The Book of Deanne

Annual Thanksgiving Thought

2011-11-25T11:09:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are now ready to brave the next holiday season… Christmas. More about that subject later. Today, I‘d like to talk about some of the things I’m grateful for. Like most of you, this has been a financially challenging year, with a lot of changes, some more welcome than others, so it’s been easy to get a overwhelmed by all those problems and difficulties.

In order to keep my balance, and my sanity, I decided to start paying attention to the many good little things that happen in my life every day. The things I don’t often consider, but that make my life a little bit brighter.

Gift 1 – No snow. I’m not a big fan of snow. I don’t mind it up in the mountains, or hanging artistically in the bare branches of the trees, but I cannot stand it underfoot. I hate to drive on it, I hate to walk on it and I don’t really like to shovel it. I prefer to visit it on special occasions, and then return home without the threat of slush or black ice. So far this year the snow has been very considerate and stayed off the sidewalks and streets . I’m grateful that we are still snow free.

Gift 2 – Do you ever wish you could thank the person in the next car that lets you move into a crowded lane or pass into the street from the grocery store parking lot during rush hour? The one who doesn’t honk, even when the light turned green 2 seconds before and you haven’t hit your accelerator pedal yet. I love those drivers who don’t feel the need to ride up my tail pipe on the freeway if I don’t change lanes as quickly as they might wish, or who manage to avoid an accident, even when it’s me that’s made the mistake. To all considerate and kind drivers on the road, I’m very grateful to you.

Gift 3 – A baby’s smile. I don’t believe there is anything that can make me feel more important and of more value than when I’m standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, and a little one in the cart ahead looks up, meets my eyes and offers a huge toothless grin. It’s like somehow I was chosen from among all the other shoppers to receive that angelic manifestation, or that the innocence of youth saw something in me worthy of joy. So to all the sweet and happy young children that smile at strangers, I’m grateful to you.

Gift 4 – Everyday there is something that goes my way, some bit of luck or chance of timing that makes my world go a little smoother. Hitting all green lights on my way to work, getting the last discount blouse in my size on the shopping rack, enjoying a full night sleep with a really sensational dream, or stepping out my front door just in time to see the most spectacular sunset ever. I am grateful for all those little, almost meaningless moments that mean so much to me.

Because Christmas is now on its way, bringing the temptation to get lost in the stress and guilt of creating the perfect holiday with less and less resources every year, I think it’s important to keep our eyes open for those exceptional instants that happen every day. I’m trying to keep that attitude of gratitude going through the next month and into the New Year.

What are you thankful for?

We Have Overcome!

2011-11-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I sent out a call to all my faithful readers to help get our economy back on track by going out and spending. I explained that according to the radio… which we all know is second only to Google in being an authority on generally everything… we as a nation were headed for another recession because consumer confidence was down and we were afraid to shop.

Thanks to my small but faithful following of readers, last quarter consumer spending was up by 2%, as reported by - the radio. We did what no politician or economic guru has been able to do. By getting out there and spending money, we are saving our economy.

I must humbly take credit for getting this economic reversal going, but I could not have done it without all of you and your tireless feet, shopping the heck out of stores and malls through the country. Only in America can we go out, with basically no money in our pockets and shop our country back onto the road to recovery.

I have been asked by several sources if my success in this great economic achievement has inspired any more lofty political aspirations. In fact, I have been getting letters from the Mitt Romney campaign for weeks. I haven’t actually opened them, but I’m certain he’s concerned about his chances in running against a woman shopper-of-the-people like myself.

For the record, I do not plan on running for president. I feel like one of the first qualifications for a leader of the free world is to have a handle on keeping their own house bathrooms clean. So, for at least another four years, or until all my kids move out, I will not be running for any public office.

I am, however, available for any White House dinners, shopping mall grand openings, or private consultations. I am an American, and I must do what I can.

One last note. I can only take credit for this startlingly good financial news, with the understanding that I can’t be accountable for everything. After all our hard work, should the economy dip again, Mr. President… we know where to place the blame!

A Halloween Tale of Terror

2011-10-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

With Halloween fast approaching, I thought this would be a good time to share one of the most horrifying Halloween stories that ever happened to me. Please don’t read this in a darkened room, and it’s best if you make certain that you’re not alone. You have been warned!

Back in the year 19 something, I was in my last year of elementary school in the town of Pleasant Hill, California. Across the road from our school was the local police station. It was an old building then though I’m sure it’s since been replace with something made of steel bars with lots of glass. Back then they used a remodeled old house with a very dark basement. Every year, the police officers and their families would convert this dark basement into the “Basement of Horror!” It was a great Halloween activity and the money they raised was used for charity.

This particular year I chose to dress up as a Chinese maiden in a silk kimono top and matching silk pants. After our traditional Halloween party at school, my friends and I decided to go through the police station’s “Basement of Horror!” and though I never much liked being frightened, I was more concerned about letting down my friends then any possible fear factors.

My memories of the tour are pretty vague for the most part. I remember huddling in a group with my friends as we passed through each scenario, screaming when one creature or another would jump out or touch us. But there was one moment that is etched into my memory permanently.

As we came around a corner, I saw a large white wooden coffin leaned up against the wall. I don’t know what it is about a coffin, but its mere presence gives me the creeps. Of my group of friends, I was the one standing closest. I tried to move away but my friends and I were pretty much hemmed in on either side and by masses of other scared kids.

The coffin door swung open and a corpse stepped out of the box, right next to me. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs. Suddenly I had a strange sensation in the lower half of my body. No, I didn’t wet myself. Even worse. I looked down and my silk Chinese pants were now sitting in a puddle around my ankles where they had slid off, leaving my bare legs and pretty pink and yellow panties for everyone to see.

Truthfully I don’t know who was more startled, me or the teenage boy who was playing the undead zombie.

My fight or flight instinct had kicked in big time, and fighting wasn’t a consideration. I had two options, simply run out of the room leaving my pants and any dignity I had left behind or I take a few precious terror filled moments and pull up my pants before making my mad dash. I chose the second option.

That pretty much ended any future visits to haunted houses, gardens, basement, forest or any other October attractions for me. However, I’ve often wondered about the boy playing the spook. I imagine he went home to his family, proud to inform them, that he had been so frightening, he had literally scared some poor little girls pants off.

When is A Truth Not A Truth - When Deanne Writes it!

2011-10-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that last week’s blog raised some concern among my extended family. While this is a good thing, it means they are reading what I write, it also caused me to take a look at my writing style, and realize that maybe I should clarify what is actually fact and what is exaggeration/fiction/humor/bull each week in my blog.

For the record none of my children were in a car with a bunch of drunken smokers who crashed into a tree. If they had been, I would hope they’d been wearing their seatbelts or at least taken out a sizeable life insurance policy with me as beneficiary, because if the accident didn’t kill them, I would.

What did happen last week, was I got into a discussion/argument with my indignant and testosterone filled youngest teenage son who asked why I had the right to come up with punishments for him. I took if form there.

In my blogs, I like to take a little event from my home life, then blow it so out of proportion that the child or adult in question wouldn’t recognize it should they stumble across the story on the web.

For example, this week’s blog is based on an exchange between my nearly 16 year-old-daughter and myself. She came into the kitchen and announced that she would be going to school early to attendance school to make up a couple of absences. She explained that 4 tardys equal an absence, and that her science class is held out on the far side of the school in the green house where it’s hard for her to get there one time. That’s it, a very normal somewhat boring parental exchange.

And then I started to work on it….

The Secret Inner World of the American Mom

I don’t know if it’s because the media is constantly reporting on all the ill’s befalling our society, or a kick back to my own teenage days where I watched my friends and other school mates participate in risky and sometime dangerous behaviors, but I have grown into an extremely paranoid mom. I suspect my children’s motivates and behaviors at every turn as I try to keep them on the straight and narrow.

Take for example the exchange with my daughter last Thursday night after dinner.

“Mom,” she announces with that casual sing-song voice she uses when she’s trying to play down some soon to come confession.

“Yes?” My ears perk up at that tone in her voice.

“I missed some classes this last month, and I have to go to attendance school tomorrow morning to make them up.”

Missed some classes? When could this have happened? I think I know my daughters every move. If she wasn’t in school she’d be home sick or with me at the dentist. Unless…

Had she started to cut classes? Had those wild friends of her convinced her to leave the campus and walk down to the Purple Turtle for a burger? No, teenagers don’t cut class for food. Maybe she went to get a tattoo? If she has a tattoo I’m going to murder her.

What if they didn’t walk? What if they got a ride from some crazy 16 year-old boy driving his parent’s mustang while he kissed his girlfriend up in the front seat, trying to stay on the right side of the road?

I tried to control the panic in my voice. “When did you miss class?”

She flips her head and grins. “I didn’t miss class, you know that. But I was late a few times. Four tardys are counted as missing a class.”

She was late? That could only mean one, or two… or several things. She was smoking grass under the trees by the end of the field with her new druggy friends. Or she was busy texting a guy, maybe a Senior guy and lost track of time. I’m so going to take away that cell phone of hers. Or maybe she was being harassed at school. Why wouldn’t she tell me about the bullies?

“It’s right after lunch” she continued. “So it’s hard to get there and eat too.”

Bulimia!!!! That sounds just like what someone would say who was busy throwing up her lunch every day. I had to get her to a therapist right away. If only I’m not too late!

“Uh where is the class?” I ask, trying not to let her see how anxious I am.

“Way on the other side of the campus. I have to run the whole way. But I told my teacher I’ll try to be better at coming on time so I don’t have to go to attendance school again.”

I can breath. She is making responsible decisions. She is the good girl I always thought she was.

“Well thanks for letting me know,” I say as casually as I can. “It’s good to know I can always trust you.”

She slides out of the room, smiling from ear to ear as her younger brother makes his way in…

“Hey mom, do you remember that rule about not driving in the car with drunken smokers unless you’re wearing your seat-belt? Well…..”

The Rules of the Game

2011-10-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

I read a bumper sticker the other day, posted on the back of a fifteen passenger van, driven by a woman with half of her hair pulled out, and a strange glazed look in her eyes. The message read, “Better Ask Your Teenager NOW, while they still know everything.” I smiled at her in motherhood induced sympathy.

“You’re just trying to totally mess up my life aren’t you?”

That is how the conversation with my fourteen-year-old son began late Sunday afternoon.

Apparently he felt that his discovery of a loop-hole in a family rule deserved my admiration, and not the immediate punishment that actually occurred.

“You think you know everything,” he continued. “What gives you the right to just pull a punishment out of the air, whether it’s fair or not?”

An interesting question.

In my defense I didn’t cut his hands off, lock him in a dungeon or place him on bread and water for the duration of the week. I simply grounded him from playing computer or video games for the last four hours of the day, a punishment that was dramatically extended when he wouldn’t stop arguing his point.

How do parents come up with the punishments, meant to teach their young people that stupid choices bring unpleasant repercussions? My sixteen-year-old daughter suggested that a family counsel should be convened where all possible rule infractions could be considered, and an appropriate punishment decided on by popular vote, our pet dog being given the tie breaker responsibility in the event of a stalemate.

“So, the curfew is at 12:30 a.m., and everyone but the child in question, is smoking and drinking in the car, when suddenly a deer jumps into the middle of the road, causing the driver of said vehicle to swerve into a ditch, thus causing the said stinky but sober kid to show up at 1:15 a.m. What, if any, is an appropriate punishment? And can some of it be commuted if said child can prove that they were wearing a seatbelt at the time of the accident?”

There in lies is the challenge, to come up with an appropriate punishment that is both humane and just, while at the same time severe enough to at least make a teenager think, before they go jumping into a car full second-hand smoke and drunken teenagers.

In real life, the results of stupid actions aren’t always as mild as a simple grounding or a few extra hours of house work. They can be major big deals like income loss, jail time or death. And if we as parents don’t get these lessons drilled into our kids now, while we at least have a little control over them, we’ll have to sit and watch them screw up for years and years to come.

And so, with all the love and compassion I can muster, I give him my answer.

“The same supreme power who sent you to me in the first place, who let me love and care for you, and who will hold me responsible if you don’t learn right and wrong before you walk out of my front door for good, He is the one who gave me the right… and you’re still grounded.”

My Plan for Economic Recovery

2011-09-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

On my way home from work the other day, I heard on the news that the majordomos of the financial world are predicting another huge dip in the already downward spiral of our countries economy. This time it isn’t due to those greedy credit card companies, dishonest bankers or even Obama who, according to a number of my acquaintances, is responsible for everything bad, from world hunger to my favorite summer TV show being cancelled.

No, this time the fault is ours, yours and mine. According to this news report consumer confidence is down, and shoppers are keeping their purses closed and their wallets firmly entrenched in their back pockets. In other words, if we want to pull our country out of this economic depression/recession/slump/really really bad time.. the answer is simple. We need to all get out, and spend more money. It’s American.

I love this idea. It’s like saying the only way to lose weight is to eat your little heart out. What a concept. Now I’m not an economist, CPA or MBA. In fact, my main claim to fame in the financial business world is that I know where the news radio channel is so I can listen to it on my way home from work. But I figure, if some guy says it over the air waves then it must be true.

Which is what brought my husband and me together in our last discussion/fight.

“It’s simple mathematics,” he said. “If we have only so much money coming in and you spend so much plus two hundred dollars, we’ll be in the hole.”

“That’s easily solved,” I counter. I have been listening to that news radio station faithfully for weeks now. “We just raise our debt ceiling, and it will all work out.”

How could he respond? To deny the truth of my statement would be… well un-American.

Which is when I made my astounding proposition. Everyone should go out and spend money, now. Have a good time, and let the big bucks flow. A country wide shopping-palooza, if you will. Max out our credit cards, then raise our debt ceiling, and go out and do it some more. If we all hand over our hard earned cash, and sign our names to our checks with all the consumer confidence we can muster, the big shot on the radio promised that our countries economy would be back on the rise once again. It’s the patriotic thing to do.

I can’t imagine why Obama hasn’t already suggested this.

My husband is curled up in the fetal position, his head in his hands. I think he’s overwhelmed by the audacity of my plan. And it will work too, if only I can figure out where all our disposable income has been hiding for the last few months....

This Just In

2011-09-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Apparently I missed something really exciting. For those who want to purchase The Latter Rain, the author is giving my blog readers a limited time 20% discount on the purchase. That is really really good! To take advantage of special price, go to http://www.thelatterrain.net to order and put Tour in the coupon code. That's all you have to do.

Book Review

2011-09-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

The Latter Rain: Using the Book of Isaiah As the Key to Unlock Bible Prophecies That Are Relevant Today by James Conis.

I had the opportunity this last month to read a new non-fiction book by author James Conis. Conis is a brave writer who took on a very challenging subject, symbolism from the book of Isaiah as a key to unlocking the symbolism in the Old and New Testament.

There is no doubt that Conis knows his stuff, and it was interesting to read the selections of biblical verses, many from the Old Testament, that he used to support his insights. I was particularly interested in the section on receiving revelation, where he spent a great deal of time talking about women in the scriptures who had the gift of revelation. We have so few females represented in the scriptures, and it was refreshing to know that Conis had taken the time to find them and bring their contributions to light.

I did have a couple of problems with the writing. There seemed to be a lot of repetition as Conis explained various points. Not in the sense of using a point or scripture to make different points, but in explaining the same point several times to make sure the reader understood the concept.

I also had some trouble figuring out exactly where the writer was going sometimes, and who his target audience was. Sometimes it felt that he was directing this book to an LDS audience, and other times is appeared that it was pointed to readers that were unfamiliar with the LDS doctrines.

The writing on the whole though was easy to follow, and he had some very interesting insights into Biblical symbols that I had never heard before and found very interesting. I think this book is definitely a beneficial addition to the library of any individual who is studying the Old Testament.

She's Back

2011-09-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

Like my favorite TV shows, I’ve been on a summer hiatus for the past five months. And like those same TV shows, I’m ready to get back into the weekly groove again, unless of course I’ve been canceled, but that’s another story.

And, speaking of stories I have the opportunity this week to review a really interesting non-fiction book by Jen Brewer.

Real reviewers start their blogs with a summary of the book or the back cover blurb. But since I am only a fake reviewer, I’ll jump right into my thoughts. If you want to read the back cover blurb, go to Amazon or buy the book.

Brewer’s book All Diets Work that’s the problem approaches a common issue with American men and women, yours truly included, the difficult if not statistically impossible challenge to lose weight, especially when you’ve moved into that “next” stage of life.

This book is not a diet; in fact one could say it is the anti-diet book. Now before you get to thinking that this women espouses chocolate chip cookies for breakfast and buffet-it till you drop, let me warn you. Jen Brewer has an RD after her name which means that she is a registered dietitian. It is from this stance as a professional medical person that she expresses the opinion that ALL DIETS WORK… but with the caveat, only if we can stay on them for life.

Brewer promotes a much more healthy and holistic method of losing weight, one which I personally agree with. It’s not about dieting; it’s about learning how to eat right and figuring out what obstacles are getting in the way.

The book is divided up into four basic parts: Introduction, Principles, Tools and Tool Box.

Right from the beginning Brewer says we don’t have to read the book through but can pick and choose the subheadings that interest us. I ignored that counsel entirely and read the book cover to cover and I was glad I did.

This book is a little gold mind, littered with all kind of words of wisdom and creative ideas. Let me share one that literally reached out of the book and pinched me on the nose.

I like seconds at dinner. I don’t know why, but I can’t be satisfied with just one plate of food. It makes me crazy, and I try so hard to resist the urge, rinsing off my plate, leaving the room. But before the evening is up, I’m back for that second helping.

Now we could spend time psychoanalyzing this food neurosis of mine, but instead Brewer had the perfect suggestion. Eat on a little plate. Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? And guess what? It works. I get my seconds and keep my calories down too.

Would I suggest you buy this book and read it? NO! Not unless you are sick to death of dieting and looking for something else, something more long term and real. The suggestions in this book are written for normal people like you and me.

The writing is fast paced and easy to follow. There are clever illustrations throughout and Brewer has collected some really clever weight loss quotes that add a touch of humor. At 123 pages it’s an easy read and at $10.50 on Amazon, it’s a steal.

Revolutionary Diet Plan

2011-03-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

I’m pleased to announce that due to a miraculous life changing event that occurred this week, I am currently in negotiations with four different publishing houses for my new book Get Sick and Lose the Weight.

Last week was not the first time I became aware of the strange and yet natural connection between physical illness and weight loss. My sister lost an amazing seven pounds in four days because she was fortunate enough to contract the stomach flu.

But it wasn’t until last week when a pain motivated trip to the ER led to a 2:30 am appendix removal surgery, that the idea really began to take shape. Getting sick, really sick, almost always results in weight loss.

I’ll admit, I don’t understand how the weight loss community has missed this loop hole for so long, but their oversight simply translates into my success.

Once the anesthesia wore off and the morphine had dulled the pain of having a puss filled appendix pulled out through a small hernia in my belly button, I found that the selection of liquids I was offered for breakfast, tea, bullion, clear juice and green jello, had no appeal. Really, I wasn’t even hungry.

It’s been four days now, and the phenomenon continues. Most foods taste bland and uninviting and after a few bites I don’t want to eat any more.

I have watched with satisfaction as the numbers on the scale seem to be falling away at an unbelievable pace. What can I say, I’ve discovered the secret to successful weight loss.

Now I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are one or two negative sides to this eating plan, but hey, what diet worth its carbs and fiber doesn’t?

There is a certain degree of discomfort associated with things like surgery and illness, but as the old saying goes, ‘No Pain, No Gain’ or loss as in this example.

And with the pain comes a certain amount of financial output for such things as medical care, pharmaceuticals and loss of productive activity… but just remember that it’s all for a good cause, a bum that looks hot in a pair of tight jeans.

The real tricky part, is acquiring the medical emergency in the first place. I should also point out that problems requiring surgery aren’t always appropriate for weightless. A coma for example might work for dropping a few dress sizes, but since you’re unconscious, it’s not like you can enjoy it.

In my new book, I recommend illness instead. Keep your ears open for friends and loved ones who are fortunate enough to catch some debilitation and highly contagious illness, then offer to nurse them back to health. Avoid hand washing, touch your own face often and if appropriate kissing is highly effective for sharing germs.

Now, I need to caution that this diet is not doctor recommended, and if you are one of those wimps who avoid pain and aren’t willing to be laid up for days and weeks of recovery time, then I can only suggest you stick with the old fashioned method of less calories in and more energy out. But for the few adventurers who are willing to risk it all for a half inch less around your waist, my new weight loss plan is guaranteed to work… (or kill you).

Falling off the Wagon

2011-02-24T10:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, it happened and I’m ready to admit it. I took a nose dive off the wagon of my diet this last week and broke my fall on a package of double stuffed Oreo cookies, a cube of butter mixed with a little bit of baked potato and a peppermint shake from my favorite fast food restaurant.

It’s a tough world out there for those of us who were blessed with a little more fat than everybody else, although according to statistics (and I always believe those things) our numbers are growing.

Sometimes it feels like there is an army of marketers out there with the singal minded goal to keep us chubby and eating.

Case in point, it’s almost impossible to watch a TV program without being inundated with ads for fat laden, calorie horrific foods, being daintily eaten by super models with thighs so thin, they could thread them through the eye of a needle. Just what I need while I’m munching on my after dinner snack of raw carrots and water.

And when I’m feeling discouraged or overwhelmed or discouraged and overwhelmed which is more often the case, I don’t crave an apple or a nice green salad without dressing. No, I want pasta and brownies. Sugar, simple carbs and chocolate.

I don’t know why the stuff I love like See’s candy and double bacon cheese burgers with a side of steak cut fries has to be so unhealthy. If we can send a man to the moon, we ought to be able to invent food that tastes decadent but is actually good for you!

A lovely dream, but not very realistic. The facts are the facts, if I want to lose weight and be healthier (and I do), I have to eat fewer calories than I expend. End of discussion… sigh.

