electric boogaloo

First, I should clarify that my child-made gluten-free birthday cake wasn’t technically cake. But I’d much rather have gluten-free “cake” on my birthday than “gluten-free” cake.

This past week was busy busy busy and yet somehow not at all productive. Nicolaus was sick the first part of the week with a sore throat, fever, chills, and etc. I would have called it the flu except that he was over it completely by Wednesday which is good because that gave us a day to run errands and have fun before Graham got sick on Thursday. Graham was much better by this weekend, which was perfect because around 4:00 Friday afternoon I was feeling achy and wretched. I texted Kevin to share the good news and he wrote back that he too was feeling awesome not.

It was a danged viral relay race. Kevin and I both spent the weekend trying to wrangle two kids who feel ALL BETTER WOOOOO PARTY.

So even though I am trying and wanting so much to be a better housewife person, given the amount of medium-fever lameness we had this week I’m going to call the week a success because we were all alive at the end of the week and none of us were fired, evicted, arrested and/or hospitalized. We worked on reading and writing, listened to stories about Rome, did laundry and dishes most days, ate thousands of meals at home, discovered the wonderful web comic Minus, took Graham to his new swim class before he got sick. And! on Wednesday we learned an important life lesson about scrapbooking stores which is that scrapbook stores are operated by snooty-tooties who don’t like kids even if your kids are being unusually charming and well behaved and aren’t touching anything except to ask how much something costs and then try to buy it with their allowance money. We have learned the same lesson about rubber stamp stores. If you work at one of these stores, can I please recommend that you keep some wine in the breakroom and maybe sip it throughout the day? While you listen to classical music and study a large, beautifully scrapbooked sign that says Seriously. It is MFing PAPER.

You could use glitter letters for the M and the F.

So I was proud of the boys for deciding not to buy anything as a form of protest. We walked out and went next door to a pet store where the boys fell in love with some little albino mice because “We didn’t realize they literally run in little wheels! That is so cute! And they are only $2.00!”

I told them no, because A) the mice are $2 but the cages are $40 and B) Kevin has already said that everyone has a pet except him so he gets to pick the next animal. That means no more pets until we move to a place that allows goats.

So instead the boys spent their money on gumballs and tiny glow in the dark alien toys from the little machine.

Somewhere in there we also watched the state of the union speech (which the boys took from it: “Soon we can expect to get a whole lot of money! Because he said that the banks have to pay back the taxpayers.”), found a free wallet for Nicolaus, took a gift to a friend, started to go for walks and turned back because OMG winter, drank numerous teaspoons of cold medicine, and took turns requesting and offering sympathy. Oh and Graham — maybe because of his cold? — spent an extraordinary time in the time out spot.

Sick people require passive entertainment so we also watched a lot of Star Trek and a new Batman DVD (the Bold and the Brave — highly entertaining and I’m pretty sure starring the dude from Drew Carrey as Batman).

I was feeling guilty for the amount of television they watched this week until I remembered days when I stayed home sick from school as a kid. My dad and I would eat cinnamon toast and watch:
Gomer Pyle
Addams Family
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Andy Griffith show starring Andy Griffith
The Pink Panther cartoon
Looney Toons
The Munsters, even though it wasn’t as funny as the Addams Family
I Dream of Jeanie

There are others I am forgetting. Hey remember TVGuide? Do they still make that? I just had this strong memory of being home sick and studying the TV Guide to figure out my plan for the entire day.

This week I also spent every possible minute working on the new Nerdy Baby products we are going to make this year. At the end of the Christmas rush, Kevin and I started working on lots of ideas — fun. Too fun. Now it’s time to narrow them down and figure out what it would take to actually produce some stuff. Each product idea presents its own special thrills and hassles, particularly since we are trying to expand Nerdy Baby (TM!) to the next level without acquiring more debt and without having things made in China.

If you have ever started a company and/or manufactured anything then you know that these two self-imposed limitations are very… what’s the word? Exciting? Challenging? No, more than challenging. Exciting? No. Impossible?
No.

Oh, I’ve got it! Exciting.