Weekly Wrap-Up (9.27.13)

Before and After the Beards
If I didn't tell you ahead of time that these before and after the beards photos are of the strapping young - and old - men from Duck Dynasty, you might not recognize them. Funny how a little facial hair (and a head of insanely long, bushy hair) can change things...

Best Voicemail Ever
At first I thought to myself, "listening to someone else describe a car accident couldn't possibly be funny". But as it turns out, I was wrong.

A man called his boss to tell him he was running a bit late to his next job, and while leaving a message for his boss, he witnessed a car accident. He remained on the phone - with voicemail rolling - and provided his boss with a running commentary of the accident. He described in great detail the driver in the first vehicle (who was clearly at fault)...as well as what the passengers in the second vehicle did to him when he approached their vehicle, appearing to place blame at their feet.

I can only imagine what the boss must have thought when he turned on his phone, noticed he had a voicemail, and pressed play...

Seeing a Woman
I couldn't possibly write a better introduction to this conversation between a father and his son than the author himself does, so here it is:

Someday I am going to have to have the conversation with my son. No, not the conversation all parents dread and are mortified of having...No, I'm talking about another conversation. The one that happens after I catch his eye doing what male eyes do well - following an object of lust. We will probably be out at the mall, because that's what dads do with their sons, and I'll catch the look. Maybe we'll go to the beach and see it. Doesn't matter where it is, there will come a time when I will see it. And then it will be time for this conversation.

This man's take on how to talk to our sons about women is spot on. I've bookmarked the site, because as much as I hate to admit it, our need for this conversation will arise sooner rather than later.

Just Because
The words that kept me afloat this week:

MomsEveryday: A Drive-By Peanut-ing
In case you missed it the first time around, earlier this week MomsEveryday ran my story about the woman who took a somewhat legitimate concern (she had trouble finding foods, other than peanut butter, that her supposedly picky-eater daughter would eat) and turned it into an excuse to completely lose her mind. For those of you following this story, I'll have chapter two of Crazy Lady's Saga ready for posting next week...

No One's Ever Really Done That, Right?

Wrong.

Usually my stories about strange, ridiculous, or embarrassing behavior and events focus on Hallie. A couple have centered around Hallie and my niece, Lily, who, as unidentical cousins with identical personalities, have identical missions in life to wreak havoc. But this story? This story is ALLLLLL Lily. (Thank goodness.) And I just had share it with you.

Last weekend my sister, Sara, and her husband, Jeff, took their two kids - Lily, almost three, and Carter, seven months - with them to the home improvement store to shop for a new bathroom vanity. While Sara and Jeff spoke with the salesman, Carter chilled in his carseat/stroller and Lily explored a few of the display bathrooms on the sales floor. Suddenly a little voice rang out above the bustling sounds of a busy store (Saturday mornings are notoriously crowded on Saturday mornings)...

"You guys! Someone get over here and wipe my butt!"

Sara and Jeff looked at each other, and then turned, s...l...o...w...l...y, toward the voice.

There was Lily, naked from the waist down, sitting on the display toilet in which she'd just emptied herself. And as one might expect, she was pleased as punch for keeping her underwear dry and making it to a toilet in time.

Sara, Jeff, and the salesman laughed so hard they nearly needed to use the display toilet themselves, while Lily remained on the toilet and grew angrier and angrier that no one would wipe her butt.

When the adults finally pulled themselves together, Jeff carried Lily to the real bathroom to clean up, while Sara emptied and sanitized the display toilet. (She's like Inspector Gadget - who has the supplies to empty and sanitize a display toilet in their diaper bag?)

If you saw the movie Couples Retreat, I bet you watched this scene and thought, "yep, that's funny, but it never really happens".

Well I can assure you, it does. It did. Way to go, Lily.

Few Words Wednesday: Wishing and Hoping

Summer ended and fall began with the most beautiful weather our region of Texas has seen - and felt - in nearly five months. Blue skies, a light breeze, low humidity, high temperatures near 80 degrees, and low temperatures near 70 degrees combined to create the kind of nearly-perfect days people move to Texas to experience. We spent as much time as possible outside, not just because we'd missed this kind of weather, but because we knew it wouldn't last...today the high temperature should climb back into the 90's.

My homesickness sets in at the beginning of every September. And when fall finally arrives, my developing passion for our current state dwindles and I find myself wishing that clicking my heels together and repeating, "there's no place like home" three times would somehow transport me back to the land of brisk mornings, sweaters and jeans, stunning colors, falling leaves, pumpkin patches, and apple orchards. 

So today's pictures are of fall in the cities I've called home. I can't take credit for the first group, but the second group is all mine. (I probably shouldn't willingly take credit for the quality of the photos in the second group, but I will take credit for the adorableness of the little ones in those photos.)

