Wordless Wednesday

Wondering what flavor are the jellyfishes?

Headline News

You see, I used to be the manager at a Bombay Company store in the mall and there was this guy who came to work for me part time, who also worked as a producer for Headline News. Now you might think it is odd the this producer guy would want to work part time at the mall, but he had just purchased a house and wanted to furnish it at a discount. You might also wonder why I as a manager would hire someone to work in my store who so obviously just wanted a discount and had no plans to work their beyond the decorating of his new home.

Well, he was hot and cute and really smart and I REALLY like that combination. Turns out he was a great employee and I had a enormous crush on him and he just happened to be gay(not that there is anything wrong with that). I know! I should have seen it coming because, well, he took a part-time job at a furniture store in the mall in order to decorate. Today I would see it, but then I was 23 and all I saw was a cute, hot, smart, older guys who seemed to be at least somewhat interested in me. I think he just liked my hair or something(it was a all spiral curls just like Sheryl Crow wore at the time). Anyway, he was a nice guy, but he batted for the other team and I blame Headline News. Because him working for them also made him that much more attractive and made me crush that much more on him. So Headline News was really the nail in the coffin of my post pubescent heartbreak.

Now this was not some embarrassing thing, like I hit on him and found out he was gay. I would never have hit on someone who worked for me. That would be SOOOO wrong, but I was totally going to try and tap that fine ass the minute that damn house was decorated. Luckily my super best friend at the time was a gay, cross dresser from Monks Corner, SC named Seth/Allyson(for reals his mom dressed him as a girl until he was 6 years old and called him Allyson...it was not until he went to school that he found out he was not a girl and was in fact a boy named Seth....true fucking story, y'all). Anyway, Seth figured the whole thing out long before I could make a totally ass of myself. God bless his daisy duck wearing little heart, he even stayed away from Mr. Headline News himself out to respect for my heart. A true fucking friend, that one.

Under Used Wall Art Sayings

Don't you love those cute sayings and words that people so proudly display on their walls in kitchens and dens throughout America. Please don't confuse this with the classic Microsoft WordArt, because that funky shit is classic. I am talking about trite one liners or one worders which was meant to sum up a persons home or being.

They range from simple words like: Cucina (because nothing says I am chic like kitchen in a foreign language), -or- imagine (really you just killed John Lennon again), -or- joy (hmm okay). Of course they go straight from simple to complex with quotes and phrases like: Friends, like wine, get better with age (at least until they start pissing themselves) -or - All You Need is Love~John Lennon (again with the killing of the already dead John Lennon) -or- Made in the USA (highly doubtful, but okay we can pretend).

Now I would understand such things is your ran a business and need these things for display purposes, i.e. men's hosiery this way, or watch your step. Or I could understand this if you had a person living with you who might need some assistance such as, 'this way to can, Grandma!', or 'that the waffle iron not the phone, Grandma'. But otherwise, I find these items to be trite and just a waste of money, not to mention sweet to the point to making saccharin ashamed. I know that we as humans need to define ourselves. We need to make statements about WHO we are. We need to heard....that is why (ahem) some of use start blogging.

Maybe I should try a find a few that would define me:

The K-Man is 5 Today!

This is the story of how my oldest came into the world. His story is less comical than his brother's and I am pretty sure it will always be like that. The K Man will always be my serious one and the Deedle will always be the cut up. I wrote this originally for a birthing board that belonged to while pregnant with the K-Man, so it may read a little odd as it was written for a group of women with whom I was very intimate. I have edited it to remove the K-Man's name and my husband's name.

Okay here it goes. I woke up in the morning on Saturday (6/25) at 6:57AM with contractions 4-5 minutes apart. When we got to 45 minutes of contractions every 4-5 minutes I called my doctor and my husband put all the bags in the car. My doctor was off for the weekend but the doctor with whom she shares office space was on call. She gave me the option of staying at home to labor or coming in to L&D. As I have a weakened cervix I decided to go in to L&D.

