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Rubber Chicken Madness

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I met Ms. Rubberchicken via the Lady Blogger Society’s weekend tea party. (There’s a sentence you don’t say everyday.) I wanted to share this post (“I Want to Be a Gym Rat”) with y’all because not only did she make me laugh until I snorted (always a good thing) but it made me think, “YES!!! That is egg-zactly what I want to do and EGG-ZACTLY how I feel!”

Then I ended up in full-on stalker mode and spent several hours reading Ms. Rubberchicken’s blog posts and actually e-mailing her to ask her what kind of running shoes she bought because I was dying to know. Dying. And because I’m a total over-acheiver, I went and bought the exact same shoes in a different color. (But not just cuz I’m a crazy stalker lady, the tread on my tennis shoes was completely gone and I actually slipped and fell while holding Sadie a few weeks ago.)
At any rate, Ms. Rubberchicken is FUNNY. Check her out.

As those of you who’ve been following me for a few weeks already know, I’ve been training for my first 5K . Ok. Truth be told, it’ll also be my first 1K, 2K, etc. Never mind that agreeing to run this 5K was an oral contract entered into while ingesting some of Kansas City’s finest Boulevard Wheat with a lemon wedge (HEY, don’t judge! It’s a fruit serving, right?).

But, as a woman of integrity, I’ve been keeping my word. And I’m kind of glad about it. I have hit the gym several times. Even bought a membership (and with the help of the colossally cool LT, I bought new running shoes which are the BOMB, I tell ya!). And for the record, I’m not the most out of shape person at the gym. I’m about average. Not super athletic. Not hopelessly tripping over my own two expensively-clad-in-new-running-shoes feet.

To be fair, this IS the first month after New Year’s Resolutions. I fully expect to be the most out of shape person still hanging out there by February 1, but hopefully I’ll make some C25K progress by then. And, God willing, I’ll still be there trying to juggle the exercise app on my smart phone and move my feet at the same time.

So, tonight was my first “long” visit to the gym. Thing One had his Friday night teenage ninja class and I had two hours to kill. Off to the gym I went.

I did my C25K training for about 40 minutes, and then I headed to the locker room to change for a nice Friday night treat of relaxing in the spa. Changing INTO my swimsuit wasn’t a problem. Finding the spa proved to be fairly easy too.

Deciding to actually put my body toe in the spa was a little tricky. You see, there was one man already IN the spa. And although I’ve got enough hair on my head to populate a small country of hairless people, he had enough hair on his back to populate a small PLANET.

I shuddered, but realized that I was standing on the pool deck in my MiracleSuit (which doesn’t REALLY work miracles, or the person who invented it would have achieved sainthood already, and if there was a Patron Saint of Swimsuits, I’m sure I’d have heard about it by now being the good Catholic girl that I am try to be), so there was really no going back.

I took off my glasses. Great. Now I can’t SEE the hairs floating my way to deflect them. But if I wear my glasses, they’ll fog up like the windows in the back seat of a teenager’s late model SUV. So I decide that “glasses off” is the only way to go. At least that way I won’t look ridiculous. [Note to self: eye surgery has just skyrocketed up the priority list]. [And secondary note to self: WHY do you care if the man with the back hair supply for alien planets thinks if you look ridiculous???]

Sigh.

I eased myself into the spa. And the water did feel amazing. I took one whiff and knew that anything that coming out of that pool of water was definitely chlorinated to death. I could relax.

After my prescribed 15 minutes of avoiding floating back hair relaxing hot water, I decided that I’d better get ready to pick up Thing One. Lord knows that the ONE day I’m late to get him will be the first day in recorded history that they’ll finish ninja class on time, right?

I drip my way blindly out of the water and head for the women’s locker room. But, I don’t have my damn glasses on and almost stumble into the men’s locker room. Thank God for Braille signage.

