I'd Like to Thank the Academy...

Blog awards fascinate me. There are no criteria. You make up your own rules. You don't actually win anything. There was never a contest to start with. It's just - an award. For nothing.

I know this is a horrible thing to say, but (whispers) Blog awards are kind of stupid. They're a lot like chain letters. You pass it on because someone gave it to you and you have to give it to someone else. It's like on my sister's MySpace page where half the comments are little pictures with sappy/crappy little poems like this:

Friends are like butterflies
Fluttering about
Oh so pretty
Sent from heaven
Yellow and Pink
Kind of dumb, but in a really nice way
And butterflies sometimes fly in front of a car and that's like friends too because I would totally get hit by a car for you.
PASS THIS ON TO TEN OTHER HOT MOMMAS THAT YOU KNOW!!!
XOXOXOXO
!!! ! !!

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you are old and have not been on MySpace lately. Frankly, I would not advise it. MySpace makes me weep for the future of America. Gotta love it when the comments say things like, "Sorry I passed out last night.")

The part of awards that I do like? They are a way for people to express friendship and appreciation - to give a virtual pat on the back, solely because you like or enjoy someone. I think that is a genuinely nice thing. Wonderful even. But it's not really an award.

A lot of times, if you get an award, you know the blogger just couldn't think of anyone else in their blog circle who hadn't already received it. You got it by default. Sort of like getting picked last for soccer. I have to question the validity of any award whose primary criteria is - I couldn't think of anyone else who didn't already have it. That's more like an STD than an award.

However. However. However. I am going to create my own blog award to use for my own nefarious purposes. Because if we're gonna do awards, the award should be something that's really embarrassing to post on your blog.

Therefore, I give you:

The Prettiest Blogger in All The Land Award

In the event that you receive this award, here are the rules:

1. You cannot say it's an award. It already says that up there, in the teeeeeny tiny little letters.
2. You just have to post it on your blog with no commentary whatsoever.
3. The end.

Hey. I get to make up the rules, right? It's MY AWARD, dagnabbit. (Yes, I know that when people come to your blog and see that you have dubbed yourself the prettiest blogger in all the land, with no accompanying explanation, they may wonder what type of medication you are taking. They may contact you to see if they can get some for themselves. This cannot be helped. Besides, if you do not want this award, there is a very, very simple way to avoid it.)

I hereby bestow this award upon anyone in the blogiverse who gives an award to ME.

HELP: MISSING CHILD

Please help. Someone somehow slipped in here during the night and traded this child:

For this one:

Also reported missing - two other children, as pictured below:

Curiously, older versions of the same children are present in the home, however, parents believe a mistake has been made, as their children now appear much older than seems logical.

If you have any information about how this possibly could have happened, distraught mother seeks information leading to recapture of last three years.

On a completely unrelated note, parents would like to sponsor research into projects involving stopping time and freezing children. If interested in participating in these projects, please indicate below.

Thanking you in advance,

Sue

P.S. Sniff.

P.P.S. I want a time machine. And possibly another toddler.

I Promise I'm Not Quite As Weird As This Post Makes Me Sound

My husband is home. Glory hallelujah. I have never been so glad to see someone in my entire freaking life. I wanted to do approximately the same thing the dog did, jump all over him, cover him in slobbery kisses and hump his leg a little. I was that excited.

Want to know how awesome he is? He let me take a three hour nap this afternoon that stretched OVER DINNER, THROUGH BATH TIME, and THROUGH BEDTIME, so that when I woke up, the children were magically gone. Poof.

He is the BEST. HUSBAND. EVER.

I'm still tired though. So - here are ten random things about me. Blame Ahna.

I used to be a huge liar. O.K., so we already established that as a teen I was somewhat crazy, right? Well, buckle your seatbelts. I used to lie about everything. When I went away to Ricks (er, excuse me, BYU Idaho, for the fancy schmancies among us) for my freshman year of college, I lived in the dorms with five roommates. As we were all sitting around getting to know each other the first night, we got on the topic of boys, and feeling insecure about their vastly superior looks and dating potential, I invented a boyfriend back home for myself, as a sort of defensive move (If I didn’t get asked out, it was o.k., because I had a boyfriend). He was a (fictional) apprentice cameraman with Channel 8 news in Las Vegas, and we’d been (fictionally) dating for two years. His (fictional) name was Matt. He loved me passionately (and yet fictionally), but he never called, and never wrote, so eventually I had to break up with him.

Yeah, I was nuts.

Once in a while? I still lie and I don’t even realize I’ve lied until later. It’s like a bad habit that comes roaring back now and then, out of the blue. We had some people over once and they asked what I do for a living and I embellished, with my husband sitting right next to me. After they left he looked at me and asked why I’d said that. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I had no clue until he explained it to me. I hadn’t meant anything by it, it just seemed like it would be a nice thing to do for a living. It made for a more interesting story.

