"That's Not Food!"

Today I'm trying something new and attempting the " Weekly Writing Challenge " at "The Daily Post."  Here is the challenge: Pick a stranger, family member, or friend. Imagine a day in their life.  Give us insight. Give us detail. Don’t just tell us about the other perspective, make us forget that you don’t live it every day. How does the homeless man on the street corner see you? What’s on your mother’s mind minutes before you visit? Does your boss like her office chair, or does the squeaking sound drive her crazy, too? Aim for two or three paragraphs. Okay, here we go. It takes forty-five minutes to style my blond hair into the perfect librarian up do, and I can accomplish this only because I enjoy interruption free mornings in my silent condominium.  Sure, the cat purrs a little loudly at times, but I purse my lips and shoot him instructive looks telling him to keep it down.  I treasure my mornings in which the lack of noise is so pronounced it's...

About a month ago, I was driving Andy and Alex to the library when Andy said, "Mommy, can you put your hand back here?"  Thinking he was going to hand me a piece of garbage or a wayward fruit snack, I reached back to him and had my hand greeted by a bare little foot.  Andy burst out laughing, so proud of himself for thinking of taking off his shoes and socks and tricking me into touching his stinky foot.  Playing along, I gasped and cried out, "Andy, is that your foot?"  Letting go of his foot, I slowly brought my hand back and stared at it with a mixture of disgust and despair.  "Ewwww.  Now my hand smells like a foot!" And so this is the new thing we do.  Granted, this is not the safest game to play while driving, but it is Andy's favorite, and many car rides will consist of me getting "tricked" into touching his foot and then groaning Andy's favorite "line."  My hand smells like a foot.  This makes Andy laugh every time, an...

"Daddy, will you tell me the M&M story?"  I overheard Andy asking Chris last night.  This piqued my interested, and I wondered what sort of fantastical, chocolaty tale Chris had woven for his young sons. "Once upon a time, when Daddy was a little boy," Chris began, "The only M&M colors were red, green, yellow, brown, and other brown.  Can you imagine a world without blue M&M's?  Well, son, I lived it! Then, one day, the M&M people had a contest and all the little boys and girls and some of the weirder adults cast their votes.  Blue, pink, and purple were on the ballot- and blue was the winner!  So, they stopped making other brown  and started making blue.  The end!" "Wow," breathed Andy.  Then, "Can you tell me that story again?" And so Chris told the story again, and this time I listened closer.  That's right- there was once a world in which a bag of M&M's looked drastically, yet minorly diffe...

Christmas break for Andy is ending tomorrow, assuming the preschool decides to open.  Today is one of those days with a -52 degree windchill, which means nothing to me and the kids since we're warm inside.  It could be any other day on the couch except for the fact that we watched Chris leave for work wearing no less than three pairs of pants.  And except for the fact that we never stay home all day, unless it's -52 degrees windchill wise or one or more of us is vomiting like crazy. We did the vomiting like crazy thing over the break.  Andy had the good fortune to only be ill for six hours. He woke up at three am in his own throw up.  Like an idiot, I brought him into bed with me, and also took Alex in, too, since he had been woken up by the ruckus as well.  Chris, lucky Chris, was out on the couch. Two hours later, as I was almost starting to drift off, Andy sat up, retched, and soberly declared, "I threw up on Alex."  That did not bode well, except...