All yell’s breaking loose

photo credit: showmeone

Three weeks left.  Three weeks left and I feel like I am going to spontaneously combust.  Our two story house has collapsed in on itself like a black hole, sucking all the light out of my world.  Dramatic?  Maybe.  True?  Yeppers.

I’ve spent the last two months trying to entertain a 12 year old, and a 4 year old 12 year old wanna be.  Troubles abound…daily.  Maybe even minute-ly.  Is that a word?

If I wake up to hear what do you have planned today one more time, I will implode.  I’m not sure when my name became Little Miss Day Planner, apparently that memo got colored on, or made into a paper airplane because it sure as heck didn’t find it’s way next to my morning cup of coffee or my evening glass of sanity.

There’s the pool, but when it’s 105 degrees outside and the pool feels more like a bath without bubbles, it looses it’s appeal.  I enjoy solitary, not communal bath times.  Pretty much everything else costs money – and if it’s truly “fun” it costs lots of money.

When I was a kid – oh God, did I really just say that?  When I was a kid no one entertained me.  That’s not to say my parents didn’t do things with me, but they weren’t responsible for my daily agenda.  Mostly I rode my bike and did a bit of hairbrush singing in between.

Today I reached the end of my rope – it was a jump rope so it wasn’t very long to begin with but it was a rope nonetheless.  (Okay, it’s been frayed for a long time, but that’s another post.)  Anyway, Jacob and Nick both had my remote and kept pushing all the buttons.  Nick is easier to deal with – he’s only four.  Jacob, on the other hand, won’t let up.

As a result I found myself raising my voice – something I swore I would never do.  And now I feel horrible.

I think summer has had it’s last hurrah in our house.  I think we are too together – it’s time for a break and not the summer kind.  I never thought I’d be one of “those” parents who looked forward to school.  After all, I used to homeschool Jacob.  But this summer, I’m ready for it to be over.

Today kids seem to need more.  At least mine do.  Maybe that’s my own fault.  I’m not sure.  But I do know that right now I’m thinking “the most wonderful time of the year” comes way before Christmas.

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The Hip Bone’s Connected to the…Weather?

photo credit: bark
photo credit: Kristian F

Are you kidding me? Ever since my unfortunate pogo stick accident (I talk about that a lot, don’t I?), that and giving birth to Pumpkinhead 4 years ago, my bones have become my very own internal weather app. Lucky me.

Pumpkin Head Nick

Even before the dark clouds start rolling in and the pine trees start bowing down in submission to the winds; even before Wal-Mart has had a chance to put out those super-special, in a Wal-Mart kind of way, complimentary plastic umbrella baggies;  even before the local meteorologist has had a chance to profess his incorrect weather predictions on his viewing audience, me and my bones know that there’s a storm a brewin’.

I remember as a kid being fascinated with my father’s ankle.  It had an innate ability to track weather patterns.  Amazing!  Unfortunately, it didn’t open up any new career paths for him or even gain  him a place of honor in the prestigious Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum we frequently visited on our annual vacations to St. Augustine, FL.

What it did give him in addition to uncanny accuracy in predicting when the rain would hit us depending on the severity of pain and swelling his ankle was experiencing, was an additional pain…in the ass.  No, not literally.  Although having an ass that could predict, say, the future would most certainly have made him a Ripley’s favorite.

Oh well.  His ankle, not his ass (he would kill me for saying that word, by the way, if he were here.  I wasn’t even allowed to say darn or dang when I was a kid) was his anomaly.   Putting it that way makes me thankful.  Imagine having an anomalous ass.  Not good. That darn (sorry again Dad!) ankle of his caused him some troubles for sure.

So now 25 years later I have inherited my father’s weather gene and have a weather bone of my own.  Thanks Dad. Guess that’s what I get for having a foul mouth.

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Scratch and Sniff Tattoos

photo credit: Tattoo_Lover

Maybe Warner and I have too much time on our hands, or maybe we are just a couple of brilliant minds brimming with innovation.

Last night as we were talking about my Doppleganger (DG), Michelle “Bombshell” McGee, the conversation took an obvious turn to tattoos.  Now I’m not going to start ink bashing here because I have two very lovely body stamps that I am very proud of – just in case you’re wondering – a blue poison dart tree frog on my right ankle (designed by Warner) and the word “believe” on my inner right wrist.

