I went to an Oscar party on Sunday night at my friend Lisa’s house.  I have always loved watching the Oscars; there is something magical about all the movie stars, dressed in their finery, sobbing through their acceptance speeches.  I will be there one day when my blog wins an Oscar for “Best Blog Adapted For the Screen.”  I will thank all my faithful readers who have been with me from the beginning.  Then I will trip over the hem of my borrowed designer gown and plunge headfirst into the crowd, landing in Jack Nicholson’s lap. 

But I digress.  Lisa’s party invitation specified formal attire, something which I don’t really own.  And being a woman of dimension (how ’bout that for politically correct???) I can’t just rummage through the children’s dress up box for something to wear.  Plus, I had been at Thinking Day all afternoon, with no time to “think” about what I was going to wear.  I came home and stared in the closet, and finally settled on a gown I had worn to a school fundraiser several years before.  The only problem was I have shrunk somewhat since that time, so there was quite a bit of room in the….ahem….bodice.

Aside:  Why is it when women lose weight, we lose it in our boobs?  It’s not fair, my boobs are fine, I want to lose it in my butt or my thighs or even my rather ample backside!  But no, when I lose weight, the first ten pounds come off my cheeks (and I don’t mean the ones I sit on!!) and the next ten come off my chest.  I never manage to lose any in my waist!  Not fair!!!!

So anyway, not having a lot of choices, I decided to wear the gown and keep the matching wrap clutched tightly to my chest.  The other thing specified by the invitation was a garage sale item.  Lisa was so taken with the Super Bowl auction at my house, she decided to have one at the Oscar party.  In desperation, I raced around the house, trying to find a piece of junk to take with me.  Nothing presented itself as a suitable item.  I don’t buy lots of knickknacks and I am very good about not holding on to junk.  At the last minute, I seized the 25 year old vacuum cleaner Tim’s mom had loaned us when ours died.  She told me to give it to GoodWill when we were done; I thought this was an even better use for it!

So I clomped down the stairs to the car, tottering on my high heels, clutching the top of my dress and lugging a vacuum cleaner.  Thank God the paparazzi laid off me for a night!  I had a hard time getting the vacuum in my truck, but I finally managed to wedge it in behind the driver’s seat.  Then I took off to get Kiki.

Once I picked her up, we headed for the party.  When we got there, I decided to park in the street, since our hostess had luminaries lining both sides of the drive.  I pulled up very close to the curb which was a huge mistake, because when I got out of the car, my heels promptly sank into the lawn, which was wet from the rain we had just gotten.  I yanked my foot up and the shoe came off in the grass.  I hopped around and got it, then grimly opened the back door of the car to get the vacuum cleaner.

Vacuum cleaners were much heavier 25 years ago.  I reached in and grabbed it and pulled with all my might, but it was wedged in very tightly.  I staggered backwards and got stuck in the lawn again.  I surged forward to do battle again.  I pulled mightily and my dress started dropping in the front.  

By now, I was cursing rather colorfully and Kiki, who was doing something on the other side of the car (God only knows what) started laughing and asking “are you ok?”  

“I’m fine,” I snapped, and went back to do battle a third time.  This time I grabbed it from the bottom and gave a sustained pull and it popped free and I staggered back again and dropped it on my toe.  Many colorful words followed, which is why it’s a good reason I didn’t give up cursing for Lent.  It didn’t help that Kiki was positively howling and verbalizing her desire to have a camera to record my battle with the vacuum cleaner for posterity.

Ignoring her, I straightened out my dress, pulling it up over my heaving bosoms, and then marched up the driveway, dragging my Hoover behind me.  We hit the red carpet and I lugged it up step by step and got it into the house.  It took a diet coke and 4 baby quiches before I regained my composure.

We settled down in the living room to watch the Oscars.  Before it started, we filled out our ballots and chattered about the upcoming show.  When it started, I innocently remarked that if I was a lesbian, I would think Ellen Degeneres is totally hot.  I know some of you are going “ewwwwwwwwww”, but I have always thought she had the most beautiful eyes and she looks like fun.  Well, five minutes after I made that comment, the camera panned in on an attractive woman with short hair.

“Isn’t that….”, someone started to comment.

“Oh yes, that’s Judi Dench,” I finished for her, wanting to show off my extensive knowledge of all things trivial.  She gave me a strange look and said “That’s not Judi Dench, it’s Melissa Etheridge!”  Everyone screamed with laughter and I sank down into my dress, feeling like a fool.  

