The Countdown Revealed

Now, in my defense... I told you all in one of my very first posts that the countdown was something personal, nothing that was going to affect anyone but me. And from there it has been extremely entertaining watching everyone's anticipation grow with each passing day.

In order to reveal, I need to turn back time about 5 years.  Picture it... We were away for some reason and staying at a hotel- Zob, me, Fylee and Qaitlin who was just a toddler. I was in the shower, and Fylee, as any mother on the planet can attest, "suddenly" has to use the bathroom once I am in there. Now, the particular shower I was in was one with the rippled glass door so as to distort any image standing inside it (as though I needed the distortion help). Fylee comes in, and of course, it wasn't a quick trip- number two instead of just a quick whiz... so he's sitting there, doing his thing, with the speed of frozen syrup, and he yells in to me "Mommy... you look like a teletubby. The red one!"  For any of you not blessed with less than 48 inch minions or grand-minions, Teletubbies are a drug-induced creation of some pedophile posing as a children's show creator. They are rediculous pear-shaped alien beings who don't speak, but run around in dopey costumes with odd-shaped appendages on their heads as their every action is narrated by someone, who I imagine is, the pedophile himself. I will try to enclose an image from the internet to assist your imaginations.

As you can see (or imagine if I failed my attempt to enclose an image) Teletubbies are not all that attractive. This reality, as pointed out by my then 5-year-old, has nearly destroyed any minute semblence of self esteem I had at that time. (However, I remain grateful to have been tagged the red one, who is not only the shortest, but also the less enormous of the four.) So, I made it my goal to un-become a Teletubby- ANY Teletubby, even the red one. Several things have assisted in my procrastination of acheiving that goal, one of which was having a third child (Pogan) in 2008. It wasn't until last summer, at band camp (ok, just kidding, it was actually at the swimming pool) that I firmly reconnected with my goal of shedding my Teletubby image. It was a hot August afternoon, I took the day off to spend with the kids, and we went to the pool. By this time, I had convinced myself that strutting around in a one-peice swim-suit would not induce mass vomiting by onlookers. So here I am, it's break time, and the kids and I are on the loungechairs at the side of the pool. I am on my tummy, and apparently the water on the backs of my thighs have pooled into my cellulite dimples enough to invite a small bird to come over for a refreshing drink or to bathe itself. (Ok, so I admit I embellished this for the sake of humor- it really wasn't a small bird, it was really just a dragonfly- but bird sounded funnier). Now that I have insects drinking from my fat dimples, I am suddenly aware that I most certainly must have caused some vomiting during my twenty-yard-dash from the locker room to my loungechair. I promised myself that I would not resurface at that pool again until I was one-peice-worthy. Thus began my journey to weight loss. 

My journey has been assisted by inner-office Biggest Loser competitions whereby humiliation of public scale-tipping encourages weight loss. I simply raised the stakes on the public humiliation factor and have turned my journey into entertainment for you on Facebook. Pushed on by everyone's curiosity over the past four months, I found that the fear of not wanting to fail miserably was quite a buffet-deterrent. I had originally set my goal to be under the 150 mark by May 1st. Sadly, I have not made that goal. My mouth is way too attached to my stress level. However, I have been able to drop a noticeable amount of weight, and have lost several inches on various parts of my Teletubby form. I believe I now resemble a more emaciated red one. I was smart enough to build in a month at the end of my public journey before the pool opens to tackle those remaining pounds. 

So there you have it. My countdown was all about Teletubbies and thirsty insects.           

josjabber: What Sense Does YOUR Flu Make?

josjabber: What Sense Does YOUR Flu Make?

What Sense Does YOUR Flu Make?

