Thoughts From a Sometimes Desperate Housewife

What is A Housewife and How Do I Become One????

2009-11-04T13:26:00.006-06:00

(SPOILER ALERT: GIVEAWAY BELOW!!!!)

So, amazingly, I landed a spot on Claudine Wolk's Blog Tour with WOW! Women On Writing. Claudine is the writer of "It Gets Easier.... and Other Lies We Tell New Mothers."

Claudine sent on a copy of the book for my reading pleasure, and it was definitely a stupendous read.

I've never been one to pick up a whole lot of books on mommyhood. Actually I don't know that I've ever read one till now, five years after my initiation. I'm a little late I guess.

Anyway, the book is filled with chapters like, "What is a Housewife & How Do I Become One?"

That is too funny.

On that note, here's a somewhat funny story that I found completely revealing about my inner thoughts on housewifery. I just had my 10 year class reunion (scary) and while I was someone who vowed to never have children or even get married, here I am married with a preschooler. One of my old friends, who back then shared my thoughts on marriage and children (but who is also married now...), asked me at the reunion, "So I suppose you're a stay-at-home mom now." She said it as if "stay at home mom" was synonymous with societal outcast, or a mental patient.

My response? "Actually, I still work part time, from home, for a jury verdict publication." I realized later that I said it like I had just flung a punch right back at her. How terrible is it that I felt the need to reduce myself to throwing word punches just because I "stay at home."

In addition to step by step instructions on how to become a housewife, the book is filled with info like, if you commit the abominable sin of microwaving a bottle, make sure you shake it up real good and almost more importantly - DON"T TELL ANYONE!

I always found it so interesting that while I run a homeschooling, toxin-free, organic, on schedule, work-from-home, virtually no t.v, household, I thought it alright to microwave bottles from time to time.

From the start, when I finished nursing, I always warmed up bottles on the stove, and when we had to go somewhere, I would warm up the bottle before we left just enough so that it's warmth would correspond to the time when he would need to be fed again.

Believe me, it was quite the scientific process to make sure the bottle was still warm enough, but not too warm, when he would need the bottle again. Who knew I'd ever need a science degree.

The problem was that the kid just would not drink the bottle unless it was the perfect temperature. No matter how starving he was, he would not drink a cold bottle. As if that in itself didn't make me wanna throw something at the wall, then a friend of mine had a baby a few months later, and her kid would drink a bottle at any temperature.

I finally asked her, "How in the heck do you get that kid to drink a cold bottle?" Her response? From the very beginning, she just never offered a warm bottle. She'd keep a bottle of water and some formula-filled bottles in her diaper bag and she'd mix them up as she needed them. What a genius. Would have been nice if she would have offered up that little tip when I really needed it.

Anyway, Claudine's book really is a book after my own heart, and it's so nice to know that even some of the best mothers (see Chapter 14- The Best Mother) don't know how to play "men" on the floor. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who sucks at action-figure playtime.

My son will ask me, "Mom, can you come play Transformers with me." And before I know it, my teenage mutant ninja turtle is getting completely mauled by Optimus Prime. I just hop my guy around, pretending he's on his way home after a hard day of fighting crime, and my son thinks I'm a complete idiot.

"Mom, you're not playing right," is pretty much where the conversation ends up. Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't rather cut off my toe.

So on to the giveaway.... it's pretty simple, just leave a comment here for your chance to win my very own copy of Claudine's book, "It Gets Easier...And Other Lies We Tell New Moms." Consider it a tactful re-gifting on my part.

I promise - it's as good as the day I got it. And after reading the previous week's post, you'll appreciate it when I say I completely disinfected the book! So, feel free to keep it for yourself or even pass it on as a baby shower gift. BUT MAKE SURE TO LEAVE YOUR COMMENT!

If you want, even include an anecdote from the trenches of motherhood in your comment. We'd love to hear it.

Claudine Wol is a columnist, blogger, speaker and mother of three. She writes humorously and speaks on all subject regarding motherhood in the 21st Century.

Check out her blog at Help4NewMoms.blogspot.com.

Visit her website at Help4NewMoms.com

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The wonders of the neti pot and the Voodo Doctor, Part Deuce

2009-10-27T11:18:00.004-05:00

So as you can tell I've been a little absent from my blog world for quite some time, and let me tell you, it's been for good reason. For awhile there I was just wishing for my death, but I am feeling much better now.

A trip to the voodoo doctor, as my husband calls her, a readjustment of the ileocecal valve and walla, I'm all better.

As you may or may not know, ever since we moved back to this great and wonderful tundra locally known as North Dakota, I have been one sinus infection away from the decision to begin planning my own death. And these aren't your run of the mill sinus infections either, these are "want to throw yourself in the lake" kind of chronic sinusitis.

Let's just say that it begins with completely closed up and swollen nasal passages, then it progresses to a wall of mucus behind the eyes (I think I'm going to try and find a lovely picture on the internet that corresponds to the phrase, "wall of mucus," all for your viewing pleasure....or maybe I'll just settle for this photo)

so while I feel like I'm being choked to death because of lack of oxygen, I'm also being drowned in my own mucus. I kid you not, one night, I started rubbing my fingers on the sides of my nose and tears started squirting out my eyes. I'm not even joking.

When the neti pot stopped working, I knew I was in trouble. For those of you less snot-filled people, you may not know about the neti pot, but let me tell you, whatever ancient chinese medicine man thought up the neti pot, he deserves a noble peace prize for medicine. But I'm sure, like Noah, he was completely misunderstood and I'm sure people mocked him till the cows showed up as he shoved his little pot up his nose in hopes that the water would come out the other end.

But alas, millions of snot-nosed people around the world are forever in his debt.

Anyway, so I do the neti pot because apparently, I'm allergic to the dust in North Dakota. Go figure. (I'm saving all my money for my move to Tahiti. Hopefully I'll get along with the locals alright.) The neti pot is like a shower for your nose - it gets all the junk out - the only problem is that the junk has to go somewhere and it ends up coming out the other side of your nose.

But let me tell ya, when your sinuses are so inflamed, nothing'll get through. I'd shove the pot up my nose and the crickets would start chirping. The dog would tilt her head and look at me like, "What the heck happened to all that yummy water?"

Apparently, in addition, to my wonderful allergy to North Dakota, I also had a blocked ileoecal valve, which the voodoo doctor adjusted for me. Can you believe that the first time I spelled ileocecal I actually spelled it right? I must be a genius. Anyway, I have been told that this ileocecal valve is what rids the body of all the junky, gunky germs that get in. It's somewhere between the small and the large intestine and when you get sick, it's the valve that releases the mucusy gunk.

With this ileocecal valve being blocked, I was pretty much giving myself the same mucusy gunk the next month and the next month and the next month. But after the voodoo doctor did her little kung fu move on my ileocecal valve, that supposedly fixed the blockage.

Oh, and I got a wonderful bottle of Allerplex, a nutritional supplement that nips environmental allergies and viruses in the butt. And for all of you voodoo doctor supporters, you'll appreciate when I tell you I muscle tested positive for Allerplex.

I don't even know how to explain muscle testing, but I found this little lady on this youtube video who I think will explain it much better than I. She teaches you how to self muscle test, which is different from the muscle testing that the voodoo doctor does, and I will say, the concept is so ridiculous that I even found myself laughing at the idea during this little lady's video. I can't explain it, all I know is, it doesn't make sense that G-d came down to earth as a man either, but I know it to be true.

Great stuff, huh?

Oh, and the really hilarious thing about the voodoo doctor and the natural supplements? I also got a steroid inhaler prescription from the doctor so that my nasal passages would open and I could being breathing the wonderful North Dakota air once again. Moral of the story?? A little all natural medicine sprinkled with some steroids seems to be the answer to life problems.

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Your Cooking is Heavenly...With Once A Month Cooking...

2009-10-07T09:46:00.002-05:00

So I have succumb to the masses and am finally doing my first book review here on From a Desperate Housewife. And appropriately enough, I've had the opportunity to cook through the Once-A-Month Cooking Family Favorites Cookbook by Mimi Wilson and Beth Lagerborg. Any good housewife, as you know, has mealtime covered with gourmet courses every night of the week.

I'm not quite sure how I hooked up with this book review gig, but before I knew it, I was cooking in my kitchen with it. All I know is that a few months ago I happened upon something about once a month cooking while aimlessly eluding a half-written verdict article on my computer that my editor had been anxiously awaiting for some time. It was then that the idea kind of hit me on the head like a rock.

Who would have thought to do all that daily food prepping all at once??? What a concept?

The book outlines "cooking cycles" with each cycle containing 30 recipes. Each cycle comes complete with the grocery list, by category, of everything you'll need for the entire cycle along with detailed instructions on exactly what your cooking day will entail.

There are even summer grilling cycles, gluten-free cycles and gourmet cycles for all you fancy red-wine-with-your-dinner-types.

The whole idea is that rather than spend a half-hour each night prepping for dinner, you spend a day, one day, during the month prepping and freezing the entire month's meals so that all that's left for dinner time is the thawing, some final preps and maybe a side dish or two.

I have to admit though, I'm still working my way up to actual once a month cooking, after having the book for about a month now I'm onto Once a Week Cooking right now. (Baby steps.)

Because I am the pioneering woman now, out in the middle of nowhere, my shopping trips go something like this, "Goodbye Pa, I'm hitching up the horses to take the kids into town for winter supplies. We should be back in a day or two." So, I shop for at least two weeks worth of groceries when I make it into "town." I say "town" because I guess I technically live in a town, while it's a small one, it is still a town per say, but in my opinion, I live in a village. Going into "town" is making the 55 mile trip into Minot where there's a mall and a Super Wal-Mart. A town just cannot be a town without Target, a mall and a Super-Walmart.

So anyway, for the first two weeks of my once a week cooking, I took ten recipes out of the first one-month cycle that I thought would give us some variety and some new flavors. Then I put my grocery list together based on everything I'd need for those two weeks' recipes. A trip to Super-Walmart and a good $200 later, and I had everything I needed.