So where does that leave me? Sitting in the mud of my over indulgence with a sore tummy and jeans so tight I have to unzip them to breath? Or ready to rise again, dust the cookie crumbs from my face and hands and get back into the wagon of self control and healthy choices?

As Mary Anne Radmacher say’s – “Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.”” And since she’s the same author who said, “Begin each day as if it were on purpose” I think she knows what she’s talking about.

The Scale of the Scale

2011-02-15T09:37:00.001-08:00

So, after nearly two months of relatively strenuous dieting, with only a few (well maybe more than a few) slips off the wagon, I am down 6 pounds, or maybe 8 pounds or perhaps 4.5 depending on whether I’m weighing myself on the doctor’s balance beam scale, my daughter’s precision digital scale or the WII fit action board scale . This opens up the obvious question, if the scales of justice are blind why aren’t the scales of fat?

All weight measurement appliances are not created equal, and can vary as much as five pounds. Plus the time of day, and the current temperature in the room can also affect results of the machine. And let’s not even go into the difference between weight based and spring based machines. The point is, some scales weigh you less than others.

With this in mind, I decided to go shopping for the most weight favorable scale on the market.

“You could always just set our bathroom scale lower than 0,” suggested my husband.

I shook my head and smiled. He just didn’t get it. I wasn’t looking to cheat by making 395 (basically -5) my starting point. No I wanted the confidence of knowing that my scale was honest and true… but lighter.

I approached a clerk in a high end department store and asked for their most user friendly scale. “I’m looking for something that will match a sky blue bathroom. I’d like the weight displayed in numbers that are positioned well in front so that I don’t have to pull back my breasts and belly just to see them, and since my eyesight isn’t what it used to be I need print that is large and bright.

“I’d prefer a voice enhanced model that would say something encouraging each time I weighed myself. Perhaps ‘Well beautiful, look who got up this morning. I’m so proud of you.’ And if a little electronic smiley face appeared, well that would be great too.

“I’m searching for a scale with some degree of artificial intelligence, so that on those days when I’m a little down or overly hormonal, the scale can take that into consideration. Then, rather than giving me my weight, it could politely suggest that my day would go better if I pass on the weigh-in and go straight to the chocolate.”

The cashier, a fellow woman with a few pounds to lose herself, was nodding her head understandingly.

“And most importantly,” I continued. “I’m looking for a product that weighs on the light side.”

The saleswoman put a gentle hand on my shoulder, her eyes full of sympathy and compassion. “I know just what you mean. The problem is we don’t have any scales like that, and I’ll tell you why.”

I nodded encouragingly.

“Bathroom scales are designed by men.”

Ahhhh that explained it. How could any man, regardless of how in touch with his feminine side he claimed to be, ever understand the weight measurement needs of a woman. Perhaps some day when girls choose science class in high school over creative dating, a woman will design the scale of our dreams.

In the mean time, I’ve devised my own scientific system for weight-loss accuracy. I now weigh myself in kilograms, and at 104 K I’m feeling pretty darn hot.

The Skinny on Wieght-loss

2011-02-01T10:30:00.000-08:00

You know what’s funny about going on a diet? The HUGE number of people, out to make a buck, who think that fat people are either naive or desperate enough to buy their outrageous claims. The other day I saw an ad on TV that promised me rapid and easy weight loss, and all I had to do was rub a special cream made of whale eyeballs and spotted owl feathers on my pockets of fat seven times a day….

Where do I sign up?

Another clever weight-loss guru suggested eating cotton balls. Yes, those little puffy white things you use to remove nail polish and mascara. The idea was that with your stomach full of indigestible fiber filaments, there wouldn’t be room for anything else … like say food. It makes me gag even to think about it.

I loved the diet that promised you could sleep your fat away.

Now there’s a lot of scientific evidence that getting a full eight hours of shut-eye a night helps control chemicals and hormones in your body related to over-eating. But this clown suggested something more along the line of hibernation. Cause see – if you’re asleep you can’t eat, just ask a bear.

Perhaps my favorite was the diet that recommended eating anything you want on even days and then fasting on odd days. As if the body didn’t understand the concept of roll-over calories.

Believe it or not, the best diet advice I got came from my son’s basketball coach and he wasn’t even talking to me. The eighth grade team was playing against a team from a neighboring town. This was the third time the two had been matched up, and both times the other team had won. The boys were hungry to even the score and the parents even more so.

Right from the start there was something different in that game. The ball seemed to be charmed and the team jumped ahead quickly. The score for our side soared, and at half time one of the happy fathers pulled the coach aside and asked him what the boys were doing differently this game.

His answer?

“This time we are trying to win not trying not to lose.”

I thought about that a lot, and I realized there is a subtle difference between the effort to win and the effort to avoid losing.

Applying it to my weight loss efforts, I’ve tried to look at this whole experience as a journey toward better health, not an attempt to shed a quarter of my body weight. I’m focusing on the foods I should eat that will give me energy and health and provide the most bang for the least calories.

The second best diet advice I got came from a conference I attended, where the speaker explained that when we stay focused on a goal or an idea, our body naturally works toward that same goal.

So in other words, my body is not the enemy and isn't purposely trying to thwart my dieting attempts by subterfuge and manipulation? Wow, what a relief.

Okay so none of those tips will help me shed seven pounds in seven days, or allow me to “think” the fat away, but maybe they will help me face this experience more honestly. I didn’t get fat in seven days, what makes me think I could get thin in that same amount of time?

Oh dear, I just looked at the clock and it’s time to rub whale eye/spotted owl cream on my pockets of fat again… gotta go.

To Starve or Not to Starve

2011-01-12T11:01:00.000-08:00

Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but they can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate cake. ~Author Unknown

When I was young there were certain foods one would associate with going on a diet. For example, breakfast might consist of a half a grapefruit sprinkled with fake sugar and a side of hard, dry, toasted wheat bread. Lunch could be a scoop of non-fat cottage cheese, some carrot sticks and a couple of melba toast crackers. At dinner a moderate green salad, filled with raw vegetables and drenched in a tablespoon of gelatin filled fat free dressing and half of a boiled chicken breast were expected to hold one over till the next morning. No wonder I grew up to be fat.

The problem is, I enjoy eating. A night out at a good restaurant gives me more pleasure than fitting into a pair of skinny jeans… not that I’ve ever actually fit into skinny jeans but I can imagine how it would feel. I crave things that burst with flavor, creaminess that comes from honest to goodness real cream and sugary sweetness with no strange aspartame after taste.

Still, I’m way overweight. How overweight, you ask… well according to the free online weight program Fitday that I use, if I get too much fatter I will move past the Body Mass Index of obese and fall into the black hole of BMI hell. That is bad! My feet get sore each night after carrying around my bulk all day, and I had to buy a second full length mirror just to make sure that I was wearing the same shoe on both feet.

To make matters worse, losing weight is hard. According to one expert, the number of people who go on diets compared to those who actually lose and then keep off the weight is so low, it is statistically impossible. And if you add on the sluggish metabolism that comes after menopause… not that I’m admitting to any such age related situation myself… well, you might have a better chance just playing the lottery.

Oh sure you can down pills or liquids that make your heart race and trade in sleep for early morning reruns of I Dream of Jeannie, or you can buy yourself a gym membership and live there all day for months, camping out in the parking lot during the four or five hours when they shut down. You can even subsist on cabbage soup and lemon water for 42 days… well I couldn’t but perhaps you can. The problem is that the weight lost with these methods isn’t actually lost as much as it’s hidden behind your couch cushions waiting to spring back onto your hips and thighs the second you stop.

So what’s a girl to do?

I suppose that once again I am called upon to execute the impossible. To find a way to please my palate, shed that unwanted baby fat (the baby just turned twenty), and beat the odds. I must be the next bulbous shinning light, the portly purveyor of truth, the overflowing full figured freedom from fat fighter!

In other words, they might want to start looking for someone else to play Santa Claus next Christmas.

This is the first in a series of humorous looks at the mission to find and release the skinny hostage held against her will within the fat inflated body of her charming but overweight captor.

Mother – Keeper of the Family’s Guilt

2010-10-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the blog delays. I was under the gun with a project that just refused to get done...

Have you ever noticed how easy it is for many mom’s to take responsibility for all the problems that occur in their homes, regardless of whether they are actually at fault or not? As if somehow being the all knowing all wise matriarchs implies that we should be able to control the painful influences that affect our families.

Much like the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legend, we hang onto the Excalibur of guilt, as if by doing so we somehow protect our families from its heartrending sting.

Perhaps it starts off in the early days when as a young mother, we discover that our lips have the magic power to remove the smart from skinned knees and scratched elbows. Or that a chocolate chip cookie and a few well placed tickles can ease the hurt of a playground rejection.

However, as the children grow, so do the complexities of their suffering. A kiss and a cookie don’t cut it when a bully is picking on them after school. And there isn’t a mother alive who’s figured out how to repair a heart broken during the throes of rebuffed first love.

It’s nearly impossible to stand by and watch those we love suffer and not do something to take away the pain, so instead we take on the guilt. We stay up at night worrying, exhausting our brains as we struggle for the solution that will make it all better.

A few weeks ago my husband complained that the numbers on the scale were creeping up at and unexpected and completely unacceptable rate.

“Perhaps if I started buying more healthy foods,” I said, “And if we took walks after dinner, and if I used less oil when I cook maybe…”

“You’re doing it again,” he said with a smile.

“Doing what?”

“You’re feeling guilty for me.”

And he was right. I was taking responsibility for the food and exercise choices he was making. I was feeling guilty, as if somehow I had control.

“You’ve got to stop that,” he said gently. “You’ll drive yourself nuts.”

But how does one stop a feeling, even one as negative and destructive as guilt when it has become equated with motherhood? How does one walk into a parent-teacher conference for the class your high school daughter is failing without the fear that somehow you must be at fault. And how do you stand by and watch as your child suffers the repercussions of their own foolish choices without jumping in with both feet and trying to make it go away?

Then I met a woman whose child lay sick in a hospital bed, suffering from a debilitation disease and I asked her the question, “How do you handle the guilt?”

She was thoughtful for a moment. “I have to fight it every day because, if I don’t, it will consume me and then I won’t be of use to my child.”

I nodded as she continued. “I remind myself that there’s nothing I can do, things happen as they will and my anxiety won’t make a difference. Then I pretend that I’m letting it go.”

“You pretend?” I said in surprise.

She laughed. “And you know what, it isn’t long before the guilt is really gone, and I can be there to enjoy the good hours and be a strength in the bad.”

The old fake it till you make it ploy. I’d never thought of that before, but I guess it makes sense.

So, just as the Lady of the Lake happily relinquished her hold on Excalibur, I’m ready to turn the family guilt back to the family where it belongs. How about you?

How do Kids Think up These Things?

2010-09-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

As parents we can’t, in good faith, condone our children’s devious behavior… no matter how cleverly they pull it off. However once the kids are asleep, and the bedroom door is shut, it’s sometimes tempting to snicker admiringly at their clever, if ill begotten escapades.

Sometimes they’re just little things, like the time my oldest son poured a whole bottle of white glue into his younger brother’s underwear drawer, and I didn’t realize it for three days.

Or when my daughter got on her eleven-year-old brother’s Facebook account and, pretending to be him, started flirting with all the girls on his page. He was so embarrassed he refused to go to school the next day.

But every now and then someone will pull off such a huge, amazing and creative misdeed, it goes down into the annals of family history, to be brought up and recounted for years and years of family reunions and Christmas dinners to come.

Take the clever young man who, in a fit of anger, tore apart his younger brother’s bedroom. Once the crime was committed and the possible repercussions assessed this same genius managed to convince his whole family and the local police, that a burglar had broken into the house and ransacked the place. It was years and years later before he finally confessed, and when he did, the story became an instant classic.

One of my favorites is the case of the mysterious kitchen hole. A teenager was goofing off with his friends one morning in the family kitchen, and as often happens, things got out of hand and a hole the size of a rolling-pin ended up marring the otherwise perfect yellow wall.

Being a quick thinker, the young man grabbed a calendar and tacked it up precisely over the unsightly gap. Fortunately it was April at the time and by the end of December when the calendar was taken down and the hole discovered, no one even thought to suspect him.

An eight-year-old girl will never live down the tale of pushing her even younger brother off the second floor of the backyard play house in a box. She convinced him to participate by assuring him that the box would glide gently to the ground like a kite. They both learned an important lesson in physics that day and created their own permanent place in the chronicles of family legend.

However, if tales could be rated on complexity and sheer chutzpah then the golden banana story would surely be the winner.

Our parents were out-of-town, and my brother was home alone. Despite the strict rules about no social gathering, he planned an elaborate party that included setting up the camping tent in the back yard, an adventure that led completely through the house including the garage and attic and ultimately the digging for buried treasure in the school playground across the street.

When the police pulled up to the school at eleven-thirty that night, they were convinced that the crazy teenagers tunneling through the tan bark must be either high or drunk. And when my brother explained that they were searching for the Golden Banana, they weren’t reassured.

However when he produced an actual banana, spray painted metallic gold and resting in my mother’s chest shaped jewelry box, the police dispersed the group quickly with a severe warning about breaking curfew.

How long this famous event would have remained a secret is unknown if it hadn’t been for the unexpectedly early arrival home of my parents. Telltale clues of dirty dishes in the kitchen, melted candle wax and black crepe paper in the bathroom and the unexpected appearance of the family tent set up on the left side of the house eventually forced a confession.

I believe my brother was grounded for the better part of his fifteenth year, but the story remained well after his own children were grown; a small price to pay for infamy.

So the next time your toddler runs out of the bathroom and into the living room where you are entertaining guests, with Kotex pads stuffed into his diaper, or your second grader rips open a double bean bag chair and sprinkles a billion tiny white pellets throughout her room because she wants to pretend it’s snowing, take a deep breath. Remember that these are the moment’s family memories are made of. Then punish them.

Take Time to Sniff the Underwear and Other Time Savers

2010-08-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

As a mother of six active children, I’m always on the lookout for time savings tips, and I’m not above trying a housework cheat or two. There are so many things I’d rather be doing than scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees like say… anything. And if I can save a few dollars in the process, well I’m euphoric.

Tip Number One – Wash Clothes and Dishes without Soap

A few years back a neighbor was selling these plastic balls that she told me where full of special ionized water. When added to a dishwasher or washing machine, clothing and dishes came out sparkling clean without the use of detergent.

I was skeptical, but agreed to give them a try. On a Saturday morning I set up my own scientific test. I washed three loads of clothing, one with regular detergent, one with the ion balls and one without adding anything at all. Per her instructions I pretreated all stains before washing them, and amazlingly enough all three loads came out pretty much the same. The dishwasher experiment was equally as surprising.

Needless to say I returned the ion balls, but it gave me serious pause to think that plain hot tap water just might be the best cleaning agent of all.

Tip Number Two – If You Can’t See it, It’s Not Dirty

This is a trick I learned from my twelve-year-old son who is a master at hiding the entire contents of a dirty room in such a way as to make them disappear. He’s discovered nooks and crannies in his room that I hadn’t imagined even existed. One time he managed to cram all of his dirty clothes behind the sheetrock through a hole in his wall. We weren’t any wiser until strange smells began to fill his room without any noticeable cause.

Now I don’t recommend hiding dirty clothes for extended periods of time, but I have been known to grab a laundry basket and sweep everything on the surface of a cluttered table inside, before stowing it out of sight. This works well when my mother-in-law calls to say she’s in the neighborhood and wants to drop by.

Tip Number Three – The Occupied Bathroom Ruse

We have three bathrooms, one of which is the exclusive domain of the boys and upon passing through the door, you’d have no doubt about the truthfulness of this statement. It badly needs a new paint job and flooring, especially in the vicinity of the toilet, but we’ve decided to wait until the last guy’s a little older before investing the money to redo it. In the mean time though the guys aren’t bothered, I’m hesitant to have someone walk in there accidentally.

My trick is to simply lock the door before guests arrive, then direct those that ask to one of the two other facilities. Should someone decide to investigate on their own and find their way to the bathroom of terror, the door will be locked and they’ll be left to assume that the restroom is already in use by someone with a serious and possibly smelly bowl condition. For the rest of the visit they’ll be secretively searching the faces of everyone else in the house, looking for the poor victim.

Tip Number Four – Smell the Laundry Before Washing

A few years ago I went on this kick of riding the kids to clean their rooms. I would scrutinize the furniture and floor each night before bed, and if the room wasn’t up to my exacting standards I’d make the negligent inmate arise from the comfort of his or her cot and finish the job. It only took a few of these nightly inspections before the kids got the idea and made sure their rooms would pass muster before retiring.

A few days later I noticed a sudden and unexplainable influx of laundry coming through. At first I thought that it was a backlog from all the weeks of sloppy bedroom upkeep. But after a week when the volume didn’t diminish I began to get suspicious, and it was then I noticed how many folded shirts and pants were showing up in their dirty clothing piles. I washed several swimming suits, even though it was the middle of January and there was at least three feet of snow outside, and socks that hadn’t fit my youngest for at least two years where coming through the dryer with frightening regularity.

The following morning I got up early and hung about the hall watching my children get ready for school. Sure enough as each opened a drawer they would throw five or six outfits onto the floor before located something they liked. Blouses and skirts were knocked off of hangers, and one little boy emptied half the underwear drawer until he found a pair with Spiderman swinging across the back. No doubt by tonight, all these clean cloths would be scooped up and unceremoniously deposited on the laundryroom floor.

Now, I employ the famous sniff test on all questionable clothing, which has saved me hours of time, and probably gallons of detergent free water. It’s simple really. If a piece of clothing looks questionable, I take a quick whiff. If it smells like lavender, orange blossom or spring morning fabric softener, it goes back to the room and if it smells like… well anything else, into the wash it goes.

The Emergency Room Journey

2010-08-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

A few months ago my daughter had a nasty fall that wrenched her ankle. I was almost positive that it was merely a bad sprain, but she sobbed and screamed that the pain was excruciating and that she was certain she’d heard a bone crunch as she hit the ground. It was a Saturday afternoon (of course) and our normal pediatrician’s office was closed until Monday. Our only option was a visit to the local ER.

Now, I don’t know about you, but for me an ER visit ranks right up there with walking barefooted over hot coals and sleeping on a bed of nails. It’s a long torturous processes often resulting in physical and emotional pain.

“Can’t we wait until Monday,” I beg my hysterical daughter.

“You want me to suffer with a broken foot for two whole days?” She responds in her best abused child voice.

Which is worse, the guilt trip administered by a skilled teenager or the eternal wait and condescending attitude of an ER trip? Hmmm that’s a toughie.

I’ve worked in a hospital, and I know that the ER professionals are a skilled and talented group of men and women trained to deal with gunshot wounds, internal bleeding and the occasional missing finger or toe. In fact, I’m sure they’ve chosen to work in the ER because they like the challenge that comes from never being sure what horrible life threatening emergency will come through their door next.

Maybe that’s why they get so exasperated with guilt ridden mothers or slightly over dramatic young people.

One Sunday evening my younger son clobbered his older brother over the head with a kitchen bar stool made of wood. Fearful of a concussion I checked the young victims pupils, and asked such questions as “Are you dizzy?” and “Are you nauseous.”

He replied in the affirmative to both questions, so I rushed him down to the ER. After waiting nearly forty minutes to get into a waiting room, and another thirty to see a doctor, I was humiliated when this same boy assured the doctor that he felt fine and not the least bit sick.

Once the doctor left, after giving me that “over-protective-mother-wasting-my-time” look that they all have down, I turned to my son who was happily getting dressed to leave and asked him. “Why did you tell me you were nauseous?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I thought it meant hungry!”

As mothers, we have debated at some length about what goes on at the ER desk while we sit in the examining rooms waiting for hours and hours with Nickelodeon or the Disney channel running incessantly in our ears. We’re pretty sure the doctors and nurses are making fun of us, and wondering why the state doesn’t require some kind of competency test in order to be a parent.

Still whether it’s a bad cold, a failing kidney or as in our case, a bruised ankle that was feeling much better ten minutes after arriving at the ER, the medical personnel get paid either way. And paid well. You can’t go to a doctor’s office or clinic and get the kind of tests that are routinely prescribed by an ER doc.

“Let’s get an x-ray, a CT scan, a spinal tap, and fourteen vials of blood… and I promise you, she won’t bring her kid in here again unless they have one leg dangling by a piece of muscle.”

So if it’s such a pain to visit the ER, and I assure you it is! Why do we mothers keep doing it?

The answer is simple…guilt. Mothers have the unique ability to carry around guilty feelings better than any other creature, human or otherwise, on the planet. What’s more, mothers have the capacity to imagine whole scenarios that include answering questions at the inquest when their son or daughter died, because the seemly innocent headache turned out to be a brain eating parasite. And had they only rushed Junior or Juniorette to the ER when they had the chance, everyone at the wake wouldn’t be staring at them with dismay and judgment in their eyes.

Sure the chance that a child could die from a brain eating parasite is pretty low, probably even less than winning the lottery or being attacked by a gang of angry girl scouts. But if there is any possible chance… do you want to be the mom that wasn’t cautious enough?

What this means it that I will continue to be humiliated when I take my child, who acts like she’s on deaths door, to the ER only to find out that her pony tail holder is on too tight. And the ER docs will continue to vent their frustration by taking two hours to do a fifteen minute test. (And yes guys I do know that you do this!)

The Infamous Diaper Bag Dilemma

2010-08-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

My daughter and I were shopping for a baby shower gift a few weeks back and had decided to buy the mom-to-be a diaper bag. We stood before a wall literally covered with carry-alls of every style and color, but there was one thing they all had in common. They were huge, practically the size of an ice chest but without the wheels.

“Do you think she’ll want something that big?” I asked as I surveyed the selection before me.

My daughter, the mother of a two-year-old, only laughed. “She’ll probably need two of them at least.”

