Why I'm chunky and what I'm doing about it

I had a baby a little while ago

my baby

and I'm still struggling with the baby weight. I've decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and get things back under control.  According to the insurance weight tables, I'm overweight.  Here's a picture of a perfectly healthy person according to those tables:

  I'm. So. HUNGRY!

Just kidding.  I'm sure she's on the thin side of those tables. Probably. The only reason I am overweight is because of having stupid babies. My body was perfect before.  My legs seemed longer and more gazelle-like, and not at all out of proportion with my long torso and short t-rex arms.  Pregnancy is a cruel mistress.  My weight issues are not because I have a niggling emotional problem, like Oprah always says, or because I am drawn to and totally in love with full-fat Cheez-its. (did you know they are made with lard?) (seriously, I ate so many once that I thought Mitch would have to take me to the vet to get my stomach unflipped.)

Mmmmmm.... cheezy, salty lard......

I can't help it if lard is delicious.  Pie crusts, Cheez-its, flaky perfect goodness.......

Anyway, what was I saying?  Oh, yes.  I'm getting in shape and healthy.  I'm getting my pre-pregnancy body back and you know who is helping me?  Stupid Jillian Michaels from The Biggest Loser.  I got her DVD called "30 Day Shred" because I've heard it is a super workout and it's only 20 minutes long.  I am not a fan of Jillian Michaels.  I think she's kind of dumb and mean and melodramatic and I'm a little bit afraid of her angry mouth, but I thought I'd put my feelings aside because I need a good workout DVD.  Even the title annoys me: 30 Day Shred.  What exactly is a shred?  Isn't that a verb?  If you really want to push it I suppose it could be an adjective but it is definitely not a noun, stupid Jillian. 

There are three workouts on this DVD and I'm still in the beginner stage.  I'm motivated to get in shape enough to move on to the intermediate workout if only because then I won't have to listen to her stupid voice saying the same stupid things that she says in this particular workout.  She says if we want to get in shape we have to "fight for it," as in "Come on! One more! FIGHT FOR IT!"  After I fight for it I get to "own it."  The process for "owning it" involves "digging for it."  "It," I'm assuming is good health and a shapely body.  I hope that's what it is.  Maybe I shouldn't assume.  Maybe "it" is something bad that I don't want.  She never really clarifies what exactly "it" is.

Another thing that bothers me about this workout is that Jillian is wearing sweatpants made for a six year old.  Seriously, they are skin tight and only go to her knees.  Not stylish, Jillian.

Sweatpants courtesy of Gymboree

But what bothers me the most is that I need to do this in the first place.  I have a muffin top and cottage cheese thighs (Mmmmmmm... muffins and cottage cheeeeeeeeeeese...) and I'm kind of mad at myself for letting it happen.  But it's not my fault.  Oprah, Cheez-its, and Kira are ultimately the ones to blame.

(Am I "owning it" yet, Jillian?)

Summer is rotting Kira's brain

Kira: It would be cool if you could unscrew your arms and take them off.  

Mitch:  Why would you want to take your arms off?

Kira: Because then you could take them off and slap people with them!

Mitch:  What would you hold your unscrewed arms with?

Kira: .........Oh.  I never thought of that.

Wood-carved Man

This is a little wood-carved man that I've had forever.  I don't remember where I got it but I've had it longer than I've had kids.  I hung it up in the downstairs bathroom when we moved in and never gave it a second thought but apparently it has caused my poor kids some stress.  Sam told me that when he was very small he thought it was God.  Not just an image of God, but God himself.  Hanging in the bathroom.  In our basement.  He said he was very afraid of it so he wouldn't use that bathroom.

Kira said when she was very small she thought it was a poop-carving.  As in a piece of poop that was dried and carved.  She said she thought it was poop because it was hanging in the bathroom.  What better place is there to hang your poop-carving than in the bathroom? (Touché, Kira.  Touché.)  She was totally grossed out by it so that was why she wouldn't use that bathroom. 

It's funny how some things that make no impression on you as an adult, make such a huge impression on kids.  When I was really little I can remember asking my dad how big the moon was:

Me:  Dad, how big is the moon?
Dad: Really big.
Me:  How big?
Dad: Bigger than you think.
Me:  How big?
Dad: Well, if it was here with us now it would fill up this whole room!
Me:  WOW!  The whole room!?  That's huge!

I know my dad will deny having this conversation because he probably doesn't ever remember having it.  But I remember it like it was yesterday.  It was the day I learned that the moon would completely fill up our entire living room, and that was fascinatingly large because back then I thought it was about the size of a basketball.  A few years later I learned that my dad doesn't know very much about astronomy.

In the context of the wood-carving man, what have my kids learned about me?  Back when Sam was little he thought I had God held captive in the scary basement bathroom with the spiders and the furnace.  He probably learned that I was a powerful bitch and he better not cross me, which would explain why he's always been so well behaved.  Kira thought I was the kind of person who would use poop as a decoration and she probably learned that because she has a mother who hangs poop on the walls, ANYTHING GOES!  Which explains her lack of self-discipline (or any other kind of discipline).

I wonder how our lives would be different if I never had that little wood-carved man?  The downstairs bathroom would have seen more use, that's for sure.

Summer Camp

Did you ever go to camp in the summer?  I did.  I went to Little Elk Ranch horse camp.  It was co-ed and when we got there we were assigned a horse and it was ours for the week.  In the morning we did a few hours of arena exercises (to practice for the rodeo at the end of the week) and in the afternoon we went on long trail rides.  When we were done with the horses for the day, we could do other stuff like swim or play flag football.  Sounds fun doesn't it?  It was. There is a picture of me on the last day of horse camp with my horse and it is possibly one of the dorkiest pictures ever taken of anyone in the world.  I have asked my sister to find it and send it to me and then I will post it.  Until she sends it, (and as a motivator,) I will put this picture of her here as a place-holder:

Actually, this is both my sisters.  

Beth is the little Scottish maiden with the awesome white-man's overbite.  

Amy is the one with the side pony.  

I went to camp with my sisters and my friend Susie when I was about 12.  Susie thought she was SO cool because she got to bring her sister's "fashion" cowboy boots and they had super high heels. Honestly, I was a little jealous at first because I had what my mom called "practical" cowboy boots, until I saw Susie walking around with her knees bent to keep herself from toppling over forward.  THAT had to be tiresome, but she wouldn't admit it. 

