The fruits of my very minimal labor

I planted a cherry tomato and a grape tomato plant in a huge pot on my patio this year. It was my way of connecting to mother earth, and enjoying tiny tomatoes on my salad without having to pay $2.99 every 2 weeks.

They're so delicious and were so easy to grow that I've started wondering why I don't garden on a much larger scale, and then I remember that I'm still officially on strike. My parents promised me 10cents for every quart of strawberries I broke my back to pick from our huge family garden back in 1988 and I've yet to see a penny of that money.

Unfortunately I was only 12 so according to my lawyer, the contract was not legally binding since I was a minor. However, I'm still pushing for a settlement. If you factor in lost wages and pain and suffering, I think we're talking close to $2,000.

Creative Writing 101 - Character Development

I attended a creative writing class once that suggested taking a situation or scene that you witness (a couple sitting at a café, a group of people having an animated conversation on the street etc.) and using that scene as a starting point for character building. Who are the characters? How did they get into that situation? What is prompting them to act they way they are?

I’ve attempted it a couple times but never really found an adequately inspirational situation to evolve into a proper set of characters. That is, until Sunday night.

Matt and I had taken the kids for a ride in the evening, pretty much to get them settled and to be honest – to avoid our normal lengthy nighttime ritual just for a change of pace. On our way home, around 9:30 or so, the kids were snoozing softly in the back and we were just getting ready to pull onto our quiet street when we noticed a car stopped at the intersection.

A woman, probably early to mid 20’s, was leaning her entire torso out of the window and yelling at someone either on the street or in the cheap motel on the corner. The driver of the car was a man, about the same age, slouched in the driver’s seat, looking fairly embarrassed and dialing someone on his cell phone. Here’s the kicker. The woman was completely naked from the waist up. Yep, fun and fancy free my friends.

Now after the initial shock and excitement wore off; I mean stuff like this is a fairly rare thing to witness by two socially dead middle aged parents in the heart of the Midwest, I began to create my own detailed storyline to fit the scene.

The woman’s name is Tamara, and she insists on being called Tamara, not Tammy. She practices the almost extinct art of macramé and also crochets things like pop can belts and purses and sells them on ebay to supplement her income from her cashier job at the local health food store. She’s just gone through a very messy break up with her boyfriend Dan, whom she caught sleeping with her best friend Samantha in a cheap motel.

She was feeling a little sorry for herself tonight and had a few too many bottles of Boone’s strawberry wine while watching Footloose. The fight scene at the bar got her all teary. She remembered the time Dan had punched some guy who had playfully smacked her on the behind at the local bar. She’ll never forget that romantic day they spent together after she bailed him out of jail for assault. Anyway, she’d ran out of liquor and didn’t want to drive to get more so she called up Terrence, her co-worker, whom she knew had a secret crush on her and would jump at the chance to do something for her. Sure he was a complete geek and she suspected that he was stealing herbs from the “male enhancement”display at the store, but he seemed harmless enough and could take her for more liquor.

Terrence was delighted when he got the call and was so excited that he even logged off Socom (his username is TerrITup29) before finishing the battle. He was sure that his online teammates would understand. He wondered if he should he take some of those herbal supplements before he went? He picked her up in his Mom’s Camry and she was so drunk that he thought he had about an 85% chance of getting a little first base action.

He made a critical error though when he chose the route that took them by that motel with the ancient outdoor swimming pool that they had filled in with dirt and allowed every manner of weed to invade.

She just lost it when she saw it, and before Terrence knew it she’d ripped off her shirt, threw it in the backseat, leaned out the window and started shouting obscenities at the numbered doors of the Motel. She was reliving that terrible night when she discovered Dan and Samantha in room 3B and fueled by the power of cheap liquor, she was somehow reliving it barechested.

