Glitter, glitter everywhere, and I could use a drink

Or a shrink. Either way. Both?

The other night, as I walked through the living room toward the kitchen, the glow of lamplight picked up little bits of sparkle that weren’t there the night before. Is the Tooth Fairy real? I marveled. It looked like fairy dust, right in my living room. My investigation discovered a clear trail of it leading from the kitchen table into the other room, ending at the Girl’s desk. The usual suspect. I might have guessed. Though I share in the culpability on this one.

No, no Tooth Fairy, just another school project come back to bite me in the ass, that’s what it was. (Try to vacuum up glitter. Let me know when you finish. We’ll wait. Still waiting…)

Last week, the Girl’s class was given an optional assignment of making a diorama of a penguin habitat. Did you get that word? Optional. The Girl begged to do the project and gave me specific instructions about what to buy which I totally ignored. So after Michael’s collected my 30 optional dollars, I walked out of the store with the following: five plastic penguins (Rockhopper and Emperor Penguins who, I decided, could live side by side in harmony…we are the world, make a better day, lalalalala), some Styrofoam, hot glue sticks, craft glue, and (yep) a gigantic modest shaker of white glitter.

Yes, glitter was one of the things on the Girl’s list. And I’m a big stupidhead sucker. She had convinced me of its reflective, ice-mimicking properties, and I caved. We used about 1/1,000,000th of it on her project, which leaves us with approximately an assload of it left over.

By the way, parents, if you’re helping your child with a school project and he/she asks, “When are you going to let me do something?” it probably means you’re doing it for them. The Girl let me know pretty fast that it was her project and not mine, and demoted me to hot glue gun duty. Which, don’t tell her, is really the magic wand of a project. So there, my sweet girl. Gotcha.

I will say she’s been pretty darn creative with the glitter. Making snowmen and snow-scapes. Drawing hair on the people in her drawings with glue, then shaking glitter over it. Glitter in a shaker is genius, except for the copious amounts of over-shake that left a snowdrift around the kitchen table.

We went sledding in it today, yes we did.

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Today’s post came perilously close to being written in longhand and delivered to you by carrier pigeons. For most all of yesterday, I couldn’t access this site, though I could see that it was up and running for everyone else. For almost 12 hours (twelve!), I couldn’t see a thing, just a taunting message saying the site was unavailable. The support people were stumped and requested all sorts of voodoo codes and whatnot. After busying myself with other things for the day, like drinking whiskey and Googling pictures of George Clooney cleaning my neglected office and talking to my children, tonight I sat down to watch HGTV and promptly fell asleep. When I awoke an hour later, I looked down and saw–wait for it–fairy dust clinging to my clothes. Could it be? I ran to the computer, and yes, yes, yes, my site was working. I believe, Blog Fairy, I believe!

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I need to say thank you for two awards that I received recently. The first was from Meg at Lucchese to Louis Vuitton who gave me this first one, which makes me feel all awshucks. She deserved it, and is a sweetheart for passing it along to me. In turn, I give it next to Woman with a Hatchet, especially for this post which really made me laugh.

And next, a huge, warm, grateful thank you to Tootsie Farklepants at Vintage Thirty for this award, which touched me more than I can say. It’s nearly impossible to choose whom to pass it to now, since you have all shown me such kindness. But since I have to choose: I first want to give it to my sister, because she was there, for all of it. And because she calls me almost every day, and calls her niece and nephew often, even just to hear a penguin song for the second time. Next, I pass it on to my best friend J, who has known my stories (and I, hers) for 20 years. She’s funny and kind and thoughtful and talented, and has a wide open soul. Also, to Emily at Wheels on the Bus who, with her own brave writing, gave me faith in my ability to write things that I wasn’t sure I could.

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One last thing…This morning when we were eating brunch, the Boy said, “Mom, do you know what morning is like? It’s like starting your life all over.”

Tagged as: glittery, morning, school projects, sweet things The Boy says