Outnumbered Two to One

I’ve borrowed this idea from Helene over at I’m Living Proof that God has a Sense of Humor, she’s a list girl and consistently cracks me up with her twin tales, so I figured I’d use her as inspiration this Friday. Also check out Elizabeth at Three Channels who also did a great version of this list.

1. By all means, the toilet and the sink are completely interchangeable, feel free to wash your hands in the commode since it is already at your level. If I was shorter, I might opt to freshen up in there as well.
2. Of course Hershey’s kisses are an acceptable meal substitute. Calories are calories right? Who needs fiber? Nutrients are way overrated.
3. Please, tell your friends they can call at any time of day or night to gossip about what some long haired boy did or didn’t say to them. I don’t mind waking up at 3 am to answer the phone in an agitated haze, expecting to hear that someone in the family had died a horrible fiery death. Finding out it’s just a bored teenager on the other end is like a fabulous punch line to a hilarious joke.
4. Absolutely I’ll buy you that $75 Godzilla plush toy imported directly from Tokyo, but only if you ask me 35 times in rapid succession.
5. No, really, I love it when you ask me a series of questions in the middle of a climactic scene of a movie I’ve never watched. I love being jarred out of the moment.
6. Whenever you have to pee in the early predawn hours of a school day, please be sure to wake me from my peaceful slumber just to let me know. Knowledge is power.
7. Don’t ever, ever, do things the first time I ask. That would just take the fun out of me repeating myself thirty times before finally bellowing so loudly I burst a blood vessel in my eye. I don’t get enough opportunities to yell at you.
8. Aw, it’s so cute when you rip off your diaper and run around naked before accidentally peeing on the tile and slipping in it. It’s like living my own AFV clip, except I get to wash pee out of your hair which makes it that much better.
9. Yay, splash more of your dirty bathwater at me, especially when I’m nice and dry and ready for bed myself. If you can, wait until my mouth is open.
10. More whining, please, I can’t get enough of it. If all four of you can do it at the same time in varying pitches, it’s almost musical, like you’re all performing a beautiful new age opera just for me. Ah, what a tribute.

After braving morning rush-hour traffic yesterday (I’m so grateful I don’t commute anymore), my tweeny-bopper and I (along with a surprisingly accommodating toddler) made it to the county wide spelling bee she qualified for late last month.

It was a pretty big event, roughly about 200 kids competed in a written competition for about 25 spots in the oral bee. They allowed parents and teachers to sit, while 50 words were pronounced for the participants who had to scribble them down on a sheet. My charge in the mean time was keeping a two year old from shrieking his way through all 50 words.

Luckily I had pennies and a baggie of cereal at my disposal, not to mention threats that the authorities were going to whisk him away if he got too loud. I got the occasional glares from various corners of the aisle I was sitting in, but what kind of mom would I be if I hadn’t learned to ignore those by now.

The spelling words started off harmless enough - “ballerina, hyphen, caboose“. Then gradually built up to “kahuna and hygiene“. The sentence they used for “quell” made me chuckle just a bit since it involved storm troopers and rebels, I’m not kidding. Later there was “gulag and boysenberry“, “ubiquitous and commensurate“, not to mention a couple I still can’t identify, something that sounded like “car” but wasn’t and a word I can only identify as “bat-ter-soy“. They wrapped it up with “mukhtar, pfeffernuss, and hoomalimali” just for fun, I think.

In the end my little girl was not in the top 25 selected for round 2. But she wasn’t terribly disappointed, she got out of school for the day, got BK’s for lunch, and didn’t have to deal with any homework all afternoon.

She also spent the rest of the day proclaiming, “I’m still a winner!” to anyone who’d listen.  Me and her dad both agreed. Her teenage sister…not so much.

• She’s cute and all, but I can’t look at Olivia the pig without automatically thinking of Lord of the Flies. PMS occasionally puts me in a dark place.

“There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.”
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies

• Sorry about that, dark moment and all. I’m better now.

• Since having boys, I have always envied them their ability to pee standing up. It just seems like a hassle free way to get in and out of a public restroom. Then I saw a clip for a GoGirl commercial on the Style channel. It’s a female urination device that lets you “go” anywhere and it’s stylishly pink. You can throw it away or rinse and reuse as necessary. Only $4.99 a pop for space age silicone. How’s that for a dream come true? Except for that whole ewww factor. “What’s that in your purse, mom?” “Oh, that’s just my pee funnel.” I think I’ll just stick to my hovering strategy for now…call me old fashioned.

