Day 290/365

Today has been one of those lazy, wasted days. We started out by sleeping in and when we do that, the day just kind of goes to pot from there. Did that distract you all as it did me? Goes to pot? I don't know if it's just because I was raised in the 70s when adults got away with touting illegal drug use as a good thing because it "enlightened" you so we heard it used all the time, but when the word pot is used in an idiom (Kristi, that means an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements), my first inclination is to think there is a drug reference in there. And really, it kind of works. A lazy, wasted day. Pot smoking. They kind of seem like soul mates.

If you don't already know, the phrase does not, in fact, have anything to do with toking. Thanks to my friend Google, I did not have to waste more than a few minutes of my gone-to-pot day, as they did in the 70s, with an encyclopedia and the card catalog at the library searching for the origins.

Around 1542, when the phrase first appeared, "to go to pot" was to be cut up like chunks of meat destined for the stew pot. Such a stew was usually the last stop for the remnants of a once substantial cut of meat or poultry, so "going to pot" made perfect sense as a metaphor for anything, from a national economy to a marriage, that had seen better days. Early uses of the metaphor were usually in the form "go to the pot."

After spending time reading all that, do you feel like your day just went to pot?

The boys and I have an evening planned that involves Benjamin Button, hot cocoa (no yucky instant stuff) with marshmallows, and popcorn (the yucky microwave stuff.)

In between getting up and our date with Orville, Hershey, and Brad, the boys' day has gone to video games. Video games are usually limited to an hour or two once or twice a week. The rest of the time, they read quality classical literature, cultivate new varieties of tomatoes, you know, little time fillers like that. Not really. Actually, Caelan is always gone to school (or some function to do with school) or doing homework.

Will, on the other hand, is constantly whining, "I'm bored! There's nothing to do." Sometimes he lowers his chin and sticks his lip out when he says it and I irritate him by saying, "Turn that frown upside down!" He can't resist laughing at me when I'm being a dork so I completely sabotage his ploy to get more Sponge Bob or Wii time.

I suppose he has decided to temporarily wave the white flag in my direction because last week he went to Shawn and asked him to make a list of all the things he liked to do when he was a kid. We thought it was cute he wasn't satisfied with a verbal list. He wanted it in writing.

And it was even cuter a few days later when I went in his room and found this on his desk. He's on a mission to complete the tasks on his dad's list. No days gone to pot in the near future for this boy. He has a lot on his plate and this ain't no stew meat. This stuff is the prime rib of a young boy's life.