My horse was named Tomahawk and he was a real jerk.  On the trail rides he tried to brush me off whenever he saw a low-hanging branch, even if it wasn't technically on the trail.  When I had his stall all cleaned up and the shovel and rake put away he took a huge dump and it wasn't just a coincidence because he did it every single day.  We never really bonded.  I sometimes wonder what happened to old Tomahawk.  My sister Beth had a horse named Joharra and she told me she fell off of it once.  I never heard of a kid falling off a horse at Little Elk Ranch but she said it was more of a slow motion slide in the saddle because she didn't tighten the straps enough. 

We slept in huge bunkhouses with about 15 or 20 girls to a room and a counselor.  One time the counselors were all off somewhere together and we got pretty rowdy in our room and someone had a maxi-pad (scandalous for the middle-school set) and she stuck it on one of the blades of the ceiling fan.  At the time, I thought that was about the most hilarious thing I had ever seen anyone do.  Now it's not that big a deal.  (I have a pad on my fan right now and I'm not even cracking a smile.)

You know what wasn't fun about camp?  The craft room.  It was hot and stinky and the crafts sucked ass.  I only did crafts once.  I made a Native-American style choker with beads but it broke right away because I didn't tie the end-knot well enough.  Swimming was also a bit of a drag because I was a really good swimmer and we were only allowed to go up to about waist deep in a tiny roped off area of a big lake. You know what else sucks?  Flag football.  I knew I would hate it but the counselors made us try everything once.  Having a boy you don't know who's faster and stronger than you chase you and rip off a piece of clothing is not very fun.  It was like stranger-rape practice for everyone.  Not cool. 

The rodeo at the end of the week was a blast.  Parents and grandparents came and we had events that we participated in.  I don't remember what Tomahawk and I did but I'm sure it was mediocre (thanks a lot, Tomahawk!)  Everyone got ribbons and then we went home.

Does anyone go to camp anymore?  Did you go?

Hey bugs, why don't you go flour your nuts

Mowing the lawn was once my favorite chore and I don't really know why because I get scratched up and strangled almost every time by the murderous trees all over the yard.  Today I was mowing the lawn and because it rained this morning, every time I would mow near one of the dozens of pine trees, I would get soaked with water that would make me sharply inhale with it's bracing freezingness.  On one of these pine-tree-passes, I deeply inhaled a bug.  I think it was a fly of some sort because I didn't feel any beetle-like hardness.  I immediately started coughing so hard that I had to stop the mower so I could gag and have some melodramatic dry heaves.  I couldn't get it up.  It's still stuck down there deep in the lowest part of my lung and as I sit here I can feel it irritating the lining of my lung and I know I'll get a cyst that turns into an infection that turns into pneumonia that will result in an ugly, undignified, and early death.  People will have conversations like this:

friend #1 - Did you hear about Sarah?
friend #2 - Sarah who?
friend #1 - Sarah Lindahl
friend #2 - Oh yeah, isn't she the one who loves dollar store tuna and has a skin 'stache?
friend #1 - Well, she had a skin 'stache, but I think you're thinking of her sister, Beth.
friend #2 - Anyway, what about her?
friend #1 - She DIED.
friend #2 - Oh My God!  From what?
friend #1 - Guess.
friend #2 - Cancer?  Car accident? Oh, I know, it was a drug overdose, wasn't it?
friend #1 - No.  She inhaled a bug!
friend #2 -.............
friend #1 - ..............
friend #2 - Shut up.
friend #1 - I'm not even kidding.
both friends together: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
friend #2 - Oh, that's a good one!  I can't wait to tell everyone I know!
friend #1 - I know, right?

and I won't be remembered for all my good deeds and how I made this part of the world just a little brighter, they will just be talking about how I died from breathing in a bug. 

The other night when Mitch and I went to the movie I'm pretty sure I ate a bug.  I got a popcorn and ate the entire thing, and then I was eating the pieces I dropped on my front and I think I had one of these bugs on me:

and I mistook it for a piece of popcorn and ate it.  I think it was this kind of bug because that was about the size of it and I find about ten of these on me every time I go outside.  It had a very strong taste to it that was definitely not a piece of popcorn.  You know how lady-bugs smell when you vacuum them or squash them?  It was kind of like that but just different enough so I don't think it was a lady-bug.  That taste stayed with me for a long, long time and totally ruined the popcorn.

"You Should....."

...Those are the two words I hate hearing more than just about anything else.  Actually, I guess I would rather hear a "you should" statement than hear "you have head lice," but those statements both evoke very negative feelings.  I would be more panicked about the head lice and would be considering the extensive cleaning-of-the-house I'd have to do and I would be contemplating burning everything my head has ever touched, including my hair.  I guess "you should..." is more annoying than alarming.  When I hear that statement I assume that the person that said it thinks I'm an idiot.  Someone telling me I have head lice would be doing me a favor (if it was true. It would NOT be a funny joke, FYI.)

Some people can be forgiven for the "you should" statement.  My grandma is constantly telling me what I should and shouldn't do but she's in her nineties and has been around the block, so I will actually either listen to her, or ignore her (mostly ignore).  When my parent's "you should" me, I choose to think of it as being funny as opposed to incredibly annoying because they still think I'm 14 and their "you should" statements are usually so stupidly obvious.  "Are you going to cut that watermelon?  You should use a knife." or "Are you going outside?  You should bring a jacket."

The only time I appreciate a good "you should" is when it comes to books I should read, although I've been pointed to a few real stinkers, so I'm inclined not to listen anymore.  "You should read Left Behind!  It changed my life!"  (Nobody should read Left Behind.)

What really annoys me is when people who have no kids tell me things I should be doing with my kids.  Or people telling me obvious things, like I should get in shape, or visit every continent, or recycle, or floss, or take a shower.  No duh.  Do I look like I need to be bossed?  I don't.  And I'm just obstinate enough to do the opposite of what was suggested which is counterproductive for everyone because the "you should" suggestions are usually pretty good.  I wanted to quit drinking diet Coke a few years ago and then someone said, "You should stop drinking that.  Even the diet stuff rots your teeth."  I thought, oh GREAT!  Now I have to drink this for the rest of my life and I can't even go to the dentist because somebody told me I should do that too!