My wedding ring is fake. I lost the original diamond in my wedding ring and replaced it with a really big cubic zirconia. It's totally fake and looks it. I am continually amused when people compliment me on it. At first I was just being cheap, and later it evolved into a principle thing, after reading up on all of the issues surrounding conflict diamonds, and the diamond trade in general. My husband (the sweet guy he is) actually bought me a replacement diamond and I made him take it back. (I sort of can't believe I did that - how rude.) I told him I'd rather have a kitchen backsplash.

I love hide and seek. I am so excited that my kids are finally getting old enough to understand the concept. For a long time they just didn't get it. Carter would follow me pointing and saying, "Mommy in there," and I'd get all annoyed, like I was six. He would just stand there giggling and I would have to hiss at him, "You're ruining my spot - go find your own spot!"

We used to have this huge green couch with these tremendously huge cushions and large pillows along the back, and I was able to hide inside of it, under the cushions, and my husband couldn't find me for like, an hour. And our house was only 1500 square feet. And we didn't have children. Yeah, I made him play hide and seek with me. Shut up.

I used to wish I was Samantha from Bewitched. If only I could have figured out how to twitch my nose I TOTALLY WOULD HAVE BEEN MAGIC.

I was the tri-state judo champ when I was 8 years old. My dad made us take it, and I loved flipping people over. I was short, and especially tiny compared to my classmates because I was skipped ahead a grade. One day a kid started hassling me on the playground calling me pee-wee because of an "incident" that occured in the second grade and I swiftly flipped him flat on his back. He was just lying there on the ground, blinking up at me. It was awesome.

I play the organ, but it's a secret. (Well, sort of. Once you blog about something, it's not exactly a secret anymore I guess.) I'm not an expert or anything, but I can play the foot pedals well enough for most hymns and I played for congregations in Las Vegas for years. But I hated it. I would always get distracted and start daydreaming and would get into trouble. I'd lose count of the verses and would stop playing, but the congregation would keep on going, because, you know, the song wasn't over - and I would just be sitting there wondering what was going on. Or I'd keep playing after it was supposed to be over. Or I'd lean forward and accidentally blast notes with my chest while someone was speaking.

When we moved here, they asked me if I would play from time to time. I didn't say no exactly, I just burst into tears, saying something about, "I - I don't think I can - I don't think I - I mean, after what happened..." and the poor flustered church guy immediately withdrew the offer. My husband laughed all the way home, because he knew I was faking, and also evil.

I wrote a poem in fourth grade and won the Reflections contest at my elementary school. I thought it was pretty good for a fourth grader, but I don't know much about poetry - I don't GET most of it, so you tell me. (And don't lie. If you think it sucks, you can tell me. I was in fourth grade, it's not like you're gonna hurt my pride.) I never read or write poetry now, unless you count Shel Silverstein.

"Silver streaks of lightning anger
Flash, crash and resound
As they transform
Into tears
That trickle down my cheeks
Like raindrops on a window pain."

The steam from the jacuzzi somehow set off the fire alarm in our hotel room when we were on our honeymoon. We didn't hear the alarm, because it was malfunctioning. Firemen burst in on us, when we were stark naked and, er, busy.

Everytime I go to Borders I get diarrhea. I have no idea why. I don't eat or drink anything when I'm there. (I know that is too much information. Coming up with ten things is hard.)

I refuse to tag people, on principle. The principle being the whole - I'm a coward thing. But please, feel free to steal.

My Husband is In Vegas and I Am Alone Here With The Children And The Dog And There Is Nothing To Eat But Cereal Because I Cannot Cook

And there is no time to blog or comment or even lurk.

I hope you appreciate the horror of that statement.

See you on Friday. If we survive till then. It's getting very Lord of the Flies up in here.

P.S. Send cookies.

P.S: Need a laugh? Watch this. (Totally stolen from Alice C, courtesy of Blackbird.) (There is swearing, fyi for those who don't like that kinda stuff.)

I'm a Yamaha

(I’ll just warn you - this isn't a funny post. I'm gonna be a little serious for a minute, because I feel like spewing this out into the universe – I’m not sure why. Why do we feel compelled to share any of the things we write about on our blogs? I doubt very many of you will make it to the end of this incredibly long, self-indulgent post, but I felt like sharing it anyway. So here you go...)

I was a miserable teenager. I really was. I think I went a little crazy from 15 to 19. I remember that time as sort of a fevered nightmare, murky and dark and awful. I wasn’t acting out in the way that you would expect a troubled teenager to do, I was just incredibly lonely. Lonely and angry and sad. I was awkward and emotionally immature, poor with really bad clothes, and lacking the personality or attitude to make all of that something you could overlook. I existed in a haze of gut wrenching self hatred and distress.

I know we all tend to write off our teenage angst as just that, but I honestly know what it means to despair, because of that time in my life. I've never been depressed as an adult, probably because nothing I've gone through as an adult has ever made me feel as broken or as sad as I felt as a teenager. There were days, weeks, months when I thought about suicide, planned it, thought about the sheer relief of not having to get up the next day and face the world again. Of not having to continue to make an effort to be something other than what I felt I was – embarrassing, mediocre, unloved, unwanted. I would trace the lines on my wrist, and the only thing that kept me from doing it was my certainty that then I would burn in hell.

For most of my adolescent life, I thought my musical ability was the only special thing about me. I loved to sing and play the piano. It was one of the only things that made me stop thinking, made life bearable, made me break out of my narcissistic fog of self-pity. So I would sing – ALL THE TIME. I used to drive my family up the wall with it. I’d play the piano and sing for literally hours in the living room and my brothers would be like, would you SHUT UP already, I’m trying to watch TV. My mom would have to come out into the music room after a while to try to get me to stop. She didn’t want to discourage me from singing or playing, but there was a limit to how many times anyone in the family could listen to me sing “On My Own,” at full volume before they went stark, raving mad.

I had a nice voice in the way that millions of girls have nice voices, because they can sing in tune and have a nice tone. Nice, but run of the mill. I used to dream that I would be good enough to sing on Broadway someday. I knew that wasn’t really an option - I wasn’t at that level, but I wished it was true.

Still, now and then people would turn around in their pews at church to tell me that I had a pretty voice and it made me feel like maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t totally worthless. One day when I was feeling particularly awful about my life, someone told me that I sang like an angel, and it made me so happy that I started crying right there on the spot. I would sing a solo in church, and people would seek me out afterward to tell me how much they enjoyed it. I would collect those little compliments, store them up inside and bring them out and think about them when I was especially unhappy. They were like little pockets of warmth in the middle of a long bitterly cold winter. They made me feel better when I felt like there was nothing good about me at all. And there were a lot of times like that.

When I got out of my teens, I started to figure things out emotionally and socially. I think I probably had a chemical imbalance for a while (it runs in my family) and it was clearing off. I started to recognize my own value, and started to learn how to get along in the world. I learned how to be happy, and how to feel hopeful.

I still sang whenever I had the opportunity, but I didn’t crave the attention so much – didn’t need it in order to feel o.k. about myself. I was happy. Music was just something else that was good about life, not the only thing.

A year after I got married, I decided that even though I’d never really do anything with it, it would be fun to take voice lessons, just to finally get some training. My sister was taking lessons from someone who she raved about, so I called him up and made an appointment.

I will never forget the conversation I had with the voice teacher after he’d spent a half an hour “getting to know” my voice. He told me I had a nice voice, a good ear, was perfectly in tune, and a great sight reader, and I thanked him, feeling good about his comments. Then he went on.

“You know, I like to compare people’s voices to pianos. Some people, like Leslie,” (his star pupil) “have Steinways. Other people have cheap little Casio keyboards. You, I think, have a very nice, serviceable little Yamaha.”

I didn’t know enough about piano brands to be able to place myself very accurately on the range of piano goodness, but I could tell from his tone that it wasn’t that great, wasn’t that special, and never would be.

And even though I already knew that I had a “nice” voice, and not an amazing one, it broke my heart a little to hear it, for sure, from a professional. I think somewhere in my heart I’d always held on to that dream of one day being Jodi Benson or something, however unrealistic a dream it might have been. I came home crying from the first lesson and never went back. My husband wanted to go punch the guy out, because he could see how much that comment had wounded me.

To hear that this one thing, this one thing I’d thought might be a little special – not Hollywood special, but special enough to mean that I was special, really wasn’t that special after all? It hurt me.

Every time I sang I thought, not that special, not that great. I lost my confidence. And my voice over time has gotten less steady, less confident, less clear. Self fulfilling prophecy.

For a long time, I couldn’t sit at the piano and play what I wanted anyway, because my kids would crawl all over me requesting Disney songs, or on Top of Spaghetti, or songs from Annie. I would sometimes go months at a time without ever sitting down to play anything for myself. It's only recently that I've started to get reacquainted with how happy it makes me to sing, just for the sheer joy of doing it.

When Abby had croup she asked me, “Mom, are lullabies just for night time?” I told her no, so she put her head in my lap and I sang to her for a few minutes, stroking her hair. After a bit she asked me, “When I grow up will I sing just like you, Momma? I want to sing just like you.” It was probably the best, sweetest compliment of my life, and I nodded through a haze of tears and told her she would sing even better, and then I cleared my throat and sang her to sleep.

And I thought - what a wonderful gift. I’ve wavered in my beliefs now and then, but today, right now, I feel pretty sure that my voice was a gift. Not a gift in the way that people usually mean, as in gifted, but as in - God loved me enough to give me a voice that, while not special enough for the stage or any kind of acclaim, would carry me through a time of despair, would help me feel special when I couldn’t feel my own worth, would give me a reason to go on. And now I can use my voice to sing to my children, to help my daughter to feel how much I love her, to help make my children feel special and adored and wanted. That IS a gift - one I am incredibly grateful for.

And it’s definitely something to sing about.

About the Kids

(Yes, family, this is an old picture. I don't care. It's cute. Plus I can't find the new ones. Just play along.)

I love my children. I really do. They're kind and sweet and talented and cute. They are smarter than the average bear, they make my world revolve, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. (Cut and paste loving mommy blog paragraph here.)

