The Great Balancing Act

Nowak Christmas Letter 2010

 

It's the fifteenth annual Nowak Family Christmas Letter.  2010 shall here forth be know as The Year We Moved A Lot (YWMAL).  Not to be confused with The Year We Moved Three Times (YWMTT) nor The Four Years We Got To Live In One Place (Yippee-4).  We moved to Portsmouth, Rhode Island this June so that Curtis could be an Army guy at the Naval War College for the year. (ILE by Army terminology.)  He is earning a Masters of Arts in National Security and Strategic Studies.  This coming June we will be moving again to a yet to be disclosed location.

Here is a typical weekday in the life of the Nowak Family:

5:50 -- Curtis magically wakes up before the alarm goes off and hops into the shower.  Jennifer lays in bed wishing it was Saturday until about 6:15.  Katie starts to stir and Meeko begins to whimper for her to take him out.  Katie stumbles in and takes Meeko to "go potty".  She feeds Meeko and takes him out yet again. Usually, all of this commotion wakes up Holly.  Since Holly drew afternoon Kindergarten, she could sleep in if she wanted to, but she doesn't.  Thus three of the Nowaks wish they were in bed and one gets up unnecessarily.

7:00 -- Curtis is out the door and on his way to school.  No uniform for him this year -- it's business dress at the Naval War College.

7:20 -- Katie, Jennifer, and Meeko are off to stand at the bus stop.  Fifth grade is in the middle school here in RI, so Katie gets a pretty early start.  Her morning bus is usually prompt.  As the bus stop is only one house over, and Holly hates getting dressed, she stays in the house and ponders what she would maybe, possibly like for breakfast.  She reserves the right to change her mind.  If it is cold, or rainy, Meeko stays in the house with Holly because he's a wimp.

7:30-11:00 --  Jennifer and Holly have "quality time".  Sometimes we read and do homework, sometimes we use the computer, sometimes we take Meeko for a walk, and sometimes we wish we were still in bed.  One day a week Holly has swim lessons.

11:00 -- Holly eats lunch.  She'd usually rather be playing.  Jennifer packs up Holly's school bag, takes the dog out, and ponders a second cup of coffee.

11:40 -- Off to Holly's bus stop to wait from 5 to 25 minutes for the bus to arrive.  Holly does her best to get muddy, Jennifer tells Holly not to get muddy, and Meeko barks at squirrels.

12:00-12:15 -- Except Wednesdays, when he has an afternoon class, Curtis get home from school.  He gets to read 100-200 pages of "stuff" or maybe write a paper.  Once or twice a week Curtis and Jennifer go to lunch.  This school schedule is kind of nice.  Meeko and Sabrina fight over who gets to lay in the afternoon rays of sunlight on the floor.

3:00ish -- Katie's bus rolls in.  On Mondays Katie and Jennifer get ready to head to Girl Scouts.  On Tuesdays Katie has a piano lesson.  On Wednesdays Katie and Jennifer hop in the van to make a mad run to pick Holly up at school.  Then we all dash off to the YMCA where Holly takes a level 1 gymnastics class and Katie practices with the level 3 team.  Katie has another team work out from 8:00-10:00 on Saturday mornings, and Holly is currently the only girl in YMCA Pee-Wee floor hockey.  Thursday and Friday we have nowhere to run, unless we do.

3:40-4:10 -- Jennifer or Curtis and Meeko go out and wait for Holly's bus. The bus most frequently comes at 4:00, but if an adult isn't out there, they won't let her off.  Holly got a bonus tour of the rest of the bus route once because the bus was on the early side and her parents weren't out there, so we wait.

4:10 -- On Mondays Katie and Jennifer are at Girls Scouts from 4:00-5:00. Every other Tuesday Holly and Jennifer are at Girl Scouts from 6:00-7:15.  On Wednesdays Katie, Holly, and Jennifer are at the YMCA from 4:00-5:30.  At some point Jennifer makes some semblance of dinner.  Occasionally, the children eat it without complaining.  Katie works on her homework, takes out the garbage, and practices the piano.  Holly is usually too tired for homework, and does hers in the four-hour period of time between when Katie and Holly get on the bus in the morning.

7:30 -- Bed time for Holly.  Every night she insists she "isn't tired" and "never runs out of energy".  The parental units disagree.  Katie reads and sometimes watches Alton Brown, Psyche, or Doctor Who with Curtis.

