Party Hangover

Recently, I had a rather sizable back yard barbecue get-together, thinly disguised as a 4th of July/birthday party.

I have no idea how many people were wandering around our back yard.  I just know that there were a loooottttt of kids.  Well, there were really only about five or so, plus one pre teen and one teen, but when all of the littles banded together and started running, it sure felt like a loooooootttttttt of kids.  (Of course, when you consider that of the "littles," the oldest is only five ... no matter how many kids there actually were, it felt like a whoooolllleeeeee looooooooooooottttttt of kids.)

In the aftermath of this party, I find myself in need of making some public service announcements.  Here goes:

To all the parents of all those kids, if you are missing a red capped sippy cup with baby farm animals, or a pink capped sippy cup with that ballerina girl from Little Einsteins, I am holding them for you. 

All of the food anyone left behind, whether intentional or no, has been donated to the food gods in your name.

I'm not sure what to do with the bag of dog treats, as I do not have a dog.  (And, despite Toddler's earnest whining, we will not be getting one.)

I thought I knew who brought all those presents, but I just found a set I don't even remember being opened, so now I am just baffled.  I sincerely apologize, but Thank You cards will be on hold until I can sort this out.  In the meantime, please accept this generic Thank You.  I assure you that all toys have been used, except for two, and I'm waiting for a rainy day where I can pay attention to where Toddler thinks he wants to run with Play-Doh to use those.  (Toddler thanks you very much.  I'm on the fence.)

Never fear, all of that leftover cake has found a home in someone's belly.  That was a biiiiiggggg cake.

While we did survive (perhaps with more luck than grace), I am still questioning the wisdom of inviting every pre-schooler I know.  I can only thank my lucky stars that half of them were busy.

I neglected to give any of the kiddos their "hope this keeps you quiet" bottle of Mickey Mouse bubbles.  If you are remotely interested, and local enough to drive by, I will still give it to you.  The Post Office frowns on mailing liquid, even if it is soap.  It sorta makes them nervous.

To our poor friend whose birthday it actually was, I apologize for not arranging a rendition of "Happy Birthday" for you.  I was never far enough away that you wouldn't be able to punch me.  Happy Birthday anyway.  I promise to keep your age our little secret.

To the runners who went for wine, you have my eternal blessing.  To the family member who forgot to put the last of the boxes into the fridge, I curse you.

The outdoor cats would also like to extend their thanks for the burgers and hot dogs the children dropped on the ground.  The cats made short work of them and are feeling quite spoiled now.  They would also like to know when you are coming back.  To the family with the dog, the cats say, "Hey, this is still my yard and it took me forever to remark everything."

I think that about wraps up my announcements.  Whose turn is it next?

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The Bucket List Gets a Makeover

Apparently, I have a Bucket List.  Supposedly, everyone has one.  After some investigation into the term "Bucket List," I will admit to having one, and I will acknowledge that most rational people do have one.

What I cannot figure out is how it came to be called a "Bucket List."

If there is any other human being as woefully ignorant as I about the term "Bucket List," let me explain.  It's that list of things you want to do before you die, or "kick the bucket."  There are an almost infinite number of euphemisms for dying, and "kick the bucket" is a reference to a particularly nasty form -- suicide by hanging.  So the old wives tale goes, it is a reference to kicking away the bucket you stand on to tie the rope.

Now, after reading (most of ) Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends, I know better than to believe what I think to be the origin of that phrase, "kick the bucket."  In true etymology, the term may actually have a far different origin than what I described.  I don't think the truth actually matters (just this once), because we all think it refers to suicide, and that is the most important part.

So, when we refer to our "Bucket List," we are referring to that list of things we'd like to do before we kill ourselves.

Um....

I think I like the term even less now. 

Personally, I'd just call it, "The List of Things I'd Like to Do Before I Die." After all, the title worked well for 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, updated ed. (2010) (1,000 Before You Die) and all of its progeny.  Why mess with a good thing?  Well, Twitter, for one thing.  "The List of Things I'd Like to Do Before I Die" is a little tough to tweet ... if you want to bother to add what you are putting ON the list or to talk about it in any way.  (I almost said, "any meaningful way" but that might be stretching 140 characters a little too far.)

So, I figure we can try some sort of funky abbreviation, like LOTILTDBID, but I doubt it would catch on.  We could call it, "The List," but that just begs the question.  We could work with the abbreviation a little, and call it the "LOT List," but that is both redundant and begs the question.  I'm guessing we will have to examine the other euphemisms for death and dying and work with those instead.

Here are just a few to consider:

Bought the Farm -- that would make it the Farm List
Pushing up Daisies -- that would make it the Daisy List.  (Hey, I kinda like that one.)
Resting in Peace -- that would make it the RIP List.  (It's oddly accurate.  This one has potential.)
Shuffled Off the Mortal Coil -- that would make it the ... I don't know ... the Mortal Coil List?
Six Feet Under -- that would make it ... maybe ... the Dirt List?
Sleeping With the Fishes -- that would make it the Fish List
Cashed in His/Her Chips -- that would make it the ... Casino List?
Meeting the Maker -- depending on your beliefs, this could be the God List or the Aliens List or the Evolution List
Entering the Pearly Gates -- I would call this the "Gates List," but I think someone has already taken that name.
Appointment with St. Peter -- I think the best shot of this one is the "Appointment List"
Give Up the Ghost -- that would make it the Ghost List
Go to Glory -- umm ... Yes. Nothing I can come up with will pass the PG-no-innuendo-permitted-filter in typing fingers.

This is one of those posts that is just begging for your comments.  (Do you hear it pleading with you?)  So drop a note, take a vote, and let us know what you think we should call the Bucket List.

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A Day in The Museum

As I mentioned briefly in my last post, Toddler and I took a trip downtown to go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.  I must say, Toddler was charming, civil, and well-behaved all day.  The experience was rather surreal for me.

We took the metro downtown, and Toddler was in little-boy heaven.  He was on a "train, mommy! A train!"  When the metro went underground, he looked up at the tunnel and said, "It's really black, black sky.  It's really dark in here."  Then he looked at me, grinning, and said, "How we gonna get out?  This is TERRIBLE!  We need to find a way out!"  (Nope.  That kid doesn't watch too much Disney Channel.  Not at all.)

I'm not positive about this, but I am pretty sure I saw some of the other passengers, smirking behind their hands every time he said it.  I swear, every time I go someplace with that kid, I feel like people are looking at us.  Sadly, I know it isn't me they are looking at anymore.  I lost that kind of appeal a few years back.

Once we got into the museum, Toddler wanted to keep climbing into and out of the giant half-model airplane sitting on the exhibit floor.  I'm not sure anyone envisioned a three year old running up the stairs, through the airplane, and back down the other side repeatedly, all the while calling out, "More rocket ship, mommy!"  I am, however, pretty sure they envisioned people trying to sit on the model seats of the plane.  That's why there is a big barrier there and lots of plexiglass everywhere else.  Of course, these obstacles did not prevent Toddler from trying (once, before I could catch up to him).

Then, in my infinite wisdom, I walked us to the other side of the museum, thinking they would still have a model fighter plane for people to climb into, with working switches and everything.  Alas, it appears that this vehicle has been moved to the Udvar-Hazy museum.  On behalf of all parents, I say, "What a tragedy."  The half of a DC-10 is the only small-child walk-through remaining.  Trust me when I tell you that Toddler is less than impressed with the triva computer games that appear elsewhere in the museum, and I was not about to try to test his endurance in either the IMAX or the planetarium show.  (I can picture it now.  "Mommy?  MOMMY!  It's DARK IN HERE!  I scared!  How we gonna get out?"  Or, possibly, several loud and repeated renditions of, "Oh, WWWWWOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!!"  Either way, a disruption for sure.)  Flight simulators?  Uh ... no.  Not until he's 18 and does it when I don't know about it.

Of course, like any good Pluto-loving blogger, I took my son through the solar system exhibit.  I don't know if he heard me mutter under my breath about the signs explaining the demotion of Pluto to a "dwarf planet," but perhaps I wasn't being as quiet as I thought.  I mean, we've been sick, and my ears are a little bit clogged.  Anyway, as I wheeled his umbrella stroller up to the display of the relative size of the planets, I sighed a little.  "At least Pluto is still up there."

He sighed too, really loudly.  Then he looked up at the display, and said in that high-pitched, penetrating voice of the very young, "Yeah, Mommy.  It's too bad."

*snort* 

I couldn't help it.  I wondered how far he would play along.  Already, people were starting to turn their heads.  "I agree, Toddler.  Poor Pluto."

"Yep, Mommy.  Poooooorrrrrrr Pludo."  (More heads started to turn.)  "This is just TERRIBLE."

Aaah, that's my boy.