• Some things just shouldn’t be invented.

• Play-doh is in that category.

• If someone ever gives your kid a Play-doh gift set, consider it an act of aggression. They obviously don’t like you or your clean carpets. An appropriate response would be to give their kid permanent markers or possibly a bead set in retaliation.

• At one time or another my children have been gifted either Play-doh, permanent markers or bead sets. Apparently I rub some people the wrong way.

• I won’t even go into details about the stupid toys I’ve bought myself, like the plastic Icee maker, or the plastic McFlurry maker, or the God forsaken Easy Bake Oven. All which were specifically designed to torture parents with their multiple malfunctioning parts and their impossibly difficult breakdowns and all those ridiculous powder packets you have to buy in order to make said product in teeny tiny portions that all the children have to share thus producing a cacophony of screaming, whining voices as you’re trying to hand crank simu-ice-cream for your sanity.

• Didn’t I say I wasn’t going to go into details about that?

“Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?”
- William Golding, Lord of the Flies

• Don’t mind me, it’s just the hormones talking. Please don’t send my kids Play-doh. For the love of all that is good, please don’t ship the Play-doh!

HASAY not ringing any bells for you. Go get wise .

So I was sick last week, *koff, koff*, which obviously means I eschewed exercise and healthy eating in favor of whining, lying down and binging on mini crullers.

But this week, well I’m gonna…

I intend to chase that bugger down, swing myself on and get to sweating profusely. I even purchased salad fixings. And I, for one, am not afraid to use them.

Oh yeah, folks, I’m ready.

Except today, as I was going about my business - doing laundry, feeding the masses and stepping on various sharp edged abandoned toys - I was overcome with a very familiar feeling. It was a mixture of melancholy, apathy, quiet fury and utter confusion.

The end of the month had crept up on me again.

I feel it and so does my family - the mood swings, the lack of focus, the alternately salty/sweet cravings. Really, going to town on pork loin drippings with a spoon cannot be good for my BMI (or my self esteem).

Regardless, I intend to confront my Wii Fit today, ignore her snide remarks about my weight and inconsistency, and get some exercise in. Now that my antibiotics have wiped out the colony of bacteria harboring in my face, I no longer have an excuse to kick back and take it easy.

I will not be deterred.

I will not give up.

I will not snuggle up on the sofa with a package of Chips Ahoy! PMS notwithstanding.

Next week’s update will be different.

I mean it. And not just because the girl scout cookies have run out. (Although that may be a small part of it.)

I was recently tagged by my sweet blogging friend Elizabeth from Three Channels with this easy assignment. Since my kids are currently busy throwing toy airplanes at eachother, I figured I’d try my hand at it.

Threes About Me

Three Names I Have Been Called…

1. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy
2. Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom
3. Yes, Dear

Three Jobs I Have Had In My Life…

1. Subway sandwich artist, thankyouverymuch                             
2. Sears associate (i.e. clothes hanger, register handler)
3. Courtroom clerk (i.e. filing, pencil pushing, fielding obnoxious judge tantrums)

Three Places I Have Lived…

1. Miami
2. A different house in Miami
3. Florida (Miami)

Three Hobbies…

1. Wiping up vomit
2. Reading
3. Sleeping (mmmm, sweet delicious sleep)

Three things most people do not know about me…

1. Peeling hard boiled eggs makes me extremely hostile. The shell always sticks to the white and I end up destroying the egg and getting stuck with basically a yolk encircled in a skin of white, which for some reason awakens this terrible fury in my gut and leads to much shrieking and freaking out on my part.  I know, very mature.
2. I used to watch Degrassi Junior High when I was a kid. Now as an adult, I watch Degrassi Next Generation marathons with my teen, whenever my husband is at work. I don’t know what it is about Canadian teens that I find so compelling..but I soo do. Also Spike and Snake are in it. What’s that all aboot?
3. I blog. Duh. Relatively often. But in real life, most people are not aware of this. I want to keep it that way. I’m incognito.

