You Can Put Stupid People in Jail...

In response to the fecund post, my link-savvy friend Steph sent a link to this post about a 76 year old women arrested for birth control comments at a bus stop. Pretty funny stuff.

Buckeyes Rule

I'd like to take a quick minute to point out that the NBA has selected not one but TWO Ohio State University basketball players in the first round of the NBA draft. Greg Oden was chosen as the number one pick (you may recognize him because he looks like a very nimble grandpa)




and Mike Conley Jr. went number four.

I'm not just saying that because I spent four years of my life there, but yeah, well I am. I love the Buckeyes.

What's that? Did you say something about national champion-ACHOO-ips. Oops. I sneezed. I didn't hear anything. It must not have been important.

Word of the Day:

Fecund \FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd\, adjective:

1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific.

Now that the kids are out of school and we travel en masse, I get some strange looks and odd inquiries. Here's a list of fecund related questions I get from strangers on a weekly basis followed by my mind's retaliation:

5. Are those kids all yours?

Whoa! No ma'am, I dint see that last yung'n. Whooose d'ya spose that is?

4. How do you do it?

Do? Do what? Life? What are my alternatives? I do it crazily, hectically, lovingly, grumpily, beautifully, gratefully, sometimes heavily medicated but otherwise joyfully. How would you do it?

3. You know how that happens, don't you?

Dagnabit, if I could just figger how this keeps happnin' I might be able to stop it, like a leaky faucet, just plug it right up.

2. Are they from the same father?

Do I look like I have separate litters?

And the top most ridiculously asked question...

1. Are you done yet?

Done? Done what? The answer to #3? What's it to you? Do you really want to know the answer?

Gilmore Girls and Guys

I don't get to watch a lot of TV. So, when I do, it's usually Amazing Race or, up until this season, 24. (Note to the producers: What have you done? Fix it for the love of Pete, FIX IT! I left 24 mid-episode to watch The Bachelor. The Bachelor??! Up until this season, it would've taken a natural disaster or the loss of an appendage for me to leave the room during 24. This season, I voluntarily left to put away laundry. LAUNDRY!).

So anyway, some of my friends are into Lost or whatever other tropical themed shows are out there. I just can't get into those. My babysitter recently suggested I watch Gilmore Girls, which I can rent by the season at my local Blockbuster. After initially ridiculing her, I rented season one on DVD. I know everyone in the known world has seen it, but, on principle, I try not to be swayed by peer pressure.

I love it. Even more surprising...my husband loves it.

When I popped it into the DVD player, he, of course, issues the required manly protest about watching a chick click. This is the man who can honestly claim that an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, changed his life. Anyway, he was yawning in church this morning because he stayed up late to watch the rest of the first season.

Yeah, I know. The series is canceled. Just my luck. And don't tell me what happens!

That's my recommendation for summer TV. If you're looking for something to read but don't want to get involved in a novel, I recommend short stories. I picked up an anthology of Southern literature at Half Priced Books, so I can get a literature fix in half the time, and obviously, at half the price. I also found this website that offers short stories on line. Free short stories.

I wouldn't recommend reading all of the Russian authors in consecutive order. By the time I was done, I didn't want to do anything except drink Vodka and growl, Vy gavareeteh pa ru-sky? and Ya ne gavareeu na ruskom at anyone who walked in the room.

Dibs? Dibs!

It all started with my mother’s yard sale. She and my dad have decided to downsize, which means parting with enough home décor to furnish a small country. My mother lives to decorate. She is the knick knack queen. She’s made decorations out of things that most people would consider small appliances. There are cows in designer suits, bears with dresses, candles wrapped in flowers, French writing on walls, wine glasses wrapped in sparkly stuff. You name, she’s given it a make over. Because she practices decoration diversity, style classification is sketchy, at best. Because of its Midwestern regional connotations, ‘knick knack’ works well. ‘What-not’ sounds like tools and spools of thread and ‘bric-a-brac’ sounds like ceramic frogs and mug holders.

If I said ‘bagatelle’ or ‘furbelow,’ those sound more exotic, right? Or, how about this- if my husband Kevin came home and said, “Honey I found the perfect bagatelle for you today,” I would think, wow, he must have bought me a Faberge egg or something. If, however, he came home and said, “Honey, I bought you some flummery, today, I would have to assume he’d been shopping at the medical supply store again. The same goes for ‘kickshaw’ and ‘gewgaw’. (I’m serious, look at a thesaurus).

Anyway, my mom was making a list of items that we, the kids wanted to keep. On the list my sister-in-law had written DIBS. D-I-B-S. What does this word that sounds like a burp, possibly mean? And why has it risen to international significance, much like the universal sign for, “I need the Heimlich maneuver.”

