Okay so. Come closer. LEMMIE SHOW YOU SOMETHING.* I remember when I was a wee blogging lass and I would actually write my face off on Saturday night, and then wait to post it until Monday. I wanted you to believe I had a life when I was 24. I actually did not. I was home writing most nights while my preschooler snoozed, which is really nothing to be ashamed of. I had this idea that I should be Having My Twenties but I was kind of born 57 so it worked out really. Last night P. and I went out to one of them drinking theaters to see Cry-Baby when the children left, which was fun. I HAVE CHILDREN WHO TEMPORARILY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY LEAVE NOW.

Tonight Franny went out to a potluck at her boyfriend’s house. P. gave her a talk that was funny but like the opposite of last weekend’s traumarama dad sex talk. “Aw that is so grownup that you’re going to a potluck,’ he said,” she told me in the car. We were on our way to upsize Strudel’s violin from a three-fourths to a full sized one and Franny was riding along. She thought it was very funny but I think she likes it. I sent her with flowers since her boyfriend’s mother insisted she did not need to bring a dish.

So Strudel and I stayed here alone. “What’s for dinner?” she said.

“PMS. I mean, cinnamon loaf.”

We were responsible and had some proteiny leftovers while it was cooling. Then I iced it. Hur hur. The icing was too thick and the hole was too big.**

“What is that pattern, Mother?”

“Uh…just going for coverage, I guess.”

“They’re chevrons,” Strudel declared, generously.

As soon as I cut it, she noted that it was underbaked. We’ve been watching The Great British Bake Off like WHOA and suddenly she’s an expert in these matters.

She pronounced her final verdict: “Paul Hollywood would say ‘two more minutes.”

This is what I get from a ten-year-old.

You might have noticed in the first loaf picture there was something in the corner…that something is…a shopping cart.

After date night on Thursday night I got a ride home in this from the bus stop. It was amazing. I laughed until I cried, which has not happened in a while. And now I have a cart in my yard. What to do? Return it in the Elco tomorrow when I run to the hardware store for more beehive parts? Turn it into a mobile planter??

On Friday morning Franny left the house and didn’t notice it until she came back after school. She promptly called P. and I, who had fled our jobs and were waiting for the bus. He answered and acted as if he had never heard of such a thing, and when we came home we had the fun of accusing her and her boyfriend of stealing it and leaving it there. I love an indignant Franny.

So, currently, Strudel is in the tub. She went to her first ever sleepover last night. We were nervous but they have allergies at their house too and we were super serious and we emailed and I thought we were cool. But they xanthan gummed her and she got covered with hives that started on her right arm and spread to everywhere.

I thought maybe taking the doges out for a walk and being distracted would help but she started to lose it and scratch and scratch. I understood–I am the person who could not shake poison ivy without steroids. I put her in the tub with, I shit you not, a coffee filter full of oatmeal rubber banded shut, some tea bags, some baking soda, Epsom salts, and apple cider vinegar, because fuck the inflammation police. She was eager to take a bath and I hear her splashing around in there.

So that is my hot Saturday night. In other news, there were parcels yesterday. My new running shoes came and I bounced around the neighborhood and then walked around Greenlake. There is a woman at Greenlake who is bodychecking people on purpose. I am not kidding. She is actually walking around the lake running into people’s shoulders. She did it to my walking buddy and now I have seen her do it to others. I kind of want to STOP her. What would you do?

* I, Asshole: The Motel 6 of the Lileks Experience
** That’s what she said