This is a sticky post so the Purse Drive details can be visible for all newcomers. Here’s the short version:

Problem: our high school girls are only allowed to carry small purses to school (it’s a safety issue)  and many girls have already purchased purses. Do I need to mention The Economy? Do I need to mention the poverty rate in my school?

Solution: have friends and family help donate small purses (women almost ALWAYS have more than one purse!), sell them for the bargain basement price of $5, and donate that money to the school for the students. My friends have been gracious enough to clean out their closets, but I know a lot more people find this an easy project in which to get involved.

Purses should be no larger than 8.5 x 11 so measuring with a piece of paper should be easy to use for measurement. They can be sent to me at:

Kelly Wickham 

P.O. Box 9465

Springfield, IL 62791

Then, there’s karma. Who doesn’t love good karma for doing a good thing?

Well, I’ve just gotten over quite the hot wing hangover. All I have to say is that the next time I say, “No, let’s not BUY PRE-MADE stuff for the Super Bowl Party. Let’s do it all from scratch!” then someone needs to stop me. Because there’s a new fryer in the house and the biggest jug of canola oil I’ve ever seen. Does some small country want to use the rest of it? I have plenty left over. But there are a few things I’ve learned about making hot wings and they are as follows:

1. Do a salt-soak marinade. Do this accidentally the first time and then by the time you get to batch four you’re all THESE ARE THE BEST BATCH YET but you can’t even speak those words. They are spoken in your head as you have two thoughts going on at once: one, about the best batch yet and two, about how your stomach ‘feels funny’ because you haven’t bothered to put a vegetable in it for the entirety of the day.

2. Don’t screw around with fake hot sauce or bourgeois hoity toity crap you get from a gourmet place. Hot sauce. From Louisiana. Otherwise? You’re doing it wrong.

3. Crispy wings is the key. So is butter. Butter is the key to so very many things in life. Crisp up the wings, mix up the sauce (with butter) and then put them in a frying pan with more butter and cover each individual wing with the sauce.

4. Cure cancer. You just might do that with this little magical recipe. Wouldn’t that be grand?

So! This year for the game I actually watched it and paid attention. DO YOU HEAR THAT, ADVERTISING JERKS? I’m not at all thrilled with the ignorance with which the commercials were played nor was I happy with their lameness. LAME. I got up more times to check on the hot wings than I cared to stick around to find out why some football player I’d never heard of wanted to throw a thinly veiled opinion about my healthcare out there.

Mallory is a Colts fan. It’s weird, but she comes by it honestly. Her boyfriend is a Colts fan. So, naturally, when she’s home on a Saturday and there is a Colts game on, we’re watching it.  In any case, I was enough of a fan to be paying attention to the game that it’s taken me 25 years to understand. Because I now understand it I make up fully one-third of all football fans. I’m pretty sure the NFL knows this data, but can someone send that information over to the neanderthals in marketing? Anyway, this was a particularly difficult game to watch because my family are New Orleanians. (Is that the word? Or am I just supposed to call them ‘heathens’?) (Ha! Ha! I joke!) (No, really. I have to put that in there. My family owns guns and I shouldn’t joke about them.)

Speaking of owning guns, I sorta wished I did so that I could shoot the person responsible for that horrid Dodge commercial during the Super Bowl. I wouldn’t hurt them, because I’m not a violent person, but I would surely shoot them in the buttocks a la Forrest Gump for this. The best roundup of the ads was on Salon and I particularly liked this description of the that purposefully emasculating ad:

“I will shave. I will clean the sink after I shave. I will be at work at 8 a.m. I will be quiet when you don’t want to hear me say no. I will take your call. I will listen to your opinion of my friends. I will put the seat down. I will carry your lip balm.” Oh you will, asshole? Wow, I didn’t realize being a grown-up was soooo challenging. And as you glumly stare at the camera until your eyeballs look like they’re about to explode, all you demand is that you can zoom around to some fucking James Bond music in your dumb Dodge as you boldly take “Man’s! Last! Stand!” Way to stick it to us. The Charger: delusional masculinity’s reward for having to put the toilet seat down.

Oh, and have you read Margaret and Helen this week? Simply delicious. I should have snacked on that instead of 52 hot wings.

It was more like 58. Or 15,000. It was a lot.

I wrote this two weeks ago and couldn’t bring myself to publish it.