“There’s no way Ellen will have you now,” someone hollered.  “You don’t even know who Melissa Etheridge is!!”  Just like that, my lesbian notions were squashed!

Well, as the Oscars continued, I continued to display my ignorance.  When Alan Arkin’s name was announced for Best Supporting Actor, someone asked who he was and I said informatively “You know him, he’s been around forever, he played Columbo.”  I got some strange looks and I thought about it for a minute and then I admitted “never mind, I’m lying, that was Peter Falk!”  Whatever, they’re both old!!

After the second mistake, I just kept my mouth shut.  It was safer for everyone that way.  By 8:30, everyone was restive and ready for the auction to start.  Lisa had purchased some foreign currency at a coin show a few weeks before, and she handed out envelopes to all the guests.  Each of us got nine envelopes.  There were two bills with Saddam Hussein on them; whoever got one would be thrown into jail.  Well, of course I got one, so Lisa cuffed me in red, fur-lined handcuffs and threw me out on the back porch, along with the other ”prisoner”.  I had a mug shot taken, and then, in order to be readmitted to the party, I had to trek across the street, in my formal, ill-fitting gown, to receive psychoanalysis from Lisa’s neighbor.

Well, I am a good sport, so I marched across the street and knocked on the door.  Dr. “Freud” answered, a very dapper, good looking man who looked a lot like his namesake.  He invited us in and then took the other prisoner into another room, so we could be interrogated separately.  I sat on the couch and waited nervously for him to come back.

He came back in and took my handcuffs off and started off asking me about my sex life.  I responded that Tim insisted on parading around in a fur thong and asked me to whip him repeatedly.  He asked me about my background and I told him both of my parents were therapists.  He gave me a strange look, and then wrote out his impressions on a piece of paper.  He advised me that Tim’s behavior was normal, that under no circumstances should I ever take advice from my parents, and that I should avoid Lisa’s parties in the future.

I marched back across the street and was readmitted to the party.  The other guest returned a few minutes later, and we began the auction.  Thirty minutes later, I had saddled Lisa with my vacuum cleaner (there is some justice in the world!!) and I was the proud owner of a very strange pitcher (a receptacle for holding drinks y’all, not something you hang on the wall!!!)  It’s in the shape of Santa and Rudoph and Santa’s head comes off and becomes a mug.  It seems vaguely cannibalistic to me, but I figured the blonde goddess would get a kick out of it.  Plus, it was Lenox!

At the end of the night, I marched back down the hill to my car, yanking my dress up and carrying my shoes.  Thank God the Oscars are over for this year!!

I never give anything up for Lent.  I have no self control and no willpower, so I always figure it’s not worth disappointing God every year.  He made me who I am, so I’m pretty sure He is well aware of my fatal character flaws.  I have deep and sincere admiration for those of you who can give up chocolate and quit swearing at your children for six weeks.  I’m not sure I could do that for six minutes!

I used to try and give things up, but two days into life without swearing, would find me forced into a situation where only the “f” word would do.  Or I would give up chocolate, only to find myself in Wal-Greens, curled up on the floor in the candy aisle, surrounded by Cadbury Creme Egg wrappers and asking God to forgive me as I shove another one in my mouth.  I have no self control!!

Every year I swear I will do better and every year I am cast into the shadows by those who managed to go six whole weeks without drinking sweet tea or eating bon bons.  Some years I’ll pick up the Lenten devotion books they put out at church.  I start out the season, solemnly promising to read a devotion every day and meditate upon it for fifteen minutes.  For two or three days, I do great and then before I know it, a week has gone by and I have lost the book.  I find it again 12 days later and by then, I figure I’ve missed so much, I might as well just quit.  Meanwhile the people who swore to pray a decade of the rosary every day pass me by on the ladder to heaven, leaving me to linger on the bottom rung, dangling ever closer to eternal damnation.

But yesterday in church I had an epiphany.  The priest mentioned how television and the internet consume so much of our free time.  I squirmed in the pew, guiltily aware of my ever increasing Pogo addiction.  I tried to calculate how much of my free time is sucked up by meaningless computer games and to my horror, it was a lot.  “How many times”, I thought to myself, “have you ignored your children to play a game of Blackjack?  How many times have you handed the blonde goddess the pack of matches she wanted, absently telling her to have a good time?  How many times have you said “yes” to the children, without really knowing what you were agreeing to, all because you needed to play five more games to win a badge?  Their childhood is passing you by while you sit at the computer and play Canasta!”  

