Blah,Blah,Blah...

The Laundry Conundrum...a poem

2011-05-24T10:21:00.000-05:00

Four baskets of laundry sitting in a row, staring at this woman whose thinking "No fold no!"
Four baskets of laundry persistant in their demands, how am I to do this with only two hands?Four baskets of laundry really making me mad, if I dump them in the closet is it really that bad?Four baskets of laundry sitting like a lump, if they would only fold themselves I wouldn't be such a grump.
Four baskets of laundry no solution do I see, combining two together...now I have just three!Three baskets of laundry causing such a stink, perhaps I'll just ignore them and poor myself a drink.

A Letter to my kids...

2010-09-28T18:33:00.003-05:00

Dear Kids,

Contrary to popular belief, the house is not self-cleaning. Backpacks, shoes toys, etc., do not
sprout legs and walk themselves to where they belong. The vacuume does not run itself and the mop does not
dance around all the floors like in Fantasia. If Disney would make that happen then I would finally believe in
"Happily Ever After".
The clothes that you all like to wear each day do not wash themselves and hang themselves up to dry. Nor have
they, to the best of my knowledge, learned how to use an iron.
The toilets do not scrub themselves and neither do the shower, the bathtub or the toothpaste spit stained
sinks. (Seriously, can't you rinse that down when you're done brushing? It's a real bitch to clean up once
it's dried.) Oh, the mirrors do not magically shine to let you see your smiling little faces either. It takes
some elbow grease and windex. It's almost an art to get them looking fabulously streak free so keep your damn
fingers off or risk losing them!
The refrigerator dose not take a trip to the grocery store and fill itself with food. Nor does it prepare the
food and put it on the stove, in the oven or microwave. Also, do you really have to touch every inch of every
stainless steel appliance? Heaven forbid there is once place that does not have a grubby little finger smudge
or face print. Really? A face print? Which one of you closes the fridge with their face?! Don't answer that.
I don't want to know.
The dishwasher does infact wash the dishes. I do not deny this. However it has not learned and never will
learn how to load and unload itself. You can stop assuming that this is how it happens because it most
definately does not.
The lawn does not suck the grass in to make it shorter each week nor does the lawn gnome spring to life and
pluck it uniformly short. The mower has to be gassed, primed and pushed over the yard repeatedly for it to be
cropped so neatly.
Please consider this my letter of resignation. By this I mean that I am resigned to the fact that I will continue to do these things regardless of the recognition or lack there of. I will do them because I love both of you.

Love,
Mom

Feelings of verbal and written inadequacies...

2009-12-28T05:20:00.005-06:00

Sometimes I find it hard being married to a man who is a much better writer than I am. I've be so overly critical of everything I put to the page that a new neurosis has formed to join the abundance of others I have. I will type out a sentence and then re-read it over and over to see how I can make it better. This is a no-no. "Let it flow. Don't look back. Feel the moment and write it down." Advice from my college creative writing professor. Advice I have yet to take...even now as I write this. I've re-read these few sentences numerous times already. Looking for...what? I don't know exactly. I know what I don't look for when I re-read. I don't look back to make sure my gramatics and syntax or even my spelling is correct. I gave up on those things long ago. (Actually I just caught myself spell checking what I have written. Check that of the list of what I don't look back for.) I suppose look back to make sure that what I am writing will be of the most possible interest to anyone reading my words. In doing so I tend to be overly wordy, a puking of words so to speak, that are completely unnecessary but without those words I wouldn't really have much to say at all.

Wow, have I digressed from my first sentence. Let me try to bring it back around. My husband is a phenomenal writer...among other things. Writing comes to him with such ease. The way he writes, the things he writes about, are all so captivating and engaging. I envy him and a little bit of me admittedly hates him for his creativeness. Just a small part of me...not the important parts mind you. Just the bit that resides in the back of my brain that whispers ugly insults at myself for not being better at one of the things I love to do. The bit that holds me back for fear that I will never compare to his abilites so why even bother trying at all. The dark bit that I mostly try to ignore but which festers just on the edge of my conciousness, waiting to get it's grips in and turn me into an angy blubbering mess of words that spill onto the screen haphazardly like this.

