When you're a mom, sometimes you do what you have to do to get by. It's not always exemplary. But you survive. For example:

• Sometimes, when there is only one more muffin/lime yogurt/other highly desirable food item left, I eat it and then tell the kids I don't know what happened to it.
• In order to get my 2-year-old to smile for Christmas pictures, we bribed her with Cheez-its.
• Sometimes when I'm blogging/checking Facebook/IMing with my husband, I tell the girls they have to be good and not bother me because I am "working" on the computer.
• When the girls select a book at the library that turns out to be really annoying, rather than reading it over and over for three weeks, after I few days I tell the girls we have to return it so it won't be overdue.
• On those rare occasions that I happen to be running errands alone, I almost always get coffee or a soda, because I know I won't have to share my treat with anyone.

And now, the final, worst True Confession of the day, the one I'm almost too embarrassed to share:

• A couple days before Thanksgiving, all three girls and I were trying to do some grocery shopping in the crowded pre-holiday supermarket. It was lunchtime, things were taking a long time, and in order to keep the girls' spirits (and blood sugar) up, I bought a piece of pizza from the store's deli for Beth and Lucy to share. They were each munching happily along on their half-piece when I heard Lucy cry: "Oh, no!"

She had dropped her pizza, topping-side down on the grimy concrete floor. Tears were already welling in her eyes. Faced with the possibility of dealing with a 2-year-old's grocery-store meltdown (and having to abandon my full cart of badly-needed food items); of going back to the deli for another piece which she just might drop again; or of exposing her to all kinds of nasty germs, I made a split-second decision. I scooped the pizza up off the floor and stuck it back into her hand. "Here you go. Don't drop it anymore," I told her. I used a napkin from my purse to do a swipe of the floor and then pushed my cart away quickly, looking not to the right or the left, not wanting to see the looks directed at the mom who just picked food up off the floor and gave it back to her kid.

Life. It's not always pretty, is it? Sometimes I think my life is like my house. Or maybe my house is like my life. Whatever. Here's the metaphor: It's not the most beautiful house you've ever seen. It is never completely spotless. But we couldn't survive without it, and messy though it may be, it's ours. Our home. I am supremely grateful that we have a home to call our own. And likewise, I am supremely grateful for this life I'm living--dropped pizza and all.

Yes, Booking Through Thursday, I do give books as gifts.

That's the question on the weekly book meme. My answer comes with a qualifier, though:

I only give books to people whose taste I know really well, so that I can be certain they will like them. This amounts to mainly just my husband and kids, and also my grade-school age brother- and sisters-in-law.

I find it difficult to give books as gifts to other adults. Because just because I found a book fascinating/funny/touching doesn't mean they will too (I've learned this in my book group, when certain books that I loved were a flop with other members, and vice versa). People have very different taste in books.

I also worry about offending other peoples' sensibilities. In general, I don't mind a book that has an occasional profanity/R-rated scene/action or violent scene, as long as the rest of the book is good and it's not overly vulgar. Other people choose not to read books that have even the slightest whiff of the above, and I can respect that choice. I always worry, though, when I give books or recommend books, that I may have forgotten some particular scene in a book and when the recipient reads it he or she is going to be horrified.

So: to reiterate. I do give books. But only to a select few.

The second part of the question is: do you enjoy receiving books as gifts? And the answer is: yes! yes! yes! I'll give anything a try, and I'll take as many books as people will give me. So feel free to send some my way.

Just in case you might ever suddenly forget that you're a mother...

• You put your foot into your boot and discover an orange crayon inside.
• You pick up your new magazine and see that there is a perfect set of teeth marks right through the top edge of every page.
• You roll over in bed and find a pacifier.
• You reach into the fruit bowl and discover half a dozen apples, each with a single bite missing.
• While searching through your purse for your car keys, you find a package of minuscule hair bands, a kid-size hairbrush, two pacifiers, and a nearly-empty baggie of Cheerios...but not your keys. (Those are in your baby's car seat where she was entertaining herself with them).

Things have been a little crazy around here this week; we have snow.

Only about two inches, tops, but in the Willamette Valley that's enough to stop the entire state in its tracks, shut down schools, and send kids into a frenzy of excitement. (Even not-so-young kids; check out Joanna's description of college snow days and you'll get completely nostalgic for dorm life.)

My own kids were no exception. Monday morning as soon as they finished eating breakfast Beth wanted to be out in the snow. I managed to restrain them at least till the sun was up, then I let them at it.













And here is the one person who did not join in the general snowfall merriment. (OK, so I guess one of my kids is the exception that proves the rule).




