the real reason bugs have antennae

we were listening to shortstack's new favorite band (blink 182) on the way back from getting a dozen small crickets for bo (the treefrog from grammie, who lives on our kitchen counter). while we are waiting at the longest red light on earth, shortstack is singing his heart out in the backseat. he stops only long enough to tell me 'the crickets like my shinging. that's why they have antennae, so they can hear me shing.'

random conversation of the day

i think you can figure out who is who in this one...

'i wish the sky was brown'
'really? that'd be kind of silly, wouldn't it?'
'yeah, then it would look like POOP!'

just checking in

being an adult is all about doing things you don't really want to do, but you HAVE to do, right? so what am i doing instead? distracting myself by writing about the laundry i need to be folding and putting away--i do apologize. i really have become the 'sehr langweilig' person our exchange student deemed me in high school. YIKES. you have full permission to stop reading now--on with the bore: i can handle most anything, but laundry kills me every time. it's right there with making phone calls. i don't think anyone fully grasps how much i despise the telephone. but hey--if laundry is all i have to worry about today, i'm in pretty good shape and grateful for it. the laundry fairy did not come and take care of all of our clothes last night. bummer.

this is insane. i know laundry isn't my favorite thing to do and i have a hard time keeping up with it, i always have. but i can't for the life of me figure out where all these clothes are coming from. there's a whole floor full, sorted and waiting to go to the washer, and the closets are still almost full. i'm thinking it's partially because we've been doing a lot of things outside and wearing more of our get grubby in the yard clothes and changing clothes a couple times a day because of that. maybe after i get it caught up this time, i can somehow manage to at least not let it get so bad! [and yes, you guessed it--i say that EVERY time i get the laundry completely finished]

i have a lot to say about my visit with my mom yesterday, but i'm not sure if i'll be able to make it back here before our trip this weekend. this whole week has gotten away from me, and i'm really behind on almost everything!

I WANT A SEPARATION! (from neighbors. almost all of them...)

given all the excitement that inevitably comes with having neighbors, we’ve decided that we’d like to make the exodus to the country once we find tons of land appropriate for the homestead. quite the task and will take a long time to find the right place—so don’t be going getting any thongs or boxers bunched up over it, m’kay? i believe it went down something like this—and yes, i was and still am this frustrated with things. ‘honey, i can’t take this neighbor crap anymore, it’s just making me sick. i think i’d rather find a big piece of land somewhere and—i can’t believe i’m saying this—put a trailer on it and live there while we build our house instead of staying in a neighborhood...’ ‘really? that’s cool, but a trailer?’ ‘a shack, ANYTHING. but something that could be turned into a guest house/office space that’s separate from our house. we could get one of those little golf carts to drive back and forth to the main house...’

it’s been a full month of dealing with a particular busybody neighbor about a drama that just won’t die at our own casa, and also at our other property, trying to take care of things like cutting down a very, very dead pine tree and having the neighbor call the police on us and mutter garbage about what we were doing while she was out in her own yard the next day. who knows for sure exactly why she called the police—but there was no other possible place to drop the tree in the street—it was so very, very dead, and so light it wasn’t an issue, and it was cleaned up within an hour and a half. even a professional tree company would’ve done that with this particular tree. i trust my husband’s judgment, he’s not stupid. i think fm is the brawny man in disguise! well, the flannel shirt, big booted, chainsaw wielding, hottie hot lumberjack part at least—this is definitely NOT him [for the record, i don’t want my man to act like THAT, call me old fashioned, but i see it as weakness—must be those mate choosing instincts kickin’ in]. i could go on and on and on and on about the neighbor situations, but i’m trying not to get sucked into people’s negative ways (that’s a difficult, full-time task for me...) also bear in mind that i have to hold back a bit for fear of making things worse with the off-chance someone from the ‘hood might read this. i think i’m safe, but i don't want to risk it—most of the people around here hardly use a computer—that’s the frustrating, but in cases like this cool, thing about living in sc. please know in your heart of hearts how desperately I WANT TO TELL YOU, beloved semi-anonymous internet!

anyhow—i’ve come to the realization that no matter what the situation is, people are going to complain when things aren’t done and people complain when someone tries to get something done. most likely, when action is taken, it’s not being done to someone’s exacting specifications. the next time i hear somebody complaining about the way something is being done, i’m going to tell them that they can do it however they damn well please if they choose to foot the bill and until then, i’d appreciate it if they’d shut their freaking trap and go back inside! as if i’d really have the balls to say that to anyone, but i can imagine myself having the guts my confident alter-ego obviously has, right? my usual tactic with neighbors is to run and hide from them. literally. [which incidentally, throughout my youth was the defense strategy of choice against my least favorite grandmother, but that’s a story for another day...] judging by the few months of spring so far, i think i need to up my miracle grow dosage for the summer season! good thing i just bought that super-sized pack from sam’s!

so having rediscovered the true the nature of neighbors, does it make me want to be more understanding of them and the stupid things they do? um, no! do i honestly think it’ll be any different if the closest neighbor is almost a mile away? nope, i’m not deluding myself one little bit. but at least i’ll have enough space to run and hide from them! ;)

and besides, if we didn't have any neighbors, we could do this to our yard and nobody could make us take it down the next day... [i happened to drive down a different street in our neighborhood one day and was delighted to see this. shortstack kept wanting to go by there for days. i fully recommend shaking up your usual routes occasionally--oh, the treasures waiting to be discovered!]

you know you married the right person

when one 18 minute, 48 second phone conversation about everything from work and the daily grind to, 'i had a discussion about private parts with shortstack yesterday' and 'holy crap i really, really, REALLY don't want shortstack to get caught up in drugs' somehow pulls the train wreck of completely unrelated thoughts in your brain back into an organized line of cars that can actually move forward along the track and make it a little bit closer to the final destination.

stating the obvious

thanks for the newsflash, oprah!

i wish i made that much money for having guests on my show tell everybody things they should already know. i mean, come on. what's the old saying? garbage in, garbage out? maybe it doesn't only apply to computers. the only thing i learned is that only 1% of the gas we pass actually smells. well, a few people i know must pass an awful lot of gas. or either they are just saving ALL of their 1% for me!

i won't even make a guess as to how much of my time has been spent giving the quick observation to my offspring's poop. how else are you supposed to know what NOT to feed them when they are tiny, tiny? he's four, and i'm still learning. example: i'll never feed the child indian food again. poor stuff tore him up, and his body probably got NOTHING out of it. how else are you supposed to know these things if you don't look???

maybe you shouldn't listen to your father

AKA: how to teach your four year old son to be a horndawg

after a long day of nerve rattling dead pine tree dropping and yard cleanup at the other house, fm and i were pretty wiped out. shortstack and i were heading out for a quick, ‘mommy’s too tired to argue with you about going to bed, you’ll be out in 5 seconds if you would just be still’ tour of the town. as fm was buckling shortstack in his seat, we ended up breaking into song about muscle soreness. so of course shortstack thought we were singing songs about our ‘nussels’ being sore. [even though we’ve told him thousands of times, shortstack’s translation remains: ‘nussels’ = nipples] he gets this amazed but puzzled (i beleive a good wood would be dumbfounded) look on his face and says ‘your NUSSELS are sore?’ i pulled at fm’s arm to make sure he knew what shortstack thought we were saying. well, when fm got back to the business of strapping shortstack in, shortstack started touching fm’s nussles. i’m guessing he was trying to massage them—since they were sore, you know? and how does fm respond? ‘that’s not something you do to daddy. or mommy. or other boys. only girls—when they ask you to.’ he didn’t even realize what he had said at first, his smartassness comes so naturally. unfortunately, it’s lost on a FOUR YEAR OLD! we were laughing so hard we could hardly keep from peeing our pants while trying to redeem ourselves by explaining why it wasn’t ok, etc. but i’m totally going to hand the phone to fm when shortstack’s kindergarten teacher calls about him grabbing girl’s chests and saying, ‘but she asked me to...and my daddy said it’s ok to do to girls, if they ask you to do it...’