She went on to explain that today’s diaper bags have to carry so much more than simply diapers. “There are changing pads, and wet wipes and refills for the wet wipes. You have your baby powder so they don’t get diaper rash, and your diaper rash cream for when they do. You have your plastic, non-porous, odor-free plastic bags to hold poopy diapers and the cute little yellow ducky dispenser that hides them discretely out of sight. And if you’re little darling is a boy, well you have to carry little pee-pee tee-pees.”

Apparently the pee-pee tee-pee is a paper cone that fits over the little male’s pee spouter to prevent unfortunate accidents. If you run out, you can also use traditional snow cone cups.

“Then of course,” she continued.”You have to have room for pacifiers, bottles and milk.”

“I thought she was breast feeding,” I said.

“Expressed milk for those times when you need someone else to feed the baby, and a large wire-framed cover up blanket for when you do it yourself.”

I was beginning to get the picture.

“Then of course there are the clothes. I always carry at least three complete outfits from socks and onesies to coats and hats, four if I’ll be gone longer than an hour. You’d be amazed at the multiple ways an infant can find to soil a set of clothing.”

I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate.

“There are the incidentals like baby pain reliever and allergy medicine, a first aid kit, syrup of ipecac, tweezers and a thermometer. A variety of small toys and books, preferably educational in nature, and I always carry a notepad with emergency numbers and medical history for the little guy… just in case.”

My eyes were starting to glaze over.

“Now that he’s bigger, I have to include a box of rice cereal and those bland apple snacks that taste like styrofoam. And unless I like driving down the highway with a screaming toddler, I can’t forget the portable DVD player and a selection of Elmo videos.”

“Wow,” I said. “What a collection. No wonder the bags have to be so big.”

“But you know what’s really frightening,” my daughter asked, her eyes big and her voice dramatic. “She’s having twins.”

I’ve never been so happy to be menopausal in my life.

Is it Really a Lie if No One is Deceived

2010-08-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

Liar, liar, pants on fire

The other day I walked into the kitchen and discovered a plastic bottle of chocolate syrup turned upside down on the counter. It was carefully balanced against the toaster its squeeze top immerged in a slowly growing puddle of brown ooze.

I don’t know what the rational was for leaving the sticky sweet stuff in such an unlikely position. To be honest, I stopped asking why a long time ago. Suffice it to say, that an hour before when I’d left the house, the counter was clear, and when I returned some would-be Willy Wonka had been at work.

I turned to my youngest son who was deeply engrossed in a computer game only a few feet away, and I asked the question, “Did you leave the syrup container upside down?”

Without looking up for his game he responded quickly. “No.”

“Are you sure? Cause it looks like your work.”

My husband says this child is naturally destructive, I say he is creative in the damaging sense of the word. One day I found a small black stain on the top corner of his bedroom ceiling. From my vantage point it appeared to be smoke residue. When I called the kid in and confronted him with the mark, he assured me that there had been no fire involved. Black spray paint was at fault.

Why he was standing on a chair in his bedroom, in the corner with a can of black spray paint to begin with, I’ll never know. And what possessed him to dispense a brief spurt to that lonely spot is also a mystery, but not out of character.

“No,” he said again, “I didn’t even touch the chocolate. Why would I?”

“Maybe you wanted to make chocolate milk, but the syrup was all at the bottom,” I suggested

He glanced up, giving me the look that only an arrogant thirteen-year-old male child can pull off. “Oh yeah, right. Like I’d do that.”

This is the same kid that spent over an hour at the kitchen sink, when he was suppose to be doing the dishes, mixing Kool-aid powder and dish soap to create florescent pink bubbles that smelled like lemony-fruit punch. By the time I realized what he was up to, the foam had filled the basin and overflowed onto both counter tops and the floor.

“Why do you always blame everything on me?” he said, the volume in his voice rising with his apparent indignation. “There are lots of other people who live here too.”

“That’s true,” I said, keeping my voice calm, “But no one else was home. Are you suggesting the dog was messing about with the chocolate syrup?”

“Maybe,” he said, unmoved by my show of parental logic. “All I know is it wasn’t me.”

I still made him clean up the mess, despite his constant insistence that he was innocent. and I was being unfair. But it got me to thinking. This young man in smart enough to realize that he’s been caught; the evidence of his guilt is air tight. So why would he continue lying in such a useless defense attempt?

The conclusion I arrived at is this. Perhaps it isn’t so much about deception as independence. Maybe these pointless arguments are a way of stretching his wings and testing his intellectual faculties against a worthy opponent.

Through the years of broken toilets, mangled mini-blinds and chunks of wood super-glued to the carpet, I’ve retained a hope that as my son grows his power of thinking outside the box will turn into a force for good. And his determination to cling to his convictions, regardless of the obstacles in his way, will someday be a strength rather than simply an amusing stubborn streak.

That’s my dream, but in the mean time, if we can just get through today…

eBooks - What a Concept

2010-07-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how many of you know this, but I recently decided to publish my second novel, Sleight of Hand, as an eBook. I haven’t had much luck getting an agent for this project, and since it didn’t cost me anything to list, I figured it couldn’t hurt to have it online.

I didn’t know much about eBooks when I started so it’s been an interesting adventure.

The eBook world carries books from all sorts of genre’s, written in a wide range of skill levels and sporting its own spelling system… hence the term eBook not ebook or Ebook or even ebOOk. And unlike traditional publishing where you have to convince some agent or editor that your book is worth their time, in the eBook world all you have to do is cut and paste.

I’ve been spending time over the last few days perusing the books available on Smashwords, one of the sites that carries my book. The books available are an interesting combination of the inane and the ridiculous with a few gems thrown in every now and then.

I’ve discovered a huge market for books about women getting into bondage type relationships and then becoming confused about who they are… really? Go figure? And Tolkien would be shocked to learn the extensive array of soft porn that passes for Fantasy… or maybe he wouldn’t.

While browsing through the summaries of some of the newest releases the other day, I came across a few that tickled my funny bone and I thought I’d share them on today’s blog.

One writer describes her newest novel as:

an action adventure that is rich in vocabulary and real-world adventure.

Rich in vocabulary - which no doubt means there are a lot of different words in her book, an absolute requirement for any good story.

Another nonfiction writer wants to make sure we know how comprehensively his volume covers the subject.

A teleological view of the human condition is considered from a bio psycho social techno spiritual perspective. Cultural foundations, scientific advancements and practical apps will be explored as concepts from modern physics,energy medicine,theology,philosophy, psychology,nutrition,the arts,the humanities,and conventional medicine are integrated in meaningful,goal oriented ways.

What more is there to say?

A fantasy novel touted as “A Gender Switch Adventure,” starts off with the ambiguous line,

Her people conquered, Coruna turned to piracy.

Did Coruna actually conquer her own people and then head off to sea, or in a state of depression after her people where conquered by someone else, did she run off to join the pirates… and then switch genders? I guess you’d have to read the book.

The following are a couple of first lines which quite frankly don’t need any commentary what so ever.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... ...and then he died?

Coralynn Levine does not like people. In fact, she would rather spend her life doing what she does best, killing them.

And of course the ever frustrating scenario

Alena was just like the rest of the crowd until she realizes that deadly creatures from folklore are real and that she is a key player to their existence.

Sometimes the authors try to sum up the whole plot in two or three sentences with surprising results.

Reincarnation ideas spark a child’s coming of age quest for truth about his beloved uncle’s puzzling death, unearthing family secrets that lead to severe consequences… hu?

Freddie is robbing the place, Victor has come to kill him, Steve is caught in the middle and Holly is looking for a quiet evening at home.

One can only assume that the popular book The Promise was this writer’s inspiration,

The essence of our existence on this planet is survival. It is therefore a breath of fresh air to discover a method of success that requires only applying specific principles and strategies to one’s life—the principles and strategies of Universal Sense.

Using universal sense to solve problems… now that is a concept I could get behind.

And lastly an author who is probably just as lovely, sweet and verbose as her book…

Let strength give you wings to fly and if you believe, you can touch the sky. "I Believe I Can Fly," is filled with true inspiration that will help guide you through the journey of life's magic ride. May you be intrigued and enlightened for years to come as you soar above the clouds and follow your hopes and dreams!

FYI - You can follow the link above to download Sleight of Hand onto your computer or digital reader for $3.99 at both Smashwords or Amazon.com.

Also, I've started a new blog the follows my experiences listing and trying to market my eBook at http://www.ebook-adventure.blogspot.com/.

Five Things You Can Only Do If You’re a Ghost

2010-07-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

Death and taxes, they happen to everyone, and while taxes happen on a daily basis, death usually happens but once. So I say, if you have to go, then why not enjoy the trip. Not in some morbid zombie like way, and I’m not suggesting an Edward the vampire living-death kind of thing either. No, what I’m talking about it enjoying the whole invisible life after experience.

1. You get to watch all the movies and plays you want without paying a dime.

I’m a big fan of theater but the cost of attending more than a few plays a year can get high. And if you want a view from the first few rows, the price goes up even higher. Not so if you happen to be a disembodied spirit. You can choose the prime locations from which to view every show on Broadway. You want to sit cross legged in the orchestra pit or float lazily above the actors heads? Go for it.

2. You can get the best gossip before anyone else.

No matter how well connected you are on facebook or how lucky your timing is while you’re alive, most of us still have to wait for the juiciest tidbits to make their way to us through the grapevine. But when you’re a see through specter, you can achieve the ultimate in on the spot gossip-getting by literally becoming a fly on the wall. You can actually watch as Perfect Patty, your neighbor from down the street, stuff’s silk scarves in her purse. You’re there when the store security stops her in the parking lot and makes her empty her bag. And when the police arrive to hauling her off to jail, you are close enough to smell her Channel Number 5. All before anyone else has heard a word. And with a whole spirit world of people to share this “secret” with, you could be passing on the shocking details for eternity.

3. You can skinny dip and run around the city naked and no one will ever know.

There’s a sense of freedom that comes from acting out your most embarrassing nightmare in public and not getting caught. It’s kind of like actually telling your boss what you think of him, in any words you choose to use, and then walking back to your desk without losing your job in the process.

4. You can visit places like museums and zoo’s whenever you like and beat the crowds.

Imagine strolling through the Louvre at two in the morning or dancing in the Roman Coliseum in the middle of a private tour. Locked doors, security camera, even laser beams can’t stop a true art loving ghost. And if a sign warns “No Entry Past this Point” they aren’t talking to you. Go ahead, sit on the chair that Thomas Jefferson used when he wrote the constitution, lay on the bed where Cleopatra had her fateful encounter with the poisonous asp or stand on the top of the Washington Monument and sing Jeremiah was a Bull Frog at the top of your voice. You’re dead so you can do what you please.

5. You get to hang out with other dead people.

Think about it. There are actually more dead people around than living people and some of them would have great stories to share. Imagine swapping tall tales with Napoleon Bonaparte or fish stories with Jonah. Solve such pressing mysteries as the whereabouts of Miss Amelia Earhart’s plane, the truth behind the Kennedy assassination and whether the King of Rock and Roll is dead and well or pumping gas in a BP station in Pocatello, Idaho.

Sure being alive is great, and there is the whole breathing the air, eating real food and enjoying the society of your loved ones stuff. But when that day comes, and it’s time to meet the grim reaper, you can clap the old guy on the back and give him a wink cause there’s no fun like ghost fun.

The Tale of The Dead Ant

2010-07-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I begin a blog I have to add a few words of warning before proceeding and so let me do so now.

Warning number one: This blog may embarrass my mother. Yes I know I am a grown woman, and have been grown for many more years than I chose to remember, however I am still completely capable of shaming my poor mother, who did in fact try very hard to teach me all the womanly homemaking skills to which she so excels and to which I so expel.

Warning number two: This is a crazy busy summer. I’m in the process of working on three books all of which are in the mid or final phases of writing, editing and all of which have interested third parties who are harassing me on a daily basis for final results. The kids are home which means more of everything except quiet writing time. I had to stay up till one three nights in a row to finish a baby quilt I’d agreed to make for a good friend’s, son’s eagle project. And thought I am trying to change my lifelong image (see warning above) I am not a Hannah Homemaker.

The downstairs bathroom has always been the safe house of toilets when it came to entertaining guests with over filled bladders, and noses in need of wiping. When someone would ask to use the facilities we would point them toward the stairs with the words, “Down and to the left. It’s really the safest one in the house.”

The reason this bathroom was so designated was first, because only my youngest daughter uses it, and secondly, without brothers to mess it up, she usually keeps it pretty clean.

So about a week ago this same daughter woke me up at four thirty in the morning to tell me that she had lost-her-cookies all over her bedroom floor and into the bathroom. Now when both she and I were much younger I might have dragged myself out of bed, cleaned up the stinky mess and tucked her into bed. But those days are long over.

“I’m sorry sweety,” I mumbled. “Just clean it up and go back to bed.” Then I fell asleep and forgot about the whole incident.

It wasn’t until the following afternoon when the older kids began to complain of a strange odor emanating from the downstairs hall that I recalled my daughter’s sickness from the night before. (Did I mention the memory thing going as I get older?) So I tracked down said child, who was watching chick flicks on her DVD player, and suggested she might want to clean up the bathroom.

She too remembers the days of her childhood when her job was to spew and my job was to mop up, and she isn’t too happy about the change in responsibility. But after some moaning and complaining and a really dirty look, she finally agreed to handle the problem.

I returned to my writing, assuming the issue was taken care of. (Remember note above about memory loss).

Again, she is the only child who uses the bathroom, and I rarely descent into the darker regions of the basement, so it was probably two or three days later when I sent a friend down to use that bathroom.

Fortunately, this was a very good friend, and when she returned with a strange look on her face, she was quick to explain the dilemma.

“Have you been into that bathroom recently?” she asked.

“Uh…. Noooo,” I responded hesitantly. “Why?”

She grimaced, widened eyes and drew her eyebrows up to her hairline. “You might just want to.”

Of course, I headed down there immediately and opened the door with more than a little trepidation.

The floor, normally a white and blue speckled linoleum now had tiny specks of black mixed in. Ants. Dead ants, covered the floor. Hundreds of them, maybe more. It was like those places you hear about in Africa where elephants go to die. My lower bathroom was the doorway to the great ant beyond.

However, looking closer, I discovered what had been the cause of so many insect’s untimely death. Apparently someone (and I won’t name any names here) in an effort to clean up a mess of already digested food, had poured bubble bath all over the floor.

To this day I don’t know what the logic was behind this. Maybe she was hoping to let it soak and then come back and mop it up. Maybe it spilled during the cleaning process and she thought if she spread it around it would just dry and harden like wax. Who knows.

But what it turned out to be was a monumental ant trap. Apparently every black ant in the neighborhood got word of a strawberry scented floor, conveniently located in the basement of a nearby house, and headed over to join in the fun. Little knowing that this room of delight would turn out to be a sticky mess from which they would never come out alive.

I sighed deeply as is best when confronting a humiliating situation, then turned to my friend.

“You might have better luck with the restroom at the Mobile gas station down the street.”

A Cat, A Dog, A Bird -- And A Mouse Under the Basket

2010-07-07T07:58:00.000-07:00

This is a brief addition to this week’s blog... sort of a late breaking news kind of a thing.

I got up this morning, showered, dressed and walked into the kitchen and for once I could see the floor.

For the past week I have been trying very hard to get the kids to pitch in more around the house and to become more adept at washing out their dirty dishes. It's what? Wednesday? So three days down, the rest of the summer to go.

As I walk into the kitchen I notice a large cylindrical basket, the type where the mesh is large enough that one can easily see into it. It's turned upside down on what looks like a brown fluffy hair ball. I squinted and looked closer and noticed the ball had ears and a tail.

I dropped down on my hands and knees to get a closer peek and sure enough a small rodent sat miserably on the floor under the basket.

It looked like a cross between a mouse and a tiny tiny guinea pig, with long fur, and I furrowed my brow in confusion. I live in a hot dry deserty area, what freak of nature would give a poor mouse a heavy summer coat like that.

On closer inspection, the back legs didn't seem to be functioning and the critter did not look well.

I stood up and announced to the house hold in my loudest voice, one of those phrases I never could have imagined myself saying before I had children. "Alright, who put the basket over the mouse?"

The only child up and awake, my youngest son sauntered into the room. "I did."

"Why?"

"I didn't want it to get away."

I don't think it was going anywhere, but at least it kept the household pets away from it.

This is the same son who accidentally dropped an egg on the floor yesterday morning and then cleaned it up by draping a bath towel over it and walking away.

So now I'll have to wait for one of my older sons to wake up and dispose of what I hope will be a dead mouse at that point.

I'm going to have to lay down the law to my dog and cat that is for sure!!!

A Dog, A Cat and A Bird

2010-07-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Our dog brought a live bird into the kitchen the other day. She was quite proud of herself, and the cat was equally as impressed. I noticed the canine and feline gathering at the back door and went over to investigate. There on the floor between them lay a very small brown bird with an orange beak.

My first thought was that it might have been one of the pet birds my son has been raising for the past six months. Though the little darlings are locked safely behind the bars of their cage, the cat has been known to jump on the top and knock the whole contraption over. Tiny birds are amazingly difficult to catch, l learned, as I watched my son chase the finches around the room with a bed sheet ballooned over his head.

But no, this small creature was a wild bird.

I hate it when my pets bring in live but injured animals. Sure I can rescue them from their captors, but what does one do with internal injuries or a broken wing? And do you know how fragile bird bones are?

My brother’s family had a canary that suffered a broken leg due to an unfortunate accident involving a canister of flour and a heavy handed child. My brother, being the independent type, decided to help the little fellow along by setting the bone and wrapping it in a narrow ace bandage. They call the bird ‘One-Legged-Jack’ now.

I stared down at the unfortunate creature debating what the best course of action was. By my side, the dog beamed with pride and the cat looked down right jealous.

Staring at the bird before me I was reminded of the incident of the broken winged robin that had happened the year before.

It was evening that day when I walked into the kitchen to find my cat happily playing with a large red breasted robin. It’s left wing hung in such a way as to assure me it was broken, but it’s eyes were bright and incensed.

I rescued it from the indigent cat, while debating what to do with the poor thing. If I threw it back in the yard, it would be forced to wait helplessly to be dinner for some larger carnivore or worse, to suffer a slow death from starvation and pain. On the other hand, I didn’t want an injured bird living in my kitchen eyeing me angrily every time I tried to give it food or water.

“Just kill it quickly and put it out of its misery,” suggested my son, the one without the pet birds.

“And how would I do that?” I asked.

“Just hit it on the head with a hammer.”

We couldn’t find the hammer, of course, and I refused to let my meat cleaver be sacrificed for the heaven bound Robin.

“You could twist its neck like they do with chickens?” that same son suggested.

An idea which, though we all agreed with in principal, no one was actually willing to do.

“Perhaps if we leave it outside in a box it will be dead by morning,” I suggested.

And so, after finding the right size box, fitted with a clean rag and a small pyrex custard cup of water, we place our injured fowl out on the back porch and suggested it rest in peace.

The next morning, the darn thing was not only alive but active, hopping about the box, dragging its broken wing behind it and complaining profusely about the accommodations.

At last, with no other option, I did what all residents of this free country do when faced with an impossible situation. I called City Hall and they dispensed the animal control truck. The brave officer, who handles rabid cougars on walking trails and rattlesnakes that have taken up residence next to back yard swing sets, showed up at my house and took custody of our houseguest, box and all. I left the rag but retrieved the custard cup.

This year I was not willing to go through another painful bird incident and so I determined to scoop the guy up into a dustpan. Once I'd retrieved him from the floor I headed outside.

My two pets watched me in stunned amazement. What was I doing with their toy? Didn’t I realize how hard it was to actually catch a bird? Those dead ones weren’t nearly as much fun to play with.

But I ignored their pleading eyes and went to the edge of the deck, intent on tossing the visitor into the depth of the strawberry plants where it would hopefully heal or die peacefully.

As I raised the dustpan up, low and behold the bird flew out and off into the distance. I guess it just needed the right motivation to push through its shock and fear.

To me this was the perfect ending to a difficult problem. My dog and cat still haven’t quite forgiven me though.

A Funeral to Die For

2010-06-28T20:45:00.001-07:00

There’s nothing like attending a funeral to give you pause and direct your thoughts to your own mortality and the state of the world in general. I discovered this while attending a funeral this morning with my oldest son. A young friend of his had died most unexpectedly and he and I attended to honor this boy.

In my day, funerals were considered a fairly formal event, especially those held in churches. One would dress up to show honor and respect for the newly deceased. That doesn’t seem to be the case these days.

The clothing styles sported by the young mourners varied from the casual to the obscene. I’m sure the young man in the Grateful Dead t-shirt and dirty torn jeans thought the rose bedecked skeleton on his chest had something to do with death, much as moldy bread has something to do with science.

Another young man draped an oversized wool blazer on top of his purple t-shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts in an effort to dress up the ensemble.

Many of the young women showed up in skin bearing sun dresses and one in a short ebony colored number with a plunging neckline, proving thus again, that the little black dress isn’t suitable for every occasion.

Perhaps these attempts at fashion rebellion are an effort to keep the atmosphere light and avoid the grim reality that life does not continue forever.

That evening, we talked around the dinner table about funerals in general. One son insisted that he wanted his funeral to be held at a local dance club after which he wanted to be cremated and his ashes spread throughout the shopping mall. Another wanted a party, with all the nieces and nephews walking around with platters of appetizers and perhaps a bubble machine. My daughter insisted that all her shoes be stuck inside the coffin with her, just in case she figured out a way to take them with her.

We laughed, and changed the subject. But it got me to thinking about how short life is, and how once it’s done, well it’s done. No do overs, no second chances.

Behind me at the funeral, two young girls who were still in their teens sobbed uncontrollably. For them death was a horrible monster who had stolen their friend from their very arms. I understood how they felt. I was young once too.

For me the idea of death is not so frightening. I believe my spirit will go on and that there are many more adventures yet to discover and mysteries to behold. But I also know that life happens fast, and we need to savor every moment.

