bumper sticker warm fuzzies

Maybe I am just becoming more observant lately, but I have seen a lot of really funny bumper stickers lately.

While at Costco this AM I saw one that was unintentionally a bit humorous.  I should have snapped a picture, but didn't think of it at the time, but I had to share it here.  So here is my thought for the day for you ...

You know its time to remove the bumper sticker from your back window when the words "tasty food" have faded to the point they aren't really readable and all that’s left is "Love people and cook them."


Yeah, it gives you the warm fuzzies, don't it?

an open letter to the jerk who stole my ads

Dear Jerktastic Buttmunch Who Stole My Black Friday Ads,

I just wanted you to know that I have spent the better part of my Wednesday wishing you a lot of misery.  If any of  my exes are correct, I am a witch.  If I am in fact a witch, you are really in for a rough couple of days because I have been focusing all my witchy powers your way this fine pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday.

First off, by now your hands should have turned into a bloody, pulpy mess given the number of paper cuts you acquired thumbing through MY ads.  Yes, I did that.  I hope that cheap newsprint glossy stuff feels like razor blades, you thief.  I started off hoping that each page gave you a paper cut but I realized that freaks as hardcore as you must go through them multiple times to price compare, so I amended my original curse to include a new slice with each page turn.

You may as well not bother staying up after gorging yourself on Thanksgiving to start shopping online at 12:01 AM because your computer will only explode right at that moment you click the button that says "Proceed to Checkout" causing you to not only not get any of the things in your cart but to also send a variety of embarrassing spam emails to those you are most concerned with impressing.  Family pictures? Passwords? Tax info? Internet favorites?  Yup, all gone too.

Imagine this, but times like a million.

If you decide to not heed my warnings and turn your computer into a nuclear wasteland after all, please stop there.  Because if you decide that you must physically go shopping, you will make the news.  You might get trampled or you might get buried alive under a mountain of those Lets Rock Elmo toys, but I assure you that you won't get a single one of the things you went out to shop for.  Not one.  You will be exhausted and have nothing but your frazzled, theify nerves to show for it.  And everything you go to buy this holiday season will be full price, and dang hard to come by.

For the record, had you asked me for the Black Friday ads I would have given them to you.  This is because I think that people who actually leave the house on this, of all shopping days, are either nuts or really nuts.  I respect some of the nuts, but for people like you, I got nuthin'.  At any rate, we are too broke even for Black Friday deals and all I wanted was the regular, boring grocery ads so I could feed my family.  Ass hole.

In closing, my temper is quick to rise but burns out quickly, so while I hope a lot of misery for you it will all be fine by Saturday morning and you will be healed but hopefully a valuable lesson will have been learned.   In case you missed what that lesson was let m spell it out for you:

Stealing is wrong, but stealing the ads from my paper? Really low and pathetic. Even without all the names I have spent today calling you and the misfortunes I hope befall you, I pity someone like you because karma's a real bitch and if you are so sad as to think you neighbor's ads are worth stealing I am willing to bet you have few friends and even less of a life.  Happy freaking Thanksgiving, you jackhole.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. To all the peeps who didn't jack my ads, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving with those you love.

lies I tell my children

just like candy

Given that a decade passed by between kids I often feel a bit like a first time mom all over again with child numero dos.  I don't remember all of it from ten years ago, and if we're being honest its not like I knew what I was doing well enough to make actual decisions then.  Its a miracle Thing 1 isn't already in rehab.

So when I was nearing the end of the prison term that is pregnancy I joined Baby Center and added myself to a bunch of clubs so I could read and get advice as needed.  I have found on this one website, more than anywhere else, the most concrete of evidence that women are singularly the most cruel beings on the planet at times.  The moms on this site rip each other to shreds at times over things like formula feeding and onsies with stupid phrases on them.  I am not much of a Judgey McJudgerson myself, because I am pretty sure I am doing it all wrong by someone's standard anyway, so I don't dive into these blood baths or partake in assuming I know a dayum thing about how someone else parents (unless you let your kid sleep with knives, then I think you're nucking futs, you sicko).

But a while back the concept of lying to your kids came up on a post and it got me thinking about the lies I tell my children.  As I am not the type of mom featured in parenting magazines I will admit I have had some fun at the expense of the minds I mold ... no, you really are the only person with a butt crack and its because I dropped you ... but one of my best ones came to light fairly recently.

