Sunday, May 29, 2011

he knows me, he really knows me

my husband & i are only about 2 weeks from our 13th anniversary and i was thinking i'd save this post til then, but we're moving next week & my brain is all befuddled, so there's no telling when i'll have time or inspiration again.


last weekend while we were out of town in the mountains for a few days, we had a really great, relaxing time. that first night, arriving in that little town & sitting down on the couch beside my honey after brooke was tucked into bed in our cabin, i felt my soul take a deep, cleansing breath such as it hadn't taken in a very long time. it was just the thing we needed, even in spite of all the things that needed to be done at home.

i took tons of pictures as we wandered through the woods, meandered through the strip of tourist crap and wound our way through a nice zoo.










it was our last night, just a few more hours and we'd be headed back into reality. we had eaten in a nice restaurant & were driving through the back of a parking lot when something caught my eye. i was craning my neck to figure out what it was. "there's a dead duck lying on that curb over there!" i said. he looks at me, looks at the duck & says, "want me to drive closer so you can take a picture of it?"

i blinked a couple times before i burst out laughing, because of COURSE i wanted to take a picture of it! and even though i know that's kind of dark & creepy and not particularly lady-like, i totally wanted to get all up close to that dead thing so i could check it out & take a picture of it. but i wouldn't have asked because i didn't want to gross out my love. there have been so many dead creatures that we've seen & generally i don't have my camera handy when i stumble across their permanently ended paths, but here i was, camera in reach & there was a duck carcass just begging for its photo to be taken.

so chris drove up all close & positioned me just right for a good look at that dead duck. and i got my one shot of it that of course i now need to share with you guys. because who doesn't want to look at a duck dangling over the edge of a curb? who knows, it may be the only picture ever taken of him and now he will be remembered forever as the last picture i took on vacation & a sign of how well my honey knows me.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

the signs are everywhere

we were just on vacation for 5 days & i noticed some entertaining signs that i felt the need to photograph. i will now share them with you.
this was in the window of a dog clothing store.

this makes me happy.

the path was seriously bumpy due to the roots below. like an amusement park ride for children riding in strollers.

okay, it's not that funny unless you read it like a sentence. i want to know what the plastic ever did to the cans to get trashed like that. and was it trash talking? trash throwing?

i like to think of this as a grammar problem like we see so much of in tennessee. they tried to have pride, but they done forgot the S.

shocking that this place is out of business.
okay, so this wasn't a sign, it was a stool in an ice cream shop, but how random & funny is that to sit on?

if you're old enough to read that warning, you're probably old enough to know that it's not a fruity beverage.



there was also a truck that i didn't quite manage to get a picture of, but on the back was written "just consumated." and on the side window it said, "i just got laid." it was parked outside a cabin in our resort for several days & never seemed to move, so i'm guessing that truck window was telling the truth.

here's a short video i made at the zoo. i was trying to get a cute little clip of brooke brushing a friendly little goatie guy, but mr goat had other plans when i crouched down to pet him. and this was right after i'd had another goat nuzzling & licking my toes. i don't know what was up with the petting zoo, but it was certainly memorable.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

i'm number 1 and 2 and 3 and...

i was looking at my stat tracker thing & it has a new feature on it showing where you rank on google for a particular phrase. imagine my surprise when i was scanning through the various searches people have typed into google leading to me when i found that i had a #1 ranking on there for the phrase "my abs look like shit." this makes me a little bit sad. not that it's untrue, cuz in all honesty, my abs do look like shit, but still, it hurts a little to see it in black in white for all of the googling world to see.

i also rank number 1 for "status: tell me how & where we met." ever since i put out that post where you guys were so awesome about coming up with crazy ways of how we met, i've gotten a lot of hits there. i also get gobs of hits & therefore the top spot for "games for when you are sick" because i wrote something about how i was keeping brooke amused when i was super sick with pneumonia and ear & sinus infections last fall.
and i come in numero uno for "what are the only kind of bees in the world that make milk." and also for the phrase "boob arm rest." i kind of like that i've got the market on the boob arm rest, cuz that's funny.

i come in number 2 for "hair bonanza" and "obsessed with mole hair." those 2 i understand, but then i get hit with another meanie one - "do my abs look gross." again, i say yes, but let's not dwell on it, shall we?

i rank #3 for "dressing room pantyhose," "a personal fear," and "she makes me look like shit." oh and "bring it on wedgie."

there are so many more unflattering searches that bring people my way that i haven't even listed here. i've noticed that many of my posts that bring in a lot of google hits are posts that are poorly written or just plain dumb, much like this one i'm working on right now. i kept getting so many hits from "cat pee" that i finally deleted the post where i'd written about it.

what brings people to your blog? are any of the search terms particularly funny or disturbing?

Friday, May 20, 2011

bras

i've been thinking about bras. not about colors and styling options, but rather about why we wear them. and why we don't wear them sometimes and how it somehow seems to have way more significance than it should. like, no one really thinks about if the people around them are wearing underpants. on occasion we catch a glimpse of someone's drawers, but otherwise, i think most of us give little thought to the panties of the people in our midst.

but bras - bras are something we're way too aware of to ignore. if you see a woman with her bra straps showing out the edges of her tank top, you're now aware of the color she's wearing & that she doesn't care if you see it.







some women like to wear strapless or backless tops & yet still wear a normal bra. everyone who sees her stares & makes a stink face at her tacky, tawdry lack of common sense or general trashiness.

i will admit that i get a little judgey when i see a woman strolling through a public place with her boobs clearly long & swingy with no bra in evidence.



though, if i'm being honest, i must admit that i never wear one when i'm home. they are misery and discomfort. the only problem is that when i walk in the door, rip if off & yell "Boobies Free!" i then tend to toss or hang it any old place. this isn't so much a problem for me, but my husband isn't crazy about my bras lying on the kitchen floor. i can't imagine why, but whatever. so i try to remember to at least hang it from the computer desk drawer handle so it's off the floor, but then i usually forget that i've put it there.

today my landlord came over for something & of course, since i wasn't expecting company, i was in the "free zone." i've kind of gotten over the awkwardness of that since it's happened so many times in the past few years that we've lived here. but tonight he came into the kitchen to get some paper work taken care of in preparation for us moving & was leaning over the end of the computer desk writing something when i noticed that he was right up next to my bra. actually, it was brushing his knee. i willed my face not to turn red. i hoped he hadn't noticed it. or maybe he'd seen it, but didn't recognize it in that size & from that angle. a girl can dream, can't she?

the same thing happened last month, but it was with the cable guy. he was squatting down, waiting for the modem under the desk to kick back in & i saw that his face was actually only about a foot away from the bra that i'd discarded there the day before. i couldn't bear to just stand there, having a conversation with this nice, young guy while his face & arm were so close to my hooter holder, so i slowly inched closer & closer to him, then reached out & slowly pulled it off the handle and then backed away, whipped it behind my back and scampered over to brooke's toy box where i promptly stuffed it down in. i'm sure that wasn't obvious or anything.

and now i'll leave you with a lil joke - what did one saggy boob say to the other saggy boob?   "if we don't get some support soon, people will think we're nuts!"

Saturday, May 14, 2011

sleepy time adventures

tonight i was tucking the kid in & kissing her goodnight and i had a flashback to my own childhood. you see, she's sleeping in a pillow pile on her bedroom floor rather than in her bed. every so often she makes up a little nest somewhere in her room & then sleeps there for a few nights & then the fun wears off & she goes back to her top bunk again. this time the space is really small & she can't even stretch her legs out, but she's curled up like a big puppy, happy as can be.

when i was a kid, my brother (who is only a year older than myself) and i used to sleep all over the place and our nests weren't limited to our bedrooms. we slept on various floors, under the baby grand piano with couch cushions propped up around it to close us in. we slept in the dry bathtub. we draped blankets over the kitchen table & slept under there and at one point, we even slept under the ping pong table in the cellar. i didn't know until i woke up the next morning, but sleeping in our funky basement caused my brother to have an asthma attack & he had to be taken for medical treatment in the middle of the night. i wondered why he wasn't still down there on the concrete floor with me when i woke up the next morning, but i never could've guessed the answer.

i slept in a crack/fort space in between a couple sheets of sheetrock & beams in the cellar when we discovered it was in there & we could slither in if we dragged up a ladder and shimmied in just so. there was even a peak hole where we could spy out to see if anyone was coming. or to beg for food if we got hungry & it was too much effort to slip & slide back out of the hole.

sometimes we had an adventure together and camped out with our sleeping bags side by side and other times we had solo adventures. on one of my wacky solo sleep-outs, i chose to bed down in my favorite weird place, which was behind the couch. i'd slept there on several previous occasions, but this time i decided that i wanted to take my book with me so i could read for a bit before going to sleep. however, since i was wedged in tightly behind the couch in such a way that i couldn't even bend my legs in my holly hobby sleeping bag, there was very little light by which to read my book. then i had the great idea to take my bedroom lamp with me. i ran up & got it, plugged it in & realized that it would never fit back there with the lampshade, so i yanked the shade off & sure enough, it fit just fine then. i got myself & my book situated with the cat curled up close to my pillow to enjoy the newly installed heat lamp.


 i was reading myself into a slumber when one of my parents came running into the room, clearly upset.

"what is that smell? what's burning?! SHERILIN!?!"

that's when we realized that in putting that shadeless lamp back there with me, the light bulb was just about pressed against the fabric on the back of the couch & i had burned a hole in the back of the couch, which, by that time was a smoldering mess of blackened, plaid nylon.

but i'll always take with me the joy of my childhood sleeping adventures. being free to pick a spot, any weird spot & curl up there for a night of dreaming about being a hobbit or a fairy or a dallas cowboy cheerleader, without any adult telling me that it wasn't proper or acceptable to sleep in the place that fed my imagination with a healthy dose of happiness. so thank you, mom and dad, and i pass that gift down to my own girl.

Monday, May 9, 2011

changes a-comin

we've got a lot of changes going on right now. chris has been sick a lot & extremely stressed out. he's had the gamut of tests run & we're trying to figure out how to deal with all the challenges this has created. at the same time, things in the land of home school have been less than ideal and many, many tears have been shed. there are other things too, but those are the low highlights.

so we've decided to move to another city in another state, about 6 hrs from here. we're moving to where our families live. it seems like it's long overdue because for the past few years, our world has been shrinking around us until we mainly exist in our little house with just us. we have some friends, but we don't get to see them often & with no car every evening, i can't go out to spend time with people. i'm a social person & i miss human interaction terribly. i feel like i've been drowning as i've been swimming spastically in circles for a while now & it needs to change.

hopefully this move is exactly what we need to put us back onto a good path. hopefully chris can find a new job in the field he has chosen, but hasn't yet become employed, once we get to an area of the country that's bigger and has a better job market. there's a ton to be done in the next 4 weeks to get us ready & get us out of here, but i've vowed that this will be our most organized move yet. i've already started cleaning, organizing & purging as much clutter as i can to make it easier on moving day.

as much as i've been feeling overwhelmed and stressed, there are still some very bright spots for me. this morning, chris & brooke were watching a documentary about a sunken ship being recovered from 1000 ft below. i heard brooke ask chris, "why do they always call boats 'she'?" and his reply warmed my heart. he told her that boats and sometimes cars or other similar objects are called females because they're beautiful & valuable to the men who own them and talk about them. he said that women are powerful and bring joy and they are cherished and beloved by their men and so as a way of complimenting their women, they call their machines girls too.

i never would have come up with that explanation if she'd asked me that same question. it made me feel again how happy i am to have a man who loves and values me and who is teaching our daughter that she is a thing of beauty and strength and a treasure to be treated as such through her whole life.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

a lil trip down memory lane

as i was going through my old pictures the other day, looking for evidence of the bedbaby addiction, i came across so many old picture that made me fall in love with my sweet girl all over again. and since it's mother's day weekend, i thought i'd share a few of my favorite pictures with you guys & tell you how glad i am to be a mom.

we had infertility issues that we discovered a couple years after we got married and i think that has made me appreciate motherhood even more. after having two miscarriages just 3 months apart when brooke was 3 years old, i decided that the one child i had was fine and enough and wonderful. i'd always imagined that i'd have at least 3 kids, but that didn't seem to be the plan for my life.

so i threw myself, heart and soul, into brooke. she was my miracle. my one and only. the one i think about when i wake in the morning and would throw myself in front of a train to save. my dreams came true when she was born and i've been able to be the mom i was meant to be, for her and her alone.

the sweetest little one year old face i ever got to kiss.



after chicken pox, her face was marked with pink spots, but the smile and chubby cheek dimples still melt my heart.

this is one that i can still just stare at, wondering what she was thinking about inside her head.


brooke and belle having a bonding moment under the table.


she was singing "triangle, triangle, little star," complete with her own hand motions.

i got her a kimono to wear for easter one year. it was way past her bedtime, but her tired little eyes were still sparkling.


scary T-rex only has 2 fingers per hand.

the wonder and awe of bubbles flying around the bathroom.

hmm... should i be a paleontologist or a herpetologist?


good times around the aquarium.


please, mommy, please can't we have another cat? see, this stray really, really loves me!

even on days at home with nothing going on, we still have oodles of fun together.

times have certainly changed in the past 9 years of our lives. there's no more baby voice singing the alphabet song. no one's wearing the dinosaur costume to the store anymore. bubbles aren't as amazing as they once were. but instead i've got someone more closely resembling a companion. we laugh at the same jokes. we like drawing together out of the same tutorial books. i was looking at a bottle of tums to see if she's supposed to get one or two for a stomach ache & she told me, "don't worry, mom, tums are rated E for everyone."  last night she told me that instead of reading books together, she wanted a massage and to just hang out and talk with me.

these are beautiful things. they make my life feel like it matters. they keep my spirits up when they're sagging and put joy into my life when i feel like it's missing.

thank you, God, for making me a mom to this amazing and wonderful girl.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

ode to bedbaby

i've been lacking for blogging motivation lately, but got a little burst of inspiration from karen over at "ow, my anst" and that's how this little ditty came to be.

for any parent who has a kid who falls truly, madly, deeply in love with an object, when they're a really little kid, you can understand that the object, whether it be a toy, blankie, passie, doll or batman dvd (i saw a kid carrying one around a park one day & his dad said he never ever puts it down) becomes a part of the family. you can't go anywhere without it, you tuck it into bed each night, there's a good chance that it has a name & maybe even a personality or voice.

brooke was a newborn baby when she got her soft bodied doll. i used to tuck it into her crib with her since there were no hard parts and by the time she was 9 months old, we were calling it bedbaby & she was calling it "beeboppy." she loved bedbaby's hands, which are like little mittens with just a thumb & she would rub that thumb onto her lips as she was falling asleep. by the time her first birthday rolled around, bedbaby & brooke were inseparable.

this was on brooke's first birthday


brooke was a very vomitous child & that, added to the fact that she rarely put bedbaby down, resulted in me needing to wash her frequently. this was a problem. so we solved that problem by buying a second baby when we ran across one in a store. then, over the next year or two, we bought 2 more, resulting in us owning 4 bedbabies. i would rotate them out regularly so that all of them would hopefully be equally satisfactory and less than pristine so that brooke wouldn't know that there were in fact 4 babies. but then she found my stash. there was a whole pile of bedbabies in her closet & suddenly, she needed all of them, all the time. this became a frustration because when it was time to go somewhere, she felt the need to round them all up & truck them along with us on our outings. i had to put the kabosh on that pretty quick & she wasn't allowed to take more than 2 out at a time.



the other thing about brooke & her babies is that when she was out of the house with her babies, she would rarely take her thumb out of her mouth if a baby was in her hand. by the time she was 3, i had to forbid her to take them out of the car when we went places so that she wouldn't go into that drone state where she wouldn't talk or interact with the world, would only suck her thumb & go off to la-la-brookie-land.





at some point she decided that she had a favorite out of all the babies & that favorite was chosen based on her thumb. apparently, from how she can explain it now, this particular one has the biggest thumb & therefor it is the most desirable for lip rubbing. she named that one goodbaby. there was a runner-up in the thumb competition & she named that one newbaby since it was the most recently acquired addition to the baby gang that ruled our house. the other two were dubbed otherbaby & otherbaby. they were unappreciated because their thumbs were little more than nubs.


now baby lives only in brooke's bed unless we're going on a trip. she no longer inspires thumb sucking, but she's a source of big comfort and companionship during the dark hours.

there was even a poem written in her honor. my mom wrote it for brooke during bedbaby's hay days, before i started restricting her usage.

EDIT: for any of you who may have been here & read the original post, you'll notice that the poem is gone now.  i didn't ask my mom for permission before posting it & since it's her work, i should have done that. we've been thinking for years about making a book out of it, so maybe one day the bedbaby poem will be back in the form of a baby board book.