Every year for the past few years we've hosted a family Halloween gathering at our house. My kids love to decorate for Halloween, and I love the chance to host a holiday party--especially a party that involves cooking up ghoulish looking cookies and other Halloween-themed food. I was so prepared this year--in advance, for once. Weeks ago I bought the party plates and tablecloth, and I've been collecting recipes and party ideas, and browsing Halloween sites for what seems like forever.

It doesn't look like it's going to happen this year. Thanks, H1N1. [more]

Irony
pronunciation: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural iro·nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler
Date: 1502

the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning

OR

Spending weeks and weeks debating whether or not you should get the H1N1 vaccine for your children, making the decision to go ahead and do it, then finding out that you can't get the vaccine anywhere, even if you beg and plead, and wring your hands.

************ [more]

Something has happened to my internal clock, and to the internal clocks of my students, and my husband, and my poor children, who usually hop out of bed pretty wide awake every morning (my kids can go from asleep to awake in .2 seconds). Every day this week I've surfaced painfully from a deep sleep and every day this week I've had to drag both L. and T. out of bed. Even the dog has a hard time getting up. She follows me downstairs in the dark, but races to her second dog bed--the one in the office--to catch a little extra snooze time while I blow dry my hair. [more]

Yesterday I finally did what I had put off for two years--I skipped out of my office hours early (grouching all the way to myself about the work I needed to do) and headed to my OB/Gyn for that exam--you know the one--the one that's supposed to happen annually but the one we moms often put off because, well, we're awfully good about taking care of other people, but sometimes not so good about taking care of ourselves.

While I was there I learned two unexpected things:

1) My driver's license expired in August

and [more]

This weekend my mother-in-law visited and brought with her several tattered cardboard boxes filled with all sorts of odds and ends from my husband's childhood years--the missing years, as we have called them, because while a quick trip upstairs to my parents' attic will open up a time capsule to my childhood, Scott thought for a long, long time that all those boxes were lost--thrown out by a renter who had once used their family's garage and taken it upon himself to do some housecleaning. [more]