Does it count if you were bombed when you took the test?

You Don't Drink Too Much

Looks like you're a social drinker, at worst! Keep partying, but as always, know when you've hit your limit.

Are You a Drunk Diva or a Crunk Chick?

Getting ready to embark

This was one of many pictures I took of the kids at the beach today.

Believe it or not, we've been here for a week and we hadn't gone to the beach. Because ... for a variety of reasons, we're not such enthusiastic beach goers.

For one thing, they're 12 and 10, but the kids only learned to swim this summer. This was the natural byproduct of Asperger's stubbornness on their parts, and throw-in-the-towel pick-your-battles slacker parenting on mine. There, I said it. My kids have neuro-behavioral problems, and sometimes I don't deal with them as thoroughly or as promptly as I should.

Their not being able to swim meant that "constant vigilance!" was the byword whenever we went anywhere where they could drown. And that's not very relaxing.

Then there's the whole pack the car with the towels, sunscreen, snacks, water toys, reading material, sand chairs, and it seems to go on and on and on. And then finding a place to park, and trudging on and on in the blazing sun.

And then when we get there, my husband and I feel fat and pale, as though someone had moved a rock and exposed us to the sun, while we wriggled feebly in protest.

(it's paragraphs like that that make me realize all the money that was spent on my many degrees in English literature was, in fact, completely wasted.)

So let's move away from the extremely hideous verbal picture I painted, and on to the actual real life digital picture I posted.

This is my kids getting ready to get into the water with their boogie boards. I decided I wanted to take a picture of them, so my daughter is walking towards me to pose, whereas my son is still doing something or other to his board.

And far away in the water, so tiny that you can hardly see her, is my niece.

My niece is a normal 12-year-old girl. She can swim, she has friends, she goes on sleepovers.

My sister pretty much had to drag her out of the house today. She was sullen. She didn't want to go out. She wanted to stay indoors and watch television.

But we went out, and my kids were in the water for a while. They didn't get into the water as quickly, and they didn't go as far out as their cousin, but they went in. And they had a good time.

This isn't just a vacation snapshot. It's their life. And you know what? It really isn't that bad.

Things to do when you can't seem to get off your lazy fat ass

Start by not waking up until 11:00. And then let it go downhill from there.

1. When you're a lame-o, the laptop always beckons. With a cup of tea at your side, and still wearing a pair of cornea-searing hot pink Lilly Pulitzer pajamas, get straight to work.

2. Check Bloglines for updated blogs. Head over to Badger's. Read and enjoy.

3. Methodically go through Badger's links. Add everything promising to your Bloglines feeds.

4. Worry that so many people are dealing with cancer.

5. Upload pictures from camera to laptop and from laptop to Flickr.

6. Answer telephone. Find out sister wants to bring the kids to the beach.

7. Go to beach.

8. On the way to the beach, try to decide whether you're more of a lame-o for giving up a thriving career as a pajamas blogger, for spending so much time on the computer, or for doing what your big sister wants you to do.

New semi-daily feature: the Plat du Jour

Did you know that EITHER New Hampshire OR Illinois has the highest per capita occurence of vanity license plates? You didn't?

Well, I order you to be grateful that I called your attention to this fascinating fact. And for your amusement or at least edification, I'm going to be posting pictures.

I call this new feature the Plat du Jour because I'm hilarious that way, what with the word play and the French and all.

And so ... voila. The first plate.



It's tuna.

As it turns out, I don't actually like long walks in the rain.

My pal L. came and visited with her daughter--even though they were here last year. A vote of confidence, yay! I'm not the world's worst hostess!

L. likes to go for walks. We always brought our cameras. L. has a fine eye for the picturesque.
So from time to time she ordered me to take a picture.


Above: a window filled with cranberry glass. Below: part of a headstone from a local cemetery.
It was lovely. But the clouds looked threatening.


Just after I took this picture


of the oldest house I've seen yet, the rain clouds burst open and we scurried to hide under a tree. We ended up under a little place that was sticking out over someone's garage door.

A few vans passed. I wondered what was wrong that these people didn't ask us if we needed help, but I figured it was because they were commercial vans and didn't have time. I decided to flag down the next car. The driver might have a cell phone.

A car came by. A van, but a passenger van. It was That Stud Muffin I Married come to rescue us. He'd driven all over the island looking for us.

He took us to the lobster place where we bought half a dozen lobsters.


All ended well.

Three words

House guests.

Mamarazzi.

In which Poppy risks death for her art

I was thinking of taking the kids to the beach, going on another photo safari, and maybe getting the car washed. And so, of course, it rained.

Then I decided to run a couple of errands and take the kids for lunch--fried calamari for them, and a lobster roll for me. I'd take awesome foodie pictures of the local clam shack and ice cream joint--I'd show off my mad food photography skillz for my blogging audience, and they would leave me all kinds of comments about how awesome I am! And so, of course, my camera battery was dead.

Therefore, you'll just have to take my word about how awesome lunch was. My son and I shared an order of steamers that were so good we moaned aloud and thrashed about orgasmically, and we'll never be allowed in the restaurant again. Then my children ate their fried squids, and I had the first lobster roll of the summer.

That damned lobster roll was so good that when a blob of lobster salad fell on the deck, I did what we all spend years teaching our children not to do. I mean, how disgusting to pick your food off THE FLOOR and eat it, but I did. I sure hope nobody saw me do this. It would be so embarrassing to have anyone except the entire internet know how I wallow in filth.

OK, maybe not filth. After all, we were outside, so my salad didn't fall on a creepy restaurant carpet; it fell on some weathered deck planks. We were overlooking a marina, listening to the cries of the gulls, and admiring the boats. So I think I'm safe from everything except cholera, e. coli, and tapeworms.

You did realize that I'm disgusting, right? OK.

Then I came home and found a working camera.



See? It really was raining. And just look at that gutter. It's practically falling off the house. And now you know why this house--if it actually had a name, a la "Windy Acres," or "Upson Downs" or some such folderol--would be named



I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Deferred Maintenance taking pictures of the sublime



and the ridiculous.