Once inside the correct locker room, I proceeded to try to change from wet swimsuit to dry clothes quickly. I had planned on a shower to rinse away someone else’s excess back hair, but decided that I couldn’t let my feet touch the bare floor longer than absolutely necessary and since I had no flip flops (the neurotic beast ATE my most recent pair), I had to kind of hop around (as if hopping reduces contact with nasty germs like the one that causes athlete’s foot, right?) and try to dry and get myself into clothes again. I think I got a more intense workout trying to get dressed than I did C25K-ing.

As I sat down to put on my amazingly comfortable running shoes, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over and saw a cute chubby girl in a coral t-shirt and grey sweats. She had the same running shoes as me. I started to smile (as in…Hey! Great choice in running shoes!).

And then I stopped in my tracks.

She WAS me (in the mirror). I’m that chubby girl. And I had a moment of overwhelming “holy-crap-that’s-really-me” feeling. Then I realized:

Yeah, sister, that may be me, but not for long.

As long as someone can answer me this: Where do you buy flip flops in January?

Holiday Blog Tour

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I’m participating in a holiday blog tour, and sharing favorite holiday memories with a few of my favorite Mommy Bloggers. Here is Jodi’s favorite holiday memory:


Paper chains. Whose bright idea was it to make paper chains?

“Take the glue stick out of your hair Will,” I say for at least the tenth time.

“Mom! Mine won’t stick together!” Jack whines. “I just can’t DO IT!”

“Babe, remember to put the paper through the last loop before you stick it together. O.k.?”

“Okaaay,” he reluctantly agrees, and laboriously slides a purple strip of paper through the end of his sticky, lopsided chain. Carefully he presses the ends together, and tries to wiggle his fingers loose. “Hey!!” he whines in surprise. “I’m stuck, Mom!”

I help separate him from his work, and we both heave a sigh of relief to see the chain is still intact. He holds his work up triumphantly, all 2 feet of it. “Mine’s the longest!” he crows.

And in an instant, I’m five years old again.

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“Jodi, stop eating the popcorn,” Mama says for at least the tenth time.

Still munching, I pick up the next piece and try to slide it over the needle and onto the red string behind. It gets stuck on the kernel.

“Mom!! It won’t go! I just can’t DO THIS!” I whine.

“Try to push it through the soft part, baby.”

Mama takes the kernel off, and reinserts it the right way. Letting me take it from there, she watches as I finally succeed in pushing it down to join the straggly ranks of its mangled and crushed compatriots.

“Is it long enough yet?” I wonder.

Mama examines the pitiful length of popcorn chain I present her. “Well…maybe if we join it with Bubba’s it will be ready for the tree.”

I look over at my brother’s perfect work. He’s been quietly and carefully stringing kernel after kernel the whole time Mama’s been helping me along. And now he has an impressive length of garland to show for it. I glance back at the string I’ve worked so hard to create and contemplate how long it will take me to make it long enough to go around the tree all by itself. We planned to sing carols around the piano when we finished. And isn’t Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer coming on t.v. tonight? Suddenly, the choice is easy.

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“Let’s put ‘em all together!” Jack shouts. “Then we’ll have a MONSTER big chain!” His brothers chorus in agreement as they generally do when Jack has a Great Idea.

I help everyone link to each other’s work and we all ooh and aah over the wonder of our finished work. I pray it will hold together long enough for them to lose interest.

“Mom, can we watch our Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer DVD?” Jack asks.

“No!” Will screams. “Dat scare me!”

“Snow White scare you, Will,” Tom reminds him. “Not Rudolph.”

“Oh,” Will says, as his brothers scamper away to find the DVD.

He reaches up to take my hand and asks hopefully, “You sing Thomas da Train song?”

