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Archive for the ‘Oma’ Category

Laughing at Myself and Maybe, Laughing at My Kid

Posted in Boys, Logan, Oma on December 1, 2012 | 1 Comment »

I may have said this before, but my mother is one twisted woman.  She used to make me and my brother stay up late on Friday and Saturday evenings to watch scary movies, ostensibly because she didn’t want to watch them alone.  That’s what she has claimed for years.  She still yells at the characters on any show, knowing full well they won’t change their course of action.  This behavior is absolutely genetic because my Logan does the same.  He can’t sit still while watching a scary movie.

I took the boys to see The Rise of The Guardians last Saturday and then Ed and I both took the boys to see the new Bond movie the following Monday.  You won’t get any spoilers here, but both were absolutely fabulous!  Anyway,  Logan and I spent the entire time during The Rise of The Guardians talking to each other about the show and being surprised by the show.  One of the fabulous things about children’s’ movies is that children are expected to talk during the movie.  As long as the parents occasionally shush their child, you can have a conversation at almost any decibel level.  When we went to see the Bond movie, it was Monday and the theater was almost empty.  Logan sat next to me and, as usual, we talked almost the whole time.  He told me about the different weapons being used and accessories for said weapons.  I would scream and thrust my arms out in a defensive maneuver whenever something startling happened.  Ed would shush us every few minutes.  I wonder how much of the movie Ed actually got to enjoy because that kid and I are very talkative and we both have issues with volume.  Ha!

Anyway,  it dawned on me that there was probably a method to my mother’s madness when she made me and Jacob watch all of those scary movies as children.  It’s funny to watch your children freak out at a scary movie!  It’s funny to watch me watch a scary movie because I freak out!  It’s really funny to watch Logan jump up and down while watching anything which might be classified as mildly startling.

I suggested this theory to my mother.  She told me I was wrong.  She said I couldn’t have been more wrong.  She said she had us watch those movies so we could be prepared for whatever might happen.  It’s a dangerous world out there and we needed to know what could happen.  I think she’s got an interesting cover story.  She said she’d never laugh at any of her children and really, she probably wouldn’t.  I, however, am not quite like my mother.  I find many things my children do hilarious.  And when they’re adults, I plan on telling them all about the funny things they did as children.

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People Actually Read My Blog, or I’ve Got a Killer Friday Night Social Life

Posted in Boys, Ed the Awesome, My freakish delusions, Oma, Parts of this may be true on November 9, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Well, it’s Friday night and I’m a bit bored because Ed and the boys are playing Call of Duty:  Modern Warfare III, which is their favorite pastime until Call of Duty:  Black-Ops II comes out next week, so I decided to check out my stats page because I haven’t done it in forever.  The list was significantly longer that I had expected, mostly because I think my mother is one of the few who read my blog and I’m pretty sure she poses questions to the Google browser just to tease me, and there were some search questions listed that I found amusing.  There were even a few that made me almost spew my delicious Pinot Noir onto my computer screen.  That would have been a travesty though, and a waste of good wine, so you can calm yourself because there was no wasting of good wine in the writing of this post.

Slightly off topic, but I’ve recently come across a quote I really like.

Write Drunk.  Edit Sober.  Earnest Hemingway.

That guy must have been brilliant.  (Yes, I know who Hemingway was.  I’m not that drunk yet.)  (Mom, relax.  I’m kidding!)

Anyway,  on to the list!

1. Kid Who Looks Like A Monkey.  I mostly liked this one because we’ve been teasing Trip about his enormous ears lately and he is very proud of them.  He has even told his teachers that he has ears like a monkey and they should be jealous.  The little dude is a chick magnet though, so maybe he’s on to something.

2. What Happens to Boys Who Are Raised by Neurotic Mothers?  Dear God, I hope they turn out okay!  Otherwise, mine are screwed.  I think they’ll turn out just fine in spite of me.  Or to spite me.  They’ll probable live as far as humanly possible one day from their dear Momma, but it’ll just be so I can visit them in exotic locales.  Right?  You know what’s really troubling?  Someone found my blog with that query.  And they received absolutely no help at all!

3.  Jacob Hates You.  I don’t really get this one, but it makes me giggle anyway.  Maybe that’s the Pinot?  There are some mysteries the world will never solve.  In any case, I am Jacob’s favorite sister.  I might also be his only sister, but that is not the point.  I am his favorite sister because he thinks I am awesome and no one should ever disillusion him from that opinion!  That, and he’s right.

