Multi-tasking

So my favorite gift this year is one that I requested. My new laptop. I love it. It’s a thing of beauty. See we have a PC downstairs in our furnished basement and it’s in fine working condition and really there was very little justification for the purchase of another computer. However, I convinced myself and Matt that I needed one so that I could write more often. It’s difficult in the evenings when I’m home alone with the kids to get downstairs, or when I do get them downstairs then Aaron whines incessantly about playing Go Diego Go online. If he had his way he’d stare at that Nick Jr. website until the images were permanently burnt onto his retinas.

The theory was that it would be much more convenient to have a laptop that I could slap on the kitchen counter and be able to bang out a few paragraphs here and there in between dinner, bath, and the oft-occurring screaming fit and/or bloody contusion. The other advantage of a laptop would be that I could haul it with me to work and whip it out during lunch in the break room and type to my little heart’s content.

Today is the 2nd day I’ve brought it to work and I find that doing so serves three purposes. 1. it makes me more productive (with my personal goals of course, who really cares about work productivity). 2. It allowed me to remove personal files from my work computer and to discontinue typing up blog entries on there (even though I rarely if ever posted from work, it still wouldn’t look so great to see that I had 20 personal documents on there that were obviously written on company time) 3. It makes me look damn important when I whip this baby out and prop it open on that break room table, or perhaps it makes me look like an idiot for hauling in a computer to work on during my break when I’m already spending 8 hours sitting in front of one anyway. Hmm, well I’m going to go with "makes me look important" and leave it at that.

The best part about this laptop though is I can take it anywhere at home. I can have it on the kithchen counter, then move it into the living room while the kids are watching a video. I can take it to bed with me and type in my daily journal right before I go to sleep, and best of all, this laptop turns previously wasted moments on the toilet into productive and exciting experiences. I mean who doesn’t want to work on a short story while their body excretes waste? Who needs bathroom trivia or magazines when you can sit there and play a rousing game of Mine Sweeper?


The only thing that would be better is a stimulating internet search on the care and feeding of pygmy goats or maybe a good Google for sexy pics of Ewan McGregor. Alright, that pairing of topics sounds a little odd, but I’ve always wanted a cute little pygmy goat to feed and pet and take care of, and who doesn’t like a good Ewan McGregor fantasy? Not that the fantasy would include the goat too – okay I think I might be digging this hole even deeper – let’s move on. The point I’m trying to make is that unfortunately I don’t have a wireless modem yet so I'm unable to get online and do uhm, important research.

But I’m hoping that this laptop will make me a much more proficient writer, both for my blogging and for my personal writing goals. If nothing else though I should at least improve my Solitaire skills.

The greatest gift of all - excess mucus and a high grade fever.

Yes I am still alive - barely. I managed to write up this entry a week ago and am just now finding the time to actually post it.

We spent Christmas weekend in Kansas with Matt’s family and all in all it was a nice trip. Well aside from the 3 and a half hour church outing and the plethora of made for TV movies. See Matt’s mom is a fan off all things sappy. Josh Grobin and Celine Dion are two of her favorite singers if that helps paint a picture for you, and her favorite TV channel is the Lifetime Movie Network which plays a 24/7 sickeningly sweet dosage of cliché movie plots played out by former sitcom and soap opera actors.

Lifetime wasn’t quite sappy enough for her though and we ended up on the Hallmark channel watching such treasured and time honored Christmas classics as "All I Want for Christmas is a Boyfriend" and "Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Clause". And in case you were sitting around wondering what happened to that great thespian Steve Guttenburg of Police Academy 1-25 fame, well look no further than the Hallmark channel. You’ll be happy to know that his skills are just as blunt as ever.

We got a lot of nice and very thoughtful gifts, but the best gift Aaron and Gwen got was to spend time with their cousins. Staying home all day with Daddy and all night with me pretty much limits their social interaction with other children and they had such a blast with the other kids. However, as most children who are in school or have siblings who are in school they all had colds and the moment my children walked through the door they were dowsed with germs. One kid was coughing on them, the other wiping snot on her hands and then touching their faces. It was inevitable that they would come home and be sicker than dogs and now they are.

One night I ended up on the couch holding one in each arm, mucus oozing out of the majority of their orifices, their foreheads so hot that I could have whipped up 2 eggs over easy and a side of bacon on them. So our living room has now become ground zero. We’ve whipped out the sofa bed to accommodate the ease of non-stop cartoon viewing, there are new and half used tissues in every corner and on every flat surface. A vast array of medication is lined up on the counter. And medication is a major issue, especially with Aaron as he seems to have a mental block against oral medication. It doesn’t matter what form it’s in, or what flavor, this kid just doesn’t like the taste of medicine and he gags and upchucks whatever you try to give him. The only thing we can get down him are grape chewable Tylenol tablets and even then we have to break them into little pieces and he has to take 5 drinks in between each little piece. It takes me 15 minutes to get half the dosage down him.

