Filed under: Misc. Humor, Travel | Tags: adulthood, Birds, budget, construction, family, humor, kharma, lake, porches, south, southern, subourbonmom, travel, Virginia
Every now and then Hubby and I have a Come-To-Jesus meeting about our budget, where we both agree we eat meals out too often, among the other things we spend too much money on. That’s an easy way to cut back. Then we promptly go out with friends to a Mexican place and have beer and margaritas. I’m always lecturing the girls on not spending their money at restaurants, and to save it for something they really want—and they promptly go to a local dive called Satterwites and order breakfast. Shocker…
Come to find out, the Animal Kingdom isn’t much different than the People Kingdom in that regard. Nobody likes to eat what’s in their own house.
We (okay, really it was Hubby and friends) recently finished the back porch. I was the SOA (Sr. Outside Assistant, handling things like running to the kitchen for rum and cokes and beer). The porch is another dream come true (seriously, I’ve been thinking about it for years—BIG points for Hubby)—and then came the opportunity to get some good karma from the Animal Kingdom, to balance out the massive amounts of fish we’d been catching and eating. (I’m sure that someday I will come back as a catfish—that will be my punishment—in fact, I’ve already got these suspiciously long hairs around my mouth that I now have to get waxed off…seriously, getting old is so gross.)
Unfortunately, a family of wrens built their nest (complete with 3 eggs) in the stack of cushions we were storing on the porch. By the time we got the screen done and were ready to move the whole stack outside, nest included, there were three baby wrens in the nest instead of just eggs. What a dilemma—make birds happy, or push on with my dream of sitting bug-free on the porch.
Newsflash: I’m not a bird fan, Baltimore Orioles excepted. They creep me out—all twitchy and beady-eyed.
I spent some time trying to determine how to move the nest without dropping the babies, but finally, better people (Mom and Daughters and Niece) decided the right thing to do was to leave the nest where it was and leave the porch doors open so Mama and Daddy Bird could feed the babies and teach them how to fly. According to the internet, this takes about 2 weeks.
I was not happy to have to share my porch with my feathered friends.
So we spent the rest of the time with the doors open and citronella candles burning, watching wasps, ants, mosquitos and other creepy crawlies enjoy their new home. It was also entertaining to watch the bugs have to re-route their flight paths once the porch was enclosed in a no-fly zone–lots of smacks against the screens. Those smacking sounds were almost as satisfying as hearing a bug zapper, or hitting them with the electric for swatter.
Finally, after dodging yet another angry, Kamikaze wasp, Big Brother said, “If those birds are going to live in here with us, the least they can do is stop going out for dinner. They should eat what’s here.”
I guess even the birds need to have a Come-to-Jesus budget meeting, too.
Filed under: Misc. Humor, Travel | Tags: family, Fishing, humor, lake, mafia, Middle-Age, mobsters, south, southern, sports, subourbonmom, summer, travel, trees, Virginia
Lately, I’ve been learning a lot of things about myself—some good, but most of them not flattering. For example, as I’ve gotten older, my brain-to-mouth filter has gotten, shall we say…porous? Hard to believe, I know. But one of my most recent self-discoveries had nothing to do with the new job. It had everything to do with one of our favorite American traditions—hiding the bodies.
This week, with the 4th of July coming up and the buzz around the US Soccer Team creating a surreal sports hype I was feeling nostalgic for some American traditions. What better tradition than to devote a weekend doing yard work and drinking beer? So, we went to the lake, where we have a small house and a boat, and enough chores to keep Hubby busy burning stuff for a lifetime. One of our chores was to finally sink this year’s Christmas tree in a secret fishing spot. In theory, the sunken tree will attract crappie and other fish (if you ever see fisherman randomly sitting 20 yards or so off of…nothing, you can bet there’s a sunken tree down there somewhere). Mind you, this is
a) illegal, and
b) a messy activity involving pine sap and pine needles that are impossible to get out of indoor-outdoor carpet.
It’s also harder than you’d think. First, I had to drag the tree to the dock because some people were a little concerned about spiders and lizards. Then we tied a cinder block to the tree so it would sink (the arborist version of cement shoes). Daughters 1&2 held the tree in the water in front of the boat while we idled over to the secret spot. With a flourish we let the tree go and backed the boat away.
The tree floated like a bobber.
Or a body.
Apparently, one cinder block wasn’t enough. In the meantime, the ski boats that whirl around our little piece of lake were watching.
Hubby was getting nervous…he sat on the front of the boat, feet dangling in the water as he tried to guide the carcass with a stick.
“Stop! Back up! You can’t go that fast!” All the while the body, er, tree was bobbing up and down for the whole world to see.
Eventually, we nudged the tree back to the dock and tied two more cinder blocks to it and headed back out.
“Hurry up!” Hubby said. “You know this is illegal, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but everybody does it.” Pause. “Do you want to stop?”
Hubby said, in true, fatalistic accomplice fashion, “No, they’ve seen us now. We may as well finish.”
