All Things In Moderation Please

Okay, I'm back. Did you miss me? I really, really, really hope someone missed me. I think I went through withdrawals. And I certainly missed all six of you. You have become my link to sanity and escapism. Out in my rural wilderness, you have joined the ranks of my friends, along with the rattlesnakes, javelinas and scorpions - not that I think of you as poisenous and dangerous nocturnal creatures, but because that's about all there is out here.

Where did I go? Sit down, let me tell you all about it.

Poor Nacho is going through a very stressful time right now and feeling my absence as I sit like a zombie in front of the blogs. He sees me for about ten minutes a day, and that's usually the ten minutes I have free to try and write and comment and read. The whining got progressively louder and more obvious as I tried, once again, to complete a Nablopomo.

So I got the scales out - husband/marital relationship or blogging, husband/marital relationship or blogging. Hmmm, this is a tough one.

No, it really wasn't tough. I was willing to give it all up and never touch it again. After all, if I'm going to sacrifice something for my Nacho, it might as well be martyrdom all the way, right? He wasn't happy with that either. He just wanted balance, moderation, and a little love and attention. Okay, I guess I can compromise. He's worth it.

And so, my friends, a little prudence, hopefully some better writing as I take time to develop a higher quality post, moderation, and a much happier Nacho.

But if I'm ever widowed, I will be here every day!!

Okay, Clarissa's diaper stinks, she's covered head to toe in red sugar, and I have to find where she dumped it. Balance, balance, balance . . .

Happy Mother's Day

Today was a wonderful Mother’s Day. I woke to see my children working together to make me breakfast. To see teenagers cooperating to create something for me is very touching. Then, tonight my sweet Nacho made dinner for me. It was delicious. I am very grateful for a family that loves me.

On the spur of the moment, I invited two women to come and spend Mother’s Day with us. One is a single woman, never married, never had children. The other woman is a single mother with two young children, no other family around and not much contact with other adults.
The second woman was talking as she came in the door, and didn’t stop talking until she got in her car and shut the door. For three hours and forty-five minutes it was straight talking, going from one subject to the next. Nobody else had to prompt her, or ask her questions, or offer any comments. We just sat and listened. By the end of the evening, my head was pounding!

As she talked, she revealed a childhood of severe emotional/mental abuse with some physical abuse. I have found, since living the past nine years in this rural community, that there is an awful lot of abuse going on, and has been going on for generations. How did I not know this before? I have discovered just how sheltered I have been.

So, on this Mother’s Day, I would like to remember my mother who never, ever abused me and who loved me tremendously. She had eight children, and every one of those eight children were well fed, well dressed, well cared for, but mostly each one was well loved. Every single one of us felt we were her special child, the one she loved the most, the one that was her best friend. How is it possible for a mother to love eight children so much that each one felt they were the extra special child?

My mom isn’t here anymore for me to tell her how much I love her. So may I share with you how much I love my mother, how grateful I am for her, and how I hope that each one of my children feels like they are my most absolute special friend, just as my mother was to me.

I hope you have all had a wonderful Mother’s Day!

When I Knew We Had Become Rednecks

I am following along in the bug theme. I think Nablopomo should have used bugs as the theme this month, because I totally would have rocked with that subject.

As I have mentioned previously, from about spring to fall our home is inundated with flying creepy crawlies. It’s getting to the point where I hardly even notice them anymore, except when they fly into my bra and bite me.

A few years ago, my sweet Nacho walked into the house one evening with a box. Now, all kids get kind of crazy when you walk into the house with a box in your arms. Ours could hardly wait to see what was inside it.

Me: Hey sweetie! What’s in the box?

Nacho: A bug zapper.

Me: A bug zapper?

Nacho: Yeah, I wanted to get one because of all our bugs. I remembered when I was living at home my dad bought one and hung it up outside to zap all the bugs. It totally annoyed the neighbor because whenever a really big moth got in it, it would completely destroy his TV reception.

I’m thinking that one tiny little bug zapper outside is not going to do the trick. We were going to need some industrial sized zappers, one on each corner of the house, and a few outside of each door and window.

But then Nacho did something completely unexpected and really quite strange. He proceeded to set up the bug zapper INSIDE the house. Next he turned all the lights out in the house. Soon all the boys were gathered around the bug zapper, just waiting.

Bzt – Ooh, it got one.

Bzt, bzt – Hey, a couple more.

BZZZZZZZT – Whoa! That was a really big one. I can smell it and everything!

That bug zapper entertained them for hours. It then became the favored evening entertainment all during the bug months.

That’s when I knew we had truly become rednecks.

