Celebrations, a new party idea site, is looking for an expert. I ran across it in my hunt to try and find some work-from-home writing jobs, and briefly debated applying myself. But we all know that creative party throwing and crafty are not words that folks usually use in conjunction with my name. And while I am pretty sure I could come up with some great ideas to pitch myself, the thought of having to keep coming up with them made me shiver. So, I pass the opportunity onto all of you.

And if you run across any writing gig that requires a little less Martha Stewart, keep me in mind, OK?

After weeks of temper tantrums, hysterical pleas for more sleep, and general miserableness by all parties, I think (please, oh please) that we have finally made the transition to standard time. 7 am baby!

Now if only we could get Dumb Cat to sleep past 4:30….

I took this quiz, as seen at Revdrmom’s, on which candidate held views closest to mine. The result? Joe Biden. Go figure. Every time I see anything about him I scream at the TV “Stop running already! Who is giving you money???? You are NEVER going to win!” Apparently, people like me are giving him money (hangs head in shame for doubting the one who is obviously my political solution). Hilary came in a distant second, which is the direction I am leaning even though it pains me to no end. Really, there is no one who I am willing to throw myself behind like I did Bill Bradley (I still have my Bill Bradley hat. And clearly I have a tendency towards agreeing with folks who don’t have a shot of winning).

I actually think I played the role of Joe Biden’s campaign manager in high school at a mock election. In which he got clobbered by Dukakis (hey, I went to prep school in Massachusetts, he didn’t have a shot).

Go take it, it’s fun. And I suppose eye opening, if you believe in such quizzes…

Next week we’ll be headed south for the piggroom festivities. The last time we flew with both kids it was, how shall I say this nicely, disastrous. I know there are folks out there who fly frequently with small children, so please, take pity on me and tell me your travel secrets. Here are the facts, so far:

1. We will be traveling on the busiest travel day of the year. Because I totally messed up the ticket ordering.
2. Our flight is at 3pm, give or take.
3. Currently one parent is sitting with both children (guess which one) and the other is a few aisles up the plane.
4. The flight is supposed to take three hours, give or take.
5. There is no food being served on the flight. One child is already hysterical about the fact that there will be no cute little turkey sandwich on a cute little tray (which neither child would ever eat anyway).

Thoughts? Tips? Tricks? Any ideas on good packable travel games/activities that a three-year old and a five-year old might both enjoy without fighting over?

Two comments have been made to me this week that I would love to expound upon, but I just can’t find the time to sit down and really address them as I should. But because I want to get my thoughts out of my head, you’ll have to suffer through my less than thoughtful prose on one of the topics as I stand in my kitchen trying not to burn dinner.

Sitting at one of the kids activities the other day I was chatting with another mom who I keep running into at random places. Somehow we got to talking about how in a few years our youngest were going to be in school full-time, and suddenly we were going to find ourselves “out of a job” so to speak. She asked if I was planning on going back to work then, and I replied “Yes, but I don’t really know what I would do. And given M’s travel and work schedule and my tendencies towards perfectionism, I’m not so sure it would be the best thing for our family. I certainly won’t be going back to my last career, that’s for sure. We couldn’t have two people doing that commute and working 80 hour weeks.”

She nodded and said, “I know! I feel the same way! My husband just wouldn’t be able to be so successful without me at home!” I think I startled a bit, because that wasn’t actually at all what I meant, and it just struck me as so fifties-ish. And then it reminded me of a book I read in one of my graduate school classes called Men and Women of the Corporation. A chapter or two addressed the role of the wife in a successful man’s career, and I remember finding it both fascinating and a bit horrifying, in a Stepford Wives sort of way.

At the point in time that I read that book, I was in graduate school with all intentions of pursuing a career of my own, and engaged to be married to M, who was clearly a career driven individual intent on climbing the corporate ladder. I was actually so intrigued by the topic that I wrote a short paper on it, which I would post for everyone if only I had any idea where all my graduate school work was stashed. I remember being somewhat horrified by the thought that all of these women had devoted themselves to furthering their husbands careers at the expense of their own. I also remember realizing that many of these women had to have been intelligent, capable, organized individuals to keep their households running so seamlessly and provide their husbands with the advice and support they needed to climb that career ladder.

