What Santa is bringing this year...

I want to get the munchkeroos these!

By my calculations, I'd be in 22nd grade this fall. (But don't trust my calculations, I didn't make it through college.)

In the same way that Christmas and Halloween have become less about me and more about the experience I create for my children, The First Day of School has been a spectator sport. I get to channel my inner geek with a romantic stroll down the school supply aisle, where, in my imagination, protracters and glue sticks follow me like I'm Snow White, where I am serenaded by the pencil sharpener that just flew by and landed on my shoulder.

Happy First Day of second grade to Madelynn!
In the grand tradition of Maddy, me, and first days of school, I fought back tears after I waved goodbye and walked out to the car. She was excited to go this year, fully because she had been suffering a mean case of withdrawal from those three months without Monkey Bars. She worried all summer about second grade, but I don't worry about her. Madelynn may be shy at first, but people adore her. (And even if they don't, she doesn't really give a shit. Sweet.)

She sat at her desk, hands folded, and looked like she was afraid it was going to swallow her up. I watched her through the big classroom window for a few minutes while I was chatting with the other Moms, and I saw her straighten her pencil box in the center of her desk, and then move it to the side, and then the middle again. And then I noticed that even though I got the exact pencil box the teacher specified, most of the other kids had a different brand. Knowing this as I walked back to my car burdened me with some bizarre surrogate social anxiety. Is that weird?

Speaking of surrogacy, I emailed the four girls I know who are still in high school, and asked how their first days went. And then I begged them to tell me what they wore, because that's pretty much what the first day of school is really all about. My daughter has to wear a uniform, which, although a godsend on every other day of the year, kinda takes all the fun out of the first day. I reconciled myself with this by harassing my sister and her friends to tell me what they wore... and by reminding myself that there is Free Dress on Picture Day.

Attack of the Mom-Brain!!!

Something about pregnancy and the subsequent weeks of being postpartum renders your brain only about half-useful. It's the phenomenon of Mom-Brain that leaves you incapable of even the easiest mental tasks. It's what causes you not notice that you're wearing your clothes backwards, have two contacts in one eye (right, Tiana?), or that you never rinsed out your conditioner. It's what caused me to leave an entire trunkfull of frozen foods in my car until they melted beyond salvation because... well, because I just completely forgot about them.

The grocery mishap, compounded with the fact that I've been listening to Disney music all day, caused me to seek shelter within the pages of my new book, Rant, by Chuck Palaniuk. The pessimist in me especially loved this passage from pages 12 & 13:

"The big reason why folks leave a small town," Rant used to say, "is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out." Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere... Rant used to say, "Life's greaetest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you."

May your day be graced with a good book, some age-appropriate music, and no thawed chicken juice seeping into the upolstery of your trunk.

Love me, love my weakness for musicals.

Because it's late, and I'm exhausted to the point of nearing delirium, I'm going to confess something. I was really anticipating the August 17th release of High School Musical 2. Unfortunately, my daughter was out of town and we had to wait until she came back to watch it... which means the last five days were more torturous than I'd like to admit.

If you're not familiar with the High School Musical phenomenon, it was a movie made last year for the Disney Channel about a group of high school students. It's plot is Grease meets The Mickey Mouse Club, and it so corny yet so catchy. When I saw previews for the sequel, I knew it would be horribly cheesy, predicatable, and over-the-top... ergo absolutely fabulous and I couldn't wait!!!



Even though I grew up loving musicals and cheesy movies, there were moments that garnered a groan and eye-roll from me. ME- I saw From Justin to Kelly- IN THE THEATER- so who am I to pass judgement? Noooooooooooooooone. But I will anyway.

Zac Efron- dreamy enough to make me feel like a creep- was wearing so much makeup that he looked like an Oompa-Loompa gave him a makeover. Sadly, even his freaky fake tan was not enough to distract from the horrible song and dance around the golf course that he did. Who thinks that was cool- besides the Kevin Bacon character in Footloose? Otherwise, though, that kid is adorable. Even when he's trying to cop a feel on Gabriella as she's singing her "I'm Breaking Up With You" song. Hello, on the bridge? I am SO not the only one who noticed that, right? (Oh, how I wish I had another adult to discuss this with!) And why, oh why, was there an omelet on the stove just ready and waiting for him every time he walked into the kitchen?

Really? Am I really typing all this? Time to put myself to bed before I start to analyze the beseball dance-off... one boy just sang to the other, "I'll show ya how I swing!".
It would just be too easy to keep going!