I then tried to reason my way out of it.  “After all”, I told myself, “I hardly ever watch television.  It’s only on for an hour in the morning while I hit the treadmill.  And I don’t smoke at all, nor do I drink to excess.  Still”, I forced myself to acknowledge, ”normal people don’t sit mindlessly in front of the computer all day, shooting technicolor ducks and playing endless games of word whomp.  It’s an addiction”, I told myself sternly.  “And you can control it!”  So right then and there, I decided to give up Pogo for Lent.

Almost immediately, I teared up because I am right in the middle of earning the “blankety blank” badge on Qwerty.  I rock at qwerty; it’s basically scrabble and I am damn good at it!  I only have to use 45 more blank tiles to win the badge plus 1200 tokens.  I am saving my tokens to dress my pogo mini as a viking warrior; this will cost about 65,000 tokens.  It’s very important to have a well dressed mini at Pogo.  People totally judge you.

But I have to do it.  I have to give it up before it consumes me body and soul.  Before my children become crack addicted prostitutes and go on Jerry Springer to tell the world they would not be hustling in Miami if their mother had been there for them instead of playing Panda Pai Gow Poker.  So that’s it; I’m done with Pogo until Easter.

I have not clicked on the icon at all this morning.  It’s hovering there on my toolbar, beckoning me with its promise of endless hours of mindless pleasure.  But I am staying strong and resolute, determined to play wholesome board games with my children this afternoon and enjoy their remaining childhood years before it’s too late.  I will haul myself up the next rung of the ladder to heaven if I have to kill someone to do it!!

Today my girl scouts will celebrate World Thinking Day. This is the time when girl scouts all over the world learn about their sisters in girl scouting and learn that girl scouting is a world-wide movement. This is the time when leaders all over the globe scratch their heads and wonder how they got suckered into being a leader in the first place.

What makes this day even better is I am hosting a Thinking Day event for over 100 girl scouts! So today, while all of you are sitting at home watching spring training baseball games or Lifetime movies or just taking a moment to enjoy the peace of a Sunday afternoon, I will be spending the entire afternoon blowing a whistle every fifteen minutes and shouting “next country please.” The only real justice is I have roped Kiki into doing this with me, so at least I won’t be alone!

So gobble your Sunday morning pancakes at leisure. Read the Sunday comics on the toilet, while eliminating your Sunday pancakes. Enjoy your day as I groom the youth of America, systematically warping them with my twisted world view. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow with some really good stories. Or maybe you’ll be reading about it in USA Today tomorrow…..Crazed Girl Scout Leader Opens Fire at Thinking Day Event With Potato Gun!!

Our accountant stopped in again today, and said in greeting “I love your blog”!  What??  I don’t remember giving her the blog info, and yet she is a reader!  I see how many hits I get, but I DON’T KNOW WHO’S READING THIS!!!

In the blogiverse, there are memes.

What is a meme?

(from www.thedailymeme.com)

People often ask, “What is a Meme?” so here’s a more than a little information on that. I pronounce it so it’s rhymes with ‘dream’; some pronounce it so it sounds like ‘mem’ (from mem-ory).

In the context of web logs / ‘blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it’s some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).

So I am throwing a meme out here and I want answers dammit!!

I don’t think I’m Stealing this idea, but here are Five Things You Don’t Know About Me:

1.   I am deathly, mortally afraid of cockroaches; the big scary kind that live in the South, not the puny ones found in the rest of the country.

2.    My mother died when I was in high school, and I am afraid of dying young and leaving my kids alone with their father who will not take care of them they way I do.

3.     I met my husband when I was 18 and we have been together ever since.  God that’s depressing!!

4.     I have never dyed my hair before, nor have I ever been tempted.

5.     I have extremely, abnormally ugly feet.

So there!  Now I expect every one of you lurkers to give me the good on yourselves or pay the consequences!!!

Last night we had dinner at my in-laws house.  Unless it is a special occasion, my father-in-law can usually be found taking his meal in front of the television.  First he watches the news, then it’s Wheel of Fortune.  Last night, in a fit of nostalgia, I joined him.

Wheel of Fortune reminds me of my grandmother and of being a little girl and watching it with her.  It also reminds me of childhood summers, before cable, when all that was on in the morning was game shows.  And they were kinder, gentler game shows back then.  Ah, how I pine for the simpler days of W of F, when instead of exorbitant cash prizes and vacations, the winner got to “shop” with whatever cash he or she had earned.  “Um….I’d like the Hi-Fi stereo with the 8 track tape deck for $850 and the fondue set for $75 and the naugahyde living room furniture for $1200.”  Inevitably the contestant would get down to the remaining $50 and be forced to go with the life size ceramic dalmation with red and green spots.  My birthday is in May and whoever gets me one has me for life!!!

As I watched Wheel last night, traipsing down memory lane, I found myself wondering if Pat Sajak has sold his soul to the devil.  Because he looks and sounds EXACTLY the same.  This is more than just plastic surgery; there has to be some sort of unholy blood sacrifice going on because no one is that eternally youthful.  And what kind of drugs is he taking to keep him so damn happy about spinning a giant technicolor wheel?  Don’t even get me started on Vanna White, demon goddess of the Wheel.  I bet if the Wheel was pried up, there would be a direct stairway to hell underneath it! 

Watching the show got my blood pressure going, because I am highly competitive.  This is not a character trait of which I am proud.  My younger brother will attest to many games of checkers being “accidentally” disrupted, with the game board being knocked over or mysteriously flying up into the air, checkers spilling everywhere, because I was losing.  Even now, as a parent, I find myself getting a little too exuberant when I get the big ladder all the way to the top and I annhilate Anna in a game of Chutes and Ladders or I get past the Molasses Swamp and make it to the end of Candy Land.  “It’s not fair mommy,” she sobs as I do a war dance around the board, whooping and hollering and declaring myself the emperor queen of Candy Land.

I decided last night I will never go on Wheel of Fortune. I would find it extremely difficult to stand in between the other two constestants and smile as they rack up winnings and I have nothing but a big fat goose egg, no ceramic dalmation to show for my time.  Do the losers even get the lifetime supply of rice-a-roni anymore?  There is no skill involved in Wheel of Fortune whatsoever.  It all depends on the spin. 

There is no doubt in my mind that I would hit bankrupt every time, while Betty Ann from Mud Duck Iowa gets $10,000 for five “T”’s and solves the puzzle “It Takes Time To Travel” because every letter was filled in for her, by me, before I hit bankrupt.  I would get too greedy and keep spinning, and instead of going on to the grand prize round, I would go home empty-handed.  Betty Ann would go on to win the final round and go home with $87,000, the red convertible and rice-a-roni for life.

And as she wins that final round, unable to contain myself, I would sprint over the wheel and take her down, solid Mid-Western farm wife that she is, and pummel her with my free spin I never got to use.  Pat and Vanna would try to pull me off of her, and I would come up swinging, knocking Pat’s perfectly centered nose to one side and yanking Vanna’s hair extensions right out of her head. 

So I will content myself with watching it on television and solving the puzzles from my couch.  I can blow the family competition away with no problem.  And I will dance around the room, Queen of the Wheel, and the family will tremble in fear for they will know I am mighty and cannot be destroyed.  Because if I lose, I will knock over the television! 

It’s been on my blog a lot lately.  It’s a pervasive problem in our society, corrupting our youth and leading to joblessness and despair.  It has been cited as a possible factor in global warming.  It flies in the face of common sense and decency.  Yes, I am talking about….Low Rider Jeans.

At the high school open house the other night, I was, if you will recall, positioned against the wall, having been dragged from my seat by a dessert crisis.  So instead of fighting my way back down the row of people, I chose to lean nochalantly against the wall to listen to the presentation.  There was a lady standing in front of me, next to a stroller.  Her little girl was about 18  months old, very cute, and she was out of the stroller, walking around.  Soon after I arrived, mom decided to sit down and that’s when the trouble began.

Because she was wearing low riders.  And a shirt that did not cover her adequately.  So when she sat down, the shirt rode up and the pants rode down, and her bare bottom was exposed for all to see.  I am fairly attuned to my environment, and I feel sure I would notice a sudden gust of wind around my anal region, but maybe I’m just super sensitive.  Because she didn’t notice at all.

Pretty soon, I had lost the thread of the debate over the merits of AP classes versus regular classes.  I was absolutely transfixed by the sight before me.  My imagination took flight and I engaged in an elaborate dream sequence.

I pictured myself and two or three of my best comrades, dressed in spandex tights and high boots and capes.  Or maybe just sweatpants and a bedsheet tied around our necks, whichever is more cost effective.  Emblazoned across our chests would be a human rump with a circle around it and a line through it.  We would call ourselves the Gluteus Girls….or maybe the Anti-Butt Crack League.  Something catchy anyways.

Whenever a butt is exposed, whenever low riders are in danger of riding too low, whenever a woman over the age of 40 is about to expose herself in a ridiculous manner, we will swoop in with our Granny panties, suspenders and high waisted jeans!!  We will grab the offender and drag her off to a secluded place where we will replace the ridiculous low riders with a more appropriate pair of pants, such as these:   

Once we have re-clothed the offender, we will chastise her sharply about the perils of exposing innocent Americans to an unsolicited butt crack.  Then we will zoom away, ever vigilant, keeping America safe from crack.

The guy next to me was having a hard time looking away as well.  He wasn’t quite as gleeful about it as Bobby, but every so often a smirk would cross his face as he glanced down into the yawning chasm before him.  I’m telling you, it’s like a train wreck; you can’t look away.  I swear I am going to write Miss Manners and see what she has to say on the subject.  Can you tap someone you don’t know on the shoulder and say “pardon me ma’am, but I can see your anus?”

So I am looking for a few good women to join me in my crusade for cracklessness.  These people must be stopped before they damage society irreversibly.  Because today it’s only butt cracks, but tomorrow it’s….you know, I really can’t come up with anything worse than a butt crack.  So let’s just concentrate on that, shall we?

I had to go back to work today.  Even as Tim is winging home from his trip to Las Vegas, sipping a martini and watching the in-flight movie, I was slaving away at the vet clinic.  Because Tim is not here, I had to get up at 5:30, exercise and shower, wake the kids up, get them moving and dressed, all by myself.  By 7:15, the garbage was out, the dishes were done, the house was picked up and I was on my way to work.  My life is HELL!!!

I got to the office in record time and discovered one of the employees had not shown up.  Beautiful.  It was ok, because for about five minutes, we weren’t very busy.  Then the phone started ringing.  I was busy all morning, which was good because it made the time pass faster.

My last feat at the office involved holding the tiniest of Yorkshire Terrier puppies while the doctor examined a lump.  The puppy had come in for diarrhea but when the owner came in to pick up, she requested the lump be examined as well.  It’s extremely difficult to hold a puppy that weighs less than 2 pounds because it is so fragile.  I managed to hold it still while the vet aspirated the lump.  I noticed a stench as she pulled the needle out, and I attributed it to the puppy having bad gas.

I walked out and returned it to the owner and as I handed it over, the lady gasped and said “oh, I’m so sorry, look at your shirt!”  Yes, I was besmirched and besmeared with fecal matter.  Apparently, the tiny precious puppy could not contain herself when probed with the needle, so she evacuated her bowels right there on my favorite shirt.  I had a large brown stain at the bosom, and both sleeves were coated as well. 

I laughed and assured her it was fine, secretly wondering how much I could inflate her bill to cover my cleaning costs.  I did use it as an excuse to go home right then.  Can’t work if you’re covered with crap, right? 

I ran home, did some housework, and the children came home.  Then I rushed Josh off to his piano lesson and then we rushed home to gobble a sandwich so we could go to open house at the high school.  Because my baby is going to high school.

I can hardly believe it, but there we were, walking through the doors of the great big high school, me nervously keeping my eyes peeled for crazed gunmen or dealers peddling drugs in the corners.  It’s a brand new school, very nice, and we filed into the auditorium for the presentation.  Josh insisted on sitting in the back row, right in the middle.  The place was packed, and as the academic advisor began speaking, it was standing room only.

Fifteen minutes into her talk, my cell phone rang.  It was home, so of course I answered it, since the girls were alone.

“Hello,” I said anxiously.

No answer.

“Hello…Abby?” I said a bit louder.

No answer.

“Abby are you there?”  No answer and people were starting to glare at me.  So I hung up the phone.

It rang again almost immediately.  I answered it again, but still couldn’t hear her.  Apparently there is limited reception in the middle of the auditorium.  I hung up, but now I was worried.  Last week, when I left them home alone, the tornado sirens went off, it started hailing, and Nancy had to drive up the street in the storm and rescue them.  Luckily, she chose not to call DHR, in case they decided to make her keep my children.  So I figured if the girls were calling, there was probably something wrong.

I got up, and began fighting my way down the row.  I stepped on the feet of the lady next to me, apologizing profusely as I went.  My butt bumped the people in front of me and I kept saying “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry….sorry….sorry….excuse me….family emergency….”  People were shushing me and craning their heads, trying to see around me as I crushed their feet and bumped heads with my butt. 

Finally, I made it to the end of the row and then I had to fight through the people crowded by the door.  I dialed home as I was swimming upstream, and when Abby answered, I snarled oh so quietly “someone better be bleeding!!”

“Fine, never mind,” she said and HUNG UP!!!!!

By now, I was enveloped in a murderous rage.  I have seen enough CSI and Law and Order episodes to know exactly how to eliminate an 11 year old, dispose of the body and make it look like an accident.  I called her back and I said “Is there a problem?”

“No,” she said.  “I told you to forget it!!” 

“Abby,” I said very nicely, “you called me and I was in the middle of a meeting.  I am now calling you back and I want to know WHAT IS THE PROBLEM!!!!!!”  I was actually hyperventilating at this point.

“Fine.  We just wanted to know if we could have dessert.”

My eyes rolled back in my head and I could feel the demons of rage trying to overtake me.  She is sooooo lucky I didn’t have the keys because I would have been in the car in an instant, heading home to make sure she never called me again!!! 

“Yes, Abby,” I said, admitting defeat.  “You can have dessert.”

“Thanks,” she chirped.  Then:  “What are you guys doing?”

I hung up; what else could I do?  I went back into the auditorium and stood against the wall for the next 45 minutes, because I had no desire to repeat the foot stepping performance to get back to my seat. 

By the time we got home at 8:00, I had been out of my pajamas for over 15 hours and I was fading fast.  I told everyone good night and went to bed!!  Thank goodness I don’t have to work tomorrow!  Because today was really crappy, in every sense of the word!!

I have never been comfortable with my children in bed with me.  I never let them sleep with us as infants.  I was convinced I would either roll over on the baby and suffocate it or that it would fall out of bed and break its neck.  I didn’t really breast feed (yes I know, I was an inadequate mother and my children will become crackheads and work at convenience stores because they ingested formula) so it was never a convenience thing to put them in bed with me at night.  I had to get up anyway!

But as they grew, they learned to find their way into our bed.  After being cuffed by me a few times in the middle of the night (I tend to wake up swinging!), they learned to go to Tim’s side of the bed.  Without even waking up, he pulled them into bed and then he would come over and invade my space.  After enduring several minutes of wiggling and flailing, I would finally get up in disgust and go sleep either on the couch, or in whichever bed had been vacated by the child now in my bed.  Some nights it’s like musical beds at our house!

I know I have mentioned this before, but I like to sleep on my own little island.  I don’t want the bed to move at all.  I get in my corner and I stay there.  I don’t want to snuggle, I don’t want to spoon, I just want to go to sleep.  The problem with children in the bed is they want to get next to you and touch you.  I don’t do well with that.

Last night, since Tim was gone, I let Anna sleep in my bed.  We have a king-size bed and she only weighs 55 pounds, so you would think it would be easy to sleep with her.  When I turned the lights out, she was on one side and I was on the other.  But sometime in the night, she began to worm her way toward me.  I awoke at 3:00 in the morning to find her trying to burrow underneath me.

What possesses a child to cross the vast expanse of a king size bed in the middle of the night to be close to a woman who is likely to throw a punch?  All I know is one minute I was drooling happily into my pillow and the next moment, I felt Anna’s head at my side.  I pushed her away and she wormed right back, apparently in an attempt to return to the womb.  I tried to inch away from her and she followed me.  Whether Tim is at home or not, I tend to sleep on the edge of the bed, so I had very little room to move.

I kept pushing her away and she kept rolling back.  Finally, I sat up and grabbed her under the armpits and moved her back to her side.  She stayed there for about five minutes and then returned just as I was starting to get comfortable. 

I was at the end of my rope.  I picked her up, put her back on the other side of the bed and wedged two pillows between us.  I figured she would have to wake up to actually cross the barrier.  It worked, and she stayed put.  Now I was wide awake, so I laid there, twiddling my thumbs, wondering how Tim was sleeping in his nice quiet hotel room in Las Vegas.  I think it’s my turn for a business trip!!

I headed to the Publix today to stock up on rations for the week.  Upon entering the store, I was greeted by a large display of Italian food.  Apparently it is Italian week, and so they had all their pastas and sauces and loaves of Italian bread arranged in a tempting display.  I walked over to peruse the selection and left Josh in charge of Anna next to the buggy.

I picked up a bag of ziti, which was on sale for $.99 and turned it over to see if there was a recipe on it.  There wasn’t and I started to put it back, but then I figured for $.99, I could come up with some use for it.  I turned toward the cart and Josh said “Hey Mom, over here, I’m open” and backed up, channeling his inner wide receiver.

Being myself possessed of a puckish sense of humor, I dropped back, faked left, called “hut hut” and threw the bag.  It sailed in a beautiful, spiraling arc and broke open in mid-air.  As the ziti noodles began raining to the ground, Josh caught the bag, and not realizing it was open, spiked it into the cart, crying “alley oop”.  The bag exploded and ziti flew everywhere.

It’s amazing what a loud sound uncooked pasta makes as it clatters against the tile in the grocery store.  There were about ten people around and every single one of them looked up and stared.  “OH look, see the retarded family??  How cute they look when they shop together.”

Josh started howling with laughter and I was laughing too, but I hissed at him, “quick, pick it up and put it in the bag before they kick us out!!”  He and Anna crawled around on the floor, scooping up the ziti and putting it back in the bag while I waved at the onlookers and smiled, pretending my family always throws its pasta on the ground before buying it.  They got it cleaned up and we pulled away from the display really fast before we broke anything else.

Being a good person, I went ahead and paid for the ziti anyway.  I figure the kids can make pasta sculptures tonight.  Guess what you’re all getting for Christmas this year!!

I dropped Tim off at the airport this morning and as of this writing, he is probably winging his way toward Las Vegas.  Please do not bother with the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”; like I’ve never heard that one before!!  This was his first ever “business trip”.  Bayer has hired him as a veterinary advocate; he gets to go to meetings and tell other veterinarians how to use Bayer products, or better yet, how to sell a whole lot of them, thereby increasing Bayer’s profit margin to 80 gazillion!!

As I was driving him to the airport, we reviewed safety procedures.  “Count the seatbacks between you and the emergency exit,” I told him.  “You have a narrow window of time to get off the plane before you die of smoke inhalation or it explodes.”  He looked at me like I was nuts.

I am nuts.  I hate to fly.  Just seeing an airplane makes me break out in a cold sweat.  I hate taking off, I hate reaching cruising altitude and I hate landing.  I hate the little bags of peanuts.  I hate the little cups of coke they bring you.  I hate the oxygen mask demonstration and the tray tables.  I hate it all!

I am not afraid of crashing.  I figure if the plane crashes, you might stand a chance of getting out alive.  No, I sit in my seat, hands curled in a death grip around the armrests, panting like a Boxer with bronchitis, waiting for the inevitable. 

“The inevitable”, you may ask?  Yes, the inevitable moment when my seat is sucked out of the bottom of the airplane, and I plunge thousands of feet to the ground, still buckled into my seat, with the tray table smacking me in the forehead as I descend.  I realize it is somewhat irrational to assume I will be sucked out of the airplane.  But I am no crazier than the people who spend five minutes lining the toilet seat in the Wal-Mart bathroom with toilet paper so they don’t catch cooties.  What’s the difference, really?

So I continued to give Tim instructions, imposing my neuroses upon him as we drove.  “Now if the plane is going down, call me,” I told him. “If I see your number pop up before I know you’re supposed to land, I will let it go to the answering machine so you can leave one final message for the children.”  He laughed at me in a very unkind way.  

So we moved on to financial matters.  After much discussion, we determined I would actually be making $.73 less per week if he died, after paying off all of our bills, even with life insurance and social security.  At that point, I started actively lobbying for his survival.  There’s no point in being a widow if you can’t be insanely rich!

We pulled up to the airport, and I let him out of the car with final instructions.  “Now don’t try to be all heroic and save anyone,” I told him.  “Step on whoever you have to and get off the plane!  They only make movies about survivors!”  He gave me a kiss and walked away quickly, presumably to get away from me in case the insanity was catching.

So he’s gone, the phone hasn’t rung yet and I am going to Kohl’s to pick out a new black dress. Just in case!!