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Nature's A Little Gross

Now that I've been blogging for nearly five years, I feel it's time I come clean about something to you, my faithful readers. Here it is, a deep, dark secret of mine.

Sometimes nature grosses me out.

Sure, there are gross things in nature, like slugs, that are important. Though I can't think of one off the top of my head right now, I know slugs serve an important purpose in ye olde circle of liiiiiife.  I'm talking about things like a whole bunch of mussel shells stuck to a rock. GROSS.  The spores on the backs of fern leaves. SHUDDER. But the worst?  CRACKED MUD. Seriously. It makes me gag.

I worked on a dance show the first year I worked at Cornell that involved 5 choreographes, 4 of whom took the elements of nature (fire, air, water and earth) and created a dance based on their assigned element.  In our design meeting, the set designer brought in photos for reference. One of them was a full-screen shot of cracked mud.  I gagged so hard people heard me.

Maybe it's the naturally occurring patterns that freak me out, since  I also can't look at segmented worms for too long without gagging.  Something about all that symmetry is just nasty. 

As for food, I don't like to look at highly marbled raw beef, raw chicken skin (BUMPS, OMG) or, watit for it, the tops of tomatoes. I'm ok if they don't have those weird little lines on them, but if there are lines, FORGET IT. Gag city. Spotted bananas also gross me out, but not on par with the tops of tomatoes. Here, because I love you, I will give you a visual aid.

Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

Ok, that one on the left is extra gross, probably to everyone. But it gets the point across, right?

Now that I've nearly made myself hurl, I'm wrapping this up.

Do any of you have naturally occurring things that gross you out? Please tell me I'm not alone.

It's Like I'm A Magnet

I sometimes attract weird people in weird places. I come by it honest--my parents are the same way.  My dad sees zany stuff every day as he goes into people's homes for inspections. (He's a claims adjuster for an insurance company.) I think my favorite of his experiences was the time he went in to inspect a kitchen fire to find his clients had a pet monkey in their house...and the monkey smiled at him.  People love my mom, especially older people, so she finds herself in a lot of conversations with strangers.  I  must have one of those faces that makes people think I really REALLY care (Not that I DON'T care, but, um, yeah, ok, sometimes I just don't). Over the years, I've found myself in some truly bizarre conversations with complete strangers.  I've also had the pleasure of meeting several versions of "that person." You know the one...he/she has no "edit" button.

A few weeks after Dean was born, we visited my in-laws in DC.  Every time we visit them, one of the top items on my trip agenda is "Visit Costco." I LOVE Costco and we are not members, so I have to get my sample fix while I'm with the in-laws.  So, there I am, walking around with tiny baby Dean snoozing in his Baby Bjorn when a woman practically jumps out from behind an enormous box of cat litter screaming, "LOOK AT THE BAYYYYYYBEEEEEEEE!"  She then says, "Hold on!" and runs an aisle over to retrieve her shopping cart which contains a huge bundt cake and her three year old twin daughters.  "THIS IS WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE WHEN THEY'RE THREE!!  RIGHT HERE!" Um, yeah, lady. I've seen children.  I smile, answer a few questions about his birthdate and weight and such, then politely walk towards the croissants.  A few minutes later, I'm standing in line to grab myself a free buffalo wing when this woman literally materializes out of nowhere and screams, "ARE YOU BREASTFEEDING? Because if you are, spicy stuff is not good for our baby!" OUR baby? Call me crazy, but I'm fairly sure she had NOTHING to do with the creation of Dean Lane.  As I stood there, searching my brain for a reply, the man serving the hot wings pipes up with, "Oh, no! My wife ate tons of spicy food while she was breastfeeding! It helps increase your milk supply!"  At that moment, and this is not just my imagination about 20 sets of eyes were pointed directly at my, uh, "girls," shall we say, so I did what any self-respecting new mom would do...I grabbed myself a hot wing and hid behind a vat of olive oil.

My encounters with strangers are not usually quite that dramatic or traumatic.  In fact, some are quite pleasant.  There's a delightful older gentleman in our town whom everyone refers to as The Judge. He is, in fact, a retired judge turned cattle farmer.  When we first moved here, we frequented our one coffee shop a lot because you can do that sort of thing with one immobile baby. Now that Dean's his own man? Not so much. Anyway, nearly every time we went in for months, The Judge would come and sit at our table.  Sometimes he'd ask to hold Dean. (And we'd let him. He has 14 grandkids and knows what to do.)  He'd always tell us, "Now when he's older, you'll come out to the farm and he can ride a pony, ok?"  Those were nice encounters. I still run into The Judge in town and he has become more of a friendly acquaintance than a stranger, which is nice. That one had a happy ending.