We got there at about 8:15AM and after determining that I was 4 cm dilated and 100% effaced they decided to let me stay. So my husband and I settled in. By 2pm I was at 6cm dilated and I requested my epidural. The anesthesiologist got there and everything went fine with getting the epi. But by the time he was done I was at 10cm dilated. I numbed up very quickly, but then my blood pressure dropped drastically. I had to get oxygen and I kept fading in and out. Finally the oxygen kicked in and I was able to pull myself together and push. Which was really good because we found out later they were preparing the OR to do a C-Section.

So, I got it together just in the nick of time. I pushed for two hours and at the end his heart rate dropped and they had to vacuum him out. It turned out he breathed in some amniotic fluid into his lungs and this made his heart rate drop. But everything was okay in the end. I am okay and I have a beautiful and healthy baby boy. We love him so much. We cannot take our eyes off of him. I am just so amazed that my husband and I created this wonderful baby.

At 6lbs 15oz The K Man was born at 5:55 pm on Saturday, June 25, 2005. I feel as though I have been waiting my whole life for this moment and I am beyond happy to finally have this child. Love to you all.

Rejects From the Fortune Cookie Factory

• Keep you face washcloth and your butt washcloth separate.
• Never play with a cat while naked.
• If life is a bowl of cherries you are the pits.
• Were you aware that the FDA allows for a certain amount of bug excrement in all processed foods?
• The squeaky wheel gets the oil, but eventually it just gets replaced. So, STFU.
• Your cat mocks you behind your back, mostly about how you look naked.
• Remember, that which does not kill us makes us stronger: Sorry about the diarrhea.

Wordless Wednesday

Playing on a hill in my parent's backyard while waiting for the lightening bugs to appear.

Things Worse Than a 5 year old with a sheet of Bubble Wrap

• Jillian Michaeals' Face: What? Too Cruel. You listen to bubble wrap in the hands of a five year old for 1 hour and let's see how nice you can be.
• Nails down a chalk board: Same child different hand and no he has not done them together yet.
• Getting a cold after returning from the tropics (i.e. Georgia) just in time for your husband to go out of town and render you a single parent.
• The 2 year old: waking up screaming from his afternoon nap in the middle of Bubblefest 2010. Not sure if the two are related, but together they suck an extra lot.
• The song Isn't It Ironic?: Because NONE of that shit was ironic....it all just sucked!
• Allergy testing: For real this should replace water boarding. Poke those terrorist guys with a bunch of itchy stuff and then not let them scratch for 20 minutes or more, repeat three times. Seriously, you could incorporate it into their health care plan and no one would be wiser. Better yet, put them in a room with a 5 year old who has a full sheet of bubble wrap!
• Quoters and the people who enable them: Seriously, put down that copy of Bartlett's Quotations and come up with something fresh. Oh who am I kidding, you stupid Quoters have never heard of Bartlett's. Instead stay off of google quotes or whatever. By the way, that wasn't Katherine Hepburn who said that, it was Dorothy Parker. When in doubt, it is always Dorothy Parker.
• Miley Cyrus and those who enable here: Come on, stop looking and they will go back from whence they came, in this case some holler somewhere.
• Oh Christ let's just face it, nothing is worse then a 5 year old with a full sheet of bubble wrap. For real how long is this going to last.

Post trip re-cap

I do not normally show photos of my children where you can see their faces, but I felt this could be an exception as my children are not usually blue.

We travelled back East to Georgia last week to visit my parents and my sister. I gotta say, things went better then expected. Both kids were on their almost best behavior (come on the 2 years still loves the word NO, better than a coal miner loves fresh air), and my family did really well with having us there as well. My sister was a absolute Godsend when it came to the boys. In fact it took three days for them to stop calling her Grandma as she spent far more time with them than their actual Grandmother. Oh well, I suppose at some point my mom will notice that I have had children and she might then actually try and interact with them for a minute or two.

We discovered a couple of things while on our trip. We discovered that children born and raised in California DO NOT like unheated swimming pools. In fact they react to a 78° pool in much the way a person would react to being dipped in acid or shot in the crotch by a laser. They react so loudly that the across the street neighbor can hear them and is left to wonder what sort of torture is going on poolside. Please note that the neighbor did not come to investigate because she was too busy being eaten alive by mosquitoes while trying to plant mosquito flummoxing plants (oh the irony).