Next we wandered over to an exhibit about weather and satellites.  Boring?  You bet, but I was looking for "less-crowded" so that Toddler wouldn't get on anyone's nerves while we waited to meet up with a friend.  We deposited ourselves in a conspicuously abandoned alcove with lots of seats and a television.  I figured whatever video was about to play above our head had to be something worth blogging about, for good or for bad.  Given how many people were not paying the slightest bit of attention, I was betting on "bad."

Little did I know, though, how bad it could be.  I just don't think I can do justice to the video, so let me summarize a few salient points for you.  The narrator was Willard Scott.  He had a full head of dark hair, and he weighed about 135 pounds soaking wet.  He started off the video talking about something that happened "Only since the 1960s," and toward the end he made a reference to flash cubes -- as in camera flash cubes.

After seeing this video, I had to ask myself why the Smithsonian was spending money to renovate the sign posts relating to Pluto's status when, clearly, here was a video in sore need of renovation itself.  But, as is so often the case, no one bothered to ask me.

Our day trip ended with a similar train ride home, except I had the added pleasure of sitting almost on top of an empty bottle of booze.  It was tucked into the side of the seat, next to the wall, and I decided I didn't really want to touch it with my hands, so I left it there.  Toddler asked if he could have the seat next to the wall, and I said no, because, really, I didn't want him touching the bottle either. (And, well, he would. And break it too, I suspect.)

Finally, I was once again blessing the forces of our nature that make most human adults think children are cute. Toddler kept telling me he wanted to "say 'hi' to the mom".  By that he meant the woman sitting behind us making flirty eyes at him.  I didn't want to turn around and look at her before I answered the question, because I figured that would be pretty rude.  I mean, if she looked ugly, was I going to say no?  I just quietly prayed that whoever she was, she was old enough to appreciate being called a "mom".  Thankfully, she was.  The 20-something in the seat next to her was not, however, when he tried the same stunt on her.  She was not amused.

And then we went home.

The end.

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Stop Me If You Have Heard This Before, But ....

I feel like I'm having a bit of deja' vu these days.  After this post, I suspect maybe you will too.

Darling Husband and I have been playing a rousing game of Find the Funk for the past several days.  Sadly, the Funk seems to be winning, and we are out of ideas.  I have cleaned all the obvious places (and creatures), and I've cleaned the heck out of certain rooms where it seems strongest, but we just can't find the source.  Of course, a sweet Girl Cat who thinks litter boxes are optional, plus a few weeks of steady rain, and the ever-present possibility of mice (alive or dead or even a practical joke), makes the possibilities just endless.  As I am preparing one more clean of the floors (yes, on my knees), I've just thrown open the windows and doors and am hoping that whatever it is dissipates.

In the meantime, all three of us have been stricken with the plague.  We're mostly over it all by now, but we sound like you wouldn't want to sit next to us on the metro, or stand too close ... or anything.  Of course, I made the oh-so-wise decision to have a little outpatient surgery while I was no longer technically "sick" but not exactly "recovered" and I think that set me back a ... few ... days ... or so.  During our virus-adventure, Entropy and Chaos took advantage of my lie-on-the-couch-and-plead-for-energy-between-coughs, and they messed up the house.  Our Chaos Footprint seems to have grown during my convalesence, and I am afraid that if I ever spend more than one week out of circulation again, we might drown in our own filth.  Certainly illness brought out the Manchurian Candidate in all of us, with stuff strewn around and tossed every convenient place because we were too sick to care.

Today was a much better day, though.  Toddler and I went downtown to visit with an old friend and walk around the Air and Space Museum.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that in high school, I actually had great taste in friends, or at least in this friend. (I guess I shouldn't generalize. )  This is one Facebook-caused reunion that I am happy to have experienced.

Of course, being at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, I felt compelled to examine the solar system exhibits to see how they were handling the Pluto situation.  I am sad to report that there are new placards up all over the exhibits explaining that Pluto has been relassified as a dwarf planet, a move that I seriously object to. 

The model of the solar system, happily, still has Pluto shown.  It looks like they aren't taking it down, but other than in the model, the little guy sure has been demoted.  Like a poke of a sore tooth, I couldn't resist moseying over to the part of the exhibit were they used to have the video booth singing, "The Family of the Sun, the family of the Sun!  There are 9 planets in the family of the Sun."  As we could have all guessed, the exhibit is closed for renovation.  *sigh*

On a related note, it seems the human evolution exhibit over in the Museum of Natural History has finally re-opened as the brand new exhibit hall, the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins.  Also, apparently, we can all morph ourselves into ancient humanoids.  There are even downloadable applications if you can't make it all the way down here to try it out yourself.  When I finally get myself down there to check it out, maybe I'll have a blog post about it for you.  (Okay, these last two links don't go to former blogposts.  You can actually check out the real Smithsonian pages there.)

Maybe tomorrow something new will happen.

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The Trash of Artcans

To at least a very small extent, we all have some sort of nesting instinct.  Some of us have a stronger one than others. Some people will decorate everything in a matched and obsessive way, while others see absolutely no problem with two different end tables in a living room, provided they both still work.

No matter where you are on the spectrum, chances are, at one time or another, you found yourself in need of a wastebasket.

Wastebaskets are not cheap, unless you count the cardboard box you found in your garage, or unless you are pack-ratty enough to have taken one from your grandfather's house when you were cleaning it out after he passed away.  (Admitting nothing, here.)  Heck, even the cardboard box probably cost money, for at least whatever came inside it.

If you were to wander to a store, looking for a wastebasket, some retailer could easily attempt to persuade you to purchase a decorative bin for your trash for anywhere from $10 to $110 dollars, depending on whether the matching bathroom excessories come with it, it is made of gen-u-ine faux leather or rhinestones, or has cute froggies painted on it. 

I've been eyeing some wastebaskets for years, including one that periodically shows up in the Levenger catalogue to be used in a home library.  (Need I say more?)  It looks like it is made of the same material as "leather bound books."  Eh, from Levenger, maybe it is.  Anyway, I don't have it, and I never will until a plastic facsimile appears within my price range.  I just can't justify triple digits for trash.  Until then, my library is ... wastebasket-less.  I just can't find one that doesn't look ... well ... trashy ... in my otherwise scholarly room. 

Then, of course, we have those really fun wastbaskets for kids rooms, with cartoons and all the bright colors.  (I mean, how neat, right?  We buy them in part because we wish we had them when we were little.)

Finally, and possibly the cutest of all, we have those adorable little wastebaskets for the rooms of babies and toddlers.  Little lambs or lions or sheep, with lids and swinging tops shaped like heads for the trash to pass through....

And there you have it.  You have just been lulled into it too.  For at least one little moment there, you actually bought into the idea that a wastebasket in a baby or toddler's room should be cute and animal-ly, and have adorable moving parts.  You have just agreed that a bin for trash in the room of a small child should look irresistably like a toy.

What on Earth we were all thinking?  Don't we know what goes IN those trash bins?  Why in heaven's name would anyone in this germ-hysteria country ever make a trashcan so much fun to play with?  We have collectively lost our ever-loving minds is what we have done.  We don't want it to look like what it is (a nasty receptacle for things we don't want to have to touch anymore), so we make it look pleasant.  Pleasant.  In a room where children reach to grab all that is bright, colorful, or animal-looking.

Man.  Aren't we bright?

The sad thing is, none of this even occurred to me until the first day I set my kid down on the floor of his own room and watched him eye that trashcan.

Yep.  I fell for it too.  Darn cuteness.

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I Just Can't Get Over This Pluto Thing

Off and on over the past few months, we have been working on decorating the room that will eventually become Toddler's.  At least, it will become Toddler's when he no longer has the compulsive need to press his face into the bedrails so hard that it leaves marks for hours, and all of Mommy, Daddy, and Toddler are ready to move him further down the hall without tears (by any of us).

One of the "decorations" that came with Toddler's new bed comforter/curtain set is a picture of the solar system for the lucky child to color and hang on his wall.

The only problem is that this picture has only eight planets -- no Pluto.  I still can't get over how wrong this is.  I mean, yes, maybe technically Pluto was misclassified early on, and if we had to do it all over again knowing what we know now, we would have called Pluto a "dwarf planet" all along.  But why do we have to do it all over again?  Why can't Pluto just be special?  By itself, the discovery of Pluto is a mathematical achievement reflecting mankind's growing understanding of the space we occupy in the universe.  The planet is not observable with the naked eye, and yet, with math, we discovered it because of the pull it has on the gravity of the other bodies in the solar system.  None of the other "kuiper belt objects" had enough "pull" to produce that effect, so doesn't that make Pluto an extra-special kuiper belt object deserving of a little bit of respect from us?  Doesn't its discover make it ... say ... a little more like Neptune, which was discovered in the same way?