8:30 -- Katie takes Meeko out yet again and is off to bed.  Curtis reads some more or writes some more  and watches some TV and Jennifer reads her Kindle until they both pass out to do it all again tomorrow.

It's been quite a year, and next year promises to be more of the same.  You can find us at our web site http://thenowaks.typepad.com/my_weblog/ , on Facebook  C.w. Nowak and Jennifer Shoemaker Nowak, or at curtis.nowak@us.army.mil and cowsnfrogs@cox.net .

Curtis, Jennifer, Katie, Holly, Meeko, and Sabrina  Nowak

The Top 10 Reasons why I haven't written for 5 whole months.

1.  We moved from Germany to Rhode Island.  It was a thing.  Our energies were engaged with move "stuff."

2.  Curtis came back from Afghanistan.  Yippee!

3.  I took the kids on a marvelous 2-week cruise in the Eastern Mediterranean.  I know, you are perhaps not feeling bad for me there, but it certainly occupied some time.

4.  I am a hopeless Facebook addict, but I have given up all games.  That's step 1 of 12 -- right?

5.  My Amazon Kindle is my new best friend.  I'm sure Curtis is regretting that he ever got it for me.

6.  The kids didn't have any friends to play with this summer, they were very much around --over, around, under, and through.

7.  Did I mention the whole international move thing?  How about shipping the van, all our worldly goods sailing over the ocean blue for 3 months,  hotel living, trying to figure out how American works after being gone for four years, and endless unpacking?  Or that I prepped and sent out all of those worldly goods solo while Curtis was still in Afghanistan?  Or, one of my personal favorites, that I gave myself a concussion walking into the underside of the second story deck of the house not once, but twice on the day we moved in?  Like I said, it was a thing.

8.  It had been so long since I've written I couldn't figure out what to write.  (I know, lame, but true.)  It's kind of like not returning a phone call for so long you don't know how to explain yourself, so you just don't call.

9.  American TV, DVR, and Netflix on demand.

10. Rhode Island isn't called The Ocean State for nothing.  There are beaches on this here island, and we arrived here June 19.

Dependancy

The Army calls me a "dependant", that is my official title.  You have the service member, and his or her "dependants".  So for the purpose of say our medical insurance, I am not a beneficiary, I am a dependant.  When you live on post, this can all get very weird.  You need permission and papers to enroll your children in school, fuss with your house, or register your car.  It all gets a tad bit silly.  I guess you can't blame them really, after all they'd much rather deal with the service member who has to do what they say, than a "dependant" who does not work for them and can tell them to stick it.

Add living overseas to this mess, and you have a whole other layer of issues.  I of course, only have permission to reside in Germany on the basis of my status of Curtis's "dependant".  Just like in the US, you can't just decide to come from another county and live in Germany.   After all, we wouldn't want any foreigners (aüslanders) to receive federal benefits.  I am allowed to use the commissary, medical facilities, the bank, and many other things based on the fact that my husband, an American, is allowed by the German government to work in the country.  Or, as the US Army would say, I am a "dependant".

 It's an interesting system, one that hits you full force when you are living overseas.  Because while you are a "dependant" you are expect to take care of every imaginable thing, and every imaginable thing directly involves the Army when you live on-post in a foreign country.  They encourage their spouses to be independent and take care of themselves, freeing the service member to say deploy 3 times in 4 years -- you just need a power of attorney to do it.  For example, when a child turns 10 they must be issued their own dependant ID card.  As Curtis is deployed, I had to use my power of attorney to authorize my own child to get her ID card.  Since his school in Rhode Island starts so soon after he returns from deployment, I have to conduct much of the move myself; and you guessed it, I need a power of attorney to do it.

Ok, whatever, most of this isn't news to me, but recently, they made me very, very angry.  Back in September, I scraped a car, in a parking lot on post.  I hunted down the owner and exchanged insurance information and such.  The other party decided that we need to file a report with the military police for  the insurance to pay, we didn't, but who was I to argue.  I figured the MP's would show up and tell us that a report was unnecessary, but I guess they were bored that day so we spent a delightful hour filling out paperwork.  They needed to know several really important things like:  where my husband works, his social security number, his height, weight, and eye color  . . .  You did get that I was driving the car, and not only was Curtis not in the car, he wasn't in the country. . . .  Anywho, I did the usual things with the insurance company and went on my merry way.

