All I Need Is This

Concerts and I have an uneasy relationship.

I love going to hear my favorite bands, but everything leading up to it makes me slightly crazy.

Picking out my outfit, is of course, the most stressful part of the evening. I need to have something with pockets, but it also needs to be super comfortable, since I've got to be able to move and groove freely!

The pockets are the most important part because I do not believe in bringing a purse to a concert (or a coat either, so I usually pray that it's okay weather or a close parking spot). Especially when we go to a concert where it's standing room only....I don't want to be standing there with my big purse dragging my shoulder down.....bumping it into people.....never aware if it's being burgled....

All I need is my chapstick. And my ID. And some money. But that's it. That's all I need. And my cell phone, but that's really all I need. With the right pair of pockets, I can securely stash all of my needs and not have to worry as I dance the concert away.

I do have one other need, but this one will require forcing someone to go with me to the concert....I want someone to go to a concert with me who has ZERO desire to stand right in front of the stage, so close to the performers that you can feel the sweat flinging off them, so close you can make eye contact in a crazy stalker kind of way, so close you can see their wrinkles (and they can see yours).

That's really all I need: a fellow concert goer who wants to stand farther back!

Looking For One Good Pencil

Twice a month, my husband sits down with bills and the checkbook, a calculator and a pen, to keep our finances on track. And twice a month I hear nothing but mutterings about how he's just looking for one good pencil, who is taking his pencil, where are all the pencils, why can he never find a pencil.....

The mutterings are endless, but focus on one thing: he wants a good pencil.

I have a mini stockpile of pencils and pens on the school supply shelf, but since I also have 5 other pencil/pen cups around the house, he looks in the other cups first. Just in case his pencil is there. It isn't a pencil that has his name on it, it's just one that has been sharpened and used and proven it's worth.

We have all had it happen to us. A pencil, sharpened to perfection, the point begging to be pressed against a clean sheet of paper, and with the first hint of a letter formed, the lead snaps off and the pencil is broken. My husband hates that. So when he has found a pencil that holds its lead, he understandably wants to keep it.

I've heard that the lead is very fragile, and if you are in the worst aisle in the world (school supply days before school starts) you might just throw the boxes of pencils into your cart and get out of there fast and that throw could be breaking the lead internally, so every time those pencils are sharpened and look good to use, they are actually just a useless wood tube holding broken lead together.

I've heard that. I'm not saying I've done it. Just that it's something I've heard could possibly happen.

Or maybe all I'm looking for is a kick ass pencil sharpener.....stop using tiny plastic school bag shavers or a sharp knife to whittle the lead out.....a real sharpener might make the chore of sharpening a pencil not so time consuming and hideous.

I could also start tagging my husband's pencil, so we all know that belongs to Dad and the bills. If he drops it on the floor and doesn't pick it up and Olive Badger takes it out and chews it to bits, well, that's a different story then. She can't read the tag that says "Dad's Pencil."

Or I could ignore the twice monthly mutterings, content to know that is all part of the process of bill paying!

The Bug In The Glow

I see you, bug, flitting around in the glow of the TV, as I lie comfy and cozy in my bed, settled in nicely for the night. You bounce off the screen again and again, then disappear into the darkness of my unlit bedroom.

I am settled in for the night. The fan is on, the lights are off. The alarm is set, the water bottle is full. And I am so tired, my eyes are burning with the need to close.

But just as I'm ready to shut off the TV and pull the covers up to my ears, I see you, tiny harmless bug, and I am too tired to shoo you out of the room, but not too tired to obsess over whether or not you are a moth.

I sure hope you aren't a moth.

You probably are a moth.

Your wings seem to flutter very moth like as you throw yourself against the TV. Your intense attraction to the light is very moth like too.

Now for the momentous decision: am I too scared of what a moth will do to me as I sleep or am I too tired to get up?

I am too tired. Besides, if the covers pulled up to my ears protects me from the monsters in my closet, I'm sure it protects against marauding moths loose in the night.

And Now Back To The Saga Of Dish Washing

My only woe of dish washing is that I am always splashing water on myself.

In fact, yesterday as I washed dishes and created a huge tidal wave that slopped over the rim of the sink and soaked my shirt, I wondered if there will ever be a time when I don't get wet while I do the dishes.

When I was a kid, I couldn't help but get wet. My sleeves would unroll and trail in the sudsy water, I didn't understand how much splash back would get me when I dropped silverware in, I would get sprinkled as I shook the excess water off tupperware.

But I am a grown up who has been washing dishes in my own home for 18 years....I'd have thought by now I'd know how to keep dry! Not so much.

I'm not too keen on getting as wet as I end up, but Olive Badger hates it more. I try to tell her she should not sit at my feet as I wash dishes. Water is going to land on her, she will get wet.

She still takes up position as soon as I do, and with the first splash of water, she looks at me with her brown puppy eyes full of accusations. The only thing stopping her from taking the rag and showing me how it's done properly is her lack of thumbs.

