The drop off line at school

You would think most of what I have to say would be self-evident behavior for the drop off line at school, but sadly, it seems not. What the hell are you people thinking?

First, of course,...people, get off your cell phones! How many times do people have to be told this? You’re in line for 2 minutes (unless there is another inconsiderate jerk like you in the line), don’t you think the high profile world issues you face on a daily basis could wait until you drive off? Pull forward retard!

Second, coffee...you prepping your $6.50 cup cream-mocha-latté-whatevertheheckitis is not an acceptable reason for holding the rest of us up. If you just have to mix your lead filled package of Chinese slave labor flavoring before heading off to your stressful day, could you drop your child off, pull to the side, and do it out of the flow of traffic? Pull forward retard!

Third, whatever the hell it is you are digging for in your console. Why do you stare at the line, eyes fixed forward, waiting...waiting...waiting...and then just seconds before it’s time to pull forward, you pull your hands away from the wheel, flip open your console, and start digging for...?...what? What the hell are you digging for? You never find it! The statistical odds of finding anything in your console, while waiting in line to drop off you child, is nill. You have proven time and time again. It’s not there. It’s never there. Pull forward retard!

Next, dressing your kid in the car. If you don’t have your child dressed by the time you arrive at the drop off line, then you are not ready to get in the drop off line. Most of us dress our kids at home…I know, weird concept! If your kid is late, your kid is late...and dressing him or her in front of the school, in line, holding the rest of us up, does not somehow magically stop the clock and make it all OK. I know, I know, “It takes a village,” but the village is stacking up behind you, and we really wish you would pull forward retard!

OK, “Snoop-Dog”...yes, you driving the 1987 Corolla with the snap-on hubcap spinners and the bumper sticker that says “My other car is Tupac”, stop getting out of your car each day, defiantly starring at the line waiting behind you, and doing that gangsta swagger where you hold your balls with one hand and walk as s-l-o-w-a-s-e-f-f-i-n-g-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e around to the other side of your car to let your kid out. There are two teachers and ten monitors there to make sure you kid gets out safely. If you just have to do this routine everyday, then move to the side, otherwise...pull forward retard!

Slack-jawed people...I am pretty sure you can’t read this, but hopefully a nose breather has seen it and passed it on to you...that big empty space in front of you...the big 5 car space between you and the lady up there on her cell phone...that is a space which your car and the 4 people behind you should be filling in. Those people up there with the safety vests, waving their arms, looking at you like you should close your mouth and step on the accelerator are giving you the universal signal to...pull forward retard!

Last, the stay at home moms...do you have to talk to every other stay at home mother that you happen to see on school grounds? What the hell do you have to talk about each and every day? You just talked to her yesterday when you held us all up, what could possibly transpired in the last 24 hours that would require you to once again pull forward 5 feet, step on the brake, try to roll the window down, hit the locks, lock again, roll down the window, talk for-effing-ever, and then roll your window up, pull forward another 5 feet, and repeat the whole process again? Maybe you could start a coffee group, a “La Starbucks’s For Moms,” or some other type of morning meeting that would satisfy your craving for endless conversation, but somewhere other than in front of the other 20 cars trying to drop their kids off. Until you come up with a plan, could you please pull ALL the way forward retard!

The secret of why women go the restroom in groups

When you have to visit a public restroom, you usually find a line of women, so you smile politely and take your place. Once it's your turn, you check for feet under the stall doors. Every stall is occupied. Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall.

You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter, the wait has been so long you are about to wet your pants! The dispenser for the modern "seat covers" (invented by someone's Mom, no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook, if there was one, but there isn't-so you carefully, but quickly drape it around your neck, (Mom would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume "The Stance".

In this position your aging, toneless thigh muscles begin to shake. You'd love to sit down, but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold "The Stance".

To take your mind off your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mother's voice saying, "Honey, if you had tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!" Your thighs shake more.

You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday-the one that's still in your purse. (Oh yeah, the purse around your neck, that now, you have to hold up trying not to strangle yourself at the same time). That would have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible. It's smaller than your thumbnail.

Someone pushes your door open because the latch doesn't work. The door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your chest, and you and your purse topple backwards against the tank of the toilet. "Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, lost your footing altogether, and slide down directly onto the TOILET SEAT. It is wet of course. You bolt up, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper-not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your mother would be utterly appalled if she knew, because, you're certain her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, dear, "You just don't KNOW what kind of diseases you could get."

