being judged, by a phone

While there are some things I am quite good at, the God's honest truth is -- and anyone who knows me more than 45 seconds can attest to the truth of this -- I have the world's worst sense of direction.  Seriously.  When God was putting all the skills I would eventually develop into the heavenly Kitchen Aid mixer someone must have distracted the Big Guy when he got to the "internal compass" part of the recipe.  I have none.  At all.  Like I have lived in the same 30 mile radius for over 20 years and still get turned around and couldn't tell you which direction is north even if life itself depended on it.

I also have a car as old as Thing 1.  Standard at the time of good ol' Betty's (yes, I name my car) production were cassette players and driver/passenger side airbags, but alas ... no navigation stuff.  Not even a compass on the rear view mirror that unhelpfully announces I am heading southwest (what good would that do to someone like me anyway?).

So when I discovered I could get turn-by-turn, walk-me-through-it-like-a-baby directions on my phone I was pretty blooming thrilled.  Gone, I thought, were the days of calling my husband only to have him start giving directions with north, south, east and west before he patronizingly says "oh, sorry I forgot ..."  Gone, I hoped, were the days of calling my dad only to have him burst out laughing and say "Good lord, how did you wind up there?!"

I thought that finally my smartass phone would have a feature that could save me in my times of trouble and need.

I named it Fancy Nancy.

Not sure why, but I have a thing for naming stuff and I thought it was so spiffy that my phone could not only talk but tell me where to go ... anyway, back to the point.

The point is this: Nancy is a raging biotch.  And a judgmental one too.

Don't tell me your phone doesn't say "recalculating route" with the same "you are such a bleeding moron" tone of voice and eye-roll Nancy does for me.  If your phone is friendly about your flaws I don't want to hear it.

homework assignments & fear

For all my numerous faults as a mom, I am at least one impassioned supporter of my children's education.  I can give my children many things ... fodder for the therapists couch, genetic predisposition toward various chronic ailments, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches heavy on the jelly for lunch ... but the one thing that will remain with them, always, in spite of the weather, who is in the White House, or any other variable out there, is their education.  For this reason (and the fact that my mother was just as maniacal and I come from a long line of teachers) I am a tad hard core when it comes to school related things.

Its how I roll.

So I diligently check emails and communicate with Thing 1's teachers all the time.  Like his mother before him, my child never comes home following a bad day without my already knowing the ins and outs of what happened.  Fortunately for me and my child, there aren't many bad days.  Thing 1 is a good kid, I'd like to take credit, but I am pretty sure he is raising himself.

As I was checking my emails the other day though I came across this message from his fabulous teacher:

As part of our Reading-At-Home assignment your child should be asking you about some “funny” stories about you as a kid. Help keep them motivated by giving them some time at dinner to ask you some questions.

Thanks for all you do.

And my blood ran cold.

I know that the teacher wasn't asking me to share funny stores from my teen-years youth.  I have a few more years before high school aged shenanigans come back to haunt me, and I am praying to never need to explain my college years to my kids, or parents for that matter.  I mean really, I narrowly escaped a terrorist bombing and was too drunk to know it and that was just another Thursday night as far as I was concerned at the time.  True story.  Maybe for another day.

But really, "funny" stories from my youth.  I couldn't think of any immediately that would not make my nun-of-a-child get all judgey-pants on me.  Shall I share about the time I dumped my new born sister into a flower pot?  How about when we got cold at the bus stop and lit notebooks on fire?

So I asked my mom.

Yeah that was a mistake.  {Sigh}

After the fourth story where she told me that she explained to the traumatized witnesses that I was in fact her identical twin sister's daughter (we look quite a bit alike) so as to not have them judging her for birthing the demon child with freckles and pigtails, I decided that I needed to make up some stories. This way, I reasoned, I would have something good to tell Thing 1, were he to ask.

Still trying to make something up, I checked my email and I had a gem of an email from my mother reminding me that I could also tell the story the note I gave to a girl on my bus that would have warranted a greater than PG13 rating due to the volume of "eff off"s included ... then signed my name.  First and last.  Hey, I felt strongly about what I had to say, I guess.

