Have you ever been so tired you became untired?

I’m drained. I don’t even think I have enough energy to make this post witty. The horror! I probably shouldn’t even try to be funny while I’m in this tired state because it will just come off as really bad jokes . . . like puns. The horror! I guess some people like puns. The Husband does. He attempts them on a regular basis. The horror!

But enough about that. Turns out we may actually be able to contract Bubba’s ailment after all. He now has a rash which probably means his ear infection is more the viral variety. His little body is covered in little pink dots, and his eyes are oh so sad. Hence it makes me sad. Whenever my children get sick I start to think I’m not cut out for this whole motherhood thing. Will I ever develop those nerves of steel I keep hearing people rave on and on about?

Anyway, I’m spent. The piggy bank is empty. I spent all my savings on various sundry items like folding laundry, cuddling a sick baby multiple times throughout the night, chasing after a hyper toddler, diffusing possible tantrum scenarios, making dinners, cleaning rooms, straightening my hair, worrying about Bubba’s pitiful state, crying my eyes out at that video going around Facebook where soldiers surprise their families. Word to the wise: do not eat curry noodles while crying your eyes out. You will feel fantastically sick afterwards. Now that I think about it, don’t do anything while crying your eyes out. Don’t believe me, ask the dishes.

But since I aim to lighten not frighten, I think it’s time for one of those bright side moments.

Bright side: At least my job doesn’t (for the most part) involve sniffing pits. I’ll leave that to these stoic ladies.

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PS. You may have noticed a new lovely button on my top left sidebar for TopMommyBlogs. You can click it and vote for me once a day. Can you believe it? A chance to say you heart me once a day!

Also I just heard, from a very reliable source, that the amount of followers you have on a blog is directly linked to your value as a human being whilst on this planet. 37 is pretty respectable for sure. Imagine how the people who have thousands of followers feel? They must be as the gods.  How about something more realistic like my aforementioned goal of 50. It would be as though you all were fanning me whilst feeding me grapes. I love grapes!

End of self-promotion.

This weekend I had thoughts

If I told you what I did this weekend, you would probably just yawn and call me a loser because I did NOTHING (beyond the traditional weekly visit to Target of course). And can I just say I’m proud to be a loser. It is fabulous.

After over a week of schlepping suitcases, two strollers, dirty laundry, diapers, two car seats, two children who sit in the car seats, bags of snack food, bags in general, a cranky Husband, important papers that cannot be lost no matter what, the Husband’s fanny pack, and my tired weary body, it was a joyous occasion when I could unload all THAT at various points in our cobwebbed home and just sit there staring off into nothingness (for as long as the kids would allow). Sometimes nothingness is good for the soul, especially when this particular soul has an unhealthy desire to have constant somethingness. Am I the only one who suffers from this?

Anyway, I let myself bask in this soupy state of mind all weekend. It was a little self-indulgent and lazy, I’ll admit, but I also did a lot of thinking. I don’t do that too often as it usually leads to me doing strange things, like starting a personal blog, or that one time I thought about sewing . . . something.

I thought about how great our vacation actually was despite the weariness that has now set up shop in my bones, and possibly my organs.

I thought about how great it was that my sons finally got to meet their great-grandmother, and how Bosco thinks GG’s house is just over yonder.

I thought about how it might be nice not to realize how far away GG actually is, and to have a totally warped sense of the space and time continuum.

I thought about how the next time I pay for a hotel room and find “no-no hairs” all over the bathroom floor, I will not swallow my pride. I will make a fuss. I will listen to that inner me because COME ON!

I thought about honeysuckle and lightning bugs, and how strange it must have been for the people who looked out their window one warm July evening and saw the silhouette of a lunatic redhead darting all over the neighborhood, into people’s yards, and into the middle of the road, trying to catch the one lightning bug that was still in existence.

I thought about deodorant, and how I would have to change my ways if ever I lived in a place where sweating is involuntary. As it is now, I live in place where sweating is more or less voluntary.

