I woke up to a rainy, grey, chilly morning.  A day made for snuggling with your babies and hubby in bed snoozing for an hour and then waking for a few minutes and then back to the snooze.  But the world continued to shout our names to wake up and greet it and Cy continued to bark our names to let him outside – so we had to pull our bodies out of bed. And get dressed.  Ugh. 

Dude-man and his girlfriend with Maria (happy with her barbie gift!)

I rushed Maria down to school just so we could participate in the Book Fair a half hour before her school started only to find out that there were no early hours for the fair that morning.  I waited with Maria for the first bell to ring and then rushed home to get dressed and ready for work.  As I tried to run from the bedroom to the closet, I tripped over a gym shoe and knocked my head into the door.  I looked at myself in the mirror and thought “it’s just gonna be one of those days.”  By the time I got to work, I was ready for chocolate.  I downed a snickers bar and a hot chocolate and started to work on a policy that I had been ignoring.  The phone rang off the hook with questions from clients.  My stomach hurt.  Ugh.

As I stared out the window mad about the day, I heard the ring of the computer telling me I had new mail.  I looked down and saw my brother’s name, jack menkedick, on my screen.  “Dude-man” as my sis and I call him.  Seventeen years my junior, he is a superstar musician and actor and one cool cat.  He had forwarded an article to me from The Onion, A Parenting Study.  It made me roar with laughter for the first time all day.  No more worries about how I am parenting – Maria and Mario are screwed no matter what!   How relieved I am to have found that study and to know that there is no parenting tactic that works any better than another – rock-n-roll!  And how awesome it is to have a little brother that thinks enough to send me an email that he knows will put a smile on my face on a dreary day.