So we were talking about how nasty this DG of mine is (and not in a good way) and somewhere along the way the our topic of conversation morphed into scratch and sniff books – of course it did.  Don’t ask me the connection because I can’t recall – it might have something to do with that second glass of Pinot Grigio that I had, but Warner has no excuse because he was sober, sleep-deprived, but sober.

As is usual with Michelle-driven conversations thoughts merged and collided and the idea of scratch and sniff tattoos was mentioned.  Why not?

Some tattoos I’ve seen would lend themselves naturally to this.  Cute double cherries behind the ear – nice and yum.  A vine of wildflowers wrapped delicately around an ankle – sa-weet!

But what about that koi fish swimming around the bulging bicep?  No thank you, sir.  Fish odor is never a good thing.  And consider the smell of skulls and dragons and darker images like that.  What does evil smell like, and do we really want to know?

I don’t think we have the technology for such a thing, but at the rate we are developing I’m sure it won’t be long before there’s an App for that.  And I already have the perfect name for it – Stinky Ink.

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My Life in Letters – “B” is for Books

I have very fond memories of my mother reading Edward Lear’s Nonsense Alphabet book to me.  I still have the book only now it doesn’t live on my bookshelf, it’s in a plastic baggie, the pages worn and the spine broken.  Although it may be broken, the memories that are within those pages are still there, and I believe that my love of words began with those nonsense rhymes.

“A was once an apple pie.  Pidy, widy, tidy, pidy nice insidy apple pie. B was once a little bear.  Beary, wary, hairy beary, taky cary little bear.”

As I got older and began to read on my own, I discovered The Boxcar Children.  I was intrigued by the idea of these 4 orphaned children who lived in an abandoned boxcar in the forest.  They furnished their new home with items retrieved from a local dump.  Henry, the oldest, worked for a doctor in town to make enough money for food.  I spent many days imagining what life would be like as Henry’s sister, rummaging through piles of garbage and finding uses for other people’s trash.  It seemed like an enchanted life to me.

When I was 10 my mother gave me the book Little Women.  I felt like I had been given 4 new best friends – Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy – tucked inside the pages of that purple-covered book.  I couldn’t wait to get to know them.

We spent weekends taking long trips to the local library where I would fill my arms with new friends and adventures to be had.  I remember the smell of the old books, dusty and earthy, the weight of the story in my hand waiting to whisper its words to me.

It might sound like I had no real friends, but that’s not true.  I played like any other kid.  But I was fortunate enough to have parents who read and who showed me the value of spending some quiet time with a book.  I could read wherever I was and I usually had a book with me at all times.

I studied great literature and poetry in college.  I grew attached to my Norton Anthologies and still have them to this day.  One of the best quarters of my college days was when I signed up for 4 English classes at one time.  I would sit in my papasan chair, the icy winds of Lake Eerie rattling the windows of my house, with my stack of books at my feet and I would read all day.

I read to both of my boys now and hope that I can raise them to be book lovers.  I read all of the Harry Potter books out loud to my oldest son, and did voices for all the characters.  And one of my favorite books to read out loud to my youngest is Fox in Socks by the one and only Dr. Seuss.

Read this and tell me you didn’t have fun:

“When a fox is in the bottle where the tweetle beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle on a noodle-eating poodle, THIS is what they call…a tweetle beetle noodle poodle bottled paddled muddled duddled fuddled wuddled fox in socks, sir!”

I have a friend who recently bought a Kindle.  And while I am intrigued by this technological advancement in reading, I can’t imagine giving up my books.  I do listen to storytelling podcasts on my iPhone like The Moth while I’m driving.  But if you look on the seat next to me, chances are you’ll see a book or two waiting to be read.

What do you think about the Kindle?  Would you give up your books?

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Acts of Random Kindness (ARK) Challenge

photo credit: jhritz

Something that has had my attention the past few weeks has been the idea that intention can shape your reality.  It’s the whole idea that one’s thoughts whether positive or negative can affect the direction of one’s life. Simply put – whatever you put out there is what you will receive in return.  What goes around comes around.  Karma.  Whatever you choose to call it, I have witnessed it in my own life and believe that it’s real.