What came first, the chicken or the egg? (And other food-related queries)

Do I watch Food Network all the time because I'm constantly hungry, or am I constantly hungry because I watch Food Network all the time?

Piss Drunk?

Germany. Home of sausage, Hefeweizen, lederhosen, and now... the Piss-Screen.

Essentially, it's a way to weed out potential drunk (male) drivers by having them play a simulated driving game where they steer a car with their stream of urine. If you crash your car in the game, the number for a local cab company appears on the screen.

Great for society, bad for janitors...

http://www.piss-screen.de/

For those Crazy, Hip, Neglected Blog Mamas!!!

I haven't participated in a CHBM rally in a while. Please forgive me while I unabashadly blame it on my unborn child. After the stretchmarks she's giving me, she can take a little heat from a blog group. ;) Oh, and if anyone's peeved that I didn't post this on Friday like I should have... take it up with afformentioned unborn.

The theme is Summer Photos, here's what I got for ya:

As a favor to me...

Anyone who has access to Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds", go play it... this is my message to you-ou-ou.

This has to be some kind of joke. Unless Petra Nemcova designed a line of resort footwear inspired by her tsunami survival, or Aquaman has a fashionista for a girlfriend, I have a hard time imagining much of a market for these.


On the other hand (foot???) they do accomplish one remarkable feat (feet!!!)- they actually make Crocs look not-so-bad. I can't believe I just said that.

More than meets the eye?

Anyone out seeing this



soon? Keep an eye out for my step-brother, who's got a teensy bit of screen time in the movie. (Towards the very end, he's flying one of the helicopters, and then he blows up.) I haven't seen it yet because the idea of sitting in a packed movie theater watching robots fight for two hours while my body is screaming "Why aren't you laying down, Stupid?" at me... well, it's not my bag, Baby. I am, however, extraordinarily proud of my brother.

This step-brother of which I speak is named Michael, and he's a month older than I am. I didn't get to know him until after my mom married his dad a few years ago, because he was an Army Ranger and served two terms in Iraq, flying Blackhawks. He's one of those guys who comes off as a complete asshole until you get to know him- then you realize, well, yeah, still an asshole, but he's funny.

Soooooooo, go have fun, those of you who are unencumbered enough to be able to sit in a movie theater for two hours without frantically making an escape plan in case your water breaks!

Honestly-

HELP.

Does anyone know how difficult it is to remove wallpaper? Like, on a scale of 1-10... for a preggo. I have a fairly small bedroom with a wallpaper border along the top of the wall that I would just like to not exist anymore. Anyone have any pointers???

Young man, you are grounded until I can tell this story without busting up laughing.

Tonight, over dinner, I was dealing with the usual frustrations of trying to get my children to eat... not to mention keeping elbows off the table, full mouths closed, and the bodily-function jokes to the bare minimum. To make matters worse, Maddy had a friend over, and my baby broher Tyger, and my sister and her best friend were all there too. Mealtime was hectic, and I was getting frustrated with how much policing I had to do to get them to eat. It's not like I was forcing them to eat liver and onions or anything, I made their favorite- Mac & Cheese- from scratch.

My three year old was in rare form tonight, especially because he had an audiance, and I had to keep pestering him to quit the comedy routine and eat. Raising my voice slightly, I said, "FINISH YOUR DINNER!" to which he looked at me, wide-eyed, looked back down at his plate, stabbed a forkful of Mac and said, "MACARONI! You are going in my belly to marry my lunch! And then you will kiss each other! Nakey! AND IT WILL BE SEXY! They'll be like 'Oooooh la la!'"

I almost spit out an entire mouthful of salad. I could not fathom what had just come out of my baby boy's mouth... let alone begin to process how to counteract the situation. While the six other people at the table howled with laughter, I tried not to choke on my mouthful of food. I could feel my face blush with mortification. And then, after asphyxiation was no longer a concern, I couldn't help but laugh. And trying to reprimand a three year old while you're laughing doesn't help much.

"The Talk" happened after dinner, when it was just the two of us, and I still had to turn my head away a few times when I was about to break character. I'm not sure where he picked the term up, but according to my daughter, he had used it at least twice before. It got me thinking about how, even though my kids cross the line occasionally, they do it with hilarious pizazz. Hey, it could be worse- as long as cracking a really inappropriate joke is the most trouble they get it, I can handle that.