When Thing 1 was younger I, like all good mothers do, warned him of the dangers of accepting candy from strangers.  It was probably a Halloween related bit of wisdom but I never do anything halfsies, so I went fully monty and told him about the crazy Tylenol poisoner.  I believe that whole thing happened the year I was born or so, so I have been raised with the pain-in-the-ass-bottles but none of the fear and stuff people who really lived through it experienced.  But I sure milked it.  And after I was done telling this innocent little three year old about it (see, I told you I was a bad mom) I proceeded to tell him that the crazy Tylenol poisoner considered spiking candy at one point too.  In my infinitely selfless willingness to show motherly love I told Thing 1 that it was best that I act as his royal taster and insure that none of his food was poisoned.

I know, you think I am sick.  But think about the possibilities.  I got the first taste of anything good for years!  That trusting little goober would allow me to take a sip of his chocolate shake, a bite of his cookie, a taste of anything that was appealing to me because I had the foresight to know what kinds of things crazy Tylenol poisoners would poison. Interestingly enough it was all the things *I* like.

But the funniest part about this story isn't that I was evil enough to say it, do it, and milk it for years, but rather that at about 9 Thing 1 finally realized that his mother was devious enough to hatch such a plot.  I got nearly six years of it!

But really, the best news of all: I convinced him to not tell his little brother.  Here we go again! =)

sleeping with swords

I am a bad mom.  The worst in fact.  According to Milwaukee anyway.

As if all the other horrible things I do weren't enough, it seems that there is yet another travesty to add to the list of crimes I have committed against my children.  But this one takes the cake really ... and slices it into nice dangerous pieces ...

These ads recently came out, to much controversy I might add, claiming that sleeping with your child is just as dangerous as letting them sleep in a nice big fluffy bed, on their stomachs, with a butcher knife.

Say what?!

Yes, parents who sleep with their children are clearly all letting them sleep in beds like the one in the images and they may has well stick cleavers in bed beside them.

I will admit to this much, my bed is no where near that poofy/soft looking and I sure as hell would never own white sheets.  Oh, and yes, my kid sleeps with me.

There are plenty of resources that can outline how bullshaty this ad campaign is and how safe co-sleeping is when done properly (like this one, or this one, or even this one) so I won't bore you with that.  

But I will give you this....

Take that Milwaukee!

We are such rebels.

the *real* Story of Creation

Being out numbered three to one by males in my house I am quite sensitive to gender issues.  This is a nice way of saying that I am situationally bombarded with farts (which I mind), football (which I don't mind), and I find myself swearing at the Mars/Venus author a lot.

So when on Wednesday night Thing 1 said that his throat was bugging him a bit and his head was hurting I began bracing for the worst.  Sigh, the Man Cold was about to invade.

While the invasion is in full swing, however, it has led to a religious epiphany on my part.  Whilst reciting my version of the Serenity Prayer, I realized the Almighty's motivation in something.  I, of course, felt very blessed to have been gifted such an amazing bit of holy insight and had to share it here, with you.

Despite popular and biblical belief, God did not create Eve from Adam's rib following the realization that the poor guy was one lonely dude.  Rather, God looked down from heaven and saw that Adam was slowly starving to death and completely unaware of what the eff to do without someone there to hold his silly little male hand.  And it was then God realized once that poor fool got sick he'd just whither away and die.  Realizing that He could not allow his most prized creation to just die due to his overwhelming sense of self pity, God created Eve.

Then Eve went and served up some forbidden apples and they were cast out of Paradise ... and God, then and only then, created the Man Cold so as to punish woman kind for Eve's mistake.

Gee, thanks.

evidence that my child is a horrendous dictator in the making

Following a title like that I am sure you are either thinking "oh my gawd, she's horrible" or "Ha! Preach on sistah, I have one of those kids too!"  Your response of course entirely depends on your being a parent or not being a parent.  Or maybe you are a parent without a sense of humor ... good lord, how do you survive?!

Anyway, my child is only 7 months old and I am pretty sure he has all the makings of a horrendous, terrifying dictator in the making.  I already shudder to think about how the history books will portray his sheer mad brilliance, and I hope history doesn't look down upon me too harshly because, as you are about to see, his path was set long before I started to pretend I had control over this.

{Editors Note: I still pretended I had control of him as a human being from the moment the little line on the pee-stick formed right up until about a few weeks before my due date, when I realized I had truly zero control over anything having to do with this kid beyond incubating him.}

With no further adieu, the Top 5 Reasons My Kid Will Someday Be a Terrifying Dictator:

1. His nickname in the womb was Voldabean.  As in a morph of Jellybean and Voldemort.  Yeah.  At 13 weeks I had my first ultrasound, and it looked like a jellybean with a heartbeat.  I thought it was cute -- this kid hadn't given me any morning sickness or unpleasant preggo symptoms as of yet so I started calling the little gender-less blob my Jellybean.  Fast forward to the Jellybean turning into a Sasquatch sized member of Cirque de Soleil in my tummy who left me with horrendous heartburn, back pain, early onset of contractions, and thought his "due date" was merely a laughable suggestion of date he should avoid arriving on at all costs... I started saying I was going to give birth to Voldemort.  Voldabean was the compromise.