I think it would be fascinating to come to a mommy blog and read something like, "MAN, my four year old is a little jerk. He's constantly picking his nose, and it's disgusting. He won't pee in the toilet, he keeps making this loud beeping noise, and if I have to read that Diego story one more time I will kill myself." I think I would have to read that one. Possibly I would have to report the mother to social services eventually, but it would be interesting to read.

Because my children CAN be incredibly annoying sometimes.

Is it really necessary to run around the house flapping your arms and yelling, "I'm a goony bird, I'm a goony bird," for twenty minutes straight? Is that ever necessary? Am I really a horrible mother for making you STOP IT? Have I really crushed all of your dreams?

And why is it that if Sarah is sitting in the family room by herself, and I ask her to turn off the T.V., she'll just kind of sigh, and look at me with an aggrieved expression, then gradually, slowly, make her way over to the T.V., lift her arm as though it's incredibly heavy, and in slow motion, turn it off, sighing the whole time? Then look at me as if to say, the things I do for you mom, the things I do for you.

But if all three of my kids are there? And I say, "someone turn off the t.v.," World War III breaks out as they all rush to be the first to turn it off. Someone pushes someone, someone is victorious, someone else falls on the floor crying as though they'd been stabbed, when really all that happened was that they DID NOT GET TO TURN OFF THE T.V. Then with the crying, and the "I was going to turn it off, " and "but I was first," and "he didn't let me turn it off."

The other day Abby and Carter had a fight. As ducks. One of them started quacking and the other quacked back. It was all good fun, but eventually the quacking turned menacing and angry, and one of them burst into tears. "Mom, she quacked at me." They don't even know what they are arguing about. They don't speak duck.

Irrational goons, my children. And yet, they think I'M annoying. What is up with that?

Someday, twenty years from now, when we are sitting in some therapist's office, discussing all of the ways I failed them as a parent, I know some of this stuff is gonna come back to bite me. Sarah will cry about how I never bought her cute shoes, and I never learned to properly braid her hair, and as if that wasn't enough, there were a lot of times that I did not let her order from the book order, and if there is something terrible you can do to a six year old child, apparently that is it. Judging from the hysterical sobbing that took place last night.

Abby will explain how I stifled her creativity and smashed her hopes when I would not let her wear her princess costume to preschool on non-Halloween oriented days. Her friend Brooklyn came over to play yesterday dressed in princess shoes and a frilly skirt, and Abby looked at me and said, "THAT'S NICE, your mom lets you wear PRINCESS SHOES OUTSIDE," and then gave me a look of disgust and walked away. She is also ashamed of the fact that I do not wear dresses every day, as she imagines most other mothers do. She encourages me to "please wear a skirt" and to "try to look nicer" and to "make something in your mouth not smell like that." O.K., maybe she had a point on the last one. But do I have to take this from a girl who still occasionally pees herself?

Carter so far, has no major complaints, but give him time. He's still at that age where he thinks his father and I are wonderful. Well, except when we tell him "no computer" or "no TV" or "you have to come inside" or "get your hands out of your underwear." So really, thinking about it now, he's kind of mad at us a lot. But when he's NOT mad, he thinks we're awesome.

Sorry. Excuse me. This post really has no point. I know I'm supposed to wrap it up with some kind of inspirational story or thought, but I don't have it in me today. Maybe if they'd KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE INFERNAL BEEPING FOR TWO SECONDS, I could come up with something.

-----

In other news, I am never eating again. I got on the scale this morning and WOW. Wow. You have to be really dedicated to your craft to attain this particular level of rapid weight gain. I need to do something about this. TODAY. Or possibly on Monday.

Blah.

The One With All the Imaginary Boyfriends

42 COMMENTS Y’ALL! And only THREE of them were my own! Whoooooooooooooooo! (Why do I feel the urge to pretend I’m Southern when I’m excited? I have no idea.) I doubt I will ever top that number of comments in my lifetime. I will probably just pull up the post from time to time, marvel at the number of comments, and bask in the feeling of imaginary popularity. Is THIS what cheerleaders feel like?

I was in the mood to do a meme (Hey! That is NOT your cue to stop reading so COME BACK HERE.), and I saw this one on Julie’s blog. She didn’t tag me, but I wanted to play, so I stole it. Julie was tagged by Veronica at Toddler Dredge, who came up with this original meme title that made me love her immediately:

“Meme: Ten Literary Characters I Would Totally Make Out With If I Were Single and They Were Real But I’m Not, Single I Mean, I Am Real, But I’m Also Happily Married and Want to Stay That Way So Maybe We Should Forget This.”

Ha! You see why I have to do this, right? Romance, books, pretending, run on sentences - all of my great loves in one place. Here's my list:

1) Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind. But he would have to look how he looked in my imagination, and not in the movie. I read the book first and when I saw the movie I was horrified because I know Rhett Butler, and YOU, SIR, ARE NO RHETT BUTLER.

