Took my baby walking...

This dog is really settling in. 

 Mark was away on a trip this past week and it was a doozy.
I had one 12 hour day and several other loooong days.
I was running around like a nutball piecing together childcare like a crazy lady.
My mother was also out of town.
WOW.
Amazingly enough we made it to most everything, school, work, karate, marimba band practice, regular band practice, math lab... We did forget circus class on Saturday, which is really stupid because I could have used that hour and thirty minutes to get my mental health together.
I don't really do spontaneous, I don't dig change.
I like stuff to pretty much be the same, all the time, so when I have to depend on other folks to do stuff for me, I tend to freak out.
Oh, and Friday was a no school day.
Portland Public Schools seems to revel in any excuse to close the shop down.  It was an extra added feature, as my dear Leo would have said.
Bring is PPS!,
Is what I said.
Lili offered to pick Maxwell up from a day long drama workshop I found for him, at Lincoln High school and Wawa my mother in law watched Freyja for me, so it went pretty well.  Rolf even drove her to Wawa for me on Thursday evening, the tail end of my 12 hour day.
There really is no substitute for good friends.
We are about to get up and do it all over again tomorrow, as mom is still out of town, so Maxwell will get out of school, walk to the marimba lady, practice, then go hang out with a friend that lives in the neighborhood,  then go back to school to get a ride home with our carpool, which is offset, because the carpool host's kid has play practice, WHEW, you try keeping all that shit in your head and see how well you feel.
I am personally not feeling that hot; I got off early on Friday, so I rushed downtown to pick Maxwell up from the drama thing and on the way back to our car in a downpour, I slipped one of those elevator grates in the sidewalk and slid down the sidewalk, about a quarter of a block. Like a fool, I was wearing sandals, and I ripped off my big toenail on one foot and bruised the heck out of my knee. 

... and biting us

Mark was in New York for the week, and boy was it a long time.  It was like dog years, or slow motion or something.

I made enough pie for an army, or for two 13 year old boys.

A big bag of limes for .99 at the Mexican store. 

and posing looking super cute

providing a good deal of entertainment

If you haven't tried no bake noodles, you are a fool.  I remember slaving over lasagna for my brother, when I was a teen, using those awful thick noodles with the curly edges.  The no boil noodles make making lasagna a snap, and the finished product is far superior to that gloppy mass that the old stuff used to produce.

Spinach lasagna

Not to toot my own horn, but isn't this the most beautiful boy in the whole wide world?

Gone on a journal jag, I have no idea where she gets it.