Three TV Shows That I Watch…

1. Hell’s Kitchen
2. 30 Rock
3. The Office

Three places I Have Been…

1. Knoxville, TN
2. Tifton, GA
3. St. Augustine, FL

Three places I want to go…

1. Australia
2. The Grand Canyon
3. Italy

As for tagging my fellow bloggers, have at it. If you’re on my blogroll, consider yourself tagged. If you’re not but find this concept immensely intriguing, by all means adopt it as your own. If the number three bores you, then, you know disregard and go on with your weekend.

Move along, there’s nothing to see here.

I am easily amused. Just ask my husband.

It’s one of the reasons why we’re together, not only is he hawt, but he makes me laugh on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, I’m not that discerning in what I find humorous. Occasionally when he and I sit down to watch television (which is pretty rare considering our viewing tastes are so diverse, I like trashy reality TV, he likes the Outdoor channel), we usually opt for something light and entertaining that will please both. Something that will offer a good chuckle or two.

A favorite of ours is The Soup, which we DVR and watch together. Sometimes we opt for some SNL or Mad TV. Now, my husband rarely finds humor in anything on either one of these skit shows, he’ll dramatically roll his eyes and shake his head, like it’s beneath him. I, on the other hand, will giggle, guffaw, and snort at the most ridiculous segments. Stuff that borders on the bizarre has been known to push me over the edge. Men screaming like women will always get a laugh out of me, which inevitably triggers a chain reaction in my husband who will always laugh when I’m genuinely laughing. Maybe it’s my flaring nostrils, maybe it’s that gurgling sound emitting from my throat, or the tears streaming down my face, but every time my husband will laugh and look at me like I’m a head case and he’s happy about it.

Things that make me laugh include:

A recent SNL skit that literally had me in stitches was The Lawrence Welk Show, since for some reason I can’t include the clip, I’ve linked to the NBC website. If you haven’t seen it and you have three minutes to spare, go take a look, even now it still cracks me up with it’s weirdness…I apologize in advance to any of you with big foreheads, baby hands, and car chasing propensities.

And for more laughter Spins please visit Sprite’s Keeper for a chuckle or two or twenty.

Today my neighbor came by with her brand spanking new baby.

She also let me hold her brand spanking new baby. For a good ten minutes.

I think new babies are like new cars, when someone you know gets one, you’re immediately overcome with the urge to follow suit and snag one of your own regardless of your financial situation. I mean they smell soooo good…both cars and babies.

So here I was holding this tiny, squishy, sweet faced, sleeping baby and it’s like there was a short circuit in my brain. Colic, middle of the night feedings, projectile vomiting, and ear infection memories were all filed in my mental trashcan. All I could do was suck in the smell of new baby (because I can finally breathe through my nostrils thanks my effective antibiotics prescription) and swoon and see this in my head…

This was my youngest mere days after we got him home from the hospital. My neighbor, who’s a great photographer, was nice enough to shoot these for me since our hospital picture taker ditched work early on the day of our departure. This sweet little newborn has turned in to this…

Which, don’t get me wrong, is always hugely entertaining and delicious in its own right, but…well, his feet will never be this small again…

Please, folks, convince me I don’t need a fifth baby. For sure, we can’t afford one. Nor can we fit another kid in our tiny shoebox house. But I need your help to clear the scramble that newborn left in my brain, that hardwired signal he triggered that tells me I need to reproduce yet again.

Tell me how awful new babies are. How unbearable those nine months of pregnancy can be.  How hard it is to give up sleep again. How gross baby barf smells when you unknowingly walk out of the house with it on your shirt.

It will help, trust me.

Sadly, this is what’s left of my husband’s recent Girl Scout Cookie purchase. I should be grateful that the temptation to binge on chocolate covered minty goodness and coconut caramel heaven has been eliminated, but the sad fact is I didn’t even get a single, pathetic lick of a cookie, much less an entire serving, before my children completely devoured our cookie ration.

I like to feel I’m doing my part to help the Girl Scouts out. Not by participating in any way, shape, or form, but by buying and eating and savoring their products in a carefully managed allotment, so that my yearly purchase can last me as long as humanly possible. This strategy helps me feel that I’m contributing in some small way to the Girl Scouts’ courage, confidence, and character building.

When my kids join forces to rob me of that experience, well that’s like mutiny…or something. It’s like a revolt, I mean it’s certainly revolting to me that I didn’t get a taste of a single Samoa. I’m not a perfect mom, but I’ve taught my kids the basics - don’t bite people, don’t eat your boogers, brush your teeth sometimes, share your toys. That last one applies to cookies too, dammit.