That is until Curtis received an e-mail telling him that I have been awarded 4 points against my driver's license, for destruction of private property.  (In Germany, running a red light  gets you 3 points.)  It seems that in the 6-months since the incident in the parking lot, the Army has been engaging in a judiciary process against me without my knowledge.  Since I am but a "dependent" when they finished their judgment they wrote a letter to my daddy to let him know.  Now, this is not a case of some funky regulation that says they had to inform Curtis as well as me, they informed him INSTEAD of me.  'Cause you know while he's in Afghanistan he should be keeping a better eye on what I'm doing with my car.

I, of course, marched my oh, so happy self down to eat someone for lunch inquire about the situation.  I am rather certian that the words "I am a grown-up" (in case you missed the crows feet) came out of my mouth.  Along with many, many others. After giving me some half-baked explanation that no rational mind could ever understand, I got a lecture, from someone who was still in high school while I was attending my 10 year class reunion, about how I hold my drivers license as a "privilege" as my husband's "dependant".  Funny . . . and here I thought the State of Washington awarded me one about 20 years ago.  I seem to recall them renewing it every so often, when I pay them to, without my husband's approval, but I guess I'm mistaken.

So, there you have it folks.  I need a keeper, and have been convicted of a federal crime without due process.  Cool . . . does this mean they have to send Curtis home now?

The Case of the Drain-Unscrewers

A neighbor and I were discussing the plumber the other day.  As we all live in Military Housing  here, we all have the same plumbing team.  It's not a choice program.  Generally, water comes pouring out of either the ceiling in the dining room or the wall between the dining room and the entry hallway and the maintenance people send the same guys.  (No joke, I know many people who have had water spout from these locations -- it seems to be the weak point in our plumbing system.)  Any who . . . after our discussion we concluded that our tale sounded absolutely crazy, and that anyone who had never lived it would not believe it. So, for your reading enjoyment  I present The Case of the Drain-Unscrewers.

Our plumbing issue began as an electrical problem.  We lost power to half of our downstairs, over Thanksgiving weekend, when we had house guests.  When regular business resumed the happy electrician came to our house, flipped the switch, everything worked, and he had me sign his trip ticket papers and went on his merry way muttering about Stupid Americans.  Stupid Americans, Stupid, Stupid Americans, don't they know how a breaker box works?  Ditto for his second trip to our house for the same mysterious electrical problem.  However, on the third time, even The Master of Electrons couldn't get the power to come back on.  Of course, this was now a Big Job and he needed to go to lunch, so we had to reschedule for the next day.

On electrician trip number 4, the man proceeded to go through every room in my house checking my appliances.  Clearly something sinister like my brand new $800 Coffee Goddess must be to blame.  It could not possibly be the wiring of a building thrown up quickly after WWII in a country that didn't have a lot of affective building codes at the time. When he determined that everything down to my alarm clock was not to blame, he finally yielded to my suggestion that he concentrate his search to the electrical items on the actual circuit that didn't work.  After some persuasion on my part, he pulled out the first outlet in the series that didn't work, located in the wall between my dining room and entry hallway.  Eureka!  It was wet.  "Ah Ha!", he says in his very best German accent, "This is not problem for electrician.  It is problem for plumber."  He takes my hair drier to said outlet (Cause after all he knew where it was after his extensive recon of the entire house.) flips the power back on, tells us to call for the plumber, and skips off on his merry way.

Several weeks into the investigation of the mysterious electrical problem, we get our first visit from the plumber.  He goes straight upstairs to the master bathroom shower.  (Located over the kitchen, not the dining room nor the wall in question.)  He proceeds to tell me that all Americans unscrew their shower drains and cause the water from the shower to go into the wall rather than into the pipes.  If you are a German plumber in an American's home with a water leakage problem you can certian that the Drain-Unscrewers are to blame.  I assured him that I had done no such thing, but he was certain my husband had.  He replaced the shower drain, and though there was no wetness anywhere near the shower drain and the shower drain was indeed screwed firmly into place he proclaimed the problem fixed.

Now, let me explain about drain unscrewing: I received my first shower drain lecture from a German plumber in 1996.  Apparently, if you undo the 5 inch long screw holding the metal screen in the shower drain to get say hair out of the drain the whole pipe system drops away.  German plumbers are convinced that all Americans are a race of Drain-Unscrewers.  Now, as I let plumbers mess with drains, I don't know if this differs from American drains or not, but I got the message: stay away from the drain screws.  In the maintenance briefing I've received upon moving in to each of the 3 apartments/houses I've lived in Germany I have received the same four rules: open the windows for 10 minutes every day to avoid mold, put Special Saltz in the water softener of the dishwasher, recycle properly, and never, ever, ever unscrew the shower drain.

