I like to consider my home a bug free zone. We pay an extermination company loads of money to help make this a reality. When I say my home is bug free, I would also like for that to be a blanket statement that covers the outside of my home and the grass where my kids and I play as well. Just because I'd like it to be so doesn't always mean it is so. The trees and other areas of the yard are fair game as far as I'm concerned.
Apparently, the stink bugs and cicadas did not receive the memo. They are going out of their way to get into my home (as I write this) or onto my front porch or window screens. The things are ugly from the top side...the underbelly is far worse! Chills creepy-crawl from my ears to my toenails when I encounter such eery looking creatures. Thanks to their presence, I haven't set foot on my front porch after dusk in weeks. (Spiders account for all the other warm nights I've imprisoned myself in my home.)
My husband is trying to turn me into an outdoorsy girl...sitting on the deck at night to enjoy a glass of wine and the latest Daily Show or Colbert Report on Hulu; enjoying the back and forth motion of our hammock swing while staring at the back of our shrinking house. I spend most of the time looking for bugs out of the corner of my eye - always ready to spring out of my seat and into the safety of my home should a 6 or 8 legged creature decide that tonight's the night to climb Mount Lee. Sometimes hubby sits on the front porch, smoking a cigar and watching something he's downloaded on the computer, just to taunt me. He knows that I refuse to go to bed without kissing him goodnight, so he lures me out there on purpose. Nice try, but the few seconds I spend out there, surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature, are a few seconds too many!
Heaven help me when my girls grow up and, like most children I know, decide they want to spend the night in a tent in the backyard...with Mommy.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
The Great Dishwasher Debate
In the land of Passive-Aggressiva, AKA my house, there's yet another silent war being waged. This particular skirmish involves the dishwasher and whether to pre-rinse the dishes or not prior to inserting them into their proper spot in the machine. I'm a rinser, hubby is not...hence the debate.
Until this past week, I've let him go about his non-rinsing ways and not said too many words about it. However, during a particularly whiney morning in our household, I was unloading the dishwasher and reached the end of my tether. When the girls are screaming or whining, two of the cats are fighting and creating a tornado of cat hair, the third cat is puking somewhere in the house, and the phone is ringing, the LAST thing I need to do is re-wash a dish; or lose a fingernail trying to scratch off the food that is now hermetically sealed to the dish. I agree with hubby on this one important point..."A dishwasher is supposed to wash the dishes, therefore I shouldn't have to rinse them off first." YES, that is so true! Items should not have to be rinsed before putting them into a dishwasher. Commercials for detergent and washers all hail that very remark!- Life would be easy if I could simply turn on the dishwasher full of dirty, sticky, messy dishes and it actually got rid of all the food on the plates, like a good little dishwasher is supposed to do. Ours, which we inherited when we bought our house, does not perform its washing duties appropriately, and when hubby leaves food on his dishes/cooking items when putting them in the dishwasher, I inevitably have to re-wash said items before putting them back in the cabinet. Who has time for that!?!?
So, after a day of being a mommy and an entertainer and a short order cook and a housekeeper/maid and a soother and a translator and a dish re-washer, I decided to approach hubby in that walking-on-egg-shells manner that's required of such an endeavor. Kindly, I mentioned that once again, the dishwasher did not fully clean the dishes and it added a bit of stress to my hectic day. I continued with a plea for his help in making my day peachy keen by simply running his plates/utensils under running water for a fleeting moment prior to putting them into the dishwasher. *Notice I did not place blame. I said nothing about his rinsing negligence that created the problem in the first place.* His response: "I'll see what I can do." And the war wages on...and on and on.
