Daily Diatribes

Well, I got inspired on the way home so here I am to blog again!!

When Josh and Abby were little, they were constantly writing down phone numbers for me to order merchandise advertised only on TV.  I particularly remember two products with which my family became intimately acquainted.  One was the “turbie twist” and the other was the “magic pancake maker”.

Now generally, I subscribe to the theory “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”, so I avoid the As Seen On TV product line.  But for a brief moment in their childhood, my children believed in the Gospel According to Ron Popeil. 

The first one was the turbie twist.  The turbie twist is a towel.  But it has a little twistie part to it that makes it easy to keep on your head. Josh was obssessed with owning one.  He must have been about 7 or 8 and every time the commercial came on, he would go ballistic.  I can’t count how many times he wrote the number down for me.  He would tell me in an awestruck tone:  “It doesn’t matter if your hair is short or long, you can still use a turbie twist.”  Like that was the number one selling point right there.  Finally, my dear Gianna, who is his godmother, purchased the multi pack turbie twist for him for his birthday.  We still have it today and it is still in use!!

The Magic Pancake Maker was another heavily advertised item.  One memorable Christmas, I received one.  The Magic Pancake Maker is nothing but a double sided frying pan sort of thing.  You pour the batter in, wait until it sets and then flip it.  Then you have a perfect pancake, right??  Josh was so excited for me, he couldn’t wait for the Christmas pancakes.

First of all, let’s state the obvious.  The damn thing only makes one pancake at a time.  If you have a family, this is already a huge problem.  And it just wasn’t quite as easy to use as Mr. Popeil would have us believe.  I made the batter in the magic pancake batter container that came with the pancake maker.  It did not work very well and when I tried to squirt it into the pancake maker, it wouldn’t come out of the hole.  So I had to spoon it in. 

Pancake batter immediately started oozing down the sides of the thing and when I flipped it, well, it just wasn’t pretty.  We abandoned the idea of making pancakes  quickly.  Josh was crestfallen, so I decided we would try to fry an egg in it.  I have never been good at over easy, so I thought the Magic Pancake Maker might help me make the perfect egg.

It started out so well.  I cracked the egg into it and closed the lid.  After a few minutes, I opened it and the egg was cooking nicely and was ready to be turned.  Did I mention the pancake maker has open sides???  When I flipped the egg, it squirted right out the side of The Magic Pancake Maker and fell on the dog, who happened to be standing there licking up the pancake batter that had already oozed out of the damn thing.  So the dog ran off with a fried egg on her back and I was cussing, and it was just one more Merry Christmas in our house!!  I actually have a picture of the dog with the egg on her back.  We are going to blow it up and have it framed!

I tell you all this because yesterday I was tempted to buy something off the TV.  No, it was not the Bidet Ole, which is an actual product, and they have a website, so look it up.  Go to www.bidetole.com and watch the video!  You’ll be sold!  It hooks right up to your toilet and it’s not only hygienic, it’s pleasurable as well!!  Swear to God, it really exists and that is really what they say in the ad.  Like I’m going to put a Bidet Ole in my guest bath.  I’ll never get the women out of there.  It will be like the Clairol commercial with people crying in ecstasy while using my toilet.  I’ll have a line a mile long to use the bathroom at my house!! 

No, I was caught by the product that promises thousands of beautiful flowers effortlessly.  It’s a roll of astroturf looking stuff and you roll it out, sprinkle seeds on it, water it, and you have a flower garden!  You can cut it to fit any area, even a flower pot.  It repels weeds, so you don’t have to worry about lots of weeding.  However, watering is an issue with me.  As you may know from previous blogs, I do not water plants well.  I either give them too much, or, as is more often the case, I forget to water them until they are dry brown stalks. 

Still, I think I could handle this roll, sprinkle and water system.  And if I call right now, I’ll get another 10 feet of green astroturf stuff absolutely free.  So the next time y’all come by, I will have a garden to die for!!  And I will serve you pancakes and fried eggs in the garden!

