Daily Diatribes

I took Josh today to be measured for braces.  Ever since his permanent teeth came in, he has had a major gap between the front two teeth and they flare out rather significantly.  Our old dentist kept assuring us it would close.  I think he should pay for the braces, cause it hasn’t closed!!  So off we went to the orthodontist to get Bucky Beaver’s teeth molded and xrayed. 

I’m thinking Tim is the wrong kind of doctor.  The furniture in Dr. Moore’s office is nicer than my furniture.  Josh went to use the bathroom and came out saying “wow they have a fancy bathroom.”  All the girls working there (and it is all girls, poor Mrs. Moore) were twenty something and size 2’s.  About this time my male readers are checking their children’s teeth for signs of crowding.

There is a game room with three tv screens, each with its own video game.  There is another room with a massive television and a child sized entrance for the restless siblings.  In short, it is paradise.

Of course, in order to maintain the amenities, the good doctor is forced to charge exorbitantly for his services.  Let’s just say Tim could get that bass boat for what it’s going to cost to give our son a movie star smile.  And believe me, he has been working that angle with Josh. 

First of all, despite Josh being able to gnaw down a good size pine tree without opening his mouth all the way, Tim does not believe braces are needed.  He keeps insisting Josh will grow out of this buck toothed look.  I’m not sure when that will be.  Maybe when he is 75 and has the last three teeth pulled to make way for the dentures.

I have had to argue and and argue just to get him to agree to the appointment.  Tim has offered to:  dremmel down the teeth; use rubber bands to tighten them; knock them out; or send him to the doggie dentist on 119.  None of these options appeal to me however.  I have to keep reminding Tim that having children is for better or for worse and orthodontia falls under worse.

So now I am going to have to keep Tim out of the orthodontists office becuase it will confirm his suspicions that it is a money making racket designed to deprive parents of their bass boat dreams.  I get enough grief when I take them to the doctor when they’re sick (let me just give them some antibiotics and steroids, they’ll be fine) so you can imagine how a non essential service like braces is going to send him over the top.

Oh well, at least Abby has a beautiful smile.  Of course, she does need that nose job…. 

First of all, let me give a shout out to my “legion”….Hey Margie Blackwood, smooch smooch, kiss kiss….thank you for being my number one fan!!  Are you going to tie me down and cut my feet off now, Kathy Bates???

Ok, got that off my chest!!  We went to a wake this evening, which naturally leads into tonight’s topic:  food.

I hate going to funeral homes.  All those flowers and tissue boxes and the bad classical music playing just softly enough that you can’t quite determine if they’re playing Bach or the Beatles.  The median age in the room was about 75, so we sort of stood out as paragons of youth and beauty, or something like that.

We had to stand in a line to view the deceased, whom I did not know.  It was a long line and then the people in front of us stopped and blocked the line to have a conversation with some old friends.

Well hey, I know funerals are for meeting and greeting, but I had a dead guy to look at and dinner was calling me!  After five minutes, I went around them.  I guess it was yesterday’s suppressed road rage spilling out!

We got through the line, hugged our friend Kris, met her family members (who we will probably never lay eyes on again!) and moved on to let the rude line blocking people (who were now behind us…heh heh!) have their turn.

So with the viewing done, I was hungry!  Something about viewing death reminds one forcibly of life and that it must go on no matter what.  So it was off to dinner with some folks from the wake.  You know Tim and I are always trying to get up a party!

We went across the street to a restaurant called John’s City Diner.  The interior was all silver and black, very retro new age sort of decor.  All the wait staff were dressed in black and I was sure a karate exhibition would happen later in the evening or perhaps a ninja would bring our salads, wielding his pepper grinder like numchuks (is that how you spell that damn word???)

So we sat down, ordered a bottle of wine and perused the menu.  Here in my blog, I will reveal one of my deepest fantasies.  No Chuck, it’s not seeing you dressed in a thong with a red rose clenched in your teeth while salsa music plays in the background (altho now that you mention it….)  But I digress….I have always wanted to be a snooty food critic.

