You Know That Bear in the Woods?

My lovely and delicate daughter had a friend over this week. They played and frolicked in the sylvan wilderness behind the house for the entire morning. Industriously they built a fort from fallen branches and lined the ground with fern fronds. They came inside and grabbed something and dashed right back outside. "She's been outside in the woods for the entire morning! I love it!" The thought was no more than 30 seconds old when she and her buddy plowed back into the house, Trueby clutching a garden trowel. "Mom! Mom! Guess what! We pooped in the woods and buried it! We're NATURE GIRLS!"
Oh my good lord...WHAT?! They came in the house for TP and then went back outside so they could dump in the greenspace!! If anyone says anything, I'm blaming the neighbor's dog! A little knowledge is a really dangerous thing.

I am Crazy Old

It's a little hard to reconcile the amount of loveliness that surrounded my birthday with the amount of craptacularness that it engendered. I am clearly and definitively outside of the bracket of young. In fact, I am in the hazy area that could start to be called middle-aged. Since my life plan from age 16 has been to hurl myself from a clifftop at 30, thus avoiding any semblance of proximity to old-age, finding myself in middle-aged territory is violently jarring.
However, the birthday itself was a kick. The day before I spent with science teachers and my astronaut. One friend was so sweet as to bring birthday cupcakes for me, and another treated me to lunch. Almost enough for me to forgive them for making the entire workshop sing "Happy Birthday" to me and make me just about want to sink through the floor.
Yesterday I went to work but didn't get squat done. Another friend brought lovely cookie treats and I was sung to again...but the cookies offset that nicely. I met the fam for dinner at Olive Garden and came home to surprise decorations and some rockin presents. Not only the Flight of the Conchords DVDs, but check out the awesome silhouette they made me. Love it! Round it out with some house stuff and some craft stuff and I'm calling it aces! Topped off with a seriously tasty chocolate cake, with ALL the candles, and I barely made it to bed.
My kids have been calling me Oldylocks forever, but now it's official. I'm elderly!

Fan Girl!

I'm so geeked out right now! I went to pick up the Trube from her daycamp today and who should stroll in to pick up his daughter as well? Ryan Stiles! I played it totally cool (Gordon doesn't buy that for a minute...and he's right. I was so giggly!) and pointed him out to Emma who immediately got giggly too, squealing, "Go say hi to him!" So when he finished watching his daughter on the climbing wall, we went over and said hi. I WAS super cool, shut it! And he was crazy nice. I told him we'd just seen the Who's Live show and loved it and showed her some YouTube clips that she loved and we both just wanted to say hi. He was lovely and asked her name and seemed genuinely glad to meet her. I asked her if she wanted to tell him her favorite part, it's the line she squawks at random and cracks me up every time. Check it out I told him about it and he totally laughed, "Oh yeah!" He was aces! I've seen him around town a couple times, but have never said hello. Totally glad we did!