The Apron Scandal

I'm at home with a sickish kid today. I just made a typo where I mistakenly wrote "dickish" kid, and thought about leaving it, but, actually, she's been pretty good. Not a lot of whining about TV, just a little talk back that makes me give her the Mom Stare. I say sickish because she's not that sick. She's sick enough that I wanted to keep her home from school to watch her, and I'm lying in wait for the impending ear infection, and her temperature pops up a degree or so every couple of hours, but it pops back down to normal again without meds, and she's in her room drawing and listening to an audiobook.

Hey, here's a parenting question: how many times is too many times when it comes to listening to the same audiobook? This kid has listened to The Saturdays about 150 times, no exaggeration. Its driving me a little crazy, and she can recite the entire thing (the whole, unabridged, 117 page book, I swear to God) but she seems to like it, and she can sit in her room for long stretches of time, coloring, making things out of construction paper, organizing her Littlest Petshop pets, whatever, giving me a lot of peace. I Have the Power to take it off her iPod and replace it with something else, but should I? Please advise.

I'm a little sick, too. I have a cough and a runny nose, but other than that I feel alright. I took it real easy yesterday, but today I've been roaming around the house, doing this and that, and have not been over taken by the strong urge to take a nap, which is better than most healthy days for me. So, I organized the kitchen utensil drawer; took everything out, wiped down the drawer, sent some utensils to the Rarely Used Kitchen Tools box (yes, I have one of those, and it is labeled thusly) and put back the rest. I have these really old kitchen cabinets, probably original to the house which was built in the late 20s early 30s, and they're wood all over, no metal rollers or anything, and when you push and pull the drawers, they make a fine wood dust that settles on everything in the drawer. I routinely have to clean my mini rubber spatula before I use it because its covered in fine, brown wood dust. So I cleaned everything off and organized it by size, but I can't get the drawer back in. Seems there's an old baby proofing device in my way that I managed to negotiate when pulling the drawer out, but now I can't get it back in.

I also organized the drawer where we keep cloth kitchen things like napkins and dish towels and aprons and I'm here to tell you, my daughter has 4 aprons. For years, I had one apron. It was Rob's old Frugal Gourmet apron, like the guy on TV, who settled out of court with seven men who said he molested them (he settle with 7 out of 20 who accused him, I looked it up.) I wore this apron for years, the child molester apron, and no one believed me when I said I wanted a new apron for Christmas. Meanwhile, my daughter, who only eats five different foods and isn't allowed to use the stove has four aprons. But I did get a new apron, finally, last Christmas and now all is right with the world.

I am really in the mood for apple pie. If you are in my neighborhood, and have a spare piece of delicious apple pie, please feel free to drop it off. This worked with the Tagalongs, so you never know...