Lofty Blogging Goals

I've got them. Dreams of being a blogger. Dreams of blogging everyday or every couple of days. After my last post, almost a month ago, I swore to myself that I'd blog every day for the rest of the month. I dared myself. I challenged myself. And then I went blank. I fell into the all too common uneventful aspects of my life. Thanksgiving planned, shopped for, come and gone. Blake orthodontist. Collin pediatric dentist. Annie book club. Play dates. Christmas shopping. New cloth diapers. Cooking. Cleaning. Laundry. All, more of the same. All without a kernel of inspirational humor. Why write? Why document the mundane?

I call it writers block, but really it's a life block. I want to be about quality, not quantity. Do we really need another blog of recipes? Or a blog of "give aways" that require us to jump through 6 cyber hoops of comments, links, and Facebook friend adds? What's up with that? I keep clicking on blog links only to find the blog to be one huge commercial asking me to click, add and link back. I've got news for you, that's not what I came for, and I don't care what kind of free shit you're getting for it, it's false advertising to call it a blog and then ask me to push you and your products down the cyber throats of the people I know.

I don't know, maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think we've got way too much advertising as it is. Why are we allowing it to intrude on the private sector? Is a free hair gizmo, book or kids toy really worth it? My dad always told me "nothing is free." As a child I argued "air is free" and he straightened (or attempted too) me out by telling me it wasn't, because we pay taxes. I didn't get it back then when I was 14, but I do now.

And so I wonder, do these blogger's who specialize in "give aways" stop and think about the collective consequence of their greed to get free, useless, unneeded crap, that they didn't even know they wanted, but took because they could, and the impact it has on our society that is already overburdened by an instant gratification lifestyle? Why perpetuate that? Why push your fellow man to waste time contemplating wanting or needing things simply so you could get it for free?

I don't know. I guess this post is off topic.....see, this is what happens when my life is boring and I am left to come up with a post without inspiration! And please, don't get me wrong, if you do "give aways" once in awhile, cool, I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about blogs that only have "give aways", there's never any personal content, or very little of it.

And so I ask:

Who do you read? Send me a link.

Want to know something about me or my life? Ask.

Have a topic you'd like to hear my opinion on? Let me know.

And finally, a month in pictures.....

And to this final picture I say "Little dude, you're number 8, you're going to have to come up with something much better than that to impress me!"
Oh, wait! This is the final picture....because my man offered me 10bucks to post this one....as though all of his money isn't already my money!
Yes, that is me peeing at the bathroomless Christmas tree farm....woo-hoo...a mama peeing....so exciting!

Birthday Shopping

It was Collin's 10th birthday last Monday. He had been working on his list of presents for weeks. He would ask to use to computer to look "stuff" up, do price comparisons, make his final decisions. This was big stuff to him, deciding what he really wanted. He had a sheet of lined notebook paper, well worn, and tattered along the edges and corners, chicken scratches of notes, items crossed off, new items squeezed in here and there. Finally he was done. He turned his list over to me, carefully explaining his wants and notes. I took it and set it aside. All of his items were little boy things, foreign to me. Pocket knives, air soft ammo, paint ball ammo, speed loaders. Nothing fun for me to shop for and buy. Just parts of things that I know nothing about.

Not sure of what to do with his list, I procrastinated. I put off birthday shopping, and that actually turned out to be a good thing. Collin ultimately decided that all he wanted in the whole big wide world for his 10th birthday was......money, and a trip to a Army Surplus store. Whew, I thought, I'm saved from navigating my way, alone, through unfamiliar metal and plastic parts of things I know nothing about. I'm saved from making the dreadful mistake of buying the wrong thing and single handedly ruining his birthday with festively wrapped boxes of all the wrong parts.

And so when his birthday rolled around a few days later he opened his card, with his money and off we went. All 11 of us, and my mom piled into the van, lunches packed, ice chest filled, and off we headed for Nashville. I did map quest the directions, and we did get lost, again. But no matter, in our lostness we passed a Trader Joe's grocery store. I hadn't been to one in a good 16 years, and my mom had never been. So Collin's birthday or not, we were making a detour.

