The random winners of the Roadtrip Giveaway are April C. and Seabird. Congratulations and thanks to everyone for all the great tips!
If for any reason they are unable to fulfill their duties as plastic tube winners, we’ll draw more names at random.
Well Enough About Me
Let’s talk about you for a minute. (Be sure to answer the questions at the end of the post!)
A while back I asked you all to fill out a survey for me. The results are in and they’re fascinating.
74% of Daring Young Mom readers are between the ages of 21 and 34. No one over 75 or under 18 admitted to reading this blog.
I’m surprised that only 3% of the readers surveyed were male. I’ve always been very popular with the men folk. Maybe they couldn’t handle my year-long period of lactational discourse shortly following Magoo’s birth.
Although I live near Seattle, I’m actually located in a very small town. A quarter of you also live in small towns or out in the country but more than half make your homes in the suburbs. For some reason, my blog does not appear to be massively appealing to the urban crowd.
Most of my readers are middle class but those few of you making over $500,000 annually, please email me. I’ve got some great ideas for how you could spread around the love.
Very few of you have more than 6 kids yet so I guess most of us are still getting started. We’d better get busy.
96% of my readers have had at least some college education. Rock on educated ladies! … and you few gentlemen.
Your political views are all over the place with the biggest portion of you (45%) listed as republicans.
Half of you have a valid passport. The rest of you should get on that if you want to visit my motherland any time soon. I’m working on getting one for Magoo tonight actually.
For the most part, you’re churchgoers, or at least you claim to be for internet research purposes – with the largest group, roughly a third of you, being Mormon.
Your occupations are so varied I think I could staff an entire mini-civilization with your expertise. I’ll let you know when there are job openings for the Daring New World.
You need to send more email, preferably to me.
More of you watch Saturday Night Live than any news show, more American Idol than The Office and if so many of you watch What Not To Wear, why have none of you nominated me to be on the show? I’d gladly be humiliated for an hour for the chance to get a whole new wardrobe.
You use the PCs, although I suspect that many of you like me dream of switching to the Mac.
You started reading blogs right around the same time I started this one.
You like your internet speed high and 62% of you have your own blog.
More than half of you use Blogger.
30% of you only read one blog per day. Awww… geee…. Thanks. Oh. You didn’t mean mine? I still like you.
You read blogs for humor, personality and perspective but you like mine anyway.
60% of you never use RSS to read blogs. It really makes life much easier, ya’ll. You can subscribe to all your favorite blogs on Bloglines and it keeps track of new posts for you.
Only half of you floss regularly. This makes me like you more. I won’t say why.
You talk on the cellular phones.
Tsk. Tsk. Only 18% of you believe in UFOs. I sure hope you all still believe in Santa.
There were a few questions not covered in the survey or in other surveys I’ve conducted. There are things I just need to know.
For today please answer one or more of the following 3 questions:
What percent milk do you drink?
How many of your kids are currently named Dirk?
Do you believe in dust mites?
Road Trip
We just got back from a week-long visit with family.
We talked in the car… when we weren’t eating… which wasn’t often… unless our name was Dan.
[long silence]
Me: Are shrunken heads really shrunken heads or are they just made out of coconuts?
Dan: I don’t know.
Me: I wouldn’t think you could actually shrink a head because it’s made of bones. Do cannibals shrink heads manually or by magic?
Laylee: Mom. Those people have all kinds of clothes in the back of their car. That probably means that wherever they’re going, they’re probably gonna spend the night, right?
Me: Yep. It sure does. Just like we did at grandma’s house!
Magoo: Truck. It’s ee truck!!
Me: Have you noticed that Magoo is way less verbal than Laylee was at his age?
Dan: Mmmmhmmm.
Me: Maybe it’s because he’s a boy.
Dan: [silence]
Me: Have you noticed that I’m way more verbal than you were at my age?
Pyrotechnics Are Always an Asset
You can never always sometimes tell what will make a day magical for your kids. [Read more]
Chocolate, Socks and Apple Pie
They wanted chocolate.
It was dinner time.
I said no.
They really wanted chocolate.
It was a holiday.
I said yes.
It was the 4th of July and I thought they deserved some freedom.
I did not put sandals on Magoo while he was wearing these socks. That was someone else. He has the freedom to wear sandals with socks. And I have the freedom to abstain.
Here’s to a country where we’re free in many more ways than those listed above. Although I am daily aware that this country isn’t perfect, I love it dearly and feel so grateful to live here. I’m far from perfect myself and I just hope that every day I’m getting better… and that there’s some pie left in the kitchen.
Raging on the Road to Pass the Time
On long cross-country drives, it is not unusual for me to find my Newman, that innocuously evil nemesis who seems intent on ruining the flow of my driving or simply driving me insane.