We discovered that a curly haired children quickly becomes a Afro-headed child when introduces to temperates in the mid-90's with a humidity level around the 60% range. We also learned that when you calculate the heat index for the mid-90's with 60% humidity you get a temperature which is roughly that of Satan's butt crack. Also please note that any dog let out to play in such temps with two little boys will also SMELL like Satan's butt crack after about 15 minutes.


We went to the Georgia Aquarium and we learned that the people who volunteer at the aquarium appear to be the very same people who where released from the Georgia Hospital for the Criminally Insane, back during the Carter administration. While I applaud their efforts to reestablish a link with polite society, I do question the choice of having them yell the directions to the Penguin exhibit. I mean what did those penguins ever do to anyone. And do I really need to be told that I have a choice to crawl through an exhibit....what about me suggests that I have crawled an inch since my 1st birthday. Really?


Finally we learned that when we leave a place it stays with us not matter what. Whether it be the accent, or the ability to say the word" y'all without sound like a douche bag, I will forever be from and of the South. There is no taking that away from me. But, going home sure makes you think about how far you have come and how much you love how you got there and who are you with now.

365

I do a lot of list on this site and I know that this is not considered a good way to blog by many, but honestly this is way better than some pedantic, self aggrandising whine-fest that reads like a bad English 101 paper.

Yesterday I tuned in to the Today Show and caught a story about a Yoga instructor who did everything Oprah advised for an entire year. Of course she blogged about it and now she has written a book about the experience. Then a couple of years ago there was the couple that had sex everyday for a year...no matter what. Well, of course they wrote a book about it. And of course there was Julie & Julia...and we all know how that worked out. Yes, with Meryl Streep playing a woman my age in a movie....am I bitter about that. FUCK YES! She is old enough to be my mother, dammit.

Anyway, I was thinking what could I do for a year which would put me into a position to write a book and of course that would give me better blog fodder than my two very boring children and super shy husband.

Here are some options:

•Pee on my neighbors front lawn every day for a year...well it might not be book material, but it would definitely get me booked!
•A journal about how I lost the spellcheck function on new post screen and my attempts to find it because I cannot spell or type worth a crap.
•button collecting
•mock Yao Ming
•stalking and then pinching total strangers
•downloading useless apps onto my iPhone (I do that one already!)
•work for a year as the crotch checker at my local airport
•try to figure out what is making that weird nose only to discover it is the icemaker
•read the same book to my children every night (again i already do this one...curse you Polar Express)
•button collecting
•not shave my legs and take a picture of the results every day
•place a crank call every day to Nancy Pelosi's office claiming to be calling from the Botox Lobby...oh wait that will never work. She would take the call EVERY time.

Best of Wordless Wednesday

Building a better man is some serious business. My oldest also know how to pick up his dirty sock off the floor and change out the toilet paper roll, but I could not find this pictures when I was putting this together.

This obviously first appeared on August 14, 2009 and I am going to need write a similar letter for the State Department regarding my new passport.

August 14, 2009


California Department of Motor Vehicles
Driver's License Inquires
P.O. Box 942890
Sacramento, CA 94290


Attn: Director of DMV

Subject: Recent error in licensing process

Dear Director:

I recently had the good fortune to having to renew my driver's license with your fine agency. Allow me to assure you that I am not being sarcastic. Having lived in both Georgia and New Jersey I have come to love the efficiency with which the California DMV operates. That appointment system is brilliant! I bet it was your idea. Don't believe the detractors who criticize the long wait time and the moody employees at the California DMV. Those people were obviously too stupid to make an appointment. Really, between you and me, they are too stupid to live and we ought to direct them to that new Death Panel thingy that has been in the news lately.

Forgive me, I digress. While I feel that my time spent at the DMV was productive and well spent. I do feel that there was some serious mistake was made somewhere along the way. Because you see somewhere between me standing before the camera and mailman delivering my new driver's license and serious error occurred. You can imagine my surprise when I opened my new driver's license to discover the face of a stranger looking back at me.

