I have actual real things to blog about. Real topics. I KNOW SHOCKING. Like, I have them all saved with notes and such. But my brain’s all scattery and I have a million other things bopping around in it so I can’t actually force myself to sit down and concentrate on them.

It’s a day off today for me, which is so nice, I can’t even tell you. Yesterday? I TOOK A NAP. I haven’t taken a nap, other than when I’ve been sick, in probably years. Because when I take a nap, it throws off my sleep schedule. But I didn’t have to get to bed overly early last night, and I was sleepy in the afternoon (even though I totally slept well the night before) and I thought, you know what? I’m going to take a decadent little siesta. And I DID. And it was GLORIOUS. And I still slept last night, too. And had trouble waking up when the alarm went off this morning. So apparently, this long weekend was for sleeping. All the sleeping. Every last bit of it. And it’s been GRAND. I only wish I could bank all that sleep for the days I’m not getting enough.

Aw, look, a little sleep bank. I like that.

I also finally took down the Christmas decorations (yes, I’m aware Christmas was almost a month ago, I hadn’t gotten around to it yet) and cleaned up the house a little and wrote and watched television and paid bills and petted Dumbcat and baked cookies and talked to my parents and did all good things. It was a very productive day.

And TODAY, I woke up to an email with the best news EVER EVER, which I can’t go into detail about yet, but will as soon as I can (it’s good, it’s SO SO GOOD) and also in fifteen minutes I’m taking off to spend a few hours with The Nephew in his new house. I can’t wait to see him. The cookies referred to above were for him, by the way. I can’t bring him gifts EVERY time I see him, that’d be absurd, right? So in lieu of gifts, I’m bringing him and his mom some homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Not JUST cookies, but my SPECIAL chocolate-chip cookies, which are the best recipe I’ve ever tried and they’re utterly delicious. I think he’ll approve. (I mean, the kid loves his desserts. His face gets all excited when there are desserts involved. Apparently, the last time he was at my parents’ house, he opened the fridge and stuck his finger in a cherry pie “just to see what it tasted like.” Hee!)

So my house smells like baking right now. I’m pretty sure if a man were to come over here, I could woo ’em with the scent alone. Just saying.

And I have another busy week coming up – dinner with friends Wednesday, theater stuff Friday, work Tuesday-Saturday. Plus I really need to start reading those one-acts for the play festival we have in July. It is my job, after all. Sigh. Those aren’t going to be a fun read. They never are.

Also, for no apparent reason, my apartment is like a fridge right now, even though the heater keeps going off. So that’s perplexing. WARM UP, APARTMENT. I AM CHILLY. Like, I’m seriously thinking of purchasing a Snuggie.

ZOMG, look at all the uses. SO MANY USES!

Now, time has passed since I started this. I know, it’s like the magic of blogging, right? I am home from my adventure with The Nephew. And it was TOTALLY an adventure. Listen, even if things aren’t an adventure, I make them so. That’s the way I am.

So first, I’d never been to either The Nephew’s new house, or the town he currently resides in. So it was GPS time. I popped in the address. All was well! All was good! I got in the car! Yay, yay! I put on loud, cheerful music! Ba-BAM! Ready to go! The town is about half an hour away, so here we go!

About five minutes into the drive I realized something was terribly wrong. TomTom was giving me the silent treatment.

This is the face TomTom would have been making. Had TomTom a face. Which it doesn’t. Because it is a machine, sheesh.

I didn’t have it on mute. I had the volume turned all the way up. Everything else was working perfectly. TomTom was just not telling me where to turn. So I could SEE where to turn, but the whole point of TomTom is that you don’t have to take your eyes off the road much. You can mostly listen to it, and every once and a while when it gets confusing, you peek over briefly. Well, I had to peek over ALL THE TIME once I got off the highway, because the rest of the trip was all small roads and traffic circles and such, and TomTom was all “we’re playing the game of who can stay silent the longest” and THAT was disconcerting.

So I finally got there – while beseeching TomTom to please talk to me, what’d I do, baby, please talk to me, don’t do this, you’re only hurting YOURSELF, TomTom, I can’t lose you, DON’T DO THIS TO US, TOMTOM, think of the good times, don’t give up on us, baby! – and there was the house! And I knocked and no one came to the door and I was all, “Oh, well, this is bad, maybe it’s all a dream” but then K. came to the door because The Nephew had been in the bathroom.

AND THEN THERE WAS THE NEPHEW!

He ran into the hallway all happy-faced and big-eyed and said “Aunt Amy Aunt Amy HELLO!” and LAUNCHED himself up into my arms for a big hug and I picked him up and gave him that big hug and he said “I want to show you my room!” and I said, “I want to SEE your room!” and he said, “OK! Let’s go!”

So he gave me a kiddo-tour of his new place. “This is my KITCHEN! This is my LIVING ROOM! This is the BATHROOM! Where you PEE! This is MOMMY’S room! THIS IS MY ROOM! That is the basement, sometimes you have to go down those steps.” He gave that door a very mistrustful look. Can’t say as I blame him. Basements are a frightening affair.

I don’t trust you, basement.

“Do you want to play with me?” he said. When your beloved nephew asks you such a thing, the answer is always yes. No other answer will do.

