Look Who's Stalking

There is only one thing in the world that my darling 2 year old will pick over me (unless she’s in a real needy mommy moment), and that is the outdoors. Thank you sunshine because I would be writing this blog with her attached to me (like most of the others I’ve written) if it weren’t for you. As soon as it is time for her to come inside, I will be typing one handed again. I better get a move on it.

My youngest babe, I’ll call her CG, (that’s not what I really call her but it will work for the purposes of this post) is a stalker baby. She won’t leave me alone. Stalks me day and night. My niece calls her a “Stage 5 clinger.” I’d say she’s moved up to a 9 by now. It’s bad. I’m sure I am mostly to blame because I am a softy. She is still nursing (hey I’d be considered normal in other parts of the world so no judgy please my Yankee friends) and she co-sleeps. My older children nursed and somewhat co-slept, but I was able to break them of both at younger ages than CG.

I believe it has gotten worse over the last month because I started a new full time job. I’ve only worked part time since her birth, so she is not used to the long hours away from me. I walk in the door and am greeted by, “Mo-mmy!” With big toddler arms ready to wrap around my neck. Precious isn’t it? Just wait, she hasn’t hit stalker mode quite yet. I greet the rest of my family, while little footsteps follow me (and they’re getting closer). I set my things down but if I haven’t picked her up by this time, (I’ve been home probably 75 seconds, which is a long time when you’re a stalker baby) CG loses it. She’ll start the long armed baby stomp. (Picture a toddler-sized orangutan doing the River Dance). And she’ll whine, cry, blubber and wail until I pick her up. Which takes me another 75 seconds because I must change out of my work clothes. If I am going to have a barnacle attached to me then there is no need to be wearing business casual.

So she gets her lovies and cuddles and all is well with the world. AS LONG AS I AM SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO HER UNTIL IT’S TIME FOR ME TO LEAVE FOR WORK THE NEXT MORNING. That’s right. I get up to get a drink and guess who’s on my trail faster than a damn bloodhound? If I sneak into the bathroom to have some peace and a little reading time? Well it’s not long before little CG has discovered my hiding place and starts poking things under the bathroom door. (It’s an old house and the door does not touch the floor). Have you ever seen the old TV horror classic Trilogy of Terror starring Karen Black? There is a scene where Karen Black’s character Amelia shuts herself in her bathroom to get away from the Zuni Fetish doll (known as the Yi-Yi Monster in my family.) So the Yi-Yi Monster takes his little knife and starts waving it under the bathroom door to get at Amelia’s feet while she screams her annoying head off. The scene in my bathroom when my little stalker is waving one of her little toys under the door always makes me think of the Yi-Yi Monster. Only I don’t scream, but I do whine my annoying head off. I whine things like, “Go away CG. Can’t mommy have some peace? Go find daddy. Hey look Caillou’s on! Wanna watch Toy Story? Have daddy take you outside (that one works sometimes. It doesn’t always make daddy happy, but he’s pretty outdoorsy too, so he mostly doesn’t mind.) What happens most of the time though is one of CG’s older brothers decides to open the bathroom door for her because, “Mommy, she wants you.” Gee thanks little dude. I didn’t notice.

Bedtime is a terrible time. If I’m not around, she’ll go to sleep for daddy no problem. But when I’m at home, (which is pretty much 365 nights a year, but who’s counting?) it’s all about nursing herself to sleep. Still. 2 Years Later. There must be high fructose corn syrup in these puppies because I have to use a lot of force to dislodge her Pitbull grip on them. How the heck am I ever gonna wean this girl? Anyway, once she finally falls asleep, usually in my lap while I am online, social networking, I have to get her out of my arms and into bed all while keeping her in a slumber. It is not an easy task. I tiptoe (well as much as one can tiptoe while holding a 25 pound baby) to the bedroom, which is really pointless since we live in an old house with hardwood floors. I look like I am dodging laser beams as I try to avoid the creakiest parts of the floor. Then every single door squeaks when it opens. It’s like an old Vincent Price film in this house.

