Tuesday, November 16, 2010

with a stop sign shaped tool................

Mondays......

Last night I totally took the girls to clogging practice. No lie, Ms.P left me hanging for a business venture possibly, so I was own my own with 5 girls for the night. I wondered what the heck I would do with myself at first cause Monday is gab yer head to the point of complete and utter emptiness.

I thought to myself, "Self....you could finish yer book tonight. Except yer eReader light is out of batteries and it isn't back lit...forget turning on yer car lights and draining the battery again. What to do???" In my mind flashed Z's DS game Rhythm Heaven....I would play his game FINALLY, in peace. THEN I was super excited to be on my own.

Nothing is ever as it seems though. When Smalls and her trusty side kick Spunky finished their class, the 5 girls headed off the McD's like we always do for some not nourishment. I had to get some gas first though.

**I got out

**I pumped the gas to full tank.....without my Kroger card which was deplorable.

**I got into the car.

**The flippin car WOULD NOT crank.

tick, tick, tick. tick, tick ,tick

Insert the whole jaw dropping syndrome again with all peeps great and small seated in my car.

A- WHAT??! REALLY??!

SB, May, Smalls, & Spunky - Oh no! I can't believe this!(etc, etc, etc)

I get out and this fellow and his wife that were filling the 2 cars they own and every single gas can from here to the TN border with their Kroger gas card at .40 off a gallon.....were in disbelief also. They were pumping when I pulled in. The husband tells me he doesn't have cables and we discuss for not more than 40 seconds how insane this situation is. I am gabbing with him and making the call to D......again, to come and rescue me.

It's cold and rainy...he isn't feeling my vibe and we are disgruntled with one another cause he is asking me questions I feel are inconsequential and he thinks I am not listening again...and I feel like not listening cause his questions are not helpful. I want him to say, " I am on my way," and he wants me to say "Oh never mind, the car cranked false alarm," or something of that nature.

While I am trying not to get frustrated with his tone of voice at my situation that is completely not my fault, Gas Can Husband has located an Old Navy Truck Man with jumper cables.

EXCITEMENT! I try to hang up with D so I can help this fellow make sure both ends do not touch, in the cold flippin rain, and show my gratitude....but D will not quit lamenting to me on the phone. I want him to be quiet and hang up now and he wants to know what's going on.

I HATE talking on a cell phone, can't stand it....even when not in dire situations. It just bugs the crap out of me.

D- CALL ME WHEN you get the CAR CRANKED! BYE! (D loves his cell phone, even though at this point he was on our home phone. Both D & my mom...the two of them, would lose all consciousness without their cell phones.)

Gas Can Husband connects the cables up completely different than Mr. P has told Ms. P and I.

Gas Can Husband connects the cables up completely different than D has told Ms. P and I.

Three men connecting cables in three different sequences...all telling me with confidence their way is the right way......and at what point the battery could spew rabid, clothes melting, flesh eating, acid onto your face......all three different.

The six of us females have concurred on this: At birth, males are given the knowledge of how to hook jumper cables up. I don't care what order they do it in, they do it with confidence and authority.

My car cranks right up.

Rejoicing!! Not near what it was when Ms. P & I did the man deed. But it did feel good to be rescued and rather quickly in the cold rain.

So I walk over to tell Old Navy Truck thank you for letting us use his cables and how grateful I am that he hadn't left the gas station yet.

Cause it's the south, he wants a hug. I gladly give him one. I am grateful.

Gas Can Husband is bringing the cables over and telling Old Navy Truck Man some man words about my car, that I don't care about. Gas Can Husband is happy cause I am happy....plus he's getting .40 a gallon off every piece of equipment he owns that will hold gas.

I pat his back and tell him "Thank You" and he squeezes my shoulders as in a half hug, cause he's glad to help a car full of gals. Gas Can Wife is happy too, cause her husband is the super hero who saved the day.....plus she's getting .40 a gallon off every piece of equipment he owns that will hold gas.

Well....Old Navy Truck has been talking to a One Legged Man, who makes BBQ sauce, while we are having Monday night drama at the Shell. One Legged Man, one legs it on over to my car and discovers that my battery cables are loose and this is why my completely fine battery has repeatedly acted incompetent.

