Conversations That Have Made Me Laugh

Me: You do know what "WTF" means, right?
Friend: No. But hey! What does S-A-H-M mean? I think I figured out, I think it means "sexy and hot mama." I saw it on this one girl's blog and I didn't know what it meant, then I figured it out and I was surprised that she was calling herself that!
Me: HAHAHAHHAAAA! That's hilarious. It means, stay-at-home-mom!
Friend: Oh.


J: Come help me
Me: Okay, hang on though (clicking on my sitemeter) I just have to make sure no pervs are linking to my blog. Okay! Looks good, no pervs today!
J: I guess that makes your blog impervious, huh?


Me: Avee, you have two choices, you can either sit quietly on the bench, or you can sit quietly on my lap, what's your choice?
Avee: A spank! I choose a spank. Just don't do it very hard.
Me: (Laughing too hard to hide from her)
Avee: I love it when you laugh like that Mom.
Me: Spanking is not a choice. How about this, you choose to sit quietly or you'll get yelled at, do you want to get yelled at?
Avee: No-I mean, yes! Just do it quietly and not very long.

Bo: Is Avee still up in her room?
J: No.
Bo: She already came down?
J: Bo, guess how many seconds Avee spent up in her room.
Bo: 70?
J: None. She spent no time upstairs in her room. And you know why? Because she weasels out of everything. The ability to weasel, that's what separates us from the animals.
Except the weasel.

Me:(on the phone) Do you have any yellow cake mix?
Jay:(after I hang up) I don't see what the big deal is, if Iraq buys a yellow cake from South Africa. Heh heh heh.
Me: blank stare
Me: was that a joke?
Jay: yeah!
Me: Don't tell jokes that are not funny and make people feel more stupid.

Then J explained the joke and it still wasn't funny and still made me feel stupid. I totally win that discussion. And I keep score of discussion winners.

Message From A Bottle

I have been sick.

I know a lot of people have gotten this. And I'd like to say I'm sorry. Well, I am. But I'm more sorry about me because that just seems to work best for me.

Today is the first day I've wanted to be upright without causing great bodily harm to anyone near me. And I use the word "wanted" loosely. I finally went to the dr this morning because I couldn't take another sleepless night. My lungs pull out all the stops and have a huge party and don't invite oxygen and I cough and cough and cough and thus, don't sleep. Sadly, neither does my husband. But I'm more concerned with my lack of sleep. Because that also works for me.

I'm not nice to my kids either. I've yelled at all three of them more meanly than a child should ever be yelled at in their lifetimes. And yeah, it's made them cry. But guess what else it did? It made them listen. I didn't yell the first 5 times I had to say something, but looky there, screaming like a banshee does the trick!

I took some medicine that "may" cause drowsiness and "may" has turned into "yeah, it do" and I'm typing through half closed eyes. Not even lying. This is either sincere devotion or complete psychosis. I'm pretty sure I flirt along that line daily with my actions.

Mostly I wanted to say Hi, Y'all. And that I probably won't be blogging for a few more days until I can rid the demons of fever and pain from my body.

The good news is, I've made a priceless discovery that will help me in parenting Avee. In my limited capability of being on the ball as a parent, I've only half-heartedly kept my kids on the straight and narrow. The one that they seem to have a hard time keeping themselves to. Avee promised me she had eaten her lunch and was ready for her chocolate (she found a king-size Hershey bar in our glove compartment this morning, right after her eyes rolled back in her head from the sheer joy of anticipation, she broke into it and had 4 complete squares down her before I stopped her). Avee will stash contraband anywhere, so I assumed she had done so with her lunch, in order to get to the chocolate faster. So I listed off the normal places, "trash, toilet, drawer, under couch cushions," etc. And she laughed. She thought every thing I said was SO funny. Then I suddenly remembered this happening before when I thought she had done something that her friend had actually done.

Even though her little mind thinks of these things on her own---she thinks they are outrageous and hilarious coming from me. So, this is good news. Laughing= she told the truth.
Darting to recover hidden food = she lied and I busted her.

Now I'm going to go lay down on the couch.

Probably on a peanut butter sandwich...

*any and all spelling, grammatical, or political incorrectness are a direct result of the elixar that "do cause drowsiness" and any issues with such errors or incorrectness can be directed to that bottle.

It's Just a Joke

I was sitting at the computer with my back to the kids when I heard J say,
"Hey Avee, why so serious?"

I whip around to see her face (earlier this morning she was sobbing because she heard me say I loved J and I forget that in her mind, loving her and loving J are mutually exclusive). To be honest, I was shocked to "hear" J noting a female emotion that hadn't been verbally expressed. Loudly.
He hadn't. He was just quoting his favorite movie. Aptly though, dontcha think?


















p.s. Mom, J was quoting the Joker in the most recent Batman Movie. Even though it's J's favorite movie, you should not see it.