If I make it to the bedroom and she hasn’t wiggled, then I know I am in the home stretch. Just have to lay her down and press my arms deep into the bed to remove them from around her without her noticing. Oh it’s so nerve-wracking. So I place her down but hover over her for a minute so she won’t detect a sudden cold snap from mommy removing her warm arms. Now, if I can get to a standing position without any CG movement, then I am usually good to go. There has been the occasion when I accidentally knocked the remote onto the floor as I turned to leave. Man does it ever suck when that happens. I have to start the whole process over.

When morning hits and my alarm goes off, I have to battle the hardwoods again. I roll to the edge of my bed, (I want to make the least amount of mattress movement and rolling seems to be the best method) and slowly put my feet on the floor. If I’m smart, (which is never) I will have laid my undies out the night before so that I only have to grab them and head to the shower. Nope. Not smart. I have to open my dresser drawer which has the potential to wake the sleeping Yi-Yi Monster if I don’t do it just the right way. Can’t be too fast or too slow. Once I make it to the shower, one of two things happens. I either get to enjoy the nice warmth of the water and peace of being alone. OR I hear the creaky floors and the squeaky door and see a teeny little head full of matted hair and crazy eyes peering at me from behind the shower curtain while fighting off the water sprinkles that are lightly pounding her face. Yep! Some mornings she finds me. And until she gets her cuddles and Memmies, (her name for mama’s milkies) she will shadow my every movement and beg for me to "Hold you. Mommy hold you.". 

So I give in. Again and again and again. I hope I don’t come home to my pet rabbit boiling in a pot on the stove one day. That would be terrible. No, just kidding. We don’t have a pet rabbit. But we do have several dust bunnies that may be in danger thanks to stalker baby on the loose. Boiling a dust bunny might be interesting though. Hmmm. I joke about CG. I mean, she does cling to me, but she is also a loving, funny and darling baby girl. She will pet my hair and tell me, “Good try mommy, good try.” As though I’ve just lost on Jeopardy. She also has a great sense of humor and laughs quite a lot. I probably shouldn’t complain and enjoy these little moments with my lastborn because one day she will be embarrassed to be seen in the same city as me and I will be crushed. Damn I can’t get sentimental or I'll never get this baby weaned. NEVER.

Motherhood in the Age of Twitter

I swear the internet exists just to remind me what a shitty parent I am. The opinions about what makes a good mom/parent abound. If you don’t have those little fuckers quoting Shakespeare by the time they are 3, your kid is going to be Shift Lead on the fry line apparently. Now a really good mom would let the shit roll right off her back. She’d say, “Fuck you, I love my children, what’s it to you how I raise them?” And sometimes I do. But since I am a flawed human, sometimes I let the passionate opinions get to me. Damn being human has its sucky moments. I wonder if Spock could turn that shit on and off when he needed.  I shoulda been a Vulcan.

Oh man though, the mommy competition is brutal. Some women are really unkind to their gender. They don’t give you any leeway for a bad day. If you don’t have a fucking twinkle in your eye and a grin on your face while little Bartholomew and his bulbous head make their way into the world via your coochie corridor, “Well, maybe you just shouldn’t have had kids.”

Looking for a rogue turd that has disappeared under furniture while potty training? “Smile, you are blessed to be a mom!”

Turning your nipples into crunch berries because you’ve been breastfeeding half your adult life? “Well that’s what they are there for. Good for you mom. Yay! Clap clap clap.” (Pistol, please.)

Wanting so badly to poop alone so that you can read People magazine in peace? “Well, if you didn’t want kids and everything that comes with them, then maybe you should give them up to a family who would love them and everything about them, even the exhausting things and all the time. Every second of every moment in time FOREVER.”

See, what these pretend people with the pretend quotes don’t understand is, I do love every exhausting thing about them. But a day or two later. When I can tell it as a story. Not at that exhausting moment tantrum #3 is occurring. During the moments they are taking me there, you know to that, “mommy’s head is seriously about to pop right off her neck” place, I want to put a “flux capacitor” into my car and drive 88 miles an hour back into the year 1999. Oh yeah. Sleeping in on the weekends like humans are supposed to. Sprawling out onto my bed (instead of teetering on the edge while I’m curled like an armadillo into a teeny tiny ball). Going out to dinner. Watching rated R movies at 6:00 pm. NEVER buying chicken nuggets for any reason whatsoever! Making love loudly and in any room at any time. And so on. That dreamlike moment doesn’t last long. I come back to reality and perform my mommy duties to the best of my abilities with a smile. Sometimes it’s a forced one, but dammit, it’s there. It counts!