Ok, I haven’t written anything lately because I am bored!!  I have nothing witty or amusing to share with anyone.  So I am just going to rant!

First, I’d like to welcome a new reader to the blog:  Hey Shirley!! 

I have three different drafts saved that I haven’t published because none of them seem interesting enough to go on about for several paragraphs.  So I think I will condense them here.  It’s the Reader’s Digest Condensed Blog!!

First of all, does anyone read the society pages?  I actually live for The Scribbler, as the column here in Birmingham is called.  My favorites are the debutante balls and then the various ladies charity events.  I scrutinize the names very carefully, but I have yet to find any mention of my close friends anywhere, leading me to believe I need to keep better company!

Or perhaps I need to start submitting write ups of my parties.  Something like….Guests at the Hoover home of Dr. and Mrs. Tim Brunner (gotta throw the title in there!!) enjoyed an evening of karaoke and conversation Sunday night. An elegant buffet of cocktail wienies in ketchup, meatballs in barbecue sauce, and chips and dip was set up for guests to visit in between sets on the karaoke machine.  Beer and moonshine flowed freely, loosening the inhibitions of the invited guests.  The party lasted well into the night, until the neighbors called the police and several of the guests were cuffed and booked for public intoxication and indecent exposure.  

Some friends seen at the buffet table included:  Layton and Teensy Bauer of Pelham; Mark and Cookie Vincent of Maylene; and Rance and Figgy Cleary of North Shelby County.  Other guests included Kiki and Bobby Willis of Brook Highland and Dava and Billy Fant of Shelby County.  

The guests who were arrested included Kristie “Teensy” Bauer, Chuck Blackwood and Lisa Deleon  Blackwood was arrested after stripping down to his shorts in the street in front of the home and singing Elvis Pressley’s “Teddy Bear” while gyrating his hips lasciviously.  Police were called to the scene and after a brief scuffle, subdued Blackwood and cuffed him. 

Bauer was arrested for public intoxication and lewd behavior.  After downing 5 shots of peppermint schnapps, Bauer was found wrapped around a column on a neighboring house and performing a pole dance.  “But it’s my birthday,” she was heard to howl as she was led away.  Deleon was arrested after exposing her breasts to the arresting officers and yelling “Have you  met the girls??” 

Well, ok,  I guess my parties are never going to be covered in the Scribbler. 

The next topic I was going to touch on was visiting Cracker Barrel with 15 children.  I went on the last day of school with Margie and Dava.  Between us, we had 15 assorted children, which made for a very interesting morning!  The waitress was absolutely the best I have ever had.  She was so good and patient!

But it got intersting when the five year olds started running from our table to the checkers game by the fireplace and back again, often pausing to dance in the middle of the room, as 5 year old girls are inclined to do. There was an elderly couple sitting between us and the aforementioned checkers game and they were not enchanted by the twirling girls. 

The lady in particular looked most sour.  She was, at the most, 115 and wearing hot pink pants.  She would stare at the girls and then mutter something to her companion, then stare, then mutter and on and on.  It was quite amusing really.  I don’t know how she could get her fork to her mouth since she never took her eyes off of the 15 children for a second.  Mean people suck!!

Alright, I guess that’s it for now.  I have to go enjoy Memorial Day festivities with the in laws.  Maybe I can get into the Scribbler for that!!  “A Memorial Day cookout turned tragic after a Hoover woman stabbed her inlaws repeatedly with a plastic fork…”  Hmm, watch the papers!! 

You can read every parenting book on the market, from What to Expect The First Year to Dr. Spock and not one of them will give you practical advice on dealing with the midnight puker.  No parenting magazine I have ever read offers practical advice for the most effective way to remove the vomited remains of chicken nuggets from the sheets. 

I went into parenthood ignorant of the protocols involved in cleaning up puke.  Even my years of experience working in the hospital and cleaning up puke did not prepare me to deal with a toddler projectile vomiting across stuffed animals and toys.  I am thinking about writing a book on the subject and I expect it to be a runaway bestseller.