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When you get a new job and you meet new co-workers and spend new time with them it’s normal for conversations to go from ‘Wow, we like the same things and I had no idea you were a Libertarian and did you even know that we had a re-cycling program here?’ to ‘There’s nothing wrong with using the term light colored-negro’ and then your brain explodes because OH MY GOD, WHO STILL SAYS THE WORD ‘NEGRO’?

It didn’t happen to me, but someone I’m very close to and someone who is actually a person of color. A person who passes. A person who looks like me and finds herself incognegro in situations where people think she’s all white. They think she’s all vanilla.

So. You know. She probably shouldn’t say anything. Or, if she does, what should she say? Because we are in a recession here and it’s not like you can just get up and leave a job. You aren’t a Vanderbilt and you don’t use the word “summer” as a verb.

What’s a girl to do?

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That’s where I ended it because I couldn’t finish the thoughts there. Then, President Obama addressed the nation and Chris Matthews “forgot” that Obama was black for an hour. Now, it’s February and the time when most Americans a handful of people celebrate Black History Month. So I won’t say anything.

I’ll just say that I’m having a contest sponsored by Clever Girls Collective and See’s Candy where I’m giving away some CHOCOLATE and no, it has nothing to do with Black History it’s just that it’s closing in on Valentine’s Day and CHOCOLATE is the theme for that, too, so hey! Coincidence!

Enter here.

Don’t mind me, though. I’m really not going to say anything. Except maybe one more word.

CHOCOLATE.

My sister is 40 today. It’s a milestone in our family because she’s the eldest of all us girls and I’ve been teasing her about turning 40 for the last two years.

“You know, you actually turn 40 twice, Erin. Once when you turn 39 because all you can think is OHMYGOD I’M GONNA BE 40 NEXT YEAR and then once when you truly turn 40.”

She reminded me that I’m a mere 14 months younger than she.

Guess who turns 39 this year? Yeah. That came right around and bit me in the butt, didn’t it?

Erin always got to do everything first. She got her license before I did, when she asked to go roller skating with her friends on a Saturday all by herself she got to go alone. Erin also got to make mistakes before I did so that I could watch her and tell myself that I didn’t want to make those same mistakes. (Let’s face it. I made all new ones. I wasn’t very smart.) She got married right out of high school and moved to New Mexico but came back to Illinois after her second baby.

She works harder than anyone else I know. It drives me crazy but I’ve seen her clean her house from top to bottom after working a full day and she seems to go, go, go long after any normal, rational person has lost steam. Nobody is as exacting as Erin.

She’s a crier. If anything sentimental happens, Erin will be crying. (Even though I watched as she gave birth to her third child and teared up, she gritted her teeth and pointed at me and screamed, “Don’t you dare cry right now, Kelly Marie!” because she’s also dramatic with that pointy finger of hers and likes to use both of my names when she scolds me.) The entire family has said at one time or another, “Oh, Lord. Someone get Erin a tissue because we know she’s gonna cry.” She’s a pretty crier, too. ANNOYING.

She’s an encourager. If you feel like you can’t do it she is right there telling you that you can.

She’s the first person I wanted to talk to when I found out that Maddie was back in my life and she’s the first person I will call when I think the world is crashing down upon me. All “what am I gonna do?” conversations start with my big sister. When I got a tattoo on my back she decided that she wanted one, too, and now all three of us have the same tattoos. Sometimes I like to point out that I GOT MINE FIRST but then I look at her tattoo and realize she went bigger and fancier than mine.

Happy Birthday, sister. I love you fiercely.

I know you’re crying as you read this so get a tissue, wipe your nose, and collect yourself you big baby.

How can anyone who hasn’t seen the sun in days stop themselves from feeling blue? Or gray? Or from hurting the nearest kitten that comes close to their yard?

I do not know. But it has made me Super Cranky which is like Super Superior but angrier and with clenched fists.

It’s making me engage in passive aggressive behavior.

It’s becoming nearly impossible to get through a day without sprinkling around some bad words.

No one is funny right now.

Oh, and another thing that’s just really irritating? Stop taking a gazillion pictures of yourself while you’re on vacation and posting them. I don’t care that you ate that shrimp cocktail on that tropical island with a drink that had 15 kinds of liquor in it. No, I just don’t. You’re just being mean now.

And pizza? I MISS YOU TERRIBLY. Because whatever, I know there are a ton of new ways to eat a pizza without any cheese on it but damnit, I miss cheese pizza. Look there. You made me cuss and say ‘damnit’ which, by the way, is the real way to spell it and not ‘dammit’ because that’s just stupid. Damnit.

Now that I’m combining foul language and junk food into one paragraph it’s time to get to the bidness.