I mean, this is harder than getting used to the idea that we weren't supposed to call Halley's Comet "Haylies" anymore, but instead we were to call it "Hallies (rhymes with Bally's)".  (I'm really giving away my age here, aren't I?) 

Besides, if we demote Pluto, do we then have to name all of the kuiper belt objects, or at least all of the estimated 200 of them that will likely be dwarf planets?  What happens if all the other kuiper belt objects make fun of Pluto because it actually has a name? I guess Pluto could hang out with the other dwarf planets recognized by the International Astronomical Union (Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris), but shouldn't we at least be sensitive to the issue and aware that we might be setting Pluto up for some bullying?  I mean, with Jupiter as your big brother, who will touch you?  Take that away, and it just might be open season on Pluto.  You don't know.  If there is an increase in asteroid attacks on Pluto, just don't come crying to me for help.  I warned you.

If we de-planetize it, will Congess refuse to fund NASA's proposed missions to Pluto?  (Eh, probably.  They've managed to un-fund everything else, why not this?)  In that case, don't we feel like we are kicking some poor hunk of rock out of not only a home, but a job, too?  How far will the madness go?

What does Mickey Mouse's dog think of all this?

The whole problem stems from the idea that we have no universal definition of a "planet".  I'm not scientist enough to be able to say what that standard should be, but whatever it is, we should make an exception to be sure Pluto gets to stay.  I firmly believe that no matter what, Pluto's time as a planet should not be the Amarna period of cosmology.  We should not be able to just erase it from a few King's Lists and  "George Orwell" it out of existence and pretend it never happened.  Let's just own up to it for what it is -- a hunk of rock the citizens of Earth feel a lot of attachment to, even if it doesn't "technically" qualify for it's title.  After all, plenty of people still count Europe as its own continent, even though it is techincally attached to Asia.  Isn't that pretty much the same concept?

A few years ago I finally tossed out a poster from the Smithsonian showing all the planets in a pretty neat 3-D arrangement. A good friend of mine bought it and mailed it to me after I left my copy in a cab, along with all my business receipts and my raincoat.  *sigh*  The poster was looking a little beat up in those last few years, and I decided it was time for a change.  I honestly don't know why it was looking beat up, as I had only had it in my last two dorm rooms at law school and moved it seven times by the time we got it here.  It should have been fine, right?  Careless, I tell ya.  Careless.  Anyway, I tossed it, thinking I could just run down to the Smithsonian myself these days and pick up a new one if I needed it.  Well, if I had only known that the whole composition of the solar system was changing around me, I would never have let the original go!  Think of what it won't be worth in a few dozen years!

Of course, no one listens to me.  Just you wait, though.  They'll find microbial life under the ice on Pluto one day, and then everyone will wish Pluto were still a planet.  Won't they all be chagrined then.  In the meantime, I'll bet someone starts a campaign to kick Uranus out of the solar system because it orbits sideways.

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Celebrating the Onset of the Madness

One year ago tomorrow, this blog was born. Yes.  That's right.  On May 29, 2009, I sat down in front of the computer and wrote a post called, "Erma Bombeck is My Hero."  Then, according to the time stamp, I wrote two other blog posts that same day.

I assure you, I did not.  (I only wrote one other one.)  I had not yet understood the miracle and mystery of how to make post dates and times work.  For that matter, I also failed to realize that my blog thought it was in a different time zone altogether, so the times it recorded usually equated to times when I was asleep.

For the record, let me interrupt myself right now to clear up one little thing.  I do not get up very early in the morning to get a post published for you by 7 AM.  If you have been reading for awhile, you know that I don't do mornings with dignity and grace, and while I might be outrageously funny to watch in the mornings, I don't have the coordination to string together a sentence, much less type it, for at least an hour.  As soon as I figured out the magic of "scheduling" a post so that I could write it one day and it would publish itself some other day while I was taking a shower or drinking coffee, or hiding from Toddler, well, life got good. 

Before I figured that little trick out?  Well ... what can I say?  It was a rough beginning.  In fact, I even attempted to complain about the little inequities of post times in my third post, "Computers Lie and Cheat."  Unfortunately for me, I failed to realize that the things I was complaining about would no longer be visible after a day or so, and no one would understand what I was talking about anyway.  Let's just say, when someone asks me to send over a post to reprint on their website ... Computers Lie and Cheat is never on the list.  Perhaps I really should remove it from the rolls, but honestly, I think it's a whole lot more fun to just poke fun at myself, don't you?  I mean, the post has its redeeming moments ... or maybe just one.  Anyway, it's history, and it reminds me that despite such brilliant pearls of non-wisdom and barely-funny, I'm still here, and the number of "you" that are actually claiming to read this blog has grown quite a bit.  At first I was just talking to a cousin, my mother, and a woman I met online who became my Follower before I even knew what a Follower was (and before I'd even published a post, I should add).  No, she didn't have that much faith in me.  She's just that nice of a person.

And now, there are people reading this blog I've never met, online or otherwise.

That's just cool.

I poked fun at myself and you laughed.  You even told your friends.

Some of you might not think that reaction is enough to celebrate.  If you were in my shoes, you might feel compelled to ask whether the readers were laughing "at" you or "with" you.  I make no such distinction.  I think that distinction is a lot like saying, "No offense."  Nothing changes, you just use different words to make yourself feel better.  I learned this from my family when I was very young.  I would do something stupid, or get confused and decide I wanted to contribute to the conversation anyway, and my whole family would laugh.  Of course, if I was trying to be serious and not make anyone laugh, I'd get all hurt and say, "Don't laugh at me!"  Inevitably, someone would say, "Oh, honey.  We aren't laughing at you.  We are laughing with you." 

I had a hard time figuring that one out because I was seldom laughing when they said it.  Once I even whined, "But I'm not laughing!"  Everyone only laughed harder.

Now, in hindsight, I admit the laughter was probably deserved, and I freely admit that my family had no malicious intent with their laughter (which is probably what they meant by laughing "with" me).  While I still have a low threshhold for looking foolish, I must also admit that the best weapon against people laughing at you is to first step up and laugh at yourself.  Without a doubt, I deserve it.

So, laugh with me, laugh at me.  It's your choice.  At least this time I'm laughing too.

Happy Blogaversary.

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Humor in Unlikely Places

Some of you know ... well ... all of you know, if you have read my bio, but some of you know because you have been reading my stuff (here and elsewhere) for a long time, that Toddler was born with medical challenges.  Some of those moments in his very early life were among the scariest I have ever lived through or ever hope to live through.  Inevitably, though, my family and I found the humor in what we had to endure. 

As you already know, if you have been paying attention, I process much of the major events in my life through humor.  For example, I advise you to not sit next to me in solemn occasions, and I explain some of that here.  I share some lovely stories about trying to avoid inappropriate bursts of the giggles in my post about my family here.

Given this history, no one who knew me was surprised when we found the levity in the dark days and nights of watching my son breathe and coughing up snot balls from his trach.  While many might find the humor "dark," we found it natural, and we called it survival.

Howie Mandel describes the "sense of humor" in the beginning of Chapter 3 of his book Here's the Deal: Don't Touch Me: 

The actual sense of humor is the ability to sense humor in places where it might not be obvious.  I am not talking about the ability to laugh at jokes or even tell jokes.  This sense is the ability to find the joke.  Some people can find a seed of humor in the darkest, most humiliating moments.  I know personally that these moments have made for some of the best stories and material in my act, and judging from the audience's response, I was right.

I have come to believe that humor, more so than the other senses, actually defines who we are.  I want to qualify that by saying that the lack of a sense of humor doesn't make you a worse or better person.... I just believe that a sense of humor is an identifying factor of who we really are deep inside.

I think there is a lot of truth to what Howie Mandel is saying here.  Where others may think it amazing or inappropriate to find a joke or a laugh when our children's very health and life might be at stake, I find it only natural, as without the humor to hold us together in the dark times, we will never be easy in the light times.  For me, a sense of humor is a survival trait.

I have never been more keenly aware of this observation then when I read the blog of one of my dear friends, Janis, who writes about her life with a medically fragile child in her blog Sneak Peek.  In fact, in one of her medically-related posts, she achieved the rare feat of making me actually laugh out loud.  This post is an old one, but I can't forget it, and I want to share it with you as an example of humor in unlikely, but very necessary, places.  So, without further blather from me, I give you another shout out:

Deaf Awareness & The Pointy Nurse

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Things it Took Me Too Long to Learn

From time to time, I tell you about "things I have learned" in various places and doing various things (such as our vacation to Lake Tahoe, or from living with an almost-3 year old). 

Of course, the more embarrasing things to write about are the things where I didn't learn things as fast as maybe I should have and ended up feeling a bit like a dolt when I finally figured it out.

