Archives for May 2006

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
~Them, those one people~

I think that is one the dumbest phrases in the English language. Of course you do. If that pharse were true, Dan never would have married me. It’s not that I made a bad impression on him. I just didn’t make one at all. We knew each other for several moths before he remembered my name.

When he finally did, he asked me out every day until we got married. It was very sweet, really. There have been many times when I have misjudged someone the first time I’ve met them and found out later that they were actually very nice, regardless of how pretty or talented they were.

This weekend, many of us will be making first impressions with babes we’ve been chatting with online for months. I know first impressions can be overcome with time, but time…she ain’t what we’ve got this weekend. One dinner. That’s it. I make an impression over salad and then I only have until the last bite of pasta and exchange of marvelous wit to leave a lasting impression on my internet idols.

My suggestions for myself for this specific occasion are:
-Don’t tell anyone, “Wow, your picture online is really really flattering! I hardly recognize you.”
-Don’t spill food, spew on anyone, or horkle soda out your nose when laughing at some funny thing Karen says.
-Say at least one sentence that does not involve computers or small people.
-Stop talking.

Please share your words of wisdom on how to make a good first impression or at least not come across as a total goober in front of new acquaintances. This does not have to be specific to meeting people you know from the internet. You may not be “that kind” of person. I’d also be happy to hear about ways you’ve completely embarrassed yourself when meeting someone for the first time. Those are always fun… in retrospect.

P.S. The house hunting is progressing. I even think we’ve found a winner. Keep your fingers, toes and nostrils crossed for us.

I got the dates wrong, even though I totally know them. The Idaho dinner is on SATURDAY night. I will be on the road Friday if you’d like to join my in a truckstop corndog somewhere in Oregon.*

*Disclaimer – you will not be allowed to pump your own gas and you’ll have to drive 60mph.

Sorry I’ve been a blogging deadbeat for a few days. Interest rates are rising, house prices show no sign of stopping their insane rise in the Seattle area and we’re feeling an itch to move from our condo to a single-family home before the price gap get’s too wide to ever cross. Having learned from Jeana, the intercontinental traveler, to “mind the gap” last week, I decided to take her advice.

It’s been enlightening so far and yes, mostly in a depressing sort of way. There are thousands of Microsoft employees, and young retired millionaire former employees, who are helping drive up house prices. Our condo has shot up 50% in value in the last 2 years and other houses in the area are doing the same.

The problem is – everyone who likes their spouse wants to live close to the city to avoid a long commute so houses in decent school districts, close to the office are too rich for our blood. We’re talking $500k for a 2000sqft, 30-year-old home with very little yard.

Before we started looking, I told myself 3 things:
1. In order to move up, we have to move down.
2. I am spoiled in our luxury condo and should be prepared to move into a “fixer-upper” that I won’t be able to fix up for the next 10 years due to the staggering new mortgage payment.
3. I am totally fine with this.

Now, number three is where I start to come unhinged. I am in fact not okay paying $450K for a small dark split-level with almost no back yard that needs a ton of renovation. I will say that the home I’m referring to had a lovely patio with a great view of the potbellied neighbor guy sitting in an old lawn chair, wearing a wife-beater and smoking while the thousands of dogs across the street yapped their heads off.

Dan said that half of you are probably potbellied middle-aged sweaty male smokers, wearing wife-beaters and posing as mommy bloggers so I should be careful what I say. Sorry if I offended anyone.

The most disturbing thing about the house was actually the hearse parked on the street two houses down because they had too many beat-up cars in the driveway.

In many of the neighborhoods we visited, people didn’t park their old cars or hearses on the street. The lawn was just fine. What is the deal with parking multiple old junkers on you front lawn? Why, I ask you, WHY?

Saturday started with all 4 of us suffering from a yucky cold, getting a cavity filled and being told by a friend that the schools in the areas we were planning on looking were “scary.” We then looked at the homes with the “scary” schools and hearse-driving, yappy-dog-owning, hoopty-collecting neighbors, started getting used to it and thinking it might be okay, but decided just to take a peek at a neighborhood WAY out, so far out that I would likely never see Dan again, so far out that we actually fell in love with a couple of homes in our price range and realized that we were not at all satisfied with the things we’d seen closer in. Then by the time we drove all the way back to our condo, we realized that we were not okay with a commute that long.

So, we’re back where we started.

AARRRG! But it’s fun…right?

FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT — Several of us are meeting together for dinner this coming SATURDAY night in Boise, ID. If you plan on attending, please email me and I will send you the information. The deadline for getting our final numbers to the restaurant is Wednesday so if you’re bringing someone, please let me know that too. I’m really excited. There will be some wonderful bloggers there. I hope you’ll be one of them.

Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day.

Oh, and I am so TICKED that the West Wing is over. The 10 other remaining viewers and I should get together for a bawl fest sometime.

Oh, and does anyone want to buy a really sweet 2-year-old condo across the street from a Bambi forest and backing onto a duck pond with actual bulrushes? Moses could be in there! …or a frog or something.

When I read about Piglet being blown away, I wonder what gauge weapon will be used and who will be wielding it. Eyeore seems the most unstable mentally, although Rabbit has shown himself capable of physical aggression in the past. Kanga is right out, but Roo wants so badly to fit in. Who’s to say that he’s not planning the job, maybe earn him some respect from the whole gang? They all made nice at the end of The Heffalump Movie but I think that book

is pretty solid evidence of the rising tide of violence in their little world. Christo-Robinizzle is too high up in the food chain to take anyone out himself. He’d undoubtedly use one of his henchmen. I don’t think it would be too hard to convince T-I-double-Guh-ER to “bounce” little pink, if you knowahmsayin’. After that whole forgery of documents and posing as a member of his long lost Tigger posse, in The Tigger Movie, our boy is not exactly right with Mr. T. At least the Pooh’s got his back… for now.

Got any theories, yo?

I remember a while back Angela’s daughter was freaking her out a wee bit by telling her morbid things about her future. The past few days Laylee has been telling me what we should do when our house falls down. Has anyone told her that Seattle is expecting a major earthquake any day now or do we just read too much about the three little pork chops? I promise our house is not made of straw.

However, Laylee is fairly certain that it will be falling down soon. When it does, we are to evacuate immediately and go live at Grammy’s house until our house gets put back up again.

Then today she told me that tomorrow we are all going to die. Um, thanks for the warning. I asked her if tomorrow was the day the house was gonna fall down. She said “no”. We’re just gonna die. So if I don’t post…

Now I will share with you something else that’s been disturbing me into hysterical laughter:

So Piglet’s gonna get blown away, huh? What kind of hood is this Hundred Acre Wood?

How do you get your kids to work FOR you, not against you? Last night we gave Laylee her first allowance so we could teach her about saving money and paying tithing. She was pretty much stoked that 5 of the shiny monies (dimes) went into her pink pig’s belly.

I’m not sure if she understands the tithing thing but she did keep saying that her savings box was for college. We gave her several options for the use of her 40 large, but she insisted that her savings were for college. Nice. At this rate, she will have her bachelor’s in approximately… never.

When I explained what allowance was, I told her that she would also be expected to do more “responsibilities” around the house. She was very excited about this plan. Responsibilities = big-girlness. Big-girlness = eating as many peeps as you can fit in your mouth because you’re tall enough to reach the cupboard of coma-inducing refined sugar products.

Currently she helps me set the table, clear her place, “make the bed” (cackle), and “dust.” Not bad for a three year old, but I still don’t think she’s earning her keep.

When we were young, my mom made chores fun by having us “play vacuum cleaner” (Dealers were exempt.). Yes, she trained us all to be dealers. We also tried various chore charts. These were more fun when we were younger and not as able – To Deal. (Isn’t that the name of a Mandy Moore flick?)

Some were not so much fun, such as the “15 minute blitz.” This involved my mom running around like crazy, talking really fast and peppily urging us on like a cheerleader as we tried to make it look like our limbs were moving quickly to clean the house, while making sure that we were cleaning less than our siblings. I HATED the 15 minute blitz with all of my soul. I am SO using it on my kids. I will also be singing the “Good Morning To You” song as I flip on their light and sing tales of orange juice and “get out of bed you lazy bum.” They will LOVE it.

How do you get your sweet little freeloaders to start earning* their 25 cents per week, not to mention all the food and toilet paper they consume? (Yes, I do mean eating toilet paper. Another day, another story about my kids finding ways to be absolutely disgusting at lightning speed. If I’d just been two seconds faster, I could have stopped it. Two seconds slower and I wouldn’t have had to witness it. But hey, I dip my Oreos. I guess TP ain’t the only thing that tastes better when wet.)

*I don’t think chores should be directly linked to allowance. I’d love your opinions on that issue too.

Laylee’s speech seems to be regressing this weekend. She’s picked up this really annoying version of baby talk that sounds more like a 23-year-old imitating a baby for a Saturday Night Live sketch or an idiot Munchkin that was too mentally slow to be allowed to welcome Dorothy to Munchkin Land in song.

I’m not sure if she thinks linguistically-deficient-demented munchkins are cute or if she just hopes this new way of speaking will scare us into giving her what she wants. It is rather scary. I had trouble explaining to her what “annoying means but I do think she caught my stop-talking-like-that drift. She told me that she wasn’t doing it. It was actually her little yellow clip talking. Also scary.

Language is important.

I found that my doctor took me much more seriously this week when I used words like “concerned”, “acute”, and “localized”, rather than my previous visit where I said things more along the lines of “freaked out”, “it kills”, and “seems weird to me.”

