Tawdry quirk curators
// November 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Doug, kid quotes, me
Noah: “It’s older than YOU? Wow! That’s really old.”
Doug: “You know that drink you like so much? They make a low calorie version that you really need to try.”
I will be sleeping in a tent in the backyard from now on. I hope the wireless is accessible from there.
// October 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Doug, me, movies
Me: “You remember wonderinging where they filmed when we were watching The Holy Grail?”
Doug: “The Holy Grail? I remember wondering where something was filmed, but I don’t remember what it was.”
Me: “It was Holy Grail. You asked where they filmed it.”
Doug: “Noooo. I think it was Planet of the Apes.”
Me: “Are you sure? I thought you asked where Holy Grail was filmed.”
Doug: “Nope. It was definitely Planet of the Apes.”
Me: <- sigh ->
Doug: “Go ahead and tell me. You know you have to say it.”
Me: “No. It doesn’t matter now.”
Doug: “Come on. Let it out.”
Me: “Scotland. And they used the same castle for every location.”
Doug: “Feel better now?”
Me: “No. I have to look up Marky Mark AND Charlton Heston.”
// October 4th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // me
One of the many pleasures of crisp fall weather is the return of socks. I love fuzzy, funny socks. Socks are like a secret joke that make your toes giggle. Happy toes make me feel relaxed and mellow. Socks are a good thing. After months of neglect, today the socks came out to entertain my feet. All day, I slid on the wood floors like a child. As my brain started getting fuzzy and I lost the motivation to do anything but my imitation of a sloth, I fixed a drink, loaded my arms with clean clothes that needed to go to our bedroom closet and began the trek downstairs.
I made one step onto the stairs before I remembered that sock feet on our steps are extra slippery. When they are MY uncoordinated, klutzy sock feet on stairs, there is guaranteed hilarity. I fall down the stairs about once a year. Usually, it only hurts my pride. This time I was holding a red drink. The noise from my big fanny falling down the stairs would make enough noise to wake everyone. I think the site of me crumpled at the foot of the stairs with red liquid splashed everywhere would be slightly upsetting to a few of the children. Despite the huge laugh it would give Doug, I walked down the stairs more carefully than any other human has ever stepped. My next pratfall will have to come when the children are all at school.
// October 1st, 2009 // 1 Comment » // me, school
I arrived at the school for my parent/teacher meeting. As I walked in the building, I saw the teacher taking down a decorative display in the lobby. I waited until all the teachers were finished discussing a new display before assisting with the clean-up. We carried everything back to the classroom and I waited for the teacher to begin discussing my child. I stood silently and stared at the teacher. The teacher tilted her head slightly and asked if I needed help with something. “Don’t we have a meeting today?” In my mind, I began questioning if I had gotten our meeting date wrong. The teacher looked like she couldn’t decide between laughing out loud and hugging me. “I was your child’s teacher LAST year.”
// September 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Doug, marriage, me
Me: “The cat has a chipmunk in her mouth.”
Doug: “What?”
Me: “The cat has a chipmunk in her mouth.”
Doug: “Where?”
Me: “In the front yard.”
Doug: “Why is Tommy chasing the cat?”
Me: “He’s trying to get her to drop the chipmunk.”
Doug walks outside and I go in the bathroom to scrape toothpaste off the bathroom mirror.
Five minutes later, Doug sends a text message to my cell phone:
“The cat is hunting a chipmunk.”
// September 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // me, TN
“My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.” Aldous Huxley
I am not amused by this particular silly season. I stomp around the house grumbling about news, politics and people. I am acutely aware of the weeks that have passed without time alone with my best friend. I allow others to hurt my feelings and make me cry like . . . a girl. I shouldn’t feel this weary. It has only been a few days since my day in the mountains. I have mentioned my love for mountains numerous times on this blog. The mountains have never failed me. I feel recharged and unburdened after a trip to the mountains. I should still be high on the inner peace that the mountains offer to visitors.
