Monday my hubby walked in the door and said “what have you done all day?” And though he said it with a smile, I could clearly see the wheels inside his head turning with questions like “how long have these dishes been sitting here?” Uh-oh, I was being scolded!
“I got the paperwork done! Well, part of it, but the main packet, it’s done! Finito, finished.”
Leave it to my hubby to point out that there have been plenty of days in the past month when all of the dishes were washed and apparently those days would have been the perfect time to spend a day at the desk, filling out forms, in quadruplicate! “So, how many hits did your blog get today?”
His enthusiastic voice was clearly an effort to fake me out, get me to let my guard down! He was trying to bait me into admitting I’d spent the day glued to the bloggosphere, but I wasn’t offering up any confessions. “I’m not sure, let me check…” I maintained the fake enthusiasm as I logged in to check it out, and truth be told, I really had gone a whole day without WordPress. Okay, almost the whole day. I can’t help it if my morning ritual includes checking in on my favorite blogs, but I did not write any posts, so I really didn’t spend my day in the bloggosphere.
I was pretty proud of myself for finally completing the four novels required to complete phase 1 of the adoption. These are the pre-lawyer packets. I’m scared to see what the lawyer is going to give to me. When I was a kid I wrote so much in my little diaries and my poetry notebooks that by the time I was 8 years old I had one heckuva callous on my middle finger from the way I held my pen. It’s never gone away, but the past several years typing has made it much less noticeable. And now, after the packets, that sucker is back, with a vengeance!
After the return of the callous, the grueling hours of filling out the same things over and over again, I had no choice but to catch up on Dallas and take a nap. So far my summer reading list has been the DVD queue on NetFlix. I rented all the old seasons of Dallas. I’ve been watching the new show, and since I remember running around as a kid shouting “who shot J.R.?” I thought it would be fun to remind myself of all the old drama and catch up with the Ewing’s. So far, Bobby married Pamela, and she is Digger’s daughter. Digger’s a drunk, and he blames it all on his arch-enemy, Jock, who was smart enough to go register a claim for the oil they found together and he also rode away with the girl, Ms. Ellie. Then Jock and Ms. Ellie raised 3 boys, J.R., Gary, and Bobby. J.R. goes around sticking his nose in everyone else’s business and he sticks something else is everyone else’s wife. He ran off his brother Gary and does his best to keep Bobby on a leash. Sue Ellen is married to J.R., and even though she was once Miss Texas, her singing is terrible and she can’t hold J.R.’s attention for long, but she is dying to have the first grandchild, and is forever jealous of Pamela, who is sweet as pie to everyone, including the forever trouble making Lucy, the baby Gary left behind for Miss Ellie to raise. Then there’s Valene, she’s Lucy’s mama, a po-dunk waitress who dared to find her way back to Texas even though J.R. ran her off years ago. Right about there I fell asleep, with a four-year-old on my leg. Apparently he too is deeply engrossed in the happenings at the South Fork Ranch.
When a friend showed up at the house, I jumped up. I couldn’t believe it was 3:30! Where had the day gone? I started to busy myself, trying to get everything all spic-n-span before the hubby walked in. Then it happened, the door opened, and there he was! That gosh-darned cable box! Why does it keep going back to the wrong time? It’s stuck in the wrong time-zone or something, so it wasn’t 3:30 when I woke up, it was 4:30!
When my husband skips the griping and gets out the broom and just starts sweeping the house, I know he is at his breaking point! I like it better when he just says “damn, you could have done better around here today”. He gripes, I reason, he gripes some more, I pout, then we kiss and make-up… but when he sweeps, well, that means he doesn’t even wanna hear the reasoning. Is this a good time to mention I have a cold???
Knowing that he works outside all day in the heat while I spent my day in the dark air-conditioned house, enjoying the thunderstorms outside my window made me feel about 2 inches tall when he took to cleaning house. In the school year, I pull off some crazy combination of working, going to school, and volunteering, but in the summer, well, in the summer I am a stay-at-home mom, so I expect myself to run a tight ship.
This is where living in a tiny house presents quite the challenge. It’s either spotless or a wreck. There’s no in-between. It goes from Mr. Clean to Hurricane Disaster Zone in about 7.2 seconds on any given day. So yesterday I knew I really needed to devote my day to getting back on the Mr. Clean side, but I can tell you, I was tempted to hang out in the bloggosphere. Cristy over at Paltry Meanderings of a Taller Than Average Woman sent me a message that said she was nominating me for a whole lot of blogging awards! And then she insinuated that a lack-luster response would make me some kind of kitty-cat, you know the kind!
I’m not sure if I should thank Cristy for all of these awards. I mean, I love the Sunshine Award, I got it once from Roly. I’ve seen the Versatile Blogger a few times, but the Perspiring Blogger Award? Who came up with that one? Surely no one sees the sweat pouring down my face as I type away word after word… Thanks, but um, no thanks. Sweaty Armpits aren’t exactly something I’d like to brag about. Even Magic Mike loses his luster when sweaty armpits come to mind.
I’ve never gotten the Kreative Blogger before, which is surprising, considering my love affair with glue guns, but I just figured everyone telepathically understood I have a hatred of “creative spelling”. I guess Cristy didn’t pick up on that… but I just hate it when people go around creating their own spellings, especially for names! Take Tiffany, for example. I have seen it as Tiffanie, Tiphanie, Tiffnay, Tif’ne, Tiffini, Tiffahnee, Tyffanie, Typhanie, and Tioffany. What the freak is all of that about? Don’t people realize that all of this “kreativeness” just cheats kids out of ever having those cutesy pencils with their names already printed on them? Still, it’s an award I didn’t have, so I guess I’ll take it, but I’m a rebel, a rule breaker, I like to color outside the lines. So I’m gonna skip all the formalities, steal the graphic, and move on.
I will do just one thing, I will answer Cristy’s questions… just to be fair. So here you go…
1. Do you ever have that not-so-fresh feeling?
If you’re referring to the “one too many beers freshman year of college, woke up smelling like barley” feeling, then yes. If you’re talking about something out of a Summer’s Eve commercial, I’m gonna plead the fifth, while referring back to the night of too much beer. Although I am now wondering why in the world you’d want to know…
2. How often do you beat your children?
I don’t. They’re not nearly scared enough of me. I’m thinking of rectifying that. One of our caseworkers actually offered to buy us a paddle as an adoption gift! Proof that I need to scare them a little more….
3. If you owned a dwarf, what chore would you require him or her to do daily? Paint my toenails. For some reason just the idea of a dwarf polishing my toes is making me laugh so hard right now, that I’m thinking of looking on Craigslist to see if there’s a dwarf for hire somewhere…
4. How many fingers am I holding up? Just one, but he’s that tall guy in the middle no one likes very much…
5. What’s the worst gift a loved one ever gave you? My hubby once brought home some chocolate protein weight loss shakes, they were disgusting, and nothing says love like “I thought you wanted to lose a few pounds”
6. If you didn’t have to work, how many times a week would you really shower? Who needs a shower, we jump in the pool at least once a day!
7. What’s the one thing in your home that you wouldn’t want your grandmother/mother to find? I’m not really embarrassed of anything I have in my house these days, but if you wanna see what did embarrass me, check out #8 on this post!
8. If you had a catchphrase, what would it be?
Oh I have a terrible one. I’ve always said “are you smoking crack?” It bit me in the butt once when a girl in a fifth grade classroom got up on the table and started dancing provocatively. She was lifting her skirt when I looked up and it just spilled out of my mouth. It gets worse, apparently her parents, who were local crack dealers, thought I said it just because of their profession and drove over to my house to “thank” me for outing them like that. After assuring them that it’s a tacky phrase I often use, and wasn’t meant specifically for them, I had no choice but to go to the principal and confess my mistake. I was sure they were planning a visit of their own, and I wanted to beat them to it. Strangely, they decided to let it go, I think because they couldn’t figure out how to word their concerns. “She’s making fun of us just because we deal crack” just doesn’t come out well, no matter how you spin it.
9. Who is the most evil person you know and how would you destroy them in a perfect world?
I could give you a silly answer, but hopefully the crack story gave you enough laughs. I have known a few people in my time that I thought were evil. I believe it destroyed them. When you’re evil, it eats you from the inside. Perfect world not needed to accomplish that…
10. What is the meaning of life? Explain in seven words or less.
It’s about the journey, what you give!
http://www.reverbnation.com/open_graph/song/10520375
11. If you were a cartoon character, which one would you be? Jem! And if you don’t remember her, look it up on Wiki, cuz I cannot spend my day on WordPress. We are about to embark on our very first vacation, and we’ve decided to have a garage sale before we go. Some of my friends have already told me I’m crazy, but go big or stay home, right??
Life With Blondie 
Well done, Tiffany! The crack dealer story cracked me up! Yeah, I went there. Couldn’t help it. That was friggin’ hilarious.
FreddyFlow created The Most Perspiring Blogger Award; I just passed it along. Regarding the Kreative Blogging Award, the “creative” spelling also makes me cringe. It’s never a good thing to substitute a “k” for a “c.” Like in seafood. No one wants to eat krab vs. crab. But I suppose whoever created the award was trying to be, erm, creative. I’m willing to be that his or her kids have names like Kantalope and Krayon and Kamper.
As long as Krayon and Kamper don’t try to date my daughter, she’s blonde already, no sense confusing her with the “kreative spelling”! LOL
Bahahahahahaha.
Thank you for the photo of pretty pretty men. Is that a MOVIE?!!! What rock have I been under?
I’d say you’re funny and an awesome sauce blogger, but I’m thinking with all these awards that it would be redundant. And now that I’m done brown nosing, I must say that we’re on opposing sides over the creative spelling issue. I do it both purposefully and unpurposefully. (BTW, it’s Tyfanny) Now expecting to be black balled
Black balled? Never! There is only one thing worse than a kreative speller, and that is someone who pretends to agree with everything you say! I always welcome an alternate point of view, and yes, it’s a new movie, you must be under a rock if you haven’t heard people talking about Magic Mike, but don’t go see it for the beautiful story and amazing acting, you must go for pure eye candy only!!
Congrats on the awards. I ones lived in such a small place, u just put a Coffey mug on the table then the place looks dirty. I knew a song about Dallas, it goes something like this. “Hi`s name is cool, his wife is a fool. He drives a silver caaaarrrrr. He lives in a palace in the middle of Dallas, he`s name is J.J.R…” U have to know the theme song for Dallas, then u can sing along to it, lol!
Haha! I sang it… we used to do the “who shot J.R.” thing on our fingers, were you say the sentence and each time put one finger down, until you’re left with just your thumb and index finger in the shape of a gun, and POW!! Shot my sister a hundred times like that…
Poor sister. Wish i knew this game, would have loved to shoot my brother. LOL! Just kidding.