It got me thinking, though, about how hard it is to repremand a child when they do something funny. My all-time favorite example of this was when my family went out for dinner once. My mom, two brothers, sister and myself were in the middle of a busy restaurant on a busy night, at a table surrounded by other diners. My brother Tyger had to have been only about 3 or 4 years old at the time. In the middle of dinner, Tyger lets out the most enourmous, resonant, bellowing belch I have ever heard in my entire life. My entire family is dumbstruck for a moment, in awe of the fact that a noise like that came from a three year old and not a lumberjack. Apparently, the other diners heard it too, because it seemed like for a split second, a hush fell over the restaurant and all eyes were on our table. And then, my baby brother, with a look of shock and disgust on his face, turned to our mother and said, accusingly, "MOOOOOOOOOOM!"

Almost ten years later, I can't even type that story out without laughing out loud...

But enough about me and my family's bad manners- anyone have a story to share about a kid getting out of trouble (if only momentarily) because of a keen use of comedy? Sharing is caring.

delish...

Last night's dinner...
The Tabasco sauce is for Chris, who liberally applies it to everything edible. I've got mad Tabasco aversion thanks to one fateful lunch shift where an entire bottle spilled in my apron and I had to smell it all day long. (In case you were wondering. I'm a huge fan of Cholula, though.)

So, there you a go, a picture of dinner in lieu of an actual post. Eat up!

If Tabasco and Cholula got in a street brawl, who would win?

Why put something off until tomorrow when you can do it the day after that?

So, I'm gonna level with you here. I'm not really a motivated person. Especially with this whole "(insert any verb here)-ing for two" that I have going on lately, sometimes it takes me a whole half hour to motivate myself to rise from a reclined position to go get a brownie from the kitchen. If it takes that much for chocolate, people, you can only imagine the struggle I'm having with housework.

It's not just that I'm lazy. It truly is difficult for me to move around. I'm trying my best! Yesterday, I did a few loads of laundry, some light housekeeping, played with my son, grocery shopped, and cooked two dinners from scratch. Seems like an easy day off, right? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? By the end of the day, I felt like I got run over by a truck.

Today, I still feel miserable- a theme I've been battling for the last week or so now. (I'm thinking about starting a fund to bribe Dr. Jacome to expedite this whole childbirth thing, donations gladly accepted.) I'm taking it easy today, although I'm bored out of my mind. Already cleared my TiVo of everything I have been saving to watch when Chris wasn't around (he disapproves of my addiction to The Ex Wives Club). I had to get out of the house before I went stir crazy- seriously, nothing makes me grumpier than feeling like I wasted a perfectly good day off by staying in my house and not contributing to the economy in any way. Since we're trying to save money, I decided against going anywhere that provides you with a shopping cart, and instead decided to visit my other therapeutic outlet, Golden Spoon. Life feels so much better with an empty cup of frozen yogurt in front of you, especially when it's Strawberry and Orange 50/50 Bar Swirl with fresh strawberries on top. Or maybe that's just me. But I sat outside of the the yogurt shop, reading a book and basking in the sun until I was scraping the bottom of my Styrofoam cup and the metal rivets in my maternity jeans had absorbed so much heat that they were literally burning my skin, and now I feel like a new woman.

Or, at least, I will...after my nap.

I've returned physically, but not mentally.

Our two-day vacation was perfect... except for the fact that it was way too short. Depressingly short. Almost-threw-a-tantrum-when-we-had-to-leave short. As a matter of fact, I may appear to be back, but it's just a clever illusion. Really, I'm still in the VIP cabana at the Viceroy Santa Monica, sipping Voss water and eating food I can't pronounce. You're reading this because I've gotten mighty good at telepathy.

In reality, I'm glad we could sneak away from the desert, even if it was for 24 hours. Timing was perfect- I was maxed out mentally, and still kind of am, to be honest. A proper post is in the works, but I'm having a hell of a time stringing words together to form sentences so it might take me a little while to get caught up.

In other news, can I please have this baby? I'm literally losing what little sanity I had left.

And the livin's easy...

I'll take a Jehovah's Witness any day.

One would think that living two decades in a city with the word "Desert" in the name would make one accustomed to desert-y things. I absolutely adore my desert city, with the palm trees, the sand dunes, the tumble weeds the size of SUVs, the mountain ranges hugging our valley from all sides, the unrelenting sun- even wild coyotes, bighorn sheep, roadrunners and scorpions lose their novelty after a while. What I will never get used to? The fact that because I do, indeed, live in a desert, sometimes I might need to be prepared to come home from the hardware store to find a four-foot snake on my doorstep.

Luckily, Snakey the Snake was first spotted by Chris, who's "WHOA!" was reason enough for me to stay pretty far back. I did get a peek at the serpent, from a good 15-20 feet away, and it was enough to creep me the F out. I could not, do not even want to try to imagine what would have happened if I had stumbled across the thing on my own. Only one of us would have been able to walk away from the situation without going into cardiac arrest... or, more appropriately, I should say "slither away."
My money? It's on the huge scary scaled thing.

