the underwear drawer

hi again

I'm posting! Two days in a row! Because I am nothing if not inconsistent in the attention to which I pay this blog!

So Cal and I made the cookies, and I'm not going to tell you that they all turned out great, because while 23 of them turned out in decent enough shape to send to school, 15 of them (the ones on the pan closest to the bottom rack of the oven) turned out like this:





OK looking on one side, horror charred cinder on the other. Just like the Phantom of the Opera.

They still tasted OK though, so while I sent the 23 aesthetic ones to school in a box (luckily there are 22 kids in Cal's class), I couldn't quite bring myself to throw out the burned-on-the-bottom ones, because hey, don't waste food. So overall, carbonization aside, I would classify the cookie-making as a marginal success of family activity cum math lesson. If I have a pan with three rows of five how many cookies do I have and how many more do I need to make to make sure everyone in your class gets one cookie, etcetera. Not that I have to trick Cal into learning math (he actually has a wonkish devotion to all things mathematical and clamors for us to get him math workbooks, which I find alternately weird and satisfying) but it's always nice to have real life applicability.

Oh, one more thing from inside Target. Who else thinks that Blue Bell needs to update the packaging on their individually-wrapped ice cream products line?





The second one in particular is horrifying. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She ate too many ice cream sandwiches, that's what. And now LOOK AT HER.

And now, for no other reason than because she looks cute, a picture of Cooper.




Periodically I am obligated to show some sort of photographic evidence to my mother in law that we are not KILLING THE DOG as she so heartily insists. Look, it's not that we don't care about the dog, it's just when you have two kids, the dog is not your third kid, the dog is a dog. I know several people who have dogs-as-children who are about to have human children soon, and I keep trying to warn them that look, I know you love your dog, but be prepared, Rover/Spot/Cujo is in for a major downgrade in status. On one hand, it's kind of pathetic for the dog. But on the other hand, I don't give my children squeaky tennis balls to chew. So there you go.