Tag Archives: Humor

Since 1917

Posted on November 8, 2012 | 9 comments

Dear Duke’s Mayonnaise,

I love you so much.

Today I cleaned out my kitchen cabinets.  I threw out a very gross open bottle of chocolate flavored red wine.  I am donating a small bag of canned goods that I bought when I decided I was going to try and get over my disdain for kidney beans.

When I rearranged my stuff in the pantry I realized I had three unopened containers of Duke’s Mayonnaise.  Because when I go down the condiment aisle and I see you there I always think it is better to be safe than sorry.  What if there was an emergency that could only be fixed with egg salad? or a turkey sandwich?  Or the delicious chicken recipe I actually got off of the Hellman’s website? Or what if I decide to make grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner? Did you know that mayo makes the best grilled cheese? Don’t butter your bread, use mayo.  You will never go back to using butter.

You’re a damn fine mayonnaise, Duke’s.  You really are smooth and creamy.  Now, come to Mama.

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Some more Stuff

Posted on November 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

Stuff. I have written about my tendency to hold on to Stuff before. I hold on not just to scraps of paper and pictures and acorns and single mismatched earrings. I hold on to people, too. It is both my greatest quality and my weakness. In recent years I have learned to embrace the “people are in your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime” theory. Previously I tried to keep everyone in my life for a lifetime. I thought it made my life richer. Sadly, I think it may actually just dilute the people that are there day to day.

I have embraced the theory. I have. I have let go. And I have done so with peace in my heart and the knowledge that just because someone is no longer in my day to day does not mean that they were not there for a reason or that their season may not come around again.

I try to live this theory as it applies to my Stuff, too. I don’t always succeed. Right now in the back corner of my attic storage is a lampshade with black fringe from my Leg lamp costume. I know it is an item that served it’s purpose, it had a reason. I should let it go. But I want it to be a Lifetime piece, I do. I know it has no practical purpose… but you just never know. What if I need it?

In the last seven years I have moved three times. Prior to that I had moved only a handful of times in my life. I took advantage of each move to let go of some things. Having children makes the keeping of everything impossible. Holding on to each and every precious item, it is adding to the pile of Stuff that they will someday lug around.

Daylight Savings Time allows for a perfect morning. We all woke without the use of an alarm clock, our bodies gently nudging us towards wakefulness before the alarm clocks starts screaming Wake Up! You’re Late! (I wake to Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life every single day. Start each day with a laugh and a little perspective.) While Em ate breakfast I rummaged around in my junk drawer in the kitchen for three more items. I promise I won’t spend all month showing you shit from my kitchen junk drawer. Really.

Trash and Donate were easy today. For the trash I have two cheapie cat toys. A catnip toy that has a hole in the corner and a weird little ball that sheds blue plastic pieces. Lucy is a huge fan of cat toys and I am a huge fan of her not choking. We no longer have cats so these items have outlived their usefulness. They have neither a reason nor a season coming up in the near future so in to the trash with them. As I tossed them in to the kitchen garbage can I got a little misty. For the first time in more than 15years I will not be filling a christmas stocking with cat toys for an ungrateful beast that shits in a box in my house. A heartbreaking realization, I know.

Donate – I often wonder if the collect box tops for education campaign is real or if it is akin to the collect soda pop can tabs for cancer campaigns of my youth. I had jars of tabs, bracelets made of tabs, tabs in my pockets, in my backpack. I don’t remember ever doing anything with them, but I knew it was tacky not to pop them off before I chucked a can in to the trash. (In to the trash! Gasp, those crazy non-recycling 1980s.) I clip boxtops from the few items of prepackaged food we buy and I toss them in my kitchen drawer, or in to the bowl of fresh fruit that sits on the counter. Very occasionally I get it together and turn them in to the school. This year I have managed to send them in on three separate occasions and it is barely November. Yeehaw, stay at home mom for the win!

My Keep item is one that has surely outlived it’s season. But dammit, its reason is genius! 17 years ago I used to go to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va quite often. Any and all funds that were not spent at Anheuser Busch’s amusement park were spent on their fine American made product, the Budweiser. Even as a young gal I oozed class and style. I didn’t always have a frosty mug with me, sadly, and I couldn’t just go around slugging beers from a can. I could snap on this metal handle and Tada! This item has a two-pronged approach to assisting you in catching a wicked buzz. Not only does your beer stay nice and cold because your hand is not warming it up but you can’t put it down without it tipping over so beers had a tendency to disappear before my eyes!

