Three Men and a Blogger

I completed my work today, just in time to take a nice long shower, shave my legs, paint my toe nails, pluck my eyebrows, and trim my mustache (hey! at least I trim it). Now I have been given the super sensitive task of unscrambling a sparkly Rubik's Cube. I can do the top two rows by memory, but still the bottom befuddles. I would like to memorize the steps, but I am losing room in my grey matter as it is. It's time to establish sponge worthiness. Mr. Rubik may have to wait for a vacancy.

Some guy just came by selling life insurance. I think about death all the time, but when it knocks on my door with a dollar sign in its hand, I get a little creeped out. Not to mention, the guy selling it was old enough to be Death himself. I've been watching Dexter all week, but wait, tonight I'll have a nightmare of that dude knocking on my door with a black cloak, bony fingers and spittle in the corner of his mouth. He'll hand me a card and tell me that when I'm ready, he accepts cash, checks and all major credit cards, but what he prefers is annuities. Isn't that what age is -- Death's fee paid in increments? I wish I could say I have nothing to give but, unlike money, youth is the only thing everyone receives an abundance of at birth.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE: Tomorrow is the 13th Anniversary of the day I officially (as in, signed the papers) married my Hubby! You see, we did a little backyard thing with a few friends and family members, but we forgot to pick up the marriage certificate. Don't judge, we were 19 and 20, and my irresponsible ass was the older one! So, the wedding happened on a Saturday, and Memorial Day landed on Monday, making us officially married on the following Tuesday, June 1, 1999 when the city court house was open again. We enjoyed our blunder and decided to always celebrate the 1st of June because our lack of pomp and circumstance is sort of the base for our marriage. Now tomorrow night, while the kids are with Grandma, I expect to be PAMPERED!  ha ha. Just kidding!

I need to go vomit now.

Do I seem busy World? I recently had some work come my way. And this woman is not complaining! But dang! Getting things done with rug-rats running around is not easy.  It helps that they now have neighbors to play with and that they are big and easily entertained. We have a pretty strict schedule to abide by anyway in the summertime and it helps immensely.

I don't think that the schedule does anything more than help the kids to appreciate how much goes into running a household and keeps their brains in working order for the next school year.

Well, here... here's a breakdown. It's not as strict or structured as it's going to appear here, but we use it as a reference (and the kids actually like doing the worksheets).

Morning chores:
Get Dressed
Brush Teeth
Make Bed (or as I like to call it, Throw the blanket over the pillows)
Do a review sheet from last school year (they love this because of how easy they are)
Feed the dogs -- one kid does this in the morning, one does it in the afternoon
Do one indoor chore - i.e. scoop litter, wash a window, water a plant, etc.

Do one outdoor chore -- i.e. water flowers, scoop poop, (we haven't started these because I haven't come up with any more.

Breakfast happens at any time during these chores.

At Five o'clock:

Clean off and set table

Put away toys

Straighten room

(after dinner):

Clear Table

Take a shower

Put clothes in the wash

For any group of chores that they do without being asked, they earn a bead. They also earn beads for various acts of good behavior they exhibit during the day. At the end of the day, each bead counts for 5 minutes of free time. During that time they are free to do absolutely whatever they want. They typically can't manage to earn more than 6 beads and a 30-minute later bedtime is totally worth the peace of such well behaved kids. Also, taking a bead away is a very easy disciplinary action that does not require yelling or grounding.

Ugh... did I just write an entire blog about parenting? Excuse me, I need to go vomit on myself now. I don't have time to rewrite this one today. BLECH!

Yeah, that didn't work.

Oh, well, never mind ...

Our House

We're back in the Big Titty (our nickname for Wichita, that and "Witchy-Titty). It was nice to walk into my own house again. My kitty missed me. My doggies missed me. Hubby was so distraught that he moved the drum set into the office. Now, as I write this, my daughter sits on a tall stool and whacks inconsistently at the different surfaces. boom, tap, boom, BOOM, bop, TAP, tap, CHING. It's slightly annoying, but well worth it to hear her come to a rhythm all her own or find her coordination.

... and she's gone.

It doesn't last long, these interruptions in the quiet hum of the AC.

We're discussing a possible rearrangement of the household furniture. The older our children get, the more eccentric our living quarters become. I love it that way. We eccentric are a dying breed. I feel sorry for all of our children's classmates who live in ordinary sets like the stage of a play. When nothing is real, "practical" becomes a tool rather than a practice. Our house screams to be functional, loved, and unusual. How could we not oblige? Make the office a dining room? The dining room a music room? The living room an office/library? What can we change next?

How long before our options run out?

It's a Grandparent Thing. You Wouldn't Understand.

