I get Bad Parent Demerits. It's hovering just about 50 and I only made it through 45 minutes of Ben's first baseball game before coming home.

That's OK Amy, my mom never attended more than one night of my theatrical performances (all the other parents came every night), but I am just fine!

Also, I have a round about thank you to msbelle-- who introduced me to the SImple Dollar. Hx some I like. e often annoys me because he is prescriptive, but ultimately, he has good advice. He often talks about starting hobbies with the simplest possible tools to see if you like them. Well, I have been thinking about how much I loved drawing and painting as a child, especially how I loved to draw mountains and color them in with various colors. I had shades of blue moutains, and brown mountains and green mountains, and even red mountains. Because I love playing with color. So I was thinking I could do that again, but maybe with paint. And I looked at all these art supplies and found myself wanting all sorts of fancy stuff that was expensive. And then I said, self, you know what I have laying around... cardboard boxes. So why don't I paint on cardboard boxes? And you know what else I love... colors, so why don't I just try and mix them, because it will be fun! So now I am just going to buy gesso to coat the cardboard, and the primary colors, plus black and white, and see what I can get. That will be less than $20 to see if I enjoy it! So thank you msbelle!

Sophia, you made my day brighter.

I packed 5 boxes today. Had chicken and slaw for dinner, spaghetti and red sauce for mac. We are half-way through with the hummingbird cake, I've got my eye on a cherry cheescake-like thing to make next. Maybe will do that tomorrow night. Over/under on mac taking his bath tonight?

Olivia can now sing the opening bars to "Iron Man." She has the beat perfectly. I think the things that make me proud are definitely different.

Sophia, if you can find scrap wood around, it's also a great material to use for painting!

Well... just made my reservations for the SCBWI conference in LA in late July. Conference is being held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, so that's also where I'm staying. I'm coming in on the 29th and leaving early on the 3rd.

So excited! Haven't been to LA in SO long.

I was up stupidly late writing, slept stupidly late, but still managed to do three loads of laundry, a load of dishes, cleaned, lifted weights, and sorted through an epic amount of paperwork I found hiding under the bed. All while burning through shows backlogged on my TiVo.

Now I just need to clean the bathroom and shred a new pile of paperwork. And write a hell of a lot more.

Bath without incident. He's in bed, says he wants to go to bed alone. The ds has no bettery left, so he can't be playing that. Hopefully he will read and fall asleep quickly.

So how I am managing this no-fi weekend: all electronic or cords needed to make electronics functional are locked in a suitcase with a small padlock. The padlock key is in my bra, as are the soon to be sold ds games. I look forward to no longer having small metal and platic objects in my bra.

Combination locks?

Can I throw Loki in mac's room? Despite having a fun evening of deck time (and lots of deck hopping and rail walking shudder, ) he's been systematically emptying everything from my desk organizer. And not like the table was clear to begin with.

msbelle, I'd be happy to buy the DS games, if you're putting them up for sale.

Cash, they do not have instruction books with them.