Take Erma Bombeck's book, Motherhood, the Second Oldest Profession, for example.  I first read it when I was a young girl, and I could not figure out what the heck the "oldest profession" was supposed to be.  I remember thinking, "well, technically, you become a dad the same time you become a mom ... so ....????"  Of course, the years passed, and I didn't think about it much.  Then one day, I came across the book again, when I was probably in my early 20's, and suddenly, "OOOHHHHH!!!!!! Riiiiighht.  The second oldest profession.  Yes.  Got it now ."

I mean, I wouldn't exactly call myself naive.  Squeaky clean?  You bet.  No one squeaked better than I did.  I still suffer a lot from the Goody-Two-Shoes complex.  But naive?  Not so much.  I was completely aware of how much my classmates were boozing it up (or dealing drugs), I just didn't participate or want to.  Apparently I even fooled a lot of them into thinking I was too clueless to even realize.

My mother gave me Flowers in the Attic to read before I was 12.  (I still don't know why she did that.)  She tried to keep kept me from a lot of things (like the sequels to Clan of the Cave Bear, because of their blatant pornography randomly inserted into various chapters), but Flowers in the Attic was just fine, apparently.

I was just a little slow on the double entendre, I guess.  I don't know.  I have no excuse why it took me so embarrasingly long to get the joke.

Then there was the whole water conservation movement building steam when I was young.  The "in thing" to do to help the conserve water was to put a brick in your toilet to artificially increase the volume.  Every so often people would recommend this as part of the "tips to save the planet" we would hear in school, on TV, etc.  I just couldn't figure this one out, though.  I understood turning off the faucet while brushing teeth, as annoying as I found that at the time, but I didn't get this whole brick thing.

See, I thought they meant put the brick in the bowl of the toilet, and I couldn't figure out how that would help anything.  Besides ... wouldn't it get really messy ... and more than a little bit gross? 

I don't even know how old I was before I finally understood that the brick didn't go in the bowl. 

Of course, like a lot of little kids, I didn't understand the connection between the food on my plate and the starving kids in China (or wherever).  To be fair, I need to tell you that my mother never said anything to me about cleaning my plate.  She would be very mad at me if I let you think that.  She never told me to clean my plate.  I do remember reading a Dennis the Menace cartoon (or maybe it was Family Circus) where the mom told the child to clean his plate because there were starving kids in Africa (or somewhere).  The child answers, "Can't we just send them this stuff?" 

I didn't get the joke.  To me it was a serious question -- if there were starving kids in Africa, what did the food on my plate have to do with it?  Why would my eating more help starving kids?  Of course, I knew we couldn't actually mail my dinner to them because it would go bad, but how would my eating it help them?

Now, I finally do understand that there is more than one answer to this question.  First, we should be grateful for what we have, and second we should not take more than we need so that there will be enough for everyone.  Still, I think this logic is awful tangential when likened to the food on my plate.  I guess at my age, I still don't understand that very well.

So ... I think it should be your turn now.  What puzzle took you way (embarrasingly) too long to figure out?  Post your answer in the comments below.  Don't make me call you out individually, 'cause I will. ;-)

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Twenty Years of Madness

I have had a mystery on my hands for about 20 years, and I need help to stop the madness.  Really.  Please.  Help.

About 25 years ago, I read a book, and I need to find it again.  I don't know the name, and I don't know the author.  I have tried every Amazon and Google search I can possibly think to do, and I have come up dry.  Only I would make such an issue of this, but this missing book has been driving me nearly mad since about 1990 and someone has simply GOT to help me find it or I will spend the next 20 years driving myself even crazier than before trying to figure this out.

Here is the story.  For the love of all decency, please post below if you can help me.  Circulate this blog post if you can't help me in the hopes of finding someone who can.  I am begging you.  Have pity.

So, I was in 6th grade (I think), when I read this book.  Basically, back in those days, our teacher would pick a book, read a few chapters to us, and then put the book away for good.  The goal, I think, was that if we liked the story, we should go get the book ourselves, read it for ourselves, and see what happened.  I imagine this was one of those "encourage kids to read" kind of movements.  Eh, whatever.  I read anything I could get my hands on and was always looking for more.  I am -- I mean was--  kind of nuts that way.

Anyway, this boy in our class named Dave (real name, by the way), bought the book and read it.  He said it was FABULOUS.  He was kind enough to loan it to me, and I read it too.  I, too, LOVED IT.  I read it, then read it again, then kept it so long he had to ask me to give it back.  I didn't mean to be rude, but I was having such a good time that I was struggling to part with it.  Insofar as I can recall, I have only ever borrowed something and had trouble returning it because I was enjoying it so much twice in my life.  The other was a cassette tape of Phil Collins in Genesis that I borrowed from my best friend in High School.  My favorite song was Something Happened on the Way to Heaven, and I listened to it in the car about 10 times a day.  He, too, had to eventually ask me to give it back.  Normally, I was much more polite with other people's things.  Honest!  I was!

About a year or so later, I was in a bookstore with my Aunt, showing her a copy of the book, because I was still coveting it.  To my surprise, I found about half a dozen SEQUELS!  HOLY COW!

Then ... I don't know what happened.  I didn't buy the book.  I didn't get the sequels.  I guess I thought there would be time, and I'm sure I didn't have the money.  I obviously failed to add them to my Christmas List, and I wonder if even then I was struggling to remember the name.  I certainly didn't think there would come a day when the books might *gasp* go out of print so that I couldn't just figure it out by going to the store.

And yet, here I am, 20 years later, wishing I had that book.  I even ran into that guy Dave on email awhile back and quizzed him about it.  Sadly, he neither remembers the book, the story, or my borrowing it.  He is sympathetic, though.  He told me if he still had the book and knew what it was, he would mail it to me immediately.  Unfortunately, he doesn't even know what I'm talking about, and only the politeness of grown ups keeps him from calling me, "a nutso he used to know."

Here is all I can remember about the story.  I hope someone, somewhere, has a clue for me:

The "villain"of the story is some dark spirit that kidnaps young women and takes them away to his castle.  I can't remember if we know in the beginning that he is bad.  I seem to think not, but I can't be sure.  I also seem to think that rather than "kidnapping" these women, he is marrying them, or so their families think.  Again, I can't be sure.  At the beginning of the story, the heroine's sister is taken away.  Or maybe it was her best friend.  Anyway, for some reason or other, the heroine goes with her sister/friend to the castle, as a servant, I think.  I seem to remember a subplot that she thought she was terribly ugly, or something.

Over the course of the story, we learn that the girls/wives waste away in the castle and become wraiths of some sort.  Eventually, the villain realizes that the heroine is a pretty girl, too, and he courts her as well, while her sister is (or has?) faded away.

I remember one scene where the heroine is lying on a bed, very sad, and all the former wives/wraiths come to her.  They tell her they could come to her because her heart was weaving a string of despair, and despair was a strong enough emotion for them to follow back from wherever they were.  Unlike happiness or sadness or whatever other emotions they talked about, despair weaves a strong enough thread that it doesn't break when they try to follow it to the source.  (Eh, something like that.)

I don't remember what happens next, but I do know that was the turning point of the novel.

That's it.  That is all I have to go on.

Is this ringing a bell for anyone?  Anyone??  ANYONE???

Only you can stop 20 more years of madness.  Help me solve this mystery?  Please?  (She asked pitifully.)

Edited to add:  Less than three hours after tweeting a link to this blog, someone had an answer.  Thanks to @rachelintheOC, we now know that this book is DarkAngel by Merideth Ann Pierce.  For achieving this miracle, she has demurred any offers of thanks and instead asked that I refer to her as "Queen." Given how little she had to go on in finding this book, I think I can manage "Queen Rachel" ... for today.  You can check out her blog here.  Have a look. I dare you not to love it.  

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The Hazards of Living in the "Not-Country"

In my last post, I shared with you my first, and for nearly a decade after that my only, telephone call to the police.  (Notice that I carefully did not say, "encounter" with the police.)

I really did think that it was quite something to say that my one and only telephone call to the police station involved a runaway cow.  I just wasn't sure whether that "something" was a good thing or a bad thing.  Certainly, it was distinctive.

Little did I know that my second ever telephone call to the police (and, so far, the last one I have ever had) would be even more unique, involving a racoon and a mayonnaise jar.

Yes.  A racoon, a mayonnaise jar, a feral cat trap, and a laughing dispatcher.

Here is what happened.  Basically, Darling Husband and I were running a shelter for feral cats.  Well, no, we weren't, but the cats seemed to think we were.  We had adopted two feral cats to live in our backyard and help us control the rodent population.  At first, they (the cats, not the rodents) were contained in a very large pen -- I think it may even have been bigger than Darling Husband's single dorm room at Penn State.  Then, after enough time went by, we released them into the backyard and left the pen there with the door open.  (They returned every night to sleep and use the litter for awhile before we took the pen away.  Yes, we cleaned litter for outdoor feral cats.  We wanted them to like us.)