The three men agree that One Leg has discovered the answer to all of the worlds problems. They all shake their heads in a concurring manner....I do this also. It feels like the right thing I am supposed to do.

One Legged Man tightens the cable best he can till I can get home for D to tightened it properly with a stop sign shaped tool.

Then he declares the car good for another 100,000 miles.

One Leg informs me that he saw me give the other two dudes a hug and he wants one too. After all, he is "the one who discovered the loose battery cables."

We all cackle a bit, I hug him and he reminds me that the Shell gas station sells his BBQ sauce inside and for me to go and buy some. The three males shake hands. They are heroes who have saved 5 females and they have been hugged properly for it......plus Gas Can Husband has gotten .40 a gallon off every piece of equipment he owns that will hold gas.

After that, food was gotten at the drive thru.... Smalls & Spunky played in my car with it running, while I played Rhythm Heaven on Z's DS....and SB & May made it to their class on time.

Furry Bunnies and Rainbows........

Friday, November 12, 2010

crickets marinated in camel spit on a stick or something...........

One afternoon while I was having problems with the perpetual hemorrhoid(that I am now over thank you) I had decided to take a bath. I had found my jar of TOA(Tired Old Donkey) hiding in my cabinet. TOA is mostly epsom salt. This excited me more than it should have.

I poured almost the whole jar into the tub and put the water on entirely too hot. I know the water was too hot because the parts of my skin that were submerged in the tub water were a sun burned red color. The parts of my skin that were outside of the water were a tannish brown.

Relaxing……….relaxing………………….relaxing…………………

!!!!!!!BUST THE DOOR OPEN!!!!!!

S- (with her Diary of a Wimpy Kid book) HEY MOM! Will you help me fill this book out please?

A- No

S- Mom, please…

A- No I am soaking my butt. Lock the door please.

!!!!!!!!!!BUST THE DOOR OPEN!!!!!!!!!!

CB- Mom can I get in?

A- No CB! I am burning my skin off…on purpose. Look at my legs. You see how red they are? You don’t want to burn your legs off do you???

CB- Mom…you can just put some cold water in, then I can get in with you. Besides I already heard you tell Sky you were soaking your butt off not your legs. (I wish it were really that easy to rid myself of excess buttocks.)

Cole is rolling his Hot Wheels up and down the side of the tub making this horrible, unpleasant, not relaxing noise.

S- So. What is the worst thing I ever ate?

At Easter, instead of an Easter Egg Hunt I do a scavenger hunt. Sort of a like The Amazing Race on TV with “Detours” (where the 4 siblings have to complete a challenge together before they can get the next clue) and “Road Blocks” (where they select one of the 4 siblings to complete a challenging task before they can receive the next clue).

I will try to blog on this stuff later…. if I can remember.

What is The Amazing Race without an eat something yucky food challenge?

Before Sky was really old enough to do the hunt fully, Zac had to eat 2 pieces of Kibbles and Bits dog food. I can feel you thinking, why would a parent ask their child to do this awful deed…..but hey, they don’t go to school where kids can subject them to this kind of atmosphere. Somebody has to complete the daunting task of making them "normal.".....after all, this goes under the category of "it tastes like chicken," right?


I mean for real, once this kid told me tree bark tasted like chicken. So I took a rock and scraped some tree bark off of an idiot tree and ate the flippin stuff. I really believed the dang tree tasted like freaking chicken. I liked it so much sometimes I still eat it.......fried......just kiddin.


...side tracked, sorry.

Sky is an eating machine. She loves all food… meat, veggies, tuna, sushi…if I eat it, she will too. She adores eating all creatures great and small from the sea, unlike me in this way(cause you know I like to eat tree bark....just kiddin, sidetracked, sorry).

Two years ago the food challenge was eating a ¼ of a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich.
(I actually like to eat this sandwich about once a year.)

May and Zac totally bugged out of the challenge and refused to eat the sandwich. I mean it was ¼ for petes sake. It wasn’t even like I asked them to eat crickets marinated in camel spit on a stick or something(or tree bark).


.....so they zoned in on “Mikey.”

Sky said she would not eat it either. I told them that the game was finished then. They would not get the next clue until the challenge was completed. Now…most parents would have given in and gave them the next clue, but I swear I’m just hard that way. This way when I need them to know I will stick to my word, good or bad…they know it’s true.