My parents have a fully automated house. Well, it seems that way at times. Their coffeemaker beeps when it's done brewing a pot; the dishwasher beeps when it finishes a load, so does the washing machine and the dryer; the refrigerator beeps when it's left open, and there's a timer on the stove and the microwave that make noise. Hell! Even the toaster beeps before popping! Most of the beeps sound the same making every beep the beginning of a futuristic guessing game.

But the newest addition to this mechanical mayhem is their security system. Anytime a door opens to the outside, a doorbell rings quietly and a female computer voice announces which door has opened. During the morning hours and around dinner time, that automated voice turns into quite the jabber-mouth. "Front-door," "Back-door," "Garage-door," people coming in, going out; the dog coming in, going out; the cat following the dog; and when my kids are visiting; kids going out, coming in.

Yesterday, Little Man opened the "back-door" for the dog, then he decided to go out the "back-door" too before Juliet followed them. Then, not even a minute later, my mom picked up her glass of wine and opened the "back-door" but when she stepped down to the back porch my daughter announced, "Ding-Dong! Back door," doing her best impression of the computer voice. "Ha ha," said my mom, "very funny." 

I love that my kids see humor in these things too.

Nick Hanauer

I LOVE THIS!

"If it was true that lower taxes for the rich and more wealth for the wealthy lead to job creation, today we would be drowning in jobs."

"Someone like me makes hundreds- or thousands-of-times as much as the median American, but I don't buy hundreds- or thousands-of-times as much stuff. My family owns three cars, not three thousand."

Can't Beat 'em? Join 'em!

My Gym underwent some construction during the winter months that left it looking less like an 80's YMCA and more like an airport lounge. Now the lockers, which have an executive feel to them, no longer need a membership card to be locked. They have a combination pad on them that allows you to choose the combination before locking it. The result is that people don't have to leave the lockers unlocked when they go.

There are approximately 16 lockers in a little cove directly outside the showers. I take a shower every time I go to the gym and therefore like to use those lockers. WRONG! They are always locked. There might be a total of 10 people, including staff, in the gym at 8am, but all 16 shower-side lockers and about 15 of the others will be locked in the ladies locker room. I tried to hint at this treachery to the skonies (skinny phonies) behind the counter, but without a pad and pencil to draw them a picture, the message wasn't getting through.

As if by some miracle, or sign from the universe that I've been a good girl, I found one of the shower-side lockers unlocked. It just so happened to have the same number as the year I was born and I quickly put my stuff in it and locked it up. But after my shower, once my hair was done and I smelled good again, I went to the locker to remove my items and I closed the door. I made it halfway through the locker room and asked myself if I really wanted to risk losing that locker again. I turned around, went back to the locker and entered a code. That one is mine!

If they decide to burst our bubbles tomorrow and unlock all of the lockers I won't cry, but for now, I enjoy being one of the shower-side locker ladies. It is pretty damn sweet.

Whatcha Want?!

I've been hearing The Imperial March in my head every time I checked my grades online. Now that they have come in, however, I only hear The Beastie Boys. I got an A MINUS in the course I was worried about. I guess I should feel grateful.

I'm in St. Louis this week. I'm relaxed and looking forward to reading and sleeping in, but I'm kinda home sick this time around. I miss my kitty and my hubby, and not necessarily in that order.

I love seeing my family though: sitting in the living room with my mom and little brother, talking about books we're reading, movies we've seen, shows we're addicted to -- making plans for later in the week, letting the kids stay up late watching movies that I grew up watching.

I'll get back to serious tomorrow.

Shit Stain

Whew! It's the first day of summer vacation and I'm already feeling more relaxed. I feel like I have just been going non-stop for the past week. I turned in my final project for my master's class and the professor emailed me saying that I had "numerous" errors and that he would give me time to revise. That bummed me out because I really felt that I was understanding grammar better. Then when I saw what he called "numerous" I realized that he was just nit-picking me to death( there were three and my compound and extremely complex sentence containing three semicolons, a colon and five comas was perfect.) He also implied that my originality was in question, which did not make me happy. Don't fret, World. I sent it back with corrected nit-picks and added notation on exactly where my ideas, games, activities, worksheets, came from. I told him this wasn't so much to give credit to the few websites and people, like my mom, who helped with ideas, but to assure him that the rest of the work was my OWN. I think if it is within ones capacity to question the work of others, perhaps one should just require references from the start. It would go a long way to weed out the not-so-serious students and take away the guessing games. But what do I know? Either way, I believe I earned an A. Now I play the waiting game to see if he agrees.

Today is LAUNDRY DAY!! We have a trip coming up a few days, I'm very excited to road-trip again, but damn it do I need some clean underwear!

Have a great Thursday, World!

Really? Wait. What?!

