we're fraternal

We've had lots of fun in the past with celebrity look-alike posts, so I thought I'd offer up mine.

Now, the picture I took with my phone of a National Enquirer cover last month was too distorted to use in the blog, so I was forced to scour the internet for images that will confirm my twindom with Kirstie Alley. Mind you, I only resemble her when she weighs 260+ pounds. When she's thin she is quite beautiful. And I definitely don't fancy myself having her kick-ass hairline. But there is an undeniable similarity when she's heavy.

See for yourself.:


this one captures my ever-present scowl


this could be either of us

wanna get in my drawers?

B is my most fervent cheerleader, in all realms, and I am hers. This is especially true in matters of the home front. We encourage each other to forge ahead on days when we're dog tired and uninspired, and we have a wonderful reciprocity with grace for those times when it's just not happening. But mostly we keep each other going, and relish each others' successes.

Our primary method of mutual inspiration is our use of "challenges." When one or both of us is lagging, the other throws out a loving, creative, and clever challenge, proportional to what the other can reasonably handle in the moment. When B is out of coffee and the kids are sick and the dryer is melting all of their clothes, for instance, I would never challenge her to clean her whole house. But I would challenge her to spend a half an hour in her garden, rejuvenating. This was one of her challenges this morning, along with spending a half an hour cleaning something inside the house. In turn, she challenged me to study up on lapbooks and introduce them to Quinn, as well as clean one surface/cupboard/drawer that has been seriously neglected. (Yes even ocd mamas neglect some things.) I've posted before and after pics of the drawer I selected. Man it was grody.

Since we spend a lot of time in each other's homes, we can set awesome challenges with ease. B knows the top of my refrigerator is getting cluttered again, and will crack the whip on it, and I know that clean towels are becoming scarce at her house, and will challenge her to do a load of them right away. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not romanticizing these challenges. Sometimes they downright suck. This is particularly true when I've just sat down for my Lost reruns, or when I'm so tired my eyes are crossing, or when my ocd is flaring up and I'd sooner burn my f-ing house down than try to clean it. My least favorite challenge was to clean off our hillbilly white trash porch, and then paint it and wash down the back door. I'm still a little bitter, even though she did come over to help with the painting. My favorite challenge came last weekend when I was feeling sooo resentful and obstinate. She told me I had to put away 15 things, throw away 15 things, and wipe down 15 things. Sheer genius! I immediately made a list, and within one hour had crossed all 45 things off. My house still has a little sparkle from that one.

Uh oh, I'm getting dangerously close to a novella. Sorry guys. I could talk cleaning all day. Instead, I think I'll clean all day. B, this challenge took five minutes, got anything harder? (No painting please!)

Before:


After:

these things come in threes

I swear this is short. I'm just looking for a pat on the back.

My kids spent Wednesday night at my mom's, so I hung around B's house all day trying to will $2.51 into $20.00 so we could eat really bad delicious food. We wondered if there were any merchants who might accept magic beans from the garden, an I.O.U., or one of Addison's rock necklaces as currency, but ultimately were stuck with the classic Krap Macaroni & Cheese vs. Top Ramen debate.

Anyway anyway, I personally did nothing constructive the entire day. That is, until later when I picked up my kids. I whisked them home to get jackets, and got cajoled into allowing not only a bike, but some jumpy trampoline shoes of Quinn's. We headed to McKay track, where we met my mom for a mile-long walk just as it was turning from dusk to getting-mugged dark. After sprinting, speeding, and bounding around the track, we took my ma home and the kids and I went to the Courthouse gym, where I signed Brandy and myself up for a two year membership (yea!). Then I took my kids out to eat, and brought them home to say goodnight to their dad. Finally, we went back to my mom's to watch Lost, because hello, "My name is Cheyenne, and I am a Lostaholic." There we were treated to beef roast and (only a dollop I swear B!) of mashed potatoes, and an hour of Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), who may have surpassed Sayid's lead for my unswerving devotion.

