Road Rage, Podcasts, and Hot Chocolate

So I know it's not socially acceptable, and even dangerous, to text and drive.  I try really hard not to do it.  I mean, I have enough distractions in my car at any given time. I really don't need to try to compose a witty tweet, scream at and possibly pinch my kids, turn on the DVD player, and apply my makeup while I change lanes without my blinker at a speed probably at least 10 miles over the speed limit.

I'll let you decide if I'm exaggerating.

You know I love my podcasts.  I wish I would have cashed in on this whole podcast thing when it was just getting started.  What better medium is there for an NPR junkie who lives in her car? Or the anti-social employee (or former employee- more on that later) who doesn't want to be bothered while entering mind-numbing data or formatting a dry technical report? Or the disgruntled housewife who hates laundry but can be found with her phone blasting in her back pocket while traipsing around the house solving the murder of Hae Min Li?  Podcasts! I can't get enough.

The other day I dropped John at school and waited in the line of traffic to exit the middle school parking lot.  The traffic flow is slow and cycles with the light at the exit of the lot.  While creeping along I used my phone to turn on my podcast and answer a quick text from Kitty asking for hot chocolate.  As I put my phone back and looked up at the line of cars I noticed the woman in front of me elaborately reprimanding me for what I can only assume was "texting while driving". I mean, she was shaking her index finger into the rear-view mirror.  Shame on me.

I, in turn, raised both arms in the universal "what's your problem lady?" sign.  She continued with her finger and started shaking her head.  I felt the road rage boiling up from my feet. Why do some people feel like it is their duty to police everyone they come into contact with? I did not put anyone in danger while my foot was on the brake and my finger was on my phone. There is a drop-off zone so it's not like the parking lot was busy with people running around. But I think what bothered me most was the nerve of that lady.  The nerve!

Caroline is one!

Carebear is one.

It takes a lot to impress this baby.  She isn't your typical happy-go-lucky-I'll-smile-at you if you smile at me kind of girl. I think she get's that from her dad.

She loves her older siblings, especially Chickie. The only binkie she'll take is one that Chickie has had in her mouth, otherwise she's not interested.

She likes to bounce and dance and she can't wait to start really walking.  Walking has been on her to-do list since she was about three minutes old.  She finally got her top-heavy weight balanced and took a few steps the day before her birthday.

She's quite independent and doesn't really love to snuggle. She viewed me as a sole provider of sustenance for the first nine months of her life. We moved beyond that and now I not only provide food, but efficient transportation.

She has snaggle teeth. Not really, but she got all four on the bottom and when the top finally came through it was the two right. I had visions of her teeth looking like Sloth from the Goonies movie, but they look pretty good now, so that was kind of irrational.

Less than a week old.
If I could crop out the crap in the background I would.  I could say it was because I'd just had a baby, but it's looked like that more often than not as of late. 

January 2014

March 2014?
Startled? No. Just irritated that I was trying to get her to smile.

May 2014
Again, that's her, "What are you doing? That's weird." look.

August 2014
This one makes me laugh.  She looks like Jared (at least he's smiling).

September 2014
She looks bigger than Chickie here... and a little bit like a boy.

September 2014
These two are going to be crazy together.

October 11, 2014
She thoroughly enjoyed the CareBear cake at her party, so did I.

October 10, 2014
And yes, she is related to me.

Not sleeping in Nakko

John and Kitty like to hear "funny stories" from my past.  They usually entail crazy embarrassing moments and lately the stories have been thin on unique and valid content.  In one such moment John asked if I could think of anything funny that happened when I went to Africa to visit my friend Christine, who was in the Peace Corps. That got me thinking about Christine, Burkina Faso and my not so relaxing "vacation" to Africa.  I went back to my journal and decided to record this entry for posterity- especially since the story I tell these days is about sleeping with pigs, and to be honest, I questioned the accuracy of my memory (were there actually pigs?).

Here is the entry in its entirety... a little boring, not very funny, but brought back memories none-the-less.