4.  Box Fight.  That was it:  “box fight.”  What in the hell is a box fight?  I wish I knew.  I’m a child of the 80′s and I absolutely love boxing.  I still watch it on whichever channel shows it late at night when I’m the only one awake because Ed hates it.  Or he just thinks I’m slightly weird for watching people fight in a ring.  I really do love it though.  I remember Mike Tyson fighting on HBO back when HBO was the only movie channel available.  Or were we just poor?  I’m not sure if there were other channels available back in the dark ages and I have no intention of finding out now, unless you, dear reader, just remember that kind of thing off the top of your head and would like to provide me with that little tidbit of knowledge.

As a little aside, I went out with my brother Jacob last weekend for a little drinking and debauchery.  Well, drinking at any rate.  So we went to a local establishment and had a couple of beers, but we were younger than most of the other patrons by a decade or two, which is no easy feat at my advanced age, so we walked across a busy highway (we’re in the country-it’s like crossing the street and risking your life at the same time) to another local establishment where the clientele was closer to our age and we saw a few people we had known from high school because they also hadn’t moved away and a Laurence Fishborne look-alike.  As we were chatting and discussing the merits of a life well lived, a “fight” broke out behind us.  I was as observant as ever and had to be pulled out of harm’s way by my dear brother.  Fortunately, he has become quite the quick thinker.  I turned around in time to see one guy slapping his own chest while hopping backwards.  These weren’t mere steps backwards or done in an attempt to find a space with more room for the actual fight.  These were HOPS!  He was hopping backwards like a rabbit!  And then, there were bouncers who appeared from out of nowhere and separated the two, although I don’t really know if you can separate two guys who are ten feet away from each other.  In any case, one was escorted out the front door and the police were called and they stayed for what seemed like an eternity!

In the end, I came to this conclusion:  If you’re going to get arrested anyway, you might as well throw a punch!  Otherwise, WHAT IS THE POINT??

5.  My brother’s full name.  You’ll have to forgive me for not listing his full name here, but with the last name, there are only twelve in the good ol’ USA, so it’s not like whoever typed that name into their browser could’ve been looking for someone else, but WHAT IN THE HELL, Google?  How is his full name, which I’ve never used on this here blog, associated with my fantastic blog.  (Yes, you should infer a little sarcasm there.  Self deprecation.  Whatever you want to call it.)

6.  My grandfather was in the CIA.  Dude, so was mine!  Maybe.  I’m not really sure.  The stories my mom tells about him killing people didn’t come out of her mouth until long after he was dead and she has a very, very vivid imagination.  (Mom, do not view that last statement as an invitation to describe said murders or self-defense maneuvers in the comment section.  That’s for private discussion at your dining room table where the possibility exists for us to enjoy making even more people uncomfortable.)

7.  Ed is awesome.  I think my husband may have searched this term in hopes of finding some dirt on me.  He has finally come to accept that he has received a life sentence with me for some unconscionable sin in a past lifetime.  Whatever it was, it was bad.  Poor guy.  He’s so nice now too.  You’d think a guy as nice as he is would get a wife who might cook and clean once in a while.  Lucky him, I work and drink red wine.  And beer.  And spirits.  Though not all at the same time because I learned my lesson when I was much, much younger.  Drink one at a time young lady, and you’ll be that much happier for it.  And he is awesome!  And cute!

8-88.  There were so many variations on stretch mark queries, I can’t even begin to list them all. Ladies, and Gentlemen if this happens to apply to you as well, stretch marks are permanent.  Once they rear their ugly heads, they never, ever leave.  Unless you have a tummy tuck and get those bad boys surgically removed.  That’s always an option.  But if you’re not willing to consider surgery, you’re stuck with the little reminders that your body has done something wonderful.  Mine housed three souls at once.  However, those bastards itched when they were forming (the stretch marks!) , so put your lotion on or you will be miserable. 

“It puts the lotion on it’s skin or else it gets the hose again.”  Can you name that one?  It’s one of my favorites.  I blame my seriously warped mother and the strange upbringing I endured.  I can’t believe my brothers don’t write.  Our mutual biographies read like a sociopath’s background….and her mother made her stay up late on weekend evenings to watch scary movies because she didn’t want to watch them alone. 

89-100. These were really just various queries about children and I’m hoping they were parents searching for inventive ways to photograph their cherubs.  And even though I’ve got some mad iPhone skills, they should probably look elsewhere.  I’m not very skilled with the camera.  I’m just persistent.

And well, now it’s time to  send the cherubs to bed and take the remotes away from them.  Momma wants to start watching Grimm and she needs that playstation to do it.

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All I Wanted Was Some Barbecue Chicken Like My Mom Used To Make

Posted in Ed the Awesome, Home, Oma on September 19, 2012 | 3 Comments »

All I wanted to do was make some barbecue chicken in my crock pot like my Mom used to make.  I found a recipe in a magazine that looked good and easy and those are some pretty good indicators if a dish will be good.  So one night last week, I got the dish all prepared in the crock pot and put it in the fridge.  Ed was an amazing husband and agreed to come home on his lunch hour so he could turn on the crock pot for me.

  I came home after work expecting the delicious aroma to be overwhelming.

I had told everyone at work about how awesome my barbecue chicken was going to be.

And I came home and was underwhelmed.  Disappointed.

There was an aroma, it just wasn’t strong.  It didn’t live up to my expectations.

I shredded the chicken and ate it.  With more barbecue sauce.  The boys stole some off of my plate.  Ed had some when he got home.

And so….lesson has been learned.  When you want barbecue chicken like your mother used to make, ask your mother how she makes it!  You might even learn something!  And, your house just might smell as delicious as you’re expecting!

You know what’s even worse than underwhelming barbecue chicken?  I used to have a cooking blog.

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You Just Never Know What Might Be Hiding Under The Bed…

Posted in Boys, Conversations I've had Recently, Dogs, Ed the Awesome, Family Stories, My freakish delusions, Oma on July 1, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Ed’s parents have taken a little vacation, a long weekend, just the two of them.  They asked Ed to look after their dogs while they were gone.  Of course, he said yes.  Said he’d even be happy to do it.  It’s a real honest-to-goodness vacation for them and it’s been far too long since their last one. 

So tonight, after Ed and the boys and I watched a movie (Brave–loved it!) and had dinner (Tex-Mex–awesome!!), we dropped in at his parents house to feed the dogs and give them some attention.  Sir Patrick Mayo is a standard French poodle.  He’s champagne colored and likes getting his hair cut and styled like a fluffy 80′s perm until Ed reminds him what a waste of time his pride is and then he sulks.  There’s Julie the Boston Bulldog who is absolutely positive that she’s the top dog and she will take down any male dog who tests her authority.  Yes, being a Boston Bulldog, she only weighs 20 pounds.  She’s still top dog!  :)   And then there’s Burban, the pup of their pack.  He’s a full blood mutt who happens to be mostly black with a small white patch on his chest.  He was named Burban because my in-laws found him sleeping in their garage as a puppy underneath the suburban.  If my mother-in-law had accidentally put the car into drive instead of reverse, things would’ve turned out badly.  Fortunately for all of us, she didnt’.   Burban most enjoys chasing after cats and boys and Julie and wreaking havoc wherever possible.  It’s just that everything is so exciting and he has too much energy and he’s really not sure what to do with all that energy!

Once Julie and Burban had licked their bowls clean and Patrick refused to admit there was food in his bowl or that his body required any sort of sustenance, we let all the dogs run through the house and chase after the boys.  That is why you have children, right?  To wear down the dogs?  Anyway, the dogs and the boys made multiple trips up and down the long hall and scattered the rugs and absolutely nothing fragile was broken.  After the dogs and the boys looked sufficiently tired, the young dogs were put in the back yard and Ed and I went to find Sir Patrick Mayo.  Sir Patrick Mayo was cowering on top of Ed’s parents bed and shivering because he absolutely knew he had been abandoned and his people were never coming back.

And then, I noticed it.  My dear in-laws, most likely my father-in-law, had taken louvered doors-the quarter width ones you might have found on a closet door back in the 80′s- and propped them up along both sides of the bed.  There has always been a wooden box at the foot of the bed so the dogs could easily climb onto the bed. But this, this was too much.  Their bedroom has a dark, gothic feel to it anyway, but now, you can’t see under the bed at all!  It totally freaked me out!  You have no idea what might be hiding under the bed waiting to grab your foot while you’re sleeping!  Mummy?  Vampire?  Crazed Murderer?  Werewolf?  Zombie?  Alien?  You have no idea!  Any one of them could be under the bed and you would be totally unaware!

I told Ed and the boys about this.  I described the fear with which one might be jolted when said unknown creature grabbed their sleeping foot and pulled them under the bed and started eating their organs.  I even demonstrated the scream which might slip from their mouths.

They all looked at me like I was crazy.

“Where do you get this stuff?” asked Logan.  (He can be a cynical little monster some times.)

“Dude,”  I said, “You don’t understand!  Oma made me watch all of the scary movies when I was your age.  She wouldn’t let me go to sleep.  She made me watch every single scary movie ever made just because she didn’t want to watch them by herself.  She said she was preparing me for a potential attack.  I mean really, if a poltergeist was going to target just one person, it would be her and not me.  The point is, I know all about these kinds of things and you always leave the space under the bed within clear sight so you can see any monsters under the bed!  It should be a law!”

“Mom,  you’re weird,” said Trip.

“I don’t want to watch any more movies with you, Mom,” said Logan.

I think Ed just rolled his eyes at my histrionics.

I might have seen a zombie hand pushing the louvered door out of its way.

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Oma’s Vacation Proclivities

Posted in Oma on February 12, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Ed and the boys and I haven’t really been doing much other than working our tails off lately and I don’t want to write about ICU patients and for some reason, Ed thinks client confidentiality extends to spouses too so he won’t tell me what’s going on at his office.  A couple of weeks ago though, Mom told me she really wanted to go on a vacation this summer.  She had asked my brother Brian to go, but he had claimed to be too busy, so she invited her sister to go on a vacation.  This relevation always invokes a groan from me because Mom is a bit accident prone, to put it lightly.  I’ve written about her adventures before, but today seems like a good day to write about her near death stories again since she’s apparently intent on threatening her own life again.

1. Mom and I went to Peurto Vallarta, Mexico when I was 19 with my baby brother, Brian, who was 8 years old and a girlfriend of mine, S, who was 18.  One of the days we spent in Peurto Vallarta was not overly booked with excursions around the town and we simply swam at the beach.  I am a decent swimmer, as was everyone else, but out of the group, I was blessed with the most common sense, which is a rare occurance.  If Ed ever reads this blog, he might fall out of his chair because I’m a bit of an airhead on most occasions.  So there we were, swimming at the beach, when S and I hear Mom and Brian screaming for help because they had gotten caught in a current and were drowning.   S and I swam out to Mom and Brian.  I grabbed Brian, told him to float, and started hopping back to shore.  I looked back once we were at the shore, expecting to see S and Mom right behind us and they hadn’t moved one stinking inch!  I swam back out to them and yelled, “What the fuck are you doing? Swim back up to shore!”  (I was 19.  My cursing is much more advanced now.  I was just a beginner then.)  They began babbling about the current and not being able to move.  I grabbed my mother’s hand and led her on a diagonal hopping trip back up to the shore.  Mom collapsed when she got to shore and said I’d saved their lives.  She treated me and S to manicures and facials!  We reciprocated by getting way too drunk at the hotel’s dance club.  (Again, I was 19!  I’ve learned my lesson about alcohol poisoning and cheap tequila.)

2.  My mother and her older sister have a propensity for planning overly adventurous vacations.  At the time of this particular vacation, they were both in their 50′s.  Neither was in particularly fantastic shaped or even exercised on a regular basis.  Mom and her sister planned a vacation that was so crazy that the two of them were completely unable to convince any of their combined four children to tag along.  There was a train trip from Texas to San Francisco (which was reason enough for me to refuse the invitation).  There was a planned stay in a hostel.  They also planned a bus trip with about thirty other people through the Yosemite mountains that included camping. (Shudder!)  The near death experience occurred during a hike through the Yosemites.  Mom, her sister, and another member of the bus tour went on a hike up a beginner’s trail through the Yosemites.  This should seem simple enough.  Follow the green course markers.  Don’t leave the path.  Don’t give your sister ALL of your bottled water just because she’s thristy after drinking all of her own.  Don’t give your sister your roll of toilet paper after she’s used all of her own.  Don’t tell the other hiker with you to go on ahead and leave the two of you because you’re just holding them back.  Really.  Neither of them can follow a map on hard paper and have gotten lost in their own major metropolitan cities.  My aunt has driven three hours to the south when trying to visit my mother who lived to the north.  These two women who lacked anysense of direction at all told the only person with them to leave them.  They, naturally, were unable to follow the directional signs for the trail and ended up headed into what they were later told was an uncharted part of the Yosemite mountains.  Prior to them being found, my mother ended up becoming dehydrated and having diarrhea, hense the need for bottled water and toilet paper.  By some miracle, my mother and aunt were found by a couple of very experienced hikers who took a different trail than they had originally intended to take based on a hunch.  The hikers found two exhausted, dehydrated, stinking women who needed every ounce of help they had to offer. 

