12 things I learned today

1. When I have a doctor’s appointment at 8:30 for just a “quick check” of my eyes, it will last 90 minutes and I should take more than one bottle, one diaper and two, count them, TWO wipes because (by the fourth child you would think I had learned this already) I would rather be safe and over-prepared than oh so very sorry.

2. Unfrosted strawberry Poptarts have exactly the same amount of sugar as the frosted kind. Huh.

3. I should look at my calendar more than once a day because it is entirely likely that even though I have been looking forward to lunch at the park with my High School buddies Kathy and Debbie for weeks, I will completely space it and only when Debbie calls me from the park at 12:10 will I remember and then have to admit that I’ve just put Nora down for a nap so please could they come have lunch at my house instead of the park which they will agree to because they are T.F.F.s (True Friends Forever) just like they vowed they would be in my yearbook 20 years ago.

4. When properly motivated I can take the kitchen from Totally Shameful Squalor to Almost Not Embarrassing in 10 minutes flat.

5. (Gabie taught me this one) Lavender lotion and a treatment of water applied with 17 different Q-tips will make the skin on a 5-year old’s face “less pooky.”

6. WARNING: It is actually possible for a 23 pound, 16 month old baby to produce 5 completely full, red-alert, toxic blowout diapers in a single day.

7. Junior High kids can be such idiots, especially the ones who called my sweet Ethan mean names and have apparently singled him out for teasing. He especially hates being called a “nerd.” I try to tell him that those twits will be changing his oil, flipping his burgers and emptying the trash in his executive office some day, but it still hurts.

8. Ethan’s Dad will come to the rescue. Ken vowed to find out where these kids live and (if Ethan wants him to) go have a little chat with their parents.

9. The Pennsylvania Turnpike—been there, done that—was the first freeway in America. (The kids were watching Modern Marvels tonight.)

10. A new word: blook. It means a book developed primarily from material first posted on a blog. Turns out there are loads of people who have done it, some quite successfully. So there! It is not ethically outrageous to recycle one’s own writing.

11. I have awesome, supportive blog readers who give me great advice and tell me to follow my heart and say they’ll read whatever I write and remind me why I love having instant feedback (who knows how many months it will take to hear back from editors who may or may not read past the first sentence of the manuscripts I just sent them?). I love having an audience of people who are just plain NICE. But I already knew that.

Which is why I’d like to post more, even if it’s short stuff here and there and maybe the occasional burst of serious mental tesserae-ing. Because I enjoy writing for people who appreciate what I have to say. Plus, once again, I am reminded that it’s a great way to develop ideas into words that may later work their way into my blook (see, I’m already a pro at wielding this new vocabulary!).

12. Even at the end of a day that I imagined was completely boring and utterly un-blogworthy, there are things I want to say—things that if I didn’t say them and post them to my blog might drain out of my head tonight onto my pillow and dissipate into the stuffing and be lost. Maybe it’s good to just have a place to take notes on the lessons of the day so I’ll remember them tomorrow and (hopefully) avoid having to relearn them again the hard way.