About 3 weeks ago a lady running for Minnesota Congress, Char Samuelson, asked my husband if she could put a lawn-sign in our yard. He agreed, but the more we read about her, the more we both agreed with each other that we support her opponant, Geri Evans DFL , so we removed the sign from our yard and just brought it up closer to our house, leaning against our side fence.

All this time, my husband has been calling local John Kerry campaign headquarters to ask them to deliver a Kerry-Edwards lawn sign.After 3 reqeusts, we still didn't get one, so our friend Derek just went to their office, because he lives near there, and got us one. Thanks Derek! We put it up, in our yard, near the curb. Two days later I found the paper sign ripped off of the wire frame. I put it back on. The next day the sign was completely removed from our property, the empty wire frame still implanted in our yard. So within about 3 days of getting our Kerry-Edwards lawn sign, it was vandalized and stolen.

Yesterday, we looked out on our front lawn, and saw Geri Evans had set up a lawn sign in our yard.We're leaving it up, because we support her anyway, but neither of us remember authorizing it!

And the Char Samuelson sign that was leaning against the side of our house? Also missing! I was going to return it to her campaign headquarters , but now it's gone too!

We wonder what the neighbors think of us keeping up lawn signs for 3 days, then having them go missing like that.

Just two weeks apart both our stove and our refrigerator had to be replaced. OK we got the money from when we refinanced our house , which still essentially is a loan, just added on to the amount of mortgage we pay each month, but I'm still not too happy about it.

Our new Whirlpool fridge is as tall and wide as the old one, but we didn't notice it was about 6 or so inches deeper than the old one, so it sticks a little farther out in to the kitchen, from the wall, than the old one did. Good news, it holds more food and has much more freezer space. Bad news, it just makes the kitchen seem that much smaller.

We ate out way too much in the 2 weeks during which we were in process of either getting our stove or refrigerator repaired. I felt terrible by the end.

Both kids lost a tooth last week! For my 5 year old son, it was his first, and he swallowed it. I didn't even know he had a loose one. He just came up to me and showed me the empty space where one of his lower front teeth used to be! It was the 8th, for my 10-year-old daughter. They both got 2 dollars from the tooth fairy.

I also had to take an emergency trip to Cub food one night last week at about 10:00 , to hang out in the "feminine products" aisle. This time, it wasn't for me.

Q: Why doesn't anyone make a sanitary napkin with child-friendly designs, such as Disney or Muppet babies, and be scaled smaller to fit in a 10-year-olds clothes?.
A: BECAUSE 10-YEAR OLDS SHOULD NOT BE GETTING THEIR PERIOD YET, that's why! They're still loosing their baby teeth, goddammit!

On Sunday, my friend Debi and I went to the Uptown Theater in Minneapolis and saw "End of the Century: The Ramones." I came out feeling profoundly sad. Not just because Joey and Dee Dee died several months ago, and Johnny died earlier this week, but also because the film really detailed how ill with OCD Joey always was, and how hard they struggled just to put out albums that never really sold well, commercially, in the United States. And also because knowing I've outlived more than half the original Ramones, 3 of the original 4, just makes me feel old. Not old in the good sense, old in the melancholy way that old people insist that the days of their youth were a better time, even if in reality they weren't at all. Old, in a "Future Shock" kind of a way.

About 2 weeks ago we finally got around to buying a new stove. Our old one that came with the house was CRACKED on both sides, along the top so badly, that when the gas company pulled it away from the wall last week, the top actually caved in!

We were all proud of ourselves, being able to replace the stove with a new one from Home Depot. The bad part was that since the new one is gas, like our old one, we had to arrange for and pay the gas company to come out and disconnect the gas from our old one, then wait for Home Depot to deliver our new one, then arrange for and pay the gas company to hook our new one up to the gas. It was a process that took days, and we alternately ate horrible microwave food and fast food while waiting for our new stove to be replaced and hooked up correctly.

Then Saturday, Sept 11 was my husband's birthday! Yes, sometimes I think we're the only Americans who celebrate on September 11, our official National Misery Day. But it really is my husband's birthday, and we spent all last week cleaning up our house trying to make it look like 2 little kids, a big shedding dog, and two slobby adults don't live here, all while trying to coordinate the stove replacement. Saturday night was great, everyone brought chili, as my husband requested, and we all sat around and ate junk food and told jokes, it was fun.

I noticed when my husband passed out the ice cream cups, you know, the kind with the little, wooden spoon in them, that the ice cream was kind of melty, but I didn't investigate it until everyone was gone, around midnight. Guess what. The refrigerator is dead!

Sears says they can't come out and see if they can repair it until Friday, 4 days from now.

Tonight we ate Chinese take-out for dinner.

We got our cell phone delivered to us. The first thing we could think of was that we DIDN'T want to give the number out to ANYONE, as if we just got it so we could call out, but no one could call us. We also each wanted the OTHER person to be the one to carry the phone. I think my husband should carry it, because his commute is longer than mine, and he could call me at home from his car if he needed to. But so far I'm always the one carrying it, I just leave it off all the time.

Friday we drove to Green Bay. Saturday evening my husband's whole extended family gathered at his Aunt Margaret's for his grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary. She's 89 and he's 97. She had folding tables and chairs set up in her 2-car garage, and served booja, which is this chicken gumbo soup that people in Wisconsin eat on special occasions. Afterwards, they all played a game on the lawn in which teams throw two washers duct-taped together like a big heavy coin, into a tooden box on the opposite side of the lawn. Kind of like horse-shoes. I just kept my kids with me and we watched and drank more Coke.

When we drove back on Sunday evening we got a flat tire! My husband changed the flat tire, what a guy. But we knew we couldn't drive over 100 more miles on our little tiny spare tire in front! I was excited when I remembered we had a cell phone...then remembered I don't know who to call, and 411 was "out of range." A lot of good that does us. I guess we gotta join AAA auto club now too. We ran a stop sign, and I was so grateful we got pulled over by the police. He gave us a warning, and not a ticket, and showed us where there was a truck stop ahead where we could at least ask about where we could get a new tire on a Sunday night in rural Wisconsin. And they gave us a phone number to a small independent auto shop that was open!!! That guy rotated our small front tire to the back , explaining that since most of the weight is borne by the front tires, that should get us the rest of the way home. He couldn't actually insall a new tire on us, because we'd thrown the old one away at the road side like bad, bad litterers, because our trunk was full of our luggage, and our tiny little sedan car was full of us and our dog. I was go glad to be home. We left Green Bay before 3 pm and got home at 11 pm !

Two days ago it was my 5 year old son's first day of kindergarten! I wept at my desk all day long and called the school twice just to ask them to check on him. They said he was playing nicely with the others both times.
Yesterday I only called them once, he was fine again. My little man is not my baby any more!...and his day care price just plummited dramatically. Yay , I'm rich , I'm rich!

My husband and I took last week off from work. We took advantage of the last week before school started, and spent 4 days at my in-laws' lakeside cabin in Eastern Wisconsin. The kids enjoyed sitting on the edge of the dock and feeding bread crumbs to the fish. About 20 sunfish would come right up to the surface of the water and feed off the crumbs, and we never got tired of it. My mother-in-law and father-in-law stayed there with us, and my father in law took us all for several rides in his motor boat along the whole chain of lakes in that area, it was great. My 10 year old daughter especially enjoyed knowing that the state of Wisconsin does not require that children be licensed to fish, but adults need to pay for a permit. So legally she and her brother could fish, and my husband and I couldn't . When grandpa helped my son actually catch a fish on his hook, however, and he pulled hte fish out of the water and showed it to my son, both my children screamed and ran away! We released it, of course.

Later in the week, we drove back to Wisconsin to go to Crystal Cave , just less than an hour from our home . We had a 1 hour guided tour of a huge underground cave. A friendly bat flew over our heads occasionally just to give us that true 'cave' experience.

My husband and I shelled out big bucks and got tickets for REM and Springstien! I'm not a big Springstien fan, but I've always loved REM and this might be my only chance to ever see them. Plus the money is for Move-On, a progressive political cause we both feel very strongly about.

What else?

We also shelled out and got a cell phone! We had 3 incidents in about a week, where we were running around in public looking for a pay phone, and just couldn't find one any more! So we got a cell phone through Working Assets. We each think the OTHER PERSON should be the one to carry it, however. I've got it today. I've got a mental list of things I will never do with it, such as start chatting with a friend from a restaurant or grocery store; leave it on so it rings during a movie; or forward my home phone calls to it, answer it while I'm out somewhere, then inform the caller how disruptive this call was to me, just now.

Also, I just mailed my only copy of a booted video tape of Soul Coughing playing in Minneapolis in 1997 to the web moderator of a Soul Coughing web site, who says he's giving them to ex SC bassist Sebastian Steinberg to put togeher at DVD. Wouldn't it be great if part of my video was in that DVD! My husband bought me that tape off the internet for my birthday once, so there could really be numerous copies of it floating around out there who knows?

Now tonight we're going to drive back to Green Bay, to celebrate my husband's paternal grandparents' SEVENTIETH wedding anniversary. They're both in their 90's, but they're both still alive. I have been assured that the week-end long festivities will include "booja" which is this kind of chiken gumbo soup that people in Wisconsin make on special occasions, and a special Catholic mass in onor of the event.

Too bad we didn't shell out more money, and get a cell phone with text messaging, I'd play with it all the time. Such as on trips to Wisconsin.