Reject #10: Alpha and Omega

Title: Rant: File Under "Things That Drive Me Insane"

Date: November 12th, 2008

Recently I bought a sweater. Attached to the tag was a tiny ziploc bag of yarn, which just begs the question: where can I get these adorable ziploc bags?

But really, that yarn is getting me all unraveled. It's been floating around my house for weeks now, just driving me crazy (because obviously I don't have any real things driving me crazy or else I wouldn't be on a rant about a tiny bag of yarn). So I ask you, what, in the name of all that is organized and efficient, am I supposed to do with 3 inches of brown yarn? I suppose it's meant to be the sweater equivalent of the extra button, but really, what do they think I'm going to do if this sweater starts unraveling? Run over to my file cabinet and look in the "Yarn, mini ziploc bags of" file?" Which brings me to first dilemma: where to put it. Every time I see it, it seems to taunt me Just try to find a place to put me without ending up at Ikea buying a entire wall storage system with little tiny drawers, and baskets-- lots and lots of baskets. I dare you. Seriously, those are fighting words.

I know, just put it with all those extra buttons and get on with your life already, right? I've tried that a few times; I walk over to my sewing stuff, open up my box of buttons and start to toss it in with the masses of other tiny ziploc bags (seriously, can I buy those online?). You're NEVER going to use me. Crap, is the yarn taunting me again? You don't know that. I might, anythings possible, I retort, channeling my best 13-year-old-girl-attitude, and top it off with a dramatic eye roll. Liar! You don't even know how to knit. That stupid yarn is so smug. Fine, guess where you're going? I walk to the garbage. I stand there. A few awkward minutes pass. I just can't bring myself to throw it away. This probably has to do with growing up in California, where I was taught in school that throwing something away is akin to murder, smoking, and voting for a conservative. Damn. I walk away. The yarn is back on my desk.

I think I've got it. I'll just learn how to knit. I could easily justify keeping a little length of yarn around if I knew how to use it. Problem solved. Take that yarn-o. So I walk over to my master to-do list. I'll just pencil it in: learn to knit. Let's see, right after clean out the garage, mulch the garden, touch up the baseboards, remodel the master bathroom, replace the kitchen counters, make a chore chart, buy new clothes for the kids, save the world, and print out and organize all our pictures from the last 4 years. And that doesn't even include all the TV I need to watch. Sigh. I think the yarn is laughing at me.

This yarn thing keeps reminding me of my grandma, who we'll call Grams for privacy reasons. Grams lived through the Great Depression and could not throw ANYTHING away. We have an oft-told family story of my cousin taking donuts to share with Grams, only to come back a few months later to find that Grams had saved the remaining half of a donut in the freezer for their next visit. My grandparents lived in Nigeria for a while, and traveled all over the world. My memories of their house involve room after room of interesting, old, and exotic things stored away on shelves and in drawers, closets stuffed with African fabric, colorful jewelry and beads, and an entire room full of ancient food storage. Grams passed away 2 years ago, a little over 3 years after my grandpa died. Last Summer my mom and her siblings got together to divvy up their parent's possessions. My mom came back with a van full of treasured items, among them an email that I had sent Grams a few years ago which she had printed out and wrote on it, "From Donna, Joyce's daughter." I bet she had a file just for that email. She probably had a file for little ziploc bags of yarn too.

I think I've decided. I am going to save that little bag of yarn. In honor of grandma's generation that just could not waste anything. I'm going to put it in the diaper bag, because you just never know when you'll need some yarn, you know, MacGyver style (quick, I need some gum, an old battery, and about 3 inches of brown yarn to deactivate this bomb!). So next time you need some yarn in a tiny bag, I've got you covered. But if you come over and leave me with a half eaten donut, I'm probably going to throw it away... At least I think so. I'm pretty sure. About 72% sure.

