How My Mother Inspired Me Today

 Essays, Family, Humor, Memory Mondays, Parents, Self-Help, Writing  4 Responses »
May 072012
 

I’m usu­ally upbeat–one of those annoy­ing peo­ple who makes Pollyanna look like a goth girl. How­ever, today I had one of those days where I just felt out-of-sync, like a poorly dubbed Japan­ese mon­ster movie where my lips moved, fol­lowed by a B-List char­ac­ter actor say­ing in Eng­lish, “For the love of God, don’t let Godzilla reach the Golden Cor­ral! They have the only all-you-can-eat salad bar in Tokyo!”

I woke up Sun­day morn­ing, refreshed after finally catch­ing up on my REMs. (When I say that this blog is writ­ten under severe sleep depri­va­tion, I’m not kid­ding.) I had the day off from my full-time job at a non-profit and my part-time job at an inde­pen­dent book­store. I told myself that there were only four things I needed to con­cern myself with today:

1. Exer­cise
2. Iron my work clothes for the week
3. Buy gro­ceries
4. Fin­ish writ­ing the next chap­ter of my novel

Piece of cake! So I started with the first item on my list. I was about to head to the gym when I remem­bered that I wanted to find a work­out plan specif­i­cally for an ecto­morph, which refers to peo­ple, like myself, who have a body type like Flat Stan­ley. I want to build some mus­cle and bulk up a little.

I fired up the Inter­net and did a Google search. Hun­dreds of web­sites popped up and I checked out one after another. And there was some­thing wrong with every one of them. Many of them required work­out ses­sions of an hour or more up to six days per week. With my sched­ule, that did not seem realistic–unless I gave up eat­ing and uri­na­tion. Oth­ers required spe­cial­ized equip­ment that I had nei­ther seen before at my gym nor were legal in the great State of Georgia.

I glanced at the clock. It was after lunch and I had lost the entire morn­ing. It was just like those times when a ques­tion comes to mind, like: How many num­ber one hits did Michael Jack­son have on the Swiss Music Charts?  Nat­u­rally, I must run to the com­puter and find the answer at once, usu­ally get­ting sucked down a rab­bit hole of one intrigu­ing piece of infor­ma­tion that links to another. (For the record, Michael Jack­son topped the Swiss Music Charts four times, with “Bil­lie Jean,” “Remem­ber the Time,” “You Are Not Alone,” and “Earth Song.”) This habit makes me a lethal weapon for trivia night, but not so suc­cess­ful in the pro­duc­tiv­ity department.

I could feel my insides knot­ting up. I told myself to eat lunch and then I’d start work on my chap­ter, since I usu­ally tend to put the most impor­tant thing to me last on my “to do” list. I don’t know why. It’s doubt­ful that the world is going to end if I don’t clean the toi­let. But after lunch, I thought I should warm up to writ­ing by read­ing a bit. At the end of each chap­ter, it seemed like I needed to stretch my lit­er­ary mus­cles some more, so I began another chap­ter. The after­noon wore on. The tight­ness in my gut increased. The sounds of min­utes tick­ing away grew louder, which is really inter­est­ing, because I have a dig­i­tal clock. And the the voices in my head started talking:

You are such a loser.

If the Depart­ment of Fam­ily & Child Ser­vices inves­ti­gated cars that never seemed to get washed, you’d be locked away in prison with­out any chance of parole. Why aren’t you wash­ing your car now instead of read­ing this book?

You’ll never fin­ish that novel.

You do look exactly like the actor who plays Freddy Krueger in all of the Night­mare on Elm Street movies.

This is just like when you wanted to join the band in the sixth grade. You never prac­ticed “Pen­guins on Parade” and dropped out. That trum­pet is still on the top shelf of the closet in your old bed­room in your par­ents house!

Even though I know bet­ter than to lis­ten, I did, any­way. I felt like I was on the bot­tom of a swim­ming pool, pinned down by the pres­sure of all these unsur­mount­able tasks, the drain of the pool mak­ing a painful waf­fle pat­tern across my cheek.

