Crisis!

I found this when I looked

in Sophie's doll house, thats a chicken in the pot on the stove and appears to be a child in the oven. Also her nursery rhyme score slipped on her non-report card. We are of course looking into therapy. Valerie

giraffe mural

Sophie added the elephant to the mural. Her first mural. I am so proud.

I painted a new mural on Sophie's

new years resolutions

Yeah, yeah I know, they never work but this is different. This year my friend Maggie talked me into a different kind of resolution. Each month we pick a resolution and work on it. January is NO t.v. month. The idea is to make better use of your time. I know you are thinking what could be more important than Law and Order, I don't know either, Maggie can be very persuasive, if you know her be careful not to look into her eyes when she is coming up with some new scheme. February is be more social month. for Maggie that means phone calls letters and emails for me that means having people over to my house. More frightening than you know as i am about 3 magazines shy of a guest stint on hoarders. We are also doing a month of clearing out clutter and a month of being more creative. Email me back if you would like to join the challenge. I know it seems very cliche but cliche's come about because often they are true. Maggie has a whole list of good resolutions but true to form i only memorized February as it was coming up soonest. January's resolution taught me two things first i am a cheater and second that i really do rush things with Sophie in order to see the opening of law and order. what a waste. She will be off at reform school before I know it and law and order will still be on. Oh and third my husband is a rat bastard. He keeps threatening to turn me into Maggie for cheating. But I would like to expand this list. Today on the today show, for those of you with real lives involving people over the age of four I will fill you in on what went on today. They had these four living Bratz boy dolls on talking about their bucket list . They were only 12 so predictably their list was longer than mine. But I still wanted to make a list, even at the risk of being trendy, of ten things that I would like to do before I die. and I would really like to see your bucket lists so Victoria, Marina, Cassie, Maggie, Dierdra, Sandy, Connie, Jennifer, Kat, Rachel and Laurie please send your bucket lists. I do not include bob in this because I am afraid that his list might contain things like never have to wade through a sea of laundry in the bathroom again, have something more exciting than a bologne sandwich for dinner, and never be told what I am thinking again. So here is my list. Not very exciting and very predictable but here are the ten things i would like to do before I die.

1. Write a children's book.

2. Visit Verenna Italy again,

3. lose 40 pounds

4. be a good mother to Sophie and a nicer wife to Bob

5 be braver about approaching people

6. visit Yellowstone

7. Drive cross country in my van

8 fix my van

9. participate in an art show.

10. Go on a mission trip with Cassie to help people.

bad day at black rock

The flooded basement with my red pajamas floating by.

Well it finally happened, the whole tower of lies came tumbling down. There I was at the library responsibly returning my library books checked out under an assumed name, one that you can assume is not mine, when this new Librarian who looked just like Ellie Mae Clampet, wearing one of those bumps as seen on t.v which is supposed to make your hair look thicker but in reality makes you look like you have a brain tumor, demanded I.D. I don't know why I did it. I could have refused, i could have lied, the only thing i can think is being a stay at home mom is dulling my bat-senses.

I gave her my real id. She looked it up and a stunned silence fell across the library. They called out the seventy or so librarians from the back to gaze in awe and rapt disapproval at the person with the biggest single library fine in the history of libraries. $110. American dollars.

I tried bafflement followed by shock and awe and finally my old standby towering outrage.

Nothing worked, it didn't help that we have suffered a flood in my house this week which broke the washer and dryer leaving me very few clothes. Sophie and I were dressed in clothes that would shame an Afghanni refugee. I was wearing an outfit that i thought would make me look sort of Audrey Hepburn but in reality makes me look like a rubenesque Where's Waldo and Sophie was dressed in too small tights the crotch only came up to her knees a too short knit dress and cowboy boots two sizes too large. I could not even employ the adorable daughter factor, as she picked this week to cut her own bangs to a length of two centimeters, which look just like goats have been chewing on her head and recovering from "hand foot and mouth" (a real disease, by the way, and 10 solid days of the swine flu).

She also pointed out that I could not pay my fines in the canned goods I was holding because the food drive was last month, I should have thrown the cheap canned pineapple at her head, I should have run but swine flu has left Sophie weak and the two big pink cowboy boots would have slowed her down. And if Sophie gets taken hostage over my library fines well that is just the kind of thing that puts Bob over the edge, a place he dwells anyway. So I paid ten dollars of my fine bringing it down to only $100 more dollars and exited the library setting off the theft detector. It was a very bad day. I hate all librarians now, not just the Cagney and Lacey wannabee that busted me today, maybe someone should look into why they employ 100 librarians in the library or did they send the bookmobile out to bring them in like a field trip kind of thing. Either way they should be nicer to me since I am paying all of their salaries.

Family Vacation

This year a lot of our Riverview neighbors went on vacation. They went to Paris, San Diego, and London to see the broadway show Wicked. Here in Amish country we live a simpler life. We took Sophie to Yorktown where she got to belly up to her first bar and later sit in a tepid swamp like stew on what shall hereafter be known as murder beach. The temperatures were roughly that of the surface fo the sun and we were next to what looked like a squatter's camp. The squatter was missing. We think he evaporated in the heat. Anyway good times for Sophie to remember as she has the cheapest parents in the free world.

Matilda Jane Newman

This is Matilda now. She appear to be a mix, not a Dalmatian cow as Sophie at first imagined. She has the head of a chihuahua, the body of a beagle-goat mix and the heart of a chupacabra. She also has the intestinal fortitude of a python.

Sophie turns 4 and a half.

We had a birthday party for Sophie. We decided on an evening barbecue on a day when the temperatures reached the love one thousands. with a chance of torrential downpours with a side order of locust. It was actually a lot of fun and I feel very grown up for hosting a party. We did almost poison the guests, Bob's doing, lost his mother, my doing and forgot to give Sophie any dinner. So much for grownups. Happy birthday Baby Girl. Sorry about the sideways pictures, courtesy of Ansel Newman. Just turn the computer sideways. Valerie