Notes: This is my oldest reject post, and also the last in my series. This is the one I've been dreading. It's been in my post-list since 2008. I think it was the first post I ever attempted to write that wasn't about my kids, or anything that we did, or even about anything at all really. It started with the MacGyver bit, one day as I was staring at that bag while I was supposed to be doing something else. Originally it was not very good-- it felt like a bunch of jumbled up one-liners with a weird reference to my grandma thrown in there. I revised it a couple of times, convinced myself to delete it at least 32 times, but I never could. I just wanted to see it to it's fruition so badly. I'm sure you are all very embarrassed for me now. Don't worry, there was a good year in there that I didn't even think about it at all. But this whole month while I've been digging up these old posts, I knew this one was there and that I wanted to finish it and publish it. I don't know if it was really worth the time I spent on it today, but I have to say, after a little, OK a lot, of editing today, I think it might be my favorite reject. I knew it had it in there. I still have that bag of yarn. I'll probably never learn how to knit. And yes, it really does drive me crazy to have to throw things away. Even blog posts that I never finished.

Reject #9

Title: 4 Stops a Day

Date: March 10, 2009

I have 4 bus stops each day: 11:15, 12:40, 2:20, and 3:45. Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic-- they are directly in front of our house, and it saves me from loading kids in the car 4 times a day to get to and from school. But it also means that I have to feed Sam lunch at 11, Mia lunch at 12:30, Sam a snack at 2:30, and Mia and Sam (again) a snack at 4. Nate has his own random eating schedule that really isn't much of a schedule and never seems to coincide with when the rest of us are eating. I feel like I feed children ALL day long. And then there's the nap schedule. Nate takes 3 naps a day. Between his naps and the bus stops, it's almost impossible to leave the house except to get the mail. Which I guess is a good things because apparently whenever I do go out I get speeding tickets, and since Mark just got laid off this week, we need to avoid getting any more of those. And when Nate isn't napping, he wants to be held. Maybe it seems worse lately because he's been sick for the last few days, so it seems like all the time. He's almost crawling, and I'm not sure which is worse: a clinging baby, or a mobile baby in a house full of Polly Pocket accessories. Choose your poison I guess. I've got about 1 1/2 hours with both Sam and Mia alone each day (with Nate). When they're together all they do is fight, but when they're apart they get bored and do whatever it takes to get attention from me.

So the point is: I spend almost every day at home getting NOTHING done. It's a blast. Bored? Come on over. Trust me, we're not doing anything.

Notes: This is one reject I didn't edit or revise at all, even when I first wrote it. This is the original, uncut, 100% unfiltered first run. The writing is not spectacular; it's simply me spewing out how I felt about my life at home with 3 kids last year. I meant to add more to it, but (surprise) got interrupted and that was the end of that. When I got back to it a few days later, it seemed whiny, and even I can get self-conscious about that. Now looking back on it, I find it an amusing little snippet from a rather non-amusing era of my life. A year later, I still have 4 bus stops, though more spaced out. We can actually leave the house for more than 2 hours at a time. Nate is only napping once a day. Mark is no longer unemployed. So far, no speeding tickets this year. Mia and Sam, though, are still constantly fighting with each other or fighting for my attention. And I'm still trying to catch up from not getting anything done for an entire school year.

Reject #8

Title: Weekly Thank Yous
Date: January 22, 2010

I know there are really somber, desperate things going on in the world, but a snarky blogger can only held back for so long. There are some things that must be shared, whether or not LenoGate has run it's course.

To the elderly gentleman at the fabric store who was buying more brown fleece to add to his Snuggie because "the darn thing didn't come with a back!": Thank you for absolutely making my day. Add a hood and you can be Obi-Wan Kenobi for Halloween.

Thank you bumtrinket for being my new favorite word.

Is it bad to give your 19 month old a bottle of melted ice cream because you're out of milk and too lazy to go to the store? Thank you, parental ingenuity.

