You are not invincible. (Ode to dumbasses everywhere)

My husband, God love him, fails to act his age. I realize this is probably not an isolated case. So enjoy while I sing his praises.

One fine morning, a fresh football season brought “the guys” over to prepare for the proper abusing of the PSLs. My hubby and his “bros” were all geared up (in appropriate team wear), toting coolers and groceries, talking loudly about guy crap. They were loading up the truck to make the haul down to where the chest beating, ball scratching, shit talkin’ takes place. It being one of the first games of the season had this lot in rare form.

I don’t know what happened conversation-wise to require the riding of my husband’s childhood BMX bike, but they were doing it. My kids are out laughing at them. My neighbors were too. My husband takes his turn at being the baddest ass and “I can’t watch”. So two grown men and two little boys are watching as dear husband ramps the curb, hops the sewer and bites it. “Awwww! Wow! Ouch”. Head first over the handlebars. I knew it was bad before I even turned around. I kinda wish I would have seen it. He is laying on the grass and then just pops up like “It’s ok! I’m ok!”(name that movie). He was obviously shaken. I am not sure by what, the fact that he is not 12 anymore or that he has just seriously hurt himself trying to be 12. Oh, and he hit his head, but that couldn’t have anything to do with it, right?

He staggers. He heads to the house. He stands in the bathroom trying to convince me he didn’t hit his head very hard and it’s just a hematoma on his shoulder. *in my best Schwarzenegger* “It’s not a toma”. Crickets?!?! Really? I thought that was hilarious. Fine, I’ll admit, ill placed. I digress…

So my adrenaline junkie goes to his football extravaganza, and proceeds to tail gate. Chest bump. Wait. That hurts.

Then I get the call.

“Huuuuneeee, could you pick me up? I think I’m hurt worse than I thought.” “Of course” *eye-roll* *huff* *grumble*. The kids and I gather up and head downtown (35 minute drive with no other cars on the road) to sit in baseball and football traffic and finally arrive at the corner of “major interstate” and “right in the middle of downtown”. He is standing there with this painful glare and when he slides in the car he instructs me to drive him directly to the ER. These words are not uttered by my husband lightly. Before you get all upset, his dudes were handed the tickets and told to keep him posted, they instructed him to do the same. All is not lost.

Off we go! Two major highways, one bridge closing, giant loop around detour, two antsy kids, one injured husband, an hour and 12 minutes drive time, one Xanex and 51 deep breaths later we are at the hospital closest to our home. We wait in the ER (ya’ll know what that’s like so I’ll spare ya) and they tell him his collar bone is detached and they won’t touch him. He needs an Orthopedic Surgeon!?! Yikes. 

Here, take a look:

BLAMO!

My poor hubbs had to throw all aspirations of swimsuit modeling out the window and come to grips with the fact that until he has surgery he will have a bump on his shoulder. Like Quasimodo. I know, low. But funny.

You will be pleased to know that almost two months of physical therapy and loads of time off work he is fully functioning. For those interested, the bump is barely noticeable. The only thing he can’t do is lay on his left to sleep which leaves me snuggle-less and I hate that. He has also completely forgotten any lesson there were to be had from this. I asked him to buy a skateboard for our dude’s 7th birthday and he comes home saying “man, skateboards have gotten way cheaper! I almost picked one up for myself.” REALLY?!?!? Did you learn nothing?! I would kill him, of course I could just wait and see if he does it for me.

I would like to state for the record that I have been very supportive, non-judgy, and only have half of a tongue left because I have been forced to bite the other half off. Everything happens for a reason. Accidents happen. Blah blah blah.

I am convinced this must be a chromosomal defect. The Y chromosome.  

HELP! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

Call Life Alert. I have fallen out of the blog-o-sphere. I am having a hard time finding my way back.

Holy crap, my life has been stupid crazy lately.

We moved. We found out we are not good at moving. I picked up a new career. Hubbs got laid off. Find out new career kinda blows. Hubbs got hurt (for-the-love-of-god-that-is-a-whole-'nother-post). Two new schools start. I can’t remember the last time I read a book for grown-ups. A boy turned seven. Hallo’frickin’ween. Hubbs goes back to work, but at night. And that almost, with very large gaps, brings us up to now.