Saturday June 17, 2000
Last night was wild.  We took a bush taxi to Nakko to watch the theater group perform. We got a flat on the way- I guess it happens all the time.  the taxi is pretty much an old beat-up Mazda pick-up. Christine and I were lucky, we got to sit in the front while everyone else sat on benches in the back. The guy drove close to 60 mph on sketchy dirt roads. When we got there the troupe had a DJ blasting music into the streets and everyone was dancing- it was a crazy scene.  Finally, at 7:30 the group started their skits- the first was on AIDS, the second on industrialization, and the third on female genital mutilation. We had front row seats next to a high ranking official, his wife, and his two beautiful little girls. We shared the Chex Mix I had packed with them and eventually ended up giving it to them- he really liked it. (Christine was super irritated that they took it from us).

Sleeping under the stars with the pigs and chickens in Nakko

We were supposed to go back last night- but since we had the flat the driver didn't want to risk the drive at night without a spare.  So we were made to stay.  They provided sleeping mats for us and I at least had a pillow.  The house we stayed in was kind of like a bar or something.  The walls had tons of spider webs and there were crickets all over the ground.  I really didn't want to stay there but we had no choice.  It was a full moon so we moved outside under the stars.  Just when I was nearly asleep I felt a mosquito biting my fingers (despite the burning coils...) so I had to use the spray.  Then the second time I was almost asleep I was startled by pigs rummaging through the nearby marche. Finally I was almost asleep when suddenly I realized it was getting pitch black really fast.  We hurried inside with the crickets just as torrents of rain started to fall.  It continued to rain throughout the night.  I think I got a total of about 2 hrs of sleep.  I'm in a bad mood as a result.

This morning we waited about an our for them to load everyone in the taxi and then we headed back. About half way we had another flat. Luckily it was in Tainkoura- a village where we could patch one of them.  It took a few hours then we made it back, GUH.

Farmer girl and farmer dad

When we're not pretending to be Kitty and Kloey, the baby, or the puppy, Chickie likes to play farmer girl and farmer dad.  I get to be the dad. I don't know why there isn't a farmer mom, there just isn't.  Farmer girl and farmer dad is easy to play, it pretty much involves farmer dad telling farmer girl what to do and she gets on her horse (the arm of the couch) and rides off to do it.

This morning farmer girl was "sleeping" in the chair and farmer dad woke her up to do her chores.  I told her she had to get up and go milk the cows, feed the horses and get eggs from the chickens. Farmer girl reluctantly got on her horse and rode off to the store to get milk and eggs. She also got an apple for her horse.

I think we might need to spend more time on a farm...

Naughty

 There was a little girl,

            Who had a little curl,

 Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,

            She was very very good,

 But when she was bad she was horrid. -Longfellow

I'll tumblr for ya: What do you meme part 2

A few weeks ago I decided to figure out tumblr.  I couldn't. I did a few Google searches, read some articles, and even signed up for my own account.  I spent a good chunk of an afternoon looking through various "tumblelogs" that I might want to follow.  I still don't get it.  Something about social networking and a multimedia platform. I think it's the next generation of blogging,or at least that's what they told me.  Maybe it's a cross between this antiquated blog and Twitter.  And you know how I feel about Twitter

I noticed a lot of tumblr blogs that were dedicated to a theme. I liked the then and now blog where people submitted photos taken from the same spot "then" and "now".  It reminded me of my old favorite, "Boring Postcards".  I loved that book.

Maybe I'll start my own tumblr blog for freakish M&Ms

Chickie has been potty training for about eight months.  The turning point came when she discovered YouTube on daddy's iPad while she was doing her "business".  We don't normally allow YouTube, but when your two year old accesses it through the Talking Ginger app (why do we still have that?), what can you do? She loves the videos of Play-Doh surprise eggs and the Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff Barbie scenes. Why didn't I think of filming myself playing with Barbies? Oh yeah, because that would be weird. Does she make any money doing this? Why is her voice so annoying?

What about those quizzes people post on Facebook? Should I really change my hair to strawberry blonde, move to Texas, and call myself Deborah?


*Check out DisneyCarToys on YouTube if you're interested in watching a grown woman with an annoying voice play Barbies. BTW it's not what you think, it's wholesome. Strange, but wholesome.

Wisdom from Kitty

"Sometimes it's easier to stand up for someone else than it is to stand up for yourself."

I need help, just not from you

Do you have a Gil Thorpe in your life? Or better yet, a Gunther Thorpe (Gil's dad)?

On last week's episode of Modern Family we were introduced to Gunther Thorpe, a guy who always seems to show up when Jay is at his worst.  I totally have a few Gunther Thorpe characters in my life. My Gunther Thorpes tend to fall into one of two categories. The first is the person I secretly admire or look up to for whatever reason. The second, and most common, is the person who doesn't add anything of value to my life, but seems to always be hanging around in the background, waiting for my inevitable failure.

I recognize that in the first case, the fault is with me.  I become hyper-critical of myself around certain people.  And really, there are only a handful of these women in my life.  They are the ones that have their finger on the pulse of fashion/hair/skinniness/coolness of the world.  These are the women  I run into at the grocery store (for the third time) when I'm wearing stained sweats on day three without a shower, buying a year supply of Hostess and M&M products . Maybe she'll decide to drop in later in the week and the two year old will answer the door dressed only in a diaper and sticky chocolate cheeks.  She'll timidly let herself in after the toddler runs away and wait patiently while I flush the toilet and emerge from the sanctity of a much needed bathroom break. These women have impeccable timing.

The difference between the first group and the second is all in perception. The first group leaves me feeling embarrassed, the second group makes it clear that they are embarrassed for me. They make a big deal about pointing out the tag that is sticking up in the back of my clean shirt and when I laugh it off by saying that at least the shirt's right-side-out, the look of confusion and pity in their eyes says it all. These people don't understand self-deprecating humor and instead view it as an opportunity to offer obvious advice as another avenue of delivering criticism.  "That's why I always double check that nothing is inside-out when I put it away..."  Duh.

More examples:
"You'll need to vacuum more often when she starts to crawl..."
"You shouldn't let them watch TV until they are ready for school..."
"You should make a list of things to do, that's how I get things done..."

I find myself offering unsolicited obvious advice all the time, so... maybe I'm the obnoxious person that isn't really helping anyone.  Sorry.

What do you meme?

There are many things I don't get. 

I'm not ashamed to admit, for example, that I totally looked up the word "meme".  I had an idea what it might mean, but with it being thrown around like common knowledge these days I figured I'd better know what it actually meant. To save yourself the embarrassment of maybe using it in the wrong context here's the definition:

a. a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes

b. a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way. (dictionary.com) 

I joined the Twitter the other day.* I figured I should jump on the bandwagon and get tweeting. It's like reading code.  A code everyone knows but me.  In this day and age of technology everyone just assumes people can figure stuff out without so much as an overview or description.  It's like when we got that first iPod and the box came with no instructions.  Luckily we figured it had to be plugged in. Let's just say don't bother following me. #what'sahashtagforanyway #whatsthepoint #itsweird

And what about Minecraft? I could go on and on but I wouldn't know what I was talking about, creepers, mods, spawns, the nether... The graphics? Is it cool to have horrible 80s style graphics? In the 80s we played a game on our dad's Osborne computer called "Castle" and there were no graphics.  Believe me, the graphics of our imaginations were awesome, we didn't need anything else.

Does anyone know what the deal is with Comic Con? Or is it Comicon? ComicCon? Didn't we used to make fun of Star Trek conventions? Now it's cool to dress up and go to a comic convention? Isn't that what it is? Am I missing out?

And "What Does the Fox Say?"


*I know it's not the Twitter, I added that for #dramaticeffect

John's "pre-church" attitude is awesome.