Who is this I said to myself. This woman is overweight, and old. Her hair is limp, yet unmanageable at the same time. Her nose is crocked and she appears to have an orange-ish glow about her. She is also clearly insane for why else would someone smile like that. In short, this is not me! I am young and svelte. My hair is the picture of perfection and I am certainly not orange. Also as you have no doubt been able to determine, by the tone of my letter, I am anything but insane.

I can only imagine that this poor, old, unattractive and crazy woman has infiltrated the ranks of the DMV in order to swap out her photo with that of a much more attractive person. You are just lucky that this happened with me and not to someone famous and powerful, like Cindy Crawford. Boy, would that have been embarrassing! Luckily for you I have brought this error to your attention before things could get out of hand. This is California and we can not afford to be angering any celebrities, now can we. I feel that I can overlook this error and continue on in my relationship the California DMV.

In conclusion, I suggest that you make every effort to find my missing photo, affix it to my driver's license and send it to me post haste. Thank you in advance for your assistance on this matter.


Sincerely,




The Mom(aka Amy)

Never

This was orginally posted on September 29, 2009, but the sentiment still stands.

I never want their hearts broken. I never want them to hurt. I never want them to know sorrow. I never want them to feel the sting of someone else's stupidity. I never want them to go without. I never want them to struggle. I never want them to....

This is what I never want to happen to my sons. Of course as their mother I have an overwhelming urge to shield them. I would like to encase them in large bubbles and keep them at home forever, but that hardly seems reasonable. It would not be fair. It would not be right. I would be no way to live. I tell myself this.....

Life is just as much about failure as it is about success. You cannot know love, without heartbreak. You can never know pleasure without pain. You cannot know true joy until you experience sorrow. You have to be able to face other's in order to truly know yourself. You need to go without to be able to really enjoy plenty. You will not know true triumph without struggle. I know these things. I know that they need to experience life fully and that my job is not to shield but to help them learn to cope with life's problems.

BUT, with each struggle or roadblock my heart breaks for them. I can only hope that somehow my heartbreak helps to immunize them against their own.

On My Way Home

Today the boys and I are leaving for Georgia to visit my parents and sister. I don't want the site to be barren for an entire week and I am not sure that I will be able to update that often from my phone, or my parents computer which is set to some weird stark white huge font setting.

So, my husband suggested that I do a best of week next week. I am not sure what that means as this blog has not been around that long and even he does not read my blog (so how would be know what was best). But I think I will just re-run some of my favorite posts.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and I will think of you often as I am sipping on my sweet tea.

Georgia at it's Finest

This is were I get all mushy. I wanted to share this with you all because this song and these images are to me so indicative of my home. Sure we have some things in our past(and present) that we are not so proud of, but the fact remains that Georgia is one of the most beautiful place on God's green Earth. From the mountains in the North to the coast in the Southeast and with every inch of red clay in the middle, this place is and always will be my home.

I have made it clear to my husband and I will make it clear to boys when they are old enough to hear it; I want to be cremated. They can keep part of me to bury or keep near to them, but part of me has to go home. Part of me has to be rest in someplace green and warm and familiar.

Georgia at it's More Finest...remember I know about Guam

Okay we may be rusty on the basics of island geography in Georgia, but we did spawn REM. That has got to be worth something, right?

Georgia at its Not So Finest

This video is of the House Armed Services Committee. Admiral Robert Williard is being questioned about the stationing for something like 5000 US Marines and their families on the Island of Guam.



Now, it may seem odd that I am posting this video which obviously shines a less than stellar light on a fellow Georgian and the Georgia educational system in general. But I just thought it was funny. Also, I was hoping that you all might notice that while I make the occasional grammatical or spelling error, I do know that Guam can and will not tip over with the addition of about 20,000 people to its population. I mean of course not, the people of Guam are certainly smart enough to line everyone up on opposite coasts so that the island would stay balanced and not tip over. I mean, duh. To think otherwise is a insult to island dwelling people every where.

Homeward Bound

In less than a week I will be flying home to Georgia to visit my parents and sister. I taking the boys with me and my husband is staying at home. This was all my idea and now I am despersately hoping that they will offer a Valium cocktail on the drink menu.