2) Gilbert from Anne of Green Gables. “Let me walk you home... Carrots.” Eeeeeee…

3) Mr. Darcy, the Colin Firth version

4) Mr. Darcy, the new movie Emo version


O.k. Wait. I just realized – if I'm putting movies in there, then I'm not really - I'm not really thinking in strictly literary terms. So I will revise the MEME title, despite it's awesomeness:

Ten Literary Characters, Who Also Were Featured in Movies, Who Kept Me Warm on Many Cold, Cold, Lonely Nights, Except, No, Not in the Way That You Are Thinking, Get Your Mind Out of The Gutter, Geez.

Let's move on:

5) Edward from Sense and Sensibility:

6) Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail

O.K., wait. Tom Hanks, not a literary character exactly. So I’ve obviously strayed again. Let me try this again:

Ten Fictional Characters from Movies and Books and TV and Also Random Actors in Whatever Capacity, and Also People Who are Cute in the Movies But Would Probably Creep Me Out In Real Life

7) Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer

8) The teacher in Never Been Kissed, even though he’s kind of creepy for crushing on a student, but I don’t care because, hello, Vaughn from Alias

9) Topher Grace in anything, even Win a Date With Tad Hamilton, and that was one crappy movie

10) Chuck from Chuck. He's a lot hotter than that promo makes him look. Seriously. Cupcake's latest post brought me to my senses. HOW could I have forgotten my best imaginary boyfriend EVER, George Clooney? When Carol left ER and went to Seattle and Doug was there on the dock, all twinkly and dimply and GEORGE, I died. DIED. I mean, come on, resist this:

That sound you heard, after that episode originally aired? The sound of ten million women spontaneously ovulating.

Wait. O.k. I’ve just realized that this is not really a meme of literary characters, but rather, just a list of random men and characters I think are hot. I think I’ve gotten away from the crux of the post. This whole thing may be somewhat inappropriate. Also, I think I may have a thing for nerds.

Er, except for my husband, I mean. He's not a nerd. (Hi honey!) And neither is George. Obviously.

But still, I feel I must make one last stab at an appropriate title for the meme. Therefore:

Ten Boys Who Should Totally Be My Imaginary Boyfriend, Not That I Ever Imagine Anyone Other Than My Husband, Ever, But If I Did It's Really None of His Business Because Hello, I Know About Megan Fox From Transformers

I have a headache now. Actually, I’m thinking that if anyone is planning to do this they should probably just go back to the ORIGINAL meme. Yeah. That would probably make more sense than - whatever it was I did here.

OR, if you don't feel like doing the original meme, you could also do this one, which is a celebration of extreme nerdiness, and I am going to warn you right now not to read any further if you want to ever be able to take me seriously in ANY capacity whatsoever:

Five Imaginary Couples Who I Would Watch a You Tube Music Video About, Not That I Have Ever Done That Before Or Anything, Because That Would Be A Waste of Time, And Everyone Knows I Hate Wasting Time, But if Someone Forced Me To Watch One, Like With a Gun or Something, I Would Probably Do It,

(Edited to add: No, these aren't adult videos, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the whole You Tube "ship" genre. They are just really sappy videos that people with too much time on their hands like to make about their favorite TV and Movie couples. Not that I would know anything about that. Shut up.)

• Jim and Pam


• Anne and Gilbert


• Mulder and Scully


• Vaughn and Sidney, before Alias started to suck


• Jack and Jennifer from Days of Our Lives, circa 1989 - i.e., the awesome year when everyone in my college dorm would gather at 3:00 and write love letters to Matt Ashford

What? Stop looking at me like that.

So. That's that. I just lost my entire readership. In an effort to gain back your respect, my next post will be about global warming, or orphans, or something like that.

I won't actually tag anyone, because it always makes me feel nervous to tag someone. (They're probably like, oh GREAT, like I needed to deal with THIS in my life today. I was just about to blog about world peace or cold fusion or something important, but now I have to stop and worry about HER issues. And also, if you tag them and they DON'T do the meme, you're like, hmmmm, so do they not like me? Or if you get tagged and you choose not to do it, then you're all worried they'll be offended and then you have to leave extra comments, and - well, it's all very awkward. Possibly I have given this too much thought.)

Also, I swear, this video on Caroline's blog is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in quite a while. Go watch.

P.S. It's kind of not fair that after a post with a lot of comments, you have to start over at zero again. You should automatically get to bank 10 or something.

Insecure

You know that kid? The one who hits himself over the head with a baseball bat, and people find it mildly amusing, and laugh, and so the kid does it again? And again? And again? And again? Until he has a concussion? And nobody is laughing anymore?

I’m SO that kid. My husband had to dissuade me from sharing my greatest hits of general humiliation and embarrassment in a new post. I think he is worried that eventually I will have overshared to such an extent that I will not be able to look anyone in the eye at family reunions.

But I can't help it. Having people call me amusing, even if they are just being nice or humoring me, is like a strange kind of crack. Because in real life? Nobody ever calls me funny, unless they are doing it in that pitying tone, "Oh, Sue, you're so funny." And what they mean is, you are the dorkiest dork that ever dorked.