That said, imagine the difference each of us could make if we all decided to live with intention – to live a life that projects kindness and love.  If you believe, like I do, that we are all connected in some way then it only makes sense that our perceptions and experiences not only shape who we are, but, in turn, can be absorbed by others and, ultimately, make a difference in their lives.

In James Van Praagh’s book, Heaven and Earth, he discussed the idea of connectedness:

What we perceive with our five senses is only the tip of the iceberg.  Imagine a perspective from an airplane, thirty thousand feet above the earth.  Millions of people share this perspective every day.  Our perspective of life changes at that altitude.  We see a much bigger world than we do in our automobiles.  You might say that the world has expanded, yet nothing has changed except our viewpoint.

The same is true about the relationships and situations we experience.  The only thing that we can change is our perspective of these things.  When we realize that our attitudes of ignorance, selfishness, competitiveness, and fear create negative results in our lives, we have a choice to alter our thoughts and beliefs.  If we choose to free our minds of past conditioning and predisposed expectations, we will see life from a whole new point of view, one that is filled with the light and splendor of spirit.  Then, instead of misery, we will create conditions and experiences of a positive nature as we develop into high-minded and loving individuals.  From this new altitude we will discover our true selves deep within our hearts.  I believe that when this happens, we will truly begin to live life.

Most of us have been programmed to see life as divided into separate parts – family, job, money, relationships, creativity, religion, and so on.  This leads to feelings of isolation.  But we are all connected, even if we are not aware that we are.  Once we start to reawaken our God-given instincts and use all the tools afforded us, we will begin to find the connections that we have been searching for.  We will radiate our truth in all we do, bringing fullness to every aspect of life’s experiences.

Remember that we are on a journey through life that is one of balance between the illusions of the material world and the truth that is spirit.  We are all spiritual beings on a journey to enlightenment.  By piercing the veil of illusion and tapping into the great God-connectedness of the universe, we will discover that the consciousness of heaven and earth is one.

Regardless of your religious or non-religious orientation, the idea is simply this really, be a nice person.  As simple as it sounds it’s anything but.  The busyness of this world makes it difficult for us to slow down and let go of our frustrations and expectations and stop letting those things drag us down and keep us from being the light we were meant to be.

I think the Beatle’s said it best in their song “The End” : ‘And in the end, the love you get is equal to the love you give,’

How wonderful is it to think that by changing ourselves we could possibly change the world?  A lofty goal?  Absolutely, which is why we need to start now.

Here’s my challenge to you:  Make an effort to do one ARK a day.  It doesn’t need to be anything huge.  Hold open a door.  Let someone with fewer items go ahead of you at the market.  Do like my son Jacob does every single time he sees a soldier in uniform and thank them for what they are doing for our country.  Give a dollar to the homeless man on the corner even if you think he might spend it on something you don’t approve of.  Who are we to judge?  And smile, sometimes that’s the best gift of all to a person who needs one.

Are you up for the challenge?  What are you waiting for?  Pass this along to someone today.  That can count as your first ARK – let’s start something together.

Please share some of your ARKs here (big or small) with the rest of us so we can feel inspired. You can also share a story of when you were the recipient of an unexpected ARK. It’s all good!

And as always,
Believe.
Michelle

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Five Things Friday – Things I don’t understand

I like to think of myself as a fairly smart person.  I mean I know some things.  Like I know that you don’t really have to wait 30 minutes after you eat before you can swim.  I know that apples taste best with a little peanut butter on them.  I know that my mother really was right most of the time.  And I know that eating Tofu given to you by a friend while you are pregnant will result in a near death experience and a very real fear that  you will, in fact, vomit up the baby if you get sick one more time.

But there are some things that I just don’t get.  They baffle me.  Here are five of those things:

1.  Sushi.  Yep, I said it.  I am one of the uncool people who finds sushi to be the equivalent of dragging one’s tongue along the bottom of a briny tide pool.  I have tried it twice.  And I so wanted to like it because it looks so pretty and it seems so hip.  Sadly, even trying it in a happening NYC restaurant in the late evening hours as I celebrated my 40th birthday did not mask the taste of the seaweed.  I’d rather eat the tofu mentioned above.

2.  This sign.

See store manager for details

I saw this sign at Hollywood videos.  I guess it’s just in case your supply is running low.