Mom called as soon as she could and gave us an update on her vacation and got every bit of the cussing she was expecting and more. 

3.  When I was 13, my mother, stepfather, and brother, aged 11 and 2, went skiing in Colorado.  I started out the trip aggravated that my mother was not putting my 2 year old brother in ski lessons.  Olympic skiers start learning how to ski when they are 2.  Why couldn’t my brother? (The Olympics must have been on, or I don’t think I would’ve possessed that tidbit of knowledge.)  So my mother and two year old brother spent 6 of the 7 days when everyone else was skiing just playing in the snow.  (Now that I have children who do not live in mountainous states, I completely understand her reasoning, but don’t tell her that.)  My stepfather watched my brother play in the snow around day 3 or 4 of the trip so that Mom could ski.  Mom managed to take the beginners skiing course and ski the bunny slope 2 or 3 times before having her big fall.  According to Mom, it was really more of a tipping over than a fall.  She decided that the fall hurt enough that she didn’t want to ski anymore so she began scooting down the mountain on her back side.  The snow patrol happened to drive by and she rode down the rest of the mountain on the back of a snow mobile.  Mom’s nerves were understandably frazzled and she chose to spend the rest of the vacation playing in the snow with Brian rather than trying her hand at skiing again.

Fast forward 10 years.  Mom had been saying for years that she had arthritis in her hip.  She had a routine bone scan to check for osteoporosis which revealed a healed fracture on the hip she fell on when skiing. (See?  Her luck really is horrible when she goes on vacations!)

4.  My mother and her older sister went on a road trip to the most haunted hotels in Arkansas.  I was married so I decided not to go on the trip.  My two brothers and cousin decided to go on the trip because it sounded like fun, but with the stipulation that they take their own car and not wait for thier mothers.  My mother and aunt are infamous for not being able to get within 20 miles of the posted speed limit when they’re on a road trip together.  This is understandably annoying for their teenaged and twenty-something year old children. So my brothers and cousin left mom and her sister to wind their way slowly through the mountains of Arkansas.  Somewhere along the way, my aunt announced that she had to go to the restroom.  Immediately.  Right then.  My mother stopped the car on the side of the highway.  It was a fairly open stretch of highway.  They left the passenger door open to shield my aunt’s face from oncoming traffic.  Mom stood behind her with her back turned and her jacket stretched open to shield my aunt’s backside from traffic coming the other direction.  My mother was expecting my aunt to urinate.  Who wouldn’t announce voiding intentions other to than urination the sweet person shielding their most private functions?  Mom was shocked when the backs of her legs got sprayed with diarrhea.  The passenger seat of the car also got sprayed with diarrhea.  My aunt’s response was, “Oops!”

On a side note, if I’m ever on a road trip with you and you spray my legs with diarrhea, I will leave you where you stand.

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Oatmeal Dreams

Posted in Boys, Family Stories, I Couldn't Make This Up, My freakish delusions, Oma on January 22, 2012 | 8 Comments »

Growing up, Mom would cook breakfast for us every weekend.  Cereal with milk was the norm for the week, but once Saturday rolled around, Mom would break out her Betty Crocker cookbook and open it to the breakfast section.  She didn’t really need the cookbook, but I think she opened it out of habit.  Mom would make pancakes and french toast and lots and lots of bacon.  Her repertoire also included some fantastic cinnamon toast, peanut butter and honey toast and oatmeal.  She would only ever cook one thing for breakfast, but whatever she cooked was bound to be delicious.  And what got me thinking about Mom’s Saturday morning breakfasts?  Well, I’ve been on a cleanse in an attempt to lose the holiday weight I have gained and I get to eat almost nothing.  In my food deprived state, I saw a breakfast tray for a patient in the hospital and it had oatmeal on it and the oatmeal seemed  absolutely decadent.  After drooling over hospital oatmeal (and not stealing a nibble from my patient!), I decided that the next weekend I was off, the boys were going to have hot off the stove oatmeal, made with butter and sugar.

That happened to be today.  I got out of bed at the perfectly reasonable time of 10:30 a.m. because the boys were begging for chicken nuggets and I told them they would be trying oatmeal today.  They moaned and groaned and made faces.  They whined and said they just wanted chicken nuggets.  I told them Oma used to make oatmeal for me with lots of butter and sugar.  Their ears perked up a little after I said sugar and butter, but only slightly.

So we all tromped down the stairs and I turned on cartoons for them and filled a pan with a bit of milk.  I then promptly forgot about the milk as I was getting the oatmeal and got distracted by my phone and the milk may have scorched a little bit.  I added in the oatmeal as the boys started whining again about starving to death.  I told them the oatmeal only had six more hours to cook and that I’d get it right to them.  They may have rolled their eyes at me, but i ignored them.  I stirred and stirred and then added more oatmeal because my concoction didn’t have the right consistency.  After it reached perfection, I divided the oatmeal into three bowls, added butter and sugar and brought breakfast to the table. 

And even I was a bit disappointed and I think I’d have been happier if I had just taken a bite of my patients oatmeal.  I don’t think she would have cared.  The oatmeal was good, it just didn’t live up to my expectations.  And my demon children hated it.  Logan absolutely refused to take a bite until I threatened him with housework.  Trip, who is a people pleaser and doesn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings, ate as much as he thought was necessary to make me happy.

And Logan stopped after this bite.

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Fun with Cats

Posted in Boys, Cats, Funny pictures, Oma on January 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »

Logan and Trip recently turned seven.  Their actual birthday sucks because it’s right after school resumes from the Christmas holiday and none of their friends or their parents would be able to remember a birthday so close after Christmas.  At least I presume that’s the case since I usually forget to schedule their birthday party until well after their actual birthday.  I’m punctual like that.  I was a week late for my own birth, I think I can be forgiven for scheduling my boy’s birthday party a couple of weeks late.  I think it should even be expected. 

Starting back in early December, the boys started asking for remote control helicopters.  They asked anyone and everyone who would listen and even a few strangers.  If I had taken them to see Santa, where they would be taught that it’s acceptable to sit on some strange man’s lap, to have their picture taken and asked what they wanted for Christmas, they surely would have said they wanted a remote control helicopter.  (Or maybe I just find the idea of standing in line for half a day for a cheap picture of some strange guy in a suit with my kids to be very low on the list of priorities.)  They wanted lots of other toys.  In fact, they may have fallen victim to the endless commercials they saw on television in the week they were out of school before Christmas.  But the toy they mentioned over and over and over was that remote-controlled helicopter.  There was no room for an unplanned toy under the tree this year.  Why?  Because we had already gone overboard and I don’t want them to get every single toy they ask for.  So the munchkins woke on Christmas morning to find lots of toys and no helicopter.  Oma didn’t bring one either.  The poor dears.

So time passed and they kept asking for that helicopter.  They knew their birthday was fast approaching and so they would mention the helicopter to anyone who would listen.  They are a couple of persistent munchkins.

Today, we finally had their birthday party.  It was a fantastic affair held at our usual spot at the local mall in their party place.  The boys were ecstatic.  Ed and I finally wised up and did not request that people not bring gifts because the boys were still overwhelmed from Christmas presents.  We learned that lesson well last year.  They might have been overwhelmed when they were younger, but now they expect presents at their birthday party.  And they received tons of fantastic presents this year.  My kitchen floor is covered with the packaging from these gifts.  The gifts they were most excited to receive however, were  the remote-controlled bugs from Oma.  They look a bit like cockroaches to me, but they were the first gifts out of their packaging.  After a brief plug-in, the boys played with them for 37 seconds and then they were ready to move on to bigger and better toys.  They received four video games today and such extravagances must be addressed.  So the blue electronic cockroaches were left on the floor, their controllers on my desk in the living room, completely abandoned by the boys.  What’s a mother to do?  There’s only one thing to do!  Play with the cat! 