Okay, so what brought this shit up? This mommy uncertainty? Well, it’s been clearly established on this blog that my favorite famous male human is Russell Crowe. However, his little tirade about circumcision on Twitter recently (last night to be exact) brought to surface old guilt I had tucked nicely away into a teeny tiny corner of a synapse inside my cerebral cortex about circumcising my own boys. Why should I care what this person who I don’t know and will most likely never meet face to face thinks about a parenting decision I made once upon a time? It goes back to that flawed human thing I was talking about in the first paragraph. A part of me does care. Especially about the opinion of someone I respect and admire. I don’t want someone I like to think I’m a shitty parent. And I hate the fact that I care. It pisses me off actually. What’s it to this privileged man who doesn’t have to deal with half the shit I do on a daily basis? (now he could say the same about me. I could go on a Twitter diatribe and unless I’m threatening Barack Obama, or flashing my Weiner, it isn’t going to make the news.) So that’s neither here nor there. I actually agree with his stance, but his delivery was as stinky as an intact penis. (That was a joke. Ha. Ha. Ha. I love my intact friends. They are right with nature.) Oh and I promise that will be the only time I ever criticize Russell’s delivery. Speaking of which, he better DELIVER in his next film!

HOWEVER, you don’t change hearts and minds by insulting everyone who thinks in a different way about a certain subject. You lose people when you do that. When one’s defenses immediately sprout up, it’s hard to get them back down, and dialogue is dead and soon both sides have created an arsenal of weapons to shoot at their enemy because he insulted your stupid penis. I think that pretty much sums up how wars start. Men and their FUCKING penises. UGHH!

How bout you start a dialogue and leave the insults out. It’s a valid topic. I changed my mind about circumcision around 3 years ago. And not one nasty thing that an “intactivist” said to me moved me. NOT ONE. It might dredge up that little bastard guilt, but it won’t call me to action.  A picture of my second born immediately after birth in his “full” natural state really moved me. I could not think of a really good justified reason for cutting his foreskin off. That’s all. I should’ve left him alone. It’s not that I have regret so much as guilt. If that makes sense. Because my boys are fantastic, Kiwi cut and all. I adore them. They are unique and they are not damaged by a decision that me and my husband agreed on years ago. I would make a different decision today if I were to have another son. (Never gonna happen. Baby making has been put away on a nice little shelf next to the frozen peas.) But when someone I admire goes on a diatribe about us barbaric parents, I can’t help but feel a little shitty. Boo on me. He’s lucky he’s a good actor, because I’d hate to put him in the “inactive” file next to Mel Gibson. No, in defense of my (#1 freebie), he is passionate, and that is a great thing. But shut the fuck up too!

So enough of that. I'll have to make up for cutting short their penis capacity by being a kick ass mom in other ways. What else have I done wrong according to total strangers on the internet? We’ll have to save it for another time. My family just arrived home and I want to be a good wife and mother. So off I go. Cheers.

Jaws and Friends

My 9 year old son just spent his allowance money on a 30^th Anniversary Edition DVD of the movie Jaws. “The greatest of the shark eating people movies!” According to his 8 word review of the film. Why yes, I’d have to agree little man. Jaws is nautical miles above Shark Attack 3 – Megalodon (you want a good laugh, watch a scene or two of this gem on YouTube) and Giant Shark vs. (oh pick your ferocious animal and either put a “Mega” in front of it or a “Saurus” behind it. That’s how they do it on the SyFy channel.)

Until I became a mother, I had no idea how much little boys are into menacing creatures with sharp teeth and deadly bites. I have two older brothers. I do not remember this part of childhood. They are only 1 and 2 years older than me. We hung out. But one was into Olivia Newton John (Gimme me whatcha got, ready or not my love’s totally, Totally TOTALLY HOT!) – You gotta really hit that high note at the end to do Olivia justice. The other brother was into The Six Millon Dollar Man. Dn-Dn-Dn-Dn-Dn (that’s my imitation of Steve Austin during bionic slow-mo battle.) Six Miilion?! Today he’d be worth at least 500 million and he’d have his own reality show with Jaime Sommers probably on the SyFy network.

