Mr. Lane is singing: Summer Time Blues

Poor Mr. Lane. I pulled a dirty rotten son of a bitch on him, and there wasn't a thing he could do about my antics. Sucks to be you, pretty boy. I didn't plan it out. Sometimes, life happens and I don't get the short end of the stick. Those are the moments I cherish most of all.

Lane 2 has a friend over. She is staying with us for two weeks. It took three days before Mr. Lane noticed the extra kid in the house. He rarely knows what is going on around here. Anyhow, she used to live in our old town, but since has also moved to Indiana, which is why I agreed on a two week stay. It was nice getting the kids together again.

Because we moved to a town just a handful of miles away from where we were living, my lovely daughter convinced me that we should round up a few more friends from the old hood.

I needed to grocery shop anyway, so I loaded the kids up and we headed out. I came home with a couple more extra kids. When I pulled into our driveway, I realized it was after 6. I'm on the board of directors at our local teen center and my meeting began at 6.

Even though he just got home from work right before we arrived, I yelled from the car, "Sorry honey, I have a meeting to get to! The kids will help you put the groceries away. Oh yeah, I was going to make spaghetti for dinner tonight. Love you guys!" And off I drove.

Mr. Lane was unintentionally duped with all of the extra kids, plus having to put all the crap I bought away, and having to make dinner. It felt better than sex! I loved every second of dropping and running. I really should do that more often. I wish you guys could have seen the look on his face!

When I got home two hours later, amazingly enough, he handled things pretty well. Groceries were put away, dinner was already made and eaten. The mess was waiting for me to take care of it, but that was okay. I grabbed the sauce pan first and then I saw it... smoked sausage.

I bought Italian sausage and he used the smoked sausage instead. It had to be an accident right? Just about that time, Lane 2 walked in the kitchen, so I asked her how dinner was. She said it wasn't too bad, considering.

"Considering what?"

"Considering Dad didn't know how to tell when the noodles were done, but I showed him. And then, I tried to tell him he wasn't using the right sausage but he wouldn't listen, and told me to go and entertain my friends."

"Thanks for trying to help Daddy. So how was the redneck variety of Italian food?"

"Seriously, redneck! Most of us just picked around the sausage, so it wasn't too bad."

Overhearing us, Mr. Lane walked in and said, "Sausage is sausage."

"No it's not!" Lane 2 and I said simultaneously.

"You may as well have put Vienna sausages from a can in that sauce, Dad."

"Oh come on. It wasn't that bad!"

"Yeah, Dad, and it wasn't that good either."

Viva la teenager daughter!

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I'm pretty excited about my new NBC blog. Many of you received an email from me last week, so some of this post will be a rerun for you. For those of you who didn't get an email, I likely landed in your spam folder, because it was a pretty meaty email. Or I didn't have your email address already saved in my address book.

Know right here and now, this blog isn't going anywhere. We have been together for nearly four years. I will continue to update once a week, give or take. But the new blog is like a new baby. It requires a lot of time, care, love, effort, hands-on molding and an occasional breast in its mouth.

I'm updating three or four times each week, so please stop by often. Link it on your site if you like what you see. If you would like to comment, which I of course would love, you have to register with NBC. I hear it's a real pain in the ass but I promise I'll be worth it. One thing I do know about signing up is that you can skip all of the profile information if you want, which I think is what takes the most amount of time during sign up.

I hope by starting up a home there, I can get more exposure, which ultimately can get me that dream writing job. I'm sick of dreaming. And I'm sick of low paying crap ass freelance work. Help me make it happen. It would be great to see all of you and your friends there.