Antithesis of Everything

It is spring break this week, which means that I get to sleep past the 5:00 hour each morning, which also means that I actually have the inertia to stay awake past 10:00pm.  That minor detail and my computer  finally being  back up and running (after getting a new hard drive), means that  I have no good excuse not to blog this week.  

Okay, okay, you can stop groaning now.

I know that intense randomness with a touch of boringness is a common writing style that I like to employ when composing blog posts, but for some odd reason I like to blog anyway and my family (okay...just my dad)  seems to get worried about me when I go too long without updating them on the mundane details of our very unexciting lives.    And when I say "unexciting", believe me that I don't use the term loosely in the slightest.

So this week I am on rash patrol.  Yes, yes...it is as spectacular a job as it sounds.   Ellie just started a new medication this week, which carries a higher than average incidence of dangerous rashes associated with it.  If I were to discover a rash on my daily rash check, it would be considered an emergency because it has the potential to be life threatening.  I am feeling rather opposed to emergencies currently, so it's a good thing that so far she is tolerating it well.  

Last Friday I tried to eschew boringness for a day and boldly threw caution to the wind, made the kids do their schoolwork the night before, and braved a trip to the cherry blossoms by ourselves.  By ourselves, of course, along  with the thousands of other people that were downtown that day.  We rode the Metro down, walked around the Tidal Basin...

took a few pictures of Ellie wearing her "match-the-cherry-blossoms" sequined hat....

then went to the Natural History Museum where we spent a while trying to determine the approximate worth of a display case of gems and minerals.

Afterward,  at Ellie's request, I  took them to Astro Doughnuts (right by the Metro Center metro station) for lunch.   Fried chicken and award winning doughnuts....yes, it was as nutritious a lunch as it sounds.  One of Spencer's fellow cancer survivor friends works there, so we hoped to be able to say hello while we were there, but he never seems to be there when we visit.  I'm pretty sure that the young female co-workers of his always think it's so weird that a forty-something woman with kids in tow is questioning whether twenty-something Tim is working that day.   In fact, they always ask me how I know him.  Someday I am going to make up a really fun story about how he sold me a rotten doughnut or something.

So in other dull-for-everyone-but-dad-news, we bought season passes to Busch Gardens in one spontaneous moment when they were selling their  season passes at the same price as a one-day admission.  So now we are Busch Gardens members and plan to visit there on Thursday. If anyone has that day open, doesn't mind a trip to Williamsburg, and would like to join us for a day of spectacular fun (seriously, Busch Gardens is an awesome amusement park),  let me know.   We like company and Busch Gardens has great shows (the Irish Dancing is my favorite), as well as fun rides for old and young.

Speaking of fun, it's a good thing that season pass sale popped up when it did, because after Glen did our taxes this year and discovered that for the first time ever we owe the IRS a check for thousands of dollars, we are going to need all the cheap fun we can get.   And there's no way we would've bought those passes had he done the taxes before that.  Don't worry, though, you won't hear me cursing the government about stealing so much of our hard-earned money.  I love America and love to give our hard-earned dollars to further governmental meddling in our lives.

Speaking of cursing, I am struggling with my social media right now and wonder if it's time to go back to the dark ages.     For some reason, unbeknownst even to me, I am suddenly feeling much more sensitive about the plethora of events that people are bragging about on Facebook and Instagram that I and my family are not invited to.    I had a complete and total melt-down about an event last week when, against my better judgment, I examined the pictures someone had posted and realized how many of mine and my kids' friends were there and we weren't even invited.  I even went home and checked my spam folder to make sure I hadn't missed an invitation.  Nope.  It was just me and I normally wouldn't care one iota, but for some reason now I do and  it's made me realize the beauty in the whole "Ignorance is Bliss" mindset.  It's one thing for people to have fun events and not invite you, but it's a whole other thing when you know exactly who else was invited and how much fun they really had.

Last, but not least in my random list of updates that's getting more negative by the paragraph (and I'm pretty sure no one is actually reading)....
I have weighed the options and have decided to cancel my birthday this year.    My kids were looking ahead on my iphone calendar today, picked out my birthday as the potential date for some future event,  and swore up and down  that there was absolutely nothing going on on that date.   I took it as a sign and  I have opted to not have a birthday this year.   Randomly,  I feel younger already!