By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, propelling a stream of water like a fire hose against the inside of the bowl that sprays a fine mist of water that covers your butt and runs down your legs and into your shoes. The flush somehow sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the empty toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too.

At this point, you give up. You're soaked by the spewing water and the wet toilet seat. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket and then slink out inconspicuously to the sinks. You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past the line of women still waiting. You are no longer able to smile politely to them. A kind soul at the very end of the line points out a piece of toilet papet trailing from your shoe. (Where was that when you NEEDED it??) You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it in the woman's hand and tell her warmly, "Here, you just might need this."

As you exit, you spot your guy friend, who has long since entered, used, and left the men's restroom. Annoyed, he asks, "What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?"

This is dedicated to women everywhere who deal with public restrooms. It finally explains to the men what really does take us so long. It also answers their other commonly asked questions about why women go to the restroom in pairs. It's so the other gal can hold the door, hang onto your purse and hand you Kleenex under the door!

After this brief commercial break....

Have you ever been in one of those moods where you’re completely, utterly pissed off, but there’s no single reason? Just a million little things that decide to save themselves up for a good month and hit you all at once, but you happen to be in a completely intolerant mood to top it off?

Of course you have. You are human too. (Unless you are some freak trained ape able to use the internet.)

Now don’t get me wrong, sure it could be worse. You could be a starving kid in a third world country, you could have a hump on your back, a doberman could have bit your naughty parts off. Your keyboard could have arbitrarily decided to write over any corrections you make to a pointless rant instead of inserting them, making you have to type every sentence again. It doesn’t matter that you know how to fix it, because your computer has decided that it’s smarter than you today and will not let you. Your email that you just copied and pasted from an unformatted text document decided to triple space everything, put it in wingdings font, and turn it blue for the hell of it.

But hey, unlike this computer that thinks it’s a human in a pretentious abstract art school, we actually are human, and we’ve been granted the greatest gift of all: the gift of incessant complaining. In the spirit of this incessant complaining,

I’m picking an arbitrary rant out of the thousand things that have mildly bugged me in the last 24 hours: the local news.

Last night at about 7:00, a man with caps on his teeth and hair that looks like it should be stuck to the top of a Lego man informed me that it may or may not storm, and he’ll give me the answer at 10:00. This pixelated man looks me straight in the eyes from MY OWN TELEVISION that I paid for WITH MY OWN MONEY, this guy who’s salary I pay for by being exposed to Beyonce telling me to switch to cable (which I’m already on), and those horrible Jared commercials, the J.G. Wentworth guy, the seemingly innocent Money Tree caterpillars that are demons from the foulest pits of hell, charging 742% interest in states they can get away with it in (no exaggeration), and those awful credit score commercials. "I’m thinking of a number. Do you know what it is?"

Yes. I do know what it is. It’s 53,289, and it happens to be how many times it feels like you’ve inflicted your androgynous presence on this house.

But I digress. This hair helmet newscaster looks me right in the eyes and lies. He’s not going to tell me whether it’s going to storm at 10:00. Oh, no. That would be far too easy. He’s going to tell me at 10:00 what kind of strawberry harvest farmer Joe had a month ago, and then he’s going to delve into some heavily biased politics, and then he’s going to tell me that he’ll reveal this magical storm secret after the commercial break.

Beyonce tells me to switch to cable again, having not heeded my prior notifications. J.G. Wentworth Guy asks me if my hope is starting to fade. Viagra people tell me that I’m a geriatric man and can’t get a boner. I wonder if someone could tell them I am woman and sick of their commercials. Credit Score Guy asks me about number 53,290.

And then the news comes back on.

Bush, Iraq, pretty white girl hasn’t called parents in over six hours, "Storm may be on the way – we’ll tell you how much rain to expect! After the commercial break."

Curse your scaly hide Beyonce! Screw YOU, Credit Score Guy! (53,291) No, I do NOT need an artificially inflated piece of compressed carbon that is built on the blood of Africans and is controlled by a monopoly. Beyonce? AGAIN? TWICE? IN ONE BREAK? I finally understand that personality is genuinely more attractive than looks, because she has somehow transformed from this gorgeous vixen to a blood sucking tic in a mere week. Is it really necessary to have four topless guys dancing in perfect synchronicity with her while she yet again stares me in the eyes and tries to sell me cable? And why does everyone have to stare me in the eyes when they’re trying to sell something? I pay about a hundred bucks a month for this lousy cable, and this is what they do with the profits?