I really wanted to be a good little blogger and continually bang out witty post after witty post. Unfortunately my new Big Girl Job has me chained to a computer six hours a day and I’ll be honest, I just don’t feel like it anymore.

Then I realize how much I have missed. I have not done any sewing. I have not had any snarky rants. I read up on my faves and realize that I suck. Who do you have to blow to get Pintrest to accept you? What is the big friggin’ deal about Pintrest anyway? Reminds me of Jr. High when we used to clip pictures out of magazines and make our dream house/wedding/family. Don’t lie, you did too, didn’t you? Why can I not do something simple like pick a paint color for the dining room, or wash socks? My last project was lame, my attempt at “mumming” (don’t ask) was weak, and my car has had one headlight for like a year. 

I need to have a good old fashioned “get your big girl panties on and get over it’ lecture handed to me. I’ll try. I will.

So in the spirit of things I vow to post immediately after this one with a story about the Read-Todd-Did man I married, shower, take a yoga class, and suck it up.

I promise.

Poetry

One of my KK Mommy friends posted this today and it touched me so I wanted to share. *sigh* If only they were small and sweet again.

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
...She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
but I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

 

Have a great weekend.

Thank you JS.

Our poor tree.

I wrote last year about this tree. Take a look HERE. Seems a little silly to put so much emotional importance on a tree but I do. I think this tree is a significant story teller that runs parallel with us.

Let me add a little back story and maybe you can see it. In my and husband’s relationship there have been a few bumps. Nothing catastrophic, but bumps big enough to jostle your brain when ya go over ‘em. Who hasn’t?! It seems whenever we have something major happen everything major happens. So, we built a new house and were moving crap over daily and in the middle of the mess a huge storm hits our town. Tornados nearby, rain coming sideways, and lightening that was scary close. Ya know, summer storm, Midwest style. I thought sure with everything happening we would have lost the tree. She was a bendin’. Nope. It stood. Strong and tall and I looked at my hubbs and thought “just like always we are gonna make it”. Then two days later a second but not nearly as ferocious storm blew through and took our tree with it.

Leveled to the ground. Again! This tree does this about every five years. So do we. I cried. A lot. Then I started over analyzing the symbolism. With all the stress of the five-million-and-two things that we loaded up on our plates, my lover and I had been fighting quite a bit. Is the tree trying to tell us that some storms you can weather but some are just to big to withstand?! Or was it saying here’s a fresh start for you? Just call me neurotic. Some people take advice from tea leaves. At least mine was living.

Well… running true with the tree speak we have moved on, started fresh. We have cleaned up our old mess (well…almost) and have begun to grow a new life from the ground up in a different place.

(insert sad faces)

Let’s just hope this new house’s tree isn’t a sign of anything. It was a straight-up pain in the ass then immediately it died. Puleeze! Really?!?

And of course, before i got a pic (stupid camera. STUPID battery.) the magic tree fairy (aka: project manager) came and replaced it. Maybe that is a sign! Ugh.

So now I have little to no worries a (surface survey) and I just pray the grass here is not the fortune teller. Premium Kentucky Bluegrass my foot! More like poopity-poop-poop. Poop. Although the grass does kinda feel like me right now… crabby and a little “broad”.

Wanna see some pictures?

I am totally not a photographer. At all. That being said… shall we?! Here’s what the last nine months have looked like:

October

Please try to focus on the reason for the season instead of my half-wit facial expressions. Yes. As a matter of fact my tongue is out and I have indeed not bothered to brush my hair. Huh.

 November

Incredible. In November we celebrate my nephew’s birthday.

December

 

 

January

 

“Playing” with our Christmas loot. Um… that is a volcano. You’re welcome.

February

Let the building begin!

This is the one I made for my baby’s 4th birthday.

March

 

April

   

May

We were waiting for the much anticipated port removal.

Almost done!

June

Hello Summer!

July

 

Check out my sexy mutha-*bleep* with his cold blooded jewelry.