I walked through the house and saw all the unfin­ished projects that awaited me. It reminded me that on Fri­day I had finally fin­ished every­thing I was sup­posed to do before I left for the Erma Bombeck Writ­ers’ Work­shop that I had returned from  two weeks ago.  I real­ized that I prob­a­bly would prob­a­bly be late for my own funeral. I could see myself rush­ing in and plop­ping down in the back row as the pall­bear­ers car­ried my car out to the hearse. I’d turn to the lit­tle church lady to my right and say, “Tell me the truth, how did I look?” She squirm on the pew and scrunch her face up, then say, “Kind of waxy. I’d ask for a refund.”

I shut my book, closed my eyes, and curled up into a fetal posi­tion on my bed. I couldn’t under­stand why I was shut­ting down. I was hopeless.

I thought about the scene in my novel that had me stuck. A high school senior invites a new stu­dent home for lunch. While his friend is wash­ing up in the bath­room, the senior checks his hair in the hall­way mir­ror and his friend catches him. The friends says …

I know, it isn’t rocket sci­ence, yet, for some rea­son, I’ve been frozen at this point for three weeks.

And then my mind started to wan­der. I recalled an e-mail that I received a few days ago from my mother. She had writ­ten about a dilemma. She dis­cov­ered that her 50th high school reunion was sched­uled for the same night as her Hafla, which is the recital for her belly danc­ing class. Mom mulled it over. Ulti­mately, she opted to attend her Hafla instead of her class reunion. She fig­ured that she could either spend her evening lis­ten­ing to a bunch of old peo­ple she didn’t rec­og­nize talk about their bod­ies falling apart, or she could spend it doing some­thing wild and crazy that sixty-eight-year-old women don’t nor­mally do. My mother chose to do some­thing that made her feel good.

My mom inspired me.  I have fun when I write.  I wanted to feel good when I wrote again.  What would make me feel bet­ter right now?

I fig­ured I’d bet­ter knock out the things that I had to do before the day was over, so I could focus on writ­ing with­out those dis­trac­tions.  So, I unfurled myself from my fetal posi­tion and I did my reg­u­lar work­out. I felt bet­ter, so I ironed my work clothes for the week. Com­plet­ing half of my list felt good, so I drove to the gro­cery store and stocked up on food for the week. I felt my mojo return by that point.

Now, I’m back home typ­ing up my blog post for tomor­row, which will be your today. It feels good for my fin­gers to be tap­ping across the key­board.  I decided to move for­ward in the chap­ter of my novel to where I knew what hap­pened next.  As a result, it helped me fig­ure out what the friend says to the senior when he catches him look­ing at him­self in the mir­ror.  The waf­fle marks on my cheek from the drain of the swim­ming pool have faded away, and that low point with the weight of all the pres­sure I put on myself now seems so long ago. It’s a good reminder that even after we grow up and move away from home, we still need our mothers.

How has your mother inspired you recently?

 Posted by at 7:00 am

Mother Cleared of Wrongdoing for Using Son as Battering Ram

 Crime, Family, Humor, Kids, Parents, Parody, Tall Tale Tuesdays  No Responses »
Apr 242012
 

The Divi­sion of Fam­ily and Chil­dren Ser­vices (DFCS) has cleared Margie Bauer, 34, of Kissime­coochee, Geor­gia, of wrong­do­ing when she used her son, Wilber, 10, as a bat­ter­ing ram to escape an apart­ment fire last week.

““I don’t nor­mally use my chil­dren as a siege engine,” Bauer said.  “But flames were every­where and Wilbuer was being dif­fi­cult.  I asked him to help me tie some sheets together so he and his twin sis­ters and I could lower our­selves safely to the ground, and he refused to help unless I gave him an advance on his allowance.”

““Some­thing inside me just snapped,” Bauer con­tin­ued.  “And in my defense, I had cut out diet soft drinks ear­lier that week and I hadn’t had any choco­late that day, so I was on edge.”

When asked why she used her son as a bat­ter­ing ram, Bauer replied, “Well, he’s so darn stub­born, and I needed some­thing to break down the door so we could escape.  I fig­ured as hard-headed as Wilbur is, his nog­gin should do the trick.  And he went–head first–right through that oak!”

Wilbur, cur­rently in hid­ing from his mother, has released a state­ment through his lawyer that he intends to sue his mother for every­thing that she’s worth, which will–hopefully–be enough to buy a copy of Zom­bie She-Male Apoc­a­lypse for his Xbox.  “I also plan for my attor­ney to ask for the death penalty.”

