Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Some Things are Humorous… To Me

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snowman-002When Laylee was building her snowman this afternoon, she asked, “Can you please get me two blueberries and a carrot… and some more blueberries?”

This is literally the funniest site I’ve visited all week. I’m wondering if I could really get a ticket on a literal roller coaster to Hell by simply eating lots of junk food. Thanks to Veronica for the heads up.

When we were driving through Montana this Christmas I noticed a sign along the way in a sparsly inhabited windswept plain. It read, “Jesus is Lord of this Valley.” Funny thing. I thought he covered bigger territory than that.

Currently Magoo’s favorite bedtime songs are “Jesus Beam” and “Chug-a-God.” CHUG CHUG CHUG CHUG

Here you will find the only people in the world who can make ledge jumpers funny.

Bunks, Thugs and Harmony

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Bunkbeds at Costco were ripe for the picking and who am I to argue with purchasing furniture when it’s in season? About a year ago they had them in stock and I wasn’t QUITE quick enough snatching one up. When I went back they were gone and we haven’t found a set as nice for as reasonable a price since so I’ve been laying in wait, checking back every week or so for the past 12 months, comforting myself for the fruitless trips by purchasing books and artichoke dip.

Dan brought home the impossibly large boxes and stashed them in the garage while I made the rounds of every store in the known universe looking for twin mattresses. I settled on some basic foam mattresses from IKEA because I’d like to keep our retirement savings intact and also eat Swedish meatballs at least once a year. I could not BELIEVE how much most stores were charging for basic twin mattresses. In this case “basic” means spring mattresses where you can practically see the springs poking through the thin layer of foam and plastic on top. You can certainly feel them if you make the mistake of laying down on one of those torture devices. For that price I could get two comfortable, if less than durable, foam mattresses and several meatballs WITH SAUCE at IKEA! The “spring” mattresses at ye olde mattress warehouse may have been durable but I’m pretty sure the kids would be praying for them to self destruct after the first five minutes so I decided to go with my “durable crap is still crap” philosophy and purchase the less durable, less crappy crap.

They’re actually quite comfortable.

After we got the beds up, visions of blissful childish room sharing danced in my head and I couldn’t help letting them try sleeping in them together the first night. We told Magoo that if he got out of bed, he’d have to go back to the crib in his room. Five minutes went by before we heard footsteps running down the hall. We found him spinning in circles around the living room with his head thrown back in the heady winds of freedom, a maniacal laugh escaping his lips. The laughing stopped when we tossed him back in the brig.

The second night he kept mumbling to himself about, “I no get out of m’bunk bed. I stay in m’bunk bed.” And he did. For hours he laid in bed talking to himself. We eventually found him sound asleep with Laylee spooning up next to him, a blanket covering them both. My heart nearly exploded. There’s nothing I love more than to see my kids be sweet to each other.

m'bunk beds


When I asked her about it in the morning, Laylee said that it was lonely way up there on the top bunk and each night this week she’s waited for Magoo to drift off before sneaking down the ladder, adjusting his blankets so he’ll be warm enough and climbing in for a snuggly sleep. This is why I became a mom.

Of course they’ve also been waking up earlier than usual and when one wakes up, they both get up and wreak havoc. Dan found them yesterday morning camped out on the kitchen floor with spray whip cream, chocolate chips and a whole package of sandwich cookies from which the frosting had mysteriously been licked. Some of the frosting was found on Dan’s computer and the doll house was full of chocolate chips. The two of them argued over which kid had thought of which little bit of naughtiness and luckily Dan got mad at them so I didn’t have to. I could focus my energy on the sweetness of their bonding.

I told him how much I love that they’re becoming best friends. “They do everything together now,” I grinned.

“Yes,” Dan smiled dryly, “Sort of like a gang.”

Biggest Loser – EXPOSED

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It has come to my attention that the entire Biggest Loser franchise, Jillian Michaels specifically, is not working to help overweight Americans but rather attempting to kill fat people.

I started watching last season when Dan was working a billion hours and there was nothing on TV Tuesday nights and heaven forbid I do anything productive after 8 o’clock at night. I was inspired by the alleged “transformations” of the “contestants.” I even softened my stone-cold veneer for a few moments and cried once or twice…
every episode… for the whole season.

Now I’m somewhat fluffy myself and after watching several episodes while chowing down on my favorite snack foods, the propaganda started working on me. I thought, “I could do that [snarf, snarf, crunch crunch gobble gobble]. They’re so inspir[munch munch]ing! If she could lose that much weight, I could totally [swallow gulp gulp] shed the pounds I have to lose and tone up like a swimsuit model.”

Am I the only one who can’t stop eating while they watch that show?

So I bought the Biggest Loser Fitness Plan book, which was approximately as uncomfortable as purchasing my first box of tampons. You know if someone sees you buying feminine hygiene products they might know you’re a… a… a girl and if you buy a BIGGEST LOSER book, they might suspect you of being overweight because I’m sure they couldn’t tell by the pinchable pudge of your too-loveable-for-a-person-over-the-age-of-2 cheeks.

After doing the workout one time yesterday, I’ve finally figured out their master plot.

It’s true that the producers want to decrease the number of overweight Americans. They plan to accomplish this by convincing us to try the diet and exercise routines, effectually picking us off one by one like puffer fish in a barrel when we can no longer raise our arms or effectively move our legs.

It seems fairly obvious to me at this point that the so called “contestants” are really just smoking hot athlete/models in remarkable stage makeup for a show that is to weight loss what the WWF is to real wrestling. No real pinchable overweight person can live through these workouts.

“Ow!”
~Kathryn Thompson~

A Quick 70 Bucks

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I drove out to a nice hotel by the airport tonight and made a quick 70 bucks. I sold my music tastes to a big market research company in exchange for enough money to pay for the heart rate monitor and exercise mat I purhcased for my yearly trip into hard core exercise mode. Did you know I work out? Why yes, yes I do. Since January 3rd 2008.

I worked out a little last year but this year I’m hard core. I have a heart monitor for the love of Pete’s Dragon! I use it to monitor my heart and things. I love it. This weekend Dan and I played a rousing game of Super Mario 3 on my Christmas Wii and I measured my heart rate throughout the evening to see if I was getting an aerobic workout simply from stress and thumb strain. It’s fun to check your heart rate during all kinds of activities. You know. Just because.

Which doesn’t really bring me back to my evening of market research but I will talk about it anyway. In a 2 hour period, I texted Dan a couple of times, drank 20 oz of water, avoided putting my kids to bed and rated 550 popular songs on a scale of 1-5 of how much I liked them and a scale of A-C of how tired I am of hearing them played on the radio. It was quite emotionally taxing for me.

I’m someone who’s fairly private about my listening preferences because in part but not limited to the fact that I am embarrassed about what I like. My everyday music choices are not exactly highbrow and sitting in that room full of 25-35 year old women rating the songs I like in a computer database that will most likely go on my personal file somewhere where they keep permanent personal files of embarrassing things had me worried. I thought, “If I had not been born in Canada and were thusly eligible to run for President of the United States one day, and had also not seen every episode of the West Wing, therefore learning that becoming the POTUS is the last thing I’d ever want to do besides, you know, other things I’d less rather do, and I was one day running in a political race for the aforementioned office, would it somehow surface in a vicious smear campaign that I think The Police are overplayed but I somehow remain strangely charmed by Ace of Base?”

I also thought as I listened to one Hip Hop song that it would be cool to have one of those Hip Hop sidekick people following me around saying, “Unh, yeah, uh-huh uh-huh, GIRL, sing it Kathryn, UNH!” every time I opened my mouth, you know, with the approving grunts and such.

As I left they gave me $70 cash which I tucked away somewhere where cash should be tucked and headed home, feeling a little weird about exposing my music tastes in such a reckless and feckless fashion.

When working out at the gym as I am wont to do, I have been known to occasionally trip on the treadmill and go flying off the back end. Rather than worrying about possible injury or the fact that I look like a flailing spaztard, I’m generally just very anxious that my MP3 player not get disconnected from my headphones, thus turning on its external speaker and revealing to my fellow gladiators that I work out to a mix of Gwen Stefani, Carol King, Out”k”ast, Abba and Milli Vanilli. That’s just private.

My current blogging heart rate is 75, temperature 98.6F.

Death in the Winter

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They’re dead, all dead. I left them for 2 weeks in a cold house with no food source and now they’re gone, gone for good. It was an intentional mass gnat-ocide but I find that I’m strangely lonely for the pitter patter of their little wings, for the way they would lovingly nuzzle up against my hair or my teeth as I walked through the kitchen. Here’s to the memories. They’re all I have left.

Not so Good with the Follow-up

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My blog goals for 2008 will be:

1. Write something. Yes, it’s drastic but I like to shoot for the stars. In 2008 I plan to actually write something on a regular basis on this blog, as though I were, in essence, a blogger, of sorts.

2. Do a little more of the follow-up. I tend to write about something big and dramatic and cliff-hangerish (okay, maybe you’re not exactly on the edge of your seat, but I sure feel the drama evident in my daily life, like the saga of what deodorant I should choose, or the decision of whether or not to go elsewhere for my children’s literature.) and then never refer to it again. I’ll solve a problem in my head or in my life and don’t feel the need to share the solution with the internet. Most of the time no one seems to notice but every once in a while someone will email me or comment to ask what happened and I figure for every person who expresses curiosity, there are at least 2.5 other people who wouldn’t have been enraged if had written a follow-up post.

So this year I will try to be all about giving you the closure you so richly deserve.

In that spirit, I’ve written about how I did on last year’s parenting resolution over at Parenting.com.

I also want to answer Kelly who asked, “My pits are waiting the results of your deodorant tryout – please fill us in!”

First I was really affected by Ericka’s comment about aluminum in antiperspirents and its carsenogenic properties so I followed Michelle’s advice and went with Tom’s of Maine. I like wearing it, knowing that it’s safer for my body. The problem is that it’s not safer for my friend’s noses if I happen to sweat really hard or miss a day.

Therefore I went out today and purchased some Lady Mitchum in Shower Fresh to wear on the days I plan to be really active. I figure that even if I wear it every other day, I’m still cutting the evil aluminum seeping into my body via my pit pathways by half.

If you’re dying for updates on any of my past posts or just have any burning questions for me, leave them in the comments section and I’ll try to follow Jessica’s example and give you the answers you crave.

I Know What Year it Is

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It’s 2008 and I’m so relieved. I’ve been thinking it was 2008 since about June. For some reason the even numbered years just don’t sit well with me. For the first half of 2007 I thought it was 2006. Then one day around the longest day of the year, it suddenly felt like 2008 and I’ve been crossing out and rewriting the date ever since. I should be content writing 2-0-0-8 for a good 18 months.