Just think of all the money we'll save on shampoo!

This evening, I was multi-tasking: making dinner and searching for my lost pedometer. As I headed down the hallway to check the computer desk drawers for about the twentieth time, I got the shock of my life - Bryan was sitting on the bathroom floor holding Wyatt and SHAVING HIS HEAD! I could not believe what I was seeing was really happening. First I screamed and then I had to lay down.

It's true - Wyatt has been developing a bit of a mullet (business in the front, party in the back) as babies sometimes do. And, I had mentioned possibly cutting the back a little. But I couldn't believe Bryan had taken him into the bathroom and shaved it! Bryan said, "I was going to surprise you." Oh, I was surprised all right.

I know it should not have been such a big deal to me. It is just hair. But I am a sentimental person and I would have taken pictures of the process. And I would have CUT it, not shaved it.
People, I love my husband dearly and I like surprises but there are good surprises and bad surprises. Good ones are ,"I gave the dog a bath so you wouldn't have to," or ,"I ordered pizza so you don't have to cook tonight." Bad surprises are, "I invited my mom to come and live with us!" or ," I shaved our baby's head for the first time without telling you."

Thankfully, he only shaved the long bottom part, not the whole head. And, he did pick up some of the hair so I can put it in Wyatt's scrapbook. Also, I just took pictures of Wyatt's little mullet yesterday so at least I have that.

I guess Bryan must like surprises. And being a good wife, I have to think of a surprise for him - a really, really good one. I'm thinking something involving laxatives. LOTS AND LOTS of laxatives.

and THAT is how I got the keyboard-shaped bruise on my forehead

About a year and a half ago, I noticed that everyone else on the planet had an ipod. Except, of course, me. I wasn't sure what they did besides play songs, but I wanted one. So I began thinking of a way I could justfify spending $130 on something I didn't need and had no clue how to use. Having no job, I immediately started looking for something to sell.

Flashback to my early 20's:
If you live in Boulder, Colorado and you want to fit in, there are a few things you need; a pair of flip flops, a backpack full of granola, and a good sleeping bag. If you are a chick, it also doesn't hurt to have really hairy armpits, but I'm talking about the sleeping bag here. As a youngster, my family camped a lot but it was the kind of camping done from a really nice trailer. The rough part of "roughing it" was that the TV in the trailer was black and white. Now a 20-something, living in Boulder, I had some friends who convinced me that I would enjoy a slightly more rugged version of camping. But first, I would need some equipment - including a $225 sleeping bag that was rated to zero degrees. That means that if I were stupid enough to go camping on a night when the temp would get down to zero, theoretically, I would not freeze to death. The problem was that I don't think I ever camped on a night that got below a blustery 80 degrees. So the few times that I camped, I spent the night on top of my sleeping bag. In a pool of my own sweat.

Flash forward to a year and a half ago: I find myself scanning our home for something to sell and I'm drawn to the beloved sleeping bag which incidentally still has the tags on it. Yes, I used it THAT much. I decided to list it on Ebay (don't worry - I was honest and said it was used but in excellent condition. I didn't mention the pool of sweat part.) A few days later it sold for $137! I now had the money it would take to be cool.

Bryan used the money to buy my shiny new ipod for me. We spent an entire weekend going through all my CD's and Bryan put all the songs I wanted on it for me since I'm technology impaired.

I was finally as cool as everyone else - I, too, could drive around town rocking out to "Brass Monkey" with my tinted windows down. I was no longer bound by the cassette player in my trusty old Buick. It changed my life.

Now fast forward to a month ago. I plugged my ipod in to the car's outlet and...nothing happened. Blank screen. To my absolute horror all my songs had been somehow erased. You know how horses can smell fear? It was just like that - my ipod smelled my technology impairment and delete my songs just to be a bastard!

So this week I begged Bryan to show me how to put the songs back on. I took him one CD so he could show me, knowing that it was going to take me a while to get all the CD's put back on.
But every time he tried to show me, something went wrong. Bryan, being a little more tech-savvy than I, had to troubleshoot over and over again. Meanwhile, everyone in our house under the age of three was having meltdown - Wesley was jumping on the bed and taking papers out of the file cabinet and Wyatt was crying and wanted to be held and constantly jiggled. By someone in a chicken suit. It was as if every element in the process was against us. And I'm not sure if Bryan is a bad teacher (probably not since he has a teaching degree), I am a slow learner, or my ipod and computer are seriously messed up, but adding five songs should NOT be that hard. I wanted to Slam. My. Head. On. The. Computer. Keyboard.

After about an hour, Bryan announced, "There. That's how you add the songs." Wow, after only an hour and 17,000 steps, there were five whole songs on my ipod!

And so the next time I have about a year of free time and a deep desire to torture myself, I'll add more songs to my ipod. But until then, I might be stuck with the old Peter, Paul, and Mary cassette tape.

hello - is anyone there?

It's like my mom always said - "Your friends are the ones who will be there for you when you need them."

Two days ago, I sent out a plea, asking that you all help me think of something to do every day for a year. And do you know how many responses I got? Are you ready? Two. Yes, that was the number that comes right after one and before three, TWO! I guess it's time to thank God that I didn't really need help - that I hadn't fallen into a well or wasn't choking on my own tongue - because with only TWO people to help me, I'm pretty sure I'd be stuck in that well or tongueless. And it wasn't because the prize offer was vague. In fact, one friend actually said he would take the Poop-Eating Dog. That's a true friend.

So, despite my feeling that you all apparently wouldn't post a comment if your life (or mine probably) depended on it, I'm going to share the ideas I've gotten so far.

Every day for a year, I could:
Hug a stranger
call my mother in law (talk to her every day already, though)
blog 10 words
post a blog
do a good deed
write a letter to someone

These are all good ideas, but I haven't gotten the one that really makes my heart beat faster yet. And don't worry - I haven't lost faith in you guys. Because my mom also used to say, "Cupcakes are not breakfast food," and she was WAY wrong on that one.

Send me ideas!

a plea for help

I need some help. From you.

Here's the scoop: yesterday, my friend, Steph, sent me a link to a website of a lady who made a New Year's Resolution to use her crock pot every day for a year. She writes about it every day, shares her recipes, and as an added bonus, she will crack your butt up. And then in People magazine last month, there was an article about a couple who made a resolution to have sex every day for a year. (Honestly, my reproductive organs hurt just thinking about that kind of workout...) Now, I've made a lot of New Year's Resolutions in my life, but none ever involving a crock pot or daily sex. How could I have missed out on those two?!?

So here's the part I need your help with. This idea of Do Something Every Day For a Year is sort of "in" right now. During my 31 years of life, I've missed out on the "in" thing too many times - I never had a Big Wheel, never had an Easy Bake oven, never wore parachute pants, never had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese (and isn't that a right of every kid born in America?) I'm not missing out on this one.

I think the next step is to figure out what I could do and write about every day for a year. My self discipline muscle is sore just thinking about doing a year's worth of anything but I am up for this challenge.

I'm even going to come up with a prize for the person who comes up with the winning suggestion - a good prize, not just something I have laying around the house like a poop-eating dog or a baby.

Just send me suggestions. Keep in mind this needs to be something most people wouldn't do every day, but also something that won't land me in prison. Jail is fine, but not prison.

Game on!

I hadn't even thought of that

As some of you might remember, a couple months ago a devastating tornado went through our neighborhood, splintering entire houses into toothpicks and nearly killing our family. If you know me at all, you know that I never exaggerate. But really, the storm DID blow Wesley's sandbox away, blow down our neighbor's fence, and tear up the trees in our yard. And, more importantly, it scared the bajeebies out of me because it made me realize that we didn't have anywhere to hide except our bathroom. And while our bathroom is a lovely venue for eliminating body waste, it wasn't really made to be a tornado shelter. I guess a safe place to go in case of a tornado is one of those things you don't really need until you need it. Like flea powder for your dog or a Vanilla Ice cassette tape.

Well, after that traumatic incident, we (read: I) decided to get a storm cellar. My MIL found a local company that installs storm cellars so I called and made an appointment to have them come and put one in. My understanding was that they come to your house, dig a giant hole in the yard with a tractor, drop in the pre-made cellar, put dirt around it, and leave. Then, I go down in the cellar and add the finishing touches - hang some pictures, put out some potpourri, perhaps a little rug and maybe even draw a cozy fireplace on the wall to make it seem homey.

I did think to ask the saleswoman on the phone if there was a sample cellar that I could go and see. She told me where it was - a kind of remote area out in the country - and I set out to see it.
To say that it was in the middle of nowhere would be perfectly accurate. Had she not given me the directions down to the tenth of a mile, I would never have found it. The CIA couldn't have found it without directions.

I got out of the car (which I kept running in case I needed to get out of there fast) and walked through knee-high weeds to the cellar. I pulled open the door to get a good look. Oh, how I wish I had just ordered a cellar and called it a day. Inside the cellar was the thing I fear most in this world - a mouse. A MOUSE! The fact that it was dead and decaying was not help to me because - let's be real - it didn't just fall in there dead. No, it scurried in there alive.

Something very bad must have happened to me as a young child involving a mouse. I know that if I could just think rationally, a mouse really isn't going to hurt me. But when I see a mouse, I don't think rationally, I go into cardiac arrest. And so seeing this mouse crushed my dreams of our family seeking shelter during a bad storm, laughing and playing card games by flashlight. No, this had just turned into my own personal episode of Fear Factor. People, if a tornado was headed straight for me and I opened the cellar door to find a mouse in there, it would be a toss up - get killed by a tornado/die of heart attack from mouse...I might have to flip a coin on this one.

I tried to put it all in the back of my mind. The day finally arrived when a giant truck came hauling a cellar and a tractor. The guy in charge came to the door to ask me where to put it. I gathered my courage and asked him, "How do you keep mice from getting down there? I hate mice."

He grinned at me with his four pearly ecrus showing and said, "Boy, I don't know. My wife isn't afraid of the mice - it's the snakes that get in our cellar that bother her."

Someone hold me. Because this is going to take a lot more than potpourri.