Friday Confessions

Joining up with Glamazon and Mamarazzi for some confessing!

I confess:

• I hate commercials.
• I hate them so bad I prayed to have them go away.
• Now some of you might think, turn off the TV and go live life!
• But God knows me better than that.
• Which is why He gave us the DVR.
• You’re welcome.
• There are a few awesome quality commercials
• But 95% of them are worse than being trapped at the bottom of an outhouse.
• The kind I hate the most are the ones about things none of us really want to talk about.
• The ones that cover things like hemorrhoids, poopy diapers, adult diapers and feminine needs.
• ***sidenote****Has anyone noticed Steven Tyler often looks more feminine than JLo?***endsidenote***
• They are all things that may be necessary but we don’t need to discuss them, witness dramatizations or see how amazing they are at holding blue water.
• Being human can be gross and embarrassing and we don’t need to be reminded of it while watching Sister Wives or Grey’s Anatomy!
• We all know where to go to get stuff for the feminine itch/hemorrhoidal flair up/monthly visits/erectile dysfunction/lack of bladder control etc. etc.
• Ew.Just Ew.
• Have you ever had to go buy that kind of “reminding you that being human is gross” kind of stuff?
• Yeah, me neither.
• Cuz I don’t have any of those problems.
• But I will say for times like that, for those of you you have had them, I’m grateful for the self checkout.
• Especially when you (not me) are there just for that one thing.
• Only you throw in a candy bar to try to camouflage what you’re really there for.
• Unless there’s a price check issue.
• Over intercom “We need a price check on Preparation H Cream. Jumbo size. On aisle 4.”
• One time I did a big shopping trip and threw in my two embarrassing items into the middle of it all and the checkout lady actually held them both up and said nice and loud for all to hear, “Condoms and a bra, that’s an interesting combination!”
• It’s a shame she never made it home that night.
• But you gotta love  a store where you can get both of those at such a low price!
• My daughter likes to watch a few shows on TLC and she’ll record them.
• I don’t mind the show she’s watching, it’s the commercials for their other shows that bother me!
• She hasn’t totally grasped the whole forwarding commercials thing so I’ll walk in and they’ll be promoting another one of Lisa Ling’s shows.
• If you’ve seen her shows you know she’s following in the footsteps of her idol, Oprah, by showing all of us the ugliness of humanity.
• I’m just not ready to explain to my kid what transgender means or what a pedophile is.
• That’s just me.
• I usually come running  (by running I mean waddle) in the room saying, “let’s forward the commercials, please” frantically looking for the remote, as I hear some guy with a mullet and no teeth telling Ms. Ling about his love affair with his pet pig.
• ****anothersidenote****I swear Steven is wearing more lip gloss then Jennifer….******endsidenote****
• Anyway, I need to find something for explosive diarrhea but I just don’t know what…I keep forwarding the commercials, dang it!
• But it’s  not for me, it’s for a friend….I don’t have those kind of nasty problems!

The mind of a 9 year old

My 9 year old has been cracking me up lately! She can also drive me to drink with her epic tantrums and fights with her sister but my goodness, she’s funny and I’m not entirely sure she realizes it.

My husband had to leave town twice in a short period of time. One trip was an overnight leadership retreat with some of the teenaged young women in our church-with other male and female leaders, of course. A couple days later he was going to a conference for a few days. My daughter told her teacher that her dad was going away for a while. The teacher asked her if I was going with him and my daughter said, “No, he’s going with a bunch of girls.” Her teacher and I laughed about it at parent teacher conference but I’m sure at the time she was thinking, “So, that’s how it is in their family…”

Another time I was finally waking up on a Saturday morning (around 10AM) when the family all ended up in bed with me. I was laughing and goofing off with them and my observant and somewhat shocked child said, “Mom, you’re actually in a good mood today! You’re usually just yelling at everyone!” Uuummmmmmm….thank you? (What I really wanted to say was, “You try carrying around a baby in your uterus for almost a year and see how happy you are all the time!!!)

