After A Come To Jesus Meeting...

my children independently brought me these:




"From someone who loves you most"

Tonight showed both my best and worst attributes as a parent. The details are not worth the typing skills involved, but we got through it, hugged it out, and they're still breathing with all appendages attached. Success.

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Urban Dictionary Definition of "Come to Jesus Meeting":

A meeting where someone close to you (e.g. friend, family, etc.) are confronted over behavior that's causing consternation that's negatively effecting your relationship.

A Milestone Reached

I think I'm about 18 years too late and 4 wine coolers too short, but I reached a milestone this morning. I managed to stay awake all night for the first time in my life.

I went out to dinner last night and watched the sunset from the patio of my favorite fish taco restaurant, and at home this morning I watched the sunrise as I got the girls ready for school. Not a wink was slept all night. How 'bout that? To quote Rachel from 'Friends': "Wow, that's quite a waste of time." This WAS pretty, though -



Caffeine + afternoon nap + late night Rock Band session + really good chick lit book = All-Nighter

Best parts:

* Kids are in school today, so I can sleep until 2:40pm
* No hangover
* No Organic Chemistry final to cram for
* Still feeling delirously high from sleep deprivation

Worst parts:

* Besides feeling like a moron for not being able to get to bed like a responsible 38-year-old, I'm guessing the worst parts are yet to come

Have a great weekend, y'all!

Wordless Wednesday: Obi-Wan's Real Killer

If You Put A Ham In Front Of A Camera...

she'll give you quite a show.










aaaaand now we're done.

Wii Fit Thinks I'm 48. Should I Be Concerned?

I haven't used the Wii Fit in 88 days. I think the machine is broken and also trying to make me feel bad. It tells me that I've gained 6 pounds in those 88 days. Lies. Complete lies, to be sure.

Most damning, however is the age estimation. FORTY-EIGHT? Inconceivable! I'm a fresh, young 38 year old. How can this be?

Well, when calculating your Wii Fit age, it uses two balance tests, and one of them is walking. But you have to walk in place on the Wii Fit board. Have you ever tried to walk naturally but in place? It's not easy! No, I mean it. Stop laughing! I actually walked OFF the board accidentally. It tells me that walking is not my strength. NOT MY STRENGTH. I'm not so good with the walking. I should go with my strengths I guess, instead of WALKING.

Actually, that works just fine, because for 88 days, my strength has apparently been creating a divot in my big green chair. Take THAT, Wii Fit!

Kitchen Duty Sucks

I hate cooking. There, I said it. I don't enjoy it, I'm not particularly skilled at it, and I dread each night when I have to come up with a healthy, thoughtful dinner for 4.

Last night I promised Boodle I'd make lasagna for dinner. I was excited. She was excited. Loodle, not so much as she doesn't like pasta sauce AT ALL, but oh well. Suck it up kid. However, being the complete idiot I am in the kitchen, I failed to note how LONG it would take to cook lasagna. Somehow I anticipated it would be ready in a jiffy, when in reality, it took me like a half hour to prep everything, and then was supposed to cook it for at least 50 minutes.

That would have come out of the oven 10 minutes after the kids' bedtime. Awesome. I debated for a few seconds, and then informed Boodle that a heavy Italian dinner right at bedtime was a bad call, and she could take the lasagna for lunch tomorrow or we'd eat it for dinner Friday night.

Oh my goodness. The tears. The drama. The phone call to The Man, who was conveniently staying late at work last night, who confirmed that I was indeed making the right decision. Boodle went on and on and on and ON about how sucky this was (read: how suck I was), and I tried to be understanding for a while and apologized and apologized and apologized, and then I lost it.

I yelled. I lectured. I shook my finger. I gesticulated angrily. I used the word crap. I yelled so much and for so long I became winded. Boodle went to her room for a bit and I calmed down and of course felt like a giant pile of sh*t. She came out and apologized, I apologized AGAIN, we hugged it out and I made her a turkey pot pie.

Then I found a dead scorpion in the kitchen sink.



The End.

PS - who's coming to dinner next week???

Owwwww, My Tooooooooeeeeee

I dropped a spoon on my baby toe last night. A spoon. Big deal, right? Not a giant serving spoon, not a spoon rest. Just a spoon with which to eat gobs and gobs of ice cream delicious soup or warm oatmeal.

Freaking fracking frook, it hurt like a mother-something I can't type here. I was just finishing cooking dinner, and after it hit my toe, I mouthed that cannot-be-typed-here word several times at The Man, and then had to go collapse on my beloved big green chair. I couldn't stand, and was incapable of rational thought. It HUUUUUURT. The Man actually had to go finish plating the dinner for me. How sad is that?

Poor Boodle attempted to console me, and was harshly rebuked. Mostly because she was supposed to be cleaning up her crap, and had simply been looking for a way out of it, but still. I felt bad. I HAVE explained to her in the past that when I am in massive pain, I cannot talk or accept condolences right away. Give me space to scream profanities in my head.