I love to read the food columns in the paper and I really enjoy the descriptions that make even the most unappetizing food sound like a gourmet feast.  “The cake of lard was presented on a bed of shaved fennel with blood oranges and rutabagas, topped with a reduction of bacon grease and cumin.”  Yum, I’ll take the family size portion please!

So I play food critic when I am in a restaurant and mentally write my column while I sit at the table.  The menu at the “Diner” was nouveau retro.  Meatloaf with a mushroom demi glace served on a bed of smashed potatoes.  “Not Your Mama’s Macaroni and Cheese” served with your choice of two side items.  It’s kind of like June Cleaver’s kitchen, pumped up on Vault and diesel fuel!

I ordered the mac and cheese and Tim got the meatloaf.  Here is my snooty food critic description:  The macaroni and cheese consisted of penne pasta, cooked al dente, and dressed in a cheese sauce consisting of smoked gouda, aged cheddar and parmesan.  Bits of prosciutto contrasted nicely with the cheeses and gave the dish a pleasing complexity.  The pasta was dusted with a coating of Japanese bread crumbs and topped with chopped tomato and finely minced spring onions for a colorful presentation.  For my sides, I chose the fried green tomatoes, which were lightly breaded in cornmeal and fried and the stone ground grits.  The tomatoes were perfectly prepared, crispy on the outside and tart and juicy on the inside.  A sauce or remoulade would have been welcomed to enhance the taste, but they were quite good.  The grits were thick and creamy, with pieces of corn and bits of garlic.  Warm corn sticks were served with the meal, but were a bit chewy, leading one to believe they had been prepared much earlier in the day and left in the warmer.   

What do you think….could I make it as a snooty food critic?  I am going to apply to the Shelby County Reporter and start by reviewing all the gas station cafes.  I will work my way up to Mountain Brook eventually! 

Today I went to Wendy’s for lunch.  I was out on 280 at the Girl Scout shop and I decided to run through the drive through for a quick lunch. 

Only it wasn’t so quick.  The line wrapped all the way around the building and was moving approximately 1/4 inch per minute.  But since I was hungry and had time to kill, I decided to join the crawl.

I got to the drive through and placed my order with the scary disembodied voice.  That has always freaked me out, even though I know it belongs to some creepy high school kid with more acne than sense.  It’s like talking to Darth Vader (deep voice…”Use the force to order please”)

I rounded the corner to pay and the woman in the van in front of me hadn’t pulled up far enough to the pick up window, so I am forced to stretch my short little arm way far out to try and hand the scary, pimply kid my money.  The woman in the van reached out for her food and I couldn’t help but notice her very scary arm.  It was thin and veiny and her fingernails were long and curling.  But with a french manicure, like that’s going to make her talons look exotic!

She grasped her food in her talons and moved up just enough so that I could pull up to the window.  Then she got out of her car and left it there.  I am waiting for my food, thinking she’s just run in to get ketchup, but this was not the case.  I got my food, got my drink, and there I sat, trapped behind the Claw’s van.  Trapped, like an animal in a snare, with no way to move forward and no way to move back.  At least I had my Diet coke.

Now at this point, any self respecting road rager would have honked like crazy (hey Gina!!) and started hollering; perhaps some would have even uttered a profanity or three.  Could I do that??  NO, pacifist that I am, I sat there for another two minutes, waiting to see if The Claw would return.  No signs of her.

By now, the natives in the cars behind me were starting to get restless, worried perhaps that their Frosties would melt before they could consume them.  So I closed my eyes (no, not really, but it sounds good!!), backed up an inch and then pulled around her, praying the whole time I would scratch her bumper.  Unfortunately, I drive my truck too well, and I passed with a 1/4 inch to spare.  

As I drove away, I could see her van, still sitting there, trapping other unsuspecting patrons in the line.  So if you ever find yourself at the Wendy’s on 280, beware of the Claw!!!   

I do not watch HGTV.  At all.  Ever.  All of those chipper, perky, plastic interior designers running around, creating fabulous wall hangings out of old fly strips and canvas leaves me cold.  Watching Elton John look alikes construct headboards out of old windowscreens and rubber tubing does not appeal to me.

