Another in the series of non-posts

I know that you guys don't actually have a spare second, what with your incessant brushing of your lips with a toothbrush and also the constant slathering onto your lips of nipple cream and udder cream and heinie cream (thank you for all your great advice!)--

But:

I wrote this.
And also this.

Over at wondertime.

I'm having a hard time keeping up with both a column and a blog, as you have likely noticed, and I wish I were doing better at it. But then again, I also wish that the caulk around my bathtub weren't dark grey and furry. And that Birdy's baby book didn't contain only a one-month photo and a five-month photo. (Is that better or worse than Ben's, which contains about a million pictures of our tabby cat and of me, pregnant--because that's when there's time to d0 the baby book! Before the baby's born!) And that I could figure out a way to get the spices to stick to the Chex without all that yummy butter.

But our gutters are fixed. OUR GUTTERS ARE FIXED. So really, what is there left to wish for? ("You saved my marriage!" I said to the Slavic teenager who fixed them, and he backed away from me and smiled and said, "Voonderful!" and backed all the way into his gutter truck and drove away.) Working gutters, two sleeping children, and a house full of miniature candy bars. Life is good.

Happy Halloween, you dear ghouls and goblins. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.

Because I am grateful

And also because, ahem, in all of your fabulous responses to my blog questions, very few of you mentioned "helpful hints" as a reason you come back here and I would like to rectify that, I offer you this pearl: If you have already eaten half a bag of Frito-Lay Naturals Cheetos White Cheddar Puffs Cheese Flavored Snacks, and if you are planning on eating the remaining half a bag, get yourself a pair of scissors and snip off the top of the bag! You will end up with much less cheese dust on your knuckles and wrist. Also, you will be less tempted to, say, put the puffs away, because now there's not even enough bag to rubberband closed, and so you will do the sensible thing and eat every last puff. (Kill me.)

But, now that we're sharing advice like sugar in this neighbor-across-the-fence way, can I ask: when your lips are so chapped that it's like you're wearing another pair of lips on top of your actual lips, and rubbing any kind of balm into them is as effective as, say, spritzing Spray and Wash onto a chain-mail vest to get out the stain on your underwear beneath, what do you do? Can I loofah my lips?

What? You wanted to hear about Ben and Birdy? Oh. There's this. And yes, I took that picture, and yes, that's the yolk of a poached egg decorating her maniac face.

Whoa Nelly!

So, um, holy frijoles! I askedeth and receivedeth. This is fantastic. Thank you. I probably have just about enough feedback at this point, and am so grateful for your thoughtful responses. Please know--even if I can't thank you all individually, or am too delinquent to, and even if I don't quote everyone directly--your thoughts will completely inform the piece I'm going to write.

Don't forget to bring this coupon for your free mojito!

Special Request

Dear Ones,

I''m not writing to ask you to go read this, if that's what you were thinking.

I'm not even writing to tell you how Ben and Birdy were having a quiet conversation in the back of the car last night and when Birdy said, "I know Benny, it is glorious," I didn't even know what they were talking about until Ben said, "Especially when it's so bright and full like this this." I love them so desperately. Even when we got home and Birdy fell to the floor of the bathroom sobbing when I went to brush her teeth because, "Mama, your pee in the toilet is too stinky."

I'm really writing to ask a favor. I'm working on a piece for wondertime about blogging, and I was hoping to ask you a couple of questions, whether you write a blog yourself or read other people's blogs, or both:

1. Why do you keep a blog?
2. Why do you read other people's blogs?
3. In what ways does blogging--writing or reading--affect the way you parent or think about parenting, or how you feel about your kids or being a parent? (Please be both general and specific, if you can.)
4. Anything else about blogging?

Those are my questions. I would need to hear back in the next day or two (I know--I'm such a procrastinator.) Please feel free to post your response here or to email it to catherineATbodiesinbalancemtDOTcom. And please indicate whether it's okay to quote you, and if you'd want to use your real name or a pseudonym.

Then you can come out here to Western Mass, and I will buy you a drink in gratitude.

38

I want to pretend to complain about how I celebrated my birthday by washing a black marker with all our best clothes (true). Or about how my moles celebrated by growing another eight of an inch. Or how Birdy celebrated by jabbing her celebratory elbow into my grumpy old bosom.

But really I am having such a sweet day. A friend took me running and to a shopping spree at the Salvation Army (Hello, perfect birthday morning!). There were calls and visits; there were flowers and also a bath. Michael gave me a jar of pickled eggs, a wrapped package of locally smoked pork chops, a homemade card of my faced superimposed over a hockey player holding up the Stanley Cup (Hello, Michael's wet dream!), and an IOU for a sewing machine that he's getting for me with my parents. (Will my annual Halloween sewing fiasco now involve fewer expletives and less sewing of my body parts to the children's costumes? Maybe, maybe not. "You can be whatever you like," I've already said to Birdy. "As long as it's a snake or a cat. Which are the costumes we already have. But it's totally and completely up to you. Snake or cat.")

And Ben gave me a little box of marzipan fruits. Ben who was so gracious that only when I asked did he mention that he'd spent his own money. And that is really too much for a crybaby birthday girl like me, the kind of birthday girl who is so lucky and unworthy and happy and sad just like I always am about every single thing, that I have to boohoo into the place where my cake would be if Michael hadn't been so thoughtful as to remember that I don't even really like cake that much. Here's to another year of all of it: I lift my pickled egg to toast you.

p.s. I almost forgot! Please go read this.