Okay, back to scary toothed beasts. I wonder if you google those 3 words together, “scary toothed beasts”, then click images, if a picture of Amy Winehouse will pop up. Somebody should try that and see. Anyway, my boys are picky about which creatures are allowed in their exclusive club of scary beasts worthy enough for them to want a stuffed animal version or watch a movie about. Take for instance the mandrill. I think it is the most terrifying looking animal in existence. It’s basically an evil baboon (aren’t they all really?) with gigantic fangs, a long blue and red snout and a mouth that can open wider than Steven Tyler’s. Come to think of it, mandrills actually resemble Steven Tyler. He used to be a drunk, he’s probably got a blue and red snout by now. I joke, Steven. You are very loved in my family.

But the mandrills are not scary enough for my boys. And they haven’t yet been the subject of a SyFy movie creature feature starring a who’s who of has been stars from the 1980’s. Although I think calling Lorenzo Lamas a star in any decade is a stretch not even my lower intestine in a zombie tug-of-war could handle. The mandrills may not make the list, but I bet they and other kinds of baboons would if I let my boys watch The Omen (like my parents let me and my siblings). Those baboons sucked. But they were nothing compared to that thing they were terrorizing in the car. Yikes. Me no likey evil kids in movies. That movie ruined a lot of things for me. Baboons, no thank you. Rottweilers, no thank you. Nannies in black dresses, no thank you. And kids named Damien. NO THANK YOU! If you are reading this and you happen to have a child under the age of 5 named Damien, do not…I repeat, DO NOT give him a tricycle for his birthday. Not a good idea, I promise.

Moving on. So baboons don’t make the list. Hippos, (which kill a shit load more people annually than a lot of the other creatures on their list, according to one of the Netflix instant play nature docs I watched once) don’t make the list. Komodo dragons on the other hand, are second in line behind the Great White Shark. King Cobras, crocodiles, anacondas, polar bears, wolverines (although I’m convinced that one has more to do with the X-Men.), bats (but only vampire ones), spiders, Sharktopusses, Crocosauruses and Piranacondas etc. You get the idea. They all make the cut. Those animals are cool because they might eat you. Nice. I must be raising either future "Crocodile Hunters" or B-movie directors. Which is fine with me as long as they don't bring any of those damn creatures into my house. Well not the real ones, the animatronic or plastic mold ones (you know, for the cheesy special effects) are okay with me. Love those boys, they are awesome. And Jaws just finished so I must conclude until another time. The end. 

The Torches I've Carried

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No worries, I’m not talking about “real” torches. What a boring post that’d be. I’ve never touched one of those things in my life. But I do think it would be cool to light one up at the same time others are gunning for the candles and flashlights during a thunderstorm and subsequent power outage. I’d just like to see the expressions on everyone’s faces when I enter the room looking like I’m about to hunt Frankenstein’s monster. I’m just going to do that sometime.

Oh and to any of my old boyfriends who are on Facebook and might see this blog entry, you’re safe too. What happened in ex-boyfriend land stays in ex-boyfriend land. So you can sigh a big relief.

Okay, enough of that. This is all about the pretend boyfriends I never had but dreamed about because they were larger than life on the big and small screens. The celebrity torches I've carried over my thirty-bluhbluhbluh years of life. There are too many to fit into one blog post, (I’m boy crazy like that) and since I don’t have time to compete with the Dead Sea Scrolls, I will keep it as brief as possible and post about the ones that stand out in my memory. Wow, for someone who makes Kiwis, I don’t talk about the Kiwis I’ve made very much. I sort of thought this would be a “mom” blog. Oh screw it. I can talk about whatever I want. There are a million mini-Kiwi stories to tell, so be patient….they’re coming just not before my man blog.

It all began in ’77 with Grizzly Adams. Ooooh yeah. I luvs a grizzly man. I went through a big beard and mustache stage when I was a little girl. It has to be because my dad had the whole Wolfman Jack thing going on in the 70’s. (He also had the whole rust colored pleather jacket thing going on, but THAT my friends, is for another time.) Anyway, Grizzly was the man. He could live off the land, help lost hikers and raise a wittle bear cub all while eluding bounty hunters. Awesome. While my friends had posters of Shaun Cassidy plastered all over their walls, I was smitten with the Bear Whisperer.

That same year, George Lucas released Star Wars. Oh no doubt I was crushing on Luke Skywalker, but what stood out to me more was the fact that I got really upset any time someone with a mustache bit the bullet  (or space ship missile whatever they may be called. I’m a little nerdy, but not THAT nerdy.) Toward the end, when the good guys were trying to destroy the Death Star, a roly poly mustached good guy got blown to bits by a TIE Fighter. I was devastated. So devastated that I could have cared less about the skinny, clean shaven guy who bit it next. Nope. Didn’t care.

A year later, my infatuation with Barry Gibb began. Yep, my first Aussie crush. Damn he had the best feathered hair I had ever seen. Walking around in that gem of a movie (and by gem I mean giant turd) Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with those silky tight pants and that little forest of hair popping out of his unbuttoned shirt. Oh my. He was so pretty and dreamy. But to this day, I still don’t know which Bee Gee has the falsetto? I always thought it was Barry, but that was just a guess. Is it him?

I have to take a step back, a couple of years anyway, and admit I had a little crush on King Kong. Not in any kind of pervy animal love thing kind of way, but in a, I wish King Kong was my pet kind of way. His eyes looked like my dog Muffin’s eyes. And I wanted to take him home and hug him and pet him and love him and name him George. Oh and YES, it was THAT King Kong. The one everyone trashes. Not me man. I likey and Jeff Bridges was all hairy faced. So lot’s of cool bonus points.

I eventually graduated from my mustache and beard phase and went right into my “muscle shirts with British flags on them while bandanas circle the necks of long haired rockers named Def Leppard” phase. All of em. I loved em all. Well, actually that’s a lie. It’s no secret that Phil Collen was the homely one of the bunch. I’ve seen pictures. I know…that wasn’t very nice, Phil is probably a lovely guy with a great personality. Anyway, my Def Leppard phase went something like this: I thought for sure one day while I was walking around outside, their giant tour bus would stop to pick me up and let me live with them for a while. And my first “real” boyfriend would be Rick Savage. Oh yeah. I mean c’mon, a 12 year old with the start of a fantastic mullet vs. 18 year old horny groupies who have no curfew. It could happen. It happened to Rachel Ward and Richard Chamberlin. He waited for her, Rick would wait for me. But the tour bus never came. I had to endure 6^th grade without an older British boyfriend. Sigh.

By the time I was a Freshman in high school, I was over the Def Leppards and moved on to the Bon Jovis. Oh ho ho yeah. That frost tipped hair coupled with the snake patterned spandex pants threw me into a teen girl tizzy. That man, Jon, was the best part about MTV in those days. Even though I never got picked up by the British rockers, it didn’t convince me that the Americans would neglect me. No way, they for sure were going to move me in and be all charmed by my 15 year old self. It didn’t happen but at least I had my Hit Parader Bon Jovi posters all over my bedroom walls to console me on my lonely nights.

Just as video killed the radio star, grunge killed my love for the hairspray rockers. It was all over for them. I jumped the train to Seattle where my love of flannel flourished. (I wasn’t being trendy, I LOVED flannel. I just chose not to wear it until 1992. That’s all.) Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, that one dude on bass, that other dude on rhythm guitar. Purr purr purr. I finally gave up the tour bus dream though. Thank goodness. I was tired of getting my hopes dashed.