The phone rang tonight. It was from "Out of Area" which of course means that it was my 80-something year-old, next-door neighbor -- the one who kills my grass and thinks I'm a horrible parent. I can answer my phone once again when she calls since I've started calling her out on things that she does to our property. For instance, last summer I asked her not to spray our grass ever again. Then this spring, I asked her to keep her mowers off our grass since we are aware that her concrete is actually on our property - not our grass on hers. I've also started letting her know, in subtle ways, that I don't give a rat's ass what she thinks about my parenting. The most recent example of this happened a few days after Gryffindor adopted us. Another, black and white fur ball appeared on our doorstep and Polly rang our doorbell to see if we wanted another cat. She gave us a sales pitch by pointing out how cute the cat was, saying that it might be pregnant, and talking about what a sweet disposition it had. I checked for claws and found some (on the cat). I explained that I took in Gryff because he was clawless. In that case, she thought I should feed it and then maybe it would go away. I told her I've been feeding my kids since they were born and they haven't left. Anyway, she's coming around to the idea that she's my neighbor, not my keeper. So when she called tonight I answered. The kids scaled her fence earlier that day for a lost shoe. I thought the least I could do was field the complaint when it came in. I answered the phone, "Hi Polly!" just to keep her on her toes. Well, apparently she called because she read some useful tips in a book or magazine or something and wanted to share.
I figured I might as well pass these little nuggets of knowledge along because I can't imagine in what alternate universe I would begin to need them. Tip #1: to untangle necklaces, put olive oil on the knot then use the point of a pen (or pin?) to kneed the knot out. Tip #2: to store necklaces, cut a straw in half and thread the necklace through the straw. I thanked her for these, but she wasn't finished. Tip #3: to get a stuck ring off your finger... Preparation H! She then proceeded to explain what Preparation H is and how it works. If I had a way to play back the audio of my neighbor explaining how "Preparation H restricts the blood vessels" you would all be in for a treat tonight. As it is, this will just remain my own personal sunshine for days to come.

So, what d'you do today?

Jonah

Hey there!

This was sweeping across Facebook and I have shit to do, so enjoy!




p.s.
There are many people who want this video to be fake because they think it will somehow erase the real pain that teenagers like Jonah are experiencing. But the effects of bullying are real and permanent. Stop being afraid to feel ashamed of the society you live in, and start summoning the courage to CHANGE IT!

Talk Softly

After being taught extensively about racism in school, traveling the world, witness class division, and now experiencing this war on women, I think that a common theme has emerged:

Equality is a whispered promise, while inequality is a bellowed demand.

I would rather talk softy.

Oh-Well

Holy CRAP! How long has it been??
It feels like ages.
Well, shit.
Sorry, I guess.
I'm not ready for this week. I'm in the process of finalizing a project for my last class of the semester. I only have one week left. Then I have a little project I'm working on for this blog. Technically I have tons of little projects in my head that I would love to be working on for this blog, but one that will take precedence. At some point this summer, I want to do some stop-motion photography. I wonder if my kids would help me with that. But that's not the project that will take precedence, that's just one of the many other things I would like to do, but I can't even really think about that right now because I have to focus on getting my school work done so that I can enjoy a little quiet time before my kids are with me 24/7 again. And Oh My Buddha, do I need to have some quiet time with no school work! I keep thinking I'll paint, then I think I'll read, then I think No! I want to spend hours on my blog projects! but in reality, those two or three days are going to come and go in the blink of an eye and before I know it I'll be carrying piles and bags of artwork, sculptures, math homework, painted and glittered messes, and binders full of review material to my car with two sugared up, excited, finished-with-their-year, feeling-the-excitement, and talking-a-mile-an-hour kids, wondering where the year has gone and feeling like I'm just not ready for this summer.

Not Nice!

And now for a little game I like to call, "THAT'S a nice problem!"

• It's the end of the semester and I have only one project left to do. I am obsessing about it slightly because I want to do such a good job, but at the same time, I have five more days to complete it. So, although I have a slight headache from staring at my computer screen, I think my obsession headache will turn out pretty in the end. 

THAT'S a nice problem to have. I could obsess for a week and turn in shit. That would not make the headache worth it.

• I will finish my semester with about four days to spare before the kids get out of school. Although I am excited to start our summer adventures, they love their friends and schools so much that they would only be angry with me if I pulled them out early.

THAT'S a nice problem. I can push our plans back one week to spend a miserably happy four days BY MY SELF! What ever will I do?

• My run has been suffering lately due to fatigue. I've had to stay at the same level for the last three weeks, which has caused it to become easier and easier, so what used to kick my ass three weeks ago has now become a relaxing workout.

THAT'S a nice problem. Though I look forward to moving up, I can't complain that where I'm at feels good.

• Wow! I'm really sucking at writing a blog today and this game was so much more fucking stupid than I thought it was going to be. But hey it's my blog and I can stop whenever I want to and I'm tired, so it's not nice and it's not a problem, it's just PEACE OUT!