Basically, I do not like home improvement.  I do the minimum required to make my home look lived in, such as arranging the dust bunnies geometrically and drawing intricate designs in the dust on the television screen.  (You can actually read “help me” through George Clooney’s mouth on the TNT ER reruns!!)  Some of this is because I am intrinsically lazy.

Now there are those of you out there protesting that I am not lazy, but that just demonstrates that you are nice, Christian people who like to give credit where it’s not due.  Need I remind you of the Chia cat??  Anything that requires maintenance or expenditure of energy is not for me.  I am certain that in a former life, I was an emperess of somewhere and lounged around eating grapes and being fanned by fabulous looking eunuchs. 

All that being said, I decided this week to tackle the ugly wallpaper in my girls’ bathroom.  Last year, I undertook the creation of a fabulous suite for Josh, so it only seems fair for the girls to get equal treatment this year.  So Monday, I started to strip the paper. 

Today is Thursday and I am still not done!!!  What a hateful horrendous job!  My nailbeds are inflamed.  My back is killing me.  My neck creaks every time I move it.  My thighs are protesting the hoisting of my large ass up and down the ladder! 

I have nearly ended it all twice, quite inadvertantly.  I decided standing on the back of the toilet to reach the wallpaper over the window was safer than using the ladder.  It wasn’t.  Apparently God is not quite ready to call me home yet.  I have not suffered enough in the purgatory of wallpaper removal.  I windmilled backward and caught myself before I plunged down and broke my neck.  With my luck, I would only have been severely maimed and disfigured and not actually manage to die.  

I am sure one of the circles of hell is home improvement.  Examine the word “imp”rovement….imp is most certainly a type of demon and demons live in hell.  Need I say more?  In this circle, victims will have to paint baseboards without dribbling on the floor or touching the walls.  Maybe there will be some crown molding to paint too!  Certainly, wallpaper removal will be prominent for those who committed the most egregious sins on earth, such as not watching HGTV.

I will finish the wallpaper tomorrow and I am sure I will feel some satisfaction when the wall is painted smoothly and uniformly.  Maybe I can find a eunuch to come and feed me grapes when it’s all done! 

A good morning to all the ruly folks who are reading my blog today.  I have checked Dictionary.com and confirmed my suspicions: ruly is a word!  And it means exactly what I thought it would mean.

rul·y    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (rll)
adj. ru·li·er, ru·li·est

Neat and orderly: “A small, ruly beard balances his hair” (Whitney Balliett).

So obviously my theory bears out, that if you have a prefix of “un” then there must be a word that corresponds.

Next question:  what is the plural of the diocese??  Is it, in itself, plural??  Or do you have one diocese and two dioceses (and how do you pronounce that????)  I will check dictionary.com and let you know!!!

Where are you my fan??  I was so looking forward to a rousing exchange with you, but nothing!!  I am so sad!

This morning, I am arguing with my teenage (almost!) son about how to make cinnamon rolls.  He has wanted to make them every morning. I have said no every morning.  Finally, he has worn me down. 

Of course, what he means is that he wants me to get up and make them for him.  Typical man!  First came the issue of how to open the can.  “Read the directions” I tell him.  “It doesn’t say” he tells me.  “Yes it does….look!”  This went back and forth for a few minutes until he realized that indeed, the directions are printed on the can.

Do you see where this is going??  Every step is designed to break me, so that I get up and leave what I am doing to make the rolls for him.  “Spray the pan” I tell him.  “Where is it?”  “In the cabinet”  “I can’t reach it”  “Get a chair”  Every step!!!

I think what bothers me the most is the evolution of the male psyche here.  He thinks he can fake me out and I will get so disgusted that I will get up and do it myself.  This is a strategy frequently employed by his father and by many men of my acquaintance.  But woe to Josh, I have seen this strategy used too many times, in too many different ways, to fall for it!