Then I took some time on Saturday to prep for the entire week, in between pulling up my entire garden, re-planting like 1005 bulbs and bushes in the backyard, oh and the usual cleaning, laundry folding and tending to the dog, kid and hubby. But alas, I simply followed the assembly order for the required meal prep in the book, and I had five meals in the freezer for the week and a week's worth of ingredients awaiting the next week's cycle.

Another bright idea I had? Since most of my precious weekend time has been consumed with fall yard work, I have had a week or two where I didn't quite get the entire week's meals ready during the Saturday before. So on the nights that I've had to cook dinner, I've been prepping double and putting half in the freezer for another night's meal. How lame-o is that that I just came up with that idea, now, after about 10 years of cooking?

So after all that, my point is, get the book. You'll thank me later, maybe by placing a small amount of money in the mail and addressing it to me. Or maybe just a nice thank you note with a gift will suffice.

The once a month cooking has replaced a lot of my go-to meals out of the freezer section at Super-Walmart. There always seemed to be one night out of the week where I just would not have time to prep a meal, so that's when we'd whip out a frozen pizza, mix up a fruit and veggie salad, and I'd be happy enough that everyone was getting a veggie, a fruit and some protein for supper. Now, I still have the frozen pizza that I bought a month ago, just sitting in the freezer.

But the thing that saddens me about the whole cooking thing? A little while ago I brought a meal over to a friend who had just had a baby. I simply doubled a lasagna that I had made one night and I froze half of it for her. At the last minute I thought about how I had forgotten that she has four mouths that require feeding every night rather than the three I cook for every night. So I was a little worried that it might not be enough, after all, with a lasagna I get enough to feed all of us for a night with a little left over for hubby's lunch at work the next day.

Well, I got a thank you note from her the other day thanking me for the wonderful mean that fed them all for two dinners and a lunch. What in the heck?????? How is that possible?

I think what's happening is this: hubby, the massive person that he is, actually eats enough for two people, average people that is, and Kaydn Rye, massive person that he is, consumes about the same amount of food in a day as I do. So that means that I'm actually cooking for roughly four grown people every night.

Anyway, for more info on the Once A Month Cooking, check out wwww.once-a-monthcooking.com

And here's a fun little recipe sample from the book that hubby and I thought was a "mixture of vibrant flavors for the palate." That's my official food critic critique of this Picadillo Pizza recipe:

1 cup salsa
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cumin
2 boneless, skinless chx breast halves, cooked and chopped (or in my case, I required 3)
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins
1/2 cup pitted, chopped green olives
1/4 cup chopped onion (i'm picky and don't like olives or onions, so I just left these out)
1 tbsp sliced almonds
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 12-inch Boboli Italian bread shell (I went even cheaper and got a Jiffy crust)

On prep day, combine the salsa, cinnamon and cumin in a 1 quart bag. Combine the chicken, cranberries or raisins, olives, onion and almonds in a 1 quart bag. Combine the cheese and cilantro in a sandwich bag. Clip these bags to the unopened Boboli packaging, which can be bent to fit the freezer if necessary. Freeze them.

To serve, thaw all the ingredients and place the Boboli on a medium round pizza pan. Spread the ingredients on the Boboli in the following order: sauce, chicken mixture, cheese and cilantro.

Bake the pizza in a preheated 400 degree oven for 16 to 18 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the pizza is bubbly.

Kaydn Rye described the pizza as, "interesting."

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Awkward photos, Things That Can Get you Pregnant and Stuff That Can Kill You, For $1000 Please!

2009-09-28T14:43:00.006-05:00

So this last week has been a busy one, but I have still managed to make some hilarious finds on the internet and see something I never thought I'd eyewitness in this lifetime.

First off, I was cleaning out my Bookmarks in my internet tool bar (because computers have created a whole new way to clutter up your life) when I came across this site something that I think I bookmarked from Amber's site, Squash Cakes, but never really got to peruse at the time (must have been too busy, imagine that).

The site, Awkward Family Photos, has bringing hilarious laughter to my entire week.

And then, when I should have been writing my summary on the settlement case involving the guy who got sucked into the tree stump removal machine, I was instead cavorting around Yahoo! when I saw this article about the lady who got pregnant while she was pregnant. Just when you thought you were safe.......

But really, I think I agree with the skeptics, there is a much more plausible explanation, and I of course think my expert opinion should be put into the hat with all the rest....

Or then I found this article on how your shower head could be spraying bacteria. Just when you thought you were safe....

Well, never fear all you ablutophobiacs (ablutophobia is the fear of showering, by the way), Newsweek just did an article titled, "Don't Panic: Showerhead Germs Won't Kill You (Or Make You Sick).

I sure hope it's some hard earned tax dollars that are funding all these germophobe studies that ultimately all lead to one conclusion: The world is just one giant microbe, and we are powerless to stop it. I think I may have missed my calling in life; why write commentaries on tort jury verdict cases when you can swab the entire world's surfaces for a living. Stay tuned for tomorrow's headline, "Waking up in the Morning Could Kill You," oh and the day after's headline? That'll be, "Wearing Pants May Cause Your Death."

Oh, and of course I cannot forget about my promise to deliver on the one thing I never thought I'd see in this lifetime.

I don't know how it goes in your house, but most often at the end of the day I'll come out of my office and find something random just lying on the floor, sitting on the table or possibly lying in the stairway. Sometimes I think, "That squirt gun has been there for three days now, I wonder if anyone's going to pick it up?"

So I then began conducting a few experiments. Once a little green book of Kaydn Rye's sat on the ledge above the fireplace for a month and a half before I finally put it back in the bookshelf. Nobody even noticed the little green book, completely out of place on the mantel, and no one seemed to notice that it was gone either.

With my latest experiment, a nerf gun lay at the very bottom of the stairs for three days. No one tripped over it, slipped on it or otherwise noticed its presence. Deeming it to be too hazardous to remain in the experiment, with it being at the very bottom of the stairs and all, I proceeded to place it in the window sill on the stairway landing. I'd like to say that I set it there as part of the experiment, but instead I think I must have been onto another project that didn't involve going all the way up the stairs, so I just left it there for a later time when I was actually going up the stairs.

A few days went by and every once in a while I'd think about how the next time I went up the stairs I'd remember to grab that stupid nerf gun. Not long after, on a trip up the stairs with some laundry, I noticed the nerf gun was gone.

Sure enough, I looked in the toy box, and there it was. Somebody - hubby, Kaydn Rye, the dog, a squirrel - somebody, had actually thought to grab the nerf gun off of the window sill, bring it all the way up the stairs and place it in the toy box.

I was amazed and decided I am now going to pursue a government grant for my new research study on what prevents us from bending over and picking stuff off the floor. I'll let you know how it goes.

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Water leaks, Oral Surgery and the In-Laws....

2009-09-16T16:04:00.003-05:00

We have now properly fixed the leak, have no more teeth problems and the in-laws have left.

We kicked off the weekend with a wonderful plumbing leak. Never had one of those before, but it begs the question, why do bad things, GERM-RIDDEN events, happen to good people.

I came home from, something, can't quite remember at this time, to find a little puddle of water in the kitchen next to the wall. I went through the usual questions, "Kaydn Rye, you didn't potty on the floor, did you? And Gertie, you didn't potty either did you?"

After some thought about the events of the day, Kaydn Rye officially ruled out that he had pottied on the floor and Gertie gave me a look like, "Wasn't me, man."

It was then that I looked up, and sure enough, the water was dripping down the wall. I immediately started tearing down the kitchen ceiling tiles like some kind of crazy monkey at the zoo, and realized yep, that pipe is definitely leaking.

The question then becomes, so what kind of water exactly is coming out of that pipe? I tried not to have a panic attack, wiped up the water, and stuffed a towel (now appropriately sitting in the landfill) up there until hubby could come home.

My fears were confirmed when yes, of course it would be the drain pipe from the bathroom that would be leaking. So I had a grand mixture of used sink, tub and toilet water in my kitchen.

After a few breathing exercises, I was doing alright, until hubby fully assessed the situation and concluded that the pipe would need to be snaked before we could fix it.

A plumbing "snake" as everyone calls it, seems to be an item that one should purchase, use once and then burn. But to avoid the $500 we'd probably spend on this magical piece of plumbing equipment, my husband decided to rent one from the hardware store. If only that snake could talk.....

So while he's dragging the thing up my beautiful hardwood stairway to the upstairs bathroom, I am right behind him disinfecting every surface that may or not be contaminated.

He then proceeds to rip up the toilet and snake the pipe through the toilet, and after standing in water only fit for the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, he then thinks he's going to walk down the basement to see if he made it through the entire pipe with the snake.

My immediate reaction to this?

STOPPPPPPPP! WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?? YOU HAVE CROSSED INTO THE CONTAMINATION ZONE AND NOW YOU CANNOT LEAVE WITHOUT SETTING YOURSELF ON FIRE!

I don't know what disturbs me more, the fact that his feet were covered in toilet germs, or the fact that he was okay with just walking down the stairs, through the kitchen and down to the basement while defiling the entire house with toilet water.

But the toilet was in the tub and he made it clear that he was not going to try and wrangle each of his 100 pound legs in the bathroom sink to hose them off.

I think he used some choice phrases including the words, "Crazy, need therapy, little blue pills, psycho," or something along those lines.

But we ended up fixing the problem with some $7 goop at the hardware store and the contamination zones have now been purified.

Then the in-laws came. I have taken more time off of work this summer to galavant that I was in no position to take any more time off, so it was pretty boring around here. Nothing much to see except me sitting at the computer writing about jury verdicts in botched tummy tuck cases. Pretty exciting stuff.