So when I hear someone say "You should..." to me (unless it's a dare. I love a good dare. Or if it's something sensible like "you should let a doctor cut that off instead of doing it yourself."); the first time is an alarm and I'm really listening, and if I hear another, it's over, my bossy non-friend who thinks I need the direction only you can give.

Leo has a nice forehead and Mitch is an old liar

Last night Mitch and I went to see the movie Inception with Leo DiCaprio.  I thought it was great!  Thrill a minute.  Fantastic romp.  I might have to see it again because I don't really get the whole shared dream concept, but I suspect there isn't much in the way of explanation that I missed.  The special effects were fantastic and I don't usually notice this, but I loved the musical score too.  There was one intense scene and the music swelled and actually made the theater vibrate.  I couldn't help but squeal and had to stop myself from clapping like a three-year-old.  I mostly liked it because of Leo DiCaprio's forehead.  If there was a contest for best forehead in the world, he would win hands down.  It's so broad and handsome.  I'd like to bite it as hard as I can right on the little wrinkles between his eyebrows.  Is that weird?  

On the way home Mitch and I got to talking about going to Canadian bars when we were 18 (it was right across the border) and where I preferred to go.  Then he asked me this:  "Did you ever go to the socials?"

Okay, something you should know about Mitch; he says he's 39, but according to his childhood experiences, he should be about 100.  Here is the evidence:
1.  He and his neighborhood friends used to play games like kick the can and stickball.
2.  When he was little he remembers shopping with his mother at the general store and the butcher shop.
3.  His mother used to buy cheese in wheels.
4.  This was his first bike:

(Just kidding)

5.  The newest evidence:  he went to socials.

He told me that the socials were held at the Fort Frances arena and beer was 25 cents.  He also told me that the man who took tickets for the socials was the father of a friend and was employed as a prospector, which immediately makes me get this picture in my mind:

 Either Mitch is a lot older than he told me he is, or he's a fantastic liar.  If anyone reading this remembers socials at the Fort Frances Arena, or who can verify that Shannon McSomething's dad was a prospector, please comment below, or email me.  Mitch and I have a bet riding on this.  He says he can prove it was true but I need independent verification.  

EXTRA EXTRA! Mitch's first job.

My graceful little mermaid girl

Kids, Summer, blah blah blah

I'm back home from my weekend at the lake.  I was planning on bringing the kids back with me, but they begged to stay there and horn in on their grandparent's vacation time.  My MIL half-heartedly said, "We like having them here, you can leave them if you want," instead of,  "Fuck no, take them with you NOW!" so I left them there.  Bluff offered; bluff called.  Checkmate, Julie, check and mate.

I remembered my camera and took some pictures.

This is Kira with her flippers on.  She never takes them off.  She can really move in the water and on land with them on.  I took some movies that are HILARIOUS, but I haven't been able to get them to play on my computer so I have to try to fix it.  Then maybe I'll post one.

The kids caught two small-mouth bass off the dock and put them in a cooler full of water to stew for the day.  One died and then a million tiny bugs came off of it.  Sea lice? Plankton?  I'll have to google it.

This is my baby niece.  She's 18 months old and the bossiest person I know. She kept crawling in and out of the boat and didn't want to do anything else, so her poor mother had to hover over her while she got in the boat, out of the boat, in the boat, out of the boat.  Somebody said, "I wonder why babies like to go back and forth like that?" and Amy said, "Because babies are jerks."

The little boss actually hugged me and gave me a few painful kisses on this visit.  (Someone should teach her that there are no teeth involved in kisses.) Since she gets almost everything she wants, I've come up with a few rules to live by that I'm going to start employing in my everyday life so I can get everything I want too. 

How to get what you want, according to my niece, Sid: 

1.  If someone does something you don't like, arch your back and scream NOOOOOOO!!!!

2.  If you eat a food you don't like, make a dramatic show of your distaste and let the food drop out of your mouth onto your plate, and then throw the remaining offending food on the floor.

3.  If you see a cute boy, show him your admiration by doing the following:  a) Throw yourself face first into furniture, hard enough so you bounce back and fall on the floor. Repeat.  b) Get his attention, then dramatically collapse to the floor and laugh maniacally.  c) Throw things at him. d) Run laps around the room at your top speed and squeal. d) When he least expects it, launch yourself into his lap.

4.  If someone is talking to you about something you don't want to hear, bend over at the waist and pretend to be interested in something on the floor until they leave.

5.  If you're hot, get naked.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The Stink Wall

Several years ago Mitch and I bought a house out in the country that was in move-in condition.  So we moved in.  Unbeknownst (what a stupid word) to us, the house was already occupied by dozens if not hundreds (probably thousands) of mice.  Having mice was a novelty to me and my city-girl ways, and I thought they were kind of cute when I'd see one occasionally run across the mantel or under the genuine leather Naugahyde-padded breakfast bar.  They seemed so sweet and polite, being quiet, staying out of the limelight.  They had cute little ears and gigantic brown eyes.

Awwwwww....

What's not to like?  Hello, Nature!  Come on in and live with us!  I felt a little like Snow White with all her bird and mouse friends. 

Then we decided to remodel the basement.  We started by taking out the fireplace.  There was cheap lava rock on top of black grout on top of brick which housed the mouse equivalent of Mexico City.  There was more insulation in there than there is in any one of our walls, all brought in by nesting mice.  There was a ton of poop pellets, along with about 5 pounds of pilfered dog food and cereal.  That's when I realized that this had to be more than just a few mice who lived here when we moved in, and my plan of simply outliving them wasn't going to work. That's when I began my war.

I set traps and caught some every single day.  I thought I would catch the ones in the house and that would be the end of it.  I discovered that the little bastards were really drawn to my laundry room garbage can, and could jump in, but it was too tall for them to jump back out.  I went down to do a load one morning and saw 5 pairs of little brown eyes looking up at me.  I showed everyone in the family, made the kids cry when I told them we would NOT be keeping them as pets, and then brought them out the backdoor and set them free.  They ran right back to the house.  The next morning I caught 4 mice in the garbage can.  I couldn't let them go because they would come right back so I had to kill them.  But how?  It was a real dilemma.  I had never killed anything in my life and I really didn't want to kill these 4 adorable little fellow-mammals.  Mitch told me to stick my leg in there and stomp them.  Barbaric.  I couldn't do that.  Then he told me to drown them.  I couldn't do that either.  He acted all exasperated by my unwillingness to commit murder and said, "Fine, I'll do it!" and I'm pretty sure he just tipped the can over where I couldn't see and let them go.

