Wednesday Wonderings or where I have an issue with laundry caps

Why are laundry caps so hard to decipher? I mean really.
First, they are so deceptively deep. On the outside, they're like, "Ooo, I may be a cavernous container, but my cap is so dainty, delicate, and delightful. You'll only use a drop; you'll save the earth from useless, detergent waste." 
Then, you're at home at the washer and you open the itty bitty lid. And Woah!  There is this whole sub-terranean area coming out of this lid! Seriously, I can hear the echo of my "woah." And somewhere down there is my dainty, little number 1 line. All I can see is a 6. Or is that at 9? I can't really tell because the line, the number, and the cap are all the same color. I flip to the back of the bottle. "For a normal load, go to line 1 and a heavy load, line 2." What? So why even have the 6 on the cap? Did someone just like drawing lines? Forget saving the earth; I have children crawling on couches upstairs! Throw in line 6 and the noxious wash and be done with it!



Why don't minivans and station wagons and SUVs come with a limo glass option? You know, the kind that slides up and down just behind the front seats. That bit of privacy glass could come down if there were a problem, but save the drivers ears from the sounds of bickering. It would be like, "Go to your room and work it out" for the car. I mean seriously? I would pay more money for that than a DVD player.


When did pipe cleaners become Chenille craft sticks? Are we terrified our children will go make a corn cob pipe and smoke some tobacco because they want to use a green, glittery pipe cleaner? Because, well, I was thinking about smoking a pipe, but since I can only find chenille craft sticks, I'm going to stay clean. Well, that and Nancy Reagan told me "Just say No."

Not me! Monday

Oh, yes Monday! MckMama and friends' weekly confessional.

I DID NOT post to Twitter a grammar joke about the kids playing that made me laugh (I'm sure no one else!)

I DID NOT make bread every day this week, just in case someone came to see the house. I DID NOT eat any of the bread I did not make. Especially the really bad for you white bread.

I DID NOT lock my children outside for an hour in the back yard on a 68 degree day, so they would just stop coming in and out and banging the back door.

I DID NOT have to turn around to keep from laughing at my 6 year old who stuck his tongue out at me, before having to discipline him. By the end of that day, he DID NOT have to go to bed without supper. It was NOT a rough day.

I DID NOT find my 2 year old dressed for the day and reading a book in her little rocking chair. It was NOT 8:30PM. She DID NOT take a quick nap and think it was morning.

I DID NOT write this on Thursday morning because of Girls' Weekend. There will be no reports from Girls' Weekend. What happens there stays there!

Have a great week.

Not me! Monday

The freedom of not being perfect, not living up to every expectation, and confessing it to others. Ah...must be Not Me! Monday! More imperfect fun at MckMama's site.

I would never, I mean never stay up until 12:15AM on Sunday night, hoping MckMama would post her Not Me Monday at 12:01 like she did the previous week. Because I am NOT at all competitive, I DID NOT get annoyed when she hadn't posted it before I had to leave for carpool. I was not at all miffed that I was 92 when I was prepared at 12 AM. I would never put that much stock into a list. Ever.

I DID NOT leave the room where my 6 year old was giving a monologue about something inane. I DID NOT enter my bedroom, close the door, and say "Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. You do not have to use all 10,000 vocabulary words in one afternoon," and then go back to the other room where my child, still talking, had not noticed my absence.

I DID NOT decide to take a shortcut while putting away the entire alphabet and numbers cookie cutters by not using the step stool. I DID NOT toss the cookie cutters up into the cabinet, unaware the bag of 40 cookie cutters was still open. They DID NOT rain down on my head and into the sink full of draining dirty dishwater.

While preparing to leave and pick up Sabrina, I DID NOT put down her lunch box. So I then, of course, DID NOT spend 10 minutes searching my house for said lunch box. I DID NOT find the pink camo lunch box on the top bunk of my sons' beds. I DID NOT put it there because I got distracted by quickly remaking Stuart's bed.

After an afternoon double play date, I DID NOT go to the YMCA to work off some frustration. I DID NOT burn off 726 calories of frustration in 55 minutes on a cross trainer. I DID NOT decide that was too little time away from my darling children, so I of course had no reason to take the 25 minute hot shower after the cross trainer.

When I caught my boys not following directions to clean their room, I DID NOT simply laugh at them because they were so darned cute, they looked like a cartoon pair. I would never be that silly.

I would never laugh at my husband's job. I didn't laugh at all when Friday he called to say he was leaving on Sunday morning at 6AM to fly to DC for 4 days to sit in the back while a delegation of Vietnamese lobbied the US government for the definition of catfish. I would NEVER laugh that his company would send my husband, who works in marketing, on this assignment.

Have a great week, everyone!

Laughter through Tears

Life around me has been, well, a bit high drama and sad recently. I'm kinda tired of crying, but I've had a lot of "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion" recently. (Steel Magnolias for those of you who don't remember...) So with each of these conversations, I've been crying and seriously just had to laugh.

Chase:
You know, it definitely wouldn't be good to live near a cocoa factory. I really couldn't do that. He would be too noisy. Maybe a chocolate factory, but not cocoa.

Stuart:
Could we, um, PLEASE go to, um, McDonald's and [slurping sound] get McDonald's stuff? Um, and the take the [slurping sound] McDonald's stuff, um, home and um, eat it? And then, um, maybe play there?

Sabrina:
I have three dogs. [We have no dogs]
You do? 3?
No, 2 dogs.
What are their names?
Naomi and Table.
Naomi and Table?
Yes. Those are my 2 dogs.

With a friend, London:
[I had bemoaning on the phone the difficulty of the day with the kids]
You know, Jenn, when it gets like that I think just go, [shouting in her great Louisiana accent] "OH MY GOODNESS! IS THAT SANTA CLAUS????" I say if there's a Santa up at Walgreen's, you can totally use that.

Sabrina: (Ok, I'd not been crying, but this was just funny)
Mama, I don't want a spanking!
Why do I have to give you a spanking?
Because I shouted "NO" at you.
Do you deserve a spanking?
No.
Why?
'Cause I don't want one.

Thank you, Lord for the gift of laughter and the gift of tears. And I thank you even more that we don't always have to choose.