Some time ago, I recall promising to write a post about my experience with the flu. Don't worry, I'm not going to ruin your appetites by blogging about north or south-door emesis. But I do find it curious that when one has the flu, suddenly, the senses are at their peak performance. SIGHT:  Well, most of the senses, that is. I always find my eyesight is off when I'm down with the flu. My caretakers all resemble a methed-out Mrs. Edna Garrett from the Facts of Life. "Come on Joooooo, just take a little sip of this broooooth, it'll do you wooooondersssss." And, is it just my bedroom that the grim reaper lurks around in smacking his lips and checking his Timex? SMELL: Not much else is working right with the ol' bod, but you can smell your neighbor's raunchy odor-eaters from 10,000 paces. And that tiny speck of cat litter residing too close to the floorboard trim that the broom always seems to miss, smells like a moist-moldy, rendering truck. TASTE: Everything tastes like rusty nails. That life-saving liquid we normally refer to as water, is barely tolerable. And to actually have to chew something is like chewing and swallowing a mouthful of those stick-tight sandbur thingies that always got caught in our shoelaces as kids. SOUND: Every noise, even the noise a flake of dandruff makes when it falls, is amplified about 826 million decibals. When I am sick- I can hear colors. But only the primary ones. Yellow makes a screaching noise much like Mick Jagger, blue is the metal gurgling of a garbage disposal if you have let a fork drop down there, and red sounds like those annoying whistle straws that kids win at carnivals. TOUCH: It is my firm belief, that when one is down with the flu, each and every individual hair follicle on one's body, grows sensory neurons. The sensation of dust particles bouncing off my skin about sends me into pain orbit. A simple static electricity shock might as well be me licking a live 220 outlet- barely survivable. 

There you go, my tribute to the flu. I think it may have been more explicit had I actually written this while down with the bug, but I found myself unable to lift the 19-ton pencil over my shoulder to write, and the force with which my fingers were hitting the keys with the thumbtacs on top was just too much for me. So, I write this blog with vicarious attachment, as I watch my oldest son wince in pain as an air molecule bounces off his forehead. Poor thang!  Best go get him some broth.        

Keeping the Magic in Childhood OR Creating Psychosis?

When is it time to let the cat out of the bag about Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Toothfairy, Jack Frost, Leprechauns, and The Great Pumpkin?? My 10 year-old son (Fylee) thoroughly, without a doubt, still believes, and I think I, as well as a few of my friends, are partly to blame for this. In an attempt to induce a spirit of "let's not kill each other" between my oldest two kids (Fylee and Zaitlin), who are 2 and 1/2 years apart, I have "used" certain childhood mythical figures. Ok, who hasn't told their kids Santa is watching??! I guess I just took it a few steps further. Here is childhood at my house:  I found the Santa threat somewhat affective, but only during certain times of the year, you know, when the Christmas toy flyers start bulging my mailbox. I needed some assistance for compliance for the rest of the year. So,... did ya know that from Christmas to oh, the end of January, Jack Frost peaks in on kids and reports back to Santa?? Jack frost, though, isn't very sophisticated. A little scrolly writing on the inside frost of storm windows, and wallah!  He has visited! Now, this has invited Fylee to stare wonderously at the rest of the frost on the windows, and he actually convinces himself he sees certain pictures in the frost patterns.  - A parachuting cow, a kid with broccoli for hair... things like that. I don't see these things, but perhaps my artistic eye needs a corrective lens. 

Then, from February - March, Santa's elves' cousins, the Leprechauns, keep vigil at our windows. Sometimes, if there is too much fighting going on, they will break into our home while we are gone and will pull open every single drawer and cupboard in the house. Last year, they even left little, green footprints all over the countertops. This is an inconvenience to Fylee and Zaitlin because they have to clean up the mess. As the story goes, they do that as a warning to kids to behave. If you have been good, and they visit, they don't mess up your house.  Suffice it to say, our house is ALWAYS hit HARD by those little green minions! 

Various times throughout the year, as the kids lose teeth, I can cash in on the Tooth Fairy myth. Did you know that the Tooth Fairy only leaves coins for non-cavitied teeth? Cavitied teeth, however, are rewarded with an IOU made out to the Tooth Fairy, left under the kids' pillow. Just to sell them on the Tooth Fairy, I actually had to catch it on film, compliments of a digitial camera and the glittery mane of a My Little Pony figurine. If you snap a photo of that thrown into the air, it leaves an image wide open to interpretation. 

