Shot Through The HeartJust realized it’s been nearly a year since we’ve published anything from the hilarious Jenny from the Blog. And here she is! To read more from Jenny, head over to Suburban Jungle. I Slept With Tiger Woods OMG, I have to tell you guys something. I often turn to my iCarly diary with my darkest secrets, but this one is just too juicy. Here goes… I slept with Tiger Woods. You guys are probably freaking out, as Tiger’s reputation has been sooo perfect up until now. Let me be the first to tell you, he’s not the squeaky clean Jonas Brother, he pretends to be. Our affair was rather recent. I must confess, he was passed out when I met him. Sadly, that’s not the first time I started an affair with an unconscious man. The other time was when this guy was hit by a subway car and I went to visit him in the hospital. His family showed up and took me for his fiancé. I went along with it because I was lonely and it was the holidays. Eventually, he woke up and I married his brother. Oh wait, that wasn’t me. DUH. Anywho, with Tiger it was different. He was admitted to the hospital (where I am a candy striper) after a rather harsh battle with a fire hydrant. –See, it’s different already. It appears he and his wife play late night golf and he took his car to search for a stray ball, when the confrontation occurred. I can only imagine how far one of Tiger’s balls can fly (well, I don’t have to imagine anymore). –That was a sex joke, in case you didn’t catch on, LOL. As it turns out, it was lucky that his wife was caddying for him, as she was able to use his iron to pull him from the wreck and beat off the fire hydrant. I didn’t even know fire hydrants could come to life, but I saw this movie about a car named Christine and she came to life. So anything’s possible. Tiger even promised me a signed Fat Head of his best friend MJ. I can’t believe he can get in touch with Michael Jackson, but after the fire hydrant, I can see Tiger has special powers. Other people can see it too. He also had sex with my friend Luanne who mops the floors. And then Gertie, who resides in the nursing home’s Hospice area. Oh, and Becky who was in the pediatric unit to have her tonsils out. I ran into him wandering around the Nursery. He says looking at the babies calms him. I get it, they’re so sweet and innocent. I confronted him about all those other girls, but he said, “don’t worry honey you’re my hole in one.” He said if we do it enough I can be his double bogie. I don’t know anything about the golf but the nicknames are sooo cute. Oh yeah, he made me swear I’d never tell… Shit. Call 1-800-SHOOTME by Creative Junkie on November 4, 2009 Ring ring ring. Me: Hello? Mom: Oh! Are you home? Me: No. You’ve reached a wrong number. I just happened to be walking by and heard the phone and figured, what the hell? I’ll pick it up. Mom: Really? How peculiar! How in the world did that happen? Me (sighing): I’m just kidding, Mom. Mom: Oh. So … you are home? Me: Yes, Mom. You called me. Remember? Mom: Don’t be smart. It’s unbecoming. Me: I’m not! Nevermind. You’re calling because …? Mom: Can’t I just call? To speak to my own daughter? Do I need a reason? Me: Certainly not, Mom. Mom: Don’t sound so enthusiastic. I just called to talk. No reason. And why do you sound so far away? Me: Sorry. Just checking outside to see if the sky is still there. Mom: So, what do you think of this H1N1 thing? Me: Oh, I know, right? It’s scary! I can’t believe … Mom: Why hasn’t your brother called me? pause Mom: Andy? Are you still there? I hear you breathing. Me: Sorry. Just switching gears. Hang on a sec while I shake my skull around. Mom: Fine. Let me know when you’re ready. Me: Ready. Now, what do you mean? Mom: I mean, why hasn’t your brother called me? Don’t be obtuse. Me: Ummm … I have no idea. He lost all his fingers in a freak swan attack? They’re can be vicious, you know. Mom: They have swans out in Vegas? Me (rolling my eyes loudly): I think so. In some fancy fountain, maybe? Mom: Well then, someone else could dial the phone. Is it too much to ask that he call me? Once a month? To see if I have a pulse? Me: Apparently, yes. Mom: I am livid. Livid. Je-sus Chrrrrrrr-ist. I could be dead on the floor and he wouldn’t even know. Then where would I be? Me: On the floor? Mom: My point is, your brother does not care. And I am just beside myself. Me: My God, there are two of you? Mom: What? I can’t hear you. Me: Nothing. I’m sure he cares, Mom. Mom: Oh, really? And how would you know? Have you talked to him? Me: Uh, no. Mom: Well, then? Explain. Me (sighing): OK. He doesn’t care. Is that the answer you were looking for? Mom: Didn’t I just tell you not to be smart? What has gotten into you? Is that how I raised you? Now, should I call him or not? Me: Sure. Mom: I refuse! REFUSE. Why should I call him? I’m his mother. He should call me. And yet, here I sit. No call. I could die tomorrow, for all he knows. I’m not calling him. I swear to God, Andy, I’m not calling him! I always call. I’m not doing it this time. I AM NOT CALLING HIM. Me: Good for you. Mom: Maybe I should call him. Me: Are we actually having this conversation? Mom: I know. You call him. Me: Me? Mom: Yes, you. Just see if he’s alive. And what’s he’s been up to. And did someone break all his fingers? Is he dating anyone? Why isn’t he married? Me: Mom … Mom: Just find out why he hasn’t called me. There must be a reason. God only knows what it is. I mean, what have I done? I’m a good mother, aren’t I? I stay out of your business. I stay out of his. I just want to know why he isn’t married. Is that too much to ask? That my son date one girl for longer than two weeks? Nicole was nice. Stephanie was nice. There was a bimbo or two in there, but I can’t remember their names. But still, I don’t dwell on it. I don’t think asking him if he intends to be single for the remainder of his life is dwelling on the issue, do you? It’s not like I ask him what’s wrong with him every time I talk to him, which is never, because he never calls me. Shit.on.a.stick. Why do you think he doesn’t call me? Me: I can’t imagine. Mom: Call him and ask him why he hasn’t called me. But don’t ask to call me. I want him to want to call me. Otherwise, what’s the point? Am I right? I’m right. So, you need to be subtle. Be discreet. Understand? Me (sighing): Yes, Mom. Mom: Discretion, Andy. It’s a skill. Me: I know, Mom. Mom: Subtlety. Me: Right. . Two minutes later … . Ring ring ring Tino: Heeeeeeey, what’s up? Me: Mom’s tail feathers. For shit’s sake, call her, please? She’s up my ass about why you haven’t called. And why you’re not married. Tino (groaning): Oh God. Me: Just call her, will you? But don’t tell her I told you. She’ll kill me. You know, discretion and blah blah blah. Tino: Right. Me: Be subtle, OK? Tino: Right. . Two minutes later … . Ring ring ring Mom: Hello? Tino: Hey, Mom. Mom (stiffly): Well. Tino. How nice of you to call. And to what do I owe this honor? Tino: Andy said you reamed her a new one because I haven’t called. Mom: I have no idea what she’s talking about. Tino: Don’t tell her I told you that. She made me promise not to tell you. Mom: Right. Tino: OK? You know, that whole discretion thing? Mom: Of course, dear. So, how are you? How are things? Tino: Things are good. How are you guys doing? Mom: We’re fine. Why aren’t you married? . Two minutes later … . Ring ring ring Me: Hello? Mom: Oh, are you home? My house is now a no-fly zone for the birds and the bees, thank you very much It was the same old, same old at the Chamberlain household this weekend. Hauling laundry up and down the couch, losing grocery lists, searching for all three cordless phones, hiding from responsibility, avoiding housework and … let’s see … oh yes, the sex talk with my youngest. Fun times! Helena’s only nine so I delayed The Talk as long as possible but that’s hard to do when she’s got a fifteen year old sibling around who insists on being a teenager and having her teenager friends over and doing teenager-y things like watching PG-13 movies (HELENA, THAT IS INAPPROPRIATE, GO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO) and updating their Facebook status (HELENA, THAT IS INAPPROPRIATE, GO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO) and talking about hottie boys (HELENA, THAT IS INAPPROPRIATE, GO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO) and getting their periods (NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE ONE. GO FIND SOMETHING ELSE DO TO.) Unfortunately, Helena ran out of things to do. Despite having a Wii and a closet full of games and craft supplies and a bedroom full of toys and a computer all to herself as well as 2,439 playdates. So, sex talk it was. Seeing as how she just started using deodorant and just started wearing what passes as a bra but what is really the top half of a blinged out undershirt, I knew it was just a matter of time, so I was ready. The Talk is a huge step, a milestone, a right of passage, if you will. There might be a lot of nervousness and anxiety and EWWWWS and YUCKS and shouts of disgust and maybe even some vomiting but as long as your kid doesn’t see it, you’ll be fine. Having been through this twice now with my girls, I thought I’d share my tips to make it as smooth of a nervous breakdown as possible. Here’s what you’ll need to get started: $10,000 to bribe someone else into doing it for you. Lacking that, you’ll need (1) a will of iron; (2) a