Sit back, relax, enjoy the slide show.

Sarah G. sent me some pics she took at the wedding- hopefully this will hold you over until the professional ones are ready...

What weekends are for:

I'm sure everyone's had a hard week. Go splash around a bit!

"I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine."

Married life.
It's been under a week, and... uh... well, it feels no different, except now, every few hours, Chris and I look at each other, giggle, and say, "We're married!"

Our honeymoon consisted of one whole entire day off together- well, technically half a day, because we had to pick Maddy up later that afternoon. We went and watched Shrek the Third, and as I sat sandwiched between the two of them, I found it hard to stay focused on the movie because I kept staring at the person to my right or left, feeling overwhelmingly blessed.

By the next morning, the "overwhelmingly blessed" turned into "overwhelmingly overwhelmed," as I looked around the house and made a mental list of all the chores that had to be done. I still had a few days off from work, but Chris was leaving to rejoin the workforce at 7:30am on Tuesday. I took a break from packing Maddy's lunch to walk my husband (I can't even type that without a giggle) to the door that morning, something that made me feel very June Cleaver. The only problem was that about ten steps from the front door, the realization hit me that This house isn't going to clean itself... and I'm the one with the day off today... oh eff me. I've got to do it? As I said goodbye to Chris, I couldn't stop the tears from falling, the big fat wet hot tears sprung from the hormonal well of pregnancy. I was already lonely before his car was shifted into Drive.

I spent most of Tuesday cleverly avoiding doing most of the housework. I even went into my work to see if I could pick up a shift! I ended up spending the afternoon shopping for new carpet with my grandma, with enough time to accomplish a few of the least deplorable tasks on my housework to-do list.

Wednesday, it was unavoidable. I had to clean my closet. Really, I had to, because people were coming out in the afternoon to measure my bedrooms for new carpet. I really wanted to avoid having someone opening my closet doors to measure the square footage and losing their life, suffocated under an avalanche of mismatched Vans and clothes I haven't been able to wear in 6 months. There is no motivator for housework greater than the chance a perfect stranger might die upon entering your home! And, let's be honest, I can't afford BOTH the new carper AND a lawsuit. Let's be honest, I can't even really afford the carpet.

Ever since Tuesday morning, I've been arm-wrestling with my hormones and have consistently lost. Ever the glutton for punishment, I declare "TWO OUTTA THREE!" and lose again. "BEST OF FIVE!!!" Then, my Self-Esteem decides it can't handle watching the slaughter from the sidelines, so they pipe up, "I play winner!" My hormones then proceed to mop the floor with my Self-Esteem. I've gone through the last few days unwittingly doing an Eeyore impression as my punishment.

I worked a little the last two days, which really didn't serve any purpose other than annoying me. (I gave the play-by-play over at zee other blog, the one where I just complain a lot, you know, that one?) Now I'm self-medicating with Fiona Apple (Extraordinary Machine on repeat!) and trying to distract myself from the daydreams I'm having about French Fries wearing ketchup shoes and can-can dancing from the plate to my mouth. Yup, daydreaming about junk food, despite the fact that I can actually feel my toes swelling as I sit here.

I'm off to go elevate my lower extremities before I have two pillow feet and ten Vienna Sausage toes.

Mmmmm.... sausage...

A generation gap so wide, you'd need a pair of Acme Rocket Skates to cross it.

Upon Seeing A Roadrunner:

Me: Look, Maddy! A roadrunner! Like the cartoo---
Maddy: Like High Speed Online!


(For those of you saying "Huh?", our cable internet is called Roadrunner.)

Hitched, without a hitch.

As of Sunday, May 20th, at 2:49pm, I am married.

Everything went perfectly (insert dreamy sigh here). I don't have enough time to elaborate at the moment- I'm not even at home- but I did just want to check in with everyone in the Blogosphere and assure you that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

More later, that's a pinky swear.

It's like muzak for the eyes!

I've got nothing to say. Here's a picture of Brady, post-haircut.

For the old man in all of us!

Mapquest finds you the lowest gas prices in your area!

Smile like a saint, curse like a sailor

According to an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, there are Seven Bad Words in the world, but thirteen if you're a sailor. Madelynn asked me about the truth of that yesterday. I told her that there were probably more bad words than that, depending on who you asked. She told me that she tried counting and only got up to eight, so there was no way that there could be thirteen bad words.