set your tivo!

know any middle-aged white stereotypical self-righteous judgmentals who think the nearby housing development is a 'slum' because they heard some people playing ‘that rap music’ and a tiny percentage of the thirty units are occupied by relatively unsavory characters who cause some minor (if you mind your own business...) issues every now and then??? (wait—are they talking about the duplexes or your place??? hmmm.)

help is on the way! we are now screening participants for the most raw, kick in the pants, eye-opening reality television experience in the history of mankind—OPERATION SLUMDROP! so your nominee thinks they know what a real ghetto is? we’ll set the mood and acclimate the participant by putting on some tame, top 40 type hip-hop & rap selections. then we’ll set out on a whirlwind tour, starting mild, in someplace not unlike downtown allentown pa and work our up to the more hardened areas like compton. hey—isn’t that where all those gangstah rapper people are from??? we’ll finish up by dropping the participants via helicopter to the ‘hood chosen by the fateful spin of the slum wheel. will they last longer than 15 seconds? will they be able to make it and become a straight out gangbanger or rise to the ranks of slumlord? who knows. but hopefully they will come away with a very valuable lesson about snap judgments and some perspective about places with some hard-core issues. and maybe when they find out you nominated them, they'll MOVE.

he calls 'em like he sees 'em

fm and i are standing in the garage being affectionate, but not overly so. fm’s hand is in ultra- stealth mode holdin’ up the rear. shortstack had decided to head back inside. he is walking up the two steps and through the door to the mudroom and hears me laughing. he swings around, hanging on the open door and quips, ‘hey, you guys are in LUUUUV, aren’t you?’ we are so shocked we can’t think of anything to say (quite a rarity between the two of us). not missing a beat, he follows up with a most authoritative ‘well, iiiii’m NOT...’ and he’s back inside quicker than fm and i can look at each other and say, ‘um, GOOD.’ with all the girlfriends he has these days, i was quite relieved to hear that.

i have absolutely no problems with shortstack seeing two people in a good relationship being love-y, and of course we’ve talked about being ‘twitterpated’ (or 'twitterpatted' as i've mistakenly said for almost four years now...) and such—but i have to say that for a split second, i felt like a teenager caught making out or something.

adult entertainment

my mom called earlier today while i was using nasty chemicals to take the paint off shortstack's bedroom door. she asked me what i was doing, and i just couldn't resist...

'i am giving the neighborhood a show—i’m strippin' in the driveway.'
'well, you ARE a disgrace to womanhood, so what can they say?!?'

[a few months ago, our neighbor called me a disgrace to womanhood—without getting into it now, let's just say it's become quite the running joke around here. thanks for the entertainment, neighbors!]

coming clean

i'm usually a pretty happy person. but i've been known to have some really, really bad days. when i'm having one of 'those' days and someone asks me how i'm doing or what's the matter, i almost always brush it off with an 'i'm just tired.' i've come to accept that even though i am physically exhausted most of those bad days, it's more than that--but i just don't want to waste any more time or energy on it. i fully realize how childish and irrational some of these things may seem. i am also fully aware of how much pressure i put on myself. i used to blame it on my mother, but i understand now that i put most of it on myself. i'm usually pretty good at keeping these feelings in check, but some days i just can't deal. today would be one of those days. when i'm feeling pretty rough, i'm not lying about being tired. yes, i'm most likely physically exhausted, but it's also usually one of a limited number of other things i'm tired of. most of these aren't referring to any specific situation or person, they are pretty broad observations--interpret as you wish, you're probably right.