Lesson Learned

"Sure Bo, you can choose that 'hammer' for your prize, but I don't want to see you hitting any people with it, okay?"

I may as well have said, "Sure Bo, there's oxygen in this room, but I don't want to see you breathing any of it, okay?"

Skip to the End (Name that movie!)

Wellllll, I'm back from the living dead. You didn't know I was with the living dead, did you? The beauty of saved drafts.

Is it just me or is this winter's round of illness particularly prevalent? And harsh? Bo has been SO sick this whole week. It started last Saturday and the moment he said, "My head hurts" I looked at him and knew it was the flu. And it was a doozie.

Today is his first fever free day and he is using all newly regained energy to yell at and taunt Avee---so I know he's on the mend.

I loved the comments in the last post--I wanted to respond to them individually, but I just didn't have the oomph to do it, and now it seems like I'd show up at a Fall party wearing white shoes---so I'm just not going to embarrass myself. But I appreciated what people shared, and some really got me a'thinkin'.

One thing that stood out to me was how much other's words affected us, in our youth. I told J last night, "If I ever catch our kids being cruel to each other, I will...I will...I will beat them." I was so serious and he laughed at me. It makes me sad that people still struggle in their adult life with things their siblings said carelessly or even parents. It makes me want to be more careful with how I say things to my own children. Makes me want to.

Bo really wanted to go to school today but I bribed him to stay home with the promise that he could play with friends when they got home, and we'd go on a walk or to the park, and that we'd go to Family Fun Night at his school. Sort of backwards, but ehhhhhhhh, he wasn't quite ready for a full day of school, even though he wasn't contagious anymore. If it's possible for a child to ever not be contagious. What with all the licking and picking and touching...
This was acceptable for Bo.

So basically, what I realized after a day spent with semi-healthy Bo is, I could pretty much never send him back to school and be happy with it. There'd be some guilt with such a decision because I also probably wouldn't homeschool him--but I'm sure more TV and less getting up to take him to school would assuage that guilt. He's just downright delightful. And I'm not just saying that because I'm his mom. People stop me all the time and say, "he looks like he's downright delightful."

No they don't.

We had a really fun day.

My friend came over in the morning and after stepping over my piles of laundry long enough, we decided to get lettuce wraps and go to the park. We called a couple of other friends and made it a party. The weather is beautiful here right now. Danyo thinks he's died and gone to heaven---he hasn't played outside since the Bush Administration. We all know that the Bush Administration essentially ended before a new president was actually put in. It's been a long time for poor lil' Danyo.

I was sort of dreading FFN at Bo's school, but I had a promise to keep. But THEN I found out that the Family Fun Night was actually Family "Empty the Bank Account" Night and that it was a totally packed event and blah blah blah. So I bribed Ben AGAIN with a trip to Mr. Cheese's to play ski ball---his new passion. He threw in a trip to get a pack of Pokemon cards with his own money, and we had ourselves a deal.

We got a babysitter for Avee and Danyo and went out on the town. By way of Chuck E Cheesery's. My friend called me on our way home and asked incredulously, "Why'd ya get a babysitter to go to a kid's place!"

Ehhhh, we wanted to play. Avee and Danyo were tired and are kind of the "have to be watched and stuff" brand of kids.

Bo probably played 37 games of ski ball. He's really good and it kind of cracks me up to watch his little 5 year old self hurl a ball up the ramp in hopes of the 10,000 point hole "up in the coh-no"

I've been a little sick myself this week, and while one of the symptoms is exhaustion, for me it's also coupled with mild restlessness. Where I usually fall asleep quickly at night or take a nap easily when the opportunity presents itself, I have been unable to do both all week. The combination of which, has resulted in a Nobody with diminished capacity. On all fronts.

I knocked the cup of tokens off the ski ball lane two times in less than 5 minutes. My high score on ski ball was on average, 10,000. For some perspective, Bo was averaging about 22K. There's a basketball game I love to play there and I try to beat my best every time I go, my best of about 197 or something. I got nothing over 150. I bumped into people regularly, I dropped over 100 tickets, like three times. Basically I was a bumbling idiot. It really made me laugh. J? Not so much. I guess he doesn't like "picking things up all the time". Whatever.

We got some nice pictures taken. I think I'll cancel our appt with JCPenney's Photography and just have Avee and Danyo photoshopped in. What do you think?

One thing I noticed is Bo's similarity to Barack in that 3rd picture. As much as he'd like his skin color, his nice suits, and his residency in the White House---for now he'll have to settle for pictures of them both with a disproportionately large hand.

Things That Change You

Do remember those certain moments in life that sort of define how you are today? Not big life changing moments (although, I guess they could become life changing) but--more like small moments that change how you view the world?

I was thinking the other day about some when I went to wash and condition my hair, and did my usual, check and double check of the label on my shampoo and conditioner bottle.

