The Truth About SOPA

Holy cow, why are you asking me????





Seriously, on this, The Great SOPA Protest Day when many of your favorite sites are going black in a display of virtual non-violent protest, use the time you might have otherwise spent perusing humorous blogs or locating potentially unsubstantiated research or whatever else tickles your fancy but is today unavailable due to the power of the people making their voices heard in the halls...er...computers of Congress and do your own research on SOPA and decide what you think.

Piracy is bad. Censorship is bad. Don't let anyone else make up your mind for you. I started here.

Homeschool Lies Debunked

Last night a friend of mine shared this video...and I loved it! In fact, I loved it so much I decided to dedicate an entire blog post to it. And I'm sure it's just a happy accident that I happened to find a video to share on a day when I had no idea what I was going to write about. What a coincidence. Ahem.

Anyway the video is funny and encouraging and awesome all at the same time. And as for the last homeschool myth...our family is totally guilty.

Intrigued?



Thanks to Messy Mondays!

I Love the Smell of Decomposition in the Morning

So one bright sunny morning Major Dad let me sleep in. Aaaahhh, bliss. When I finally rolled my lazy self out of bed and decided to make an appearance in the kitchen, I was greeted rather rudely by the smell of death...and coffee.

This was a rare time when the question "eeewww, what died in here?" was actually appropriate. About two days prior to this stench filled morning, Major Dad and I heard some scratching in (what we thought was) the kitchen closet. This is where we keep the dog food and cleaning supplies (not mixed together, separate shelves). So Major Dad put down a mouse trap, baited it with chocolate (because apparently mice in our home have excellent taste) and waited for Mickey and/or Minnie to meet their chocolate induced demise.

So as I walked into the stink filled ick, I saw Major Dad pulling everything out of the closet in order to check the trap. And guess what...no dead Mickey and/or Minnie. Which led us to the incredibly ridiculous task of sniffing the inside of the closet to pinpoint the exact source of the putrid smell. How lovely is that? I'd put it somewhere to the grosser side of judging a worst smelling armpit contest held in a clogged sewer located in a city somewhere around the equator where the chief food staples are brussels sprouts, cabbage and beans. Yeah, it was nasty. I even got to take a turn sticking my nose in all the corners trying to determine where the mother of all bad smells was coming from.

And where was the source of the uber-stink located? Inside the wall. Inside. Fabulous. So Major Dad grabbed a knife and a mallet and proceeded to tear apart the inner wall of the closet. Yay, rotting flesh and destruction all in one day. I'm such a lucky girl. And lo and behold, a pile of mutilated dry wall later we were rewarded with a whoosh of fetid foulness.

Apparently a mouse family picked our house as the site of their very own rodent Jamestown. There they were a whole mouse family all curled up together and so very, very dead. Picture "An American Tail" with a depressing, existential, probably French, life-is-meaningless ending. And in my kitchen. How do I know they were all curled up together in what would have been sadly adorable if they didn't reek so badly? Because Major Dad, upon locating said sad adorableness said "come here, you have to see this." That's true love right there folks...hey honey, come look at the stinky, dead, disease infested rodents with me.

So after Major Dad sucked up the corpses with his Shop-Vac (not quite a burial at sea, but what can you do?), I dumped a gallon of bleach in their former tomb and drenched the kitchen in Febreeze. Now the house smells like disinfected flower covered corpses.

And on that note...Happy Monday!

Permission to be Imperfect

Have you ever heard the phrase "nobody's perfect?" And have you ever heard the phrase "nobody's perfect" and moments later started berating yourself for all the things you've recently done wrong? Do you grasp the intellectual concept that "nobody's perfect," freely extend it to others and yet still allow your own inner critic to hold you to a ridiculous standard of perfection that you just agreed is unreachable?

Ah, the mind contorting and heart piercing puzzle of perfectionism. It stinks, right?