Literally hours after we first let the two orange mousers out of their pen, we were watching them cavort around the yard in the fading sunlight.  As the moon rose, we counted one, two, three, four ... five??? sets of eyes in the backyard and the neighboring undeveloped land.  Our new friends had friends ... and lots of them.  As it turned out, there were a lot of feral cats living nearby, probably because there was an old woman with a lot of cats who used to live somewhere around here.  No one knows what happened to the cats after she passed away, but the neighbors all seemed to think her family just opened up the house door and let them all go.  With all the eyes we kept seeing in the backyard, I was beginning to think so too.

With the help of Alley Cat Allies, the wonderful organization that gave us Princess and Charlie, our two feral cats, we gradually began trapping, neutering, and returning those cats to the wild.  Surprisingly, none of them were totally wild, although I wouldn't have invited most of them over for dinner.  Those that were friendly enough (although clearly abandoned) went on to live in new homes with people thrilled to take care of them in all the domestic glory they could stand.  One of them went on to become the now-famous Houdini that wormed his way onto our queen-sized bed -- in the middle, thank you very much.

So ... as the years passed by, we accumulated one or two ... sets ... of traps to catch and transport feral cats to vets who will treat them. 

One day, while I was trying to use the internet to identify the strange long-legged, odd looking animal that ran through my backyard (it was a young coyote), not too long before the 12-point buck chased my husband out of the yard, our family of racoons came to try to steal the cat food from the back stoop. 

Did I mention that we live just outside the beltway in metropolitan DC?  No, I don't mean in the West Virginia or Gettysburg commuting corridors, either.  I mean, I could be downtown in 15 minutes.  I know, with all this wildlife, you just knew I lived in a big city.

Anyway, here comes the racoon family, and one of them is looking mighty strange.  He's following his family members, and wobbling and weaving a little ... because he has a mayonnaise jar stuck on his head.  Yes, he looks like a jar head -- literally.

As annoying as racoons are (and expensive, with all the cat food they eat), we were too much of softies to let this situation go.  So, Darling Husband got out the cat trap and set it for the racoon, baiting it with cat food.  The poor thing kept creeping in, trying to figure out how he could eat that food through the jar on his head.  For the life of me, I can't figure out how he was breathing, much less smelling anything.  He'd move forward, hit his jar head on something, and back away confused.  Anyway, Darling Husband got him trapped fairly quickly while I, once again, had the pleasure of calling the police to report an animal issue.

Fortunately for me, the county I live in now has an animal control division that they can send, but I still needed to talk to the dispatcher.  The conversation went something like this:

"I need some help with a racoon in my backyard."
"What's wrong with the racoon?"
"He has a mayonnaise jar stuck on his head."
"...  I'm sorry, he has a what?"
"A mayonnaise jar.  On his head."
"A mayonnaise jar?"
"Yes.  On his head."
"It's stuck there?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's about the strangest thing I've ever heard.  I'll call the animal control officer.  Do you want us to remove the animal?"
"I want to get the jar off its head before it suffocates or starves in my backyard."
"Okay."

According to the animal control officer when he finally arrived at our house, the dispatcher could hardly stop giggling when she radioed the call.  He, of course, was mildly amused at the diversion, but he wasn't sure it was going to live up to the yogurt cup that got stuck on a possum once....

Now, the animal control officer was a nice enough guy, but he was a little bit ... of ... a goofball, if you haven't already figured that out.  He didn't understand what we were trying to tell him when we said we had the racoon confined to an animal rescue trap.  He took a big hook-loop thing like the kind they use on Animal Cops or whatever that Animal Planet show is, and he tried to open the hatch to the trap so he could hook the racoon.  In the process, he managed to let the racoon go, and off into the woods it ran.  I don't know why he couldn't just take the trap we gave him, take the 'coon to some vet, shoot him full of drugs, and pry that jar off.  I'm figuring if the 'coon couldn't get it off himself, I don't know how one guy could do it with a control collar around the 'coon's neck.  But hey, I'm not the animal control expert.

And what was the officer's advice?  "He'll be back.  If so, give me a call.  If not, it probably means he broke the jar and got it off somehow."

Yea.  Sure.

To be a bit more fair to the officer, he did apologize for letting the 'coon go, and he blamed it on his unfamiliarity with the trap, thinking the door would only open a little bit.  He thought the trap was a neat idea, and he thanked us for trying it.  But still .... confined animal in small cage versus animal dangling from metal pole.  How would you prefer to deal with it? #justsayin'

Anyway, we never saw the 'coon again, so either he starved in the woods or he did manage to get the jar off.  I guess we'll never know.  Either way, I have now gone down in the police log books (again) as calling to report some pretty crazy animal antics.

Yep.  That's how my life rolls.

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The Hazards of Life in the Country

I grew up in a small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  No, I did not grow up on a farm.  We lived in an ordinary suburb in a house that was only as old as I was.  I did, however, live across the way from a horse farm, and the vacant lot next door was fertilzed by the leavin's from that there horse farm, if you smell what I mean.

Down the end of our street, the housing development stopped rather abruptly, leading out into the great wide open farmland that you can see on all the postcards.  We bought most of our fresh vegetables from the Plain farm down that street.  Beyond them was ... not much -- a lot of winding, twisty roads with very few street signs.  Like much of the "back roads" of the County, those road signs were turned 90 degrees or removed by the local kids "for fun." 

Of course, these days were before the GPS era, and the word to the wise was, "Don't go driving on those roads unless you know where you are going."  A body could get lost for hours trying to find their way back to a main road ... or a house that believed in using electricity.  And a bathroom?  Forget it. 

If you knew where you were going, however, precisely, and without needing to see road signs, those so-called "back roads" could save you a lot of time, especially in the summer when the tourists clogged all the main roads gawking at the horses and buggies.  Most of the time you would easily be the only car on the road, and if not the only, then one of a very few, especially on the unmarked roads.  A hawk's eye out for people walking, horses and buggies, and bicycles was a very good idea.  Occasionally, a few other moving beasts were back there, too.

I worked at a restaurant at the other end of town, so I knew half a dozen ways to get back home.  Many of them were so rural that my mother made me promise to go the same way every night if I was coming home after 10 PM so she'd know which way to come looking for me if I never came home.  One night, on my way home from a late shift at work, I met one of these "beasts" of the back road.

I was driving down this windy, dark road that had fences on either side to keep the local livestock contained.  The fence line was several feet back from the road, and parts of it (at least) were made of wire.  As I traveled, I thought I saw a dog in the distance, near the fence.  As I got closer, I thought, "man that is a big dog."  As I got even closer, the animal starting running, first towards my car.  At that point, I realized that this was no dog, and if it was, it was the biggest dog ever made by man or spirit in this universe.  Just as I thought it was about to plow into the side of my car, it turned right and started running along side of me.  It was drag racing me!  I was in a rural drag race with a ... a what? 

A cow.  Possibly a bull.  It was too dark to see.  It was bovine, and it was big, and I was country girl enough to know two things:  (1) If it hits me, it will win.  It is stronger and heavier than my car.  (2)  If it hits me, I will lose, because that cow is almost certainly worth more than this car.  I swerved my car into the other "lane". (I say that in quotes because most city folk wouldn't consider that a two lane road, although much of Scotland would call it a three-lane road.)  The cow kept running, drag-race style.  If it got in front of me, one of us was in big trouble, probably me.  I don't know if my auto-insurance covered cattle loss, or "death by stampeding cattle," for that matter.

Thankfully, it veered right when I veered left, and I had the chance to speed on without it, leaving it galloping alongside the road. 

After I caught my breath, I got to thinking about the next poor vehicle coming down that road.  What if they weren't so lucky?  Think of all that beef and moo juice that would go to waste!  Think of all the damage to that car!  What if they closed my little shortcut and all my restaurant buddies got stuck?  (I was a very conscientious college-aged kid, you know.)

So, like any super-squeaky clean kid, I drove the rest of the way home and called the police.

Yes, I called the police.  My name went on record in the local police station as reporting a ... a ... runaway cow.

The call went something like this:

"Hello, East Lampeter Township police, how can I help you?"

"Hi.  I'm calling to report a loose cow on ____ road?"

"A what?"

"A loose cow.  It got past the fence line, and it's on the road.  It almost ran into me when I drove past."

"Which part of the road were you on?  That road cuts across the township line."

"I was on the part between Route 30 and Old Philadelphia Pike."

"Uh.  Shoot.  That's us.  Are you sure it was a cow?"

"Well, it was big, and heavy -- too fat to be a horse, and to big to be a dog."