You all know what I am talking about.  Your child is fine all day.  He/she eats like the proverbial horse, gobbling fruit snacks colored with red dye 53 and drinking red Kool Aid like it’s going out of style.  Then, at about 1 a.m., when the house is quiet and your body has shifted from REM sleep to that really good deep sleep, it hits.  Your child wakes up screaming, spewing Sponge Bob fruit snacks all over the room, on the sheets, on the walls, on the ceiling and just about every place possible for vomit to go.

You blearily trudge up the steps with a bucket, paper towels, bleach and a TB mask, ready to do battle.  The first question is how do you remove a vomit encrusted shirt from a child without smearing it all over her little face???  I vividly remember my mother cutting my nightgown from my body to avoid just such a disaster.  I have never had to resort to that drastic a measure, but I have many years ahead of me, so never say never!  I find rolling the puke up into the shirt and rolling it over the child’s head smears a minimal amount of puke on her. 

Once you have removed the shirt/nightgown/restraints or whatever, you have to clean the child.  Take the bucket, add clorox…wait, that’s for the carpet, sorry.  Usually, the child has managed to somehow get chunks all over her person.  In her long blond hair, in her eyebrows, inside of her ears, under her chin, etc.  So a good scrubbing is in order.  Of course, the child is half asleep, ready for bed now that the offending ten lbs of sugar has been exorcised from her body.  So the washcloth comes out and you scrub the child down, taking care to remove the puke from the insides of the nostrils and behind the earlobes.  If it is a boy child, it usually has not gotten into the hair, but woe betide parents of a girl child!  You might as well plan on a bath complete with hair washing to remove the steaming chunks of goo from every precious little curl! 

Once the child is changed and has been put to bed in another room with a bucket close by, the real fun begins.  I am wide open to suggestions on what to do with the chunks in the sheets.  I will never forget the first time one of my kids puked in the bed.  It never occurred to me to shake out the sheets.  I kind of thought the vomit might dissolve in the washing machine.  Unfortunately, the clots do not bust in the machine.  It was so much fun to try and remove the freshly laundered lumps of vomitus from the washing machine.  Not a recommended activity for 3 a.m.   Now I know no matter how cold it is outside, whether it’s raining or a tornado is blowing, you go outside and shake the sheets out first!!!

So it’s now well on to dawn, the sheets are in the wash, and you are ready to tackle the carpet.  Then another child throws up in another part of the house.  This is when you really start to appreciate mammals that are evolved enough to abandon their young after birth.  So you go to that child’s room and start the clean up process all over again.  Another nightshirt to roll over the head, another set of sheets to shake, more crevices where vomit has gathered, waiting for you to scrape it out with chisel and a toothpick.

By the time you deal with the new mess, the process starts all over again.  Someone somewhere in the house is puking anew.  As you trudge to the next room, you make plans to run away to Acapulco to live in sin with the checker from Winn Dixie.  And there will be no children!!!!!

The second Circle of Hell is Chuck E. Cheese or any place where large numbers of small children congregate to scream their lungs out and demand more tokens.

The wonderful thing about having six years between your children is that you never get away from the aforementioned places. Just as you are taking a deep breath and start enjoying restaurants where your food doesn’t come in a box, you have to start all over again with the next child. So it is with the demon goddess. She feels right at home in Chuck E. Cheese.

There is no denying that Chuck E. Cheese was invented by the devil. It’s amazing how brightly the sun shines outside of the building. But as the doors slowly swing shut behind you, the atmosphere becomes dark and murky, almost sinister in nature. You are forced to go through a turnstile, where a helper demon stamps your hand with the number 666 so your child cannot leave with the wrong person. Like anyone would want to take her!

The farther in you go, the darker it gets. Many helper demons throng about it orange polyester uniforms, emblazoned with the image of the demon god Chuck E. Cheese. If you have the misfortune to be there for a birthday party, you will be stuck all the way in the back of the building, where it is darkest. A life size Chuck E. Cheese robot dude holds court in one corner, enticing the youngsters over to him so he can suck their souls out, replacing their sweet innocence with a demonic force which urges them to ask Mommy for another twenty dollars for tokens.