Of course by tomorrow I'll have forgotten these profound thoughts, and I'll go back to worrying about the dishes and what color to paint the living room. And that's the way it should be. We will all die sometime but we can't live worrying about that eventuality. But maybe between the hustling here and the rushing there, I'll stop and enjoy the now, at least for a moment.

Glass Breaks

2010-06-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

It’s summer time and the dishwasher is running almost non-stop so I asked my youngest son to empty a load for me while I finished working on a writing project. Mid sentence the familiar sound of breaking glass assaulted my ears. Without rising from my chair I called out, “Did something break?”

A momentary pause. “Uh… no.”

“But I just heard it.”

Another pause. “Well, maybe. I’m not sure.”

“How can you not be sure. Did something break or did it not?”

Long sigh. “Sort of I guess.”

“Just make sure you sweep it up before someone walks in with bare feet and looses a foot.”

It was just a glass, so I don’t know why he was so worried. He’s broken things much more valuable in the past and still lives to tell the tale. But I guess we all have a hard time when something we value gets broken.

But that’s how life is. Things break, cars get dents, carpets get stained and people screw up. And you know what? It’s not the end of the world.

When my husband and I were first married, I remember spilling a glass of milk. It ran across our new tablecloth and dripped down the front of my husband’s dress pants. He was furious and I felt terrible. That was back in the day when we believed that if we were really careful all our stuff would stay nice and new forever. Then we had kids.

It’s amazing how children change your whole perspective on the world and teach you what is really important. We use to refer to our son as the human fire-hose. That kid could spit-up a stream of half digested breast milk and hit his father five feet away. For months we couldn’t get that lingering odor of sour milk out of our house. The carpet, walls and even our clothing were soaked with it.

But now that same son has just become engaged. He’s about ready to start a new life with a darling girl and he just bought his first car. Yesterday someone left a jacket on the top of his trunk and you’d have thought that life as we know it was ending. I just smiled. He has no idea what’s coming.

Sunday was Fathers day and it was my husband’s turned to get guilted out at church. I think it’s only fair after what they put women through on Mother’s Day. And sure enough, he was guilted out, although he did get to bring home two giant chocolate chip cookies afterwards.

“Sometimes I feel like I haven’t been a very good father,” he said later in the day. “There are so many things I could have done and didn’t. So many things I should be doing now and don’t.”

I know the feeling. As I said, Mother’s Day was just a month ago.

“Glass breaks,” I said.

He turned and looked at me with some confusion.

“Do you ever remember throwing out a set of glasses or mugs because we bought a new set and they didn’t match?” I asked.

“No.”

“That’s because we never did. You don’t throw away glasses. They break, every single last one. That’s how it works. And you don’t cry or mourn or even worry. You toss the shattered pieces, and you buy something new and start over.”

“And this applies how?” he asked. My husband often doubts the true depth of my wisdom.

“We all mess up. Glasses get broken, harsh words get said, misjudgments are made, and time is wasted. But that doesn’t mean we can’t start over. Our parents weren’t perfect moms and dads, we aren’t perfect and our kids won’t be perfect parents – but that’s okay. We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to keep trying.”

He smiled at me and I think he felt better, and he should. My husband is a good man. He loves his children, worries about them, and is always there when they need him.

Talking to my husband got me to thinking about my own father.

A lot of my cousins have lost their fathers over the last few years, and I feel lucky to still have my dad in my life. He’s been married to my mother for over fifty years. During those years he has been a hard worker and a good provider. I never knew a moment of fear or need growing up under his roof. As an adult I find that I have many habits and traits that I picked up from him. Many of the values I most treasure and the beliefs that have guided my life were instilled in me by the lifelong example of the man who loved and raised me. I’m sure he wasn’t always perfect but it’s funny how I can’t really remember anything but the good.

And as an imperfect mother myself… this gives me hope.

Happy Fathers Day to the two most important men in my life… my father and my husband.

Summer Time and the Living is Crazy

2010-06-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Every year about this time I do a blog on how nuts I’m going with the kids at home for the summer. That is probably because during the school year I forget what it’s like. I imagine summer to be lazy days sleeping in till ten or eleven in the morning. A patio chair under a shaded tree, with hours to spend catching up on my reading or day dreaming as fantastically shaped clouds glide peacefully over head.

It is similar to my Christmas fantasy where I’m serving hot wassail and homemade cookies to my neighbors and friends who’ve dropped in for a visit. My house is sparkling clean and twinkles with lights and tinsel and Christmas music is playing in the background as I bask in the joy and peace of the season.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we imagine such impossible scenarios for the three months after spring and then beat ourselves up when they don’t happen? Perhaps because we refuse to deal with the realities of summer life. Who wants to think about piles and piles of plates and dishes growing in the sink thanks to a herd of hungry teenagers with access to the kitchen twenty-four seven? And where is the magic in lying on a bed on a hot summer night, stripped down to the most minimal of clothing and wishing a nice blizzard would come rushing through so one could cool off and go to sleep?

Personally, I think it’s nicer just to imagine how fun it would be to pack up all the kids and take them to a California beach vacation for a week then to actually do it. The dream is delightful, while the reality is grumpy kids that can’t decide on one activity they all want to participate in or one food they are all willing to eat.

My mom tells me to enjoy these days. She says that the kids will grow up far too soon and move on with their own lives. She says the things that annoy me about a house full of summer bored kids will become the stuff of fond memories in the future. She says this and then she and my dad hop a plane to Hawaii or take their trailer-for-two and cruise around the country, stopping at gift shops and restaurants that don’t offer ‘kids-eat-free’ deals. Hmmm

So what’s a middle aged girl like me gonna do? Only one thing. Lock the bedroom door, turn up the stereo really really loud and dream of the first day of school, the only daydream in my life that always turns out as good as I’d imagined.

Awakening Avery Book Review.... well almost

2010-06-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

About a year ago, I created a website. The main reason behind this website was to practice my ever growing skills at using Adobe Dreamweaver, and partly to play around with my love of books. I had this idea that I could make a place, almost like a real live bookstore, where visitors could leisurely explore a wide variety of books, maybe read some excerpts all from the comfort of their own computer chair. See LDSBookcorner.com.

It was one of those projects that ended up being a lot tougher than I thought it would be, but has also proved very satisfying. I’ve gotten to know a lot of authors, and my html skills are increasing all the time.

I was asked to do a review recently for part of a blog tour. The book, Awakening Avery by Laurie Lewis arrived in the mail a short time later. I read the book, wrote my review and then discovered that the link that was being provided for my part in the tour was this blog, my personal blog, the one that has nothing to do with my website, and everything to do with expressing my own unique brand of humor.

So I wrote what I humbly consider to be an insightful review, which you can find my clicking on the following link, Annie’s Book Blog.

I have to admit I find it flattering and more than a little amusing to be asked to review a book. Not that I don’t have experience in it. I’ve been reading and then privately reviewing books for years. We all do right? Take J.K. Rowling. We didn’t just read Harry Potter, but we discussed it in detail. Did Harry whine too much in book number five or was it six? And just how long could book number seven possibly be?

I’ve read books I’ve hated. Books I thought had no business even being published, and then I find other readers just like myself who think they are the greatest invention since tracking devises on children.

Sometimes I like to explore Amazon just to see how many strange and varied plot lines I can find.

Take mysteries. I love mysteries, as do many other people. So the challenge for a writer is to find new ways to present a genre that is already overflowing with hundreds if not thousands of book ideas and find something fresh. There are books with main characters who are old, young, fat, thin, actors, writers, garbage men, and even cats. There are mysteries that include recipes, knitting instructions and free prizes inside. Some are written from the point of view of the detective, some from the point of view of the killer and a few from the point of view of the victim. One has to get really creative to come up with something new.

I’ve been playing around with an idea myself, and I thought I’d shoot it out there to all of you, see what you think. I’m putting together a mystery series with an older widow like Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote. Then I’d combine it with the success of the Twilight series, so she would have to be an ageless vampire. That would be tricky because it appears most vampires prefer to remain in their late teens through late twenties, but surely there is room for an aged but winsome vampire woman.

She can have guests over, feed them lobster bisque (recipe included), then once they are full and sleeping in her guest room, she can drink their blood. Thus energized she can go out, solve mysteries and provide down home advice to the locals. I think it could work…in some alternate reality.

Unlike my book idea, Awakening Avery is good, really good, so please read my review at Annie’s Book Blog and then go buy the book.

Thoughts on Mother’s Day

2010-05-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

On the second Sunday of May each month we, as a nation, stop and pay homage to the mother or mothers in our life. It’s a great idea and like so many great ideas, it leaves itself wide open for guilt ridden humor and irony. Let me explain.

As I child, I loved Mother’s Day. It was the one Sunday that we didn’t have to have a bible lesson in Sunday School but instead got to work on our homemade Mother’s Day cards. A piece of colored construction paper and a few crayons and poof, we had the perfect gift. These childish efforts brought tears to my mother’s eyes, something I rarely saw unless my brothers had been really really bad.

And then I became the mother… and things changed.

Mother’s Day is the one morning of the year when my children are allowed to run rampant in the kitchen and I have to stay tucked in bed listening to the sound of broken glass and pots being banged together, while that strangely eerie scent of burnt eggs wafts gently in the air.

Just as tradition dictates that the groom is not allowed to see the bride on their wedding day before the ceremony, so I am not allowed out of my room until the traditional ‘breakfast in bed’ sequence is complete. Though, truth be told, it’s probably good for me to get the extra rest, as I will need it when I am finally allowed out of my room and back into the shambles that was once a clean kitchen.

After the hour and a half it takes to clean up breakfast, we usually attend church together as a family. It’s quite an accomplishment to get everyone out of bed, showered and dressed in time to attend services, especially for the one who is determined that God will strike him with a lightening bold if he so much as steps through the doorway. But after many tears and pleading on my part, and guilt trips on the part of their father, I manage to get my whole brood sitting somewhat quietly together on a church pew.

As other mother’s arrive at church one notices immediately that many are sporting brightly colored Mother’s Day corsages. By far the most popular model is the single orchid, boxed and sold by the thousands at most retail outlets the Saturday before Mother’s Day. These are the ones that come with two huge white headed pins, guaranteed to draw blood, and a small vial of water attached to the flower stem.

There is some debate as to what that small vial is for. When removed, the stem seem to go wild, often tangling itself up in the ribbon or just sticking out in some annoying angle. On the other hand, if you leave the vial on, you are guaranteed to find water leaking onto the chest portion of your Mother’s Day outfit. Though this may bring back memories of your first over engorged Mother’s Day, it isn’t really a pretty sight.

Among the myriad of single orchids are some double variety. They cost a little more, but they make you husband feel special when he gives them to you and in effect says, “You my dear are a two orchids wife!”

A few women show up with corsages of flowers other than orchids, the type that you order from a florist in advance. I tried to order myself a corsage of baby roses once and claim that it was a gift from my three year old, but I couldn’t do it. It felt like purchasing your own Christmas gift, then placing it under the tree and saying it was from some made up friend.

In our church, various members of the congregation are invited to stand and share memories of their own mothers. This is by far the most difficult part of the day. Last year, eighty-five year old Roy Mossbrow rambled on for thirty minutes about his sainted mother who passed away nearly forty years before, while all the mothers in the audience, including myself, cringed at his description.

“Never do I recall that woman raising her voice,” Roy drones on. “Or saying a sharp word.”

I look down the row to see all six of my children looking in my direction, eyebrows raised. I shrug. What can I say, I’m an awful mother.

“She was up before the dawn and often wasn’t in bed till midnight.”

I don’t get up that early, but often I watch Letterman till well after twelve a.m. Does that count?

“I am the man I am today because of that sweet angelic woman.”

I swear, if any of my children ever stand up and make all the living mothers feel guilty by embellishing my memory after I’m dead, I will come down and hit them over the head with my halo or pitch fork, depending on where I end up.

As we leave the chapel, the young men hand out carnations with yard long stems and I do my best not to beat myself up with mine. Being a mom is hard work, and the fact that my kids are involved makes it even tougher.

Then my teenage son slips his arm around me and whispers in my ear. “I love you mom.”

I guess having to suffer through one Mother’s Day a year isn’t too bad. I mean I do have pretty great kids. And besides, maybe someday, when they all grow up and move out, I can be perfect just like my mom.

My Mysterious and Romantic Life

2010-04-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

To most outside observers, I may appear the typical stay at home mom. I cook, clean (when absolutely necessary), run my kids to and from basketball games and friends houses, and keep the family dog and cats fed. But unbeknownst to even my closest friends I’m actually living a double life as a secret agent.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the James Bond movies; well my life makes his look like an afternoon at the mall. You want to talk about suspense, top secret information, mysterious happenings and romance on a daily basis, then my friends, you have come to the right place.

My world is full of suspense. Let’s me tell you what happened just yesterday. I decided to bake some homemade whole wheat bread. I followed the instructions, allowed the dough to rise in the pan and then turned on the oven. After the allotted time, I peeked in and found that the bread was golden on the top and looked ready to come out.

I carefully removed the first loaf from the oven, slid a knife around the outside and turned the pan upside down. For about ten seconds it looked absolutely perfect. Then it happened. The bread began to slowly implode along a center crack caving in like an asphalt road during an earth quake. Quickly, I transferred the mangled mess back into the pan and returned it to the oven for another twenty minutes. Later my daughter stated that the loaf tasted good but looked demented.

Now who would have guessed THAT was going to happen?

As a secret agent I am entrusted with many bits of top secret information only to be released on a ‘Need to Know’ basis. Like, why my fourteen year old daughter no longer likes N but thinks that A is really cute. And that her best friend T has a crush on L, M, J and F. I would tell you what name each of these letters represent, but then I would be forced to kill you….

Also I am sworn to secrecy about that unfortunate tuna sandwich incident at school, what my husband really thinks about that guy down the hall with the obnoxious laugh, and who is responsible for the new dent in the back rear fender of the BMW. (that would be me.)

I spend my days solving mysteries that would stump a detective of lesser valor. Like, why is a set of speakers sitting in the hall plugged into an outlet but not attached to any music producing device? Or how come the pens in my room keep disappearing no matter how often I buy new ones?

How about this. Our black lab is sitting at my side, staring up at me and whining. Is she trying to tell me A) one of the kids has fallen down the well, B) our house is being invaded by a swarm of killer cats or C) she wants to go outside but no one will open the door? It could be any one of the three and that’s the challenge.

Perhaps my favorite part of being a secret agent is the romance that comes with it. I am adored and get kissed or hugged by at least four handsome men every single day, and sometimes more. I get called sweetheart, honey and beautiful constantly and I get to wear skimpy sexy clothing… ok, well what I mean is that I gained a little weight and my clothes are all too tight and revealing now, but hey I can see it how I want.

Yes, between trying to deduct what to make for dinner, interrogate a teenager about her evening plans, make sure the new box of cookies doesn’t fall into enemy hands and spy on my son and his new girlfriend in the family room, I have a pretty exciting life. But just remember… it’s a secret - shhh - so don’t tell anyone.

Relationships Are Difficult or Why I’m So Hard To Live With

2010-04-14T08:21:00.001-07:00

The subject of marriage came up the other day while I was talking with some women friends of mine. Marriage often comes up in such conversations followed by children’s exploits and of course Oprah. The consensus was that creating a successful marriage was not nearly as easy as the romance novels lead us to believe. It takes committed long term work.

Try putting any two people together for an extended period of time and no matter how good of friends they were to begin with or how compatible they seem to be, problems will occur. It happens. Someone gets hurt, or misunderstood and someone else gets tired or down and bang… you have a blow up.

And it’s not just other people. I get frustrated or angry with myself all the time, so you can imagine how hard it is for my poor husband to put up with me. Now I’m not saying that I kill animals or have gambling issues with the local 7elevan mobsters. But I will admit to having a few eccentricities that occasionally get on my sweethearts nerves.

I hate to clean house. I’ll admit it right here, I really do. I would almost rather do anything than clean house. Now don’t misunderstand me, I do clean… I just do it as little as possible. For instance we have a bathroom that seems to get dirty faster than any other room in the house. When company comes over, we lock the door from the inside so if someone tries to use it, they will think it’s already occupied. I had a friend comment to me the other day that she was really anxious to see the inside of that room. “It must be amazing because every time I come over it’s in use.” … Oh yeah it’s really amazing.

My husband is a very sociable person and I’m kind of a loner. He’s a successful salesman and I love sitting alone with my computer writing creative prose. When we go out, he likes to mix and mingle while I prefer to lurk and leave. From the moment we walk into a party, I’m watching the clock, trying to figure how long I have before I can gracefully slip out unnoticed.

I love chick flicks… the more sappy romance the better and my hubby goes with me, even if he would prefer an action adventure or a historical drama more.

I’m what I call a crap shoot cook (using the gambling definition not the potty definition). I can make the exact same meal, following the exact same recipe and the exact same ingredients twice and never get the same outcome. One meal is perfection and everyone loves it, the next, it flops miserably. I like to think that it adds a sense of adventure to my husband’s life.

Another reason I’m so hard to live with is that I hate to be wrong. I’ll argue for hours that Thomas Jefferson was the first US president rather than admit I made a mistake. “I didn’t actually say he was the first real president,” I say with conviction, “I said he was the first US president to have a name that sounds like two last names.” I did mention my inventive imagination right? Anything to avoid being in error.

I like to stay up late in bed and read, I’ve been known to eat the last piece of cake without offering to share, and I sometimes “accidentally” delete a prescheduled recording on the television to watch something I’m more interested in.

But despite all these idiosyncrasies and quirk’s my husband is still with me. I hope that it’s because of my many redeeming qualities, and not because it would be too much trouble to start over with a different model. But I guess that’s what makes our marriage so good. It’s a relationship in progress and as we work it out togetherour love grows and our hearts unify.

It All Comes Out in the Wash

2010-04-05T10:45:00.000-07:00

I know better than to go to the grocery store between four and six on a week day afternoon, because that's when everyone else goes. The food aisles are clogged with carts, shoppers and oblivious small children running in every direction. Turning left from canned goods into the meat and deli aisle is an act of courage. More than once I’ve nearly crashed into another cart. Those darn Fruit Loops end units make visibility impossible.

Even worse than trying to move about the store is the long wait in the checkout line. It seems that everyone has carts filled to overflowing, and patience zapped from the bumper-car-like challenges it took to get them this far.

I try to avoid such shopping situations, but that isn’t always possible so when I find myself at the end of a long line of tired shoppers with a lot of purchases, I grab a magazine and read till it’s my turn. Of course, I always purchase the magazine because who wants to buy a periodical all read and used.

It was during one such shopping trip that I stumbled across an article on the “proper way” to wash clothes. This article went on for four full-colored pages. I was intrigued. How much could there possibly be to washing clothes?

Step one, according to the writer, was sorting. We were to read the labels on each item, then separate them by hand-wash, dry clean, dry clean only and machine wash. I had no idea there were two dry clean options. Apparently the first is just a suggestion, while the second carries jail time.

Next you go through your machine wash clothing and sort it according to the cycle. Normal, permanent press or gentle. I’ve never used any cycle but normal. I figure if a normal cycle is good enough for my jeans, it’s good enough for everything.

At last, the article says, I must separate my dirty clothes by color starting with dark and gradually moving to light, with real true whites reserved in thier own category.

If I was following these instructions, I would find myself with fifteen piles of two or three items of clothing a piece. Please… who has time for that? I have six children who, for every pair of pants I wash, are getting two dirty.

Step two makes such useful suggestion as checking pockets before loading clothes into the washer – where’s the adventure in that? Most of my spending money comes from stuff that comes out with the clean clothes.

The writer says that you are supposed to zip up zippers, button buttons, tie strings, buckle buckles and snap snaps before ever putting them in to be washed. I’m envisioning a sweet tempered homemaker sitting in a rocking chair and watching afternoon soap operas as she works tirelessly preparing her family’s clothes for their exciting laundering experience.

My loading method is to grab a arm-load of clothes in similar colors, stuff them into the machine, toss in some soap and fabric softener and get back up to the kitchen before the soup boiling on the stove over flows.

The next page suggests ways to make your laundry cleaning experience even better. You can add vinegar or table salt to the rinse cycle to keep colors bright and dye from running onto other clothes. This works great if you happen to be walking by the laundry room, with vinegar and salt when the machine hits this point in its cycle. I’m lucky to get back to the laundry room within a few hours of when the wash finishes.

Their suggestion to dry light loads first and then follow up with heavier materials like terry cloth and denim while the drum is still warm sounds good on paper, but in real life, at least for me, it’s just not happening.

I close the magazine with a smile. Maybe someday in my empty nester future I will buy clothes with instructions like “don’t allow water to ever touch this fabric” or “This sweater will do best if it is given its own room”. But right now, my priority is not the brightness of my kid’s colored t-shirts, but how much time I have to spend with the little bodies that I’m washing them for.

Twenty-Five Years of Spending

2010-03-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

Do you ever experience those cringe moments when you look back into your past and remember some of the crazy things you did, say at nineteen, before you learned better? Oh I do. If you look up the word “stalker” in the dictionary, definition number 6 merely reads Deanne in college…, but that’s another story. Today I’d like to share a few cringe moments from my first years of marriage.

My husband and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary in a few days (and for those of you doing the math, I was married at twelve and a half). It’s hard to imagine that our little family of two has since grown into a family of ten with possibly two more joining in before the end of the year.

One of the things that still makes me cringe as I look back over the past quarter century is how many stupid things my husband and I spent our money on. We were an easy mark for salesmen, and if I had a nickel for all the dumb purchases we made, I’d probably have enough too…. Well buy something else.

With a mother and a sister in his family, one would have thought my husband would be a little more prepared for the expenses associated with a woman when we got married. But I remember his unhappy shock during our first major shopping trip together after we’d tied the knot. Shampoo, conditioner, razors, tampons AND pads, nylons, nail polish remover, mascara, moisturizer, lotion, body soup and face soap. He’d never guessed how much money went into achieving the look he’d fallen in love with.

