But he wasn't in a shitty band

So, in the great baby-having poll we have three votes for a solid three year gap between siblings from people with one kid or less, and a vote for closer spacing from one person with multiple children. Interesting. I will take some time to evaluate the data before I go doing anything crazy. But I must say I am leaning toward the three year plan. Mostly because I'm selfish and hedonistic. I like the idea of having one more free summer, during which my parents will happily take Marlo for overnights and I can run around pretending I am young and carefree again. Of course that means that I will be stuck in Newborn Land two summers from now, but that is two summers from now Tori's problem. Besides, if the world ends a year from now, I'd be pretty pissed about spending the last months of my life knocked up.

I've got the TV on for background noise, and Jane Fonda just pulled some sort of flash mob on Anderson Cooper. Anderson just kind of stood there going, "wow. okay." I thought it was sort of off-putting for a moment, until I realized that is probably exactly the reaction I would have if Jane Fonda tried to impress me with a flash mob three years after flash mobs were interesting. Poor Jane Fonda and her pitiful attempt at relevance. I do hope to rock leggings and over-the-knee boots when I'm 74, however.

Speaking of awkwardness, I was getting my hair did today, when all of a sudden my high school boyfriend was sitting in the chair next to me. I have not seen him in, oh, fifteen years? It was horrible. I don't know why it had to be so bad. He was my Jordan Catalano. He even kind of had the hair.

We also had deep fried bacon

You know, I'm no trendspotter, but I think that salted caramel has jumped the shark. That doesn't mean that I don't love it, oh no it does not. But I'm realizing that it is everywhere, and in increasingly shitty iterations. It's definitely a dessert buzz word that those crafty restaurant folk realize will get people to fork over an extra fifteen bucks at the end of a meal. Maybe they'll do it for the same reason that my husband and I did recently, in an attempt to salvage an underwhelming and overpriced meal. John Howie, I'm looking at you. Or maybe it's just because salted caramel is guaranteed to be at least as delicious as an Oreo, and could potentially be, like, fifteen thousand times better. And if you disagree with me on that point, well, I'm not sure you and I were ever that good of friends.

So even though I'm kind of sick of hearing myself talk about it, I made salted caramel chocolate pretzel bark last weekend. It was good. Damn good. But it was sort of like how I imagine heroin is - I felt awesome eating it until I felt sick, and then I felt sick until I ate it again. It is definitely meant for small doses. And I think it counts as a small dose to crush it and blend it into some vanilla ice cream.

The next salted caramel dessert I want to try to make? Salted caramel apple pie. Or maybe salted caramel pumpkin cheesecake, which I saw demonstrated on local tv last weekend. Or maybe I'll just read all the blogs from 2009 talking about such recipes and call it a day.

Someday I will be a grown up, but not today

Well, you'll be glad to know that I have completed the first three days of the Shred, and I'm only about three years behind every other mom with a blog in writing about it. I must say that my Google search for before and after pictures left me a little disappointed, but I wrote that off as other peoples' failures and not the ineffectiveness of the program. Naturally.

The whole workout thing is part of the general sort of "back to school" attempt at re-perfectionist-ing I end up cooking up about this time every year. I am very good at setting myself up for failure by attempting to implement several major lifestyle changes all at once. My plans for this September include getting Marlo on one nap, getting myself out of bed and dressed first thing in the morning like a grown up, having a family dinner on the table by 6:30 ever night, and the aforementioned daily workout. Yesterday, Marlo took two naps and wandered around in her pajama top and diaper all day. I got dressed myself somewhere around the four o'clock hour. We have a long way to go.