Let's Play - Name That Carcass

My best friend Shawna found this thing dead on her living room floor this morning. How she managed to get it outside on her deck to take this picture is beyond me. I would have just put a a bucket over it with a brick on top of it and waited for my husband to get home. I mean I got married for 3 reasons - kids, car maintenance, and dead animal removal - okay maybe 6 reasons if you count love, affection and companionship.

The first mytery is - what is it. She's sure it's not a mouse though that's what it appears to be to me. I apologize for the small scale of the photo - it was taken with a camera phone - you're getting instant coverage here. She thinks the head is far too pointy for a mouse and the tail is far too short. The whole animal is approximately 3-4 inches long.

The second mystery is how did it get there. Was it living in her house and decided to make it's first appearance in the throes of death? Did one of the cats catch it? She think that's unlikely as they were sniffing it and looking at it like "where the hell did this come from and why wasn't I informed?". More than likely her dog Riley carried it in, as he's prone to catching, killing and presenting her with small lifeless gifts. He's a cocker spaniel and king charles cavalier mix and very quick at catching small things, whereas thankfully my beagle is only quick at barking at things so my life is fairly carcass free.

If anyone can identify that carcass. Let me know.

Child Rearing – one concussion at a time

Gwen fell down the stairs yesterday afternoon. Now it was just 3 stairs that lead down to a landing and the back door, and thankfully she didn’t then take another roll and proceed down 9 more stairs and end up on the concrete floor in the basement. She’s completely fine and doesn’t even have a bruise. My first reaction upon hearing the news was obviously – “My God, is she alright?” and my second reaction was, Thank God it didn’t happen when I was responsible for her. I’m just happy in the knowledge that her worst tumble was Matt’s fault. That’s what makes for a healthy marriage – honesty.

This kid has taken more tumbles than I’d like to admit in her short lifetime and most of them happened when I was with her. She’s fallen off the couch three times (after the 1st time you’d think I would have just stopped putting her on the couch), just last week I fell asleep with her in the recliner and woke up at 1 a.m. to her screaming and realized that she had rolled down my legs and onto the floor, and now the stair incident. We’d even installed the safety gate across the stairs last week to avoid just such a situation but it wasn’t properly latched and it swings open and closed and Matt’s theory is that either Aaron or the dog or perhaps Gwen herself opened it before this latest Child Services Inquiry- worthy accident happened.

So I was thinking that our parenting skills were really getting lax this second time around because I didn’t recall Aaron having quite so many unhappy meetings with the floor. Matt was quick to remind me though that Aaron fell off the couch once, off the side of the recliner once when I fell asleep with him, and he fell off the bed, which was quite traumatic. I still hear that thud in my nightmares. He also got a lovely deep scratch, mere millimeters from his eyeball when he was 2 months old and the cat went streaking across the couch and used his face like a runner’s starting block.

It’s times like these when I find myself repeating the parent’s child safety motto. “What doesn’t kill them, makes them stronger”.

A sign that maybe we watch a little too much TV.

Aaron: “Try it free for 60 days . . . try it free for 60 days”

Me: “Is that the Bowflex or the Total Gym?”

Aaron: “Total Gym . . . try it free for 60 days!”

Me: “Remind me to tell your daddy to stop watching so much ESPN during the day.”

Of course I don’t think Matt is any worse than I am. Aaron often says “Turn your house into a home” which is a phrase used on a Lowe’s commercial that plays incessantly on my favorite home improvement and DIY channels.

Aaron’s college tuition could hang on the decision of Rock, Paper or Scissor!

So Matt wanted to watch the Nathan’s hot dog eating competition on ESPN on the 4th and I figured why the heck not – you can’t get any more American than watching people stuff themselves with processed white flour buns and amalgamated meat products. Now if you’ve never watched one of these then you’re really missing out.

There was a half hour pre-show to discuss the history of the competition, and to have little profiles of the main contestants. The 6 time champion, from Japan was in danger of losing the title due to a recent wisdom tooth extraction which left him with jaw arthritis. I mean this is drama with a capital D! Would he be able to perform? Then there was the up and coming American competitor valiantly fighting to bring the Mustard belt (yes that’s what they call it) back to the U.S. It was both the most hilarious and the most pathetic thing I’ve seen in my entire life. Kind of like the movie Dodgeball.

Well in the end the American won by shoving 66 hot dogs down his throat in 12 minutes. I had to look away from the screen for the majority of the competition. It was like watching someone throwing up but instead of just letting it all shoot out like the spinning head scene of The Exorcist, they’re shoving it right back in their mouths.

Now to me, the best part of the entire experience was that they were advertising the upcoming Rock, Paper, Scissors competition, to be aired on ESPN on 7/7/07 – set your Tivo folks. It sounded so utterly ridiculous that I had to check it out. Two contestants face each other, with a referee to make sure that the signs are “thrown” at exactly the same time so neither player has an edge. The best 2 out of 3 makes up a “bout” and then there are 3 bouts per match. The winner gets $50,000!

Now this is legitimate stuff. They even have their own lingo. A win by 3 successive rocks is called an avalanche, 3 scissors is a tool box, and 3 papers is called confetti. It’s hilarious! But I’m thinking maybe I should start practicing for next year. I throw a mean rock – which is my favorite sign to throw. That $50,000 could be mine next year!

Here’s a link to their website: http://www.usarps.com/rules/ I found their “rules” page exceptionally entertaining.

Just like spitting tobacco juice in a Pepsi Can

Bing Cherries are in season, and I think it’s an understatement to say that I enjoy Bing cherries. I LOVE THEM. I love their color, their texture and of course their taste. I buy at least 2 pounds of them at a time and often can easily eat them all within a week. The pitfall (pun intended) of the cherry is the pit.

I don’t own a cherry pitter, because really your teeth and tongue do a quite sufficient job on their own and who wants to sit there and put the cherry in this plier-type device and rip the pits out one by one and turn your fingers all red? Besides if you pit them manually then you lose the stem as well and the fun part about eating a cherry is picking it up by the stem and guiding it into your mouth and then plucking the stem off. Can you tell I enjoy the process of eating and all things food related?? This is what I look like in my own mind each time I eat a cherry. Notice how the bad hair permeates even my fantasies.

Anyway, my point is that eating cherries requires a “pit cup” unless of course you’re eating them outside in which case you just spat them at the nearest squirrel. Now I often take my cherries to work to eat them because I LOVE THEM, and the process of eating them at work breaks up the monotony of the day. I use a paper cup from the break room, and all afternoon today my coworkers have had the joy of hearing not only the clicking of my keyboard but the gentle “ptoo” and “plop” of me spitting seeds into my cup. I try to be discreet and I cover the top of the cup with a paper towel so that if someone comes to my desk they’re not staring at a cup full of saliva-marinated cherry pits.

The process kind of reminds me of guys who chew tobacco. I went to college in Missouri so I’ve met quite a few and one of my friend’s husbands used to chew as well and whenever we went somewhere he’d bring along an empty can of Pepsi and spit in it all night when we were in the car or some other public place where it wasn’t proper for him to spat on the floor/ground. I always thought it was extremely disgusting. I mean seriously, just take up smoking, it will kill you faster, the cancer will go straight to your lungs rather than mutating your jaw, plus smoking doesn’t require you to carry around a can of your own saliva wherever you go.

So I hope my cherry pit expectoration isn’t as gross as that. It’s not like I carry the cup and cherries around with me in the halls. Even if it is that gross I’m not going to quit, that is unless they come up with a bing cherry cigarette.

In a few years we’ll be watching the “Preparation H hemorrhoid Relief Bowl” instead of the “Super Bowl”

I like to balance out my son’s consumption of oreos, peanut butter, and string cheese with at least one fruit and/or vegetable serving per day, and bananas are one of his favorites so we usually have some in the house. A few months ago I noticed that they had cute little stickers with Curious George on them instead of the normal Dole or Chiquita stickers. I can handle that – slapping a children’s character on a healthy food is OK with me, plus he’s a monkey so it makes sense. It does NOT make sense that he’s a monkey but doesn’t have a tail, I mean every species of monkey has a tail; shouldn’t a fictional monkey have a tail? When you think of monkeys don’t you always envision the tail???? – okay sorry I’m getting off topic.

However, this morning I noticed that one of our bananas had a sticker with the picture of a squeeze bottle of Reese’s ice cream topping and the words “Topping Section”. Now first of all, I don’t really see the need to advertise anything on a banana, and secondly don’t you think that’s kind of a stretch? I mean, what’s the correlation? Somebody’s buying bananas to make a banana split and they’re thinking “boy I wish I could find a new unique topping” and bam, they’ll look down at the banana and run right to the “topping section’ of the store for that bottle of Reese’s peanut butter and chocolate topping? They’re kind of reaching there don’t you think. In my high school sex-ed class they used bananas to illustrate how to correctly put on a condom – perhaps Trojan should consider banana sticker advertising?

Now I shouldn’t be surprised. Advertising is everywhere now. Heck I’m even thinking about placing some internet ads on this blog in the hopes of raking in about 10cents a month in profit for this crap that I write. So can I really blame the banana growers of the world for selling out? Think of the possibilities. Everyone eats bananas, young and old, male and female. Anything could be advertised – tampons, male enhancement pills, Donkey Kong video games, wart remover, garbage bags. Why stop at Bananas? Why not encase every single grape with its own little sticker advertisement for hair gel or pet shampoo?

Maybe I could sell ad space on these gigantic boobs of mine. I mean they’re almost the size of a billboard, and I move around – think of the audience I could reach! Or maybe I could get a hair stylist to advertise on one of my headbands. It could say "Don't let hair like this happen to you - Call Betsy at 555-5555 for an appointment". I need to make some calls.

Pee Puddle Skee Ball

So after promising Chuckie Cheese and threatening to take away Chuckie Cheese for 4 days we had to finally go on Sunday. He’d been doing fairly well, with only a couple accidents at home. He had even gotten to the point on Saturday that he was actively going potty himself instead of us having to threaten him with taking away a privilege every 20 minutes just to get him in the bathroom.

We got to Chuckie Cheese and I immediately acclimated the kid to the bathroom. We went in and tried to go – nothing. Which I’m thinking is OK since he went before we left the house. So we ordered pizza and I said to him, “We’re going to try and go potty again in 15 minutes but if you have to go before then you tell someone.” Then I sent him off with Grandma and a handful of tokens. 5 minutes later he’s waddling towards me, his pants soaked. He stood right at the foot of the Skee Ball game and pissed his pants. So immediately I’m mortified, envisioning a puddle of piss on the skee ball machine, but it appears that it ran down his leg and the majority of it was soaked up by his shoes. I did take solace in the fact that even if he had left a puddle it wouldn’t have been any worse than the kid who had his hand down the back of his diaper and then proceeded to touch every thing in the place while picking his nose with the other hand.

Of course I had brought an extra change of clothes and I told him that if he went potty in his pants again we would have to leave because I didn’t have any other clean clothes. The rest of the afternoon was accident free and last night he had absolutely no accidents, initiated going potty himself when he felt the urge and even went in the toilet late last night when we had already put his night-time pull up on him. The best part though was when he informed me that he had to go poopy and ran into the bathroom to do it in the toilet. I mean this is the same kid that 2 days earlier told me that poop was supposed to go in his pants and not in the pot. At the very moment that turd hit the water, a shaft of light came through the window and formed a soft halo around his head, and I think I heard angels singing.