"Did you see any markings?"

"Big and brown.  That's it."

(They had a few more questions to try to be sure I wasn't some prank caller -- like, what were you doing on that road this time of night? -- , and they made me give my name and phone number for good measure.)

The Operator turns away from the phone and talks to someone beside her, "Hey. We got another loose cow tonight.  I'm getting the directions now. One of yous is gonna have to go wrangle it in and find the owner."

Yep. That's where I grew up.  They totally believe the possibility of a drag racing cow.  I think their only concern was whether some band of drunk teenagers was off chasing the cows.

Yee haw.

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The Good and the Bad about Blog Awards -- The Versatile Blogger Award

Blog Awards are great, and blog awards are terrible. 

They are great because when someone sends me an award, I (momentarily) feel thrilled.  Oh, wow, someone reads my blog.  This is great!  They think I am worthy of receiving these pretty little electronic pixels. ('Cause we humor bloggers really thrive on the attention, ya know?) 

Another reason that Blog Awards are great is that they give me something to write about other than my usual stuff.  Of course, Blog Awards often come with a lot of rules, but as far as I'm concerned, rules about what I am supposed to write about are great because then the topic is not my fault. 

Now, however, we get to the "bad" stuff about Blog Awards.  First of all, most of the rules are not about what to write -- they involve finding some huge number of other "worthy" bloggers to whom we will grant the award.  The higher the number, the worse I feel.  I read lots of blogs, for sure, but I honestly don't sit around all day reading blogs.  (I know you thought I did.)  Plus, lots of the blogs I read are by people who don't know me and wouldn't respond to any award I might choose to give them.  (Or, they are by some super busy moms who might flip off the deep end if I try to lay one more hair of work on their plate.)

Of course, the higher the number of recipients from each gifter, the closer we are to a ponzi scheme, I think, and the more devalued I feel.  Did they give me the award because they love me, or because they know me and desperately needed one more name?  Ya gotta wonder ... ya know?

But, back to basking in the glory.  I am the recipient of this:



Isn't it so pretty and green?  And the name "versatile blogger" -- how flattering! (I'm going with flattering.  Don't spoil it for me.)

The rules for this award are as follows: 


1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

I will start by saying, "THANK YOU" in big letters to Dazee Dreamer for sending this on to me.  The rules do not specifically say no "tag backs," but as part of my thanking procedures, I will also refrain from sending the award back to you.

So, next, I will share 7 things about myself.  I will also refrain from merely copying my post A Few Random Things to Know About Me (although, again, I see nothing in the rules that would prohibit this approach).

Here goes:

- I like the color green.  You might have inferred that from my remark above about the award being "pretty and green," but I have repeated it in case you weren't paying attention.

- I'm actually starting to appreciate the show Wizards of Waverly Place, and the movie wasn't half bad.  Of course, I watched it while out of town at a funeral, so possibly my standards weren't very high that day.

- I love Disney, but I'm mad at them for cancelling Bunnytown, and I think Special Agent Oso is the world's dumbest bear.  He even makes Pooh look smart.  (Sorry, Pooh.  You are loveable, but no one ever said, "smart" in reference to you.)

- Toddler's first ever amusement park ride was at Epcot, in Norway.  Yes, I took my son on a semi-scary boat ride.  Why?  Darling Husband and I might have ... possibly ... if you want to consider it that ... taste-tested a few too many wines at the Food and Wine Festival when we made that choice.  The good news is that Toddler loved it.

- I am an excellent cook when forced to be.  In general, I really hate cooking.  This fact has bothered my oldest sister for many years now.

- I never wanted three cats.  Nope.  Never.  Houdini didn't give a crap what I wanted.

- I never really thought I would be a stay at home mom, or a blogger, but look at me now.

Now, here is the hard part.  How do I find 15 other bloggers to give this award to?  Of course, I know plenty of worthy recipients.  (I'm not that unpopular, thank you very much!)  Yet, I can't give an award to the same 15 people all the time.  First of all, most of them haven't posted their entries on my last award, and second, they might start blocking my emails and tweets and stop speaking to me.

So ... here goes.  I'm fairly sure none of these people will stop speaking to me or send me (too much) hate mail.  Some of them have never even heard of me, so if they get mad ... eh.  And one of them, at least, has a whole heck of a lot more to bother to get mad at me about over the last 20 years than this:

@kailexmummy (Turnabout is fair play, my dear.)  Allaboutus and Suchlike

@BustedKate from Busted Plumbing because you crack me up about something that I never knew I could laugh about. I guess that's only fair because until now, you probably didn't even know I existed.

@kadiera for Our Little Acorn

Adrian for his fledging blog Now Once, because the award is green, and he used to always show up wherever we were going wearing this green sweathshirt....

@jterzieff from her blog JulietteTerzieff.com because she was so darn thrilled the last time I tagged her (honest, no sarcasm intended!) that I can't help doing it again

And ... that's it.  It ain't 15, but seriously, this is the third "tag" I've had to do in a short period of time.  I reserve the right to send this out to future bloggers at a later time, just as I did with my Beautiful Blogger award.  It's always good to have something in the backburner for the future, right?

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Guaranteed Weight Loss and Fitness Tips

As hard as it may be to believe when you look at me, I actually have a fairly fool proof way to lose weight and increase exercise.  My system really will work, if you simply follow the rules.  In fact, the program is very, very simple.  The only trick is making yourself actually do it.  Can you?  There are two methods.  One involves the stay at home (or weekend) parent.  The other involves similar rules for the workplace, but today we are talking about the home-based version.

Here are the rules:

1.  Small children are required.  If you don't have any, borrow some.  Lots of parents will gladly give you their children for as long as you need them.  Now, if you choose the, "conceive, carry and give birth from your own body" method of having children, of course, you will have some extra weight to deal with before you can begin losing the weight, but the more children you have, the more effective the weight loss rules become.

2.  You may only eat when you are sitting down, alone, in your own chair, without any children sitting in your lap.  If you can't satisfy all of these requirements, you need to eat later.

3.  The car does not count as sitting down.  A table is required.

4.  You must use a plate, a napkin, and utensils.  Actually, you don't have to "use" them, but you have to take the time to get them out and set up a real place setting.  If you don't have time, or if small children take them away before you sit down, you need to eat later, when you can satisfy these conditions.

5.  You must not eat anything until your entire meal, drink included, is on the table.  Again, if you cannot satisfy all these conditions due to complications from your family, you must wait until you can.

6.  You must close your eyes and count to ten.  If no child screams or speaks to you during this time, you may proceed.

7.  You may not start eating unless you honestly believe you will have time to eat an entire meal without interruption. 

8.  If you are interrupted by small children, other messes, the telephone, the doorbell, Famville, or Twitter, you must stop eating until the interruption is over.  If your meal gets cold, you may reheat it.

9.  If your child wants fast food, you may go, but the same rules apply.  If a fast food restaurant is within walking distance, you have the added obligation of having to walk there, with your children, and any strollers they may require.  You may only order from the dollar menu, and you must have the same thing each time you go.  Trust me, you will tire of this before they do.

10.  For aerobic exercise, tell your child s/he may not go into a specific room, then play goalie to keep them out of it. 

11.  For yoga and stretching exercises, tell your child you will be scrubbing a floor on your hands and knees or vacuuming a carpet with a hand-vac.  Then attempt to do so while climbing over, around, under, and past your child.  The goal is to not actually get anything clean, but to try to get around your child while you are both on the floor. 

12.  For weight lifting, periodically tell your child he needs to go upstairs to take a nap, take a bath, clean his room, or something else he does not wish to do.  Proceed to carry him there.  When he runs back downstairs, follow him and repeat.  When you get truly advanced at this exercise, tell the child and the family pet the same thing, then proceed to carry them both.  You may receive the added aerobic benefit of having to chase the pet/children, and the mental exercise of having to figure out where they are hiding.

By following these simple rules, you will surely lose weight.  You will only be able to eat about 3 bites per meal, and by the time the children are in bed, you will pass out from hunger and fatigue. 

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We All Survived The Garage Sale ... Even the Baby

Few things in our family are more fraught with peril than a family that garage-sales together. 

First of all, the "family" consists of three under three.  While the indeterminate number of lumps of teenage hormones are helpful or not, agressive, or not, as they see fit, from year to year, at least they know how to "sound off," are not likely to wander into traffic, and will (mostly) respond when you yell their names.  The under three crowd scores very low in all of these crucial skills.  

Then, on top of our family composition being less-than-ideal for haggling and large gatherings of people, we must consider the unique challenges of the so-called "garage sale."  Let's dispense with the stupid jokes early.  No garages were sold, nor were any yards.  Every year we try, and every year we fail to sell those things.  Perhaps the problem is that we do not hold the "garage sale" or "yard sale" in either the garage or the yard.  We hold it in the driveway so no one steals the non-sale items or ruins the grass.  We have dogs and small children to ruin the grass, so we don't need the help of potential customers.

