Yesterday Mrs. Carl Sagan and I spent all morning surfing at Etsy and emailing our finds back and forth. Every five minutes one of us would continue to ignore the needs of our children, and instead would dash off a quick link or two to some really cute ragdolls, or crocheted cupcakes, or thank-you cards, or bracelets. I’m sure the kids will forgive me when they see the super cute homemade puzzles they’ll be getting in their stockings this year!

We are quite far gone with the addiction, you see. It’s sort of like going to one of those Arts and Crafts shows, which we used to do all the time before it would have involved bringing along three kids apiece with grabby hands and bathroom needs and really whiny voices when bored. Only with Etsy, there’s like, a hundred thousand exhibitors. It’s so fabulous I could die swooning.

This morning, it’s been more of the same. We’ve both discovered the “pounce” feature in which you can see a constantly updating list of what just got sold a few minutes ago. I have a compulsion to check it every six seconds to see what I’ve just missed out on buying. I could have owned that! It’s like I’m about five years late to the eBay party, what with the constant refreshing of my browser and the bitterness over things I am no longer allowed to buy. Which is typical for me, I’m a late adopter. Have you heard about this new thing called the internet?

Mrs. Carl Sagan upped the ante yesterday by actually purchasing two lovely pendants from Madison Craft Studio. I loved them, and wanted some. But buying stuff for myself is always so hard, so fraught with guilt. Last night encouraged me to just go for it, get crazy, spend $15 on myself and call it a Mother’s Day gift.

So this morning I put two pendants in my cart…and there they sat for several hours while I went all around the circle of “I don’t need it” to “They’re too expensive” to “I don’t have anything to wear them with” to “TurtleHead, YOU SUCK.”

So then I clicked “Purchase.” Even though there was a big scary warning under the button that said that once I clicked “Purchase,” there was no backing out, ever, EVER. Eeep!

End result, apparently, there are necklaces in the mail. I’m excited! But guilty. So typical.

In other news, Mrs. Carl Sagan also bought some reuseable vegetable bags from Etsy seller Daisy Dots, because she was tired of waiting for ReMarket to restock. The Daisy Dots version are larger than mine (16×12 instead of 10×13) for a little less money, and have pretty coloured ties to boot. They haven’t arrived yet, but they look like a good option for anxious environmentalists.

Now I must run. At least 100 things were pounced on at Etsy while I wrote this post!

On Wednesday, Captain Jelly Belly had his first Junior Soccer game. He was so excited; even though it was pouring rain he didn’t hesitate to put on his new little cleats (so cute!) and run out onto the field.

Before the game, the team had to pick a team name. The Captain and I had talked about this a few days earlier. He’d just finished jumping off the edge of the bed onto a pillow and I’d called him a Crazy Monkey, so the Captain said he’d like to name his soccer team the Crazy Monkeys.

I thought that was pretty good.

I warned him, though, that the other kids would all be allowed to submit an idea. Then everyone would choose as a group and maybe they wouldn’t pick his idea. And if that happened, he was NOT ALLOWED TO CRY, instead he just had to shrug and say, “Oh, well, maybe next time.”

Every day for the past week I’ve been emphasizing that they might not pick his name. SO BE PREPARED.

So what happens on Wednesday? The coach asks if anyone has a name suggestion.

One lone hand shoots up in the air. “Captain?” “CRAZY MONKEYS.”

No one else had any other suggestions. One boy kept saying that he did not like Crazy Monkeys, but he had no ideas of his own. He’s going to grow up to be one of those naysayers in meetings who poo-poos on everyone else’s hard work while contributing nothing of his own.

Too bad, naysayer boy!

Crazy Monkeys it is.

We’re so proud.

Some of you may be wondering how my little shopping excursion went last week.

It went pretty well.

After five minutes in the store I had my usual closed-throat reaction to clothes shopping and almost burst into tears. But I fought through the terror and forced myself to stay. I grabed like, 50 things and headed to the changeroom — because there is nothing I hate more than getting naked and putting on a shirt, only to find out that it is too tight and I need to get all dressed again only to go back out into the garish store light and the booming music to search for another size, and repeat. One changeroom visit only, that’s my limit!

