Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Posts | Tags: adulthood, Build-A-Bear, decorating, family, home decor, home decorating, humor, Middle-Age, mom, moving, packing, real estate, realtors, south, southern, stagers, stress, subourbonmom
There comes a time when every suburbanite needs a change, so they turn their lives upside down, become instant HGTV experts and get the overwhelming urge to purge.
Since there’s no good time to have kids and there’s no good time to move, we decided to add the challenge of doing it in the fall of Daughter #1’s senior year. I mean, really, there isn’t much going on except SAT Tests, college visits every weekend, college applications and Senioritis.
Once the decision was made, we realized we had to get our stuff out of the house (all 15 years and two children of it), and try to make it look like no one ever lived there except June Cleaver and a decorator from Crate & Barrel.
It quickly became clear that we needed a Stager. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, a Stager is someone you pay to come to your house and tell you what you need to get rid of or change so your house will sell. What no one tells you is that having a Stager come into your house is a lesson in humiliation.
Oh, don’t get me wrong – our Stager is a seriously nice lady with good decorating sense who was trying really hard not to be too critical when she was talking about my decorating.
Apparently, there are decorating rules.
I decorate by seeing a picture in Southern Living or Coastal Living, buying one piece of furniture to start the look, then covering that piece of furniture with stuff until you can’t see it anymore. Then I start the process all over again. After walking around the house with my Stager, she said in an exasperated but kind voice, “Are these also the same curtains that were here when you moved in?” When I nodded, chewed her lip and asked hesitantly, “So, do you like shopping?”
I looked around and said, “Um, does it look like I like shopping?”
She just nodded to herself, like a therapist would after hearing some whackadoo story that confirmed their theory that the client is definitely…skewed.
After realizing my serious decorating deficiency, I decided I would channel all of my pent up anxiety at having my world (voluntarily) turned upside down onto the Stager.
And Build-A-Bear.
I now despise Build-A-Bear. Not only did they raise the stuffed animal bar so high you spend half a paycheck picking out fake roller skates and a tutu for a leopard, but they did something even worse – they created memories for the children.
Oh, it was great when my sweet baby girls’ faces lit up on a Build-A-Bear day. I loved watching them pick out the outfits and “adopt” their animal at the kid-friendly computers. Fast forward 10 years when we are trying to fit everything into a pod and there are two more trash bags filled with stuffed Build-A-Bear creatures that just won’t go in. Can I give them away? Of course not – each bear is a memory. They say you can’t put a price tag on memories – well I call bulls#*&t. The price tag is $25-$35 dollars, if you’re lucky and get the basic model without the fancy clothes.
So in went the Build-A-Bear bags (yes, I kept them, damn you, Build-A-Bear) and all of the syrupy memories, and out went two trailer loads of junk to the dump. In went boxes of schoolwork from kindergarten on, and out went my jean skirt from 1989. The closer we got to the show date, in went a lot of bourbon, and out went sentimentality.
Now that the Stager is no longer in our lives and the Build-A-Bears are packed away, I’ll have to find something new to channel all of this self-inflicted anxiety onto.
I’m thinking it will be the person who decided the NFL should play football on Thursdays. I’ve already missed my picks for Week 1 – maybe I’ll go get a football bear.
Filed under: Posts
Last week the fam went on the annual pilgrimage to Buggs Island Lake (a.k.a. Kerr Reservoir if you’re from North Carolina), which sprawls across the border of Virginia and North Carolina. Not to be confused with its uppity neighbor Lake Gaston, Buggs Island Lake is idyllic if you don’t likhee internet, people or paved roads.
Perfect.
One of my self-appointed jobs, as opposed to jobs assigned to me by my mother (like setting the table) despite the fact that I’m in my mid-40’s, is to check to gas level in the boat. The dangly gas-reader thing in the tank the isn’t exactly reliable, and cell phone service is questionable, so I consider it kind of a life-saving moment each day when I look in the tank.
I’m one of those quiet heroes you read about in Reader’s Digest.
Since I do this every day, and every day I ask Hubby if the gas level is ok for what we want to do, he gets tired of checking and just says, “There’s enough. I’m sure we’re fine.”
You know where this is going….
Well, one of the things Hubby, Big Brother and I love to do is go fishing early in the morning. This year, we broke with tradition and instead of trolling for a couple of hours, we decided to check out a creek we’d never been in before. As we got underway I asked about the gas, as is tradition, and was told, as is tradition, “it’s fine.”
Halfway up the creek the engine sputtered. The only boat within view was along the opposite shore a couple hundred yards away, being used by a man who looked like 30-Beer Santa. Santa glanced over and listened to us trying to start the engine, but made no move to come over and help. Very un-Santa-like. (I wonder what they say to Santa when he’s not being nice? “You’re on Mrs. Claus’s naughty list, Santa, and when Mrs. Claus ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.” I’m just sayin’ there was a reason Santa was out by himself.)