Here's a fun conversation, thanks to the public education system:
Mia: What are all those people doing?
Me: Protesting, because we're in a war.
Mia: We're in a war?
Me: Yes.
Mia: With Russia?
Me: No.
Mia: Were we ever in a war with Russia?
Me: Yes.
Mia: Oh yeah, and we won because of Martin Luther King Jr!

Notes: This one was just your typical random week in review that never got reviewed. From January 2010. I'm still not sure if it's worth reviewing, except that the old man at JoAnn's still makes me laugh.

Continuing On: Rejects #6 & 7

OK, so I had an unexpected blog hiatus for a few days, give or take a week. I spent most of of it picking lice nits out of Mia's hair-- hours and hours of nitpicking in the most literal sense. I now have an unwelcome understanding of the severe odiousness of that term. Also the term "mountains of laundry."

So let's continue. I hope you're not too tired of my rejects. It's been a fun little creative exercise for me. Most other people call it "finishing what you started," but those people are probably the types who actually make cookies instead of just eating all the dough. Boring.

To make up for my little absence, today's post is a 2 for 1. After this, I only have a few more, provided I don't get distracted by another public health epidemic. When I'm all finished, I just might make it worth your while, if you know what I mean. But I'm still trying to decide if I have that kind of blog.

Reject #6

Title: Put it in Vinyl

Date: June 2009

I hear that vinyl lettering is all the rage these days. You can even custom order your own quote/cliche/expletive to adorn your wall/mirror/baby's bum. I was browsing through an assortment of them at a craft store recently. They were mostly the kind of heart warming sentiments that elicit a sudden desire to frolic in a meadow with singing woodland creatures, and also to punch someone in the face. Since I don't normally spend time doing either of those things, I didn't get any. However, on the wall of a tiny little restaurant in Canada a few weeks ago, I saw THE quote. The one that is destined to become my vinyl mantra just as soon as I can figure out what font to put it in. And when I do, this is what will be above the mantle:

I can only please one person each day.

Today is not your day.

Tomorrow isn't looking good either.

And this is what I would put in the kitchen:

Make yourself a dang quesadilla!

What would your vinyl mantra be?

Notes: This one is from June of 2009. I believe it was originally part of a post titled "Other Reasons I Would Never Fit In In Utah." I was really down on the Beehive state back in 2009 for some reason. Eventually it morphed into this version, but I could never decide if it was funny or over-the-top bitter. Since then, I've read quite a few blog posts in a similar vein, which were much better, I thought, and I lost interest in finishing it. But, I still love that quote, so I might as well add mine to the mix of vinyl lettering satire. And for the record: I do have a quote on my wall (on a wood plaque, not in vinyl though) that says "Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much." You want to barf now don't you? (Hey, now that would be a great vinyl quote.)

Reject #7

Title: My Blog Rules

Date: September-ish 2009

1. I never ever blog about the weather. This has been one of my rules since my 2nd post, and I'm pretty sure I haven't broken it since. If I have, refer to rule #2.
2. I can change my rules at anytime. I know this is the most over used rule ever, but it really takes care of that pesky integrity problem.
3. There are some things I do not share on my blog. One of those things is couponing. Yes, I coupon (rather, I dabble in coupons, really). But let's face it, nobody wants to see a picture of 25 boxes of Cap'n Crunch with a caption underneath that says, "For all of this? $2.47!!!"
4. Lying is perfectly fine as long as it's funny. "My stories are 97% true," I once said. OK, no I didn't. David Sedaris said that, but I wish I did. It's a great quote.

Notes: This one started out in my blog notebook as a very rough outline, sometime last year. I ended up using the funnier parts in this post, and what's left is mostly serious. Serious meaning these are actually rules I kind of adhere to while blogging. I never posted it because a) I couldn't think of anymore rules, and it felt incomplete, and b) I couldn't figure out how to phrase it so that other bloggers wouldn't get defensive. And once I have to preface a post with a long "please don't take this personally" disclaimer, it just takes the fun out of it all. So, just to be clear, these are my rules only. If your blog has different rules, or no rules, I still read it. So you blog about the weather, so what? It's your blog, right? It would be especially appropriate for a weather blog, I might add. The point is, we all have different rules, spoken or unspoken, for blogging. If you have some, feel free to share.

