Worst Case Scenario

So, lately, my dog Sweetpea has taken to barking a lot at night. A lot. A lot lot. And it's very annoying. At our old house we could go outside and tell her to "HUSH!" and she would. Now, not so much. Now you can tell her to hush and she will. Until she hears the next little sound and then she's off again. She doesn't even know what she's barking at. She's just barking.

While we're up it's not too big of a deal. But at night. Good grief. She barks and barks and barks and barks. Thank God we don't' really have any neighbors to speak of or I'm sure we'd be on their you-know-what list.

Occasionally I get up to tell her to hush, but honestly? Most of the time? I don't know what she's barking at either. It might be a coyote. It might be raccoon. It might be a crazed serial killer (out for a pleasure cruise at night, in eel infested waters) who has wandered through the woods and found our house sitting out here in the dark and lonely woods, miles from help.

Yeah, that's how my mind works.

It doesn't help matters that one of my favorite stories as a child was about Little Dog Turpy. See, Little Dog Turpy lived with a little old man and a little old woman. And every night he would bark and bark and bark and every night, the little old man would go out and cut off a piece of Little Dog Turpy in an effort to get him to stop barking until one night, there's nothing left of Little Dog Turpy. And that's when the Hobyahs come in and steal the old man's wife. They carry her off in a sack singing:

Hobyahs Hobyahs we can brag.
The little old woman is in our bag.
We're as proud as we can be.
Forever more our cook she'll be.

They've been coming up to the house every night, but every night Little Dog Turpy's barking kept them away. Eventually, the little old man puts Little Dog Turpy back together again, but really, hasn't the damage already been done? If I were the wife and Little Dog Turpy, I'd be heading out.

I've pretty much always been a worrier. Once, when I was pregnant with Bubba and Mr. Daddy was still managing a Starbucks, we got a call in the middle of the night from the alarm company -- the alarm was going off at Starbucks. At that time (and this might still be the policy -- I have no idea), managers were required to go to the store and see why the alarm was going off. Usually it was something small, the alarm could be reset and Mr. Daddy would be back within a half hour.

But not that night. An hour passed. Then another half hour. I started thinking the worst. The robbers had lain in wait for Mr. Daddy, tripping the alarm just so he would come and then they would rob him and force him to open the safe. I was tempted to call the store, but then they would know that someone was wise to their plan. Maybe they would kill Mr. Daddy to cover their tracks!

While I dithered -- swinging wildly from "Oh my God he's lying there dead" to "Surely there's some kind of rational explanation" -- I was also planning the lawsuit I was going to file against Starbucks for requiring that their managers check on alarms, leaving my unborn child fatherless!! My rich poor fatherless child!Sob!

Finally, I called the police non-emergency number and asked if the patrol officer on duty could drive by the store and check on Mr. Daddy. And if he was alive, to please call home. About five minutes later Mr. Daddy called. Someone had thrown a brick through one of the windows and Mr. Daddy was having to wait on the glass company. He had assumed I had gone back to sleep.

Yeah, riiiight.

So. You see. It's important for me to let Sweetpea bark. You just never know what's out there.

Haiku Friday

So busy all week.
Running to and fro. Get set
for a big event.

Work on Saturday.
Sunday is a day of rest.
Monday will be too.

Comp time is the best.
Whiling away the day while
others are working.

Want to see more haikus (or is it just haiku? haiki?) Then check out this link here.

I'm Actually Starting to Miss Inane Chatter

For the record, let me state that this is not a complaint. It is merely a statement of fact. There is a distinct difference.

About a month and a half ago, we finally broke down and washed my car. We'd been holding off in light of the record breaking drought, doing our part for the conservation effort. Somehow it just didn't seem right to wash our car when they were telling us we only had about 28 days of water left. But since we've been getting some rain recently, we both felt it was time. My car was no longer white, but a nice shade of...dusty beige? Pollen tinted yellow? It was hard to tell.

So, Mr. Daddy hightails it off to an automatic car wash in town and returns about a half hour later.

"Oh, I need to tell you that your antenna broke off your car in the carwash."

"WHAT?!" WTH?

"I couldn't screw it off before I went into the carwash. I thought it would be alright but the swipey things grabbed it and broke it right off."