But at any rate I have decided that in this one instance, I am going to just hope that Thing 1 doesn't do his homework.

turtles & S.A.D.

the scene of the crime, later that day

Since we have had fairly typical-for-other-parts-of-the-country winter weather here lately we've all been a tad in the downy dumps.  Not being used to cold, grey, dreary weather has made for a miserable mommadeaux clan, and you know my feelings on my menfolk getting sick.  Thing 2 is genuinely sick, Thing 1 had to be picked up early from school this week due to illness, I can't get St Paul out of bed in the mornings without a lot of threats and the promise of coffee brewing and this morning he actually said he was "dying," and I have personally polished off more Christmas cookies than is reasonable for a gal who says she's watching her figure.  So I decided we all had the desert-region-version of Seasonal Affective Disorder, commonly called S.A.D.

But I misjudged the level of seasonal depression in our house apparently.  Why you ask?  Because yesterday morning I had the strangest wake-up-yelling I have had in all ten years of motherhood thus far.

"Mom come quick, the turtle climbed on her log house and jumped off!"

Yes, turtle.  The docile, slow animal typically associated with laziness.  She climbed up on her log tunnel, don't ask how, I can't quite visualize it myself.  This had to require a good amount of effort on her part.  Ultimately I guess she just couldn't take it anymore.  In her misery, she decided to jump off the highest area she could manage in an effort to end it all.  However, the highest area in her aquarium is like 3 inches tall.

As it turns out, she merely got herself stuck and scared the crap out of Thing 1 who awoke to the loud thud that resulted when her shell hit the side of the aquarium.

While this incident may leave you scratching your head don't be alarmed.  If anyone was going to own a turtle that was both acrobatic and klutzy, it would be me.

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.

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.

when life hands you a broken door knob

You know the phrase "when life hands you lemons ..."?  I prefer the ever more practical variant which mentions salt and tequila because when did lemonade ever make anyone feel better?  But I found a new application for this phrase over the weekend.

For the last couple of weeks both of my bathroom door knobs have been biting the dust.  Both of them.  Seem fair? No.  Not fair, because the bathroom is about the only place I can guarantee alone time anymore and its not even a full guarantee.  Anyhoo, door knobs sent a little memo to each other and agreed to simultaneously have the little sticky-outy-part (I know there is probably a name for this part, but who cares) stay stucky-inny.  So the doors can close but not latch, much less lock.

So on Saturday St. Paul of Bunyan and I were furiously cleaning, storing, throwing out and swearing at stuff.  As we were wrapping it up I needed to "powder my nose" so to speak.  Go into the bathroom and do my business and was about to leave when it happened.

The sticky-outy-part that has been stucky-inny for like 3 weeks?  Popped out.

But could it pop out in a miraculous door-is-healed sort of way?  Hello, this is me we are talking about!  What are the odds that the exploding smurf, plastic wrap warrior will have the good luck to have something work in my favor like that?!

So the thingy pops out and I can't open the door.

I try turning the knob.  Turning it fast, turning it slow, pulling on the door, pushing on the door, speaking to the door nicely, calling the door a few names, smacked the knob a few times (not advisable, hurts you more than the knob) ... no change.  Finally I take a deep breath, try once more and I hear a strange clicking snapping type noise then feel the knob go slack.  I can now turn it in either direction with no resistance or effect.  Yeah, not good.  Fortunately, I wasn't home alone, or home with just the baby.  More fortunately I happened to have my cell phone in my pocket so I didn't have to yell myself horse until I was heard.

St Paul came back, starts running through the procedures I already did from one side of the door.  Then goes and gets tools. Lots of loud noises come through the door.  I sigh and realize I am not going anywhere for a little bit when the hubs has to go back to the tool box for some new tools.

And it hit me.

I am locked in a bathroom, alone.  As in by myself.  Just me.

And the shower.

And the clouds parted and the rays of sunlight shown down while the angelic chorus of "hallelujah" blasted through my brain.

That elusive beast that evades all moms, especially those of younger children, is mine for the taking.