Reject #5

Title: Deep Stuff

Date: February 1st, 2010

It's been a while since we've talked.

No, I mean really talked. About important, deep stuff.

Oh, no I didn't mean right now. I mean someday we should we should just get really deep, you know?

Did I tell you our dryer broke last week?

Thank you, you are so thoughtful. Yes, it was a pain. But you know what is really fun?

The laundry mat. Seriously, you should take your kids there.

Those carts they have-- they are a blast. I'm thinking about getting one.

Not really actually. Have you seen The Amytiville Horror?

Me neither, but I was reading about it in the laundry mat while my kids were running around with the carts. At least, it said it was the Amytiville Horror Story but when I got home and looked it up on Wikipedia, it was a completely different story. Still, it was creepy.

Well, I won't tell my husband you said that about Wikipedia. I think it was the magazine that got it all wrong. Get this, it was a Redbook from 1988.

Seriously, in mint condition. There was a whole pile of magazines from 1988 in the laundry mat. I don't know what was creepier, the freaky ghost story, or the 80's flashback. That thing was full of big hair and even bigger blazers. And Loni Anderson.

No, I'm pretty sure she's still alive. But the really scary thing is that women's magazines haven't changed at all. I was reading all the same articles in the check out line at Albertsons this morning. The only difference is back in 1988 the answer to the "how to dress for your body type" question involved high-waisted pants and shoulder pads.

Shoulder pads are coming back? Oh, please kill me now.

Oh. Really? I mean, um, no- yeah, you'd look great in shoulder pads.

No, don't return it-- I'm sure it's totally cute. Forget that. All I'm saying is, you would think after 22 years, women's journalism would have evolved a little. Have a little more substance you know?

It's a good thing we can talk about deep stuff.

We really should talk more often.

Notes: When I wrote this, it seemed like I hadn't been blogging much at the time. So it started with the "It's been a while" line, and it took on a life of its own from there. It's all true; I did spend a morning at the laundry mat with the kids, reading the so-called true story about a haunted house in a 1988 Redbook. And it did say it was the Amytiville story, but it really wasn't. And those laundry carts really are a blast. And women's journalism drives me crazy. But as far as not publishing this post, here's what happened: I got hung up on the shoulder pad thing. I must have reworked that line 50 times, and eventually it just killed it. Death by regrettable 80's fashion trends, I guess. But I think it illustrates something interesting about blogging, at least blogging for me. Reworking something over and over is not always a good thing. By the 73rd time I'd looked at it, I'd long since begun questioning it. Is anyone even going to get this? Or worse, are they going to get it and think, "WOW, that was lame." Or, "I wish this lady would just go back to posting pictures of her kids that I'm stalking." Could my 4 year old write better stuff than this? OK, well yes, that's entirely possible. But what's the worst that could happen? It is really lame and I only get one comment and it's just a bunch of links to buy shoes online? I could live with that. It's happened before. All I'm saying is, that publish button can be a scary thing sometimes.

Reject #4

Title: Love it!

Date: January 3, 2010

As I was perusing through the newspaper ads yesterday, this green leather chair from Cost Plus practically jumped out of the page, scooped me up, and cradled me in cozy imaginative repose for a full 4-5 minutes until I finally came to and blurted out, "I love this chair so much I can hardly stand it!" Everyone ignored me, except Mia, who came over and looked at it quizzically. "Hmmmmm," she said, and picked up a pen and did this:

"There," she said, and then she walked away. And that was that.