 A few weeks later the power went out again.  I pulled the outlet myself, saw it was wet, used the hair drier, and called for the plumber. Three months after the first power outage problem, they sent the "Chief", who was, of course, convinced that the Dirty American had struck again and unscrewed the shower drain.  We had words.  Finally, he checked the shower drain, found it to be un-tampered with, and began investigating in the other bathroom.  (You know the one without a shower. That is actually located above the wall that was wet.)  They broke out tile, and opened the wall in the bathroom to have a look at the pipes -- it was all dry.  This was of course declared to be a Big Job, the plumber needed to go to lunch and the work was rescheduled for the next day.

A side note on Big Jobs . . .  Germans have a 30 hour work week.  For the most part, they do not work late, do not work overtime, do not work German or American holidays, and never, ever take less than an hour and a half for lunch.  Or at least those with a US Government Maintenance contracts. . .

Several months, and 3 plumber trips later they opened up the wall where the wet outlet was located and found a crack in the big, outgoing water pipe. This was of course a Big Job that they repaired on the fourth trip to my house.  Boy that was eye opening -- this place has cast iron pipes!  Sixty some years later they are all corroding -- little ticking time bombs in our walls.  Some weeks and 3 trips from the wall repairs and painters everything was good as newish.  In any case, good enough for Government work.

Recently my neighbor and I were discussing her big water issues, and our general frustration with the plumbers.  In her case, water came pouring out of the dining room ceiling while her husband was in the shower and she was enjoying her morning coffee.  Since she herself is German, the plumbers were convinced that her husband had  . . . wait for it . . .  wait for it . . . unscrewed the shower drain! Her husband and the plumber had words.  They changed the shower drain, turned on the water and it continued to pour out of the dining room ceiling.  Or course, she already had them out several times for an upstairs slow moving sink drain.  After several days of being told not to use any water upstairs, and multiple "Big Job" return trips it was discovered that a clog in the pipes had gotten worse, and worse until it finally burst the rusty, corroded, cast iron pipes.  The housing office actually tried to charge them for the repair for  "causing" the clog.

We decided that anyone who hadn't lived here listening to us talk would think it was the craziest thing on Earth, hence this lengthy post.  Gee, aren't you all glad I went for a walk with that particular neighbor.

Oh, and while we're talking about plumbers . . . We have both also had other, more emergent, but less involved plumbing issues that required the serviced of the after duty hours guy.  In both cases Mr. Grumpy Pants whom the Army pays a great deal of money to handle after hours issues, accused us of putting up with the emergency running water problem all day, and waiting until 10 pm to call it in.  He "could tell."  So yes folks, we now confess that we bailed running water that wouldn't shut off ALL DAY LONG just so we could have the privilege of the afterhours guy's sparkling company.  Now you know. But hey, at least we didn't unscrew the shower drain.

The One Where I Puke Too

The tummy bugs generally follow 1 of 5 possible pathways around here.

A)  Katie pukes the house down, I bathe in vomit and do 8 loads of laundry cleaning it up.  I have to force her to take a shower because she's covered in vomit.  No one else gets sick.

B)  Katie pukes the house down, I bathe in vomit and do 8 loads of laundry cleaning it up.   I have to force her to take a shower because she's covered in vomit.  Holly catches it and pukes once or twice, always hitting a container unless she happens to start in her bed .  Then it's 50/50.

C)  Holly pukes once or twice making minimal mess.  Holly doesn't sleep, not even when she's sick.  Katie catches it and pukes for days like one possessed.  I bathe in vomit and do 8 loads of laundry cleaning it up.

D)  Maybe I get it, feel dizzy for a day, lay on the couch and whine. Sleeping with one eye open so that nobody burns the place down or eats me.  Please, oh please, can't you see that Momma is SICK.

E) Very, very rare Curtis gets sick -- pukes in bowls, asks for carrots, and naps on the couch telling everyone to be quite.   I tell him to sleep in the bed, the bed, the bed.  I would KILL to be able to sleep in the bed when sick.

We've had something a little different this week.  I woke up Wednesday morning to Holly gagging, I ran down stairs, and back up, she puked in the bowl.  Then I puked cleaning out the bowl.  Turns out we both had it.  Fever, headache, dizzy, a couple of trips to the toilet, laying on the couch whinning, and rice for dinner. Yada, Yada, Yada . .

