Yesterday the kids spent about six hours playing with an office chair and three empty rolls of tape. What’s next, playing with the box the toy came in? Sometimes I think children have turned my life into an embarrassing cliche.

Look at this cute shirt I bought:

Rob saw it and said scornfully, “It looks like a SPORTS shirt.” But do you see what it says? “Junior Scientists of America.” And those are, like, atoms zooming around the A. Hee! I bought it in 12-18m (or did I get 18-24m?) (like it matters) for Henry and in 4T for Edward.

I’m a little peeved, though, to see they are now $3.99, since that was what I paid for them AFTER a 15% off coupon, and I was feeling all triumphant about it. I’ve noticed with Old Navy that either there is a 15%/20%-off coupon, OR everything is 15-20% off. Well-played, Old Navy. Well-played. Now perhaps I will also have to buy the grey “mathletes” version:

“Cuter than the sum of our parts,” it says.

This morning William said, “I saw a band-AID in the trash.” And I went, “Mm.” And he said, “I said ‘AID’ like that because of my spelling words”—which are all words with AI in them. So I praised him for being smart, and then told him his shirt was on backwards.

You definitely want to come over: I baked pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins, and I’ve got a pot of coffee brewed.

Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Muffins
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 and 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 12 muffin cups with muffin papers.

Mix the melted butter, pumpkin, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla in one bowl. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and chocolate chips in another bowl. Combine the two bowls and mix just until you don’t see powder anymore. Scoop into muffin cups and bake 25-30 minutes.

And please do keep sending them to me! It is fun to see the ripples going ever outward! And, er, sometimes back inward!

Ya Ya’s Mom is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest.

Secret Mom Thoughts is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest.

Midwest Mom is showing the giftie she got and starting a new contest.

The Q Collective is starting a new contest.

• I’m about to go to Target. It is really fun to have older kids and younger kids at the same time. I love when the baby talks to Rob and Rob answers so kindly. Henry says “AH-LO!!” (hello) and Rob says, “Hello, Henry!” in the same “you sweetie!” voice we grown-ups use. Or just now, I heard a crash and a baby starting to fuss, and I heard Rob saying in that same grown-up voice, “Oh NO! Are you o-KAY? There! You’re okay!”

• I stupidly sent my sister-in-law and brother, who are expecting MY NIECE in February, a snarky article about baby names. I didn’t read it very carefully; I was just like, “Oh, this is about baby names, it is relevant to them!” But it was so snarky! And it turns out that about 80% of the snarking was in the direction of names actually on their lists! And not only that, in the direction of names I would LOVE to have on a niece! So now if I don’t get a niece named Ruby, Flannery, or Matilda, it is totally my own fault!

• I’m so glad Halloween is over. I’m kind of a BIG CHICKEN, and I get scared/startled by Halloween merchandise. In our neighborhood there’s a huge fake spiderweb with a fake PERSON caught in it, with the person’s head…removed by the spider. And it is FREAKING ME OUT. I want to see CHRISTMAS decorations now, please!! Nice happy snowmen and jolly Santas, is what I’m thinking! No more killer spiders!

• I am SUCKING DOWN the coffee this morning. I’m getting a cold, and I need the artificial energy. Plus, I want more of the Italian Sweet Cream creamer, which I love.

• I wish I could format this with a space between each bullet point. This whole big solid block of text is FREAKING ME OUT. [Edit: My dad told me how to do this! Enjoy the pretty spaces!]

So yesterday I was all “If you’re frazzled and you know it clap your hands (clap clap),” because I had SO MUCH TO DO. One of the many problems of having a houseguest for TWO WEEKS is that things get behind. Especially if the houseguest is a mentally-draining one who leaves the hostess feeling as if making it through the day with everyone still alive is all anyone can ask of her.

After she left I was all “I need to RECUPERATE” and so I continued to not do stuff. And yesterday it all seemed to wallop me at once. I mean, you should have SEEN the laundry. Astonishing. And bills needed paying, which always stresses me out, and there were dishes in the sink but also a full clean dry drying rack of dishes, and the trash was overflowing, and WHEEEEEEE.