But life goes on and as I gave up the musician crushes in real life, I gave them up in pretend life. NO MORE ROCKERS! Time for a nice boy from the land down under to show me a good time. Right on readers, you guessed it. We just entered Russell Crowe territory. You may think, damn we are still in the 90’s, how on earth can we already be at Russell Crowe? I’ll tell you how: Romper Stomper. It was made in ’92 but I saw it on video in ’93. Never heard of Russell Crowe. Plays a menace to society in that film and man does he play it well. I felt a little body tremor (not telling you where) watching that movie although I despised the character. Which was weird to me. Damn. Who WAS that dude? He can act. So I rented a teeny little film called Proof next and was like, “Holy shit. WHO THE FUCK IS THIS GUY?!? I'd watch him on C-Span. Wow. I like him. He’s got it. He needs to hop on a boat, (well I suppose a plane would be faster, boat just came off my tongue first), and get his ass to America. We will love him!” And he did. And we loved him. And Sharon Stone gets all the credit for some strange reason. Oh no Ms. Stone. You DID NOT discover Russell Crowe thank you very much. (At least not for me.) I had him pegged to be the colossal talent he is with no help from you hobag! (I’m immature…I know. Poor Sharon.) If Sharon got him cast in America first or if his mad acting skills did it on their own (ding ding ding) it doesn’t matter. He made it here and he went straight to the top (in America and on my list!) Damn I use a lot of parentheses.

I challenge any reader to tell me one actor in the history of movies who was manlier than Russell Crowe in Gladiator. I’m telling you, it’s impossible. And I won’t believe you anyway. So there is no winning this argument. The movie was great on its own merits, but damn, I looked like Robert Hays at the end of Airplane by the time the movie finished I was sweating so badly. And the air conditioner worked just fine. It was all Russell’s fault. Sorry Spartacus, you were cool and masculine and all, but there’s a new Gladiator in town and he just made you look like Liberace in an armored tunic.

People Magazine has never had the guts to put Russell on the Sexiest Man Alive cover. The pages could never hold that much soul and spark and badassmotherfuckerness so they don’t even try. Good! The last thing I need is those eyes staring at me from the magazine rack at the grocery checkout. I need to concentrate on my purchases and my unruly children.

I married my husband in 1999. (On my birthday no less…best birthday ever, well except husband had bronchitis and we didn’t honeymoon. What the hell is wrong with us?) Russell has been the one celebrity freebie throughout my 12 years of marriage. I’m loyal like that. Oh many others have come and gone, like Daniel Craig and Clive Owen. But I would feel like I was cheating if somebody were to bump Russell to number 2. I think my husband at this point would be pissed as well. He’s used to having Russell in his life and he's gotta stay loyal to the Kiwis or Kiwi/Aussie combos. Awww. What a nice husband. I think I will hug him and pet him and love him and name him George.  

Brown Thumbs Unite!

When I back out of or pull into my driveway every day, sometimes several times a day, I have to block out the heinous eyesore to my left. What you ask is so worthy of being blocked out daily? Myyyyy,  lawn. I’m not sure it’s really fair to use the word lawn actually. How offensive to real lawns. Regardless, I just pretend I don’t see that hot mess. Apparently I am a member of one of the mosted hated groups in America, the Brown Thumbs. The Brown Thumbs, where our motto is: We’ve never met a plant we couldn’t kill!

Oh I see the looks in the eyes of my lawn mower obsessed neighbors as they walk by our stickerbush stalks that populate all of our front slope. Hey, I say better to keep the robbers away. Who wants their hurried ass to fall into a patch of sticker bushes the size of Jack’s beanstalk? Not any robber I know! In all fairness to me though, I do try to pull those fuckers up out of the ground often. But they hurt dammit. They’re not called sticker bushes for their soft furry coating. I know what you’re thinking, “Duh, wear some gardening gloves doofus.” I do and they do nothing to protect my precious fingers from the stick of these nasty beasts. It’s like Day of the Triffids out there in my front lawn when I go to battle these pricks. So it’s not that I don’t try…a little…a teeny tiny bit. In all truth, it takes a lot of hard work to be this lawn lazy.

I’m pretty sure I’ve got what it takes to kill a cactus. Just send yours over to my house to babysit while you’re vacationing in the Caribbean, and I can almost guarantee you’ll be taking a dead cactus home to Arizona with you. I’ve got one decent looking plant that I take care of at my house. I was all proud of my work in keeping the thing alive when my plant snob brother-in-law reminded me that the plant I have (see I’m bad, I don’t even remember what he called it) is one of the hardiest plants out there. An Antarctic blizzard wouldn’t be able to take this plant down. Gee. THANKS A LOT, B-I-L, be sure to not let me enjoy even a moment of greenthumbedness.