Anyway, not a shabby job of bringing up the caboose of a mostly unproductive day right?

i might rather pour honey on my head

Late at night I become susceptible to a sort of ethereal reasoning and say and do things that feel monumentally wise at the time, and then in the morning I want to slit my throat.

Tonight, I'm copping to the fact that I hate the Gilbert House. That's right, I hate it. I know my crunch factor just dropped by ten thousand recycled hemp points, and I don't even care. I know I'm supposed to dress my kids in uncoordinating Hanna Andersson sweat suits until they are fifteen, and encourage them to memorize every exhibit, if not create some of them, and I know I ought to spend every sunny day there. But I just can't. Because I hate it. I'll try to restrict my explanation, as I've already hogged most of cyberspace tonight, but okay, I can't handle not being able to see my kids for thirty minutes at a time. Nor am I fond of them disappearing into some labyrinth of broken necks, into which I could not fit if I tried, and would therefore fail at rescuing them. (If you're wondering if know I'm crazy, I do, and I take a lot of pills, but I can't shake the pervasive safety phobia.)

Fortunately for my kids, we have a lot of friends who guilt me into going, paying little mind to my delicate mental state. The kids instantly enter that cage/maze/chamber, and are not be seen for half an hour, when they emerge asking for hot dogs, another fear of mine. So we go, and they run, which is wonderful, and they visit the exhibits and punch and choke each other in the shadow room, and I try to get a colorful educational vibe rather than a dank desperate vibe. I know one mom who agrees with me, and she had BETTER come forth in unity, for I fear after this gets posted, she may be my only friend left.

I don't want to get too detailed about why I'm uncomfortable there, because 40% of my friends either built it, or run it, or consider it a member of their family, and I'm not aiming to hurt anyone. But it's specifically configured to choke and/or hide your child(ren). I always want to take everyone into the baby room and sit safely amongst the shape sorters, but nine year olds are prohibited, and they get pissed when you try to hold them there. They want to be slopping around in that sticky bubble bullshit, or assembling people's garbage into crafts that must be brought home and cherished forever. I just can't take it. But, I'm a mom, first and foremost, and I shan't deny my kids these liberties just because I'm scaredy cat with ocd. So, if you're not busy setting fire to my house for this act of treason, and you happen to be headed to AC Gilbert's soon, and everyone else on your list turned you down, and you hate me, go ahead and call me. We'll probably come.

blogical

A friend and new blogger recently posted a question to our moms' group about so-called blogging etiquette, how personal to get, etc. And since I have three minutes to kill before rushing to my mom's to watch Lost, I thought I'd give it a vast deal of thought and bore the shit out of all of you with my musings.

First of all, newsflash: discretion is not my strong suit, so most things are going in. I yam what I yam and everything. Obviously I make an effort not to upset the people I care about, though I must confess to using far less caution not to offend the people I don't care about. It goes without saying that private things are private, be they actions or opinions, and I don't reveal these truisms unless I drink .000005 ounces of alcohol, or unless I'm emotional and call Sam, or if it will make someone laugh, or like me better, or be my friend, or get me invited to a party. In short, the real dirt gets dished in person.

But my method isn't as haphazard as it seems. I am fairly calculated about who is reading my blog, and what they see, but I deal in probabilities rather than exactitudes. My mother-in-law, age 79, is probably never going to suddenly stop grooming cats everyday and buy a computer and learn to use it and intuit the name brilliant monster and catch up on years worth of posts, and happen to see that I've maligned the clothes she picks for my kids. Probably.

That said, my high school best friend/current persona non grata is quite likely to have patchworked his way here via B's MySpace blog announcement, and I'm sure he's delighting in what he sees as my fat, ordinary, non-flying-to-Beliz, life. Though sickly, he's jealous of my nervous breakdown because he always wanted to have one, and he'll mask his envy with a slathering of judgement.

OMG, what am I talking about?