I'll admit it. I was pissed. Mr. Daddy didn't really see why I was so irritated, but I guarantee you had the situation been reversed he would be been peeved, too. Also, this from a man who had just installed his satellite radio. Harumph.

Anyhoo, a replacement antenna wasn't super expensive but with Federal and state taxes and both car tags due in April, we didn't have the money to replace it right away. When we did finally get around to replacing it, the dealership here in town didn't order one of the parts we needed and so I've been driving around with my new antenna in the trunk of my car.

So, I've been listening to CDs. Mostly this:


and this:

With a little of this tossed in every now and then:


Occasionally I'll muster up the effort to put in a big girl CD, but frankly, I'm getting sick of those too.

If you're ever stopped at a red light and you look over and see a woman banging her head against the steering wheel. It's probably me. In time with "The Hairbrush Song" no doubt.

Summertime

As I drove home from my stepfather's birthday party Saturday evening, I drove with the windows down. Saturday was a very warm day and as I drove, I drove through patches of smells. Honeysuckle. Wisteria. And out here in the country, chicken houses. And I realized how much I love the smells of summer.

It's not a new concept that warmth releases smells. Heck, Glade has been making a living on that concept for years. But I just realized the other day how much my sense of smell is tied into summer and how much I love those smells. Sure, I love the smell of a bonfire crackling in the winter, but that's just about the only smell I can think of off the top of my head that I love from colder months.

But summer. Oh. Summer is a different animal entirely.

Hot creosote coating the scorching parking lots of my barefoot youth, along with the coated telephone poles we passed as we made our way to town.

The warm, dark, sandy smell of earth turned for a garden. The sharp, green smell of squash vines, prickly in your hand.

Honeysuckle in the evening, the sweet nectar drops on your tongue -- if the bee didn't get there first.

The dry, musty smell of the canvas of our tent.

The hot, burned oil and grease that lubed the old tractors under my Papa's barn.

The smell of cracked upholstery and the tobacco spittoon of Papa's truck.

The smell of Gain detergent on Grandma's sheets dried in the sun. Tucked in after a long day playing in the creek.

The combined smells of warm cow fur, burlap bags, feed, and manure of the milk barn.

Hawaiian Tropic, no SPF, not in those days, slathered on to catch as many rays as possible. Combined with the deeper smell of the "axle grease" sunscreen applied to our squirming faces and bodies while our feet danced toward the waves.

The salty smell of the ocean at night.

These are the smells of summer. If I concentrate hard enough, I can smell them now. Heaven.

The Return of the Potty Mouth

A while back I wrote this post about Bubba's fascination with the word "poop" and "butt" and his ability to string the words together in catchy little songs. We successfully broke him of his habit by appealing to his greedy nature by taking money from his money jar every time he said those words and consequently those words mostly disappeared from his vocabulary.

But now they're back. But it's not Bubba this time. It's Punkin. If you do something she doesn't like, you're immediately labeled a "poopy head." She's not mad when she says it. She thinks it's the funniest thing in the world. And we've tried everything short of corporal punishment -- the "look," scolding, and ignoring, a favorite tactic of mine because sometimes when you react you're just feeding into their grand scheme anyway. Just ignore it and they'll stop. Well, not this time. If she says it and I give her the "look" she'll immediately look contrite and say "Sorry, mommy" or she'll say "You loopy led" which, I must say, is a brilliant way of saying poopy head without actually saying it.

And I was about to say I don't know where she got such a potty mouth, but then I remembered the favorite joke of the moment at our house, which was introduced by Mr. Daddy. Someone in our family will walk up to another family member and say "Hey, look under there."

"Under where?"

"Ha ha, you said underwear!"

This joke is guaranteed to get you a laugh, usually a fall down on the floor, side-splitting, fit-of-giggles-inducing laugh. From the under-5 set anyway.

And Punkin is always listening. The first time she got me with the "under where" joke I couldn't believe it. And she even told it properly. At the time I thought, "Wow, for a two year old she has a pretty sophisiticated sense of humor."

But then the next day she came up to me and said "Mommy, look up there."

"Up where?"

"Ha ha, you said upwhere?" Occasionally she'll switch it up with "Look down there" or "look over there." And while these jokes miss the mark, she thinks they're just as funny. And I have to say, they make me laugh more than the original.