And just when the in-laws were on their way back to Idaho and Kaydn Rye was all nestled into his preschool routine so that I could actually have a few hours to myself after a summer rife with moments in which Kaydn Rye literally sat with his elbows on my desk, watching, and waiting for me to be done with work for the day so we could "go play," well, that's when I get a call from hubby that went something like this:

"Um, I saw the dentist for my toothache, I'm in Minot (55 minutes away) at the oral surgeon office and they're going to need to put me out for surgery, so you're going to have to come get me cause I won't be able to drive."

My response, "It's just a tooth pulling, can't you just get some novocaine and be good to go?"

Needless to say, that didn't go over well and I ended up making the hour trek to town to load up hubby, who was mumbling something about driving a bobcat or a tractor or something. Not sure what was going on there. He was pretty happy though, apparently the drugs made him forget all about the screaming incident in the bathroom with the toilet water.

Actually the tooth pulling went well. You just never know with hubby, he'll maybe say, "the pain is like a 9 one the pain scale," but really, what is a 9, in his mind exactly? For all I know his 9 is maybe more like a 2, you just never can know. But I made sure he took at least the minimum dosing of his vicodin (who gets a vicodin prescription for a measly tooth pulling anyway??) so that I wouldn't be awake all night with his pain moanings. And I was perfectly honest in telling him that I needed him to take the pain medication not for his own sake but for mine, I was going to sleep that night, and I was going to sleep good. And I did, and it felt good. I went to bed that night with all the hope of a new day with no interruptions, no teeth pulling, no water leaks and no decontamination procedures.

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So How Do We Change the World?

2009-09-02T22:11:00.005-05:00

So I haven't driven off the face of the earth, which wouldn't take much, considering I live in the middle of nowhere North Dakota, not far from the official end of the face of the earth. Seriously though, I think I actually saw myself going out the door the other day.

Here's a recap of what's been happening around here. Kaydn Rye now speaks in my language, with sayings like, "Okay, here's the deal, here's how this is going to work." Yep, pretty scary, he now tells me how things are going to all go down.

And just the other day while we were waiting in the newspaper office Kaydn Rye stood at the counter and asked, "So how do we change the world?"

Uh, (blank stare) we be kind to absolutely everyone we meet and (blank stare) tell as many people we can about how much Jesus loves them? Does that about cover it? I don't know that I've ever done anything to change the world, oh, except that I introduced another person into it.

So then we get home and he notices all the big kids playing across the street and he says, "So I think I'm going to be five now." As opposed to four-and-a-half, of course.

"Maybe then I can beat Austin and be older than him." Like age is a race we can win.

I of course told him that we cannot control how old we are.

"Yeah, cause only Jesus can control how old we are, cause Jesus controls the world."

He is indeed a very smart boy. He has figured out the key to the meaning behind the entire universe, THAT JESUS CONROLS THE WORLD." There, I've done my job, he figured it out, now he's ready for his own apartment across town.

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Life lessons: Do Not Lick Your Friends......

2009-08-20T19:53:00.004-05:00

The last week has been rife with life lessons here in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota.

First off, life lesson #1: Do not pee all over the floor while playing with the neighbor boy.

Before I move on I suppose I must explain. This week Kaydn Rye has been absolutely obsessed with the neighbor kid. Well, I suppose he's been obsessed with the neighbor kid for quite some time now, but the problem has always been that he is seven and Kaydn Rye is four - big difference there. It's like the difference between the tropical rain forests and North Dakota. Kaydn Rye may look like a 7-year-old, and herein lies the problem. His little friends are always appalled when he starts acting like, you guessed it, a four-year-old.

So anyway, the neighbor kid has taken much more interest in Kaydn Rye since his first and favorite friend moved across town. So yesterday he was here for most of the afternoon, which I didn't mind because it's like a having a free babysitter.

It was finally time for supper, and I kept yelling at Kaydn Rye to come down to eat. When he didn't come and he didn't come, I knew something was awry, so I proceeded up the stairs to find him in the hallway, with his pants down, and a huge puddle in the hallway. Apparently he told his friend he had to go potty, but instead of going into the bathroom, shutting the door and sitting on the potty, he just pulled his pants down right there and proceeded to shuffle to the bathroom. He must have had to go so bad that he couldn't hold it any longer and alas, the pee on the floor emerged.

Then, from what I'm told, the two had a conversation about how Kaydn Rye should just wipe up the mess, change his clothes and pretend like nothing happened - until I came up the stairs and ruined their plans. And the neighbor kid, who had been playing alongside a naked kid for who knows how long, was just going about his business completely undisturbed by his friend's freestyling. This is exactly why I don't allow little girls to come over and play.

Which brings me to life lesson #2: Don't lick your friends.

The neighbor kid finally left after he had pinned Kaydn Rye down to the ground and when he wouldn't let him up, Kaydn Rye licked him. Yep, he licked him, and the kid left in absolute horror.

On to life lesson #3: Always be prepared to put yourself in time-out.

If you read this blog regularly, like you should, you know that I've been trying to catch up on some home school we missed during the course of the last couple weeks of slacking off, and we have definitely had our rounds the last couple of days.

First off, last night we ended up doing his reading lesson around 8:00 at night since the neighbor kid was here for forever and then we had to eat supper and yada yada yada. So by the time we started, we were both ready to veg mindlessly in front of some television or something to that effect. It's like there comes a certain time in the day when his brain begins to spew nothingness, which is a brain effect I'm quite familiar with.

But believe it or not, Kaydn Rye was going with the flow, but I on the other hand, was completely WIGGING OUT. He'd read a word and then when it came time to read the very same word again, he would become incapable of reading it!!!!! How completely frustrating.

Finally, I had to give myself a time-out. Ironically, by the time we made it through our 20 minute lesson (which ended up taking us 40 minutes), Kaydn Rye's response was, "That was fun."

Yeah, it was real fun.....

Oh, and today, he was obviously prepared for the fact that mom might wig out on him him and when he came to a difficult word, he sat up straight, cracked his knuckles and said, "Okay, let's do this. Just take a deep breath." He then proceeded with some lamaze breathing.

And finally, life lesson #4: Do not discouraged when your desk goes from this

to this....

in a matter of an afternoon. But alas, I can just put everything in the inbox and the desk is magically clean again in a matter of minutes.

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Oh no, Silly Me, That's Not Right.....

2009-08-10T23:17:00.003-05:00

It's time again for another installment of Confessions of A Four-Year-Old. Today we were busy catching up on some much needed home school since we were away at The Gathering with the Firestarters in Ottertail, MN (more details and pics to come). I could tell he was a tad too sleepy to be reading about rats and cats and sacks, but we made it through.

We are going through the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and even though he's only four, Kaydn Rye thinks it's great and usually doesn't give me any problems. Usually I'm the one who ends up in time out if anything. Seriously, you may never know just how frustrated you can get until you start home schooling. Right now, Kaydn Rye has "Hmmph Syndrome," and when he doesn't get it right the first time he crosses his arms and says "Hmmph. I didn't do it."

While I'm trying to curb such wonderful enthusiasm with regards to failure, since it's probably going to happen a few times in his lifetime, at least one of us usually ends up "taking a break" in the process.

Yesterday was such a day, and when we congregated again at the home school table, he was still struggling to read his second sentence and said to himself, "Oh, no. Silly me, that's not right. You just have to keep trying and then you'll get it right."

And then after home school he was still talking about this weird little ball toy that he lost at my mom's house about a month ago. Here was his solution to the missing toy, "Mom, can we just go all over the world and look for it? We'll find it somewhere in the world."

I'm not exactly planning a trip around the world in search of his $4 little toy.

Then I went upstairs to fold some laundry, which is an improvement over our usual system of just pulling whatever we need out of the clean clothes basket. That system has worked well for me for years, and when we've pulled everything out of the clean clothes basket, I just pull some more clothes out of the dryer. But I guess I actually decided to put the clothes in drawers and while I was busy, busy with the laundry, Kaydn Rye was doing karate in his room. I asked him what in the world he was doing in there, and he said, "I'm learning how to be a Jedi master."

"So you don't want to first learn how to be a Jedi?" I asked.

"Nope, I wanna be a Jedi master."

Now we're off to take Gertie to the vet. I came home from my week long trip to Minnesota to find my hostas plants being completely eaten alive, weeds in the garden, dust rolling across the hardwood floors and Gertie with open wounds on her back.

As Kaydn Rye says, "Gertie is damaged." So we're off to the vet.

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Are You a Duck???

2009-07-24T18:43:00.003-05:00

So with last week pretty much being just me and hubby, we were in some dangerous territory. Without a four-year-old shimming in between us, the week could have gone something like this, "So." (funny head nod) "How about this weather, eh." (more funny head nods)

But alas, we escaped the treacherous time spent without a wedging four-year-old and have made it to the other side.

I'm sure every married person has had the experience of waking up in the morning, brushing their teeth and wondering, "How did I end up here, with this person, forever? (Please tell me you have)

Actually, for me I think it's more like a longing for a little variety, like maybe if he could just morph into somebody even a tad bit different for a day just to change it up a little. Heck, I'd even go for different mole placement for a day sometimes, just to keep it interesting.

Yet despite the fact that I would like a morphing husband, we seem to do alright. He does know how to make me want to hurl his massive self into the lake sometimes though. Like just the other night, I was up late and he had already gone to bed (thank God, sometimes it's like trying to get a little kid to go to bed) and after reading my Bible and some F. Scott Fitzgerald for awhile, I turned out the light and rolled over to go to sleep. Just when I was nice and cozy, he asked me, "Are you a duck?"

"What in the heck are you talking about?"

"Are you a duck." "Do you like to quack," he asked.

Then he started mumbling something about ropes and belts or something. I don't know. See, his conversations when he's 1/3 coherent (which could be the middle of the day for all I know) just seriously irk me. Am I duck, no, I'm not a duck, and if you are having some weird dreams about ducks, keep them to yourself.

So I guess his half-coherent-ness isn't so predictable, and now that I think about it, Kaydn Rye and I have been together now for quite a few years, yet I don't seem to get as bored with Kaydn Rye. I guess maybe because he looks an inch taller everyday, so that's changing it up enough. And he'll ask me things like, "Can you quack," but I guess I don't find it as annoying. And Gertie of course can go from shaggy to shaved in a matter of hours, so whenever she gets boring she's pretty easily changeable.