Over the summer, we went to the new Sno Biz in town. I was very excited to get a shaved ice and enjoy the tacky tropical decor.  I worked at a Sno Biz in high school, so I knew the menu and didn't need any time to select my flavor. Dean always gets strawberry, so I walked right up to order. (Marcus stared at the wall for 15 minutes trying to pick a flavor and ended up with blue raspberry and grape mixed together.)  The guy at the counter rang me up, then stopped and asked, "What'd you have for dinner because MAN do you guys smell! Is that curry?"  We'd had something involving Cajun sausage and onions and, ok, we DID smell, but dude. You don't say that to your customers!

My most recent stranger moment was a doozy. But I did get a pretty good recipe out of it, so there's that.  It will be featured in my Friday post over at Food Lush.  Tune in and hear, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.

Got a freaky stranger story of your own? Tell us!

You're The Inspiration

I've been collecting inspiring images lately, mostly of things that just make me happy.  I find extreme joy in simple things like this: 

If you don't want a hedgehog pencil holder, something might be seriously wrong with your funny bone. Have that checked, wouldya?

and in majestic, God-given miracles like this:

 
Alaska. So beautiful it's kind of ridiculous.

I also like looking at this baby:

 

Nom nom nom I will eat your baby head in that hat!

And I want these shoes:

 
I have nothing to match you, per se, but OMG, get in mah closet!

All these images are living in my Pinterest gallery right now. (Have you been to Pinterest? It's addictive and so much fun!)  I'm trying to use my boards as inspirational spaces, but sometimes I find things like this which just make me laugh:

 
Heck, yeah.

Where do you find inspiration?  Are you on Pinterest? Let's be friends.  (Or let me know if you want an invitation!)

NaNaBloPop Hysteria Sets In

Somewhere in the deep, dark crevices of my  over-thinking Aquarius brain I convinced myself that all my blog posts need to sound at least a little like scholarly articles. With this being NaNaBloPop month, I've been  writing a lot of posts and saving them to draft so I can either go back and tweak them or ditch them altogether. I started four separate posts today, each of which was absolutely horrible. I have no idea what posessed me to think ANYONE would be interested in some of the subject matter nor do I know why I thought they all  needed  to read like paragraphs from my masters' thesis.  I'm not saying this out of self-pity--I'm telling you because the junk I'm writing, while horrid for blogging, is absolutely hilarious.   Here's my  favorite reject:

Remember the last episode of Little House on the Prairie where the "bad" folks are buying Walnut Grove and Laura gets mad and breaks a window? I get that.

That's it. I saved THAT  as a draft.  WHAT??? I have  no idea what that even means.  Perhaps I should submit it as a writing prompt. Everybody take that and....BLOG.

I don't feel like I have my usual "OMG it's NaNaBloPop" writer's block panic thing happening this year, but I'm obviously having some trouble getting my posts started some days.  The problem, you see, is that my brain overthinks pretty much everything. We're making some grand life decisions around these parts lately so things are coming to me in fragments. There are notes all around my house which, honestly, is nothing new. I'm known  at work as "the stage manager who goes to the bathroom with 8 post-its stuck to her shirt," after all.

I think a part of me would just really like to sit and have a face-to-face conversation, perhaps with some of you. No screens, no typing, no avatars, just people and maybe a big cup of coffee.

Ok, reality? My in-laws are arriving in a few hours and I just had surgery and can't clean like I want to and OMG you would not believe the number of MegaBlocks on the living room floor right now.  If they comment that the house is a mess, I think I'll just show them  my scar and cry. Yes. That will work. Or I'll break a window like Laura. Then they'll hardly notice the blocks for all the glass.

Coming soon

I decided this week that I'm going to give NaBloPoMo (NaNaBloPop, as it's known at my house) a go again in November.  Anyone else doing it?  Alissa is, so we're going to be each other's cheerleaders.  It must sound pretty nuts to you that I've just written a post about having difficulty finding material, yet now I"m committing to write a post every day for a month.  Honestly, that's why I like NaNaBloPop.  I thrive on deadlines and I love completing tasks, so it's a perfect situation for me.  Plus, I'm hoping that having an assignment of sorts will encourage me to find things to write about. I also want to take more pictures. I love Fall and there are so many cool and wonderful things around me that I want to document them. 

One thing I want to make sure I include this November is a "Week in the Life" post.  Each day for a week, you take pictures of ordinary things your family does, like mealtimes, school drop-off, or bed time stories.  As bloggers, it's so easy to fill our virtual pages with wonderful stories of special or one-time-only days and events, but it's rare that we include a lot of pictures of our day-to-day activities.  I, for one, want to remember the ordinary things my family does each day. 

How's your month going?  We're looking forward to a visit to my parents' house this weekend, where we'll get to see my grandmother for the first time since April. We're also really excited about Halloween and an upcoming visit from Marcus's parents around Thanksgiving.  Our weather has allowed us almost daily playtime at the park where Dean amazes me with his friendliness, fearlessness and curiosity. The ordinary is pretty extraordinary around here.

It ain't deep

I'm having one of those days where there are about 8 posts circling in my head, but I'm too tired to get any of them out of me and onto the screen.  I had precious little free time last week, so my blogging had to take a back seat to work.  For maybe the second time since I started blogging, the blank screen actually intimidated me a bit when I logged in this evening.  So much to say, but where to start?

So instead of trying to be deep, I'll tell you that there are 2 mice living in my house and my goal for the evening is to catch and dispose of them.  Wish me luck.

EDITED TO ADD: I caught the mice. BOTH mice.  Heh, heh, take that, suckas.

POOF it's Fall

I have several "big" posts brewing in my head, but unfortunately today I also have a BIG headache, so those will have to wait. I do have to give some credit where credit's due, though, and encourage you to browse around my blogroll because there are some fantastic things happening and some wonderful posts to read this week.  There are so many great ones, I can't even pick a favorite.

Fall has FINALLY arrived, bringing some very welcome cooler temperatures. To celebrate, we turned off the air conditioner and threw open the windows yesterday. They have stayed open since then. We awoke to a cool, crisp breeze and a very fresh-smelling house this morning. The fresh, clean smell has been replaced by the aroma of BBQ pork, which has been simmering in my slow-cooker all morning.  Let's just say dinnertime cannot come soon enough today.

I spent last week substituting for one of our assistant stage managers at the theatre.  It was the first time I've worked backstage there since 2001. It's funny how some things in life change so drastically, yet others remain almost exactly  the same.  Our crew chief, Tony, and I fell right back into our old rhythms. He denied me sugar before the show began, lest I get too hyper and drop one of the eight trays full of glassware that I had to carry back and forth from backstage to the kitchen for washing. (Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to let me play with glasses? Did we learn nothing from the entire set of martini glasses I destroyed during Relative Values my last year of grad school?  GAH.)  The weekend was fun. I enjoyed the energy backstage and the opportunity to work with my friend Tanya again. The play I worked on was great and the cast was delightful.  It was a fun break from the norm.

Dean is playing a game today entitled "See How Many Times I Can Make The Short Lady Who Bore Me Change My Outfit." We are currently on outfit #4, if you count the berry-covered pj's I had to strip off of him earlier.  I swear I didn't realize I put THAT much sauce on our pizza...most of it ended up on his t-shirt. There was also an incident involving a sippy cup of (thank God) water that we won't talk about any more.  We tried to go for a haircut this morning, but the combination of a cranky, freaked-out toddler and a rude stylist sent us running for the door. (Yes,I was THAT mom.  Guess we won't be going back there...)

The coming days are going to hold a lot of outdoor activities, baking, cooking and football.  Fall, I sure am glad to see you this year.  Took ya long enough.

Profound Randomness (Now with more parentheses!)

For some reason, I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to write something profound. Or profoundly funny. Or both.  I guess it could be because BlogHer is so close and I want my front page to be full of awesome! writing! when people I meet there visit.  Or it could be that it's Monday. Or that I'm between jobs and the most profound thing I've done all day was combining a manufacturer coupon with a store coupon, thus getting two, count 'em, two dollars off my baby wipes.  I should probably just go to the kitchen and bake something. 

I did manage to drag poor Marcus and Dean to Target, where I bought the most amazing control-top pantyhose I've ever owned and scored some beach toys for 48 cents. (It should be noted that I will probably ruin the pantyhose the first time I try to put them on and should, therefore, have bought two pairs.  Alas.) Then we came home and entertained ourselves by presenting Dean with a big bowl of spaghetti for lunch and watching him slurp noodles. (It's the little things, folks.)  I'd like to be able to report that we've been outside frolicking in the warm summer breeze, but A) there's no breeze in Alabama in July and B) it's hot, y'all.  Every Sunday, I wake up and wonder if there would be a good day that week to hit the zoo.  Then I go outside to get the paper and I have a heat stroke and decide that if it's this hot at 6:30am, there's no way any of us will survive a trip to the zoo unless we can go at midnight. (Unfortunately, they're not open then.)

We find different things to busy ourselves with indoors.  Sometimes it's family Play-Doh tournaments, other times it's me reading cookbooks and suggesting I make fun new desserts, only to have Marcus say, "I'd rather just have the chocolate thing." (the chocolate thing being this)  Sometimes we throw Dean into the bathtub to "swim" because he refuses to go into his blow-up pool on the deck. "Nope.  Hot," he whispers when we ask if he wants to go swimming outside.  Our library doesn't do story time in the summer, which seems very silly to me. I mean, wouldn't that be the ideal time to do story time?  When the little darlings aren't in school and need intellectual stimulation in the form of literacy-building activities???     ??  Dean and I did take a free Kindermusik class a couple of weeks ago. Aside from the fact that they spell music with a K (SUCH a pet-peeve of mine), it was ok.  Unfortunately, it was JUST ok.  We mistakenly got put into the 6 months to 2 years class when I think Dean would have liked the 2-4 year old class a lot better.  He had a pretty good time, but a lot of the exercises were just not active enough to hold his attention.  If they do another free demo day, we'll go and try again, but I definitely want us to TRY again before we commit to 6 class sessions at nearly $10 a pop.  I wish we had a Gymboree around here...

Dean will be going back to Mother's Day Out this year. We've got him signed up for Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He had such a great time last year and blossomed so much with the extra (and different) attention.  I think it's good for him to have a break from me and I think the structure this provides is excellent.  He's on a schedule that works well, he gets lots of social interaction and, probably most importantly, they are just better at arts and crafts than I am. He brought home some super-cute creations last year that I'd look at and go, "Man. I have a Master of Fine Arts degree and there's no way I could have thought to do that."  The Mother's Day "let's make a baby food jar into a lady bug" project was our favorite with the "Christmas wreath made entirely out of your child's handprints" coming in a close second.  Here at home, a craft project usually consists of Dean making monkeys with his rubber stamps until he gets bored and does a face-plant onto the ink pad. (You should see his nose-print art, though.)

This is going to be a weird week, I can already tell.  Next Wednesday is Marcus's 40th birthday, then Thursday I leave for BlogHer (ohmigaaaaaaaaaaaaah), Marcus's show opens and we get one week closer to back-to-school.  Maybe we'll try to squeeze in that trip to the zoo.  Or maybe we'll just be weenies and go to the movies. If I were a bettin' girl, I'd put money on the movies.

HOTel

Our air conditioner broke on Tuesday evening.  Marcus and I had been out for our first date night in a looooong time, so BJ the Manny was here with Dean. BJ noticed it was a little warm, but assumed it's because, and I quote, he's a "bear," and thought nothing of it.  When we arrived home, I went up to check on the sleeping bebe only to discover warm air shooting out of our vents.  This happened once before because our A/C froze from being turned down too low, but after a few hours, it thawed and was back to normal.  We turned it off and hoped this was the case this time, too.  It wasn't.

As soon as BJ left, Dean woke up crying because he was hot. We got him some cold water to drink and brought him, along with all or bedtime stuff, down to the living room where the three of us camped out on the couches for the night.  We were actually fairly comfortable under the ceiling fan and with the box fan pointed at us.  Fortunately, i remembered to put pillows down on the floor in case Dean rolled off.  At 2am, I opened my eyes to find him on said pillows. I"m not sure whether he rolled off the couch or just decided it would be neat to sleep on throw pillows, but whatever.  He woke up around 6:30 Wednesday morning, looked around and, realizing we were all in the living room, said, "Cool!"  He was very concerned about his daddy, who slept on the couch while Dean and I shared the sectional.  I assured him his daddy was fine and we began our day.

Around noon it got unbearable.  We put Dean in the car, hoping he'd get a nap while we drove around aimlessly, enjoying the car's A/C.  A call had been made to our A/C repairman, but we'd had to leave a message.  Dean slept about 20 minutes. Finally, we went home and ate a lot of popsicles.  Around 4:00, my dad called to say he and my mom would treat us to a hotel stay for the evening.  We were out the door 20 minutes later.

Marcus found a great deal on priceline.com and we ended up at a hotel featuring free dinner AND breakfast.  The room was great, the food was good and we had a blast in the pool.  It was like our own little mini-vacation. Now here's the thing about our son:  he LOVES hotels. He thinks it's his lot in life to touch every single thing in a hotel room and he's mildly obsessed with hotel bath tubs.  The first thing he did was pick up the phone, which we promptly unplugged, lest the little dear rack up a thousand dollar phone bill by calling Belize or something.  He then got into the closet, rode on the luggage rack, discovered the satellite radio (and danced), then popped up the footrest on the recliner, where he spent most of the evening hiding under a blanket. And he stripped, because OF COURSE he did.He ran around like an insane man for hours.  We finally caught him at 10pm (TEN PEE EMMMMMM) and made him lie down.  Eventually he gave out and so did we.  On Thursday morning, we discovered him lying sideways on the bed, spread out like the letter X.

 After reluctantly checking out of the hotel, we came home, let Dean nap under the fan, then smiled all the way to the bank when the A/C guy told us our repair would be EXTREMELY affordable.  (Like, so affordable we didn't have to use a credit card--score!)  It's delightfullly cool now and we're all rejuvenated from our one-night vacation. AND AND AND!  Tonight we have REAL plans with REAL friends who also have REAL children! Adult conversation! Squee!  Other children for Dean to play with and fun to be had and pizza to be eaten! Squee some more!  In case you couldn't tell, we're really, really excited. Squee! (one for the road)

Round Here

I'm always fascinated by blog posts that tell how people REALLY live. I like to hear other people's menu plans, cleaning tips, family schedules and the like.  A lot of times, I'll get a great idea or two, or at least see that YES! there are other people out there like me! Or different from me, which is really what makes life interesting, right?  So in the interest of keeping it real, allow me to give you a little peek into some seemingly ordinary parts of my household.  Then you share something with me in the comments section so I don't feel like a weirdo, ok?  Great!

*I use generic dish washing detergent, usually Up and Up brand. (Target)  I tried every single product Cascade manufactures, both with and without rinse agent, and it left my dishes so gunky that I often had to run another cycle just to get the detergent off.  One day I had a coupon for the Target brand, so I figured why not? I guess I can afford to lose a couple of bucks if I hate it.  I do not hate it.  It is lemony fresh and rinses off very well.  This is all because we have a genuinely crappy dishwasher.  It broke about a month after we moved into the house, then miraculously resurrected itself 4 months later.  But it still leaves spots on my glasses.  Boo.

*I am a complete and utter toilet paper snob.  So is my husband. I even turned a roommate into a TP snob once upon a time.  My preferred brand is Quilted Northern, but Charmin Basic is also acceptable.  I will use Cottonelle only if it is on major sale and I have a coupon or if I can't find my first and second choice.

*We make coffee at least twice a day and Marcus has started drinking decaf at night. This means I have started drinking decaf at night. In fact, we even have a separate little container of decaf, complete with its own special scoop.  I used to think decaf was for wimps and senior citizens, but now I kind of get it.

*I once won a year's worth of free Dreft Detergent.  I know, you hate me now.  So I guess this is a bad time to mention they also gave me a year's worth of Huggies, huh?  It's true.  File under "One of the Top Ten Blessings I've Ever Received."  Anywho, since I spent over a year not paying for Dreft, I now get annoyed when I do have to pay for it.  I've tried other baby detergents, but they don't smell like Dreft.  And, let's be honest, Dean's skin could erupt in angry eczema patches with the slightest change in products, so why tempt fate and switch at this point? But, oh, how I wish I had some more of those FREE coupons.  Every time we're almost out of Dreft, I sit with my sale papers, seeing who can save me the most pennies. And I NEVER have even a 50 cents off coupon, so I'm paying full price.  It makes me sad.

*I don't wash my hair every day. If I do, it gets oily on top and dry on the bottom.  I have to blow-dry or else I have a frizzy mess to contend with, and we can't have that.

*I absolutely could not live without my Dust Buster handi-vac.  Mine's a wet/dry variety, perfect for sucking up Cheerios that Dean leaves trailing behind him as he passes through the house, or soggy coffee grounds when Marcus misses the trash can when he's throwing out the coffee filter. (I can't really get mad at him for this because it means he's making the coffee.) 

*I do menu plans, but only for dinner.  This inevitably leads to Dean being in charge of choosing what we have for lunch, which means we eat a lot of cheese tortellini, peas and fruit.

*Between the two of us, Marcus and I own about 13 pairs of tweezers, but we only use 2 of them.  He has a very pointy pair that's like 20 years old and I have a pair that lights up.  These are very important when you have a house full of unibrows.

*I'm the only one allowed to fold towels in our family because no one else does it right.

*I'm pretty sure Dean just ate an apple seed. Do you think a tree will grow out of his ear?  That would be sort of cool.

*We like to drink OJ from wine glasses.

*There is not a single wall clock in our house. This is due to my utter hatred of ticking.  Ticking clocks cause a gag reflex in me similar to the one that happens if I try to swallow oatmeal.

*We subscribe tothe Birmingham newspaper on Sundays and Wednesday only, mostly for the coupons and the food section.

*We bought a new truck (well, new to us) yesterady, OMGGGaaaah. More on that later.

Ok, tell me some quirks of your household!