As the months of the mouse war dragged on, my heart grew colder and I became a killing machine.  I started to enjoy emptying mouse traps and one day my friend Jonelle found me methodically smooshing the life out of the garbage-can mice with a baseball bat, butter-churn style (the last one was always the fastest), and she screamed and wretched like I was disembowling infants (melodramatic much?) Mice seemed to be drawn to my house because of the readily available supply of bird seed and dog food and they were somehow gaining easy access.

Meanwhile, one of the basement walls had a *smell.*  We called it the stink wall, as in:

Kid:  Mom!  Where is my yoga ball?

Mom:  Check next to the stink-wall, I think I saw it there.

The stink wall, remodeled

The smell was faint and animal-ish so I chose to assume it was because of the dog crate and cleaned it until it was cleaner than any room in the house.  The smell was still there.  I cleaned the carpet.  The smell was still there.  I told Mitch, who said it was probably mold or something.  When he took the wall apart, he discovered that a two foot section of wall (which was hidden under cheap paneling... Jealous?) was eaten away, as well as a huge section of the particle board under the siding.  In between the siding and paneling there was no actual wall left.  It was stuffed full of mouse corpses.  Stuffed.  Full.   It was a load-bearing mouse graveyard.  Mitch had to literally shovel them out. 

In the past ten years we have discovered two things that we once thought were awesome, but have since found out totally suck:  Nature and home-ownership.

Nature makes me look foolish

I know it's popular to be green and be in love with the earth, and I agree with it (for the most part) but come on, people, I think we are starting to get blinded by our love of unspoiled habitat and clean water.  Let's not forget that Mother Nature has a really ugly side:

  Nature's ugly side

She needs to be put in her place every once in a while, and if that has to be done with deadly chemicals SO BE IT.

 (Nature also has a stupid-looking side)

"Why are you so mad at Nature now?" you ask me.  It's the usual, spiders.  Nothing can ruin a stay at the cabin like a gigantic spider crawling across the dock 6 inches in front of your face as you are coming up the ladder in the dark.  Did it make me scream in a manner that was totally out of proportion to the event?  Why, yes it did.  Did it make my sisters think I was being brutally murdered by "Skeleton Hand" who Amy is pretty sure lives under the dock?  Yes.  Did it make me have the heebie jeebies and totally ruin my relaxation from the sauna?  YES.  Was I awake spastically slapping random itches and lint for several hours?

I think you know the answer.

While I was awake, I was mad at myself for being so afraid of something so small and supposedly beneficial.  As I've been told a million times (by smug know-it-alls), we NEED the spiders because if they weren't here we would be completely overrun by other bugs. But why do we need the other bugs?  I spent the afternoon on the dock fighting with ONE fly that kept landing on me over and over and over and over.  Annoying.  You'd think the fly would get tired of doing that, but it didn't. I tried to ignore it by thinking of how people in Australia are so overrun with flies that they totally ignore them even when they are crawling around in the snot trails going from their baby's noses to their mouths.  But I couldn't because my friend Pete sent me something the other day that said,

"Houseflies feed on feces, open sores, sputum, and moist decaying organic matter such as spoiled food, eggs and flesh. Houseflies can take in only liquid foods. They spit out saliva on solid foods to predigest it, and then suck it back in. They also regurgitate partly digested matter and pass it again to the abdomen."

Enchanting!  Are you still in love with nature?

When I wasn't slapping at that one annoying fly that preferred to spit and predigest on me over everyone else including wet dogs, I was scratching the mosquito bites on my ankles.

Besides spreading disease and being food for terrifying spiders and equally horrifying bats, what good are the flies and mosquitoes? I know that being in favor of causing the extinction of species is not a popular position to take in the current cultural climate, but really, would anyone be sad to see flies and spiders (and bats, and pandas, and leeches) gone?  Think of all the good outdoor time you could have without them.

"I sleep in your patio umbrella and scare the life out of you when you go outside to read your book!" 

Midsummer Reminder

Have I lost my coolness? Did I ever have it?

I got a new swimsuit to replace my suit after all the funny I-can-see-right-through-your-suit-and-I'm-guessing-you're-of-a-swarthy-Eastern-European-decent looks I got at the beach last time I wore it.  Here it is:

I thought it was kind of cute and got it because: a) it's got a very busy fat-confusing print, and b) it was the only one Shopko had in my size.  There wasn't much to choose from because they were all picked over because apparently other people buy suits before mid-July so it was either this one or one with a skirt.  I showed Mitch and he said, "Holy mom-suit."  Do you think this looks like a mom-suit?  I have apparently lost my ability to judge the coolness of clothes because I also got some new jeans which I was feeling pretty cool in and Mitch laughed at them.  And let's face it, he's no fashion plate.

Maybe there is something to this whole "moms aren't cool" thing.  I remember when my sisters and I were kids and we'd go to my Grandma's cabin and look at my Grandma and her sister's swimsuits that were hanging in the boat house and laugh and laugh because they were so stiff it looked like someone was in them when they were hanging on their hooks.  I would kill for one of those suits now. 

I got it home and noticed this on the tag:

Yeah, that's right, Bust Minimizer.  Who needs that?  Not me.  Also, I think it's cute that they think they can control my tummy.  

Seizure time!

I'm going up to Northern MN this weekend to visit with parents and in-laws and sisters and my favorite aunt (sorry Donna, you're #2) and I thought I should forgo the peep show for the relatives at the cabin.  The kids have already been up there for a while which has left Mitch and I with a blissful few days (bow chicka wow wow) of not settling kid fights, no meal preparation and not having to worry about being caught watching Family Guy ("Hey!  Why can't we watch it?  It's a cartoon!"), but now I'm starting to miss them.  Kira wrote me a short note that said, "Hi.  I got scared by a duck.  It's a long story."  I can't wait to hear it.
See ya!

I won an award! For this blog! No, YOU Shut up!

I got an email yesterday from someone named Emma Lee and this is what it said:

Dear Sarah,

Congratulations! Emma Lee here, and your blog, So.. what else?, has

received our 2010 Top 45 Humor Blogs award!

You can see your name amongst our winners here at:

www.onlinemba.com/top_humor/#So_what_else

Winners were chosen through a scoring system led by internet nominations,

which came from your reader base!