Today, while bombarded with a fresh piece of wedding-related info, I... um... well, I kinda lost it. I was unloading my rage on the phone when Maddy walked into my room. I immediately shut myself up.

"On second thought, I think there just might be thirteen after all," she deadpanned, "maybe more." Then she turned around in her sparkley mary-janes and walked out of the room, adding, "You could teach Mr. Krabbs a thing or two."

Cracked Up

Today kicked my ass.
I was running on two hours of intermittent sleep and not prepared to deal with not one, but two small crises in Wedding Planning Land.

I laid as low as I could, tried not to flip out. I only officially lost it once (on the phone with my grandma, of course) and came dangerously close to having a breakdown in the middle of the baking supply aisle of Albertson's while thinking to myself, "How the hell am I supposed to get through this without my trusty companion, Junk Food?" UNFAIR.

Maddy and I both had friends over for dinner- Maddy's friend Jade and my friend Andrea. We started talking about the concept of "If Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy!" (which, lucky for me, is a notion completely understood by Chris). Maddy had her own take on the witticism, which was "If Mama Ain't Happy, I CRACK UP!"

HOW DOES SHE FIT A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD IN THERE?

As the older two of us were doing the dishes together and the younger two were fighting over whether they were going to watch Freaky Friday or Annie, I turned to Andrea, and in reference to Maddy said, "Where did I go wrong?"

Without hesitation, Andrea replied, "You mean, 'How Did You Manage To Give Birth To Yourself?'"

Oh. Good point. On the bright side, Maddy wrote down some nice things as part of the Mother's Day gift she worked on in school. For example, she loves it when I "make chocolate cip cookies" and I'm smart because... well, see for yourself!

Art Show(-off)

(You have to click to see the full image... my apologies on behalf of blogger.com.)

Last Thursday, we went to check out my brother's artwork on display for the senior high school Art Show. First of all, it is abundantly clear that I got NONE of the artistic genes that run abundant in our gene pool. Both my grandmother and mother are extremely talented artists, and the only artistic talent I have is nice penmanship. Sometimes. All the actual look-how-well-I-can-represent-actual-things artistic talent went directly to my brother.



So, yeah, he can draw. I'D LIKE TO SEE HIM CARRY A BABY. ;)

Love you Ernie, and I'm way more proud than I am jealous.

I can see clearly now the rain is... on my parade.

I'm just going to throw this out here: without the help of ophthalmology, Chris is blind as a bat. Every once in a while, he'll throw on his old pair of glasses, but I'm not sure they're that much help, seeing as how the prescription was written when fanny packs were cool. The time finally came for Chris to get contacts.

While he was having his eyes examined, I was running wedding-related errands with my grandmother. When Chris was finished with his appointment, he called me up.

"Babe, I'm not sure if you knew this or not, but we're... surrounded... by MOUNTAINS!"

I couldn't help laughing out loud. Yeah, I was kinda aware of that. (We're surrounded by a 360 degree view of mountain ranges, even from our backyard.)

After I hung up with Chris, I had to explain to my grandmother what had caused the guffaw that made her jump out of her Reeboks. A look of panic swept across her face. "His eyesight was that bad? Oh no!"

"Isn't that hilarious?" I said. "I'm glad he finally got around to getting his eyes checked."

"Oh, me too," said my grandma. "And it's a good thing he's got two weeks to get used to how you really look before the wedding!"

Sometimes, the grass is greenest in your own front yard.

I'm going to be honest with you here. I was Cranky Mom yesterday. I was impatient, irritable, not Very Much Fun At All Mom. I was looking forward to spending some one-on-one time with my daughter tonight to compensate for my microscopic fuse yesterday. We ignored the chores that needed to be done. We neglected the television. We shunned (most of) her homework.

An old friend of ours asked about Madelynn, and it took me a while to figure out how to answer. She's absolutely the most complex child I've ever met. She can be deliriously silly and then completely morose in the same sixty-second time span. She's got teen angst flowing through her seven year old body... she is very hard work and the thing I am most proud of, and also the biggest challenge I face. I can see myself through her. I am petrified of her growing even a day older.

But, for today, I pushed away the sadness of knowing that one day this will all be different. For today, I enjoyed her as my seven year old. When I tucked her in bed tonight, I sat on the edge of her bed a little longer, hugged a little tighter, and lingered at the door for a few minutes longer.

Goodnight, Moo. Thank you for today.

Eye of the storm...

Even though Andrea's up to her ears in stress, she's still managed to kick some photo-bloggy ass this week. Please pay her site scout a visit!

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.