Yesterday the tummy bugs "jumped out of our mouths and into Katie".  48 hours later she's still going strong.  She refuses to eat or drink, huddles under a blanket, and whines about feeling dizzy.  We once again have conversations about dehydration and lack of food causing the same symptoms as the stomach virus.  The good news is she hasn't puked anywhere inappropriate this time.  Katie is a lazy puker, but  I think I put the fear of God in her last time.  You know, just a little motherly advice that if she ever ran around the house wallowing in her own vomit again, I'd kill her, after I made HER clean it up of course.  I think it was the idea of cleaning it up herself that did it -- it's all about having the proper motivation.

I know, go ahead and say it, we puke more times in a year than you have in a lifetime.  Yada, Yada, Yada.  I guess we're just talented that way.

Today I will be happier than a bird with a french fry.

I have been tired, overwhelmed, angry, restless, unmotivated, and generally at odds with life.

Tired of the challenges of the small, old, unmaintained houses the Army sticks us with.  So sick of appliances, showers, radiators, and . . . that work poorly.  Worn out by ten long months of my husband's deployment.  Overwhelmed by bones that brake; computers that won't work right; children who choose not to listen; cars that need to be maintained; the ills of an Army community that is in shut-down mode even  though over 10,000 people still live here; the missing pieces of my lawn mower; seasonal viruses; the never ending drive to gymnastics class; cold, dark weather; fighting with the Army healthcare system; and in case I forgot to I mention it, this blankity blank deployment.

And Angry.  Though I pretend not to be.  Angry that the Army has once again hung us out to dry.  Sick of deployments.  Sick with worry over the fact that they've taken away our school crossing guards.  Frustrated at the thought of conducting an International Move, by myself, in less than 3 months, and still not having the orders with which to do it.  So, so very angry at a school system that has offered my family absolutely no support and stability over this very trying year.  Violently, violently angry that my eldest daughter, amidst all the stress from the deployment that a child her age should not have to deal with, still occasionally cries herself to sleep over a teacher who choose to leave the classroom  to grab the brass ring of her "dream job" three months ago.  I try to understand, really I do.  I know that the anger isn't always rational, but it hangs on none the less.

Restless for time to pass and the deployment to end so we can move on to better things, and for time to stand still so that day to day things can get done.

Unmotivated to do anything about any of it.  After all, I don't need orders to know I need to clean-out closets, and toys, and clothes, and craft supplies, and . . . to prepare for the move.  A work order list for small items of repair in the house pile up.  I could certainly call them in -- it would take DAYS to deal with, but it can be done.

I'm a planner and a controller, and things have been so

very, very out of my control.

Yet . . . Steven Covey  would say I can't control all of this.  I can't control that the people at branch don't send out the orders.  I can't control that the powers that be seem to have lost sight of the fact that so very many of us still live in this dying community.  Nor can I control that the school system seems to have forgotten in its quest to "use its resources to the benefit of the whole school" that at the end of the day the school is made up of individual children.

I can only control how I respond to it.  And let me tell, you it's high time I got over it.

So . . . Today I will be a happier than

 a bird with a french fry.

 

 

We have some spectacular things coming up:  a move to a GREAT location, an opportunity to take my children on a marvelous cruise to Egypt and Greece, less than 100 days left in this darn deployment, piles and piles of friends and family who love and support us, birds at the feeder, and 16 lilac bushes that will be blooming before I know it.  I will re-find my excitement for our life -- even if I have to fake it for awhile.

 I will get more sleep.

I will rejoice in my healthy, bright, loving children, and the fact that even though my marvelous husband is gone from us right now, he will be returning.

And I'll get back in the cleaning out for the move saddle -- tomorrow. Today I'm refilling the bird feeder and taking my kids to a movie.

It's hard to be five!

We were chatting with a little girl at gymnastics today.  She was telling us she is four.  I told her that Holly just turned five. 

Holly said, "Yeah, it's hard to be five."

It's hard to be five.  I have to do soooo many Big Girl things.

I could hear the capital B G in her voice and started taking notes.

I have to buckle my own seat belt, take a shower, and wipe my own poop. (I'd SURE like to see this one happen.)  I have to put my own socks on by myself which I don't do very well.  It's hard cleaning up your own room, trying to draw pictures, and remembering names -- sometimes I accidentally call Jessica Olivia and Olivia Jessica.   It's hard doing school when you're five, because the teachers make you do more things.