Thoughts of flying alone with a 2 year and a 5 year old notwithstanding, I am also not looking forward to being there. The original intention was to take my son's to where I came from so that they can have a better understanding of me as a person. I am now pretty sure that this lofty idea should have been shot in the ass the minute it reared its ugly head. Seriously, what was I thinking.

My parents are in their 70's and they only ever raised girls (18 years apart mind you). They are completely and totally unprepared for the hell that is two boys, at once. Not to mention that my oldest has some pretty serious anxiety issues ( I call him my little Woody Allen) and does not always get along well with my dad. Now my youngest is a living replica of my father, so they get along just fine. Like two freakin peas in a pod, but my dad just does not get The K Man. He sees the K Man's actions as proof beyond a doubt that my husband and I suck as parents. This is a constant and growing concern on my part because the K Man really senses these things and gets all the more anxious. I am hoping he will just spend most of his time outside with the dogs, because not matter what dogs love boys, and vice versa.

Then their is my mom. To say that my mom is a character is the understatement of the century. She is a woman of very strong opinions and feelings; and each and every one of those fucking opinions and feelings must be expressed IMMEDIATELY and LOUDLY. Thankfully she is also more than just a little obtuse and self obsessed, so my kids will not give her any problem whatsoever. In fact, I hope she notices that they came with me.

My sister is my sister. She has laundry list of problems far to long for this blog or any blog. I only hope that she can stay happy for the entirety of our visit. Otherwise she will just barricade herself in her room and my boys will be left with the impression that Aunt Kay-Kay is a door.

The last thing I am concerned about is the freaking humidity. For all those years I never noticed that humidity existed. It just was the way it was. But now it hits me like a ton and a half of bricks. From the moment I step off the plane I am completely and totally aware that humidity suck that this is why I spend a small fortune to live in California.

I need to be positive and think about little boys learning that green can last longer than a rainy season and that lightening bugs do actually exist! I need to think about honeysuckle and sweet tea. I need to think about what I do miss about home and not about what helped to drive me west.

Sweet tea, sweet tea, sweet tea.....ahhh I feel better now.

Running On Empty

As you all know I recently had an upper endoscopy because of health concerns. Last week I went in to see the doctor regard that test. As expected no cancer or infection was found and they verified the hiatal hernia (which I kind of already knew about). The swallowing problem will be with me always because the hernia has made my esophagus bendy and we now have to find a prescription which will both work, not have horrible side effects and be covered by my insurance.

Well, I have almost done it. The samples my doctor gave me are actually working. Listen to this I was able to eat some popcorn last night at 10pm and nothing bad happened. No waking up at 4am with chest pains, no waking up feeling like there is moose in my throat. Nothing! Yippee. You have no idea how exciting this is. In the past I would have to stay up half the night if I ate late. The side effects for this drug are minor compared to the others I have tried. Sure I get a strong cramping urge when I have to poo, but otherwise things are normal. The other drugs offered explosive diarrhea or week long constipation. I can handle some cramps. It will be like an early warning system and since I am a shy pooper, who can only go at home, this is fine.

Now onto the insurance. This drug requires prior authorization, the pharmacist tells me. What does that mean? She is not sure, but it will taken care of and I should know something in 10 days to 2 weeks. So I call the insurance company when I get home. Or should I say I all the prescription service that my insurance company has farmed this stuff out to. They tell me that this prior authorization is required by the FDA. What does that mean?

As a DES daughter I am naturally suspicious of all drug companies. They are right up there with gigantic spiders and Pennywise the clown. Because of my own personal prenatal experience that drug companies lie and cheat. I know that they are willing to do anything, including put my life and the lives of other women at risk so that they can continue to make money hand over fist. I also now that when caught they will file bankruptcy to avoid paying out millions in lawsuits. Or even worse they will purchase our politicians in order to control their liability.

I have done my research and all I can find is that this drug has experienced a name change (previous name to close to the name of another drug) and that this class of drugs can cause bone fractures when used for decades. So now I am even more confused. Is this not going to fill prescription without prior approval thing because of my insurance company or because of the FDA? Will I ever know?