I can’t tell you the last time I used this. I pull it out on occasion to show someone. Typically someone visiting from my college days. But this item has lived in every junk drawer I have had for the last 17 years. It has outlasted the purge of moving to a new state. I can’t get rid of it now. Dare I say that this item has no reason, it has no season? Is this a Lifetime junk drawer item?

For today I am going with a solid, yes. Yes, it is. I wanted to show you how handy it is. No can of beer to be found. Here it is providing a handle to my jar of Fish Oil Supplements. Fish Oil has done wonders for my achy creaky joints in the morning. Amazingly enough a solid decade of Budweisers did not seem to make me bounce out of bed feeling like a million bucks. Who knew?

Stay tuned for 26 more days of my treasured pieces of crap. Can you even imagine the wondrous items yet to be revealed?

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Balance

Posted on October 29, 2012 | 23 comments

It’s no mystical secret that life is a careful balancing act. Every single decent therapist I have ever spoken to has said within twenty minutes “Well, Kelly, it sounds like you need to find some balance and I can’t tell you how to do that.” Well, I am not forking out $125 an hour for you to ask me questions.

Balance. I have spent my entire adult life looking for it. Work and play time. Ambition and relaxation. Exercise and diet. Save money for your future but live in the moment.

Looking crazed, I thought I’d be gone for hours!! Free as a bird!!

I work really hard to keep balance in my life currently. Take care of everyone else and take care of me. It isn’t easy. I left the house this afternoon with the intention of staying gone for a few hours. I have never been away from Lucy for more than about 90 minutes but MQD and Emily were both home. She had a full belly. She had just had a nap. She would be fine and I needed to get out. Bad.

MQD is pretty good about not crying wolf. I wasn’t gone 45 minutes before he sent the first text “We have a very sad baby.” I was getting my nails done. Yup. I am that shallow. Once a month I take an hour for myself and that is what I choose to do. Judge me, if you like. It makes me feel pretty. I sent him one back “Bring her to me, I can’t leave just yet.” He got things calmed down on the homefront and ultimately I was even able to stop and get milk on the way home. That’s right. I went to the grocery store. Party on, Wayne.

I could have stayed out longer. But I wanted to be home. Walking through stores window shopping or sitting somewhere drinking a cup of coffee wishing I was at home would not make me happy. I took my perfectly manicured fingernails home and strapped on an apron. Emily and I sat on the floor in the kitchen and we grated six zucchinis while Lucy took out every single piece of tupperware we own. And I was happy.

That might have been enough Balance for the day. But enough is never enough for me.

After I whipped up some ridiculously good zucchini bread (slammed full of vegetables and almonds for protein power!) I sat back and thought “I’m not cooking another god damned thing today!”

For breakfast tomorrow my family will have delicious zucchini bread made with love and natural sweeteners. For dinner tonight? I taught Emily how to line up Scoops Tostitos chips and place a loving dollop of canned hot dog chili in each one. Then we put some cheese on those bad boys and slid them in the oven.

Because it is all about balance. Em had a fever this weekend and was under the weather. I told her she could have anything she wanted for lunch, anything at all. She picked salad. SALAD.

My girls will grow up loving vegetables. But some day, many years from now, I hope they will both stumble through a 24 hour grocery store after the bars close and grab some Tostito Scoops, a 79 cent can of chili made with godknowswhat and some cheese. Her friends will encourage her to just put them in the microwave (or cook them with their space-aged cell phones) and she’ll say “No way, man, my mom made these when we were kids and you have to take your time and line up the chips and cook them in the oven.”

If it sounds like I hope my kids grow up to occasionally stumble drunkenly through a grocery store and eat food that is one step above low level dog food, yes, I do. They will also probably buy their vegetables from the farmer’s market and recycle like their life depends on it. And that, friends, is Balance.

It’s not hard to picture her drunkenly stumbling around, actually.

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Complicated

Posted on September 16, 2012 | 6 comments

I tend to make things complicated.  Overly complicated.

I woke up early this morning.  Lucy woke up early this morning.  Is 3:30 the morning?  Eventually we went back to sleep. Around 5:30.  I fear that may have been the morning nap.

On the weekends in the morning MQD and I have a date.  Sometimes on Saturday.  Sometimes on Sunday.  The kids goof around in the living room and we stay in bed for twenty minutes.  It is the sum total of our alone time for the week since Lucy has been born.  I treasure it.

This morning it was raining.  MQD was tired.  I have a sore throat.  This is not a recipe for a super weekend morning date.

I make things complicated. Is MQD tired because he is tired of me?  Did Lucy wake up at 3:30 because we are both getting sick?  Is my sore throat a bug I caught from Emily and the cesspool of germs that is the first grade?