Lucky for her, her sisters are big weenies, and after about 15 minutes they were ready to come inside for hot chocolate. And dump all their snowy wet clothes on the floor. And half an hour later decide to go out again for another 15 minutes. This has pretty much been the pattern for the last couple days.

And even though the bad weather has been messing up some pre-holiday plans I had, I don't mind too much. I've never had a white Christmas in my whole life. Maybe this is the year!

This fall, hunting season somehow happened to coincide with the girls' first viewing of the movie Bambi. This was entirely unintentional on my part. We've been working our way through the library's selection of classic Disney movies, I happened to see "Bambi" available on the shelf, so I picked it up.

This was about two weeks after their daddy went on one hunting trip and their grandpa went on several hunting trips. The results? A trip to grandma and grandpa's house for a dinner of freshly-killed wild turkey, and a freezer with some elk meat in it. Beth, it turns out, is crazy about elk. The night I cooked elk steak, she begged and begged for more until she ended up eating a larger portion than I did.

We made sure she knew where the meat came from. We showed her pictures of elk. We explained that bacon comes from pigs, that chicken is from...well, chickens. That all living things eat other living things to survive. There was also the picture that a reader sent in to our local newspaper, and which Beth observed with interest this morning, showed a local hunter posing with a giant elk head...a head that was detached from the body of said elk. That made it quite visually clear, if nothing else did, that "hunting" means killing.

I wondered, after all of this, whether "Bambi" would have any effect on her carnivorous ways. Cause any eater's remorse, if you will. This is, after all, the movie that inspired the American Film Institute to list "Man" as one of the top 50 worst movie villains of all time. As in, Bambi's dad says, "Man is in the forest," and the next thing you know, bang-bang! Bambi's mom is dead.

So this morning, I came into the living room to find Beth holding a refrigerator magnet shaped like the state of Maryland (a gift from my friend Amy), pointing it into the distance and saying, "Bam! Bam!"

"Oh, is that a gun?" I asked. (Maryland is kind of shaped like a handgun, if you look at it).

"Yes," she said.

"Are you hunting?" I asked.

"No!" she said. "We are the deer, and we are shooting the bad guys in the forest!"

Armed wildlife fighting back against the hunters? Now that would make an interesting Bambi sequel. Too bad Bambi's mom didn't have Beth and Lucy on her side.

The girls are playing, and Beth is being the Mama. They are having some difference of opinion, and Lucy is daring to thwart her mother/sister's will.

In her best super-sweet "mommy" voice, Beth instructs her wayward child:

"No, no, Baby. You can't fight with Mama."

Then she lowers her voice to an intense, thrilling whisper.

"Because if you fight with Mama...that will be dangerous."

I always used to think it was crazy on The Brady Bunch that even though Mrs. Brady did not appear to have a job, they still had a full-time housekeeper. Wasn't keeping house supposed to be Mrs. Brady's job?

Now I know that sometimes "mother" and "housekeeper" are actually mutually exclusive roles.

I could be such an awesome, effective housewife--laundry clean and folded, house tidy and sparkly, files and closets and e-mails all organized--if only it weren't for these three little people who live with me.

They follow me around constantly and want me to clean them and feed them and entertain them. It really interferes with me being all Martha Stewart-y. Or even Rachel Ray-ish. It's like they love me and want me and need me or something.

It's very hard to wash dishes, fold laundry, and balance your checkbook one-handed.

It's difficult to focus on making doctor's appointments, driving people to school and dance lessons, and making grocery lists full of nutritious, healthful, yet inexpensive items when you're constantly being bombarded with requests for stories, crackers, and hugs.

It's nearly impossible to accomplish anything when your baby is crying for no apparent reason.

(I know, because I'm constantly attempting all of the above.)

So unless Alice is willing come live in my garage (and work for free), I just have to let some things go sometimes. I'm too busy being a mom to be a housewife.

A. To the large-bellied man in the "Live Free or Die Hard" T-shirt: It is not necessary to grunt like a dying bear with every weight that you lift. A little noise is no big deal. I get that you're working hard. We all are. That's why we're all here. But when you are emitting loud huffs and groans at such a volume that I can hear them over both the music the YMCA plays in the weight room, and the second layer of music I have playing on my iPod--well, that's some pretty loud grunting that you're treating the rest of us to. Over and over and over again.

Did you notice that none of the other gym-goers seem to be making quite such a racket? Even the guys who appear to be in much better shape than you are? I don't think that your vocal histrionics are impressing anyone with what a manly manly man you are. It just makes me think that if what you're lifting is really so hard for you, maybe you ought to switch to a lighter weight.