The beauty of this too is... they all want their perspective prizes. The clues have been set. They can’t get to one without the other. So it was over……no prizes. Life is like that you know. You don’t always get what you want without some sacrifice. People don’t cave in and give you what you want without getting something in return all the dang time.

Somebody had to eat ¼ of the peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich.

Sky did it.

Maysie and Zac worshipped her for a full day. Whatever she wanted that day, they gave her…..because they were grateful that they didn’t have to eat the sandwich.



..........Back to the bathroom taking my bath……

S- So. What is the worst thing I ever ate?

A- Well, let’s see...........Think back to Easter a couple years ago….what did I make you eat that was really gross?

Then she says….

S- I don’t know, Mom. You’ve cooked lots of gross food before.

A- Sky, get out of this bathroom with that retarded book right now.

CB- Mom? When yer done soaking your butt off will you play UNO with me?



Is there really no rest for the weary....ever?

Monday, November 8, 2010

Somebody's duck is out of line here...but it isn't mine......

I was on this rant about how kids appear to be generally ungrateful these days …not my kids of course……..or yours……you know other people’s kids are generally ungrateful is what I was saying.

I was discussing a particular situation to a friend of mine who happens to run another Awana program in Knoxville with her husband.  This woman completely encouraged me.  She and her Awana youth group are planning to go to some Awana shindig in St. Charles, Illinois.

She was telling me that the youth literally have to do x, y, z amount of community service in the name of the Lord or work for the church in some way to go on the trip and/or obtain church funding for the trip if they do not have the funds to go.  In other words, the church does not just hand them over the cash to go, even if they can’t afford to go.  The kids who want to go actually have to show initiative and do something for it.

This year, in order for the 13 youth who want to attend this event, to go to the shindig... they participated in the “Duck-out-of-line” at the Duck, Duck Goose consignment event in Knoxville.

This event is a huge consignment sale in an old K-Mart building.  It is a 4 or 5 day event (including a private shopping day for consignors) that supposedly rocks all consignment sales to the very foundation of the earth in these parts of town. 

I am told during this conversation that the line goes all the way around the building and then some to get inside….then to pay is another line all the way around the other side of the building.

A “Duck-out-of-line” is a person who gets paid $10 to stand in line for you and hold your spot while you shop.  So that when your shopping has been completed, you can get in line where your “duck” is.  If your duck is already past the paying counter, then guess what? NO WAITING at all! You get immediate ups and no waiting in line at all!!! All of the money earned by the people who volunteer for this (churches and local charities) get 100% of the money!

The ladies that I am conversating with tell me the Duck out of line is well worth the $10, as a wait in line to pay for merchandise can be up to an hour or more.

I decided to go and check out this consignment sale for myself after our co-op classes and as sure as a dog sniffs another dogs butt – the line to get in the place was as long a line as I had ever seen.  The Ducks out of line were busy with their clip boards signing people up.  I swear if I had been determined to go into the place I would have paid someone $20 to stand in line for me. Instead I opted to go to Old Navy and by M & Z new coats. I just tried to let go of my unearth friendly guilt for not recycling....it didn't take too long.  

I am just gonna say… Maysie's unearth friendly coat.... it’s tha dang the bomb. 

So, Ms. Awana Co-Commander ….. yeah, she took her 13 Awana youth teens down there to be Ducks out of line.

On the Wednesday preview sale for the people who are consigning clothes and other special designated folks….the teens made $1300…….towards their trips to the Awana event.  That’s $100 bucks a piece minimum for each kid towards their trip for one day of service.
 
I thought that was SUPER COOL!

The following week I see Ms. Awana Co-Commander and asked her what her finally tally was for the kids towards their trips…….Did they meet their goals?

Uummm YES!  Those teens made $4000 dollars towards their trip in 3 days’ worth of work!!!!!!!  

So they stood in line for folks repeatedly at a consignment sale at $10 bucks a pop and worked off the entire cost of their trip. 

This says a minimum of 6 things to me:

**These teens are motivated to go on a Jesus trip that is important to them.

**These teens take pride in seeing their goals completed.

**These teens are being rewarded for diligence.

**These teens parents don’t have to come up with $300 randomly when the economy is not optimal….AND during the holidays

**These teens parents must be proud of their child for doing something not fun like standing in line for three days to help pay for their trips and possibly the trips of those who could not afford to pay for the trip themselves.