Until this past week, I've let him go about his non-rinsing ways and not said too many words about it. However, during a particularly whiney morning in our household, I was unloading the dishwasher and reached the end of my tether. When the girls are screaming or whining, two of the cats are fighting and creating a tornado of cat hair, the third cat is puking somewhere in the house, and the phone is ringing, the LAST thing I need to do is re-wash a dish; or lose a fingernail trying to scratch off the food that is now hermetically sealed to the dish. I agree with hubby on this one important point..."A dishwasher is supposed to wash the dishes, therefore I shouldn't have to rinse them off first." YES, that is so true! Items should not have to be rinsed before putting them into a dishwasher. Commercials for detergent and washers all hail that very remark!- Life would be easy if I could simply turn on the dishwasher full of dirty, sticky, messy dishes and it actually got rid of all the food on the plates, like a good little dishwasher is supposed to do. Ours, which we inherited when we bought our house, does not perform its washing duties appropriately, and when hubby leaves food on his dishes/cooking items when putting them in the dishwasher, I inevitably have to re-wash said items before putting them back in the cabinet. Who has time for that!?!?
So, after a day of being a mommy and an entertainer and a short order cook and a housekeeper/maid and a soother and a translator and a dish re-washer, I decided to approach hubby in that walking-on-egg-shells manner that's required of such an endeavor. Kindly, I mentioned that once again, the dishwasher did not fully clean the dishes and it added a bit of stress to my hectic day. I continued with a plea for his help in making my day peachy keen by simply running his plates/utensils under running water for a fleeting moment prior to putting them into the dishwasher. *Notice I did not place blame. I said nothing about his rinsing negligence that created the problem in the first place.* His response: "I'll see what I can do." And the war wages on...and on and on.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Warning:
:Exposure to Introverts or Rude People Can Cause Enhanced Exercise Experiences
First full day at the OBX and the girls were up earlier than the sun. What did I do with my early, EARLY Sunday morning? Like all people who like to appear healthy and fit, I went for a brisk walk on the beach. On my walk, which was boring b/c I didn't have earbuds with which to listen to my iPod, I decided to do an experiment. Being in the true South (if you knew my hubby you'd know why I had to put the word "true" in there), I figured most people would be friendly. However, knowing that most people there were transplants for the week, I guessed I would be hard pressed to find friendly, Southern folk. So began my quest.
As I wiggled my hips down the beach I mostly stared into the glistening ocean, thinking that I should have applied sunblock or at least worn a hat. I was coming up with blog topics, singing songs in my head, and having fake conversations with people in my mind. That is, until I'd pass a fellow exerciser. No matter where they were looking or what they were looking like, I waved and piped, "Good mornin'!" With my signature big smile and Richmond accent, I hoped people would oblige me and return my salutations. I made sure to just smile and wave to people with earbuds. Even still, they couldn't contort their faces to return the smile. Sadly, out of the 31 people I greeted, a mere 3 returned my sentiments. Maybe they were too shy to say hi back? Perhaps some cussed me out once I passed for being so chipper in the morning. I appeared to be enjoying my exercise...maybe they weren't enjoying theirs? Maybe they were so thrown by someone acknowledging their presence that they were stunned into silence? To those 3 people who pleasantly responded...I thank you. Although, you didn't do much to change my opinion of society in general and the direction in which it's heading.
Since the walk away from the beach house proved fruitless in terms of making new friends, I decided to try the running thing on the way home. I hadn't run since 2005 or 2006 when I was training for a half marathon I got peer pressured into doing. I'm slow, I look like a fool, my thighs rub together at the top, my shorts look like they're being eaten by said upper thighs, I turn bright red and appear to be close to passing out even though I'm not, and I get blisters the size of dollar bills on my flattened arches no matter how top-of-the-line my running shoes are. All of that aside, I went for it. At first I thought someone had poured Jell-O into my butt, stomach and boobs. Holy Wiggle Jiggle, Batman! I felt like I was being pulled to the core of the Earth with each step. Knowing that my jiggly-bits would settle in a while, I kept going. Ugh. Why did I start this? What was I thinking? I had to be at least 2 miles from home. OK - maybe a mile and a half. Either way, it might as well have been light-years. I couldn't even see our beach house from where I was, and anything resembling it was blurred by the morning haze. Being competitive by nature, giving up and walking was NOT an option at this point. I quickly thought of any song to sing to myself. "I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee..." Nope! Sad that the first song that came to mind was a children's song...work hazard I guess. Then I remembered all the summer songs I'd recently downloaded onto my iPod, so I sang those to myself instead. Once I got close enough to the house to see it I started running a bit faster. I didn't want my family members to see me running at the pace of a speed walker. Forgetting that, unlike the car's side view mirror, things are FARTHER than they appear on the beach. Remember...competitive nature here! So, I kept up that faster pace for the rest of the distance to the house. I got to the "finish line" I drew in the sand and vowed never to do that again...until Tuesday.