What I thought was that coffee would help. I was feeling tired because of staying up too late the night before, and I was feeling discouraged because of all the yucky tasks ahead of me, and sometimes caffeine can be just the thing for tired and discouraged. Unfortunately there was a little backfire and all I did was add jangled and queasy to the list.

Well, I got the important bills paid, and I took out the trash, and I put a new package of diapers in the thingie, and I did three or four loads of laundry (and please ignore the load of clean laundry sitting in the hallway), and I also managed to check one million times to see if any of my postcards had arrived yet. No. They hadn’t. Where ARE they? I have one traveling in the U.S. that has been traveling EIGHT DAYS. It’s making me antsy. That one’s not too bad because it would only cost me 27 cents to re-send it, except that I had a special postcard that was PERFECT for my assigned person, and so that would be (1) irreplaceable, and (2) a bummer. Worse is the one that’s been on its way to Germany for 28 days. That one is almost certainly lost, and PIFFLE CRAW that’s upsetting. It happens, of course it happens. What’s amazing, really, is that so many of these get THROUGH. I mean, I’m sending a 4×6 flat piece of paper to, like, TAIWAN, and it just ARRIVES there over sea over dell as if by magic. So I suppose that a postcard slipping away here and there is unsurprising.

Edit: Okay, FREAKY: AS I WAS TELLING YOU about the 28-day postcard to Germany, it arrived in Germany.

My brother and my sister-in-law are here for a short visit, and I got to see my sister-in-law’s tum. My NIECE is in there! I was in the same room as my niece! Oh, and I suppose it’s “their daughter,” too, whatevs.

It was so exciting. I was sort of struck with awe about it. There is a BABY in there, and it is a new member of our family! My sister-in-law said, “She’s been kicking,” and I was, like, SHE! She she she! Because she is a PERSON! A person who is a SHE! She’ll be a REAL PERSON, and I’ll probably know her my WHOLE LIFE! And yet right now we don’t even know her NAME or what she’ll LOOK like!

Babies are so neat.

P.S. Work It, Mom!, the site where Linda and I do our column Milk and Cookies, has a new section called Problem Solved: various writers answering common reader questions. I have one posted today about cheap skincare, but there are also posts up about homeschooling, low-carb lunches, reducing morning chaos, weight loss tips, etc. It’s not a niece, but it’s a pretty neat new baby anyway.

Today at Target I bought a “Christmas Tree Grow Kit” in the dollar section. It is the wee-est, cutest thing ever: a teensy little green pot about 2 inches tall, and a chunk of soil, and six little spruce tree seeds. For one dollar!

It is almost worth the whole dollar just to see the soil expand. It’s a lightweight chunk about the size of a stack of four quarters, and you look at it and think, “Uhhhhh….this is a wee little pot, but it’s not THAT wee.” Then you add a little water (1/6th cup, which took me awhile to figure out but is 2 and 2/3rds tablespoons), and the soil just GROWS. It’s a little gross to watch, even.

And then there IS enough soil to fill the wee little pot, and you scoop it in there and press in the six seeds, and you put the pot on a sunny windowsill and you wait. Good thing I bought it with lots of time before Christmas!

So! Here we all are again! What will we talk about? I want to CHAT but I have nothing in particular to talk about except the last couple of weeks of mother-in-law visit, and let’s not talk about that.

Oh! I know! Do you want to hear about the tick I removed from my cat? Okay! Well, Elizabeth said there was something on the cat, and I went to look and it was this weird shiny grey smooth dangling POD-LIKE thing, about the size of a popcorn kernel. I couldn’t imagine what it could be. It was too big to be a skin tag, and so I thought maybe tick—but it was totally smooth. No LEGS. I’d thought there’d be visible bug parts if it were a tick.