Did I have to spell it out for them? Did I have to be that specific? Maybe the right strategy would’ve been stashing the cookies in an undisclosed location then doling them out one at a time at my discretion…which would be never…muhuhuhahahaa (that’s my evil laugh, in case you’re not familiar).

Do as I say not as I do and all that…I’ll share the regular cookies with them - Chips Ahoy, Oreos - the special ones are mine next year…all mine.

For more Wordful Wednesday visit:

Cause some people don’t want to keep it Wordless apparently.

• Sometimes when the doctor’s office says “be here at 9:30″ what they really mean is “the doctor will see you at 11:15″. What they really mean is “eat a good breakfast cause you’ll get hungry” and “bring your own reading material unless you want to flip through Golf Magazine or Business Week. “
• At least if they’d told me how long the wait would actually be, I’d have had some coffee before I left the house and spared myself the migraine I had when I walked out of there.
• Normally I wouldn’t mind the wait since it’s technically considered quiet time away from my kids, except since my husband was working, I was there with my darling two year old in tow and he does not wait well. I had to resort to giving him pennies to play with and my car keys and my cell phone. I was obviously ill prepared.
• Also, since it was a general practitioner and not a pediatrician’s office, it was filled with at least seven Cuban grandmas who were all ahead of me.
• For those of you who don’t have experience with Cuban grandmas, they take extreme offense when they witness the child of a bilingual parent speaking in only English. They express their umbrage by talking to each other about how all their grandchildren speak perfect Spanish, and English should come later when a child starts school, and at home only Spanish should ever be spoken. They hold these loud conversations right next to you without ever making eye contact and alternately looking at your English speaking child pityingly.
• Cuban grandmas also have very definite opinions about children playing with money. They also are constantly fretting about children cracking their skulls open on table corners. Any time a child even approaches within five feet of a table corner, they hold there hands out toward said child and scream “cuidado, cuidado.” Unfortunately my son couldn’t understand them.
• Six out of seven Cuban grandmas agree my son is adorable. Even if I am obviously a bad mother.
• One medical professional agrees, I have an ear infection.
• At least I walked out of there with an antibiotic prescription.

Last Friday my sister and I decided to meet up once again for another one of our  oh-so-rare girls’ night out. It had been a couple of months since we’d last ventured an evening without our respective broods and we both felt we needed some grown up time…you know, after dark, in our good jeans, with our hair brushed and sporting a little lipstick. Fancy, right?

Well, after abandoning my children to their father’s capable hands, I hopped in to my styling minivan, and shuttled off to meet my sister at the restaurant, which is about 20 minutes of highway driving from my house. About halfway there, cruising along at a steady 80 mph, I noticed some movement in the left corner of my windshield. What I saw lurking there was this…

Now, I normally don’t harbor any ill will toward the arachnids. Live and let live is my general approach, not like roaches which I strive to either annihilate or flee from. The problem was that as my vehicle was hurtling forward at an alarming rate of speed, I suddenly became terrified that this slightly repulsive critter was going to fling itself toward my face and I was going to drive my car in to a ditch where it would quite theatrically burst in to flames.

Spiders are fine, sure. Spiders on your face are somewhat less fine.

Rather than pull over to the side of the road and risk getting splattered by whizzing traffic, I opted to get off at the next exit, drive to the nearest gas station, and run screaming from my car, while simulataneously checking my hair for spiders. After a brief moment’s panic I walked back to the driver’s side and checked things out. The tiny spider was still perched at the edge of the windshield, possibly wondering what the heck was making me so twitchy.

After trying unsuccesfully for several minutes to flush the guy out with a balled up paper towel, I was approached by one of the car wash attendants who must have thought I was completely schizo dancing around in my flats and making little squeaking sounds on the asphalt.

Luckily he ignored his better instincts, and helped a girl out. He very gallantly grabbed the little guy by the legs, pulled him out, and set him free in the nearby bushes, hopefully to live out the remainder of his spider life in peace and happiness. He also was quick to point out that spiders are good luck and I should consider his little visit to be a good omen.

I suppose he was partially right, I was lucky enough to find parking that night at the restaurant , we only had to wait half an hour to be seated, and the movie we caught didn’t suck.

All in all it was a successful evening.

Now had a spider landed on my face, I probably wouldn’t have been so fortunate.