Terrence was in a complete panic. This scenario had never come up in that online tutorial; “What to do on a date with a hot chic”. Desperately he dialed his best friend Kyle – he was the guru. He’d made it all the way to the finish line with Sarah Grettelman on prom night. Sure, she’d been drunk, and possibly slightly unconscious, but it still counted as a score. Kyle would know what to do – especially with a drunk chic. He just needed to lay low until he got a hold of Kyle. That couple that just passed him in the mini van looked like they recognized his Mom’s Camry. Maybe they knew her from the neighborhood association?!

Now isn’t that fun? Talk about inspiration! Come up with your own characters or at least a believable scenario if you’ve got nothing better to do.

My friend Shawna came up with the following: the driver is her boyfriend and they were having an argument. He suggested that she needed a boob job, and was in the midst of calling one of his buddies to confirm his beliefs and she was so irate that she whipped off her shirt and was soliciting opinions from passersby.

What do you think?

Losing a finger or two could be considered as a character building experience.

I recently upgraded the status of my “body fat terror alert” from yellow to red. It’s been determined that my ass is a weapon of mass destruction and I’ve enlisted the help of Weight Watchers to help me fight the good fight.

Losing weight is always a struggle, but I like the “Points” system and so far things are going well. The key is to have a lot of weight loss weapons in your arsenal – and I’m not talking about workout equipment or little scales to measure out all your portions – I’m talking about 2 cupboards worth of Fudge Grasshopper and Fudge Stripe 100 calorie packs.

Because without these things I could seriously be caught licking the Oreo cookie crumbs off the faces of my children, or worse: “Here sweetie, eat this Little Debbie Fudge Round and don’t worry if you get all messy, Momma will clean you up . . Oops, we’re out of wet wipes, let me just nibble that chunk of cookie off your sleeve there . . .”

I take these treats seriously here people. First of all they’re pricey and second of all they’re the only things that can keep me on track on certain days and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give even one of these little cookies up. But I have 2 children and as anyone with children knows – what’s yours is theirs. Far too many times I've had little fingers reaching into those sparsely populated bags. Too often have they reached for their own entire pack! I cannot allow this to go on. So far I’ve found the following strategies to be beneficial:

Distraction: Throw in a Dora or Diego DVD and as their little eyes alight upon the glory of Nick Jr. entertainment and their little bodies (and probably minds) cease to function, I sneak into the kitchen to enjoy my 100 calorie pack in peace.

Bargaining: “No honey, you can’t have any of Momma’s cookies . . . Oh don’t cry! You know how you’re always wanting to play driver in the van? Well here are the keys – go on out and play in the van for a while. Just remember to leave it in Park because neither one of you can reach the pedals.

Other times I try lying but Aaron is getting too old for that to work. For some reason he doesn’t believe that those cookies taste like broccoli, and he’s smart enough to recognize the boxes in the cupboard when I try to tell him that we’re all out.

Now maybe some of you are thinking that I should be sharing these low calorie, low fat snacks with my children in order to teach them how to be healthier and I’d have to say that I agree with that in theory. However, they really have fairly little nutritional value and most of the time my kids are content with some fruit. Thankfully they haven't yet learned to equate happiness with sugar and chocolate. Not to mention the fact that things are going to get really, really messy if I come home to find that I’m completely out of those 100 calorie miraculous elf created treasures. So even though I love my kids so much that I'd throw myself in front of a bus for them, they'd better leave my cookies alone if the want to go through life with all 10 digits intact.

Crapping in echo canyon

Aaron saw a Kipper cartoon the other day about echoes and this afternoon while I was in the living room I heard:

"MOMMA . . . momma . . . momma"

What?

"I'M POOPING . . . pooping . . . pooping"

Okay.

"COME AND WIPE ME . . . wipe me . . . wipe me"

God I love that kid!

Because nothing's funnier than a genetically deformed animal

Aaron loves knock, knock jokes and after suffering through his own made up jokes for a couple months (Knock knock - who's there? - House - House who? - House Door! and somehow that was hilarious to him) we got him a children's joke book. For the most part it's okay. It's got some groaners in there and some pretty bad puns but it's also got some jokes that are really bad. I don't mean that they're simply not funny - they're just in really poor taste. For example:

"Where can you find a dog with no legs? - Right where you left him."

