Manic Monday
2004-02-09, 9:40 a.m.

I can't work til I get all the swirling thoughts out of my head, through my fingertips, and onto "paper". Imaginary paper.

I bought the coolest gadget. A lamp timer. But this is no ordinary lamp timer - it's the lamp timer that is set to make my coffee brew at 4:30 and to turn off at 5:30. Monday through Friday, I'll wake up to fresh coffee already done and waiting for me to partake in its warm, delicious, slightly bitter and scorched eye-popping flavor. I have named the timer mom, as in, "thanks, mom, for getting up half an hour early to get my coffee going." I cracked up the Lil Guy this morning when I patted the timer and told it thanks.

And I think I have figured out that the best say to stay connected to my kid during these lovely, communicative, sweet and obedient pre-teen years and beyond, is to just make him laugh with the same sense of humor that he shares and understands. Take the coffee maker timer...naming it mom. He totally gets that.

I dropped him off at his Granny's this morning because she had some social studies assignment she wanted to help him make some corrections on this morning. When we pulled into the driveway, I told him "OK, get ready for some bossy social studies." He grinned, and I realized that we were commisserating in his Granny's bossy controlling way, which by the way, have only his best interests in mind. She just can't (1) separate her life from those of her children and grandchildren or (2) believe that a nearly 40-year-old mom is capable of reviewing the correcting the social studies assignment correctly. Or signing his tests either, apparenlty. I'm not sure how to get her to stop doing that. I wonder if his teachers just think that his dad and I are slackers? Really, Granny just gets ahold of the tests and assignments first, and gets her signature and comments on there before we can. Newman!

Am I feeling good, then? Yes. Up at 5, coffee already made, read the funnies, drank said coffee, put dinner in the crockpot (Italian chicken and potatoes). Fed the dog, worked out. My legs are tired and sore in a good way, and my abs are like buttah. Operation Lil Guy's Mom (has got it going on) is on day 8, and things are progressing quite nicely.

As DW said this morning, I can be happy for the rest of my life with my coffee timer. It was the one thing that was missing in my life. Wanna work out every morning? Get the coffee brewed. Wanna get to work early every morning? Get the coffee brewed. I mean, those are 2 very important self-improvement goals for me.

I made homemade lasagne last night. Lil Guy ate it right up, even though the presence of cottage cheese was evident. He is becoming less and less picky. And pickly. And then I made him help me put away his clean clothes. And then I made him help me put clean sheets on his bed. "But mom, I'm not good at this!", he whined. "Well, you're gonna get good at it. When you get married, I want your wife to thank me, not curse the two of us."

I bought new makeup. It makes my face sparkly and kinda shiny in a fresh and healthy kind of way. My office is semi-clean, the mulberry candle is burning, I have already got one long-put-off task finished, and now it's on to knock out a few other procrastinated tasks.

The mail just came - do we rock the bond statements, or what? The mailman is surely glad to drop all this off with us and be rid of it.

Later, skaters.