Happy Birthday Max

Dear Max,
HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY!
You're one spectacular boy! Full of enthusiasm for reading, Bionicles, friends, apples, Bionicles, sibling rivalry, Pokemon, lego's and TV. Battles sometime surround these enthusiasm's but I admire your tenacity and desire and I'm willing to set limits and let the gargantuan tears fall where they may. At the end of the day, you still say you love me so life with me can't be that sub par.
I sent you to school today with cookies so that you could share them with your classmates. Cookies that I had to search high and low for, as there is a student in your class who has a peanut allergy, and as it turns out nearly all packaging has a disclaimer that says something to the effect of: "WHILE THIS PRODUCT DOES NOT CONTAIN NUTS, THIS PRODUCT MAY HAVE POSSIBLY COME INTO CONTACT WITH A NUT AND THERE IS A STRONG POSSIBILITY THAT NUT VAPORS MIGHT HAVE MYSTERIOUSLY ENTERED THIS FACILITY IN SOME UNKNOWN WAY THEREBY CONTAMINATING THIS PRODUCT".
I feel for this childs parents and hope that these nut free products can be gathered together and sold in a specific section of the market.
Finally I found one stand up company who made a nut free product and was willing to leave the nut disclaimer off their packaging & for that I am thankful. I celebrate "Back to Nature Chocolate Chunk Cookies" and they can be contacted at 866-536-6946. I encourage all of my readers (hi mom) to call this company and congratulate them on not being like all the lawsuit wary pansies who know full well that only human nuts contaminate their facility, but just place that note on their packaging so that they don't get sued.
I digress.
Today was lovely. We reminisced (or I dissertated) about the day you were born and how daddy got lost 3 times on our way home because my going into labor put him into a state of utter confusion. We reminisced (or I dissertated) about how my labor with you was wild and felt like I was journeying with a Shaman (I think I inserted the word power ranger just so you could relate). You said "Oh Wow". Yes, "Oh Wow" was just what I was saying to myself as I explored a 22 hour unmedicated labor. You must have felt like you were journeying through the neck of a glass bottle, but we'll save that sordid conversation for your 7th birthday.

I continue to digress.

Once you came home from school, we all piled in the car and met up with Damma, Pop Pop, Aunt Sharon, Noelle and Owen at Newport Creamery. Unfornately Daddy assumes I am in a state of comprehension between the hours of 7 and 9:30am, which is simply untrue, so I directed him to the wrong Newport Creamery. We missed him, sorry I messed that up for you pal.
So celebrate we did and you now have enough bionicles to wage a campaign of destruction upon your power rangers. Way to go. And the ice cream cake was delicious! I brought the extra ice cream cake home with us with the unstated explicit agreement that one portion of this cake will be for family consumption and one portion of this cake (lets call it one fourth) will be for my pleasure. My pleasure meaning this section will be for me to dig into, pluck and excavate product as I please, because honestly the vanilla and chocolate ice cream are not all interesting to me - I'm in it for the chocolate crunch in the middle as well as all manner of icing. And I really don't want that product handed over to me, that would be too uncomplicated. It's called digging for gold and it's a form of catharticism for me. (Catharticism is my religion, at some point I'll share the doctrines of this faith with you).

Enough from me today.
I promise to come on here more and document the days of our lives so that next week when someone asks me what we did I have a resource through which I have tracked such information. And Daddy won't have to respond so much with, "Go back in your time machine".

Can't wait to see what this new year brings!
Love n' special sauce,
Mom (I think I've graduated from Mommy, at least from your perspective)

On Hobbies

Whenever I'm about to take on new hobby, my first question is:

"How long until I'm an expert?"

Albuterol, Coffee and Me; A Blessed Trinity.

I cleaned my house today!
And I don't just mean I cleaned, I mean I DECLUTTERED the entire first level of my house, and theres only 1 room on the upper level. So I decluttered 90% of my house.

And by decluttering I mean I moved all the clutter than was primarily in my kitchen to the 1 room on the upper level, which is my bedroom, and a bit unfortunate, but that room is still a work in progress, so the clutter sort of disapears into the backdrop of unfinished walls, ladders and hammers and isn't this the longest sentence I've ever written!

Regardless, this is a massive accomplishment and I have now decreed that no paper products are permitted on my kitchen counters or anywhere other than my desk for that matter. I know, "Good luck with that." As a defense tactic I have placed a handsome metallic rack in my foyer, which is technically a 2' x 2' space, but just enough room for me to enter, spin 45 degrees counter clockwise and place mail in appropriate bins. And the bins are labled "Recycling", "Dave" and "Me". I will allow papers to reside in that bin for 1 week at which time, anything left unnatended to will shift to recylcing and so it will be from now until the end of time or one week from now when I get lazy.

This high level of productivity was facilitated by 2 very nice, soft slow steady inhalations of albuterol (asthma treatment) to facilitate the opening of my passageways, chased by 4 cups of coffee. And I've only been drinking 1 cup of green tea a day for the last 4 months. The treatment was just what I needed to catapult (literally) me into action.

Shazam.
ps. Mom. Don't be concerned about the Albuterol, I'm not addicted, I happened to be a little asthmatic this morning and decided to capitalize on the situation. You know my cup is always half full...