I don't know, hubby's probably thinking he has the opposite problem. He could probably use a little more stability, but alas, I am what I am. I'm like a box of chocolates, if only they were all the gooey caramel nut clusters.

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A Slip and Fall, A Ride Around Town and Mating Dogs

2009-07-21T10:39:00.005-05:00

Right now the kid is at grandma's and it's a great feeling to eat junk food for lunch, on the couch, and stare at the wall for five minutes without "Mom, wipe my butt," or "Mom, Gertie won't share her toys with me." If you don't know Gertie, check her out here. But because my life has been completely consumed by mind numbing activities like t-ball and swimming lessons for the last two weeks, I had to completely fill my day with work. Gotta love work. I had some nice case summaries to write up including an "Oh no, I slipped on some water in your building and strained my back and now I'm suing you for $90,000" case and there was the Department of Transportation case where some teenaged girls sped over a monstrous dip in the road, flipped the car and were killed. The parents subsequently sued DOT for not tending to the dip in the road, which apparently has been there about 50 years now. The parents have lots of money now.

So anyway, with a couple case summaries written up, I started a nice supper of pizza and salad when hubby returned from his day of hunting and gathering all the money he possibly could out of the insurance business. Without having the worries of the little guy tagging along on his scooter, deflecting off of it and subsequently screaming bloody murder, we went on a bike ride/roller blade run around town.

Hubby hadn't been on his roller blades in quite a few years, and since we live in the hilliest town in an other wise not-so-hilly state, as you can imagine, he was having quite a few problems getting back on the saddle on the 90 degree hill our house sits on. So, he walked down the hill, found an old parking lot near our little "downtown" area and we rode/roller bladed around for probably an hour, me on my Wizard of Oz bike and hubby flailing around on his roller blades.

He finally got the hang of it again and we proceeded back home. He did eventually lose all his speed going up the big hill to our house, and it was then that every little pebble and stone became a giant obstacle, but he made it just fine.

(This is Gertie in her mating-time diaper.)

It was when we got home that I realized I had left Gertie tied to a tree the whole time. Now, normally that wouldn't be a problem, obviously. I took down the little chicken fence I had her confined to in the backyard because I was tired of tripping over it, and tying the dog to the tree is definitely cheaper than the millions of dollars I'd spend putting up a real fence in my massive yard. But the dog is in heat, and I guess it hadn't dawned on me that I was tying a hormonal sex machine with her butt in the air to a tree where anyone could have her way with her. So with that lapse in judgment, you wouldn't believe what I found standing next to the tree with Gertie - a little white dog. I came around the corner and they were both looking at me like, "We didn't do nothin."

Hubby thought though that since Gertie hates all creatures great and small, she probably would bite the eyes out of whoever tried to even sniff her. Whether it's a leaf floating through the yard or a 200 pound dog across town, she will eradicate it. Plus, Gertie uses us as mating partners, so she's not really looking for an actual dog to mate with, but it looks like they were having a pretty good time before I came around the corner. So it looks like we'll be contributing to the pet over population real soon. Hubby's idea last week that we should maybe get the dog spayed was definitely not the best timing.

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Shouldn't This Be Happening to A Much Less Intelligent Person??

2009-07-10T10:49:00.005-05:00

We have had an eventful week. We almost died and I almost started my grandma's kitchen on fire, all in the same day, oh, and I completely spaced out a t-ball game. Kaydn Rye doesn't exactly know what day it is from one day to the next (luckily) so he didn't know he had a t-ball game that day, and I never told him about it. Ignorance is bliss. Next year at this time, if I miss a t-ball game he'll probably freak out on me, so I thought I'd take advantage of the situation while I still can.

With the airing of my little t-ball secret out of the way, the near death story goes something like this. We were on our way out to my dad's rental property that I manage, Kaydn Rye, Gertie (see The Dog, Our Old Chinese Man) and I all in the Durango, when Gertie proceeded to try and jump on my lap.

Gertie has some separation issues which prevent her from being more than a foot from any one of us, and I tried to give her the boot into the backseat when I proceeded to drive into the ditch. Gertie was clinging to the center console for dear life while I attempted at shoving her onto the floor of the backseat. You'd think she was hanging from a cliff for pete's sake. We were almost fully in the ditch when I looked ahead and realized we were almost fully in the ditch and seriously over-corrected. While we then almost entered the ditch on the other side of the road, we were definitely on two wheels, I'm sure of it. We were all over the road for quite a while before all was well again, and Kaydn Rye was on the edge of his seat when I asked him if he was alright. He said he'd be alright but that he definitely did NOT want to do that again.

So with that behind us, we proceeded to swimming lessons in neighboring Stanley. My grandparents also live in Stanley so I thought during swimming lessons I'd make them a nice puff pancake, egg and bacon dinner. No problems there, right? Well, the puffy pancake tends to poof up a little too much sometimes, and this was one of those times. The melted butter that coats the bottom of the pan must have also started dripping on the bottom of the oven, and I ended up with a seriously serious oven fire. Everyone once in a while, the puff pancake will drip on the bottom of the oven, but I still have absolutely no clue what in the heck happened, I've never had an oven fire before.

I opened the oven and there was a fire, and by the time I got the puff pancake out of the oven, the fire was completely engulfing the inside of the oven. My grandma's idea was just to shut the door and let it burn itself out, but something about sitting down to eat a nice dinner while the oven was on fire just didn't sit well with me.

To make the situation even better, two of my great-aunts were also over there that day. To save my life I could not remember how to put out an oven fire, without a fire extinguisher of course.

"Anyone have any idea how to put out an oven fire?" I asked.

"Put salt on it," said my great-aunt.

"Pour some flour on it," said my grandpa.

The salt was handier, so I threw an entire container of salt on it, which significantly decreased the fire, but didn't put it out. My grandma was getting pretty upset that I was wasting all the salt, apparently not thinking about the fact that her oven was on fire. That's when I grabbed the tupperware container of flour and doused the oven in flour. That did the trick, and with more than a century of combined cooking experience between my grandma and her two sisters, none of them had ever had an oven fire before. My guess, somebody in the bunch is lying. Really, how is that I am the one responsible for their very first oven fire experience?

Sadly, the oven fire was not the end of a day gone seriously wrong; it was perhaps the pinnacle, but not the end. After everyone was stuffed with puff pancakes and we had ruled out making a trip to the hospital for smoke inhalation, I then began the hour and a half cleanup of the oven fire.

There was a pretty big heap of salt and flour in the oven, so I thought, "Hey, let's just vacuum up the heap and I'll wipe out the rest." Well, my grandma failed to tell me that after every use, her little vacuum with all the wonderful attachments needs to be completely cleaned out. So not only did the vacuum not really do much to suck up all the crap in the oven, but I then had to spend a half hour cleaning out the vacuum.

Once I had spent more than an hour with my head in the oven, scrubbing as ferociously as I possibly could, I then had to clean up the mess I had left on the floor by the oven, and once that was done I had to clean out that stupid vacuum.

I proceeded to the porch for said vacuum cleaning task and accidentally emptied out half of the vacuum cleaner dust onto the porch, which then needed to be cleaned up as well.

Once the oven, the floor, the vacuum and the porch were as good as new, I headed home, where before I left for grandma's I had sprayed oven cleaner in my oven. So, you guessed it, I had a dirty oven awaiting me at home.

It made me wonder, why is it that things that would typically happen to stupid people, keep happening to me?

Oh, and for future reference, flour cleans up much better than salt in a scorched oven. Thought you'd like to know.

Oh, and that puff pancake recipe, here it is:

Pancake:
1 1/2 cups all purpose-flour
1 1/2 cups milk
6 large egges
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
To make pancake: In a bowl, whisk together flour, milk, eggs, sugar and salt until no lumps remain. Let stand for 30 minutes. (You can mix batter the night before, cover and refrigerate. Remove from refrigerator when you begin preheating oven.) Preheat oven to 450 degrees. While the oven preheats, place a large slope-sided baking pan or ovenproof skillet into oven with the stick of butter. When the butter is melted, remove from oven. Pour pancake mixture into heated pan and return to oven. Bake pancake for 15 to 20 minutes until edges are puffed high and golden.

Apple filling:
2 large apples, peeled and sliced (I leave the peelings on though)
2 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
To make apple filling, While pancake bakes, in medium skillet, sate apples in butter until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Add brown sugar and stir until dissolved. Transfer to serving bowl.

To serve pancake, be sure everyone is at the table when you bring it in, as the pancake will slump quickly. Cut pancake into quarters and fill each serving with sauteed apples. Pass the whipped cream on the side if desired. Serves 4.

Here's to a fire free day!

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The Blaisdell Rodeo Has Again Come and Gone....

2009-07-02T20:43:00.003-05:00

Last weekend was rodeo time at Blaisdell, ND, population 12 I think, since it's had a population spurt the last year or so. The town is probably the sorriest thing I've ever seen, but the rodeo, high on the hill on the outskirts of Blaisdell, is for some reason a no-miss event.

You'd never know it by my done-up hair, wedge sandals and crop pants, but I can actually ride a horse, being from a ranch and all. I usually ride horse in my cute little blue running shoes, and I usually attend rodeos in wedge sandals or some cute flip flops, I guess because cowboy boots and wranglers just aren't in my DNA makeup, and I'm sure I looked absolutely ridiculous behind the shoots getting Kaydn Rye to hop on a sheep in my wedge sandals, but that's just how I roll.

Kaydn Rye has been in the kid's showdeo for the last two years, and this year he graduated to sheep riding, which turned out to be a terrible experience. My Mr. Safety was pretty psyched about riding a sheep, which I thought was utterly shocking. He didn't last more than a second, but he did it.

I don't really know what the point of sheep riding is, but for some reason it is socially acceptable. Of course, it's not exactly like bull riding where you get your arm in the air and swing it hoping to look cool and stay on the bull. Nope, sheep riding is a sport that is only won by hopping on, grabbing the sheep by the neck and hanging on for dear life as long as you can.

Kaydn Rye was fully prepared to grab the sheep by the neck and hang on for dear life, until he actually got on the sheep and became utterly grossed out by all its fuzziness. I'm sure he thought, "Oh my word, how many germs are lurking under all that fur?" Which is why he got on, put his hands in the air like the sheep was a bomb ready to go off, and he of course fell off before he even really made it out of the shoot.

Here are some more Blaisdell Rodeo pics for all you rodeo fans.

Kaydn Rye's the kid on the end with the brown jacket who looks like he's in some serious pain.

Here he's getting ready for the big stick pony race.

Here's him taking a much needed break from rodeo-ing.

And I can't forget the wonderment that is t-ball. We've been busy with that the last couple weeks, and we've been hard at work practicing in the yard things like, this isn't football so don't tackle your team mates for the ball. Oh, and when you bat, don't run and grab the ball just so the other team can't tag you with it. Things like that are always helpful pieces of information.

Oh, and of course there's the wonderful yard fishing, can't forget that. I don't know how many bushes he caught in the yard, but he was pretty proud of his casts.

That has been my summer vacation so far...now we're off to the lake.....

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Drumroll Please......

2009-06-24T09:56:00.002-05:00

The time has finally come for before and after pictures to prove that while I have not had time to force even one creative thought into my brain, I have been a busy, busy girl.

First off, for the last two months I have been trying to tame my overgrowth of a yard, and I must say, for someone who has no more experience with growing things than watering houseplants and constantly stuffing food into a little monkey-boy, I'm pretty proud. I even put in a garden, all by myself. Yeah, my mother used to force us to garden, but she was the brains behind the operation then.

So I proceeded to the garden spot with my straight-line string, a hoe, a tape measure and some seed. I was busy measuring it all out and making sure all my rows were absolutely and perfectly straight when my grandparents decided to show up and thought I looked ridiculous. My grandmother's suggestion?

Just hoe a roe and put the seed in.

Apparently stuff grows better in crooked rows. I couldn't bring myself to plant crooked rows, but the rows in which I didn't count absolutely every single tiny little carrot seed came up much better than the rows in which they were meticulously counted and evenly spaced. Who knew?

Oh, and remember that crappy (literally) little pond I had in the backyard? Well, we did a little sprucing and here's the transformation.

Drumroll.....

Here are some more flower garden shots....I thought I'd better snap them so at least I could prove I can grow stuff like a good little housewife.

And of course, the pirate house....

With that done, last week I tackled the bathroom. We had finished the tile, after ripping out CARPET out of the bathroom quite a few months ago (see Holes in the Bathroom) but in a week's time we tore off that terrible wallpaper, replaced the countertop, installed new fixtures, spray painted some of the old fixtures and redid the tub area. We had planned on just doing kind of a concrete overlay on the countertop to make it look like concrete, but we found this remnant countertop for $25, a fourth of the cost of the materials to do the concrete look.

Remember that most-hideous wallpaper and the wonderful holes in the floor?

Well that's all gone now.

Some friends came over and helped me de-wallpaper, which took hours upon hours with sponges and surprisingly, a spatula. Nothing like a good ol' spatula for taking off wallpaper.

Here are a few more pics for your viewing pleasure.

See, I have been very busy.

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What Would the World Look Like Without Us....

2009-06-14T20:33:00.005-05:00

My anal retentive self has struck this week, which is why I have again been AWOL from my wonderful blogging life. There have been weeks where I've thought, "Man, I only posted once that week, what in the world was I doing?"

And then I've realized, "Oh yeah, I was actually hanging out with my real-life friends that week. Imagine that." Blogging is a great substitute for human interaction when all your real friends are either busy or on vacation.

But I did not have the privilege of hanging out with friends this week, well, unless you count the day a couple of friends came over to help me in my wallpaper removal endeavors in the bathroom the other day. For the most part I have been working on completing my yard beautification mission, which has completely taken over the last month of my life.

When we moved into this house in September we moved into a property that looked like a flower garden had spontaneously combusted. There were flowers and bushes everywhere, and I mean everywhere. You could just be walking along and realize oh, you stepped on a tulip, or a day lily or a whatever. I am into flowers, really I am, but I need to be able to walk in my yard without feeling claustrophobic. And the massive flower garden that wraps around the house? Well, that was being taken over by grass. So, for the last month I have been cleaning out flower beds to ultimate perfection. And I cannot stop.

I have an innate need for flowers to be where flowers should be, for grass to be where grass should be and for dirt to be where dirt should be. It's the same reason that in our closets, all the hangers need to be exactly the same and all the clothes need to be hung according to purpose and color. For instance, in Kaydn Rye's closet, all the hangers are those little white hangers, and all his shirts are hung up with the blues, the reds, the yellows and oranges, the blacks, the browns and the plaids all hung together in their respective groups.

In my closet, I have skinny white hangers and my clothes are hung with the shirts grouped into blues, purples, greens, blacks, browns and reds. Then the pants, the skirts and the dresses all hung in their respective groups.

In hubby's closet, he has big black hangers and his clothes also must be hung according to color. This was a prerequisite for marriage. Believe me, it is that important.

If he couldn't keep his closet color coordinated with everything hanging on the right hangers going the right way, it wasn't going to happen, I wouldn't marry him. I informed him that he could perhaps sleep on it and let me know if he was ready to commit to proper closet etiquette, till death do us part.

He had seen my closet, so he knew what he was getting into, but for some reason he just had not previously thought about how he would be required to follow the same closet etiquette. Needless to say, he traded his freedom for a life of slavery to closet etiquette.

So anyway, same goes for the yard. There can be no weeds and no grass in the flower beds, and there can be no weeds and no flowers in the grass. There's just no working around it. I have actually taken a couple days off of work to de-grass the flower beds in the last few weeks. That's the beauty of telecommuting - I do not need to seek help for my illness and can still hold down a decent job.

Yes, I know I am suffering from some kind of schizo-obsessive disorder, but the truth is, I do not want help. If I was cured, then I would have weedy and grassy flower gardens, and that's not good for anyone. What would the neighbors think?

And really, if there were no obsessive people in the world, the people who have nightmares about weeds in their flower gardens and blue shirts mixed with brown shirts in the closet, what would the world look like?

Scary thought.

This week, after I clean out all the grass from in between my lilac bushes, then I believe I should be about done. I'll post pictures for the big reveal.

Additionally, I am also de-wallpapering the bathroom. After finishing the slate tile floor almost three months ago, I finally decided to get my butt in gear for another round of de-wallpapering. By the end of the week I'll have updated pictures of our de-hydrangea wallpapered bathroom, complete with new counter top. Wallpaper is like the wrath of G-d upon humanity. I'm sure, just like Eve eating the apple in the garden, wallpaper may seem like a good idea at the time, but believe me, it never is. If ever a little voice starts filling your head with fantasies of wallpaper, run. Run away as fast as you can. Run straight to the paint aisle and pick yourself up a nice gallon of paint.

With that thought, I will return to the world of blogging later in the week, once my mind has been eased by the riddance of wallpaper and weeds.

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Just Listen To Your Heart Mom

2009-06-02T09:09:00.001-05:00

Kaydn Rye's been busy this week with all kinds of quips and quotes.

Just today, after a week of running around in circles trying to accomplish 502 tasks, my housewife super powers seemed to be wanning and I felt like I coming down with a serious case of the "I've been running around in circles all week and think I caught a cold" disease.

Well, it might have had even more to do with the fact that while I was in town with some friends on Tuesday (town being 55 miles away - see I Am the Pioneering Woman) the driver's window on the Durango decided it was not going to roll back up. So, I drove the 55 mile trip home in 45 degree temperatures at 70 mph. By the time I got home I didn't have any hair left on the side of my head.

So anyway, I was feeling not so good this morning, and the always concerned Kaydn Rye said, "I think maybe you should go to the doctor, mom."

"No, I think I'll be fine. I just need you to not bother me for stuff today so I can get some rest," I said. Stuff meaning, "Mom, can I have a snack. Mom, can I have some water. Mom, can I have another snack. Mom, can you button my pants. Mom, can you carry my toys here and there and do this and do that."

He replied with, "Mom, you just need to listen to your heart, it will tell you that you need to go to the doctor."

I felt like breaking out in song, namely a Roxette song.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Oh, and the night of the mysterious window failure, Kaydn Rye decides he's got everything under control and says, "Don't worry about it mom. I'll take a look at it when we get home."

If only all of life's motor vehicle related problems could be solved by a four-year-old.

____________________________________________________________________________________

This line I kind of stole from some kid in the gas station while picking up my cappuccino so I wouldn't end up asleep in a cow pasture on the side of the road during my hour drive home from town. Some kid was looking at the tabloid magazines and happened to see a Jon & Kate Plus 8 headline that read "Jon and Kate's 5 million dollar divorce."

The kid is apparently quite a fan of Jon and Kate Plus 8 cause he was pretty disturbed by the headline. He said to his friend next to him, "Jon and Kate getting divorced?? Oh man. No way." He may just go on to become a marriage and family therapist some day.

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You Never Know What May Be Lurking in the Backyard

2009-05-29T14:15:00.004-05:00

So I have again been AWOL for most of the week due to some yard maintenance emergencies and such. I have spent much of the week doing this:

And this:

(Gardening is a job requirement for any good housewife.)

Not only did I find a dead cat, a bunch of yucky leaves and some garbage as I was cleaning out the flower bed, but I also found bird legs and some feathers. Aside from that and all the thorns I pulled out of my forehead from sticking my face in the thorn bushes, it was a good time. I started off with the tiniest little hand clippers imaginable when apparently the neighbors saw how ridiculous I looked with my little hand clipper that they offered me their industrial length tree trimmer.

And of course, next week I'm on to this:

There may an elephant secretly lurking in my backyard jungle.