 Hunter the cat is the most awesome cat ever!  He thought he was a dog until he was a year old and we got our black cat, Penelope.  He still plays like he’s a dog though.  The electronic bug was perfect for him.  I set them both down on the floor and started figuring out the controller.  That’s a difficult thing for a woman of my advanced age!  So there I was, playing with my boys new toy and Hunter sauntered into the room.  His ears perked up as he heard a strange clicking on the wood floor.  His eyes darted back and forth, watching the movement.  He stepped forward cautiously, unsure of what these strange creatures were.  Surely they were something tasty to eat.  And then, they stopped moving.  Hunter moved bravely closer, trying to figure out if this new creature was edible.  He’s on the genius end of the spectrum when it comes to cats and he figured out pretty quickly that these things were not food.   

So I spent  half an hour playing with my boys new toys, which they had grown tired of in a mere 37 seconds.  The bugs go back and forth and in circles in either direction.  As long as the bugs stay close enough, one controller will work both bugs.  The best part is leaving the bugs still for a few minutes and then, when Hunter isn’t paying attention, making the bugs crawl towards him and watching Hunter jump with the sudden  movement.

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Our First Date

Posted in Ed the Awesome, Family Stories, Flatulence, Oma, Parts of this may be true on December 2, 2011 | 4 Comments »

Yesterday, Ed and I celebrated the twelve-year anniversary of our first date.  I pointed out the significance of the date to Ed and he got a little misty eyed and said, “Yeah, I remember that night so clearly.  It was like I was being arrested that night.  Three months later, I got arraigned.  And then in late July, I was sentenced to a lifetime of incarceration.”  I looked at him and smiled and said, “You say such sweet things to me!”  So he raised his eyebrow and said, “You know, if I’d committed murder, I’d already be eligible for parole.” He’s such a sweetheart!

I met Ed because my mother knew he was a sucker he would be a good man for me.  Mom said to me that there was a cute young lawyer who was just out of law school and she knew he was single because he didn’t bring a girlfriend to work or church with his parents, so I needed to get dressed up in my new blue suit and come to church with her.  So I did.  I didn’t get to meet Ed that day, but he did see me from across the church.  After church, Mom dragged me over to Ed’s parents and introduced me as her daughter who was of legal age and who would soon be able to bring in a respectable income.  No, really, that’s almost what she said verbatim.   Several weeks later, Ed came by Mom’s office to ask if I would think he was too old to date.  Mom said absolutely not even though I’d never dated anyone nearly as old as he was.  Ed got my phone number, along with half a dozen other ways to get a hold of me because Mom wanted to make sure that we started dating.  He called me a couple of days later and we talked for about an hour on the phone.  We arranged to go out the very next night because all first dates should happen on Wednesdays.  Ed picked me up in his white Dodge Ram.  We talked non-stop for the hour drive down to Dallas.  We had a three-hour meal at a fabulous steak house which was shockingly empty and had the most fantastic meal I’d ever enjoyed and we talked the whole time.  There was never an awkward silence.  Or maybe I am incapable of keeping my mouth shut.  Either way, there was great conversation between us.  And, I managed to only drop three pieces of silverware!  We then headed over to a theater to see the worst first date movie in the history of movies.  The last thing you want to see on a first date is marital discord and faked murders.  It just doesn’t set the right mood for romance.  You also don’t want to fart in a theater where you and your date are the only ones in the theater, especially on a first date, but I think Ed made up that part of the first date.  Or I blocked it from my memory.  Either way, I think Ed engages in revisionist history.  So after the horrible first date movie (which was a decent movie, just not for first dates), we started the hour drive back home with me yakking his ear off the whole time.  Towards the end of the drive, about ten miles from our town, Ed had to pull almost all the way onto the shoulder of the highway and I barely noticed because I was still talking and maybe because I was still a little tipsy and he asked if I’d noticed the SUV weaving all over the highway so I shut my mouth finally and watched as the SUV swerved and weaved and we were glad that there was so little traffic because the driver surely would have hit anyone who got in her path.  The SUV went over a hill and within seconds, we saw headlights bouncing all over the night sky as the SUV rolled over and over.  Ed slowed his truck to a crawl as we approached the  wreck and we were both sure that we were about to see someone critically injured or dead.  Instead, the driver opened the door and got out.  She was limping and we went over to help her.  The glass had busted out of most of the windows, but she was largely unhurt.  We stayed until the ambulance came to take the young woman to the hospital and then proceeded back to my house.  Ed walked me up to the front stoop and gave me a gentlemanly hug and asked me if he could take me out on another date because he had enjoyed talking to me.  At least, that’s the way I remember it.