I have a very loud and very mean inner critic who likes to point out when I fail, when I'm going to fail and can even search out the failures in my successes. "Sure, you just climbed Mt. Everest, but you should have done it faster and in a cuter outfit...that Eskimo gear makes your butt look huge." Sigh. I know I shouldn't do it and I know I'm too hard on myself but even that psycho-babble self-awareness just starts up a whole new critique from my inner Ebert (it may be Roper) on why I'm a failure for listening to the very voice telling me I'm a failure. Now, that's a special kind of twisted.

So here's a phrase I recently heard echoing in my brain and I decided that I like it. "Permission to be imperfect." Maybe all of us hyper type-A, perfectionists need to chill out and give ourselves permission to be imperfect. Because the ugly truth of the matter (at least for me) is that the only person judging me and labeling me a big, fat failure who needs a bedazzled dunce cap...is me. There's no one else demanding that I keep our homeschool exactly on schedule. There's no one else yelling at me that we're running late for an ice skating session with no time limit. (yes, I do that..."hurry up, we're going to be late even though there's no start time and we're not obligated to be there anyway.")

And there's no one besides little ol' me declaring my house to be a messy embarrassment, or my to-do list too neglected, or my curves a little too curvy. Or reminding me that my blog is late and how dare I do that to people nice enough to read it even thought they probably won't like it anyway because it sounds like some throwback 80's after-school special about a nerdy girl who learns to love herself just the way she is and ends up going to prom with the most popular boy in school.

Is there such a thing as a type-A+ personality? Cause I think I rate some extra-credit crazy here.

So here's my point...if I don't expect perfection from others, why do I demand it from myself? Now I know we're wading into some deep Freudian-flavored psychological waters here and I don't have my floaties, so I'll end with this. I would like to buy my grumpy inner critic a big box of chocolate, some snazzy new shoes and give her the rest of my life off. I'd like to run late without freaking out. I'd like to actually try and fail before I label myself a failure. Or maybe even try and succeed and enjoy it without reservation. Doesn't that sound like fun?

So while I'm out shopping (metaphorically ) I'll throw together a goodie bag (also metaphorical) for any of you with inner harpies and give you the same permission to be imperfect.

Now go mess something up...on purpose.

Hey, Watch Your Language

I know this may come as a shock to many of you, but I tend to find humor in the strangest of places. I can be totally unimpressed by a slapstick comedy filled with people falling down and getting trampled by stampeding puffins, but catch me on the right day and a simple misspoken word will keep me amused for hours. Hours, I tell you!

Here's my most recent example. Major Dad and I were washing dishes and talking about something. I can't remember what exactly but it was something sports related. Trust me the something isn't the important part of the story. Let's just say it was...oh I don't know...lawn darts. So, Major Dad says "guess they don't have many lawn darts terminents."

Now he meant tournaments, but instead of being a sweet and supportive wife and just continuing the conversation I latched on to the tantalizing vocabulary Frankenstein that is "terminent" and took off running.

Me: "'Terminents?' Aren't those the bugs that eat your house?"

Major Dad: "That would be termites."

Me: "Right. Terminent is that robot movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger."

Major Dad: (Through slightly clenched teeth) "That's Terminator."

Me: "Oh, right. Terminent is when you get fired."

Major Dad: (Silence. He's not playing anymore).

Me: (Totally not caring that Major Dad has left the playing field) "Sorry, Jim but after your recent debacle with the fax machine and the ferret we have to terminent you."

Still Me: "I'm sorry, Mrs. Jones, there's nothing we can do. The tone nail cancer is terminent."

Major Dad: "Are you done?"

Me again: "Gosh I hope this stain isn't terminent."

P.S. I would like some serious props for spelling Schwarzenegger correctly...without even googling it.

P.P.S. Ok, I did Google it, but only after I spelled it correctly, just to make sure.

Help! I Think I Just Bought Mom Jeans

I love jeans. I literally live in my jeans. All day, every day...jeans, jeans, jeans. I understand that there are other types of pants in existence. I just don't understand why they are necessary in life. I own a pair of khakis (a pair...singular) and 2 pairs of black pants. But my go-to bottom half of any outfit would be jeans.