Oh, and then there's the wonderful garden pond that has gone neglected since we moved in.

Remember when last fall, right after we moved in, I tried to bring the fish pond fish in to the house for the winter so they wouldn't freeze? (If not, see The Fish are Dead) Yeah, that was a disaster. They all died within a week.

About a month later, I found all this fish water stuff in the basement that the old owners had left for us when they moved out. Would have been nice to know before hand that I was supposed to add all this stuff to the water to make it livable for them... But, the fish paid for my ignorance with their lives. And now the new fish that hubby's picking up on Monday mean I actually have to not only touch that yucky fish pond but that I have to touch it repeatedly to prepare for the new fish. Just what I need, more creatures to try and keep alive.

Oh, and after I found all the fish water stuff in the basement, I run into a friend who told me I'm supposed to just leave the fish in the pond for the winter. I thought what in the world, the fish'll become mummified in the frozen water, which is the exact fear that led me to bring them in and even buy a special rubbermaid container for them to live in last fall. I had recurring nightmares about waking up in the morning to a frozen pond with all my little fishies trapped in the water. But apparently they can still swim in the bottom of the pond in the winter. Who knew? Maybe I should have googled fish pond maintenance before attempting any kind of live saving efforts.

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Butterflies, Hannibal Lector and Onions

2009-05-20T22:04:00.003-05:00

I don't know about everyone else in world, simply because I have never been able to get into anyone else's head (it's hard enough getting into my own), but I have been prone to brain wanderings lately, especially during my daily hair blow-out sessions.

If you read this little blog long enough, you know that I am way too compulsive to let my hair go unblown-out for an entire day, and surprisingly, during those 10- minute blow dryer sessions I happen upon some deep thoughts every now and again.

For instance, we are becoming one of those crazy homeschool families with the bugs and science projects strewn about the house. Kaydn Rye's latest project is a butterfly garden, which I got from Insect Lore. For some reason the price on this says $24.00, but I got it for probably $12.

But anyway, so the caterpillars come in the mail, which I thought was a really weird concept - to mail insects - and that morning as I'm blow drying my hair I start thinking of the caterpillars and cocoons, which Kaydn Rye somehow learned are chrysalides. So I started thinking of chrysalides. A chrysalis. Chrysalis. Ah, yes, Silence of the Lambs. That's where I know that term. You know, when Clarice extracts the moth cocoon, or chrysalis as Hannibal calls it, from the dead girl?

I think it goes something like this....

Lector:Was it a butterfly?
Clarice:Yes. A moth.
Clarice:Just like the one we found in Benjamin Raspail's head an hour ago.
Clarice:Why does he place them there, Doctor?
Lector:The significance of the moth is change.
Lector:Caterpillar into chrysalis, or pupa,
and from thence into beauty.
Our Billy wants to change, too.

I think that was the first time I'd ever heard that term, chrysalis. And don't ask me why I have thoughts of moth cocoons lodged in the throats of dead bodies, but I guess that's just the sort of stuff that floats around in there.

So from there I went on to how I would be Clarice right about now, discussing lambs and lotion with serial killers if only I would have stuck out the original plan of riding the job with the Department of Homeland Security all the way to the F-B-I.

But that was not to be. Instead I wipe butts and summarize odd and sundry jury trials for the reading pleasure of attorneys across the land.

After my wonderful blow dry experience, I proceeded down stairs to get at least a couple jury verdict commentaries written up before noon, and after that I figured I'd maybe get in my P90X sometime before 10 o'clock that night and I proceeded to the DVD player.

Instead of spending a magical 15 minutes with the wonderful Tony Horton, I hunched over the tv and proceeded to look out the window for probably five minutes.

There was a bird on the tree outside bopping his head around, and there were, of course, the carcasses of the many dead weeds in the yard that just won't completely shrivel up and blend in to the grass. Then I started thinking about my first fall in Memphis.

They have these abhoringly atrocious weeds down there called lawn onions. They really actually are onions, and they grow, everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. We knew nothing of how you must kick the onions in the butt before they grow butts, so we ended up being the clodhoppers with all the onions in our yard until we became smarter than the onions. I don't know how many times I had to spray those suckers before they finally curled up and died, but I actually remember one afternoon I was sitting at the kitchen table doing some work for most likely my Chaucer class (nothing says a great afternoon like The Canterbury Tales) when I became physically unable to function because of the sight of all the weeds in the yard.

So I went outside and started pulling them out of the ground, all 1 million, nine hundred and eighty six thousand, two hundred and fifty-four of them. I was probably out there for roughly three hours maybe, but once all the onions were pulled up, I had won a tiny victory for the South.

Looking back on it now though? I have to say, while there were at that time millions of starving people in the world just waiting for someone to stop on by with a loaf of bread, I was out in my yard pulling weeds for three hours.

That was about the end of the deep thoughts for the morning.

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The Weekend of Banana Bread and Lions and Tigers and Bears

2009-05-12T14:16:00.006-05:00

In my blogging absence I have been everywhere from the pasture to the nursing home to the zoo, all in one weekend.

Kaydn Rye and I decided to continue our tradition of bringing goodies to the nursing home on special occasions by making banana and blueberry bread (not together, separate) and by decorating Mothers Day cards for the ladies at the nursing home. (Thanks to all my wonderful MOPS friends for all their help).

I apparently miscalculated the amount of time required to make 20 cards out of card stock and scrapbooking cutouts, but I had the great idea that I would bring all my supplies to the MOPS scrapbooking night on Friday, giving me just enough time to get them together for a Saturday afternoon delivery.

I'm always the lame-o one at scrapbooking night since I roll in there with some papers, some stencils, a ruler, a pencil, a scissor, some markers and occasionally a cup for tracing circle cut outs. Yes, I am LAME-O. Everyone else rolls on in with their rolling suitcase carts full of bags upon bags of fancy accoutrements that I don't even know how to work. They have these fancy paper cutters that don't require a ruler and a scissor, and there are even circle cutters that don't require any cup- bottom tracing, imagine that.

After an hour or so of me cutting traced flowers out of some cardstock, one of my friends comes along with a flower puncher-gadget. And after I spent a half hour measuring out and cutting some stock for the card backgrounds, someone comes along with a fancy paper cutter and with one swoop the cards were done. I have probably spent 507.2 hours of my life, which I will never get back, with rulers and scissors completing scrapbooking tasks which could have been accomplished with that stupid $15 paper cutter. I CURSE AND BLESS the paper cutter.

So anyway, we delivered the goodies to the nursing home ladies, and I think Kaydn Rye may have even left a plate of banana bread in an empty room, but some orderly will come along and find some moldy banana bread one of these days. With all of his help delivering goodies to the "old people" as he calls them, I asked him, "So what would I ever do without you to help me?"

He thought about it for a minute and said, "Hmm, perhaps you would work all day."

Surprisingly perceptive for a half-grown man.

The day before that we met my parents in the pasture near their rental property where they were unloading cattle so that I meet them and take pictures of horse poop. My parents were having some issues with the wonderful horse people who rent their property who love their horses so much that they pen them up in the yard, and obviously, livestock messing up the yard is a cardinal sin according to my mother. So, my parents needed someone to come out there and take pictures of all the horse poop in the yard, for legal purposes of course, which I was obliged to do.

With that task scratched off the list, we finally headed to the zoo on Sunday for Mother's Day. With all the stuff at the zoo, all Kaydn Rye wanted to do was hang out with the prairie dogs, so I paid 16 bucks for us to stand around and look at a bunch of prairie dogs for half the afternoon. One of the better parts of the day for my obsessive compulsive child was finding the strategically placed hand sanitizers throughout the zoo. Fun was had by all.

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It Has Come Back to Haunt Me.....

2009-05-05T14:57:00.002-05:00

So today was chalked up to the old adage, when you have so much to do that your brain starts flipping around in its shell, take a minute, grab an ice tea and blog.

I'm pretty sure that sleep deprivation is half of my problem, which kind of makes me feel like I'm walking around my house in a drunken haze. (And you say, what's wrong with that??? - Shame on you)

You know how when people have a new baby and it's all wonderful, except for the fact that they are awakened from REM sleep three times a night? Well, I was never really much into sleep deprivation, which is why Kaydn was a child of the Ferber Method. What's the Ferber method you ask? It's the method in which the entire family gets a wonderful night sleep, minus the screaming baby "soothing himself to sleep."

"Okay, here's the plan, we'll nurse him, change him, don't make eye contact and walk out the door," was the most often heard conversation in the middle of the night in our bedroom.

Yep, I'm a "let him cry it out" kind a parent. Hubby almost developed hives with all the screaming, but I'd usually be able to simply roll over and pull the covers over my head.

Throw stones all you want, but I bet if you counted all the hours of sleep I've had in the last four years, and the hours of sleep you may have had, you'll probably find a significant difference, and I bet I'm the winner.

But that seems to have bit me in the butt during the last month. Bladder control seems to the biggest problem we've encountered during this whole child rearing thing. Don't ask me how a kid who's been potty trained since he was two-years-old can't seem to shake the at-night-pull ups.

Well, last month I had had enough. The pull ups are gone, which resulted in more money spent on cleaning sheets than I had ever spent on pull ups in a month. And I'm pretty sure the rain forests didn't appreciate it either.

So, I thought of a plan. Kaydn Rye can take a two hour nap and not wet the bed, so I thought maybe waking him up every two hours during the night for potty breaks would seal the deal on our pull up free lifestyle.

So, every two hours I wake up to "BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP" and haul myself into Kaydn Rye's room, get him out of bed with a shovel, carry his 50 pound self into the bathroom, get him on the toilet and hopefully his half asleep self doesn't fall over on my bathroom floor.

I will give him some credit, we are now down to waking up every three hours, at 3 and 6, but I haven't had a night of uninterrupted REM sleep in more than a month, and I think I may morph into some kind of nasty bridge troll.

But I thought I had found a solution and it involved hubby's obsession with phones.