I scoop him up for a hug and sing the opening theme of his Thomas the Train video as we head off to join his brothers. Old memories and new meet and mingle in my head leaving a warm glow in their wake. It’s Christmas time. And it truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

Want to read more about Jodi? Visit her blog at www.thedrunch.com

Guest Blogger: Ain’t Jeni

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So I got this email from my sister in law yesterday, and I laughed so hard I hurt myself. Let me preface the story by saying that my sweet SIL is pregnant and let my niece, Ella Grace (4), have a friend (Sarah 4) over to spend the night, because her mother had just had a baby. Ella Grace is quite easily one of the most well-behaved children I have EVER been around.

Jeni was in the next room while Ella Grace and Sarah were playing and overheard her child say, “Let’s smell each other’s heinies!” Jeni ran into the room just in time to see that Sarah had her pants down with her bare butt sticking up in the air! Jeni made the girls pull their pants up and gave them a stern talking to about why they shouldn’t be smelling each other’s heinies.

A few minutes later Jeni was lying on the couch in the den with a heating pad on her neck, when Sarah walked into the room and said, “Mrs. Jeni, Ella Grace colored on me with markers.”

Jeni looked Sarah up and down and not seeing any marker asked, “Um, where?”
“On my legs…”
Ella Grace started screaming, “NO I DIDN’T MAMA! I DIDN’T!!!”
“Sarah, show me where she drew on you,” Jeni said.

Sarah pulled her pants and her panties down and Jeni looked in shock, to see that her angel had literally COVERED Sarah’s tiny heinie in every color of marker you can imagine!

Jeni told me, “I’m talking about her booty, all up in her crack, her tee -tee in the FRONT…all over her!” Ella Grace didn’t just use one marker either. Nope. She used every color in the pack and according to my brother, Ella Grace did SUCH a thorough job they couldn’t even see Sarah’s skin.

Jeni was livid. “Where did she get an idea to do something like that?! And why did Sarah lay there and let her do it?!”

Ella Grace was in Big Trouble with her Momma and her Daddy and Sarah had a nice long bath. My brother said, “We didn’t even think to check Ella Grace’s body. We went to put her in the tub later that night and it looked like she was wearing Crayola panties.”

A tip of my hat to you Ella Grace. Even Emma, Queen of Sharpie Body Art, has never taken the marker to that level.

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Guest Blogger: Lori Wescott

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The blog tour continues with one of my very favorite peeps, Lori Wescott. Lori and I went to nursing school together and she is hands down one of the funniest people I know…please enjoy her award winning essay about her mother-in-law.

“Throw Mama from the Wheelchair”


I was recentley selected as a finalist by Humorpress.com, and their “America’s Funniest Humor Writing Contest.” Many thanks to my mother-in-law, Janelle. Without her, this story wouldn’t have been possible.

Janelle has had many opportunities to seek revenge on me for this incident, but she never has. After Luke was born and I was incapacitated with medication, she could have easily smothered me with a pillow and blamed it on a drug interaction- but she didn’t. That’s love. So I say to you, Janelle: hugs, kisses and a big fat thank you!

Without further ado…

Throw Mama from the Wheelchair

Whether you call them in-laws or out-laws, it is always a struggle to fit in with your new family. I had been married five short months when my mother-in-law, Janelle, invited me to Chicago with her and her two sisters. It was a “sister trip,” and I was invited. How exciting! My first official sign of acceptance. I had made it. I was in.

The plan was to spend thirty-six hours “power shopping.” No time for sightseeing or lollygagging, we were on a mission. We arrived at Midway and hurried to baggage claim, but, while picking up her suitcase, Janelle threw her back out. The sisters looked nervously at each other. There was no way Janelle would be able to keep up the pace for our shopping trip. One of her sisters decided to call the hotel and arranged to have a wheelchair ready. “It will be fine,” I told her. “We can push you around from store to store, and you won’t miss a thing.”
When we arrived at the Omni Hotel, there was, indeed, a wheelchair waiting for us, but it was missing one foot rest and completely rusted over. We pretended the chair was fine but, as we pushed her to the elevator, we heard the screeching serenade of the rusty wheels. It was bad enough that Janelle would be in the wheelchair, but now everyone would hear her before they saw her. She wasn’t discouraged, however, so we began the first leg of our mission.