Their driving travesties are honestly not that bad when compared with say, global terrorism or Barney, but they’re just annoying enough to make me slam back a diet cherry coke, ask incredulous questions to no one in particular and tense my hands in the 10 and 2 position to make the steering wheel feel my pain.
This last trip I did not run up against the ever-heinous long-term-blinker addict. However I did experience a touch of the exasperated-that-I’m-only-going-10-over-the-speed-limit-elaborately-gesticulating-tailgating-headlight-flicker-er, and the you’ll-thank-me-for-my-high-beams-in-your-rearview-mirror-when-you-eventually-go-blind-and-don’t-have-to-watch-The-Fantastic-Four-Part-15-a-couple-years-from-now-ite.
However, the most annoying this trip was the woman who graduated from the driving school where they preach vehemently against conformity such as the use of cruise control or any kind of control over the speed of your vehicle. It must be a large and successful driving academy because I come across its students with frequency.
Why it should bother me that a person passes me only to slow down to below the speed limit so I can pass her at a steady 70 miles per hour, only to have her blow past me like I’m a pylon 2 minutes later, pull back in front of me and slam on her brakes, I’ll never know.
But she is my nemesis and I feel that she must be stopped. After about the 3rd time she passes me, my patience begins to fail. I say things like, “Ratchin fratchen fruggen!” and grip the wheel more tightly. Eventually I begin the drinking and in a battle of wills, I vow to maintain my speed of 70 or veer off the road in the attempt.
It is a standoff. I with my cruise control and she with her blatant spedometeric insanity.
I know I should be worried about much more important things but in a several hour drive with a little boy who points out every rock, tree, blade of grass, speck of dirt, piece of water and cow we pass and repeats his observations frantically until they are acknowledged with a respectful level of frenzied excitement, little things tend to catch my attention.
Is it illegal to ram someone’s taillight to silence their eternal turn signal or is that just considered a public service?
Keeping My Baby
“I grab the produce quickly, not taking the time to pretend I know what makes a watermelon good, and I rush back to hug him dramatically. ‘OH BABY!’ I fake-sob…”
I’ve decided to keep my baby. Read more at Parenting.com.
On the Bright Side…
…this is the first time in my life I’ve ever been able to successfully wink my right eye.
Then again, it’s completely glued and swollen shut so winking my left eye has lost its charm.
Portrait of a Cyborg
Things are strange around here.
In ocular health news… it still kills! I’m giving the antibiotics a couple of days before going back to my neighbor’s house for things which I don’t know what they are. (If you comment on my funky eyebrows, I will FIND you.)
This morning I came down and found Belle and Sinead hanging out in the hallway. I’m so glad to have creative outlets like this. I’m also glad that besides having no god, Polly’s world also contains no metal parts.
I paid less than $3 for gas for the first time in forever… and was so excited about it that I took a picture.
Shaq has a new reality show where his image consultant has him helping obese kids lose weight. It’s getting good reviews and the premise seems promising. Here are a few quotes from the first episode that make me think it will be the best, most sensitive insightful reality show about children EV-ER:
“Of course they’re gonna tell me the truth. I’m a superstar.”
“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything this pathetic in my entire life. It disgusts me.”
“We’re gonna have to turn up the heat on these kids.” Then he smashes a bottle… because he CARES.
A Homeopath is Running Loose in my Neighborhood
My awesome new biologist neighbor has been teaching me all sorts of interesting things about gardening, healthy living and home décor. She took me on a tour of my backyard introducing me to all my botanical friends, makes the most amazing organical foods and I plan on stealing several of her decorating ideas for my house, which has an identical floor plan to hers.
She is kind, listens to Laylee talk for hours and I recently found out that she practices homeopathic medicine as a hobby. I’ve always loved the word “homeopath” because in my world that’s how you would make a contraction of the words “homicidal” and “psychopath.”
I was coming home from the doctor the other day where I’d gone for help clearing up my randomly swollen eye and my neighbor told me to come over so we could come up with a natural remedy.
I tried the antibiotic drops for one day and found no change. So the next day I walked next door to Dr. Nat for some advice. She looked up my symptoms in a big fat book, packaged up some remedies and materials in a ziplock, wrote down instructions and sent me home with the strict advice not to use any chamomile, tobacco, alcohol, or mint while doing the treatment, not even toothpaste. (No whiskey-flavored Colgate. Check.) I was also not to touch the herbs with my hands or with metal utensils.
I followed all her instructions exactly and the sty was gone in less than 24 hours so I broke down, pulled out Old Bessy and whipped up some minty fresh breath. When I woke up this morning the sty was back but in the OTHER eye! I am being smitten by the Homeopathic Gods Against Oral Hygeine. Have you ever heard of the HGAOH? They’re big players in the Tarter Wars. They’re for it.
So now I’m left to choose whether to continue to look like a cyborg or knock Dan out with my halitosis.