Many strange games abound, most of them evil by their very nature. For example, one game exists whereby you use a large mallet to pound small rodents back into their holes. An appallingly violent game designed to desensitize young children to the effects of violence. James Dobson has done a whole series on this topic on Focus on the Family. Another game would have you hurl wooden balls up a ramp and into circles of various sizes. No one ever hits the 10,000 point circle, but I am sure if they did, Lucifer himself would materialize and spirit that lucky individual straight down to Hell. It’s a direct portal, everyone knows this.

Each demonic game spits out tickets, two to three at a time. If you manage to collect several hundred tickets, your child might be lucky enough to redeem them for a small prize. It costs several thousand dollars to earn a prize that costs the Chuck E. Cheese people $.03 to buy. But there is something special about a pencil from Chuck E. Does anyone remember the old Fox tv show “Friday the 13th” about the antiques store with the cursed relics? I am thinking along similar lines for the prizes Chuck E. hands out to the little tykes!

Aside: I vacuumed up a monkey’s paw last week. I forgot to tell you all this. Sammy the dog ate a Barbie monkey (from the Barbie petting zoo) and all that was left was its little paw. I called Kiki immediately, because I knew she would truly appreciate the literary significance of such an event. Is it any wonder Gina had to perform the gray hairyectomy on the vacuum cleaner the very next week????? Ok, that only popped into my head because of cursed relics; sorry about that!!

Back to my story. There is no bright side to the Chuck E. Cheese Emporium of Exotic Games and Big Fuzzy Rodents. It’s loud and there are ten million children running around in a building with a max occupancy of 197. They frequently bump into you, and if your child puts her tokens down, they are gone before you can say “jack sprat” because some other little heathen has scooped them up, in order to EARN MORE TICKETS!!!!

There is a series of tunnels overhead, but no child ever enters the tunnels. The children are too busy spending Daddy’s paycheck smacking rodents on the head, or hurling balls. There are rides too. Each ride costs a token and it lifts your child up for about 1/10 of a second and then the ride is over. Obviously, it takes at least ten tokens before any level of satisfaction is achieved.

The entire time we were there, a man went around with a wrench, fixing the various games. He flitted from game to game, like a little bee gathering lubricating oil from various nuts and bolts. Or maybe he was reapplying the curses on the various games to ensure no child can win more than two tickets, thereby upping the number of tickets it takes to buy the plastic doohickey prize.

I actually equate a trip to Chuck E. Cheese to feeding Rocky the Bearded Dragon a mealworm. These two events are equally repulsive to me, yet they are things I would do only for my children. Which goes to prove I will go to Hell and Back for my children!!

I do not mail things.  Ever.  Except for Christmas cards and I usually only do that every other year.  If you get something in the mail from me, it’s because someone has died and I am showing my support and love for you.  Otherwise, it’s an email or a phone call!

I remember everyone’s birthday.  I remember all those Hallmark occasions like Sweetest Day and Broccoli Day and even Day of the Dead.  I often buy cards for these occasions.  I search and search to find the perfect card and spend a lot of money on these cards.  I take them home and sometimes even sign them.  I might make it so far as to address it.

However, it usually ends there.  For me to actually put a stamp on it and stick it in the mailbox is a huge commitment I am usually not willing to make.  So, 9 times out of 10, signed and addressed though they are, the cards end up stuck in my desk.  My Dad’s birthday is January 11th and I just threw his card away.  It was an act of liberation, an acknowledgement of my inability to actually follow through and stick the card in the mailbox.

I have friends who faithfully write notes for everything.  No gift goes unacknowledged, no kindness unrecognized.  These friends send perfect little notes in perfect little handwriting, designed to make me feel good for having done them some small service.

However, the card has the opposite effect.  It actually heaps coals of remorse upon the fires of guilt that burn in my subconscious because I have not written thank you notes to them for whatever kindnesses they have rendered me.  I become obssessed with my own inadequacies and worry endlessly about the thank you notes not sent.

