Snotty Babies, Unicorns and the World's Largest Cooler

The banalities of everyday life have returned. My parents went back home on Sunday. That night was the first with just the four of us here, and it felt amazingly normal, like that was the way life had always been. Kelli's mom is here now, helping out while Kelli recovers. My new role in the house seems to be periods as a chauffeur, interrupted by sitting around on the sofa trying to stay awake. This is must be exactly what Michelangelo's days were like. God, I need some work!

Halloween was low key for us this year. Savannah seemed to have a little bit of a cold yesterday, so we kept her home from school. The trick then was to keep her away from her brother, which was virtually impossible since she is obsessed with him. In the vein of not risking Cooper getting sick, we just put out a bucket of treat bags for the Trick-or-Treaters. I'm always amazed that people will keep their kids out of school for a little runny nose and then send them out in the cold to go door-to-door begging for candy. Seriously, are they that hard up for some unchewable Tootsie Rolls and a wad of stuck-together candy corn from Halloween '93? By the way, Savannah went trick-or-treating as a unicorn.

By last night, Cooper had come down with Savannah's cold/sinus infection/snot-nose syndrome. He had trouble breathing all night, which meant he had trouble sleeping, which of course meant we had trouble sleeping. Today, he managed to catch some winks. We, however, have been walking around like zombies -- the slow-moving, old school, George Romero ones, not those manic "28 Days Later" goons. We've had to suction out his sinuses pretty regularly, which ticks him off.

Finally, our fridge died again. We transferred what we could to the basement fridge and then filled all the drawers in the broken one with ice, turning it into a 25 cubic foot cooler. I'm pretty sick of the whole refrigerator saga. Therefore, I'm swearing off fresh food forever. From this day forward, I will only eat canned food or junk food full of enough preservatives to mummify me alive. I'll also consider spoiled foods. What are cheese and yogurt, after all?