I took a long, hot shower ... by myself.  Uninterrupted, if you don't count the loud noises resulting from St Paul eventually breaking the door down.  After 20 minutes I emerge from the steamy bathroom with my hair clean, skin scrubbed pink and moisturized, all relaxed and calm to a frazzled husband and crying baby.

So the next time you hear that tired old phrase about life handing you lemons just remember, when life hands you a bad door knob you can have yourself a somewhat peaceful shower.

You got a long, hot shower to yourself? You're welcome.

the Battle of the Toilet

There are things one must accept when horribly outnumbered by boybarians.

Fart is a second language.

Showering can be seen as optional to some.

Chocolate, and Mommy's compulsive need for it, is not treated with the sacred respect it requires.

But the toilet seat?  Ah this is a battle I have had within myself because you see I am a fair person all things considered.  Being that there is only one of me, and two of them (two out of the three males in my house use the toilet, third one is too young yet) I kinda debated briefly whether or not it was reasonable for me to expect the toilet seat to be put down after use. 

When I say I "debated" it that means I thought about it for about forty five tenths of a second.  I asked myself is this a fair request when there is only one pee-sitter in the house and was instantly barraged with mental images too gruesome to share -- though I am sure some of you can relate.

I really have two toilet related issues:
1.) The seat is rarely down
2.) The pee rarely goes where it aught


When I bring up either of the two to the others who live in this house I get one of three responses.

St. Paul of Bunyan: That is sooo Thing 1's doing.

Thing 1: It wasn't ME!!!  I don't know how that happens!

Thing 2: Dadadada <-- he is only 5 months old but if you pay close attention note that he is blaming someone who goes by "dada" ... hmmmmm ...

In the front bathroom, which we all use, there seems to be a pee fairy that hits everything but the toilet, and no one claims to have been this person or had anything to do with it.  Since the baby can't walk yet and I generally know where I have put him we can assume he is not the pee fairy.  Since I would have to do some impressive acrobatics that would leave me severely injured I think we can rule me out as not being the pee fairy.  So that leaves two others.  The two who say they have nothing to do with it.  Strange.  In the other bathroom, the one St. Bunyan and I use, the seat is never down, but the aim does seem to be a bit better.

Odd, donchya think?

Ultimately, I have reached the conclusion that Mars vs Venus may be a way of life for us here, but its all about compromise.  Basically I accept that I will hear things like "no really, pull my finger, I won't do it this time" and will not interfere because really some lessons in trust and gullibility are necessary.  But I also accept that while I expect the seat to be down and there to be some attempt at aiming this this will not happen 100% of the time.  I will be lucky if I see it work out 30% of the time. But that's okay.

What's the phrase?  Revenge is a dish best served cold with a single red sock in a hot wash with all your white clothes?  Something like that anyway.

plastic wrap and dry yeast - two deadly foes

In my valiant efforts to pretend I know what I am doing and am not completely worthless at domesticity I am plugging away at my little list. But to prove that I have the opposite of the Midas touch and remain ever the lucky gal I tried baking from scratch with a recipe* that called for bread flour (took me forever to find that in the store, they have special flour for bread?!) and dry yeast. 

I admit, never used the stuff in my life.  Baking experience up to this AM incorporated soley following "recipies" that were read off of the side of the box and said complicated things like "pour mixture into bowl with water and bake at 350 for 20 minutes." So the dry yeast was supposed to do one thing, but of course, for me, it did another. 

The recipie called for one amount of water, the yeast packaging another.  The yeast package also called for sugar, but the recipie said nothing about sugar.  I am sure actual cooks/bakers who know their shat and have done this before may read this shaking their heads and say something like "oh you poor dear, donchya know you just ..." (I do picture it with a Minnesota accent for the record).

The recipe says to dissolve warm water and yeast.  Then let stand.  Stand?  I do know what stand means, don't ask how because I am really not sure.  For how long?  How will I know?  Why in the sam heck did I pick a recipe that presumes minimal knowledge as my first foray into being a big girl?  After staring at the murky mixture for a few minutes I went to go google it ... ah, damn, computer is doing its dying swan act ... thank the techno gods I have a phone.  It says I'll know when standing is done because I will have a hella poofball of foam.  Okay it didn't say that, I am paraphraseing.  When no poofball happens I read that with some yeast you have to add sugar.  Now that makes perfect sense to me because I either need coffee or sugar (not together though) to get my ass moving in the morning. 