And… this is what happens when you hand me one! Ack!

Do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with just one (ok, sometimes two) pictures to sum up an entire month? Why nine months, not six, or twelve? Dunno. Deal.

Been a long time…

It has been since Easter since I posted?!?! It has been since Easter since I posted.

We have had a whole truck load of crap happen, I probably have about 27 funny things to tell you, like 16 not so funny, and at least one that will make you cry tears of joy. None of those things will be posted right now though. I am simply too pooped. Plus that would mean organizing my stack of post-its. Too hard. Especially when I can’t find my stapler, my favorite bra, or about three dozen other things since the move. Never been too organized, now it bites me in the ass.

Piled high on top of the move is summer (aka: boys parked in my face), my '”fun job” that sucks a big one, a lay-off that turned into out of town work for my dear husband, and my car just up and gave me the finger. The friggin’ clutch went out. I want to scream. Instead I decided to pout. We had loads of wonderful family activities that needed attending this weekend and I was stuck. With my sweetie out of town the weekends get crammed full of shit we hate (him working on the old house, me at work) instead of the things we really want to be doing (spending time with friends and family, or hell just enjoying summer for five minutes).

Today I surfed the net for solutions to the car disaster until one of eyeballs actually fell out on to my keyboard. Don’t worry, it was the one that recently survived pink eye not my good one.*

*in a tiny little side note: whenever anyone says “pink eye” do you immediately think “poop on your eyeball”?! I do. I did. Till now. I did not have poop anywhere near my face. I am a compulsive hand-washer. Sort of. (remember the scene from Knocked Up when they all got pink eye from farting on each other's pillows?! I feel better)

My dear sweet sister showed up and informed me that we needed to get out of the house and do something fun with the boys for just once in their poor deprived lives. That was at like 1:00. So by 4:00 we started really thinking about what to do. The public pools around here (well not really around here anymore since “here” has moved) have special cheap-o rates after 4:00 so since it was now only 99° instead of 105° we suited up.

Pay attention… this is where it gets good… in string bikinis!!! BWAaahahaha.

No seriously.

We totally did.

We dug around in my swim suit pile and finally decided on the little ones. Why? ‘Cuz we are obviously of diminished brain capacity. Obviously.

I have two things to tell you about this ridiculous decision:

1. We are not the adorable 20-somethings that these suits were originally purchased for.
2. If you ever want to feel better about your physical appearance you should head over to the public pool.

Knowing these two things led us to the conclusion that we are too old to care what anyone really thinks. That and she has a tropical vaca coming up and she and a thawed out chicken have the same color skin. So my sis, her blissfully happy new b’dunk, our three pasty boys, and my scarred up nasty (think shark bite or mauled by tiger) belly jiggle all got in her car. I made her promise to make a whooper-whill whistle if one of my nipples popped out and then made her practice it with me for insurance. God forbid she mistake it for another bird call. She rolls eyes and comments on my mental handicap.

We arrive. Pay. Throw our crap on the first empty chair. Undress. Suck in… and head for the water. I don’t have the required stomach muscles it takes to hold the kind of blub I carry. Little sis meant what she said about not caring about what people think and is sitting down. You can’t suck in and sit. F*@#. Oh well.

In an hour and 20 minutes my insignificant stomach muscles are sore from trying their hardest. My thighs are rubbed red on the inside from the weird way I was walking trying to minimize the jiggle. We have been splashing and playing the entire time. The boys were having fun. The water feels great and so does the sun. Having a great time.

Until… she swims up to me and giggles “thought you might wanna know your suit is see through”. Really? Really?!?!

Not only did I not hear the whistle we rehearsed but she waited an hour to tell me that everyone could tell within a millimeter exactly how my nipples look?!?! Aaahhhh!!!

Top that shit off with a trip to Wal-Mart in goofy half wet swim covers with three over tired and hungry boys and I was almost in tears looking for a happy pill.

No. There are no pictures to go with this post.

SHEESH!!!

 

  

 

 

Ahhh… Easter.