Wanna see the damage I did to my poor toe? It's not gross:

It's TERRIBLE, right? I feel your warmth and sympathy for me, I really do.

Look, I know it doesn't look like much, but dude. Blood. Blister. From dropping a spoon. And you can't really tell that it's kinda swollen, too. Sigh. There goes my planned trip shopping at the outlet mall to the gym.

Wordless Wednesday: Look, Safety Patrol Is Cool, And You Know It

Snippets

Glimpses into my very odd brain:

* I went to get a glass of milk this morning, thinking in my head exactly how much milk I wanted. However, in the cabinet, there was either a very small cup, or a rather large cup. I stood there in despair, because I cannot get a large cup and only fill it with a medium amount of liquid. I'm uncomfortable with that idea. I actually rinsed out a medium sized cup.

* I think I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. I cannot leave the temperature controls in my van set to an odd number. CAN. NOT. I've tried. I even say out loud that I'm going to leave it at 67 or 71. And I do. For about 30 seconds and then I HAVE to change it that one degree or... well, I don't know what'll happen, but apparently, my brain does, and it will probably involve sharks and ninjas.

* To say that I like order and efficiency is an understatement. You'd never know it by looking around my house on a daily basis, but it's there in my head. I was at Bunco the other night, and we keep score on a 4x6 grid, putting a "1" in the corresponding rows for wins, losses, and buncos, and your total points for each game in the bottom row. I moved to a new table, and noticed that one gal had put her total number of points in either the won or lost row, instead of in the bottom row. How genius! You can tell if she won or lost by which row her points were in, and she didn't have to use the 1! I even, to my later embarrassment, commented out loud as to the coolness of this recordkeeping trick. Yes I did. I then had to explain that I used to do accounting, and I'm a giant dork. I'm pretty sure the latter was self-explanatory.

* After we returned from our summer trip in August, the house needed to be put to rights. The Man had done an awesome job not turning it into a den of filth, but still-he's not on a first name basis with the Swiffer. I was doing my pre-Swiffer sweeping, and I noticed a spider web at the base of one of the cupboards. I leaned to get a closer look because there was all this... stuff under the web. The stuff was a bunch of dead spiders. Dead spiders. CANNIBALISM in my kitchen. As if that's not bad enough, then I start wondering how you can be a spider and get killed in a spider web? How lame do you have to be to not be able to get out of your signature trap? THEN (yes I'm still thinking about spiders at this point and not sweeping), I start thinking about spider BABIES, because I also saw spider egg sacs in there (shudder), and wondered when the babies hatch, how do they keep from getting entangled in the web right away? They don't KNOW yet how to tread lightly or however they traverse a web, so how do they deal with that at 3 seconds old?

THESE are the thoughts that my brain has, instead of coming up with ways to cure diseases and bring about world peace.

I Think This Guy's Working With Little Tiffany

I was leaving our neighborhood in the middle of the day and looked over to see a man, probably in his mid-forties, riding a bicycle, wearing a polo shirt and khaki shorts with a sweatshirt over his shoulders. His bicycle had a basket hooked to the handle bars, and in the basket rode a small white puppy.

He's obviously up to something nefarious, no? Besides the fact that NO MAN does this, I give you a scene to help shore up my argument:



CLEARLY. Up to no good.

Obama Indoctrinated My Children. Is There A Shot For That?

So, today I sent my children to school to be indoctrinated by the President of the United States. I know. I'm really taking their futures into my hands by exposing them to such propaganda.

Sure, Obama is telling my kids to "fulfill your responsibilities", and that if they want to be successful, they need to "work for it". The worst part was when he said "Here in America, you write your own destiny."

*snort*

C'mon. WE know what he's really trying to do here. We can read between the lines. My children came home today and you know what they told me they'd learned? Republicans are from the devil and they should vote Democrat so we can stop global warming and save the polar bears.

I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

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Okay, it MIGHT not have happened that way. What DID happen was our district chose not to air Obama's speech, citing logistical issues with TV's or something. So, I didn't have to make the agonizing choice of whether to inflict this propaganda on my delicate, easily influenced offspring.

Whew, dodged that moral minefield. I'm just waiting for our governor to come out with some speech telling our children to "brush their teeth" and "play nice with others". That man will receive a strongly worded letter from this mom if THAT day ever comes.

Who Says Teenagers Are Useless?

After an entire day at home during which I not ONCE wanted to ship my children off to Siberia neighbors (no, really. No sarcasm-they were GOOD today), I decided to reward them with a trip to the pool, even though we had all showered earlier in the day. I'm cool like that.

While I roasted in 90 degree heat and thanked the Lord that it wasn't 100 degrees, (and who DOES that by the way-is thankful for 90 degree weather?) the girls happily swam and cavorted and worked off excess energy. They of course made a friend five minutes before I was ready to leave, and proceeded to play for an additional 45 minutes, at which time the other girl's grandpa and I had had enough baking and called the girls in.

