Mommy's Precious Angel Baby Boy (Sorry, Sam)

Sam is in his senior year of high school.  Can you believe it?  I can't.  He had his senior pictures taken over the summer.

I remember when he started middle school.  The summer before he started sixth grade at his new school Kira, Sam and I drove over to the school to for a tour.  There was a big sign over the front door that said, "Home of the Hawks!"

Kira looked at it and said, "Hey Sam, when you go here you'll be a hog."

Sam said smugly, "Kira!  That sign says HAWKS, not HOGS!"

Kira said, "...I know what it says."

It was a pretty good burn for a second grader.

The first day of ninth grade I drove Sam to school.  He was a little nervous about starting high school.  We were listening to the radio and a new song came on that I liked so I turned it up to try to lighten the mood.  It was a good song:  happy, lots of whistling.  I didn't understand the lyrics because I'm old, but I thought it was saying something about a bucket.  Sam looked at me like I was weird.  Later I figured out why.  The song I was blasting for my baby on the first day of high school was "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People.  It's all about a kid shooting other kids in a school shooting type scenario.  The lyrics weren't saying, "[something something] my bucket!"  They were saying, "run better run, faster than my bullet"  HAVE A GREAT FIRST DAY OF HIGH SCHOOL, HONEY!!!

Pretty soon my baby will be graduating from high school and will be a college boy.  He has big dreams of getting his own place and making tons of money and being an independent man.  I have big dreams of him staying at home and going to the community college a few blocks from my work and carpooling together every single day.

I think some compromises might have to be made.   

Chores

I am a mother with a full-time job (still celebrating that), two teenagers, and a house.  When I started working I thought to myself, "Hey, why should I spend every one of my weekends cleaning up the house and doing shitloads of laundry?  There are two nearly grown people who live with us who have lots of time to kill. They can help.  Last year I made a daily chore list and one of them would do half one day and then they'd switch and do the other half the next day.  Well, it became kind of a competition to see who could leave a bigger mess for the other the following day.

For example, Kira would have dishes one day and she'd do a half-assed job of doing the dinner dishes, putting the plates and silverware in the dishwasher and not starting it even though it was jam-packed, but then "soaking" the cooking pans and "forgetting" anything left on the stove.  So the next day Sam would have the dishes and he would start the dishwasher, but then he would have to "soak" all of that day's dishes because they couldn't fit into the dishwasher.  Meanwhile, on Kira's kitchen day, Sam's chore would be to do the laundry.  If you do a load of laundry a day, it doesn't pile up and isn't that hard to keep up with.  Well, he would throw one load in the washer, and then MAYBE put that load in the dryer, but he couldn't be bothered to turn the dryer dial far enough so it goes long enough to actually dry a load of clothes, so when the dryer stops they are still damp, but he brings them up anyway to fold, but then doesn't fold them.  So he leaves a load of wet clothes in the washer, a load of damp clothes in the dryer, and a load of too-damp clothes in a heap on the couch.  The reason he has three loads is because when Kira had laundry day she "forgot" to do it.  And so on and so on and so on.

So this year I thought I would get creative and make them do one set of chores for an entire week and then switch over on Sunday.  I made charts:

I hang them on the fridge with a hanging pencil, like at the bank, and the kids have to check off what they do when they do it.  I thought it was INGENIOUS.  I could hardly wait to show Mitch.  I envisioned us high-fiving and celebrating my super-parenting with a gin and tonic.   When I finally got to show him he looked at me with pity, and said, "You know that they are never going to let you live this down.  This is what you will be remembered for."

Sure enough, when Sam got home and I told him all about the new system, he looked at me with a smirk on his face like I was kidding.  I AM NOT KIDDING!  I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO DO THIS SHIT!  He said, "Okay, it's a good idea, I guess.  I'll get started.  Let's see, first thing on my list is to empty the dishwasher.  But look, Mom, it's empty so should I cross it off?  I can't cross it off because I haven't done it.  But if I don't do that chore can I move on to the next one?  What if I don't have all my checks?  Will I lose credit?"  and so on.  And then later he called down the stairs to me, "Hey Mom!  Are you sure I can't give the bird dirty water?  I really feel like I should give the bird dirty water, but the list specifically says 'clean water is important.'  So what should I do?"