This is either the most exciting thing to happen to me in my entire blogging life, or else it is a very clever computer virus, and now because I opened an email and clicked on all the links, my computer is being used by terrorists without me even knowing it.  But who cares!  I won an award!

This came as a total surprise to me because believe it or not I didn't even nominate myself.  Whoever did put my name in, thank you very much!  I'm very flattered.  I read lots of really good blogs but I don't ever imagine that I will get any recognition or financial compensation for telling the internet about why I hate pandas or how Virgin Mary stains look like vaginas (to me), or how my b.o. smells like delicious meatballs.  The reward for writing this blog is writing this blog and anything else (readers, comments, awards, huge bundles of cash) is just gravy.

(mmmmmmm.....graaaaavvvvvvvvyyyyyyyyy.....)

Adding some Sizzle!

I just googled "blog post ideas" because I'm too lazy to think of something to write all on my own.  I came across a site that said, "101 great blog posting ideas that will make your blog sizzle!"  I'm not sure I want my blog to start sizzling, but I'm going to try out number seven: "take an alternate position."

This, of course, involves me having to think about some topic that everyone agrees on and then taking the opposite position.  What could that topic be?  My first idea was to write about why Winnie the Pooh and Piglet are such dicks because they live in huge mansion trees all alone, offering their hospitality to one another on the occasional blustery day, meanwhile their clinically depressed friend Eeyore is trying his mightiest to live under a bunch of propped up sticks in the middle of the Hundred Acre Wood.  I have actually been thinking about this a lot since reading a post on The Sassy Curmudgeon's blog that brought this controversy to my attention.  But I reject this as a writing idea for today because when you think about it, who is going to disagree that Pooh and Piglet are assholes when you think about them in the context of Eeyore?  Nobody, that's who.

Oh yeah, Eeyore's birthday is also on Christmas. Let's name all the dicks in the Eeyore controversy:

1. Pooh

2.  Piglet

3.  Christopher Robin (take care of your toys equally, you racist.)

4.  Everyone else in the Hundred Acre Wood who calls himself Eeyore's friend.

5.  The person on photobucket (where I stole this picture) who thought a sad picture of Eeyore, alone on his birthday/Christmas, in his stick house would make a good homemade birthday card for someone.

6.  A.A. Milne

So then I thought I'd try to take this position:  Mel Gibson is NOT mean and crazy.  That's topical, and everyone who has listened to his phone calls to his lucky lucky girlfriend obviously thinks he's mean and crazy, but try as I might, I can't find one single thing that would point to him not being crazy.  He's going to kill someone and he scares the crap out of me to the point where last night I had a low-grade nightmare about running into him at the grocery store.  Yikes.  (Let me just give you this little tip:  if your run into Mel in the grocery store and you both reach for the same package of string cheese, just let him have it. It's not worth the fight.)

Am I sizzling yet?

No, I didn't think so.  I'm too lazy to post anything sizzling today.

Worst Date Ever

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately about horrifying (and hilarious) dates people have gone on.  It seems to be a theme, so I'm getting in on it too.  (And so are you, in the comments.)

One time just after high school a boy I liked asked me out and I said yes.  He thought it would be fun to go "bird" hunting.  Okay, whatever.  I wasn't picky.  As long as they bought me food I was game for anything.

I wouldn't exactly call myself an "outdoorsy" person.  I like to go outside when it's between 70 and 85 degrees, with little or no wind, and lots of sun.  That is, of course, unless I'm sunburned from the last time it was 70 to 85, not windy and sunny.  Then I'd rather just sit in the shade and read a book.  I knew this was going to be an outdoor date and in my mind I pictured us walking hand in hand lazily along a nice path in a sun-dappled forest.  I really really hoped no birds would actually get hunted because I like birds and I hate the smell of gun powder.

There was no sun-dappled forest, and no lazy hand-holding walk.  He picked me up in a filthy SUV and he had a gigantic golden retriever with him.  I was a little disappointed to also see a gun.  I was kind of hoping "bird-hunting" was date-code for "going in the woods and making out," but apparently, he really did want to take me to kill animals.  Fun.

I guess I never knew what bird hunting involved.  I always thought it was just walking through the woods looking for partridge and then shooting them.  I never gave much thought to what happens after that.  As far as I knew, they just magically appeared on a platter, cooked to a perfect golden brown, and tasted delicious.  Oh, how wrong I was. 

First of all, there was no walking in the woods.  We drove along a rutted dirt road going about 25 miles an hour, and if I knew I was going to have to withstand so much jostling, I would have worn a sports bra, but my date spent all his time with his head out the window and his eyes peeled for birds, oblivious to any jostling or discomfort.  He couldn't hear anything I said with his head out the window either and whenever he saw me talking he would say, "Are you looking for birds?"  No, no I wasn't.   I was mostly holding my boobs and fighting with his dog who was a little put out that I was sitting in his regular spot.  Neither one of us wanted to sit on the garbage on the floor, or on the garbage in the back seat. 

Suddenly Mr. Wonderful slammed on the brakes and he and the dog jumped out of the truck and I heard a shot.  I got out to see the dog jump into a flooded ditch, swim across and then race into the woods, coming back with a partridge.  I was proudly shown the dead bird (ew) and then to my horror, my date bent over, stepped on the little birdy's feet, pulled on his wings, and the feet and guts all came out at once.  Oh my god, that was about the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. Five minutes before that little bird was just minding his own business, sitting in a tree, probably thinking about how cool it is to lay eggs, and then boom:  he was shot, then a dog got him, then his little feet were stepped on and he no longer had guts.  I must have looked as horrified as I felt because Mr. W. said, "Are you okay?  That's how it's done.  I thought everyone knew that."  (I did NOT know that...Did you know that?)  Then he asked me if I wanted to try to shoot one and handed me the stinky gun.  Um... No thanks.

We got back in the truck, and the dog, who was now dripping wet with ditch water sat in my seat before I could get there.  The seat was soaked.  Mr. W. shooed him out of the seat and offered it to me (ah chivalry), and I sat in it for about five seconds and then my pants were soaked, so I kneeled on the garbage with my arms up on the dash instead.  The dog saw that I was not going to be using my seat, so he jumped up from the back seat to reclaim his spot.  Like all dogs, he had to turn around a few times before he could sit, and on one of the passes he stopped with his wet ass by my face and let out a total wind fart.  It just went "hoooooo" with no resistance at all right on my cheek.  I could actually feel the wind of it.  Mr. W. saw this and laughed so hard I thought we would crash.  I told him I wanted to go home, and to his credit, he turned right around and headed home, still laughing.