I remember leaving the previous visit feeling invalidated and disappointed that she hadn’t taken my concerns seriously. I was ticked, dude.

This time around tests were done, recommendations were made and I have to say, BTW, it still kills, but I have a follow-up scheduled.

So, the moral of this post is, you get more from people when you speak their language. My doctor’s language of choice is not freaked-out-new-moma-ese. My language of choice is not developmentally-delayed-munchkin-ish. And I know the yellow clip is not culpable.

This has been sort of a motto (sometimes excuse) I’ve used throughout my life for my desire to see the humor in nearly any situation. At times it’s served me well, lightening the mood at a crucial moment, and at other times it’s gotten me into trouble.

This blog, often categorized as a ‘humor’ blog, was created as an outlet when I was going through the hardest period of my life to date. I was in so much physical and emotional pain. What could be more natural than writing about my life in a way that would crack other people up?

The first time I remember this concept being discussed was at my grandpa’s funeral. He had died suddenly and it was traumatic for all the grandkids. On the way to the funeral, we stopped for some fast food. As we were loading the drinks into the van, my mom started it up and it immediately lurched forward, drinks exploding everywhere. Every surface of the van was drenched in soda, not conducive to a long car ride. We drove all the way back home, cleaned out the van, put tarps on all of the seats and started out again. Along the way we saw a rainbow and I remember my mom producing giggles by telling us it must be a sign from God that he would never flood the van with soda again.

At the internment, we found humor in the fact that Grandpa’s next door grave neighbor was named James Kirk. How cool to be laid to rest next to the captain.

After the family dinner, out of a clear blue sky came a large dark cloud that rested right over the house where we were staying. Down poured an amazing deluge of hail. All of the grandkids went nuts, running, screaming and laughing through the pelting storm, as sun shone all around the dark cloud. It was an amazing emotional release at the end of a dreadful day. We felt sure that Grandpa had requested the storm for us personally, sick of seeing his grandkids looking so forlorn.

At Aunt J’s funeral service, the tears were near constant. She is a woman almost impossible to hyperbolize. She really IS that wonderful, not in a “perfect” way but in a perfectly real and loving way. When my mother-in-law was discussing her talk for the funeral, Aunt J stopped her at one point in her list of attributes, semi-annoyed, and said, “DON’T LIE.” I love that about her.

At every step of the two-day funeral process, Laylee would ask us, “Is this the part where her body and spirit get stuck back together and she can move again?” Sadly, no, it never was. At one point, frustrated, she asked, “Okay. Then can she please PLEASE get resurrected tomorrow?”

Soon. Soon. Not soon enough for my taste, but I guess “soon” is relative.

Laylee had everyone around her cracking up during the funeral service. She got so bored halfway through when it became apparent that no Beauty-and-the-Beast-style fireworks would be coming from the “Snow White bed” where J’s body was lying, that she started distributing goldfish crackers up and down the church pew to friends, family members and complete strangers. On her second pass, she grabbed a handful so large, it was obvious she would be spilling them all over the place. Dan whispered to her, “Laylee. That’s too many.” She sighed, rolled her eyes, took ONE cracker from her bulging fist, put it back in the bag and continued on her mission. It took a lot of control for everyone who witnessed it not to bust out laughing.

We definitely watch too many movies on long roadtrips but it keeps us sane and it makes for some really good jokes.

At a rest stop, I washed the windows of the car and Laylee (having just watched Aladdin) asked, “Did you squeege these windows? Did you bring me here?”

At a restaurant in Sumpter, where a model train circles around several times per hour, Laylee got impatient for the train to make its next pass. She laid down in mock exasperation and began to sing the famous Snow White ballad, “Some day my TRAIN will come.”

Overall, the trip was a good one. The kids did really well. Heather took some gorgeous portraits of them in her new studio. We got to see friends and family and say “See you soon” to a woman we will never stop loving.

I’m funeraling and the family’s all together. I’ll be back in a couple of days. I don’t have much coherent to say about what’s been going on. Tons of emotion, very little sleep, much of driving, a few fun moments, mostly overwhelming.

Blog out.

Think Fast! It’s another Tuesday where I will require that you think fast or don’t think at all. I want your favorite or current favorite children’s book of all time. Don’t think too hard, just suggest one. Just one.

Okay, just this once, in my grand beneficence, I will allow you to give two suggestions. Here are mine:

1. Big Bad Bruce by Bill Peet — This is a favorite from when I was a child. I could not get enough of this book.

2. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault — We use this book as a warm up for our Daring Family freestyle rap battles. We wore out the copy Grammy sent us and I bought a new one… at a real bookstore… at full price. I know. I am insane. It was worth it.

As you can see, I only like books by people named Bill.

Your suggestions can be by people with other names… I guess… if they’re REALLY good. You can include anything from board books to Young Adult reads. Go!