If I wanted to ship them to Brazil it would be $37 third class, and $69.50 for express delivery.

I finally did it. I weighed my tits. Why? Well first of all for curiosity sake. I mean I've been lugging these things around for years and I'd like to know how much they really weigh. Secondly, I've been contemplating having breast reduction surgery sometime and I'd like to go into the Doctor's office and say "hey can you shave about X amount of lbs. off these things for me" so I feel I need to know their actual weight.


So when Shawna and I were trying to fashion a pair of tits out of cake (a practice run for her hubby's birthday cake - don't worry Matt we abandoned the boob cake idea) it hit me that it was the perfect opportunity to weigh the girls. Boobs were forefront in our minds, I had a kitchen scale and someone to read the weight, so off went the bra and plop went the mammaries.




Now it was completely unscientific and I don't think it was real accurate. It was a difficult undertaking. It's not like I could detach the things and slap them on the scale. I had to try and let the full weight of them rest on the scale without leaning too far - therefore pushing more weight onto the scale, but then at the same time, I couldn't hold back too much therefore pulling weight off the scale.



I don't feel comfortable divulging their actual weight because for some reason I find that too personal to share, and yet I'm not finding it too personal to describe in detail how I weighed my own boobs on a kitchen scale. That's slightly odd isn't it? Oh well, I never claimed to be normal. But anyway I have to say that I was disappointed. I was expecting a wow factor. A moment of "My Lord I can't believe they're that heavy!" and well I just didn't get it. They came in at a much lighter weight than I would have expected and Shawna is convinced that they must weight more than what the scale showed but we did make several attempts and got the same result so I guess it's fairly accurate, or as accurate as you can get weighing your own body parts on a kitchen scale.


The more I thought about it though, and the more I compared the weight to other objects, the more I realized that they really are heavy. I mean imagine walking around with a newborn baby strapped to your chest at all times. That's the kind of weight we're talking here. And just think - when I had Gwen and she was attached to my boob 24/7 it was technically like I was smuggling twins under my shirt.


So to put things in perspective I gathered a bunch of household objects and weighed them to help you, the home viewer, envision what my poor defenseless bra is forced to hold up and try to make perky day after day. My boobs are as heavy as:

Books 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the Harry Potter series - hardback of course

A full bottle of laundry detergent AND Woolite.

7 cans of vegetables

Looks like my bra could double as a shopping bag huh?

The Gwen Whisperer

Now that Aaron is potty trained, we’ve decided that getting Gwen to sleep in her crib will be our next parental challenge. And since this kid is the clingiest, highest maintenance thing we’ve ever come across it’s going to be quite the challenge.

Techniques we’ve tried so far:
Begging
Pleading
Praying
Letting her “cry it out” (we’ve found that she has a lot to “cry out” and it takes 45 minutes or longer before she’ll cry herself to sleep. The only reason we know this is because Matt has more tolerance than I because I give up at minute 30.)

Shawna came over one night last week with her friend Carrie so that we could fashion a pair of tits out of cake (that’s another story) and I soon discovered that Carrie must become more of a regular visitor to my house. Why? Because not only did she keep Aaron entertained and under control all evening but she also put Gwen to sleep, in the crib! It was like watching a magic show. Gwen was sleepy. Carrie held her, soothed her, suggested we play some static in the bedroom for “white noise”, she slowly held Gwen further away from her, laid her in the crib and offered her a stuffed animal to cuddle – done.

Now I’ve successfully laid the kid in the crib also but she usually wakes up about a half an hour later. But after Carrie put her in there that kid slept for 4 hours straight! Now I know that doesn’t sound real impressive for a 9 month old, as most normal ones are already sleeping through the night – but for Gwen that’s miraculous.

Now I will admit that when she wakes up at 2 or 3 a.m. I usually break down and bring her into bed with me. I know, shame on me, but still getting 4 hours of Gwenless sleep is fabulous. Plus with the static playing in the room she sleeps pretty soundly in the bed as well instead of tossing and turning as usual.

I must thank Carrie for her fabulous work and ask her to come over again so that she can teach me how to get her back to sleep in the crib when she wakes up. I wonder if she’d object to sleeping between Matt and I so that she’s on hand at 3 a.m. when I need her? She’s my Supernanny and her work is so fabulous that I haven’t even obsessed over the fact that I was schooled by a 20 year old in parenting. At least that is until right now, as I’m realizing it for the first time.

He's getting his own apartment next week.