But wait, we still haven't come to the worst part of the date yet.

He kept his head out the window on the way back, still hunting for birds.  I was watching him and I saw him not-so-secretly pick a huge booger out of his nose and then leave it on his finger in the wind.  He happened to glance at me and saw what I'm sure was a look of absolute disgust and said, "What? I'm letting it dry."

I'm not even kidding. 

What was your worst date?

Meet ya at the Choke and Puke

  Jackie Gleason, Sally Field, and Burt Reynolds (NOT Norm MacDonald)

How can I be almost forty years old, a child of the seventies and eighties, and know hardly ANY CB language? (huh, DAD?)  We rented Smokey and the Bandit for Sam last night.  It was made in 1977 so I was eight when it came out.  I know I must have seen it but I didn't remember the movie, I just remembered the sound track of Jerry Reed singing every single mundane thing Burt Reynolds does.  (I might have had the cassette tape of that.) 

Anyway, do you know what a "Choke and Puke" is?  It's a truck stop in CB language.  That is a term I would have liked to have known before yesterday.  That got me thinking about what other wonderful terminology I've been missing out on so I looked up a CB language website and I've come to the conclusion that 1970s truckers were funny in an embarrassing, dorky kind of way, and they must have been really bored on those long trips to come up with an almost complete slang language of dorkiness, and also: there weren't enough books on tape.  Is that a big 10-4? (do you understand/agree?)

Do you remember seeing that movie?  It was funny because Burt Reynolds reminded me of Norm MacDonald's impression of Burt Reynolds.

Sally Field sure was cute but she's apparently always had an old lady voice.  Jerry Reed was a friendly psycho (anyone who repeatedly screams into a radio for no reason at all is a little bit crazy, even if it is for a movie).  And Jackie Gleason made me laugh every single time he was on the screen.  ("Gimme a diablo samich and a Docta Peppa!") That movie is worth seeing just for him. 

What was with the obsession with semi-trucks in the 70's?  Aside from the Smokey and the Bandit movies, you've also got Convoy the movie (and the wonderful song), BJ and the Bear (featuring BJ's ladyfriend, "Stacks"), White Line Fever, CB Hustlers etc. etc. etc. 

Apparently highway safety, fuel economy and trains were not very popular in the 1970s. 

This, that, and the other

  Kira and Kolten

I brought Kira and Kolten, her neighbor friend, with me to Wal-mart yesterday.  When kids are in the backseat of the car and I'm in the front it's like they forget I'm there or they think I can't hear them because normally Kolten is silent around grown-ups.  Ten year-olds talk in a series of rapid non-sequiturs.  Here's an example of their conversation:

Kira - Maybe I'll get some new flip-flops.
Kolten - My foot is the exact same size as our digital TV remote.
Kira - I'm going to buy a fish today.
Kolten - I'm going to buy a pufferfish.
Kira - My cousin is saving her money to buy a pygmy elephant.
Kolten - What's a pygmy?
Kira - I don't know but I think it's something small.
Kolten - Camaros are my favorite kind of car.
Kira - Do you like wiener-dogs? 
Kolten - How many fish do you think I should get?
Kira - How much money do you have?
Kolten - I don't think my mom would like if I got fish.
Kira - When we get in there let's run wild.
Kolten - Have you ever had pigs in a blanket?

And on and on.  I pretended I didn't hear a word they were saying and when we got to Wal-mart I told them, "Okay, here's the rules: No fish and no running wild."  They both looked at me like I was some sort of wizard, and Kira said, "How ...?"

Kids aren't very smart.

Today we got up early and drove to Floodwood because they were having a chicken swap.  They didn't have much there.  A few little goats, a bunch of different kinds of birds, free kittens, some rabbits and some puppies.  Not the best swap I've ever been to.  Of course Kira and I wanted to get a new puppy, but Mitch said no, which I see the wisdom in now that I'm home and don't have my judgment clouded by milk-breath and loose puppy skin.  Do I really want to spend the rest of my summer cleaning up someone else's crap?  No.  I guess I don't.  But man, were they ever cute.  They looked a lot like this but they were just a little cuter:

They were also celebrating Catfish Days in Floodwood, but it's not much of a celebration.  There was a street blocked off and a bunch of food wagons and that's about it.  They didn't even have any catfish, which was weird, but they did have mini-donuts and that made the trip worth it.

Watch out Martha Stewart! (seriously, watch your back)

When Kira got up she said, "Today I think I'll make a weapon," and then she got busy and wouldn't let me see what she was doing until she was finished. Mitch and Sam are gone today so I'm alone with her. While she was working I was thinking to myself, Why would she have to make a weapon? She already has a bow and arrow and a slingshot. Why spend time crafting another? What is she going to do to me?  If I scream will anyone hear me?

When she finished I was in the bathroom cleaning up. She threw open the door and threatened me with this:

A mace. How very medieval. I wonder if they have a weapons category in 4H?

Eighteen things about Eclipse, (the most awesome vampire movie of the summer of 2010) in no particular order:

What I liked:

1. The apparent shirt-poverty amongst the werewolf boys.
2. The fact that Edward totally looks like a vampire and nobody seems to notice. You can see it from a mile away! Are people in Forks, WA. blind or what?!
3. The way Edward sparkles.
4. Bella's hair.
5. All of Charlie's lines.
6. Awesome vampire/werewolf on newborn vampire slow-motion combat.
7. The sound of vampires getting dismembered. (Sounds like metal shattering.)
8. The Cullen's house, except you'd have to carry groceries up two flights of stairs to the kitchen. But who cares if you're a vampire and you're super strong and don't have to buy groceries anyway!
9. Jasper's and Rosalee's background stories. Jasper was a Civil War Veteran/Vampire warrior, Rosalee was a spurned, brutally-violated human, only to become a bitter, vengeful vampire. (Turns out Rosalee has bad taste in men as a human and as a vampire. Raaarrr!)