The cinnamon rolls are finally in the oven and I am proud to say, I never once left my chair!  It remains to be seen whether he can remove them from the oven himself and spread the icing.  I know you are all on the edge of your seats!

I got a complaint from my legion of adoring fan that I am not blogging enough to satisfy her.  First of all, it is very hard to get on this site, esp at night.  Second of all, it is very hard for me to continue to be sarcastic, ironic and witty on a daily basis and still get the laundry done.  And C, I am lazy.  So unless this position starts paying , my posts are going to be infrequent.

All that being said, lets get down to my topic for today, which is, well, nothing.  I really have nothing in particular to rant about, so I will just free associate and see what happens.

First of all, as I was trying to fall asleep last night, I was suddenly wide awake, pondering the word “unruly”.  The prefix suggests that an unruly person is one who is not ruly.  So is ruly a word???  If unruly means out of control, does ruly mean in control?  Instead of an unruly bunch of children, can you have a ruly bunch??  If you can have a ruly bunch, then why don’t they live at my house?

Next topic:  Roy Moore.  Can he seriously be elected in this state?  Do I need to put my house on the market now?  Are we all going to have to post the 10 commandments in our yards to avoid the Roy Moore Gestapo??  If Roy is elected, I am moving.  However, I can still blog from North Dakota, so don’t be alarmed.

Have you ever read the police blotter in the Wednesday paper?  If you need a chuckle, check it out tomorrow.  People list the most bizarre stolen items.  Last month, someone reported a pair of panties as stolen.  It did not say whether they were crotchless, thong, or anything like that.  Just panties.  One time, someone reported a danish missing.  Just like that, a panic started and people began locking up their pastry, afraid that the bear claw burglar would strike them next.  Seriously, read it.  You will be glad you did.

Spring break….when did I become the source of all entertainment on the planet?  I have three children gazing at me with expectation, waiting for me to pull a 3 Ring Circus out of my rectal area.  I would say ass, but this is a PG blog.  I don’t believe I ever waited for my mother to entertain me.  She kicked us out of the house at 8 a.m and we didn’t show up until suppertime.  I suspect there were just as many child molesters and axe murderers (too many “er’s”??) then as there are now, but we didn’t have the benefit of CNN to scare the bejeezus out of us!  So why do I have to entertain the children?  I want them to entertain themselves and leave me alone so I can blog and play Pogo.

I hate American Idol.  There, I said it, it’s out there and I can’t take it back.  What a stupid show!!  It’s a bunch of would be karaoke singers assaulting my ears with their rendition of the latest Mariah Carey tune.  It’s bad enough she assaults my ears with it so do I have to suffer through someone with no vocal training belting it out?  It’s completely staged and there is nothing at all spontaneous about it.  And if Randy Jackson says “Dawg” one more time….I actually don’t watch the show, but there is so much media saturation you don’t have to; it’s on every commercial!

So I made chicken last night in an effort to avoid mad cow disease and Josh had a fit.  He was convinced he was going to get bird flu from the damn chicken.  He was actually afraid of the bird and voiced this to me.  I cannot win here.  I think we are going to start eating Tofu. 

I am going to start my own disease called Insane Heifer Syndrome.  I really like the name:  IHS.  I am not sure what they symptoms will be, but I think it might constitute someone on a mad rampage for chocolate.

Ok, enough silliness.  I will try to think up something new and entertaining tonight!!

Ok, like I don’t have enough to worry about in my life, now we have mad cow disease in Alabama???  My family eats nothing but beef all day long!  We do not eat chicken at all.  On the rare occasions I do fix it, my family reacts in horror, like I’m trying to serve them ground up gopher feces, dressed up in a nice cream of mushroom soup sauce and topped with Ritz cracker crumbs(doesn’t everything sit better on a ritz????)  And with bird flu about to become pandemic (any second now!), chicken may not be the best option either.  Tofu anyone??

So what I am supposed to do now?  How will I convert my family of carnivores over to white meat?  Or the other white meat for that matter, being pork for those of you who don’t keep up with ad campaigns. If it doesn’t have red blood dripping from it when they bite into it, they are not interested.  Even Anna likes her steak on the rarer side of medium.  Josh won’t eat it if it’s not pink!  We have no worries about our cholesterol; no, we just have to worry about whether our brains are developing little holes in them!!!