I love blogging, but I tend to do it hit and run style - late at night, off the top of my head, blurt it out before I think it through and hit post. (And yes, mean person who emailed me, this is why I don't bother with appropriate grammar and tenses - because I don't CARE. It's a blog. And yes, if it will help you to sleep better at night, I DO bother with appropriate punctuation and avoid run on sentences in the writing I do on the professional side. I KNOW the injustice of the fact that people pay me to write is killing you. Deal with it.)

But internet, after I hit post? I worry. I worry about the lameness of what I've posted.

I don't care what people think if I've just written something not meant to be amusing, like my dog died (although let's be honest, that would amuse me), or somebody got sick. But when I've written something that I'm hoping will seem slightly funny I get all whackadoodle crazy about it after I post and will start driving my husband nuts until I get a couple of comments.

This is a pretty typical example of what my husband goes through:

This is me yelling downstairs from up in my office: “Hey, hon, did you read my post?”

This is my husband, downstairs in the living room: “Yes.”

“Was it funny?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it really funny, or sorta funny, or just funny because you love me, or really sort of lame but you don’t want to hurt my feelings or just the dumbest thing ever?”

“It was funny.”

“Did you laugh?”

“Yes.”

“How hard?"

Silence. I hear him giggling.

"How hard?"

"That's what she said." (He's been hitting The Office reruns again, I can tell.)

"Come on - on a scale of 1 to 10, how funny?”

“I don’t know. A six?”

“A SIX???”

“Maybe a seven.”

“You thought it was lame.”

Silence.

"Honey?"

“I'm TRYING TO WATCH PRISON BREAK.”

“Oh. O.k. Alright… But honey?”

Silence.

“Hon?”

“WHAT?!!!” I can hear him mumbling something about marrying a crazy person.

"What did you just say?"

"Nothing."

“I can tell you think it was the dumbest post ever. I'm going to take it down.”

Groaning noise. “Aren’t you supposed to be working on a technical proposal?”

“Oh, I am. I am. I just – I wrote that blog post earlier. Now I'm working. I’m not – I’m not just up here writing blog posts.”

“You’re a grown woman, you can do whatever you want.”

“I know but…. I’m not blogging is all.”

“Whatever.”

Silence.

“So basically, you thought it was funny?"

So I'm pretty much driving him crazy. I can't help it. I have to CHECK with somebody. Because when I tell a joke in real life, it's always the same - with the awkward silences and the courtesy laughs. That's kind of what it's like when there are only three or four comments on a post. You know you bombed. So thank you, my friends, for humoring me and leaving a comment anyway. Because my self esteem is a fragile, fragile thing, and I'm more like a trained comment monkey every day.

What I want to know is - are you all a little nutty about comments too? Do you think it's the positive feedback that keeps us all blogging? Is it sad that the validation of a "tee-hee" or a "ha ha?" can be so very cool? (Don't answer that. If that's pathetic, I don't want to know.) Or are you SO cool that you don't care if people comment or not?

P.S. If Sarah Hollywood ever dies (not that I want her to die, good heavens), I am totally stealing her "COMMENT OR DIE" graphic. Sorry Sarah, that probably came out way creepy. I meant it in the most non-creepy, calling-dibs-on-your-stuff way possible.

P.P.S: (The saddest thing that happened to me this month was hearing about DeLurk Day AFTER it happened. The trauma of that moment lives on.)

I am Fashion Challenged

Yes. Sad, but true.

It's not a new thing, either. I used to get Seventeen Magazine back in high school and I would slowly go through the magazine circling things, longing to look as cute as the models did in their pleated skirts and sweater sets (shut up, it was the eighties). We were poor though, and I got most of my clothes for freshman and sophmore year from the thrift store.

See, this is the part of the story where, if I had any eighties cred at all, I would then sit in my room and teach myself to sew (with the theme from St. Elmo's Fire playing in the background of course), creating dozens of cute and trendy outfits made from somebody's vintage cast-offs and dental floss. I'd show up on the first day of school looking cute in my one-of-a-kind fashions, and Keith from Some Kind of Wonderful would fall in love with me because I was so quirky and alternative and real and crap.

Yeah, in the real world, this is just the part where I show up at school looking really, really ugly.

(Note: In my early twenties, when I was fairly thin for about five minutes, I dated a guy who looked EXACTLY like Keith/Eric Stolz. EXACTLY. His name was Justin and he was hilarious. He was also a HUGE jerk and we fought constantly. I HATED him, but I couldn't break up with him because - if I stayed with him, I could pretend he was Keith from SKOW. And I loved Keith. During the few moments each date when he would actually shut up for ten seconds in a row there was some lovely internal wish fulfillment happening. Unfortunately, he was not capable of staying quiet for long. One night when I really just wanted to spend some quality time making out with my imaginary boyfriend Keith, Justin instead chose instead to start in on me about polygamy and how we would be required to live it someday, in heaven. And so I had to kill him. But it was fun while it lasted.)