Aaron loves the Giant Slide at the State Fair - who doesn't really, and this year we tried to convince him that he could go down by himself. Yes I know the kid is only 3 - but he's 3 and 3/4 technically and besides it's $2.50 per ticket so every time he goes with one of us it's $5 and that adds up pretty quickly - I mean that buys a lot of deep fat fried Snickers bars!

I had my misgivings of course but it wasn't really crowded and we'd pumped him up for it: "GONNA RIDE THE BIG BUMPY SLIDE ALL BY MYSELF!" he'd say as if it was the coolest thing since string cheese. And that's pretty damn cool in his book because the kid lives off of string cheese and Diego yogurt - it's a wonder he ever has a bowel movement.

We buy the tickets, instruct him to walk up the steps slowly and carefully, and to wait at the top until the nice man helps him with his mat and tells him it's okay to slide down. Off he went with that burlap mat rolled under his little arm, and he didn't even look back. I had practiced my "reassuring, loving Mom smile" all afternoon, and I didn't even get to use it!

He even biffed it on the second time down and slid the last 10 feet on his face, and he still didn't need me. It was awful. Here I was at the base of the Giant Slide fighting back tears because my baby boy was growing up. I mean first it's the slide and then what? Shaving, dating . . . before you know I'll be pretending to like his wife (because, let's face it, no one will ever be good enough for him).

I got one trip down the slide on video. It's really bad because I used my digital camera that only takes like 60 second videos and is pretty poor quality. Plus I didn't really want to zoom in a whole lot because I wanted to capture the whole scene and also I had turned the camera to catch a portrait view and I don't know enough about videos or have any video editing software that will make this thing rotate the right way. So really the only reason I put it on here is because I was just really proud of figuring this much out. Just tilt your head to the side and use your imagination.

Heaven on a stick

Everyone knows that it's a state law that if you attend the State Fair that you MUST eat something on a stick. It must be done, and considering that the only thing on a stick I'd consumed at the fair this year was a porkchop on a stick - I thought I needed to try something else on a stick, because technically the porkchop isn't on a "stick" it's on the bone.

So Matt and I decided to try the Deep Fried Snickers bar on the last day of the fair. Now I've scoffed at this whole deep fried candy bar for years. "How could it possibly be good?" I'd always say. The booth sells deep fried oreos, snickers, milky way and twinkies. Now I've had a deep fried twinkie before at the farmer's market - and let me tell you it's not good. The cream filling disintegrates from the intense heat - and what's the best part about the twinkie my friends? The filling. So when that's gone - what's the point??

Out of all the choices the only thing that sounded halfway good was the Snickers and so we went for it. Now it doesn't look like much - as you can see in the picture above. Well actually it looks like a runny turd on a stick, but looks can be decieiving because it was delicious! Imagine: melted chocolate, gooey nougat, caramel and peanuts floating inside a warm coccoon of sweet deep fried batter. It was a thing of beauty, and now I've got to wait until next year to experience it again. It will be well worth the wait!

Whatever happened to the good old “Is your refrigerator running” gag?

So I get this forward the other day in my inbox:

Hi, my name is Amy Bruce.

I am 7 years old, and I have severe lung cancer . I also have a large tumor in my brain, from repeated beatings. Doctors say I will die soon if this isn't fixed, and my family can't pay the bills.

The Make A Wish Foundation, has agreed to donate 7 cents for every time this message is sent on. For those of you who send this along, I thank you so much, but for those who don't send it, what goes around comes around. Have a Heart, please send this.

Now first of all I hate forwards. Whatever miniscule humor or joy I might have found in that little joke or incredibly bad poem about friendship, or the power of love and Jesus, is instantly destroyed simply because it’s a forward. I used to open them years ago, now I just delete them but this one was from a family member and the subject was “please respond” so I thought maybe it might be something legitimate.

I think the thing that annoys me the most is when they try to guilt you into sending it on or back to who just sent it to you. For example if it’s a poem about best friends there’s usually some verbiage in there about how if I’m a true friend I’ll send it on to my other friends and I’d better send it back to the person who sent it to me to prove that they’re my friend too. What the hell? Are we in middle school again? Is this the electronic version of “if you like me circle yes and if you don’t circle no and then hand this note back to me.” I think maybe the fact that I haven’t blocked your emails and/or changed my email address without giving you my new address is evidence enough that I like you, even despite the fact that you’ve inundated my mailbox with this shit. And what’s with the “what goes around comes around” in this message? I don’t appreciate being threatened – even if it’s just with bad karma.

