Archives for March 2007

Today I offer you some time-honored bits of advice that have served me well in my life. I hope they work for you and if you have some of your own, feel free to share.

1. If none of the boys are worth dating, don’t date em. If none of the food in the house is worth eating, don’t mindlessly stuff your face. If none of your kids are not having a fit of angry bovine proportions, don’t take them shopping.

2. When someone is waking up with a clean pull-up after every nap but the pull-ups are still disappearing from the drawer at a steady rate and you start to notice a strange smell in the family room, check under the crack in the slipcover before the acidic pee of death and destruction claims your couch as its final resting place.

3. Never engage in a fight with your spouse if he is still asleep.

4. When your grocery store checker asks you how things are going, don’t really tell her. Do compliment her on the gold star on her nametag and feel free to make faces behind any irate customer who may be harassing her.

5. If you grow tired of feeding your fish, leave him alone with your husband for two weeks. They will bond and begin speaking to each other in the language of fishy bachelorhoodic solidarity. Your husband will teach the fish tricks and develop a tender feeding routine. You will never need to feed or cuddle your his fish again.

6. Don’t purchase any item of clothing that you don’t feel good about dousing with poop, shredding with craft scissors, rolling in mud, scraping with sand paper, throwing into a vat of chunky yellow vomit, dipping in lighter fluid and then incinerating with a blow-torch. You can postpone taking this advice until you’re ready to start having children.

6. Don’t eat the pigs feet.

We’re having some guests this Friday so I spent 6 hours on Saturday slogging through the mud in my new rain boots finding worms and pulling the hamstrings in both my legs, a little thing I like to call “yard work.” There is probably at least one worm for every blade of grass in my yard and at least 2 weeds for every worm. We like it wild.

When I went to buy rain boots, I saw some flowers that asked me to please bring them home, which I did. As I was planting them, I found several other half-chewed bulbs lying around the yard. CURSE YOU BAMBI-DEER!

I didn’t plant any of the flowers in my yard last year so I didn’t miss the ones the deer et. I’ve actually been looking around in awe, never knowing what will pop up next.

It’s fun to move into someone else’s landscaping… and scary. Under the tree stump out front is a hollow space. In the hollow space is a mushroom, a giant rock and then a deep cavernous void of slime. I did not reach my hand in there but have spent several minutes imagining what kind of creature could be hibernating under a tree stump in my yard and whether it’s hungry for little boys named Magoo who will most likely try to pull it from its lair by the eyelashes the moment I turn my back.

I bought a power washer. I wash things. Powerfully. I wash moss off my deck, paint off my railing, crud off my driveway, dirt off my flower petals, and petals off my flowers. You should try it some time.

Magoo’s favorite new book is Rabid Demonic Cows by Margaret Wise Brown, originally published under the title The Big Red Barn. His verbal skills are burgeoning along with his animal impressions, particularly if he’s doing an impression of… a rabid demonic cow… or a dinosaur. They sound pretty much the same.

He can speak in short full sentences but prefers to shake his head wildly and say, “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,” while frantically grasping for the item you’re offering him. He reminds me of Tom.

He wants to use the potty, but not really. He wants to sit on the potty wearing nothing but a furrowed brow and a smile. The combination is unnerving. I am afraid of his equipment which points ominously upwards as he sits with his chubby legs smooshed together. He has yet to unleash a stream of any kind but when he does, I may need a Swiffer with a longer handle.

Grammy was getting ready for an obligatory outing when she accidentally sliced open her tall man with a large knife.

Band-aid in place, she continued on with her preparations and grumbled to Papa about how much it hurt and how she couldn’t bend her knuckle.

Papa: That’s unfortunate considering which knuckle it is.
Grammy: I may give someone the knuckle tonight if they don’t watch it.
Laylee: Mom, why is Grammy going to give someone her knuckle?
Me: Why don’t you ask Grammy that question?