**This Awana Leader did something right and good here.

I am just going to say, I love it when a child is able to stand back and look at good work completed and be amazed that they were a part of something bigger than THEMSELVES.  

As an adult I enjoy this feeling myself when I accomplish a big task. 

Being a child or a teenager would only magnify this good feeling of accomplishment because the world is so big and so much has yet to still be discovered.

It is my personal opinion that enabling a child to appreciate his/her situation more by digging in deep and hard sometimes……..is good for their self-esteem, not bad.

I am over handing out stuff to kids for free because they expect it.  This is the type of adult we are breeding, a society where they believe themselves to deserve to be given stuff that isn't theirs to take.  

Sometimes it feels to me... youth, generally speaking,  know nothing about how to be humble.  

However, I am proud of at least 13 who do.

HAVE AN OUTSTANDING TRIP AWANA TEENS!
YOU’VE EARNED IT!!!!


Thursday, November 4, 2010

to tuck or not to tuck, the epic ending. Praise God..........













The soccer season is almost over.  One more game and the fall school start up chaos is completed….mostly.


We finally got CB playing soccer with his shirt tucked in.  It would seem that with me as his safe haven for hiding from his fear of kids running together in a cluster and being overwhelmed….it was too easy to quit, show his butt, and sit on the sidelines. No matter that he has ran with other kids in a cluster in our backyard a billion times.  It wasn’t the same. D and I came to the conclusion for him to play I would need to be perceived as not being at the field.

These are the steps to getting a 4 ¾ year old child to play a sport that you paid money for and don’t want him to quit (When you have accidentally volunteered his dad to be the coach).

1.  When the child sasses you about how he doesn’t want to play soccer anyway….yank his cleats off, his shin guards, and his jersey then throw them as far as you can into the yard. 

2. Eat Lindor chocolate balls 3 at a time, until the bad mommy feelings inside you go far, far away.

3. Make a deal with the child about tucking his shirt in that will surely be broken.

4. Send him to the soccer field with his dad and tell him you are not able to come to his game. Plan to show up and hide behind a tree to watch him play.
 
5.  In the last quarter, after you have watched him have a great time, score a goal, smile really big all with his idiot shirt tucked in…. reveal yourself as being there the whole time. 

This is when your child will reveal to you that he saw you drive up and get out of the car. That he saw you hiding behind all of the trees.  He will want to know why you didn’t just sit in a chair like all of the other moms and dads.

This is when you will need to eat some more Lindor chocolate balls 3 at a time, until the bad mommy feelings inside you go far, far away.   


                            The End






Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Now that we're men......

Last night, in my eyes, I did this totally amazing thing along side Ms. P.

At the clogging studio we were in deep girl, God, and geek gab ....not necessarily in that order. When I say deep, it was almost an hour past the time we were supposed to have left the studio to head home. The class had ended around 9:00pm and our girls were still gabbing, so we continued to gab.

Hear this! Because we were totally gabbing incessantly for two hours barely stopping for breath.....in my car.....with the interior lights on the whole time.......at 10:00pm... my interior lights suddenly went dim.

I say to myself, "Self....I bet your battery is getting weak." I crank my car up, uumm, no I don't cause it won't crank.

tick, tick, tick, tick. tick,

try again

tick, tick, tick, tick

My jaw drops, Ms. P's jaw drops, our teen girls in the other vehicle show us that our jaw dropping syndrome has contaminated them also.

A- D is going to kill me....he is packing for a trip to Orlando in the morning.

Ms. P - I think I have jumper cables

A- (furry bunnies and rainbows....in terror. Cause somebody had to hook them thangs up)

Ms. P can't find them, she calls her husband, they discuss at length how to hook the cables up while I read the directions on the packaging.

Ms. P's husband is at home in one direction far from the studio and D is at home far away in the opposite direction from the studio, and we are out too late anyway....it just wasn't optimal.

Ms. P relays that Mr. P has said we should hook up red, black, black, red (or vice versa or something). We shouldn't let them touch... insert some more directions and technical stuff that I am starting to tune out because I'm afraid to hook the jab-O's up. All my life I have heard that some somebody's car blew up, somebody got venom spewed in their face and their face burned off, acid melted their clothes off and onto their skin and falalala la lala la la.