We pulled into the parking lot filled with Volvo's and econo cars guaranteed to leave as little an environmental impact as possible. Our 15 passenger van sat in it's ginormous gas guzzling glory like a beacon to all breeders among empty nesters, child free'ers or the more typical 1-2 kids only family sized cars. I hesitated as we bumbled our way through the unwelcoming parking lot. I had second thoughts about actually walking through the sliding double doors, unsure of the attention we would draw. It felt like I was wearing a fur coat to a Peta rally. Would all the crunchy mama's throw organic birth control pills at us? Would the store manager announce over the loud speaker that all natural sheepskin condoms had just gone on sale, buy one get one free? I was scared, really I was, but then I remembered back to my own child free days walking up and down the isles of Trader Joe's and the cornucopia of funky cheese, wine and cracker spreads, all at a reduced cost, because they didn't sell well wherever they had originally been sold. In that hopeful haze I hoisted one of my two year olds into a bright red shopping cart and forged through the double doors planked by children on all sides. There was no hush, there was no birth control recommendation, there were no flying organic eggs thrown in our direction. I was free to peruse the seemingly endless cold case of cheese in peace.

Not long into the store it was decided that we needed to make a group trip to the potty. Trying to keep a low profile we spread out around the bathroom hallway so that it didn't look like the breeders had come to push dye ridden, preservative laced foods onto the wholesomeness of what Trader Joe's had become. No longer was it funky offbeat foods, no, now it was yet another chain store of organic, healthy body and brain fuel. I was ever so thankful that I had taken a few seconds to wipe the worst of the Cheetos jizz off of my kids faces. All that Orange dye would have given away the fact that not only am I single handedly destroying the environment, but I'm doing it with kids high on crap food. As we lingered the kids noticed the sample's counter with cups of 100% fruit juice and paper cups of food none of recognized. The juice man seized the moment when he saw our crowd and started hawking free juice samples. I ignored him figuring he didn't really want a gaggle of kids swooping in and taking every single cup of juice off his little tray that he had no doubt spent the last five minutes of his life filling with care. But he kept on and finally added there's enough for everybody! And so, with a nod of my head, and a muffled okay, the juice was gone. The juice man was nice, he offered his little cups of food and made eye contact. He even offered refills on the juice.

With our bladders emptied, and refilled with juice, but not yet ready to go again, we wandered along to pursue more of the food that didn't really appeal to our large family diet. That's when a crunchy mama passed us with her daughter in tow pushing her very own mini shopping cart. Oh, how cute I said, someone go get one for Emma Rose. I guess my brain was in a state of shock from having been given something dye and additive free, cause I really didn't think through what I had just said. I didn't think through the fact that once George and Grant saw Emma pushing around a little shopping cart, they too would want to be shoppers and cart drivers. I didn't have to wait long, because somewhere in get Emma a cart my children translated that to go get 3 carts for all the little irresponsible children in our family. I wanted to scream NO! nobody gets a cart, take them back, take them back!!! But it was too late, they had seen the carts. We were committed. Committed to 3 children aged 3 and under pushing cute mini carts through the store populated by green people who I'm sure didn't want to be nipped in the heals while picking out which soy ice cream they would have after their tofu dinner, or we could leave with 3 children screaming Nooooo! Nooooo! I was screwed either way, so why not? Why not let them nip the heals of the organic crowd? Why not let them get in the way of the guy who wants to be the first on his block to own an electric car? Why not let them teach that little girl, most likely an only child, the joys of playing chicken with shopping carts while laughing and screaming their way through purified air? I wanted to warn, breath deep kids, cause we're gonna have to leave here soon, and then it's back to regular, pollution laced air.

Really, it went well, for a while. Then they did start racing around, and clustering up the isles, they did start ramming each other and laughing about it, they did start grabbing organic foods they would never eat and putting them in their mini carts. It didn't help that the juice man showed up with chocolate cookie samples and encouraged each of us to take several, once fueled with sugar, they were on high speed. My man doesn't get out much anymore, and I could see by the red color in his face that his blood pressure was sky high. I'm sure he wanted nothing more than a sheet of seaweed to cover up and hide in. I assured him that our kids weren't being bad, per say, there were just lots of them, so it was just busy, but that really if there was just one of them, their behaviour would seem normal. I told him to lighten up, let'm have fun, at which point he threw up his hands and ridded himself of any and all responsibility of our toddlers and their mini carts.

We left soon after, without incidence, as far a I know anyway. Though if I had to guess I'd bet there was a woman or two who went home and took 2 birth control pills instead of one that night.

We found the Army Surplus store, Collin didn't buy anything, so he's now officially the richest person in the house. Then we had our picnic and went to the Nashville Science Center. It was a good day, not soon to be forgotten. Happy 10th Birthday Collin!!! Welcome to double-digits!

Friday Night Fun

First thing first on Friday nights. Pizza is for dinner. We've got homemade pizza down to a fine art. I make the dough. Blake makes the ranch dip. Collin, Kent and Dawson man the Kitchen Aid grater and shred 4 pounds of cheese. Annie and Kenna make the sauce and roll out the crusts. Then the toppings get thrown on and we wait for hot, cheesy perfection.

Then we watch a movie, well most of us watch a movie. George and Grant don't have the attention span to watch a whole movie. We know that when they are out of the room, and quiet, there is trouble brewing. Here they are rearranging my spices. What helpful boys!

On this Friday night we played Monopoly. I'm pretty much undefeated, so tension was high as they schemed and scammed a way to finally take me down. They finally did it, but it took five of them teaming up and combining money and property, not to mention playing till after midnight. Then they gloated for a good half-hour.

Don't worry though, my pride is still in tack. I figure if it takes five of them to beat that's not much of a win on their part.

Emma Rose didn't make it till the end of the game, but she's still got her 500 dollar bill tucked under her head, nice and safe.

They've challenged me to a rematch, which doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, they finally beat me, why are they so eager to risk losing such a cherished title it took them so long to claim? But that's fine by me, I'm more than willing to show them what a slumlord I am, again.....

The piano on the side of the road

Last month I was out yard sailing and I came upon a piano, for 20 bucks. I passed it up though. I could hear my man whining and complaining. I could see the look on his face, if I came home with news of a piano purchase. It wouldn't be about the 20 bucks, it would be about the pain in the ass factor of moving it. So I fought the temptation and moved onto the next sale.

Fast forward about a week later, on my birthday to be exact, and I mention the 20 dollar piano, and the willpower I had shown. My man was quick to say I could have bought it, he would have moved it for me, because he loves me so much. I said no, I don't need a piano, we don't even have a place to put one at this point. At which point Annie chimed in it could go in her room. No, no, I said. I am fine without a piano, we don't need a piano. But they pressed on telling me I should have bought it. It was my birthday after all, they wanted to make me feel good.

So later that day when I was out running errands I stopped by the piano selling lady's house. Yes, she still had it. Yes, I gave her the 20 bucks, and got her phone number to arrange to pick it up.

I went from asking my man when will you be getting that piano?, to you need to go that piano!, to let's go get the piano today, it's been almost a month since I bought it!!.

And so today was the day. I instructed Annie and Kenna what and where to cleanup in their room. My mom came to watch the kids. My man, Blake and I loaded up and off we went.

The piano lady was very glad to see me. After nearly a month she was worried if I was going to come back or not. She saw our van and was adamant the piano would not fit. No worries I told her, it will fit. No, she said, I don't think it will. You'd be surprised what we can fit in a van, I said. Off she went to get her tape measure. And sure enough, she was right. There was no way we were going to get the piano in the van.

Her man offered to use his truck and bring it home for us. Relieved, we started clearing a path to move this heavy beast. I thought it went rather well, as far as moving pianos goes. We got it in the truck, and the nice man strapped it down. Now, I'm not professional strapper, but I've seen plenty of men do strapping in my time. The nice man's strapping seemed easier than other men's strapping, it involved less checking, and double checking. The nice man strapped 1-2-3, and he was done. My man watched the nice man, just as I did, and he said nothing, so I assumed my man approved of the nice mans strapping.

We all got in our cars, my man and I went to pull around and then we heard it. We heard the crash. I turned and looked over my shoulder to see the nice mans truck on the side of the road (intact mind you, no nice men were hurt in this story), minus a piano in the back.

Yes, my 20 dollar piano had toppled out of the nice mans truck and was laying on the side of the road in pieces.

The moral of the story? Nice men don't strap well.

The piano selling lady and her nice man were rather upset, it was toss up of who felt worse, them or us. We all stood on the side of the road, scratching our heads, traffic slowing, one man even stopped to help, but then left when it was revealed the only casualty was a piano. Finally it was decided we would load the piano into the nice mans front loader tractor and then he would dump it in their burn pile.

My man and I fought off laughter throughout all of this. We've been through enough disasters in our lives that at this point we see them all as humorous. We long ago gave up fighting small tragedies, we now embrace them for the wonderful story telling opportunities they provide, or for the momentary entertainment. This approach was obviously not shared by the nice man and his wife, so we resorted to sharing only small smiles, and twinkling glances. Waiting till we could get in our own van and belly laugh.

On our final farewell I reminded the nice man and the piano selling lady that if this was the worst thing that happened to all of us for the day we should still consider ourselves lucky. Ya know, there's so many worse things in life than a broken piano on the side of the road.