The Potty Train

2008-10-19T15:20:00.001-05:00

So I realized the other day that Maxwell takes things quite literally as most 2 year old's do. I told him that he cannot go to pre-school ever if he is not potty trained. My son looks at me with such excitement and exclaims, "I get to go to school if I ride the Potty Train! I want to ride the Potty Train. Where is it?" Once I picked myself up off of the floor where I had fallen in the throws of laughter, I tried to explain to him that there is no Potty Train but he was having none of it. When I told my husband about the incident, a light bulb when off in his brain. He told Max that when he uses the potty and not diapers anymore he can go on the Potty Train with Daddy. His excitement was encouraging. We will see what happens.Post Options

Adventures in Potty Training

2008-10-19T14:32:00.003-05:00

My youngest son Maxwell is in the midst of potty training. And let me tell you, it is not a fun place to be right now. More so for mommy than for Max. This kid has a stubborn streak that runs deeper than the Grand Canyon and as long as the Great Wall of China. I say "Yes" and he says "No!" I so "No" and he says "Yes!" I say "Up" and he says "Down!" I can go on and on but I'm sure that by now you got the point.

My frustration has been mounting over his unwillingness to use the potty rather than his pants. Some people say to me that he will let me know when he is ready and not to push him or it will take longer. Well I say that when your son comes up to you carrying a new, fresh diaper and says "I need to be changed. I pee pee." Well, then he is damn well ready to start using the toilet I say.

Now, I'm not known for my patience. In fact I usually only have a small surplus of such and I have reached my limit. So, when my son informed me that he was going to wear diapers forever I nearly lost it. Images of me as a gray haired old lady changing her 30year old son's adult sized pampers sent me to the bathroom to weep.

Well, once I regained my composure, I decided he was going to wear his big boy underwear today. Let me just say that having a toddler wearing underwear for the first time is kind of like trying to potty train a puppy. (Which, for the record, I tried a while back and failed miserably at.) I feel the need to follow him around the house trying to prevent any sort of accident. I think Max is beginning to understand how I feel when he is my constant shadow. When he goes to play cars, mommy is there. When he runs to play on the keyboard, mommy is not far behind. When squats in the corner to do his business, mommy is there to scoop him up and whisk him away to the potty. You can imagine how old this gets. I eventually stop shadowing him and just obsessively ask him if he needs to go potty. The answer? Always "No!" I mean, he told me no as he stood in front of me actively peeing through his undies, down his leg and onto the wood floor! Even then he insisted he was not wet. (I can only surmise that he gets this from Kevin's side of the family, as my side is not stubborn in the least.) Then Max inform me that he did make a puddle on the floor earlier. He takes me over by his toy box and book shelf and points at the floor. I look and see nothing wet. I don't feel anything wet either. But the unmistakable smell of pee is definately there. Upon closer inspection I see that he has either used a book to try to clean up his mess, or just squated over the book and did his business. Trying to get a straight answer from his is harder than convincing a rebublican that McCain in no way measures of to Obama. Anyhow, there was no saving the book. At least it was one of his and not the library's. Imagine explaining that one to them.

So, Max is on his second pair of underwear and doing okay for the most part. At least I think he is. I haven't been upstairs in the last ten minutes. I sit here imagining piles of poo and puddles of pee riddling the living room floor. (Which isn't too far from the truth. The pile of poo on the floor is a whole other story.) As much as I am dreading it, I must go investigate the silence up above....

My Trouble with Tribble

2008-10-08T14:44:00.004-05:00

Last week we got a guinea pig. She looks more like a ball of hair that purrs and squeaks, hence her name, Tribble. What I didn't know when bringing her home, was that she was not alone. She had, unbeknown to me, brought hundreds of microscopic friends along. Lice. The Guinea Pig Louse to be exact. Thank God these lice are species specific and will not infect humans or other animals. Although this should be comforting, it still gives me the heebie-jeebies. Well, I took her into the vet to have these unwanted guests evicted from my little friend only to find out that it may take 6 weeks and two more vet visits during this time to rid her of all parasites. She has to have a series of Ivermectin injections to get rid of the damn little buggers! All of this for the bargain price of about $100.00 give or take. Our free guinea pig suddenly has become quite expensive.