Well, so I went online, because that is what I do. And it did seem like it was probably a tick. I looked on several sites, and the instructions seemed pretty consistent. I took a little of this and a little of that to come up with My Plan:

1. Don’t try to burn the tick off or smother it with vaseline. Those are apparently really bad ideas.
2. Get a disposable cup and put half an inch of rubbing alcohol in it. Put a Q-tip and a tweezers in the cup. (You’re sterilizing the tweezers and getting the Q-tip’s tip wet for use later in the process.)
3. Locate the cat. Open a can of tuna if necessary.
4. Kneel around the cat so the cat is as immobilized as possible, with the tick centered in your cat-view.
5. Take a breath to stabilize yourself, because this is going to be icky but you can’t let yourself get icked: working quickly and decisively is in everyone’s best interests here. You need to get that tick before either the tick or the cat realizes what’s going on.
6. Take the tweezers, grip the tick as close to the cat’s skin as you can get, and YANK. Pull straight out, don’t twist. Just POP that thing off, and then drop it into the cup of rubbing alcohol.
7. Take the Q-tip out of the rubbing alcohol and rub it around on the cat’s skin where the tick was.
8. Release the poor cat. Maybe bring out that tuna.
9. WASH YOUR HANDS. Ticks are diseased and gross.
10. Wait ten or fifteen minutes, then flush the tick down the toilet and throw out the cup, and wash your hands again.
11. The next time you see the cat, check the owie. It’ll look kind of icky. It’s normal for it to be red, bleeding, or welty. Apparently it’s okay if (WARNING, WARNING, IMMINANT GROSSNESS ALERT!) the tick’s head remained under the cat’s skin; that will work itself out. (BARF.)
12. You can put a little dab of ointment on the owie if you want to. I mixed some antibiotic ointment with some hydrocortisone ointment.
13. Keep checking the owie regularly for several weeks. Call the vet if the owie gets worse or if it fails to get better, or if the cat seems sick.

There! Now you know!

Today’s theme is “The Easier Way.” Anything where I have to decide which way to go, I’m going with the easier way. Elizabeth could stand to have a bath this morning, but it’s not at a crisis point yet so I’m going with the easier way and not bathing her. When I packed the boys’ lunches, I went with whatever items were easiest to grab and toss into the lunch boxes—and if today’s hot lunch option hadn’t been something I knew they wouldn’t eat (“Warm Egg-and-Cheese Bagel”), I would have had them get hot lunch. The kids are going to watch a LOT of television today, and I’m not doing any laundry or any cleaning. I don’t think I’m even going to unload the dishes from the drying rack.

Let’s see. I know I had some Positive Spin things to say. Now what were they? Oh yes!

One: My Mother-In-Law Good Dishes are one of the best purchase decisions of my entire life. I feel happy to get them out, happy to use them, happy to set the table with them, happy to WASH them even. When my mother-in-law announces a visit, I have the happy thought that I will get to get out the Good Dishes. They’re dressy without seeming unreasonably dressy. I like to look at them. They’re to my tastes. I don’t mind if, later, the children fight over who gets to inherit them. And yet, I don’t mind putting them away between visits. Here they are, so we can all admire them for a moment:

Except my set has mugs, not cups-and-saucers. I’m not sure why, except that I bought mine open-stock-style at TJ Maxx.

I had more positive-spin stuff, I’m sure I did. Oh! My mother-in-law visited some other relatives first, and she brought me two nearly-new, good-quality coats another relative was getting rid of. And, unbelievably, I really like both of them. One is a light, clear, vintagey aqua color, and a vintagey cut, too. It’s old-ladyish, but in what I THINK is a cute, sassy way. The other has a red suadey outside and an orange fleecey inside, and it’s cute and warm and cozy. So even though my mother-in-law announced with a merry laugh that she’d told her cousin, “Swistle is bigger than me—I’ll see if she can use them,” I’m happy to have both coats. I wore them on outings and felt like a cuter person than when I wear my usual coat (one of Paul’s). And for the record, I am NOT bigger than her. Taller, yes, and I could totally take her in a fight.

Now I’m going to brew a pot of coffee and get caught up with everything you’ve been writing while I’ve been gone!

OMG HI!!! I kiss you on both cheeks! I feel like I have been away from the clubhouse for YEARS, perhaps because of a long prison sentence!

And oh my dear, I am so behind. I have over 500 new posts in Google Reader, so I will be doing a lot of Skimming. My email inbox, which shows me the most recent 50 unanswered emails, has overflowed. I haven’t looked at Twitter for a week and a half. I have nearly 100 Facebook requests to accept or ignore. MY COMPUTER CALLS TO ME.

And unfortunately, so do my children. Even now I hear the first peeps. And by “peeps,” I mean I hear a 3-year-old yelling “ONE TWO THREE FOUR!!”