1. We've got twenty-one days until we welcome 2017 and, apparently, Edie realized that she's not quite done filling her quota of sicknesses to be contracted by year's end. Clearly, eight ear infections, one surgery, a mysteriously knocked-out tooth, two stomach bugs, and one severe case of Hand, Foot, & Mouth Disease weren't an adequate match for her devout tenacity so she graciously went and got strep throat. "YOLO," she says, "Go big or go home, ma! If you're going to do something, always give it 100 percent." Meanwhile, I'm so tired that my left eye is beginning to uncontrollably twitch so now, when I smile, it appears as though I'm winking. I'm too tired to even blink, let alone exert the amount of effort required to coordinate one-eyed blinking for fun. You won, Edie Cooper. You won.
A waiting room selfie while Edie exhibits how to adequately express how much she currently hates being such a winner at life.
2. As the temperatures drop, some sort of soup has been simmering away on my stove for at least two days a week for the last six weeks now. Hashtag BUSY BEING BASIC. On Tuesday, I made THIS soup from Nigella Lawson's newest cookbook, Simply Nigella, and, y'all. Let me tell you something: it was one of the best non-traditional chicken soups I've ever made. I substituted 100% buckwheat Soba noodles and I added scallions and Sriracha to finish because I take culinary rebellion quite seriously. I'm also completely incapable of following a recipe exactly as its' written but, hey, at least I'm consistent.
3. This morning, I attended a Breakfast with Santa even at the girls' school. Santa was there-- who Mo immediately recognized as her Gramps, causing the illusion of a single Santa being shattered forever. (Just kidding, we've been telling her all along that Santa is so busy the month of December that he has helpers everywhere who are responsible for the relaying of vital information to the real Santa. However, she does now think that she's the coolest ever because her Gramps is an official member of the Santa's Helpers Brigade.) Anyway, there was a raffle fundraiser and one of the items was an American Girl Doll. We decided to go all in and put all five of our raffle tickets into the pot. Since Mo has been asking for one from Santa since the day after last Christmas, my hope was that she'd win and "Santa" would conveniently get out of shelling out such an ungodly amount of money for a fucking doll. (Santa isn't bitter, don't worry.) Well, Santa wasn't so lucky. A ten year old little girl was and, for the first time in my adult life, I found myself physically hating a tween and mentally scheming how to take that bitch down...
4. I've accepted it, yes. But I'm still not over what the results of this election meant.
5. You see? I wasn't kidding about my eye. The bright side is that flirting with Joe is a whole lot easier now.