Speaking of high school, I am reminded of a time wherein I was really burdened everyday by a friend's chronic bad breath. It was a quality of life thing. I could think of no acceptable way of alerting her to this problem (and frankly, was flabbergasted that she didn't know), so I sat our entire group of friends down and announced that "one of us has bad breath." Appropriately shamed, I promise never to do that in my blog. ("Ahem, ONE of us is always late. Or for that matter, never shows up at all, and doesn't even answer her phone. Or care. Deborah!" Again, she'll never see that.)

Good Christ, am I still writing? Sorry, I got a late energy spurt. (note to self: I hate the word spurt.) The good news is I'm going to throw in the towel on this roving post. The bad news is, I'm going to blog something else.

There Kendra, if I can post this horse shit, you have carte blanche.

whiplash

A word to the wise:

If you don't cook or bake, and rely on the ambition and generosity of others, namely your mother-in-law, to bestow pies upon you, you'd be wise to use caution about one thing.

When you've sliced yourself a piece of the scrumptious pie in your sleepy morning haze, so eager to wash it down with the aforementioned 64-oz. coffee, and you see a tupperware container of hand-whipped cream in the fridge, I URGE you to make sure it's not mashed potatoes before heaping it upon your pie.

I mean, for what it's worth.

no country for sissies

B and I are on a little movie kick these days, and last night we selected No Country For Old Men. Critics gave it an A, and the film and its crew were showered with Academy Awards the other night. Plus, Tommy Lee Jones is really cute, so how cold we miss?

Within eight seconds of our arrival, my blood was running cold. Set against the backdrop of the dreariest old western landscape, Josh Brolin was making one gruesome discovery after another. Soon he made the fateful mistake of absconding with two million dollars he liberated from a rotting carcass, and the hunt began.

Enter the creepiest m-f-ing villain you have ever laid your tender eyes upon. Dark and silent, tall and relentless, with eyes can that could turn you to stone. Or at least make you cry. Granted I am prone to some exaggeration at times, but this man was so sinister I wanted to leave the theater. His gaze bore a hole straight through my heart, and I literally trembled throughout the entire movie. As crazy as it sounds, his face was not his most frightening feature, nor was his modified oxygen tank murder weapon. It was his hair. When a fraction of my terror subsided a bit, I was commenting to myself that his medieval pageboy was really the source of my fear, and that's when Brandy leaned over and whispered, "What's up with that Prince Valiant hairdo?" It was the only smile I was afforded the entire night.

So grim guy tracks dumb luck guy, in search of the money, and our audience was breathless for two hours. This pursuit was so chilling, so hopeless, and so so bloody, no one made a peep. You could actually hear my nails tearing the flesh of B's arm.

Spoiling the ending isn't really a problem here, because A) the Coen brothers spoil their own endings, and B) this post is about Javier Bardem being the most ominous son of a bitch in the history of my cinematic life. So disturbing is he that I refused to believe, when Sam told me, that he actually had a name. That he could have an actual mother, or worse, that he is walking around somewhere. I think he should be imprisoned just for looking like that.

After dropping B off and managing to make it home without him popping up in my back seat, I immediately Googled him to see if he was in fact human. Surprisingly, he is, and does have a mother, and even smiles! This latter fact was the only reason I got any sleep last night at all.

So, do I recommend the movie? Um...yes, if you like to lose control of your bowels, no if you require satisfying endings.

But I consider it a badge of honor to have survived. B, sorry I mutilated your arm. Go heavy on the Neosporin!

perspective

There's a bit of notoriety surrounding the coffees I drink each day, and I wanted to show everyone why. I start out each morning with a tumbler full of joe, that is, when I can't get to Starbucks to settle for their meager portions.

In my heyday (of mania in full-swing), I was drinking two or three of these a day, and was always delighted to have Brandy over because she'd match me gallon-to-gallon, until we were both writhing on the floor with coffee heart attacks.

So here it is, my morning ritual, the jolt that enables me to make beds, start laundry, do dishes, roust sleepy munchkins from their beds, and, when I'm lucky, take a shower and run 665 errands.

