I’m wiped out. 🙂
Chris Gugliotti of Thicklebit fame
Lunch with Jock
Zander and Scott pretending they have a mean bone in their bodies
Entertaining ourselves with selfies while waiting for Stampylongnose to come onstage
The girls’ turn
Couldn’t leave this guy out
He’s finally here!
Back at Chris’s table, and this time we remembered to get a group pic
Whew, time to relax
About all I can grow during this drought.
Most years, the approach of Comic-Con means that household chores start to slip on the priority list. This year, my 20-year-old niece is flying out for a week, so we bumped the house back up higher on the list above typical pre-SDCC to-do items like read all my friends’ new books before I see them and pore over the con schedule for the best panels. And as always after a deep cleaning, I’m enjoying the minimalism and shine so much I want to vow to keep it like this forever. Ah, but I’m an experienced con-goer by now and I know perfectly well what the place is going to look like after five days of late nights and crowded mornings. I’m enjoying it while it lasts, though.
I really haven’t even glanced at the schedule. I’ll be catching panels on the fly, this year. Mostly I’m looking forward, as I always do, to spending time with friends I see only this one time a year. And my niece! And right after she leaves, my parents and another niece arrive for a few days. One of the nicest things about living in San Diego is if you stay put long enough, everyone will come see you sooner or later.
He takes his work very seriously.
Whenever I cook dinner it feels like such an event it warrants a whole post. Scott took over the cooking three years ago when he returned to freelancing, and I have mightily enjoyed that arrangement. 🙂 But we’ve been talking about changing up our work schedules this summer, and one of the changes is that I’m going to take charge of three dinners a week. “Take charge” like one of those shrieky TV chefs, probably, haranguing my beleaguered sous chef—cooking does not bring out my gentle side. Okay, I may be exaggerating a little. Rose helped me put together a perfectly delectable meal yesterday and I don’t think I shrieked once.
We made this: Holy Yum Chicken. It lived up to the name. Even my picky ones were bewitched by the sauce. We served it with roasted broccoli and boiled new potatoes. Three different foods on the plate: I felt positively gourmet.
Of course then tonight rolled around and it, too, was supposed to be my night, and I was out of ideas—you failed me,  Pinterest—so we’re ordering a pizza.
But NEXT WEEK. Next week I shall be a veritable Rachael Ray. Or Ina Garten. Or Betty Crocker. Or someone. As long as my sous chefs have plenty of ideas.
The post includes links to the many books I gushed about (I swear, once you get me started on book recs there’s no stopping me) and a Prairie Thief giveaway. I had a great time chatting with Sarah about how read-alouds work in my family with our many ages of kids, how I do dialects, how we squeeze book time into the various parts of our day, etc. Basically: my favorite topic in the entire world.
While you’re checking out the podcast, you’ll want to bookmark the two Jim Weiss episodes! What a treasure.
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Huck: “You know those Inch and Roly books? Can you get them for me? ALL of them?”
HUCK’S FINGER IS SO MUCH BETTER. Yes, I’m shouting, because HURRAY.
Whew.
Our attempt to bust the world record for Most Appointments in a Single Summer continues on track: so far this week: dentist (me), audiologist (WB), orthodontist (WB), haircut (me). Two more eye doctor appts next week but at least they’re at the same time. After that things should slow down a little, if by “slow down” you mean “continue at breakneck speed only in a different lane.” Because HOLY CATS IT’S ONLY TWO WEEKS TO COMIC-CON.
HOW CAN THIS BE POSSIBLE??
My list of things to get done before Comic-Con is ten miles long. Oh, July, you rapscallion, you. Every year you attempt to break me. Last year I went to Colorado and back TWICE in the three weeks before SDCC and I STILL found time to paint my toenails before the con. You think 4,000 medical/dental appointments are going to best me?
(July chortles, rubs hands together gleefully, whispers Just wait until you see what I’ve got in store for you next week, Wiley.)
ANYHOO. (She says, whistling past the graveyard.) How’s your week been? Read any good books? I gulped down Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members, an epistolary novel about an overworked writing professor in a deteriorating English Department at a second-tier college. Nothing cures a beleaguered feeling like reading about someone who’s even more so. This was excellent waiting-room entertainment. The story unfolds entirely through the prof’s letters, most of which are letters of recommendation for students and colleagues, and all of which reveal a great deal more about the letter-writer than the typical LOR. Having a number of friends in English departments similarly strapped and stripped of funds, I enjoyed the book’s pointed, funny, occasionally poignant skewering of the current state of academia and was engaged by Prof. Fitger’s crusty, dogged, oversharing, impertinent personality.
And when I say “upon me,” I mean sitting on me in a squashing manner, because that’s what’s on the calendar today. So far, this has been a summer exceedingly full of running around.
Huck’s poor infected finger had been doing better, so it seemed, after he started antibiotics the week before last. By this weekend the antibiotics were done and the infection most certainly was not. Again I’ll spare you the ugly details. Of course it was a holiday weekend. We spoke to the on-call doctor at our practice on Saturday and he instructed us to take Huck to the ER at Children’s.
BEFORE
AFTER
A dose of Versed, several shots of Lidocaine, and one fingernail-removal later, and I had a very stoned little boy waving his mummified hand in immense delight, inquiring of everyone who passed: “Why can’t I feeeeeeel it?”
Happy to report the finger is looking MUCH better this morning. Healing at last, I think. And yes, the irony of the On Tide Mill Lane parallel is not lost on me. Very happy my boy’s infected finger occurred in 2014, not 1814.