Okay, now that we have that out of our systems, let's get back to the story.

Technically, the town had multiple "neighborhood" yard sales going on, with folks setting up in their own yards/driveways/garages at the times designated by their neighborhood.  The neighborhood where my mother lives was supposed to start at 8 AM.  The neighborhood where my sister lives was supposed to start at 7 AM.  Of course, we all knew that the early bird shoppers would be prowling the streets by 6:30 AM at the very latest.  One year someone in the neighborhood was organized enough to publish a list of who was selling what sorts of things, and I'll be darned if someone wasn't knocking on our garage door before 7 in the hopes of picking up something we'd advertised. 

This year, we were more prepared than usual.  We actually had a critical mass of "sale crap" unboxed and on tables before midnight, just waiting to be pulled out and sold in the morning.  Now, none of it had a sale price on it, but hey, at least it was out.  The only decision left to be made was ... who had to get up and go deal with the insane buyers at the sale, and who had to stay home long enough to herd the mass of children out of the house and over to the sale.  Neither job had anyone jumping up for volunteers.

I ended up being one of the ones on the "herd the children" brigade.  As it turns out, both jobs began at 5:30 AM, when two of the four under-threes tried to get up.  Someone promptly sent them back to bed where they dozed for awhile and then an hour later got up and began "whispering" to each other.  After a few moments of this "whispering" I sent them downstairs to bother the television set instead of the other kids.

By about 8:30, I think (who was looking at the clock?) I arrived at the sale in a borrowed minivan carrying an army of children.  Actually, come to think of it, the word, "circus" would fit better.  Yes.  We were a travelling circus.  By 8:45, give or take, we were entertaining offers on selling the little beasts - er - offspring.  The younger the child, the cheaper the price.  By 10 ... or so ... my sister and I snuck off to go troll sales, conveniently leaving all of our children behind with other relatives. 

After nearly 20 years of these sales, I do not understand what people will buy, or why people will charge what they will charge.  I might think I have the most wonderful thing, and I can't give it away, while the neighbors are selling broken bookshelves for $50 each. 

I have concluded that there is some sort of "garage sale bug" that goes around that makes people do strange thigs, and I am far better off not trying to figure it out.  I nearly bought a table to redecorate a room my son is still living in, for the benefit of another child I may never have.  My excuse?  It was cute, and it was only a dollar.  I nearly overlooked the fact that it seemed stained beyond repair, and the foot was missing so it would be forever crooked.  Thankfully, I came to my senses and moved on.  I managed to only spend $1.60 the whole day and I accumulated a book and a jacket for my kid and a present for someone else.

Meanwhile, back at "our" sale, things were moving along swimmingly.  This year no one brought anything that had been a Christmas gift from anyone else at the sale, so no one's feelings got hurt.  I'm pretty sure my sister swiped a bunch of my sale items frm the table and took them home with her, but that's okay with me.  It's about getting it out of the house, not about making money.  Now, if she tries to send it back to me in the next hand-me-down box between our kids, then I will get upset.  No one should have to discard the same item twice.  Really.  That's unfair ... especially when you come from a family of packrats, and selling anything even once sometimes requires therapy.

Of course, in the days following the sale, we have to ask ourselves a few questions.  Was it worth it?  Yes.  Will we do it again next year?  Well, probably, once we forget what it felt like to get up at 5 AM, to feed all the children outside because some of them are allergic to the dog, all of them are filthy from playing, and none of them will cooperate in taking a nap in the tent we brought for them.

It all comes down to how much therapy we need to part with our things we don't need, and how fast we can forget how painful those early morning hours can be.

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How Has It Come To This?

Just last night, Darling Husband and I were driving to our first parent meeting for Toddler's new preschool, where he will be going in the fall.  On the way over, I was wondering how we managed to find ourselves in this situation?  Us, at a parents meeting for school?  Really?  I mean, we got dressed up and everything.

I can visualize myself in a lot of roles in life, and I've played a lot of roles already.  I've finally even accepted my role as "mommy," although I'm still having a hard time believing it.  But when did we go from "mom and dad" to "parents" at a school meeting? When did that happen? 

After all, I may be 37 years old, but some days I think I still have one foot in college.  I am definitely not one of those moms on the playground that definitely thinks she has all the answers and is happy to advise all the other moms.  (That mom, more often than not, is quite a bit younger than me but thinks she is older and wiser.  It's funny sometimes when you don't look your age.)  In fact, I'm the mom that forgot to take really important things with her when she left the house with the kid the first few times ... like food ... and stuff.  You know -- the basics. 

I don't know if people think I look like I've got it all together, but I sure seldom feel like I've got it all together, and I don't think I've got it all together.  (I don't think the mom on the playground that says she has it altogether really does, either.  I think she's just making it all up.  No.  Really.  I think that.  I also think that if you spend too much time reading parenting books and magazines, then you are compensating for something.)

So, in the middle of all this, I have to ask how it is I managed to become the responsible adult in this household?  And, does anyone really think that was a wise idea?  Moreover, who was silly enough to let my kid into a co-op preschool where I will now be the responsible adult for an entire classroom of three year olds, and sometimes other kids, at least one day a month?

Sitting in those little chairs with my knees up in my chest didn't provide any answers.  The fact that my child was the only one who had to come with us to the meeting just made the feeling worse.

The fact that he introduced himself and played quietly with one of the veteran moms, was very polite, and in general acted like a well-behaved little man and not the wild hooligan he was being not half an hour before did make me feel a little better.  The fact that membership in the co-op gives me the option to join a babysitting co-op makes me feel even better.  Then again, I think a co-op babysitting group means someone will be giving me their child ... alone ... without any other adult supervision.

Oh dear.

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I Met *HER* Today

I finally found her, in the park.  I have been wondering if she was real, or simply a figment of my imagination triggered by the paranoia inspired by modern media.

Yet, out of nowhere, there she was.  I didn't recognize her, at first.  She looked like just another mom in the park watching her toddler and hanging out with other moms.  True, this particular group of moms she was with was exceptionally fit-looking, with well groomed hair, fingernails, toenails, and kids.  I overheard them talk about their desire for pedicures, so I knew we had little in common.  Still, I didn't recognize her.

Then, after about a half hour of sitting near each other, and chatting just a little, I watched her pick up an infant from a stroller I didn't see earlier.  Hmm.  She had not one kid with her, but two, then.  The baby was not too small, but still, there was something about the way he was curled up that triggered a recognition in me.

"Oh, you have a really little one!"

"Yes," she answered.  "He's two weeks old."

At that moment I recognized her.  With her perfect hair, her clear complexion, her well-rested eyes, her makeup, her trim figure and fashionably tattered clothing, I don't know how I didn't see her before.

She is that mom -- the mythically, etherally, perfect mom from the cover of parenting magazines.  Two weeks post-partum, and she looks almost airbrushed.  Her infant didn't cry, and her toddler had no dirt stains on her dress.  She and her children all looked well-combed and thoughtfully dressed.  None of them looked tired, there were no red eyes (from tears or otherwise), and no one had a drippy nose even in the middle of a terrible allergy season.   She was stunning, in a blonde-next-door-meets-Kim-Kardashian kind of way.  Even her clothes were stylishly shabby and unassumingly cute ... provided you overlooked the fact that she bought them that way.

In all ... she was perfect.

It was unnatural.

I am deeply suspicious.  She seemed knowledgable about things like how hard it is to convince a small child to leave a playground gracefully.  She seemed to understand about boo boos and the tension between giving your kids freedom to be independent and the desire to be a helicopter parent.

And yet, something was very wrong with this picture.

Either those perfect kids weren't really hers, or she wasn't a real person. 

Real women two weeks post-partum don't sit angelically at a picnic table looking serene and well-rested. 

Real children don't play in the dirt-playground in white dresses without stains.

Real babies don't sit quietly for hours waiting for their turn to have attention.

I think someone gave her a dressing room, a hairstyle, makeup, a suporting cast of actors and actresses, and sent her into the park that day.  I'm not sure who gains from this, but someone wants us to think that kind of perfection really exists in the world.

I am not buying it.  She was a fake.

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I'm Amazed We Can Talk At All

I was recently "challenged" by a blogger I just met from "across the pond," kailexmummy.  She was challenged to write about the "Ten Things that Make Me Happy," which she did here when she also challenged, er ... invited? ... me to do the same. 

I'm tickled pink ... no, wait.  I don't like pink.  Let's think of another expression.  Hmm.  Blue means hypoxia, purple and red mean angry, green means jealous ... what's left?  How about orange?  Okay, for today, I'm tickled orange by this challenge (and/or invitation). 