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The Unsuspecting Oma

Posted in Boys, I Couldn't Make This Up, Oma on November 7, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Children are remarkable in their ability to read people.  They intuitively know who to ask questions.  They know when it is okay to misbehave.  Why do your children act like angels at school only to break down and have a temper tantrum with you?  Because they feel comfortable enough to be themselves with you!  Be grateful when your children know your love is unconditional!  They know with whom they can let their guard down.  And with that little rant, I have a funny little story about my boys for you.

My little munchkins have led a remarkably normal life with no major family events taking place in the 6 1/2 years they’ve been alive.  They also attend school with a bunch of kids who are in stable homes with comfortable incomes.  It sounds idyllic, but really, kids need to see some of the other side of life, just so they know what can happen.  Can a set of divorced parents provide a stable and loving home for their children?  Of course.  Do mine know about it?  Not at all.  Ed and I do show the boys that a marriage takes work, but I don’t think it means much to them yet.  They are however, very observant…

My mother takes the boys at least once a week, either for us to go on a date or because Ed and I are both working late.  When Oma picks them up, she likes to take them to IHOP.  She insists they share a salad and eat some vegetables and then they share a dessert and everyone ends the evening happy.  Depending on how hungry everyone is and how much day light is left, there is also a trip to a local park, either before or after their dinner.  Being together so often has created a very strong bond between the three of them and there is a fantastic level of trust that has developed.  So a few weeks ago, Oma took them out to eat and they bombarded her with questions.  The first one was “Where is your husband?”  Oma is divorced.  She tried explaining divorce to the boys, but her explanation was not sufficient for them.  The conversation about her marital status apparently lasted all through dinner and they still weren’t happy with her explanations.  The conversation only ended because I picked them up from her house.

The funniest thing to me was that they never asked me one question about Oma’s husband (or my father).  Not before or after their conversation with Oma.  Divorce is not a topic we’ve refused to talk about with the boys.  It just had never come up. 

Munchkins are amazingly observant and every once in a while, they will absolutely knock your socks off.

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My New Project

Posted in Family Stories, Oma, The Hotness that is Me, Uncategorized on October 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Hello everyone!  I have a new pet project and my poor blog has been neglected.  I am attempting to write a short story to be published on amazon.com!  Have you heard about this?  You can self publish on amazon!  I’m almost to the point where I can send my little story to my ‘editors’!  There is a story about this little short story I’m writing.  It started out as a competition between me and my brother Jacob.  The goal is to write a scary short story, get it copyrighted, and publish it on amazon.  The stories would then be given to our Mother to judge.  The winner is the one who scares her the most!  As of right now, it looks like I’m going to be winner by default, so I figured it would make a really good Christmas present for Mom.  Why would this be a great Christmas present for her?  Because she loves all things scary!  She used to make me and my brother stay up late on the weekends so we could watch scary movies with her because she didn’t want to watch them alone.  Poltergeist for a 6 year old?  Absolutely!  I can still remember the opening music for the Hitchhiker series.  So anyway, I’m hoping to clear up the middle part of my story, which is the part giving me trouble.  I’ll make an announcement when I finally get to publish.

In boy news, the munchkins have started playing flag football!  They’ve enjoyed playing and they both have scored a few touchdowns.  First grade is treating them reasonably well.  Trip remains as clumsy as ever.  One week, he bumped his eye on the corner of his table and managed to black his eye and exactly a week later, he managed to break his finger!  It was a hairline fracture and only required three stitches.  Trip watched the doctor put in every stitch because he’s not about to let someone do something to him without watching.  He might have some control issues.  I have no idea where he gets them.  I asked him if he wanted to be a doctor when he grows up and he said absolutely not!  He’s a trooper though and played football the next weekend.  He even scored a touchdown and ‘tackled’ quite a few of the opposing players.  Logan, try as he might, still has not managed to get a single scar anywhere on his body.

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