Even after high school, I never learned the skill of putting together an outfit. I have shirts, I have pants, I have skirts, I have shoes. I have no outfits. I don't know how to accessorize. I look at the other women and try to figure it out, how they combined a bunch of stuff and it resulted in something adorable. I shop at the same stores, combine a bunch of stuff and end up with something both awkward and uncomfortable, or on a really good day end up somewhere in the vicinity of "trying too hard."

I like the idea of having cute clothes, but the reality never quite translates. I think it's a talent - an art form that I will just never understand, kind of like modern art. I can sit and stare, and muse, and appreciate, but I can't actually accomplish it on my own. The closest I get to achieving any kind of fashion related artistic accomplishment is performance art - in the vein of constant public humiliation.

Because - people? If there is something embarrassing you can do with clothes – I’ve done it. I’ve had people come up to me to “discreetly” remove dry cleaning tags and price tags from my sleeves, or XXL tags from the back of my thighs. I've worn shoes that don't match to work, and not realized it until the end of the day. I had a very nice old lady approach me at Smiths the other day to ask if I "meant" to wear my shirt inside out. Once, during a period of rapid weight loss, my slip fell off while I was singing a solo in church, on stage, and I had no choice but to gingerly pick it up and continue singing while I watched my friends dissolve into hysterics in the congregation.

My attempt at Word Illustrations, ala Kristy.

The humiliation, it is not a stranger to me.

I'll never forget what happened right after we moved into our current neighborhood. Our neighborhood is sort of upscale, and is full of trendy, gorgeous, thin women, the kind of women that scare the living crap out of me. I was supposed to meet some of them to go walking, and as usual, was running late.

I was a scattered mess - nervous and tense because there was the possibility that I might have to participate in actual small talk, which makes me incredibly jumpy. (I think I would function better in the world if everyone had a little keyboard attached to their forehead and we could just type messages to each other instead of ever, ever talking.) I flew into my closet, and miracle of miracles, managed to find a few things that sort of - MATCHED, that sort of looked like they might possibly go together - black sweats, a black hoodie, and a white t-shirt. I threw them on and checked myself out in the mirror. I looked - passable. Nothing stood out. Socially acceptable exercise camouflage? Check.

So I run out the door, find the group and we all start walking and talking. To my amazement, I'm fitting in, or at least managing not to make a complete idiot of myself. The women all seem smart, funny, and unfortunately for me, extremely fit. I start to sweat, so I take off my hoodie.

A minute later, one of the women looks at me and starts laughing. I am perplexed. A second later another one looks and cracks up. Now I’m freaking out a little. Bad high school flashbacks. This is not good.

I look at the blonde one, feeling panicky. “What? WHAT?!!”

She points at my shirt.

I look down. I am wearing my husband’s garment top.

Put me out of my misery. Please tell me you have a fashion horror story of your own. Or that you will take pity on me and teach me the strange art of accessorizing.

P.S.: You know, a bunch of blogs I read are having contests lately, where you win fabulous prizes for doing stuff, like making an awesome comment. I'm trying to figure out how to make a contest out of forcing people to nominate me for What Not To Wear. Of course, it's complicated by the fact that the people who participate in my "contest" wouldn't really win anything. Tricky, tricky.

Anyone in the market for a very special, custom designed, slightly used pinata?

P.P.S. For my non-mormon friends, who are scratching their heads and thinking, "What in the ??" Garments are special clothes that some mormons wear under their regular clothes - a reminder of certain covenants they've made - kind of like how some Jews wear a yarmulke on their heads. Anyway, it's white, and t-shirtish, but, uh, definitely not socially acceptable outerwear for women. Not by a long shot.

How to Waste Time

Sit down at the computer, open article I am supposed to rewrite tonight. Retype the first sentence. Realize the article is really bad. Check blog, look to see who has commented, check THEIR blogs, leave comments.

Back to the article. Read it for the third time. Realize I need a break to get creative juices flowing. Rewrite the lyrics to the William Tell Mom Song to revolve around mommy bloggers. Ponder making a video to put on blog. Remember hair, remember shreds of remaining dignity, realize this is a bad idea. Smell cookies. Investigate.

Back to the article. Rewrite 1st paragraph, 2nd paragraph – on a roll. Hear “bing bing” of Outlook. Get an email from a friend. Read it. Respond. Important to be thorough when responding. Amount of time it takes away from work is inconsequential, compared to friendship. Press Send and Receive to see if there is any new email. Do it again. (It’s like pulling the handle on a slot machine – what will happen after I press the magic button – will I get something good?)

Back to the article. Still boring. Check blog again. See new comment. Respond. Visit blog of person who left the comment. Leave comments there. See funny commenter. Visit blog. Leave comments.

Back to the article. Man, it's quiet in here. Turn on TV for background noise, accidentally get wrapped up in House Hunters. Which house will she choose? Will it be house #3? Husband asks if I’m coming to bed. Realize it’s late. Turn off TV.

Back to the article. Buckle down, really start cooking. Decide I need music. Pull up my Itunes. Put on Love Songs playlist. Think of something to add to latest exercise in (extremely crappy and embarrassing) romantic fiction. Decide to jot the idea down, not actually write out the whole scene.