First full day at the OBX and the girls were up earlier than the sun. What did I do with my early, EARLY Sunday morning? Like all people who like to appear healthy and fit, I went for a brisk walk on the beach. On my walk, which was boring b/c I didn't have earbuds with which to listen to my iPod, I decided to do an experiment. Being in the true South (if you knew my hubby you'd know why I had to put the word "true" in there), I figured most people would be friendly. However, knowing that most people there were transplants for the week, I guessed I would be hard pressed to find friendly, Southern folk. So began my quest.
As I wiggled my hips down the beach I mostly stared into the glistening ocean, thinking that I should have applied sunblock or at least worn a hat. I was coming up with blog topics, singing songs in my head, and having fake conversations with people in my mind. That is, until I'd pass a fellow exerciser. No matter where they were looking or what they were looking like, I waved and piped, "Good mornin'!" With my signature big smile and Richmond accent, I hoped people would oblige me and return my salutations. I made sure to just smile and wave to people with earbuds. Even still, they couldn't contort their faces to return the smile. Sadly, out of the 31 people I greeted, a mere 3 returned my sentiments. Maybe they were too shy to say hi back? Perhaps some cussed me out once I passed for being so chipper in the morning. I appeared to be enjoying my exercise...maybe they weren't enjoying theirs? Maybe they were so thrown by someone acknowledging their presence that they were stunned into silence? To those 3 people who pleasantly responded...I thank you. Although, you didn't do much to change my opinion of society in general and the direction in which it's heading.
Since the walk away from the beach house proved fruitless in terms of making new friends, I decided to try the running thing on the way home. I hadn't run since 2005 or 2006 when I was training for a half marathon I got peer pressured into doing. I'm slow, I look like a fool, my thighs rub together at the top, my shorts look like they're being eaten by said upper thighs, I turn bright red and appear to be close to passing out even though I'm not, and I get blisters the size of dollar bills on my flattened arches no matter how top-of-the-line my running shoes are. All of that aside, I went for it. At first I thought someone had poured Jell-O into my butt, stomach and boobs. Holy Wiggle Jiggle, Batman! I felt like I was being pulled to the core of the Earth with each step. Knowing that my jiggly-bits would settle in a while, I kept going. Ugh. Why did I start this? What was I thinking? I had to be at least 2 miles from home. OK - maybe a mile and a half. Either way, it might as well have been light-years. I couldn't even see our beach house from where I was, and anything resembling it was blurred by the morning haze. Being competitive by nature, giving up and walking was NOT an option at this point. I quickly thought of any song to sing to myself. "I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee..." Nope! Sad that the first song that came to mind was a children's song...work hazard I guess. Then I remembered all the summer songs I'd recently downloaded onto my iPod, so I sang those to myself instead. Once I got close enough to the house to see it I started running a bit faster. I didn't want my family members to see me running at the pace of a speed walker. Forgetting that, unlike the car's side view mirror, things are FARTHER than they appear on the beach. Remember...competitive nature here! So, I kept up that faster pace for the rest of the distance to the house. I got to the "finish line" I drew in the sand and vowed never to do that again...until Tuesday.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Hallmark: Take Note!
While searching for a Valentine's Day card for a boyfriend about 5-6 years ago, my inner monologue had a malfunction. I said, in a loud teacher voice, "Where's the 'I Don't Love You Anymore and I'm Breaking Up With You Tomorrow' section?" Apparently I hadn't noticed the nice man standing next to me, nor the 14 other people in the store. We were all last minute card shoppers. Normally I wouldn't be caught dead in ANY store the day of a "major" holiday, but this was a def-con 5 emergency. I hadn't gotten a single thing for my boyfriend for V-Day. As you can probably tell, I was NOT feeling the love anymore and didn't even want to spend $5 for a stupid card that didn't convey my true feelings anyway. What a waste...of my time AND money! Anyway, my plans to break his drunken heart needed to be kept secret (from him at least, since the whole store now knew about it), as I didn't want to forever ruin his Valentine's Days from here to Kingdom Come.