So, if potty humor is the order of the day in our house, I guess it's all our fault.

I Should Totally be the Principal

The other day Tootsie over at Vintage Thirty tagged me for a meme. Which is great and all, but have any of you ever tried to follow Tootsie? Her answers to the question were so hilarious that I got performance anxiety and my mind went completely blank. I thought I'd give it a day or two and then I might feel up to the challenge. Which I did. Until I just linked back to her and read her answers all over again. Sigh. Oh well. Here goes.

Five Classes that Should have Been Taught in School:

1. How to Say No. (For Girls Only). This class will be useful from high school to college and well into your married life. It's applications are endless. However, it is only once you become a mother that the lessons learned in the class will truly become meaningful. (Required as a freshman. Seniors are encouraged to take a refresher course before heading off to college).

2. Auto shop class (For Girls Only). The absence of boys in the class will prevent certain girls from acting dumb in the presence of boys *coughcoughnataliecoughcough*. Every girl will learn how to change a tire, jump a dead battery, and change your oil. You'll also be taught the fine art of how to spot a dishonest mechanic and learn to spot typical scams, i.e. "You need to have your serpentine belts replaced."

3. Home Economics (For Boys Only). The absence of girls in the class will prevent boys from acting like juveniles when required to do anything remotely identified as feminine. Boys will learn how to use the oven and the stove, and not rely solely upon the grill. Boys will learn how to make a shopping list before going to the grocery store so that they don't buy whatever strikes their fancy as they stroll the aisles. Boys in this class will also learn to do laundry, fold said laundry, and put it away. Upon completion of the course, the boys will be given a certificate noting their qualifications that they will be required to keep on their person at all times.

4. Time Management. (College Prep) Students in this class will only spend 5 minutes of the hour-long class with the teacher each day. The remaining 45 minutes will be spent on work for 4 other classes, writing three term papers, socializing with friends and working a full time job. Failure to complete any of the required tasks will result in a failing grade and loss of scholarship.

5. Sex Education. Students will spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a mother and brand new baby. The students will be required to shadow the mother at all times, including the 2, 3, 4:30 and 6:00 a.m. feedings. When the mother is breastfeeding, the student must attach a clothespin to their own nipple for the entire duration of the feeding. The student will learn to identify by sight all forms of poop, including but not limited to, black tar-like poop, yellow seedy poop, mustard yellow poop, and formula poop. For the exam, the student will be required to change the poopy diaper of a screaming child, in the dark, while maintaining their sanity and composure and without poop ending up on the child, the changing table or the wall.

What about you? What do you think they should teach? Today I'm calling on:

Laurel at The Tea Party Place
AndreAnna at Diary of a Modern Matriarch
Esme at Blowtorch in the Middle

She's Got Dirty Laundry

Okay, first of all, I can't tell you how relieved I am that so many of you understood my reluctance to share my broccolamoley with Punkin. When I wrote it, I thought "Gah, that sounds so...selfish." So I threw in the part about the carpet to assuage my conscience and to hopefully keep from looking like a selfish troll in the eyes of my readers.

BUT, truth be told, I wasn't really all that worried about the carpet. I just didn't want to share. I mean, good grief, I share every single other thing all day long with my kids. I can't even go to the bathroom by myself. Is it too much to ask that I get to eat a little guacamole in peace? Especially when Punkin has already had her dinner?

They say confession is good for the soul. And in light of the Pope's visit to America, I am about to confess some other things I do as a parent that I'm slightly ashamed of.

Sometimes, before bedtime, I hide Punkin's Angelina Ballerina book. I just CANNOT read "Angelina in the Wings" one.more.time. When she asks for it at night I just say, "Punkin, I don't have that book. Let's pick another one for tonight." After a break of a day or two, I can happily read it for seven nights in a row.

Punkin still takes a higgie (or pacifier to most of you) to bed. I know Burgh Baby's Mom is going to give me grief, but Anglophile Football Fanatic is sure to come to my defense. It helps Punkin sleep. It gives her comfort. And I'm pretty sure she's not going to take it to college. Or even pre-school for that matter, so I don't worry about it. Much.