So we played with Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and some Toy Story 3 dolls (Lotso Bear was the badguy, and Buzz Lightyear and one of those little “the CLAW!” aliens were the good guys) and a wrestling playset that had a spinny circle in the middle that launched the wrestlers into the bouncy elastic side of the ring, and that made him laugh and laugh (there was a monster on the side of the ring, and he was very careful to tell me, “this isn’t a real monster, though. It’s just a TOY monster.” I get the feeling someone had to tell him that once or twice.) We also played with some Matchbox cars. Mostly this involved him driving them off the dresser and me catching them as they crashed. “Do they like crashing like that?” I said. “YES! They LOVE it!” he enthused. OK, then, well, it must be true. He also showed me his books (“You could read ALL of these to me!” he said) and his bed (“I sleep there!”) and his Wii (“You can’t bang on this, or it breaks, right, Mommy?”) and he kept running from room to room like a little Tasmanian Devil so I got dizzy. I think parenting might be exhausting. Why didn’t you people warn me parenting is exhausting? Kids don’t sit still very often, is what I learn whenever I see The Nephew. They are always go-go-going.

Lotso is TOTALLY a bad guy. The Nephew and I are in agreement on this one. “He put them in the FIRE!” The Nephew said, in a scowly way.

He also wanted me to participate in “Family Fun Night” which apparently entailed watching movies on Mommy’s bed. “But it’s day! Can we have Family Fun Night during the day?” I asked. “Yes we can!” he said. “Well, it’s like Family Fun Night has no rules!” I told him. He thought about this very seriously. “No, there are rules,” he said. “No hitting, no biting, no lying, and…um…no hitting.” “Those are very good rules, The Nephew,” I said. “I try to live by those rules every day, myself.”

(I didn’t tell him I’m not always successful. He’ll learn that soon enough, why burst his bubble now?)

Then he had one of the cookies I made. “These are EXCELLENT,” he told me. Hee! Excellent. Nice. Also he had some lunch, but mostly he didn’t want that lunch. He doesn’t like eating very much. So instead of eating, he dripped soup all over and put his sandwich in the soup and dripped THAT all over and nibbled his sandwich and apple like a baby bird.

Then he did a thing which made me realize for the billionth time I would be a terrible mother.

He, for no real reason, tore off a piece of sandwich and dropped it in his chocolate milk. Then he tried to retrieve it, but he couldn’t because it was too deep in the cup.

“Well, I can’t drink my milk now!” he announced.

“You shouldn’t have put sandwich in there. Do you want some water?” his mother said.

This was not the answer he wanted. I think he wanted her to replace it with a whole new cup of milk. He got the dangerous pouty lower lip.

“No. Maybe I could get it out with my fingers?” he said, tearfully and doubtfully.

“No, you already tried that. You know that doesn’t work. You could drink the milk with the sandwich in there. It’s ok,” his mom said.

This brought on a full-on toddler tearstorm. “NO I CANNOT!” he wailed.

“Well, The Son, why did you put your sandwich in your cup in the first place?” she asked. K. is a very good mom. She is the most patient. I was standing there trying not to giggle. Because he was SO SAD about that piece of sandwich in his milk. Good gracious.

SO SAD!!! *not The Nephew; dramatic re-enactment only

“I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FU-HU-HU-NEEEE!” he sobbed.

That’s when I totally lost it and had to turn away so he didn’t see his beloved aunt cracking up. He put a piece of sandwich in his milk because it had comedy potential; the joke backfired, and now he was left with chocolate milk that tasted of grilled cheese sandwich. ZOMG LIFE WAS SO HARD. Also, this seems an apt analogy for a lot of things I do in my life. I’ve had a lot of things backfire that I did because I thought they would be fu-hu-hu-neee.

K., with a totally straight face (I think if you’re a mom you have to probably practice keeping a poker face in the mirror, or something) said “What if I fished that out with a spoon?”

His tears IMMEDIATELY stopped. “I want to do it.”

“If you eat two bites of your sandwich, I’ll let you do it,” she said. TRICKY! And SMART!

He promptly ate two sandwich-bites and then fished the offensive sandwich-piece out of his cup and drained the rest of his chocolate milk. SUCCESS AND VICTORY FOR THE LITTLE GUY!

He also started punching his mom really hard in the leg. “I thought there was no hitting?” I said. “This is not HITTING,” he said. “This is MARKING. It’s like TAPPING but HARDER.” Then he did it a few more times. It sincerely looked like hitting to me. “Marking marking MARKING!” he said gleefully. “I think it’s time for a new rule,” his mom said, with painful-face. “No hitting, biting, lying, or marking.” The Nephew made a VERY sad face at this news. “It is just HARD TAPPING!” he wailed. Aw, kiddo. I think you might be a lawyer someday. You really have a very good answer for everything.

Then it was naptime and time for Aunt Amy to morph back into her alter-ego, “just plain old Amy” and go home.

I got one more launched-from-across-the-room hug and sandwichy kiss and I told him I loved him and I would see him soon. “OK!” he said gleefully. Aw, buddy. In the grand scheme of things and people, I love you more than anyone. Shh, don’t tell everyone else, they’ll get a complex. I also gave K. a hug, don’t even think I didn’t.

Then I got back in the car and guess what? TomTom apparently got over his snit and was talking to me again. What the hell? THAT was weird. When did my TomTom become like a passive-aggressive teen boyfriend?

And now I am back in my strangely freezing apartment and Dumbcat is keeping my legs warm because it’s like a fridge in here still. VERY MYSTERIOUS.

There was my Monday in a nutshell. A very large and long and probably rambly nutshell. Thanks for the day off, new job, you’re the best.

Hope you all had lovely long weekends! Real posts with real content soon. I hope. I think. We’ll see. I have topics and everything. I promise! Really! Would I lie to you? I can NOT lie to you. That would be breaking the rules of Family Fun Night, you see. That’s a total no-no.