Bau­rer rolled her eyes when advised of her son’s com­ments.  She declined to com­ment and pro­ceeded to make a pot roast with car­rots and pota­toes and an ice­box coconut cake.  The smell of the food brought Wilbur home where he and his mother reconciled.

The reunion was short-lived, how­ever.  Wilbur, in a sugar high from dessert, admit­ted to set­ting the fire to col­lect the insur­ance money to buy video games.  Bau­rer then denied Wilbur a sec­ond slice of cake and con­tacted author­i­ties.  Wilbur has since been incar­cer­ated at the Enis “Scrappy” Smith Reform School for Delin­quent Boys.

How My Mouth Gets Me into Trouble Again and Again

 Essays, Family, Humor, Kids, Parents, Self-Help, Spirituality  4 Responses »
Apr 022012
 

My par­ents really deserve a Pur­ple Heart for rais­ing me. I wasn’t a holy ter­ror, but I was, at times, a force to be reck­oned with. To be fair to myself, I never set the house on fire–just myself–but that’s another story. My mom and dad lived in a state of anx­ious antic­i­pa­tion because they never knew what was going to come out of my life in front of other people.

I can recall accom­pa­ny­ing my mother to H.E.B. when we lived in Waco, Texas. Every week my mother and I went down the same aisles of the gro­cery store and picked up the same things. When my mother changed her pat­tern, I would ques­tion why. I was prob­a­bly about five and we were on the bath & beauty aisle. Try­ing to be help­ful, I picked up large box of Kotex tam­pons and yelled, while run­ning toward my mother, “Hey, Mom, do you need any Kotex?” My mother said an elderly lady fur­ther down the aisle clutched her shop­ping cart and almost fell into it. Mama quickly explained in her We-Don’t-Do-That-at-Church that she was well-stocked at home. I didn’t know what Kotex were; I just knew that my mother often bought them.

When I was a teenager, we went to a fam­ily reunion. I found myself sit­ting next to my dad’s cousin, whom I’d never met, and try­ing to think of some­thing to say to her. My folks never gave me lessons on mak­ing small talk, so I quickly searched my mind for some­thing of rel­e­vance to share. I recalled that ear­lier that week I had caught Charles Fox on The Tonight Show, so I announced, “Did you know the guy who sings the theme song for Love Boat once went to a nude beach?” My dad’s cousin laughed ner­vously, excused her­self, and avoided me the rest of the day. I wasn’t try­ing to be provoca­tive, I was just try­ing to make conversation.

And there was the time I asked my grand­mother if she had sex with my step-grandfather in front of my uncle (her son). I will give props to Memaw, though, she answered the ques­tion, but later told me she was mor­ti­fied to answer such a ques­tion in front of her son. I thought, Well, why did you answer the ques­tion, then? Again, I don’t have a fetish for geri­atric love­mak­ing, I was sim­ply try­ing to under­stand. I had only recently learned about sex, which struck me as hav­ing a lot in com­mon with the movie Alien. I couldn’t fathom why any­one would let some­one else stick any­thing inside their body. One minute you’re hav­ing lunch and the next, a baby is explod­ing out of your chest. Why would any­one want to do that?

It’s almost been forty years since I almost caused that old lady to faint on the fem­i­nine hygiene aisle of H.E.B., and it still seems like the only time I open my mouth is to change feet.

Recently, a friend’s daugh­ter was catch­ing a ride back to col­lege with a man who was a friend of a friend. “Melissa said he’s a really nice man,” my friend said, more for her ben­e­fit, it seemed, than to jus­tify her deci­sion to me.

Before I knew it, I heard myself say, “You know, Ted Bundy was sup­pos­edly a really nice guy too, except for being a ser­ial killer and blud­geon­ing all those soror­ity girls to death.” The expres­sion on my friend’s face told me that my mouth had struck again.

Why I Don't Like Having My Picture Taken

 Blogging, Essays, Family, Humor, Memory Mondays, Parents, Photography  3 Responses »
Mar 192012
 

Jef BlockerI don’t like hav­ing my pic­ture taken. It’s some­where on a pref­er­ence scale between a lucid colonoscopy and giv­ing birth to a blue whale with only half a Claritin-D as an anesthetic.