Most of the stuff did not work at all. But some of it did.

In the end I walked away with three very nice spring-like short-sleeved shirts, and one cute denim jacket which I like but I already wonder where the hell I’m going to wear it.

Here I am wearing one of my new shirts and my hot-ass pants, on my way for a duty day at Gal Smiley’s co-op nursery school:

Even though I was very pleased with this outfit, looking at this picture of myself leaves me cringing because my hair and face are such a mess (I admit I chickened out and used the smallest possible photo so you don’t get a lot of face detail). My hair is in that tragic state called “eight-weeks-post-cut,” when it can’t quite decide if it wants to be straight or curly and is really in need of reshaping to calm it down. This is when I usually start to wear it exclusively in a little pigtail all the time but this time I’ve decided that I’m a grown woman, dammit, and I should probably try for a more adult look, so this day in particular I decided to try wearing it down. Unfortunately my hair did not want to cooperate. Of course, it would probably point out that it was not helped by the fact that I completely refuse to blow dry. It makes me cranky. No more blow dryers ever!

As for the rest, I’m really past the age where I can be running around town with a makeup-free face but I hate makeup — I have a ton of pimples STILL, apparently my pores have not yet received the message that I am THIRTY-SEVEN, for God’s sake, and makeup makes it worse because I hardly ever remember to wash it off my face at night. Plus, I can never seem to remember that I have the stuff on, so I’m constantly rubbing my eyes or licking my lips or sitting with my chin in my hands, only to discover my hand is now a lovely shade of plum while my face is now naked.

I feel committed to making over my wardrobe in the upcoming year, but the nice pants and cute tops are only highlighting the fact that I also need to do something from the neck up.

Man, you get one pair of hot-ass pants and it all steamrolls from there, doesn’t it?

I think I need more products in my house. Something to smooth hair. Something to even out my facial skin without feeling heavy or requiring a lot of blending like foundation. Maybe some pretty shiny lip gloss. And eye cream. Do I need eye cream? And night cream? Who can say. I totally skipped that whole part of adolescence where you experiment with face wash and eyeshadow and learn how the hell it all works together to produce a glowing, beautiful you, so I need lots and lots of advice. Please leave me your product ideas!

Meme! From Beth at LNTO!

What we have here are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you read for school, underline the ones you started but didn’t finish (or are on the shelf waiting for a free week).

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment — I got soooo close to finishing this one, I only had about 75 pages left…but I’d had CapnPlanet’s copy for more than a year and I just couldn’t seem to push myself to get to the freakin’ ending so I gave it back!

Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange — started several times in the ol’ book room — but I could never finish it

Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King — halfway through this one right now, but it has gotten really dark and violent, so I had to set it aside for a while

The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon — had this book several years ago, and I started it when he finished it, but he wanted to lend it to a friend of his, so I said okay, I’ll read it when it comes back, and I’M STILL WAITING.

Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything — again, halfway through this right now, but it keeps getting bumped for exciting new novels on-loan from others

Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Poor Margaret Atwood and Jane Austen. They appear to be the literary equivalent of Bran Flakes — everyone thinks that they will be boring and only buys their books because they are supposedly “good for you” and then ignores them, when really they are a truly tasty treat.

Andrea over at QuietFish is a woman of great ideas, and I totally stole her idea to get some reuseable vegetable produce bags. You know, those clear bags for putting your beans and cherries and whatnot in, that are totally useless for any other application, that end up in the garbage?

Andrea made her own because she is a crafty woman who, apparently, does not waste her energy by getting overly involved in American Idol. But I did not have it in me to drag my 500 pound sewing machine up from the basement, especially when Brooke White so desperately needed my love and support sent through the TV, so I ordered some online instead.

They arrived. And I love them.

Here’s what they look like:

They’re wicked awesome. Lightweight so they don’t add any extra cost to your food; see-through so you can tell what’s what. Totally machine washable and dryable. Since we already bring our own cloth grocery bags to the store, it’s no trouble to remember to bring these little bags, too.