• i'm tired of being compared to other people. sometimes it's me being compared, sometimes it's something i've done or want to do being compared, and sometimes it's me doing the comparing, because i know everybody else is going to do it anyways--why let other people rip you to shreds when you can do a better job yourself, no?

• i'm tired of people judging other people and putting them into little boxes where the ones doing the judging think they fit. no matter what those people do, they can't get out of the box they are put in. in the minds of the judging, every single word and action wedges the others even tighter into their box. i will admit to being this way on occasion, but usually only when the see-saw refuses to budge from the weightier side, if you know what i mean... even then, i tend to hold out hope for the lightweight to catapult the heavy guy across the sky.

• i'm tired of having very limited adult interaction and people giving me a hard time about talking so much when i do have the opportunity to interact. maybe if i had something interesting or really meaningful (at least to them) to talk about it wouldn't be that way. i mean, everybody already knows how awesome shortstack is, so i just sound conceited when i talk about him even more, right? and most of the people we know don't even have kids, so why would they want to hear about it anyways? plus, it's ALL i have to talk about. when i do have something important to say, people tend to not really listen or tune me out completely because all i talk about is useless garbage, why would they need to listen?

• i'm tired of having a hard time asking for help, and when i finally do having to beg, and beg, and beg, and beg for it. this applies to you, stupid yard people who will never come out, EVEN THOUGH WE WILL BE PAYING YOU.

• i'm tired of the bonehead things i do that make everything so much more difficult or pretty much ruin what i worked so hard on. example: spending a whole week doing hard, physical prison-type labor preparing a small garden plot, only to practically kill the plants by spraying them with soapy water to keep the bugs off; also, soaking myself with gasoline/oil mix because i forgot to open the can's vent before unscrewing the funnel attachment. who needs fancy, expensive perfume? i got a whole gallon of 'eaude de gasoline' for $2.05!

• i'm tired of being the maid. but nobody else will do it, and nobody else even thinks it really needs to be done. all i'm asking is that people pick up/put away their own stuff and TRY not to make a mess in the first place. even brushing your feet off an extra little bit at the door helps.
  

• i am tired of every day being essentially the same. but i guess that's what happens when you get older and 'grow up.' how boring!

• i'm tired of not having time, money, and energy/effort for myself and from others. there is always plenty for anything and everyone else, but never any for myself or the things i want to accomplish, much less for any hobbies or recreational interests. i can't even sit and watch tv without doing something or thinking about what i else i should be doing. if by the off chance i do have some down time, i'd rather be by myself doing stuff that needs to be done than just goofing around. if i can't manage to reserve any of those things for myself, how can i expect others to deem me worthy of any of theirs?

what i'd rather be doing...

but won't for a number of reasons--mostly for the sake of the awesome bedtime routine we've worked so hard to re-establish (read: my sanity)

scene: i'm working on reinstalling my computer. shortstack keeps coming in the office, even after i've laid down with him for a bit. not wanting to start the cycle of bad bedtime habits again, i stand my ground and keep taking him back to bed.

me: 'honey, i really would like to lay down and cuddle with you some more, but i need to get my computer up and running again so that i can work tomorrow.'

ss: 'but girls CAN'T work'

'oh, really? why not?'

'because they CAN'T'

'right--but why can't they?'

'because they can't'

[realizing i need to change my approach or this is going to turn into some crazy comedy skit...] 'well, what do girls do if they don't work?'

'they stay & cuddle with their cheeldren ALL DAY'

independence

today marks the first breakfast (of the non-pop tart variety...) shortstack has made completely by himself. shortstack woke up a little before i did. while i was still in bed he made a bowl of cereal, with milk. when i finally got my groggy self out of bed and saw the bowl with milk on his table, he proudly told me he did 'all four steps' by 'hisshelf.' i didn't know quite what to expect, but i know i didn't expect the only mess waiting for me in the kitchen to be my own dishes from last night. not one drop of milk was spilled, there was less than half a gallon of milk left, so it wasn't too heavy. oh, and everything had been put back exactly where it belongs...

shortstack's four steps for making cereal.