Five minutes later, we had sunk our tree, praying it was deep enough not to get hung up in someone else’s boat prop, but also hoping the fishermen would snag it often enough with their lines that they would stop trolling along our piece of shoreline at 6:00am.
The boat was littered with evidence (it still is)—pine needles in the carpet, sap on the seats and our hands and legs, like Lady MacBeth’s blood. At least three ski boats saw our crime—hopefully we looked intimidating enough (me in my tankini and Hubby in one of his soccer dad t-shirts) to scare them into silence.
So what did I learn from my near-mobster activity?
- Do your illegal activities at night—no witnesses, and it saves on your breakfast revisiting you in the form of anxiety-induced heart burn
- Use plastic sheets to keep the evidence off of your stuff—there’s a reason they always assassinate the victims with plastic bags on the floor.
- Carcasses are more buoyant than you think
- I cannot pull off acting cool when I’m doing something “illegal”—we took treated lumber to the dumpster once and I was as nervous as if we were doing a drug deal in the middle of The Jefferson
- If the first detective asked me anything about it, I’d crack like an egg.
Happy birthday, America!
Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Posts | Tags: adulthood, children, communication, employment, humor, jobs, Middle-Age, office, office etiquette, preschool, south, southern, subourbonmom, teaching, work
Hey? Did you hear that flapping sound? That’s me, flailing around in my new job. Yep, I did it—I stopped teaching 5-year-olds so I can work with much taller 5-year-olds in the grown-up world of business.
I won’t go into all the boring details, but suffice it to say (who says “suffice it to say” anymore?), I am having to re-work some of my mental processes as I make the transition from teaching to having a “big girl job,” as my teacher friends like to call it. One of the things I decided would help me through, is to make a list of things to remember while I’m sitting in my cube:
- Do not talk about poop at work….or pee, or green boogers or vomit.
- You don’t have to get someone to stand over your cube and make sure nothing happens while you go to the bathroom.
- Crayon and markers are not acceptable modes of communication.
- Do not display your finished work on the board outside your cube.
- People can hear you if you’re whispering on a conference call (found that one out yesterday).
- You cannot tell irritating people to take a time out.
- Do not send back edits with smiley faces on them.
- There is no “Question of the Day;” there hundreds of questions (usually asked by me) every day, and the answer usually involves three emails and trying to figure out how to work the phone that has no labels.
- You don’t have to write everything in words of one syllable for the beginner readers…usually.
- Don’t expect the supply closet to be very inviting—there are no paints, stickers, glitter or construction paper, even though every office in the working world desperately needs these things.
- Sitting on the carpet to sort out your papers just looks…odd. Sit in the chair whenever possible.
- Do not spin in the chair just because it’s fun. People will look at you funny.
- Relax—no one is going to look under the bathroom stall door to see which teacher is in there with them.
- It is now safe to talk about The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy without the fear of damaging a child’s imagination—but Santa’s still real, right? (In our house the rule is, “If you don’t believe, you don’t receive.”)
- Seriously, don’t talk about poop at work…ever.
Filed under: Middle Age, Posts | Tags: adulthood, boxers, dating, humor, Marriage, menopause, Middle-Age, mom, Panties, sex, sexy, shopping, Soma, south, southern, subourbonmom, thongs, underwear
Recently I was in the “library,” thumbing through my Bathroom Book of Facts, when I came upon one that sparked my interest:
“The average American woman has 27 pairs of underwear.”
I thought, that can’t be right. There’s no way we have that many, even if you include Date Night panties, the inevitable Granny Panties, and the “Hell no, I’m not wearing those. I don’t care if you got them in Vegas.” Since I like to do research, I decided to
1) survey my own stash of underwear;
2) survey how many my friends have; and
3) see if there’s a difference in the number men and women have, since the book didn’t mention it.
Surprise! I have exactly 27. Nice to know I’m perfectly average. But when I counted up the three categories, I was surprised to find I only have 8 cotton everyday Jockeys, and 2 Granny Panties; but, I have 17 Date Night pairs (I’d already gotten rid of the “Hell No” panties years ago). Very strange (and depressing) since I pretty much only wear the cotton Jockeys every day.
Taking the advice of many women’s magazines, I made a decision to try and wear a Date Night pair every other day and see if I felt sexier, even though nobody else would know. (I didn’t say anything to Hubby, since I knew he’d never leave me alone if he knew what I was wearing). The result? I didn’t really feel sexier, since I instantly forgot about them unless they started crawling up, which they inevitably did. Polyester and Lycra are not my friend. (Side note: The Hanky Panky thongs are still the only ones I will ever wear, and they didn’t crawl up, since they were already there.)
When I asked my friends about their supply, I learned four things:
1) most of my friends are around the 25-30 mark—I like to think of this as a sign of optimism, unless the Granny Panty pairs are outnumbering the Date Night Pairs;
2) the younger the women, the more they had (teens-25 had pairs numbering in the 40’s)—I attribute this to the number of times they change clothes in a day;
3) men have significantly fewer pairs—also attributed to the number of times they change in a day, and the fact below;
4) men and women categorize their underwear very differently.