Boobs and Bugs

I was just sitting here typing when I felt a bug fly into my bra. I thought to myself “Did a bug just fly into my bra?” I wasn’t quite sure, until I felt it stinging or biting or something. My first instinct was to stand up and fling my bra off and start searching for the offensive thing. Unfortunately, I had a 17-yr-old and 18-yr-old boy in the same room with me. I could just imagine their faces as A) a female suddenly stood up and flung her bra off and B) her boobs suddenly collapsed down to her belly button. While this is highly entertaining for my sweet Nacho and considered somewhat of a comic relief for him after a very stressful day, I didn’t think these boys would appreciate it near as much as he does.

So I was trying to nonchalantly search for this sexually assaulting bug, but I just knew that if the boys happened to see me, it would probably appear that I was trying to feel myself up.

So then I remembered that yesterday, or the day before, I took my bra off and found a dead bug. I wondered was it in my underwear drawer and had died in my bra before I put it on, or was it alive and subsequently was suffocated as I wore my bra throughout the day. Then I felt that I just really didn’t want to know. I hate creepy crawlies.

Then I remembered what happened to me 11 years ago. We had just moved from the city to this more rural area. I was exhausted from unpacking boxes and trying to make our new place seem like our home. I was lying in our new bedroom, when I heard something buzzing around. It was a flying ant. I had never seen a flying ant before. I started to panic, because I really hadn’t had much experience with creepy crawlies before moving here. So I said to myself “Calm down. It’s just one dumb bug. The hall light is on and it’s dark in here and it will probably fly into the hall towards the light. It is not going to bite or sting you. Close your eyes and go to sleep.”

I was just drifting off to sleep when I felt something on my body stinging me. I ran into the bathroom and stripped down, and there was the offensive flying ant. Geez, I am never trusting my self-talk ever again.

Then one morning I woke up and found that a spider had bit me on my boob which subsequently became infected and took a number of weeks to heal and left a beautiful scar (which matches the set of scars I previously received when a midwife put hot packs on me to stimulate labor, which by the way did nothing to stimulate labor but left a matched set of burn scars. I just know when I go in for physicals the doctor is thinking “don’t ask, I don’t want to hear any sordid stories”).

I am getting just a little bit tired of horny bugs.

Carcinogens, E-Coli and a Mooky Nose

I am a Bear den leader at Cub Scouts, and today was our den meeting. Consequently, when I got home it was dinner time, and there was no dinner to be found anywhere. I was planning hamburgers, but I just needed to put my feet up a minute because Cub Scouts wears me out. You know, nine-year-old boys and all. Fine, I only have one Bear, but he wears me out, okay?! Besides, there’s all that rural traffic. It’s getting worse every day. Today there were like four cars at the stop sign.

So I was at home, putting my feet up, sitting at the computer checking my boys’ school, looking at the news, reading e-mails (okay, okay, I was also checking blogs, but I had to see how many comments Sue the navel gazer had achieved). That’s when Clarissa came in crying.

Crying I can handle, but crying with a green runny nose is just too much. I mean, this mucus was hanging down past her top lip. Ugh, didn’t anybody wipe her nose the whole time I was gone? Then she wiped her nose with her hand and smeared the green slime up way past her cheek bone, which then stringed out as if it was cheese on a pizza when she pulled her hand away from her face.

She held her arms out to me asking silently for me to hold her. Hunh, hunh, hunh. I love her, but not her snot. I held her at arm’s length and asked her why she was crying. “I hungy”. Okay, I can fix that. I get up and go to the kitchen, eliciting more crying as she thought I was ignoring and abandoning her.

I threw a frozen hamburger patty on the fire and turned it up high. I coaxed the hamburger “Hurry, hurry, hurry”. But then, somewhere in the recesses of my addled brain, a memory surfaced which was that meat cooked at a high temperature, until the edges are crispy, have carcinogens. Hmm. I looked at the hamburger, I looked at Clarissa. The nose excrement was now hanging past her belly button. Burn, baby, burn!

Well, it was looking pretty done on the outside, but when I pierced the center, it was still more than a little pink. An E-coli threat. I looked at the patty, and I looked at my baby. She was holding her hands out to me again. Hey, we’ll say a blessing on the hamburger and, Voila, no E-coli, right?

I cut her burger in fourths, cleaned her face, and set a happy toddler down to eat. She took one bite, spit out the meat, and promptly fell asleep. The dog ate the rest of the hamburger. Eh, the dog can get cancer and e-coli, I don’t care. Besides, she eats the poopy diapers out of the garbage. I’m sure she will survive.

My Hero, My Nacho

Today Clarissa and I were out running errands all afternoon. That is so much fun to do with a 2-yr-old. I can hardly wait ‘til we get to do that again.

