Monthly Archives: May 2009

Mix one set of Mom-size flannel pants and hooded sweatshirt with two sets little-girl-jammies. Throw in some frog-style rainboots and a pinch of umbrellas for the mid-morning jaunt to stomp in puddles.

Add in approximately one thousand miscellaneous Legos and a floor suitable for Lego city-building. It is helpful to have two kids to really pull off this well so that Mom can stay on the couch and noodle around on the Internet.

A good soundtrack is key, so plan your favorite rainy-day tunes, or your favorite Pandora station, or even your favorite radio station. Throw in a good-sized soupcon of kids messing around on the piano, with recognizable songs popping up here and there in the din.

Now assemble banana-cinnamon-butterscotch-chip cookies from a new recipe. The dough seems awfully goopy, but your helpers will enjoy slopping them on the cookie sheets anyway, and your kitchen will smell delicious. Final judgment: a good way to use overripe bananas if you’re tired of banana bread, good lunchbox cookies, but be glad you added more flour than the recipe called for and sprayed the cookie sheets well. Let the kids bring some into their blanket-tent-clubhouse for a special meeting of the “Friendship and Reading and Fun Club.”

Make sure to have plenty more blankets and pillows for cuddling and reading D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. One little girl will like Aphrodite, the other Pandora, and they will want to hear the story of Persephone more than once. Allow one or two kids’ shows, like WordGirl or even Grossology, your least favorite (it’s really gross).

Plan tuna melts and Crash Hot Potatoes for dinner, with juicy red seedless grapes and corn on the side. Think of your husband, off studying for his last exam of the year (Civil Procedure, on Tuesday), and feel so proud that he’s worked so hard this year. Be happy that you went grocery shopping yesterday and don’t need to leave the house again today.

Remember that summer is coming soon. Don’t think about all the grading that must be done today.

If you are ever feeling blue, blah, or just plain overwhelmed, then I have the solution for you.

Go see a middle school production of The Wizard of Oz.

Make sure you bring your girls, all dressed up in new summer dresses, so you can watch them giggle with their little girlfriends. One brought her Barbie-pink sleeping bag, so they will all cluster together in the floorspace in front of the seats in the school’s Multi-Purpose Room. Spend $13 on tickets and donate the other seven to the PTA in exchange for bags of Smartfood popcorn and chocolate donut holes. Wave to all the other moms and dads you know from pick-up and drop-off and school events and classroom parties. Meet up with your girlfriend so you can “ooh” and “aah” and smile at all the brave girls and boys on stage, the Dorothy with the lovely voice, the Glinda who trills just right, the Cowardly Lion who steals the show.

Then come home, kiss your husband, change into your jammies, put the girls to bed. Then drink a glass of fruit juice and eat a cookie you baked earlier in the week and a piece of the pound cake you baked yesterday, the one where you ran out of vanilla and had to use imitation rum flavor instead from the wayback of your cupboard.

Feel lucky and blessed to be living your life, money and bills be damned.