About reading, sex and survival

This is IT. This is why I read like an obsessed person and I couldn't have said it better.
The quote is from a romance book, of course :-) 

"Reading, for me, was like breathing. It was probably akin to masturbation for my brain. Getting off on the fantasy within the pages of a good novel felt necessary to my survival. If I wasn't asleep, knitting, or working, I was reading. This was for several reasons, all of them focused around the infinitely superior and enviable lives of fictional heroines to real-life people.
Take romance for instance. Fictional women in romance novels never get their period. They never have morning breath. they orgasm seventeen times a day. And they never seem to have jobs with bosses."
(Penny Reid)

PS: I don't knit, I bake cakes.

Remember to wake up on Mondays

Yes, today is Tuesday. And this just proves my point. I need one day to wake up at the beginning of the week.

How I realized that recently (as in yesterday)?

Well, you know how ladies like to wear nice shoes? Those with medium to high heels? Old news that I discovered not so long ago: those are not good shoes for driving. So after watching my shoes get more and more wear marks on the heels, I finally did what every sane woman does: take a different pair of shoes in the car for driving, then switch once arrived at your destination.

For this, what you might also need is this little thing:

Like a very organised woman - which I totally am, 4 days a week as an average! - I have those in my car.

The bad luck is that I work in an office that has an unusual policy for entering the premises with your car. Even if we have a barrier with a badge reader - so in theory it should open once you put your badge next to it and it identifies you as a simple stupid employee and not a high tech spy... well, as I was saying, even if we have that, we also have two people before that aforementioned barrier who are asking to see your badge. Because, for unknown reasons -at least to my tired brain cells- the barrier is open in the morning. Yup. Just like that.

Anyway, back to my bad luck. Yesterday I was not very awake. And as you can suspect by now, after all this, it led me to showing the poor guy this:

See the problem there? I hope he didn't. I felt like an idiot anyway, but I admit I also felt relief that I don't have other type of clothing in the car that I could have picked up and shown to him by accident.

(Almost) perfect moments

I am usually the one putting the beasts kids to sleep. I used to think (and still do, on a regular basis) that those moms who say how wonderful it is to put kids to bed and give hugs and kisses and so on are full of it. For me it's more like this book my friend introduced me to.

Anyway... So I have this "quality" time with my kids which is mostly filled with 'stay in your bed', 'no need to drink milk for the 10th time in the past 5 minutes', 'shut up and let your brother sleep' - in all degrees of voices, from whispers to shouts and back again.

But I admit that it also happens that we have interesting conversations, some become my favorite moments. Or my almost perfect moments.


                       ************
(still) 5 years old: You know, mommy, before I die...
Me (thinking): huh?
(still) 5 years old: ... there is only one face I would like to see...
Me (thinking): hmm, that's so cute...
(still) 5 years old: ... my girlfriend's.
Me: What?!!

                       *************

(still) 5 years old: Mommy, I have a secret to tell you. You should not say anything to daddy.
Me: Ok...
(still) 5 years old: In fact, I prefer you over daddy.
Me: hmm... are you sure? Daddy tells nice stories and plays with you more than I do.
(still) 5 years old: Yes, but I really like you better.
Me: Ok then, that's unexpected...
(still) 5 years old: It's because I did the "eeny, meeny, miny, moe"* and you won.


*Equivalent in French is "la plouf" (for my friend who has no clue of what it is, but has great taste in books) and in Romanian it's "ala-bala-portocala"...

Jokes

• What does a tomato say when crossing the road?
• "Ketchup!"

•  What does a 5 years old kid tell his mom after she tells this joke?
• "That was so lame "

I had to agree with him.

Animals' cruelty

I love cats. And dogs. And bunnies and all nice fluffy, cuddly animals.

The only one I currently own - also known as The (Stupid) Cat - is a very welcomed addition to my household. That is my opinion, and for sure not my husband's.

Despite this, in many occasions I get to philosophize - usually this happens between 2 and 4 am, so bear with me, the quality of the philosophical part of my internal monologue might be slightly questionable:

• Is the clock showing the right hour or I am dreaming?
• How many times did The Cat wake me up already? Is The Cat inside and wants to go out or the other way around? What door should I open - it's f... dark outside and I only hear some scratching, no idea if from upstairs or downstairs?
• Does The Cat realize it is asking to be nicely kicked out of the house at -5 degrees for no reason whatsoever?
• What does The Cat try to express when climbing on my curtains at 2 am? 
• Why don't I wear any slippers so that I can throw one towards The Cat's head? Maybe I should buy some and just keep them next to my bed?
• Should I finish the beer I still have in my glass because I was too tired to finish it last night? Oh, it's 5 am so might not be a good idea to start the day with a beer. Or would it?...
• Does The Cat communicate with the children on a hidden channel and only wakes us up at 5-6 when the children sleep later than usual?
• How come when the children wake up at 6, The Cat seems abnormally tired and it's not even moving from the bed - making it difficult for me to go and stop the screaming kid from waking his brother?

All this brings me to the idea that there is such thing as animal's cruelty.

Might be a stretch, but what if they just hate our guts and find ways to show it to us and we are too dumb to get it? Or they just want to get even. Either way, it's working.