What we also didn’t realize at the time was how much the price to maintain that look would go up the older I got.

Another memory is of a summer afternoon, when a guy with his car trunk full of frozen meat cruised through our neighborhood. The price per pound of the beef was too good to resist and since it happened to be a pay-day we thought this would be a great deal.

Unfortunately once we brought our new purchases into the house, we realized that our little refrigerator freezer just wasn’t big enough to store all the meat, so we opened the newspaper’s classified section and found a great price on a used upright freezer. A few days later we discovered that the reason the freeze had been so cheap was because it had a broken seal and wouldn’t stay cold long enough to keep the meat frozen. In the end we had to throw away most of the meat and the seal-less freezer. Talk about a deal.

Then there was the two thousand dollar set of leather bound Encyclopedia Britannica that every family with children was required to have. By the time our kids were old enough to read, the internet was in full swing, and we ended up using the expensive volumes to support one corner of our family room couch.

According to the salesman, the Silver King Vacuum had a body made out of the same metal as fighter jets, and a motor that could power a large go-cart. It cost twelve hundred dollars but it was an investment because it was the last vacuum we’d ever need. Turns out expensive vacuums don’t last any longer than the seventy dollar cheap-os from Wal-Mart even if they can withstand the air pressure at 40,000 feet.

And how could I forget the free dinner at Denny’s if we would listen to the sales pitch of the wonder high-chair salesman. Yes I said high-chair, but this was no ordinary child’s seat. It could be converted to a small table or a booster seat and used for eating, crafts and time out. It was a large square contraption with adjustable legs and wheels so that you could easily move it around the kitchen or take it out back onto the patio and hose down when needed.

Unfortunately what it was not designed to do was support the weight of three children who were using it to race down the sidewalk. In the process they hit an uneven patch of concrete that threw them all, including the wonder high-chair into the neighbor’s evergreen bushes. The kids were scratched up, crying and I hope a little wiser… but the high-chair didn’t fare as well and would not, as promised, last us until we had grandchildren.

At least our marriage has withstood the test of time, and perhaps the lesson here is that money will come and go… mostly go, but finding the right guy who loves you last forever.

My Life is Like a Water Balloon - no matter how hard I try to get a hold of it, something always bulges out

2010-03-18T09:31:00.000-07:00

I am sitting down at the computer preparing to write this week’s blog, and as I finish the title, I hear the timer go off in the kitchen, signifying that the dish washer is done with its cycle.

I get up to open the door so that the dishes will be cool when I go to unload them, and notice that the kitchen table is 90% cleared off, and so I stop and gather up a pair of scissors, a glue stick and a crumpled napkin from its surface. With the scissors, glue stick and crumpled napkin gone, I can now see how dirty the table cloth is, so I remove it. Under the table cloth is a trail of muddy cat paw prints. How they got under there I can’t imagine, but I immediately head to the sink to get a sponge.

At the sink, I remember that the dishwasher has finished its cycle so I pull open the door. I notice the sink is filled with dirty dishes. It won’t take me more than a few minutes to unload the dishwasher and get the dirty dishes inside.

A fork falls to the floor, and as I bend down to retrieve it I see my son’s basketball shoes that are, for no good reason, sitting in the middle of the kitchen. It isn’t like he’d have any reason to shed them right there. He doesn’t even cook. But low and behold that’s where they are. So while I’m down there picking up the fork, I grab the shoes as well and head for his bedroom.

I find the light on and the stereo blasting even though he’s been in school for two and a half hours, and in one corner, behind the door, there must be twenty-five empty yogurt cartons. The kid is going through a growth spurt because he is eating me out of house and home.

I gather up the empty cartons and head back to the kitchen where I notice that the garbage can is beyond full. A pizza container is balanced on the top of an empty milk jug, with another six inches of garbage on top of that. So, I stomp it all down with my food, pull out the plastic garbage bag and head out the back door.

While dumping the bag into the outside garbage can I notice two pairs of socks and a t-shirt sitting on the edge of the basketball standard. One can only wonder if stripping while one shoots baskets will improve accuracy. I gather up the dirty clothing, go back into the house and down the stairs to the laundry room.

In the laundry room I notice that the clothes from the dryer need to come out, the clothes from the washer need to be switched and there are plenty of dirty clothes for a new load. Once I’ve shifted the clothing and started all the machines, I grab a basket of my husband’s work clothes and head up the stairs to the bedroom.

I plan to set the basket on top of the comforter, but the bed hasn’t been made yet, so I drop the basket into the computer chair and proceed to make my bed. Half way through I notice that my feet are feeling kind of cold. I’d been wearing my slippers earlier, but had kicked them off under the computer desk.

So, I take the laundry off the computer chair and set it on the ground, sit down, slide my feet under the desk and into my warm slippers and then notice I’ve only written the title of my blog... now where was I going with this?

The Three Eagle Mom

2010-02-21T16:10:00.000-08:00

My good friend Jan just had her third and last son achieve the rank of Eagle in the Boy Scouts of America program. Last weekend she planned and pulled off an Eagle Court of Honor that made planning a wedding look like a stroll in the park. She then collapsed and slept for three days in a row.

Now I realize that most of you are familiar with the requirements that a young scout must pass in order to achieve the coveted rank of Eagle. And once those requirements are met, the scout receives a great deal of attention and recognition for that achievement.

However… few people (other than Eagle Mom’s themselves) realize how much work is required of the poor scouting mother. There is no scouting mother’s web page, thick paperback program guide explaining the duties of the mom of an Eagle to be, and no presidential letter thanking dear old mama for getting her kid to make the grade.

So, in an effort to correct this scouting oversight… let me share with you the six requirements to becoming an Eagle Mom. (Note: This is simply the opinion of the writer and not of the BSA, because as we know, the writer thinks she is very funny… and the BSA does not.)

Requirement 1 – Your scout must be actively involved in the scouting program for a minimum of six months. This means that you must use whatever means at your disposal to separate said scout from his video games/TV/computer/girlfriend and make sure he shows up to his scouting activities. It is best to keep a large supply of neckerchiefs and holders on hand as these can disappear at a moment’s notice thus giving said scout a reason to complain and waste time getting ready. Also important to note is that dances, hay rides and pretty much anything involving the opposite sex does not constitute required scout meetings.

Requirement 2 - Your scout must demonstrate he lives by the Scout Oath and Law, and find people willing to write letters saying that he does. For Eagle Mom’s this means nagging, lots and lots of nagging. “Did you get those letters written? Did you find that address? Envelopes and stamps are in the same drawer they have been for the past ten years! People need more time than one afternoon to write a recommendation!

Requirement 3 - Your scout must earn a total of 21 merit badges. Moms, that means that you must become experts in 21 different subjects, and guess what… they aren’t stuff we already know how to do, like juggling a crying baby, a frying pan full of hot oil and a telemarketer all at the same time. It’s stuff like coin collecting, ham radios and my favorite… personal management. You know that kid that you can’t get to bring his dirty clothes from his bedroom to the laundry room without following him with a whip? Yup, that’s the one that’s supposed to learn personal management.

Requirement 4 – Your scout needs to hold and carry out a position of responsibility for a minimum of six months. And again, it’s not the type of responsibility that we mom’s would find really useful like say being in charge of the laundry for six months or simply taking Fido on a walk every night like your scout promised when you got the dog in the first place. It means more driving them to meetings, more reminding them to make phone calls and more last minute trips to the store (cause you can’t have a weenie roast when no one was assigned to bring the hot dogs).

Requirement 5 – Your scout must complete the infamous Eagle Project. A fun little activity where for every one hour your scout puts into it; our Eagle Mom must put in five. First she must help her scout come up with a reasonable project. Something a little less dramatic than a star-studded charity concert to benefit the Haitian relief effort , and a little bigger than clearing the table after an especially large Sunday family dinner. This can be a challenging task for the mom of a boy who takes twenty minutes just to pick out a candy bar at the store.

After providing an extensive list of possible project ideas, and then threatening to turn off all electrical devises in the house if they don’t hurry and choose something, an Eagle Mom must “help” her son plan this event, “remind” him to call all those who will assist in the project, “drive” him to the various locations to pick up supplies and make arrangements and then “provide” four dozen pizzas during the day of the project.

Then when the work is completed, the project is done and the video game beckons, she must push again so that her son will complete his paper work and get credit for all her… oops I mean his work.

Requirement 6 – We are almost there. Now that the project is done, the merit badges are sewn neatly down the sash and the paper work is assembled; your little scout must add a statement of his ambition and life purpose. Just a note… they are looking for BIG things like saving the ozone layer or creating world peace. So getting to level 19 on Virtual Quest, saving Princess Alala and conquering the wicked wizard Bladamad will not work, even if in fact that is your scout’s main ambition in life at the moment.

If after completing all six requirements, you and your scout are still speaking to each other, there is one last final requirement, and mom it’s all yours. You get to plan the huge multi-media event honoring your son for all his work and effort in earning the rank of Eagle Scout.

Then and only then can you collapse and sleep for three days straight! You deserve it. And to all the Eagle Mom’s out there reading this blog, YOU are my heroes.

My Basketball Bliss

2010-02-08T11:15:00.000-08:00

I’ve been hanging out at a lot of basketball games lately. I have a teenage son who’s good… make that really good at basketball and he’s a member of three different teams. What this means for me, is that I attend as many as six games a week.

Now I have to say that of all the sports I might possibly be required to sit through in the name of motherly love, basketball would be my game of choice for several reasons.

First, it’s played in doors.

This boy is my youngest, but not by far the first to express an interest in sports. For two years we spent many a freezing Saturday morning wrapped in blankets watching a bunch of little kids in brightly colored jersey’s and matching knee high socks run up and down the field chasing a black and white ball.

I am not a soccer fan. I don’t understand the game and I find it boring. Yes I know, half the world thinks the sun rises and sets on soccer and to them I apologize. The only pleasant experience I ever had with the game was during my senior year in high school when a good looking blond with well defined quadriceps inspired me to spend a few afternoons on the bleachers with my girlfriends watching his attractive physic run up and down the field.

After soccer it was karate. Which, if you don’t mind my saying so, is about as exciting as watching a room full of middle age women taking an aerobics class. Although we did get a nice selection of colored belts out of the experience. Colored karate belts have a multitude of uses, we discovered. You can tie a baby-sitter up so tight her parents have to come over to undo the knots. With a little imagination, you can rig your sister’s door so that it can’t be opened from the inside. (This is especially effective if she is already inside the room at the time.) And you can create a visually stimulating if somewhat destructive form of art when the belts are combined with a ceiling fan, and tennis shoes.

But I do like basketball. I think its fun to watch the boy’s race up and down the court, jumping and leaping around one another in an effort to get a ball into an overhead basket.

Second, I like the facts that the points add up fast.

As a young girl I grew up in Oakland, California home of the world famous Oakland A’s baseball team. My great-grandfather was a huge fan, and I remember being taken to one or two games when I was little. It was by far the most boring sport ever invented. (Even worse than karate). It seemed to take forever for either team to make a point and by the time they did, I had lost interest entirely.

Now of course, if you played your cards right you could pass the time eating peanuts, hot dogs and other junky baseball fare… that wasn’t too bad. And the organ was always entertaining to listen to. But the nuances of the game passed right over my head. They still do.

Third, I like having the opportunity to make lots of noise in support of my team without people looking at me like I’m a wierdo.

Before the basketball season began, my son chose to play volleyball. Another sport I’m not too fond of. I was actually beaten up in junior high for missing a ball lobbed in my general direction during a rousing game of volleyball in PE.

But what I really hate about the game is how one team has to screw up in order for the other team to make a point. So here are all these cute little junior high kids, focused and determined. Our team serves and the other side stands stone still watching the ball hit the court, waiting for someone to jump in and try to hit it back. Pure humiliation. I can’t very well start clapping and yelling “Way to Go” without feeling like I’m rubbing the failure into the other team like lemon juice on a paper cut.

Not so with basketball. I can yell and scream to my heart’s content and never feel bad about offending the other team.

The one thing about basketball I don’t understand it the fascination many of the coaches and parents have in badgering the referees. I’m no expert, but in the twenty or thirty games I’ve witnesses over the past few months, I have never seen a referee change a call. Not once. Even if the coach pulls him aside and accuses him of being half blind and with a personal vendetta against blue jersey’s. They make the call, they stick by it. Still there seems to be some impossible hope that if one yells loudly and obnoxiously enough, those guys in the black and white stripes will turn around and admit, “You are so right. What was I thinking? It wasn’t really a foul after-all. Thanks for pointing that out to me.”

So all in all, I gotta say, I love watching my son play basketball. And I thank my stars every day that he found his talent in dribbling and shooting. Just imagine if he’d wanted to do something horrible like crocodile wrestling…. or ice hockey. Yikes!

There is Magic in the Air

2009-12-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

J. Scott Savage, author of the wonderful Farworld series of fantasy novels, uses the phrase “Find Your Magic” to encourage his young and old readers to find the special talents and abilities they have within them. Savage writes about worlds full of magic and intrigue. He may be one of those lucky individuals who believe that our own world is still full of magic.

Both my grandmothers were such individuals.

Grandma Martin believed that leprechaun still lived in the forest of Ireland, and fairies could be found hiding in a bed of nasturtiums if you knew where to look. Well into her eighties, my grandma declared her conviction in the reality of both Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. And I spent long afternoons curled next to her as she read me poetry and told stories from her own youth.

My Grandma Martha, on the other hand, believed in the magic of nature. She could take me on long walks in the meadows where she lived and name the wild flowers we encountered on the trail. She knew of spots where sweet artesian water bubbled to the surface of the ground and you could press you face against the cool watercress and drink to your heart’s content. And it was through her direction that I found how to crawl down under the blackberry bushes to the large metal culvert below, and sit for hours listening to the water flow below my feet eating juicy berries till my stomach was full.

So, as a grandma myself, I have been trying to think of the magic in my own life that I can pass down to my grandchildren. And though I do have quite a vivid imagination and a love for the out of doors, I find that my magic tends to be more earthy and domestic.

I believe in alchemy. Perhaps I can’t turn lead into gold, but I can do something even greater. If I mix sugar, butter, milk and chocolate I can create a fudge that is so creamy your tongue will think it’s died and gone to heaven. And if I add some eggs, flour, baking soda and salt then stick it in the oven… the scent alone will gather my family together in the kitchen like a magic spell.

I believe in poltergeists; evil spirits who lurk in my house and cause mayhem and chaos while I sleep. For instance, I can clean my kitchen spotlessly before I go to bed, and by the time I get up the next morning, the sink is full of dirty dishes, the floor is covered with crumbs and an unexplained puddle of honey adorns one corner of the counter. Some might blame it on a house full of teenagers, but I know otherwise.

I believe in whitelighters, (beings made famous in the TV series Charmed) or guardian angels. These creatures help bring out the best in their charges and help them when they’re in trouble. Except I call them Mom and Dad.

I believe in ogres, invisible monsters that lurk in strange places, like say the drier, and eat huge quantities of unsuspecting clothing. The jeans your daughter has to wear to the party tonight or your husband’s best golfing shirt. But although the ogres will eat anything, by far their favorite treat is single socks, preferably new ones without holes.

I believe we live in a world that is crazy and unpredictable. Natural disasters can destroy the lives of thousands in the blink of an eye, and man-made violence is even worse. Life is fragile and peace is often fleeting. And as we reach our adult years, it becomes painfully clear how little control we actually have over the events that shape us. In a world such as this, I think a little magic can go a long way to enhancing our lives and the lives of those we love.

I think that’s the magic within me that I will be passing down.

If I Could Meet Myself For Lunch

2009-12-18T21:57:00.000-08:00

“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you”
—Dr. Suess

There is something about the end of a year that causes one to look to the past and try to find meaning in the time that’s already gone by. Perhaps it helps us prepare for the future, or reassures us that we have done more than breath, eat and sleep for the past twelve months.

The main problem I find when trying to analyze my own life, is that I’m doing it from the confines of my own head. This is certainly a biased angle, but it’s the only perspective I posses.

I wrote a book one time where the main character dies during the first chapter. I tried to imagine what it would look like to see yourself from the perspective of a detached spirit. Would I recognize myself from that angle? And would that slack muscle thing that comes after death, and causes the body to cave in slightly make identifying my lifeless corpse even more challenging?

Having never died, I can’t really say for sure, but I assumed that seeing yourself dead on the ground would be a somewhat surreal experience. And not one that I would be drawn to fantasize about. But what if I could meet myself alive, perhaps sit across the table at an Applebees, share an appetizer and make conversation. Now that would be an experience worth imagining indeed.

Would I see myself, the way I look in the mirror with those special light bulbs that make your skin glow like a twenty-year-old girl in love, or would the multiple layers of chin that I try not to notice each morning as I brush my hair, leap out like a crumpled paper bag around my neck?

I hope I’d like my smile or the way I try to look attentive when someone else is speaking. No doubt we would both laugh at the same funny stories, and that’s important. I once quit dating a young man because it took him nearly thirty seconds to get my jokes and another ten to come up with a polite laugh. It was like watching a TV show where the audio doesn’t match the video and the mouths move moments before the actual words come out. Timing is everything.

We’d talk about our mutual interests of course, our darling baby grandson and why See’s candy is the only chocolates worth eating. I’d hope I wouldn’t be too pushy with my opinions, and I might play devil’s advocate just to see how I respond when someone disagrees with me. Of course, I’d probably see right through that ploy, but still it would be fun to try.

Maybe we’d check out the handsome waiters, and reminisce about how young we use to be. Would I agree with myself that we still feel that young deep inside; deep deep where no one can see? And would we both cringe at that embarrassing thing we did when we were single and still chasing boys?

I hope I’d be polite, and even though I already know all my stories by heart, I’d listen to them again without interrupting and smile and nod at all the right places. I’d like myself more that way I’m sure. And I’d offer to pick up the bill, even though I know I would never allow myself to pay for me and we’d end up going dutch.

As I sat across from myself, could I offer honest constructive criticism of how I could be a better person, and would I be able to take it in the spirit it was meant? Or would I find it hard to be truthful about my weaknesses and get defensive when I brought it up?

When it was time to leave, I think I’d be sad about the separation, until I remembered that it’s me, and we’re always together. And then I would be glad to know I always have someone with me who totally understands how I feel.

So the next time I got too hard on myself or became internally abusive, I could remember what a great person I am and how much fun I am to be with, and I’d realize I need to treat myself with kindness and patience.

And that, my friends, is what it would be like if I met myself for lunch.

(–thanks Carrie!)

Count Your Many Blessings

2009-11-23T10:30:00.001-08:00

Since my recent conversion to Facebook I have noticed an interesting trend. Many of my social networking friends have been spending the month listing all the things they are grateful for. This is an admirable exercise especially when you consider what a rough year this has been for many people around the globe. What’s more, there have been numerous studies that show the psychological benefits of taking time to count your blessings

So in that spirit, let me share some of the things I am thankful for this Thanksgiving season.

I am thankful that sweeping the floor in my kitchen is so much like searching for hidden treasure. As my broom passes across the tile, I never know what exciting things will end up in the dust pan. A mismatched earring, a pen with the name of my credit union printed in gold across the side, thirty-seven cents in change, a half eaten bag of Cheetos, a slobbery tennis ball (we own a black lab) and a love letter, written in pink ink, that fell out of my son’s pocket. I need to appreciate this now, as some day I may simply be sweeping dirt and pet hair off my floor.

I am thankful that I have a junior high school age daughter so that I can actually live the drama rather than just watching it on Soap Operas. And now thanks to Facebook I can also follow she and her friend’s mood swings as recorded on their profiles:

(3:30 pm) I am soooo happy!!!!

(3:52 pm) Why are boys soooo stupid????

(4:05 pm) I soooo hate life, I wish I never was born!!!!

(4:23 pm) He is soooo hot and I love him!!!!

(4:30 pm) Parents are soooo the worst!!!!

I am thankful for the advent of cell phones that permit me to nag my children no matter how far away they might be. I’m also thankful that staying up late at night waiting for my curfew breaking teenagers to get home so I can chew them out is a thing of the past. Now, thanks to my cell phone, I can accuse, convict and render punishment while texting from the comfort of my own bed.

I am thankful for grandchildren that allow me to be the good guy….FINALLY.

I am thankful for all the cooks, waiters, busboys and dishwashers who have provided me with many effortless meals over the year. And for my darling children, who manage to make up for the ease and relaxation by destroying the house while I am gone.

I am thankful for a husband who is proving you can lose weight after age forty-five and is trying really really hard not to nag me about it.

I am thankful for a computer that can fill 98% of my basic social needs. It plays games with me and doesn’t mind if I cheat or quite when I’m losing. It allows me to socialize when I want to - even if that‘s four in the morning. It provides me with hours and hours of information to explore, videos of exotic places to visit and all the latest news on my favorite celebrities. But I’m not addicted to it, just because when it’s in the shop being fixed, I wander the house aimlessly while my fingers stab at invisible keys in front of me is no reason to think I can’t live without it.

I’m thankful for compulsory education for children and teenagers and that the summer break lasts a little less than three months.

I’m thankful for jean designers who make their pants larger than the size they have listed on the tag. It’s amazing how skinny a person can feel in jeans that keep sliding down your rear.

And finally

I’m thankful that I was able to find a place in my over packed refrigerator to fit the frozen 20 plus pound turkey I bought on sale three weeks ago, so I don’t have to find out firsthand what happens when you try to roast a fully frozen bird.

Here’s wishing everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Fifty Year of Marriage

2009-11-07T07:17:00.001-08:00

Back in 1959 Fidel Castro’s army took over Cuba causing the then leader Fulgencio Baptista, to flee the country. The Soviet Union launched their first spacecraft Luna 1. Disney’s animated classic Sleeping Beauty debuted in theaters. Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper, three major rock and roll stars were killed in a tragic airplane accident. Barbie made her first appearance in toy stores. President Eisenhower signed a bill creating statehood for Hawaii. And Richard Charles Savage and Vicki Dee Martin were married and sealed for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake City Temple.

