November Peanuts

• Grandma Linda: "Melissa do you want to wash your hands?" Melissa: "No."
  
• Parked in the principal's spot to vote. (Turns out I wasn't registered. Oh, well.)
  
• After months of vigilance I left my backup mouse out overnight. Isaac was unable to chew the mousewheel off -- guess it was tougher than the first -- but he did get something sticky inside it so it barely turns now.
  
• Thermostat says it is 70 degrees inside. I am wearing a jacket. Either it is lying or Texas has made me a wuss.
  
• Rachel made a Tree of Thanks for us to fill with leaves on which we write things we're grateful for. I'm putting "no eye surgery without anesthetic" on my next one, which sounds flippant if you hadn't heard the guy in church today share the story about his freak basketball-to-the-eye accident.
  
• Had some trouble getting my power cord out from a table-top power hub one-handed, so I slid my fingers under the edge of the plug for more leverage. Touched both prongs at once. Yes, that stung.
  
• Rachel's new phone came with Swype pre-installed. Jealous.
  
• Melissa: "I'm going to be a mommy." Me: "Yes, you'll be a mommy and Matthew will be a daddy." Melissa: "But Matthew doesn't like kisses!" Matthew: "Eww!"
  
• Melissa: "Daddy, can you put my picture in my folder?" Me, rolling my eyes: "You can put your own picture in the folder." Melissa: "No, I need help!" Me: "Fine. Bring me the picture and the folder." Melissa brought down Rachel's laptop: she wanted her picture saved in the 'Melissa' folder.
  
• Me: "We mostly talk about work. I see him post things about his family on facebook, sometimes." Rachel: "That's just enough to know his kids are still alive."
  
• Total Isaac bathtimes that ended with an emergency abort to scrub poop out of the tub: four. Then he stopped doing it. Weird. Not that I'm complaining.
  
• Driving home with Isaac. I hear spitting noises, and "duck!" [yuck] I hear this repeatedly but I can't figure out what he could be talking about -- maybe he just wanted to practice for dinner. Turned out he'd gotten bored enough to eat his shoes. Why he didn't stop after determining it was yuck -- maybe try each of them once, for good measure -- I don't know.
  
• I had the minivan washed for Thanksgiving, inside and out. Matthew folded the paper floor mat they left into a hat.
  
• Got a handwritten, page-long Jehovah's Witnesses solicitation via US Mail. Part of me is impressed with the effort it takes to do a spam campaign in longhand. On the other hand, spam is spam.
  
• Thinking about buying my first desktop in about 10 years: Matthew and Melissa are starting to fight over whose turn it is to use Rachel's laptop. Not to mention sometimes Rachel actually wants a turn.
  
• Briefly considered buying a quality solid-wood desk for kids to do homework on, and to put the desktop on. Then sanity returned: particle board it is!
  
• Melissa is crying in bed now because her pillow is not as fluffy as Matthew's. That is one tired five-year-old girl.
  
• We tried letting Isaac choose which piece of Halloween candy he wanted. He'd pore through his booty for half an hour, picking up each piece and inspecting it for tastiness potential. Eventually we'd lose patience, and take the candy away, leaving him with his most recent selection, and he'd HOWL (then he'd squash the candy to show us how mad he was). So now we just pick a piece for him and everyone is happy.
  
• "Melissa, take your foot out of the cereal box."
  
• Usually google voicemail transcripts are useful but this one cracked me up: "Hi, Whether. Ellis, this is sister method. I was just returning a phone call that I did, and my phone or Switzerland that that you really called anyway. Just want to know we got yours. But the phone call with Mr. Just barely talk to you later. Thanks. Bye. "
  
• It's officially Christmas season, and the kids are working on Dad. Melissa: "Lights that glow are so pretty. You need to put some on our house since it's Christmas time!" Matthew: "Do you know what Christian's dad did? He let Christian climb on the roof with him to hang lights!" Humbug.