editor’s note: In an earlier draft I spelled intentions wrong roughly 50% of the time in this post including in the title & the image. So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m using the term “editor” very loosely. Also that I’m kind of a dummy.

Sometime in March my nephew Nolan, 13, was over for dinner. When he spied a pile of black and grey granny-square strips he asked if I was ever going to finish his Christmas present.

“I’ll have it done by Easter,” I said. Because I like to believe I work better under a deadline and really the “Christmas” deadline was a stupid pipe dream as was the “by your birthday” (which is January 14th). Un my defense I do make all the gifts for my niblings and so.

Easter came and went with almost no mention of the blanket, until Jaycie via Skype from the UofO started talking about some blanket she made, which involved the tying together of two pieces of microfleece. And not to demean her efforts or anything, but the stupid blanket I am making for Nolan involves like 445 individual granny square, each of which takes nine minutes to make, and then they have to be joined and then the strips of joined grannies have to be joined again and it’s a never-ending ellBlanket^TM. I hope he likes it or at least uses it as a sort of shroud for me when I finish it and then promptly die.

This post isn’t even about HellBlanket^TM. This is a post about how all my best intentions seems to dissipate into the wind and I don’t know if this is because I am inherently lazy or inherently flaky or if it’s some other as-yet-unnamed character flaw.

What I am saying here is that Nolan’s HellBlanket^TM still isn’t done, though it’s really, truly almost done and will be complete by the next Bob’s Burgers Night^*.

What I’m really saying is that the blanket is just a symbol of all my good intentions that go right into the crapper about 12 minutes after I intend them. Like my intention to blog more regularly every month or not to eat so many chicken nuggets or to finally, finally, finally get serious about writing the bowling alley short story collection. I have these intentions every month and I do really well for about a day. Then, the next thing I know, it’s the 29th and I’m waking up from a nugget coma smeared with honey mustard, haven’t blogged in like two weeks, and yet somehow managed to re-watch the entirety of Scrubs, even the super shitty Med School season.

What is wrong with me?

What do I have to do keep starting each paragraph with the word what?

What I intend to do with this blog post is list my best intentions for the month. I saw this concept on Shutterbean, only she does this weekly because she is not a garbage human. I’m going to try it monthly to see if I can ungarbage myself.

So here are my intentions for May:

• Finish the HellBlanket^TM (this one is a little cheatery because I really only need to finish the edging but I’m the type of woman who makes ToDo lists and always includes one thing I’ve already done just so I can start out on a positive note)
• Write four non-book review blog posts & two book reviews
• Hand in the MN Artists’ Initiative Grant by May 18th (it’s due May 19th)
• Query four more agents
• Submit ROCK & ROLL LOUDMOUTH to Milkweed during their open reading submissions

There. That’s a good start right? I can do those things this month. At least I think I can. Goal setting has never been a strength of mine, which is why whenever I accomplish anything it surprises the fuck out of me.

Here’s to good intentions

*The Tibbles & I have instituted bi-weekly Bob’s Burger nights where we cook something from The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book: Real Recipes for Joke Burgers. So far we’ve done “Bet it All on Black Garlic” and “Baby, You Can Chive my Car” . And let me tell you it takes some kind of deep love to allow teenage boys to deep fry pickles in your house, and not just pickles but anything because deep frying is stinky and dirty and my house has just stopped smelling like a fast food joint even though we made the pickles on Saturday.

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Liam & Nolan are spending the night at Supergenius HQ. Earlier we had a waffle party which involved ridiculous amounts of whipped cream (for them) and peanut butter (for me).

After that they chose to watch Wall-E, which means that it is now my turn to control the TV. I decided we would watch some Tiny Desk Concerts, or at least 88 seconds of some Tiny Desk Concerts, because that is just the way I am.

We settled into Adele who starts off with “Someone Like You.”