No.  Today I decided to make things simple.  MQD is tired because he is tired.  He told me I can take a nap this afternoon so I let him sleep in.

I have a sore throat because my throat is sore.  A shot of booze  in my decaf coffee means I will have a fabulous afternoon nap.  And my throat doesn’t hurt anymore.

Lucy has ticklish armpits.  And she thinks this little joke I made up is incredibly funny.  Hey Lucy, your village called.  They want their Lucy back!!  To really drive it home you have to say Luuuucy in a crazed and loud voice.  See previous comment regarding a shot of liquor at 9:30 in the morning.  Not having any trouble with this.

Sometimes you have to simplify. Sunday is a great day.

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Observations

Posted on September 15, 2012 | 11 comments

It is a common refrain “It happens so fast! It’s amazing how much you forget!” Kids grow so quickly. They move from one stage to the next almost seamlessly and you somehow forget completely what was happening only last week.

I thought this rule about completely forgetting the details of portions of your life was specific to raising children. Somehow the lack of sleep combined with the excitement of reaching the next milestone contributes to the forgetting, I assumed.

Yesterday I went in to my office, to my old job. What do you call it when you have an office in a building but you don’t really go there anymore but you might again someday and no one has exactly replaced you because things are slow? In any case, Lucy and I headed in to the office around 8:15. As soon as I got to the end of the street I noticed something weird.

There were a lot of cars. A lot of cars. On the road heading to work were lots and lots of people. We live in a pretty rural area. I get out of our neighborhood several times a day utilizing the rolling stop and look both ways method. But this? All this… traffic… I didn’t know what to make of it at first.

“Damn. There’s a lot of cars all over the place, Goose.”

Somehow I had forgotten all about this morning “rush hour,” such as it is.

I continued on my way to work. Perhaps you recall my commute to work. I drive from my semi-rural neighborhood right smack dab in to the middle of nowhere. It’s not unusual to see a cow. A chicken. A horse. I slow down when I see a dog near the road. Even though I know they are likely not lost it is a habit.

I slowed down when I saw the first dog. A bigger black lab-ish looking dog. As I neared the dog he took on the tell-tale dog pooping posture and I giggled. Because I have the intellect of a twelve year old boy.

A hundred yards later I saw another dog. A smaller tan dog. I had barely recovered from the hilarity of seeing a dog poop when Blammo!! Another dog pooping. I had tears in my eyes by now.

I did not recall my drive to work being so hilarious.

I was almost to my office. I saw the third dog from a great distance. A husky sort of mixed breed. He circled a mailbox as dogs are apt to do.

And then (I am not sure I can resist the temptation to write “I shit you not”) he assumed the position.

Three. Three dogs pooping. It was crazy.  And an awful lot of cars. That’s what I saw on my way to work on Friday. I was not prepared for this.  I forgot a lot about what it’s like to drive to work in the last six months.

For the first time in a long time my post has no related picture. You’re welcome.

(Sidenote: I told MQD this amazing tale over coffee this morning. He was not sufficiently impressed. When he failed to recognize the overwhelming amusement in this turn of events I declared I was leaving our breakfast date to share this fine story with the interwebz.  So he is to blame for my wasting the last three to five  minutes of your life.) 

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Money and Priorities

Posted on September 12, 2012 | 12 comments

The decision for me to stay at home with the kids wasn’t easy for me or forMQD.  I had to wrap my mind around being largely dependent on him financially.  Since I would be taking on the bulk of the grocery shopping and management of the household it made sense for me to be responsible for our finances.  It can’t have been easy for MQD to simultaneously turn over not only the bulk of his paycheck to me but also the spending of said paycheck.

So far we have been doing a pretty good job of communicating.  Sharing finances can get messy and I expected there to be more bumps in the road than there has been.  A tight budget means that sometimes you have to go without.  Priorities are what they are and Mom and Dad tend to fall to the bottom of the list.  It’s hard to want to spoil the kids and not have the financial means to do so.  But I grew up in a house without deep pockets and I think it made me appreciate the things we did have.

Sometimes I am shopping and something just jumps in the cart.

MQD, I spent $3 on one of the kids today. But he looks so happy.  It was worth it.

It’s looking like maybe I should have spent $6.  Someone is looking awfully jealous.

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I can’t. I have kids.