Oh, and also; the molester mustache and the giant curly mullet have really got to go.

B. To the 40ish lady standing with her rear side facing me: Only people with the body of Uma Thurman should wear hot-pink spandex shorts.

And even Uma should refrain from said shorts if they give her a bad case of VPL.

C. To the chick who is always on the treadmill, every time I am there, the whole time I am there: You are really impressive. Are you training for a marathon? Because you must be running for hours and hours.

And also: how can you run so much and yet still look like a normal person? When I run I am immediately drenched in sweat and red-faced. Did you have your sweat glands removed or something?

D. To the people who select the channels for the TVs in the cardio room: Animal Planet? Really?

I thought I was a really good cook before we got married.

In reality, I was a decent baker but a pretty poor cook. I could whip up a delicious batch of cookies or a great pie, but my repertoire of dinner recipes was limited, at best. By the end of the first week of cooking for my husband, I'd pretty much cooked every dinner dish I knew how to cook and was venturing out into new territory.

Luckily, I had some good source material to turn to. At my bridal shower, my mom and sister put a recipe card in everyone's invitation, along with the request that all the guests bring a favorite recipe or two to share. At the end of the shower, they filled my new recipe box with the little cards, and I was delighted.

My mother-in-law contributed several recipes, and I was excited to recreate my husband's childhood favorites for him. One that I knew he was particularly fond of was a chicken-and-broccoli casserole.





When the time came to cook the dish, however, I was confounded. The ingredient list called for mayonnaise. The problem was, we didn't have any mayonnaise (you'd think I'd have read the ingredient list before starting to cook, but apparently not. I told you I was not the best cook). Neither Eric nor I like mayonnaise, so we didn't have any in the house. I really didn't want to go to the store for just one ingredient. Surely there was something I could substitute.





I opened the fridge. Sour cream might work. Did we have sour cream? No.

I thought I may have read somewhere once that you can substitute plain yogurt for mayonnaise. Did we have any plain yogurt? No.

But we had vanilla yogurt. I picked up the little carton and considered it. It was white--like mayonnaise. It was had the same consistency as mayonnaise. Surely once I mixed in all the other ingredients--chicken, broccoli, rice, cheddar cheese, various seasonings--surely that sweetish vanilla flavor wouldn't be detectable at all.

And I'm sure you can imagine the rest of the story. I made Eric's mom's casserole recipe with vanilla yogurt.

The other flavors did not cover up the vanilla at all.

The combination of broccoli and vanilla was especially unfortunate. Both of those foods have fairly distinctive aromas and tastes. Imagine those scents mixed together in a piping hot casserole dish and placed before you on the dinner table.

It did not smell good.

It did not taste good.

But here's the thing, readers. My husband is such a trooper--such a kind and generous soul--that he actually ate it. He didn't want to offend his new bride. As I recall, I let him eat his entire portion before confessing to the substitution. And all he said was, "Yeah, I thought it didn't taste right."

And that's when I knew for sure (as if I had any doubts) that he was a keeper. A guy who will eat a whole plateful of chicken and rice and broccoli and vanilla casserole without saying a single unkind word about it? That's one in a million.

He didn't eat the leftovers, though. Because if there's anything worse than fresh vanilla-broccoli casserole, it has to be day-old vanilla-broccoli casserole.

Even love has its limits.

It really bugs me when people play their music too loud.

I've started enjoying a good cup of tea in the afternoons.

Not only are many of my high school classmates--like myself--married with kids, some of my classmates have actually been married and divorced already.

I've stayed up past midnight maybe once in the last three months, and the next day Eric and I talked all day long about how totally tired we were.

It throws my day off if I don't get a chance to sit down and read my daily newspaper.

I think it would be cool to know how to knit, and I'm hoping to grow a garden and can some vegetables this summer. And if I had any spare time to devote to hobbies, I'd use it to sew a new quilt for my bed.

A few weeks ago I got together for dinner with my friends from college--my gang of wild and crazy girlfriends, the ones who are always up for a good time. These were the things we talked about over dinner:

• work
• wine
• books we've read recently
• favorite recipes
• cribbage

That's right: cribbage. My great-grandpa's favorite game. And then I came home and told Eric that my friends said cribbage was fun, and he said cribbage is fun, so we went out and bought a set. When my parents watched the two older girls overnight last week, that's what we did: went out for dinner, then came home, put the baby to bed, and played cribbage.

Contrary to what you might believe from reading the above, I am not a 65-year-old person. I just play the role of one, apparently, in my day-to-day life.