But you know what?  Every stupidly specific thing I put on that list is on there because they have done something stupid to require the specificity.  They will say they cleaned the bird cage and then I look and her water is almost gone and full of bird shit.  That's not done right.  And when I call them on their shitty work they say, "Oh.  I forgot."  Really?  I FORGOT?

The chore lists aren't working as well as I had hoped.  Right now as I'm typing this I am looking at a sink full of dishes, shoes and school bags crowding the back door, and laundry in various stages all over the living room.   So I will throw this out there to the internet:  How do you get your teenagers to be actually helpful and productive without driving yourself nuts?  Anyone know?  .................Anyone?  

New Babies!

Mitch mowed under some stuff yesterday that hasn't been mowed under for quite a while and he found a wild rabbit nest.  I won't go into the details about that except we now have three baby bunnies!  Yay!

Normally I would be nervous about raising wild baby animals, but there is something you probably don't know about me: I am a rabbit whisperer.  I don't like to brag.  I raised a wild baby bunny several years ago and it was way smaller than these babies are.  He grew up and went off into the wild and I am sure fathered several generations of rabbits.  These bunnies are probably his great great great great great great great great (ad infinitum) grandbunnies.  I bet he is still hopping around out there somewhere remembering fondly his time with his human mother.

These babies are at least three weeks old, and would probably be fine out in the wild by themselves but there has to be some transition between being all snug in a nest to traumatically not being all snug in a nest, right?  I'm going to keep them for a while, feed them some kitten formula and freshly picked dandelion greens and let them grow a little and then set them free.  Maybe.

I was reading some stuff on the internet about caring for baby bunnies and one of the sites said I should let nature take its course and leave them alone because they would be better off without my interference. Maybe their mother would meet up with them again and they would be fine???  That's supposedly better than having me for a mom?  Please.  I might not be the greatest parent in the world but I am a way better mother than a rabbit.  Has a rabbit ever successfully raised two human babies?  No, but I have. And I have a dwelling free (mostly) of parasites and mosquitoes not made (primarily) with my own body hair.  If a rabbit has a question about raising a rabbit, can it Google it?  No.  They can't even read. Can a rabbit offer these babies protection from predators (and lawnmowers)? Obviously not.  Would their bio mom sit and cuddle with them while watching several episodes of Orange Is The New Black?  No.  Rabbits don't get Netflix.  Can you imagine: No Netflix??? Jesus.

So these babies are going to hang out with me for while, burrowing deeply into my robe sleeves, eating, and growing.  Then we'll see about transitioning them to the next stage in their lives which hopefully won't include getting eaten by raccoons.

Oh also, in the middle of the night I heard something on the deck so I got up to look and it was three baby raccoons eating dog food out of Maisy's dish.  They were cute but fiendish.

There are Hotdogs in the Fridge

Last night Mitch and I came home from a weekend at the lake and discovered that while we were gone Sam cleaned the house and did a bunch of chores because he was home alone.  The house was literally cleaner when I got home than it was when I left. " Now THAT's how to raise a child!  GOD I'm a fantastic parent!"  I thought smugly to myself.  After Sam told me that he put my clean laundry in my room and that the dishes in the dishwasher were clean, he went to bed.

I put in the movie Chasing Mavericks about a kid who wants to surf monster waves and gets a pseudo foster father to help him do it.  I was watching the movie, still feeling pretty satisfied about what an OUTSTANDING parent I am, when I saw that the kid in the movie had the world's shittiest mother.  The first time we see her in the movie she is drunk, sleeping a bender off, totally oblivious that her kid almost died in the ocean and got a ride home from a strange man in a VAN.  When the kid came home he tucked her in and she rolled over and said, "There's hotdogs in the fridge," and passed out again.  Then he poured her booze down the drain.  "Oh.  That's too bad," I thought.  "He's not as lucky as Sam."

And then later in the movie the kid, who is about the same age as Sam, was heading out the door and he said something about how he washed the laundry and the dishes, and his mom's uniform was pressed and on her bed.  "Hmm,"  I thought, "I'm having a feeling of deja vu.  Weird."  Then I thought back to before I left my baby for my weekend of leisure while he stayed here and worked and cleaned the house, I actually said the words, "There are hotdogs in the fridge!"