You know what I say? Fuck the Green Thumbs! That’s right, fuck em all! Oh they’re sooooo superior with their fancy pruning shears and their stupid Chinese grass. They walk around with their wide brimmed hats and their tacky floral gloves like they own the damn planet. Here, why don’t you kneel down on your comfy little garden foam pad so I can show you where you can stick your trowel! And they’re  always smiling. What are they so happy about? Because the rest of us are jealous that we don’t spend 80 hours a week pulling weeds?

Well, at least in my yard (well for lack of a better word) you won’t find animal poop. Nope, even the feral cats and raccoons won’t step foot in it. Why should they? They have their choice between our yard where everything is either dead or preparing for death by weeds, OR they could go hang out in our neighbor’s yard where it looks like the Candy Land board vomited on it. I’m not gonna lie, I wouldn’t be mad if Gum Drop Mountain were in my yard. That would be the life.

I tease the Green Thumbs. I’m actually rather fond of them. I rely on them to keep these property values up. They certainly can’t rely on me. And let’s face it, there is nothing like a pretty patch of tulips in spring. Perhaps if I hang out more with my green thumb friends, they will rub off on me and I will get to join their illustrious group. *snicker snicker*. I know. I don’t see it happening either. But it was good for a laugh.

Words

This one is all about words. Words I love and words I hate. Words that I can’t decide whether it’s love or hate I feel. Words I wish never existed. Some words just sound cool rolling off the tongue, others sound as terrible as their meaning. Many of the words I love and hate have nothing to do with their definitions. It’s all about how they sound. But let’s face it, the definitions have a very strong influence on a lot of them. Read on.

Words I love:

Sasparilla (aka sarsaparilla)  – I want so badly to put on some chaps, some spurs, some teeny tiny boots, throw a cowboy hat on my head, walk into a bar and say, “Give me a tall glass of Sasparilla!” Just to see the bartender flip me off. Sasparilla is a fantastic word.

Haberdashery – Just try using that one in a sentence without defaulting to an English accent. Go on, try it. It is IMpossible to hillbilly up that word.

Intergalactic – Sounds even better when you over-pronounce the c that comes before the t and the c on the end. You might sound like a dick if you do that, but that's part of the fun.

Ambrosia – Hate hate hate ambrosia salad. Love love love ambrosia the word.

Xing – There is not a person alive who could win the road trip alphabet game without this beautiful word. Everyone should thank Xing, or we would never have gotten to Y and Z.

Rubbish – Trash to the Yanks = Rubbish to the Kiwis. One Christmas Eve after my big family opened all of their gifts, my husband grabbed a trash bag and said, (his accent is strong at times) “Chuck the rubbish in heeya.” We scratched our heads for a few minutes but since he had the trash bag as a visual aid, we eventually figured out what the hell he was talking about. Ever since, rubbish has been one of my favorites!

Winklevoss – Not a huge fan of the Harvard twin rowers or anything, just love that damn last name. It actually works much better paired with the word “twins”. Winklevoss twins. There you go, much better.

Kronosaurus – Coolest sounding and coolest underwater dinosaur EVER.

Cocksucker – Possibly the best cuss word.

Dane – as in Great Dane, Alexander Dane, and Hamlet is a Dane.

Words I don’t very much love:

Dane – as in Dane Cook. See, I 75% like the word Dane.

Bulbous – I can’t like it. It makes me think of William Shatner’s head.

Corpuscle – Don’t know what it is, don’t know what it does, don’t care, don’t like. The only thing it has going for it is that it sorta rhymes with Russell. But it will get no other grace from me.

Carbuncle – This is one of those awful words that has a definition just as terrible as the word itself. Don’t believe me? Google it, then click images. I double dog dare you! No, I triple dog dare you!!

Frothy – Now I might like this word if the image of a mug of Guinness popped into my head. Nope, no Guinness. Just people, knocking on death’s door, while horizontal on hospital beds with white foam coming out of their mouths. Frothy sucks as a word.

C.H.U.D. – Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. Need I say more?

Curdle – Terrible in every way.

Words I can’t decide how I feel about:

Glockenspiel – It’s either a really cool word, or the worst name for an instrument in the English language. I can’t decide.