I don't bathe my kids every day. They get baths every other day. And rarely, every two days, though I'm sure that will change once the sweaty summer months arrive.

When Punkin was younger, I didn't brush her teeth every day. Brushing her teeth was like trying to trap a wild badger and brush it's teeth. A tooth brushing session usually ended with Punkin flat on her back on the bed, her arms pinned above her head, lips squeenched shut with me trying to pry the toothbrush between her lips. It just wasn't worth the effort some days. Now that she's older I do brush her teeth daily and the situation is better. A little.

Sometimes I give Bubba the option of staying up a little later and skipping the bedtime story, knowing that he'll choose that option, just because I'm too tired to read a story.

When we get home in the evenings, I let the kids watch television while I cook dinner. Once the mud is completely gone and we have grass that we can play on, I promise I'll make them go outside. But right now, television is just easier.

That's all my dirty parental laundry. Or at least that's all I can think of right now. I'm sure there are more. Please make me feel better by leaving at least one piece of your dirty laundry in the comments. And if you're perfect, well, I just don't want to know about it.

Punkin Speak

Don't have a lot of time to blog tonight. Watched American Idol -- my guilty pleasure -- and cleaned up the kitchen. Then I pre-cooked part of tomorrow night's dinner so that we're not eating at midnight. I tell you, I still don't have this new routine down. I just feel so rushed all the time. It's not a pleasant feeling and I'm sure I haven't been particularly pleasant to be around.

Anyhoo, recently Punkin has come out with a few "gems" that have made me laugh and I thought I would share those with you.

Every night on the way home from work, Punkin asks me what we're having for dinner -- which is the living proof of the mother-curse ("I hope you have one just like you!"). Tonight when she asked me I told her we were having breakfast. Sausage. Eggs. Pancakes.

"Yahoo!" she yelled.

"Does that make you happy?" I laughed.

"It makes me hungry!" she replied. Me too, Punkin. Me too.

I think I've mentioned before that Punkin loves to eat. And she'll eat just about anything. Generally we all eat together as a family, but occasionally on the weekends I'll actually wait until they go to bed to eat just so that I can eat in peace. Sunday night was one of those nights, and though the kids weren't in bed, they were in another room watching a movie. Mr. Daddy and I made nachos and we had some really delicious guacamole. Punkin loves guacamole. Weird, right? She came in and saw me eating and immediately started vulturing my plate.

"No, Punkin. You already had your dinner. This is mine." It sounds cruel, I know, but I was mostly concerned about the fact that if I gave her some, it would end up on the white carpet.

"Pleeeeease, mommy. I want some broccolamoley." And that is how guacamole shall forever more be known in our house -- broccolamoley.

Another new phrase -- and we have no idea where this one came from -- is "Please, give me just one more chance." Give me just one more chance?! Wha? She says it in the sweetest, most pleading voice that she makes it almost impossible to refuse. And she uses is indiscriminately.

"Mommy, can we read one more book."

"No, Punkin, we already read two. It's time to go night night."

"Pleeeease, mommy. Give me just one more chance."

Sigh.

It's no wonder she's spoiled rotten.

And so, for tonight, I leave you with an image of her royal heinie-ness, after a long, hard, day.

Down With O.P.P.

For those of you who even remember that wretched song 1) shame on you for letting that song take up space in your brain and 2) get your minds out of the gutter.

What I'm talking about are Other People's Pictures. Mr. Daddy and I caught the tail end of a documentary by that name on the Documentary channel this evening and it looked utterly fascinating. For those of you who don't feel like clicking over, this film followed several individuals who scour antique markets, collecting photographs and snapshots of people they don't know. One male, um, "collector" likes only photographs of sailors. There are some who collect photos that tell an unfinished story and there is a subgroup who collect photographs that catch the photographers shadow. How cool is that? I could totally get into a hobby like that! I adore looking at old pictures, especially people I don't know. I think it's the nosey in me -- Who are they? What were they like? Were they married? Did they have children? What's going on in the picture? I mean, even the most innocent family portraits can hide a multitude of Peyton Place-ian goings on.

I also love looking at the back of old postcards, reading the messages sent between friends, lovers, family members. Once, as part of my job, I had to sort through a collection of old Valentine's postcards, most from the early 1910s and 20s. It was such a fascinating look at life and at what society deemed as acceptable communication between young men and women.