It would appear that part of Dante’s Inferno was lost with time. He claimed that there are only nine circles of hell, relating to pagans, lust, gluttons, material good obsessions, sloth, heretics, the violent, fraudulent, and betrayers. Maybe it was due to an early translation, but what was missing is the lowest level of hell, reserved as a special place for those that appear twice in one commercial break.

The news comes back on. Clinton, Obama, Giuliani. Which one sucks the most? We’ll tell you tomorrow at ten.

And finally, at 10:55, sweet release: "It looks like it might storm tonight or tomorrow. Somewhere between zero and infinity inches of rain." Apparently they've hired Captain Obvious to do the weather forecasting. "Thanks for watching your ten o’clock news, we’ll see you tomorrow night."

Oh no. No, you will not see me tomorrow night. You will not see me ever again, ten o’clock news. We’re officially broken up. Now pack your crap and get the hell out of here, and if you come within a hundred yards of me I’m calling the police. I’ve stolen everything that’s important to you and will incinerate it all tomorrow at 9:45. I’ll tell you where you can pick up the ashes at ten. Your signed poster of Barbra Walters is yours to keep.

Slacker!

So, I have been slacking a bit over here. I actually have been writing just haven't posted them. Goind to do so right now though!! I hope everyone is well and really enjoying their spring!!

You Poo Poo Head!!

While sitting and having a deep conversation with my 8 year old daughter, I was reminded of one of the funniest moments of my life. We all have that moment when you are laughing so hard the tears are flowing and beverage just shot out your nose….and you know there will never be a moment this funny ever again.
My kids are always a source of entertainment for me. And for many of my friends for that matter. There are many stories of the funny little things they have done through the years. But, no moment is as good as the moment my youngest child first attempted finger painting.
Before we can go forward, I need to give you a little bit of background. My ex-husband worked nights. So, he would go home and go to sleep. I was a stay at home mom at the time and my youngest was just a baby. Not quite a year old yet. When she needed a nap I would usually put her in bed with her dad. She seemed to sleep longer when I did this so I could get more done. It worked great!!
One day I put my baby down with her daddy and started with my house work. I got through my work and was waiting for daughter to wake up. I never heard a peep. I decided now was a great time to take a shower. Normally when I would take one with my youngest awake I either had to take her in with me or sit her in her car seat outside the shower. So this was going to be a treat.
Halfway through my shower my ex walks into the bathroom. He tells me that my daughter has been awake but was being quiet just sitting next to him in the bed. I say that was awful nice of her and he agrees. Then he starts talking about needing to empty the trash can in the bathroom becomes there must be a diaper in there. I assure him I never leave those things in the house and laugh him off. He go back to bed.
He comes in a bit later and starts going through the trash can. No diaper. He again says the room smells awful. Mind you, I am in the shower with all my smell good soaps but he thinks the room stinks. I finally finish my shower and come out and take a good look at him. Smeared all over his face is this strange brown substance. I instantly know what it is. I can’t help but laugh. I can’t stop laughing long enough to breathe let alone tell him what is so funny. I can stop….the tears are coming…..I can’t breath…..I even snort…..doubled over the laughing is so deep and hard. He is getting annoyed. I laugh even more. He then gets mad and says “This is crap”. I laugh even more…so funny. I finally manage to point to the mirror and gasp the word “LOOK!” He turns his head and turns green. He pushes me away from the shower and jumps in and starts scrubbing his face. I am still in tears.
I leave him to cleaning his face to check on my little girl. She has made a mess on his pillow case by sticking her fingers in her dirty diaper and then “finger painting” with them. I strip the bed and clean her up. My ex comes upstairs after his shower and is still so mad. We don’t really talk about it again. Then my son gets home from school. He’s sitting at the table having his after school snack and asks his dad why he has mud in his ears. Before, I can answer for him, my ex says, “There more of her poop on me?” My son starts laughing….I tell him what had happened that day. With out missing a beat he says, “Mom, I guess poo poo heads really do exist. “ It was great!!

A Haunting story!