Staring at the rain, I realized that although I spent the day at Newfound Gap, I never left the pavement. I saw, but did not touch. I failed to step on to the soil, to touch the tender petals and to sit on a rock that is older than time. In my own defense, I felt like the National Park employees were transformed from their usual ‘get out there and enjoy nature’ personalities into yardstick wielding nuns. “You can’t stand here.” The day was great, but it was a trip to the mountains that was unlike any other. The next time we venture into the Smokies, I think I’d like a few dozen less politicians and their security requirements . That trip needs to be soon. Maybe then, I’ll be able to laugh at the silly season.
// July 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // blogging, blogher, me
I ignored the brouhaha the year the women at BlogHer argued over being “just” a Mommy blogger. I am a Mommy and I blog. I have been doing this for a decade now. I’m not embarrassed. I shrugged about the arguments over PR blackouts. If you’re tired of doing product reviews, don’t do them. We need all kinds of blogs and review blogs are just one of them. If you are paid to write posts, it’s an advertisement. Write what you want. Read what you want. It’s all good.
I thought the Motrin ads were funny. I wasn’t offended, but I watched the Twitter mob gathering torches and pitchforks. Entertaining? Maybe in a train wreck sort of way. It should have been educational for anyone who doesn’t think their brand needs to be interacting with consumers. I like to think that kind of energy can be channeled to do good. I know that social media has helped me.
It looks like this year’s topics of introspection are cocktail parties and swag. The posts coming out of BlogHer so far include:
Not all bloggers are like that
In Which I Pi** Off Lots of People and Do Not Care
The swag behavior is childish and may or may not have been exaggerated by the enormous crowd of people that attend BlogHer. From the descriptions I’m hearing, it sounds like the day after Thanksgiving sales. Event sponsors brought swag that was far better than the pencils I get excited about at Knoxville’s First Day Festival. I drooled at the pictures of what women were getting in their goody bags. I could have filled the children’s stockings with all those trinkets. Everyone just got caught up in all the excitement of BlogHer. Maybe crowd control will reduce some of the problem. Maybe lobby tickets were a mistake. Most likely, women will have higher expectations for themselves and others in the future. I believe in women enough to know it will not be a problem next year.
Then, there is the desire to band together and protect any fellow blogger who has been wronged. This is one of the good things about who we are. Please don’t make it into an us vs them. Don’t get mad at Nikon. We should all be lucky enough to have one of their cameras. Don’t get mad at babies. Tiny babies are completely portable and when they are with their personal feeding/soothing device, there is no wailing or destruction. It’s only when they get mobile that they damage property. We can support each other without having to make someone a bad guy.
I don’t want to call myself some politically correct thing like “woman who blogs” or “online diarist” or whatever name people are going to create out of this. I am a Mom. I blog. If someone asks me to review a product that fits in my life, I will do so if there are no strings attached. I would rather write about my life, my family and whatever interests me. I will not do paid posts, but I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to see behind the scenes of where my food comes from or have a conversation with elected officials. I write about focused topics on other sites. I’m not paid for what I write over there either. I write e-mails to politicians. That doesn’t make me a lobbyist. It all falls under the giant umbrella of being a mom who has ideas, opinions and a life that she likes to write about. There are lots of Mommy bloggers who are not like that. There are lots of us who haven’t stopped telling our stories. We don’t need a new label. We just need to remember who we really are.
// July 16th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Doug, me
Last night was a perfectly beautiful evening with a slight breeze. Bugs chirped in the tall trees and geese sang in the distance. The air was filled with a blend of food and wine smells. The children were at home with a babysitter and the evening was filled with promise. Surrounded by familiar faces and cheerful chatter, my feet awkwardly slid out from under me and I fell on my hip with a very comical thud. It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to throw my arms down to break the fall. If I had, I would have been very sorry, as my wrists don’t have any of the strength and padding of my ample posterior. My natural cushioning saved me from any pain except embarrassment. As soon as I landed, I heard gasps from every direction except one. Instead of a surprised gasp, the familiar voice of my own husband matter-of-factly announced, “It’s okay. She does that all the time.”