"Oh. My. God,"  I thought.  Is Sam so good because he has to be?  Am I the shitty mother from Chasing Mavericks?  Is Sam the parent in our relationship and I'm so shitty I never even realized it???  Memories started flooding back:
~The time when he was a toddler and we played with a tiny plastic Sammy and Mommy dolls and he always wanted to be Mommy:  at the time I thought it was because he loved me so much.  I now suspect he was modeling proper Mommy behavior for me.
~The time when he was about five and was telling me a story about my dad and said, "...and then Grandpa (you know, your dad) said I could...."  At the time I thought he was a good story teller, but now I suspect he thought I was an idiot because I couldn't put together that his grandpa is my dad.
~When he would always insist on holding my hand in the grocery store parking lot; at the time I thought it was because he loved me so much.  Now I think he was guiding me safely to the store.

My child has been raising me for his whole life and I never even realized it.  Holy shit.  What does this mean?
I think it means I should write a parenting book because HOLY SHIT, I AM AN AWESOME MOTHER!!! Have you SEEN how good my son is?  IN YOUR FACE!  (That will be the title of my parenting book - In Your Face! or maybe Holy Shit I am an Awesome Mother!  or maybe There are Hotdogs in the Fridge)  I'll have Sam start working on a first draft.

Now that we are all clear on who is doing the parenting and who is being parented in this house, I have some bones to pick with Sam about how Kira is turning out.

When Did I Get So Embarrassing?

Sam is an unusual kid.  He's always been so good and helpful and sweet.  Yesterday his bed wasn't made and I said, jokingly, "I see that summer vacation for you means a vacation from bed-making," and without missing a beat he turned around with candy in his hand and said, "What do I have to do to make this problem go away?"  He knows me so well.

He went through the briefest phase where he was a little embarrassed when I would drop him off at the bus stop wearing my pajamas, but he didn't show it until I started doing the cabbage patch dance and then he asked me firmly but politely to "PLEASE STOP DOING THAT!"  And one time when he had a choir concert at his middle school he walked ahead of Kira and me instead of next to us.  I attributed this to him being annoyed with Kira and didn't think it had anything to do with me. Maybe I was wrong.  I got him back by taking a bunch of pictures of how cute he was in his skin-tight black pants that were too tight around his adorable frog-body.

But Kira, who is 13 now, is mortified by my very existence.  Unless I am blending into the woodwork like I'm invisible, she is totally embarrassed.  I dropped her off at hockey the other day and said, "Bye," and later when she got home she told me that I didn't need to say bye to her.  I said, "Why not?  I just wanted you to know I was leaving!"  and she said, "Mom, please."  I think this new mom-phobia she has can be cured with immersion therapy.  I need to start truly being embarrassing.  Here is a list of things I am considering doing when I'm out in public with her, please add your ideas in the comments:

1.  Black out a tooth.

2.  Wear shorts and a bikini top with long socks and sneakers.

3.  Wear bandaids on my face.

4.  Communicate with her only through interpretive robot dancing.

5.  Stop bathing.

6.  Wear an "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt.

7.  Start talking in a cockneyed British accent.

8.  Ask where they keep the bras at every store, gas station, and restaurant we go in.

9.  Do a dance mob routine without the accompanying mob.

10.  Introduce myself to people by saying, "Hello, I'm Kira's mother, nice to meet you." 

Some weird pictures

Sam had a wild eyebrow hair so we took a picture of it.  I was holding it out and I was no where near the end when I snapped this picture. 

Kira practiced some first-aid last night.  Now she knows just what to do if she ever sprains her face. 

My son is the best

Sam is in tenth grade and he is taking biology.  He has a classmate who is autistic.  One day when they were having a lecture on geneology, and for some reason it freaked the autistic kid out.  He was really uncomfortable with the subject and asked Sam if they could hold hands so it would be easier to get through it.  So Sam did. 

My son is the best. 

The Most Dangerous Gun

Kira: Dad, what do you think the most dangerous gun is made of?

Mitch: Cyanide

Kira: No I mean, what is the most dangerous gun?

Mitch:  I don't know.  An Uzi?

Kira:  I think it would be a gun that shoots gum.  You could shoot it into someone's mouth and they'd choke on it.

Sam:  What if someone right behind them gave them the Heimlich?

Kira:  Wouldn't work.  Gum is too sticky.

Sam: No it isn't!

Kira: Sure it is, watch.

(She then lodges her own gum in a position to block her own throat.  You know, to prove her stupid point.  Being that she's still alive and did not choke to death, Sam was proven to be right.)

Kira:  Oh, you're right, it slides right down.

Sam:  ..... Oh my god.

I'm Elderly

My boy got his driver's license.  I have a son who DRIVES A CAR BY HIMSELF.  God, I'm old.  

Movie Review: Les Miserables

I went to see Les Miserables on New Year's Day.  It. Was. Awesome.  You should see it.  The only part I had a problem with was when Jean Valjean dragged an unconscious and flesh-wounded Marius through a fully functioning sewer.  Not very hygienic.  The people of revolutionary Paris needed more fiber.  Yuck.  It reminded me of the time when Sam was five years old and he broke his leg.  He had an external fixator that he had to wear for a couple of months.  It was an external bar that was screwed into his femur in three places so he had open wounds that I was responsible for keeping free from infection.  Talk about stress.  The doctor only made it worse by saying, "If there is any redness or fever bring him to an emergency room IMMEDIATELY!"  Needless to say I was frantic most of the time for those couple of months.

During that time Sam was invited to a birthday party for one of his little preschool buddies.  It told him I would take him because he needed to do something fun.  I knew the mother from picking up and dropping off the kids at preschool.  She was a very nice lady.  What I didn't know about her, and never would have suspected, is that she lived in abject squalor.  Her house was a nightmare.  There were piles of what I hope was animal poop in various stages of dryness on the floor.  There were food stains all over the walls of her kitchen as if there had been a cafeteria food fight, and she had upholstered dining room chairs that were covered with crusty stains. How do people spill that much food?  Some of the kids were outside playing with the hose and thought it would be funny to squirt it into the kitchen window.  The mom laughed and didn't tell them to stop it.   I almost started crying when I carried my baby with open wounds into this figurative sewer, much like Jean Valjean must have felt when he dragged Marius through the actual sewer.

I told myself that we would stay for half an hour and then I'd make some excuse to get the hell out of there.  I sat on the very edge of the filthy couch and tried not to smell the smells I was smelling when a disgusting little wiener dog walked into the middle of the room and peed the longest pee in the world right on the floor next to the kids.  I jumped up and said, "Your dog is peeing!"  and the nice filthy lady just laughed and waved it off like, "Oh, he's always doing that."  NOBODY CLEANED IT UP!  It just sat there, saturating the rug and the carpet pad.  I told Sam it was time to go.  He didn't fuss much about it like I thought he would, instead he said, in front of everyone, "Okay, but I have to poop first."  I was going to have to take my open-wound boy into the bathroom of the dirtiest people in the world.  I said, "You can hold it til we get home," and he said, "Nope, I really have to go."  I couldn't decide if he really did have to go or if this was just another stop on his tour of every strange bathroom in the world, and then I had to decide what would be worse, holding my son six inches off the toilet in what was sure to be a biohazard bathroom, or having him crap his pants.  I opted for the biohazard bathroom.  I suppose that is much how Jean Valjean felt when he had to decide whether to leave Marius at the barricade to get killed by the French army, or drag him through the sewer and save his life.

Sam at a Mexican Restaurant

Sam and I went out to dinner tonight.  I was trying to be international and asked Sam if he had to use el baño? (What? So what if he shaves, am I not still his mother?)  He said, "It's pronounced baahhnooh.  I learned that in Spanish class."  I said, "No it isn't.  You didn't learn anything in Spanish."  and he said, "Oh, I learned aaallll about N's stupid little brother, Ñ."  

Kira in the Car

Sam, when you start driving I'm going to put a bumper sticker on your car that says "I heart my sister's hugs".

Sam said, "Pass."

Juxtaposition (I've never written that word before)

Yesterday Sam had a friend over who started the year going to a charter school, but a few weeks after school started, went back to his old school.  Mitch asked why he did that and he said that at the charter school they made him take all kinds of tests and found out he is really smart (he's super smart) and they made him take (free) college courses.  Well, he was having NONE of that because in college there's lots of homework!  Yuck!  No thanks!

Mitch told me this story and we laughed and even as I was laughing at how dumb a smart kid can be, I glanced out the window to see my own brilliant little daughter bent over in front of the car and she may or may not have been licking the headlight.  Mitch and I watched her for a while and we couldn't decide if she was actually licking it or just resting her face on it.  Either way her head was really close for a weird amount of time.  I stepped out of the door and said, "WHAT are you doing?"  She said, "What do you mean?" innocently.  I said, "I mean with your FACE on the headlight?"  She said, "I was just looking at it."  Maybe she needs new glasses.