Fruit Bars and Butt Cracks

2007-11-09T09:43:00.000-06:00

I spent the morning looking for a missing fruit bar. I new that it was missing and not just eaten because it was Max's fruit bar and Max's fruit bars are very rarely completely eaten. I found a small section of said fruit bar smeared across the love seat and yet another section ground into the area rug. The area rug that I just spent two hours running the carpet cleaner over yesterday. Max has a tendency to place his snacks on the floor and then dance on them. I even caught him licking fruit bar off of his toes the other day. That's my boy. So, as I search the living room for the rouge fruit bar, I am coming across many things that I wish I had not. Such as the unknown sticky substance puddled under the couch. (I am pretending I did not see it. Maybe it will magically disappear if I ignore it.) Moving on...Having no luck in finding the fruit bar I decided to give up and start folding the laundry that was threatening to eat the entire couch. I soon forgot about the fruit bar completely. About an hour later Max informed me that he needed his diaper to be changed. Rather than saying, "Oh mother. I could really use a fresh diaper.", my son yells out "Ewww! Poopie!" when he needs me to be changed. Cute at first. Annoying after hearing it all day long. Anyways, as I was changing his diaper, I noticed some red in his poo. I started to freak out thinking my baby was pooing blood. Upon further investigation, and too my absolute horror, I discovered the source of the red color in his diaper. Yes, that's correct. Fruit bar. And not just a small amount of fruit bar. My son had taken most of his fruit bar and shoved it down the back of his diaper. Not only did he put it in his diaper, but he wedged it between his but cheeks. Maybe he was saving it for later, or maybe he liked how it felt. I don't know. It's not easy to get a strait answer from a two year old. Sometimes I wonder what goes through his head.

Hot Dog

2007-10-19T15:44:00.000-05:00

Have you ever given a flamming hot Cheeto to a dog? I have and I must say it was extremely disappointing. I don't know what I really expected to happen but I thought that there would be some reaction other than the look of anticipation from her as I pulled another Cheeto from the bag.

Introducing My Oldest

2007-09-15T07:40:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I have mentioned that I have two boys but as of yet have only told stories about the youngest. That is about to change. This is my oldest Cade. He will be 8 years old next week. This is one of his favorite photos of himself with his large bass. He is a wonderful kid. Very bright but lacking common sense. I swear he has the memory of a flea. You can almost see the words you say going in one ear and right out the other. Maybe a word here or there gets caught in his brain if you're lucky. I want to start with some of the things he said to me when he was a lot younger and eventually I will work my way up to the present. This kid gives me so much material to work with. The following is a list of some of those things:

1. We were walking and he was lagging behind. I told him to pick up the pace and he stops and starts to look around on the ground. When I ask him what he is doing he replies, "Where is it?" I say, "Where is what?" He says, "The pace, you asked me to pick it up."

2. (This one was on a Crayola commercial but I swear my son said it prior to my seeing the commercial.) We were looking at a map and he was pointing out states having me name them. He points to Mississippi and I tell him it's name and he asks me, "Where's Mr. Sippie?"

3. At his daycare there was a cardinal that kept flying into windows and the teachers dubbed it "The Mad Cardinal". My son was playing outside there and saw the cardinal. He said, "Look, the mad cardinal!" His teacher ask him why he thought it was mad and he said, "I dunno." She then asked him what would make it happy. My son, gentle soul that he is, replied, "Shoot him." His teacher told him that that probably wouldn't make him too happy. He then said, "Okay, give him a coconut." What???

4. When Cade was almost three, I pulled a muscle in my leg and was limping a bit. I dropped Cade at the daycare and went to work. When I came to pick him up later that day, a few different teachers came up to me to ask if I was okay. I said I was fine, just a pulled muscle. The teachers sighed with relief and then began to laugh. Confused, I asked them what was up. They told me that Cade had told them that a "bad man" had broken into our house and shot me in my leg. I swear. I don't know where he got this idea from. I guess I should have monitored his T.V. watching a little better than I did.