Let's be honest. Unless you're a complete jerk devoid of ANY remorse or empathy, you just don't break up with someone on Valentine's Day proper. If you're just a pseudo-jerk, maybe you do it the day before...save yourself some money and the hassle of trying to find a V-Day present that doesn't convey "lifetime commitment." I am neither jerk nor pseudo-jerk, so I prepare to make nice on the actual holiday and give a card that doesn't even hint at the devastating heartbreak that is going to befall my sweetie within 24 hours.
OK-back to the story. So, there I am, searching for a generic "Happy Valentine's Day" card...maybe one that's even blank on the inside. I find said card, pay for it, and my friend and I head to our favorite bar for an apre-shopping cocktail. After the liquid courage had time to permeate my bones, I headed home to sign the darn card, and patiently wait for him to return from work. (My friend headed home for what I'm sure was a romance-filled evening with her hubby-to-be.) I open the door and am hit with the smell of my boyfriend's go-to dinner cooking in the kitchen. He had not only gotten off work early, he had also cooked dinner AND gotten me flowers and a proper Valentine's Day present. Oh yeah, and a card. Crap. Well, it gives me yet more confidence that I'm about to make the right choice, as even for Valentine's Day we aren't on the same page. I couldn't even eat the dinner he'd prepared, but I loved the sparkly sweater.
Fast-forward to the next day. I come home from my favorite watering hole to find boyfriend on the sofa...tipsy as usual. Given last night's lack of escapades, he'd figured out my plans for today and ended up breaking up with me first! ARGH! Guess I could have saved that card money after all.
Let's be honest. Unless you're a complete jerk devoid of ANY remorse or empathy, you just don't break up with someone on Valentine's Day proper. If you're just a pseudo-jerk, maybe you do it the day before...save yourself some money and the hassle of trying to find a V-Day present that doesn't convey "lifetime commitment." I am neither jerk nor pseudo-jerk, so I prepare to make nice on the actual holiday and give a card that doesn't even hint at the devastating heartbreak that is going to befall my sweetie within 24 hours.
OK-back to the story. So, there I am, searching for a generic "Happy Valentine's Day" card...maybe one that's even blank on the inside. I find said card, pay for it, and my friend and I head to our favorite bar for an apre-shopping cocktail. After the liquid courage had time to permeate my bones, I headed home to sign the darn card, and patiently wait for him to return from work. (My friend headed home for what I'm sure was a romance-filled evening with her hubby-to-be.) I open the door and am hit with the smell of my boyfriend's go-to dinner cooking in the kitchen. He had not only gotten off work early, he had also cooked dinner AND gotten me flowers and a proper Valentine's Day present. Oh yeah, and a card. Crap. Well, it gives me yet more confidence that I'm about to make the right choice, as even for Valentine's Day we aren't on the same page. I couldn't even eat the dinner he'd prepared, but I loved the sparkly sweater.
Fast-forward to the next day. I come home from my favorite watering hole to find boyfriend on the sofa...tipsy as usual. Given last night's lack of escapades, he'd figured out my plans for today and ended up breaking up with me first! ARGH! Guess I could have saved that card money after all.
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Dish Towel Incident
Although I want you to think it is, my life is far from perfect. Any perfection my friends or family perceive is all an illusion. Seriously. Mere minutes before guests arrive I'm dusting and de-cluttering at a fever pitch. No need for blush when I've got the pink cheeks that only a mad dash clean up can provide. My children leave the house with pressed clothes and not a hair out of place (now that said hair is long enough for proper use of barrets). My husband and I are all smiles and appropriate kissy kissy in public. Once the garage door hits the concrete it's sometimes a different story. The stress of his job, my job (24/7 SAHM thank you very much), lack of sleep, lack of dates, lack of regular good-good (heard that on TV the other night and decided to go with it) and overall displeasure with the fact that our house seems to be shrinking all create a murky fog that creeps into our house and never seems to dissipate.