Mind you, we are on the sidelines, using our STERN VOICES, trying to persuade three girls to get out of the fun pool and go eat dinner and get ready for bed. We were not successful, mostly because the girls knew Grandpa SO didn't want to get wet again and I was not even dressed for swimming.

So what did we do? We turned to the teenage lifeguard, no doubt waking him up, and jokingly said "hey, isn't it adult swim time?". This young man didn't hesitate - he must have actually been awake and listening to our negotiations. With three blows of his whistle, he used HIS stern voice to inform the girls that they needed to listen to their parents and get out of the pool right now. They could have made the Olympic swim team with the times they clocked getting out.

As we left, I said thanks, and the lifeguard replied, "You're welcome. Have a good evening."

I think I love him. As a SON, mind you.

It's Already Been A LONG Weekend

I've been at my house during the daylight this weekend for a sum total of 6 hours. Yesterday we left at 11am and got home at 7:30pm. Today, we left the house at 9am and didn't return until 6pm, only to leave again 20 minutes later and come back at 8.

WHY? Why would I do this to myself when The Man is out of town? Why exhaust myself schlepping two kids all over town and back? Here's the thing. At any point in their day, when not either out and about or sitting in front of a screen of some sort, my children have been fighting like cats and... insane cats on crack. About EVERYTHING. It's MADDENING, and I'm so tired of it.

Tonight, after our long day, which we spent at church, out to a lunch of their choosing, a movie, frozen yogurt, browsing at the toy store, and going to the grocery store to pick out frozen kid dinners, the girls proceeded to act like complete assholes the entire trip home.

Sorry for the swears, but dude, seriously. I guess I should expect it since they were probably tired at the end of the day, but ALL DAY LONG, anytime the action paused, they were at each other.

So, upon our return home, I screamed bloody murder and locked them in their rooms for a 20 minute time out. I flopped down on the couch and wondered who I could call to talk me through the remaining two hours until bedtime. RIGHT THEN, my friend Monica called me and asked me if I'd fed and watered my the offspring yet. I asked her if she'd heard me screaming from 3 houses down, and she said she couldn't hear me over HER screaming.

Needless to say, the frozen dinners remained in the freezer, and we joined Monica's family at a local Italian joint that has an outside patio and play structure for the kids. Ahhhhhhh. What could be better than adult conversation and eating a creamy pasta dish accompanied by the sounds of a Star Wars battle between three cracked-out exuberant kids?

Now, if I could just get them to sleep all day tomorrow until The Man comes home. They're such angels when they're sleeping.

Proof God Doesn't Approve of IHOP

We're in the middle of the worst drought that Texas has seen in 50 years, yet both times we've tried to head out to IHOP (which I am compelled to type as "iHop"), we've had TORRENTIAL rain and thunderstorms. Not that I'm complaining, but when you no sooner say the words "yeah, we can go tonight", it starts to POUR and you see lightning bolts disappear behind your neighbor's house, things get a little tense with the kids.

So, since The Man was out of town last night and God was all anti-pancake, we did things The Man would frown upon: Star Wars movies and the Joey Special: TWO Pizzas.

Today, to PUNISH The Man further for being out of town, we continued the non-approved activities with the long-awaited chocolate chip pancake festival, then 5 hours at Main Event where the girls tore the rock climbing wall UP, and then spent $837 to get $4.37 worth of junk from the prize room.

Since I'm a very good mom, to make up for all the crap we've eaten in the last 24 hours, we went to Fresh Choice because they serve VEGETABLES. They also serve brownies and ice cream and hot fudge syrup. Not that I'd know anything about that.

Where is The Man this weekend, by the way? He'd be HERE.

Is my husband a dork catch or what?

Continuing the Animal Theme

How awesome is this news story, about an ingenious solution to a turtle's tragically lost front legs? Is anyone else wishing you could mount a few more on the back and have a game of shuffleboard? No, just me? Okay.

On another injured leg front: Boodle's hamster has joined his brother in being differently-abled. Somehow after we returned, Hamilton suffered a broken rear right leg, and it has healed into a sideways facing position. Just like his brother Max, he is destined to discover that adversity breeds... well, laughter I guess, because it's insanely funny to watch him attempt to scratch behind his right ear, only to have is leg flail wildly at his side.

I know, I shouldn't laugh. How insensitive. But I DO scratch that spot for him when I notice.

Think we could rig some kind of prosthetic up for him? We DO have a lot or random Lego pieces laying around...

Wordless Wednesday: Prelude to Tragic Bird Demise

(Okay, the bird didn't actually die, but c'mon. He's clearly not long for this world.)

Fashion Tuesday

Okay, I'm not sure what's going on here, but if a tennis match (or a formal dinner) breaks out involving Xena: Warrior Princess, we are THERE.

And let the velvet dress stand as testament to the aforementioned cold front. NOTHING says comfort more on a 98 degree day than dark fabric meant to immortalize Elvis.