I don’t make my kids write them, even though I know it might break the cycle of notelessness.  I write down all the gifts and their givers at every party, perpetuating the illusion that a note will follow.  But it never does.  Because I sit them down, we write the notes, and we DO NOT SEND THEM!!  My desk drawer has notes Anna wrote from her birthday, which was in January.  Is the statute of limitations up yet?

And then, when I do get a nice note, I want to write the sender and thank her for sending me such a nice note.  And then a vicious cycle begins of thank you notes for thank you notes.  Where does it all end??

I don’t even buy stamps.  I pay all my bills online so I am not shackled by stamps.  I am offended by stamps because their existence means I should be writing thank you notes to someone and mailing them, but I don’t do it.

So the next time you give me a gift or do something nice for me, please know how deeply appreciative I am of the thought you have given me.  And don’t hate me for the note I wrote and didn’t send!!

And yes, Gianna, I know Emily Post says you don’t have to acknowledge in writing if you did it verbally, but everybody does.  And yes, if everyone else jumped off a bridge, I would too.  As long as I didn’t have to use a stamp!

I often refer to the seven circles of hell in this blog, so I though I might define one for you. I have never read Dante’s Inferno but I assume the circles worsen as you move toward number 7, or vice versa. But who really cares.

Once again, I just wrote this whole thing out and it disappeared. I am beginning to think I should write it all in Word and then copy and paste instead of typing on the net!! If only Bobby Willis had left the demons alone….

The first circle of hell is obviously the doctor’s office/dentist/orthodontist/veterinarian or whatever professional you may need to see. And no Renee, this is not aimed at you. This is a series of generalizations intended to amuse, not accuse!!

The chairs are always uncomfortable and the magazines are always out of date, if not downright boring. I love to be in an office where the only magazine choices are “Field and Stream”, “Hot Rods” or “AARP Today”. Choose between an article on the 10 Sexiest Fisherman Alive or the 10 Oldest Fishermen Alive. It doesn’t matter which one you choose because they will be equally compelling!!! Usually, there are multiple copies of the blue children’s book of Bible Stories. Has anyone ever actually bought a copy? Or do you know anyone who has a copy? Someone must buy them, but I don’t know who. I remember those books all the way back to my own childhood and I have never known anyone with a copy. Hmm.

But I digress. In the doctors office, there is inevitably some child there with a contagious, hacking cough and green mucous dripping out of various facial orifices. There is inevitably someone older than dirt who wants to strike up a conversation with me about the frequency and consistency of his or her bowel movements.

In the dentists office, there is always a child with metal teeth, which just freaks me out!! I will see a cute little moppet with a head of blond curls. I will smile at the little tyke and it will smile back and the light will gleam off the metal molars. Sends chills down my spine every time!! You know his parents put him to bed with a bottle of Mountain Dew every night until his teeth rotted out.

You wait and wait and then wait some more because the doctor/dentist/vet has been detained by an emergency. Yeah right. Likely, he or she is catching up on “Days of Our Lives” to see if Stefano is going to recover from his last electrocution. Or maybe he is playing one last game of solitaire before he starts his afternoon. Or maybe it really is an emergency. Maybe the doctor has been digging an impaction out of a 95 year old man with hemorrhoids. And in that case, are you really in a hurry to be the next patient?

But what exactly constitutes a dental emergency? “We need a root canal stat”….Bet you never hear that!! “We’ve got an emergency teeth whitening in room one; the patient is having senior portraits taken this afternoon and must look good”!! And all that time, you are stuck in the waiting room, listening to the whir of the drill and staring at the metal mouthed child and wanting to bolt from the room and take a Xanax.

Once you finally get back to the exam room, you climb up on the table and slowly take your clothes off. The hot young doctor walks in and closes the door and then takes off his white coat…Oops, sorry, wrong blog!!! So then you are stuck in the exam room where there are no magazines (not even a Body Builder Mag) and you have to wait longer. Either you are naked under a paper sheet, always fun, or you are waiting for the dentist to come in and your anxiety is mounting by the second. I hate the dentist (all of them!!) and I dread that visit. I am so glad I have good teeth. I particularly despise the hooky thing they use to scrape the goo from between your teeth. It looks like an instrument of torture the CIA uses in Guantanamo!! “Don’t touch my gums….I’ll give you names!!!” The longer I wait, the worse I feel!! But at least with a teeth cleaning you get resolution. Your teeth finally get cleaned and you can go home, free as a bird, with your new toothbrush and some dental floss, off the hook for six months!!

But the doctors office is a different story. The doctor walks in, takes a look, tells you it’s viral and you need to go home and wait it out. What??!!! Talk about a racket…you still have to pay your copay whether you have been healed or not. I think you should only have to pay up if your problem can be fixed. That’s how the lawyers do it. Make it double or nothing….if you can be treated, you pay double, if it’s viral, you go home and pay nothing!! I like it!

Or better yet, physicians can learn from veterinarians. My husband is a vet and he treats everything with antibiotics and steroids. Dog got a fever? Antibiotics and steroids. Limp? Antibiotics and steroids. Broken leg? Antibiotics and steroids. I don’t know why we had to borrow so much money for him to go to vet school because it only takes a couple of weeks to learn the treatment protocols for everything!! And I am so glad he doesn’t read this because he would not be amused!!!

Anyway, once you’ve received your viral diagnosis, just try to get out of a doctors office without paying your copay. There is no back door, so you have to go right past the cashiers office. There is no way to slink by without being seen; they will catch you and demand payment! There usually is a large woman named Helga standing by with a club, ready to bludgeon you should you refuse to fork over your $20 copay!!

So I would have to name the professional medical office as the first official circle of hell. The other six circles will follow as I ponder them and will include but will not be limited to: Chuck E. Cheese; the McDonald’s playland; and Wal Mart during the month of December!!

Oh, by the way, my pork loin turned out great last night. I was so busy writing about it, I couldn’t forget about it out on the grill!! Thanks for asking!!

I am cooking on the grill tonight.  This may not seem like a big deal to most of you, but for me it is huge.  I am an absolute failure at grilling meats. 

It’s not because I can’t operate the grill.  In these days of propane, my 5 year old can probably turn it on.  It’s because I have the attention span of a dyslexic gnat with ADHD and OCD who hasn’t taken medication in several days.  I put the food on the grill, then I go inside and forget about it.  Alas, the fix it and forget it deal only works with hamburger helper.  On the grill, it yields charcoal!! 

Let’s face it, I am not a feminist in this respect:  Grilling is a man’s job.  It speaks to their primal urge to go out and sear animal flesh over open flames.  Women belong in the kitchen, where it is cool and bug free, preparing the potato salad and corn on the cob to accompany the meat.  We do not grill. 

Well, at least I don’t grill anyway.  Usually it happens this way:  I pick a cut of meat and make some fancy marinade I’ve been dying to try; it marinates all day and I wait in anticipation; I light the grill and place the meat on the grill; then I go in the house and either start playing Pogo or the phone rings; I forget about the meat and it burns to a carcinogenic crisp!

This has happened to me on more than one occasion.  I have incinerated hotdogs, bratwurst and hamburgers in my career.  My favorite one, though, was the steak.  I don’t buy steak very often because it’s expensive!!!!  For what it costs, I can go to Outback and get a good steak and a Bloomin’ Onion and I don’t have to cook either of them! 

But on this occasion, I had some steaks I had picked up on sale.  They had been in my freezer for a couple of weeks when I decided to sacrifice them to the grill gods.  I got them out, made a marinade (I’m not kidding, I like to make marinades!!!) and soaked them for hours.  The moment arrived to put them on the grill and I slapped them down like a pro.

Only I forgot to turn the heat down.  Tim came home about 15 minutes later and I was going to surprise him with perfectly grilled steaks.  Instead, he opened the grill and the flames leapt up and nearly singed the beard off of his face.  There were my four beautiful, juicy steaks, in their flavorful marinade, reduced to so many charcoal briquets.  I actually cried.

Tim, for once in his life, tried to be sensitive and put a nice face on it.  “They’re not completely ruined,” he told me as he tried to saw through the soot to the meat.  It didn’t work; there was no meat.  I had actually charcoaled them all the way through.  We ate sandwiches instead. 

I am sure this comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed this blog and knows my history with Chia pets and vacuum cleaners.  About the only things I can do tolerably well are spell and correct other people’s grammar.  Other than that, I can’t walk, I can’t grill and I can’t grow things.  What kind of future do I have??? 
I have to go now and take my pork briquets off the grill.  My stomach is growling even as we speak!!

So here I am again, still supposed to be cleaning, but updating my journal instead.  After all, I can’t let my public down, now can I?

My laundry room reminds me of the myth of Hercules and the Aegean stables.  If you remember, Hercules had some impossible, well Heruclean, tasks to complete and one involved cleaning out some really nasty stables that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time.

This would also describe my laundry room, which had not been cleaned in a long time.  Hercules was lucky enough to be able to divert a river to run through the stables and wash away the muck.  Alas, the Cahaba is not sufficient enough to clean out the accumulated layers of lint and old socks in my laundry room.

I did get the floor fairly clean  yesterday, but then I dumped a lot of laundry on top of it.  Laundry truly is of mythic proportions in our household.  Frequently, I have to take a rope and rappel down the pile after I’ve put a load in the washer.  I climb Mount Laundry every day, but it never gets any smaller.

How underwear can multiply the way it does is a mystery to me.  I would like one of my kids to do a science project on the reproductive capabilities of Fruit of the Loom.  First, they would count all the underwear in the drawers (little pun there…drawers!?); then throughout the week, the underwear would appear in the laundry room.  My theory is the quantity of underwear in the house would double from the drawer to the laundry room and exponentially increase my work load by 27%.  I am sure there is some kind of equation out there to support this theory and one of my kids will probably win the Nobel Peace Prize in Applied Laundry Management for figuring it out!

I am actually thinking about going to school and getting a Masters in Laundry Mangaement.  It seems to be how I spend most of my days, so I might as well become an expert at it.  Obviously, the course load (another little pun there…I’m on fire today!!!) would include the following classes:  Laundry science; Physics of Laundry 101; Principle of Starch; Folding and Stacking Applications; Advanced Sorting and Separating; and Bleach for Beginners.

As a Masters Candidate, the student will learn proper managament techniques for the home laundry room.  The student will be expected to master basic sorting skill, as well as demonstrating knowledge of the various laundry products available on the market today.  Upon completion of the course of study, the student will participate in a practical exam, whereby he or she is expected to sort, pre treat, wash and fold laundry, including but not limited to:  infant undershirts; men’s briefs with and without skid marks; Victoria’s Secret lingerie; children’s shirts with stains composed of ketchup, crayon and snot; and linen.

Upon successful completion of the degree, students can pursue a worthwhile and rewarding career as a domestic engineer, maintaining a home without the benefit of a staff.  Sign up today!!

Ok, anyway, I have to go hang up stuff in Tim’s closet now, which smells funny.  I am going to call and see if Kevin Sorbo is available to come and help with the laundry room.  He played Hercules on TV and if he can’t help with the laundry, at least I can drool over his biceps while I sort!

I have been blogging for a few months now and I feel I need to make some sort of comment on my progress.  I have never kept a journal so faithfully in my life, proving to myself that I exist only for an audience and if there is no audience, there is no me! 

I find I am truly enjoying sharing my peculiar thoughts with the world.  Well, I guess the only people that read this crap are the people I share my peculiar thoughts with anyway, but at least I don’t have to call y’all 20 times a day to complain about my latest run in with a grocery store psycho.

And I am growing as a person from keeping this blog.  For example, I was vacuuming the laundry room today and instead of trying to force the Barbie twist tie up the hose, I actually leaned over and picked it up off the floor.  I am not sure I would have been capable of this action a year ago, but now I have learned it’s ok to pick it up and not jam the vacuum.  Because I have already blogged about the jammed vacuum and it is no longer interesting to the masses, so why go through the bother of jamming it again?  There’s no more story to tell!

I am not sure I will be able to refrain from falling however.  This morning I slipped on a pile of laundry and landed on my butt….again!!  It reminds me of the Sponge Bob episode where he kept dropping his pants and it was funny the first hundred times, then people started getting mad at him.  So I guess I will just have to keep my pratfalls to myself and if you happen to see me on a walker, don’t ask. 

I do have to ask if anyone read last Wednesday’s police blotter and whether you read the report of the stolen socks.  Yes it’s true, someone stole six socks.  And isn’t that a tongue twister???  My thought is I would not bother to report stolen socks.  If someone wants my socks badly enough, he or she can have them.  I’ll just buy new ones at Wal Mart!  I may have to continue keeping y’all updated on the police blotter since no one reads it but me.  How you can skip it I’ll never know because it is the best part of the paper!!

If you haven’t picked up on it by now, I am supposed to be cleaning my house.  I have blown off several people this morning who wanted me to come and play because I have to get this house picked up.  See above paragraph re: me slipping and falling on laundry!  And yet, much like my days in college, I do my best work when I am avoiding something else.  The irony is that in college, I cleaned to avoid writing and now as a grown up, I write to avoid cleaning.  Hmmm, what a twist. 

Alright, I am going to pick up my laundry off the floor and try to stay on my feet.  I will probably be back in an hour or so to avoid dusting the furniture!!

I had an epiphany tonight and recognized my addiction.  I have been in denial for years, afraid to face the truth, afraid of what it might do to me and to my family.  But I can no longer hide it from myself:  I am a Disney addict.

I realized tonight my Disneyfication was complete when I put in my newest Disney cd (DisneyMania!!!) and realized I was listening to the Baja Men sing “It’s A Small World”.  I recognized then I truly have an illness and need to seek help immediately.

I know the words to nearly every single Disney song ever recorded, even the boring ones like “Someday My Prince Will Come”.  We own all the movies, on VHS and DVD.  Grumpy is my icon, my touchstone, my reason for being!  I am sick!

I am going to start my own recovery group, Disneyholics Anonymous, DA for short.  I will stand up and say “Hello my name is Jennifer and it’s a small world after all.”  Then I will share my story of addiction, how it started off simply enough with Beauty and the Beast.  I love that movie!  From there it spiraled into soundtracks and posters and snow globes.  I really desire the toaster that makes Mickey shaped toast and I would sell one of my own children to get it.

We listen to Radio Disney in the car.  The Disney channel is on in my home for most of the day.  I know who Zack and Cody are and I know nearly every word to the movie Mulan.  I ponder the deeper, feminist underpinnings of Beauty and the Beast:  Belle…poster child for liberated intellectual woman or just a nerd with great hair??  Or how about the nihilistic themes in Lilo and Stitch with the fate of the universe resting in the hands of a depressed, neglected child with a love of Elvis?  Should she choose an alien love or the more stagnant but stable love of humans??  Really quite universal themes of love, ego and id with a dash of Dr. Phil thrown in for good measure.  And if that makes sense to you, you have more problems than I do!! 

But it’s the music I love the most.  The whole soundtrack from The Little Mermaid gives me chills.  It’s funny, at a dinner party a few nights ago, everyone was talking about music and I had nothing to contribute.  Because if it’s not sung by an animated character, I haven’t heard it!!!  And I have the songs in every format:  sung by the characters; sung by pop groups; we even have the bluegrass version for Tim’s truck.  Help me please!!!!

I will say listening to Disney tunes is a way to appreciate how America has changed since Snow White.  Some of the songs from the old movies are incredibly racist, esp the ones from Dumbo.  The tunes from the 50’s and 60’s classic movies were quite long and involved, telling complicated stories and boring the hell out of the listener.  The newer songs are simply catchy and designed to sell Happy Meal toys at McDonalds.  

Well, gotta run and catch the Mickey Mouse film festival that’s showing at 10:00.  I love to sing along to Steamboat Willie!!