That game last night? I won't dwell but that Garza guy certainly can pitch. The Sox had their chances and didn't or, actually, couldn't capitalize so home they go.

At least now I can go to bed before one a.m. this week.

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We are dogsitting and apparently I have short term memory loss. On Saturday night we were watching the game with some friends and our charge comes wandering in the room. I was totally thrown for a curve and actually said "Ah, there's a dog!" before I remembered that she was supposed to be there.

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There was an ammunition related lockdown at the local high school this week and our book club just read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Timely subject and I'm sure the whole incident was discussed but I wouldn't know because I ditched book club with another girl to go out to dinner and browse/shop.

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In a related story, I now have all the party favors/junk needed for my daughter's birthday/halloween party. And considering that I don't have to make a trip out to the store to get all of this stuff and can instead go to soccer/hockey/drama/work without stressing about when and how I'm going to get to a store before Friday? Ditching was definitely the Idea of the Month.

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My son needed a huge favor from me for school today. Well, huge in his eyes. Last night at nine p.m. he came downstairs and told me that his math quiz? The one where she checks your notebooks and your grade is based on how many papers you've kept? ed. note: STUPID.

The one that the entire class is totally unprepared for? Is Monday and he's only missing three sheets which can be printed from the textbook website. ed. note: because his mother checked the Math Class Policy Sheet and seeing nothing about keeping homework assignments threw, like four hundred sheets away since school has started and he has no idea how lucky he is that he only needs three math sheets at this point. Oh, and the teacher CANNOT BELIEVE that no one is prepared for this as she has told the kids twice that the information in on that damned policy sheet. Math teacher lady - you are WRONG.

Okay. But now it's nine p.m. and our main computer is dead and our laptop is outdated and has zero printer software installed. So, seeing as he's holding a straight A+ average at this point (braggy, brag, brag)and is stressed out because this could bring the whole thing crashing down around him I had a brief conversation with him about using his agenda book to jot notes down about things like this (not just copy homework assignments) and then told him I'd take him to my office before school and we'd print out the sheets for his binder. Ed. note: Also he's been promised his own full rack of ribs for dinner if he continues with the good great grades and he was probably more freaked out about losing the chance to cover his hands and face with barbeque sauce than anything.

But. He has to do one favor for me in return. One favor of my choosing. Hmmmm.......

And they live to see another day

Well, THAT was some kinda Red Sox game, that's for sure. Y'know it's so easy to lose faith in a team that's down by seven runs - I mean really, we had switched the channel for about forty minutes and I made a stab at guessing the score:

7-2 is what I said. Nope, it was 7-0. We laughed and agreed I gave the Sox far too much credit. My husband, bone tired, said three more outs and he was going to bed. Then he calls Pedroia's base hit and Papi's homerun before they were even at bat. All of a sudden - it's a game again. Papelbon looked spot on for the top of the eighth and then my husband calls JD Drew's homer. Blah, blah, blah - more hits, some thanks going out to BJ Upton and the Sox are heading back to Tampa.

The thing about being a Red Sox fan? You can tell yourself it's over, attempt to take a flying leap from the bandwagon, even, to save yourself the mental anguish of watching them get shut out at home. But really, they're down by seven and the minute Lowrie hits the ball you believe that they're coming back to win. In fact, you never really doubted that they could...you were only fooling yourself - or trying to.

For those of you that could care less about the Red Sox:

Um, I got nothin'.

Rally hat? Check. Piles of clean clothes? Check.

I wish I could say that I'm not superstitious but lord knows, that's far FAR from the truth.

Last year, it was my dedication to laundry and a popsicle stick that won the World Series for crying out loud.

But this year? The famed Citgo sign catching fire the night before the last Fenway game of the ALCS?

What do you think....a good omen? or have we now fallen victim to a new curse?

Aw, man...you guys are awesome. One post and I feel like all "welcome back!".

