Six things you may not know

1. While waiting in line to see Christmas lights a few weeks ago, a very angry mom accosted us. I don't know how it's possible that I never shared this story with you, but the whole event was so unbelievable that as soon as I knew we were not actually going to be gunned down, I said, "Oh. my. gosh. I have to blog about this."

I started typing out what exactly happened, but it's very technically and sort of boring, so I'll condense it.

A van tried to cut in the hour-plus long line to see the Christmas lights and no one would let it. So a woman, the passenger, gets out of her car and stands RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR CAR so if we try to move forward, we will hit her. Like RUN OVER HER. Well, this is ridiculous, so Ryan honks. (There are police patrolling to keep crazy people like this from cutting in line, but they are nowhere to be found.) She marches over to Ryan's window, starts yelling and gesticulating and turning red in the face and ends her tirade with a "MERRY CHRISTMAS."

Unbeknownst to us, the car from MI in front of us thought that their car had been hit by this crazy family trying to cut in. So a passenger no shorter than 6'6" gets out to confront the lady. She yells at him, too! This lady had no scruples. The tall guy finally gets back in his car, and the woman whips something out of her jacket's inside pocket. I was CERTAIN it was a gun. (It wasn't-- it was a pen and pad of paper, and she made a big show of taking down the MI car's license plate.) But if anyone did conceal and carry in line to see Christmas lights? It would be this lady.

Then it all became very awkward as we HAD to let this van in line in front of us, though people behind us yelled and honked at the van in protest. So here is this hostile van, in between the confrontational MI car and us, who clearly didn't want to let it in, just tra-la-la-ing through the park, hanging out the windows and taking pictures of the pretty Christmas lights. Merry Christmas indeed.

2. I think Madeline may have broken my nose. At the very least, she chipped part of the bridge off and it is now floating elsewhere on my nose. What happened was this: some very nice evangelical women have been canvassing our neighborhood trying to convert people. Because I am already a Christian, we usually just end up chatting about this and that, and--I guess--we have become "friends." Well, they came back twice last week. Twice. The first time, I had less than an hour to get dressed, feed my kids, get my house show-ready, and get the kids out the door. I politely told them that it wasn't a good time to chat, and they cheerily said they would come back another day. Well, that other day was last Wednesday. Coralie, Mads, and I were playing in Coralie's room, and I saw the evangelicals walking up our driveway when I looked out Coralie's window. I DID NOT feel like chatting that day, so I did something heroic: I taught my children how to hide in a closet. I shoved the three of us into C's closet and told the girls to be quiet and to wait until those people walked away. Coralie was confused as to why I wouldn't want to open the front door, and Madeline just played along like she always does. Well, pretty soon, she found Coralie's toy golf club and started playing with it. Now, this is no ordinary toy golf club--  it is SOLID. It's from Pottery Barn, who I am sure you know makes every single product of theirs weigh three times more than their competitors do. So she picked up the club, raised it over her head, and before I knew what was happening, cracked it down on my nose. The worst part? I couldn't even cry out because we had to be quiet hiding from those nice women.

3. I am eating an absurd amount of mac and cheese these days. I don't really even know why. Last night I made a box at 9 pm while I watched the Golden Globes. I'm not proud of it, but I did it.

4. We had our sonogram, and we are having another little girl. Besides the excitement of having a healthy baby girl join our family, I am also experiencing a mild amount of panic over the cost and drama of having THREE GIRLS. I'm not so worried about the next few years, but I am TERRIFIED about what will happen in 13 years. You know, when we have THREE TEENAGE GIRLS. THREE. TEENAGE GIRLS.

5. I turned down an opportunity to do some tutoring. This was hard for me, as I really enjoy 1) working with teenagers, 2) using my brain, and 3) making money. But, alas, the timing wasn't good for our family.

6. I am sooooooooo behind on blogging the contents of my brain. I have two more posts I would like to write, but I don't know if I can stop playing Words With Friends long enough to type out anything besides words like "zeds" and "extractable" and "yak". But I'll try.

As Coralie would say, "peace out".