This girl is a talker and a giggler. If she gets in trouble at school, it’s because of talking or giggling. I’m pretty sure she’s known in class as the giggler. I think she even got an award for it at the end of school last year. Which will explain why I found this next thing so funny. I found an essay she had to write in class in the paperwork she brought home. I’d scan it but I’m too lazy so here it is:

“I don’t want to be a bedroom because when someone will lie on me I would start to laugh and I would not stop laughing. I would laugh ALL NIGHT LONG!!! I like being a person. It is really fun!!!! THE END”

I have a feeling this was supposed to be a one page essay because she magically made it take up an entire page.

Anyway, that girl is a treasure and anyone you comes in contact with her agrees!

**PS-She caught me writing this and got really mad. According to her and my 7 year old, I am no longer allowed to write ANYTHING about either of them EVER! So don’t tell her I told you….ssssshhhhhhh

The blog with dust bunnies and cobwebs

Sooooo It hasn’t been the funnest couple of weeks. My energy level plummeted, threw out my back, failed my glucose test (a test for gestational diabetes), found out while my energy level plummeted-my iron was super duper low even though I take an iron supplement and nausea and/or heartburn that had me waking up choking on bile in the middle of the night. Don’t even get me started on the endless sobbing!

I know I am making you all want to go have unprotected snuggles.

Needless to say, I haven’t felt chatty, entertaining or the slightest bit delightful in any way. When you are a person that feels like all you have to offer those around is entertainment, it’s rough when you don’t want to entertain. Ya know?

Anyway, no need to call FEMA (they probably wouldn’t make it here till next Tuesday anyway) all is well. Just a little rough is all. I did take the 3 hour glucose test and passed just fine so that was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders! I also got some dresses (pseudo muu muus) to hopefully get through these last few (9) weeks in some comfort.

Anyway, I did have a couple things I wanted to talk about and I know you are DYING to read about!

My sweet, super sensitive and funny 6 year old became a 7 year in one of the most understated birthdays ever! I’m sure TLC wouldn’t be doing a show about the birthdays I throw!

She got a new bike from mom and dad and we took her to the super gourmet restaurant of her choice: Winger’s.

She can be as sweet as molasses one minute and the next minute make you want to pull your hair out but she will ever be my baby and has me wrapped around her finger. Her teacher loves her and she’s the best friend a kid can have!

Next on the list~ The man blogger. That sounds like it should smell of Old Spice and have a constant 5 o’clock shadow while wearing a flannel shirt, throwing large logs around in the forest. I enjoy them-when I can find a good one. I only know of a handful but I wanted to tell you about them because they deserve to be read by the masses! I love finding awesome man bloggers so if you know of one I haven’t listed TELL ME!

-Cheeseboy! I’m pretty sure everyone already reads him but I just wanted to remind you of his awesomeness! You will never leave his blog without a laugh or at least a smile!

-Mr Z. at Adventures and Misadventures of Daily Living! My favorite thing he does is Moments with Joey chronicling classic moments with that one kid in class that you go home to tell your spouse about. Yes, he is a teacher. Some of my favorites are here, here and here.

-Matt Logelin! He was on Oprah once because of his blog and he now has a book coming out. When his wife gave birth to their daughter, she died in the process and he rights about surviving that tragedy and raising their daughter alone. His daughter is so cute and he is such a great writer and photographer! One little warning-he’s not afraid to swear.

-Middle-Aged Mormon Man! He is my new favorite! If you couldn’t figure out from his name, he talks about Mormon stuff but that isn’t it. He is a delight which is amazing since he’s middle-aged and all hehehehe! He should be having a mid-life crisis…wait maybe blogging is his mid-life crisis…

You really should check these guys out! They all belong on your b log rolls and in you following list! I would never steer you wrong!

Lastly, I am super excited to see that I have actually reached 100+ followers! I don’t really put myself out there so this is super exciting to me! I took down my followers window for a while cuz my self esteem seems to get attached to it and it would go up and down, as would my self esteem. I put it back up and told myself to get over myself and look what happens! Welcome, my new friends! If you’re new and have a blog you want me to check out, I would love to come see you! I can’t tell who is new anymore so point me your direction!

Okay, that’s all. Goodnight. I am sweating like a whore in a church.