That's all I can think of at the moment. I know there are many more, but these were the ones that stuck out the most to me.

Headboards and Headaches

2007-09-14T19:21:00.000-05:00

So yesterday, not long after Max made his mega mess, I was in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher for the second time (we have one of those mini dishwashers which can be a pain in the butt, but at least we have one) when I hear from Max's bedroom, "Mommy! I stuck!" I walk into my son's room and am confronted with this:

Well, I did what any good mom would do and ran for the camera. Hey, he wasn't going anywhere. After recording this incident to use for purposes of embarrassment when he is a teenager, I proceeded with the arduous task of removing my child's head from in between the headboard posts. After a few minutes of tugging and screaming I began to panic a bit. Should I break out the cooking oil? Do I use corn oil or olive oil? It doesn't say on the bottle which would be better for extracting a kid from his headboard. By this time my son is catching on to my panic and begins to scream and pull at the posts. That's it, I was calling for back-up. I dialed my husband at work and his assistant Matt answered. I'm sure he was confused at first as to what was going on since I'm sure all he heard was a child screaming and me saying, "Mommy's trying to get you out. Calm down sweetie." I barely got a hello out when my son somehow dislodged himself from his prison and shouted, "I fee! I fee!" I was so relieved. I had to explain to Matt what all the fuss was about and then got off the phone. I was exhausted. Not Max though. He was on to his next adventure of climbing to the top of the toy box, standing proudly like he had just conquered Everest. Will the excitement never end?

Messy Max

2007-09-13T14:23:00.001-05:00

I won't make it a habit but I am actually writing my second post of the day. I normally wouldn't do this but Max has given me more to write about.

About a half hour ago I went to use the restroom and while doing so I noticed just how gross my bathroom floor was starting to look. I decided to vacuum and mop pronto. All of this, from start to finish, including me actually using the facilities didn't take but 10 minutes. That was enough time. Enough time for Max to push out his bed from the wall, strip it of it's covers and push the mattress half way onto the floor. I found him on top of the skewed mattress and under the mattress pad grinning and laughing. Then I scanned the room and noticed his dresser draw was open. Upon closer inspection of the mess I saw his pajamas scattered over the box spring and on the floor. Who knows what he would have done with another two minutes.

Poopies!

2007-09-13T12:47:00.000-05:00

Max loves to go in his brother's room on the rare occasion that the door is left open. He is still working on those tricky doorknobs. Lord help us when he figures them out. Anyways, Max will run into the room and straight for the aquarium. He pushes his little face to the glass and yells out, "Poopies!" Yep. My son thinks, for some odd reason, that fish are called poopies. They used to be "pish" which when said quickly always sounded as though he was yelling out "Piss!" Try taking this kid to the Shedd aquarium. The possibilities for embarrassment are endless.
I really feel sorry for the fish when Max is around. If we aren't fast enough to stop him, he beats his small fists against the glass while laughing with delight. The fish however, are far from being delighted. They swim around frantically not knowing what in the hell happened. And being called poopies just adds insult to injury. Thank goodness they have short memories or we would have some traumatized fish on our hands.