When we realized the engine was dead, we tried several times to rouse the teenagers back at the house, who had stayed up til 2:00am the night before. Eventually we were able to request either rescue or a gas can delivery via jet ski. They were thrilled to be woken up because their parents were stupid.
And then the best part of the trip began – the “I-told-you-so’s.”
As the discussion heated up between me and Hubby, Big Brother began the Captain’s Log, documenting our torment on the open water:
Even mom got into it, sending her first, albeit unreadable, text:
She tried so hard…
As we waited for our rescuers, we decided we didn’t want to waste valuable fishing time. We had lures, we had a boat, and we had beer (yes, it was early, but these were desperate times.
Here’s why I love Hubby: He knew I wanted to be in closer to shore so I could try and get the bass I just knew were lurking by the rocks. Hubby took a page form Master & Commander and grabbed the anchor, launched it toward shore, let it sink and hauled it back in, dragging the boat slightly closer to shore each time. He must have done this a dozen times. Eventually, we were close enough in that I could get my line where I wanted it. That’s true love, my friends.
After 30 minutes or so of sheer Hell, and by that I mean we didn’t catch anything and it was really too early for the beer, our rescuers arrived.
Lessons learned:
1. Always check the gas levels in your boat.
2. I am always right.
3. Santa fishes during the off season in a john boat with a sketchy trolling motor
4. Pack snacks.
5. You will pay for days if you wake your teenagers up to rescue you.
Filed under: Exercise, Middle Age, Posts | Tags: barn moms, barns, Exercise, Horses, pushups, soccer moms, step class, SUV, triceps
One of the benefits of working in an office is that I have been cultivating a nice store of fat around my stomach that keeps me warm now that the office air conditioning has kicked the temperature down to “Tundra.” Seriously, my index finger actually went numb the other day.
So, my schedule being what it is (work in the meat locker all day, take teenager to the barn, stay at barn while she rides, go home and fix Bagel Bites for dinner – it’s real food – and collapse in a super-sexy snoring heap on the couch), I have tried to get creative with my workouts.
Walking on country roads is interesting, if you don’t care much about fancy sports cars driven by a mid-life crisis speeding around corners and flicking you off because you’re in their space. If you go off-road for your walk, keep walking right to the drug store and get some cortisone for the poison ivy and chiggers.
So in the words of Clint Eastwood, I improvised. I adapted. I overcame.
I started working out in the back of the SUV while parked at the barn.
This workout is not for the faint of heart. Cross training? Please.
You’ve got nothing on someone who can do sit-ups and leg lifts
with only their upper body supported in the back of an SUV littered with hay, miscellaneous barn paraphernalia and water bottles…
…in the heat and dust, with 20 deer flies buzzing around the car like 13-year-olds around the mall, and with somebody’s smelly soccer cleats next to their head because nobody ever remembers to take them out of the car after practice.
Who needs a weight room bench? I’ve got a scraped-up bumper that serves nicely for my tricep workout.
Sideways planks and pushups work well off the bumper, too.
Of course, I’m not limited to the SUV exercises at the barn, although those can be done anywhere (except where your teenager thinks someone might see you).
Mats? Are you kidding? Try doing pushups in a barn with manure everywhere. You will not be touching the floor with anything except your hands and toes, I can promise you. And if you can’t do a real pushup horizontally, find the nearest fence or your car bumper and do them from a 45-degree angle.
Step class? Got that covered too. Find the nearest mounting block and there’s your step. Hop up and down on that a couple hundred times and you’ll never complain about the stairs at your house again.
Need to work the biceps and shoulders? Grab a bucket and put some water in it, then do your lifts. How about the rest of my arms, you ask? Easy – just brush a horse from head to toe. You’d be amazed how tired your arms get in 10 minutes. Wax on, wax off. Mr. Miyagi had something there.
And finally….cardio. No need to get on the treadmill or elliptical (a.k.a. the “I-limp-and-drool”) – go put a horse out in the field after being in all day, and then try to catch it again. Good luck – you’ll be chasing that beast for an hour. Scared of horses? Then walk the empty fields searching for the fly mask each horse managed to scrape off the day before.
Not a barn mom? Don’t despair – these exercises can be modified to fit any sports mom schedule, especially the SUV workout. Soccer mom? Try lifting their sports bags or water bottles instead of a bucket. Run or walk around the playing fields, but don’t do any arm exercises when you’re doing that – the paramedics might be called because your child has died of embarrassment.