When I was about 5 years old, my mom let me wash my own hair. And so I did. And I done good. When she came back, she asked me if I had washed it. I told her that I had. And she looked around and said, "with what shampoo?" I pointed to a large bottle. She picked it up and said, "This is conditioner, not shampoo!" I insisted it was shampoo, I had looked at the label and saw that it was shampoo and knew that by reading it, I could be trusted to wash my hair with shampoo. She showed me the label, and it did in fact say conditioner. I scoured that label looking for ANY word that looked like shampoo. I was SO SURE.

Of course I was wrong. But I remember so clearly seeing the word shampoo and feeling confident that I wasn't acting like an irresponsible 5-year-old.

To this day--I will not pour it out into my hand or put it on my head until I've seen the word "shampoo" at least two times on the label. More likely 3 or 4 though. Even if the bottles are different colors. Even if I'm completely out of conditioner, I will still check the label of the only bottle available.

Another one:

When I was about 9 years old I was outside when someone was visiting our house and I was laughing and smiling and doing my darnedest to get attention. After the lady left, my mom said to me, "You didn't brush your teeth today." She was right, but I didn't care. I had more important things to worry about than dental hygiene. But then she said, "It's really pretty awful Nobody, people see this pretty little girl with a great smile and beautiful red hair and then you smile and then they think 'eeeeewwwww, that's a shame, she'd be so cute if she had clean teeth'."

Of course what I heard first was "pretty little girl". But the description of me smiling with nasty teeth really stuck with me. It didn't just convince me to brush my teeth regularly, but it made me aware that people see more than I realize they see. And you'll be relieved to know, that I take personal pride in my dental hygiene now.

Fast forward many years.

I was about 23 years old. I was going to college in Northern Utah and my cousin was going to school about 100 miles south. We were going to drive to our family reunion in California together. We met and packed up the car in Salt Lake City and started to head out of town. We were winding our way to a freeway entrance. I think we realized we needed gas. She went to make a left turn from a middle turning lane. The two lanes in the opposite direction were slowing down for a red light. The lane closest to us slowed to a stop to let her through. The second lane was slow, and she slowly rolled through when a jeep came flying down the lane and broadsided us. It was my first and only car accident. Because I could move and nothing was broken, I thought it was no big deal. The stupid jeep was going about 35, when he was supposed to be slowing to a stop anyway. Either way, it was our fault, so it didn't matter how fast he was going. The best/worst part of the story---it was a mechanic test driving a customer's car just before he finished up and gave the car back. Yikes, eh?

To this day, I will not make a left turn like that. I can't bring myself to do it. If there is any traffic at all, I'll go to a light to turn around. The weird part? I'll totally do it for a right turn.

And then the last one I was thinking about.

Not much later, when I was a senior in college I lived with a great group of girls. One had been my roommate the year before. Another was a freshman girl I had babysat when I was 14-17 years old and her dad was in med school. Her mom and I had remained friends after they moved, and that year, Camille and I became very good friends. Later she babysat Bo for me when I worked a part-time job while J was in school. Then we traded childcare for date nights, and when we weren't doing that, we spent the time dancing around the streets singing "The Circle of Life".

So that's not the story. The story is---I was kind of a rude person. I didn't hesitate to make other people the butts of my jokes. I had no idea how rude I was. Because I still had the world view that people saw the world the same way I did. And I didn't mind people making jokes at my expense. Well, only if it was funny.

Well, we had a roommate named Heidi. And Heidi had a friend named Heidi. Who called 2-3 times a day. But Roommate Heidi was rarely home, so Friend Heidi would leave a message. And she'd say, "Hi Heidi this is Heidi, just calling to say hi!" And she said the same thing EVERY time. It was really funny. But because I deemed it kind of ridiculous, I sort of treated her like she was. I didn't consciously THINK that about her when we were together, but I definitely treated her that way. So, one day she was over at our house and she said something and I responded with something I'm sure I thought was funny, and I'm positive was rude.

Then I heard Camille say, "She isn't trying to be mean, I promise, she's really very nice."

It struck me to the core. I couldn't believe that THAT was being said about me, and I watched Heidi's face kind of change like, "Oh, she isn't picking on me because of me?" and I felt horrible. As I should have.

I doubt Camille remembers this. I hope Friend Heidi doesn't remember this. But I'm glad I do. There is no place for that kind of humor and if someone else has to be the butt of your joke, it isn't worth it. Unless you sit and make bracelets at a Girl's Night Out and I know you can take it. Then all bets are off. I will totally make fun of you, all for a laugh.

What are some of your "defining moments"?

The Best Part?

I actually paid someone to do this to her hair.

Sorry about the drool. She is impossible to photograph. She thought it was funny when she did it, thought it was "soooooo disgusting" when she saw it.