what kind of bees make milk?

i like to have a little fun when i'm writing sometimes, by recounting the moments when stupid or embarrassing things happen to me. most of you have probably figured that out by now. i also love hearing the stupid or embarrassing stories that have happened to others. especially when those stories come from people who normally don't share or volunteer such things because they have dignity & class and generally don't stoop to the level of revealing their shamefully hilarious events. what, for most people, would be something to tuck away & try to forget, i relish every awful detail & try to remember it clearly so i can tell or write the story later.

one of the funny, embarrassing things that has happened to me many times in the course of my adult life is that i tend to drop things into my cleavage. i know, i know, if i wore shirts with higher necklines, that wouldn't be such an issue, but sometimes, a girl's got to show off her assets a little bit, especially when out on a date with the husband. and turtlenecks just aren't very sexy.

i dropped a big blob of ice cream down there in a restaurant once & had to try to wipe it out without flashing anyone. and i drop pieces of popcorn down there all the time when we go to the movies. i've had bits of chips fall while at social gatherings or queso drips when we're dining on mexican fare.

but my favorite story on that topic happened one day when i was taking communion in church & managed to drop almost a whole wafer straight down between the girls. at first i thought i'd just leave it there & fish it out later, but alas, it must have broken on its journey into the abyss because suddenly i felt the scratching & irritating from a nasty little broken edge & i knew it had to come out. for some reason it didn't occurr to me to go into the bathroom to deal with this. looking back that seems pretty obvious, but at the time, all i could think was "should i go in from the top or the bottom?" i attempted a discreet dig from above, but by that point, it was too low down. so then i tried to slowly maneuvre my hand up my shirt all the while singing along with the congregation & trying to keep a neutral face so i wouldn't give away that i was getting to second base with myself. i did finally manage to free myself from that scratchy lil morsel, but then what to do with it? i didn't want to eat it after it had been hanging with the meat balloons, but they don't serve napkins w/ communion. so i settled for putting it into my pocket, only to be reminded of the incident when i found the remants in the laundry a few days later.

i got an email from a friend today, telling me that she dropped a slice of cheese down between the ta-tas while fixing dinner today & that was my inspiration for this post. i'd love to hear from any of you who've had one of these hilariously unfortunate events. share with me, if you will, a time when your boobs ate the keys to the car you just finished test driving. or your girls were unwilling food storage containers. or you lost your cell phone & then found it under your left hooter. whatever your story, i'd love to hear it!

nessie and the furbaby

i seem to have issues with vacuum cleaners. they're heavy, clunky, dirty & they often blow hot air at me, which i hate. i use a lot of different ones because, well, i'm a low-down, dirty maid. actually, i prefer to call myself a "housekeeper extraordinaire", but it all amounts to the same thing at the end of the day. scullery duty.

have you ever used a central vacuum in a house? they usually work really well & you don't have to deal with insufficient suction, but dang, those things are tough to work with. the hoses are about 40 ft long, they're heavy & they're covered in a hose sock. that means you're having to drag around pounds & pounds of slithering, serpent through room after room & those wily coils are sneaky too. they will reach out & snatch a chair leg or a small table & try to take it down. they look harmless, but they're actually beasts from the deep, dark lagoon. whenever i work with one, i silently call it nessie (as in, lochness monster), trying to make it think that we have a close and affectionate relationship in hopes that it will behave itself and not knock anything over out of spite or anger for having been awakened and disturbed and then expected to perform.

in my own house, i don't have such fancy dirt sucking technology. today i found myself on the floor with both of the simple vacuums i own. i snipped, pulled, yanked and chopped enough hair, yarn, string, and crud out of the roller bars of one that i could have made a medium sized stuffed animal with it. maybe after brooke goes to bed tonight, i'll dig the clump out of the trash, if the cat hasn't consumed it all yet, & pull out all my crafty skills & turn it into something exciting and new. maybe i'll even make a little outfit for it & give it to her for valentine's day. we'll name it dustin. or tumble.

i dismantled the other sucky machine to try to empty & clean it. i swear, i had my arm so far up in that thing, i felt like i was helping to birth a cow. but instead of slime and happy, wet cow babies, i only had a big bag full of hairy yuck, dust to my elbow and funk under my fingernails. but it gives new meaning to phrase furbaby.

good times in farty town

my good buddy tracy, over at It's An Average Life is hosting a month long "battle of the blogs" where she has a bunch of followers who signed up for some debating good times. she chose the pairings, mostly boys against girls, and she gave us each a quirky topic & which position we would be arguing. i was paired up with underground dude and our topic was flatulence. what a lucky surprise for me since i do enjoy some good potty humor & when i'm given an assignment to write about it, it makes me feel more mature, like it's a legitimate exercise.

so if you want to go check it out over in tracy town, here's the link to gassy greatness. (*update. that link goes to a dead page. here's a link that will take you to the story.)

and for those of you who are here from checking me out after reading that tacky delight, WELCOME! i appreciate you & i'm glad you're here! introduce yourselves & i'll come check you out.

where did we meet?

you know how on facebook, sometimes people will write in their status, "tell me how we met each other and then make this your status so i can return the favor." i always thought that was kind of stupid because aren't we supposed to already know how we met our friends and family members? and if you tell me how we met, why do i then need to tell you how we met? will the stories be different?

tonight i saw a different take on it, and it was an idea i had to borrow. it says to leave a message telling how we met, but make it a lie. i added that the more creative & amusing the answers, the more cool points one would receive. you know, from God, or whoever's in charge of cool points.

i got some great responses that actually made me laugh.
" We really bonded in that state facility after our frontal lobotomies. I think the shock therapy was really beneficial for you, but the ice water immersion really didn't help me much long term. Hope you're doing well - I still don't like wearing my helmet, but at least my sitter has started letting me use scissors on craft projects!"

i had one from one of my blog friends, creatingme, who had clearly read my last post.
"I was the nurse tech at your first mammogram. Nice tush!"

i apparently met one former church friend at a gay bar where she was checking me out & i also give a mean prison tat. i was taught by monks in the mountains and got breast implants with my aunt where she questioned my judgement since she seemed to think that DD was big enough. silly, silly woman. bigger is always better.

i had a great one from my brother.
"Almost can't even remember those early years in the orphanage anymore... I mostly just remember it was so overcrowded... But I will never forget the pillow fights! That was the only time we boys were allowed to interact with you girls for any length of time. Your plan to convince Ms. Wadsworth to alter your birth certificate to match my last name in order to get Mom and Dad to adopt us both and get you out of there was devious, but brilliant! Love ya, "sis". "

and a naughty one from my friend who i've never met face to face. she's a frisky one, this girl!
"Sherilin and I used to date before I had my sex change... she inspired me to switch teams... haven't regretted it yet. Although some days I feel "clueless" as a woman, and I get" Blue" missing being "Steve." Least Sherilin can't send me to the doghouse anymore.Cause she liked it Ruff,ruff,ruff. :P"

and another friend who loves to mock me when i get a little too excited about the raccoons & possums who come up on my deck to eat the food that i put out for them (shut up, i like them) wrote,
"The great raccoon expedition '90.....I was completely enthralled by your lecture "Befriending Earth's Creatures". Later, while you were talking with the raccoons brought in for exhibit, I approached you about their diets and how important it is......fast friends we were.....fast friends for sure!"

now, i know many of you bloggers out there are wonderfully creative and hilarious and i'm wanting to play this game with you too.  feed me a big, fat load of crap and tell me about our imaginary meeting. the wackier, the better! i would like to make the best commenters guest authors on my page in the near future, if you're up for it, so bring it on!

equal trade in mammogram town

this was written last april, but i'm re-posting it for your reading pleasure.

last year i went for my first mammogram. i had a minor issue & a family history of breast cancer, so it was time to get it done. i arrived for my appointment and the nurse delivered me to a dressing room & told me to disrobe, put my clothes into a locker, put on a gown & go sit in a waiting room until my name was called. ok. once she was out of my cubby, i realized that it seemed strange to have to strip down all the way when i was only getting a tittie exam, but i decided to err on the side of extra nudity. once, when i was pregnant, i thought i was just getting a belly check & didn't take off my pants. my obgyn told me i needed to remove them &  then stood there while i peeled them off, which was rather awkward. it's one thing that he looks up the hole, it's quite another thing to be expected to do a strip tease for him before the getting into the stirrups.

after having a child, i'd gotten over my aversion to getting caught with my pants down in doctor's offices, so i thought this time i'd just take it all off. i walked carefully out to the waiting room so as to not expose my girlie goodies. i was concerned that if i crossed my legs, the lady sitting across from would notice that i hadn't groomed up my bikini region recently. i also noticed the other women in the room were wearing shoes while i was barefooted because it seemed silly to wear shoes with my hospital gown. but i figured we were all probably beginners and i'd most likely be one up on them when i breezed through expediently, bare and prepared, while they were stopped and asked to remove their shoes and socks. 

eventually i was called across the hall for my boob crushing appointment. the technician proceeded to help me jam my left tittie into the vice & in order to do so i need to take that arm out of my fancy gown. causing the majority of my body to be left, exposed to the elements. i'm pretty sure my entire armpit was also pulled into that thing at one stage, but that's beside the point. the tech lady stepped away & looked down at me (i could only barely see her out of the corner of my eye as i tried to crane my neck around to make sure she was moving at an acceptably speedy clip) and i saw her eyes bug out of her head for a split second as she caught a glimpse of my pasty white rear. she tried to fix her face quickly, but the look of shock was definitely there. i heard her gulp before she stammered, "uh, um, most people, uh well, you really only needed to take off your top." seriously?!! you'd think the nurse lady would have told me that before i stripped my ass bare! as if having my entire chest and armpit area crammed into a garbage disposal type mechanism while standing on tip toe & trying not to move or scream wasn't bad enough, now i was also worried about my apparently inappropriate nudity that was clearly making this lady uncomfortable! way to make a good impression!

at some point in the way-too-long-and-torturous process, i started to find the humor. like me exposing my pubies to her was making her uncomfortable (especially since she had to be leaned in close and snuggly) & her wrangling my monstrous tit into her torture machine was making me uncomfortable, so it was like an equal trade. tit for twat.

nuggets of childhood

years ago, when i was looking out at my future life & the things that i expected it to hold, i saw myself with a few kids & in a neighborhood where the kids all roamed free like a pack of friendly dogs. eating lunch at this house one day or swimming in that backyard another day. i guess i imagined that it would look like my life when i was growing up. i'm one of 4 kids & our family always lived in neighborhoods where there were a lot of kids & activities.

i was homeschooled, starting in 5th grade and i had a little bit of a complex about being the weird kid since homeschooling kind of hadn't been invented yet. the average person had never heard of it and we were questioned about it frequently. along the way, we eventually met a few other homeschooled kids, but they were total freaks, in my mind. they were the kids who's mom never wore a bra and they wore tacky clothes and bad shoes. they didn't know who the popular musicians were and had never been to a movie theatre. i considered myself to be way cooler than them, even though i knew i wasn't terribly high up on the cool ladder when it came to the rest of the world.

because of this, i feel like i need to keep brooke informed about things and teach her all the stuff that kids usually learn from each other. she's my only one, there are no kids in our neighborhood and she's homeschooled. i've got a pretty tight reign on who her social contacts are, which i generally think is a good thing since i can let her wait until she's ready to learn about stuff rather than some kid showing her porn on the bus on the way to school & now she knows what intercourse is.

but i think it's fun to tell her the stupid crap that kids say to each other that generally parents tsk-tsk about, so that she won't be clueless when she runs into it down the road. stuff like "i know you are, but what am i?" or "i'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me & sticks to you." it's like i have license to return to my childhood & dig into those old ridiculous things kids say and sing, in the interest of keeping her normal. we taught her the lyrics to "on top of old smokey" and of course the "beans, beans, the musical fruit" poem.  ooo, and i just remembered another one that i need to teach her tomorrow- "great green globs of greasy, grimy gopher guts, mutilated monkey meat, itty bitty birdies' feet. great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts, and me without my spoon."

i've sung her the old songs that we used when jumping rope or skipping or doing those hand clappy games. and not long ago, i taught her the classic, "there's a place in france where the naked ladies dance. there's a hole in the wall so that i can see them all."  and we can't forget the always creepy, but fun toilet ditty, "i see your hiney, so bright and shiny. you better hide it, before i bite it."

i'm sure there are plenty more that i've forgotten or somehow missed during my own childhood & i'd like to make a plea, to you, my bloggy friends, to help my child have a full and well rounded childhood. share with us your wisdom or your folly, but educate us in the ways of children everywhere so that brooke won't feel like she's missed out any of the colorful little nuggets that must be passed on to each and every child.

the van potty x2

here's my re-offering of the day. for any of you who've read it, i hope you'll come back for the next post. i'll try to make it fresh & exciting. because this one is definitely not fresh.

we still carry a potty in our van. actually, we took the backseat out of the van so that we could fit some big stuff in there at christmas time & it's never gone back in, so it functions as a mobile storage unit. but brooke likes to think of that space as her own personal room, including toileting facilities. there have been many, many times when it has saved us, like when we're at a park where the bathrooms are locked or non-existent. or when we go to the grocery store in july, get everything loaded into the van to go home & then suddenly she has a desperate need to pee that didn't arrive until just that second. or when we're in a traffic jam on the highway, she needs to go & we can't get off an exit. this potty has saved us from many, many moments of peepee panic. (i wish i could use it since i'm often just as guilty as brooke about needing to go when there are no facilities available, due to my own self diagnosed SBS. i haven't tried it yet, but one day i may be desperate enough. i'll let you know if it happens & how it turns out.)

one time, i was loading some stuff into the van at toys-r-us & while i was doing so, brooke crept around to her potty & made use of the facilities. i think she secretly holds it sometimes just because she likes using the van pot more than public bathrooms. maybe it feels scandalous or exotic to pee in the car. i don't know.

anyway, she calls out, "mom, i used my potty!"

me, "okay, fine. let me come around to the back so i can dump it in the back of the parking lot. you didn't throw the tissue into the pee again did you?"

brooke, "weeeelllll.... noo.... i didn't put the tissue in."

me, "so what's the problem? what did you do?"

brooke, "uummm... i.... pooped."

i closed the door & mentally had a mini tantrum. we were just inside a store where there was a flushing toilet. and plenty of toilet paper. but did she use it? NO! she'd rather take a dump in the hot van in august & then put the soiled tissues into the little van trash can.

ok, too late to be mad. at least she didn't crap herself. now, what to do with it... normally with a pee pot i'd find a grassy spot at the edge of the parking lot or at least the far back of a parking lot where people generally don't go & pour it there. this was a different situation. i couldn't very well toss the log into the toys-r-us parking lot and i didn't relish the idea of carrying it up to the building to where there were trash cans & disposing of it in view of other customers.okay, so i can't get rid of it here. what other options do i have? we're not heading home yet where i could dispose of it properly & since it's august, i don't want to cart it around with us where it will get extra ripe while marinating in the car during our next few errands.

maybe i could smear mud over my license plate & put on dark glasses and a hat and sling it out the window while driving to our next stop. but with my luck, i'd throw it into the open window of a car next to us & then be hunted by an angry, poop smeared ex-con. or it would just slide down the outside of my van & i wouldn't know & i'd go through the drive-through at taco bell & the person working would be like, "ma'am, i think there's.... a turd stuck to your door." or i'd chicken out at the last second & hesitate in mid-throw causing it to mostly stay inside the van, sliding down the inside of the driver's door and getting caught in the little pocket, but splattering me in the process. or it would splash while sitting on the passenger seat before i found the perfect moment & then i'd have to clean the seat. or before i had the chance to pitch it, someone in a taller vehicle than mine would drive up alongside of me & look over & spot the hot pink poop filled pot & then look at me in horror & realize that they know me & actually they're one of my customers & then i lose my job. or i'd be holding the pot in my hand, waiting for the perfect moment to roll down & toss & i'd get rear ended & it would all go up in my face & i'd have some explaining to do when an officer showed up on the scene. "yes officer, that is feces on my forehead.... yes, it is pee soaking my shirt. no, i haven't been drinking. i was just planning to throw a bucket of shit out the window of my moving vehicle when there was a gap in traffic. no, it's not my own shit. no, i don't do pranks like that... it was in the back of my van... no, i already told you, i haven't been drinking!"

eventually i found what seemed like an acceptable solution to me & i pulled into the back of the target parking lot to one of those places where there's a bit of grass & a tree between parking spots and i crouched low, walking stealthily & poured out the mess into the wood chip area at the base of the tree. i know, it's gross & horrible, but i thought at least there was a possibility that whoever found it would think that it must have been a dog who left that deposit. i mean, who would have ever guessed the truth?