"What do you call a mouse with no legs? - Cat food"

Seriously, who compiled these jokes? The screenwriter for Saw?

For now we just don't read them to him, but we'll have to conveniently lose the book when he learns to read.

House Envy

Have you ever disliked someone for something they have no control over? Loathed their mere presence without ever making the effort to get to know them?

My neighbor is a very amiable divorcee in her early 50’s. She moved in about a year ago and she’s always been exceedingly friendly. I’m sure she’s a lovely person and I’m always ready to wave and say a friendly hello when I see her but beyond that I can’t seem to muster much effort.

Truth is, I hate the fact that she bought the house next to us. I’ve always liked that house ever since we moved into ours and when it was up for sale we toured it and after seeing the inside I loved it. In the timeframe between the tour and the day it sold I had hundreds and hundreds of lovely and vivid dreams of owning it myself and raising my children in its quaint window-seated bedrooms. Playing piano in the dining room, where the antique piano that’s been cluttering my mother’s house for years would have fit perfectly, creating a perfect garden oasis in the huge double lot backyard . . . But unfortunately when it was up for sale we were not financially ready to buy, and it would have been out of our price range regardless.

It’s really not fair of me to project my feelings of loss and regret on her and yet when I see her I can’t help but feel bitter that this single workaholic older woman is traversing the wooden winding staircase and hallway that should be littered with my children’s scattered toys and abandoned shoes. The walls are probably pristine and white when they should be covered in crayon scribbles and scuff marks. I mean what does a single old lady need with a 2 story, 4 bedroom house? She travels quite a bit and when I see it empty I almost feel like the home itself is sighing. It’s longing for the bustle of children and domestic goodness. Its windows are aching to be covered in tiny fingerprints and to rattle with the joyful screams of playing children. Instead it’s dark and lonely and quiet and I blame this on her.

Completely ridiculous and silly and yet there it is. It’s not her – hell I could have found fault with anyone who moved in there that wasn’t me. If Jesus himself moved in, I’d complain about how he doesn’t invite us to his wild monthly luau parties. Ewan McGregor could move in and I’d be livid that he trims his hedges while fully clothed.

I keep thinking I’ve reached a point that I can let things go and move on. I try to convince myself that my dream home is somewhere else and really wherever my family is together and happy is really a dream home anyway right? And then I see she’s having pizza delivered and all I can think is – I bet she just chucks the leftovers into one of the spare bedrooms. I mean what else could she possibly be using that space for?

Word Up!

I'd like to tell you that we spend most of our afternoons cleaning up state parks, volunteering at food banks, reading fully unabridged and annotated versions of literary classics or bonding over games involving laminated educational flashcards, but that's not quite accurate. What really happens is that I try to wind down from 8 hours of soul sucking meaningless busy work while keeping the kids entertained with a little age appropriate cartoon entertainment.

And on those days when my responses to Dora's continual queries of "Where are we going?" are: "hell", 'insane" and "the liquor cabinet", I'm glad that there is another cartoon option out there.

Enter WordGirl. A new show on PBS Kids that I absolutely adore. I always have a softspot for any show in which the characters converse with the narrator - that nuance never really gets old for me. Plus the focus of the show is increasing children's vocabularies which is a noble cause in and of itself.

It's just so original and well written that it's one of my favorite TV shows right now and I'd watch it even if the kids weren't around. I mean how many shows have super villians who fling bratwurst? Check out part of an episode here.

Of course since I adore it, the kids don't really care for it. True, it's aimed at a slightly older audience than 1 and 4, but still it's entertaining. If I can coax Aaron into watching until the Captain Huggy Face dance segment comes on, I'm golden.

I dare you not to smile while watching this!