Posted on September 6, 2012 | 12 comments

Maybe you know someone that rowed crew in high school and you have seen the tshirt.  “I can’t.” it says on the front.  “I have crew.” on the back.  I have seen similar tshirts for kids that are big in to drama in high school, too.  “I can’t.  I have rehearsal.” I was always a bigger fan of  “Thespians do it on stage” myself.  But that is neither here nor there.

Once you have a baby you get really good at saying “I can’t, we would love to but…” and you look at your kid and you shrug and you say “8 o’clock bedtime” or “She doesn’t take a bottle” or “We don’t have a sitter.” If your friends have kids they understand.  You might get an eyeroll from your friends that don’t do things just the same way you do, but they understand.

At first it might embarrass you.  You might worry that by the time you are ready to hit the town there won’t be anywhere to go or you won’t have any friends any more.  But the second kid?  I know that there will be plenty of fun waiting for me. I’ll be almost forty and chances are I will be home and snug as a bug by midnight but I’ll be sweaty and my calves will hurt from dancing with the dirty kids up front.  I’ll be a cheap date again for a while until I get my sea legs back under me.

And I am okay with all of this.

But this morning I had to do something awful.  I almost took a conversation to private message on the Bookface because I was ashamed of the truth.  A dear friend from the beach reminded me that we had planned on having dinner before the Perpetual Groove show in town.  At the time we initially discussed it I knew that the show would be hit or miss but surely a dinner would be a go, even if I had the kiddos in tow.  He is a perfect addition to a messy dinner with kids.  He has no judgement, kids of his own and is a lively conversationalist full of stories that could amuse even the almost seven year old ears.

I had to renege on our plans.

BECAUSE I HAVE A PTA MEETING.  If you are out of the loop the PTA is the Parent Teacher Association.

I can’t go to a killer show because I have to go to a meeting with a lot of amped up mothers and fathers and talk fundraisers and wrapping paper sales and lunch menus and school resources.  I will eat Domino’s pizza and drink lemonade from a paper cup.  And actually… I don’t have to.  I want to.

I want to meet some of the parents at Em’s school.  I want to meet her friend’s parents.  I want to know the teachers and the administrators.

I used to walk in to a bar and breeze past the doorman with a kiss on the cheek. I’d get a drink without ordering.   I imagined the gossipy girl at a corner table saying “Who does she think she is?” and the waitress would say “Kelly! She is here all of the time.  You’d love her! No, really!!”

And now I have to start all over.  Only in my dreams I can walk in to an elementary school and breeze past the Make Your Own ID machine.  “Just dropping off these cupcakes.”  Oh man, if they let me use the copy machine I will know I have hit the big time.

Just a girl in a bar, circa 1997. In suspenders. Of course.

 

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My kid is Frank the Tank

Posted on September 5, 2012 | 10 comments

I have written plenty about Emily’s love of organizing.  From a very young age she liked things neat.  She puts away her toys.  She lines up her shoes.  She completely empties her backpack and makes sure there are no stray apple cores or bits of papers every day.  She is a neatnik and I am thrilled.  She makes it easy for me to be in Pick Up Clutter Free Overdrive.

Yesterday evening MQD asked me where his flip flops were.  “I don’t know, if I saw them I put them in your closet, but Em cleaned up the living room… so…” They were in the basket ordinarily reserved for dog toys.  Of course.  She has a tendency to stash things in odd places, but I can live with this.  No matter how many times I may think it as I look for something that I am certain was just right here it will not pass my lips “Dang, Em… would you stop with the damn cleaning up all of the time!?!”

So, with a solid four years (Em didn’t really maximize her cleaning skills until about three years of age) of a tidy house behind me I embarked on having Baby Number Two.  It will be a piece of cake, I thought.  I have one kid.  Two will be a breeze.

If Emily is high tea and elbow length gloves on the veranda then Lucy is a fraternity party in a wet basement.

It seems like just last week I had a baby.  She was sweet.  She pooped on me on occasion and I routinely sleep in a pile of wet drool, breastmilk, sweat from my ever changing hormones.  But Lucy was a baby. She can’t help the constant flow of liquids.  She was sweet.  And she smelled good.

A few weeks ago Lucy started crawling.  Last week she started picking up speed.  And yesterday she morphed from my sweet baby to a benevolent college freshman, drunk on cheap beer and loud music.

I took a shower.  We were chatting.  She was sitting next to the tub.  I could hear her little hands slapping against the side of the tub, the shower curtain swaying back and forth.  And then I didn’t hear her hands.  And the shower curtain stopped moving.  When I got out of the shower I was happy that no one in my house replaces a roll of toilet paper until it is totally and completely empty.