Notes: A short one for you today. I really had every intention of posting this amusing little exchange, until I couldn't figure out how to use our scanner with our new computer. That is to say, I tried to figure it out for about 3 minutes until someone started screaming, "Mom! Sam's copying me!" And someone else said, "Honey, where are my car keys?" And I said, "did you look on the key hook?" And they said, "no-- oh, there they are, right on the key hook." Anyway, I still haven't figured out that scanner, but I did finally just take a picture of it. I also wanted to include a Rite-Aid ad that the kids had gotten to at Christmas time and circled all the things they wanted for Christmas. I lost the ad, which is really unfortunate because there were some good ones. The only ones I can remember now: a Budweiser 12 pack, batteries, and a smokeless ashtray. It still makes me laugh.

Addendum to the notes: D'oh! That 3rd sentance should read, ..."until someone started screaming, "Mom!" Sam's copying me!" And someone else said, "Mom! Sam's copying me!..." That would have been much funnier. Oh well. So glad I have Constant Sleep Deprivation as my scapegoat. Also, I should add that I never got that chair, though I still love it. I mean, love it!

Reject #3

Title: Would You Buy This House?

Date: October 16th, 2009

Actually, it's already sold. Sorry, didn't mean to rip your heart out, in case you happen to love nondescript early 1970's homes that have been abused by large families and come with exorbitant California price-tags. Anyone? What, no takers? (furrowed brow) Surprising.

This is the house I grew up in. What? You didn't grow up in a ghetto, eating shoe leather, and working in illegal child-labor factories to support yourself and your orphaned siblings? (This is you talking, in case you didn't know). Nope, suburban California, eating a variety of casseroles, no orphans around that I remember, though I only got paid $.25 to take out the garbage so we may have a case for illegal child-labor. Hmmm, I would have pegged you as someone with a much harsher childhood. (You again). Surprising, I know.

Yes, I have one of those stories that goes like this: after being born, my parents brought me home from the hospital to the house I lived in until I left for college. Actually that's not true, they brought me home to a different house, and then 5 months later we moved to this house, and then comes the college part. Except there was also a lot of stuff in between too. And since then as well.

But let's skip all that up to a few weeks ago when I went to California to help my parents get their house ready to sell after living in it for 32 years. The house is almost unrecognizable from when we were growing up, as it has gone through so many transformations over the years. It's like the Michael Jackson of houses. We tired so hard over the years to remove the 1970's from that house, and the result was kind of impressive, but only if you knew what it looked like before. As I was brushing my teeth one night, it suddenly seemed a travesty to me that the next people to live in that house would never know that the upstairs bathroom once had dark green woven-grass wall paper, gold-speckled linoleum flooring, and the most hideous caulk job around the bright yellow bathtub. Now it just looks like this:

Which they'll probably think is bad enough. But at least we fixed the broken lock on the door and they won't have to pull open the first drawer as a makeshift blockade. We did not however, fix the drain in the tub, which is still bright yellow.

You would never know that before this kitchen was expanded and remodeled it was a dark cave of brown cabinets, mustard yellow flecked counters, and orange walls. Even the ceiling was orange, and strangely it took until I was 13 to ever notice it. We had a loud hand bell and it was someone's job to ring it every night at dinner time. Like Pavlov's dog, we all became immediately and ferociously hungry no matter how full we might have felt just moments before. Thousands and thousands of meals for a family of 9 were prepared in here, including Bean Burgers (the regrettable family specialty), Grandma's famous rolls, all assortments of Mormon casseroles, crepes on Sunday night, and of course, homemade oatmeal for breakfast almost every week day morning. Being told to eat our oatmeal because it would "stick to your ribs" conjured up disturbing mental images that still haunt me today. When we complained the reply was, "You're lucky it's not germade." I didn't know what germade was, but if it was worse than oatmeal, I didn't want to find out. Eventually I learned to spoon it into my OJ and dump it down the sink when mom wasn't looking.