What I didn't like:

1. Jasper's creepy bug eyes.
2. Emmett's hair. (Actually everything about Emmett.)
3. Rosalee's eyebrows
4. Bella's engagement ring. (It's flat and huge with diamond chips. Edward is a gajillionaire, he could have done better. She's going to catch that thing on the toilet seat whenever she wipes, and everytime that happens she will love Edward a little less.
5. I can't figure out what vampires are made of. They seem pliable enough but when they get hit hard they shatter. I think they must be like silly putty.
6. Carlisle's accent. What kind of accent is that? The fake kind, that's what.
7. There wasn't enough Jessica. She was outstanding in New Moon.
8. Bryce Howard as Victoria. Bad hair, bad make-up. Her hair reminded me of my old Strawberry Shortcake doll.
9. Bella's disregard for personal space.

Beachwear

The family went to the lake today to test out Mitch's secret boat and what I expect is also a secret motor too, but I don't know, and in the interest of a smooth and carefree marriage, I'm not asking.  It was a gorgeous day.  HOT.  I went swimming for the first time this year.

When I put on my swimsuit I was in kind of a rush and wasn't really paying attention and only noticed that it's quite loose.  I silently congratulated myself for having such an awesome body while eating enough for a family of four and not exercising at all, and then went on my way.  When I got to the beach I realized that over the past year my cheap, emergency, K-mart, mom-suit had lost all structural integrity and it was a lot like wearing tissue paper.  I'm pretty sure it was see through as well because of all the stunned body looks I got and also because Kira yelled, "I can see right through your suit!" 

Mitch was much more fashionable in his new shirt/towel.  His mom invented shirt/towels in the seventies.  She takes beach towel and cuts a hole in the middle (for the head) and then crochets around the neckhole and crochets the sides shut.  The first time I ever saw a shirt towel was at Johnson's cabin when Mitch and I were first dating.  His mom got him a towel that had a picture of a humpback whale on it and it said, "Humpback Whale."   Imagine my surprise when my new boyfriend came down to the dock wearing a crocheted together towel that said "Hump" on the front.  Apparently the word "whale" was sacrificed for the neck hole. 

His new shirt/towel (it's a shirt, it's a towel, it's a shirt, no! it's a towel!) is much more fashionable and I took a picture of it but when he saw me writing on my computer he said, "Just so you know, my new shirt/towel and I are private," so sorry, no pictures.  

Happy Birthday, America!

Today I'm going to honor the spirit of the holiday by writing an essay about what freedom means to me.  Enjoy. 

What Freedom Means To Me

by Sarah 

Freedom to me is most importantly the power of making a choice.  For example, I had a choice to make yesterday at the liquor store parking lot when a kid scared the bejesus out of me by throwing one of those little white snappy things at my feet.  I could have said, "Holy shit, you little bastard!" and then kicked him in his rednecky little shins, which was my first instinct.  But then the power of choice came over me and I decided to take the high road and simply (and kindly) scream, "WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS?!" 

I didn't just give in to my first instinct because I have lived a life of freedom and I'm used to making choices every day.  Because of that simple choice I DIDN'T abuse a strange child, which some might say is a good thing because if I did, I might have had to spend a night in jail which would severely cramp my freedom on this day of independence. 

Happy 4th of July, Everybody (except the little bastard kid at the liquor store)!

Is there a statute of limitations on incredulousness?

Because Mitch said there is.  When he ever-so-casually said he might take "the boat" out to the lake today, I thought about it for a few seconds.  It couldn't be his orange boat because he gave it to his brother-in-law, it couldn't be "my" boat that he surprised me with once because it's not seaworthy, it couldn't be the houseboat because that's in the garden covered with a tarp, it couldn't be the aluminum boat because that's up at Rainy Lake.

So which boat could it possibly be???  We don't have any other boats! He said he was done buying boats.

Turns out he secretly bought another boat last year and hid it in the woods until the statute of limitations on spousal incredulousness had expired.  Now it's out in the open and according to him, it's too late for me to get upset about it. 

I don't happen to think there is a statute of limitations on incredulousness.  I think I can be incredulous about this for the rest of my life.  So I'm putting it out there to all my long-married friends:  Is there really such a thing as the statute of limitations on incredulousness and why haven't I heard of it?  If there really is such a thing, I think the rule would be that he would have to park the boat so I could see it somewhere and just not mention it.  Hiding it in the woods for a year was cheating.  Don't you agree?  I think I win on a technicality.

The sad romantic history of my old roommate Michelle

I went to see Eclipse today and then went to Red Lobster and then got home just in time for Magnum.  IT DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT!  Anyway, I'm not going to write my review of Eclipse today because I have to let it simmer in my mind a little bit.  I might have to see it again because about 2/3 of the way through I had to go to the bathroom super bad and began thinking more about how full my bladder was instead of how awesome vampire/human romance is.

What I'm going to tell you about today is my old friend Michelle.  She was my college roommate in the dorms my sophomore year of college.  I was supposed to have a room by myself and for one blissful week I did, and then Michelle moved in with her stupid red fur blanket and one-eyed-goldfish and toothed frog.  She was pissed off because she didn't want to be in school at all and her dad was making her, and I was pissed off because I didn't want a roommate.  To top it off she was thin and blond and busty.  Yeah, I really needed to compete with that.  Helping her move in was her incredibly stupid boyfriend, Brent, who was also a total dick.  I knew he was stupid right away because after hauling a load of her crap into our room he looked around and said, "How do you get out of this place?"  It was a dorm room.  One room, one door.  I just gaped at him and said, "......um.....the door," and he turned around and saw the door and said, "Oh."  I automatically assumed that Michelle was just as stupid, but she wasn't so her relationship with Brent boggled my mind.  When we got over our initial pissiness we got along great.  But that's not the point of this post.  The point is that Brent was the first in a longish line of traumatic and hilarious relationships Michelle had while we were in college.

Michelle had this ridiculous idea of what a relationship should be.  She needed to be treated like a lady and was mortified by anything gross, or crude, or tacky from anyone who she was intimate with.  It was weird because she and I had extensive discussions about varieties of body cheese and pooping experiences.  I think she was limiting herself by not allowing those topics in her romantic relationships.  Mitch and I have spent literally hours talking about things in the gross, crude and tacky categories.  I think it has brought us closer.  