Hubby is absolutely obsessed with phones.

Yes, phones.

I guess maybe it's because we have zero big screen televisions, game boy systems (or whatever they're called now), or fast race cars. He's gotta have something to make his life worth living.

Last night at about midnight, when I would have liked to have been sleepy sleepy by the way, he proceeds to show me all his wonderful phone features.

His phone will even tell him what's currently on the screen so he doesn't even have to attempt at reading it. How wonderful is it that not only has my husband's very minimal vocabulary dwindled to almost nil over the course of our seven years (it is seven years, right?), but now he barely reads.

But anyway, that's a whole other life problem. So I had a great idea. What if we could set a message that said something like "Kaydn go potty. Kaydn go potty. Kaydn go potty," and set it to go off at 3 o'clock in the morning?

Well, the closest thing we could come up with was for Brandon to label my phone as "Kaydn go potty," and for me to call Brandon's phone at 3 o'clock. We put the phone on Kaydn Rye's bed and at 3 o'clock in the morning the lady in the phone said, "Kaydn go potty," instead of "Kate calling."

Granted, I still had to wake up at 3 o'clock, but all I had to do was whip my arm over to the nightstand and hit the call button.

And in case you're wondering, my wonderful plan did not work. I thought maybe he'd wake up and scream "Mom, there's someone talking in my room telling me to go potty," and all I'd have to do was scream back, "Yeah, I know, go potty." And then go back to sleep.

But he didn't even move when the phone went off. I had that thing set so high that even I could hear it in the next room, and he didn't even roll over. He didn't make a peep.

We're back to the drawing board.

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Colbert and l Unite For World Hunger.....

2009-04-29T10:22:00.003-05:00

Today marks the day that bloggers Unite for Hunger and Hope around the world. I read somewhere the other day that 2.5 million children around the world will not eat today. I don't know if that statistic is correct, but regardless, there are millions of people today who will not eat. Our dog, AKA the old chinese man, will perhaps eat more today than some children in the most impoverished parts of even our country.

Which is why I have become such a huge fan of Heifer International. See the so aptly titled, Heifer International post from my first fundraising effort here at From a Desperate Housewife for more info.

Or, you can even check out Heifer International on The Colbert Report. You might find Colbert more enlightening than the drivel I come up with here at From a Desperate Housewife. (Is that even how you spell drivel?) Anyway, I think it's a toss up on who will rot your brain more, Colbert or your friendly neighborhood Desperate Housewife.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Elizabeth Bintliff

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Gay Marriage Commercial

I know that it is so wrong, but I love Colbert. I just cannot not love him, if that makes sense.

But with the fact that I sometimes have to dig through Kaydn Rye's piggy bank to scrounge up enough quarters for his gum and fruit snacks addiction, I'm not exactly looking to fund an entire third world country's hunger effort, but we all have something we can give. Like, you can give $20 towards a flock of chicks for a needy family, or $10 towards a pig, which will sustain and feed a family for generations.

Think about even making a donation in honor of your grandmother, mother, sister or friend for mothers day.

For everyone who makes a donation and lets me know in the comments at the bottom of this post, I'll enter your name in a drawing for my last C28.com gift certificate. C28.com has some really great stuff, go check it out.

And I guess we'll have the give away up through, oh let's say, the 3rd of May at midnight. I'll even enter you into the giveaway if you can post a comment at the bottom of this post about another way you know of that is combating hunger in the world right now. So, you have two ways to get yourself entered - donate or educate.

Oh, and you can check out Heifer's online catalog of all things farm animals at Meaningful gifts and make a donation.

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Confessions of a Four-Year-Old

2009-04-27T12:07:00.002-05:00

This week's installment of Confessions of a Four-Year-Old comes complete with insurance agents, flooding, popcorn and dead cats.

The past couple of weeks have been rife with flooding around these parts, and we've spent a few nights eating popcorn and watching the flooding on the news. The one night I had actually made the popcorn for our eating pleasure during that night's edition of Law and Order (for details on my Law and Order obsession, see There Will Be Order) but it was one of those nights when I was pretty much too tired to get off the couch and go to bed, so we were stuck. I should install some kind of lift chair to get me up the stairs, but with my luck hubby would try to sit in it and he'd probably end up taking the chair and the wall down with him. With him, we must be mindful of weight restrictions.

So hubby, myself and the dog are all chowing on popcorn when little Kaydn Rye appears at the top of the stairs.

"What are you guys doing?" he says.

"We're just sitting here. What are you doing?" I ask.

"Well, I was sleeping, but the popcorn smell woke me up," he responds. "Can I have some popcorn?"

So he ended up sitting on the ottoman shoveling popcorn in his face and watching the flooding on the news with us, which he thought could be completely solved with the purchase of flood insurance.

He said something like, "They should have bought some flood insurance. Maybe their dads could get them some." Keep in mind, I am married to an insurance agent.

If only flood insurance was the answer to all of life's problems.

Speaking of problems, we still can't seem to get rid of all the cats in the yard, and as I should have guessed, Kaydn Rye and I found another dead cat in the flower bed while we attempted at cleaning all the dead leaves out from under a row of wonderfully treacherous rose bushes (Every rose has its thorn....). Hubby figured that with all the freakin snow and 50 below wind chill weather we had last winter, the cat probably fell asleep there one night, became buried under 5 feet of snow and couldn't make his way out. So we found the cat, scrapped it off the rocks and put it in the trash bag. Kaydn Rye took a good look at it, said, "How did it get dead?" and "Where are its eyes?" and apparently chalked it up to the wonderful circle of life because he wasn't too stressed about it.

And last but not least, the newest and greatest thing to happen to Kaydn Rye is that he now has a girlfriend. Or a little sister, one of the two. One of the little girls from our church has now been deemed his official girlfriend, and I of course told him that he's going to need to quickly decide whether she's a girlfriend or a little sister. He didn't quite understand just then why she can't be both.

We'll see how that all pans out.

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What Have You Done For A Tax Deduction This Year...

2009-04-18T18:13:00.001-05:00

So this week marked the end of our week and a half long battle with the taxes until next year. Taxes are always a pain with my business and all. And myself being master accountant, I don't even balance my business check book for the year until April rolls around. It's my once-a-year checkbook balancing extravaganza. Good thing my husband actually is a master accountant and can turn the shady revenue/expenses excuse for a balance sheet I hand him into a wondrous piece of fill-in-the-fields art for the enjoyment of all the schmucks working for the man at the IRS.

Put all his hard paid off, because he had a thought. Albeit a stupid one, but it was a thought.

That night, after we had put in a full day of trying to get as much money out of the IRS as possible, he said to me, "Let's have another kid."

"What in the freakin world are you talking about?"

"Well, we would have gotten $2000 back from the IRS for the child tax credit," was his explanation.

"So, you want to spend thousands of dollars next year on food, diapers, hospital bills, clothes, car seats and whatever else babies require these days for a measly $2000 tax credit?" was my reply.

"We'd hardly spend any money. The baby could wear all of Kaydn Rye's clothes, use all his old stuff, and we'd get $2000 out of the deal."

"Yeah, that's how it works. This magical cash cow of a baby won't require any new stuff and will only eat Kaydn Rye's regurgitated food for nourishment, so it won't require any food, any clothes or any diapers..."

I wasn't being roped into that like I was the first time. And I have had four years to work on arguing my point in support of more pets over children.

If he had his way we'd be on some TLC show with 18 kids, me in a mumu and all of us living in Arkansas.

I always wonder how those crazy baby making people remember all those kids' names. I saw a clip recently of the mom on that one show, whatever her name is, Lillie May, Sally Sue, something like that, telling the camera guy about how her exercise routine consists of simply keeping up with the "little ones." She started going down the list of their names and after two or three she just finally gave up.

I do the same thing with the dog already (if you don't know Gertie, you need to read this blog more often, see Gertie, our old Chinese man). Gertie has to sit and beg before she gets anything, and Kaydn Rye has to say please and thank you before he gets anything, and it is not difficult to get the two confused. Like when Gertie needs water (like she can't wait a day or two until I'm not busy), she has to sit on her butt until I say, but on a few occasions it has been known to go down like this, "Gertie, what to you say?? What do you say?"

I then remember that she cannot speak and that she has no idea what I'm saying.

Or sometimes Kaydn Rye needs to "sit" before lunch will be served. Or just the other day I was yelling at Kaydn to come so I could put him in the dog kennel.

So needless to say, we won't be needing a conversion van anytime soon to cart around our 18 kids, all just for the tax credits.

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I Must Have a Cracker, I Must Have a Cracker

2009-04-12T18:57:00.003-05:00

While you were out chasing bunny rabbits and going on wild and crazy easter egg hunts, we over here were busy eating matzoh and sweeping leaven crumbs.

See, we celebrate the biblical feasts, and with the highest feast of the year for us being Passover, it gets a little hairy around here during the week of Passover.

Passover is a little like Hannukah, with its "eight crazy nights," so we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus beginning with a big feast called the Seder and we continue the celebration by denying ourselves crackers and a good dinner roll for the entire week. Spring cleaning was originally a Jewish idea, since you'll find traditional Jewish people cleaning every tiny spec of leaven from their house for weeks before Passover.

See, yeast, or leaven, is the biblical symbolism for sin, partially in that it "puffs things up," yet Jesus was completely without sin, so in commemoration of not only the Israelite's escape from the bondage of slavery in Egypt and the bread not having time to rise before they left, the lack of leaven during Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of how Jesus lived without sin in his earthly body.

And leaven is in absolutely everything, I kid you not. It's in soups, in pasta, in tortillas, in salad dressings, in deodorant (don't worry, we still wear deodorant during Passover) and its even in dog food. But because Gertie, our little chinese man, is not required by biblical law to go kosher for Passover, we choose to live dangerously and bravely feed her leavened dog food all year round.

And while I absolutely love Passover, really I do, never in my life did I understand the depth of a cracker craving until we began celebrating Passover. But we make it through, poor us.

