Boondock Ramblings

Weekly Winners: March 14 to March 20

2010-03-21T10:00:04-04:00

Also posted at Views Beyond the Lens. . .

(This one was straight out of the camera. I just liked the way it came out. Not perfection, but I like it. Um...probably because he's my kid.)

(Homemade pierogies. Yummy!)

(I startled Jonathan when I came around the corner at the playground. That's him screaming.)

Join in Weekly Winners. Post your favorite, or best, photos from the past week at Sarcastic Mom (Lotus)

A couple scares with Dad

2010-03-19T08:04:49-04:00

We had a couple scares with my dad this week.

The first scare was that he might have cancer.

The second scare was when he wore this shirt.

I had to look close to really see what it was all about.

Looking closer didn't make it better.

In fact, it scared me more.

I actually thought, for just a moment, that Graham Norton had invaded my parent's home on a Sunday afternoon.

(photo credit The Telegraph UK )

As for the cancer, the tests were all negative.

I'm so relieved.

I'm also relieved that I hopefully won't have to hear my dad compare the blood in his urine to a sinus infection again.

Trust me, you really don't want to know.

Hosted by Cecily

P.S. In all fairness to Graham, all the other photos I found of him he was wearing solid colors and looking very dashing. Still...when I saw Dad for some reason that's whose name came to mind.

The story behind the spit. . .

2010-03-17T21:40:16-04:00

I uploaded this photo on my photo blog for my Weekly Winners post this week.

There is a story behind the spit. To some, the spit may be "gross" or elicit an "eeew!"

To me it makes me think of my kid and how crazy he is becoming.

This is Jonathan spitting bathwater, first just in the bath, then he tried doing it at me. I stopped the spitting when I remembered the water had bubble bath in it and also when I found myself soaked in bath water and baby spit.

Once I couldn't get Jonathan to take a bath. Now I can't get him out of the tub once he is in it. He swims, he splashes, he plays with all his super heroes that have now become bath toys. He then turns into a prune.

And yes, he spits.

Blogging is what I do when I don't want to face reality. . .

2010-03-16T19:46:00-04:00

I started blogging in 2005 as a way to escape real life. And then I started to write about real life. I know. What the heck? I suppose I thought writing about it online made it more exotic somehow.

But I live in the middle of nowhere (also called the Boondocks. Also called "hell" to some who can't believe we don't have a Starbucks. Digest that for a moment. We don't have a Starbucks. We have to drive a half an hour into another state to find one. I know..It's a shock. I'll give you a moment.) So there is nothing exotic about it. Unless you're from the city, or Australia, then it is all very "exotic" (or sad).

OK. Now I'm going to get honest on you.

I don't completely live in "the middle of nowhere." That's where I was born and grew up, but now I live in "the city," which is surrounded by "the middle of nowhere."

Our "city" is four towns all squished together (one of them in another state) and all together there is about 30,000 people. That is half the population of our entire county (which does not include the town in the other state, of course. Wait, that population number does, but the town isn't in our county. Got it? Get it? Good.)

Actually, a co-worker and I were laughing the other day about how people from the Boondocks call our towns "the city." Actually I think the co-worker was laughing at me because I'm from the Boondocks and I'm one of them "mountain people" who calls this town (or series of towns) a "city."

Yeah, um..if you are from a real city and you were to ever visit here you wouldn't call it a city. You would call it the Boondocks but with houses close together.

I'm a Boondock girl at heart. When I moved to "the city" (complete with a Wal-Mart, three supermarkets, and a hospital) I suddenly felt claustrophobic. The houses and buildings were so close together. Neighbors were really "neighbors" in this here city. Out in the Middle of Nowhere, our closest neighbor was at least a half a mile.

When we bought our house our driveway merged with the neighbor's driveway. I was completely uncomfortable with how close their house was to ours and imagined them peeking into our bedroom window at night, for what reason I didn't know. All I knew was that in the Boondocks there weren't neighbors peeking in your windows, there were what we called "Peeping Toms" huddled in the woods and spying in the bathroom window, but there weren't no neighbor spies, ya' know?

So, now here I am, living in "the city", which is full of people who grew up in the Boondocks or wished they lived there. `And, once again, I must explain that if you drive even five minutes either way in this "city" you will find yourself in a world void of civilization, or . . . in the Boondocks.

In fact, a few times a year I watch a farm tractor drive past my house on its way to the farm on the other side of town. . .where the Boondocks begins.

Luckily we have a lot of rednecks , bigots, and hillbillies here in this here city or this blogger wouldn't have nuthin' to write about in the early morning hours while her child still snores away in the next room, exhausted from his mother's bad parenting skills from the night before when she didn't make him go to bed.

(Part of Jen's Spin Cycle theme for this week: Behind the Scenes of your blog, at Sprite's Keeper.).

Mommy and Me Day. . . Worth the wait.

2010-03-15T21:00:00-04:00

Last year I used up all my vacation days as sick days. By the end of the year if I wanted a vacation day I had to sacrifice a day of pay for it.

This year I wasn't about to wait for sickness to claim all my vacation days and instead I requested a vacation day after seeing that one of our local theaters was offering a black light puppet show based on the stories of Eric Carle.

It was supposed to pour the whole day, but when I woke up, it was sunny out and by the time we got on the road it was near 70 degrees and it stayed that way the rest of the day.

Jonathan wasn't very excited at the prospect of going to see a play -- he thought we were going to "ampa's" and almost had a break down when we stopped in the "big city" about a half an hour away from "ampa's"

His tune changed when we entered the theater and found out that 400 children from local day cares and Kindergarten classes would soon be joining us for the show.

He was excited. Me?

Not so much.

By 10 minutes in I knew what the arts council director had meant when he told me "I guess it's a good show. If you like 400 five year olds screaming and waving their arms around in the dark for an hour."

At first I thought that was a bit. . . well, rude. . . of him to say such a thing about such darling children.

Then I was in the midst of it all and I suddenly knew what he meant. They weren't demon-children, but they weren't angels either. OK. They were fairly good. but they were LOUD.

The show was entertaining -- enough -- but when it was all over I was never happier to walk out onto the streets of Middle of Nowhere City and try to merge into Middle of Nowhere Traffic. As we walked into the bright sun, the screams and squeals of 400 children still echoed in my mind.

This "city" has maybe a few hundred people living in it, OK, maybe 1,000, but during the day the traffic spikes to 20,000 cars and scowling women with cigarettes hanging off their bottom lip. And getting any of those scowling women to stop scowling long enough to wave you into traffic is pretty much impossible.

Finally, there was a five second break between cars and I shoved the long nose of my maroon Chevy Lumina (very luxurious vehicle) into the fray and headed toward a healthy lunch.

A healthy lunch of homemade chocolate, soft serve ice cream.

What? It has milk in it...dairy...the good stuff.

Once upon a time my kid would only eat part of a baby cone. Now? He eats it all.

You wouldn't believe how long I sat there, waiting for him to say he was full and asking me to eat it for him. He finally did -- when only the bottom of the cone remained. The very bottom. The very, very bottom.

Next time I'm getting myself a large instead of waiting to see if he finishes his!