Late Update: Things I Learned Over Spring Break

This is a little late in posting. Sorry, I’ve been busy being … annoyed mostly. I may get to that later.

Things I learned over spring break:

1.       Regardless of the number of tiny Made-in-China Adventure Time figurines my daughter has, there is always room on her shelves for more. (She was missing the Ice King, but now she has him twice)

2.       The Boy decided blue hair is awesome – not just highlights or a streak – his whole head.

3.       The Girl decided if her little brother can have bright blue hair, she can too. Then she just did dark blue underlayers at the last minute.

4.       Both kids think I’d look great with blue hair.

5.       I’m going to wait until I’m 80 for blue hair like other grandmothers.

6.       Both kids decided Hubby would look great with blue hair after I declined to fall for their line.

7.       Hubby is smarter than his children. (He also isn’t dyeing his hair)

8.       Hubby and I need to make a plan for how to tell his parents about our kids doing the ‘fun’ thing while they’re young.

9.       My parents think it’s awesome that their grandkids look like Easter eggs.

10.   Darth Jingles hasn’t noticed the kids look different.

11.   Two foot high chocolate Easter bunnies contain a lot of sugar, even when hollow.

12.   All baskets belong to the cat.

13.   It is possible for me to not be in the mood to write a sex scene for a long time.

14.   Don’t go to the aquarium on the first day of spring break

15.   If you do go to the aquarium on the first day of spring break, don’t take someone who needs a walker

16.   If you’ve failed to follow the advice for #14 and #15, keep user of said walker away from parents who might deck him for swearing about stroller-induced jams in narrow spaces

17.   Jellyfish are awesome.

18.   Just because a steakhouse charges upwards of $45/entrée doesn’t mean they’ll get your steak right. Or even your order.

19.   The city thinks my cat is a dog. (I’m serious. I have a request to license my dog, which I don’t have. They insist I have a black domestic shorthair dog named Darth Jingles. Close.)

20.   I may take Jingles (on a leash, of course) down to wherever to license her in person.

21.   I am beyond ready for Doctor Who to start again.

22.   Jeremy Clarkson getting briefly fired from BBC’s Top Gear shook our household more than I would have expected.

23.   The Noble M600 isn’t legal to import into the U.S., even with waivers.

24.   The Boy took entirely too much pleasure in watching my eyes prickle with tears at his announcement of #23. I’m serious, he stood right up next to me, almost nose to nose, to see if I’d cry. I almost did.

25.   My in-laws cannot grow cherry trees.

They’ve killed three now. We’re getting them another one, because my mother-in-law really wants a cherry tree in the front yard for some unknown, God-forsaken reason. Yes, I think that adjective is correct in this case.

I have a thing about cherries. I used to climb my grandmother’s huge cherry tree as a kid and pick cherries with my cousins. I loved cherries, they were the best thing ever. Until on cousin showed me ‘checking for worms’ wasn’t a formality. He showed me the worm. That was devastating to me six-year-old view of the world. From that day forward, I have not liked cherries.

Imagine Hubby’s surprise when I kept hinting that maybe we should plant their cherry tree among our own little orchard. There’s a cherry tree in a neighbor’s yard to pollinate it, it’s all good.

Do I want the cherry tree? Hell no, it’ll make a mess. I don’t want my annoying nephew coming to pick them either, which is what’s going to happen when it gets planted at my in-laws. But the tree stands a fighting chance at our house and it clearly doesn’t at my in-law’s, which is the real issue I’m trying to call into question here.

Hubby laughs at my inner-Lorax and tells me to calm down. We don’t have to plant the cherry tree at our house, we don’t have to deal with the annoying nephew. (He’s cute, but he’s a brat and he’s never going to grow out of it.) We’ll plant the tree in the backyard on the little hill where their other pear tree used to be (before the deer got a little too eager). It’ll be fine.

Hmm. We’ll have to put a fence around it and put out bales of hay for the deer. At this point, if feeding the deer for twenty miles around is what it takes to see her cherry tree through the winter, my mother-in-law would do it.

And that’s what I learned over spring break. Sorry to disappoint on the lack of drugs, alcohol, or scantily clad girls. Those stories were all after-hours.