I'm not Supermom, so why do I work her hours?

Seriously guys, the paying job thing? Way over rated. I don't make enough to actually, you know, BUY things. I hang out in a bookstore all day staring at books I can't buy, surrounded by their scent. I'm like an alcoholic with a magic beer fridge. Except the beer costs money, and the alcoholic doesn't have any, even though she spends all her evenings selling other people beer, and watching them sit around a drink it. Oh it's god-awful. GOSH awful, mom. GOSH.

Last night I was so tired when I came home that I baked pumpkin bread without any flour. I didn't discover this til I went to check on what was supposed to be my fluffy loaf and found myself wondering if it was normal for the sugar to be crystallizing on the sides of the pan like that. And why does my bread look more like bread pudding? Or like somebody mixed together a bunch of sugar and water and butter and stuck it in a hot oven to burn?

At least I remembered to turn off the oven. When I got up to use the bathroom around 2 in the morning, the timer was buzzing. But the oven was off, folks!

Despite my better intentions (I am using the wrong phrase here, and am too tired to think up the right one), I took the girls to the zoo this morning. Oh, you can imagine. Indy had a major tantrum and we almost didn't make it out the door. I wish we hadn't. It was the worst day to go to the zoo ever. A sea of children clad in red and white shirts and blue and khaki pants greeted us at the door, a wide sargasso sea, stretching as far as the eye could reach. Despite the impression you might get from these pictures, we had a truly horrible time. Yes, there was cotton candy. And yes, there were rides on the carousel AND the choo-choo-train ( I know there's another non-mom word for this but all my exhausted brain can come up with is locomotion, and then I flash back to that episode of Full House, with DJ and Kimmy singing along, come on baby, do the locomotion? Are you with me here?) And yes there were not one, not two, but THREE baby snow leopards with skin furry and poofy as a -- you know the--those things from Harry Potter books, Ginny gets one for a pet and I think she names it Arnold? Puffy and fluffy as those guys--with bright blue eyes, leaping and (cajoling? caroling? there's a word here, people use it to describe what kittens do. Not carousing, not, um... hmmm. Well anyway.) Leaping and fluffing about. And yes, there was an elephant laying on his side getting a bath. And yes, the polar bear roared for us and the seals spalshed and the baby giraffe took a galumphing little run.

But I'm telling you folks. Readers, it harried me. (Jane Eyre, anyone?)

Two funny things did happen:

A little girl with pom-pom pig tails asked Ayla: "Is that lady right there your mom?"

Ayla looked at me, and said. "No." Then she said something to the girl I didn't hear.

Pom-pom pig tails looks at me: "Are you Britty?"

I know there was a second thing. But I can't think of it now.

I'll let you know when I do.

Oh! It just came to me. (Ten minutes later). The really sweet girl at the drive through Starbucks smiled at the girls and said "How's everyone doing today?!"

Indy grinned and began saying "Zoooo! Zoooo! Zooo!"

Ayla, inexplicably: "Spiderman. Spiderman. Spiderman! Spiderman."

Hahah!