It didn’t stop there.  We went in to the kitchen to make dinner.  She sat in the middle of the floor with her plastic spatula and a spoon.  I turned my back for a second. I know better.

Splash!  Fisher’s water bowl hits the floor.  And she is off to the races, slipping and sliding like college kids in  a long hallway coated in laundry detergent. Things were just getting good.

Remember the first time you had a party at your apartment and That Guy showed up? That guy that was the life of the party.  He was funny and loud and had a tendency to get naked.  You were glad he was there because it meant your party was going to be awesome but somewhere beyond your desire to have your party look like a deleted scene from Animal House you kept thinking “oh shit, man, please don’t break anything…”

My second child, my sweet little Lucy… she is That Guy.  She is up for anything.  I am in so much trouble.

 

 

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Ups and Downs

Posted on August 23, 2012 | 3 comments

It has been a long time since I sat in the driveway thinking “How in the fuck did I manage to do that?” Perhaps you remember the morning I put my car in the ditch.   Maybe you even remember that I couldn’t figure what to do while I waited for AAA because it was so cold outside.  My patient husband suggested I go INSIDE the house.

So, today while I sat in the driveway wondering how in the hell I managed to lock myself and two kids out of the house I kept thinking fuck it, we can just go inside and wait.   Yeah.  No, I can’t.

We cleaned out the car.  We organized my purse, suspiciously devoid of keys.  We took funny pictures.  And we waited for Dad.

Eventually the funny picture taking began to wear thin and I started to sweat.  I do not care so much for sweating unless that is an activity I have planned on.  I love to get sweaty.  Exercise and get sweaty.  Go to the beach and get sweaty.  Get it on and get sweaty.  Sweaty is an integral part of many activities I love.  Sit in the driveway and get sweaty.  It wasn’t doing it for me.

I started to get annoyed.  “Emily, today might be a shitty day.  I might swear a lot today.  A lot, like more than normal.  I need you to just hang tough.”

Eventually we got our keys.  We headed to the museum for the afternoon.  We ate ice cream BEFORE our lunch.  I was trying to rally.  Really, I was.  But I had showered.  I had on cute shoes.  And now I was fucking sweaty.

We ran our errands.  We checked the teacher lists at school.  Em got a haircut and the teacher she wanted. Things were looking up.  But it’s not easy for me to turn a day around.

So when the nice woman with the baby said “How old is she?” I could  feel myself start to sigh inside.  I can be aloof.  I know it is hard to imagine but I can.  “Just shy of seven months.” I thought I was making the “Don’t talk to me, I was fucking sweating today, god dammit!!” face.  But I must have misfired.

“He is, too.  And she is six months and she is eight.”  I have no idea how it happened.  Have you ever walked in to a bar with a royal hangover  in your flannel pants just to get your credit card that you left there the night before and forty minutes later you are smashed and getting hit on and it is the middle of the day?  No?  That was just me?

All of a sudden I was sitting on the floor with one, two, three other mothers and FOUR babies and it was … fun.  And one of them took my phone number!! And we were Facebook friends within twenty minutes of her leaving.  These people had ruined my bad mood.

And I don’t think I ever said anything about “my job.”  The job I don’t really have anymore.   I just said “Yeah, I will have tons of time when Em starts school next week.”  And I didn’t apologize.  Or explain that I am terribly busy Mod Podging my shoes (I am still so in love with my freakin’ shoes!!!!) and making homemade granola bars and becoming Queen of the PTA.  I just said “Yeah, here’s my number.”

And it felt good.

So, today kind of Sucked.  But then it turned Awesome.

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Where’s Waldo?

Posted on August 19, 2012 | 9 comments

There might be fifty shades of Grey but there are only four shades of Kelly.

1. Being hilarious
2. Laughing about hilarious I just was
3. Trying to pull it together and get a grip on my aforementioned hilarity
4. Reenacting my hilarity for my own amusement
I was in the middle of step four when the unsuspecting woman walked in to the bathroom to see my husband in his bowtie snapping pictures on his phone.  Flustered she said quickly something to the effect of  ”I can come back later!”
Excitedly we tried to explain that my dress matched the wallpaper.  It was a photo op we could not pass up.  She walked past us and entered a stall as I tried to excuse our behavior “We have a seven month old!  We haven’t left our house in a year!”
But we did last night.  And we had fun.  And both kids lived to tell the tale.  We should try it again.  In a few months.  No need to rush in to anything.
We are now accepting social invitations for the holiday season. With advance notice I will dress to match the wallpaper in your bathroom.  Your guests will have a chance to play live action Where’s Waldo?  Now that is a good time.  Take my word for it.

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