For the record, my dis­like of hav­ing my pic­ture taken is not because I think vil­lagers will chase me with torches and dogs to the wind­mill that they will set on fire to destroy me; I’ve just seen very few pic­tures of myself that seem nat­ural.  They always appear stiff, posed, and noth­ing that resem­bles my per­son­al­ity comes through. Hon­estly, how can a pic­ture rep­re­sent you with­out your per­son­al­ity?  It’s like meet­ing some­one with no soul.

Per­haps it’s because at an early age we are snatched from our lives in motion to stand in place, pull our lips back to reveal as much teeth and gums as humanly pos­si­ble, and then shout out a word for cur­dled milk–CHEESE!

About the time we become teenagers, we are con­di­tioned to comb/brush our hair, apply lip balm/lipstick/makeup, and attempt to look cool at the sight of a cam­era.  Instead, we often give the impres­sion that we’re abus­ing a con­trolled sub­stance.  If you don’t believe me, look at any teenager’s Face­book page.

As adults, we uncon­sciously suck in our stom­achs any time any one men­tions the word cam­era.  After being sub­jected to numer­ous sexy bill­boards, mag­a­zine ads, and T.V. com­mer­cials, it seems impos­si­ble for men to have our pic­ture taken with­out six-pack abs, a few days growth of beard, and a vul­gar tat­too of a tribal design or Japan­ese sym­bol on an upper arm, shoul­der, or chest.

Last year it became appar­ent to me that I needed a professional-looking pho­to­graph when I was asked to sup­ply one for a poetry read­ing I par­tic­i­pated in.  Since I’m usu­ally behind the cam­era, the only pic­ture I could find of myself was one I took of my shadow on a wall at the North Car­olina Aboretum.

“Is that the best you could do?” a friend asked.

“It’s the only pic­ture I have of myself,” I said.  “Does it exude a mys­te­ri­ous, artis­tic personality?”

“No, it looks like an upload to Guys with iPhones from a burn victim.”

I imme­di­ately began a search to find a pho­tog­ra­pher.  For­tu­nately, I dis­cov­ered that one of our cus­tomers at the book­store, Vyvyan L. Hughes, trained with a fash­ion pho­tog­ra­pher in San Fran­cisco.  I checked out her web­site and fell in love with her use of nat­ural light in her work.  Yes, I thought, this is real.  This is what I want.

When I met with Vyvyan, she asked me what I was try­ing to show with my pho­tographs, I told her that I didn’t want some soul­less por­trait of myself–I wanted to reveal the real me.  She asked me who the real me was, and I was at a loss.  I real­ized that there was more to the process than look­ing at the cam­era and smil­ing.  I write a humor blog, but I didn’t want a pic­ture of myself with an arrow stuck through my head or wear­ing Grou­cho Marx glasses.

I e-mailed sev­eral friends and asked them to send me the first three words that came to mind when they thought of me.  Surely, I could iden­tify a pat­tern that might be help­ful to com­mu­ni­cate to Vyvyan who I am.  The results were sur­pris­ing.  Many peo­ple put a lot of thought into their responses and sent heart­felt mes­sages like:  You’re such a good lis­tener; you’re so wise; you’re so kind.  I thought to myself, Well, that’s very mov­ing, but how do I get across in a pho­to­graph that I’m a good lis­tener, wise, and kind?  Should she get a snap­shot of me feed­ing home­less peo­ple or read­ing to orphans?  I started to get a few ideas.

Then I asked Jeff for his opin­ion.  “You should take your pic­ture in a leather jacket in front of a dis­tressed wall, because you’re edgy.  You’re not your mama’s Erma Bombeck, you know.”  And with that com­ment, all of my ideas seem to deflate like a rogue bal­loon, fly­ing hel­ter skel­ter around the room until they petered out at my feet.

Vyvyan arrived the next morn­ing with her cam­era.  I told her I really didn’t have any ideas.  I just knew that the major­ity of my friends described me as funny, cre­ative, and play­ful.  “Do you know how we can work those qual­i­ties into the pho­tographs?” I asked.

So Vyvyan took me out into the back­yard and began talk­ing to me as she took pic­tures.  We tried lots of dif­fer­ent ideas: stand­ing, sit­ting, seri­ous, smil­ing, with grop­ing a wooden Indian.  (Don’t ask!)  And then I had an idea.

It dawned on me that since I write about ‘80s music, why not incor­po­rate it into a pic­ture?  We went upstairs to the mas­ter bed­room, which had great light­ing from the sky­light.  I spread out the record sleeves of some of most iconic 12″ sin­gles from the ‘80s.  I lay down on top of the record sleeves and Vyvyan went to work.  “OOh, that’s yummy,” she cooed.

“Vyvyan, you can’t say stuff like or I’m going to crack up.”

“Let the music lift you up, dahling!”

After we fin­ished, we pulled the images up on my iMac and took a peek.  I was blown away.  We took almost 300 pic­tures and I was amazed at the qual­ity.  We had plenty of the stan­dard pro­fes­sional headshots–smiling and serious–but the pic­tures with the record sleeves really pro­jected the words  the major­ity of my friends had used:  funny, cre­ative, and play­ful.  For once, I had a pic­ture that pro­jected my per­son­al­ity.  Mis­sion accomplished!

When I had time to sit down and spend some time going through the images more closely, I encoun­tered a new obsta­cle.  When I looked at the pic­tures of myself, I couldn’t see myself.  In one pho­to­graph, I looked just like my mother.  In another pic­ture, I saw only my dad.  The faster I scrolled through the images, the more I real­ized that I couldn’t find myself, any­more.  It slowly dawned on me that as I’ve aged, I’ve begun to see my par­ents on my face more and more.  That might not sound like a prob­lem to most peo­ple.  How­ever, after fin­ish­ing a stren­u­ous work­out or long run, when I look in the mir­ror, I want to see a pil­lar of manly sex­i­ness star­ing back at me–not the 65-year-old woman who gave birth to me.

“Do you think maybe I have some sort of strange pho­bia and I’m going to need some bizarre treat­ment that requires elec­troshock ther­apy?” I asked my friend Joan.

“You’re prob­a­bly just not used to see­ing pic­tures of your­self,” Joan said.  “Why don’t you put the pic­tures where you can see them and you’ll even­tu­ally get used to them.”

Joan’s advice struck a chord with me, so I uploaded one of Vyvyan’s images to my iPhone and made it my wall­pa­per.  It’s just a pic­ture of me smil­ing at the cam­era, noth­ing spe­cial.  At first, I avoided myself when I picked up my phone.  In time, though, I began to grow more com­fort­able with look­ing back at myself and I began to see me again.  This morn­ing when I picked up my iPhone, I looked myself in the eye and said, “Wel­come back, old pal.”  I could see myself again.  Granted, it’s a 44-year-old self, but that face is no longer a stranger–I rec­og­nize it as a friend.

Now, I just have to fig­ure out which one of those 300 pic­tures to use.  Stay tuned …

Word Up Wednesday: Leap Fear

 Dictionary, Family, Health, Humor, Kids, Parents, Parody, Pop Culture, Vocabulary, Women's Interest, Word Up Wednesdays  No Responses »
Feb 292012
 

Leap Fear (noun) \leep feer\ — An expect­ing mother’s ter­ror that she will give birth on Feb­ru­ary 29.

Exam­ple:  Although Jeanette eagerly awaited the arrival of her baby, leap fear took over as her due date neared and she did the math and real­ized if he lived at home until his eigh­teenth birth­day, she’d have to sup­port him until he was seventy-two.

Can you use leap fear in a sentence?

Police Quell Toddler Brawl at Daycare

 Crime, Family, Humor, Kids, News of the Weird, Parents, Parody, So So Southern, Tall Tale Tuesdays  No Responses »
Feb 282012
 

Coweta County Police were sum­moned to the Tatum Tots, Kissimeecoochee’s pre­mium day­care, which is run by Miss Amber Jean Tatum.

Miss Tatum told the author­i­ties that a fight broke out in the nurs­ery when Li’l Bubba Buttes, 18-months, lum­bered over to the other side of the play pen where Caleb Jones, 12-months, was gnaw­ing on a touch-and-feel board book. Bubba pro­ceeded to push Caleb onto his back and threaten him by say­ing, “You wanna a piece of me?”  Then he pulled a paci­fier on Lit­tle Jones.

Caleb, who is the sun of Bubba Lee, the World’s most famous Asian-American quad-amputee stunt­man and mar­tial arts cham­pion in the peo­ple with no extrem­i­ties divi­sion, reacted by, in the words of Sher­iff Amos Tucker, “whip Li’l Bubba’s sweet-diapered ass with that feel my fuzzy bear book.”

Chaos erupted among the rest of the stu­dents in the nurs­ery, and at least one police offi­cer received blows to the head with a rat­tle before order was restored.

No one was arrested, how­ever, since Tatum Tots has a “No Cor­po­ral Pun­ish­ment” pol­icy, and Miss Amber Jean redi­rected the class’ behav­ior toward the shiny blue lights on top of the police cars.

Offi­cer Justin Thomas received an Sesame Street bandaid for his head wound and no stitches were required.

Ms. Tra­cie Leonard-Buttes, estranged wife of Big Bubba, was called down at the Meow Ranch Truck­stop and Mas­sage Parolor to come pick Li’l Bubba up and take him home until he can behave.  Ms. Leonard-Buttes apol­o­gized, stat­ing that Li’l Bubba had been teething and had been on edge recently.

Big Bubba, who is cur­rently serv­ing time for shoot­ing a hole through the large neon dough­nut sign out front of Dunkin’ Dreams, released a state­ment through his Mama, Mrs. Ernest T. Buttes, that Li’l Bubba has been unfairly sin­gled out and he plans to sue.

When asked for com­ment, Ms. Amber Jean said, “Well, I’ve never seen any­thing like this in my three years as a day­care cen­ter direc­tor, but I defin­tely plan to have an extra beer when I watch The Real House­wives of Atlanta tonight.”

On Sharing Personal Stories of Decapitation

 70s, Essays, Family, Humor, Memory Mondays, News of the Weird  No Responses »
Feb 202012
 

Grow­ing up, I remem­ber my grand­par­ents, aunts, and uncles telling tall tales and heav­ily embell­ished sto­ries at fam­ily gath­er­ings. There were quite a few char­ac­ters in my fam­ily tree, so there was no telling what you would hear between pass­ing the turkey and ladling gravy on your mashed potatoes

For some rea­son, my Aunt Bar­bara seemed to fre­quently have acci­dents and adven­tures. I believe she sliced the tip of a fin­ger off while work­ing at the Kroger deli and was once pulled over by a high­way patrol­man while wear­ing a nun cos­tume while on the way to work on Halloween.

The most amus­ing story my aunt shared with us, how­ever, is about the time my cousin, Kel­ley, decided to teach her mother how to ride a minibike. Things were going well until Aunt Bar­bara gave the minibike too much gas and shot off with her cling­ing for her life. Kel­ley and Uncle Jimmy chased after her and watched in hor­ror as she hit a pot­hole and her head flew off, just before the minibike fell to its side with her body. When they reached my aunt’s body, they dis­cov­ered that her head was still–thankfully–attached; it was her wig that had flown off. Unfor­tu­nately, she had bro­ken her wrist, I believe.

What's in a Name?

 Essays, Family, Hollywood, Humor, Kids, Parents, Pop Culture  1 Response »
Jan 302012
 

When I was a teenager, my mother told me that she named me after a boy she once dated who got fresh with her at Dairy Queen, so she shoved a soft serve ice cream cone in his face and walked home.  Although the boy’s pop­u­lar­ity had dropped in her per­sonal Gallup Poll, she still liked the name.  I was shocked.  I thought that the love my par­ents shared had burned brightly from the time they met as fourteen-year-olds at  Church of Christ roller­skat­ing party, when my dad grabbed my mom’s skates and said, “You’re skat­ing with me!”

My father told me that my mother was pulling my leg.  I was named after Jef­frey Hunter, a Hol­ly­wood actor, most famous for play­ing Jesus in King of Kings and Cap­tain Christo­pher Pike in the orig­i­nal Star Trek pilot, “The Cage.”  This befud­dled me, because we were nei­ther an overtly reli­gious fam­ily, nor were we Trekkies.  (How­ever, now I’m get­ting a visual of Jesus with pointed ears …)  Dad clar­i­fied that they weren’t par­tic­u­lar fans of Jef­frey Hunter, but his celebrity made the name pop­u­lar at the time I was born.

My mother told me that my father was in denial on two accounts:

Jeff Chan­dler, nom­i­nated for an Oscar for play­ing Cochise, was the Hol­ly­wood actor who was in vogue at the time–not Jef­frey Hunter.  (This intrigued me, because I always give the name Cochise to host­esses at restau­rants, so there is never any con­fu­sion when I hear “Cochise, party of four.”)

Dad was in denial because she always con­sid­ered the Jeff from high school more of a man because he always bought her a much larger soft serve ice cream cone than my father did.

My father rolled his eye and told me to stand back, before my mother’s nose grew and put out my eye.

I told my friend Kristie about it later.  She sug­gested that we look up what my name meant in a book of baby’s names that her mother kept on their shelves.  “Your name means peace­ful, a divine gift from God.”

““Ugh,” I said.  “That’s so boring.”

““What did you think it would mean?” she asked.

““I don’t know,” I said.  “Maybe ‘He who rocks’ or ‘God’s cool one.’”

““Well, look on the bright side,” she said.  “You can truth­fully tell girls that you are God’s gift to women.”

What’s the story behind your name?

Top Ten Worst Pop-Up Books for Children

 Family, Humor, Kids, Parents, Parody, Pop Culture, Top Ten Thursdays  3 Responses »
Jan 192012
 

Over the past few years, pop-up books have become more pop­u­lar with both chil­dren and adults.  How­ever, one must exer­cise cau­tion when select­ing a pop-up book for small chil­dren.  One never knows how a young one will react to a paper cre­at­ing jump­ing from the pages and into their tiny faces, but here are a few pop-up books that are prob­a­bly best left alone:

01. The Pop-Up Book of Ser­ial Killers

02. Oh, the Places Your Par­ents Will Aban­don You

03. Back in the Stirups Again: Mommy Vis­its Her Gynecologist

04. Slaugh­ter­house Fun: Where Do Ham­burg­ers Come From?

05. Billy’s First (and Last) Satanic Mass

06. How Sweat Shop Sally Lost All of Her Fin­gers and Toes (But Pro­duced a Lovely and Inex­pen­sive Cot­ton Blouse)

07. Things That Swim Up the Drain and Lurk Under Your Bub­ble Bath Foam

08. Dr. Smiley’s Pop-Up Book of Big Nee­dles

09. Some Ani­mals Like to Eat Kids

10. Preschool Prison Bitch: Danny Goes to the Big House

How the Modern Family Celebrates Christmas

 Family, Holidays, Humor, Kids, Memory Mondays, Parents, Pop Culture  No Responses »
Dec 262011
 

As my fam­ily grows older, and tech­nol­ogy con­tin­ues to evolve, I’m cer­tain that the mod­ern fam­ily is begin­ning to cel­e­brate Christ­mas in new ways.

For one, most every­one has inten­tion­ally lost body fat over the past year, so after we ate a calorie-laden lunch, we sat around and dis­cussed our mod­i­fied eat­ing habits.

“I don’t eat any­thing more than eight points,” my mother said.

“I start the day with oat­meal,” my older sis­ter said.

“I eat my mid-morning banana at ten o’clock,” I said, “And my almost-time-to-go-home orange at four.”

“I just don’t read the nutri­tion infor­ma­tion and eat the whole pack­age,” my lit­tle sis­ter said.

Next, we updated con­tact information.

“Are you still at the Alliance for Sex­u­ally Ambigu­ous Pen­guins?” I asked my older sister.

“No, they never seemed to be able to tell me exactly what my job descrip­tion was,” she said.  “Randi, is your Hot­mail address still the cor­rect one.”

“Not unless you’re send­ing me SPAM or Bath & Body Works coupons,” my lit­tle sis­ter said.  “If you want me to read it and respond imme­di­ately, e-mail me at Twynkle_Toes8469341e@myemailcanbeatupyouremail.com.”

“T … W … I–”

“Actu­ally, it’s a ‘Y’ not an ‘I’.”

Then we pro­ceeded to take pic­tures of one another with our iPhones, so we could sync them with the cor­re­spond­ing infor­ma­tion in our Con­tacts, which led to a group pic­ture using a bap­tism by fire approach to learn­ing how to use the self-timer.  After six attempts, we decided my lit­tle sis­ter should e-mail them all to us, so we could deter­mine which image of our­selves that we liked best, then my niece could just Pho­to­shop us into one picture.

Just when I thought noth­ing about this Christ­mas would be the same as our pre­vi­ous hol­i­days, my mother finally asked her peren­nial ques­tion:  “Did the stuff­ing taste okay?”  It was com­fort­ing to know that my mother’s stuff­ing para­noia still remained.

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