Things you Don't Know

I have a lot of first world problems.  They always seem to find me.  I am just unlucky that way.  Because they are first world that makes me somewhat lucky I guess.  

Things you might not know about me:
1. You know pretty much everything.  Dig through my archives you will find it all.

2. Well you might not know that I am a yeller.  I hate that about myself.  When I get pissed the whole world has to know it.  It comes right from the belly and comes out my fingers in slams and bang.  My cabinets and doors are terrified of me. 

3. I decided to go gluten-free.  I haven't shared that yet.  It is a personal choice, with some medical concerns.  After being on it for four months and feeling good it's hard to imagine going off it.  I cheat from time to time and sometimes pay the price.  Do you know what it's like to have to pass up cake and cookies?   "Oh no!  No cake for me I'll just have this apple."  But when you poop and actually feel relieve instead of feeling your gut twisting from the inside out it's a good thing.
It is an adjustment.  For sure.

4. Oh and and .... I am now the Co-leader of a Daisy troop.  This happened because I can't say no and I am somewhat crafty in a five-year-old sort of way.  They got me hook, line and sinker.

Now you know everything oh except I love this song and I want to be these gals bestie...

banjo take 2

I have endless love for the banjo.
Blessed blessed banjo...

Princess

My house is turning into Disney central.  Major.  We talk, eat and breathe Disney right now.  My children are  saving their pennies for their very first trip there.  They Youtube Disney rides to figure out which ones to ride and which ones to skip.  The girl watches clips of little girls meeting princesses.   This makes me glad we waited till they were older, they really are invested in this trip.
We also have a ballet recital coming up and the song the girl is dancing to just so happens to be from a Disney movie.  We listen and practice dancing to it everyday.  That leads to listening to other songs and that leads to wanting to watch a particular Disney movie.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
All this Princess stuff raises the question that plagues all moms with little girls; Am I setting up her up with  unrealistic expectations?  Do I want her growing up thinking a man is going to save her?
You know the whole debate so I am not going to bore you with the details.
Really there is no debate with my daughter,she is a bit independent minded.   The first time she actually watched a Princess movie from start to finish something happened to calm the raging argument in my head.
I saw her face as Ariel and Prince Eric kissed and were wed.  It was a sight.  Arms crossed.  Rage in her  eyes.   "Married!  I hate married!"   The very idea that Ariel gave up her mermaid tail for a man was so disturbing to my little four year old.  She couldn't comprehend such a travesty.  A  year later she still can't.  Marriage is not even a possibility now.  Which I know will change possible one day.  Right now she wants to live with me forever and travel the world.
I let her believe this is the way it will be.  Who am I to squash her dreams?

in the thick of it

This is my day.  Everyday.
 Throw the ball. Catch the ball. Throw the ball again.
 He was birthed into baseball. I laid in bed. I walked around. I labored in a tub to the sound of baseball.
 He shares a name with one of the greats.
 He keeps score of the games on TV and the ones he plays in his mind.
 He shares a fantasy team with his dad.  He yells at his players when they don't do well and cheers when they do.
It is in his blood.

"Mom, look at this picture in the book doesn't it have so much detail?" She says.
"Mom, don't throw that away I can make something out of it." She says.
"Mom, I'm going to be an artist one day." She says.
"Yes, yes you are."  I say.
It's in her blood.

war

War, what is it good for?!?  Everything.  Conflict makes people breathe and think and think and love and lust.  If you didn't have hate you couldn't have love.  If you don't have war you can never know what true peace feels like.

Complete and total world peace can only truly come if everybody and everyone agreed with everybody and everyone.  It's a scary thought, scarier than war.  To even have the notion or the dream that everyone and everybody will get along 100% of the time, all the time, for all time is not tangible.
 I don't hope for world peace for my children, I hope for world civility and total empathy domination.  That seems more likely to happen in their life time.  Or so I hope.

Garrison Keillor

SECRET: I have a mad girl crush on Garrison Keillor.  His voice is the lullaby that lulls my thirty-four year old baby self to sleep.  His voice is peace.  When I listen to Prairie Home Companion it can never happens with little people around, it negates the whole peace thing.  They have no appreciation for sexy-man-voice.  It is sad.  Very sad.
 And don't even get me started on The Writer's Almanac.
 Poetry little people, the live-blood of literature!!
 Recognize!!!
I love when I get Garrison's subtle humor.  I feel smart and educated and highbrow.  I look around the empty car/couch to see if anyone else got his joke, and not one of those imaginary people ever does.  And I feel even smarter.
Imaginary people are not that smart. 

Just an added video.  Seriously Punch Brothers get me every time.  I listen to them all day everyday.  I get all sad when people don't know who they are.  Just sad people....

calisthenics bitches!