I volunteered to push first. After all, I was practically a nurse and far more experienced in that sort of thing than her two sisters. As we approached Michigan Avenue the traffic signal changed, giving us the go ahead to cross the intersection. However, as I guided the wheelchair into the road, the foot rest became caught on the curb. The wheelchair then came to a dead stop and my new mother-in-law was airborne.
It seemed to happen in slow motion and there was nothing I could do but stand there watching in horror. While clad in a dressy, black pants suit, her flight was less than effortless. Her blonde hair was swept back by the wind and her arms flailed at her sides. When she finally came to rest, Janelle found herself three lanes over, in the middle of Michigan Avenue with her head a mere six inches from the bumper of a cab. Her sisters immediately began pointing and broke into hysterical laughter while the cab driver shook his head at their insensitivity.
All I could do was think about how momentarily the traffic light would change, she would be run over and I would have to call my husband and tell him that I killed his mother. That was not how it was supposed to go. I had just made it into the club of acceptance and I show my gratitude by dumping my mother-in-law into the middle of a busy intersection.
Meanwhile, Janelle was trying to get up off the ground by herself because her sisters were incapacitated with laughter and I was frozen still. Then, as I had feared, the light changed. In an effort to avoid being run over myself, I instinctively backed out of the road still clutching the wheelchair. In doing so, I was oblivious to the fact that Janelle had gimped back over to me all by herself and was attempting to sit down in the chair. Thanks to my survival instinct I pulled the chair right out from under her and she landed yet again on the dirty Chicago asphalt.
Seeing Janelle laying in the road for the second time, her sisters quickly got their acts together and helped her back into the wheelchair. Shortly thereafter, I relinquished my wheelchair pushing duties and began my dissertation on apologetics. Thankfully there were only minor scrapes and bruises to add to her back injury and, although I’ll never live it down, I was quickly forgiven. This experience did, however, turn out to be a great litmus test regarding my new family. If your mother-in-law still loves you after you dump her in the road and leave her for dead then she’s probably a keeper.

Check out Lori’s blog, Loripalooza: Where Funny Rocks!

Guest Blogger: Jodi Burrus

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As I mentioned last week, I’m hosting a blog tour to introduce you to some of my favorite mommy bloggers. Jodi is the creator of The Drunch, and has four boys…who were born within two years of each other. Think you’ve got your hands full? Check out what Jodi has to say about surviving motherhood on The Drunch.


Night Falling

The day has been long and difficult. There have been fist fights over toy cars and shouting matches over pop guns. Scuffles over who goes first and whose turn has lasted too long. They’ve insisted on juice, then cried that it wasn’t milk. In short, a day like any other only this one seemed to go on forever.

As I finally crawl beneath the covers and feel the cool sheets begin to warm beneath me, it feels as if I’m sinking by degrees into a gorgeous velvet nothing. Sleep envelopes me like a lover’s arms and I go willingly into that good night with a soft sigh and a smile on my lips.

A cry jackhammers its way into my ears. My sleep fogged brain struggles to clear the mists while my exhausted body fights to hold onto sleep. I send up a fervent prayer that there will be no follow up. It goes unanswered. Another whimper is followed by a muffled sob.

Suddenly, I envision a tangle of sheets, a too plush toy, a pillow pressed too tightly to a tiny face. I throw back my covers knowing I’ll get no sleep until I confirm that all my boys are well. The light on the monitor tells me to angle toward the triplets’ room, and my feet respond automatically.

Despite all my efforts to the contrary, the door hinges scream in protest as I crack open their door and squint to focus in the semi-darkness. A tiny figure sits upright in the center bed, one in a line of three, rubbing his eyes and whimpering pitifully. I tiptoe to his bedside and gingerly examine the covers around him, afraid to discover he’s fallen victim to the same illness his brother’s have suffered in previous days. Finding nothing, I move to examine Will himself.