That, at least gets me to the summer months, when, if they are beating on each other too much, I can shove the food kids outdoors without the fear of "The Department" investigating me. Rainman doesn't get involved in this much, so I just park him in front of a tractor movie. 

Come September, I can start using The Great Pumpkin, who sends cards an stickers to the kids for Halloween. I happen to have a friend, who has a wonderful sense of creativity, and just as warped imagination as I do, who sends letters from The Great Pumpkin, and also publishes the North Pole Newsletter. SOMEHOW, little details about things the kids have done, or left undone, always manage to sneak into those letters. So, my kids are sold on all of this stuff. How else could all of these holiday characters know all these personal details about us??? 

Well, the reason I am considering letting Fylee out of the bag on this is that, it has started to infringe upon his life. Case in point, we returned home from somewhere, and there was a tiny pair of those huge-headed Bratz doll glasses lying on the livingroom floor. It was obvious to me that the cats had dragged them out of the toyroom, as the bows of the glasses were all chewed up and mangled. Fylee's interpreation was that these belonged to one of Santa's elves who was here doing a behavior check, and the cats must have eaten him! He was even palpating the cat's tummies to see if he could feel the poor little appetizer somehow still alive in there. He also would not leave my side, well, because frankly the idea of little people running amock in one's house is a little disturbing. 

So, this is my dilemma. Do I tell Fylee the truth and ruin the magic of childhood, plus give him ammo to use to destroy Zaitlin's childhood too? Or do I continue to allow the kid to build leprechaun protection fortresses in my diningroom, and pillow walls on his bed behind which he sleeps?

I'd appreciate professional, and not-so, professional opinions of this. Do I let him off the hook or not?       

Priorities, priorities, priorities

Well, SOMEBODY has been giving me the business about not posting all week. -said it was messing with her ability to go to sleep. I'm so sorry, a few things got in the way,... like the health, homework and hygiene of my three offspring units!  But, I have them otherwise occupied now, so I have time to blog. Zaitlin is peeling herself an apple with a Ginsu, Fylee is trying to untangle his neck scarf from the tines of the snow-blower, and Pogan is trying to fish a piece of meow mix out of the electrical outlet with a fork. So, I should have about a half-hour to... oh, Holy smokes! hang on a second, Pogan is sitting too close to the space heater... jeez, doesn't he know how dangerous that could be??!!

Whew! Disaster averted. It's like these kids are blind to the most obvious of hazards! 

Ok, on to my blog for the day. I suppose, as a sit here teeth chattering, lips blue, extremities numb and blackening, I should give appropriate screen-time to this lovely South Dakota weather. For those of you not living in South Dakota, suffice it to say, we are all eating our second quarter pounders free of charge, and have been since mid October. (Consult a midwest McDonald's promo if you don't know what this means) WHY do I live in this state??? I hate the climate here!! Out of 365 days, 179 of them are snow or ice-covered or have the potential to be (October - March); then we have that oft-unpredictable month of April where you can comfortably wear a nice spring outfit to work in the morning, but by five o'clock you are digging your sandal out of a snowbank.- That's another 30 days there. Next we have those hot and humid days of summer, May - mid September, when you have to worry about your children being carried off by mosquitoes the size of small aircraft. Last summer I was sitting on the bleachers watching my daughter's softball game, and I swear I heard a mosquito radio in for clearance to land... "zzzzz Tower zzzz, zzdiszzzz izzzzz zzzzzzero, zzzsixzzz, zzztwo, zzRoger, zzzAdam, Ivanzzz, Davidzzzzz, requeszzzzzting clearanzzzze to landzzz on tasty, unsuspecting toddlerszzzz forehead... do you copyzzz???"