“Isn’t she so pretty?” I asked my nephews.
“Eh,” Nolan who is now 11 and has long, flowing blond hair and green eyes said. “I like dark haired, dark eyed girls.”
“I get that,” I said. “No offense, but I’m not a huge fan of blondes.”
“That’s okay,” he said.
“I don’t like blondes either,” Liam piped up from the blue couch. “And I say that with all offense meant to you, Nolan.”

Well then.

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Pictured above is my seventeen-year-old niece, Jaycie, and the crocheted Grumpy Cat I made for her. Also, I made the blanket that’s in her lap, but it wasn’t nearly as popular as the cat.

This is the blanket I made for my sixteen-year-old nephew, Maxwell, who doesn’t allow you to post his picture on the Internet because he is a pain in the ass. So you get it modeled underneath my cat, Paco. Max wanted a blanket using the Minnesota Wild’s colors.

This is Cade, my twelve-year-old nephew, who wanted a Viking hat. He totally art directed this one, sending me three different images featuring the horns he wanted, the beard, and the hat style. He totally loved it.

Nolan, my ten-year-old nephew, is the one who came up with the bearded hat idea. He chose the colors from the yarn stash that I have. Of all the colors (and there are a lot), he went Miami Vice. I kind of dig it.

Finally my nine-year-old nephew, Liam, wanted a stuffed guinea pig and a santa hat (not pictured) for his actual guinea pig. He said, without any coaching from me, that this was his best gift. . . better than the Minecraft LEGO kits, the $100 from Grandpa, and the other things he got that I can’t remember.

Totally worth it.

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“I can’t even look at the spiders because they freak me out,” Liam

“Oh man, I almost forgot about my rock friends.”

Nolan is creating a website for he and Cade’s Duct Tape Bookmark business using Crayola Markers and construction paper. The URL from what I can tell is ducttapeisawsim.ducktape.com. It also includes his mom’s telephone number.

As I type Liam and I are having an argument about electricity and what wastes more the radio or the TV. He’s upset because I declared today a no TV day. “You’ve been listening to the radio all of the day and that’s so much electricity you are wasting.”

“You need to get to a higher level of origami,” Nolan said to Cade. “Right now you’re at a lower level, which is like easy origami.”

“LEGO people don’t really speak English so even though they live in Oklahoma, they call it LEGOhoma,” Cade.

“I like Oklahoma because it’s shaped like those fingers people wear at sports games,” Cade said
“Those #1 foam fingers?” I asked.
“Yeah.”

On Friday we went to he local Chinese Buffet. Now I’m not a buffet person. When given a choice, I always order off the menu. But, since the Tibb’s mom hates Chinese food, I agreed to their lunch suggestion. As we were leaving, on our way to Goodwill, they each stopped by the gumball machines and procured gumballs. After we marched into the parking lot to Ruby. As Nolan and Cade were climbing in, Liam dropped his gumball on the ground. He quick slunk down, snatched it from the ground, and popped it into his mouth.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t even have a chance to count to one. No germs got on it.”

Minutes later we were perusing the aisles of Goodwill. They each had $3 from the potty-talk jar to spend. Cade and Nolan were amazed at the ridiculous bounty they could amass for $3 at Goodwill. So was I. Liam, however, wasn’t so sure.

“A lot of this stuff looks used,” he said.
“That’s because it is,” I said.
“That’s it,” he said, a little exasperated. “I’m not getting anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because of all the germs,” he said.
“Didn’t you just pick a gumball off the ground and put it into your mouth?” I asked. “What about those germs.”
“I didn’t even count,” he said. “Those germs don’t count.”

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I can guarantee you that when the Tibbles open these gifts on Christmas day and I point to the inscriptions and tell them how I know those authors that I will cry. Hell, I’m crying already just typing about it. Giving books, which I love more than anything, by people I adore to the kids I love makes me a little weepy.

My only regret is that Jaycie and Max are still a little too young for Steve’s The Absolute Value of -1 and Brooklyn, Burning. Maybe next year.

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