Said fog is the reason for the dish towel incident...rather how my forgetting to do something ballooned up to being what I now refer to as an "incident."
Really, it's a question of which one is more sanitary. Which one would give rise to an easier kitchen tidy-up at the end of the day? Dish towel or paper towel? We have both in our kitchen, but they do NOT hold equal ground in the eyes of those who dwell in my house. So how did a simple slip of the mind become such a traumatic event that I'm still even thinking about it months later?!?!?
At first, there were 2 dish towels. They both hung on the oven handle. No problem. All's quiet on the western front...until my oldest decided the towels looked like super fun playthings! She pulled both towels down into a cat hair tumbleweed, and proceeded to drag them, a la Linus, all over the dusty floors. Into the wash they went! Mommy brain reared its ugly head and clean, cat hair-free towels were not immediately placed in the designated area. Do the math...now there are NO dish towels in plain sight. Keep in mind that there are, however, paper towels right next to the sink, and a plethora of dish towels in the hutch, which takes up prime real estate in our small kitchen.
Enter hubby. Hubby comes into the kitchen - hubby needs a towel - hubby refuses to use paper towels - hubby over-reacts (a mere opinion) to lack of dish towels. His logical response: take ALL dish towels out of the hutch and place them in various and sundry spots all over the kitchen. I mean, towels are hanging from the top cabinets, the bottom cabinets, the drawers, the faucet, the stove knobs, the hooks on the island and even on the door of the fridge. It looked like Williams-Sonoma threw up dish towels all over my kitchen. Ugh. All I could think about was not the error in not replacing the towels with mongoose-like speed, but that this was going to take a while to clean up. Oh yeah, and how ridiculous a war strategy this was.
Strategizing is a way of life around here, and hubby had made his move. I carefully considered my options...act like a child or act like a grown up. Since the first had been taken this time, I went with the second. So, with utmost outward maturity and a string of slanderous phrases invading my inner monologue, I neatly folded up all but 3 of the towels and put them back in the hutch. Send home the troops, the war is over! Well, at least the skirmish over the darn dish towels.
Said fog is the reason for the dish towel incident...rather how my forgetting to do something ballooned up to being what I now refer to as an "incident."
Really, it's a question of which one is more sanitary. Which one would give rise to an easier kitchen tidy-up at the end of the day? Dish towel or paper towel? We have both in our kitchen, but they do NOT hold equal ground in the eyes of those who dwell in my house. So how did a simple slip of the mind become such a traumatic event that I'm still even thinking about it months later?!?!?
At first, there were 2 dish towels. They both hung on the oven handle. No problem. All's quiet on the western front...until my oldest decided the towels looked like super fun playthings! She pulled both towels down into a cat hair tumbleweed, and proceeded to drag them, a la Linus, all over the dusty floors. Into the wash they went! Mommy brain reared its ugly head and clean, cat hair-free towels were not immediately placed in the designated area. Do the math...now there are NO dish towels in plain sight. Keep in mind that there are, however, paper towels right next to the sink, and a plethora of dish towels in the hutch, which takes up prime real estate in our small kitchen.
Enter hubby. Hubby comes into the kitchen - hubby needs a towel - hubby refuses to use paper towels - hubby over-reacts (a mere opinion) to lack of dish towels. His logical response: take ALL dish towels out of the hutch and place them in various and sundry spots all over the kitchen. I mean, towels are hanging from the top cabinets, the bottom cabinets, the drawers, the faucet, the stove knobs, the hooks on the island and even on the door of the fridge. It looked like Williams-Sonoma threw up dish towels all over my kitchen. Ugh. All I could think about was not the error in not replacing the towels with mongoose-like speed, but that this was going to take a while to clean up. Oh yeah, and how ridiculous a war strategy this was.
Strategizing is a way of life around here, and hubby had made his move. I carefully considered my options...act like a child or act like a grown up. Since the first had been taken this time, I went with the second. So, with utmost outward maturity and a string of slanderous phrases invading my inner monologue, I neatly folded up all but 3 of the towels and put them back in the hutch. Send home the troops, the war is over! Well, at least the skirmish over the darn dish towels.
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