I'm going way random here for a while--blog dates, topics and posting schedules be damned...so many things in my head...yeah...freaking scary right there.

I should stop. RIGHT. NOW.

nah...

• Like this song...it's gotta pretty guitar line I think...the guy's kinda a weinie. I mean, if you want your woman freakin' take her, quit yer whining to music, you're ruining it for me.
• While Iraq is out of the question, I was on the horn to some folks with work in Afghanistan today...hmmmm.
• Thank you bloggers who went over to see Mike and say hello, Muchas Gracias. I owe you a Margarita. Since you aren't here, I'll drink it for you and think warm thoughts. R at Southern (In)sanity and Ann at Transitions. Huge pitchers of Margaritas and nachos for you peeps. Nice to write the 1st Sgt. up on your blog.

I know.

Please.

It's just me.

It's. who. I. am.

*sigh*

I'm a giver.

• Those blogging buddies/IRL peeps who showed up there , (yeah I saw ya) read and never said anything? Quit being weinies and freaking say hello! It's not gonna harelip ya.
• edit: Hey you lurking bitches! I see you. Quit being pussies and say hi at least. Yes YOU!"

**eyeroll**

ok ok

not harelip you permanently.

but if it were me, I'd be more afraid of being a permanent pussy than temporarily, facially disfigured.

I'm back!
I know.
My absence left a giant sucking hole in your life.
I'm sorry.

Found this out on the web and thought some of you might like to know about it. I'm not through poking around on it, but Blog U is a site which has code for everything from adding fonts to your blog to converting link lists to a drop down menu, to all manner of other blog template conversions.

I have been reading and reading these kinds of sites lately and she seems quite good at communicating in easy to follow directions as well as answering follow up questions in her comment section. So check there for your questions first...someone prolly already asked it.

Most of her info will be in 5 drop down menus on the right hand side of the page so just scroll down a little and look for light, slate blue boxes with a plus/minus next to the titles.

Not much else to say right now.
Sleep, food and PT have been out of whack lately.
Though I saw some pics today of another Crossfitter and it did kinda kick me in the ass a little.

I'm restless.

Whew!!!
The sun finally showed up today!!!

Okay Readers, FMD reminded me the import of squirreling digital data away to be used on offspring as leverage, for retributive purposes and general parental amusement. I think I may make this a weekly Friday post.

This is Littlest Guy with his Aunt Spoil-Them-Rotten when he was about four or five months.

Any takers with coming up with a caption?
Come on, you know you wanna. I just checked my reinstalled Sitemeter so I know you're coming round--what with that and my obvious general irresistibleness and all...

I don't often speak of my husband on this blog. Though I realize when I do it's generally to reference whatever example of residual knuckledragging behavior imbued upon him by his Y chromosome and a stint in the Marine Corps.


I should have known there would be issues when dialogue about our children's sexual orientation went like this:

Me: Oh you'd love them no matter who they were attracted to, come on.

Him: Sure I would. But he's not.

Me: But I'm just saying you know, if it were to be the case, you'd accept it.

Him: Well yeah--But he's not.

I should have known when I came home from errands one day and all male members of the family were squatting around a pot of macaroni on the living room floor clutching spoons and dressed in their tighty whiteys. Hey! No laundry, no dishes, Hubs explained.

I should have known when I walked into a very dark room to find a line of multiple size high and tights illuminated in the blue light of a computer monitor and overheard one little awestruck voice chirping, "Oooooooo, blow him up again, Daddy," being contradicted by still another angelic voice making his own plea, "Nooooo, Daaaaad...catch him on fire instead! It lasts longer!"



I should have know by now.

I should have known
I
never
had
a
chance.

Even after we managed a girl child, it was clear unless I was willing to have children well into my fifties, the chances of the estrogen counterbalancing the testosterone levels in this house was a virtual impossibility.

Still, these displays of male inappropriateness continue to drop my jaw.

Hubs just walked in awhile ago from the store to find the four year old bent over at the knees with his Lightning McQueen's down around his ankles, hands firmly planted on either lily white cheek admonishing me to look at his butt.
"Mom!
Mooooooooom!
Lookit!
There's an owie dare!
See?!
Right. daaaare!
See it?"

I looked for the source of these muffled exhortations and was met instead by Four Year Old ass.
"I hurt," he said from the carpet grazing location of his head down around his ankles.
"What is dat?"he went on.

"You're bottom is just sore from antibiotics, baby. It'll go away."


"Get it out," he demanded.
"Get the 'botics' out!!!" he continued to shout while trying to follow me out of the room. I couldn't help, but be impressed with the coordination it took to walk head down, butt up and cheeks spread, simultaneously. Like a car wreck you really couldn't look away.

But I only lingered on that aspect of the situation for a moment before I redirected my thoughts to Hubs, now visibly mirthful at the physical comedy of it all.

Four Year Old would have none of it.
Exasperated he whined,"Somebody look at my butt!"

Hubs trying to maintain some sort of parental resolve and dignity and failing miserably, choked out,"Boy, I am not looking at your ass!"

"(Hubs)!"

Hubs tried to force his chin into his neck from the self restraint it was taking to not start convulsing with laughter or maybe just to survive my withering look.

Littlest Guy continued to waggle his hiney at anyone willing to pay it some attention.

"Quit. picking. your. butt!!" Hubs said with voice and resolve cracking. The man was clearly running out of runway. You could almost hear his own internal dialogue: Pull up. PULL UP!!

"Whah??? Hubs!! You. can't. tell. him. that.
He'll go to school and share it with 18 3 and 4 year olds who love dropping dimes on each other and their parents. Cut it out! Will ya?!"

"Well, he needs to cut that out," Hubs says gesturing to his youngest, still standing in our midst doing his best imitation of baboon.

"He's going to call it his ass though, honey. Or start using the term butt picking. Knock it off!"

"Ahhh, no he isn't," said the Hubs.

Littlest Guy is enjoying the hubbub in the meantime and still doing his ass walk, clearly red with what was ailing him, and intent on someone mitigating the situation...

"Boy, I said quit--!!"

"Picking my butt?" Still head upside down and staring mischieviously back at us from between his own legs, the kid now had the room and his howling sibs in it and he knew it.

OMG.

There was much spousal apology, but Hubs face couldn't quite maintain any modicum of composure between the visual he was getting from the youngest fruit of his loins still stubbornly seeking relief from a raw butt and the the other genetically related hams now crowing on the couch and waiting to see just how bad Dad was going to get it.

It was a first though here in one way.
Today was the first time in this household where one person's ass literally got another person's ass in trouble.

My father is an artist.

We come from a long line of artists, writers, teachers, musicians and nutjobs.

Growing up, I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn much to the chagrin of every coach whoever saw my 5'9-by-Freshman year frame. Few gross motor skills limited my participation in sports to Cross Country and Track.

Anyway so my Dad had a thing for not just good, but stellar penmanship and hand control. In the summers in grammar school through Freshman year, we had exercises to do everyday to promote hand-eye coordination in the realm of fine motor skills. He was maniacal about it. Pages of capital and lower case cursive and print letters, passages of literature to copy and these long unbroken cursive lower case Os we would write in a unbroken string with looked like one long overlapping slinky--we wrote line after line after line.

He was also adamant the ability
to write in a straight line on unlined paper,
judge perspective, size and shape,
pick dead center in a design
and draw a straight line be skills we mastered.

He was right. All those skills I take for granted now, but they played out well when I ran a design company or taught in the classroom. Early on I was not a first picked for teams or anything, but by gosh I won many a handwriting and art competition. Teachers marveled at my penmanship not realizing the implications it had for later OCD like tendencies which now play out in my petty compulsions for:

pictures hung straight
centerpieces centered
the mat on the floor in front of the sink straight
a car parked straight in it's parking spot.
books on a shelf lined up and faced nicely
the bows on the back of Third Oldest child's dress being evenly fluffed
address labels on the horizontal...

and so on and so forth.


I even fix displays in stores...
I've tried to stop, but I can't help it. The guys up in the camera room prolly laugh their ass off when they see me stop in my tracks and then back up to where that last towel on the endcap is sitting just a little wonky.

Hubs likes to play a game where he'll leave something meant to be straight, crooked to see how long it takes before I can't stand it... usually not long.

Today however,
Hubs came home with another kind of thing to drive his wife nuts.
It was a slip of paper which said: www.woodgears.ca/eyeball.
He grinned at me and said, "Go ahead, I want you to try this."

I looked at him a little perplexed, but acquiesced.
The site was a eyeballing game which measured all the little fine motor, hand-eye kinds of skills I grew up honing.