I bought them from an Etsy shop (a site where crafty persons can sell their homemade items) called Re-Market. I notice that she’s all out of inventory at the moment, though. She makes the bags in several sizes. I think I bought two packs of 3 in the Large size, which have been perfect for our family-of-four-and-a-half type shopping.

So, I recommend!

I have a new love in my life. A totally new product that hardly no one has heard of.

It’s called Bran Flakes.

Last week I was making a new crockpot recipe, Sweet & Saucy Meatballs, and it called for “all-bran cereal.” So I put that on the shopping list, and Sir Monkeypants bought me a small box of Bran Flakes.

Then I went to make the meatballs, and I thought, ew, flakes of pure bran? Do I really want to be feeding this kind of crap to my kids? Wouldn’t it be better to replace these with something more nourishing like Cap’n Crunch or Froot Loops?

So I tried one, just to make sure it didn’t taste like sawdust. And it did not taste like sawdust.

Rather, it overwhelmed me with waves of pure deliciousness. Then I ate handful after handful before I finally had to stop myself so that I would have room for dinner. Although to tell you the truth, the Bran Flakes were better than the meatballs.

The next morning I got up and I eyed the box of Bran Flakes and I remembered that Mrs. Carl Sagan has them like, every morning for breakfast, with frozen blueberries added. And hey, what do you know, we had some frozen blueberries in the freezer! So I threw some in the bowl and heated them up, then put in the Bran Flakes, and some milk, and voila…

Best. Food. Ever.

I’ve always thought if I were ever on death row, that my final meal would be either my mom’s lentil soup, with tea biscuits and marbled cheddar cheese on the side, or perhaps some Kraft Dinner with chips on top. But now, there’s no question. I’d want it to be Bran Flakes with blueberries. Did you know that the blueberries turn the milk a superfun purple colour? It’s like a party in my bowl and everyone’s invited!

When I was in my final year of university, I lived with SmokingToaster, and she was a Bran Flakes fan. She used to buy the really, really big boxes and have it every morning, and when she finished a big box she’d put the empty box up on top of our kitchen cabinets until the entire kitchen was encircled like a four-year-old’s birthday party with a Bran Flakes theme. University guys have piles of empty beer bottles in their kitchen, with fruit flies buzzing around them, like a monument to debauchery. We had a neat circle of Bran Flakes boxes in our kitchen, like a monument to regularity.

It’s a little hazy but if pressured, you could get me to confess to the fact that I may, MAY, have bugged SmokingToaster about the Bran Flakes a little bit. I may, MAY, have accused her of being an old lady. A really, really regular old lady.

I’ve been having Bran Flakes every day, sometimes twice a day, since last week. Now it seems I am a really, really regular old lady.

Dear Teenaged Boys With Emo Bangs:

You are so totally going to regret that haircut ten years from now. Your children will mock you. Think about getting a trim before those grad pictures cement that hair on your parents’ wall for the next 30 years.

Love,
TurtleHead

Yesterday I had to get a prescription filled. I hope this is not TMI, but I have a yeast infection in my left breast that hurts like a PUPPYLOVER when nursing, and for a few hours afterwards. Thankfully, it’s treatable, and there are beautiful, painkilling drugs in this world. Advil, you rock my world!

At least 99% of me is really annoyed and weepy and exhausted about the infection. But I must admit that a very small 1% of me is kind of happy about it, because this means that I have now had every single problem related to breastfeeding and childbirth that there is in existence. With the yeast infection my knowledge of all things baby-related has been completed, and now I can hold forth as the most Expert Expert on Babies Who Ever Experted. And trust me, there is nothing I like better than to pontificate on how to birth and care for babies.

Oh man, my future daughter-in-law is in SO MUCH TROUBLE.

Anyway, I had this prescription to get filled, so I took it over to the Superstore pharmacy. We usually get our prescriptions filled there just because it is convenient; we know we’ll be there at least once a week, so it’s not an extra trip to pick it up. I’ve always thought, though, that it was kind of a “no name” version of a drugstore, a place where you get bargain basement service and the bare minimum of care.

Turns out, not so much! I got to the Superstore about ten minutes before the pharmacy opened, and I was just standing outside waiting when the pharmacist slid the gate open a bit and told me she’d take my prescription even though they weren’t open yet. Then she checked my script, which was a mixture of creams, to make sure she had everything, and told me I could pick it up in a couple of hours (mixing the creams would take longer than usual).