I will start by saying that both my husband and I were raised Catholic. We celebrate Easter with family, dyed eggs, ham, and loads of chocolate. We had a very nice day filled with family and fun. Then this will promptly turn into a rant. Sorry.

What is it with all of the “stuff”?!

The Easter Bunny brought chocolates, Peeps, jelly beans and a bubble blowing whistle for each of my kiddos. We try to keep it simple and remind our children that holidays are much more than scoring tons of new toys. I have noticed quite the opposite trend going on in other households though. In my opinion our kids are pretty spoiled, especially when compared to how we were raised. I am simply astounded by the way that other parents over spend for holidays, whatever the holiday be. While the Easter Bunny did fill a big ol’ basket with enough candy to make an entire city diabetic in about 20 minutes, I just don’t get what I am hearing about what this crazy bunny left for others. Does it mean you love Jesus more if your kids get 9 DS games, 6 jars of Play-doh, 14 Barbies, and a Karaoke machine?! I think not.

It seems to be a bit excessive. What exactly does this say to our young ones?

I have noticed the same trend around Christmas time. Does St. Nickolas really need to bring an entire load or just the traditional goodies that fit in the shoe? I actually heard one mom say that she was buying a Loving Family house for her daughter for St. Nick’s Day! Really?! What the hell is little Veruca getting for Christmas later the same month? Gold plated bike? Trip to Fiji? What has happened to us as a society?!

I realize that with the rise in divorce some parents play the “I love you more” game. I also realize that these little brats will eventually be adults. If the trend keeps up will Santa be able to fit a Ferrari in little Johnny’s stocking and will the real reason for the season just be dead? 

I think family traditions are being lost to the hype. We always got fruit and nuts along with candy in our Christmas stockings. We would get the one thing our heart’s desire under the tree from Santa. Ya know, the big one. Not $1800 worth of every toy we asked for all year long. I am trying my hardest to keep family traditions alive. My boys each got the one thing they wanted most, begged Santa for, and pleaded for in their letters. It was accompanied by a couple smaller toys and your run of the mill stocking stuffers. Neither of my kids died. No arms flew in the air with exclamations of “is that all?!” and they were sure that Santa really did listen and they really were good boys all year. Then they go off to school and hear of the ridiculous excess that happens in other houses. “Mom, my friend Dan said that he got the entire LEGO City from Santa!” Really?! I want to slap Dan’s mom. Why can’t Christmas be about the birth of our Lord instead of the $700 in tiny building blocks that Dan’s parents thought were just what was necessary to make the day special? One kid got a pony and a horse!!! I thought we were in an economic slump right now. Lets teach our kids about that. They will be the ones running this country some day!

So back to Easter. I was talking with an acquaintance the other day and after she got done rattling the items she compiled for her kids for Easter, ranging from board games to sports equipment, she added “I still need one more thing for the baby so they have they same number of things”. Just who is keeping score? And what is up with taking pics of your kids’ loot to post on Facebook?! Is this really even about the kids, or the holiday for that matter? It’s not like these were pics of the kiddo’s surprised faces and the joy of rifling through their haul. Just pictures of stuff. Tacky.

My kids got baskets from us and from Grandma. Each loaded to the hilt with a mother’s nightmare, and a dentist’s dream. Not once did my children ask why they didn’t get the 4 Bakugan toys they need to complete their collection, or why the Easter Bunny didn’t drop off a swimming pool. They hunted eggs and were not disappointed in the least when the plastic ones held pennies and candy instead of $5 bills.

Our Santa is kind and generous without extending our credit into financial ruin. Our Tooth Fairy still brings coin (lots of it but still coin). Our Bunny fills a basket, not the living room. Our kids know the reason for the things we celebrate, beyond the “stuff”. They experience the magic first hand. They believe in fairy tales and fictitious characters that reward them for being good people. The thought never crosses their mind to be greedy.

Maybe if this were more about the traditions associated with Easter and less of a contest our kids will benefit from the experience. Brush up HERE.

Think about the “stuff”. Ask yourself what you are teaching. Lead by example.

I truly hope everyone had a lovely Easter/ Passover/ Summer Solstice.

Let’s get Spring underway!

Much Love.