Happy Friday, Friends! I am reporting to you live from the sixth circle of hell.

Vivi, my typically non-sick child, has had a cold for the past few days, so she's been coming down to my bedroom in tears and begging to sleep with me. Which would be fine if she would actually sleep. Instead, she brings her taxidermied cat into my bed (don't ask), flops around for a couple of hours, gets in and out of my bed, flops around some more, cries, whines, begs for waffles and Nutella at midnight, flops around some more, and then finally goes to sleep. And then she continues to wake up every thirty minutes after that with more flopping and fussing. If she weren't sick, I wouldn't even entertain the idea of letting her sleep with me, but I'm a sucker for a sick little bebe. Unfortunately, all 28 pounds of her manages to take up an entire king size bed, so I have gotten 3 hours of sleep in the past two nights combined.

When Bobby came down this morning at 7am for breakfast, I had just fallen back asleep, but I got up and made him breakfast. I sat on the sofa for a few minutes to catch up on the news while he ate, and I guess I had inadvertently fallen asleep sitting up, because I startled myself awake probably twenty minutes later to find Bobby standing on a step stool in our butler's pantry spraying everything with the sink faucet in our wet bar area. Vivi was awake by that point, too, and there were what appeared to be ripped apart carnations all over my living room floor. 

#byeflowers

Vivi was still feeling pretty puny, so she asked to watch tv in my lap on the living room sofa. We were snuggled up for about one episode of Bubble Guppies when I realized that I hadn't heard anything out of Bobby for about 20 minutes. And that's never good. 

I hollered up, "Bobby? Whatcha doing? You playing with your trains??"

"No, no, Mommy," he replied hesitantly.

Then he came downstairs only in his underpants and soaked in water, as well as some unidentified white substance, from head to toe. 

"I'm wet," he said forlornly.

"Well, I can see that, Bob. What happened?"

"I made a mess."

"Where? What kind of mess?"

"A mess in the bathroom. But I cleaned it up. It's all clean now, Mommy."

This would normally be the point that I would run upstairs to assess the damage, but Vivi was snuggled up on me and sniffling, and I didn't especially have the energy to move. 

"It's all clean?" I asked.

"All clean," he insisted.

"Okay," I said. "Go grab a towel and wipe off." 

After a few minutes, I got up to go to the restroom, and Bobby looked absolutely panic-stricken. 

"No, Mommy! Don't go upstairs and look at my mess!" he pleaded.

Oh, shit.

"I thought you said it was clean?" I asked, knowing good and well it probably wasn't.

"It's a big mess, Mommy. You're going to be mad. Please don't go look at my mess," he continued to plead.

If this guy admits he made a mess, that's gotta be one large mess.

Again, this would typically be a point where Normal Me would run upstairs to look, but I was so tired and so completely out of shits to give that I was choosing to abide by the mantra of what I don't know can't hurt me.

"Okay," I said calmly, "but please tell me what is all over you?"

"Oh, that's toothpaste," he said with a hesitant grin, just waiting to see how I would react.

I stared blankly into the vacuum of his eyes, waiting to see which one of us would crack first. 

"Toothpaste, huh?"

"Toothpaste."

"How did you get toothpaste all over your entire body, Bob?" I asked.

"It all happened so fast," he said.

Aha, he's learned a line from Mama's playbook.

That was the point that I decided I should probably go take a look at this alleged mess. It actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it appeared that what had begun as an innocent tooth brushing incident somehow turned into toothpaste smeared all over the mirror and his body. I can only assume that he tried to clean himself up by crawling in the sink, and then things just spun out of control. But this is coming from the kid who is notorious for flooding bathrooms, so on a Bobby scale of 1-10, this was maybe a 4. 

And then I saw the pumpkin guts. 

Somehow--and I don't know how or why--he busted a pumpkin and scattered its innards all over the play room. Now this is where I began to get pissed. I went downstairs to find Bobby and discipline him and make him clean it up, but instead, I found one butt ass naked little boy whipping a Disney Princess beach towel around his head like a helicopter and a whiny little girl running around with a cut finger and smearing blood all over my nice clean living room. How? What?? Is this real life?

Oh the humanity. 

After pitching a mini-hissy fit, I calmed down, wrestled Vivi to clean her up and put a band aid on her little finger cut, had a good long "talk" with Bobby, and cleaned all the affected areas of this morning's atom bomb. Then I figured out a way to intimidate my kids into good behavior, and things got significantly better after that.

But on the plus side, I did shower today. 

