Archive for April, 2006

That Reminds Me…

April 16, 2006 @ 7:53 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

There have been some strange events of late that I have to write down before I forget them. First of all, whenever I put on mascara (this is not a picture of me putting on mascara) and I get to my left eye, I sneeze three times in a row. It messes up the mascara and so now I touch my eye in that spot before I put on the makeup. It helps. In a totally unrelated topic, isn’t my pumpkin cute? She’s back at school now studying to be an interior designer so she can do my whole house. Thank God. That will save me a ton of money. Because private school is expensive. That reminds me: Sasha is studying the same thing. Isn’t that right?

The first time I went out shooting in the woods with my friend Brent (we shoot while our spouses fish because we reallly don’t like fishing and they really don’t like shooting) I was following him out in the middle of NOWHERE when I blurted out, “You know, my cityfolk family would just die if they knew I was following a man out in the woods with a bunch of guns that I don’t know how to shoot.” Fortunately, he laughed. Then he taught me how to shoot and I’m addicted. That reminds me: The only person who ever seemed interested in this is Tom. Can you tell what kind of gun this is?


Another strange thing is that there are all these new songs on my iPod that I didn’t put on there. My guess is that one of my children is borrowing it when I’m not using it and then putting it back. Since I’m running again I have made a playlist called “Run Your Ass Off” and that inspires me to work up to the 10k I’d like to run this summer. The weirdest song that I listen to that makes me run faster is “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg. While I’m blasting it and running on the treadmill I try not to mouth the lyrics so people don’t think I’m a freak. (That’s a picture of me just listening to my iPod. No running involved here.) That reminds me: I’ll never be as good as Erica, but I’d love to know the strange songs that get her to run faster.


My children respond to the many-sized sticky notes that I put all over the house. For instance, “NO TV” was on there each morning of our Easter Break so they wouldn’t overload on the shit that’s on there corrupting their little minds when that’s clearly my job. When my friends come over they laugh at them because I leave them up for a long time. My favorite way to send a message comes from my friend Monica who wrote this for her son:

It’s a note I would write AND LAUGH AT THE WHOLE TIME I WAS DOING IT. It’s all those boys I have. That reminds me: Jess from Drowning In Kids could benefit from this someday. What do you think, Jess?

When Ken first met me he thought it was cool and sexy that I had a tattoo, but now he cringes when I mention getting another one. Last summer 3 girlfriends and I took a vacation in Wisconsin and dared each other (maybe drinking was involved) to get another one. We went to a tattoo parlor and took so long to decide what we wanted that none of us ended up with one. A neighbor girl, Sarah (pictured below) decided to get one after a mission trip to Africa and came over expressly to show me because she know I’d say, “Awwwww, cool!” unlike her mother who would scream her head off. I also told her to please pull her pants out of her ass because it was really bothering me. That reminds me: I wonder if my friend Aafrica, who helps me name appliances and such, would ever get a tattoo. Would you?


By far the weirdest thing to happen of late involves my current taste in clothing. It wasn’t until recently that I’ve begun to not only purchase t-shirts with sayings on them, but wearing them as well. The last time that happened was in college when I wore a shirt that said “fuck” in every conceivable way every time my mom came to visit. My friend Roy played rugby and I stole his team shirt that they made on their own (they named themselves the “Leper Whores”), but my own college-aged daughter has recently stolen it from me. Morgan brought me my “Reading Is Sexy” t-shirt the other day and told me to wear it because he heard his father call me sexy. A little weird, yes. That reminds me: I don’t know if you’ve seen Paige’s t-shirts, but she’s awfully creative with them. I wonder if she carries them in my size and would do a “Blogging Is Sexy” version for me? How about it, Miss Domestic?


According to the great and powerful GingaJoy, if I trick people into thinking this was a real post and not a meme, then I’ve only got one more step to master before becoming a Jedi. Because I just pulled that whole Jedi Mind Trick shit on you. This is a meme and you are considered tagged if you are referenced in this post (except GingaJoy who’s already done it).

Move along now. These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Thanks, Elizabeth, for tagging me for the 6 Weird Things.

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All Hail The Queen

April 14, 2006 @ 9:02 pm · Filed under Computers and Internet

Cuppa
the Day - Well, it’s hot weather here today. And you know what that
means. That’s right! Iced coffee! Iced coffee made with a mixture of Boca Java’s
Blogs of Bravery (which I like and is nice and strong) and their Pajama
Passion blend (which is weaker and not as good) and it turned out
great! Over ice, dash of Splenda. Cool, cold, coffee. I’m full of
alliteration today (I blame Steve), but the coffee is not. It’s just full of bloggedy goodness.

I
have a bunch of links to send you to today. Are you getting tired of me
doing that? Are you getting tired of addressing you? Should I start to
address myself in the third person?

Mocha would never do such
a thing. Mocha is far too concerned with the prosaic details of her
writing. She is also concerned that she can’t stop watching Shakira’s
hips. Mocha’s hips don’t lie either. They tell on her all the time.

“Yes, Mocha did have that bean burrito with the extra sour cream.”

So, apparently I’m not the current Queen to whom I’m referring. In fact, I refer to my dear blog friend with whom I’ve decided to squeal along with this person
(who has done a fabulous job of the Lost Blogs campaign - I hope you’ve
all been watching that closely because it was fun to read this week
during the GBBMC week.) at the BlogHer conference this summer in California.

The Queen of Spain
is offering to pay for someone to attend this conference if they pay
their air fair and hotel. Isn’t that nice? Once you go to her site
you’ll want to stay because her writing will keep you there.

Because I’m in LINK MODE I have to also add that I’ve caught up on some blog reading from The Big Dogs and while Dooce is always entertaining, you also need to check out Mimi Smartypants and the funniest post comments I’ve read in a long time by Alice of finslippy.

I’m linked out. Start with The Queen. If you do, I’ll meet you in California. Like Grace says, if you tell me you read me when you meet me in person, stand back. I’m probably going to hug you.

Or squeal.

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I’m One Hip Mommy. And I Blog. And I Contradict.

April 14, 2006 @ 7:42 am · Filed under Uncategorized

My lurrrrvely daughter is home from college for Easter and we do everything fast and furious when she’s here. A record 5 minutes passed before all three children and I hopped in the mom-mobile (which, I’m proud to say is no longer a mini-van, but a cool, earth-friendly, mini-SUV that gets way better gas mileage) and headed for dinner and the video store.

Since the boys don’t get to talk to Mallory that much now that she’s living in another state, the contest to see who can use 30,000 words in one-sitting is on. Thus, she uses the phrase, “Take a breath, guys. Geez.” or she utters the uber-cool lingo of, “Oh, my God. Shut up.” (though, to please me, I know she slurs that hard “d” at the end and it comes out “Oh, my Goooaaahhhh.)

This is what happens when you save up months of details of your life and try to squeeze it in with your super-cool sister. My boys believe that Mallory is so wonderful that glitter shoots out her ass and that she sleeps with fairies who make her pretty all night long and then she wakes up looking just that amazing.

The glitter part is the only thing that’s true.

Late last night we were both doin’ our thang on our respective laptops and I updated her on my blog stuff (though she reads it periodically) and she updated me on her Facebook stuff.

“Mom, do you know what BFN is?”

“No.”

“Ha. Uh-huhhhhhhh.”

Oh, the smugness. The I’m-more-computer-literate-that-you-are. The underlying coolness factor that was coming in to play here.

“Oh. Ok. Do you know what G-M-T-A is? No? How about I-M-H-O? Yeah, ok. How about BITE ME? Do you know what that means?”

“Ooooookkkkaaaayyyyyyyy, mom.”

Mom: 1
Mallory: 0

Then, of course, I showed her my newly designed look here on Blogger after having screwed it up all by myself, thank you very much (or TYVM).

I’ve got to stop deconstructing myself in this manner.

A very nice person gave me some advice about no longer hand-coding my blogroll and I thought it was a great idea. And then I accidentally deleted that e-mail. And then I decided to write about how hip I am when it comes to all things computer.

Again with the deconstruction.

So, help me out, dear blogging friends. Because you do not want me to go crazy. Or do you?

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Todd Says I Can Tell You This

April 13, 2006 @ 7:12 pm · Filed under Computers and Internet

Cuppa the
Day - Why mess with a good thing? I had another cuppa Ethiopian from
Peet’s this morning. It’s nearing the afternoon slump and a nap is to
be had. IT JUST HAS TO BE HAD. Brewing currently is the Boot Up Blend
from Boca Java. Bruce sent a
challenge yesterday with prizes so if you haven’t seen it then… well.
Where have you been? I’ve missed you. Like I would miss coffee in my life. Don’t leave for that long again, ok? We’ve a long overdue cuppa to have. Then a nap.
Last week I had an email from my sister who ran into a friend whose wife sent her pictures of him and his family.
Yeah. I’d be lost, too.
Todd is a childhood
friend of mine with whom I’ve lost touch. We instantly emailed one
another and then decided to talk on the phone. He gallantly asked if
that would bother Ken (When I relayed this to Ken he made a noise like,
“ppffffttt… hmmmm”. Translation: “No, I don’t care”.) so we caught up
on our children, jobs, hobbies, etc…
Then he started reading my blogs. Concerning my “firsts” list he wrote this to me yesterday:
I have been
checking your many sites out and read that Chad is gay. If this is the
same Chad I knew, I could have told you he was gay because I learned
from his brother who told me his favorite band was Bananarama a long
time ago.
Most certainly, I got a huge kick out of this and shot him an email back telling him he could have told
me. And were were ever an item? (I couldn’t recall) And didn’t I kick
him in the shins with my skates on one time when we were arguing about
something?
His memory is better than mine because he does
remember my sister and other friends trying to set us up and locking us
in a room to “do something”. We were more like “Huh?” through the whole
ordeal and talked while they waited outside the door to hear something.
They never did.
He does also recall the shin-kicking shenanigans. Let me say in front of the Internet here and now: I’m sorry about that, Todd!
Our childhood was
spent in summer camps and playing tennis and taking raquetball lessons
and riding our bikes and swimming and all the fun things kids do. Then,
as is often the case, we grow up and go separate ways until chance
brings us together again. Chance is a funny thing because Todd has a website which he says I can share with my readers (How pretentious do I sound? “my readers.” Eeewwwww. Somebody stop me.)
Wait. The best part is coming up here. Do you know what this website offers?
Laptop bags and coffee products. With a bit of music thrown in.
So go visit and snoop around and buy something. It will help me make up for that shin incident.

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Master Morgan Teaches Momma

April 13, 2006 @ 9:11 am · Filed under Uncategorized

Normally my youngest child doesn’t try to take advantage of me. But there are some things we’ve known about this boy since birth. He will be the one who eats us out of house and home. He will be the one who argues with us and tries to get in the last word, even if it is at his own peril. And he will be the one who has the kegger at our house, thus beginning me on my gray-haired journey.

Earlier events of this week have proved that I needed to spend some time with my boys in whatever way they needed. For Mason it came in the form of attending his basketball games (”And take lots of pictures, Mom, ok?”). For Morgan it came in the form of taking pictures with my old camera while I took pictures with the new one.

I’m fairly embarrassed to tell you which belong to me and which belong to him.

Here is the Old State Capitol in downtown Springfield.


I love the color of this building and it’s no longer a drugstore, but a hoity toity hair salon. It’s an Aveda concept salon and I go in there just to inhale the mesmerizing scents it puts off.

Across the street is the old law office where Abraham Lincoln practiced.


This is, perhaps, the coolest Lincoln picture I’ve ever seen. It’s done on pieces of bread that are wrapped in foil and torched. Finally, a coating of polyurethane goes over the top and then it’s adhered with a silicon base. It was done by a high school art student. How cool is that?
Then, it was off to the fields and I’m pretty sure you can guess I didn’t take this one of myself.
Ok, now guess which is mine and which is Morgan’s (no cheating scrolling over the pictures and seeing the titles!):

I know! It’s hard to tell. Especially when we’re both getting up close and personal with flowers. He needed a few pointers here and was forced to get them from his very inexperienced mother, but he learned some things which he is now dictating to me to write here:

1. Never shoot into the sun.
2. Get close. It takes a better picture.
3. Go ahead and lay down if you need to. Don’t worry. You can wash your clothes later.

I couldn’t resist watching him take pictures for the first time with something other than a disposable camera. Or pointing out that my son still doesn’t give a crap that his clothes don’t match.

Part of our time was spent on the golf course and here is where he told me my pants were yellow from the dandelions. It’s ok. He says I can wash them later.


It was worth it and even fun to roll around in the weeds.


But this? This is my reason for living. My grand flower amongst the weeds of life. My Morgan.

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