Apparently, most men only have about a dozen, no matter what their age or athletic/work habits. And they categorize them into Regular and Exercise groups. No mention of how they want to look in front of the ladies…hmmmm…no Date Night pairs, fellas? Just a shave and some cologne and you’re all set? Well, at least you’re not being presumptuous.
So, I’ll continue to wear the Date Night underwear, if for no other reason than now I won’t have to do so many loads of whites to keep the cotton stash at the ready for gym days. For those of you with a disproportionate number of Granny Panties, don’t give up! Just because your hips have spread out to balance your bottom, which dropped somewhere below Antartica in recent years, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to wear sexy underwear. It does mean you need to get properly-fitting underwear with the sticky stuff along the edges to hold it in place—check out Soma for those in regular woman sizes.
For you men, thank you for keeping the laundry loads down with your minimalist purchases; and thank you for buying that “Hell No” underwear a few years ago, even though our bodies were clearly past looking good in them–it might have made us mad initially, but secretly, we were pleased you still saw us that way at all!
PS–when I was looking for pictures of underwear online, I came across some that were hysterical, but that I could never publish here. If want a giggle, just search for funny underwear pictures.
Filed under: Misc. Humor, Parenting, Posts | Tags: adulthood, children, dances, Dancing, dresses, family, high school, humor, kids, Middle-Age, mom, parenting, prom, shopping, south, southern, subourbonmom, teenagers, teens
Ahhhh…spring. Cheers and whistles ripple across athletic fields as the sports season winds down. Pollen hangs in the air like a miasma, and prom dresses fly off the racks at all of the local stores faster than the NBA punished Mr. Sterling.
Looking at prom through parent goggles is a strange odyssey.
Let’s start with dresses. Our newspaper listed some numbers associated with prom. Apparently, the amount spent on average for prom dresses: $250 to $500. I was floored—until I went prom dress shopping. (Word to the wise—waiting until three weeks before prom is not a good idea. There are only size 00 and size 16 left.)
For a mere $100-$200, you too can own a cheaply-made dress with plunging neck- or backlines that would make Christina Aguilera blush, and enough fake jewels sewn on to make Cher look like a Quaker. God help you if you want something else—which is (thankfully) what Daughter #1 wanted: something less flashy but still long, and in a regular size.
We found a great resource, “Rent the Runway,” where you pay a minimal amount ($25-$150) to rent a brand-name runway dress for a week. While none of those dresses appealed to Daughter #1, I’m keeping it in my back pocket for the next event I have to go to. (If anybody ends up using this catalog, let me know how it works out!) In the end, we bought a beautiful dress (for you women who care, it’s a glorified maxi) that she will be able to wear a dozen times, and not get stuffed into the closet as a precursor to all the bridesmaids dresses she will be wearing in her twenties.
The average amount guys spend on a tux these days? $120.
As for transportation, I don’t think many of my friends took limos to prom. These days, the amount many teens (i.e. their parents) spend on transportation: $400.
Seriously? What’s left for the wedding?
My generation was the first (I think) to instill the school-sponsored after-prom party, which we attended for the least amount of time required before going out on our own to a party at someone’s house, and usually with a fair supply of “social enhancers” to go with us. Lately, I’ve heard some parents talking about what their kids are doing after the prom, and a couple of them mentioned the kids might be getting hotel rooms.
Um, maybe I’m out on a limb here, but I’m pretty sure nothing good ever came from a bunch of (or two) teenagers renting hotel rooms.
And of course, there’s the increasingly popular “asks” to prom: signs on overpasses, messages on car windows, and a bedroom filled with balloons, just to name a few. It sure makes my wedding proposal, which was perfectly romantic and in no way public, seem like we were Ward and June Cleaver. I would hate to be a guy and have to ask someone to prom these days—talk about pressure! It seems that if you don’t do something spectacular to ask your date, you’re just not really trying. And, if you do something spectacular, God forbid she says no. Talk about humiliation! I don’t know if I’d ever recover.
As long as we’re skirting the prom/wedding border, why don’t jewelers come up with a “prom ring?” For a mere $100 or so, you can rent a specially-designed ring for your date, which indicates she has been asked and accepted—it would help eliminate any questions or guesswork. Plus, it’s just anther step closer to an actual engagement ring.
Or why stop there? Why not just schedule spring break right after prom? Since so many kids go to the beaches or other exotic places on spring break, why not just make it a practice honeymoon? It would probably be cheaper than an actual spring break trip, since many of the Caribbean locales are just starting their off-season in May.
So again, I ask, what’s left for the wedding? Just sayin’….
Oh, and no, I didn’t forget that I promised the underwear post this time…it just had to take a backseat to prom–some rituals just need to be commented upon.
Subourbon Mom 