Ferengi – Yeah, so the Ferengi have elephantitus of the head. Big deal. Their name still sounds kind of cool. The negative though is I can’t stop thinking about Ross Perot when I think of the Ferengi. And who the hell wants to think of Ross Perot?

Parched – My husband hates this word, but I use it a lot. So I have to put it on the questionable list just for his benefit. He always says, “Potched, what a load of rubbish! Why can’t ya just say yur thuuhsty?” I don’t know dude. I guess I just like to mix it up on occasion. Sorry. Geesh.

Schadenfraude – I bet I’d like it more if I could just fucking pronounce it. I’ve only ever seen it in writing. I think people are afraid to use it in speech because secretly, no one knows how to say the damn word!

Hippocratic – I don’t know about you but I think of hippos (the dancing ones in Fantasia to be exact) and ancient doctors with long white beards, togas and sandals. Two creatures that I am ambivalent about.

Words I wish never existed:

Octomom – No explanation needed I’m sure.

Balloon – But only when coupled with the word boy.

Linda Blair – Nothing against her. Just don’t like her name. She should change it or go back in time to turn down her Oscar nominated movie role in 1973. Then I might like her name.

Bruce Jenner – Nothing against his name. I just don’t like him. He should go back in time right after he won the Gold Medal and put the pieces of his nose back together then glue it back on his face. Dude don’t look right.

That’s it. I’m out of words for the night. Come back another time and maybe we can do math.

Thanks For the Mammaries!

So I get up this morning, like I do, every day. I hop into the shower like I do not do, every day. (I lie when I say hop. As I already established in my Urethra Franklin story, hopping makes me pee my pants. Hopping naked makes me pee down my leg, which wouldn’t be too bad since I am getting into the shower, but I’m not a dog dammit. I refuse to shake my leg when I am done to clear off the excess pee!) Sorry, I get sidetracked easily. Where was I? Oh right, moseying into the shower. Naked body must pass a mirror before entering shower. There is no way around it. Well I suppose I could crawl to the shower and enter it from below the shower curtain, but how stupid would that look? Soooo, as I pass by the mirror to enter my inviting shower, I glance over and what do I see? Two asymmetrical sock puppets with crunch berry eyes looking at me. Well probably looking more at the floor if I’m being honest.

That’s right. I’ve lost my boobies. They went down in May of 2003. That’s when I weaned my first baby. They’ve never looked up since. Oh sure they have their perky moments, like when raising my arms high into the air or wearing a push up bra one size too small or walking on the moon. (Not to be confused with moonwalking, which I still have mad skills at by the way, especially when I’m wearing socks on my hardwoods.) Moonwalking does not make boobs perky, walking on a zero gravity lunar surface however, does. Oh I digress again. Anyway, I’m sad to report they aren’t coming back.

Oh we had some good times. Like the time I was on a co-ed soccer team at the age of 13, and I could snatch the ball away from any boy on the rival team because they were pre-pubescent and I was charging toward them with my giant freshly sprouted bazoombas. Yeah, that was too easy.

Or the time I had front row center seats at a Metallica concert when I was 17 and the guitarist (Kirk Hammett was his name) played a solo just for me while looking into my eyes. Okay, in truth he was looking about 10 inches below my eyes, but why wouldn’t he? These things were perky, happy and popping out of a tight fitting low cut top like all the good little headbanger babes wore.

Then there was the time a month after the birth of my second child when I went to a gymnastics event at our local arena. It was dark, my baby was thirsty, and so I nursed him right there. Thankfully no one but me and my 21 year old niece could see the geyser of breastmilk that sprayed onto the back jacket of the spectator in front of me when my finicky little nibbler let go suddenly. That poor guy probably wondered what the hell was all over his jacket when he got home. Please don’t tell on me. I felt bad. But I laugh about it now.

Too many memories to count…sigh. See, I should just embrace all the magic we’ve made together over the years and accept that they need a little rest and down time. Just let them hang low and love them in all their droopy weariness.

So back to the mirror, I say, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, why did these boobs have to fall?” The magic mirror responded, “Mother Nature is her name, keeping it real is her game.” Thanks magic mirror. I can live with that. I guess I’ll keep em real. Swingin “real” low. And hope we’ll live happily ever after.