January, you’re a hard month. You make everything seem dreary and you’re unmotivating. It’s hard to exercise and work out but when I do go to the gym the gross, sweaty, beefy guys make eye contact with me every 40 seconds while I’m on the elliptical and I don’t like that. The only reason I’m making eye contact back is because I’m questioning if they’re really looking at me and THEY ARE BUT I WANT THE M TO STOP IT. You’re just no fun anymore, January. It’s not me, it’s you. You have weak ass weather and the I don’t even like award shows anymore and the one holiday you have to offer is still, God help me, controversial in 2010. Sorry, MLK, that we’ve reduced you do initials. I come bearing gifts, though, January. I come in the name of all the depressed, weathered, wanna-be-startin’-somethin’-but-too-lazy-to-start-somethin’ people who want to do something fun like trick or treat during the month of January.

We’ll start this weekend, ok? Saturday night. We’ll go from house to house with a pillowcase in hand and ring doorbells to see if our neighbors are still alive have heat and some candy coated goodness to offer.

If they have a keg instead then ok. That’ll do.

Over the last two years our family has gotten used to going back and forth between parents. It’s a testament to the passing of time that I’m even able to admit such a difficult thing because I know it is not the ideal situation. More than anything I’ve learned that co-parenting sometimes results in an It is what it is sentiment because things are just beyond our control. I read with great interest how other people cope with the loss of a marriage through divorce, but I’m just not able to write about it. First of all, it would be one sided and that’s simply unfair. Secondly, I would have to permit entry into the hole that is left in my heart since my marriage failed. I failed. But it’s a mourning that others write about and explore far better than I could do justice.

Every week that my boys are with me they bring a few of their favorite clothes, a karate uniform, and a ton of DVDs. My sons are connoisseurs of films. Many years ago when they were quite young our family made the conscious decision to get rid of cable television because they were so impressionable and reality shows and sexual music videos began to get out of control in our society. Since it’s hard to monitor that we simply turned it off and started playing more board games, doing puzzles, and reading. After about four months when that wore off we visited our video store and rented all the movies in the Classics section because they were free. They watched Jimmy Stewart’s incredible performance in “Harvey” and learned nearly every line to Rosalind Russell’s “Auntie Mame” (my all time favorite movie ever) and then a friend let us borrow her Ealing Studios Collection of films starring Sir Alec Guinness.

We learned, watching the  Ealing Studio movies, that the older kids didn’t get much into British comedy. I asked them what they didn’t like about it and Mallory responded with “Nothing EVER turns out right for those characters, mom!” True. It’s uh…kind of like the thing about British comedy. They were very meh about the whole thing and might even tell you that they suffered through it. The youngest loved it. He was probably 6 at the time so it surprised me that he liked it as much as he did. We got through “The Ladykillers” and were well into “The Lavender Hill Mob” when he spoke up and said, “I know that guy. That actor. But not like this. I know his voice.”

Morgan, my youngest, is really good with voices. And he was absolutely right. He did know that voice. It belonged to Obi Wan Kenobi and we’d watched enough Star Wars movies to choke a tauntaun.

Tonight, when my boys got here, Morgan pulled out 8 movies (EIGHT MOVIES LIKE WE HAVE TIME FOR ALL THAT CRAP) that he’d brought over and I grieved the realization that he probably wants to watch all of them before he goes to bed. “Look here, buddy. We aren’t watching everything. Make a choice and pick ONE.” One of them is the second “Die Hard” movie and since it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that one I had to ask if it’s the one in the airport and on the plane. Mason chimed in that he’s noticed a theme with the Bruce Willis movies.

“Ok, so the first one he saves everyone in a building. The second one he saves everyone  in an area. The third one he saves a whole city. The fourth one he saves the whole United States. I’ll bet in the fifth one he’ll save the whole world. The sixth one he’ll save the universe. The seventh one he’ll probably save God.”

Mason sure does have a special way of summing things up. Speaking of summing things up, I don’t really have much in the way of tying this all together. But that’s how life is for me sharing kids. It’s really pretty messy. The point is, I have some great kids who are funny and who have managed to maintain a sense of humor. Even when it feels like nothing ever turns out right for us.

As an added bonus, I’ve included a very cute “sweded” version of “Die Hard” that I found just now. (Have you seen “Be Kind, Rewind”? Then you might know what sweded means. Great movie. Watch it. It’s super cute.)

Yippee-ki-yay. (I can’t write the last word of that popular phrase. I’m trying to be family friendly here. I don’t have to write it. You know it.)