Its a blur what I actually did do here, but ultimately I got a foamy looking concoction in the bottom of the bowl that looked like the foam on top of a a beer you pour too fast.

{light bulb momen: beer has yeast in it!}

Mix in other ingredients ... yada, yada, blah, blah, blah ... its supposed to rise.  Baby wants fed, perfect timing!  Then I realize that my five month old, male baby seems to have an intuative baking sense greater than my own which both alarms and discourages me at the same time.  Moving on I feed him and return expecting dough that has risen, but I find dough that has maybe inhaled a bit.  Give it another 10 minutes, I think it looks a bit bigger, but that may be wishful thinking.

Then the story gets ugly and pathetic.  The beauty of this recipie is that I can freeze it.  This means I can make it and swear at it when only the baby, who can't talk and tell on me, can see.  Then all Betty Crocker punk rocker style I can whip a frozen dough ball out of the freezer and make something uber cool like homemade pizza.  But you have to wrap it all up.  I have gallon size freezer bags, but alas, I must wrap the individual balls in *gasp* cling wrap.

I hate cling wrap.  Ever fiber of my being hates it.  On the cellular level I hate it.  If you were to take a swab of my cheek, whip out a DNA sample, centrafuge the crap out of it you would see right there on the 14th chromosone I have the HatesPlasticClingWrap gene.  Right next to it would be the PlasticClingWrapMakesMeLookLikeAMoron gene.  Someday they will find my body laying on the floor wrapped in this crap like a mummy with a bowl of uncovered food on the counter and the coroner will conclude that I died via suffocation while trying to just cover the damn leftovers. 

In an effort to lesson the complexity I cut the !#$%ing wrap into sections so I would have all 16 sections ready and just needed to put the dough in them, wrap it up, toss it in the freezer bag and *POOF* I'd be done, right? Wrong! Wronger than the wrongest wrong.  Because guess what my lazy assed yeast decideds to do NOW?!  Now, after it has had nearly 45 minutes to rise but hasn't?  Now, when I have predetermined size of cling wrap to wrap the balls in based on their size?!

Yeah, the damn yeast finally gets the memo, and it rises.

Long story and half a box of cling wrap later, I have them bagged and in the freezer. 

Now the really annoying part of this fiasco if you ask me is this: the directions explain how to go about freezing the whole batch for use later.  So I freeze all of it once, I swear it into the too-small cling wrap packaging and proudly stuff it in the freezer while smiling thinking that I might have triumphed after all.  When I recall one little detail ...

Now that I have frozen all of the dough, what in the Sam Hill are we having for dinner tonight? 

Damn.

* Found the recipe at Money Saving Mom, here is the actual recipe if you are a yeast whisperer or something.

it smells like death in here ... oh wait, its just the computer

I like to think that I am a good person.  I like to think that I am a nice individual who would have loverly things said about her were I not in the room. 

However, my karmatic energy sometimes suggests that I am a raving lunatic bitch who deserves to be punished in many odd and frightening ways. 

Need I remind you of the smurfacide in the garage?  Want more evidence?  Our computer seems to be considering death.  Not a I am going to run slow and be a PITA death.  No more like a Baby pictures?  You didn't want to be able to actually access those ever again, right?  type death.  It won't turn on except for a pretty blue screen while St. Paul of Bunyan tries to do something to convince it to not die.  I am still trying to be hopeful that the baby pictures that I haven't backed up in a while are not lost.  Or all the stuff I have been doing to try to start up my business.  Or my writing.  My book.  Did I back any of that up?  Nah, back up is for sissies.

Yeah, the good stuff always happens to me.

Its moments like this where you start to play Let's Make a Deal with the powers that be.  Thus far I have promised the Divine IT Guy in the sky that I will religiously back-up from this day forward and will not call the computer names that would make a sailor blush for at least a month.  Fingers crossed I don't have to promise more.