Now I am sitting here trying to find my personal chi or whatever, which usually involves shopping. So here are some things I've had my eye on lately:

* I am head over heels for these earrings. They have a funky, punk vibe to them, and I think they would be such a fun contrast to a conservative or neutral outfit. They aren't cheap, but isn't that what Santa is for?

* This wrap sweater gives me all the winter vibes and my be going on my wishlist, too!

* I am on the hunt for some cute matching Christmas jammies, and during my search, I stumbled across the most adorable pair of Christmas kitty pajamas that Vivi has to have. They're the sweetest! And speaking of cat-wear, I am about to snag her one of these darling little kitty sweater dresses that I know she is just going to love.

* I'm obsessed with these booties and am debating how many pairs of booties a person can have before it becomes obscene.

* I wish I had a place in my house for another mirror, because I am obsessed with this really awesome, slightly creepy antler mirror. If I actually owned it, I think I would paint the wood a different color to funk it up a little bit and make it not feel like it belongs in an 1800s Scottish manor. But I dig it either way.

* Also, I need this mug in my life because I can't drink caffeine, so mornings really do blow for me. But I'd still be willing to drink my salty, slightly shitty tap water out of it.

I hope y'all all have a wonderful, relaxing, pre-Thanksgiving weekend and that nobody scatters pumpkin guts all over your home! XO

The "Cocktail Party"

These last few days have been big for us. 

First, the GA/FL game. 

For those of you who aren't familiar with the tradition, the UGA vs. UF ballgame is always held on the last Saturday in October on neutral ground in Jacksonville. UGA used to consider it our Fall Holiday and let us out of classes a day or two before the weekend so that we could all make our way down to St. Simon's, where all the fraternities would rent out hotel rooms on the beach for a multi-day, multi-night beach bash full of beer bongs and sorority t-shirts. Then, at 6am on Saturday morning, we would all pile on chartered buses to head down to Jacksonville for the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party--a moniker so infamous that it itself was banned. We would tailgate for hours and have so much fun at the game that sometimes we forgot who even won. 

Things are a little different now as a 30 year old with two kids, and then another huge change for me was going to the game as a Jacksonville resident, versus a visitor. 

I was pumped to go to the game this year, but Alex's schedule didn't work out for him to join me. I made arrangements for my parents to watch the kids, and I was thrilled that my BFF jumped at the chance to be my date instead. She's been my best friend since childhood, and I'm not really sure that the term BFF is truly accurate. Your Starbucks barista can be your BFF these days. This gal is my Ride-or-Die. You know. The friend who can literally finish your sentences and you can talk to for hours about nothing and everything with absolutely not one iota of judgement. Every girl should have one. And I'm lucky to have one of the best. 

So I was excited when we decided to go together and tailgate with some of my fun new neighbors, even though that meant sitting with some unfortunate Florida fans. But I did my part to keep civility in check ;)

Seriously, take a second and read this scoreboard.
All this was going down while people were having a dance-off to Lil' Jon in the background.

I haven't been to a UGA game in a couple of years, and I'm pretty sure I haven't been to a GA/FL game since 2007, so you could say it's been a while. It's funny how some things change and then other things never do. The styles have changed quite a bit from even when I was in college. We would wear sundresses and dressy tops with lots of jewelry and heels. Nowadays, girls don't wear such dressy clothing as much. At one point, I literally did a double take to check out a girl wearing a jean skirt and a nude colored bra. 

"Was that a bra???" I asked my friend.

"Pretty sure that was a bra," she confirmed.

"Well, great horned spoon."

 (I'm trying to curse less, and I picked up that little gem in an antique book I recently stumbled upon. Great horned spoon. It's the equivalent of "well I'll be damned," or something of that nature, but it's so much more unexpected. )

About as unexpected as passing out next to a drunk opossum clutching a fifth of Mr. Boston.

Therefore, the tailgate ended up being tons of fun. It was great to get to know my neighbors a little better and spend time with, ahem, certain fans I might not otherwise spend a Fall Saturday afternoon with. But the best part was spending a hazy Fall Saturday afternoon with my best friend--sort of as a real adult, but still with some of the same twenty year old tendencies. I like to think that there are parts of me that will never grow up. 

And the best part was lying around in our pajamas afterward eating homemade mac-and-cheese and giggling until well past midnight. Sometimes you need those times, those girl times that make you feel like a human again. The times that make you feel like a real person instead of just a maid/caretaker/wife/mama/bullshit-blaster. I think it's so important to take a certain amount of time to be with your spouse and still date each other, but sometimes I forget how important it is to take the time to have a frienaissance. 

And Gators still wear jean shorts.