Dibs is nothing more than the grown up version of “Mine!” Yet, it’s an acceptable form of litigation!

Isn’t that what most of life boils down to, who has first dibs? Leftover pizza? Dibs! Grandma’s antiques? Dibs! Child custody? Dibs! The Alamo? Dibs! Israel and Palestine? Dibs!

This past Sunday, I was sitting in a church we were visiting, trying to wrap my head around what the pastor was explaining as he was baptizing an infant. He said the baptism sacrament is not intended to wash away sins. It was intended to signify that child as being a child of a believer. The parents were dedicating the child to God, to be raised in the teaching of this specific church. So what does it boil down to?? I swear to you, all I could think about was DIBS!

It’s a weird tradition when you stop and consider the meaning that one odd sounding word has on our culture. It’s almost as funny as saying you’re having a yard sale because you’ve collected a lot of gimcrack.

Summer School

Speaking of summer reading, I usually try to concoct some sort of educational project for the kids and me to do together. I try to down play the academic aspect so as not to be accused of teaching in the summer.


I've tried a couple of things each summer...drawing class, grammar lessons (slight dip in popularity with that choice), zoology, astronomy...some worked, some are fodder for this blog.

There was the summer that I bought Latin workbooks and audio tapes. We had a great time trying to learn the basic construction of a dead language. We listened to the voice on tape pronounce the letters and sounds and we would repeat. It took almost an entire workbook to realize there was a very big reason these tapes were priced so low. Apparently, the narrator giving the Latin pronunciation spoke with a lisp, so the pronunciations weren't completely accurate. Instead of learning to speak Latin, we were, in actuality speaking Lathin.

Last summer I found a website called Teach Yourself Persian in 100 Easy Lessons. This became more practical than the Lathin. Having a working understanding of Persian, which is Farsi, a popular language spoken in Iran, carried over into matters of national security.
Believe it or not, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave those caustic speeches to us Americans, I was the only one in the free world who could accurately translate his diatribe. Instead of screeching about oil and bombs he was actually auditioning for a spot on The View. Several key elements in his speeches were misrepresented in a malevolent light. Instead of bloodshed, he actually said, "I like to wear expensive suits," and "How can I get on Wheel of Fortune?" But nobody else really knows that.

Plus, when you don't have anyone to practice a language with, you lose it pretty quickly. So now the only word I remember in Farsi is frog, which doesn't come in handy on a daily basis, but if it's ever a Jeopardy! question, I'm all over that.

The Burning Question is...

...What is Angelina Jolie reading? Yes, that's the burning question, according to People magazine. Funny, I would have thought the burning question might have been Is this the summer of the Apocalypse? or Is Vladimir Putin the Antichrist? or Will the pet population double now that Bob Barker is retiring?

My burning question to Angelina Jolie is: How can you possibly find time to read books? The four kids and their multi-cultural adjustment, the housework, the laundry, the child-rearing, wow, that sounds time consuming. When you're not talking about the challenges that you and hunky Brad have overcome together, or talking about how many more kids you want to adopt, how do you have time to work the media, stroll around shopping and still save the world??? The hardship of it all..Yeah, that just burns my buns.

I think a more important question is, what are you reading this summer? I do like to read To Kill a Mockingbird every summer. Other than that, a student suggested The Gods Grew Tired of Us. Any suggestions or recommendations?

One Van's Trash is Another Van's Treasure

Remember when you were a kid and one of the great exchanges of life was getting to ride in someone else's car? Why my niece wanted to slum it in our mini van instead of her perfectly CLEAN, odor-free car, is an adolescent mystery. Not to be swayed by logic, the two eight year old cousins delightedly tumble into the van, plop into the seats and continue their conversation about American Girls, mac and cheese and older sisters.

A few minutes later a squeaky voice from the back seat yells, "Eeewww! Half a sandwich!"

Before I could apologize for the food receptacle and offer a friendly but accurate warning about whatever else might be back there, I hear my daughter ask a matter of fact question: "What, you don't like peanut butter and jelly?"

She apparently didn't realize that most families don't keep leftovers in the seat cracks. Her instinct was to find out WHY Maddie doesn't like the all-American favorite PB&J. It evidently didn't occur to her that having a half eaten sandwich on the floor of the van qualifies as squalor.

Sadly, it is that bad.