That, and I say she has to use a rag. Licking a plate clean is so not okay.

My Secret DVR Show

DVR has changed my life. No joke. I no longer have to stand in front of the half broke VCR and force a VHS tape in over and over and over, hoping that this time it will stay in, the machine will stay on and when I press 'record' a red light will start to blink.

It's allowed us to watch our favorite shows as a family, even if on Monday night Dad is at a concert or Thursday night the kids are swamped with homework. We'll just save that show to watch when we can all watch it.

And don't get me started on the joy of SNL! I'd never actually watched a whole episode because of that whole, pesky, needing to sleep thing....but now I don't have to rely on the internet or clip shows to get my SNL fix. DVR has made my life funnier!

But it has also allowed me to set up a recording for a show that I am mortally embarrassed to not want to miss. It's a show that makes me cringe with embarrassment (it would be less cringe worthy if he'd just cut his hair....isn't bald the new beautiful?), sometimes I can't even look at the TV because the intensity on their faces makes me feel sickish, and yet I can't stop watching.

It's Sister Wives and it's a show I think about way too much.

For awhile I was just catching it on reruns, or On Demand. But when I realized I was in time to start watching with the new season....well, I put a series recording on that baby and on Monday mornings I am giddy to watch it.

There is something about the lifestyle, the decision to share one man, to share a family, that super fascinates me. It probably stems from the fact that I can barely share my hubby with his bike club and I don't think I was designed to live with other women (and since I grew up with two sisters, I have some idea of what I'm talking about), so watching four women choose that kind of life, raising their kids together and loving one guy is just so unbelievably interesting!

When I consider all the shows out there for me to be obsessed with, this one isn't bad.

I could still be in my Toddlers and Tiaras faze.

A Dish Washing Dilemma

Well, calling it a dilemma is overstating it. More like a slight curve on the rules of who washes what and my hubby asking me why I was washing dishes when it is for sure the job of our children.

To begin with I have some pretty unpleasant memories of washing dishes as a child. I never wanted my kids to do it until they were old enough to do it right, as in, the way I do it. I'd rather do most jobs myself and have them done to my satisfaction than to parcel out chores for them to do their best on but never quite met up to my requirements, but that's a whole different blog related to a streak of cleanly perfection I am a quarter embarrassed to possess.

But kids need an allowance, and they need to earn that allowance, and the first easy chore of childhood is really dish washing. After years of trying and failing to have the kids trade off weeks or setting up a schedule that meant one washed dishes Friday,Sunday, Tuesday, and the other washed Monday, Thursday, Saturday, I finally said we were going to simplify it even more.

They have to remember who washed dishes last, and trade off. Regardless of nights or weeks or what have you. This simple taking turns system has turned out to be great. Part of the reason behind the schedule change was our family tended to eat out on Friday nights, so one kid always had a dish free night.

And as I am the Queen Mother of Fairness, this was not fair and had to be fixed.

So now after dinner, one kid clears the table and one washes the dishes. By hand. We do not have a dishwasher (much to their strong conviction that a dishwasher would make their life a million times easier), I have a stronger conviction that our old house kitchen has no place for a dishwasher, and washing by hand is easy.

But my husband has recently asked why I wash dishes when I get home from work....it's an added chore that I shouldn't be doing since it is our kids chore. Well, true. He's right. Dishes are dishes whether they belong to late night ice cream or a scrambled egg breakfast plate or an after school slice of cheese or dinner. I could leave them in the sink, but I can't.

I really can't!

In order for me to cook dinner (which I strongly dislike doing), I need a clean kitchen. I do. A clean kitchen makes it easier for me to chop and dice and rinse and boil....and what makes it easier also makes me feel not so crazed.

After hearing that, my husband gently pushed me to the side and took over the dish washing before dinner chore. I think he's 100% behind anything that helps me cook dinner without turning into a frazzled stressed out mess.

I really hate cooking dinner, but washing dishes, I don't mind so much!

Finding Time For Me

Finding time for me sounds selfish because as a Mom, you don't really have time for me stuff, but time for me is so crucial to a happy Mom, it should be a weekly scheduled event, given as much respect and consideration as a New Simpsons Episode.

But when I'm doing my time for me time, who's going to wash the clothes or iron the shirts or do the grocery shopping? Or dust, sweep, and mop?

Yesterday I said to myself, "Self, yes, do some laundry. You need clean socks too, but between that, sit at your desk and work on last summers vacation scrapbook." and myself replied, "That is too perfect. I deserve a day off."

And then I proceeded to get laundry going, take the kids for flu shots and haircuts, hit the bank since I was out, wash dishes and clean house.

And no scrapbooking.

Today, I am determined to scrapbook. I will clear the shirts to be ironed off my desk chair, I will put away the folded sheets and towels and find places for that stack of books. I will dust off my desk (for reals, that desk is a dust magnet) and I will put on a movie and I will do something just for me.

At least, until someone knocks on my door asking for help.....What can I say? My Momness runs deep!