So, really, there are only about 18 days OF THE ENTIRE YEAR when I actually enjoy South Dakota weather. Which brings me right back to my original interrogative- WHY DO I LIVE HERE? As I glance out the window and see my 44 minute-old snow-blowed driveway completely blanketed again, I feel the need to make a list of reasons why I don't pull up stakes, hitch up the kids, errr, I mean horses, and hit the westward trail. Let's see... well, for starters, we don't have hurricanes here. That's a plus. And aside from 1984 when I took up jump-roping for exercise, we normally don't have earthquakes here (did ya know they are STILL blaming colliding trectonic plates for that??!!) I live on a hill, so I don't have to worry about the dam breaking (although, last year, when it rained torrentially for 39 days, I did start nailing together some curved boards in my back yard). And, I have to admit, I have nearly met my demise by avalanche, but that was IN MY KIDS' CLOSETS! THAT natural disaster would go with me wherever I moved! We don't have smog, or green toxic waste clouds blanketing the city. We don't usually encounter crocodiles large enough to swallow small sedans, or giant apes crawling on tops of skyscrapers. We DO have some awesome advantages to living here in the midwest. No matter where in this state you live, there is ALWAYS  a Walmart within 31 miles of you. We have bars here with dead animal heads hanging on the walls, and sure as rain, there is some local, damned proud of those mounts! You cannot drive more than 19 miles in any direction, on any paved road in South Dakota without running across a billboard promoting Wall Drug (and only we the true natives of this state, know that is not a pharmaceutical advertisement) Absolutely every town in South Dakota harbors a man still sporting a mullet, or a woman with Farrah Fawcett feathered hair. That's true, uncensored entertainment folks. And you can get it only here in South Dakota. So, after all the snow falls, and children fly off compliments of Skeeter-copters, I guess I'm ok here in the teeny-tiny southeast corner of So. Dak. Life is fairly predictable here. But for the life of me, I cannot figure out why my lights keep flickering off and on. And I'd better go check on Ginsu girl too. Peace-out peeps.

Sidebar:  If you find my blogs even mildly amusing, please become a follower, and share me with your friends too. But, I'd like to see if I can gain at least one follower from every state. Can you help? (Insert your own visual of me looking desperate and sad)

          

Short & to the Point

It's 4:32 a.m. Anybody else see a problem here???

The answer was in my junk drawer.

Disclaimer:  Todays post is really quite lame. Sorry.

It is 6:02 in the evening. I have been helping my 10-year-old study for his Social Studies test since 5:00 tonight. He thinks I'm an ogre because I am making him re-read the chapter again. Approximately every 1.86 seconds, the child is finding something else to fidget with, or is making a noise similar to what I imagine a caveman would have made if he bit his tongue on accident. As I watch this display, my mind wanders to what I could possibly do to help this situation. Thinking sedatives are out of the question if I want to keep my job, my mind ventures on to more practical solutions. And now I have arrived at what I think would be the perfect answer- a staplegun. It's relatively non-invasive, painless, and would not require anything I don't already have here at the house. I think I shall staple him in place. I can staple the kid's pantlegs to the chair, his shirtsleeves to the countertop and I can affix a chin-sling to hang from the counter above his head. He can rest his chin in the sling, and I will elevate the book in front of his face. Seriously, I don't know what else would work as well. And now that I think of it, I think the staplegun could be the answer to several more isses here at the house. Socks, for example. I can staple them together before throwing them into the washer. They're mated for life! The cats keep scooting their water and food dishes all over the hallway... use the staplegun. I have run completely out of hair paste... staplegun. The remote keeps disappearing into the guts of the recliner... I'll use the staplegun. Sheets slide down to the bottom of the bed while sleeping... staplegun. Seven year old sasses back at me when I ask her to throw her dirty clothes down the laundry chute... staplegun. See?! It IS the answer to everything! I must journey on now, I have thousands of ice melt pellets to staple to the cement steps in front of the house.