Mid-Week Wisdom

For most of us, it's a short week. Unless you work in retail...or food service...or anywhere else that puts a higher priority on profits than personal time with family. To everyone that must work on Thanksgiving Day or at 1:01 AM on Friday morning, I'm really very sorry. I did it once, when I was in college and working at Blockbuster. (Hey kids, Blockbuster was this place where we rented actual movies in actual cases and were sometimes fined for failing to rewind. Ask your mommies and daddies about it.) There's no shortcut around it...working on a holiday that is nationally recognized sucks. But I will be doing all of my shopping on Friday online so maybe don't blame me.

Anyway, it's a short week but Neal has been tasked with extra duty this week so it still feels like a regular old Wednesday to us. Here's what I have to share this week. It's not much and it's not all that enlightening, but I'm putting together an all-star list of small businesses for Friday's post so that you can blow Small Business Saturday out of the water this year. I'll even have pictures. Who doesn't love pictures?

Moving on...

It's nearly impossible to buzzcut a toddler's hair while he's awake...even when you let him sit on his new potty chair while you work...even when you let him hold the toothpaste...even when you hand him your iPhone which is playing Curious George on a continuous loop. I don't know what they do at those little kiddie haircut places, but apparently it's worth our hard-earned money.

The only thing to be done when it's your move and these are your letters is to sing Old MacDonald. (OH! Speaking of which...Geico has a new commercial out (or, more likely, new to us) with Old MacDonald spelling "cow" and I thought Neal and I were going to pee ourselves. Yay for parenthood.)

This is a book at our library...in the children's section. I mean that special room in the back where the preschoolers have craft time and the toddlers can find a decent selection of board books and puzzles. I was trying to keep Blue from dumping my purse on the floor so I didn't have a chance to look through it but I can't imagine a family-friendly way of explaining the horror of this epidemic.

Out of curiosity one night, I began Googling our names to see what they mean. Blue's meant brave in the face of danger and Neal's meant virile and wise (or some such ego-boosting thing that I plan on never telling him) and this is what mine means. It must be legitimate...it's on Urban Dictionary! And isn't that where selfie started? (which, by the way, has just made it into the United Kingdom dictionary, according to the BBC this week.) So, yes...I am such an Allyson.

Lastly, the Christmas orders have started rolling in so that means a lot of working in the kitchen while Ken Burns' Civil War loops in the background. There are 8 episodes at about an hour each and I've seen this particular series 3 times...always while whipping out Christmas orders. And every time I think, "Why does every documentary filmmaker believe that Frederick Douglas' voice must have sounded like Morgan Freeman's? I personally think Frederick Douglas was more badass than that and if he could find a good medium, he would tell us to start using Samuel L. Jackson or Jamie Foxx." 

Stay safe and dry and Happy Thanksgiving Eve Eve. May your turkey be juicy, your pie be fresh, and the family time involve a fair amount of alcohol and at least one game of Pictionary. See you on Friday!