www.breedemandweep.com

Thank you for all the votes…thanks to your support, BEAW won!

BREED ‘EM AND WEEP: BEST PARENTING BLOG, 2006 WEBLOG AWARDS!

Woo hoo! Who wants to go to Vegas with me?

The biggest blog-and-pony show out there, the 2006 Weblog Awards totally beat 106FM’s Schlep & Scooter in the Morning’s Radio Contest. You’re the 17th caller! You’re going to Hall & Oates at the Spectrum, baby!

I know the lady with rocks in her dryer is going to kick my ass, but if b’eaw could put in a good showing, I’d feel less desperate about it all. I got nominated for Best Parenting Blog (which, in my case, to avoid ambiguity, should be punctuated thusly: Best Parenting-Blog, and not Best-Parenting Blog. I do feed them only Clif bars and they may not make it until the spring).

Spread the word. I won Chicago tickets too but my date didn’t talk to me all night so I’d really like to start a new kind of winning streak. Save an ego. Click daily. I love you. Have a Clif bar.

Darryl Hall totally winked at me though. Wait. Maybe it was the other one.

Oh, and I’ve moved! The party’s at breedemandweep.com now!

www.breedemandweep.com

I’m warning you, there’s no place to sit down, and there’s nothing in the fridge, but I got the number for the local pizza place. Bring beer and good feng shui.

Sophie: [flatly] That’s not grass.

Me: Sure it is!

Hattie: [delighted, clapping] Bambi gas!

Me: That’s right! Fresh lovely sweet spring grass like he and his mama ate!

Sophie: That’s not Bambi grass. That’s spinach.

Hattie: [very angry] NO! IT BAMBI GAS!

David the Canadian peacemaker: People can call it whatever they want.

Hattie: BAMBI GAS! [eats]

Sophie: [disgusted] It’s spinach. [eats]

Me: It can be all things to everyone! Yay! Yay yay!

[family stares]

Shakin’ your bum-bum
Nothin’ much to say
Shakin’ your bum-bum
Nothin’ much to seh-aaaay

—Sophie’s new “rockin roll” song, which she has been singing all evening (and shaking her own bum-bum to). I think she should sell the lyrics to Britney.

Yours faithfully.
Eric Martin.

I am playing Baby and Mommy with Hannah. She is the Mommy, and I am the Baby. I am lying on her bedroom floor with my head on her little plush Pooh seat.

I try again to scratch the itch on my head, but she grabs my hand and puts it under my blanket. “No, my dears! You can’t do that! You can’t touch your head! It GERMS.”

“My head has germs?”

“Yes, my dears.” She busies herself preparing some “medicine” for me, presumably to take care of my germs.

“Waah. Waah.” I am a rather listless Baby.

“Now, my dears, drink your medicine, or you have to go to the doctor.”

I pretend to take my medicine, which is actually a rolled up ball of Play-Doh.

“There. I took my medicine, Mommy.”

She scowls. “IF YOU DON’T BEHAVE, THEN I WILL TAKE YOU TO THE DOCTOR!”

“But I am behaving,” I say. “I took my medicine.”

“Okay, then lie down, my dears. I have to go do my work.”

“No, stay!”

“IF YOU DON’T BEHAVE I WILL TAKE YOU TO THE DOCTOR!”

“Oh, okay.” Clearly we are not telegraphing Good Messages about doctors in this house.

“Don’t touch that, my dears! It GERMS!” She snatches a pair of blunt Play-Doh scissors out of my hands.

I pick up something else, a Play-Doh garlic press thingie. She grabs it away from me.

“NO MY DEARS! YOU CAN’T! IF YOU DON’T BEHAVE I WILL TAKE YOU TO THE DOCTOR! THIS GERMS!”

I am starting to wonder about my parenting style. I know I slap a lot of Purell on their hands, I know this is a house where sick dogs do unspeakable things to floors, which makes me a mother who screams, “DON’T GO IN THE KITCHEN WITH YOUR BARE FEET! TERRIBLE THINGS ON THE FLOOR! YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW!”

The topic of the day is germophobic parenting, my dears.

But it was our anniversary weekend (seventh), and we celebrated by having friends over to help us tear up the remaining ancient green carpeting in the house—in the entry area, and on the stairs. As my husband pointed out, we were bidding farewell to several decades of toe juice.

I managed not to throw up when he said that. But then I saw the decomposing horsehair again, and nearly tossed my cookies.

BEFORE:

DURING:

AFTER:

At the very least I knew you would enjoy another glimpse of the wallpaper.

I want to go. I want to go so very much. I want to go to this this this conference this weekend, more than I have ever wanted to go to Blogher, to any sushi restaurant, to anywhere, except maybe my own wedding. Ghost-hunting. Mediums. Animal spirit guides. Generally trippy freaky-deakiness, the kind that makes me so very happy. Why must it cost me $150 to finally meet my animal spirit guide? Why? I have been waiting all my life to meet my animal spirit guide!

It’s in our area, so no travel or hotel costs, but $150 is $150, and I have a sneaking suspicion that paranormal conferences are not tax-deductible, no matter how creative our account can be.

WHIM-PER-ING.

Where are my peeps? I am craving a glimpse into another house like ours, 1200-sq.-ft. and under, circa late 1800s or early 1900s—preferably one occupied by folks like us who can see their house’s potential, but don’t have the financial means to actually do anything to their house except vacuum up dog fur and paint over wallpaper.

There is no Old, Small, Leave-It-As-Is-For-Now House movement that I can find. And there should be. It’s so disheartening to pick up a “shelter” magazine that promises fabulous low-budget renovations inside, only to find out that their version of low-budget differs from our version of low-budget by at least $15,000.

I want to love what we have, and have what we need, and most of the time I think we’re doing pretty well in those departments—until I hit the magazine aisle at the grocery store, or come across “Our Gorgeous Soon-to-Be a B&B Queen Anne Victorian” blogs.

I want to hear about the aging mutts of the house world, old houses of indiscriminate origin and architectural style. I want to hear about houses with strange spooky spiderwebby corners. Houses with tiny bedrooms and no storage space. Houses that had very bad things like aluminum siding and fake wood paneling and terrible 60s wallpaper happen to them, but that may have wonderful treasures like shingles or clapboard or tin ceilings hiding underneath the bad things—treasures that the current owners can’t possibly get to or restore without loads of cash in the bank.

I want to know how other people live anachronistic lives in their old houses, i.e., how they can bear to look at their yucky, buckling Ikea furniture in the same space as old pine floors that deserve to be refinished and loved for another 100 years.

And if they wrote about their ghosts, that would definitely be a bonus draw.