Squirrel!!

So.

For some time now, I have seriously debated the question as whether or not I am actually ADD rather than an overworked mom, which is a question many moms ponder from time to time as they are folding their 473rd load of laundry only to realize they have left the water running in the kitchen sink, although they're pretty sure that the drain was open and free so nothing should have run over on to the floor like what happened last week when *someone* peeled an apple into the sink, not realizing that apple peels will clog a disposal almost as well as potato peels, though to be fair, one apple shouldn't have done it, oh but that's right, there was also an old dish rag down there, which had to be thrown away not because it was shredded but because it turned out to be the source of the mystery smell that triggered a full scrub down of the fridge and that never really goes amiss so it can't be seen as a full loss, especially since it turned out the kindergartener's reading folder was underneath the vegetable drawer, although the orange juice that had spilled down the back hadn't done it any good, but it did lead to a delightful pan of orange rolls being made -- not from the spilled OJ, of course -- and any time baked goods are involved it's a good day, which reminds me that I promised to make 8 dozen brownies for the 9th grade football team tomorrow even though they really shouldn't be eating brownies, although if any one can afford a brownie calorie-wise, it's a 15 year-old boy since most of the football players I know can barely walk under those shoulder pads, but truly, that they don't simply pass out from the the sheer smell of generations upon generations of teen boys wearing those pads without ever having the benefit of some soap and water is anyone's guess, meaning they probably deserve a brownie or two simply by not passing out from olfactory poisoning, but given the way most teen boys radiate stink on a daily basis, it's not that surprising given that their smell receptors probably just shut down for half a decade, sensing the need to protect their own survival from the onslaught headed their way whilst their young male owner makes the wild ride from boy to man, although I'm not sure anyone really realized how accurate that metaphor would be way  back at the dawn of time when the first neanderthal -- incidentally, did you know that that word is properly pronounced nee-and-der-tall, and not nee-and-der-thall, although when one does pronounce words like that correctly, like saying ahm-peer instead of em-pie-er to describe the style of dress worn by Josephine Bonaparte, everyone else looks at one as though one was arrogant and snotty to a degree only reached by people who say "one" instead of "you" or "me" in a sentence, and use them properly, including the required smirk indicating that this "one" knows enough grammar to stuff an armadillo, which brings up new and interesting imagery, not all entirely pleasant, not the least of which is that armadillos are natural carriers of leprosy, although we're supposed to call it Hansen's disease now, especially since there are still leper colonies, although Hansen's disease colonies doesn't sound quite as dramatic or historic, however the last one in the US, which happens to be on one of the smaller Hawaiian islands, may not actually be an isolated facility anymore, although there are several islands that are off-limits to anyone who is not a native islander -- the first neanderthal picked up a roundish-looking rock and rolled it down a hill and said "hey that looks promising" and proceeded to invent the first go-cart ala Fred Flinstone, grabbing a couple of his buddies and heading to the tallest hill they could find, thus creating the most accurate piece of performance art in history, depicting the journey each boy child makes from the top of the hill 'o adolescence with an intact go-cart full of friends and exuberant anticipation of immediate fun, to the bottom of the hill as young adult with an incomplete collection of go-cart wheels, battered bits and pieces of friends, and a whale of a headache, although that comparison would not occur to our newly minted go-cart racer because he would have had no idea what a whale was, although I would pay good money to see the moment the first humanoid came across a whale because that would be amazing to watch his or her face as they realized "holy cow, (well they probably didn't know about cows either) that's a skull . . . and it's bigger than all of me . . . " and I could well relate to that feeling, thinking back to when I first saw a whale skull at Marsh's Free Museum in Long Beach, where they had one on display in front of the store, although I don't think it's there anymore, when I was 5 or 6 and we would always try to imagine how big its eyeball was or its brain and then get completely grossed out at the thought and then we'd get sad because someone had killed it and Grandpa would say "No, it beached itself and rotted on the beach until the birds picked its bones clean" so we would feel more sad and slightly sick about that and Grandpa would give up and offer to buy us a candy stick (I like the apple green ones) inside the Museum so we would all race in to see Jake the Alligatorman, the epitome of all that is good and great in Americana, and the stuffed two-headed goat and the blue and green glass ball floats that Grandpa promised us had floated clear across the Pacific from Japan, and they probably did, but I always had to point that they were glass so why didn't they break because every time I even touched my "5 years old" figurine dolly, which was made of glass, I broke it, well I broke the same part, namely the gold ribbon from her hat, and I always glued it back on with good 'ol Elmers, so it's probably not much of a mystery why that broke, but to my mind it was clear proof that no blue glass globe from Japan could float that far and not break, which I now know as an adult, did happen and those are increasingly rare and valuable since no country uses those any more, given the cheaper and oh-so lovely alternative of poly-styro-whatever that can be squirted out into zillions of molds for pennies and CAN float the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic, and Indian oceans until the end of time without breaking, which I hear is actually happening with the creation "garbage islands" out in the ocean now . . . and I think I may have wandered off topic . . .

but it did give me time to unload the dishwasher . . .

She's baaaaaaack!