I’m grouchy today. Eleanor’s pneumonia recovery forced us to lay low (thankfully she’s tons better), so I have been at home all week with two toddlers who refused to nap every. single. day. And I had plans to attend an art show tonight with a handful of cool chicks, which I had looked forward to all week, but it started blizzarding this afternoon so I ended up at home in my sweatpants eating frozen pizza instead. GRRRRRRRRR.
But I’ve done more than my share of bitching lately, so to lift my spirits (and to help you not want to tell me to shut up already) I came up with a few things that have made me happy recently. Without further ado:
Andy has officially begun his work furlough week. Which, I cannot even begin to tell you how fired up I am for this. Okay, so I’m not enamored of the “not getting paid” part of it, but I am beyond excited to have him home with us all of next week. We have work-around-the-house plans, and family-fun plans, and it will be hard to give him back to his workplace a week from Monday.
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Betty White is awesome. A completely random thought, I know, but I’ve seen her a lot lately, whether it’s getting a SAG lifetime achievement award, or mentions of her upcoming Super Bowl ad, or the Facebook group trying to get her to host Saturday Night Live. She is my favorite Golden Girl and was always terrific on Super Password (confession: I also had a weird crush on Burt Convy) and I don’t know, she just makes me really happy.
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Speaking of random celebrity love, my friend Nancy and I listened to an interview with Dr. Temple Grandin about 10 or 12 years ago and have been slightly obsessed with her ever since. You hear her talk about how her autism lets her think like animals, and her squeeze chair, and her slaughterhouse designs, and at first you’re like, “wait, what?” but then you realize that she is fascinating and pretty incredible and you read Animals in Translation and then suddenly you’ve been a fan of hers for a decade. So imagine my excitement over THIS:
A Temple Grandin BIOPIC. Starring CLAIRE DANES. This is so many levels of AWESOME it makes me type in ALL CAPS like KANYE.
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One upside to the germs in my house lately is that I’ve had extra time for reading. I got a chance to move a few books from the reading it! to the read it! column over there in my side bar. One of the books I enjoyed is One and the Same: My Life as an Identical Twin and What I've Learned About Everyone's Struggle to Be Singular by Abigail Pogrebin. I witness Henry and Eleanor’s amazing twin bond on a daily basis, and as someone who is six years older than her only sibling, I don’t think I’ll ever “get it.” It was interesting to read about that bond from twins themselves and learn how it can be both their biggest hindrance and biggest blessing.
So I was excited to get an email in my inbox this afternoon saying that Abigail was following me on Twitter, and then a while later this popped up in my Twitter stream:
Yes, I know that authors are just people, but given my lifelong love of books, I sometimes assign them rockstar status in my head. So this tweet might be the highlight of my day. And that sound you just heard was probably Abigail logging on to Twitter, clicking Unfollow, and muttering, “oohhhkaaaaay, crazy internet stranger.”
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Henry and Eleanor often ask me to draw them things on their Magnadoodle, and I direct them to Andy, because he has the artistic talent. I stumbled upon this today while picking up toys:
I missed the conversation between kids and Daddy that resulted in this smiling sun with a bruised forehead, eyeliner, prison gang tear tattoos, and cop-from-Village-People mustache. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during that art session.
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