And what about the family room? In pure unadulterated 70's style, that wall originally had a red brick facade to go with the dark wood paneling on the opposite wall and the ugliest red, green, and orange astro turf carpet that can only be described as "patterned vomit." This is where we would watch VHS recordings of MTV videos from 1985 over and over again, and dance to Thriller while jumping on the little trampoline. And although the floors look clean now, there was about a 10 year period where at any given moment, someone could yell out "Touch the Floor and You're Barf, staring now!" and we would all immediately jump onto the nearest object to avoid directly touching the floor. You could easily make it from one end of the family room, up the stairs, and into the farthest bedroom with never a shortage of toys, books, papers, clothes, the occasional plate, and other miscellany to step on to avoid becoming "barf." We rarely had to use the furniture.

No one will be be able to tell about all the times we slid down these stairs in sleeping bags, eventually ruining the original puke green carpet and probably the sleeping bags too. Later, my brother Arnold would put our pet hamsters in lunch boxes and roll them down the stairs to their deaths. Or about how we figured out exactly how sneak down the stairs to avoid any creaks, and which step to sit on (3rd from the bottom) to just barely see the TV in the family room, where mom and dad were watching Dallas and thought we were asleep. By the way, that banister is brand new; we had to live with a wrought iron railing with most of the black finish chipped off. It's funny to me to see a picture of the stairs completely bare; I have no memories of that ever happening.

Imagine this room with floor-to-ceiling marbled mirrors 0n both sides of the fireplace. We only lit a fire in the fireplace once a year, on Christmas Eve. Even the year that Danny and I threw the unlit duraflame log into the Christmas tree and got sent to our rooms, effectively ruining Christmas that year. Hopefully no one will ever know how, in what can be called the "Extreme White Trash Years," the beloved family dog went senile, and began using one corner of the room as a bathroom, and how eventually the smell became so bad that no one would go in there and it became a storage room for broken furniture and old exercise equipment-- essentially an indoor garage. True story. But before all that, this was the room where we held Family Home Evening (most) every Monday night, the only family argument we had that began and ended with a prayer, as we always said. My dad kept detailed minutes of announcements and family business from those meetings, and if you read those minutes you could see for yourself that my brother John and I loved to announce really important things such as, "we have a brown couch!' and, "we're having Family Home Evening!" Every time we would raise our hands, my dad would ask, "do you have a real announcement this time?" We would lie through our teeth every time and he never learned. Another thing he never learned was that when he made a special request to sing I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home, we always changed the words to I'm so mad when Daddy comes home. To this day, I cannot sing that song without thinking of our version.

I don't have a picture of my old bedroom, the only one that was downstairs and therefore the best room in the house for sneaking out. And that's all I have to say about that at this time. It eventually became a pretty decent guest room, I'm sure for the same reason. Someone will probably use it for a home office, and never know that it was once a playroom where we played hours and hours of Q*bert and Burgertime on the Atari. When it became my room, I decided to paint it by myself, mostly to cover up the spot where my little sister Katy wrote her name in large magic markered letters. I chose a green, somewhere between mint and aquamarine, and, inexplicably, only painted 3 walls. For a long time, it was the only room in the house that wasn't painted white, except for the master bedroom which was the color of Marigold butter.

And this spot? I wish I could make a plaque to put on the wall by the door that would read, "Here stood an Alhambra water cooler, complete with a stack of little 3 ounce dixie cups and a bumper sticker on the side that said Get a Real Job, Be a Housewife." And if you thought that hutch ever actually held china, or crystal, you would be sadly mistaken. It was the home to piles and piles of paperwork, office supplies, maps, cook books, and was usually covered in post-its, snapshots, and fliers. But was one hutch enough? Oh, no it was not.