I plan on hunting through the boxes in the attic to find that book so I can re-read that section given my not-so-new anymore role of stay-at-home wife. I have a feeling that I’m going to see a lot more of my current life in those pages then I ever imagined that I would. I do know that as each year passes, more and more of the household responsibilities, which used to be shared more or less equally, fall onto me. Which makes perfect sense in some regards, since I am home and M is generally not. What I don’t know is if we will ever be able to make the transition back to a two career family.

Nana sent the kids some books about Thanksgiving (they arrived today, thank you!), and so we settled in after bath to read up on the fast approaching holiday. On page three of the first book was a picture of people with muskets. And A, having never seen a gun before, asked “What’s that?” So I took a deep breath and launched into “Well, that is a gun, and guns are bad because they hurt people.” “Are they shooting at bad guys? Are they KILLING people?” “Well, they are shooting at people they THOUGHT were bad guys. And yes, they killed people.”

C proceeded to cover his ears and declare the book too scary. A, of course, continued to question. “But why did the piggrooms think that the people were bad?” “Well, because they were scared.” “I get scared, but I don’t kill people.” “Well, that’s a good thing. It’s not right to kill people.”

C uncovered his ears at this point and jumped in with, “They’re killing the Indians, aren’t they?” “Um, probably. Perhaps the British, but since we are talking about Thanksgiving, my guess would be the Native Americans.” “Why do you call them Native Americans but some people call them Indians?” “Because they used to be called Indians, but really, the Indians live in India, and the Native Americans lived here before the pilgrims came here from England. But they thought that they were in India, at first. But really, they weren’t Indians. It’s kind of like if people kept calling you John but your name is really C. You wouldn’t want to be called John, right?” “I guess…”

A then breaks in with “But the piggrooms. Why were they scared of the Naive Mericans?” “Well, because they sometimes painted their faces, and wore clothes that were different, and the pilgrims were afraid of that.” A nods. “Ah. The Naive Mericans liked to play dress up, but the piggrooms didn’t. But the piggrooms shouldn’t have hurt the Naive Mericans just because they didn’t want to play dress up.”

“How about we read a Christmas book now?” “Yeah! Let’s read the one about the Virgin Mary! Why is she called the Virgin Mary?”

“How about Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel?”

So Bloglines is apparently down. Leaving me flailing around the internet without any direction whatsoever. Never a good thing. I would ask if it were down for you too, but my guess is that no one would answer because, well, hello! Bloglines is down, and I know that a significant number of my readers come in through Bloglines.

Bloglines has become like caller ID on my phone. I don’t actually know anyone’s blog address, I just rely on Bloglines to tell me when you’ve updated and where to go to find you. Just like I rely on caller ID to tell me what Lovely Friend’s phone number is, four years into the game. And if I suddenly stop appearing at your blog, come knock on my door as it just means that Bloglines lost my subscription to your feed. BoogieMum seems to drop off with alarming frequency, for example.

So as I sit here willing Bloglines to magically fix itself, I will pose the question: “What internet tools do you use the most?” What am I missing out on that I could be occupying myself with during this unexpected outage?

So are we the only dorks who watch every single movie or TV show with IMDB running on the laptop? Seriously. It is rare that we don’t query IMDB at least three seven times an evening. Clearly, neither of us were good at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.*

We saw two movies today, one in the theater (The Bee Movie) and one on DVD (Knocked Up). During The Bee Movie, M kept leaning over to me and asking “Who is that?” And I kept saying “I have no idea. We’ll have to IMBD it when we get home.” Then tonight, we just took turns manning the laptop while guessing how old everyone was and what previous roles they had played.

How did we live without IMDB? And do you think it would be totally rude to bring the laptop with the wireless card into our next real live movie???

*And don’t listen to Wikipedia on this one, I was playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon in college, well before 1994. So either we invented it and we should be suing someone for royalties, or Wikipedia is dead wrong. Shocker, I know.

I really want to go to London to see Rebecca, I swear. But my flight options? They suck. We can leave here at 9 am and get in at 8pm. Which sounds great on the surface. But you KNOW my kids will be up until midnight, for the whole trip. Or, we could take the red-eye. Which results in them getting about five hours of sleep and us getting none. At best. Oh, yeah. They’ll be fun then. Because we all know how wethey operate on limited sleep.

When she left, Rebecca said she knew I was a true friend because I refused to say “Oh, of COURSE we will come visit you.” Instead, I kept saying “I love you dearly, but I refuse to commit.” Well, we have committed, but man, do my options have to be so horrid? Clearly, I need to stay two weeks as given my kids track record, that is about how long it will take us to make the time zone shift…

So, which door would you choose, A or B?