Diary of a Metal Mommy

Ahhh, nothing better than a perfect spring day in Minnesota. Especially when the weekend is kicked off hanging out on the patio with your peeps after recording another podcast and enjoying some homemade coconut lemon cake that you’ve slaved away for and your friends actually like. Success! Don’t ask me why, but the weather was completely amazing yesterday afternoon so I felt compelled to stay in the house and bake a cake. huh?! However, being the paranoid that I am, I was fretting about leaving it out, as the lemon filling in the center was made with egg. Stephanie kept insisting that it was fine…even so, I still put the cake in the fridge over night.

This morning I found 2 emails from my ever-lovin’ peeps, both saying they were sick last night!!!!! Of course my first thought was The Cake–even though Coreman and I had both had some and were absolutely fine. Just when I was wondering if I should throw the rest of it away, I get another email from Stephanie saying, “GOTCHA!” Maven of Mischief cooked up a little plan to freak me out into thinking I poisoned my friends. nice. They got me, all right! Too hilarious. You just can’t let your guard down around that friend of mine. Too bad I’m so damn gullible, and am never able to retaliate. You guys will have to help me think of something for revenge….

It must have been the ‘drilles. That’s my new name for my espadrilles, thanks to Kim. It sounds much more metal, don’t you think? With them on I am about 4 inches taller than Kim, which she wasn’t too happy about.

My little inventor. Sullivan’s school had it’s annual “Imagination and Inventor’s Fair” last night. The cutest. The kids can enter anything their little brains can dream up–and of course every year there are at least 2 erupting volcanos. (Vivian had one of those in the past!) Sullivan came up with the idea of The Flying Box, a box that can fly anywhere in the world. With a *little* help from his dad, he had transformed a simple dog kennel into quite the contraption for he and Digby to travel the world in–complete with switches, maps, food dishes and of course a plunger to steer. He had a list of places he wanted to go…of course most kids probably would have said Disneyland, Grandma’s house…not my Sully. His list included Algeria (to see the Sahara Desert, of course!), Italy, Oman, (?!) and even McDonald island, which I learned is not a place full of cheeseburgers, but a teeny island near Antarctica. huh. Who knew?! Sullivan also wrote a story to tell a bit about his adventures, so people could get a good idea of what it really was. I just have to share–Sullivan told me the story, and I just typed up what he said:
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SULLY AND DIGBY IN A FLYING BOX

One time Sully and Digby went in a box to fly to somewhere. The box was very special because it could fly anywhere they wanted.

Digby looked around the box. He sniffed, too. Then Sully turned on all of his switches. Engine One, Engine Two, Engine Three, and he turned on the switch with the rockets. With the rockets burning and the lights on, Here we come around the world!

Digby was very excited to look out the window, and he did. Digby saw mountains down there. They were flying over the whole arctic. Sullivan said, “Hold on, Digby, we’re coming into a landing!”

“Let’s look around”, said Sullivan. So they looked around the arctic. They saw penguins and polar bears. One fierce looking polar bear headed straight toward them! “Ahh, quick! To our flying box!” said Sullivan. “Come on, Digby!” So they rushed in the flying box as fast as they could. They rushed away from the arctic. “Let’s go to a desert,” Sullivan said.

So they went to the Sahara desert in Algeria. They saw big rocks of sand. So the two little mountain climbers climbed up one of those rocks. They slid down the other side. “Weeee! What fun!”, said Sullivan.

When they got back to Minnesota they landed right in front of a sewer. “Let’s go inside!” said Sullivan. So the two went inside the sewer. “Yuck,” said Sullivan when some squishy mold dropped on his hand. They saw tarantulas in there, Huntsman spiders, and wolf spiders. “Let’s get out of here!” So they rushed back to their box. “Let’s go home.” So they went back home with their Mom.
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(he just HAD to put the spiders in there! ug!) Is my boy clever, or what?! It was quite the hit, although of course kids were looking all over for Digby himself who was quite pooped out from all of his adventuring and stayed at home. A big thanks to his loving Daddy who spent so much time and energy working with Sullivan on this project. You gotta love it when the man says, “let me do this one”. ahhhh.

Maybe next year I should enter my flying box…*gasp*! Did I say that?!

OK, I know many of you have your own image of me, and with this post it may be shattered. I couldn’t help myself, I have succumbed to the fickle fashion-of-the-moment. I never thought I would be saying this, but it’s true…I bought a pair of espadrilles. Espadrilles! Not only have I always hated the word itself, but in the past I always thought they were just plain butt-ugly, only something someone named Muffy would wear. Certainly not a Heavy Metal Mommy. But then Stephanie showed up last summer in some very sexy ones…between that and much In Style magazine brainwashing, I have decided that some espadrilles are pretty darn cool. So there it is. I still don’t like the word, but I do love my espadrilles. And I will still make them metal, mark my words.

…well, at least for today. Or maybe the week. Possibly the year?? Google Current did a schtick on the whole Susle Flynn thing. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, a certain young girl is ‘running for president’, with the hopes of getting health insurance for the 9 million children in America that don’t have it. It’s a very worthy cause, and if you go to electsusie.com, you’ll see that the whole campaign is nothing to laugh about. But anyone has to admit that this Current thing is just the best–check it out:

Susie Smear!

Ah yes, this girl is near and dear to my heart…;-)

Now this is news…a new Tolkien book is being published!!! I’m so excited! No, the man has not risen from the dead to pick up pencil and paper again–ghost writer, indeed!–but his son Christopher has pieced together more of his writings that were never previously published. This was the case with “The Silmarillion”, which quite honestly was a bear to read…it was more of a history book than anything else, giving the reader background to the peoples of Middle Earth and how it all began. Supposedly The Children of Hurin is written more ’story-like’, as the Rings trilogy is. Now if only someone would find some lost Chaucer that would solve the mystery…which story WAS the winner of the Canterbury Tales??

Today this post could have also been titled “Metal Mommy Goes to School”…as I went into Sullivan’s school this morning to help out in the classroom. As it turns out I helped outside of the classroom, in the hallway covering at least 30 tagboards with construction paper. Ah well, it was good tedious daydreaming work, and I know it was a big help to the teachers–so that felt good. Plus I always get a dose of My Friend Kim to brighten the old day.