If Door Slamming Were an Olympic Sport ... She Would Have Won the Gold !

My loyal followers (both of them) know the story about our little darling, Rachel, and her uncanny ability to make a phone bill rise. If she were a superhero she would be Call Girl ... wait that didn't sound right . She would be the Text Tart ... wait that didn't sound right either. Oh h*ll - she would be some sort of superhero in spandex and a cape with a phone in her hand.

Well last night she came in our bedroom while Derek and were laying in bed cuddling (ah!) and watching tv. She wanted to know if she could call the boyfriend. We asked her when she had talked to him last and she said "last night, but I didn't get to call him twice last week because I went down to Houston to see Mel with Pam (Pam is my sister)" We then reminded her that missed phone calls due not accrue and cannot be used at another time. Then we had to explain to her what accrue meant. She was not happy. She huffed. Then she slammed the door. Then we laughed !

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Please pray hard for Melissa and her family.

We Should Unplug More Often

Saturday morning I made the kids turn off the tvs and we kept them off all day long until we watched The Incredible Hulk together that night. It was a really good day. They went swimming. I sat out on the deck reading and writing and just relaxing. I let them go down to the little diner a block away to get us lunch. We had a great time ! The kids made drawings on some pieces of cardboards that came off of the back of some posters that we just bought for the girls room. They even designed guitars that they cut out and then "played". I have a collection of old Fisher Price Little People that they got out and played with in the living room floor. Not once did I hear the words "I'm bored" and when we finally went to bed that night, Emily said to me "today was fun".

Sometimes I think that I could live without a tv. We could have deep family discussions, could play games, and spend more time together. As long as we don't do it on Monday, that's Bachelorette night - or Tuesday or Wednesday, that's America's Got Talent night - or Sunday, that's The Amazing Race night. Well at least we watch those things as a family - that counts right?

Chicks Cannot Get Enough of His Ma-Cheez-Whiz

Sorry that I have been away for a week - things have been well ... complicated. I didn't really feel like blogging until last night when my wonderful husband gave me something to blog about.

For those of you who don't know Derek personally, he is 220 pounds of pure manliness. When we first got married he was so thin and trim that we had to special order his Wranglers because nobody carried a 28 inch waist with a 38 inch inseam. He was in cowboy mode then and his shirts had to be pressed just so and his jeans had to be long enough to "break" a certain way on the top of his foot. He also NEVER left the house without a cowboy hat (straw in the summer and wool in the winter). He was a site to behold !

Well 18 years later, he is still a sight to behold - in a difference way. Don't get me wrong - I find slightly paunchy, bald men who wear shirts normally reserved for elderly Spanish men very attractive. It just amazes me how his attitude about his appearance has only gotten more comfortable as he has gained weight and lost hair. When he was slim and trim, he was very shy around people. Now that he is "more robust" he is friendlier and a lot more outgoing. Maybe it's the Santa Claus theory - being more round might just make you more jolly.

Well last night he went to the grocery store to get a few things that we were missing for dinner. My sister and her family were all coming over for a mexican meal and we needed more cheese and some sour cream. When he came back from the store, he had a huge grin plastered on his face. He said "you know that new chick that works at the grocery store - she was checking me out". My response was "oh really". I found it a little hard to believe that the "new chick" just couldn't take her eyes off of my 38 year old, bald, hunk of a man. He started laughing "yep - she was taking my items and running them across the scanner and then she told me my total - she was sooooooo checking me out". Isn't he cute ? Then he started dancing around the kitchen like a former Chippendale who had had a few too many drinks and said "Oh yeah - chicks can't get enough of my machismo". I quickly burst his bubble when I said "honey - yours is more like Ma-Cheez-Whiz".

No More Tying on of the Feedbag !!!

My friends are always telling me to include pictures of myself on my blog - so there you go. That is me last night while watching the Bachelorette. I bet that you didn't even know that Ruffles came in the ten pound burlap sack. Well - they do !! and I ate the whole d*mn bag.

Each week on the antidepressant support forum that I belong to, I issue the members a challenge. Last week's challenge was to start working on correcting a bad habit. My bad habit is eating in front of the television. I lost a ton of weight last year when I was traveling through hell and back via Paxil withdrawal. Over the past few months I have started feeling it creep back on and I was extremely uncomfortable in my own skin. So I have decided to stop eating while sitting in front of the tv and to cut down on my portion sizes. Last night instead of eating while sitting in front of the tv - I stood beside it ! I think that I am making great progress !!

The Great Kool-Aid Caper

Last night after the kids got out of the pool, I told Rachel that she could make a pitcher of Kool-Aid. We usually only allow them to have one pitcher of Kool-Aid (one glass each) or one can of soda a day. The rest of the day they either have to drink juice or water or milk. Rachel got out of the pool first, took her shower and then made the Kool-Aid. One by one we sent the kids in to take a shower. Evidently the showers were so exhausting that each of them needed a big glass of Kool-Aid when they were done. Beth was the last one to get out of the pool so she was the last one in the house. She wasn't in there for more than five seconds before she came back outside crying. "They didn't leave me any Kool-Aid". Oh great - here we go again. It seems that the boys thought that a glass meant the Godzilla sized cups that we got from the ballpark a few weeks ago and they stood in the kitchen sucking down that cherry Kool-Aid as if they were Lance Armstrong after a race. Of course, the boys wouldn't admit to drinking all of it but there just happened to be two monster sized glasses on the table in front of their chairs.