Nighty Night

Mitch's parents and my brother-in-law, Mat were over today; and while we were chatting he was perusing my bookshelf.  He picked up my copy of Bear Attacks and asked if I had read it.

I told him I used to read it to the kids before bed.  I never thought that was strange but by the looks I got from Mat and his parents, it was akin to child abuse.  "They liked it!"  I had to say in my defense a hundred times.  Mat paged through and found a story about a man and woman who were stalked and eventually eaten by a grizzly and read it aloud for all of us.  It was graphic.  Lots of blood and ripped-off scalps.  "How old were the kids when you read this to them???" my mother-in-law asked in shock and horror.  "I don't know, I suppose Kira was about seven, and Sam about ten.  Old enough," I replied.

"What else did you read them?" Mat asked in a judgemental tone.  I said, "Well, let's see... Johnny Tremain, Harry Potter, Death in Yellowstone..."

"Death in Yellowstone???" they all said in unison.  I got the book out of the shelf and showed them.

It is a book that lists in order all the deaths that have happened in Yellowstone National Park since its inception, and the stories about how they happened.  Fascinating.  It was one of our favorites.  We especially liked the story about the guy who jumped in a boiling mud pit to save his stupid dog and he was so badly burned that his skin peeled off in sheets and then he died.  At this point I think my mother-in-law was considering taking the kids home with her for good.  I was about to change the subject when bigmouth Kira said, "What about that book called Between a Rock and a Hard Place about the guy who cut his own arm off with a dull pocketknife?  That was good."

Apparently I have to teach Kira that the throat-slitting gesture means to SHUT THE HELL UP.

When Animals Attack Sam

I've had another marathon week at work.  This "having a job" thing is really cutting into my blogging/sitting around time.  Luckily I had time to snap a few pictures of the panto-horse attacking Sam.  Enjoy.

I Love Duluth

This afternoon the family and I went on a St. Louis River tour with the St. Louis River Restoration Initiative.  We took a big tour boat through the Duluth Harbor and up the river a ways.  It was a beautiful day and we had lots of fun.

This is a train bridge that goes across the river and when a boat comes the center of it pivots and makes room for boats to go through.  There was a guy in the little bridge-house watching us.  I waved at him but he didn't wave back.  We came really close to an iron ore ship too, but I was too busy eating meatballs to take a picture.

The part we toured is an estuary so we saw lots of birds and I saw a fish jump out of the water, but nobody else did, and the tour guide said there are fish as big as five feet long in the water.  Yikes.

Of course, we were on a boat so it didn't take Kira long to figure out that we were held captive so she tortured us all a little.  Mitch got butt bumped about 5000 times, I got my tenders pinched, and all she had to do to drive Sam crazy is touch his back.  I have to admire her ability to ride the line of being annoying enough to cause exasperation, but not annoying enough to get thrown over the side.  That's my girl!

The best part of the tour was when we pulled back up to the pier.  There were about 50 people looking over the side while the crew tied up the boat and this guy busted out on his unicycle and rode down the middle of the street.

It's not a quiet street.  He was in the middle of traffic.

I love Duluth.

When does school start?

Summer is getting long.  I can tell because one of the things Kira and I have been doing to keep ourselves entertained is to talk (yell) to each other in an overdone British accent.

Kira:  Mumsie!

Me:  Yes Bibsie?

Kira: Whut aaa you making foa dinnaa?

Me:  Why, Bibsie, we aaa having rewsted chicken and mashed pohtahtoes.

Kira: Capital, Mumsie!  I can't wait!  You know how I love my pohtahtoes mashed!

Sam: (rocketing out of his room) Oh my god, why do you keep talking like that?!

Kira:  Oh, deaa bruthaa, you shouldn't talk to yoa mumsie that way!

Sam:  I'm sorry, but please, please please shut UP!

Kira:  Sam stop ova-reacting or you will end up pewping yoa pants!

Sam:  Mom, please, make her stop.

Me: Oh, my daaling boy, I don't do things foa people who tell me to shut up.

Kira:  Bewbs!

Sam:  I wasn't telling you to shut up, I was telling her to shut up!

Me:  Whateva foa?

Kira:  Bewbs!

Sam: ...Jesus.