So you can imagine the trauma I went through when I looked down a few days ago and spotted a hole in the knee of my favorite jeans. Ugh! Fortunately I happened to know of a department store that was having a sale on jeans. So I threw on another pair of jeans and headed off to the mall.

Now, I think it's fair to say that jeans shopping can be an emotionally exhausting experience for many women...including me. And shopping for jeans immediately following the holidays...hmmm, let's evaluate the wisdom of that plan, shall we? After a holiday season marked by family dinners, church dinners, friend dinners, leftover dinners, cookie exchanges, cookie gifts and cookies for chubby holiday icons, chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate...let's go shopping for pants that cover and/or accentuate every festively blessed curve and try them on in a dressing room lit with florescent bulbs so unflattering that even Thomas Edison would say "whoa, that's some bad lighting" and surrounded by mirrors on every side. Joy to the world, right ladies?

Anyway, so there I am trying on jeans, heaving a sigh, discarding them, fetching new pairs from the shelves, heading back to the exact same dressing room (I don't know why I do that...some sort of strange territorial shopping thing) and repeating the whole process. Several times. I tried on the exact same pair of jeans that I had just worn a hole in, but for some reason I didn't like them this time around. Couldn't have anything to do with the truffles my husband got me for Christmas. Clearly Levi's has had a change in their manufacturing process.

I finally decided to get a straight leg, as opposed to my usual usual boot cut. Why? Well, I thought I'd get a new pair of boots and I wanted to be able to stuff the jeans into the boots. Don't you just love how a new pair of jeans necessitates a new pair of boots? That's logic, right there. So I finally settled on a pair and went home. (Yes, I paid for them. I was just trying to move the narrative along.) Then the next day as I put on my new jeans I was struck by a sudden and terrifying thought. Did I just buy mom jeans???

So now I need an exact definition of mom jeans. Can I get away with the natural waist, straight leg if I don't wear a tucked in polo shirt and belt? Or am I totally up the mom fashion creek? Why can't stores label them "mom jeans" like they do "skinny jeans" so I know to avoid that shelf? Better yet, why can't we have truth in jeans labeling across the board? Imagine how much easier your shopping would be if they were labeled "jeans only a teenage pop star should wear" or "jeans you can't sit down in" or "jeans that make you look like a soccer mom, but they're really comfortable"?

Where's that Occupy movement?

Happy Tuesday!

New Year, New Blog

So one of my big New Year's resolutions for 2012 is to get back to writing. Last year everything else seemed to take priority and writing just kept getting shoved further and further down the to-do list. Eventually it didn't even make the to-do list. Every once in a while I would see something or think of something that struck me as blog-worthy, but I never made it to the computer to actually start typing. No good reasons for it, no excuses.

But by December when I started looking back over the previous 12 months and wondered where the time went, I was genuinely annoyed that I has let go of something that I truly enjoy. Not the chocolate of course, but the writing. I still have no idea what my next book will be about, but even if I never figure that out I know I can keep typing little snippets of chocolate flavored funny and sending them off into the blogosphere. Or maybe chocolate flavored not funny...who knows? I'm wild and unpredictable like that.

The point is I actually made a New Year's resolution this year...to get back to writing and to keep writing. I've actually got a whole pile of notes already put together on using our talents, bringing what we have to God even if what we have seems like nothing and seeing the things we already have in new ways. But if I wrote all that right now, I wouldn't have anything left for tomorrow. And then I'd stop blogging again after giving you this glimmer of false hope and then the whole vicious cycle would start again and frankly I'm too old for vicious cycles...or any kind of cycles for that matter. Except maybe Popcycles. Oh wait, that's Popsicles. Huh. Well, you see the problem.

Anyway, so I messed with the blog design again, changed it up a bit and I've started typing. Isn't that first step in some neglectful bloggers recovery plan? Just start typing. So to those of you who have stuck around and those of you who have so faithfully checked this page during the months of my neglectful blogger-ness (4000 views when I haven't written in months??? That's nuts...and also spectacularly cool. You guys rock!), I thank you. And this is for you: