National Scrapbook Day

Whew! I am happy to be here today. I had my National Scrapbook Day crop on Saturday and, while the crops are always a lot of fun to put on, I'm also always happy to have them behind me. It feels a little bit like a new year with exciting plans and fun stuff to look forward to.

I didn't take any pictures from Saturday, but Peanut Head did manage to snap a couple of me assembling the cake--the Strawberry Cream Cake.

Here I am, slicing strawberries to put between the layers of the cake. I don't know what I was thinking with that uncharacteristic calm look on my face, because I was freaking out most all day.

You see, Friday, the day that I should have been doing scads of food prep for Saturday, I decided to detail my kitchen from top to bottom. It's a classic procrastinating technique. When I was in college, my house was never cleaner than it was during finals week. Cleaning is always better than studying.

The really ironic part is that I've been procrastinating spring cleaning my kitchen for months. Go figure.

So, Friday I took all 45 bottles of alphabetically arranged spices out of my spice rack and dusted each of them individually as well as the spice rack. And while I was at it, why not disassemble the toaster to get all those nasty crumbs out? And take all the rocks out of my bamboo stalk arrangement and wash them? Yes, I washed rocks. And it went on and on and on. You would have been proud of me though, because I drew the line at cleaning my oven. It is still just as nasty as ever. But I'm going to get right on that this week. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. This week.

So, my kitchen is clean except for inside the oven, the refrigerator and underneath the major appliances. No need to gross myself out.

The problem was, because I went into that cleaning frenzy, it meant that I needed to spend my entire day in the kitchen Saturday, doing the things I should have done Friday. That was a bummer, because I didn't get to visit with my guests. It sounded like they were having a good time though.

I miss them. Sigh.

So, as I was saying, it feels like a new year to me now that this event is behind me. I have lots of things to share with you, starting with the best oatmeal cookie recipe EV-ER. I'm going to try to get that up tonight. Tomorrow at the latest. Well, let's be real here. Sometime this week, okay?

I woke up feeling frisky today, feeling like there is no To Do List that I can't conquer, happy to face my day, I walk in to wake up Zoe Bug . . .

and this is the freaked out, gnarled mess of a head of hair that I found. This hair. This hair that took me 30 minutes to untangle. This hair that turns me into Scary Mommy which causes me to ask my kid over and over "Do I need to shave your head? Perhaps you would like a mohawk? We are getting a boy cut TO-DAY."

And it never fails, at some point in all this panic and wigging out, usually after I've spent 20 minutes working on this rat's nest, I realize that she is going to miss her bus. And since there is nothing I can do about that, a strange sense of calm washes over me and Happy Mommy slips back into my head. Then I start talking real sweet to my poor little bug who is by now freaked out and terrified that I'm going to shave her head and she will be teased on the playground for the rest of her life. She'll be scarred and will require intensive therapy because I screwed her up. Over and over again.

Perhaps needless to say, starting off my day like this sort of discombobulates me.

Yes, I got off to an unsettling start, but like any good superhero would do, I had cake for breakfast and I'm ready to give it another go.

It's good to be back.