In a day and age where half of all marriages end in divorce, Dick and Vicki have managed to keep their love and commitment to one another alive for fifty years. I should know, I’ve been there to see it first hand for nearly all of those years.

I am very fortunate to come from a long line of successful marriages. The year my husband and I were married my parents celebrated their twenty-five year anniversary and my grandparents their fiftieth. As I stood with my new husband at our reception, I could barely see more than a few months or a year into the future before it disappeared into a gray fog of incomprehension. Now, as we prepare to mark our own twenty-five years of married life, I have so much more appreciation for the work, sacrifice and commitment that is necessary to create a marriage with the staying power to last half a century.

In order to make their marriage work, my parents had to learn very early to put each other’s needs first. This can’t have been easy. My father’s strong will and stubborn streak came straight from his Irish immigrant grandparents. Qualities that were essential for success in many areas of his life could have been a recipe for disaster in his marriage. My mother too was a woman of confidence and tenacity. And occasionally they would find themselves on opposing sides of a dispute. Yet it was this same stubborn and tenacious quality that pushed them to solve and resolve marital problems and stay true and faithful to each other regardless of the circumstances.

My parents sacrificed a lot in order to bring children into the world and raise them. According to the USDA, the cost of raising a child to the age of eighteen years is approximately 208,000 which means that my parents spent over a million dollars to feed, clothe and educated two daughters and three sons. And that doesn’t count the emotional and physical drain that comes with five teenage/young adult children. And yet I never heard them complain about any lack of finances in our home or the economic compromises they chose to face.

As children we spent many summers camping. Those were occasions of wonder and exploration. As my father would pull out the tent and sleeping bags to pack in the car, the smell of pine sap and outdoors clinging to the fabric would excite emotions of joy and anticipation in all of my siblings. It wasn’t till years later that I learned why we camped so much. It was the least expensive way of vacationing with a large family.

Over the years I have watched the kindness and compassion my parents have shown one another. My mother spent countless hours keeping our home neat, my father’s clothing cleaned and pressed and supporting him as he worked many long hours at his job and then took college courses after work, ultimately graduating with a bachelor’s degree. Later when my mother’s health deteriorated, I watched my father take over these tasks, caring for her needs, keeping the house clean and staying informed on the latest theories and breakthrough’s related to her illness. I believe it is these countless acts of love that account for the framework that has supported their marriage for so many years.

Four of their children are married with strong families, and number five will be joining our ranks very soon. There have been no divorces among us, not to say that there haven’t been trials and challenges. But we have been taught firsthand how to choose our spouses wisely, work through our differences and never give up. A legacy we hope is being passed down to the next generation.

And so it is, with love and tremendous admiration that we celebrate my parents golden anniversary and the fifty years of joy, pain, selfless love and respect that goes along with it. Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

2009-10-27T09:54:00.001-07:00

Okay, so it’s the week of Halloween and my thoughts have been drifting to all things ghoulish and scary. I’m not a big fan of fear that is induced my lots of blood and guts. You won’t see me anywhere near a slasher movie. But what I do enjoy is a good psychological thriller like Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho. Nearly fifty years old, made in black and white, no special effects and I still can’t watch it when I’m alone in the house.

Another wonderfully frightening story is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louise Stevenson. This novella has been made into countless movies and theater productions. It’s popularity due in part, I think, to how much many of us can relate to the idea of the split personality. The good and evil that constantly wage war within our own conscience.

In the story, a chemical substances was ingested by Dr. Jekyll that had the side effect of releasing Mr. Hyde, Jekyll’s evil alter ego. As a mother, I have often witnessed this unusual phenomenon in the life of my own children.
Take yesterday for example.

My twelve year old son stayed after school to try out for the school basketball team along with fifty other little boys. I had to sign a couple of papers at the office, but before I left, I took a peek into the gym.

Now those of you who are familiar with twelve and thirteen year old adolescent boys know that there is a huge range of height and weight associated with that age. Boys of every shape and size were running around the gym throwing dozens of basketballs at all the available nets. Scanning the crowd I finally spotted my son a few feet away, blocking a short blond boy who was trying to make a shot.

“Hey,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Good luck and don’t be nervous.”

He looked up, made eye contact for ten seconds then turned away without response.

“Whose that?” asked the short blond boy.

“No idea,” answered my son without another glance in my direction.

Evidently Hyde has taken over my sweet son’s body. Fortunately the transition is temporary. On the ride home he was back to Jekyll, responding politely to my questions and begging me to pick him up a combo meal at Wendy’s.

It’s the same with my fourteen-year-old daughter. Ninety-nine percent of the time she is great to get along with. She laughs at my jokes, willingly helps out with dinner and accompanies me to the grocery store (as long as I agree to buy her something.)
And then, it happens.

This afternoon I walked passed her open bedroom door where she and her friends were discussing the pros and cons of the uniforms that are required by their junior high.

“Well,” my daughter said, her voice dripping with distain. “If they made us wear those plaid skirts or navy jumpers, I would just tell my mother that I wouldn’t go. I am not a dress kind of girl.”

I smiled, peeked my head in the door and announced. “That’s right. She’s the only girl I know that will be wearing satin white jeans with beading on the ankles and a white T-shirt on her wedding day.”

I thought I was incredibly funny, but three pairs of eyes stared at me coldly.

Perhaps they hadn’t understood. “You know, she said she wasn’t the dress type,” I tried to explain. “And how everyone always wears dresses when they get married, but she would wear….”

This was a tough crowd. I could see that right away.

“Well, anyway,” I said, trying to save face. “Back to what you were talking about. I have laundry to do or something like that.”

As I slunk away from the door I heard my daughter whisper to her friends. “Just ignore her. I think it’s some menopause thing she’s going through.”

Hmmm, raising teenagers. Talk about a psychological thriller…. Maybe I have the makings for a classic.

Happy Halloween

Second Chances

2009-09-21T10:21:00.001-07:00

We all live our lives from day to day assuming that when we go to bed each night, we will awake to another sun the next morning. We worry about paying our mortgages, fitting into our skinny jeans and whether the neighbors think we are still good people even though we let our front lawn get over-grown with dandelions all summer; every day ordinary worries that seem so important until something comes at us from out of the blue. Something so unexpected that it throws our whole world off kilter.

A large mass had been growing in my son-in-laws heart for weeks without anyone being aware of it. He had interviewed and been hired for a new job. He and my daughter were excited because it was closer to home with wonderful benefits. On the negative side, the pay would be lower to start off with and they had been stressing about how they could trim their budget to accommodate the lower salary and still keep her at home with their one-year-old baby son.

As the mass grew bigger it began triggering a series of small strokes in his brain, most going unnoticed. He developed flu likes symptoms and took to his bed. It wasn’t until a mini stroke occurred in a part of his brain that controlled short term memory that my daughter realized something was terribly wrong with her husband.

Doctors took tests and suggested various illnesses until a CT scan showed the frightening mass in a chamber of his heart and announced open heart surgery would be necessary.

I drove up the night before the operation so I could be there to care for my grandbaby when my daughter left at four the next morning for the hospital. She wanted to be there early to spend as much time as she could with her husband. The doctors had warned that if he survived the surgery at all it was very possible he could sustain life long brain damage. These might be the last few hours she'd have to be with the man she'd married.

The night was dark as I drove to their home that night, as were the feelings in my heart. How could my young twenty-three year old daughter survive this? Though we had many friends and family praying and supporting her, when push came to shove, she would be forced to deal with the outcome of this surgery in a very personal and solitary way. Like everyone else, I felt helpless. I was her mother, and I couldn’t fix this.

It’s a very strange position to be in, preparing for the possible death of a loved one. And stranger still, it’s not that unique. Every day, families sit in hospital rooms knowing the end for a loved one is near and trying to figure out how they will go on living without someone who has become so essential to their own personal happiness.

And it is in those dark and harrowing hours and days that the things that matter most become clear and indelibly imprinted on our brains. While other less imporant life issues fall from our minds like dead leaves in the autumn.

Thankfully, due to the skill of the doctors and the faith of so many people, my young son-in-law made it through the surgery with both his life and his mental facilities intact. An outcome that surprised many of the medical professionals who’d been working with him. There is still a long road to recovery and my daughter is still shouldering challenges beyond her years, but for now the worst is over.

This experience has reminded me again of the fragile nature of life. The fact that that though we may feel we are in control of our lives, our futures are not in our own hands. Life can change in the length of a breath, and people and things we count on can be taken suddenly from us like a magician ripping a cloth out from under a set table.

I wish this clarity of thought and appreciation of those things most important in my life would stay with me longer, but I know my own nature, and it won’t be too far in the future before I’m back to stressing about bills, calories and messes. Still every time I see my daughter's sweet family or watch her husband playing with my beautiful grandbaby, I will remember that his life, like all our lives, is a temporary gift, and maybe I will appreciate mine and the people in it just a little bit more.

The Coupon Queen

2009-09-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

When I was a little girl, I loved playing paper dolls. Do little girls still do that? It took lots of time and concentration to cut the doll out just right. (Fingers and feet where so easy to snip through). And then the clothes, pages and pages of clothes with those paper tabs that held the outfits in place.

So what happens to little girls who cut out paper dolls when they grow up and get married? They turn into Coupon Queens, trading paper bike shorts and evening gowns for fifty-cents off on a bottle of mayonnaise and a dollar fifty off on cases of diapers.

With the recession hitting so many of us below the belt, coupon clipping has become all the rage. Here in my county, the local newspaper has embraced this fad by hiring a coupon clipping expert to help guide her readers through the always confusing, but sometimes profitable world of cut out money. She instructs her readers to purchase binders and fill them with plastic sheets used to organize trading cards and load them with the coupons they collect. It is not an unusual sight on a Saturday morning to see a focused shopper with a binder full of coupons open in her cart and more coupons fanned out in her hand analyzing the volume of a box of cereal to make sure the product and the coupons match.

Never one to be left out of the current craze, I decided to jump into the coupon madness with both feet. I signed up to receive FIVE Sunday newspapers, each the size of a large chunk of firewood. The purpose of the FIVE Sunday papers is, of course, to have five times the coupons to choose from, but there are other benefits as well - everyone gets their own copy of the comics, and there's even an extra copy to leave in the bathroom for those who need entertainment while using the facilities.

Once the papers have arrived and are hauled into the house and dumped on the kitchen table, the real fun begins. Among the colored ads for popular clothing, hardware and office supply stores are hidden the real treasures. The coupon booklets - one, two sometimes three different ones. It's better than an Easter egg hunt.

Once the coveted booklets are found, we get to scan through them, searching for prizes beyond our wildest imagination. Like a dollar off of the bathroom cleaner with the tiny bubbles that cleans a toilet while singing Just A Spoon Full of Sugar. You've seen the commercials. Even as you watch, they makes quick work of the grossest stains.

"Can we really get it?" ask my children in wide eyed wonderment?

Normally, I stick with the bargain brand of toilet cleaner myself. It doesn't actually clean, but it makes the water so blue that you don't even notice how the bowl is still dirty. But with a dollar off coupon, the sky is the limit.

There are other coupons as well. Shampoos of every color, scent and bottle size just waiting to be purchased at forty cents off when you buy two. And frozen foods you wouln't give a second glance in the store, but are suddenly irresistible when you can buy one and get a bag of frozen french fries free.

And the dog food. You know, I have a hard enought time coming up with meals that my kids like beyond the basic Mac and Cheese and Hot Dogs in a bun. Why would I worry about variety in my dogs meals? But there must be people out there who thrive on purchasing little cans of gourment meat chunks seasoned with oregano in a red whine sauce (whine... dogs... get it? But I digress).

So after a lengthy conversation with my family, the coupons we want are chosen and the cutting begins. Hours of cutting, piles of newsprint tossed into the garbage and the painstaking process of finding just the right place in my coupon binder for each coupon. Do cookies go in Breads and Grains or in Misc? And if I have a catagory called Junk Food, can I ever save enough money on it to make the purchase worthwhile? These are the philosophical questions I face each week. It's no wonder I never have time to actually read any of the FIVE Sunday newspapers.

But at last, the coupon are filed away and the newspapers are in the recycle bin (the least I can do after killing all those trees to save a few cents on yogurt that comes in a rainbow of colors and can be used as finger paint). Then the real work begins.

Sure you can save forty cents on a bag of hamburger buns, but the big money comes when you combine your coupon with a sale!!! This is where the true coupon queens really shine. You get an ad from a grocery store that is selling its Marshmallow and Chocolate Sugar Crispi Cereal for $1.50, a 50% savings off retail. Then you add your forty cent coupon on top of that. Well, I don't have to spell it out for you. Big BIG savings!

(Disclaimer - Savings does not take into account the cost of the dental bill incurred from your children eating too many bowls of Marshmallow and Chocolate Sugar Crispi Cereal.)

You may be laughing out there, but truthfully, this stuff is addicting. (The coupon clipping not the sugary cereal). I actually embarrassed the life out of my son by picking up coupons that someone had dropped in the grocery store parking lot, and yelling, "Eureka, I struck Gold!"

Granted it's not always feasible to use coupons, and sometimes, no matter what, the bargain brand is just a better deal. But other times, despite all the craziness involved, coupons can actually save you money.

My son got tired of his electric razor and wanted a closer shave so he decided to buy a straight edge razor.

"Don't go yet," I called to him as he headed out to his car. "I think I have a coupon for that."

Sure enough, I did. Four dollars off, in fact.

An hour later I got a call from him."So the razor was normally ten ninety-nine and the store had it market down to six. After the four dollar coupon I only paid two bucks. Is that great or what?"

I could only smile. My son's a coupon queen.

Garden Plants - Beware

2009-05-26T17:09:00.001-07:00

It’s that time of year again when the days are long and sunny; the earth is warm and inviting. The time of year when gardeners both young and old head out to the local nurseries to select the plants that will grace their yards for the next few months. I love to admire the little baby flowers and the supple young tomato vines and dream of growing carrots and radishes that rival the pictures on the front of the seed packets. But all I can do is admire from afar, because my thumbs are not green – they are yellow grey the color of dead plants

With the possible exception of weeds, I seem destine to drain the life out of every piece of vegetation I encounter. My first garden produced a roaring harvest of tall brown grass, prickly weeds, an incredibly tall dandelion and three cherry tomatoes buried down underneath.

Houseplants are even worse. My husband won’t let me grow them anymore after that herbicide massacre thing. It was an innocent mistake! If one tablespoon of fertilizer in a gallon of water was good for my plants, imagine what half a cup of fertilizer in a cup of water would do. I had visions of huge vines of English Ivy wrapping itself around my kitchen while the kids had to push aside long fern tendrils to make their way to the dinner table.

Instead I got to watch my houseplants whither and dye right before my eyes. One minute they were green and healthy, the next they were brown lifeless piles of fibrous debris. Even the little cactus that the lady from the nursery had assured me could withstand almost anything, actually imploded right there in its pot.

The thing is that I do love working in my yard and the beauty that comes from a wide variety of plants and flowers. So this year, I had a plan.

First, I bought a garden statue and placed it in one of my flowerbeds. I figure, no matter what else happens, the pretty little swinging angle was guaranteed to make it through the summer without dying.

Next I spent several hours on the Internet and more hours consulting with experts in the field, searching for the strongest and toughest plants available. Shrubs that could accidentally be backed over by a minivan and still come back to life. Flowers with plenty of blooms for those times when my kids are inspired to surprise me with a bouquet of blossoms. Vegetables flexible enough to deal with a flood of water when the wading pool gets turned over on them, and drought resistant enough for those times I forget to water.

Believe it or not, I now have the perfect garden! My astro-turf is always the perfect shade of green, and I never have to mow it. Rock gardens are more exciting than one would imagine and fake flowers come in a wider variety of colors than the real thing. Best of all, if I prop the hose over the dog’s metal food-dish and turn on the water, it sounds just like a fountain.

Singing the Mother’s Day Blues

2009-05-06T09:20:00.001-07:00

Recently my siblings and I received an email from our mother, announcing that she and her best friend (another mother of a bunch of grown children) had decided they no longer wished to receive gifts for Mothers Day. Her reasoning was that she already knew how much we all loved her and didn’t require any additional proof. Instead, she said, we should simply bask in the gifts and attentions of our own families.

This from the woman who never stopped celebrating Mother’s Day with her own mother until Grandma finally passed away.

Although I have not attempted to take on Mother’s day, I did try a few years ago to cancel my birthday. After about twenty-five, no one really wants to be reminded about the ceaseless ticking away of the life clock. Not that there is anything wrong with being thirty, forty, fifty, sixty etc… but who wants to have to have it thrown in their face on an annual basis. But, despite my best efforts, I still am forced, once a year, to celebrate my slowly declining body, diminishing eye-sight and the fact that there is no chance I will EVER have a body like Demi Moore.

But then Mother’s Day isn’t really about mother is it? This holiday was originally established by a daughter as a way for her and other children like her, to remember and honor all the years of sacrifice and effort her own mother had made in bringing her into the world and raising her.

As I look back on my own life, I know I didn’t really understand the depth of my own mother’s love or the challenges she faced raising me until I became a mother myself. As I held my first born baby daughter in my arms a few hours after she’d been born, I had this sudden understanding of my own mother’s life.

How can a child or teenager really get the immense weight that comes with caring for the every need of a helpless infant? Or the fear that freezes a mother’s heart when her young child wanders off in a department store? Mom’s knows from day one how vigilant they must be to protect their young from the evils of the world such as child molesters, pornography, or the tragic accidents are so often reported on the news. And oh, how long the hours of the night seem when a mother is up worrying about her teenager’s choices or waiting for him to get home safely from a late date. And despite her best efforts, every child will still go through heartache or suffering.

Over the course of her life, a mother spends countless hours washing dishes and clothes that never stay clean for long. They purchase cart load after cart load of food and make thousands of meals (about a third of which are met with less than stellar approval). They cleans toilets they didn’t dirty, mops up dirt they didn’t track in and live with the constant guilt that they still arn’t doing enough.

As I stood by my daughter’s hospital bed last July and watched her labor and deliver my beautiful baby grandson, I was reminded again of the chain that turns daughters into mothers. Tears ran down her cheeks, first from the pain and effort it took to deliver her son and then from the joy and trepidation of the responsibility she and her husband would now carry in raising that precious little child.

We children, whether adult or kids, need to take the time to celebrate Motherhood in general and specifically the Mothers in our lives. We need to give them gifts and take them out to dinner. We cannot forgot the efforts they made to bring us into the world and/or cared for and raised us through those trying adolescent years.

Okay, so I know that Mother’s day gifts are often cheesy. But sometimes, just the effort to think beyond oneself, if only for a few minutes, is an important experience for a child. One year my son bought me a bottle of French perfume from the dollar store that smelled like really strong moon-shine. I dumped the liquid out, and filled the bottle with water and blue food coloring. (My son never knew the difference when I dabbed a little on my wrist and told him how much I liked it.)

Our children learn to honor us as they watch us honor our own mother and my mother-in –law in May and through out the whole year. Not because either woman needs gifts, or because they have any doubt of our love for them. But because we need to do it, and our children need to see us do it.

Life is too short not to take every opportunity to show our love for our parents and to in turn accept the honor an d love of our children. So Mom, I love you, but you’re just gonna have to deal with it!

Fear of Facebook

2009-04-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

It all started, interestingly enough, with Morry Roach. Morry Roach was a kid from Pleasant Hill Junior High in California. We were both in seventh and eighth grade together and if memory serves we both took the same Spanish class with a teacher who looked something like a combination of Pee Wee Herman and Tiny Tim. I don’t know if we were friends, and I don’t even remember what he looked like so I dusted off my Jr. High yearbook. According to his picture Morry was an average size kid with that long shaggy hair style so popular with teenage boys in the seventies. I can’t explain why his name has stuck with me all these years, but it has.

So, anyway I was playing around on the internet a few weeks ago, doing random google searches on people’s names. I searched myself, my kids, a few people I remember from high school, and I noticed that the chances of pulling up information on the right person increased dramatically if the name was a bit more unusual. There are hundreds of John Smith’s and Bill Browns, so locating my high school buddy and first kiss Mike McMahon in this manner is next to impossible.

After running through all my families’ names, I searched through my memory for a name that was more unique and low and behold, Morry Roach came to mind. Sure enough, Morry showed up in google as a member of the online community, Facebook. Clicking on the link I was shown a microscopic photo of a man in his mid forties who may or may not have been my long haired classmate of yesteryear. However when I tried to gather more info, I was informed in no uncertain terms that Mr. Roach and his information were part of an elitest community that could only be approached by signing up with Facebook and then requesting the honor of being on his list of legitimate friends.

Yeah, like I was going to do that. I’m sure Morry not only doesn’t remember me but would find it strange if not a little stalker-ish to know that some kid from his awkward adolescent years was trying to look him up. In fact, the whole point of the internet is to gather information from the safe position of an anonymous outsider not actually make contact. So I left the computer for a more wise use of my time, and turned on the TV.

Then, yesterday a really amazing thing happened. Out of the blue, I got an email from a good friend I’d known in college. She said that her son was recently married and that there were pictures of the event on Facebook.

OH NO, NOT FACEBOOK!

But what choice did I have. I was willing to live my life without knowing for sure if the Facebook Morry was my Morry, but I really really wanted to see those pictures. I would have to bite the bullet and get on Facebook.

It was strange and surreal experience. I entered my personal information and then suddenly I was bombarded with toenail sized pictures of people I knew and people I didn’t. Relatives and neighbors popped onto the screen as if somehow the program had crept into my brain and accessed all my memories. The boy who takes care of our dog when we go out of town, was right there next to my sister-in-law in California and my daughter who lives upstate. And intermixed were people I never even heard of from places I’ve never been.

Then Facebook asked me if I wanted to look up any people from my past. I thought again of Morry Roach. Sure I was curious as to where life had taken him in the thirty plus years since Jr. High but I didn’t want to actually make contact. No, all I really wanted to do was see my friend’s son’s wedding pictures.