Then, after I had left, she noticed that this particular prescription was based on a recipe created by Dr. Jack Newman, who is the foremost expert on breastfeeding in Ontario (AFTER ME, of course). And the pharmacist realized that Dr. Jack had recently made a small change to his recipe, so she contacted Dr. Jack to confirm, then called my own doctor to tell her about the change and ask if she should change my script, then mixed up the new blend, then called to tell me it was all ready to go. Taken care of! Totally without my intervention!

I think that rocks.

Furthermore, just this past weekend we had taken in a prescription to get new epipens for the Captain, because the pharmacist there had warned us last time we got epipens (last September) that the Captain was pushing the weight limit for epipen juniors, and would probably need to move up to adult-sized ones in the spring. But later that afternoon, the pharmacist called because she had double checked, and the epipen people had just recently upped the weight limit for the juniors, so we didn’t need new ones after all, thus saving us a couple hundred dollars’ worth of unnecessary epipen replacement.

Which also, rocks.

In the past when I’ve had a prescription that I thought was extra tricky, or unusual in some way, or needed right away, I took it to a “real” pharmacy. But no longer! Superstore No Name Pharmacists…you have won my love and affection. Good show!

This past Sunday was my and Sir Monkeypants’ 12 year wedding anniversary. Twelve years. Sounds like we are old marrieds, doesn’t it? We actually dated for six years before getting married, so that makes 18 years in total that we’ve been together. We’ve been together longer than the youngest constestant is old on American Idol, by God, and that is freaky.

Know what else is freaky? I still really love that guy.

I love him for all the reasons that I married him, that he is hilarious and clever and has beautiful chocolate brown eyes. These days I also love him for being such a great dad to these three kids I adore, for having endless appetite for stories about the kids that I love to tell, and for sharing his lovely chocolate brown eyes with all three of them.

So, happy anniversary, darling.

Just the other day I was thinking about being newly engaged. I had to go to the bank to get a big wad of cash for an unnamed house project that is doing a part cash-only thing, hush hush, and I felt really, really nervous about walking around with a few thousand dollars in my diaper bag and three little kids in tow. I was pretty sure I was going to be mugged in the parking lot or carjacked on the way home. It reminded me of being freshly betrothed, when I was terrified of leaving the house with my engagement ring on. It was by far the most expensive thing either of us had ever bought — still is, except for cars and houses — and I was sure that its dazzling sparkle was just a flashing neon sign to every thug on the subway, saying, “Rob me! Rob me!” I used to turn the ring around so the shiny bits were facing my palm, then make a fist to hide the ring, and even then I’d be a shaking bundle of nerves for the whole time I was away from home or office.

Nevermind that thousands, nay millions, of ladies leave the house with engagement rings every day, and survive to tell the tale. Mine was lovely, and a token of true love. It was sure to be worth millions on the black market.

I still have it, though. Totally outsmarted those thieves.

But making into the father of my children is what really makes me feel smart.

My new laptop is here! Yay!

It’s a Dell. It has XP on it, so y’all don’t have to hear me vent about Vista anymore. Not that the venting wasn’t fun.

It’s blue, too. There were other options on the Dell site that were better priced, or offered more horsepower for the price, but they were black and boring. I wanted the blue one. Actually I wanted a pink one, but they were all out of pink, so blue had to do.

The blue one does have one bonus, and that’s a built-in webcam. I never thought I’d use such a thing but the webcam has already bought me a whole afternoon’s entertainment for the kids. They love it when we take little movies of them with our digital camera — they can hardly wait to run around and watch themselves acting goofy. I have now set up the webcam so they can sit in front of the new laptop and watch themselves acting goofy in real time. It’s a potent attractor, I must say.

And bonus!, the webcam software comes with all these fancy “effects” in which it will detect a face and then do something even goofier to it, like put it on the head of a superman and then have superman fly into a wall, or have the face change into a werewolf, or have the face wear a box of popcorn on its head. And that shit is HILARIOUS when you are five. Or three.

Or thirty-seven.