Drunkard's Christmas Tree?

What do you get when you mix a husband with a BB gun and a penchant for Bud beer, and a 6 year old boy? Why, it's a drunkards Christmas tree of course! Imagine my surprise when I glanced out my window this afternoon and saw this sight. Beer cans hanging from a tree in the side of my yard. Hillbilly hoedown you ask? Frat party held on my property that got out of control? No, no, just life in the woods of Central MA. It seems that empty beer cans make great shooting targets. Oh well, at least they are not using birds for targets, right?

Before I get angry comments regarding the danger of BB guns, and other such dire warnings that include the phrase "You'll shoot your eye out, You'll shoot your eye out" let me tell you that while I don't love the BB gun idea all that much, I am glad that my husband and son have so much fun doing this together, it seems to be a great bonding activity for them. I just wish he would leave the empty Bud cans out of it!

Oh yeah, there was also this little problem with flying squirrels we had a while back, lets just say my husband took care of those nasty critters single handedly.

Goodbye Good Fish

So, we had some sadness here over the weekend. A funeral actually, the kind that I am sure all of you have had at least once, or will have at least once. I am of course talking about a fish funeral. Let's begin at the beginning, when my son was about 3 1/2 he received a fish as a gift, a gift that I would get to feed twice a day and change the filthy grimy water of while the rancid smell of fish regurgitation flowed upwards. Anyhoo, he named this creature "Jack the Fish" after himself of course, and this fish swam & ate & pooped for almost 3 yrs (quite a long time for a Beta fish I hear). So on Friday when I saw poor Jack the Fish stiff and laying on the bottom of his bowl, I knew the inevitable end had come.

I actually thought that the kids would be unfazed. I mean, they hardly ever looked at the fish, never fed it, and only occasionally would fight over who would get to scoop him out of his water bowl so I could clean it. On 2 occasions they fought so much over the little green fish net that poor Jack the Fish actually fell out onto the counter top, flopping around while the kids screamed that he was dying. But alas, he persevered, and lived quite the good life for a fish, in my opinion. But the kids were much more upset than I thought. I broke the news gently, playing up how "old" Jack was in fish years, and how good a life he had. I gave them the choice of burying him, or giving him an old-fashioned burial at sea (by sea I of course mean our toilet). They wisely chose to bury him in the yard, in a wonderfully beautiful spot between the flowers. It was a lovely ceremony, and prayers were sent up on Jack the Fish's behalf. My 6 year old son bravely shed silent tears of sadness, but my 3 1/2 yr old daughter wailed and sobbed, almost as if she were auditioning for a new t.v. series about mistreated and abandoned children. She cried for a long time, long after her brother had left the gravesite to ride his bike she sat there, crying, telling me how much she missed Jack the Fish, how good a friend he was to her. I did feel bad for her, she was genuinely upset. Poor thing, but she did get over it . . . . on Saturday she asked if we could dig up Jack the Fish and check out his dead body.

PS: I have hidden the fish bowl in the back of the closet in an attempt to make the kids forget that fish exist as pets and thwart off the next question of "When can we get another fish?"

My First Post (How Exciting)

Well, thanks to Manic Mom (some of you may know her) I finally feel like I have gotten the kick in the butt to get moving and get my thoughts out there. I have been wanting to start a blog for so long, since I became a mom 6 years ago (my god, can it REALLY be that long!!!!) I became addicted to reading when I stumbled across the great Catherine Newman blog on Parent Center, I can only hope to achieve such fabulous readership! By the way, if anyone out there used to read Catherine as well, she is now over on Wondertime. You may notice that I do not have the ability or know-how yet to add little links here & there, but I will get there. Please have patience with me, my most likely 1 reader of this blog (probably my friend Suzy). I don't assume to think anyone will read this, but I write it at this point for myself, to share the thoughts that swirl around my brain throughout the day. Seriously, at times I feel like I have a running blog in my head, and by the time I get to my computer (at 11:45 p.m. like now) the thoughts of the day have drained away with the kids bathwater and I am left spent.

So, for me, it all began one day when a friend sent me a link to a blog named "Because I Said So" and that was the end. I got caught up in her life and cracked up at her daily posts, and slowly became enthralled with her circle of craziness. I followed her link to a Carepage for a little boy who was battling cancer, King Julian, and "met" Mimi, the brave and inspirational force that so many of us have come to love. Then I started reading "My Semblance of Sanity" and "Manic Mom" and started to feel like a part of this little group. Then damn, you all go to Chicago to go to Oprah and I actually felt a little jealous, like, hey, why didn't I get invited. But duh, because you don't have a blog fool, oh and also there is the little fact that you don't know these women . . . . But I digress, I am not starting this blog to get into the inner circle of these blogging goddesses (so please don't be scared ladies), but only to throw out my thoughts and ideas, get them out of my head and into cyberspace where they clearly belong, and to join other mothers out there in sharing this awesome, exhausting, exhilarating experience of motherhood. So, I think that is enough of a first post for tonight, now that I've gotten started there may be no stopping me. My children will become neglected, my house a shambles of empty cereal boxes and half dripping juice boxes, and my husband will get even less sex ("yeah right" he would say, "like that's even possible"). As for the name "Notes From A Human Napkin" . . we all know what it is like to have your child wipe their snotty little nose right onto the tail of your shirt and think nothing of it!