Oh.
my.
God of Rulers, Protractors and Compasses!

The laurels of vindication have been placed on my brow!!!
::insert mad, gleeful laugh here::
I may suck at getting a ball in the hoop, or into left field or over a net,
but I can still find the equidistant point in a triangle, line or circle by God!
That's right, babies!!!
I gotz skillllllllllz.
I can still, with my maniacal eye,
determine lines of convergence and right angles
AAAAAAAAND do it so well I got a place on this site's These Are the Best Out of the Last 500 to Try This Stupid Time Eating game roster.

They made up a sport for truly OCD driven--
I mean, the fine-motor skill gifted.
There's a contest and everything.
I'm positively giddym I tell ya!
aglow with victory!!!
well and totally calling my Dad.

Post edit: Seems I lost my place in the top 10 overnight.
A 2.48 score is enough no longer.
::sigh::
Victory and validation snatched in blink of an eye.
::eyes narrowing and hands flexing::

I'll be back.
There's a website I have to go visit.

Proof positive that it is at least half in the delivery, if you plan on getting any, I mean...

I'm writing this early. Not something I usually do, but I've had few glasses of wine and it's only 8. In twelve hours I have to be at the gym. I suspect it's going to hurt, but I'll have to get back to you on that.

The fact that we are sitting with friends watching Mission Impossible on Telemundo with no subtitles should indicate all of us have had a couple of glasses of wine...

The discussion first centered on Tom Cruise's voice over and how it sounded a lot taller than Tom though any masculine voice would tend to do that.

'Course, dear mama friend, exacting in nature, had me go online and google "How tall is Tom Cruise?" How messed up is that? You have a life where someone you don't know can go online and ask an electronic oracle how tall you are and BAM...5 foot 7 inches ,which no one believes anyway, jumps right on out atcha?!!!...that's just wrong...

but so is watching Mission Impossible in Spanish when you don't speak it.That's just messed up. What could be more messed up than that you ask?

Well I'll tell ya it's one of our friends singing it's Business Time in the middle of our living room... In order for that to have a chance at a being funny you have to watch the video. So shoo...hurry up and go watch it.

I keep writing.
I keep deleting--
Avoiding having to see my own disappointment in words I expect.
ha.
That's probably it right there.

::exhaling::

Still waiting on a contract to go through.
I'm giving up cognitively--albeit more slowly on the emotional side in regards to the job in Iaq. Politics here have made the Iraqis there bold and so they are refusing to honor contracts when USG assets will be theirs soon anyway. I'm processed with passport in hand, but I don't think it's a go. At least in saying this, I get a finality.

Hell yes, I'm disappointed.
Those who thought it was a crazy idea, but were diplomatic in saying how could you leave your family to go to work? Thank you for your candor and point of view. It was welcome.

Those who dismissed, ridiculed and judged (mostly IRL).
Go fuck a farm animal.
Sorry Phil, I know you think there are lots of others words in the English language which convey thought more optimally than the word 'fuck'.
I agree.
Though the word 'fuck' in terms of its versatility and ability to relay extreme pique remains unsurpassed in my mind.

Indeed, it is my hope They-who-know-who-they-are do the farm animal simply on my exhortation above, but go copulate with a horse just doesn't flow. There's no ring to it, no alliteration, no nothing. :::thoughtful look as I review the missive:::
c-o-p-u-l-a-t-e
Nope.
It doesn't work.
:::brightening:::
"Fuck" it is!

Yeah, I'm cranky.
Yeah, I kept putting off a post because of it.
Yeah, I posted other crap just to avoid it--though you have to admit the Lent/masturbation combo did have it's charm.
Yeah, I am still doing the stay at home mom thing, baking the damn cookies, doing the shopping, and lurking all over the blogosphere. Yes, I know fellow SAHMers, you prolly do way more than I just listed. I'm focused on underachievement at this point though. Don't want to get too good at it. It could change the hubs perspective on which of us is more suited to domestic tasks and then I'd really screw myself.

It's a slow simmer all that.

Pop is working his stateside contacts and gearing up for Plan B and I'm going to go find work tending bar or waitressing or something until we head out into the wide world of land agents. I figure just about the time I find the barjob to maintain sanity, Pop will call and say it's time to hit the road.

Meh.

This is what it is.
A rant.

I'll get over myself.