3.  Purposeful misspelling.  I hate it.  I think it’s ridiculous.  The worst that I have seen is on a sign advertising a preschool.  Kiddie’s Korner. To make it worse it advertises “certified teachers – state licensed”. Okay, I get it. It’s supposed to be kute, um, cute. But do I really want to send my child to a daycare whose teachers can’t even spell? No thanks. It seems the letter “k” is a good candidate for use in misspelled words. How about “Kleen Kars”, or “Kwik Kash”. It makes me want to hand out dictionaries.

4.  Mistaken misspelling.  In the mall recently, I saw a sign in front of a nail shop (fingers not hammers) that was advertising a special on kid’s manicures.  “Kitty Manicures”.  Obviously, since the sign also had two little girls getting their nails painted, what they meant was “kiddie” manicures.  Perhaps it was a language barrier (the owners were Asian, I believe) but why didn’t the printer catch the mistake?  With a world full of computers and spell check their is no excuse for spelling or grammar mistakes.  Wink, wink.

5.  And finally I don’t understand the Walmart parking lot.  If you’ve ever shopped at Walmart like I am forced to on a pretty regular basis since it’s the only major store where I live, you might have noticed the obscene amount of litter in the parking lot.  Litter alone is inexcusable, but casting a dirty diaper out of the car because you are too lazy to walk to the trash bins that are conveniently located at every shopping cart return, is something I can’t even wrap my brain around, though my foot has nearly wrapped itself around one of these landmines on several occasions.  What is wrong with people and why don’t you find the same poo pockets littering the Target parking lot?  The Target parking lot where there are no trash receptacles.  Go figure.

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Here’s to an enlightening 2010!

Happy 2010!

I’m not one really for resolutions because it puts too much pressure on me and I always seem to disappoint myself.  And the word resolve makes me think of the carpet cleaner that has never done much for removing stains from my spotted rugs.  So resolve makes me think of stains, which is not something that I want to associate with my life in any way.

Instead, I have decided to embark on a new, more positive, more enlightened 2010.  I do have ideas (not resolutions) about how I hope to reach my enlightenment.

1.  I want to learn to speak my words as well as I write them.  I tend to find myself choosing not to voice an opinion or share my thoughts because they never seem to come across the way I hear them in my head and I feel misunderstood.

2.  I want to pay more attention.  I tend to get so caught up in the stresses of everyday life that I miss out on the blink moments.  I need to remind myself often that the stresses will always be there in one form or another, but there are certain moments in my life that I will never be given the chance to experience again.  I don’t want to miss those.

3.  I want to have quiet moments.  I’m not really talking about quiet moments in my house, but quiet moments in my mind.  If Jacob got his OCD from someone, I’m sure it was me.  I have a hard time shutting down my brain and I tend to fixate on these mental loops.  It’s really bad in the evenings when I crave the quiet.  So, in an effort to help myself get to that point one day, I am going to make time to meditate on a regular basis until the quiet becomes something I can bring upon myself at will.

I have other things I hope to accomplish this year, but those are my 3 biggies.  I feel like if I can focus on those 3 the other things will fall into place naturally.  I need this to be a year of inner focus for me.  I need to remember who I have always been beneath the busyness that is life.

I’d love to hear how you plan to make 2010 your best year yet.

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Neti what?

My very own Neti Pot

Snot. Something I have had to learn to accept as a part of my life as the mother of two boys, one of who has a certifiable spigot nose. But recently I have had to come to peace with my own mucous membranes.
Living in Southern Georgia has its perks. And although I can’t really think of any now, I have to believe that somewhere deep in the heart of Dixie and myself lies some little gem of Southern-ness that I am eternally grateful for.

One thing, however, that I am not at all pleased about is the fact that as I’ve grown older my nose has put up a protest to pine trees, and pollen both of which are relentless invaders of my yard.
My nose is forever spilling its contents onto my upper lip…pretty, and quite a feminine touch if I do say so myself. And since I don’t always have a tissue handy I have been known to pull a sleeve maneuver now and again. As a result of my Chinese Water Torture schnocker, I have acquired what I like to call my “water” mark – a lovely profile-enhancing scar on the tip of my right nostril.

In an effort to ease my nasal flow and be a bit more eco-friendly (less tissues means fewer trees have to die to support my nasal needs), I followed the advice of my yoga teacher from years ago and bought a Neti pot.
If you are not familiar with a Neti Pot, it’s a little bit like an Aladdin’s Lamp, minus the genie but with the same potential for granting my wish – stop the snot.