// July 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // aspergers, kid quotes, preschoolers
Barry: “The only thing she doesn’t blog about is her children sitting quietly.”
Actually, there is an increasingly lengthy list of incidents, behaviors and observations that I haven’t been putting in writing. Since I know that everything I don’t write will rapidly be forgotten, I need to revert to journaling the good, bad and everything in between. I already find myself calling for John Boy, I mean Mary Ellen, I mean you. Yes, YOU to clean up this mess you just made.
I allude to Evan’s speech impediment, but only when it’s cute and fuzzy. I have avoided the deep, dark family secret that when Evan and his sister are fighting over a piece of paper and the paper tears into several pieces, Evan shrieks, “I ripped it.” Except, what everyone hears is “ray-ped” and that means something entirely wrong coming from a 4-year-old’s mouth. Despite the inappropriateness of the situation, this never fails to result in smirks from the adults. This is immediately followed by Evan torture in the form of forcing him to say separate sounds and then putting them together until the word is pronounced closer to its’ intended pronunciation. “Now, say ‘ri’ and ‘puh’ together.”
I try to always have ice pops in the freezer. The plastic tubes filled with frozen kool-aid are inexpensive and easy, but they are also part of Tommy’s sensory diet. After eating one, Tommy has an elaborate chewing, fidgeting, folding routine with the wrapper that can help him stay focused for a good 3 hours. Unlike most foods, Evan needs help to get ice pops open. He would eat them constantly if they were easier to access. “Can I have a popsickle?” “After you eat lunch.” “Say ‘ohhhh’ and then say ‘kay’ to me.”
// July 9th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // clothing, me
When people connect me with Doug, they always ask excitedly if I juggle. My answer that I can’t walk across the floor without tripping on my own two feet never fails to disappoint them. Their disappointment is nothing compared to how I feel about my Jerry Lewis coordination. Tonight, I had one of those extremely rare outings without children. It came after a full day of child chauffeuring and a PTO gathering. I had less than an hour to check e-mail, make sure nobody was littering on a few websites and change out of my mom uniform. In the back of my mind, I unconsciously knew exactly what I would be wearing to pretend I belonged with the grownups. My mistake was not planning ahead and hiding the outfit far from the reach of children and animals.
I prepared to iron the pink shirt that covers my upper arms and doesn’t *fit too snugly across my chest only to discover something sticky splashed or dripped all down one side. It looked like a child used my clean, folded shirt as a bib while eating a popsicle. I had a silent OCD tantrum inside my head while I aggressively squirted spray ‘n wash on the stains. I grabbed my only hot weather, not-a-t-shirt alternative to the pink shirt and sprayed it with environmentally incorrect starch. As I wondered why the starch shot out in a heavy, thick stream instead of a delicate mist, I realized that I was drenching my second choice shirt in spray ‘n wash. Paralyzed, I stood motionless with the iron in one hand and the stain remover gripped in the other hand. I don’t know how long the Aspie teen was watching my laundry performance art, but I realized there had been an audience when I heard him yelling for Dad to “come look at Mom.”
Doug silently removed the useless items from my hands as I explained in one, breathless sentence why I might as well stay at home for the evening. Before I knew what happened, Doug had kicked me out of the house and directed me to grab a replacement shirt at my favorite Knoxville store. He even called and warned them that I was en route. Fifteen minutes later, I sat in the car and changed into my new-to-me shirt. It also required a change of foundation garment. As I risked blinding and traumatizing the public, I briefly thought, “I’m old. It doesn’t matter.” As soon as I thought it, I realized that I have been changing clothes in the car my entire life. At home or in public, I’m a walking Jerry Lewis routine. Too ridiculous for anyone who doesn’t embrace their inner 12-year-old boy.
*Why do clothing designers think that women have flat chests?
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