I thought about the mature in years lady who sat directly in front of us on our first flight, the one who turned around and glared at our child and us whenever fussiness ensued. I thought about how she was just lucky she wasn’t with us on our last flight because if she had been, I’m pretty sure she would have given herself a headache with all those eye rolls, and the smack to her face I wouldn’t have been able to control.

I thought about how I probably never would have actually smacked her. Words are much sharper, and less likely to get me arrested.

I thought about the young man returning home from an LDS mission who was on our last flight, who listened to a much more than just fussy baby and still had enough compassion leftover to ask me, after landing, if I and the baby were okay, without an ounce of hostility or ugliness in his countenance.

I thought about how I should have gotten his number . . . for my sister who is single. Duh.

I thought about how grateful (I guess that’s the word) I was that an unexpected visit from my monthly friend came just as I was exiting our last and final airplane. Any sooner and I would have been fully unprepared and pissed.

I thought about how again I am grateful (that’s the only word that comes to mind), that Bubba vomiting and my left arm being completely enveloped by baby barf, happened in the comfort of our own home, and not whilst on an airplane. Because that truly would have sucked.

I thought about how I should stop doing all this thinking and just enjoy cuddling my sick baby while he’ll let me, and before he passes the bug onto me.

Cue end of thinking session.

Any thoughts?

Detox me

Have you ever felt like you needed to detox yourself of something, something that needed to be cleansed right out of your system or else it could potentially take five years off your life?

Doritos, Oprah, slushies, COPS, white rice, scrapbooking, birds, cooking shows, Top Model, sprinkles, Jay Leno, beef, rated-G movies, curling irons, feet, fiber, monosodium glutamate, Judge Joe Brown, deodorant, SlimFast, Harry Potter, running, nail polish, pickles, water parks, Cheaters, talk radio, unfiltered water, black cats, soap operas, Freddy Prinze Jr . . .

These are just a few of the things I’ve purposefully stricken from my life at one point or another. Some of them I continue to avoid. Others I decided were worth the five years.

Detoxification is good for the soul. It makes you feel like you are doing something with your life, even if it’s just you single-handedly trying to dismantle Oprah’s empire simply by remaining indifferent to her Book Club. But really who would want to do that? It’s Oprah for heaven’s sake.

So here’s a challenge for you all. Pick something you can put on the back burner for one week. If you don’t miss it after seven days and it doesn’t miss you, then you’ve just de-cluttered your life and are well on your way to not becoming a hoarder of inconsequential things.

Want to know what I picked? It’s just flat out crazy. I’m not going to access the internet for one whole week. No email, no Facebook, no twitter, no YouTube, no Hulu, no Google Reader, no blogging. The absurdity! I know! But I think it will be really good for me.

So now you may be thinking, well how is our darling redhead going to woo us with her words. In short, I’m not. For one whole week, sort of. It won’t be all that awful I suppose. I fully intend on coming back. I’m just going to enjoy my family for awhile. This could have something to do with that nightmare I had the other night wherein I dreamt Bosco was a teenager, covered in hair, and smelly. So I’m going to use most of my time breathing in all the fresh 3 year-old scent I can get up my nostrils. Not to mention the sweetness of baby Bubba.

In the meantime, since I have some new readers (hello!), and because I can’t stand to let my blog baby just sit idle, I thought starting Monday I’d re-post a few of my earlier ones to help you newbies get to know me better. I mean this blog is practically ancient now. What is it? 3 months? There’s tons of stuff collecting dust in the archives. It would be sinful not to share again. Plus I hate dust. So enjoy!

I’m interested to see if any of you take my challenge. I’m even more interested to see what you detoxed. Toodles for now my little poopsies.

Snap, Crackle, Pop: Part II

If the perfectionist inside you is screaming for chronological order, you can read Part I of my tales from the chiropractor here.