So I just finished watching another episode of TAPS. If you aren’t familiar with this show it’s about ghost hunting. Well more than that….they also debunk some of the claims as well. Which I like. It’s about things that can be proven or not. Not just a feeling. Anyway….
So tonight they are at this huge hotel. And they actually catch a woman talking in this room…when no one was there. And she could hear them…..but not see them. It was very odd. It also got me to wondering. If there are ghosts….and they are around us….do they know we are here?
Remember the movie with Nicole Kidman (you know that tall beautiful red head who was married to Tom Cruise before he went crazy) called The Others? They hit on the idea that ghosts may be there but not realize they are dead. They are just living on in their time doing the things they always did. They might hear us…or be spooked when we move something of theirs. An interesting notion.
When we were first together we moved into a charming house. The man who rented it to us was in the business of cleaning up crime scenes. So, if someone was killed in a house, they came in after the cops were done and cleaned up the mess so other people wouldn’t have to deal with the mess. So when we saw the house he was showing us we of course asked if someone had been killed in that house. He said no.
We were there for a while before the odd things started happening. We loved it. It had a huge big back yard. Bird houses, walking trails, deer…the whole thing. We loved it. We had our house warming party and then settled in.
Then weird things started happening. We had windows in the living room that would open on their own. We would lock them…they would open again. The front door would open. Locked or not. Same with the door to the basement. One day we left to run errands. When we came home the gates are all open…..as are the doors to the house and the door to the shed outback. Nothing is missing. Nothing even looks touched…it was weird. And the weirdest part….the unfinished side of the basement where our washer and dryer was always felt creepy. I hated being on that side by myself. I still thought no one ever died in this house though and it was just fluke stuff.
One day when we had got a lot of snow (after my girl had shoveled the entire circle drive) a man stopped by to see if we wanted chopped wood or for him to clear our drive way when it snowed…..in the future. LOL I said no and then looked over to the window and noticed it was open….again. So went to lock it and giggled a bit. Then the man freaked me out. He has lived behind this house since he was a little boy. He knows everyone who has ever lived here. Which was just one family. An elderly couple had raised their kids there. They were big on feeding the birds and deer. They also loved their yard work. They would open all the gates and the shed to use the riding mower…and she liked the doors open while he mowed. Yeah…see where I am going with this. LOL He said the little old lady loved the windows open for the fresh air…and always was going behind her husband to reopen windows.
A few years ago they had their troubled grandson staying with them. He had been in some trouble at school so they sent him to his grandparents. After much trouble with them he was sent back home. However, he went back intending to steal from them with his buddies. I am not sure what went wrong or the rest of the story…except that the old couple was found dead in the unfinished part of the basement. It was ruled a homicide and the son went to prison. Everything this old man said related to the things that were happening and we were feeling in the house. It was eerie.
So….are they really there? Do they know we are here and they are dead?? Or do we all want to believe in something beyond death so badly….that we see and hear what we want?

A beautiful day in Kansas

Today was a beautiful day here. The sun was out. The birds were chirping!! My kids were behaving....ok... we all know that isn't true but you get the point. Beautiful day!! I am so happy spring is finally getting here. I am sick of the snow and ice and bitter cold!! Enough!!!

As we decide to head out and enjoy the weather I decide to grab my camera so I can show you what all we got to see today!

We decided to take a short drive to our local lake/park. It is one of my favorite places to go. It has a little bit of everything so is good for a number of things.



Not too shabby, right? Here, let me pull up a bit...give you a better look...



That's what I'm talking about!! Stunning day. We decide to get out and see what the rest of the park visitors are up to on this lovely day. One man decided he would get one last nap in before his work week began.



He must have been very tired because he didn't hear any of the commotion coming from down the hill. If it weren't for my amazing lady I would have had no idea what these people were doing...but she learned all about it on Beauty and the Geek. Larping!! (A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out some or all of their characters' actions. The first LARPs were run in the late 1970s, inspired by role-playing games and genre fiction. The activity gained international popularity during the 1980s. LARP groups have highly varied approaches to rules, costume, degree of physical acting out, focus of character activity, and genre. LARPs range in size from small private events lasting a few hours to huge public events with thousands of players lasting for several days.) They take this stuff very serious...as you can see!!






Not to worry....not everyone enjoying the weather in the park today was a nut job...there were some people looking for dinner..

I don't think they ever caught anything but it looked like a nice relaxing time..unlike the Larping.

We went to check out some other area's of the park....they have stables....can you believe it...all in one park...larping, napping, fishing, and stables!! I made the coolest new friend!!

I was totally bonding with her....until my Girl found the sign on her pen that said "sick horses only". Just my luck!!

So what did we wind up doing in this full service park on such a wonderful day....



We layed back, watched the clouds roll by...and looked for shapes in them...like larpers...or fish....or sick horses....