~I am but one girl.  So much has been on my mind lately and happening in the world, like Tupac's hologram.  IT'S TECHNOLOGY PEOPLE!  Brave new world and such.  And someone spent a lot of money to project a 3D image of a dead person.  Stupid Americans!*

~Are you ready for summer?  It's the only season that seriously scares the shiz out of me.  Because I am home with children and wondering what I should do with these active, demanding creatures.  The answer?  Nothing.  I am training them now to be self-sufficient, self-entertaining people.  It's a process.  I hate hearing "I'm bored."  I might start a bored jar where I put jobs like 'cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush' and 'human vacuum the living room'.**
During the summer my mom made us do calisthenics.  That's what she called it.  "8:00 am children, time for calisthenics!"  We always tease her about this now and about the time we had to pull over at a historic landmark and that landmark was a giant rock with a plaque that said "LINCOLN SPOKE HERE!"  We tease my mom but deep down we love her because she was creating memories.  And she was making us the cool parents because when I tell my kids "When I was your age my mom made me do calisthenics!' They are like "Oh no, not calisthenics!  You are the cool parent for not making us do calisthenics."***  My kids don't ask what calisthenics means, it's a word that sounds scary enough not to ask.  My hope is one day I will make my kids the cool parents and they can tell their kids 'When I was your age I had to clean the toilet with a toothbrush!'  And that sounds scary enough not to ask.

~ I include a song because that is my day, all day everyday.  Music it makes the world a better place.****


*Said in a snooty French accent

**Human vacuum is when you give your child a paper bag and have them pick up small bits of paper that litter the carpet.

***Dramatized for literary purposes.

****It's called irony bitches.

ear-buds

*Last night I put in  some ear-buds and watched a totally awesome 80's movie on Youtube.   That 80's movie that is so bad it's good.  The movie part isn't the issue here, the ear-buds are.  I love those little buggers.  Putting them in implies that I need a moment.  My children walk into the room and solemnly walk out, 'Mom has those things in her ear she needs her space.'  I can't hear anything except Billy Idol's 'Rebel Yell' and Helen Slater trying to fake a southern accent.
 I put in ear-buds and all the little squabbles and life's problems fade away.  I give myself permission to relax.  I take the responsibly and hand it off to my husband.  It's amazing what happens when you put two pieces of plastic in you ear and tune out the world.

*There are some songs I can listen to over and over and never get sick off.
Like this one.
and this one.
and this one.

*After watching that totally awesome 80's movie I had this song stuck in my head , I started singing it and I told my husband that I'd be singing it all night.  He informed me he hated that song and I got all excited because I could annoy him by singing it over and over again.  After awhile he was all like "Oh that song, I thought you were singing another song.  I like that one.'  The song lost all it's appeal then.
This is the awkward moment I realized that our relationship was less husband and wife and more brother and sister.  Is this normal?

* I like this song.

Why I am not President

At one time in my life I pictured myself being President of the United States.  Life happened.  You couldn't pay me to be President, although they do actually pay people to be President it's just that you couldn't pay me enough to be President.  The greatest deterrent is of course the gray hair.  Do you see those pictures??  Especially with our last two presidents.  Before oval office hair one color, during and after the oval office, GRAY.

I am not ruler of this free nation but I am ruler of my household.  Less president, more dictator.  My hair isn't gray.  Okay I lie there is some gray there.  Very hard to see.  I know it's there.  It's my dirty little secret.
 My other dirty secret is sometimes I watch 16 and Pregnant.  I also like this song and I sing it at the top of my lungs in the car when no one is looking. 
Don't tell anyone okay.
That's another reason I could never be president.  I have too many dirty secrets.  And the ruler of the free world should not be indulging in shows about teen girls getting pregnant and crying because they can't go to prom.  It doesn't gain respect.   Neither does singing songs by third rate pop singers from the 90's.   Or admitting that you're less president and more dictator.  And admitting when you say dictator you get a craving for tator tots. 
Or the fact that I can't sustain a coherent thought without going on wild tangents.

Folk

I love music. I listen to it all day. That is if I am all alone in my house.  When the other people who take up space in the home are home they like the TV on. I hate the TV. TV is so obvious isn't it?  And not obvious in the hipster kind of way.
I like folk music.  It's what all the cool kids are listening to.  Some would call it country and if they are calling it country they would be wrong.  Folk is back woods.  It's not structured.   It haunting without being depressing.  Folk makes you sit in a room wrapped in a big blanket and think about how beautiful the world is.  And how lovely life is.
Country is the story.
 Folk is poetry.

luck and randomness.

*I was talking about luck and how unlucky I was, and still am.  This week about sums up my luck and it sits in the TMI catagory.
 I don't care I am going to share it anyway.
I have a cold.  A big one  With snot and coughing and sore throat and congestion in my nose and congestion in my chest and night time chills.  And sometimes I sound like a frog and other times I sound like a phone sex operator.  It basically feels like I have been run over by a semi and then the semi backed up and ran over me again.  And blessed be I also have my monthly cycle too.   Menses.  Period.  Aunt Flo cometh to town.  And now every time I cough it feels like my womanly innards are falling out of my vagina.  This is my life, because just when things couldn't feel any worse I have innards falling out of my vagina.  Not actually but it totally feels like it.  Bad.  Luck.

*I was reading a blog post about the right way and the wrong way to blog and lets not get me started on that.  I hate those kind of blog posts.
 One wrong way is to not including pictures on your post.
Because bloggers and people who read blogs have the attention span of a four year old on a sugar high.  Because I stopped needing pictures with my words two decades ago.
And how I would love to send the high and mighty person who thinks picture are so important with blog posts this blog post with a nice picture illustrating snot and coughing and sore throat and congestion in my nose and congestion in my chest and night time chills and womanly innards falling out of my vagina.  I paint a pretty picture, yes?