Wow!  Should I tell her that it's just as hard to remember names when you're rolling towards 40?  And that I too am starting to hate putting on my own socks?  Oh, and don't even get me started about cleaning things up.

I want to be four again.

But if you're four, you can't take ski school, you have to be five.

Ok, I'll be five, but could you just put my socks on for me?

No can do sister, no can do.  This is offically a put your own darn socks on zone.

 

That's My Story and I'm Sticking To It!

When Holly woke up this morning, I thought I'd see if she was still committed to her tall tale.  The girl is a professional!  I told her that I thought her trip to the woods sounded so interesting that I was going to ask her teachers where they went so that we could go there. 

And here is the rest of the story . . .

You can't ask the teachers in the Hedgehog Group (her class), I went with the Mouse Group (the other class).  The people in the Hedgehog group would be sad because they missed it, so you can't ask them about it.

Ok then, I'll ask the Mouse Group teachers.

You don't need to do that Momma.  Michelle (a child in the mouse group the girl is clever) went for a walk in the woods with her momma, and she was able to lead the way.

I am so temped to take Holly out to the woods, and tell her to "lead the way".  We have a busy weekend this week, but if I do it I'll let you know.

There's A Mouse In My Pocket

The following is Holly's account of her day at school today . . .

We went for a very long walk into the middle of the woods.  On the way there we saw pikas, squirrels, and baby mice.  The teachers let the children hold the baby mice -- they were soooo soft and fuzzy.  It was such a long walk.

We walked so far we got very thirsty.  In the middle of the woods we found a river with clean water for people to drink. The teachers let us drink all of the water we wanted to. 

Then we got hungry.  So we went fishing at a fish pond in the middle of the woods.  We caught lots of fish.  The workers cut their heads off.  Then they sprinkled them with powder and stepped around the corner and cooked them in the oven.  All of the children went into the dining room and ate the fish.  It was very good.  I ate all of my fish.  It was for free.  Eva didn't like the fish, so I ate hers too. 

Then we walked all the way back to the school.  On the way back the teachers said one child could carry a baby mouse back to the school.  They picked me, because I'm the best at taking care of baby mice.  They said we could put the baby mouse wherever we wanted in the classroom.  We put it someplace the grown-ups don't look -- that's why you didn't see it.

*** What really happened at Holly's school today.  They played, practiced songs, and set up for the Advent Tea they invited the parents to this afternoon.  As it was raining, they didn't even go outside in the garden.  When I confronted Holly with the fact that I know that her teachers didn't take them to the woods on a day they were getting ready for the Advent Tea, she informed me that she wasn't "a lion".  Well good, because I'm pretty sure a lion would have eaten that baby mouse--it wouldn't even have bothered to cut off its head first.

Oh and since her teachers say she is sooo good at taking care of cute baby mice, could she have one from the pet store please?

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Isn't she the cutest thing?  All cozy in her footy pajama's waiting to read her bed time book.  That's it! I might have to make her wear footy pajama's when she's 20.

 But then . . . the phone rang.  I needed to answer a quick question about skiing this winter -- I had to look some information up on the computer to answer it properly.  I guess I shouldn't blame her (but oh I do, how I do) after all, how is a girl to resist the temptation to let it all hang out while her mom is both on the phone and the computer.  She body slammed her sister.  She hit the cat with A Pika's Tail. (A lovely little story about mountain wildlife by Sally Plumb put out by the Grand Teton Association.)  She took only one bite of the snack I had given her, because you know she was starving to death.  Thus, we did not read A Pika's Tail, and we went to bed without finishing our snack.  She then got back out of her bed off and on for the next hour and a half demanding her bread roll -- because you know she's starving to death.

 

 

Don't let this one fool you -- with her calm, quiet book reading; organized little pile of books; and  line up of owl lovies. She somehow managed to "accidently" bounce her sister's head off the floor (twice) while I was trying to confirm ski classes, and exactly which days I reserved hotel rooms for skiing.  I made these reservations back in May, there was commotion, it was all a bit confusing. . .

In hindsight, this is the picture that showed their true nature.

 

There is not enough chocolate in the WORLD to fix this.  Footy pajama at 20?  Ha!  Thing 1 and Thing 2 will be off on their merry way by then, and I will be able to talk on the phone, and use the computer without ciaos erupting in my home.  Then, of course, I'm going to dream of footy pajamas. . . .

This morning, when Holly woke up grumpy due to lack of sleep, and her all around sunny disposition, she of course, wanted that blankity, blank bread roll for breakfast.