October 26, 2011

wait for it

I LOVE when funny stuff happens to me. It gives me blog fodder. Like the time I locked the keys in Mike's truck with it IN the garage and still running. Or like the time the cow jumped the fence. Or like last week when I lost my car in the parking lot.

The sometimes funny, sometimes not so funny thing about the last 18-24 months is that my brain has quit working. Call it hormones. Call it age. Call it grief. Call it whatever, just don't expect me to remember anything if you don't see me write it down, or make a note in my ipod, or send myself a text as a reminder.

But sometimes things happen that are SO funny, you know you won't forget. That's what happened today with my reading buddy. It was so hysterical we laughed and laughed and I thought, "I should text that to myself so I don't forget." Then myself thought, "You don't need to do that! This was so funny, there is no way you'll forget! PLUS, this will make a great blog!"

I have no doubt that it would have...if only I had written it down.

October 25, 2011

oh, poo

Kacey was a newborn - like maybe 3 weeks old - when an acquaintance (sort of a "friend of a friend") called one morning and asked if I could watch her children for the day. Now I’m about as accomodating as they come, but I hardly knew this woman, I had no relationship with her kids (girl 3 and boy 2), but mostly, I just wasn’t up to it. (Hey, don’t judge me! It takes a REALLY LONG TIME to recover from 32 hours of labor!)

Anyway ... I politely told her I wasn’t up to it, but I'd be happy to help her out another time.

Half an hour later she called back, this time practically begging. Seems an old friend of hers was in town just for the day and they really wanted to go to lunch and catch up. She had apparently called every one else she had ever known since birth and absolutely no one else was available(this should have been my first clue). She would feed her kids lunch before she brought them and would only be gone an hour - hour and a half tops.

“Well ... I guess so,” I replied.

Twenty minutes later she showed up at the door, and informed me that she just hadn't had time to feed them or even pack them a lunch, but that they would eat just about anything I would fix. (Lucky me!)


So I attempted to feed and clean up after two toddlers, while breastfeeding one-handed (now, this may work for some of you B-cup gals, but some of us more well-rounded moms requre both our hands to adequately accomplish this task without smothering our babies.)

Once that task was complete, Kacey fell asleep, so I took her upstairs and put her on the bed. When I returned downstairs a very few minutes later, I saw the 2-year-old turning a corner dressed in Pooh fashion. (Read: shirt, no pants.) Seems he had dropped his diaper . . . somewhere. I quickened my barefoot pace to catch up to him, when first ...


I STEPPED IN IT.
THEN ... I said it.

Seems he was not only dressed in Pooh fashion, but also in poo. Which, thanks to the ripaway diaper, now covered my living room floor as well. Gross.


Three (3!) hours, two diaper changes, one temper tantrum (mine) and a $60 carpet cleaning call later, “mom” returned to collect her little angels, without so much as an apology for being late, an offer to clean my carpets, or even a “thank you” for my time.

I’d say I learned a valuable lesson from this experience, but since it has been 25 years and I am still whining about it, probably not.

October 16, 2011

just the other day

The other day I instinctively threw half a cup of coffee away in my office . . . only for it to hit the floor and splatter everywhere because somebody moved my trash can and I had failed to notice.

The other day I threw two nylon jerseys in the dryer . . . only 10 hours after my son said, "Whatever you do, Mom, DON'T throw these two jerseys in the dryer."

The other day I got a fortune that read, "If you are fortunate enough to live a long life, it will be a testament to your friends' self-control."

The other day my dad called to ask, "What do you do about vertigo?" which led me to drive to their house to find my mother retching like a walrus calling her lost pup and falling (to quote Beyoncé) "to the left, to the left". I thought she'd had a stroke, but thankfully, it was just a nasty inner ear infection.

The other day my dad called to ask if my son had hidden my mom's Halloween plates. No, no he hadn't. Admittedly though, it does SOUND like something he would do.

The other day my dad called to say my grandmother had fallen and broken her pelvis. It's her first hospital stay in 25 years.

The other day I was a slacker about drinking my 64+ ounces of water. Same day I got stuck on the interstate behind an accident scene for 4 hours. Four hours. In the van. With no place to pee. Sometimes it's good to be a slacker.

The other day I was a slacker about filling Eddie van Honda before the gauge dropped to "E" and I had no choice but to get gas. I got stuck waiting behind an older couple in their dress-up clothes giving their Buick Enclave a free full-body car wash at the gas pump with the windshield washer squeegees and blue paper towels.

The other day I woke up, got dressed and ready for the day, then decided I wanted more sleep and went back to bed. It was like having sleep dessert. Only without hot fudge.

The other day I went to the grocery, and because I'm SO forgetful these days, I made certain to note EXACTLY where I parked. When I came out, I went straight to the place I parked, only my van wasn't there. I walked down a few more spaces, crossed over to the next aisle, then back to the previous one. "I KNOW this is where I parked!" I kept telling myself, "
I KNOW IT!"

It was where I parked, I just forgot I was driving someone else's car.

October 12, 2011

little buddy ... or how I learned to eat chicken nuggets with only my front teeth

When our eyes met in the hallway today, we both broke out in ear to ear smiles - only I have all my teeth (so far, knock on wood). We started walking down the hallway to the cafeteria and I was asking him about his fall break and he was telling me about riding his orange bicycle when ....... he reached up and held my hand.

We had chicken nuggets and potatoes and, despite my best efforts to convince him to "eat something green", he had a roll and I had the green beans. He told me about getting 100 pieces of candy last Halloween and how his "little brother, well not his LITTLE brother 'cause he's a baby, but my next little brother who's my best friend and whose name is Jayston" is about to have a birthday and how his own birthday was the same week school started and how if you eat with only your front teeth you can only take really little bites and you get crumbs everywhere especially when you don't have any front teeth (insert breath here).

To quote Holly Hunter from one of the greatest movies ever: "I LOVE HIM SOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!" (Raising Arizona. Thank you Coen brothers for your brilliance.)

After lunch we walked hand in hand to the library and picked out books about insects because he was "in a bug mood". He thought it HIGHLY entertaining that I also have to wear glasses to read. We read about how male crickets "chirp" with their front wings and got off on a rabbit-chasing tangent about the similarity to playing the violin and since I just happen to have Joshua Bell's recording of Vivaldi's Violin Concertino in E (from the Spring Movement of "The Four Seasons"), we snuck in a little listen. We also read Eric Carle's "The Very Clumsy Click Beetle" and learned three new verbs: ambled, scurried and slithered. We barely made it through the Little Critter book, "I Just Forgot!" (both of us racing on each page to see who could find the spider first) when the teacher conducted some mystical magical hand-clapping maneuver signifying that our time was over for today. He put our books away, got in line, waved with his whole arm, then ran back over and hugged me.

167 hours until I get to do it again. :)

October 01, 2011

oktoberquest

. . . or maybe I should call this one "Children of the Corn".

See, there are about 200 acres of big open fields, interjected with woods lining my walking place. In the spring it's soft and wet and freshly green. In the fall it encompasses every earthy color in God's creation. It's beautiful.

Usually.

But SOMEBODY had the audacity to plant corn there very late in the season, and here it is October and I still can't walk there. Well, I COULD, but frankly Bigfoot has way too many places to hide now and it creeps me out. It's like my own personal corn maze, only with coyotes and camrys and I just don't feel safe.

Regardless, a quest is a quest, and October's goal in the quest for self-improvement is: exercise every day. There. I've said it out loud. Now I have to do it. If I can work it into my schedule. Just kidding.


Next blog: too many irons in the fire.