1. 'get out cereal' (lucky charms left over from our trip to the hilton head earlier in the week...)
2. 'get bowl out of cabinet' (he chose a HUGE serving bowl, but it's the one that matches our regular bowls...)
3. 'get milk' (off top shelf of refrigerator door...)
4. 'get spoon out of drawer' (this is only step he didn't need a 'helping chair' for...)

t-ball: week #5 (thursday make-up game)

every game that goes by, we like our coach even more. he is so patient, and is good at distracting his players when they get upset about something, like today when a kid in the circle got hit in the face with a ball. coach knew he was ok and didn’t make a giant deal out of him getting hurt. i was in awe of this man’s ability to get the kid right back into the game and his mind off his jaw, which was obviously still bothering him a little bit. throughout the entire game, something would happen and fm and i would look at each other and say something about how awesome the coach is. at one point fm turned to me and said, ‘he is what makes this whole thing work.’it’s true; i can’t imagine it coming together nearly as well without him. remember the last make-up game? i hope coach al coaches t-ball FOREVER. and while we’re making wishes like that, can shortstack play t-ball forever, too?

the pictures came back today, too. we’re really happy with the quality of everything, and especially the little cards we ordered. i am disappointed that shortstack is making a pretty strange face, but what can you do. they are still adorable.

shortstack had lots of at bats today. at one point, coach said, ‘you again? come on, get ready! i think today he really noticed how much shortstack wants to play and be in on the action, even though he’s not the fastest runner on the team—the kid wants to be there and be involved. shortstack won’t run completely across the field to go for a play anymore (unless his teammate missed it…), but if that ball comes anywhere near him, he’s going for it. and if he gets into a battle with a teammate over the ball, he’s usually comes out with it. i like seeing that in him—for the longest time i was really worried he’d just sit back and let the others have all of the action. he’s still by no means aggressive, but i feel better knowing he’s learning to be a good judge of when not to let people push him around and when to give in. he got to be ‘pitcher’ at one point today. he started to go after a ball a teammate missed and then he remembered that HE was the guy in the circle that his teammate was supposed to throw it to, and he high-tailed it back to the rubber. it was great. one player threw the ball past him, and he ran out between 2^nd and 3^rd to get it. he was on his way back, doing his little shuffle jog (we think that he’s thinking because he’s moving his feet more that means he’s going faster…). i noticed his shoe was untied and knew it wouldn’t be long before he headed my way. coach al called out, ‘come on, RUN, RUN!’ to which shortstack replied, ‘but i AM running.’ coach al turns to us and says, ‘i’m sorry, i didn’t know!’ it was hilarious. then shortstack tossed the ball to the coach and keeps running (over to me to tie his shoe…). coach just saw him running off the field and didn’t know what was going on—shortstack explained that his shoe was untied and coach tied it for him. of course, shortstack was talking to him the whole time. shortstack ALWAYS has something to say, especially when he knows someone is going to be there for a few seconds. i heard one of the other dads asking what shortstack was saying, and coach al said, ‘he was asking if i wanted him to put it high or low, and i told him it didn’t matter, just get the strike…’ shortstack really connected with coach al today. it seems that every player has at least one game like that with the coach, and today was definitely shortstack’s day. what a great game.

neither of the team moms was there. what kind of team mother doesn’t make it to every game? today was the only day when they really had a job—handing out the pictures and letting us know where the pizza party is. take our $12 and run—i see how it goes! and don’t even suggest i volunteer to be team mom next time—i’d rather sit back and do the judging than be judged! (the difference is that i’m usually mostly joking when i’m making comments—for me, it’s more entertainment than actual ‘judging.’ i don't really care about that stuff. most likely not the case for everyone—this is the south, remember???) bringing snacks to a game is about all i can take!