Karen double dog dared me to invite guests to my home and serve them an entire meal prepared exclusively in the Easy-Bake. I'm totally going to do it - I plan on making it a photo essay. Stay tuned for that...

I spent the day at my mom's house, just me, and the stack of her business accounting paperwork I never seem to make time for. I've been a bit slack-assed about getting the stuff done on a monthly basis. In November, I threw up a white flag and suggested that she hire a professional, someone who gets like 6 hours of sleep a night, and who doesn't make her babysit three houligans while she enters invoices into the computer.

I've worked with my mom in many capacities. All through high school she managed retail chains, and I worked as the "my mom is the manager, yo" assistant. We did Hickory Farms. I can sample a Beef Stick like nobody's business. We also did Mrs. Fields. I remember hauling bags of left over cookies down the cliffs at late night beach parties, and being treated with reverence. Everyone likes cookies, you see. Especially after inhaling the crisp salt air. Ahem, that's it, the crisp salt air. Makes people very hungry. For cookies.

Not me, though. I found that salt air made me quite ill. As did cookies after baking and hawking them for hours a day. But they sure made me a popular girl (even if everyone defaulted to calling me Cookie Girl. Salty dorks.)

Where was I? Aha! Giving my mom "the white flag." She's been asking and asking for months for me to just wrap it up, so she can turn it over to the newly hired offsite accountant. And I've been dragging my feet, because I find it extraordinarily difficult to get away from my children, and when I do, my brain is like marshmellow, and the numbers don't add up. It's hard to apply myself at my mom's house, too. She likes to chat and make little snacks, which she serves every 15 minutes, whether you want them or not.

Eat, Papa! Noone likes a skinny Santa!

Today, she was out on a huge staging job, so I had the office to myself, and after 15 minutes of coffee swilling and random paper shuffling, I set about prettying up the numbers that I've been neglecting. Seven hours later, I was toast, and the work still isn't done. I've promised to finish it before Monday. Gah! I hope I can I hope I can I hope I can. It's not my fault! I'm rusty! I'm sleep deprived! I...I... aw, I just want to be magically done.

We've been having crazy rain here - at 1 am this morning, the kids scampered into our bed as the wind raged. We were treated to a thunderstorm and hail travelling horizontally at our windows, and noise that sounded like our roof being ripped off. After 20 minutes, it returned to normal heavy rain, and the kids fell back to sleep. I was sorely tempted to bust out my best Sound of Music "Favorite Things" dance number, but we're short a few kids and would have to double up roles.

Driving those rural roads to my parents home, I was treated to a blue sky, hung in patches with heavy, sodden grey clouds - they looked like a child's feltboard cutout. Slightly fuzzy and fixed. Still high in the morning sky, the nearly full moon hung to the west, and arching over the clouds and just under the moon was a glorious, fully arched rainbow. I cursed my lack of camera, but savored the magical view.