He’s so funny though even when he’s sick. When he’s couging or when his fever gets high, I must obviously have a concerned look on my face because he’ll turn to me and he’ll say, "I’m okay Momma" in his hoarse little voice. And then he also feels the need to tell me when he’s coughing. Like he’ll be right in the middle of a coughing fit and he’s trying to say, "I’m coughing Momma" or if he just coughs once, he’ll turn to me right afterward and say, "I coughed Momma" in this matter of fact tone, like he just felt I needed to be kept appraised of the situation.

So that’s been the conclusion to my holiday season. I think I need to take a couple days off to recuperate.

Watch her pull a rabbit out of my . . .

As some of you may be aware, I have a tendency to store things in my cleavage. It’s convenient, I never have to worry about whether or not my pants have pockets, and it’s a rather large space considering that my cleavage pretty much begins at my chin and ends at my belly button.

With a small child, I find that what I mostly carry in there is a pacifier. I can get to it quickly, don’t have to worry about pocket lint getting on it etc. Over time Gwen has discovered this phenomenon and how her beloved binky appears magically out of Mama’s chest. Recently she’s taken to checking for it herself. One of the first things she does when I come home from work is to stick her hand between my tits to see if it’s in there. Even if she has one already in her mouth she likes to check occasionally because I’m sure she’s thinking that if she can get her binky out of there, the possibilities are endless in what else she might be able to pull out – a toy, a puppy, a blanket, a bottle? It’s like the swiss army cleavage! It could conceivably hold a tool for whatever need she might have.

My favorite is when she’s got a pacifier in her mouth and discovers that there’s one in the cleavage also. Then it becomes a game of switch the binky’s. She’ll pop the one out of her mouth and pop in the one that’s freshly warmed from the cleavage, place the original one into the cleavage and then about 30 seconds later switch them again, and then again, and then again.

Recently though I feel she’s taking advantage of the seemingly vast storage area and has tried to place other items in there. One day after being hit in the face/chest about 10 times with her sippy cup full of juice, I finally realized that what she was trying to do was place it in my cleavage so that she could retrieve it later.

And then the other day when I was on the toilet and she came sauntering into the bathroom, I realized that it probably wasn’t the best idea to inadvertently train the child to stick her hands into the crevices of my body, "No dear that’s not a fuzzy cleavage you’re reaching for, and I’m fairly sure there’s no binky in there".

“Projection” or not, I’m at least worthy of pocket pool.

One of the many downfalls of being insecure and unhappy with yourself is that you tend to take everyday occurrences that are really unrelated to you in any way, and convince yourself that something about your pathetic self has caused them. Or you misinterpret people’s actions or words to mean something completely different than what was intended. I think this phenomenon is referred to as “projection” (“a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else.” Wikipedia)

For example; the other day an automatic door didn’t open for me and I took it personally. There’s no way that sensor wasn’t tripped by my larger than average frame, so my immediate thought was that the door had somehow gained the capacity for higher thinking and had decided that if anyone needed to exert the extra effort to open a door it was me.

I mean how crazy is that thinking and yet that’s what my mind comes up with. I even contemplated on the damn door’s inner monologue; “That gal should burn some calories pushing something – something besides pushing more food in her mouth, that’s for sure.” There was even a laugh track playing after that in my head!

So now that you’re somewhat familiar with what goes on in my head, let me recount a little something that happened to me yesterday, and I have to apologize to the people who had to listen to me obsess about it then.

I’m walking down the aisle at work and walking towards me is a man. I don’t know who he is, I’ve seen him before but he doesn’t work in my department – just on the same floor. Anyway, as he’s walking towards me he reaches down and does the most obvious rearrangement of his balls that he possibly could have done. I mean there was absolutely no effort to conceal the fact that he was grabbing his package, jostling it and bringing it to rest in what was obviously a more comfortable position. I’ve seen guys be more discreet when whacking themselves off, than this guy was at adjusting his jewels.

Now he wasn’t looking me in the eye or anything as the act was taking place. This wasn’t some overt sexual harassment issue. But he had to have seen me walking towards him, sized me up and determined that he had no qualms about grabbing his genitals in my presence. The man obviously found me so unattractive that he didn’t mind grabbing himself in front of me. If Claudia Schiffer was walking down the aisle towards him I think he would have managed to postpone shifting his rocks at least until she had passed by even if his left testicle was twisted so tightly in his undies that there was a danger of it falling off. But doing it in front of me was no different than scratching his ass in front of a dog. Why conceal such disgusting behavior in front of someone he deemed as equally as disgusting and therefore didn’t care about impressing?

This was the thinking that permeated my entire day yesterday. This isn’t healthy behavior. I mean the man was probably just a pig. Maybe he grabs himself in front of everyone. Maybe he was having a herpes outbreak and needed a good scratch, maybe he’s part of a test group for athletic protective cups, maybe he has a fetish for incredibly tight underwear, who knows! But it’s taken me an entire day to convince myself that I am at least worthy of a pocket pool genital adjustment, and the next time I see him in the hallway I might just tell him that.

Easy target for serial killers and/or genetically mutated homicidal creatures.

We have 2 vehicles. One is a 2000 Dodge Caravan. In case you ever wondered what the difference is between a Caravan and a Grand Caravan – it’s the size of the back seat. It’s actually possible for an adult to sit in the back seat of a Grand Caravan whereas sitting in the back seat of the smaller Caravan requires folding yourself in half in such a way that you could scratch your ass with your teeth. Just something to keep in mind if you’re ever shopping for mini-vans.

We also have a 1995 Chevy Lumina which we bought used and all in all it’s been a good vehicle. It’s fairly reliable and actually has a pretty powerful engine in it. Sometimes I get a little tingly when I tromp on the gas and it responds so forcefully as I'm passing someone. It makes me feel like Danica Patrick, except I would have actually won a race by now.

The problem with the Lumina is that, well, it’s old, and as we all know way too well, not everything works exactly like it should when you get older. It’s like the automotive version of sagging tits.

The brake lights only work when you pull the turn signal lever slightly towards you, which of course, is the same lever that switches the headlights from low to bright so I’m constantly inadvertently flashing my brights at people. The windshield washer fluid doesn’t work, and the odometer has a habit of failing to function until you give it a little tap and realize that you’re going 65 in a 35 mph zone.

Buy my favorite quirk of all occurs in the winter months; the gearshift sticks. It’s an automatic and the gearshift is mounted on the floor and it’s one of those that you have to grab the handle and push in the button on the side of the lever with your thumb before shifting out of park or into reverse, etc. Well for some reason, when it gets cold out, the car’s not too keen on getting out of Park and it sticks.

So inevitably every morning I’m sitting in the driveway fiddling with the gearshift. Sometimes it likes it gentle and all you have to do is wiggle it around a little to get that button to depress. Other times it likes it rough and I literally have to put one hand on the gear shift and with the other hand punch the button with all the strength I can muster to get the thing to budge. It was so stubborn the other morning that I had to get poor Matt out of bed to get the thing out of Park. Thankfully though once you get it out of Park that first time it doesn’t stick again- well until the next time you try to start the car and it’s been sitting in the cold.

Every time it happens though I feel like one of those pathetic people in those really cliché horror flicks, you know the ones where the only thing standing between them and escape from the immortal masked serial killer is a car with a faulty starter. The only difference is that my car will actually start, it’s just that I can’t get it into gear before a two headed genetically mutated viper snatches me right out of the driver’s seat.

Do you think Jesus likes Tootsie Rolls? Nah, I'd better play it safe and go for a new toothbrush and some floss, Christ seems like someone who'd floss

As if I don't have enough people to get gifts for this year! Now I have to buy something for the Messiah too.

My grandparents, bless them, sent this Jesus stocking to us for the kids to hang and I guess remind them "of the reason for the season". Which is a lovely sentiment really but as far as my kids know "Jesus" is the guy Momma yells at when she spills something and "Jesus Christ" is the guy she yells at when Daddy does something stupid.

Honk if you’ve got a dead person’s name on your car, or if you're horny, or would rather be fishing.

I was in a parking lot walking to the mall the first time I saw one. There it was on the bumper of a late model white sedan; a bumper sticker with small doves in the corners and the words “In Loving Memory of Sarah Johnson” followed by the dates of her birth and death. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. It made no sense to me but I didn’t think much of it until I saw more of them. One was a decal on the back window of a Chevy F10, another one appeared to be magnetic and was attached to the back door of a minivan. The more I saw them the more they annoyed me.

Now I’m not one to criticize the grieving/coping process of those that have lost a loved one. It’s a personal journey of grief that is different for everyone, but when it’s done with such a small amount of taste and tact, I can’t help but comment on it. What is the point of a memorial bumper sticker? I think people have lost the meaning of the phrase. It should be engraved on something of value, a memorial marker, a park bench in that person’s favorite outdoor setting, a donated seat at a local auditorium or a donated bookshelf or book collection at a local library in memory of an avid reader.

An adhesive piece of paper slapped on the bumper of the same car that your teenager makes out in the backseat of, and that you use to run errands with is not much of a memorial. Why do they have to stick something like that on their car? To prove that they’re grieving? To prove that they’ve lost someone? Everyone has lost someone buddy, that doesn’t mean you should stick their epitaph right next to your “Honk if you’re Horny” bumper sticker.

What is it about the car that is in Loving Memory of this person? Were they run over with the car? If that’s the case I need one for the front fender of mine that says in loving memory of Bambi, or maybe one for that squirrel I hit on 16th street. Is the car their final resting place? Is the body in the trunk?? Did the deceased leave them some money in the will and that’s what these people used to buy the car so they feel a need to acknowledge it?

Where do you get such a thing anyway? Do you think these people had them made up especially just for themselves? Did the family of the deceased hand them out at the funeral like politicians hand them out at parades? What do you do with the extra ones? It would be disgraceful to throw them out. Maybe they could be used as coasters. Hey why not make coasters? How about matchbooks, how about those engraved napkins to use at the wake. Maybe a shot glass or some of those decorative spoons that people collect.

The possibilities are endless. How about pens, pencils, maybe a lovely letterhead on a fancy memo pad? That grocery list or memo to the boss could certainly be in loving memory of Great Aunt Lilly. Grandpa always liked coffee, instead of a headstone let’s just have 500 coffee mugs printed up in memory of the old fart.

It boggles the mind.