Irish Daisy

Renée Zellweger’s face is everywhere today, or should I say Renée Zellweger’s new face. It bothers me...a lot. Why? Oh, let me count the ways. First, and probably foremost, with all of the bad, bad shit going on in the world today, why in the name of sanity is any media this obsessed with how a woman looks – even if that woman once starred in some films. Seriously, even talking about Ebola some more would be preferable to this manufactured horror about a woman, gasp, appearing to age because, you know, she’s gotten fu!#!$@# older. Second, the faux shock that she may have had plastic surgery! Double gasp!!! Who the hell cares what she’s done with her face? Really? How does it affect anyone but her, the doctor who’s Land Rover she paid off and casting directors? It’s not like Hollywood, or all of Southern California for that matter, is unfamiliar with the concept of elective cosmetic procedures. I will admit that when I saw the picture I thought, “oh, poor thing.” But I was mostly ...

You know what really sucks? Back-to-school viruses, that’s what really sucks right now. I’m home with stricken kid #2.  First Athena was laid low by some bug and an immune system that jacked her furnace up to 102. Now Badger has been nailed. Though I don’t think it’s the same thing because Athena had a wicked sore throat and lost her voice while Badger has a heinous cough and a fever of only 100. Her throat and voice are just fine – as she is currently demonstrating by wandering around the house singing at the top of her lungs punctuated by the occasional coughing fit (and I bark "cover your mouth!" every time). I may feel terrible Luckily, Badger’s bouncing back really quickly; which is good because Athena’s illness over the weekend made us delay their joint birthday party again and we’re now more than a month out from their actual birthdays. If we had to delay it one more time Athena would lose it. Also silver lining, I’m getting some stuff done around here that I ...

Heading out! Most excited she's ever looked... Athena went to her first sleep over party weekend before last and had a lot of fun. Seems like a nice, uncomplicated thing, right? Yeah, not so much. Instead, a simple night away with friends was the trigger for a complete Puff-family existential crisis (hi there, with our #firstworldproblems). First there was Quokka and her major sad because she was left behind. After dropping her sister off, we went to run errands and there was major droopyness in the Lowe’s parking lot. I started asking questions because I figured I knew what was going on, but I wanted her to think about where exactly the bad feelings were coming from so she could acknowledge and manage her emotions. Sometimes I’m an ass. Though, in my defense, no one had previously said anything to, or in front of, me about what was really going on. I had no idea we had critical sister relationship tension already brewing. All smug and assured of my insightful mom-ness,...

Do you want people to sniff in appreciation as you walk by? [Stop it – get your mind out of the gutter.] Would you like for people to exclaim, “wow, you smell so nice!” when they give you a hug? [I mean it, there’s nothing dirty here.] You do? Great! Then get down to your local store and pick up a bottle of this good smelling, super easy to use laundry shit. It’s from Method*, so it’s not going to poison you or anyone you love slowly to death while you smell great. Also, it’s fabric softener so your clothes will be hugable in more ways than just light, fresh-as-a-sunny-meadow smell. Just toss your wet clothes in the dryer, spray it in there four (or 11) times, and let it run. Voila , fresh, yummy laundry you can roll around in (we don't judge, really). If you want to be super-super fresh smelling, as some unnamed members of the Puff family opt to, you can use this shit as a wrinkle releaser and douse your shirt then tumble on warm for a few minutes before you put i...

I love school supplies. Really, really love them – the waxy crayon smell, the shiny binder covers, the rows and rows of bright markers and pens and pencils. I adore the colors, the scents, the memories and every moment of shopping for new school stuff. Loaded with fresh supplies and ready for a hopeful new year  I've loved school supply shopping for forever, even though I never really loved actual school. I was a good enough student and a lot of elementary school came fairly easy to me (okay, there was that trimester in third grade where I almost flunked, but we don’t talk about that). It wasn't the academics, or all of the terrible spelling tests that made me dislike school. It was the social thing – the having to deal with and understand other kids. I was that kid; the awkward one who wasn't really sure how to fit in anywhere. I was teased a lot and spent a lot of time either crying or punching someone (seriously, none of the shenanigans I was involved with in s...