I remember when I was in high school I found a packet of letters in an antique store. A friend and I read through many of them and though I can't recall now the story that they told, I do remember that my friend and I quickly found ourselves engrossed in the relationship between the correspondents. I had grand, romantic ideas of creating a book based on the correspondence, but when I asked the owner about purchasing the letters, he told me he wasn't sure. He didn't even know they were there or who they belonged to. He was was uncomfortable selling them to me without trying to find out if someone wanted them back. I told him I would check back, but I never went returned to the store. I wonder what happened to those letters.

You know, I once infamously cried during a Mercedes commercial. An older Mercedes is about to be crushed for scrap and the life it spent with its family begins to flash through its eyes. (Hush! It was sad!) But that's what these photographs are...someone's life. Flashing before my eyes. How cool is it that we all get to live on...via photograph. Maybe one day someone will be looking at photos of me and my family in an antique store. I hope they make up a happy story.

Things That Make Me Happy on a Sunday

This, for one:


That, my friends, is grass. Fine as a gnat's you-know-what hair, but grass nonetheless. Here's a wider shot:


That's looking straight back off my back deck. And here's the shot to the right:

The dogwoods in our woods bloomed overnight. Our woods are greening and it's making me nearly delirious.

Also making me happy today? A nearly four foot long black snake sunning himself by our back deck. He nearly gave Mr. Daddy a heart attack at first, but we're all pretty cool about snakes around here, especially the non-venomous, vermin eating kind. We brought everybody outside to see him, but in all the excitement I forgot to grab the camera. The excitement was too much for him and he slithered, slowly, off into the woods.

The Boston Red Sox are playing the Yankees tonight. They're 1-1 this season. Last night's game was gooood, if long.

And finally, some blog bling. Karen over at The Rocking Pony gave me this award weeks ago, but I've been so blogligent (do you like that word? I just made it up!) that I have not gotten around to acknowledging it.

I'm passing this one on to Burgh Baby's Mom, Tootsie over at Vintage Thirty and Stay At Home Mom Going Quickly Insane.

I also received this, a very fitting award, from Tootsie at Vintage Thirty (see above link!):


I swear, sometimes I think Tootsie really knows me! As a child I absolutely coveted a tiara that was for sale in a local store. I saved and saved and saved my allowance as a child and finally bought it. Who needs pageants? Buy your own tiara!

Anyhoo, I bestow this award to Angie over at All Adither, Fannie at This Isn't What I Ordered, and Colleen over at Wine Please. Everybody needs some sparkle in their lives. Enjoy, ladies!

Have a great week, everybody! I plan to!

No Need to Alert the Authorities

I'm still here. Still alive. The biggest event of my job-year has come and gone -- The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. This year it was a two day event, which has kept me busy since January 1, but has kept me just barely head-above-water drowning the last two or three weeks.

On Thursday I met our four authors -- three previous inductees and one of this year's inductees -- at their hotel and spent the morning ferry them to and fro an interview. I had the enormous pleasure of spending gobs of time with Ferrol Sams, Terry Kay, John Stone and Bailey White. If you have not read anything by these authors, I highly urge you to check them out. My favorites of the above are Run With the Horsemen (which is the first of a hilarious trilogy) by Ferrol Sams, To Dance with the White Dog by Terry Kay (which was made into Hallmark movie starring Hume Cronyn and for which Hume won an Emmy), and Music from Apartment 8 by John Stone (a cardiologist who also writes poetry. He was the first poet who made me think I might actually like poetry).

Most of you may know Bailey White from her folksy essays on NPR's All Things Considered. A publisher compiled several of her essays into two books, only one of which I've read so far, but it has quickly established itself as one of my all-time favorite works, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living.

On Thursday evening I went to a very nice soiree at the President's House...the President of the University, that is. The Robert Osborne Film Festival is in town, so I got to meet Mr. Osborne as well. He was nice and there was kind of a frisson of excitement in meeting someone "famous," but honestly, it was much more thrilling for me to meet the authors.