When I come to my senses Ms. P is standing in front of me with a red and a black in her hands and I with a red and black in my hands and we aren't letting them touch.....staring at each other.

The thing is we haven't even moved our vehicles yet and our vehicles are turned off.

A- Can you do this?

Ms. P - I think so...

Frick and Frack...the two willies decide first we should move the vehicles into proper position. After all the cables were touching each other in the bag right?

Move the vehicles. We are on the right track. We've done step one according to her package instructions. The vehicles are nose to nose without touching each other....

It is clear we are both leery of hooking the exploding battery acid face eating machine cables up. I feel extreme anxiety rising within as she and I are looking for exact locations at which to position these 4 pincher's.

I make the decision to call D finally.

A- (sweet) Helllllooo.

D- Where are you?

A- At the studio, my battery is dead.

D- Does Meg have cables?

A- funny thing.....yes, but Babe, I am afraid to hook them up and so is she, can you just come here and do it?

D- Really, Amy? I mean you can do this. Just put the positive on the positive and the negatasdkl lksjdji kjshdjhiuh nasjdhk and jhh yuy xernhg uyg.....

I don't hear him anymore he's speaking Japanese to me cause I am afraid.

So I put him on speaker phone for directions as I am using the cell phone for a flash light. Ms. P doesn't have a cell phone so this is it.

It is clear to him I am not listening well and about to panic which equals buggin out. D determines that I am going to do this. He determines he is not driving across the Untied States at 10pm...when I am "this close" the fix myself.

D- (on speaker phone....and BTW Ms. P is a deacons wife...not that it should matter it's just an ironic situation, that caused me to snicker a little in the after thoughts when I got home.) Put the "not the dam that beavers build" red cable on the "not the dam that beavers build" positive bolt, Amy, Now!

A & Ms. P(we laugh a little) - Easy Tiger, yer on speaker phone.

D - I don't care hook up the red cable and then do the black one, now, DO IT.

I totally hooked'em up. I was half way there. Ms. P is standing close beside with her 2 cables not touching. Like surgeons with special tools I take one from her hand and D tells me where to hook it on my car. Then the last one is placed on the black negative on my battery.

Not the optimal place I learned cause that is the crisis point at which a battery could explode with my face next to it. When I read the directions though it said not to hook it next to this fuel line and that cable and x,y,z...so I was afraid again cause I have a Hyundai and I don't know which line is which. I recognized the windshield washer fluid and so did Ms. P and all that was plastic. One is supposed to connect the last black one to a metal bolt or something. I was supposed to look away, but I forgot....cause I was having an anxiety attack in my mind.

So the moment of truth has arrived. The connections have been made. D relays Ms. P should start her vehicle and slowly rev the engine.

A- Okay go start your car and give it some gas.

D- No.. I said slowly give it some gas (Ms. P is revving up to start a Nascar race). Tell her to stop that.

I don't listen and go get in my car and crank it right up.

......insert redneck hooting and hollering in downtown, at night, behind some random building, with no lights on and 6 girls jumping up and down totally being girls.

D- Come home. ... and be careful, the deer are out tonight.

Insert some more jumping up and down and girly screaming cause BY GOLLY!! WE ARE WOMEN HEAR US ROAR FOR PETES SAKE!!!!!!

I know D helped talk us through that and he used some man words to do it......but I swear in my mind I felt like we did it all by ourselves. I mean really, we were nervous, but we seriously overcame it and just totally did the freaking man deed.

Ms. P calls her husband and relays to him we have done the deed. He asks her if we unhooked the cables. I told her you should have told him, "No, that's their leash, the whole clan need to be on a leash."

Even Ms. P's daughter and May told us they were proud of us. We had a big, 6 female, jumpy, girly group hug put our hands in the center and "Go Ladies" on three...1, 2, 3...GO LADIES!

I smiled myself to sleep last night cause I rocked my own world for a change.

I love hanging out on Monday's with Ms. P. It makes me feel strong and mighty in every way.

I dedicate this song to you Ms. P. We "passed the test and finished the quest!"
Hope you have an awesome Tuesday!!!!!