complete surrender

Yesterday was a perfect day to live in a house full of girls: TCM was running a Katherine Hepburn marathon. A couple of the girls wandered into my room while I was folding laundry during Bringing up Baby, and they were immediately hooked. Katie and Beth in particular loved it, so we decided to tape A Philadelphia Story* and I let them stay up late last night to watch it with me. Chris stayed in the basement for all of five minutes after we started the movie, when he loudly declared that he couldn't take it and was going upstairs to watch football.



I love it when he tries to assert masculinity in the face of all the pink-fluffiness of this place.



So, fast forward to this morning. It has been chilly here the past few days, and although the weather is warmer today the water in the pool is pretty chilly. Chris and I were discussing just how cold it might be, and whether it would be worth it to swim this afternoon. (I am notoriously wimpy when it comes to cold water.)



"It's going to be pretty chilly, "he said,"so you might want to start getting in the pool now so that you're finally used to the water by the time we girls get in."


He stopped and looked at me, but it was too late. "The girls and I!" he said, "I meant the girls and I."



I probably laughed for five full minutes. And while swimming this afternoon (it was very cold), I couldn't help but giggle from time to time. He tries, God bless him, but this boy has no chance. No chance. All the football in the world can only do so much against the tide of estrogen washing over us every day.

*As it turns out, A Philadelphia Story is way racier than you might think. We ended up turning it off.

Are you wondering why I haven't been updating lately?

Here's why:

Lucy climbed up on a kitchen chair and then tipped it backwards onto the floor, barely escaping breaking her neck. She then climbed back up onto the table and dumped a cup of milk onto the floor. Then she crawled into the dog's crate, ate a handful of his food and started to gag. After holding her over the sink (in case she puked) for a few minutes, she immediately went back into the crate and grabbed yet another handful of dog food. When I took it away from her, she bit me on the arm. When she was done crying (ahem), she climbed onto a bench and tried to push a box of wine bottles that we've been too lazy to recycle onto the floor. Luckily, it was too heavy and I had time to intercept. I set her back onto the floor, and she ran to the drawers where I keep bills and dumped the entire thing onto the floor. The dog was delirious with joy and immediately began to shred the paper. As I was picking up the bills, Lucy opened a cabinet door and dumped a bag of dog treats on the floor. (You can see why Jasper is so fond of her.) As I was cleaning up the dog treats, Lucy opened the liquor cabinet and pulled a large bottle of Maker's Mark off the shelf. I put the bottle back and pushed a stool in front of the door to deter her. She pulled the stool away and grabbed the bottle again. She was enraged when I would not allow her to play with the whiskey, so to vent her frustrations she reached out her hand and was about to rip out a handful of the dog's fur when I stopped her. She then screamed for ten minutes.

This all occurred between 5 and 6pm.

Chris wondered why dinner was late.

The only thing atypical about this evening was this: Lucy usually messes with the dog's water bowl as well.

I'll report back when I can, but I don't know when that will be. It's hell out here.

Been in the 'burgh

First of all: Hi Patty! (waves!) At least I know you will read this. :)

The girls and I made the trek into Pittsburgh last week, taking advantage of the summer break to get a longer-than-usual stay in the land of my birth. We had a great time! It was very nice to not only get to see almost everybody, but to get to see some of them a couple of times! We fit in a trip to the zoo (to see the baby elephants), a drive-in (WALL-E - loved it), a day at Kennywood (the standard, for me, against which all other amusement parks are judged), an afternoon at South Park, a brunch at Michael and Colleen's, and lots of time over at Bobby and Margaret's pool. At one point, Aunt Margaret stopped in at my mom's house, and Abbie immediately ran upstairs and put her bathing suit on. Pavlov would have been proud. Chris also made his way in over the weekend, bringing Jasper with him (to the delight of my mom, who I can tell has really missed being able to say, "Becca, get your damn dog!")

So now we are all back at home, decompressing after such a busy and fun week. I am really, really glad that we were able to come in. I miss all yins guys a ton.

I'm going to finally put up some more pictures on flickr, just as soon as I can remember my password, but in the meanwhile here's a good picture to sum up this past week. My mom, in an act of extreme bravery, doing what anyone who knows her would consider unthinkable: conquering her fear of heights to ride the Umbrellas with Abbie: