At one point this weekend, I felt the pangs of withdrawal symptoms. Being away from my computer, any computer, for very long makes me crazy.

However, I had a wonderful time with my dad’s family all here Friday night, and with my sisters and our mother in Indy the rest of the weekend, and as I type this I’m exhausted and my kids are here and they both have migraines and I wasn’t home five minutes before I found myself standing at the stove making grilled cheese and my daughter had a flat tire and as I type she’s at WalMart (bleh) getting it fixed after waiting THREE HOURS for the automotive people to get around to her and she’s still got a migraine and we’re all more than a little sad that Big O Tires is closed on Sundays because that’s where we buy all our tires and they fix them for free. If they’re open.

But it’s Sunday night and they’re not open and WalMart is, and that’s probably how WalMart gets a lot of its business. Pay attention, Big O Tires and everyone else.

Big O Tires is the best place in the world to get tires. We have always been treated well there, and Big O has one of the best replacement/repair policies EVER. But, they’re not open on Sunday night and WalMart is. Sigh. I don’t want my daughter to drive back home on that little doughnut thing.

Tomorrow, I’m going to tell you all about this year’s BOB awards. On second thought, I might just make another post about them tonight before I get back to all those essays and quizzes I left ungraded, choosing to party and hang out with my sistahs instead. Oh, imagine.

Zappa is beside me at Hub’s computer, being tutored (don’t tell the cat; it reminds him of an unpleasant experience at the Vet’s. . .) in physics for his final this week. Poor Belle is still at WalMart. Both of my babies are shaky with migraines. Hub’s got papers to grade but he’s helping Zappa instead. I’m taking a little break and a break, of course, means I get to do this.

Mom raised her kids with better manners than to diss a business in public, but if I didn’t have so much class I would have to say, “WalMart, where do you get off making my daughter hang around for over three hours after you told her on the phone that sure, you could get her right in?” Oh, Big O Tires, if only you had Sunday hours, that you might help a damsel is distress with the warranty that is still good on all four of her tires, if you were open. But you aren’t, and that’s why she resorted to elbowing her way through the crazed hordes of WalMart shoppers, wending her way to the automotive department, only to be met with a reneged promise and an invitation to ‘take a seat,’ which is always a scary suggestion.

Did I mention that she’s been there for over three hours?

Back to work. But I’ll be baaaack. The BOBS are a-calling me, and I do love me those BOB’s.

The new Carnival of Education is up, and everyone needs to click on over there to catch up on the news. Remember, our children deserve only the best, and if we don’t keep up, how will we know what the best is?

It occurred to me suddenly that since I’m baking a turkey for the Biggest Family Reunion in the History of the Universe tomorrow night, maybe I ought to make some stuffing dressing to go with it.

It’s not ‘stuffing’ unless it’s stuffed inside the turkey. I don’t do that. I cut up several onions to put inside the bird and I bake dressing in a separate pan.

When I bake dressing.

The problem tonight was that I hadn’t planned to make dressing because I forgot about the dressing so I had to scrounge for the ingredients for dressing.

We had a lot of bread, and in this house, it’s usually stale. Check.

We had a lot of onions, because Hub loves onions and I hate onions so I buy a lot at a time for him and they last a while because I won’t eat them. I found a can of chicken broth so I used it. Nobody will know it’s not turkey, right?

There won’t be any celery in the dressing for two reasons: 1. I don’t have any, and 2. I hate it. It’s too much like snot held together with string.

There was sage in the pantry because I think I might have made dressing four or five years ago at Thanksgiving, but ever since that memorable day, my mom has made it at her house and brought it over. Hmm, omen? I hope sage doesn’t age. That would not be good.

Poem. Heh. Oh, even when I’m harried and everything in the house is falling apart or breaking and every knob I pull on in the kitchen falls off in my hand and of course the drawer that fell out is the junk drawer and I balanced it on a chair and the weight knocked the chair over and the junk was ALL OVER THE FLOOR and I’m still stepping on little tiny screws and twist-ties and when I was gathering all the stuff up I realized the hard way that there was a razor blade in there, who knew, and when the drawer hit the floor it broke apart and the hole in the cabinet where the drawer is supposed to be reveals all my mismatched and hideous fake Tupperware that I store underneath; ten thousand lids and forty thousand containers and nary a match among them. . . I can still write classical poetry.

Sage. Age. Would. Good. Drawer. Floor.

It’s in the oven now and it does smell good. Cross your fingers.

I’ll get up early and put the turkey in the oven. I enjoy baking a turkey, and when you’re feeding a big crowd, a turkey is the cheap and easy way to go an elegant and impressive thing to display. Very Rockwell-ian.

Next week is finals week and after that I’m going to sleep for a thousand years. Prince Charming, be ready.