strong stomach; (3) an entire bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol; (4) a thesaurus; (5) a portable Jaws of Life with which to remove your foot from your mouth; (6) a Pinocchio antidote to return your nose back to normal, in the event your child asks “did you wait until you were married?” and (7) a suture kit to repair the slice of swiss cheese formerly known as your tongue. A child who has expressed some interest in the subject by asking where babies come from or, as was the case with my child, by demanding I WOULD LIKE SOME DEODERANT. AND A BRA. AND WHAT’S WITH ALL THIS PENIS AND EGG STUFF? OH, AND SOME PIZZA FOR DINNER. OK? A quiet place, preferably someplace where your husband is not so as to lessen any chance of him barging into your conversation with HEY, WHERE DO WE KEEP THE TOILET PAPER and then wondering why his child is looking at his southern hemisphere in horror while shouting “You’re gross! I know what you did to Mommy!” to which he’ll automatically respond “She did it to me first!” before he looks at you and asks “What are we talking about?” Some paper and pens, if your kid is a visual learner and you are artistically inclined. Skip this entirely if you’re anything like me with no sense of perspective or scale because there’s no sense in traumatizing your child into thinking that a baby is made by a gigantic Greyhound bus crashing into her nether regions in search of a speck of dust which is hiding in some abstract anomaly that looks like a Texas longhorn steer off its meds. Two heaping scoops of Dutch Apple Pie ice cream to numb your brain in hopes that you won’t feel the excruciating weight of failure when your child yells WAIT, THAT’S IT? I WAITED THIS WHOLE TIME FOR THAT? THIS IS SUCH A RIP OFF. And then, just make sure you cover the basics, including but certainly not limited to the following: What a period is, why a girl gets it and why the week preceding it is legal justification for involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide and, in some extreme cases such as your husband blinking too loud, first degree murder. How girls’ and boys’ bodies change during puberty and that for every inch they grow in any direction, they lose approximately three squillion brain cells and become unwitting victims of hijackings by terrorists known as Hormones and this is why your child cannot date until she is thirty-seven and fully trained in guerrilla warfare and can kill a man with her bare thumbs. The penis and the vagina and how the phrase “never the twain shall meet” comes into the play when and if the penis ever brings home a 50″ LCD HGTV despite the vagina’s emphatic objections. The daddy’s sperm and the mommy’s egg and how the daddy likes to think he’s all that and a bag of chips simply because his manly men swam upstream in an attempt to get busy with the mommy’s egg and how, after a nanosecond of WHOO HOO, they declared themselves plum tuckered out, leaving it to the mommy and her egg to do all the real work for nine long, bloated months, which period of time should not to be confused with actual labor which also lasts nine months, depending on whether someone hits mommy over the head with a baseball bat or gives her an epidural, whichever she asks for first. That sex is the most personal, special and intimate act of love between a man and a woman and should only be done between consenting adults or between one consenting adult and one adult who wants the living room painted before Christmas. Helena took the entire conversation in stride, listening quietly, asking pertinent questions (I was an egg? I’m going to get hair where? Daddy did what? With his what? And you let him?) giggling and laughing and squealing and, when it was over, running downstairs to meet Zoe at the door with a gleeful shout of GUESS WHAT? I HAD THE TALK! I’M JUST LIKE YOU! and then running over to her daddy with a plea of CAN I GET A FACEBOOK ACCOUNT NOW? My baby is growing up. That brick I put on top of her head is failing miserably. 29 JUNE 2009 More from Andrea Chamberlain at The Creative Junkie. She’s funnier than ever! Why couldn’t Barbie have just given Ken a lap dance and walked away like a good girl? by Creative Junkie on June 29, 2009 Thanks to a play date ten years ago at which Barbie and Ken got nekkid and busy, I was put into a situation where I had no choice but to tell then five year old Zoe about the facts of life. And while I wish I was talking about the seventies sitcom and that Zoe and I curled up on the couch and ate popcorn and gabbed on and on about the Eastland School for Girls with Mrs. Garrett and Jo and Blair and Natalie and Tootie and how Mommy just knew there was something special about George Burnett (well helloooooooooooo, Mr. Clooney! I love you! Call me!) … I’m not. I’m talking about sitting at the kitchen table and talking about all things birds and bees. Add in the kit and kaboodle and it was the whole shebang. Kaboodle? Shebang? Who’s in charge of inventing words? I’d like to put in a request for shuwumple. Shuwumple. My shuwumple broke and I need a new one. It’s open to interpretation. Anyway, ten years ago, five year old Zoe had her five year old playmate Maddie over. I didn’t like Maddie. I found her to have reached an inordinate level of oddness and weirdness in her short life, constantly bragging about her doctor mother and her stay-at-home father and her devil spawn younger brother who insisted on head butting me in my knees every time he saw me. They were a strange family who lived up the street from us. But we were new in the area and Zoe was happy to have made a friend so I bit my tongue until it bled. The girls were busy giggling and laughing and running around up in Zoe’s room for several minutes until they weren’t. And as any mom will tell you, NOTHING good comes out of complete and utter silence behind a closed door with two six year olds on the other side. So I knocked on the door and immediately entered Zoe’s bedroom without giving them a chance to scatter and hide the evidence. And sure enough, there was Maddie, busy contorting a naked Ken and Barbie into the missionary position. And there was Zoe, with her face all crinkled up like it was that one time she watched me change my friend’s baby’s diaper, five seconds before she screamed EWWWWWWWWWW and ran out of the room. I took this as a positive sign. They both looked up at me and Maddie turned scarlet red and looked away. Zoe looked right at me and shouted IS LUNCH READY NOW? I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Sure, but make Ken promise Barbie it will be better next time? No, get in the car – I need to drive it around the world at the speed of light so I can turn back time and save us both a boatload of therapy twenty years from now? I decided not to make a big deal about it. I simply told them that Intro to Fornication 101 was over and to come down to the kitchen for some mac’n cheese. Afterwards, I sent them outside to play but not before taking the eyes out from in back of my head and cementing one onto each of their foreheads. Later, after Maddie had gone, I sat down Zoe in the kitchen and asked her what Barbie and Ken were doing. And I held my breath and hoped she would tell me they were playing naked Twister and then we’d laugh and I’d tell her that it was against the law to play naked games before you were forty and then we’d have a cookie and I’d tell her to go clean her room and she’d cry YOU’RE SUCH A MEANIE and all would be right with the world. And then she told me they were having sex. And I silently cursed my empty pantry and fridge which forced a trip to Wegmans which resulted in bumping into Maddie and her mom which precipitated the play date. Stupid human digestive systems and their incessant need to eat. For God’s sake, who’s bright idea was it to invent them anyway? So I asked Zoe if she knew what sex was? And I held my breath and hoped she’d tell me something simple, like sex is what daddy hopes for when he cleans the bathroom. Then we’d laugh and I’d give her a kiss and a cookie and tell her to go clean her room and she’d cry YOU’RE SUCH A MEANIE and all would be right with the world. And then she told me that Maddie said boys have sperm and girls have eggs and boys put their wee wees into girl’s vaginas and the eggs grow into babies. And I silently cursed Maddie’s doctor mother and her incessant need to procreate and then discuss it with her offspring. And what’s up with using “wee wee” if you’re going to use vagina? Men get a euphemism and woman get stuck with reality? What else is new? And then I told Zoe that I really enjoyed our talk and if we stopped talking right that instant, we could jump on a flight to Disney World and see the Little Mermaid and wouldn’t that just be so much more fun than talking about boring old wee wees and vaginas? And then she asked me why girls don’t just lay their eggs like chickens? So instead of playing dress up and building forts out of blankets and making Ooblek with my five year old daughter like all the rest of humanity who were lucky enough not to live down the road from trolls, I wound up having a sex talk with her instead. I tried to keep it as age appropriate as possible, avoiding the nitty gritty details and emphasizing the concept that sex was an expression of love between a mommy and a daddy and essentially a means to an end, like if you wanted a baby or if you wanted the living room re-painted by the weekend. When we were done, Zoe was thoroughly grossed out by all the mushy gushy talk about love and asked if we could be done so that she could play with her Betty Spaghetti upstairs. And I said yes and silently vowed that the next place Maddie and Zoe would play would be that patch of grass over my dead body and then I held my breath and hoped that the entire conversation had either gone over her head or rerouted through one ear and out the other much like the 62 conversations we had the day before about cleaning her room. And then she raced up the stairs yelling NATE! NATE! CAN YOU HAVE SEX WITH MOMMY RIGHT NOW AND TURN HER EGG INTO A BABY SISTER? 