your long-overdue update

This poor old blog has fallen into deep neglect, and the reason is chiefly that my darlings Iris uber Alles and Lola have turned into highly private teenagers. It's difficult to write a dark, witty mommy blog when your dark, witty children don't want to be discussed in public. I've opted to let the blog suffer, rather than dealing a mortal blow to the tricky parent-child relationship.

But! The blog has come up recently a few times, and evidently it's not forgotten by others. I'm in physical therapy for a pesky knee injury, and during a session, my physical therapist asked me, "Do you blog?" Somehow she had found this blog and recognized its voice as that of her foulmouthed, chubby client. And one of my friends sent me a note the other day on Facebook, laughing because one of her friends, who doesn't even know me, had posted on Facebook about my blog. And one of Lola's friends asked several times, but then gave up, if I were still writing.

If I could create a new spin for this blog, I could move it into a new era. I was thinking of making it about my reading, but the world is so overpopulated with book blogs. I could make it more about myself, but I was never the most dynamic character around here.

In any event, for the loyal followers, herewith an update.

The increasingly dynamic Iris uber Alles has decided to leave high school two years early and is moving to the East Coast to attend college. Her parents are coping with this and extremely proud. She will be pursuing a degree in environmental studies, an excellent choice.

The ever-complicated Lola developed an obsession with the delightful game, Undertale, which has been described as "raising difficult, Kantian questions about our obligations and personal morality.. .But on an artistic level, Undertale places itself next to works like As I Lay Dying and Die Ehe der Maria Braun in terms of its ability to make us contemplate the dilemma-ridden moral choices that we have to make as human beings." http://www.popmatters.com/feature/undertale-and-immanuel-kant-ethics-in-video-games/

The Sober Husband is ever industrious, enjoying his current job at the height of Silicon Valley, where he endures such hardships as the one he shared last night at dinner: "The chocolate knob is broken on the FroYo machine by my desk." We jeered. I pointed out that he could walk to one in a different area, but he noted that he could muddle through by using the "mix" knob for a combination of vanilla and chocolate and then attempting to eat only the chocolate part.  Cry for him, please. Also, he's developed some kind of hero worship of Henry Kissinger, and sharp words were exchanged over a recent article in Foreign Affairs which he felt offered a moral framework wherein Henry K. was just a delightful, wonderful fellow who always did the best possible thing but which I found evidence for my assertion that no, Henry Kissinger remains a war criminal who dodged prosecution.

And as for me, contemplating an empty nest, I'm taking baby steps towards a new career working hands on with animals. I'm taking a night class in biology at a nearby college, and I'm still doing a wildlife rehab volunteer gig. More strangely, I've become a doting dog owner. My darling Kreecher, an aging Chinese Crested, foiled an attempted break-in at our home and is a constant comfort to her owner. My former obsession with working out has been foiled by a horrible knee injury I incurred at the gym (ironically my gym habits led to me becoming out of shape!). I limp now and have spent a fortune on physical therapy. But we managed to get me to Amsterdam, where I limped around the 500 year celebration of Hieronymous Bosch. So don't cry for me. Save your tears for the Silicon Valley engineers who must endure the loss of their chocolate soft serve.