What is the world coming to?  Mad Cow, Bird Flu, postal workers on the rampage, girls gone wild, and Dick Cheney shooting off his political cronies.  Pretty soon, we’ll probably find out that the foreskin was necessary after all and we’ve mutilated millions of innocent babies.  Probably, the foreskin protects against bird flu and mad cow, as well as AIDS and all those other unpleasant STD’s.

I throw my hands up in disgust.  I am off to Amazon to buy an organic, vegan cookbook!!!

So tonight over dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant, my son casually mentions to me that one of his friends had an erection in English class today.  Not quite the answer I was fishing for when I asked him how his day was.  After I finished choking up the refried beans that had lodged in my windpipe, I questioned him on the matter.

Seems several of the boys noticed the boner (on a 7th grader…this kid has an impressive career ahead of him!!!) and started teasing him about it.  The teacher gave him an infraction for…get this….misbehaving!!  I think his penis should have gotten the infraction since it was the one misbehaving!!

It’s funny, but when I first saw the tiny organ that told me I had given birth to a boy child, I did not view it as a weapon of mass destruction.  It was simply something to dodge while I was changing diapers.  As he has grown, it has stayed the same, something that causes me some alarm.  I have been assured that it will grow someday, but I figure since he’s headed for the priesthood, it’s a non issue.

But now in these golden days of adolescence, it’s a topic of great concern.  Is the weiner going to take over all brain function??  Is my sweet son going to be replaced by a hormone crazed, erection wielding monster????

Of course, my husband is going to be no help with this topic.  He refuses to acknowledge in any way that our children have now, or will ever have, any type of reproductive capabilities.  Any attempt to engage him in a discussion about discussing sex with our children ends with him sticking his fingers in his ears and doing the old “I’m not listening to you” routine.  He is going to be in for a big shock when the girls start to grow boobies, cause you can’t help but notice them!!

So all sex conversations fall to me.  I of course put the complete clinical spin on it, with discussions about blood flow and engorgement, but I think a boy really needs his father to discuss wet dreams and blueballs with him.

So keep us in your prayers as we begin to navigate the difficult paths of adolescence.  And just remember, your day will come (no pun intended!!!!!)

So I was having lunch yesterday with my dear friend Renee, who is a woman of great faith as well as an accomplished physician.  She also unfortunately lives in Mountain Brook, but hey, nobody is perfect!!

So during lunch, I engaged her in a topic that had been bothering me all morning.  I have a Bible study every Wednesday and yesterday’s topic was circumcision.  As we were discussing spiritual circumcision versus physical (see Colossians if you want more info!!) it randomly popped into my head (as things so often do!) that if Darwin was really right, shouldn’t the foreskin have fallen off by now?

Of course, I coud not ask this in Bible study, since it’s kind of contrary to discuss evolution during a Bible study, so I kept it to myself until I could get to Renee.  She was as stumped as I am. 

Now I have no problem with evolution.  I don’t see why it can’t coexist with creationism (yes, Margie, there is a picket from that fence right up my butt!!!!!).  I mean, go to any swimming pool in the summer, and you will see many examples of men who have not actually evolved out of the gorilla stage.  Visionland is a great place to monkey watch!

So if evolution is legit, then shouldn’t the foreskin have fallen off by now???  I mean, people have been chopping it off for over 2000 years now.  According to Webmd (which I consulted on this topic so I could get CEU’s to keep my internet medical specialist license up to date!) the foreskin is actually a hindrance.  It can trap nasty germs and increases the risk for UTI’s and AIDS.  So why is it still there??

If anyone has any theories, I am open to them all.  Is there a way to jump start evolution and start genetically breeding men to eliminate back hair and foreskins??  While at the same time adding a gene that helps them hit the toilet when they pee instead of the seat??  Genetic engineering to make women’s lives easier….hmmm, it has merit!