After writing out the whole scene, back to the article. Take a drink of my soda. Realize I have a lot of soda cans on my desk. Start artistically arranging them so that I can take a picture for my blog, illustrating the extent of my soda addiction. Realize I’m becoming a bit of a jackass about my blog.

Back to the article. Starting to get really tired. Realize I have short window before falling asleep at the keyboard. Bang out the article. Just need to format and submit for publication. Decide this would make a good blog entry.

Back to the article...

(Note to husband: Honey, this is not what I'm doing up here usually. I SWEAR. It's just tonight. Really. I promise.)

Random Cool Links Blatantly Stolen from Other People's Blogs

1. The Candidate Calculator, hat tip to JustRandi. I matched 93% with some guy named Mike Gravel and 84% with Barack Obama.
2. This awesome commercial, courtesy of my cousin Kelly:
   
   
3. And this amazing, scary vid from Dove, courtesy of Sarah at H.I.P. (check out her site for a rant I completely agree with:
   
   
   

Frayed

My sister emailed me to tell me to update my blog or suffer the consequences, so here I am. I just couldn't blog this week. Nothing seemed the slightest bit amusing. We have been hanging on by a (rapidly fraying) thread.

We took Carter back to the doctor again yesterday. His breathing was a lot better, but I was starting to wonder if he'd developed pneumonia. He started throwing up mucus yesterday, poor kid. (He has a mean gag reflex. He will throw up on a DIME. The good part of that though, is that he has learned to run for the toilet if he thinks he's going to barf. Only three year old I know who consistently barfs right into the toilet. As a former bulimic, I'm SO proud. He's definitely his mother's son.)

The doc says his lungs are clear, and that all of the loose snot is actually a good thing, and that he should be feeling better any day now. He actually DOES feel great during the day. He wants to play outside, and since there are always other children outside who he might infect, we can't let him do that a whole lot. He is not happy with us. We have resorted to far too much TV, far too much computer. The nighttime still isn't much fun for him. He coughs all night long. They gave him some ultra strong cough medicine and last night we didn't hear a peep. We had to go in and check on him several times to make sure he was still breathing. Abby and Sarah are back in school and feeling fine.

Really - thank you so much to everyone who commented, called, and emailed me. It meant a lot to me. I am honestly so touched to know people care. I am so completely socially delayed in real life that I end up isolating myself a bit. It is odd that comments should become so meaningful, but they are. So thank you.

I have been away from blogging not only because we've been busy worrying about survival, but also because I've had a lot of work. I write for a living and usually love it, but unfortunately, the soul sucking, boring, dry, make-me-want-to-stab-a-fork-in-my-eye nature of the jobs I've completed lately (including a technical response to a request for a proposal from the DMV, a brochure and website for an SAP programmer, a Chiropractic Practice ezine, and a series of articles on economic strategies for credit unions) have left me feeling dead inside. DEAD. The thought of writing for fun is starting to sound completely foreign.

I've been working late hours too - I got 2 hours of sleep on Wednesday, and 2.5 on Thursday. My husband brought me a bag of minature candy bars on Thursday morning, because he knew I needed some sugar energy, and I ATE THE WHOLE THING. The whole thing people. In two hours. Help.

P.S. I am not pregnant. Someone asked if pregnancy would be a good thing or a bad thing. BAD THING, what with the whole impending uterine rupture thing my doctor keeps harping on. We really need to TAKE STEPS, I know.

P.P.S. Carter just asked us to "pause" the board game Candyland so that he could go to the bathroom. Yup. Too much TV.

Bummer

This was our Saturday:

He is doing much better now. He is able to breathe most of the time, but he still sounds a lot like a seal. He thought the hospital was an AMAZING place, what with the free stuffed animal, and the cookies, and the soda, and the coloring books, and the non-stop TV. The hospital (which I love) is a bit sleepy, and the nurses and staff fussed over him quite a bit.

Abby is the only healthy family member right now - Sarah is starting to get sick, and my husband and I both have fevers and sore throats. I always thought adults couldn't get croup, so I have no idea what that's about. Maybe it's sympathetic croup or something. Is there such a thing?

The awesome folks in our neighborhood somehow found out about our trip to the ER and we have been bombarded with rice krispy treats and offers of casserole. I was lying around in bed last night after the kids went to sleep, moaning and feeling sorry for myself because my head was exploding. I heard my husband talking and wondered if he'd gone delirious and started talking to himself, so I ventured out of my room to check on him. He was at the front door, talking to some neighbors who were dropping off treats. I tried to hide, but they saw me, and I was forced to come to the door with my hair sticking straight up in the air, wearing my five year old gap t-shirt (my comfort t-shirt that I can't get rid of) with the hole in the front, and my pink sweat pants. Nice. Not embarrassing at all. Nope.

I am trying to retain my sense of humor about it, but nothing seems all that funny today. It's not as though anything horrendously serious has happened. I'm sure every kid in the world gets croup two or three times. I am just extremely melodramatic (in case you haven't noticed). Thanks for all of your kind wishes...