Potato Peels and Pipes

2007-09-12T14:01:00.001-05:00

This morning I was peeling potatoes over the sink not really thinking of any one thing in particular. Just wanting to get the veggies and meat in the crock pot and get started on folding the laundry since it was highly unlikely that it would fold it self. (Not to say that I haven't tried that approach in the past.) Anyways, I digress. Back to the potatoes, rather the potato skins that I was unceremoniously flinging into the disposal to be pulverized. Once I finished this menial task I ran the water (on cold, never hot when running the disposal because, well, not sure why. I've just been warned from my husband and my father. I think in has something to do with cooling the disposal motor or something.) Shoot, there I go again on a tangent. Where was I? Oh yes, potatoes. I ran the cold water into the sink and flipped the disposal switch. Everything seemed to be going just fine. That is, until I noticed that my socks were suddenly sopping wet. In a panic I threw open the cabinet doors and a small tsunami of minced potato peels and dirty water spread over the kitchen floor. I peered underneath the sink not expecting to see a pipe hanging unattached to anything, spewing water out at me but that is exactly what I was presented with. (Yes, in my panic I forgot to turn off the faucet. Idiot.) I jumped up, careful not to slip on the mess and shut off the faucet. That should take care of it right? Nope. Genius that I am didn't think about where my running dishwasher drained it's soapy contents to. Yes, that is correct. Just as I kneeled back down to make a second attempt to examine the pipes, a blast of water came soaring out barely missing my face. Okay, once again jumping up - not as carefully this time but dammit my kitchen was flooding- I opened the dishwasher door a crack and the flow of water thankfully ceased. Yay! Now for the repair. This was really very simple. Just a matter of replacing a poly seal and tightening the pipes. Voilà! Fixed in under 15 minutes. Apparently, according to my dad, you need to check them every so often to make sure they aren't coming loose. What? Tightening the pipes? Who knew that you had to tighten those things periodically? Had I known that I could have avoided this whole fiasco in the first place.

From One Bitch to Another

2007-09-10T13:53:00.000-05:00

Today I found out that my dog Gypsy does not like other female dogs. Hates them. Tried to tear one apart. Had it not been for her choke chain I don't believe she would have been stoppable. Choke chain...I hate that name. Maybe I will call it a correction collar. The term choke chain conjures up images of dogs with their tongues hanging out, eyes bulging from the sockets. Okay, well, I gave a good tug on her "correction collar" and was able to pull her away. I didn't realize just how strong she actually is. I'm not sure why exactly she dislikes other female dogs with a passion. I don't know if dogs have the same shortcomings as we do when it comes to relationships and jealousy. I imagine it could be much the same as humans. I know that I have a jealous streak in me when I catch a woman checking out my husband. The difference between humans and dogs though is that it would be extremely inappropriate for me to growl, bare my teeth in warning and then attack said woman. Although it may be quite satisfying. I guess we are all just bitches no matter what our species.

To Poop Or Not To Poop

2007-09-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

My youngest, Max, won't poop when we go out of town. Seriously. We spent Labor Day weekend at the lake with my family and Max did not poop. Not even one little rabbit turd. As you can imagine this makes for one cranky kid. He was a little shit all weekend. (Pun intended) Now I don't know if he isn't comfortable pooping outside of the comfort zone of home or if he was just too caught up in the excitement of the weekend. All I know is that when we returned home, the kid pooped four times in one hours time. I mean he completely filled his diaper each time. He was much happier after that and I can't say I blame him.

Mindless Morning...

2007-09-08T07:53:00.000-05:00

Somewhere between my morning mood improver (coffee) and taking the dog out to do her business, I lost my mind. It was there when I woke up, albeit in a fog. But alas it has departed. It silently slipped away as I sipped at my creamer with a splash of coffee. They only reason I noticed was because my head felt instantly lighter without the weight of the world inside. I'm not worried though. It always returns none the worse for the ware. If anything it comes back a bit lighter and slightly rejuvinated as though it spent the day at the spa. (If only the rest of my body could endulge in that luxury.)

A summation of suburban life...

2007-09-07T11:11:00.001-05:00

Pink Stucco Dreams

Strangely picturesque and unusually desolate.
Personality skipped the geography of suburban life.
Noiseless Betty Crocker wives, pleasing Ward Cleaver husbands lives.
Stable financial standing.
Good children not needing reprimanding.
The epitome of boring.
The sum of repetitive individuals that have but one mind.
With cunning minds and perceptive natures we are different with our normalcy.
Our yawns we carry like attaches.
Living our lives in a suburban haze.
Knowing more that adequate requires.
It is this knowledge that to us inspires.
So go on living your pink stucco dreams.
Believing that everything is as innocent as it seems.

-Devonee Labriola Copywrite 2007