First of all, I just "met" this woman.  Either she really, really loves my blog, or she was desperate to find enough people to send the challenge too.  I know what I really believe, and I know what I want to believe, but the beauty of blogs is that I can choose to wear whatever shade of glasses I want, and no one can stop me.  (I won't opt for pink.  As I said before, I don't like pink, even if you call it rose.)

The second reason I love this idea is that my new bloggy friend is from "across the pond."  That makes communication a whole lot of fun.  I can learn all kinds of new words like, "chuffed," and then I get to figure out what they mean. 

For example, she referred to her blog post as a "meme".  I don't know that word, so I looked it up.  According to the ever-so-reliable Wikipedia, a meme is defined as follows:

A meme (pronounced /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with "cream"[1]) is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word μιμητισμός ([mɪmetɪsmos]) for "something imitated".)[2] Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.[3]

The British scientist Richard Dawkins coined, or adapted, the word "meme" in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, beliefs (notably religious beliefs), clothing fashion, and the technology of building arches.[4]

There was more, but I spared you the pain.  Interestingly enough, this particular entry in Wikipedia is specifically identified as being improperly cited, potentially unreliable, and subject to removal.  So, not only does the definition seem confusing, it may be more likely to be wrong than even your average entry.   As a result, I'm no further along with figuring out what a "meme" is than before I started.  I made an executive decision that I would pretend she said, "memo" and just move on. 

Even better than the individual words we use on one side of the pond and not the other, we also have the added fun of being able to have whole conversations where we might think we understand each other, but we don't. 

For example, she might tell me to get "on the pavement" because a car is coming.  I might, sadly, think she is telling me to get on the road and walk right into traffic. 

She might offer to loan my child a jumper, and I might try to figure out why she wants to put my kid in a romper at his age, or I might think she meant a child's jumping toy of some sort.

If she were to offer me a "nappy" for my baby, I might, after thinking about it for awhile, decide she was offering me a napkin to wipe my baby's face.  In fact, she'd be offering me a diaper for his backside (or his "arse" if you will).

I might tell her I thought her children had "a lot of spunk," and she might wonder why I'm speaking of a male bodily fluid not usually discussed in polite company. 

My all time favorite, though, is a sentence suggested by another mom I met several years ago.  "Let's get pissed and go smoke some fags." In American English, I have just said something very offensive, and depending on the circumstance, potentially an illegal rallying cry for immediate violent action against homosexuals. In the Queen's English, I've just suggested we go get drunk and smoke cigarettes.

With these kinds of potential misunderstandings, it is a wonder the United States and the United Kingdom are still such good friends. 

Even more fascinating, both countries still claim to speak the same basic language.  I, on the other hand, disagree.  Apparently, we do not even use the same rules of grammar.  For example, I attended "a" university, while my friends in England attended, "University."  I go to "a" or "the" hospital when I need help or visit someone, while my friends simply go to "hospital."  When we talk about singular groups such as corporations, we can't even agree whether they are singular, or plural.  I would say, "Disney is releasing a new movie," and my friends would say, "Disney are releasing a new movie." 

Sometimes we even have roughly the same idioms, but we put them together using different parts of speech (nouns versus adjectives, or similar).  In England, someone may be a "nutter" and "crackers" but in the United States, we might call them "nuts" or "cracked."  So close, and yet ... so distinctinvely not.

Putting all these difference together, I strongly believe that there is a major market need for an "English to English Dictionary."  You can add that idea to my list of get-rich-quick schemes.

Now, for my Ten Things that Make Me Happy ... tune in tomorrow.

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You Know You Want My Life

Oh, have I had a day!  I learned so much.

I learned that Toddler finds the cabinet in our kitchen that won't stay closed to be a real personal threat that he intends to beat into submission.

I learned that when it comes to linens and towels, some documentary television company may soon make a weekly special about us.  I threw away/donated at least three sets of sheets (I lost count).  As for the towels, we are parting with three (possibly four) sets of worn and frayed towels.  And by "sets," I mean two of everything you need to run a bathroom properly.

Despite all this throwing away, I beg you, please do not get us any new sheets for Christmas.  We really don't need it.  Really.

I learned that Toddler stil thinks vacuuming is a game because he has started bringing his toy Dusty the Talking Vacuum Cleaner into wherever I am sweeping and "helping" me.  I am truly lamenting not buying him one of those little kid sweepers that really works, especially since I think our vacuum cleaner is quite possibly on its last legs ... er ... wheels.  When the almost-20 year old hand held Dirt Devil has more suction, I should be a little concerned, right?  Or am I over reacting?

I learned that I need a new hairdryer immediately.  Mine bit the dust this morning.  Well, to be fair, it technically still functions, if you can handle the loud helicopter noise and only want the airflow on "low". 

I have learned to suffer for fashion.  I have been attempting scrubbing and cleaning in my brand new capris style pants, cut in the newest fashion.  I have to say that all day I've felt like my pants were falling down and my butt crack was showing.  It wasn't, and neither was my underwear, but still ....

I have learned that Toddler is entering a new phase of random engineering experimentation.  Toddler has developed a new trick where he takes his Mickey Mouse toy airplane ride on toy (which we love) and drives it into the walls to see how much contact is necessary to stop the propeller blades from spinning.  Boys.  Destruction, love of cars, and fascination with dirt and trains is all apparently bred into them at a very basic level.  Everything else is a crap shoot.

Speaking of crap, I learned from a pediatrician's office all the possibly pyschological and non-serious reasons why a toddler doesn't poop for three days and what we are supposed to do about it. (I know! I just can't get away from these potty stories!  Believe me, I am as sorry as you if not more so!)

I have learned that I love Amazon, because if I want to post a picture of something very specific, and my camera battery is dead, and my phone is MIA, or if I am just plain lazy, I can still put up a picture without having to leave my seat.  Not that I would do that, or anything ... and certainly not in the next paragraph.

Now, of all the things I learned today, there is one thing I have not learned.  I have not learned why I found this book buried underneath an entire stack of towels on the third shelf from the bottom in the bathroom closet.  No, the closet is no where near the pot, so that can't be it.

I'm wondering if I can sneak it into the garage sale, or if I have to return it to the only person in the house it could possibly belong to.  Even better, he can have it back if he tells me how it got there.  Maybe that will solve everything.

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A Prelude Of Things to Come?

I'm not sure how to caption this post.  I wasn't even planning to write it, but some days, even when you think it might be time to write about something other than toddlers and what they say, you see something you know you have to share.  I'm not sure whether we should call this post, "A Prelude of Things to Come" or possibly, "Some Girl's Mamma Will Hate Me Someday."

For those of you new to this blog, I have been wondering whether my son is a junior Casanova, and if so, how on Earth am I going to handle it.  (If you haven't read that post, you should check it out.)  I mean, I didn't even date all that much.  What do I know about cute and popular?  We figured Toddler didn't stand a chance at either with the two of us as his parents, but it looks like Mother Nature is getting her kicks with us ... at least for now.  I mean, all kids are cute when they are two.  Who knows what will happen between now and kindergarten.

Anyway, I have to give a little bit of background, otherwise someone will try to call Child Protective Services because you won't understand.  We have a CD that Toddler LOVES to listen to called Music Play Date by Playhouse Disney.  On that CD is a song called "What's Monkercise?" where Aah the red monkey teaches Ooh the blue monkey to exercise.  One of the exercises involves Ooh "shaking his monkey tail."  The song even has a line in it telling everyone to "shake your little monkey tail."  When we hear that line in this house, Toddler gets up and dances, looking quite professional with his little Toddler gyrations.  There is absolutely nothing inappropriate about his little boogeying.  We even say the line and do the dance in public for fun.

Nonetheless, when taken out of context, those words ... well ... let's just say this.  Whenever Toddler wants to "shake his little monkey tail" while we are in the bathroom, we have to tell him this isn't the time or place for dancing.  I just don't even want to think what the other moms might be thinking if he were to say that in a public restroom.  Yikes!

Today we were at a playdate with a girl-child a few months younger than Toddler.  The kiddos were having a blast playing, and chatting back and forth.  For the most part, they can understand each other just fine, even when we are having trouble.  (Somehow, I feel sheepish asking my Toddler what his toddler-friend just said, but he always seems to know.)

While they were standing on the stairs, I heard this:

Toddler:  Look at me, I'm shaking my monkey tail!
Girl: 
Toddler:  C'mon, Girl.  Shake your monkey tail.
Girl:  No.
Toddler: But why not?
Girl:

Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I have a bad feeling about this conversation.  I am well aware that there was nothing but unbridled innocence in those words, but I couldn't help but think about Toddler and his girl-chasing in music class and wonder:

Am I in over my head?

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