On Friday we had our annual induction ceremony, which was lovely. In addition to Bailey White, we also inducted Calder Willingham, who originally called Rome, Ga his home. He wrote Rambling Rose, the novel that was made into a movie starring Robert Duvall and Laura Dern. He also wrote the screenplay for, and was nominated for an Oscar for, The Graduate.

After the ceremony, the judges convened to elect the newest inductees, which won't be announced until next year. I know who they are....but you'll never get me to tell!

No Complaints Here

I was looking back this morning at some of my recent posts and I began to sense a theme -- complaint. Ever since we moved, and possibly even right before, I've been doing a lot of complaining.

Did you know that there's an anti-complaining movement afoot in America? Well, there is. I first heard of it in an article in Newsweek. I tried to find that article but I think we tossed the magazine before the move. So I consulted the almighty Google and found this substitute article. If you haven't heard about this, take a moment and go read the article. From this article I found out that the Rev. Bowen has been on Oprah and The Today Show, so this is probably not news to most of you, but I'm fascinated nonetheless.

I'm kind of sick of complaining. And I'm tempted to take Dr. Bowen's challenge -- to see if I can stop complaining. I don't think it will make my life better in the sense that bad things, or things that formerly made me complain, will actually stop happening. But I do believe what Abraham Lincoln said, that "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be." It can work for me. I've done it before -- last week even!

And while I don't think it's healthy to suppress anger or feelings of unhappiness, I don't think that's what Rev. Bowen is suggesting. I think a lot of us complain out of habit. Or in an attempt to be funny. I know I do. Sometimes it gives me a topic of conversation when I don't have anything else to say. I've even formed friendships out of mutual complaining.

Recently a co-worker received a brochure about an administrative professional's workshop presented at our university. One of the topics to be covered was "Who could I be without all that attitude?" And while I thought that was one of the best titles I've ever heard, later I started to realize that it has the slight ring of truth. Who could I be without all this negativity?

I could be a better wife.
I could be a better mother.
I could be a better daughter.
I could be a better employee.

I'm not promising that I'll never complain again. But I'm going to try to curb my impulse. That's all I can do, right? Try? Wish me luck.

I Was About to Change My Name to Charlie Brown

Do you ever have one of those weeks where everything goes wrong? And it goes so horribly, stupendously, hilariously, wrong that you start to expect Alan Funt (or Ashton Kutcher for those of you in the younger generation) to step out and tell you to "Smile, you're on Candid Camera!"? When everything just goes kerflooey until the only option you have is to just laugh about it? Or when just at the last second something goes right?

I have.

We ended up not going to the folklife festival after all. Because it rained. A lot. They moved the festival inside an old gymnasium, but after the week I had I didn't really relish ferrying the kids to and fro the car in the pouring down rain only to jostle among wet, steamy, folk inside the gym.

Plus, I had to do my grocery shopping twice on Saturday. I think I've mentioned here before that I hate grocery shopping with the heat of a thousand white hot suns. (As I was typing
"shopping" my fingers typed "whipping." Enough said.) One of the biggest conundrums I've had since we moved is where to do my grocery shopping. There is not a store nearby. The closest grocery store is about 17 miles away -- which is not far, but farther than I'm used to driving -- and the nearest Wal-Mart is about 23 miles away. I hate the fact that I shop at Wal-Mart, but I do. I like being able to get my grocery and non-grocery items in one place. And, their prices are cheaper.

The past two weekends I drove the 23 miles to Wal-Mart, but on Saturday I thought I would stay a little closer to home and head to the Bi-Lo in the neighboring town. It's closer and with gas prices being what they are, I figured I'd give it a try.

So, I bee bop into the Bi-Lo and do my grocery shopping. It takes me over an hour because it's a new store and I have to figure out where in the heck stuff is. I finally get my cart up to the front and the girl rings up my groceries.

Now I have to give you a little back story here. Last Friday I lost my debit card. I canceled it first thing Saturday morning after a quick search of all the places I thought it might be and re-ordered another one which will arrive in 5-10 business days.

So, Saturday morning, debit card-less, I whipped out the trusty (and somewhat rusty checkbook) to pay for the groceries. The cashier runs it through their system...DENIED!

"I'm sorry ma'am. I can't take this check."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know ma'am. I'm just supposed to give you this card."