Carefully running my hands over his head, I am once again amazed at the silky softness of his oh-so-straight hair. I skim past the tiny crescents of his ears, down his slender neck to his shoulders. I brush down his arms, touch his bent knees, then his warm feet and toes. I place one hand on his belly while the other makes circles on his back, wondering what it is that makes a sleepy child so endearing. No boo boos can be found.

With nothing else to offer him, I bend to snuggle him close. He smells of shampoo and toothpaste, apple juice and Flintstone’s vitamins. A heady concoction that I’m sure I could market to empty nesters for a small fortune.

“Choo Choo,” he whimpers.

I turn my head in the direction of his and see that his Thomas the Train pillow has fallen between the bed and the nightstand. I retrieve it, and he immediately drops into the patented toddler sleep position — feet and hands tucked under body, rear end straight up in the air.

I spend more time than necessary arranging his covers and lean in for one last kiss and whispered ‘I love you’ before I retrace my steps to my still-warm bed. As I sink back into sleep, I offer up another quick prayer — one of thanksgiving for this moment. Drifting deeper into the void, I force myself to remain lucid a bit longer. Just long enough to make a promise to myself. I vow to treasure each intrusion like wishes from a genie’s lamp, keeping close the knowledge that each one used means one less to follow. I vow to never pass up a chance for a kiss or a hug, and I swear I will hold their hands wherever we go for as long as they will let me. And last but not least, I promise to remember what it took to get here and how very, very fortunate I am to lose sleep over four such wonderful, healthy boys.

Good night, all!

Guest Blogger: Angie Mizzell

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In the next few weeks I’m going to be introducing some of my favorite bloggers to you with guest posts. These girls are stay-at-home or work-from-home moms who are all trying to figure out this whole motherhood thing while pursuing their own passions.

This week, I would like to introduce Angie Mizzell:

I used to work in TV news, and during that time, I developed an ear for “sound bites.” I could instantly detect when the person I was interviewing said something meaningful in 15 seconds or less. It didn’t matter what they said before and after that; if I got the sound bite, I was good to go. So today, when someone asks me, “What do you do?” I feel the pressure to answer in a simple sentence, before their eyes glaze over and they start searching for a stiff drink and someone more interesting to talk to.
The short story is I’m a mom of the 3-year-old and 3-month-old, and I’ve finally figured out I want to be a writer when I grow up. The whole story is so much bigger than that, but I want you to stick around, so I’ll spare you the gory details. I guess this is my payback for cutting out huge chunks of other people’s stories to fit the allotted segment time.
In my late 20’s, I left my TV news job in the pursuit of happiness. I didn’t have kids yet, but I knew I didn’t want to be married to my pager and forced to work nights, weekends and holidays after I started my family. At the time I was clueless that having kids was also a round the clock job.
I’ve been self-employed ever since. This is the part where I leave out a lot of details. Come to think of it… it looks like I’ve had a few stiff drinks when I wrote my resume. As I’ve tried to find balance between living the dream and paying the bills, I’ve changed my mind, and my direction, a lot.
Life teaches me something every day. One thing I’ve learned, balance is overrated. The older I get, the more I realize life is messy. It’s one thing to say I want it all, and it’s another to determine what that really is. Each day I must choose what’s really important and let go of the things that are not. To me, it’s like a dance. Feeling the rhythm, not controlling the steps.
The occasional cocktail helps, too.
You can follow my journey and join the conversation at my blog, Under the MAC.

Guest Blogger: Laura G

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Yesterday I took Noah to tee tee in a public restroom. He is not tall enough to stand and go without a stool, so I just support him under his arms and let him stand on the rim. He started to go and then started dancing so he could watch his stream “dance.” I told him to stop, but he was having such a good time that he either didn’t hear me, or simply chose to ignore me. In a very stern voice I said, “Stop it, Noah.” He did indeed stop and then asked me, “Why you talking like a dinosaur?”

Laura’s kids are cracking me up!