Epilogue: Just to prove my point--As I got out of the van today, I looked down at the floor between the two front seats. Right there in broad daylight is a shiny and distinguishable lock of human hair. (HAIR??!?) Blond. Perfectly cut, although there are no scissors in the car, evidence the crime had been committed at a second location. One mustn't ask the obvious question in these situations: "Who cut their hair? "Why is it in the car?" No, the PB&J question here is: "Why haven't I noticed someone missing a chunk of hair?"

Breaking News!

Thanks to an organized outcry by the maternally defensive group MASB (Mothers Against Spoiled Brats), Paris Hilton has mysteriously been ordered back to jail. Seems a judge overruled the sheriff's decision to get her out of his hair.

Rumor has it she's not eating while in jail. That's just more beanies and weenies for the shoplifter in cell block D, so why the concern?

I'm wondering if her parents should have to serve time with her. After all, aren't they partially responsible for the final product we see today? Maybe kids would be less likely to spend time in the poky if they knew it would include spending time with their parents. Or, maybe parents would start to parent if they knew they were headed to the slammer along with the kids. Just wondering...

On a completely unrelated note-


Funny thing happened this weekend at an end-of-school party. I was gored by a bull.
A mechanical bull. Right in the leg. There's a nice big bruise with a spider web of torn flesh marks. It's feminine.

A) Who gets gored by a mechanical bull?
B) Why is there a mechanical bull at a school party?
C) Why was I on the bull in the first place?


I have no good answers for any of these questions.

Word of the Day

Word of the Day

lumpen \LUHM-puhn; LUM-puhn\, adjective;
plural lumpen, also lumpens:

1. Of or relating to dispossessed and displaced individuals, especially those who have lost social status.
2. Common; vulgar.
3. A member of the underclass, especially the lowest social stratum.



Example: In prison, Paris Hilton must have taken some thumpin' from some lumpen.

Breaking News!

Look kids! You're never too old for temper tantrums!

Paris Hilton has been "reassigned" prison cells. She'll trade in her jail cell in exchange for house arrest at her mansion in the Hollywood Hills.

I bet she won't be served beans and weenies, though.

Six bedrooms, 2.5 baths, clothing optional..

Ethan and Hudson stood at the open kitchen doors, looking out into the cow pasture. A small spider must have swung in from a web above (outside the house, of course). The following conversation took place. The voices are real, not actors:

"Spiders, eeewww!"

"We need to move to town so we don't have spiders."

"Yeah, that's true. No spiders or flies. They're gross"

"But if we lived in town, we couldn't run around outside in our underwear."

"Oh, that's true. That won't work then, we'll have to live here."

"You're smart Hudson."

"That's what happens when you're eleven minutes older Ethan."

Realtors take note: To get "the edge" you're looking for in this buyer's market, don't neglect to advertise this obvious benefit:

The ability to run around outside in your skivvies.

Watch your profits rise.

Omne initium est difficile - Every beginning is difficult

The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. -H.G. Wells

February 13, 2001. (great scanning skills, I know)



May 29, 2007.






I thought I would be more distraught, but maybe that's a delayed reaction and it will hit me next week. The twins graduated from kindergarten this week. My youngest. The last of five. I kept thinking through the whole ceremony, how difficult it is to put this feeling into words. When you get to this point, do you just use all the applicable cliches? They grow up so fast, Enjoy it while they're young, Time flies, It seems like just yesterday...

It does seem like just yesterday.

But I can't remember all of yesterday, only bits and pieces. Then I wonder, am I too careless with the memories? Will they come and go through the years or will I eventually just lose the past all together? I remember incidents and accidents, but I can't recall their little voices, the smells, the feel, the intangibles that occured each and every day. The ones I swore I'd remember.

Believe me, I'm not missing the potty training days or the 'run from mom in different directions' days. But I do miss the "I can't live without mom" days. Maybe I'm sad because those diplomas represent the little piece of time that's creeping closer.

With each passing year, they seem to need less and less of me. And now, instead of wishing for one day to myself, I want less days with just me and more days with just them. It's a helpless feeling to watch your kids grow up. We're powerless to stop it, yet we anticipate it at the same time. It's death and life all rolled together.

We were at a restaurant the other day when Ethan grabbed a huge steak knife and used it to butter his bread. I was watching his new found independence out of the corner of my eye. When he was done he put the knife down, held up all ten fingers and loudly announced, "Look, I used the knife and I still have all my fingers."

That's one more step away from me.

These graduation days are coming too quickly. Enjoy it while it lasts, They grow up so quickly, Time flies...



Hudson, age 6. Life motto: "I'll play against you in soccer and I will school you, you understand."


Ethan, age 6. Life motto: "WOOHOOOOOO! Life is best lived mildly out-of-control."