Secondly, this thing is crap. Poor little Amy doesn’t have lung cancer. Poor little Amy doesn’t exist and this email has been circulating for 8 years! Nobody can track forwarded emails. How could that possibly work? I know that technology is wondrous but think of the thousands of email services out there. They don’t keep track of what you forward on and then rip off a list to the Make a wish foundation. It’s not possible – I’ve researched it. Nobody can track what you forward from your email and quite frankly I think that’s a good thing.

I also found this on the Make-A-Wish site:

Each day, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and its chapters receive hundreds of inquiries about chain letters claiming to be associated with the Foundation and featuring sick children. However, we do not participate in these kinds of wishes. Some names associated with these wishes are: Jessie Anderson, Shane Bernier, Matt Dawson, Chad Briody , Amy Bruce, Jeff DeLeon, Rhyan Desquetado, Anthony Hebrank, LaNisha Jackson, Nikisha Johnson, Craig Sheldon, Craig Shelford, Craig Shelton, Craig Sheppard, Craig Shergold, Bryan Warner and Kayla Wightman.

So why the scam you ask? There’s a slight chance that they’re hoping to get some money from you. There is an email address that supposedly belongs to Amy that you can reply to and maybe they’re hoping some naïve schmuck will contact them and ask where to send the check. But mostly it’s just a gag. People get a real kick out of putting things like this together and envisioning their creations popping up in inboxes around the world. They would see that blurb on the Make a Wish site and probably cream their pants knowing that they’ve caused hundreds of people to take time out of their busy lives to check up on a useless and false email message that they’ve created. It’s the email equivalent of a fiery bag of dog shit on your front step.

I think I’ll just forward the contents of my junk mail inbox to Amy’s inbox as payback and maybe ask her if she’s the one who knocked over my son’s snowman and placed my front yard holiday reindeers into a mating position last year.

The self-imposed agony of victory

As you might remember me mentioning in a previous post, I entered some scrapbook pages into the state fair. This is the 2nd year I’ve done so and last year I was lucky enough to win 2nd place in the 2 page layout category.

There are 4 different categories to enter and I entered a layout into each one this year. Now I was convinced, absolutely convinced that the 1 page layout I did of Gwen was going to steal the show – it was so good that it would literally shame everything around it. It would gleam like a diamond amongst the pile of dung that was everyone else’s entries!

Now I couldn’t find out the results until I actually went to the fair and I didn’t have tickets to go until Sunday, but my parents went on Saturday and then came to my house and congratulated me on my victory. I had won 1st place! I was instantly ecstatic. I jumped up and down as if somebody had just pulled into my driveway and handed me an oversized posterboard check.

Now I had assumed that my layout of Gwen was the winner and then they informed me that it was my State Fair themed page that had won, and instantly I was dejected.

Shouldn’t I have still been thrilled? Yes, I should have. However, I thought that page was mediocre at best. It was the last one I would have expected to win and the only thing going through my mind was that it must have been the only decent one in that category. There were probably only 3 other entries and they were created by 10 year olds with stickers and glitter glue.

Why do I beat myself up like this? Lack of confidence mostly. Just as I have a tendency to tear others down to protect myself from rejection; it seems that I must also tear myself down - why? I’m not quite sure. Perhaps I do need therapy to answer that one.

I went to the fair on Sunday and discovered to my delight that there were about 12 other very nice entries in the State Fair category and that I may have truly and actually won due to some small skill of my own.

I received an honorable mention on my 2 page layout about Aaron and I was very pleased with that as well. So I’ve been trying really hard to congratulate myself and feel like a winner without having to always conditionalize my victory both verbally and internally by constantly repeating: "I only won because the judge liked my journaling – the layout itself probably sucked – 12 other entries is really not that many to beat – if I thought that page was crap and it won then obviously I don’t know what’s good and what’s not, etc. etc."

It’s really pathetic being me.

Sextra

So I'm driving home from work today and there's this little Nissan in front of me and it's absolutely loaded to the gills. The back seat is full of pillows and a bedspread and there's a luggage bin on the top so it's obvious that it's a college student heading back to school.

It's got an Idaho license plate. Did you know that Idaho plates actually say "Famous potatoes" on them? Not that there's anything wrong with the potato. It's a very noble tuber and feeds millions of people and Idaho should be proud of its spud production, but it just struck me as funny to have it on the license plate.

But then I saw something even funnier. They had pried off the "N" from the "Sentra" label and replaced it with an X. So yes, they were driving around in a "Famous Potato Idaho Sextra!" I loved it!