I laid on the table for what seemed like an eternity while a stream of electrical current made my neck and shoulder muscles twitch and tingle. It wasn’t actually an unpleasant feeling, besides the anticipation of pain. And since I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, every twinge put me on high alert.

After a few minutes I decided that if I was going to get singed it would have already happened, so I tried to relax. But the hot towel on my back was indeed just that. HOT. I was getting sweaty. And I don’t normally sweat. That’s when I realized I hadn’t put on deodorant. If I had known this was going to be such a stressful heated experience, I would have changed my usual habits and slathered on a layer under my armpits.

I was about to ask some of the unseen people in the room if it was supposed to be this hot, when a buzzer sounded and the electrodes turned off.

“I’ll be with you in a second Miss,” came an unfamiliar voice. Surely she was talking to me, and not the man lying down on the table next to me who requested his levels be turned up as high as possible. My electro stimulation therapy session was over, and my neck was actually feeling a little better. I waited for all the gadgets to be removed from my sticky sweaty body. Embarrassing indeed. I’m just glad I still had on all my clothes.

The assistant led me back to my chiropractor’s office and told me she’d be with me in a minute. I was grateful for the little break. It gave me time to adjust my contact lenses that had become glued to my eyeballs during the several minutes my eyes had been tightly shut in fear. I was also feeling a little loopy from having had my head face down for so long.

“Alright, lets get you straightened out,” my chiropractor said as she waltzed with perfect posture down the hall and into her office. I was still unsure of what to think of her since she’s the one who had put me in a potential deathly situation. I was actually a little upset that I didn’t get to play out the Chuck Norris scenario I had set up in my mind.

“You’re very tight in the left side of your neck and around your first rib by your shoulder,” she deduced after pressing and poking and rubbing and stretching.

“That would make sense since those are the areas I currently want to cut out of my body,” I concurred.

“Have you ever been to a chiropractor before?”

“No. You’re the first.”

“Oh I just love being the first for people,” she beamed. And that’s when it dawned on me that this was going to be something special.

“Well let’s get you to lie down on your back. I’m going to align your spine and do a couple flicks in your neck.”

“Uh. Ok. Align my spine? But my problem is in my shoulder.”

“Yes. But everything’s connected. We’ve got to work our way to that.”

So I did as she asked. She was very convincing. And I needed something to blog about.

“Alright, I want you to cross your arms over your chest and I’m going to reach up, roll you on your side quickly and blablahblah lalalalalala eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” and something to that effect. I couldn’t be quite sure what she said she was going to do to me because suddenly she had my body contorted into some circus freak side show position. It was . . . awkward. Somehow she had sprouted six arms and we were a tangled mess of her arms, my arms, my legs, her hair, my hair, and my bum. If that makes any sense. I can’t lie. I really hoped no one would walk in on us at that moment. It was just all wrong. At least in my mind’s eye. Who knows what it really looked like. I assume it was probably worse than my stick figure interpretation. (Click to view every nook and cranny)

And then I realized that she was about to crack my spine just as she rolled me back and pressed down. The sound that filled the room was sickening. Usually I can’t even handle hearing people crack their knuckles. But to hear the sound of my entire spine cracking, perhaps splintering into little pieces, almost made me want to vomit.

“Are you okay?” she asked, halfway worried. I must have been whiter than usual, basically see-through. “I know it’s a little strange for the first time, thinking what on earth am I doing to you. But trust me I know what I’m doing.” To which, curse Michael Scott, all I could think of was That’s what she said.

…to be continued…

7 Truths and a Lie

What? You want me to tell you about my weekend? With pleasure dahling (to be said in a very classic actress sort of way, perhaps Audrey or Katharine Hepburn). I’m going to be a little coy though, and this time I’ll list seven things that actually happened and one thing that did not. You be the judge.