2. His little baby hands can out-do any Chinese Water Torture trial.  Oh. My. Gawd.  I don't care how short I trim those nails, they are daggers.  Maybe he is like Wolverine and can retract them, I don't know.  To add to this he has this adorable habit of squeezing his hands open and closed right as he falls asleep.  So right as he drifts off he starts slowly, delicately, gouging four small trenches in your arm and all you can do is put up with it, or wake him up.  Yes, I have scars.

3. He has a sick sense of humor.  Not all dictators have this, in fact many don't thus why they are so uptight and horrible.  But my kid?  He has already learned to apply his gasp of the ironic in order to manipulate me. Example: I am with this child nearly 24/7.  I am the focal point of his world, and nearly always there trying to teach him and help him.  Who did he roll over for first?  My mom.  When he learned to do the much harder back to belly roll over, who did he do that for first?  St. Paul of Bunyan.  After days of working with his slowly emerging and adorable ability to clap I was gone from his side maybe a couple hours only to return and find him perched on St Paul's knee clapping furiously.  When I excitedly said "he's clapping!" St. Paul replied, "oh he's been doing that for like an hour now."  Don't even get me started on how the little traitor babbles "Dadadada" constantly.

4. His sense of timing is flawless.  Timing is everything, everyone knows this.  And so does my baby.  Case in point: child holds off on a blow-out until just the right moment.  Like the I am running late wearing my favorite shirt and only clean jeans in the house, go to pick him up and put him on my hip and ... I'll spare you the visual.

5. He is so stinkin' cute and perfect he could convince you to do anything.  It has been said that the greatest, most horrible dictators of our time were, for all their tyrannical cruelty, still very good leaders.  This is how they were able to convince so many to follow them, no matter what.  I assure you, Thing 2 could make you do anything.  Anything.  Between his perfect little round-bald-baby-head, big blue eyes framed with perfect dark, curly eyelashes, and adorably chubby cheeks ... my kid could kick the Gerber kid's ass.  He sneezed yams into my eye the other day, and I am the world's biggest sissy with eye stuff.  The word "contacts" makes me shiver just at the thought of touching an eyeball, but there I was with globs of grainy yam in my eye sockets and he laughed, and I was okay with it.  That gummy little smile could melt Satan's heart.  This child can already convince you to do anything, so I can only assume that this skill will be honed and of greater threat once he practices some more.

So let the record show, someday when my child is trying to overtake a small country or is working at the Motor Vehicle Division, that I saw the signs and tried to intervene.  But then he gave me that cute little gummy smile and used sign language to either sign "mama" or "bitch" (they look really similar) and I know whichever it is, it refers to me, and I just melted.  Sorry world.

Yam in the eye and ten other things I learned this week

If life is about learning, then I am really living life up well this week.  Here are my top ten lessons learned in the last seven or so days:

1. I do not bounce well anymore, so falling is a really bad idea.

2. Second chances are a really good thing, especially on house security alarms when you are not paying attention and mess up the code.

3. My bank thinks I have a sense of humor about bill paying.  I don't.  Neither do the companies that expect payment.

4. Despite looking thoroughly non edible, and despite how many times the baby has tried, my dog proved that pacifiers are, in fact, edible.

5.  Pacifiers may be edible, but they are not, as it turns out, digestible.

6.  If I act like a big enough of an idiot and clap a lot, the baby will eat yams and will end his hunger strike.

7. Pureed yams that are sneezed into your eye make things a bit blurry for an hour or so.

8.  The laminate floors we bought at Ikea are really durable and can even withstand urine.

9.  Calling my phone as many nasty names and combinations of names as I can think of does not make it work better.  I'll keep trying.

10.  Christmas music in early November makes me nauseous and I apparently have developed a nervous twitch in anticipation of the holiday season.

attacked by the bird in Dumbo

Oh look at that Corolla speeding along down there ...

You know in the opening scenes of the movie Dumbo where the patient Mrs. Jumbo finally and with much relief hears the stork calling out her name and is given her baby elephant with the massive yet adorable ears?  Okay I saw him.  Not the elephant, the bird.  It was huge, it was grey and was not wearing that smart little hat but it was a stork or a crane or something like it.  It was huge, it had a long neck with a floppy skin-pouchy looking area under its beak and it was apparently not at all afraid of my Corolla speeding down the street.  Scared the crud right out of me and between the startle factor and the fact that I have a nasty and otherwise unexplained phobia of birds, it aided in the unleashing of an impressive litany of swear words.

Problem with this story?  Both kids were in the back seat.

Now Thing 2 wouldn't have noticed anything given he is seven months old and mommy's forgivable time is still at hand.  The ten year old Thing 1 ... um, yeah. He's part nun and has been sniffing out swear words from a rather young age.  One of my friends just hands him a five dollar bill whenever she sees us so that she is "pre-paid" and doesn't have to worry about it for a while.

But rather than tell me that I didn't make good choices with my words like he once would have, he laughed.  He said that my word choice was funny.  I honestly don't remember how I combined words, but it is my art, so I am sure it was well done of me.

But it got me thinking about how I have some bad-mom tendencies of "do as I say not as I do."  Anyone who says they don't do this is either lying or not actually raising their kids, and I accept that I am not a fully conventional-mother-of-the-year-award-winning-Martha-freaking-Stewart-esk mom with as much grace as I can muster.  I read blogs.  I see the homeschooling moms who change their mantle decor every 15 seconds so that it can reflect the current season while sewing clothes for their children and making lots of cakes.  Not her, and won't be.  But I am open minded and think of me as a student of life.

So that big nasty bird that swooped over the street whilst I sped toward it and made me slam on the breaks and craft word chains that could have made a sailor blush made me also realize that I have not paid any attention to my list.  So I will be adding to it, and I will hopefully be marking some stuffs off of it soon.  And I am sure I will have plenty of sad, yet amusing, stories to share because failure is a part of learning.  And lord knows, when it comes to domestic skills I am bound to do both.

a hybrid like no other

Imagine a little halo hovering above its wand ...

Siting and typing this post out right now is not logical, but it is needed.  This makes exploding Smurfs look like nothing in terms of "you know its a bad day when..."

I have one of those Bissell Little Green miracles.  Two dogs, two kids, a husband ... a worthwhile investment.  Yesterday I lent it to my mother, who's beagle decided to pretend one of her large area rugs was a potty.

Given the atrocities I apparently committed in a previous life the karma fairy came by the house this morning.  To spare you the nastiest of the details I will give the circumstances to you via the text message conversation on my phone.  Before I do, please note the following: St Paul of Bunyan is a wonderful human being who can do a great many things including be a wonderful dad and make a fire using only string and draino while camping int he Arctic circle.  He is however a huge wussypants when it comes to vomit.  The man has the stomach of a 6-week-pregnant-woman.

Me:  Oh. My. God. I am so f***ing glad you are not home right now.

SPB: Why?

SPB: That's rude!

Me: {Insert dog's name here} just vomited a whole, completely intact, really smelly shit on the WHITE couch.  It was so gross that *I* got sick.  Can't f***ing imagine the mess if you had been home.

Me: Did I mention its on the white couch?

Me: Did I mention it still looked like a f***ing turd?!

Me: Did I mention the house smells like shit now?

SPB: Oh good   <-- we will return to this comment momentarily

SPB: What an ass

Me: Did I mention that my mom has my f***ing Bissell and I can't do anything to get rid of the stink?!

SPB: Oh hell, go get it

Allow me to take a moment to answer the most pressing question on your mind right now: WTF, you have a white couch?!  Um, yes, but not on purpose.  And really its not very white, more of a dingy grey now, but I am sure it was manufactured to be a white one.  It came with the house.

I can also assure you that St Paul and I will be having a little heart to heart about appropriate responses because he doesn't seem to have any.  "Oh good?"  Good?  What part of dog ralphing poop that can somehow simultaneously look and smell like both poop and puke is good?!  The part where you weren't home for it?  Yes, true. I agree because I would have been cleaning up after your puke too and been a lot madder, and really who wouldn't be grateful to have missed out on this fun?  But to say it?  Out loud?  Okay he didn't say it, but he had to type it.  At some point there should have been some attempt at filtering that could have happened.  I am imagining the robot with sirens blaring saying "danger Will Robertson!" only he says St Paul of Bunyan's name instead.

So, in order to get appropriate, make-me-feel-better responses, I spoke with my mom.

Me: OMG my dog just spewed.  On my couch. It was poop.  A poop vomit hybrid.  Can I please swing by your house and borrow my Bissell back for an hour?

Mom: OMG, no! You poor thing, I will bring it to you!

When you want to hear an appropriate response, ask a woman.