At last I was an official Facebook member, and happily, I entered my friends email and waited with anticipation. Sure enough, up popped a tinsy tiny photo of four itty bitty people, and a note that if I wanted a better look, I’d have to apply to be my friend’s friend. Ahhhhh

As of this writing, I still haven’t seen the pictures, but the kid down the street just asked me to be on his friend list. So I guess that’s something.

PS I've decided I'm just not a facebook kinda girl and have taken myself off. Oh well

Tebo my Life – Please

2009-04-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

We live in a day and age where technological advances verge on the magical. I can flip open my cell phone and talk to anyone anywhere on the earth at the push of a button, (that is of course if they are awake, choose to answer and I am within my calling area). I can send and receive emails at the speed of light to anyone I choose. That means my daughter can tattle on her husband to millions of people all at the same time, and those poor Nigerian Bankers can solicit help from every shmuk who owns a PC. (See blog from last week). And last but not least, I can core and slice an apple into eight perfectly shaped wedges all in one firm push. (That may not be a technological devise, but I think it’s pretty cool).

Other amazing advances make our lives longer and healthier. Tiny cameras assist with heart operations, medicines cure diseases we thought we’d never cure, and of course laser hair removal which is a marvel in and of itself. But perhaps the biggest boon to the average American was the invention of Tebo.

Can you imagine going back in time and running into Benjamin Franklin, the great statesman and inventor? Imagine his shock as you explained things like microwave ovens that allow people to create nacho’s in almost no time. Mp3 players that allow people to record more songs than they even know and watch full length movies on tiny little thumb nail sized screens. And then you could tell him about Tebo.

Granted, Tebo wouldn’t make a lot of sense to him at first, being that the founding fathers hadn’t invented TV yet, not to mention the TV station. And the idea of having the leisure time to sit in front of a screen for hours at a time might also seem strange to people who had to cut their own fire wood for warmth, carry water from a well to drink and if they over did it on the beans and bacon, they’d be trotting back and forth from the outhouse all night. But Franklin was a smart guy and eventually he would get the idea.

Then you’d spring it on him. In the twenty-first century we don’t miss a TV show, not even when we aren’t home. Our TVs can watch multiple shows all at the same time. We can be asleep but old Tebo never rests recording hours and hours of The Simpsons, Law and Order and Cooking with Emile. In one day, Tebo can record more television than we could watch in a month.

Of course technology doesn’t come without a price. We are much wider and lumpier than our counterparts in the seventeen hundreds (thanks in part to the microwave nachos). And TV does become so addictive that people put them in every room in their house, including the bathroom. But those are relatively minor compared to what I like to refer to as the Tebo snapback syndrome.

You’ve all experienced curling up in front of the tube, and scanning through the channels till you find something really good to watch. (like an old movie starring a very young Pierce Brosnan and Twiggy). Then about forty-five minutes into the program a notice comes on the TV telling you that American Idol and Sponge Bob Square-pants are scheduled to record in five minutes and you either need to cancel a recording or turn off the TV. What a moral dilemma that puts one in. Which family members TV viewing tastes are more important, and what are the repercussions of choosing one family member over another. It’s mind boggling, and I suspect that even old Benjamin would be stumped.

I've given this issue a great deal of thought I think I've come up with an answer. It is that...

Whoops. I just looked at the clock and I only have a forty minute window in between I Love Lucy recordings to catch last week’s Wheel of Fortune, so I’d better run. Bye!

My Junk Mail Folder

2009-03-21T21:58:00.000-07:00

Imagine the scenario. Two techno nerds watching TV when the host announces the invention of the World Wide Web.

“Oh wow Earl, do you know what this means? People like you and me can send information around the planet at the push of a button. What profound information can we email to the world?”

Earl scratches his head, “Tell ‘em about a cream that you can rub on any part of your body and it will make it grow bigger in two weeks.”

Lo and behold, junk mail was born.

I often wonder who these strange people are that have nothing better to do with their lives but sit at their computer and create spam. Perhaps, like myself, they are frustrated authors looking for an audience. Or maybe they‘re all part of a club competing for the world’s worst con-person.

Like everyone else, my junk mail file fills up twice as fast as my inbox, kind of like how the price dial on the gas pump always goes faster than the gallons pumped dial. And usually I just delete the whole thing without even looking at them. But today, just for the heck of it, I decided to read my unwanted emails and share the results with you.

I was excited to learn that I had won the consolation prize of Microsoft’s Email Draw. Did any of you know that Microsoft was giving away prize money to lucky emailers throughout the country? What’s even more amazing is that the Washington based company is awarding it’s monetary prizes in English pounds. Yes folks, just for opening my email I have won 1,000,000 (one million) pounds. WoW! That’s nearly 2 million in American dollars. Gosh I wonder what the winner got?

In a strange twist of fate, I also won a million pounds from the United Nations Development Program.

My next email tells the sad tale of poor Col. Hosam Hassan and his wife and daughter who were killed in Iraq leaving eighteen million dollars in a Hong Kong bank, and on the verge of being claimed by the Chinese government. But dear Marvin K.T Cheung the branch manager has a plan and I’ve been chosen to be a part of it. But what Cheung doesn’t know is that I already won two million dollars from Microsoft and another from the UNDP.

I got another email from Nigeria today. Boy that poor country is just floating in unwanted money. I always feel bad turning my back on them, but a person can’t be expected to save the whole world now can they?

As if that wasn’t enough, the Republic of Benin has been trying to wire me my consignment for weeks now but with one thing and another they just can’t seem to get it through. Apparently they are using Western Union because Western Union is also struggling to wire me money as well. Perhaps if they fired all the foreign employees who can’t write proper English, they could get that cash through in a timely manner.

And lest you think my junk mail is all about the money, let me tell you. There are a lot of kind people out there concerned with my health and happiness. There are offers to clean my colon, improve my intimacy, get rid of my stretch marks, buy my gold and get me a job – like I need a job with all the free cash on the way.

Ah well, just another day in Spam World.

Cherry Ames is Back

2009-02-17T08:39:00.000-08:00

Cherry Ames is back! After originally being published between 1945 and 1968, the series is being reprinted so that another generation of young girls can enjoy the exploits of Ms. Ames, nurse extraordinaire. In the 27 books she stared in Cherry completed three years of nurses training, and then went on to work in every possible nursing related field. This woman was bandaging knees at a kid’s camp in one book and was reattaching limbs in a war zone in the next.

I was a huge fan of the Cherry Ames series as a preteen, and I am still an avid reader. A therapist recently diagnosed me as reading addicted. And I have to say that I totally agree with his observation. I love fiction, and I can actually tract my growing up years by the genre of books I was reading at each phase of my life.

In elementary school I had rather eclectic tastes. The Mrs. Pigglewiggle books were a favorite, anything written by Beverly Cleary, and if it featured a horse I was all over it. A great uncle who raised horses use to give me his back issues of Western Horse Magazine, and I would pour over the articles. I didn’t actually own a horse myself, but I knew everything about training, breeding and that pesky hoof fungus that was going around in Montana.

As a preteen, I moved on to serial fiction. Nancy Drew, Trixie Beldon, the Bobbsey Twins and of course Cherry Ames. I missed multiple flirting opportunities with boys in my neighborhood because I preferred to curl up on my bed with a good story.

As adolescence hit, I moved into the world of Harlequin Romance were I fell in love with a different guy every other day. This messed up my head in so many ways and it took years to realize that real men weren’t anything like guys that populated those romances. These fantasy men, created in the overly imaginative minds of female writers, were always breath takingly handsome, rich and/or sophisticated, and could actually read the minds of the women they loved, often understanding thier thoughts before the females understood themselves. Real guys require real communication. And sometimes that doesn't even work.

In high school an English teacher introduced me to my next genre love. Gothic fiction. Okay, Gothic is predictable as all get out, I know, but I was fourteen at the time and it was fun to have a little scarey intrigue and suspense thrown in with my previous diet of all romance all the time. I think what I enjoyed most were the creepy old houses and mystery shrouded mansions with secret doorways and hidden rooms. Plus the most attractive guy was usually the murderous maniac and the more stoic and confused guy was always the hero.

Since then, I’ve developed a taste for mystery. I set a goal when I first got married to read every Agatha Christie book she ever wrote. She wrote a ton of books and I’m still working on that goal. But I love the whole English feel of her stories. Every house no matter the size had a name like The Paddocks or Little Styles. Granted, they were strange names, and often not very pretty, but every house had one.

Which brings us to today. I read quite a few contemporary writers now. Amy Tan and Mary Higgins Clark are two of my favorites. I recently discovered Dean Koontz. He has a series about a guy who sees dead people, has a dead girlfriend and a dead dog, so I guess that kind of fits back into my gothic past doesn’t it.

I find myself wonder what type of books I’ll be reading when I’m old and decrepit. I know I will have to wear huge magnifying glasses (my eyesight is already on the fritz) just to read the words. And the books themselves will have to be light so that my little bony arm's with saggy skin hanging down to my waist, will be able to hold them.

Actually, I can see myself and the other old broads in the rest home, sitting side by side in our rocking chairs, ipods attached to our hearing aids, listening to our MP3 books and occasionally laughing out loud at a joke that no one else can hear.

Hmmm that doesn’t sound half bad.

Stinky Kids and Other Joys of Motherhood

2009-01-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

My youngest son will turn twelve soon, and though I love him dearly, he produces some of the worst body scents ever known to man.

-I need to stop here for a second and warn my mother that I will be writing about gross stuff again this week. (She still hasn’t gotten over my remark about Hannah Montana little girl's underwear back in September.) Poop will be discussed in detail, so if you have a weak constitution… consider yourself warned.-

On the positive side, the boy is tall, athletic and has a metabolism that just won’t stop, so perhaps stinky-ness is just a side effect. Having never been a boy, tall, athletic and having a metabolism that creeps along at a snail like pace, I wouldn’t know.

To explain how bad it is, even as a little kid, if he went “number two” and missed wiping off one smudge on his cheeks, within in ten minutes, the whole house knews about it. It’s that potent.

About two years ago, the preadolescent “B.O.” kicked in. The child can be playing dead - in the snow - in his underwear - for two seconds - and if he didn’t put on his deodorant we can smell him from three feet away.

Unfortunately, he is still a little boy, which means he considers soap and water a waste of energy and would happily live in a world where toothbrushes and anti-persperant had never been invented.

Last year I got a call from the elementary school that my son stunk really badly and would I please come pick him up and take him home. (I’m not kidding, this really happened.) Sure enough, he’d missed a spot on his rear, and he’d somehow lost his container of extra-strength deodorant. The kid reeked.

I tried to use this as a teach opportunity, pointing out the importance of proper hygiene in a real world environment but he was unimpressed. He insisted that all boys smelled like this and plus it kept the girls away. Who can argue with that?

So, in my ever growing repertoire of morning chants, I now say: “Do you have you backpack? Your coat? Did you brush your teeth? Really? If I go look in the bathroom will I find a damp toothbrush?” (One time his toothbrush fell in the toilet and he threw it away. I didn’t find out for two weeks as he continued to insist that he was brushing his teeth everyday.) “And how about your rear? All clean? And your pits?”

You couldn’t pay someone enough to say that!

I have faith that someday he will decide that smelling good has its benefits and that attracting girls is more fun than repelling them. In the mean time I’m investing in a good pair of nose plugs.

Almost

2009-01-09T08:07:00.000-08:00

My grandfather was quite the Renaissance man. He was an artist who used small colored tiles to create beautiful mosaics on furniture and walls. A music lover with a rich deep voice who was often conscripted with my grandmother into singing at funerals. A born salesman who could sell you an air conditioner in the dead of winter. And an inventor of sorts.

According to my mother, grandpa came up with a chemical formula for degreaser long before the oven cleaner was invented. Her family would go on vacation, check into a motel and grandpa would mix up his special solution right there in the bathtub.

Then he would bottle it, and head out to town looking for as many greasy spoon type diners as he could find. Once into a restaurant, he would get the owner to allow him to put some of his special formula on a corner of the grease laden grill, with instructions to let it set until he returned.

Thirty minutes later, Grandpa would be back and with a simple swipe of a sponge, the grease seemed to melt away like butter.

Unfortunately, Granddad didn’t have the money or the connections to market his product properly. And because of that, I am not the rich, oven cleaning solution heiress I was meant to be.

Like Grandpa, I too have had my share of million dollar ideas that eventually made someone else a fortune.

Yeast infections are a plague that women have had to suffer with since the beginning of time. (I don’t know this for sure. Do you know how hard it is to find any info on yeast infections and the cave woman?)

And of course, the treatment is simple. For a couple of years I was calling my doctor every six months for a prescription. He didn’t even have to see me. Just called it into the pharmacy. And since I could tell a yeast infection from say pink eye or a broken arm, I was pretty sure that every other woman could too.

So I called into one of the companies that manufactures other women’s unmentionables, and suggested they make a line of over the counter yeast infection treatments. I spoke to a young man who was probably nineteen and didn’t even know what a yeast infection was. And guess what? Three years later, everybody is selling OTC yeast infection medication.

That was me, my brilliant idea, but you think I saw a single penny of the profit? I even have to pay full price when I buy the stuff!

Or how about the GPS system’s for tracking down your teenagers in the car, your lost pet or your kid wandering around Disneyland. Yup, that was all me too!

I guess it’s just the curse both my grandpa and I carry.

Exceptional minds and empty pocket books.

Reflections on a Passing Year

2008-12-31T08:27:00.000-08:00

One of my sons got in a lot of trouble about a month ago, and part of his punishment was to spend an hour a day doing extra chores for me. It must have been about the fourth day into this punishment when it finally hit him. “Mom, I’ve emptied the dishwasher every day, and I’ve vacuumed the carpets every day too. Why can’t I just do the job once and be done with it?”

The eternal question.

As I sit here on New Years Eve, contemplating 2008 I realize how much of this year I spent doing job’s that never get done. Washing dishes and clothes, dusting, vacuuming, mopping. I just have to face it. Life is repetitive.

My baby grandson has a set of books that his mom reads over and over too him. They say it’s because little children love repetition but I think its nature’s way of preparing them for the constant reiterations in adult life.

And it’s not just work that we have to repeat. What about phrases.

I notice that my cell phone came with a set of prewritten text messages that can be sent without taking the time to type them yourself. Phrases like:

“Where are you?”
“Call me when you get this message” or
“What’s your number” – although that last one seems kinda silly if you're sending a text message… oh well, talk to T-Mobile about it.

I’m thinking of inventing a little cell phone style box just for mom’s. And in it, I’ll have prerecorded all the things I find myself saying over and over and over.

“Where are you going and what time will you be back?”
“Did you brush your teeth AND use deodorant?”
“If you’d do it the right way the first time, you wouldn’t have to do it again.”
“But I’m not her/his mother, I’m yours, and that’s what I said.”- and of course-
“No!”

So, to deal with a world of mindless repetition, one must use their non-repetition time doing new and exciting things. I would recommend traveling to Branson, Missouri or visiting Hawaii or China once a year. But if you aren’t my parent’s, then these options may not be financially viable.

For the rest of us let me share some of my favorite free internet adventure hot spots for 2008

1. Karaoke Party - http://www.karaokeparty.com/

This is fun site. You can pick up a microphone at Wal-Mart for less than fifteen dollars and plug it into the back of your computer. Choose a song category (in karaoke party lingo ‘Classical’ would be the Beatles, not an aria from Madam Butterfly) and then sing. You get points for how well you match the artist (think Guitar Band Hero with out the weird looking characters) and then can compare your score with other players around the world. (Or not)

One word of warning. If you’re kids walk in on you belting out “We are the Champions” from Queen, they will make fun of you!

2. Smile Box eCards – http://www.smilbox.com/

I have set a 2009 goal to remember all the birthdays and anniversaries in my family this year by sending ecards. However I always go to Hallmark and they only have so many new and free ecards. So, in an effort to widen my ecard horizons, I did a google search and found this site.

Smile Box is free and allows you to upload photos or videos and incorporate them into an ecard to send out to people. How cute is that? I’m thinking I have a couple of photos of myself that would make truly frightening Halloween cards.

3. Jib Jab - http://sendables.jibjab.com/

This is similar to the above site except you get to attach head shots of your favorite people onto animated bodies and then watch them play out their own little mini movies. But be forewarned. If you create the movie or show it to people whose heads are in the movie, they will think these are unbelievably hilarious. Anyone else watching will get boarded really fast.

4. The American Museum of Photography - http://www.photographymuseum.com/noir/pulppix2.html

When I really need to get out of my own world, I like to search out exotic locations or interesting museums and then pretend I’m really there. The idea of web cams sounds good, but I don’t care how exotic the beach, watching several minutes of a still shot, replaced by another still shot from some high and not very artistic vantage point, just doesn’t do the job.

However, if you search a little, you can find some really funky places on the internet to visit like the site above. This exhibit from the American Museum of Photography is titled Pulp Pix: The Bizarre Case of Photography Noir. It was so unique that I spent over an hour exploring it.

Well I gotta get back to my dishes so I can bring in 2009 with a bang! Till next year.

Finding the Perfect Gift

2008-12-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

I always make a point of going to Wal-Mart on February 14th around five-thirty in the afternoon. That’s about the time that the men in our community have gotten off work and suddenly realize that if they show up at their homes without something red, pink and sweet in their hands to give to their loved ones for Valentines Day; they will probably end up sleeping on the couch.

There’s a look about these men whether they are seventeen or sixty-seven that is so amusing to watch. Half panic half hope that somewhere in the depth of that super-store will be a gift both romantic enough to show that they care, and not reek of last minute desperation.

I bring this up because in many ways Valentines Day and Christmas are alike. Both holidays rely heavily on making the right choice in the gift department, and both are loaded with potential guilt if that goal is not achieved.

My teenage son came home from Christmas shopping the other night and told me that I was the hardest person he had to shop for. He couldn’t find anything he thought I’d like. I stared at him in dumbfound amazement. In my opinion, women are by far the easier sex to buy for, falling right there in line with pre-schoolers and family pets.

It’s men in general and teenagers specifically that are the mortal terror of gift buyers everywhere.

For instance, did you ever notice that the older a man gets, the more expensive his toy wishes. Maybe if I was Jennifer Lopez or Bill Gates I could actually give them those expensive big ticket items.

“Oh Mom, how did you know I wanted a 27 inch HD plasma TV with a high definition surround sound system for my bedroom. You’re the best!”

Although even if I could afford such pricey items, this plan would probably backfire too. I can just imagine it. Christmas morning me and my young adult son head out to the driveway where a brand new shiny silver BMW sits proudly, wrapped in a huge red ribbon. “Merry Christmas Son,” I’d say with pride, watching his face for that look of stunned pleasure.

Instead he’d study the new vehicle for a few minutes before shrugging his shoulders and saying “Yeah it’s nice, but I really wanted a blue one.”

Clothes shopping is not an option either, at least not without them standing over your shoulder and whispering in your ear, “Not THAT color. I wouldn’t be caught dead in those pants. Who do you think you’re dressing? Pee Wee Hermon?” I could actually blindfold myself, and walk through the men’s department picking some piece of clothing at random and have a better chance of pleasing my boys.

A young friend of mine (male of course) told me that his strategy is to ask his parents for one concrete item. Say a book or CD that he wants. Something clear and concise that they can’t mess up. Then he asks for money. Mom and Dad get the pleasure of giving him something they can watch him unwrap and he can spend the cash any way he chooses.

So what is a mother to do? Break down and give gifts of twenties and fifties? Condense the pile of brightly covered packages under the tree to a scattering of long narrow white envelopes? Take a second mortgage out on the house to give them those expensive gaming systems and electronics they want?

While meditating on my options, it suddenly came to me. I’m the mom here and it’s my job is to teach my kids what is really important in life. Things like how they should eat a few vegetables before digging into dessert, and the benefit of the frequent and liberal use of soap and deodorant. I’d managed to convince my kids that playing with matches, though definitely fun, was not a good idea if they intended to keep a wood roof over their heads. And if they put their shoes away, right when they took them off, it’s so much easier to find them the next morning. (Okay, we’re still working on that one.)

With this in mind, I knew that it was my responsibility to instruct my children on the true meaning of Christmas and the importance of recognizing the love and thought behind a gift. And who better to teach such principles than the woman who’d been receiving hand colored mother’s day cards and bouquets of dandelion flowers, presented by little people with sticky dirt covered fists for years.

So this Christmas, we cut back on how many gifts we are buying and how much money we spend. I’m putting my foot down and not allowing myself to let the season evolve into a guilt fest. I even turned on the All Christmas Music All Day Everyday Day Since Halloween Whether You Like It Or Not radio channel and sang along with Perry Como… and it wasn’t even Christmas eve.

Will it work? I don’t know but I have seen some promising signs. Next week I’ll tell you about our eleven year old son and his amazing seven days of Christmas.

Christmas Shopping - Enter At Your Own Risk

2008-12-01T08:42:00.000-08:00

Last week, my husband and I decided to attempt shopping the early morning sales on Black Friday. I had assumed that the term ‘black’ was a financial term, meaning that the stores did so well that they went from the red ink of loss to the black ink of profit. But after actually participating, I realize the connotation is more ominous and akin to ‘Black Plague’ or ‘Black Widow.’

I joke about this, but the after Thanksgiving sales are a big deal for retailers and they put a lot of marketing ideas and dollars into figuring out ways to beat out their competition for those early morning shoppers. For example, the earlier you open, the sooner Joe and Jane consumer can spend their hard earned cash at your establishment. Six, five and even four a.m. is not too early. And if a store’s sales are really extraordinary a tent village will spring up around your front door, signaling to the world that those five Wii games for 95% off are already history.

Some retailers give away freebees to encourage customers to shop at their stores. Donuts, coffee, hot cocoa… One year I stood in line for thirty minutes in sub freezing temperatures at five in the morning, with over two hundred other people, just to get the free hot wheel car they were handing out and the possibility of a $100 shopping spree if you got the lucky car. I didn’t win the prize, but after buying two more hot wheel cars at fifty cents each, I had a stocking stuffer for each of my three boys.