Autumn in Michigan 

Autumn in Iowa

Autumn in Wisconsin

Playing in the Leaves 

Visiting the Pumpkin Patch

Picking Apples

 And the Donuts...Oh, the Donuts.

I wish there were a way for even just a little bit of fall to make its way down here. You know, before January.

"On a Scale of 1 to 10, How Bad is Your Pain?"

Are you familiar with the pain scale?

Simply put, the pain scale allows patients to describe the severity of their pain to medical professionals by attaching it to a number between 1 and 10.  0 = no pain, 1-3 = minor pain, 4-6 = moderate pain, and 7-10 = severe pain.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of the pain scale, you can break the numbers down in one of two ways: words or pictures.

• 0 = no pain
• 1 = very mild
• 2 = discomforting
• 3 = tolerable
• 4 = distressing
• 5 = very distressing
• 6 = intense
• 7 = very intense
• 8 = utterly horrible
• 9 = excruciating/unbearable
• 10 = unimaginable/unspeakable

This pain scale seems pretty straightforward to me, but perhaps that's because with a nurse for a mom, I know no other way than to describe my pain using numbers.

But if the numbers aren't your thing, I've created a new pain scale specifically for parents:

• 0 = no pain
• 1 = losing a game of Memory to a five-year-old
• 2 = having the back of your car seat kicked...over, and over, and over again
• 3 = getting your finger stuck in a hungry, hungry hippo's mouth
• 4 = being unexpectedly sprayed in the face with ice cold water from the hose
• 5 = having your heel clipped by a shopping cart
• 6 = having your foot run over by a scooter
• 7 = having a plastic fire truck driven into your shin
• 8 = being bitten by a nursing baby
• 9 = having your toe broken by a toddler
• 10 = stepping on a Lego

I'm sure you can figure out what inspired me to write this post. And if you can't, come on by my house tomorrow afternoon - I'll sell you our give you our pay you to take our Legos.

My 10th Favorite Day of the Year

Behind Christmas, Halloween, my birthday, my kids' birthdays, Thanksgiving, Easter, Valentine's Day, and the day I leave on my annual trip to Chicago with my mom and sister, today is my favorite day of the year. No, today is not a holiday or the birthday of anyone in my family. We don't have the day off from work or school, nor are we headed on vacation.

Today, the fall television season premieres begin. Whoo whoo!

The invention of the DVR changed television for everyone, and for the better, in my opinion. No commercials showing my kids how empty their lives are because they don't yet own the newest Disney princess doll or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. No commercials tempting me to purchase the AMAZING! INCREDIBLE! WONDER MOP! or the 36th season of Grey's Anatomy on DVD. The ability to "pause" our adult dramas when Hallie creeps out of her room - for the 17th time - to ask, "how's it 'til we go to The Puppy Store again?" The ability to record more than one football game program at the same time, or to watch one program while recording another. The opportunity to throw that crappy, frustrating VCR in the trash and never look back.

As a high schooler, I loved The Young and the Restless, so much so that every evening I set up our VCR to record the following day's episode. When I arrived home from school or soccer practice I'd park myself on the family room couch with my bagel and root beer and catch up on the latest happenings in fictional Genoa City, Wisconsin.

Side note: I miss my high school metabolism. You know, the one that allowed me to eat a bagel with cream cheese and drink a regular root beer every afternoon and never gain a pound. As I type, I'm fresh off a 90-minute workout, eating carrots, and drinking a decaf, zero-calorie iced coffee. I'd much rather be eating a cranberry orange scone and drinking a Caramel Apple Spice. Boo to growing old.

I taped over most episodes, but when those 60 minutes revolved around a wedding, birth, or milestone event, I saved the episode and recorded the next episode later on the tape. When the six-hour tape was full, I wrote "DO NOT TAPE OVER" on the tab and stored it on one of the entertainment center shelves.

But then my dad would decide to tape a leg of the Tour de France or a "friendly" soccer game between Honduras and Jamaica and in his state of flustered confusion (neither of my parents ever really figured out how to work the VCR), he'd grab my tape, throw it in the VCR, and hit record. In an instant I lost Nick and Sharon's wedding, Victor's shooting, and the accident that caused Victoria's memory loss. Oh, the tears (mine). Oh, the yelling (mine again). Oh, the apologies (his).

DVRs provided us with a better method of recording our favorite television programs, but they serve a secondary purpose as well: to maintain the peace, and as a result, create happier families. And if DVRs prevent dads from accidentally deleting their daughters' recorded soap operas - or daughters from accidentally deleting their dads' recorded sporting events, for that matter -  they're fulfilling that purpose.