11 JUNE 2009 She’s baaaaaaaack. Who is she? The person you need to know…Andrea Chamberlain of The Creative Junkie. Visit her regularly…you’ll be glad you did. MY CHILD’S SCHOOL SPEAKS RAINBOW The other day, Helena came running off the bus waving a brightly colored piece of paper in her hand and I immediately rifled through that mental rolodex I keep in my head called What Things Mean and flipped to the section entitled Brightly Colored Notes From Elementary School and How They Relate to You. And yes, I know that I just showed my age by using the word “rolodex” in its proper context because it’s all about crackberries and iPhones and PDAs and blah blah blah nowadays, right? I don’t care. I’m 42 and going through perimenopause. So, rolodex it is: Hot pink note in take-home folder: What it is: Lice is going around your child’s school. What it means to you: Remain vigilant, check your child daily and try not to panic. Submerging your offspring in olive oil and wrapping them in Saran Wrap seven days a week qualifies as panic, so stop it. Besides, that stuff is expensive. Hot pink note clutched in your child’s hand as you pick her up from school at 9:00 a.m. What it is: Lice is going around the top of your child’s head. What it means to you: Smelling like salad, sending your child to school wrapped in a Hefty garbage bag and freaking out whenever her head gets within spitting distance of another child’s head, all for at least the next two years. In other words, go right ahead and panic. Blue note in take-home folder: What it is: A book fair, a fundraiser, a party, a field trip, a jump-a-thon, a bike-a-thon, a whatever-a-thon, etc. What it means to you: Money, anywhere from $2 to $25, depending on how long you can listen to your child holler CAN I, MOM? CAN I, MOM? CAN I, MOM without jamming a toothpick into your eye and running away from home. Purple note in take-home folder: What it is: Volunteers needed to help out at a book fair, a fundraiser, a party, a field trip, a jump-a-thon, a bike-a-thon, a whatever-a-thon, etc. What it means to you: Time. How much is up to you, depending on how long you can tolerate children, including your own, before you donate them to Goodwill for a tax write off. Oh, and whether or not your insurance covers Xanax and psychiatric care for the next six months. Yellow note in take-home folder: What it is: Your child was sent down to the Principal’s office as a witness for the seventeenth time this week. What it means to you: Your child needs to find a hobby. Constantly running up to the bus driver to inform him that the kids in the back of the bus are swearing and they’re not even doing it right because her Mommy always pronounces it FOR SHIT’S SAKE, not FOUR SHIPS ACHE, no longer counts. Yellow note clutched in your child’s hand as you pick her up from school at 9:00 a.m. What it is: OH FOR SHIT’S SAKE. Again? What it means to you: Signing your kid up for Intro to Sign Language in Braille. Orange note in take-home folder: What it is: A special occasion is coming up and your child must dress accordingly. What it means to you: Staying up until 2:15 a.m., creating a jumpsuit by duct taping white sheets together and bedazzling the utter bejesus out of it because some moronic idiot thought a Viva Elvis! theme day would help the kids learn their multiplication facts. Red note in take-home folder: What it is: The school will be dismissing the kids fifteen minutes early on Monday to test the In Case of Emergency Dismissal plan you submitted at the beginning of the year, wherein you instructed your child to go directly to your neighbor’s house if she discovers your garage door is closed when the bus drops her off. What it means to you: Fifteen less minutes to watch TNT and see Chris Meloni flex his tattoo on Law & Order: SVU. Hope your DVR is up and running. And you like acronyms. But take heart, at least you’re not one of those moms who failed to submit such a plan in the first place and whose kid will now be in therapy for the next ten years because unbeknownst to him, Daddy also left work early that day and HOW COME DADDY GETS TO PLAY ON THE GOOD COUCH? NAKED? ON TOP OF MOMMY? But the note that Helena excitedly threw in my face the other day was green and she had never come home with a green note before so I read it carefully and filed this away in my mental rolodex for future reference: Green note in take-home folder: What it is: Your child has been assigned the violin as her musical instrument of choice for next year. What it means to you: Ear muffs. 8 MAY 2009 I love this one…and am only slightly embarrassed to admit that this kind of sounds like my husband. Have a good laugh today! 29 MARCH 2009 Claire led me to this one…this guy really did get shot through the heart. No luck in love this time. 11 MARCH 2009 Two updates in one week? I’ve got to be kidding myself. Well…I’m actually not kidding…I just didn’t write this. Because most of the things that I have to say today are about incompetent drivers. Which, by the way, I am not. But where were we? Oh yes…meet Jenny from the Blog, aka the writer behind Suburban Jungle. It turns out that she has quite a bit to say about mammograms. Enjoy! Want Pancakes? Have a Mammogram. I had a mammogram this week. I have to get one every year; though mine are small there is still room for fibroids. My tech went so far as to comment on them, saying they’re “perfectly perky.” Well, she said that after laughing aloud at the thought of getting my A’s to stay up on the shelf of the machine. After getting a good chuckle she stuck on a set of stunning nipple markers, which are stickers with silver balls that resemble starter earrings. Tech: “Sorry we’re all out of fringe.” Me: “Don’t worry, I have some at home.” I guess she was right to laugh. The first time on the shelf they slipped right out. The intense squeezing actually slung-shot them back towards my body. The second time she got a couple ribs on board. I’m guessing as anchors. Me: “Um, excuse me, is it okay that you have bone in there too?” Tech: “Don’t worry they won’t break.” Squeeze, squeeze, squeezing harder. Shelf lifting… on my toes to avoid bosoms being ripped clean off. More squeezing. Crunch. Me: “What was that?” Tech: “Just a little bone. Alright, just one more squeeze.” Me: “Fine, but I think milk might come out.” Tech: “Oh, are you breast feeding?” Me: “No.” After flattening my boobs into pancakes, I felt like a cartoon victim of a falling piano or anvil. I patiently waited for them to snap back, or for an animated squirrel to come along, stick a tube in and pump them back up. Nothing, no squirrels or skunks or other well meaning rodents came to my rescue, so I shoved them back into my sports bra and went to wait for my ultrasound. While in the waiting room I noticed a woman, not a day under 100, shakily stick her nipple markers in a plastic baggy and into her pocket book. Either there’s one kinky grandpa with a bottle of Viagra awaiting her return, or she’s like my grandma and takes everything. “You never know when it could come in handy.” Well it’s true, you never know when you’ll be at a coffee shop and they’ll run out of sweetener and you’ll need 1000 stolen Sweet ‘n Lows. You never know when you’ll be super hungry and those rolls from a bread basket that are now stale and linty from sitting in your handbag, will really hit the spot. Especially, when you have trouble chewing anything harder than soup. And if your boobs hang down to your knees, you might need some assistance finding your nipples. Whether you can find your nipples or not, don’t forget to get your mammogram! 8 MARCH 2009 So seriously folks…don’t you think it’s about time that I updated the Shot Through the Heart column? I mean…it’s been almost 3 months! I had such good intentions but I’ve been spending so much time on the other stuff that I’ve neglected poor old STTH. I’ll leave you with the hilarious Andrea Chamberlain who writes the world renowned blog, The Creative Junkie. This is her article entitled My Parents’ Sex Life and a Video, I Know What You’re Thinking. Just to be honest here…I had not seen this particular video before and if you are one of the unfortunate people who have not seen it either…don’t feel bad. I’m as behind the times as you are. I’m wondering whether my mom was a floozy in her youth. A little promiscuous, maybe? A little trampy? She used to work as an x-ray technician. Who knows what shenanigans occurred when the lights dimmed and radiation flowed freely? Maybe my dad was a gigolo in his younger days. Was he a player? He did take an awful lot of business trips when I was young. I remember he went to Australia for six weeks one time. He came home with a kangaroo purse for me and a boomerang for Tino and within ten minutes, the boomerang flew through the air and bonked me on the top of my head and I cried. Maybe he had a double life? Maybe he was bi-coastal in his spare time? Bi-continental? Because there are a handful of bloggers all over the world who seem to share my DNA. They think the way I think. They do the things I do. They like the things I like. So much so that at one point, I seriously considered stapling my eyes, ears, nose and mouth shut before I went to sleep so that in the morning, after reading their blogs, I would not feel compelled to shriek GET OUT OF MY HEAD at the top of my lungs and thereby scare the bejesus out of my kids. If my kids go to school without their bejesus one more time, they’re going to catch strep. Or lice. But I realize now that not a single one of these bloggers was graced with the Psyhos nose or the Stavri feet, and they should fall to their knees right this instant and thank God. If their noses entered a room three seconds before the rest of their bodies did on freakishly high arches, I’d be suspicious. But they dont, so I know without a doubt that my father was faithful and that my mother did not secretly have litters of children whom she then scattered all about the earth when my father wasn’t looking. So apparently, my fellow blogger Beth and I were not, in fact, separated at birth. I like Beth. She’s funny, she’s kind and she breeds dust bunnies like I do. She’s a good egg, as my mom likes to say. My mom also likes to say “dungarees” instead of jeans and “suitor” instead of date and “booze” instead of liquor. I just let her. I learned early on that dragging my mother into the 21st century is not unlike getting my kids to clean their bathroom. It’s going to take hours upon hours of nagging and lots of anti-depressants and for what? So the second my back is turned, they can drop trow and fling their dirty skivvies on the curtain rod? No, thanks. You go right head and tell us you’re “retiring” as you go to bed, Mom. It’s just not worth it. And yes, I’m perfectly well aware that I have used “skivvies” and “shenanigans” and “floozy” and “gigolo” in this post. You try being raised by my mother and not channeling her every once in awhile. I dare you. Yesterday, Beth posted this video on her blog and I fell in love with it. It’s probably been all over the web and maybe even TV by now which would not surprise me one bit because I am always the last to know anything. See that loop you’re standing in? I can’t, because I’m way the hell over here. I told Beth I was going to blog this video because yet again, I have nothing to blog about because I live the most boring life on earth, short of algae. Excuse me for a second, everyone …
Pssssssssssssst. MOM! THIS IS A VIDEO. Click the arrow in the middle of the screen to play it, OK? I could also tell you that if you click the bottom right arrow and choose “HQ” you could watch a higher quality version, but I know that will only confuse you, so just click the arrow in the middle of the screen and you’ll be fine. Don’t be scared. And no, I don’t know why Tino isn’t married or why he hasn’t called you. No, I don’t know what’s wrong with your cell phone. Love you. There’s something about watching people dance that just plain makes me happy. Except when it involves an 82 year old actress flashing her boobs on Dancing with the Stars. Then it makes me throw up in my mouth a little. I won’t name names and I hope Cloris Leachman appreciates my discretion. Dancing is infectious and how awesome is it to have something infectious that does not involve pus and penicillin and frequent urination? I’d like to think that if I had been in Liverpool Street Station that day, that I would have left my inhibitions in my luxury hotel room and joined in. I’d also like to think that I’d have been 40 pounds lighter while doing so. Shhhhhhhhh. It’s my fantasy, OK? Stop interrupting. And because I’m all about the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How, even when it has nothing to do with the XY chromosomes calling my teenage daughter on the phone, here’s a video about the video: I swear, I could just listen to the Brits all day.
Beth, what say we take a holiday and cross the pond and talk like Madonna? 28 DECEMBER 2008 I’ve been very scarce over the past week and I’ve had my own Shot Through the Heart week. On the 23rd, my youngest daughter had surgery for a bunion with a cyst on her foot. She had started to write a blog about it and I kind of wish she would update it. Because it’s funny. She was very scared about the whole thing and to make it worse, we had a huge snowstorm on the day of the surgery which made us run late. So we spent most of the day at the hospital for a successful surgery which still has her hobbling around. Or we think it was a successful surgery. We’ll know when she recovers and doesn’t feel like she’s walking around with a rock in her foot. My oldest daughter had a sleepover with my parents that night and was returning home the next morning. After she had a massage which was part of her holiday gift. So…on the morning of the 24th, I ran over to the bookstore to pick up a book that young daughter was supposed to read over the break and get her some magazines. As I was leaving the bookstore to go home, I had a screaming phone call from the young daughter that my oldest had been in an accident in front of my house. And there was an ambulance. I called my neighbor who immediately left Blockbuster to head over and she got there right before I did. In front of my house, there were 5 police cars, an ambulance, a fire truck and my neighbors. And a smashed up car. Along with a daughter screaming in the ambulance. Believe it or not…this is what happened. She pulled up to the house and parked her car. She took her bag out of the car and locked it. She looked up and saw a city snow plow backing up at an angle toward her and her car at an alarming speed. He did not see her or the car. She did the first thing she could think of which was to unlock the door of the car and try to get in to protect herself as best she could. Everything was in except her left leg. The snow plow ran over her leg. Then he pulled forward running over it again. And then he backed up again…running over it once again. He finally stopped and realized that he hit something or someone. She is alive..that is the good thing. Had she not been able to get back in the car, I might not be able to say that. Preliminary x-rays show that no bones have been broken…which is a miracle in itself. However, the leg appears to be getting worse and we are heading back to the doctor tomorrow as well as going for an MRI. The long term prognosis is unknown at this point but I hope it will be positive. The emotional part is another story. So if it takes me a tad longer to email back over the next couple of weeks, this is why. But I’ll still be around! As one friend said to me yesterday, “it’s the year that just keeps on giving.” That’s for sure. Yet…there are always things to be thankful for! I wish for a wonderful, happy & safe 2009 for everyone! 21 DECEMBER 2008 Since it’s holiday season, we’re bringing you a wonderful family holiday story courtesy of Andrea Chamberlain, blogger of the infamous The Creative Junkie. I’ve been asked to blog about the infamous Chia Pet incident that happened in our household a couple of years ago. For those of you who are familiar with this story, I apologize and will try not to be offended if you up and abandon me at this very moment. No promises, though. For all you uninitiated folk … it’s about the fall of a good, kind hearted man who had the best of intentions and stars a tall, dark, handsome, thoughtful, loving, utterly clueless husband and father who shall remain nameless, except that I’ll call him Nate. A couple of days before Christmas 2002, our youngest daughter, then six, happened to see a Chia Pet commercial on television. Because it did not resemble the 2,732 toys currently strewn about her room, she wanted one. And because it did not resemble a Polly Pocket, I considered it. It’s not as if she longed for a Chia Pet. In fact, Helena would most likely have forgotten all about it by the next day, much like her promises to pick up her underwear and stop burping in public. But if we did get one, another ten dollars was not going to break our Christmas budget. A budget that was immortalized in all its glory by the very anal, bordering-on-obsessive-compulsive, brightly colored two page Excel spreadsheet I had created. That thing rocked. As Nate was already going out, I mentioned that if he happened to run across a Chia Pet, to pick it up for Helena but no biggie if he didn’t. And because Nate is Nate, he heard me say DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO, SELL YOUR SOUL TO THE DEVIL IF NEED BE, BUT GET THIS POOR, DEPRIVED CHILD A CHIA PET, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. PICK UP SOME MILK WHILE YOU’RE AT IT. A few days later, I remembered the Chia Pet and asked Nate whether he had found one so I could update my very anal, bordering-on-obsessive-compulsive, brightly colored two page Excel spreadsheet. And he said to me “Oh yeah, that. I ordered two but I don’t know if they’ll get here by Christmas.” Ordered? Two? 
Upon further questioning, I learned that Nate wanted no part of the bloody, gut wrenching, cutthroat slaughter that is holiday shopping so he decided to order it online. And he got one for Zoe as well.
I wasn’t surprised that Nate had bought them online because if it came right down to it and it was available on the Internet, Nate would buy the air we breathe online. Who cares that we live within a five mile vicinity of at least ten major retail chains that stock Chia Pets? Online shopping saves time and gas and there’s no hassle dealing with real live people. Online shopping is nirvana. I also wasn’t surprised that he bought one for Zoe even though she is allergic to anything green or messy, because Nate is a very thoughtful father like that. He always thinks of both girls. Like when Helena was two and Zoe was eight and Nate bought them each a star for Christmas. An actual star in our solar system with coordinates and everything. But because it’s against postal regulations to ship nuclear energy encased in a fiery ball of gas across state lines, the star company sent the girls official certificates instead. They could read about the stars they owned. How the company became the presumptive owner of all the stars in our universe in the first place was a little baffling but who cares? IT’S A STAR. WITH COORDINATES AND EVERYTHING. The certificates even came framed. All for $90. Each. Zoe wasn’t sure what to do with a gift that lived a billion light years away but she was appreciative of her certificate. Helena clapped happily and drooled all over hers. So I ask Nate what he paid for these Chia Pets that may not even arrive before Christmas. And he tells me $20. Each. I try to curb the wave of panic that I can feel riding over me as I mentally try to reconcile this piece of information with my very anal, bordering-on-obsessive-compulsive, brightly colored two page Excel spreadsheet. In my head, I’m shuffling items from one column to another, changing colors and crossing certain items off the list entirely, such as Christmas dinner. And then it hits me. I didn’t ask the key question. Can you guess what it was? Wait for it … here it comes … . . How much was shipping? To his credit, Nate did not lose his composure, fall to the ground and beg for mercy as I would have done. He did not stutter, he did not stammer, he did not plead temporary insanity. He just stood there and said clear as a bell: $20. Each. Are you with me so far? Because that is a grand total of EIGHTY DOLLARS. For two stinking Chia Pets that may or may not arrive in time for Christmas for two little girls, one of whom would almost certainly say “ewwww” upon opening it and the other, having completely forgotten about seeing it on television, would ask why Daddy was giving her grass. My very anal, bordering-on-obsessive-compulsive, brightly colored two page Excel spreadsheet went up in flames and I turned to Nate, resisted the compulsion to throttle him on the spot and demanded to know what, in the name of all that is holy, possessed him to cross so far over into the realm of lunacy that I barely recognized him? Nate who? And do you know what that man said to me? “Don’t you think $80 is worth it if they enjoy it and it improves the quality of their lives?” Nate, can I just confirm that we are talking about the same thing, specifically an inanimate object made out of terra cotta with foliage sprouting out of its freakish head? I just want to make sure we’re on the same page, because I’m feeling like you called in sick, packed your swim shorts and bought a one way ticket to the dimension known as I HAVE LOST MY MIND, THE WATER’S FINE, COME ON IN and I have no idea how to get there. But as my feet are firmly planted in the dimension known as REALITY, I feel compelled to tell you that I read What To Expect When You’re Expecting twice, Mr. Lunatic Fringe, and NOWHERE IS THERE A CHIA PET MENTIONED. That eighty bucks grew exponentially as I did mental math and calculated in the cost of bail and the court-issued anger management therapy that I could guarantee was in my immediate future. For those of you who have stayed with me until the bitter end … no, they didn’t arrive in time for Christmas. 11 DECEMBER 2008 She’s back! It’s Jenny from the Blog with some holiday cheer. No matter which holiday you celebrate, she’s sure to give you a needed chuckle at this hectic time of year. To read more from Jenny, head over to Suburban Jungle. Can a Nice Jewish Girl Sit on Santa’s Lap Without Being a Ho, Ho, Ho? This is the unabridged version of the published article. I’m not gonna throw myself under the bus and call my children spoiled, as I would have only myself to blame. I will say, however, they have an extreme sense of entitlement, which I am sure has little to do with them being lavished with gifts undeservedly. My children want everything they see, hear about, could get as a party favor, could find in a McDonalds happy meal, a cereal box, a piñata, or view in a commercial. “Mommy can I have that? Will you buy me that? Mommy friends neighbor has that. I want that. When can I have that? Mommy? Ma? Maaaaaaaa? MOM! This exchange of words usually ends with, “If you mention it again, the answer will be never.” “Never? I can’t even have a Clone Trooper Voice Changer Helmet when I’m 25?” “Sure. If you still want a Clone Trooper Voice Changer Helmet at 25, you can wear it to therapy.” “How about I get it for my next birthday, or maybe Kwanzaa?” My son is already eyeing a camouflage pencil set for Secretaries Day, and has informed me that, although we are Jewish, he will be giving up vegetables for Lent. My children’s Chanukah wish lists are so comprehensive, I may be forced to explore alternative channels in my gift search. Consequently, I have sent a friendly letter asking someone who has slighted me in the past for help. Some might say it’s more of a formal accusation, but really it’s just a hand delivered note that needs to be notarized and signed on receipt. It goes: Dear Santa, Do you not bombard us with your festive songs and holiday movies made with delightfully animated reindeer and elves? Do Jews get to go a-caroling? No, we have one song… about kids gambling. Has Dreidel ever starred in a delightfully animated holiday movie? Has Snoopy, or Barbie, or a single Disney character ever lit a Menorah? Maybe in the privacy of their own homes, but certainly never on camera (it’s in their contracts.) We’re okay with that, because we wrote those contracts. Sure, we take advantage of your sales and vacations. We watch your shows, and sing your catchy songs. We’ll decorate a tree with blue and white twinkle lights, top it with a six pointed star, and call it a Chanukah bush. Santa, my Roth IRA is down 40%. I deserve a little holiday cheer. You can look me up, I’ve been nice, and I’d like to keep it that way. My daughter wishes to receive the “now truer to life” Baby Alive that not only eats, but poops. She would also like the “now truer to life on the streets” Bratz Doll, which comes complete with Brazilian waxing kit and requisite diaphragm. Sincerely, P.S. I feel like maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I didn’t mean to sound so hostile. Santa, just tell me what a girl’s gotta do to get some Christian love? I can be naughty if necessary. Perhaps a visit to your “south pole” (wink, wink)? Not by me, we Jews don’t really do that after marriage, but I know a girl that I can call. 2 DECEMBER 2008 She cracks me up & I love her. So who is “she”? Why, it’s Jenny from the Blog. Guaranteed to make you laugh…her honesty is unsurpassed. Sticking it to the Man Before the NASDAQ bubble of 1999 popped, I used to be the Man. Now in light of current economic conditions, I am getting joy out of sticking it to him. This money consciousness is not new to me. As an ex-personal shopper for the very wealthy, I know the importance of finding a bargain; because shockingly no one dislikes parting with money more than those who have it. It probably seems obvious that in these rough financial waters I should stop buying coffee at Starbucks and make it at home for 1/100th the cost, but I say “nay.” And I rarely say “nay,” unless I’m singing Old MacDonald. Like you, I am addicted to Starbucks, and fear what vice I might take up in its absence. Cocaine? Gambling? Cat juggling? Who’s to say? Therefore, I will continue to give Starbucks my hard earned dough and vow to bankrupt them with my ever popular “Ghetto Latte.” It requires two, I mean dopio, shots of espresso and a grande cup of ice. I add milk and voila, iced grande latte for half the price. Unfortunately, the staff at Starbucks is trained to look for such wily money saving tactics, so if you plan on ordering this drink, the barista may warn you and then the manager may ban you a week later, hypothetically speaking of course. I mean, I wouldn’t know this for sure. I am just guessing at how they might crack down on “ghetto lattes” or filling your baby’s bottle from the fixin’s bar, when you just happen to be in the neighborhood, every 3 hours. Last week I had my daughter’s 4th birthday. I spent hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars on balloons from Oriental Trading. I had a ton of latex pinks, purples and lavenders plus mylar balloons in the shapes of cell phones, life sized Bratz dolls, purses, lipsticks, and diaphragms (you know, “girlie” stuff.) The supermarket charges a dollar per latex and two per mylar, to blow them up. “It seems a bit much for air. Last year they didn’t charge me at all,” I said, hoping to strike up a deal. “You’re right, but the price is the price.” “I do have quite a lot of balloons here,” I nudged on, still trying to negotiate. “Ma’am, this price hike came down from corporate. I can’t change it for you.” I knew he wouldn’t budge, by the tone of his voice. It was like a chipmunk. Apparently, he found it amusing to take a drag from the tank before putting his foot down. This is an example of the “Man” high on power. That’s right, I called the guy who works the helium tank the “Man.” So do you know what I did? I bought that air and then the next day when I went to throw away the latex balloons that last all of 97 minutes, I cut the ribbon off each one and put it with my gift-wrapping stuff. That’s right, I showed him. The next time I have to wrap a present, no larger than a 6 inch square, for a little girl or effeminate boy, he’ll be sorry. Of course, the disposal of my non-Earth friendly latex balloons will sit in some landfill for 200 years decomposing, and most likely end up choking a baby seagull. But I will think of the birthday girl’s smile, and lay guiltlessly on my seagull down pillows. Now you’re thinking this girl is so brilliant it’s scary, or maybe you’re just plain scared. However, my most genius strike at the “Man” happened today. I was making eggs for my daughter this morning and one was yucky inside. One brown organic, cage free, extra omega egg that probably cost about fifteen bucks. That’s a ballpark figure, but I think I’m close. I would never feed such an egg to my daughter, and my husband wasn’t around, so I did the next smartest thing. I went in my yard and planted it. That’s right, and soon I will grow a chicken tree. Before, you know it, I’ll be out there, on a crisp 95 degree Florida autumn morning, picking chickens. Then I’ll have all the eggs in the WORLD!!! Who will have the last cluck then “Man”? Who? Read more from Jenny at Suburban Jungle. 3 NOVEMBER 2008 Allow me to direct you to Claire’s hilarious new blog, We All Have Bunions. Enjoy her wit & humor. P.S. You might have to ignore the typos. She was in a bit of a hurry with her first post. 17 OCTOBER 2008 Does anyone really believe these? How come I get so many of them? “I have a will of 20 million pounds for you. Please reply me at hughes_toreth@hotmail.com for more details.” “I await your prompt response.” “Madam Toreth Hughes” I can only imagine Madam Toreth Hughes lying in her bed with the curtains drawn…typing this email to unsuspecting souls. 3 OCTOBER 2008 I’m not much of one to speak out on politics. When I was growing up, my parents taught me that talking about politics and who you were going to vote for just was not polite. I told that to my dad last night and he rolled his eyes. I guess parents like to roll their eyes when the things that they taught their children come back around. I’ve received a lot of email lately on the subject of the upcoming U.S. election. Vote for this one, vote for that one….it seems like who you vote for is becoming very personal. Our current economic state has many people a bit frazzled and rightfully so. Everywhere I go and everyone I talk to has an opinion…& it seems that many are getting mean. If you don’t agree with so and so’s opinion…watch out. Run. Heck…it goes with the territory…the politicians commercials really seem to beef themselves up as we press on toward the election and the jabs get more and more pointed. And of course, we feed into this by talking about how one candidate mispronounced a word or said something that wasn’t factual or made a mistake…but the reality is this…if it were me (or you) that was running for office, can we honestly say that we would not blunder as well? Yes, when you run for office, you will have fingers pointed at you…it’s part of the program. But the flip side is that we’re all human & we all make mistakes. And nope, I am not talking about any particular candidate here. No one has been exempt. Not Barack, not Sarah, not John nor Joe. Yet no matter who you love (or don’t love), they’ve all goofed. And we all do too! Take my friend Marci who had to speak before a local chamber of commerce last week. She was using the word successful in her introductory speech. But alas…Marci got stuck. It came out…“sex, sex, sex, sex.” Good thing it wasn’t on tv or we would have had Marci talking about sex all week long! 
Americans are concerned about many things at this juncture & that I understand. But somehow…it seems like many are taking unkind shots at others (and not necessarily well-known political candidates) for no reason. I’m not sure if this is tied into the election or the economy or just frustration in general. Am I the only one who thinks there are an abundance of very aggressive and nasty drivers? I’ve been doing some asking around & seems like I’m not alone in this thinking. Lately this behavior seems out of control. That’s a double OC according to my husband :) Being online is not exempt…why is it that we feel as though we can take out our aggressions on people that we wouldn’t even know or recognize if we passed them on the street? Admittedly, as an online business owner, I think about this A LOT. Makes ya wanna plop into bed and pull the covers over your head.
But then I received this email from a friend and had to share it with readers. She makes some very heartfelt points that are worth pondering & I’m grateful for the kind words. Too bad I didn’t come up with them myself :) them…who I like and want in the white house. it doesn’t lessen my respect for them that they like blank or blank. It only saddens me if it distances people instead of unites despite our differences.” “People need to be more mature about these things. An open mind is where the Thanks to Amy for the above email. It made my day.
25 SEPTEMBER 2008 Taken from one of my new favorite blogs, Dorky Dad. This soooo reminds of me of my beloved stepsons…after raising daughters, boys can come as quite a shockeroo. Dorky Dad is very funny. The Boy’s Chippendale Tendencies NOTE: Dear People Who Came to this site looking for free nudity after a Google search: You are going to be sadly disappointed. We spent our morning picking apples, because everybody in my house is an apple freak, meaning each of us consumes his or her own weight in apples daily. At least we do during apple season. Off-season apples suck. Off-season apples suck so bad that scientists have made some of them taste like grapes. And I’m not kidding, by the way. They’re called Grapples. They make sense, in a drunk food-scientist kind-of way. During our trip to the apple farm to buy apple-flavored apples, The Boy began giving the international sign for “I have to pee really bad but I’m having too much fun to actually go and am probably in immediate danger of wetting my pants and the floor below, thereby causing great embarrassment to myself and my parents if I’m not dragged screaming to the restroom RIGHT NOW.” In other words: He grabbed his wiener and began dancing like an Irishman. So I did the deed, dragging him to the porta-potties outside. I let him go by himself, and waited patiently with another father for him to finish the job. And The Boy did, indeed, finish peeing. He walked out of the porta-potty as soon as he was finished. And by “as soon as he was finished,” I mean “the exact second upon which he completed his urinating task.” In other words: his pants were still down. Uh, yeah. Pulling your pants up is part of the job, Boy. Unfortunately, I wish I could say that this incident surprised me. It didn’t. In fact, it would have surprised me if he didn’t emerge from the toilet with Mr. Happy waving to the crowd. During bathroom visits, The Boy usually parades around the restroom with his pants around his ankles and his man-hose in full view. And it’s my job to catch said Boy and convince him to get his pants back up there. He does, though with a bit of disappointment that reveals a kid who, if he’s not raised the right way, could very well grow up to become a Chippendale (assuming, that is, he manages to find deep within my unused genetic material the potential for six-pack abs and tanned skin …). (The other, simpler and more realistic explanation is that the exhibitionism is just a condition of preschoolers who haven’t yet had much exposure to societal norms. Still, I’m not taking my chances. I don’t want my boy dancing in front of a bunch of screaming old, panties-throwing women while his bloodstream is half-filled with steroids and prescription painkillers. Tempting as that sounds, his job is to make the Major Leagues and help me retire comfortably.) So while he’s living in my house, he’ll keep the clothes on. Then, when he gets to college, he’ll probably have a few public nakedness moments that, if the college is anything like the one The Wife went to, could be captured on camera and published in the yearbook. 14 SEPTEMBER 2008 I went to the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago last night….in the rain. It was really raining. And it was a bummer because there were over 200 booths there & the fair was supposed to go until 10:00 last night. But at 7:00, more than half of them had already closed up shop. But I ended up with this tee shirt that makes me giddy. This is brought to you by my new friends at Cloth Moth. Consider shopping here if you’re reasonably cool. Not that I’m cool or anything. If I was, I’d be wearing this tee shirt right now instead of still in my jammies at 3:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon. Now if my husband decides to take me out to dinner (which is a real possibility considering we are child free today), I might get dressed. Perhaps he’ll come into my office and say something like, “Hey honey, put on a bra and that new tee shirt and we can go grab something to eat.” 
Maybe I should have purchased this bag to go with the fine tee shirt.
There’s good reason to buy this bag according to our friends at Cloth Moth. “Stop using paper OR plastic and start toting your groceries in a dangly brown sack. hehehe 
*8 SEPTEMBER 2008 It seems to me that we need a tad more humor over here in Shot Through the Heart so we have a continuation of garden shop humor from our friend Rachelle over at The Country Doctor’s Wife. If you’re new…and haven’t read her other post…scroll down for more humor. Beware The Dreaded LBS Deer! Sometimes customers at the garden center are so determined that the problems with their plants are absolutely, impossibly, absurdly, difficult to diagnose – that you have to get a little inventive to give them a solution. Fortunately – this is not a problem for me… Customer – I have a strange question for you… Me – I bet you do. Customer – Uh… Well, I have a Little Princess Spirea… Me – How strange! Customer – Uh… that is not the strange part. Me – Thank God! Customer – Is there anyone else here that can help me? Me – (In a high pitched mimicking tone) Is there anyone else that can help me? Customer – Is that supposed to be funny? Me – Are you ever going to get to your question? Customer – Oh… okay – So I have this Little Princess Spirea and all the bottom leaves are gone! Me – Gone? Customer – Yes, they are gone! The top leaves are still there, but the bottom leaves have completely disappeared! Me – Fungus? Customer – Impossible! Me – Insects? Customer – Never! Me – Disease? Customer – Surely you jest! Me – Too much water? Customer – Do you think I am an imbecile? Me – Not enough water? Customer – Ha! Do you realize I have an advanced degree in every known horticultural science known to mankind? I think I can properly water a plant! Me – Okay then… do you have a cat? Customer – Absolutely not! Me – Are there any deer in the area? Customer – Deer eating the bottom branches of a shrub? What are you… an idiot? I think the deer would eat the top branches not the bottom branches! Me – Yes well… have you not heard of the pygmy legless belly sliding deer? Customer – The what? Me – The pygmy legless belly sliding deer! Surely someone of your garden knowledge stature has heard of them? They are extremely rare – but oh how they love the Little Princess Spirea! Customer – They do? Me – Yes they do… and of course the poor creatures can not reach the top branches of any shrub. Customer – Of course they can’t! Me – Yes, because of the… you know… the legless part. Customer – Why didn’t I think of it? Me – That is what we are here for. Customer – So what can I do? Me – An infestation of the pygmy legless belly sliding deer is virtually impossible to combat. Customer – Oh… Me – I have heard that midnight modern dancing around a campfire sometimes helps. Customer – Really? Me – Uhuh – but uh… it only works if they dancer is um… is um… completely naked! 
Customer – Oh…
Me – Yes… buck naked AND you have to spread butter and jam all over your backside! Customer – Well… I guess it is worth a try. Me – Good luck! Customer – Thanks! 1 SEPTEMBER 2008
I hate writing sad things in this column. But sometimes I do. I want to share this email that I received this afternoon with our readers. It’s heartbreaking & is a reminder to put some clear perspective in all of our lives. Life is short & you just never know. I feel like I should mention that Brandon had just been dropped off at college for his freshman year. His parents had left to go back home one hour before his collapse. Dear Carthage Parent: We recently distributed the following news to all Carthage students, faculty and staff. We share it with you so that you may know of news that may influence your student’s state of mind in the coming days. Please keep the family and friends of Sincerely, Robert Rosen
Brandon Lindsay, an 18-year-old freshman from Oak Lawn, Ill., collapsed and lost consciousness in Hedberg Library early yesterday evening. Carthage staff immediately began resuscitation efforts. Kenosha EMTs responded within six While Brandon was being transported to the hospital, his parents were notified that he was experiencing a health emergency. They were in Oak Lawn when they received the news, and immediately returned to Kenosha. They learned of his death after they arrived at the hospital. The cause of Brandon’s collapse is unknown. An autopsy will take place within the next few days. The emergency room physician and the medical examiner expressed no concerns that Brandon was suffering from any condition that would put the health of other students at risk. Since receiving news of Brandon’s death, Carthage has been working with his family and with campus counseling personnel to prepare for student inquiries and requests for support.Counseling is available from residence hall advisors, the 27 AUGUST 2008 I knew that Wickedly Chic readers would love this hilarious post written by Rechelle of The Country Doctor’s Wife. Head to her website. Read her often. She’s good. CDW asks the BIG QUESTIONS I have two questions for you. Two… burning… questions. I would much prefer to have three burning questions for you… because two makes me feel off kilter. So let’s hope I can think of another question before this post is over. Both of my questions relate to my job, which is at a Garden Center, but I am certain that people with all sorts of different jobs will be able to chime in with some possible answers… The first question is this… When I am helping a customer… to find a product… or to answer a question… or to serve the customer’s needs in any way… and in the middle of being helped… the customer takes a call on their cell phone… what should I do? How long should I stand there waiting for the customer to finish the call? Six seconds? Six minutes? SIX HOURS??? I have to tell you that after having been in this very situation several times now, my first impulse is not to wait at all but instead to immediately reach for a garden shovel and hit the customer over the head with it. But that may not be the right response. I gotta tell you though – it is irritating. I have lots of things to do. Lots of important things. There are plants… everywhere. Plants that need care… and water… and pruning… and there are floors with dirt that need sweeping and shelves with dust that need dusting and a cash register that needs to be stared at with a gimlet eye… and a phone that needs to be answered… NOT TO MENTION OTHER CUSTOMERS TO WAIT ON… I truly enjoy helping people and waiting on customers, but there are some limits to what I can take. And the cell phone… the cell phone… ma’am your cell phone.. and it is ALWAYS a woman with the cell phone… I don’t know if I can take your cell phone. 
No really it’s okay ma’am… I will wait here for the next fifteen minutes while you finish your call with your sister about the weekend at the lake!
And while you are at it, go ahead and tell her all about how you helped your daughter move on Friday. No Friday… no we moved her on Friday… my daughter. We moved her on Friday. And please don’t forget to tell the person on the other end of the cell phone where you are currently standing. I am at the garden center… the garden center… I am in the garden center and I am standing by the geraniums… the red geraniums…. I am standing by the red geraniums… and I am getting ready to go and look at the hydrangeas… the HYDRANGEAS… we are going to go look at the hydrangeas… what?… I can’t hear you… where are you? Are you driving? Are you in the car? I am at the garden center. The garden center. Where am I going next? I will probably go to lunch… Lunch… Lunch at Harry’s. I said I am going to lunch at Harrys. HARRY’S! I can’t hear you very well. Are you driving? Are you still driving? I am still at the garden center. I am still here at the garden center. Are you driving? Where are you driving? No I am not driving… I am at the garden center. I am not even making up the fascinating content of these paramount calls. Well, I am mostly not making them up, but I have stood and listened to quite a few of these calls now. Standing and waiting for the customer to get back to her question. Trying to keep my hand from reaching out and grabbing the most lethal insecticide in the store, ripping the lid off and pouring it down my throat. Oh the burn… the blessed blessed burn and the peace… the blessed blessed peace that comes after the burn… the burn… While the customer goes on and on… And then I am going to go to Target. To Target. I am going to go to Target. I am looking for new storage bins. New storage bins. I can’t hear you very well. Are you driving? I am at the garden center. So tell me gentle readers – what do you think a humble employee in the retail industry should do when waiting on a customer that decides to take a call in the middle of being served. Question #2 What do you do when you have gas at work? Bubbly gas, ripply gas, soft feathery gas, burning gas, decroded dying animal gas, silent but deadly gas, booming gas, rubbery butt flappers, nuclear warfare gas… What do you do when you accidentally let one rip… I mean let one fly… like a delicate moth… ascending a ray of sunlight… In front of a customer? What is the best response? Should I pretend that it didn’t happen? Should I quickly drop something in an effort to disguise the racket? Should I rapidly guide the customer to the fragrant hybrid roses? Should I look askance at someone across the aisle as if he/she were the culprit? Should I giggle shyly? Should I say “Whoa?” Should I say “Excuse me!” Should I say “Did you hear that?” Should I say “Holy crap was that me or was that you?” Should I say“Barking spiders” like my dad always does? Should I feign paralysis? I am pretty good at feigning paralysis. I am just wondering what to do… Not that it has EVER happened TO ME or anything. Which brings me to question #3… which I just now thought up… What do you do if you are simultaneously helping a customer who is on their cell phone AND you are farting AT THE SAME TIME??? It is a nightmarish thought, isn’t it! Dear God in Heaven, I hope that never happens to me! I am here at the garden center… the garden center… the lady that is helping me just farted… I said she just farted… she farted…SHE FARTED! Are you driving? If you are wondering what happened to any posts in this time frame, due to our hosting company, I lost about a week’s worth of work. It doesn’t make me happy. 12 AUGUST 2008 And here’s a message/warning from Kate over at Om Shanti. I spent a good amount of time working up and testing my Long Day Working Bath Salts. See, I’ve long been in the habit of helping people move, and since I have a bad back (well, I never said I was smart) I tend to wind up fairly broken by the end of the day. I also tested it on friends, many of whom also help people move, or do martial arts, or break themselves in a wide and fascinating variety of ways, but I always test my concoctions on myself, first. And boy, am I glad I did. Arnica oil is a wonderful and commonly-used remedy for bruises and bumps where the skin has not been broken. It’s brilliant stuff, very effective, easy to find and very safe as long as you follow the instructions printed on the package in big letters NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY. Okay, I thought, I always whack myself into something while I’m helping people move and certainly my friends into the martial arts wind up bruised on a pretty regular basis. So why not arnica in the bath salts? It’s not like people are drinking them. As always, I test on myself first. So I did up a batch of the arnica-less salts, added a few drops of arnica oil to one bath’s worth, and cast it forth into the delicious hot water. It was lovely and wonderful and soothing. But wait, I was starting to feel a little anxious…my heart rate rose…what, I wondered, as I lay in the bath, was I worried about? What weighed so heavily on my mind that even a bath could not soothe it?…in fact seemed to be making it worse? At which point I had a revelation…nay, a series of them. I am a girl. Girls have girl bits. Girl bits are made of mucous membranes. Which absorb things. And they were exposed to, and thus absorbing, the arnica which is NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY so I drained the tub, rinsed myself off but good, and fled to the kitchen whereupon I poured water into myself while I prepared a cleansing tea (about which more later). Soon enough I was feeling sufficiently better to go to the computer and check out exactly why arnica is NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY: The internal use of Arnica is not suggested. It can cause raised blood pressure, weakness, increased heart rate and nervous disturbances. Yup. That’s what it did. I still have the bottle. I’ll use it to make a bruise cream, which will be wonderful and effective and will help ease the bruises involved with helping people move and martial arts and such, and every jar I sell will say NOT TO BE TAKEN INTERNALLY. 8 AUGUST 2008 Directly from April’s mouth. Good lord. Take it away, April. “i had tickets with my boyfriend, sean, a good looking 1/2 irishman, 1/2 mexican man with long thick dark hair that he used to let me braid in two shimmering lengths, to go to a huge outdoor concert hosted by Guinness featuring sinead oconnor, the pogues, john lee hooker singing with a gorgeous redheaded irish lass with that lyrical voice that only the irish tend to possess, the chieftains and many other of our favorite irish bands. all was well. and then, he dumped me a week before the concert. i was paralyzed. i also lived above a head shop across from the restaurant he worked at and was convinced he was also cheating on me. needless to say, i began to sleep less, eat nothing, and drink TONS. i worked at a small cafe at the time across the street from my house (a job i was always late to due to my habit of getting stoned BEFORE i got dressed for work which always ended in a room full of discarded clothing items of all color and form, and i, in what was considered at the time, an outfit that screamed “inconspicuously cool”) where i convinced a dude pal of mine to accompany me to the concert because, “i’ll be damned if that a**hole keeps me from having fun, damn it! so we went, i, a bit of a wreck, haven’t eaten or slept much in a few days or so, but my buddy, dan, is convinced we are gonna party like its 1999 which constituted beers at 10 am when we arrived. now, i am 3/4 irish, which it seems like i could hold my irish brew like the best of them, but au contrair, i have always been a lightweight, and in the 100 degree san jose heat, with a party pal, a sopping heart and a ex boyfriend roaming around, it was a recipe for disaster. after my first pint, a black and tan i believe, i ran into sean, the oh too recent ex. he had cut his hair and looked like shit, but i was still hell bent on drowning my sorrows. i faked like i was so happy without him when i saw him, all grins and fluffy adjectives and proceeded to down, guzzle, drain, 4 more black and tans before noon. one moment, i was dancing like a drunken banshee to the chieftains, the next, i literally collapsed on the spot only to awake with a guinness hat pulled over my face, a vicious sunburn and the undeniable urge to run. i stood up quickly and projectile vomited in one graceful motion. now beer and heat tend to create this amazing recipe in one’s guts, much like those vinegar and baking soda volcanos we all made in school as kids. i new it was just the beginning and acted on that urge to run. i could see the port-a-pottys in the background, and brilliantly made them my target. i held my hand over my mouth to contain the spew that was erupting from the depth of my bowels, but it seemed my fingers just make sort of a sieve in which to spray further. i thought i heard Dan call my name, so, i turned my head and barfed on a woman having a picnic with her boyfriend. once everyone around me caught on, it was like moses parting the red friggin sea to get away from the bile geyser. i barfed on people’s shoes, i barfed on an abandoned sweatshirt lying on the grass, i barfed up onto the bill of my hat and it cascaded down my front like one of those mini zen waterfalls you get at right aid. i barfed on a woman waiting in line for the port-a-potty. i barfed in my hair. and soon, i was barfing into the filthy blue water of the port-a-potty praising jesus for the shade and privacy. when i was finally empty, realizing there was NO running water in the whole fairgrounds, i used toilet paper to clean myself up. i emerged from the bathroom looking like i had been rolled in the sewer and felted with tiny cotton balls. i gathered up my dignity, apologized to my victims, drank a 10 dollar bottle of water, used the last sips to rinse off a bit, found my pal, dan, rocked out to the pogues (shane mcgowan himself was so drunk he fell off the stage, which made me feel better somehow). i heard sinead o connor being announced on the big stage, so in snuck away from dan. there i stood, under the stars, totally alone in so many ways that i was not yet used to. sinead finished her show with an a cappella version of ‘black boys on mopeds’ that ripped me in two. these are dangerous days, to say what you feel is to make your own grave… her voice resonating through the earth, up to the moon, into my soul forcing giant tears to run down my cheeks and i realized that there was so much feeling left in me still, that i will love again, damn it! and after all, tomorrow had to be better than this.” 
Check out April’s goods at NimbusSisters or her blog.
6 AUGUST 2008 I have a new goal. Do you have a goal now that back to school time is nearly here? No, I’m not going back to school. My goal is way beyond that. We have a Piggly Wiggly in our town. If you don’t know about the Piggly Wiggly, it’s a small-ish chain of grocery stores & my town is lucky enough to have one. It’s nothing special, really. Just a plain old nice, not too large store where I can get what I need & be in and out in a flash. When I need to escape the house, I just say, “I’m going to the Pig, be right back.” 
Well….my Pig is having a real whammy of a deal going on. From now through October 14, every time that you shop at my Piggly Wiggly & use your Piggly Wiggly card, you get a chance to win a visit from the Pig Patrol! Yes, that’s correct. 50 local families will be chosen to receive this visit. The Patrol checks out your house & for every single store brand item that you have in your home at that time, you will win a $50.00 gift certificate for more shopping at the Pig! I just have to be a winner. Pig Patrol! At my house! It must be.
I’m thinking about shopping there at least twice a day to increase my odds. Milk in the morning, bread at noon, gum at night. If I win, I will tell everyone that I know & I’ll never ever forget it. 6 AUGUST 2008 Back home again. We have an issue. Has anyone seen my husband’s nose hair trimmer? We’re all in denial in the house…the weird thing is that the nose trimmer bears a strange resemblance to a small vibrator. 
If you find ‘em, call me. We can’t have unruly nose hairs.
2 AUGUST 2008 So…I’m on the road once again (for the last time this summer). I’m in New Jersey and yes…people go on vacation to New Jersey and there are people that are FROM New Jersey & are hatched in New Jersey and I’m one of them. And New Jersey is a perfectly nice state in case any of you have your doubts. Just sayin’. Food seems to be a common theme as of late and that brings me to this evening’s dinner in one of the world famous New Jersey diners. I shoulda taken the kids to the one down the street. If I’d only known. But…the diner that we went to is one that I’ve already frequented and was quite happy with. But no more. Uh uh…this diner and I have officially broken up. Love affair over. One kiddo orders a kiddie meal. The other kiddo wants a kiddie meal too. However, the other kiddo was over the age of 10 and was told that the waitress would be fired if she served her a kiddie meal. The menu did not say a thing about age. So…the over 10 kiddo orders another meal. Chicken nuggets. With a choice of fries, mashed potatoes or a baked potato. She chooses mashed. 
The meal shows up. Chicken nuggets are served with fries. Kiddo doesn’t want to say anything. But I politely told the waitress that she had ordered mashed potatoes. Her answer, “Well, they put the wrong thing on the plate.” Yeah. That would be correct. She stood there for a moment and I asked if she could please bring the mashed potatoes. So off she goes and brings back the mashed. Then the waitress tells kiddo to take her french fries off of her plate and give them back to the waitress. Which was weird in itself but then she told kiddo that she could keep the onion rings that came with the french fries. But the french fries had to be returned. Ew. Like really ew. Wonder which unsuspecting customer ended up with them?
We all ate quietly and were getting ready to end the meal when the waitress came back and asked if we wanted dessert. In answer to this question, the kiddo who had the real kids meal pointed out that her meal already came with dessert. So the waitress said, “Well, all we have is ice cream.” “And JELLO”, the little one pointed out. The waitress shook her head. Little one says, “The menu says ice cream OR jello.” Waitress replies, “We only have red jello.”. Sigh. This just isn’t going well at all. To add to this quirky meal, when we went to the register to pay, there was a large plate of cookies. One kid asked if the cookies were free and the owner of the restaurant said, “Yes, you can take one.” With no enthusiam at all. Sometimes I don’t know what businesses are thinking. Customer service really needs to be a top priority in this competitive and soft economy. Lots of places looking for your hard earned dollars. You’d think they’d get a clue. Shot through the heart.
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