It’s my twentieth wedding anniversary today, and you’d think that would be something awesome like The Emerald Anniversary or The Ruby Anniversary, but it turns out it’s just China, according to the official lists put out by greeting card companies (and if you can’t trust them, who can you?). China seems lame. The last thing we need around this cluttered house is more fancy dishware that won’t fit in the cupboard and only gets used once a year for Christmas dinner.

Although I suppose in days of lore, when women in prairie homes were living with tin plates for two decades, the addition of a nice china teacup or two must have felt pretty fancy. Still: please do not send us any china.

Twenty years sure does sound like a long time, and I have to admit, those people in our wedding photos look like someone else’s children. Were we ever so young? Were we ever so thin? Did we ever have that much hair? Apparently so, as these were the days before Photoshop.

As usual on our anniversary, we aren’t doing much to celebrate. There’s Guides and Brownies tonight, homework and piano practice, and later, for a special treat, a bowl of popcorn to share while watching Survivor. We’ll be working and running errands and somewhere in the middle we’ll have a moment or two to chat about our day, and make plans for the weekend.

Maybe some plans for this summer.

Maybe plans for our 25th anniversary.

Maybe plans for the next 20 years.

In any case, we’ll be planning it together. I’m looking forward to it.

I haven’t posted in forever, so just wanted to check in to say:

* I am still here.

* I have been busy – work stuff, mostly.

* Blog Out Loud was on Sunday and it was so, so great. The readers always amaze me. I couldn’t be more proud of each and every one of them!

* I am sad, and worried, and generally not so fun to be around.

Mostly what is making me sad is Little Miss Sunshine. After several months of constantly itchy skin, disrupted sleep and general crankiness, I am forced to admit that what is happening to her has all the earmarks of a food allergy.

That makes me want to swear a lot, and rail at the heavens. She was our one kid, ONE KID, who we didn’t have to worry about. Who we could send to birthday parties carefree, without having to pack her own food and treat. Who we could take out to any restaurant we wanted when the other two were busy with other activities. Who could eat every single thing I make.

GROWL.

So we’ve been back at the food diary stage, trying to figure out what is bothering her, and actually she is getting worse all the time, with hives and vomiting, and all through it I am just ANGRY, and SAD, and PISSY. And it wouldn’t be so bad if she was allergic to anything the other two are – which is a long, long list of choices – but NO, it looks like it is going to be corn and/or oats, something NEW.

I give up. We shall live on nothing but apple slices and lemonade for eternity.

So yes, I’m not so fun to be around right now, either online or in person. But I’m still here.

The other day Captain Jelly Belly, who is in Grade 7, came home with a newly assigned project. He has to do a profile on “someone he admires” and here’s what he had to say about that: “I wasn’t allowed to do Donald Trump, so I picked you.”

Flattery, it’ll get you anywhere, am I right?

Anyway, he’s doing his project on me, and I asked him why he admires me, and was all, “I don’t know, you work hard, I guess?” I guess so, little man, I GUESS SO. Sigh.

So we talked about different jobs I have had and I made him a list of all the things I do in life, including work past and present, running of the household, volunteer work, etc. At the end of this life profile I added what I thought was a fun little section of weird things I like. Things like Dance! Show! and pie and trivia contests and tap dancing in line at the grocery store.

Tops on that list was License Plate Watching, something I have been doing for years and years. I think I really got into it when they changed over from the 111 AAA format in Ontario to AAAA 111, since they had run out of numbers. That would have been, oh, maybe 1997? It was right before our good friends Mark and Shirley (hi, Mark and Shirley!) moved to California and for a long time, the four of us used the new license plates as sort of a tracker to mark the time that they’d been away.

Things in the License Plate Watch world are really heating up these days – at least in Ontario – because we are very, very close to seeing our first “C” license plate. I’m part of a Facebook group that plate watches and we’re up to the “BZ” prefix, meaning that “C” is just around the corner, and trust me, we are all DYING to be the first to get a pic of a C plate to upload. I’m so happy to say that I’ve got the whole family on board with this, too – the kids are always noting license plates when we go out now, and Sir Monkeypants is the absolute king – he even called me this morning to report a sighting of BZDW 381 getting on the Queensway in Kanata – a major coup, as this is the latest anyone has seen so far.

We were visiting my mom a couple of weeks ago and happened to see a BYYY (which was still pretty new at the time, although a couple of BZA’s had been seen by then) and I commented on it, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I explained about how we were getting close to “C” and she was surprised to hear it. Plate noticing is so common now for the five of us, I was surprised myself to discover that not everyone is driving around with baited breath, distractedly holding up a camera just in case they catch a C. (Here, I must admit I have an ongoing fantasy of mounting a camera on the dash that takes a picture from a remote mounted on my steering wheel and OH MY GOD, I am the biggest GEEK EVER.)

Anyway, long story short (too late!), I thought I’d mention this in case anyone else wants to get on the license plate watching bandwagon (you know you do). Mark and Shirley – you should totally come back for this, don’t you think? It’s an OCCASION.

The other day Captain Jelly Belly came home and said his homework was to figure out what the word “ironic” means for English class, so he asked me to explain it to him. I did so as best I could, although I have to admit that ever since that Alanis song came out years ago I am shaky on the whole subject. One time I used that word in a public setting and everyone looked at me weird and said no, Lynn, that was NOT ironic and now I’m nervous.

But I do actually like the song, even though I know (now) that almost all the examples in it are not, in fact ironic. It’s still catchy, though. And the video is so cute and happy. And Alanis is from Ottawa, so I forgive her.

In other weird language news, I have noticed a disturbing trend among the youth of today, and that is the use of the phrase “so meta” to mean “so fabulous and excellent.” NO.

This has come to my attention via Clash of Clans videos – my husband and son are both big into Clash of Clans, an online networked video game, and they can sometimes be found watching YouTube videos of dudes in their parents’ basements building new villages (and, probably, making six figures per year doing just that). I actually decided around Christmastime that I’d join too, just so I could understand what they were talking about and I actually really like it – it’s kind of like the Sims in that you have to build a little village and then take care of your villagers and I know my husband died a little inside just reading that, sorry honey!

So just a couple of weeks ago they made some tweaks to the game and made this one girl in it, the Valkrye, super amazing awesome, not to mention adorable in her little red bobbed haircut. And in a few videos, online players have used this term, “so meta,” to refer to the fact that the Valkrye is O.P. (over powering, in the slang of about four months ago). And again I say: NO. Clearly they have heard the term and not understood it at all and just figured that the “so” in front meant that “meta” means “good thing” and CIVILIZATION IS DYING.

Sigh.

And in other-other news, I was out today buying Mother’s Day cards at the Hallmark store, and they had a Mother’s Day card for, seriously EVERY possible female person in your life. In addition to the usual For Mom and For My Wife and For Grandma, they also had For Sister, For Aunt, For Godmother, For (choose your own grandmother name) – where you picked a sticker from the inside to say things like Mom-Mom and Nanny-poo, From the Dog for Mother, For ex-Daughter-in-Law, and For ex-Mother-in-Law. Those last two, in particular, were so circumspect I almost took a photo, but the lady in the shop was already looking at me weird. But seriously, if Sir Monkeypants and I ever break up, as much as I love his mother I really doubt we are going to be lovingly exchanging cards on Mother’s Day, of all holidays. At best, birthday cards. MAYBE.

Still, I guess it’s good to be prepared, Hallmark. Let me know if those become top sellers.