So today, as the season premieres begin, I become one with my DVR. I record my first-tier favorites of course - How I Met Your Mother, Chicago Fire, Law & Order SVU, Modern Family, Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and The Good Wife - as well as a few secondary favorites, and then I record the pilots of any new shows that sound interesting. Throughout the next week I'll watch the pilots of the new shows to determine which, if any, deserve to move up in the ranks, and which can be forever deleted from the queue. There are always a few of those...

Tom doesn't love this week because my continuous DVR recording makes our primary television unavailable for college football on Tuesday and Thursday nights. To that I say, "college football shouldn't be played on Tuesday and Thursday nights anyway. Deal with it". So he sits in our bedroom in his recliner and grumbles about how tiny the television is and how small the ball looks and how terrible it is to "be forced" to watch football in low-definition. He has a rough life.

Second side note: in Tom's defense, he has reason to be frustrated with our cable. When we lived in Michigan, AT&T provided our internet and cable, and that cable service included the ability to record/watch up to four programs at once. Here in Texas, Suddenlink provides our internet and cable. For many reasons, the most significant of which is that the DVR only allows us to record/watch two shows at once, Suddenlink is significantly inferior to AT&T. 

Anyway...I love today. I love this week. I love fall. I love back-to-school and football and pumpkins and warm beverages and cool weather. And yes, I love it when my "friends" return to entertain me every September.

Weekly Wrap-Up (9.20.13)

You Did NOT Just Say That
These painfully funny quotes - all documented by court reporters, word-for-word, as attorneys and witness said them aloud in court - come from a book called Disorder in the American Courts by way of the Leaky Squid website. If you need a good laugh, click here. If you're thinking about a law career and need examples of what not to ask witnesses on stand, click here. If you need to feel better about our overall intelligence as a country, don't click here.

An unsupervised second-born.

Differences Between First-Time and Experienced Parents
These entertaining differences are so, so true, and from what I can tell, become more pronounced with the addition of each additional child. My mom-in-law talks about dropping her fourth child off for a school-coordinated overnight and watching all of the parents of first-borns walk their students to the bus, check them in, help them stow their bags under and find a seat on the bus, and then check in with the teacher before finally driving away. Meanwhile, she popped the trunk so her son could grab his bag, told him she loved him, and said, "see you Sunday".

I don't know about you, but #5 and #6 really hit home for me...

Right Field
The fall baseball season gets underway this week! For our family, we're talking real baseball now - no more tees, no more coach-pitch - and to be honest, I'm a little worried. Is he big enough? Strong enough? Skilled enough? Focused enough? (To be clear, I'm talking about Will and not Tom here. I'm sure Tom is physically and mentally up to the challenge of machine-pitch baseball.) I suppose that if he's not, he can always gather me a bouquet of dandelions in right field.

Perfect Timing
Check out this compilation of 50 of the most perfectly timed photos ever taken...some funny, some beautiful, some astonishing, all impressive.

Happy weekend, friends!

"I Love Jesus But I Drink a Little"

Fans of The Ellen DeGeneres Show most certainly remember Gladys Hardy, the sweet but slightly eccentric 88-year-old woman from Austin, Texas who first called Ellen to complain about the spiky plant positioned behind her head on set. Ellen returned Gladys' call to thank her for the suggestion, and one of the most entertaining conversations ever recorded - during which Gladys confessed, "I love Jesus but I drink a little" and I spewed Coke Zero out my nose - ensued.

When the conversation first aired - six years ago and long before we ever considered relocating to Texas - I remember thinking that Gladys must really keep her hometown of Austin laughing. There was something about the uninhibited and unapologetic manner in which she delivered her wise-to-match-her-years, liberally conservative (or conservatively liberal?) views on social issues and politics that made me smile. And I couldn't help but envy her slow, Texas drawl.

And then last week I heard the terrible rumor that Gladys is NOT an 88-year-old woman, but an Austin-based comedian named Scott Hardy. (From what I can tell after a little online research, this rumor emerged more than four years ago; as is often the case, I'm a little behind the times.) Now I don't know whether or not this rumor is true - my Google search resulted in an equal number of "Gladys is real" and "Gladys is pretend" links - but if it is...well, life just isn't quite as funny as it was last week.

So, do you know the scoop on Gladys? Real? Fake?

On second thought, don't tell me. I'd prefer to believe she's still out there, livin' it up here in Texas (and by livin' it up, I mean watching The Ellen Show every afternoon from her quilt-covered recliner, staying close to home for fear TSA officials will bust her for toting too much Listerine in her carry-on bag, and loving Jesus but drinking a little to thin her blood) and making folks laugh all across the world.