TheMommyBlog

Monday, December 22, 2003

Hmmmm...I do this all the time, but I thought is was just general brain-rot and lack of sleep…

“Free association is described as a “psychonanalytic procedure in which a person is encouraged to give free rein to his or her thoughts and feelings, verbalizing whatever comes into the mind without monitoring its content.” Over time, this technique is supposed to help bring forth repressed thoughts and feelings that the person can then work through to gain a better sense of self.”

Exchange:: rate (work talking)
Parental Advisory:: code
Blowout:: diaper
Spider:: man
Happy:: feet
Intense:: feeling
Corrupt:: code
Got:: milk (I’m sorry! It’s the first thing that popped into my head!)
Crude:: i-tays (mmmmm....celery and peppers and olives)
Three::children (well? They a bit at the forefront!)

via and via

Sunday, December 21, 2003 Oddbits

For the first time in longer than I will confess to here, I got hit on in a bar! My presence in a bar was newsworthy enough, but just as we were moving toward the door at the end of the evening, a young man (and I mean just out of college) grabbed my wrist and pulled me to his table and introduced me to his friend Joe. Joe looked a little slurry, so I can forgive his miscalcuation of my age and availability, but I was really very amused, and more than a little relieved that he didn’t say, “This is my friend Joe, Ma’am.”

Friday, December 19, 2003 Family

I could not make this stuff up if I tried. Yesterday, we went to the Nosebleed Zoo, arranged on the side of a mountain in Colorado Springs. Incidentally, it is the highest zoo in the nation, in case you’re keeping score. They have an outstanding new giraffe enclosure where you can get right up close, and I took some amazing photos of them, standing nose to nose with several, capturing images of them licking my children (which somehow seemed wrong), and managed a few close-ups of their gorgeous pelts filling the entire frame. There were also some dizzying shots of the slope of the zoo itself, and the town waaaayyyy down below. Oh, and some stunning snaps of my daughter and me, both looking very ski bunny in our scarves, hats & glasses. File that away. It becomes relevant in a moment.

So today, the guys went fishing. OK, fine, they don’t get to do it much and it’s only half a day. They stayed with the kids while my sister-in-law and I saw Return of the King last night, and it was going to be their turn tonight. We girls, in an astounding lapse of judgment, decided to take the 5 children not in school (ages 5, 3, almost 3, almost 2, and 1) to the mall to finish up Christmas shopping. I did manage to find the gifts, but needless to say, it all ended in tears and wailing, and the kids were pretty cranky as well. As we made our way back across the entire length of the mall and out the (wrong) door and then aaaalllll the way around the parking lot to our car, we had three screamers in strollers, lurching and flopping in protest, one riding piggy-back and wailing in my ear, and one dragging his feet and wailing from a distance back of about twenty yards. They fell asleep for the 10 minute ride home, and then were all fresh and perky for the rest of the day.

But wait, you say, if the guys left in the morning, they’d be home by then, right? Wrong. They called at 5 o’clock to say that they were still at least an hour out, and wanted to know if they were they still on for the movie, and did we mind if they also stopped for happy hour for a few beers?

I don’t know what my SIL said to them, but the movie was quickly dropped, and there will be no happy hour for them (we didn’t get one either) and I have a feeling there will be a lot of sullen silence at home tonight. Except from the children of course, who have been cheerfully clamoring for snacks, pancakes, sodas, cookies, movies, and floor hockey for, oh, about 5 hours now.

Before we hung up the phone, I did manage to ask how the fishing had gone, and was pleased to hear that they’d been lucky, and then we chatted about our days. Just before we hung up, my husband said, “Um, honey, something bad happened today.” “Are you kidding? I was there! They were maniacs, and I had sooo many bags to carry!” “Noooo, I dropped the digital camera in the river.” [sob]

P.S. Just after I saved this post, they guys came home, and Gil popped his head in to let me know that they had decided to go to happy hour after all. [ponders revenge]

Friday, December 19, 2003

1. List your five favorite beverages.
Diet Coke, wine, cranberry-grape juice, chocolate milk, huge, tall, dripping glasses of ice water

2. List your five favorite websites.
For reading & research: mine (that way I get to include all my blogging friends), Google, IMDB, Webmonkey, the unexpected discovery du jour

For shopping: Amazon, Gap, Bluefly, Pottery Barn, Hanna Andersson

3. List your five favorite snack foods.
Skittles, cashews, cheeses, all kinds of cheeeeeses, Godiva chocolates, Cheetos

4. List your five favorite board and/or card games.
Scrabble, Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, gin, Pictionary

5. List your five favorite computer and/or game system games.
Myst (it’s been a loooong time since I had time, obviously), and...uh...er, um, does blogging count?

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 Travel

This is probably an entirely unnecessary post; if you have been following this blog at all you will be able to sing it right along with me.

We made it to the airport in plenty of time to get through security and have that all-important coffee and bagel, but....we still had to scramble a bit despite being at one of the most easily navigated airports in the country. Security? Sure, we got to know everyone. In fact, by the time we made it through, I was able to tell who was new on the job, who had small children of their own, who had been on shoe duty for a while and knew her shit, and most of the code words for a secondary search.

I wore fleece sweats and clogs. The only jewelry I wear is my wedding ring. I didn’t even do my hair--just twisted it up wet straight out of the shower-- so it definitely wasn’t my straightening balm that set the damn thing off. On the first pass, I thought my hairclip was triggering the alarm. They made me take it out. I went through again with my daughter in my arms, and it still beeped. They wanted my shoes next, and I said “But they’re clogs! They’re made of leather and rubber!” The Shoe Duty Officer snapped, “No they’re not--watch.” And damned if the wand didn’t go crazy. Huh. I’ve got roughly two metric tons of metal in my new comfy shoes. Whisking them off to be interrogated, the new guy apologized to his supervisor for not noticing them before I went through. Can I just tell you that I look like the most mundane, normal young mother around? Apparently trying to make up for his lax approach he then called out, “I need a female search, times two!” Two? They were going to search me twice?? And then I saw them looking at my daughter. Jesus H. Christ in a sidecar.

The woman sat me down, and I put Daphne on the ground (is this beginning to sound familiar? At least she can walk now). She asked me, “Have you been through this before?” I barked something between a yeah and a laugh. She said, “I am going to check your daughter,” and she did, and there were no tears, which was good. “And then I am going to check you. Wherever the wand beeps, I am going to touch you.” That bloody wand beeped all around my chest and at my back (I’m wearing a b-r-a, ma’am), my ring, and the zipper on my hoodie. I just stood there like an idiot, going “Huh.” and “Wow.” No one would have been able to tell me that I hadn’t thought this through, and I still got the whole “put your arms out and stand like this and look straight ahead and I’m NOT done yet, I’ll tell you when you can put them down.” Okaaaaay, and then maybe you could turn down the dial on that thing, sweetheart, because you shouldn’t be picking up fillings I’ve had for twenty years.

Meanwhile, my 3 and 5 year old boys were running way ahead, and I couldn’t see them or my husband from my station facing the wall and everyone else standing in line, barefoot, with my daughter at my feet, and my wet hair straggling down across my face. I was beginning to get annoyed again. That was about when I heard the shoe-guy-who-didn’t-catch-me-in-time barking out, “Two little boys running--bring them back--there no there--yes, get them back.” Where was my husband?? There--repacking my laptop and slowly herding the children back into the fold (did I predict this? ‘Cause it sure sounds familiar.) Once I got everything back on my body and stuffed my hair back into a twist, really looking fresh out of the shower now, we tried to look nonchalant as we made our way to the gate.

Are you ready? Do you see this coming? In the fifteen minutes we had left to kill before boarding the plane, Dylan wet his pants, and Logan opened the door to the tarmac, setting off piercing alarms, which hadn’t been set off in so long that it took a while for people to figure out how to turn them off. We stood there, all five of us, aware that we were now being recognized from the scene at security, and tried not to imagine how many were hoping they were seated nowhere near that walking disaster of a family. As it turns out, it was sort of a moot point--we were all seated in the very last row, in the tiny seats with no recline.