Once in the store, it didn’t take me long to realize what an amateur I was at this. I watched one large family arrive and work the store like a well oiled military machine. One person got in line, while the others fanned out through the aisles, cell phones turned on and in hand.

“This is Katelynn checking in, just got the Easy Bake Oven for 60% off.”

“They’re running low on Guitar Hero, can someone create a diversion while I grab the last two?”

“I’m up to the register in five, everyone back to base.”

And the lines, oh my goodness. You stand in them to get into the door and then you stand in them to get out. We spent more time in long serpentine chains that wove through the aisles and around the store than we ever did shopping. One enterprising department store had clerks walking up and down the lines promising a shorter check out at customer service for any customer willing to apply for their credit card. Kind of a sneaky retail form of blackmail.

By eleven oclock, we dragged back into the house, tired and foot weary. As we made our way into the bedroom with our super duper savings tucked under our arms, ready to be hidden away for wrapping, we were accosted by our teenage son.

“You already did your Christmas shopping?” he asked?

“Sure did,” his father said with a tired smile, “And we’ve bought all your gifts.”

“Are you crazy?” our darling son responded. “You don’t even know what I want!”

“You want what we got you and don’t forget it!”

The Case of the Missing Butter

2008-11-05T16:43:00.000-08:00

On becoming a mother, there have been many strange and unexpected surprises. Things I couldn’t have imagined encountering while I was still a single woman. For instance, I never realized how effectively one small child could destroy a previously clean room, simply by walking through it. Or the vast number of glasses three kids could dirty on one warm summer afternoon. (I washed over forty glasses one day in August, I actually counted!)

Or the things that come out of a Mom’s mouth. Things she never thought she would say like, “Can you please put that thing back in your underwear and go get your pants on!” or “Yes I’m glad that you love me sooooo much, but the question still stands. What time will you be home from the party?” Then there is my favorite spoken to a fifteen year old driving on a permit. “For pete’s sake don’t run into that parked car. I know the woman who owns it!”

But perhaps the most astonishing things about running a house are all the mysteries one encounters in the course of a normal week. Not even Perry Mason or Jessica Fletcher could keep up with the curious happenings I deal with.

Of course everyone knows about the missing sock mystery. Two go into the wash and one comes out of the dryer. But that it a relatively easy crime to solve. The washer and dryer (which are always placed side by side) create a two dimensional vortex which sucks in one sock, leaving its identical mate alone and useless in the world.

Perhaps the same is true for the one missing earring. I actually have a shoe box full of single earrings that I refuse to throw away in the hopes that the pirate look will come into vogue again and I’ll be set with my eye patch and single ear ornament.

But let me get on to the butter. Every week I buy two pounds of butter. That may seem like a lot to those of you without teenagers, but when your family lives on Mac and Cheese and cookie dough, like mine do, a pound barely covers it.

So I bought my boxes of butter on Saturday morning and on Saturday evening I decided I wanted a piece of buttered toast. (Now please don’t lecture me on my choice of snacks, because fat mixed with carbs is my very favorite!). I opened a cube, placed it on a dish, nuked it for exactly ten seconds (the magic number for just right soft butter) and then shaved off a bit and spread it on my bread.

The next afternoon (that would be Sunday) I again got a craving for buttered toast. I headed for the kitchen but try as I may, I could not find a trace of the butter from the day before. I didn’t even bother asking the kids. Something about our house causes a type of blind-amnesia among the children. They could be standing in the middle of a room during a gang war and afterwards they would all insist they hadn’t seen anything, and if they did, they couldn’t remember but it was undoubtedly all their brother or sister's fault.

I had no choice but to get another cube of butter. By Monday, that new cube of butter had disappeared too, and the same thing happened on Tuesday.

I considered various options. Perhaps someone was breaking into our house each night and stealing our slightly used butter, or maybe one of the kids was doing the dishes without being asked and simply washing the cube down the disposal before placing the plate in the dishwasher. But as both those options were equally as unlikely, I had to give up and admit I was stumped.

Then on Wednesday morning, I happened to be wearing my slippers and had entered the kitchen without making any noise, and there, with her big black paws up on the edge of the counter was our black lab, her long pink tongue stretched out as far as it would go, pulling the butter and the plate closer to the edge of the counter.

I thought I knew my household pretty well only to discover that my dog is a closet butter thief. It felt as if my whole world had been torn apart and I found myself pondering the next natural question. What is the cat up to?

Political Mumbo Jumbo

2008-10-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

During this, the season of political elections, like all of you, I’ve been bombarded with ads by candidates running for almost every office imaginable. Some of them are clever, some of them are dull, and some of them make absolutely no sense. Like one I heard the other day that ended with the catch phrase ‘Vote for so and so, because he cares’.

What exactly does ‘because he cares’ really mean and who or what does he claim to care about? I mean, everyone cares about something. Even hardened criminals with sleazy minds and horrible body odor care about stuff but that doesn’t make me want to vote for them.

Can’t they come up with something original for a change? Like, wouldn’t it be cool if a young adult knocked at your door and said, “My name is Susan and I represent Senator So and So who is running for President. Can I come in and mop your kitchen floor while I tell you why So and So cares about you?” I’d sure remember that in the voting booth, wouldn’t you?

Seriously though, what would really impress me is to be told the truth. I get so tired of hearing all those campaign promises that everyone knows a candidate can’t possibly keep. Like the kid in the 7th grade who promised, if elected as student counsel president, he would shorten school days, improve the food in the cafeteria and make the candy in the vending machine cheaper. Sure it sounded great, and he got elected, but the office just didn’t carry that kind of authority.

Is it too much to ask, to have leaders of our government who value honesty. Men and women who have the courage to do what is best for the people and not for the lobbyists? Who are more concerned with what is right than what is popular? Someone who’s character can withstand examination and who we can trust to lead our families and the rest of the nation with integrity?

I’m going to think about that next week when I go to vote, but in the mean time, if anyone hears about a candidate washing windows or scrubbing bathrooms, you let me know!

The Back to School Money Pit

2008-08-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

School is back in session! Is there a sweeter sentence in the whole English language? How I’ve longed for this day as the hot summer weeks have slowly run their course.

The house no longer rings with the endless chant of, ‘I don’t have anything to do. He’s calling me names. She won’t stay out of my room.’ And the never ending pile of plates and glasses, that represent the infinite state of my children’s appetites, has shrunk to a mere trickle.

Yet, I will be honest enough to admit, that August isn’t all about getting the kids out of the house and back to the learning environment where they belong. There is a negative side as well. I call it ‘The Back to School Money Pit’, and any parent of school age children knows exactly what I’m talking about.

First there are clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. The underwear and socks that worked perfectly well three month’s earlier are no longer sufficient for the needs of a new school year. And speaking of underwear, I was shopping with my daughter last week and she desperately wanted a package of Hannah Montana briefs. Now I can understand Spiderman or Powerpuff girl underwear. Those are cartoon characters, but how can Miss Miley Cirus sleep at night knowing that her face is sprawled across hundreds of little rear ends through out the country.

Once everyone is outfitted with brand new clothes and sneakers that will be worn out and need to be replaced before Halloween, a parent’s next stop is the school supply section. This area of the store spans about four aisles and takes as much space as the Easter and Valentine Candy displays combined. I saw six different styles of pencil and pen holders. Six! They stick the thing in their desk and it doesn’t immerge until school lets out in May. How fancy does it need to be?

And paper. Simple paper. It comes with various sizes of lines, in multiple colors and every design imaginable including of course, Hannah Montana so that little girls can match their notebooks to their panties.

Then of course there are the fees. Locker fees, activity card fees, text book fees, parking fees. How much can it possibly cost to maintain a locker for pete sakes?

By the time the cost of school lunches and equipment for extra curricular activities are figured in, a parent is lucky if they can still pay their mortgage.

Then the child gets into school and in less than a week they are lugging home the mandatory fundraiser catalog. Come on teachers. After all the money we’ve just had to spend getting the little monsters safely back into your classrooms, we’re the ones who ought to be holding fundraisers!

Still, I find myself thinking of that clever credit card ad, ‘New Jeans, $22.00, Three Ring Binder in Trojan Blue $7.98, Middle School Registration Fee $126.00. Having the house back to yourself – Priceless”

Technology to the Rescue

2008-08-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

I hate housecleaning. There I’ve admitted it, right here on the world wide internet.

Like so many things that are good for you, I find washing dishes and mopping floors mind-numbing and tedious. I get no joy making stains disappear from my counter tops or removing greasy dust from my kitchen blinds. To me, scrubbing out a toilet is akin to walking forty minutes on a treadmill while staring blankly at the wall.

Still I’m honest enough to admit that cleaning is necessary. Especially at my house. My children would happily wear the same t-shirt for seven days in a row, never allowing the scent of week old sweat to bother them in the least.

Of course, these are the same kids who would literally die of thirst in front of the water dispenser if they couldn’t find a clean glass in the cupboard. Far be it from them to actually pull a used cup from the sink and wash it.

The option to quit housework is simply out of the question, and so I’ve searched for something to hold my minds attention while my hands complete their repetitious tasks.

First it was music. Upbeat dancing music to be exact and I’m not ashamed to admit that the mop made an excellent dance partner. Across the floor we’d slide my hips shaking seductively to the beat. (I’ve been told that other loose parts of my anatomy also shook in less flattering ways, but I didn’t care). That may have been the perfect solution had it not been for that darn, wet, soapy floor.

The twisted ankle did get me out of housecleaning for a good week and a half but my husband insisted I find something other than music to help me keep my home tidy.

I considered a small portable television propped up in easy view of the stove, but my family has had bad experiences with televisions and kitchen work.

When I was young and my brother just a toddler, my mother use to watch TV while she cooked dinner. The program, (I don’t know what it was, but I’ve always suspected a soap opera) was interrupted by the noisy yowling of the family cat who wanted to go out in the back yard.

Without missing a beat or taking her eyes from the screen, mom scooped up the noisy animal, opened the door, plopped it on the patio and returned to the sink. A few minutes later she was again disturbed by the sound of the cat meowing near her feet.

My mother looked down and sure enough, little Fluffy was curling around her ankles. If the cat was here then what had she put outside. Glancing at the door, she saw my little brother, his chubby hands pressed against the glass of the door, peering in at her with a look of confusion.

Television was out of the question. Then the answer came. It was perfectly simple, physically safe and not visually distracting.

Now as I clean the fridge or make the beds, I’m listening to Dean Kootz’s Odd Thomas or Sue Grafton’s T is for Trespassing on my mp3 player. Miss Marple and I solve crimes while vacuuming the stairs and if I’m feeling really intelligent, I will search for clues with Mr. Sherlock Holmes. There is no chore so icky that a little murder and mayhem won’t brighten it up.

Audio books have been my savior. I get so lost in the plot that I’ve been known to work for hours on end. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I actually find things to clean.

The only downside is that I’ve had to give up talking to my husband and children. I mean you can’t follow the story line and explain what you’re cooking for dinner all at the same time can you?

This and That and More

2008-07-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, first off I must address an accusation made on this site, wherein I was called, (if you’re a squeamish type, please ignore the next few words) a ‘blog fibber’. This came as a result of my lack of fresh new material appearing on this site in the past few months.

First off, unless my accuser is my daughter, I had no idea that, A – Anyone else was looking at this but her, and B – That my site would turn up on a search engine on the internet and C – that summer would get so dang busy.

My suggestion would be that if you have enough time to read my rambling’s and worse yet, miss them when they don’t arrive, you really have way to much time on your hands.

That said, I would like to interrupt my absolutely fascinating and amusing rant on weight loss to address a more current and timely issue.

That grandbaby I alluded to in my first blog has arrived a few weeks earlier than expected.

For my daughter and her husband, this has thrown them into the pool of parenting stress suddenly and with a resounding splash. And so it should be. It’s all part of the circle of life, or as I prefer to say, what comes around goes around.

For me, there is a much bigger and more profound reality that I have been forced to deal with earlier than expected. It is the issue of GRANDMOTHER-ness.

When one says the word ‘grandma’ images of a kindly white haired lady, puttering around in a flowered house dress and ruffled pink apron come to mind. A constantly stocked cookie jar and a conspiratorial wink that lets some grandchild know that sugar highs are OK at granny’s house. And that clever and insightful wisdom that comes from finally having all your own children out and living on their own.

Please, that isn’t me. I have four children still living at home (five that I’m financially supporting). I’m still trying to lose the last five or ten or fifteen or… well it’s none of your business how much baby fat I’m still trying to get rid of -and the baby is sixteen. I haven’t figured out teenagers, how to have some paycheck left at the end of the month, or even what I want to be when I grow up. How can I possibly be ready for grandmotherhood?

And to make it all worse, the little guy is a doll. You don’t even have to be a grandma to feel that. (See http://ryantiff2005.blogspot.com/ )

So here is my suggestion. If a card company can invent a major holiday without a presidential decree or blessing from the Pope, then surely I, a humble mother myself, can create a new title in the family hierarchy.

I propose, grandmother-in-training. A position not quite up there with the saintly grandmamma but a little less responsible than mother. As a grandmother-in-training or GIT as I prefer to call it, I get out of all the same thing’s grandma’s do, such as, changing dirty diapers, getting up with a fussy baby, and having to wear the baby backpack when we go to the zoo. Those are clearly mommy things and I am not the mommy.

However, unlike a normal grandmother, I don’t have to be wise and know all the answers. I don’t have to put signs on my grass saying, “Grandchildren Spoiled Here”. I don’t have to drink prune juice or walk with a cane. I can continue pursuing my hobbies, wear normal clothes, and fantasize that the young man at the grocery check out counter thinks I’m pretty sexy for an older woman. (I said it was fantasy!)

Statistics say that we are living longer and longer every year. The stage of adolescents, that use to last until eighteen, has now dragged out through the twenties and even into the thirties for some people I know. If I could live to be one hundred and ten, I think that title of GIT isn’t just a nice thought, it’s a necessity!

And so I declare my independence. Yes, I do have a grandbaby who I adore, but I am also a GIT and proud of it. Take that tradition!

Weigh Out There Part 1

2008-05-21T14:08:00.000-07:00

I have these big round sunglasses that I like to wear when I drive, and my kids make fun of me and say that they make me look like a bug.

“Sunglasses are supposed to be narrow and sleek these days,” said my daughter, “Why do you insist on wearing those huge things?”

The answer was obvious. “Because they make my face look thinner.”

She stared in disbelief, a look only possible because she’s a young thin girl who’s never had to worry about her weight.

“It’s true,” I went on to explain. “Haven’t you ever seen those models wearing oversized sweaters that hang down to their knees and slide off their shoulders provocatively? They look incredibly thin.”

“They are incredibly thin,” corrected my daughter.

“OK, that’s true but the idea still goes. If you wear clothes two sizes too big for you, it makes people think you’ve lost weight. The same thing goes with sunglasses. The bigger the frames the smaller your face appears in comparison.”

“If you think you look too fat, why don’t you just exercise and go on a diet?”

I laughed out loud. “Sweetheart, weight loss is a process not an end result. Right now ninety-five percent of all women in America are preparing to go on diets, switching diets, cheating on diets, or recommitting to diets. The point is to look like you’re farther ahead on the diet carousel than you actually are.”

My daughter might not appreciate the fact yet, but woman like me can actually qualify as experts in the field of weight loss. For example, during my stint with Weight Watchers, I knew exactly how to get the lowest numbers on my weekly meeting weigh-in. I used the restroom just before I stepped on the scale and of course I chose my clothing carefully. Only at a Weight Watchers meeting will you find woman dressed in tank tops and thin cotton shorts in ten degree weather.

But that’s only the beginning. I’ve learned how to make diet shakes more palatable with the addition of healthy and sometimes not so healthy ingredients. I’ve drunk so many glasses of water; I couldn’t pass a bathroom without making a visit. I’ve eaten veggies and fruits till I felt like a rabbit, and even tried the new-diet-math theory that states; if you eat a candy bar and drink a diet soda at the same meal the calories will cancel each other out.

(to be continued next week…)

A Mother's Day Lament

2008-05-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Another Mother’s Day has come and gone… thank goodness. That painful holiday jam packed with guilty, insecurity and unrealistic expectations. If you’re a mother, particularly a mother of teens, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

So, Sunday morning my children surprise me with breakfast in bed. And a complete breakfast it was. Scrambled eggs, home made pancakes with home made strawberry jam on top, sausage links, fresh squeezed orange juice and two slices of dark but not burned toast smeared liberally with honey.

It was a sweet thought, I kept telling myself as I loaded the second dishwasher full of breakfast dishes into the machine and scrubbed the last of the red berry stains off the ceiling. And besides, it’s the thought that counts; too bad my children didn’t just think about making me breakfast!

As mothers we have this sort of mixed up emotional expectation associated with the second Sunday in May. On the one hand, we want our children, for just a few minutes, to stop and realize how much hard work, blood, sweat and tears we have put out on their behalf. Perhaps a little appreciation for the twenty some odd years of clean laundry, healthy meals and on call chauffeuring services.

On the other hand, we don’t want them to look too closely at our parenting skills and remember things like the time we left them in the restroom at the gas station or how we got mad at them for leaving the milk out, only to remember that we used it last.

There’s the image of the model mother we hold in our head:
Constantly baking cookies and home made bread, hand ironing all her families clothing, and a cheerful smile and wise word always on her lips.
And the reality of day to day life:
Peanut butter for breakfast (just peanut butter), a freezer full of pre-made Stouffers meals, the -if the clothes smell clean then they are- test, and ‘it’s that time of the month so stay away’.

I guess all a mother can really do, is try her hardest to be a good mom, and open a high yield savings account to pay for the therapy her children will require when they’re adults.

For the Love of Email?

2008-05-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

In my rather lengthy life, I have had a very close relationship with the good old US mail service. There was nothing better than getting an envelope, hand addressed and maybe with a cute sticker on the back. Who knew what that envelope might contain, an invitation to a wedding, a note from your aunt in Wisconsin or sometimes, even a love letter!

But despite my affection for snail-mail, I was more than ready to jump on the email band wagon. By using my computer I can drop a line to a friend on the other side of the country and hear back from her within the hour. And my fingers don’t get sore like when I use to write three page letters by hand.

However, like all things, there is a dark side to internet communication, and I’m sure you all know what it is. Junk mail!

The other day I received an email in my in-box with the subject line, ‘Get use to being BIG…’

I stopped right there. Can some one please tell me; in what possible way could that subject line be inviting?

I don’t ever remember getting ads in the regular mail asking if I wanted larger breasts, and the closest thing to pornography was the underwear section of the Wal-Mart circular. Yet, for some reason my in-box is inundated with this type of garbage.

Is there some profile of me sitting out there in cyberspace that describes me as an underdeveloped, overweight, male/female, in need of more debt, gullible enough to invest money in illegal overseas accounts and sexually perverted?

I also get a kick out of the ‘helpful’ emails I receive from friends and family, warning me about the dangers of chorine soaked baby carrots, lead in red lip sticks and those horrible poisonous spiders that lurk under toilet seats in public bathrooms waiting to sink their little fangs into my protruding… well, enough of that one, but you get the idea.

I shouldn’t be surprised. These are the same people who, in college, sat up till all hours of the night debating the reality of a dead rodent accidentally fried with a batch of chicken at a local restaurant, or the likelihood of chocolate covered bugs lurking among our favorite candy.

And who has the time to sit around, making this stuff up. I’m guessing it’s the same genius who created the dancing baby, or maybe the sicko who programs destructive computer viruses that look like greetings from long lost friends. Someone with way too much time on their hands.

And speaking of time, I’m afraid I gotta run. I just received an email about the dangers of seatbelts that absolutely have to read.

Till next week…

Not Your Mother's Blog? Actually it is!

2008-04-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

I hate the whole concept of blogging. It reeks of the quote 'Enough about me, lets talk about you...what do you think about me.' So why, you may ask, would I then stoop to join the blog eat blog world?

Let me tell you a story. My oldest daughter is married and pregnant with my first grandchild. As you can imagine, I'm thrilled and anxious to stay up to date with every single detail. I called her a few weeks ago and asked how things were going.

"Haven't you read my blog?" she asked. "You know, the place where I write all about what’s happening to me and my family and how I feel about it. I even have pictures of my growing belly and my latest ultrasound on my site.”

I looked up the term BLOG on the Internet and according to http://www.simplehostfinder.com/, “A BLOG is a publication of personal thoughts, experiences, and web links. It is updated frequently and is usually a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the web or in the media. ...”

In other words, it's like inviting a bunch of people to your home who sit around, listen to you talk, and then are invited to comment or ask questions about what you’d said. Kind of like an Amway presentation.

“Can’t you just tell me how you’re doing right now or do I have to check the computer?” I asked.
“Of course I could tell you," she answered. "But what would be the point? Everything you could possible want to know about me is already sitting out there in cyber-space.”

I felt a chill run through my spine. “And when my grand baby is born?”

“We will update the Blog of course!”

Alas, just like people on hands free cell phones who appear to be talking to themselves in the grocery aisle or automated customer service helplines that know the answer to every ones question but yours, blogs are here to stay.

I could hold out and be like Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote, hanging on to the old technology of the typewriter, instead of embracing computer word processing, but why. Those hot young techno nerds in Silicon Valley and Japan will just keep coming up with more and more annoying ways to make my life (better?). Who am I to get in their way?

And besides, how will I ever find out the sex of my new grandchild if I'm not blogging?

But just because I'm giving in doesn't mean I have to sell out. I'm a writer, and the job of a writer is to entertain. And trust me, life is just jam packed with crazy and entertaining things, especially mine.

So if you choose to visit my blog in the future, I promise to update it weekly with stories and antidotes that will put a smile on your face and give you something to chuckle about. (And if not, you know where the door is right?)