Having five teens in the house, requires a lot of food. A LOT. They eat as if they are vultures attacking an injured gazelle and they don't come up for air until their plates are empty. The boys will eat at least seven times a day and are still hungry when they go to bed at night. Derek and i have started labeling the food that we buy for ourselves with duct tape and a Sharpie. So if you come to our house you might see a cookie wrapped in aluminum foil, then wrapped in bubble wrap, then wrapped in duct tape, with a boobie trap and a note on it that says "This is NOT yours - do NOT eat eat !!!". The sad thing is that sometimes it doesn't matter - the will disarm the boobie trap and chew through the foil.

The other night I went to make chocolate cream sauce to go on strawberries. A few days before I had run across a reciped in my Rachael Ray magazine where you mixed warm whipping cream with dark chocolate to make chocolate sauce for fruit. Yum !!! However, when I went to get the stuff out to make the sauce, I quickly discovered that I only had one chocolate bar even though I know that I bought two. These bars were three bucks a piece. We don't live at the White House so spending six dollars on chocolate bars was big money for us. Well, of course, nobody knew where it was and nobody had eaten it. The little scavengers don't even like dark chocolate but that didn't stop them from taking it. So either somebody is lying or we have a rat with very expensive tastes in food.

I Feel Like I am Swimming in Jello

Last night my back was killing me so I broke down and took an Advil PM. Man - those things knock me out. I took it around 10 PM last night and it is nearly noon and I still feel loopy. I am usually very anti-med but broke down and took one. If I ever do that again, I have got to remember to take it around dinner time on the night that I need it. How in the world did I walk around like this for years when I was on all of those other meds? This is not a good feeling.

Proudly Waved my American Flag .. that was Made in China

Yesterday several friends of mine sent the usual holiday greetings (always the same friends - always the same greetings). One particular greeting literally made me laugh out loud and I forwarded it on to about twenty other people. It said "Happy 4th everyone - proudly wave our American flags made in China". I found it to be terribly amusing. That is the kind of thing that he says - he is quite the character. Well some of the people that I forwarded it to caught the humor and the irony of the statement. Some, however, did not. I got a few messages telling me that I was unpatriotic and one that said that I wasn't normal - to which I replied "Thank God". Who the heck wants to be normal?

So all day yesterday while we were out shopping, I looked at American flags and sure enough - I did not find one that was made here in the good ol' USA. I find that terribly sad. We are using symbols of our pride in our nation that are not even made in our nation. What is wrong with this picture? I know - it all comes down to money. Why would we pay $2 for a flag made in the USA when we can get an inferior, cheaper one for fifty cents that was imported here from China. Sure the colors may run, and there are not the correct number of stars, or the little flag pole gives you splinters - but hey - you saved a whole buck fifty on that thing. That's a whole buck fifty that you can spend buying cheap fireworks (also made in China) that can set your grass on fire and blow off one of your kid's fingers. Or you could buy another beer so that you can make a real fool out of yourself on the lake yelling at women half of your age - because that is how our founding fathers must have wanted us to spend the holiday. Money well spent - I say !

I also find it terribly ironic that the people who are complaining about the state of the economy are the ones who are flocking to "supercenters" in droves to buy cheaply made crap that they don't really need. I challenge you to look on the packages of the things that you are buying to see where they really are made. Just because a company was founded in this country does NOT mean that it's products are made here. In fact the previous administration gave huge tax cuts for companies who transferred manufacturing to other countries all in the name of free trade. For example, when we decided to trade in our gas guzzling sport utility vehicle we did some research into where cars are actually manufactured. You would be shocked- we were ! We ended up with a Nissan. A Nissan that was made in the USA. Yes - it's a Japanese company but the car was made here. The "American" car salespeople couldn't even tell me where their cars were made. That didn't seem "right" to us.

My thoughts are that maybe we should be declaring some sort of Independence Day ever single day. We should be seeking independence from other countries for the cheap crap that we buy thinking that it is going to make us happy, when all it really does is fund poor labor practices in other countries and put our American workers out of work.

Insert Evil Parent Laugh Here ... MUAHAHAHAHAHA

After all of the drama ended last night, the hubby and I had to go out on the deck just so she didn't hear us laughing. The end of the phone conversation with the boyfriend was "I will miss you so much and I cannot wait to see you again". It was like witnessing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Yes - it was that touching - we were so touched that we had to walk outside before we spewed water out of our noses from laughing so hard. My thoughts to miss pretty princess were - well maybe if you hadn't spent nearly 30 hours on the phone with him in the past two weeks then you would be getting to see him !!! We also predicted that he would try to buy her out of trouble by paying the phone bill to which we replied "sure we will take his money but you are still grounded". It's not like she hasn't been given a second chance - this is her third second chance - so no more !!! We are in evil parent mode.

I think that when we are growing up we have this idea in our heads about the kind of parent that we are going to be. We say things like "if my child ever lied to me then I would ground them for life" of "my children will never be allowed to act that way in public". I said things like that all of the time. I had this picture in my head of perfect, well-behaved, little angels who never did anything wrong and when they did, I would be Super Mother and would swoop in with the perfect combination of discipline and love. Well - reality is totally different from that fantasy. I know that some people will say that we have already given her too many second chances and that she shouldn't have even had access to a phone but that is nearly impossible when she is at home babysitting and Derek and I are both at work. We do need to have a phone for emergency purposes so taking the phone out is simply not an option for us. She just needs to learn responsibility and to mind. So for those of you who think that we were too easy on her and that the punishment didn't fit the crime or that believe that she never should have been given that many chances, well - I was a perfect parent before I had kids too. We are doing the best that we can - and I think that we are doing a damn fine job !!!