One of our stops was at Sam’s Club. Sam’s Club is like Costco, a membership warehouse. Because I have so many teenagers, I always have an overflowing cart. But today I also had to buy food for the dog. So I picked up a 50 lb bag and I was trying to maneuver it onto the bottom rack, under the main cart. This is quite a feat for any woman to do while also trying to rein in a 2-yr-old. I think I struggled with it for at least five minutes before I was able to get everything under control and situated. During those five minutes, I can’t tell you how many men passed me by, some of them even having to move around me. No one offered any help. I was just a little put out.

It reminded me of when I was first married and 8 ½ months pregnant. I was working at a downtown professional building, 20+ stories tall. We had a garage just for the professionals and their employees at that building. I was driving my first car ever, a Honda Accord. I loved that car. But one day, for some reason, it wouldn’t start. I knew that I could get it started by getting the car rolling and popping the clutch. But I had to get it backed out of the parking space and rolling in the right direction. Now, you would think that professional men, seeing a very pregnant woman pushing a car, would be gallant and stop and offer to help. Nope. It was quittin’ time and they had a beer, a recliner and a remote calling their name. It was 4:30 and by 4:35 they wanted to hit that freeway to avoid any traffic jam. So there were many men who went around me and my car as I tried not to go into labor while pushing my car. I was very shocked.

That’s one of the many reasons why I love my Nacho. He is gallant. He stops to help everyone he sees in need. He is my knight in shining armor. When he gets up early, he does my dishes. When I come home with groceries, he’s out there unloading them. If he ever sees you stranded on the side of the road, he will stop and help you, if you let him. If you cause a grocery display to tumble to the ground and roll all over, he will be there to help you gather them up and put it together again.

He is my hero, my Nacho.

Randomness

I consider myself a pretty easy-going person. It only takes my kids or my husband to ruffle my feathers (of course, that’s my entire life right now). But I have a new pet-peeve that I need to work through. My new pet-peeve is WORD VERIFICATION!

I absolutely hate it when I have written some lengthy comment (because I know that really everyone is interested in my comments, probably more than the original post, which is why I bless so many blogs with my comments, as a type of charitable act to bring more readers to other blogs, which is why they don’t read mine, because I don’t comment on my own) and then I have to go through the word verification. I know, I KNOW I am reading them correctly. I used to be a transcriptionist, so I know that probably I don’t have too many type-o’s on my good days. But sometimes those fat letters get squished up next to the skinny letters, and probably there are too many smudges on my screen from my kids who absolutely know better than to touch my screen, and then it takes me like three tries to get the dumb word right, and usually by then my comment is lost somewhere in cyberspace, and I do not feel like writing the whole thing over again and go through the dumb word verification again.

Didn’t you all think that my NIL’s nacho cake was amazing?! If you would like to see some more of her fun cakes, just click here. She gave me permission to let you all see her cakes. Let me know what you think of them.

One of the chickees tagged me for a meme the other day. I was really pretty excited because it’s my first tag. I blessed her post with my comment too. It was just a little Miss-America-style screaming and crying and ranting that she picked me. It felt like I had broached another official blogger hurdle.

So, in case you are interested, the meme is below:

Four Jobs I’ve Held

Medical Receptionist
Sales Associate
Word Processor
At Home Medical Transciptionist

Four Movies I could watch over and over and over

1. While You Were Sleeping
2. Return To Me
3. Fiddler On The Roof
4. Monsters, Inc.

Four Places I’ve Lived

1. Spain
2. Idaho
3. Utah
4. Arizona

Four TV Shows I like to waste my time on

Um, we only get CBS, so occasionally I will watch

1. Morning News
2. Afternoon News
3. Evening News
4. Nightly News

Four of My Favorite Foods

1. Crème Brulee
2. Great Wall of Chocolate (P.F. Chang’s)
3. Anything Nacho cooks
4. Beef Stew

Four Places I Would Like To Be

1. Manhattan
2. Hawaii
3. San Diego
4. Europe

Okay, so now I tag four others. Here’s the hard part. Are they going to roll their eyes? Will they think this is so dumb? Will they scream and cry and say “Thank you, thank you, thank you”?

I tag Mrs. Smith, Karen the Kiwibyrd, Suburban Correspondent (if she doesn’t think it’s too immature and a waste of time, because she’s really becoming very popular over on her blog) and The Badness herself, if she visits anymore.

I know it seems silly, but really, it gives me something to look forward to in my pathetic little life, and I get to know you a little better, and pretend that I can count you as my friends (except you Mrs. Smith, because you have to be my friend whether you want to or not, take it up with mom).