If you pay attention to cultural commentary or women's issues, you'll hear something about how women are objectified in our culture, and while we know the definition, it can be hard to describe what it looks like in our personal lives. Athena, being only seven, doesn't know the definition and doesn't even recognize the word, but she’s already figured out how soul-sucking objectification can be. Athena has always been cute (okay, not always - she did have a couple of months of looking like Winston Churchill, but other than that, the cute is nearly painful in intensity). I mean really grab-her-up-and-munch-her-cheeks cute. Her head was in the 98th percentile when she was born (gets it from her big-headed dad, who is also pretty damn cute and extremely photogenic). Now, that sounds like it would be freaky looking right? Nope, what it does is make a person look like a living doll. See, cute The proportionally big head, combined with her proportionally large eyes, fu...

My neighbor stopped by to chat about the surprise third baby she will be having in early December, and the addition they will be building on their two-bedroom house to accommodate their soon-to-be five-person family. We laughed and congratulated and reminisced about having Badger. We commiserated about the challenge of going back to diapers and highchairs. We joked about birthdays and kid spacing (both Athena and Badger were born in September...apparently the holidays are really joyous around here), and we offered help if they ever need it because three can be challenging. Hanging with baby Badger I really wanted to say so much more, and maybe even scream a few warnings, but why scare the poor woman while she’s six months pregnant? Badger was very on-purpose (we worked to have that kid, if you call working having lots of sex at the right time of the month), but we had no idea at all what we were getting ourselves into - not a clue about how much more difficult it would be to ma...

The tooth fairy visited our house last night on a critical mission to claim a poor, broken little baby tooth – oh, and thanks to Rise of the Guardians for giving us a visual on that, as well as plausible reasons for why the tooth fairy is sometimes tardy. The whole kids-losing-teeth thing is a fairly standard part of childhood for most people, but there are certain Puff family members, not naming names, who lean toward the drama side of things. Athena is NOT amused For example, no one is allowed to show Mr. Puff a wiggling tooth, or a recently removed, still bloody bicuspid. And, while Quokka rips her loose teeth out with gleeful abandon, Athena has always been on the more restrained side. We've had instances of teeth hanging by a thread, with jagged roots cutting her gums to bits, and Athena begging us to yank it out, but if any of us made a move toward touching the tooth there would be shrieking. I was honestly afraid someone was going to call the cops on us – it sounde...

See this Pumpkin & Spice yogurt? I LOVE this sh!t. Seriously, Love. It. When I first saw it perched in the yogurt aisle at Target, I was a little wary. That could be good, or maybe incredibly repulsive.  It. Is. Wonderful.  Creamy, pumpkin-spicy goodness in a handy, portable container. Really, unbelievably delicious. [Full disclosure, I am an unapologetic pumpkin spice addict] This skyr is the Icelandic answer to Greek yogurt – it’s rich and creamy and jam packed with protein. Bonus points, uses actual pumpkin along with spices – no artificial flavors or colors – as well as real sugar. Yummeh! You can see the vital stats on the front: 130 calories, 11 grams sugar, 14 grams of protein It’s like a little cup of pumpkin cheese cake, but the kind that’s not trying to kill you. It’s so good, I’m thinking about dumping some in a graham cracker crust and passing it off as dessert for the holidays. Only now I've told everyone my nefarious plot…but who cares! It’s yummy...

I don’t know if ants actually have an Oedipal complex – I mean, they do have just the one queen, and she’s mating with somebody to lay all those eggs. Is there insect incest going on? Are all ants little inbred freaks? Whatever their parentage, I hate the little bastards because they’re irritating and impossible to live with. These are the things I've been pondering recently…why, because there are motherfucking ants overrunning my house. We've always had a, um, healthy ant population in and around the Puff house. When we had our shower fixed eight years ago, the poor dude breaking out the old, leaking tub had to run for his life from the biting swarm of ants that erupted out of the wall as soon as he broke through the tile. Since moving in we've had to keep all food in air-tight containers or the fridge or else it will be a writhing black mass of ants. On the up side, having your walls infested with Argentine ants apparently keeps the walls from being infested with term...

Just walked in the kitchen and this is how I found my fruit. Unintentionally phallic fruit. At least, I think it's unintentional...maybe Mr. Puff is trying to tell me something. At any rate, we're old tired parents now, not young crazy idiots who could find the energy to hit it five times a week and twice on Saturday. He's upstairs collapsed in an exhausted heap right now, and I went to bed, alone, early last night. No hearts for me, just a glass of wine and some ants for company as I clean the kitchen. This suggestive fruit is the most action I'll see tonight. C 'est la there's-a-toddler-climbing-in-my-bed-vie...

There was a wiggle worm in my bed this morning who woke me up early with a kidney kick, and a tickly crop of curls rubbing my face. Since sleeping was not so much an option anymore, I decided to get in some early yoga at dark-thirty o’clock. I’m still trying to get my back into a more functional state, so trooped downstairs with a yoga mat, DVD, and two excited, helpful dogs. Having soft, furry whippets rolling around on top of me licking my face while I’m in prone positions is not so helpful really. Both dogs do whippet yoga every morning after unrolling themselves from the compact balls in which they snooze. Elaborate morning stretching routines limber up their flexible spine and each leg before they trot downstairs to start the day. Yet, they lack any sort of respect for my own yoga routine and see it as an opportunity to get really ridiculous on my mat. This may be a commentary on how they think I look grunting and wheezing my way through a yoga tape... While it didn'...

Last night as I went up to bed I discovered that Badger had decided it was a good idea to make a Matchbox car parking lot out of the landing at the top of the stairs. Obviously, this is not a good thing for many reasons, most of them related to not killing us by skating down the stairs on a tiny car. Since Badger was still peering at me from around her door, I asked her to come pick them up because it wasn't safe for us or her beloved cars. I continued on into the bathroom to do my thing, and listened for the sound of Matchbox cars being tossed into the car tuppy. Then, this… Crash, crash, crash “Honey, you shouldn't throw your cars like that, you’re going to break them,” remarked Dad-e-Lion.  “They’re NOT glass daddy. They’re cars. They’re not going to break.”  “But you should treat them gently. They’re your cars. You’re going to hurt them throwing them like that.”  “They’re NOT glass. It’s fine!”  “But…”  “I told you, it’s fine. I’m putting th...

One of the things I love best about having kids, besides the unquestioning acceptance of whatever weirdness I feel like dishing out at any given moment, is that they remind me to be imaginative and see wonder everywhere. Sure, I dump water on some of the magic with facts and science-y explanations, but they always bring the wonder. But then, when I consider the science from a child’s perspective, it reminds me that the cold hard facts are pretty miraculous too.  Simple things like lightning, wind and how a cloud forms are fantastic and amazing again – they remind me to look and notice and marvel at something as simple as the sparkling dew on our windshield this morning. And then there’s Quokka, who drives me to rediscover my creativity and reminds me that I was once a fantastical kid before adult responsibility sobered me up like a hard slap to the face. Some part of me let go of that wild, impractical imagination because it didn't serve a purpose. I spent more time on “real” ...

Photoshop is a thing. Its use is ubiquitous and pervasive and it's affecting all of our lives more than we realize. Other than your own family pictures, you never see a photo that you know for sure has not been retouched, or radically changed, through the wonders of photo editing software  (that is, unless you used one of those handy new apps to smooth out and model-fy your own pictures too - you didn't, did you?) We never see photos in magazines that have not been altered in some way - never - not even the red carpet or vacation pictures that both the media, magazines and celebrities like to pretend are semi-candid. Everything is altered or adjusted, and the most common changes are the most insidious. They smooth the skin, removing lines, wrinkles, random hairs, flaws. They make everyone, but especially women, look thinner. There's a lot of ways to do this - skimming the waist, thighs and general silhouette, but also elongating necks, stretching legs, and whittling arm...