You should try it. I'll even make you your first one for free...

not your grandmother's bingo

Today I need to lament that my once promising cerebral cortex has atrophied into a pitiful little blob I have come to accept as my latent mind. You see, my exceptional children, tender little parasites that they are, managed to bilk me out of virtually all the functioning brain cells I'd worked so hard to amass during my formative years. It's not enough that they left me with a gelatinous alien flap for a stomach, oh no, they had to suck every cognizant molecule out of my grey matter as well.

They say that a mother loses brain power with every birth, but I only have two children, and am lucky if I can string together words with more than three syllables. So either my precious bundles were particularly greedy, or I wasn't as smart as I thought I was to begin with. Obviously, I refuse to believe the latter.

It is true that I speak with less confidence, for I know that key words will elude me at critical moments, and as anyone can tell you, I forget everything I see/hear/read/say/buy/etc. I was never like this before. I competed on the varsity Street Law team in high school, got a free ride to Willamette University, and could annihilate almost anyone in a verbal confrontation. Sadly, I took great joy in this and did so often. But I digress.

One thing that reminds me daily of my ever-dwindling brainpower is our Scrabble Deluxe game. It beckons me with its swirly letters, burgundy tiles, and velvet pouch. But ours is an affair best forgotten, for I can no longer score even a fraction of what I used to. My mom taught me how to play when I was very young, and I fancied myself somewhat of a natural. I've only bingoed twice, and I'm semi-ashamed to confess that I've phoneyed zillions of times (typically with lesser-known proper nouns--like cheeses and such). I'm an excellent blocker, and I even admit to some brailing in my younger days, but payback is a bitch when you're staring at a hopeless nongo.

God how I miss it.

My mom always has her Scrabble welcome out for me, but we have a fairly fierce rivalry, and I don't think my ego could withstand being trounced right out of the gate after five years. But I see certain word orders everywhere I look. License plates, babies' blocks, things my children write that are words, unbeknownst to them. I've slayed people using AA, AI, HM, and JO. I am reminded of a time my mom got like a thousand points playing DOJO on a triple. I naively thought there was no way she could play off of a hanging J with only one square open. Drats! Of course, nothing beats SUPERNOVA. See why I can't play her when I'm so raw? I seem to recall sticking my neck and playing her a couple years ago, and she QAT-ed me twice, and drew most, if not all, of the ten powers. (The two blanks, four esses, J, Q, X, and Z)

You all know that Q is typically the coveted letter, right? And that people will hold onto a U even if it's their only vowel, in hopes of drawing the Q. It's worth mentioning that, as one of only two letters worth ten points (the other being Z), naming my son Quinn was no coincidence.

Anyway, I really miss Scrabble, and I REALLY miss being able to play Scrabble. I was never going to play in a tournament or anything, but one can derive a lot of confidence from throwing down BANJAX to an unsuspecting opponent, and cresting 300 points.

Then again, one can also derive pleasure listening to Raffi sing Les Petites Marionettes. All I know is, Quinn and Reilly had better put my brain to good use!

hairesy?

Last weekend when B and I were shopping for Pam & Gab's party, we happened into Claire's, that heinous accessory store full of cheap, made in China trinkety crap. Ostensibly, we were there for a hair clip for B, which I concede is totally legit. But somehow, in this sea of gawdy horror, I found myself inexplicably reaching for a headband. Somehow I felt it might accent my outfit, in spite of its distinct contrivance, and the fact that it is about ten years too young for me. Maybe even fifteen. In any event, B liked it, and being that I was all caught up in pre-party grandiosity, I bought it. And wore it. And, as long as we're being honest, I took it off halfway through the party.

Cut to today. I was preening for an appointment and noticed this headband I thought I retired onto a shelf. Somehow, it spoke to me again, insisting it was just what my outfit needed. I was helpless against its persuasions, and before I knew it, I was wearing it. But I'm skeptical about wearing it to this appointment. I'm afraid this specialist will take one look at my teeny-bopper headband and immediately attribute all my problems to my apparent need to pretend I am fifteen.

So against all my vanity-borne objections, I am posting pictures of it here and letting you guys decide whether or not this look is edgy or desperate.

And, you know, don't let my extreme vulnerability become any kind of factor...

Behold.: