A Musing Mother 6

These are stolen. But I always love new ways to support my habit of crazy: 1. Claim you have a tummy ache. 2. Fake a bout of amnesia. Scream, “You’re not my family! I don’t know you!” and run into your room. 3. Lock yourself in the bathroom and say the door is broken. 4. Start telling inappropriate jokes to your Great Aunt Eugenia until you get yourself grounded. 5. Take up yoga. Leave to meditate. 6. Say you need to study for a test on the mental impact of a five hour marathon of “Teen Mom.” 7. Develop a clothing allergy. 8. Take a vow of silence. 9. Wear a decaying wedding dress and say you have to spend holidays with your spouse’s family. If someone mentions that you don’t have a spouse, pet a piece of your hair and giggle with wide eyes. 10. Act like a dog and knock the entire meal off the table. Everyone has to go home early! 11. Pretend to be asleep. This takes commitment. Someone will inevitably slap your cheek or throw water in your face. You must not react. 12. Rip all of your

I am fascinated by imaginary friends. I decided with my first child that imaginary friends indicate deep intellect and creativity. This belief was preferable to believing my child was weird. We first became aware of imaginary friends after an episode of Sesame Street. Our two year old daughter suddenly developed a friend shaped like an "X" that talked to only her. Only she could see "X." At dinner we were instructed to set a place for "X." She would ask "X" if he wanted more soup. And cry if anybody sat on her friend. You can see why I choose intelligent and creative as opposed to disturbing. Next came Basket. This little friend was something we could see. It was a blow-up rendition of a basketball hoop. It could actually sit at the dinner table and we could witness conversation between the two. It was still one-sided but somewhat more socially acceptable. Except when we went to restaurants. That was a little awkward. In retrospect, I am glad we

Real friends know me better than blog friends. Blog friends don't really care how I am.   (Evidence: My 3 Texas blog friends sent prayers and dinner gift cards when Scott had brain surgery. My Australian blog friend sent a heart felt email to check how I really was. My neighbor friends brought me dinner and stepped up for carpool) Blog friends aren't REAL friends. They are imaginary. Blog friends become real friends without ever meeting face to face. Real life friends don't care about my chickens. Most of them mock me.  Blog friends drive clear from Texas and bring their whole family over to meet the chickens and play with my kids. They dig for worms in the garden, too. And they enjoy it, too. Blog friends have never seen my house in disarray. Blog friends don't think I'm neurotic.  There is no evidence to support this. One blog friend crossed the barrier (or state lines). Scott is now semi-convinced I am not making my friends up (not that there's any shame in t

It is truly stunning that with all the fantastic technology we have at our fingertips, this was the quality of this photo. Ah, well. My birthday is coming up. These are the ladies I dance(d) with for years. I've boasted about these friends before but I just love them so. We've been through a lot in the past 20 years and we've been there for one another at first at church, then while our daughters were dancing and we were in the glassed in room. Eventually, we were there for one another every Tuesday night at 8:30 where we worked out our life's kinks through stretching our bodies and choreography, ending each May on the stage at nearby college.  Now we have Thai. The one second to the right is Kari. We used to have dinner at one another's homes every couple of months. Our babies played together and daughters danced together. I sneaked in an extra son but a week after I gave birth to my fourth child, she materialized a brand new baby boy. She always regretted she was

Don't all start applauding at once. They're still a little shy. Sort of.

Really, that's what it comes down to. If she is not the center of attention, she acts out. For instance, if my 17 year old daughter is laying on the floor and I'm rubbing out knots, the dog will flop herself down and roll around until she is right on Alyssa's head. All 50 lbs. of her. If that doesn't work, she will nudge her nose under our hands and start gnawing on them. Then she jumps on my back, runs around in circles, jumps over us and makes a nuisance of herself. If one of the children is holding the cat, Sunday repeats this type of behavior. She gnaws on the cat. The cat rolls over and plays dead. Then there is the issue of the chickens. Let's not dwell on the fact that I am outside in November without shoes. Nor shall we dwell on the fact that I'm digging up worms with the chickens. Concentrate on the fact that Scott yells out to me that the dog is coming outside. What you can't see is that she has run to grab a tennis ball  and is making a general nu

I subconsciously wore black. What does that say about my hope for politicians? My direct supervisor, Sue, wore red, white and blue. I immediately stood up, put my hand over my heart and belted out The Star Spangled Banner . Please note that this is my new job and my new boss. Scott went to vote at our local junior high. The bell rang and students changed classes. One bright, handsome, and clever boy looked at the faceless crowd and called out, "Vote for Pedro!" That's my boy. I named my chickens for the day; Betsy, Martha, Liberty, and Salem. Salem was my attempt at mirth. I also watched her have another stare down with the dog, eyeball to eyeball. When the anticipation is at its highest, the chicken pecks the dog in the nose. I love it when she does that. It breaks the stalemate. Chutzpah.

The nice thing about a new job is that nobody knows I blog. I plan on keeping it that way. I now have a GOLD MINE of BLOG FODDER! This makes so very happy. I'm afraid I had burned all my blog fodder opportunities by telling people about my blog. Then they read it which is not a good thing. Sometimes they find themselves featured. Apparently, this is not good for neighbor relations. This is particularly unfortunate because I wrote a wonderful email to my best friend, Heidi, describing an interaction I had with my visiting teacher. It was stunningly funny. Her comment? You write so well. Too bad you can't blog this one. Actually, it was my emails to her that got my creative juices going. Nothing like numbing the inhibitions than talking to your best friend. Still, she had a point. There were too many identifiers in the writing. Shame. I do have some interesting neighbors. Blog-worthy. But some of them talk. Some of them read. Some of them read and talk back. This does not include

One of my new responsibilities at work includes teaching lessons on career development to different classes. All during October we taught different lessons on personality types, life roles, learning styles, and a computer program all the students in the state are programmed to use.  We team teach these lessons by design. It's easier to have a modicum of classroom management with two of us there. I taught half the class time and Karen taught the other. We found that there are some scheduling dynamics that inherently lead to some classes being more well behaved than others. Actually, to be perfectly honest, we wondered if 35 out of the 40 kids in one class had been dropped on their heads as infants and suffered brain trauma. Or maybe their homes contained lead based paint. Bless their hearts.  The instructions we had given to other classes had been well received with only 20% not understanding us. This particular class, and the class right before this one, was at 85% non-comprehensio