Maybe I’ll go lay on the cold driveway in my underwear.

I’m sure my neighbors would appreciate that.

Only One, Please.

We had book club the other night. I love book club. We only talk about the book and serious things. We are very intellectual. We never ever talk about poop, our labor and deliveries or the fact that our boobs will never be the same after having children. It’s only politics, writing style and philosophy at our book clubs.

Our book was “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. Very good book about a man who goes in to Pakistan and later Afghanistan to build schools in poverty stricken villages. It’s amazing what one man can make happen.  We got talking about Islam and how so many things we know or think we know about Muslims and their faith are tainted by the fundamentalists of the religion or what movies tell us. So to most Westerners the Islamic faith is oppressive and war hungry with no freedoms.

One example we talked about was the women wearing the veil. In some cases I am sure that it is misused or taken to the extreme but I think if you were  to ask a lot of Muslim women, they would love it as part of their faith and see it as a protection of sorts.

It got me thinking about the misconceptions there are out there about my religion-The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as The Mormons (which was actually a derogatory nickname given to the church members in the early days by haters because of The Book of Mormon…funny it’s still around). I could write pages of misconceptions and false information that are out there about my church. I ran into almost everything on my mission, some laughable and some just hurtful and mean.

One of them comes from our history, back to the earlier years. Yes, I’m talking about polygamy.

We often get confused with those fundamentalist ‘Mormons’ when it hasn’t been a practice in our religion since 1890. And when it was practiced, it wasn’t about who can get the most pretty young wives. In fact, Mark Twain (not a fan of the church) said,

“Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here - until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely" creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, "No - the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure - and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence." (Roughing It, Sam Clemens, p97)

While I find his statement hilarious, he makes a good point. It wasn’t about sex or power, it was about taking care of our own and increasing the population. All of this and the belief that it was a commandment from God.

Thanks to TV, this misconception is being shared with a wider audience with these guys:

               

Because of misinformation people think this is a part of our religion now. I assure you it is not! As much as I would like a Sister Wife to be in charge of cleaning the house and taking care of the kids so I can do more important things like read and sleep, that will not be happening.

When I was on my mission eons ago, we had a contact that had asked for missionaries. His name was *Phillip Golden and we joked that he must be a “Golden contact” (missionary language for someone who is taught and easily accepts our beliefs and wants to join our church). We went to meet him and found out he was 76 years old. As we began to talk with him, we started thinking that maybe he was our Golden Contact because he seemed very eager to learn all he can and even talked readily of being baptized! Needless to say, we were giddy as school girls!

Until…

He then revealed that he wanted to be a ‘Mormon’ like his friend up north who had 3 wives.

Ruh-roh.

Come to find out he was on his 3rd or so marriage and his wife was in a home-I think for Alzheimer's or something-and he had a girlfriend on the side, who I guess he wanted to marry. I had very unmissionary-like thoughts like ‘does his ‘stuff’ even still work close to 80 (I don’t think Viagra was around then)’ and, ‘dude. This guy is an old perv!’

No matter how much we tried to explain to him that we did not practice polygamy, he wouldn’t get it! I don’t know if he thought we were saying that with a wink, you know, keeping it on the down low or something, but nothing would convince him otherwise! He wanted to join our church so he could marry him up some more women!

Boy, was he gonna be sorely disappointed, the old perv!

We handed him off to the elders (male missionaries). Let them deal with him.

*I use his real name only because he’s probably dead or too busy with all his wives to read my blog. Frankly, I think he should make the time for it but I guess being pervy takes up a lot of one’s time.

Confessions

I could go for some Spring, how about you? A mixture of Winter blues, cabin fever, Spring Fever and nesting can make a girl go ca-ca-ca-CRAZY!!! Especially since my body can’t keep up with it all at this point. I want to paint something, which seems to be a pregnancy tradition, but I know it’ll hurt so bad…grrr Almost there…

Confessin with Glam and Mamarazzi:

 

I confess:

• I want to just have a constant flow of Diet Coke into my system today.
• Too many late nights and nights of restless tossing and turning.
• My boyfriend, Bob (aka my body pillow) and I wrestle all night.
• I think my husband is jealous.
• I keep wanting to get a nap in right after the kids leave for school.
• But I live with this:

• If you looked up “Chatty Cathy”, “Tasmanian Devil”, “Constant Shadow”, or “unadulterated energy contained in a small body” in the dictionary, this would be the picture you would see.
• The moment I start falling into an unconscious state she is right there talking, asking for milk, asking me to watch her poop…whatever.
• Sometimes I can lay in my bed with her with the TV on and get a few extra ZZzzZz’s but I will sometimes wake up to her completely naked in my bed, sitting in a pile of bread crumbs and an entire roll of toilet paper scattered throughout the bathroom.
• Yesterday I walked out of my room for a moment and came back to see her holding a syringe-type medicine dose-giver-thingy that I had on my dresser from the other night, which I forgot about. When I left the room there was a teaspoon of red cold medicine in it. When I came back in she was holding it and it was empty. I looked up and this is what I saw:

• It looked like a murder scene!
• It was not only on the ceiling but on my sheets, my comforter, carpets, some clean clothes that were waiting to be put away.
• Okay, maybe not a  murder scene but like someone who cut themselves really bad..
• She couldn’t have been prouder.
• My mom just laughs when we talk on the phone because the whole time my princess is talking away in the background.
• Yesterday we were driving back from Costco and she started chanting “Don't get mad, get Glad!” over and over and we’d just laughed and laughed.
• She also unbuckled herself while I was driving and started roaming the car.
• I told her I was gonna get her a kid’s meal but I won’t if she can’t stay seated and buckled.
• She just said she didn’t want a  kid’s meal.
• That backfired.
• Luckily, she eventually got buckled after I pulled over to get me some Apollo Burger.
• She exhausts me.
• It’s a vicious cycle.

Would you like ketchup with your prescription?

Yesterday I did a quick stop to the store to pick up a couple things for dinner. I happened to have my two oldest daughters with me and just figured all would be well. They are 9 and 7 after all, there shouldn’t be any public humiliation.

Boy howdy, was I ever so very wrong!

Now I was only there for a few minutes-10 tops-and in the short amount of time they fought over pushing the stupid cart (that we didn’t even need), kept crashing into to me, yelling at each other and at one point they were playing tug-o-war with the cart right in the middle of the very busy aisle with people waiting for them to move coming both ways.

I was so flustered that I didn’t even get my ginormous Rice Krispie treat I was hoping for! I just wanted out and out fast!

I know that as the parent it is my responsibility to teach my children how to act in public so I should give plenty of opportunities for them to practice good behavior but that teeny tiny moment made me think of an even better idea.

Years ago, before I had kids and was an expert on everything from marriage to raising children, I had noticed a gas station with a drive thru and I thought, “That’s so pathetic that people can’t walk in to buy their cigarettes/snacks/Big Gulps! What is our society coming to??” Now I am singing a very different tune.

When I have my children, I pick restaurants with a drive thru. If I have to get a prescription filled, I go to the Walmart with a drive thru pharmacy-there is no way in Hades I’m walking to the far end of the store with 3 kids! Do you know how many impulse buy aisles there are between the front door and the pharmacy?? I got so tired of saying ‘no’ 75 times within a shopping trip, I almost never take children with me to the store.

Yes, I want every store I might actually go to to have a drive thru.

Can you imagine the beauty and ease of going to pick up milk and bread or that emergency pack of diapers?

Checker over drive thru intercom: Hi, welcome to Walmart! Can I take your order?

Me in my van: Yes, I would like 4 gallons of your 1%, 3 loaves of bread, a package of pull-ups, medium, and a jumbo tub of Metamucil.

C: Sure, would you like an order of tampons or hemorrhoid cream to go with that?

M: No, but could I also get one of your $8 bras, size “Holy Moly” in a classy leopard print?

C: Do you need any impulse buy items like cheap useless toys or candy that shouldn’t be ingested?

M: No, thanks. But I would like a jumbo Diet Coke and a pretzel.

C: No problem! That’ll be $30. Please pull up to the next window.

Oh, to dream the impossible dream…