So they had this hutch built in, also to hold paperwork, and piles and piles of stuff. And those piles of stuff propagated and spread to the table and chairs. If it was your job to set the table each night, first you had to remove the piles of things from my mom's spot at the table, and relocate them on top of the piles of other things on the hutch, hoping that they wouldn't reproduce while we were eating. Can you just picture us all sitting there eating meals together? Well, not at that table anyway. It's way too nice. And did you imagine us supping pleasantly together, quietly and calmly discussing current events with no shortage of "please and thank you"? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Notes: I was really excited about this post when I first started it, and somewhere around paragraph 20 or so I started to loose steam. It just got really LONG. To be honest, I never published it because I got bored. By my own childhood. It was a real struggle today to finish it so it didn't feel too truncated. Knowing that I'll never go back to that house is a weird thing, and writing about it is even weirder still. Who knows why? Therapist Aimee? Anyway, I wish I had a prize for you if you made it this far, but let's face it, I'm probably the only one here at this point. Well maybe my parents too. Mom? Dad? Hope you're loving your new house.

Reject #2

Title: It's Time We Had a Little Talk

Date: Sept. 25th, 2009

(sigh)

I was hoping it wouldn't come down to this. This is a tad awkward, but it's got to be said. Enough with ridiculous political forwarded emails. It's called Snopes.com people. Use it. It's not that hard. Don't like Snopes? How about TruthOrFiction.com, or BreakTheChain.org, or FactCheck.org. There are people who get paid to keep you from looking like an idiot. It's a wonderful advantage of living in the Information Age really. So, please, no more emails about toilet spiders. That photo of Obama saluting the flag with his left hand? PHOTOSHOP. And do I even have to say it? He's not a muslim. Please. And no, Diamond Rio's Jesus Loves America song was not blacklisted because of it's political incorrectness. It's common knowledge that political incorrectness has never kept a country song from being produced, and they are unfortunately played on public radio all the time. Did you ever think that maybe that song never became popular because it isn't very good? I mean did you listen to it? And seriously, Diamond Rio? Did you just waste my time with an email about Diamond Rio? Oh, no you didn't.

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but if you send me anything without verifying the facts first, so help me I will make a voodoo doll with your name on it and stab your eye repeatedly and then run you over with my van.

Are you still not sure? Let me help you out.

Are you a wacky republican? Stop sending me stuff.

Do you think that sending one email to your entire address book is in good judgement? Take me off your list.

It says it's been verified on Snopes.com? It hasn't.

Do it yourself, or do us all a favor and DELETE it.

And for the love, use bcc people!

And just to clarify: funny emails are always welcome. Make me laugh, not want to kill you. And to further clarify, pictures of cats dressed in human clothes and reading the newspaper while smoking cigars fall in the latter category.

So we're good right? Wonderful. Hopefully we'll never have to have this talk again.

Now, be sure to read this over and over, because Bill Gates himself is tracking your every move on the Internet, and will personally pay you $500 every time you read this post. (It's true, he can totally do that.) Also, if you don't' forward this link to everyone you know before you are done reading this post, then Jesus will know that you don't really love him and Glen Beck will cry because you hate America. And you will become impregnated with Satan's spawn, and everyone you know will die. Oops, too late.

Notes: OK, then. This was a bit snarky, even for me. I used to get bombarded with emails from some sweet lady at church, bless her email-forwarding heart. And the last straw was some ridiculous email about that Diamond Rio song. It's not even worth going into, and I don't know why it enraged me so much. But this post was born as a result. The reasons I never posted it should be fairly obvious. I know far too many republicans, and only a few of them are really wacky, but I figured it would offend them all. So don't hate me OK whackjobs? :) For the record, I know a few wacky liberals too, just none of them forward me emails. But my biggest fear in posting this was that everyone would purposefully start forwarding me the most inflammatory emails they could find, just to be funny. Why did I even mention that? Please don't. But do tell me about the worst forwarded email you've ever received, even from me, because I'm sure even I sent them way back in the day. I think the toilet spider one was the first one I ever got, over 10 years ago. That's why I like that reference. I also like the Glen Beck comment, but other than that, meh-- It never really came together how I wanted it to. I probably shouldn't post it, but here I go: my ode to unsubstantiated email forwarders.

Anniversary Series: The Rejects

My little blog had an anniversary last week. 2 years! It's a pretty big deal. In fact, you know Joe Biden's recent f-bomb slip? Well, he wasn't talking about the Health Care Bill. And in the glorious blogging tradition of blogging about your own blog, I set out to do a Best Of kind of post, but discovered in my list of posts a treasure trove of forgotten and discarded unpublished posts. Eureka! What could be better for celebrating 2 years of mediocre and inconsistent blogging, bad photography, and pathetic blog designs (not a hint Courtney, just a statement of fact) than a collection of posts that were either so bad and/or boring I didn't even bother to publish them? LOVE blogging traditions! So every day I'll dig up one of the dejected posts and give a little explanation, synopsis, or apology. I might try to finish them, or just leave them as is-- now is that CRAZY or what?! I know, I know, you can't wait.

So let's get started.

Reject #1

Title: I Don't Like to Flaunt, but Sometimes I am Just Brilliant.

Like the other day when I thought that it would be a fantastic idea to take my kids to the Seattle Art Museum by myself, in the middle of dinner time. Because nobody else would be there right after work on Free Thursday right? And also because young kids LOVE being dragged around art museums right? Especially ones where you can't touch anything, and they have security guards everywhere, child-hating security guards to be specific, just waiting for some sinister 4 year old to reach out and contaminate something. And there's nothing that kids love more than walking (not running) around silently, looking at things that don't make any sense to them, right?

And afterward, (my brilliant plans continued) wouldn't it be fun to go to some funky burger joint that was on Oprah's list of "20 burgers you must eat or you'll die", or something like that. Because no one else would be at that sort of place wanting to eat Oprah's famous hamburgers right? I mean, hardly anyone even watches her show. And we all know how much kids love waiting for almost 30 minutes in a really crowded, small space for the kind of food they could get in .3 seconds at a certain other hamburger establishment that also has indoor playgrounds and cheap licensed-character toys? I was sure a disheveled mom and a gaggle of untidy kids would blend right in with the throngs of Seattle hipsters with their skinny jeans and disturbingly fringed hair. No one would even notice me there with three young children. Three cranky, hungry, whiny children. Right? The whole outing was a guaranteed recipe for shiny, happy, scrapbook-worthy photo-op memories, I was sure.

Right.

Yes, another successful family adventure. Most parents find it sufficient to simply look through a book about art with their children, or do a simple craft with them. Me? I don't stop until my kids are emotionally scarred and I've managed in just a few short hours to stunt their cultural development, and ensure that they will forever associate art with intense hunger pains and extreme boredom. But I'll make sure when I put the digitally altered pictures of them smiling at the museum in their scrapbooks, the caption will read:

Museum Day with Mom! We *heart* art! So much FUN!!


Notes: This was from February, and to be honest, I don't know why I didn't post this. I must have meant to add more to it, and by the time I got back to it I couldn't remember what it was. I didn't edit much, but I did add my favorite line: we *heart* art! And yes, it really was a miserable trip to the museum. Pretty much from the moment we walked in the door, my children concluded very loudly that I must have been smoking crack to take them to a such a boring place, and any attempt on my part to point out something interesting (Look kids! That looks neat! Oh wait, no-- that's just a garbage can) was met with blood curdling screams of "you're not my mommy!" By the time we got to the burger joint (Red Mill Burgers if you're local), it was after 7 and everyone was well beyond starving. I think the other patrons must have thought my kids were all having simultaneous seizures. Maybe they were. I was trying to pretend I didn't know who they belonged to. For the record though, there were some very nice people sitting next to us who kept drooling over Nate. Lucky for me that kid has some sort of endorphin-producing effect on most people: they just get kind of happy and loopy around him. He's better than dope that way. Anyway, it was in the middle of Red Mill, waiting for our (over-hyped) food with crazed children climbing all over me that the line about emotional scars and stunted cultural development came to my mind. I think it confirms for me that my most creative bursts come in the middle of complete chaos. Also that I should not trust Oprah when it comes to hamburgers.

See, isn't this fun?