The girlie's room? Is Pixie Dust Pink and Hobnail Green. Entirely too frou-frou for my taste but she'd had my choice of color on her walls for eight years now and it was time for an upgrade.

And speaking of eight years, my baby is eight years old - as of yesterday. We made our annual pilgrimage to Build a Bear or as my son called it Engineer an Elephant, because that's what she came home with. A big elephant named Marilee dressed in a pink sweatsuit.

She had her choice of dinner and because I am never going to win Parent of the Year - she had an ice cream sandwich instead of cake (for shame! In my defense, I worked all day and had to be back out of the house for a meeting at 5:45 p.m.) and best of all? No birthday candles. I put a tea light (cinnamon scented, even) on top of the ice cream sandwich.

There weren't any photos so I'm hoping I can hypnotize her later into THINKING she had a cake with honest-to-god candles. This will be a birthday that haunts me at Sunday family dinners in the future when my kids come to visit me.

I plan on having our families over for the usual cake and ice cream celebration in a few days so she won't be permanently traumatized. Or she will be but it will be for entirely different reasons.

Like those earrings I got her. I broke my personal 'must be 13' rule and got her ears pierced. Six long weeks she waited. She cleaned them, turned them and counted the days until her birthday when I told her she could take them out and put in a new pair. Which we did without a problem on Monday. She wore new earrings all day and took them out at bedtime.

And that brings us to Tuesday and a whole 'nother story. Her other birthday present? Getting her earrings poked back through half healed earring holes. I mean, it was one freaking night. How could they have almost closed up? And then, after school? We went to check on the earrings she wore and they were kind of, like, stuck in there. The holes had tried to close up with her earrings in. Yeouch.

So my poor babe, all excited for some new sparkly goods, is now half freaked out because we didn't know what to do...put earrings in to try to keep the holes open or leave them out so she's not wearing permanent earrings for the next thirty years. Verdict? They're in.

I hope she likes little flower earrings when she's closing in on forty.

And look at me, with the posting.

I know no one wants to hear about the reasons for the absolute lack of posting but too bad. I'm kidding, there's little more to it then the fact that in my list of priorities for the past few weeks posting here falls way short. WAY short. I've still been reading y'all though.

And I use the y'all lightly as I'm sure visitors here are few and far between by now.

Plus my real computer, the one that wasn't built in the early nineties? It died. Basically it was all "Blue Screen? Fuck the blue screen. You've seen the blue screen about forty times this year and did NOTHING so from now on I'm all black screen and how 'bout I throw in this Primary Hard Drive Failure message for your reading pleasure?"

So there's that.

I was in the market for a new computer anyway but I was hoping to hold off until Christmas. Which, I still will but now I have to listen to my son's daily whine about the lack of Runescapability on the forty pound, seven minute battery life laptop. Such is life, my boy.

I spent the weekend painting my daughter's room. A word of advice...

If you head to Lowe's to buy paint, pull up short and get thee to a Benjamin Moore dealer. Or even Home Depot. The Lowe's paint? It sucks.

It sets up too fast, covers like shit and drips like crazy. I thought it was my lack of painting expertise causing the whole paint suckiness. I tend to be a little hyper-critical of my skills (skillz?) and I was painting kind of late at night due to some last minute wall patching by my husband (before he took the kids to Maine for the weekend he patched a few holes and ran out the door mumbling to me about closet door removal, sanding and priming) and a few late starting Sox games.

Long story short, husband comes home - notes the flaws, naturally, and proceeds to 'show me how it's done'. Which, he wields a paint brush with far more confidence than I do and he really does nice work, thinks tape is for wimps and works much faster than I ever could. And what does he say halfway through the second coat on his two walls? "This paint sucks."

And that finishes up our expert review on Valspar paint.

And truly, my husband isn't really all that critcal of my work - he knows better as he'd rather have me paint than have me watch him paint. I'm a backseat painter.