Like today, we decided to treat ourselves to a little no-kosher meal. Because we live a million miles away from civilization and have to "go into town" for church, which is about an hour away, after church we just go out and eat, rather than get home at 1:30 and have to start dinner. And because there are no "kosher for Passover" restaurants in town, we happily made our way to the mexican place and absolutely pigged out on chips and dip and tacos.

Good times.

But anyway, the big meal kicking off Passover is called a Seder, which consists of a Seder plate with foods commemorating the Exodus story and matzoh (the tastless unleavened bread/cracker). Matzoh is that stuff you probably have at communion at church that tastes like air, which is symbolic body of Jesus.

The Seder doesn't begin until sundown, and without any dinner in our bellies until around 9:30 that night, and with the ceremonial four glasses of wine that must be drank during the ceremony, let's just say that the morning after the Seder is not always a good one. And of course, we had some friends over that night for the Seder since it's Jewish tradition to party with all your friends during every single biblical feast.

This year was our third year of celebrating the feasts, and I branched out into some new foods this year for the seder, which made Wednesday an interesting adventure in Jewish cooking.

First I made a pan full of brownies made out of matzoh meal, which is basically ground-up matzoh. To get the matzoh completely smashed to a pulp and ready to put in the brownie mix, Kaydn Rye basically stood with his finger on the button on my little food processor for about a half hour. I realized the brownies were going to be a shot in the dark when I pulled out the boxes of matzoh (the last three in town) that I had my mom pick up for me and saw they were actually garlic and onion matzoh.

Well, I dowsed the matzoh meal in sugar and prayed we wouldn't be eating garlic brownies for dessert.

And actually, those brownies were the bomb. If anyone is allergic to wheat flour, these matzoh brownies might be the answer to your problems.

Passover Brownies

PREP TIME 10 Min
COOK TIME 30 Min
READY IN 40 Min
Original recipe yield 16 brownies
SERVINGS
(INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup butter, melted
• 6 tablespoons matzo meal
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
• 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, melted
• 1 tablespoon butter, softened
• 1/8 teaspoon water
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan.
2. In a medium-size mixing bowl, blend eggs, sugar, and butter. Mix in matzo meal, cocoa powder and walnuts (if desired). Transfer batter to prepared baking pan.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 minutes.
4. In a small mixing bowl, blend chocolate, butter or margarine and water. Spread over cooled brownies.

This recipe comes courtesy of Allrecipes.com.

Of course, the next day, when we hadn't just had four glasses of wine in about an hour, the brownies did have a little different after taste.

Life lesson number 2 million five hundred and twenty three thousand- make sure you find non-garlic matzoh for Passover brownies next year.

Then I ventured out into some matzoh dinner rolls, but we won't get into how that all went down.

We had a nice cajun chicken and vegetable main dish with an apple, grape and whipped cream fruit salad on the side. Cajun isn't exactly traditional Jewish cooking, but we like to mix it up a bit.

The Seder plate with all the traditional foods also needs preparing the day of the Seder. One of the items needed is a lamb shank bone, which is a reminder of the original passover lamb, and that needs to be roasted and deboned. But let's just say that at about 6 o'clock I finally remembered to take the shank out of the freezer to start thawing out. We somehow got that shank bone de-frosted and roasted just in time for placing on the Seder plate.

Here's our beautiful passover tablescape, complete with tons of activities to keep the kids occupied for the entire three hour Seder, which Kaydn Rye loves. He'd do the whole Seder once a week if he could.

And here's the after picture...

This was actually taken the afternoon after the Seder. I still hadn't recovered enough from the night to actually get up and around enough to clear the table.

And in case you're thinking about becoming a Passover family, I'll leave you with the Top Three Reasons for Celebrating Passover....

3. Save money by using last year’s Matzoh (it won’t taste any
different and you probably haven’t thought of eating it since then)

2. The required cleaning of the refrigerator gives you a reason to
throw out that old milk container.

1. To remember that Charlton Heston (and his wife, Lilly Munster)
led you out of Egypt.

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Houseparties, Escaped Mental Patients and Plastic Surgery??

2009-04-04T09:46:00.007-05:00

This week has been rife with house parties, escaped mental patients and tummy tucks gone awry.

No, not me - my jury verdict cases this week.

As you may know, I spend much of my days writing tort jury verdict summaries for a verdict publication.

Most weeks are full of slip and fall cases, malpractice cases with doctors operating on the wrong eye or the usual motor vehicle case (oh no, somebody bumped my bumper in the parking lot and now my entire body is paralyzed), you know, the usual stuff.

But dude, this week was really crazy.

First off, we had the case of the house party gone awry in New York City. Apparently the 19-year-old plaintiff offered to help out another, also under-aged teenage friend, at his birthday party, held at his mom's house. The kid claims that the mother of the birthday boy purchased a butt-load of alcohol for her kid to sell at this birthday party (don't worry, I don't write things like "butt-load" in my work summaries). She apparently told him that he could keep all the profit for his birthday present.

I know, I know, but it just gets worse.

The 19-year-old claims that the whole town ended up showing up and that he was cut with a knife while trying to break up a fight with some gang-bangers, as he describes them. He sued the mom for providing the alcohol that got everybody drunk, which led to a fight with a knife, which led to him getting sliced like a pepperoni. He won his case and hopefully the mother is in some kind of insane asylum right now.

And if that wasn't gorgeous enough for you, I then stumbled upon the case of the escaped mental patient. The girl in this case (another teenager, what is going on with all these crazy teenagers??) kept running out of the mental institution she was living in and into the nearby lake while claiming she was going to kill herself. The police kept having to haul her out of the lake and back into the mental institution. She finally gets tired of trying to pull a Virginia Woolf and decides she is now going to kill herself by jumping off a balcony at the mental institution.

Apparently the fall wasn't much because she jumped and they just hauled her back to the mental institution. The next night she must have been much more serious about it because she found a much higher balcony to jump off of and ended up causing a burst fracture in her spine. As her attorney explained, "there were bone fragments flying everywhere."

The mother of this girl sued the mental institution for not locking her in her a room where she couldn't run into the lake or off a balcony, and they won like millions of dollars.

But the really crazy part of this story, after a million spinal surgeries, the girl is just peachy fine today. Crazy.

Oh, and we can't forget the tummy tuck in which the lady stated she was "gutted like a deer" by her plastic surgeon. This one was earlier in the week so it's a little fuzzy right now, but essentially the lady had gastric bypass and needed to get rid of all that saggy skin you see on those Fattest Man and Woman shows on TLC. And she apparently was hoping to go from fattest woman to Kate Moss status in record time.

The surgery in question was one of many for this lady and despite attempts by her plastic surgeon to talk her out of another surgery, one in which she wanted to have her belly button removed, she insisted. According to the doctor's attorney, "this lady thought it would kind of sexy to not have a belly button."

So the plastic surgeon performed the surgery, got rid of the excess skin and ditched the belly button, all while the lady was under local anesthesia in the guy's office. At first our little Kate Moss in the making thought that was a great idea - ditch your belly button and head back to the office that afternoon - but I guess it's not just the thought that counts.

She sued the plastic surgeon for malpractice, claiming that she could feel all the tugging and pulling on her skin and that she felt "gutted like a deer on the operating table."

She lost her case.

So, good times were had by all this week in the world of jury verdict summaries.

So how was your work week??

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Confessions of a Three-Year-Old

2009-03-30T12:56:00.001-05:00

After a long sebatical, Confessions of a Three-Year-Old is back this week. We begin with a bit of my own advice making its way back to me.

Kaydn Rye has a habit of becoming overwhelmed, frustrated and angry when he isn't able to complete a task the way he envisioned or when circumstances just don't go his way. He starts freaking out, stomping around, and then he goes off and hides his face in his blanket.

Who wouldn't want to stomp around and then hide under a blanket?

Well, I have begun to start off each day discussing how we will take a deep breath and talk about how we feel when we begin to feel frustrated or angry. And we include a prayer for patience in our mid-afternoon prayer time before naptime.

He's making some progress, but some days I feel like locking him in his room for the entire afternoon. But of course, his door doesn't lock, so there goes that plan.

Anyway, just the other day hubby and I were in the middle of a shouting match over something, who knows, and Kaydn Rye came up to me, put his hand on my leg and said, "Just take a deep breath mom." Apparently I also need some help in the anger management department.

I think it was probably later on that same evening, about an hour after his bed time, that I heard what sounded like a herd of elephants running around in his room. I went up there to see what in the world was going on and and I walked in to find him on his scooter, in the dark, riding around. I asked him what in the world he was doing riding his scooter around in the dark when he should have had his little butt in bed an hour ago.

He replied with this: "Well mom, I needed you to come up here and bring my blanky upstairs for me."

"So you started riding your scooter around so I would hear you and come upstairs?"

"Yep."

And he was right. As long as I was making the trip upstairs, I had a hair clip in tow, a rogue sock, a few little toy horses I had found downstairs that somehow were left out of the before bed toy pickup and of course, his blanky that I had found on the floor of the sunroom.

So, he accomplished his mission I guess.

Speaking of cleaning up, apparently one of the things Kaydn Rye loves about me most is that I clean. On Friday night I actually stayed home from a few things I was supposed to go to that night just to clean. As you may know, cleaning is one of the things I do best, but March was definitely not one of my cleanest months. With the flu and work and life and Kaydn Rye's birthday party which resulted in flalling children demolishing my home, it was a little hairy around here for awhile. Literally. Like have you ever seen that movie Cloverfield where the military guy tells the kids in the movie that in the military's quest to gun down the evil monster, they are about to declare the Hammer Down protocol on Manhattan, letting the entire area go. Well, that's kind of what happened here. I had completely given up on the bedrooms, the dining room and the upstairs bathroom. So I spent every evening last week cleaning like a banshee until everything was in its usual order.

And on Friday night, just before Kaydn Rye went to bed he said to me, "Thanks for cleaning the bathroom. Very nicely done."

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