1. I reached my goal of having 25+ followers. I went ahead and gave myself permission to buy the “Smocked Dress” from Shade because I love the word smocked (thanks be to all the lovelies who clicked that follow button. Next goal 50+!).

2. I put a bottle of sunless tanning moisturizer in my shopping cart to purchase. Bosco opened that bottle (even after I expressly told him not to touch it) and had a good old time getting rid of his winter white skin while I was distracted by all the cute travel-sized products. I used an old piece of tissue I found in my purse to wipe the lotion off his face, arms, hands, pants, and shopping cart. He still has sparkle dust on his skin, and smells like a lady.

3. Thanks to some alien force that infiltrated Bosco’s digestive system, our house became the House of Poo, and I’m not talking about the Winnie.

4. I woke up around 5AM on Saturday morning and didn’t really go back to sleep because I have a bug-of-a-Bubba who is crazy like that. The rest of the weekend was spent in near delirium.

5. I didn’t eat In-N-Out. Not even once. I did have dreams about hamburgers sans pickles though.

6. I put on deodorant before I went clothes shopping. I did not put on deodorant any other time this weekend.

7. I faced a fear and killed a spider, killed him good, all by my lonesome. Then I disposed of the spider guts and legs without screaming more than twice.

8. The Husband and I decided that we should take a little trip to New York next month. While we are there we plan on seeing the sights that city correspondent Stefon recommends in the video below.



I can’t wait to see the Germfs and the human bathmats. New York is the best.

Friday Confessions: N to the O to the No B.O.

Keeping with my tradition of honesty, I will tell you that I rarely wear deodorant. Now hear me out folks. I don’t stink, and there are many people in my life who would tell me if I did. I find that I just don’t need the stuff. I know there are some who do, men (or women with armpit hair) to be specific, but generally I think deodorant is a big fat farce. I mean we all have our own natural personal smell, a mixture of pheromones, earth, wind, and fire. This scent can’t be covered up with an armpit spread so why even try. I rarely wear perfume too because I think this world is too perfumey as it is. Does this make me a hippie? Did I just confess that I’m a closet hippie?

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a good scent just as much as I enjoy a good piece of chocolate. In fact, I’ve been known to spray my pillow at night with a refreshing lavender vanilla mist. It soothes my weary soul, and drives the Husband nuts (when I accidentally spray some in his face). Deodorant, however, doesn’t really have a pleasing smell, especially when mingled with sweat and body odor. Would that be considered an oxymoron? De-odor = odor. Yes I think so.

When I was younger, early adolescence, around the time a young woman starts to go through changes, starts shaving her legs and armpits, begs her mom for a training bra, notices her sweat smells like salsa or peanut butter or something else you would put on a chip or cracker (that’s not just me was it?), starts sneaking the deodorant from her parent’s bathroom . . . this is when I was first introduced to the wide world of products geared towards making me think I stunk. And maybe I did. I used to sweat a lot in the under arm area. It was insane. Nothing worked. Then a friend suggested this product. It worked. For certain.

Then as I got older I somehow just stopped sweating as much. This could have something to do with the fact that I avoid exercise and hot temperatures like I would Neil Diamond. Or maybe it’s because I’ve become super diligent about keeping my armpits a no hair zone. Or maybe it’s because I weaned myself off deodorant since it was in fact causing the sweat. I’m sure it’s a combination of all three.

I do, however, sweat like the 4th of July if I’m nervous. Public speaking, playing Guesstures, shopping for pants . . . in these situations I will apply a coat of deodorant, just in case I become off-putting. Typically I go for something I’ve used since I was a teenager. Not even sure they make this kind anymore. I've had it for awhile.

But more recently this kind so I can feel more mature and up-to-date.

So go ahead, look in my medicine cabinets. You will find deodorant there, collecting dust. But it’s there just in case.

Hey at least I didn't confess to not brushing my teeth because I don't like them to be all slippery, like some famous person did. Hope you all have a dry and pleasant smelling weekend.