At first I was a bit put off by the whole thing. The idea of filling a pot with warm salt water and pouring through one nostril while, if you’ve managed to master the angle of your head correctly, the briny fluid then makes its grand exit along with a bit of mucous out of the opposite nostril, is a bit gross and kind of reminded me of an enema for your nose.

But it works. The first time I attempted to irrigate my nose I wound up with a throat full of salt water. After a few attempts I was able to lean over the sink with my head tilted slightly forward and in one nostril it went and out the other it came. I was surprised by how pleasant it felt. I was even more surprised by how much snot I blew out of my nose afterward.

When my oldest son found out about my Neti pot he begged to watch me do it. One thing I’ve learned being a mother is that there is no dignity that remains once you gain membership into the club. None. So, of course, I agreed to let him watch.

His eyes widened as he moved in closer to the sink to see how in the world the water went in one side and out the other. Suddenly, I was a magician of sorts. After the water drained out I plugged up one nostril, took a deep breath and blew out the offending discharge. Jacob’s mouth dropped open, “Cool.”
Now, not only was I a member of Club Mom, I had been granted membership into Club Cool Mom – because I could blow snot just as good as any boy.

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Santa’s on the naughty list (originally posted 2008)

Santa's Got a Gun

I am very disappointed in Santa.  I have, however, come to the conclusion that there must be two Santas – one for the South and one for the rest of the world.  I’m sorry to say I live in the South and have had a glimpse of the one and only redneck Santa.

Warner and I took the boys to Bass Pro Shop’s big shindig celebrating the arrival of Santa to his in-store workshop.  Well, given that kid-friendly activities are few and far between we decided to take old Santa up on his invitation.

Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that I am in no way a Bass Pro kinda girl.  I hate fishing.  I hate  hunting.  I hate camping.  I sort of hate outdoors unless it’s surrounded by civilization.  City girl through and through.

So we get there just in time for Santa’s big arrival via tractor-pulled party boat.  Yep, it’s true.  Nicholas is loving every minute of it because he’s just not old enough to know that there’s just something not quite right about party boat Santa.

We made our way inside the redneck mecca amid camoflauged holiday shoppers with their Little Bubbas in tow.  And what to my wandering eyes should appear but Santa Claus holding two tiny reindeer – antlers that is.  What?!  Since when did Santa start hunting and what did poor Rudolph do to piss him off?

Leave it up to Southern Santa to do things his own way.  Time to break out the Bud Light and spread some cheer Southern style.  Christmas will never be the same now that Santa has a gun.

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Ummm…Ewwww! Nasty Monkey Alert!

Last week I took my two simians to a house of bounce called Monkey Joe’s.  If you don’t have kids and you aren’t familiar with these Tiggerific jumping stations, just call to mind the moon jumps that you can usually find at any state fair multiply that by eleventy-one, add a few money-sucking games of chance (as in there’s no chance you’ll win), and a nice sugar bar complete with tongue-dye ICEEs, and sugar-comas on a stick (cotton candy), and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like.

Someone got smart – obviously a mother in need of a break – and turned the world onto indoor bouncing playgrounds.  And since babies gotta bounce, the idea took off.  It’s sort of like watching a life-size pinball game with added danger – kids ricochet off inflatables at the speed of sugar while parents practice collision management.

While we were there I noticed a sign in the bathroom that was a bit disturbing.

Wash your hands after touching bare human body parts other than clean hands and clean exposed arms.

Umm….EWWW!  I’m not exactly sure what goes on in the bathrooms at Monkey Joe’s – I mean I know monkeys are nasty and kids are a close second, but…really?

First, just the fact that it specifies human body parts is bothersome.  What else would be in MJ’s – maybe real monkeys are allowed on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I just don’t know.

Running a close second – they are sure to point out that at times one might encounter in the MJ toilet area bare body parts that aren’t in fact hands, or ex posed arms.  Well, we are all aware that some, ahem, parts are exposed as one goes about one’s monkey business but I’m hoping like all get out here that not much touching is going on – this is a kid’s place for heaven’s sake.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this whole thing.  But for the record, I saw no exposed parts while in the bathroom.  I did, however, feel like going home to take a shower after reading that sign.  NAS-TEE!

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