And then my head exploded. Although I managed to keep my cool and did not actually use any cuss words inside the grocery store, I was just about as mad as I've ever been. I asked to speak to the manager who called Certegy, the check verification system they use. The Certegy rep told me that because I had no check writing history with their company, they couldn't accept my check. That it had the appearance of fraud. Have.You.Ever?

Mr. Daddy derived great pleasure from firing off an email to Bi-Lo Corporate headquarters telling them about how we will now remain loyal Wal-Mart customers and will never darken their doorstep again.

I could go on and on about other stuff that went wrong (not the least of which was the fact that Bubba threw up all over himself on the way home from church), but even I am getting tired of hearing myself complain. So I'll tell you about the good that happened today, finally.

The sun came out, just a teensy little bit. The kids and I, tired of being trapped in our oasis of red mud, took a walk down the road. We live in a very rural area now and there is little to no traffic on our road. We walked down the middle of the road if we felt like it. We stopped and looked at the creek at the bottom of the hill. I picked some wild growing Confederate jasmine while the kids picked wildflowers.

And then tonight Mr. Daddy made a cake. With chocolate icing.

T.G.I.F. No, S.H.I.T.

I was trying to think of a post title and I came up with T.G.I.F., which it's not yet. And that reminded me of that old joke when someone says "T.G.I.F.!!" and someone else says "S.H.I.T. (Sorry, Hon, It's Thursday). Anyhoo. It's almost Friday and thank God for that.

It's been one of those weeks. I had my mid-week rant, which did me a world of good, let me tell you. I woke on Wednesday with a new attitude (and unfortunately that song kept running through my head all day). Mr. Daddy noticed and commented "Boy, you sure are chipper today."

"Yes, yes I am. I'm going to be so chipper today it's going to make you puke."

But today, today was...well, not good.

This has been one of those weeks where I feel like I should have "Screaming Fishwife" hanging in a bubble over my head. Or "Harridan" tattooed on my forehead. Everything just ticks me off. This morning I realized that my stylist had completely cut my hair WRONG and had in fact ruined the two months worth of "growing out" that I thought we were doing. Grrrr....

I have been so super busy at work. We've got several events coming up and I have been given new responsibilities for all of them, on top of my old responsibilities of which there were a lot. Add to that the fact that our new commute gets me AND Mr. Daddy home a lot later than we used to and you've created your basic pressure cooker. Everything just feels so rushed. It's almost like we have to get up from the dinner table and put the kids to bed. I could let them stay up a little later, but my kids have always gone to bed early and I think they are more pleasant to be around when they get the right amount of sleep. And call me crazy, but I prefer to be around pleasant kids (pleasant being a relative term at best, however).

I haven't blogged as regularly and I haven't been reading blogs, which is just another thing stressing me out. And why do I do this to myself? Why do I let it stress me out so? I want to read your blogs AND comment, but it just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day.

This weekend should provide some welcome relief. We don't' have any major plans. On Saturday we're going to a folklife festival that should be interesting. Good music. Crafts. Hopefully some sunshine. One of my co-workers will be demonstrating how to make pottery on a foot-turned wheel.

Ooh, maybe there will be funnel cakes. A girl can dream.

Mid Week Rant

Can I rant for just a moment here? Just for a moment, I promise. Will you please indulge me?

Do you know what I am sick.and.tired.of? Do you?

Red mud. Red freaking mud! Every-freaking-where!

Do you know what I have by my back door? Do you?

A pile of shoes. A pile. Literally.


It is physically impossible to step outside our house without stepping in red mud. Even though we have spread gravel in our driveway. Even though we have hay down in a lot of places to cover our newly planted grass seed. If there is one tiny speck of red mud between the car and the door, one of us, and sometimes all of us, will manage to step in it. And since we have WHITE CARPET in the ENTIRE house, everyone is required to leave their shoes by the back door.

Do you KNOW how stressful it is to maintain WHITE CARPET?? With a two year old and four year old, who even though you say "TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES! TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES! TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!" run right on past you heading straight for the white carpet.

Do you know what is forecast for tomorrow? Do you? Rain.

sigh.

Thank you for indulging me. Yes, you can now be dismissed. Please avert your eyes from the lady in the corner having a nervous breakdown.