Michelle went out with Brent for a long time and went through many ups and downs but what finally broke them up was when they were at a party together and they were talking to some friends. Brent started laughing really hard about something and accidentally farted kind of loudly.  Michelle thought farting was unforgivable and Brent knew it so when he saw the look of mortification on her face he locked himself in the bathroom and cried and wouldn't come out.  It was a huge scene.  The party host finally got him to unlock the door so he could talk to Brent. The whole party could hear Brent bawling uncontrollably.  Michelle broke up with him that night. It was horrible for her, but when she came home and told me about it I literally peed my pants laughing. 

 Michelle and her dick boyfriend, Brent the farter

I thought she should have broken up with him long before that for a million other reasons.  Like the time he called our room in the middle of the night because he got arrested and needed to be bailed out.  He didn't even get arrested for anything cool like protesting or art heist.  What he did was purposely run over his mother's neighbor's garbage cans in a fit of vengeance for some stupid thing.  And then he got caught.  By the police.  And because he was such an asshole, he got arrested.  What a DICK. 

One time they had plans for a fancy dinner date and Michelle was fussing over what she would wear.  I suggested an "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt and she thought that was mean and told me that I didn't know him well enough and he wasn't that dumb and I shouldn't be so judgemental, blah blah blah.  Earlier in the day they had gone shopping at the mall and he got a burgundy turtleneck and a pair of neon green shorts on clearance.  As Michelle was giving me my lecture, I could see him out the window getting out of his car.  He was wearing the burgundy turtleneck and the green shorts together.  For their fancy date.  When she saw him she said, "Oh, Brent, no." and they had to go back to his house so he could change.

After Brent, she briefly went out with another guy named Eric who was also incredibly stupid, but much more likeable and he didn't live with his mother, so that was a plus.  He had his own apartment which at the time was super cool and grownup!  One time we went on a double date and Eric was talking about skiing in Colorado.  He said, "It snowed a ton that first night, like....like...FEETS."  Feets of snow.  It wasn't just a slip of the tongue either because he said "feets" two more times.  I would have broke up with him for that, but she didn't.  She broke up with him because he liked porn. 

Eric went home for the weekend once and Michelle was staying at his apartment.  She called me in a panic and told me I needed to come over right away because she needed help. It was an EMERGENCY!  I was worried that she was hurt or something so of course I went over.  She was in a tizzy because she found a tape in his VCR titled "Splash Shots" and she was worried it was a porn.  She wanted me to watch a few seconds of it and tell her for sure one way or the other.  She couldn't bring herself to watch even two seconds of it.  I said fine, I would do that and as I was about to start the tape she shrieked, "MAKE SURE THE SOUND IS OFF!"  Turns out it was a porn and she sat next to me with her eyes squeezed shut, her hands over her ears (just in case I didn't turn the sound off, which I didn't) and holding her breath.  I said, "Don't worry, it's not a porn," and she opened her eyes to see a disgustingly graphic pool orgy.  (Ha ha, that was funny!)  She was mortified and cleared out of his apartment and never spoke to him again because she was pretty sure he was a problem-masturbator.  (He probably was.)

A few years later she was dating a stupid but nice body-builder who she really liked.  He was very sweet,  like a labrador retriever.  One time when they were getting intimate he was overcome by her beauty and his feelings and he said, "I just love your.... your....bazongas."  Bazongas!   She told me she got up, started gathering her clothes and was saying, "No, no, no, no, no, ....."  He was probably Mr. Right but he lost any chance he had by saying the word bazongas.  I'll have to include that little tip the next time Sam and I have "the talk."  (don't say bazongas to your girlfriend)  He'll appreciate that.  That reminds me of the time that Mitch's mother watched an Oprah episode about how teenagers were accidentally dying while practicing auto-erotic asphyxiation so she felt it was her motherly duty to warn her sons of the dangers of using props while masturbating.  Apparently it was mortifying for all parties.  But they're all still alive!  Better safe than sorry!

Quality Time

The kids and I took an overnight road trip yesterday.  We drove up the North Shore of Lake Superior to Grand Marais, stayed the night there in a cabin at a resort right on the beach and then toured the crap out of the sites on the shore on the way home today.  The purpose of this trip was to make some awesome memories and spend some quality time together.  Yeah!  Fuck yeah!  Quality time!

Oh, sorry, got a little carried away there with my outstanding mothering skillZ! 

It was really fun.  I wanted some time to hold my kids captive and drill into their heads that they are each other's closest relative and they will grow old together so they should learn to love each other and be friends.  Now I'm pretty sure they think I have a terminal illness and I'm going to die before the end of the summer and they will both have nervous break-downs trying to be good for their poor sick mother.  Oh well!  Whatever works!

 I bet you didn't know this about my kids,  Sam is a normal sized person and Kira is TINY.  

While it was nice and sunny out we spent some time on the beach.  This is a picture of Sam and Kira sitting RIGHT next to each other on a MILE LONG BEACH, bickering.  They actually pulled their chairs up that close to each other for the sole purpose of annoying each other. Progress!

We stopped at Palisade Head, which is a 2500 foot cliff (I don't know if it's that high, but it seemed that high.  I was 2500-feet-nauseous, I can tell you that.)  Kira was annoying and enjoying the hell out of herself, and Sam DIDN'T push her off!  He was sullen and angsty though, but so what, KIRA IS STILL ALIVE! YAY!

What was she doing that was so annoying, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  She had to sit in the back because Sam had to sit in the back yesterday.  When she gets sick of riding, she ups the obnoxious level until it's unbearable and hilarious all at the same time.  Today she decided to speak in an accent which was a cross between a Southern hillbilly (but somehow, from what she was saying, she thinks it was a western accent) and the Target Lady from SNL.  LOUDLY. 

Kira:  That there horse had more hair on him than a wooly mammoth, wouldn't ya say, m'boy!
Sam: Kira, shut up.
Kira:  "Whoa there fella, Pa said yer not s'pose to say shut up to me, m'boy!"
Me:  (laughing and trying to pull it together enough to tell her to tone it down.)
Kira:  Do y'all ever get any wind storms 'round these parts?
Sam:  Mom, Please tell her to be quiet!
Kira:  'Cause out in the West we have a good wind storm 'round abouts every other week!
Sam:  Ugh, can't you drive any faster?
Kira: Ma, you take it easy on that little ole gas pedal, we're in no hurry!
(merciful silence for a few minutes...)
Kira: I sure does wish I could snap! (she can't snap her fingers.)

and on and on and on for miles and miles and miles.