It's fun, but even I have to admit that after a while it gets a little obnoxious.  Kira just walks around the house all day constantly monologuing what she is doing in her high pitched, incredibly loud accent.  I was about to tell her to stop it yesterday but then she got me laughing so hard I couldn't even talk.  She was making herself a drink of flavored water with this stuff Mitch bought the other day called Green Thunder.  Mitch always says it in rumbling voice much like a professional wrestler, like this:  GREEN THUNDER! so now everyone in the house says it like that.  This is what Kira said to make me laugh:

Kira:  Well, Mumsie, I am getting raathaa thirsty.  Whut shall I have to quench my thuuuust?  I didn't realize I was so paaached!  Have we any iced tea, Mumsie?  Oh I know, I'll have some GREEEEEN THUNDERRRRRR!....

And that is when my mind finally snapped and I've been laughing ever since.  When does school start?  Seriously, Sam wants to know.

Head UPDATED!

I come from a family of people with giant heads. We are like a family of Bratz dolls without the skinny, sexy little bodies.

From left to right:  My mom, me, Amy, Beth

Then I married a man with a giant head.  Naturally our children have giant heads as well.  They were doomed to it.  Thankfully both of them were born via C-section or my head wouldn't be my only freakishly oversized body part.  I remember when Sam was born and they told me his head was nearly 16 inches in circumference.  In my drug haze I couldn't quite grasp what they were saying.  When I was a teenager my grandma told me that when SHE was my age, she had an 18 inch waist.  My teeny little newborn baby couldn't possibly have a head nearly the size of my grandma's teenage waist, could he?

Thank you, Sam, for being breech.

I thought they must be talking in centimeters and wanted to snottily remind them that we live in AMERICA and we don't use the stupid metric system!  But no, they were talking about inches.

My kids were both in hockey when they were little.  Since they started when they were about four years old, we have had to buy them adult sized helmets.  When they got to be around nine or ten years old, they were wearing an adult extra large and there was nowhere else to turn unless we ordered specially-made freak sizes.  The kids would complain of headaches from the tightness of their helmets so Mitch solved the problem by shaving off, or cutting out the protective padding inside the helmets to give their heads more room.  Sam told me yesterday that he broke a helmet once.  I said I didn't remember him ever falling hard enough to break a helmet and he said, "I didn't fall.  My head broke out of it."

Now my sister Amy, who arguably has the biggest head of all of us, is getting ready to do a tour of duty in Afghanistan.  When she was in high school she was nick-named (by me) Big Head.  I actually remember chatting with one of the study hall monitors one time and he said, "Your sister has a really big head." and I thought he was talking about how cocky she is and I said, "Do you think so? I think she's pretty humble, being a freshman and all." and he said, "No, I mean her head is enormous." and he made a gesture with his hands around his head like it was the size of a beach ball. (It's not that big.)  I said, "Oh yeah, of course. Everybody knows that."

Yesterday she was issued all her war-time equipment.  (You can read all about it here)  She said that her helmet is GIGANTIC.  She says that she looks like Dark Helmet from Spaceballs.  She didn't post a picture but I am sure that is no exaggeration.

UPDATE:  My sister stupidly told people she has to work and live with about her older sister's blog.  Why not just say to them, "Hey, wanna pick on me for a while?  Need some material?  Go visit my sister's blog!  Here's the address."  Anyway, I can't help it if she makes it easy.  She posted a picture of herself in her new war helmet and she does look a little like Dark Helmet.  You can read about it HERE)

Sam is funny

Anti-Pervs

The other day out on the lake Sam and I saw a boat full of teenage girls in bikinis driving by.  Sam's head followed them as long as we could see them and I thought to myself, oh, my baby is growing up into a man, but then he said, "Did you see that motor?  I think it was a Johnson 215 horse!  Nice!"  I said, "Ha ha, Sam, good one!" and he said, "What?" and I said, "Seriously?" and he said, "What???"

Which I suppose is totally normal considering that when Mitch was a kid and was obsessed (like all kids were) with The Dukes of Hazzard, he couldn't understand why, after Daisy smashed her fast car and got a lame Jeep, she was still on the show.  What a waste of screen time that would be better spent with the General Lee jumping over yet another bridgeless ravine! (Hazzard County was a dump sadly in need of better infrastructure.)

And the other day we discovered that both of our parents had this album:

And we both vividly remember the cover.  I remember it because I thought, OMG, I think that lady is NAKED under there!  That's kind of risque!  And Mitch remembers because he wondered if she got to eat all the whip cream after the photo shoot.