Filed under: Posts | Tags: adulthood, business, business etiquette, business travel, conferences, Exercise, gym, hotels, humor, office etiquette, seminars, sports, subourbonmom, travel
- Guys, don’t try and join the few women who actually attended the conference in the one section of comfy chairs we claimed as our own, and then ask whether sending flowers to your angry girlfriend is the correct course of action. Here’s why:
- We obviously want some girl time in a male-dominated environment;
- Your creepy designer jeans and big gold chain scream out, “I’m trying to hook up while I’m out of town” and troll in the Holiday Inn Lounge on a Tuesday night; and
- You clearly suck as a boyfriend, so why would we be interested anyway? (And by the way, creepy-guy-who-did-that, texting you’re sorry to your “girlfriend” doesn’t cut it either.)
- We obviously want some girl time in a male-dominated environment;
- The GYM, Part 1: When you go to the gym, remember that you’ll be seeing half those people again while you’re sitting in a lecture—that awesome pilates move where you throw your legs over your head? They’re going to remember that and look at you funny later.
- The GYM, Part 2: Wear yoga or sweat pants—and I mean everyone—I don’t want to see your junk hanging out of your swishy running shorts, Dude-on-the-Treadmill. I have to look at you later, too.
- Ask at the desk if there will be a karaoke night while you’re there—then make sure your room is not directly above the caterwauling.
- Make sure “just a couple of blocks” means the same thing in the conference city as it does in yours.
- Ask the questions you think are too dumb to say out loud—chances are, you’re not the only one who feels that way or wants to know.
- You can tell the level of confidence the conference sponsors have in their speakers by how cold they’ve set the room temperatures: cold = snoozeville.
- Bring a travel mug—the tiny little dollhouse cups they provide hold exactly three swallows of coffee, and after sitting in a conference room the same temperature as, say, Boston this week, you need something warm with you at all times.
- Sometimes that $14 bourbon from the hotel bar (on my personal card and after classes were done, Mr. CFO) is worth it.
- It’s not cool to go back to work in the dead of winter with a tan on your face and arms–some people find that irritating.
Filed under: Misc. Humor, Posts, Travel | Tags: adulthood, air travel, airlines, airplanes, airport security, airports, Bathrooms, flying, humor, security, subourbonmom, travel
The day President Obama announced he was officially asking Congress for permission to actively combat ISIS, I was flying home from a work conference. The plane during the flight from Charlotte to home was one of those old, outsourced planes from Canada, or maybe some company called Metal-Tube-in-the-Sky Airline. There were two rows of seats (and those felt like the old plastic covered couches in Grandma’s house) with a very narrow aisle.
About halfway through the flight, the flight attendant came on the loud speaker and said, “Please do not form a line by the bathrooms. It is a security breach.”
A few of us glanced at each other and shrugged. There was some rustling, and I assumed people were returning to their seats. A couple of minutes later, the flight attendant spoke again, this time more urgently:
“It is a breach of security for passengers to congregate by the bathrooms. Please wait until there is no one in line before you come back to use the restrooms.”
Incredulous looks passed around the cabin. Security breach? At the bathrooms?
Here are a few of the thoughts that crossed my mind while I tried to decide how long I should wait before heading back there:
First of all, I’m pretty sure folks weren’t “congregating” around the airplane bathroom, just chatting each other up—after all, it’s not a bar.
Second, what happened to make someone think congregating by the plane’s bathroom could create a security situation so dire it must be forbidden? Have the FAA and Homeland Security folks ever used the bathroom on a modern plane? There’s barely room to get your pants down, much less withdraw a weapon; and, even if you did manage to extract some kind of weapon in the bathroom, having a line of people waiting outside would only hinder what you were trying to do.
If I were to have some kind of concealed weapon, I wouldn’t be getting it ready it at the back of the plane, far away from the two most important people on the plane, the pilot and co-pilot. There’s not much sense in drawing a gun, knife or explosive device and then having to charge down the aisle, tripping over someone’s feet the whole way.
If we follow the logic of the danger of congregating outside crowded bathroom areas to its logical conclusion, we would have to question every line at every sports and concert event ever. Good luck dispersing the six-pack-in throng around the port-a-pods at a Jimmy Buffet concert.
Perhaps someone at the FAA has gone back to the basics of physics—maybe they are worried that if you have enough people standing at the back of the plane, it could simply fall out of the sky. If you’ve ever flown on a tiny plane, you’ve been made aware of weight distribution. They put the luggage in the back, and people in the front and middle. Too much in any direction, and the plane is in danger of not taking off, or tumbling to the ground–like those GI Joe’s with the plastic parachutes we threw from 2nd-floor windows as a kid.
Really, a bathroom security breach sounds more like a blow-out after eating some highly-questionable tuna salad from the airport snack stand. So, to the FAA and Homeland Security, I salute your efforts to keep us safe in the skies—clearly there are dangers we haven’t even conceived of. Keep up the good work.
Subourbon Mom 