I admit it.... I LIKE it...

Here is my other ‘Grand-Tadpole’

He’s 2 ½ and loads of fun…

He likes to come over to my house…

And do lots of this kind of stuff…

And because I’m his Grammy, I usually say yes to all kinds of treats, like this humongous piece of birthday cake…

(It helps to create a balance for all of the
NO’s I say to my own kids regularly…)

He loves playing with his cuz...
(my golfing-grand-tadpole - GGTP#1)

GTP #2 :
"Dude! Like, where's the water?"

GGTP#1 :
"You are, like, being such a baby!
When you are four, like I am.... you will 'get' it!!
HELLO!!
It's called PRETENDING!!!
Do I have to spell it out for you??!!"

He loves the beach and smiles almost all the time...
It kind of makes me wonder what he's thinking about...
Probably candy...
or gigantic pieces of birthday cake...


He calls me Grammy...
and when he's all worn out after a busy day,
he asks to hold you...
which is just his way of requesting a snuggle,
usually from his Grampy*...
He will twiddle his hair and the next thing you know....







Given my maturity level, the following revelation may not be all that surprising to you...


*On a side note, it just occurred to me that I 'sleep' with a Grandfather...
and I like it too... (Is that wrong?)
I never thought I'd be saying that...
Hey! Don't knock it, until you try it!

...but find your own Grandfather to sleep with...
Well, not your actual Grandfather...
That would be yucky..
and REALLY wrong on so many levels...
and illegal in most states...

Reality Bytes... I Mean Bites…

I was flipping through the Sunday paper this past weekend and a snippet caught my eye…

The TV modeling competition show, America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) season 10 just wrapped…
They’ve bestowed the title on yet another beautiful girl…
THAT’S no surprise right?

Truth be told, my daughter and I were hooked on this show for several of the “cycles”…
We loved the fashion…
and the drama…

It was a guilty pleasure… and we were especially fascinated by one of the judges who also helped to polish these diamonds in the rough… Miss J.

Okay, so “Miss J” is actually a Mister… I think… but he/she is flamboyant and funny and makes us look at each other and giggle every time we see him with a pink scarf tied around his/her head…

We have completely missed this latest seasons battle for the super cool modeling contract as well as some mad cash, etc…

Which brings me back to the small article in the newspapers style section.
There was a whole lot of celebrating going on for ANTM’s victor…
More than EVER before…

Because a PLUS-sized girl actually WON!!
I was smiling, thinking of how cool that was, when I read the next line...

This LARGE girl wears a size 8/10!

Hey!
Wait a second!
I used to wear a size 8 too….

Back when I was skinny… No, really…

What happened to the ‘good old days’ when you had to actually be large to be called plus size?
When your size would probably have ended in “teen” to even be considered on the “large” side…

I think we ought to send a couple of big girls over to rough those judges up… I know a couple of size 8’s and at least two or three 10’s….

Yeah… that’s right!

They could really throw their weight around and show them that big boned women are a force to be reckoned with!

"Genuine" Mistake...

My sister is the friendly sort…
She is the type of girl who usually goes out of her way to meet new people.

She’s also tricky…

Sometimes I call her Tricky Vicki…

Her name happens to be Vicki, thus the cool, rhyming nickname…

There actually aren’t any ‘cool’ words you can rhyme with my name… so PLEASE don’t even try to give me a cool rhyming nickname…
I’ve tried and none meet my approval…
i.e. Wacky Jackie (Clown name!)
Khaki Jackie (Reporting for duty! Sir-yes-sir!)

Back to my T.V. (Tricky Vicki) story…

As I mentioned before, she likes to extend the branch of friendliness… or is that the hand of friendship? Branch… Hand…. Whatever it may be…. DARN-IT!! She’s extending it…

One Sunday, at church, she happened to be seated beside a lady whom she had never seen before…

Mind you, their church was not huge, so a new face tended to be noticed.
She took an opportunity to smile and say hello at the beginning of the service, but didn’t have the opportunity to formally introduce herself after the service had ended…

On the way home, she was chatting with my brother in law, Chuck, about the ‘visitor’ and how she didn’t get the chance to actually meet her properly before the woman left…

Here’s where the TRICKY part comes in!

She told him that even though she didn’t get to do things properly that week, she did however; find out the name of the stranger…

I TOLD you she was tricky! She didn’t get her nickname for nothing!

“It’s Janine,” she told Chuck (who doesn’t have a nickname, due to the fact that his name rhymes with several words that could get your mouth washed out with soap!)

Chuck was curious to know how T.V. had accomplished this ‘covert op’ without actually meeting the lady…
“It was stamped on her bible, and when she wasn’t looking, I stole a glance at it”

I told you she was good!

“It’s Janine Lee-Ather”

Chuck was truly impressed… for at least 10 seconds…
or until he realized that there was a good chance that the woman’s bible had been sitting upside down on the pew and that maybe….

Just maybe… it wasn’t the woman’s name that T.V. had recovered.

Usually, names are stamped on the front, bottom, right hand corner…
But if it was flipped over to reveal the back cover instead, what is normally stamped in the same spot on the back…

Is something that at a quick glance may have looked like Janine Lee-Ather, but more likely than not, was...

You guessed it…

Genuine Leather…

I told you before that it’s genetic!!

Now that you've heard a few of my funny family secrets... Give me one of yours!
Just deposit your funniest slip-up in the comments section...
Maybe that will prove to me, that there's a possibility, that it's not just OUR DNA...

The Swing of it...

I spent the afternoon with another guy...
He's handsome, has blonde hair, blue eyes...
and is very young at heart...

He laughs at all of my jokes...
He listens to everything I have to say...

AND he drives my dream car...
A red mustang convertible!

He's one of my tadpoles', tadpole...

That would make him my grand-tadpole...
Just in case you're wondering...
I've discovered that all of the tadpole-frog-tadpole rules apply to your grandchildren as well as your own kids, so basically once you have children of your own, you sign on to worry for all future generations as well...


He has taken up a new sport which is apropos...
considering he just turned four...




Get it?
Four / FORE!!




He practiced in my back yard...
With his cool boots...

I yell to him:

"Hey! Wait a second! Watch out for the dog poop!"

He answers, with a hint of impatience:
"Grammy! I'm hitting the BALL!!"

Silly Grammy...
Okay... so he doesn't laugh at every joke...

We are like, SO in HOT Water!!

Our hot water heater bit the dust in the middle of the night last week…

I spent the next two days trying to rid my olfactory senses of the horrendous stench that it produced when the electrical guts fried…

It was kind of like what I imagine your tongue would smell like after licking an electrified fence…

Not pleasant at all…

(On a side note, my brother had a big, old, German Shepherd that actually did that once… but come to think of it, I didn’t notice how his tongue smelled afterwards…

I think that was mostly due to the fact that he ran into the cellar and wouldn’t emerge for 3 days after the shock…

(But truthfully, he was much calmer from that day on, probably due to his self-induced shock treatment…)

I feel kind of robbed in a way, by the timing of it all…

It seems, those all around us are receiving their “extra” tax refunds and finding all kinds of cool stuff to spend their pennies from heaven on…

Like Big Screen TV’s…
Exotic Vacations…
Or Lear Jets...
(I just threw that one in to see if you were paying attention…)

I had dreams for our money…
And most of them were legal too ;)

Actually, all of them were legal, and as always, I was Walter Middy-ing myself through every single dollar…
It probably won’t surprise you, that not even ONE of those daydreams involved hot water!

But then they all went up in a puff of smoke…
Literally…
Stinky, electrical smelling, hard-to-get-rid-of-the-horrendous-odor, kind of smoke!

Life is like that though… at least my life is.

It’s all about my tunnel that I regularly ramble about seeing the light at the end of (but recently discovered was just a figment of my imagination)

This particular tunnel, which I like to call “our life”, is also a wind tunnel…

So usually when we get a few steps ahead, and are feeling like we can stop and smell the roses…. life flips the “on” switch and we are pushed back a ways… (And my hair gets, like, totally messed up!)

That’s okay though…

It keeps us honest… and humble…

At least that’s what I tell myself to help me feel better as I’m trying to untangle the mess of my hair… as well as my checkbook, when these kinds of things happen…

Besides... I hear that Lear Jets are over-rated anyways…

HOT WATER RULES!!!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a long, hot shower to take!

Welcome to the Grand Illusion...

I had a lightning bolt hit me in the head the other day…

Well, not a real lightning bolt, but a sudden realization that felt like one…

Actually, it felt like more of a GOOOOONNNNNGGGGG-type reverberation… you know the kind I mean? The Tibetan monk-sort-of deep resounding gong sound…

I have five wonderful offspring who have been helping to keep it real for me for nearly 27 years…

We’re down to only two still living at home….

"Only a few more years and a couple of more kids to finish raising…"
I have been bragging this fact to the whole wide world (or anyone who will listen…. which makes a total of 8 people) as well as sharing that I can see the light at the end of my tunnel.

I’ve had daydreams of Tony and I having cocktails at the country club with Muffy and Biff when we reach the light…

Okay… so we don’t actually belong to the country club and I have no idea who Muffy and Biff are…

So it probably will go more like this….

We'll be meeting Ferry and Tay at the local pub for a pitcher of beer… WHENEVER WE WANT!

It’s MY dream, so bug off and let me have it!

I was struck with this sudden epiphany just the other day when I was spending half of my morning rolling over some worries that I was having for one of my adult-kids*…

*I realize that this is yet another case of the need to revise Websters, because although several of my tadpoles have already turned into frogs, they will still always be my tadpoles….
Thus the need for the addition of the term "Adult-Kids" ....
You Follow?

Recently as a friend and I were discussing our equally complicated lives with our large families, we were sharing a daydream of a time when we would be finished raising our families, which will be followed by ALL of them moving out and then we would finally reach the point when we would become free to not be involved with their drama…

In the middle of that blissful moment, I had this dream-bubble bursting thought…

I realized all at once, that the light at the end of the tunnel is really an optical illusion!!

The sense of total freedom in the not too distant future is false…bogus…phony…total BS to be blunt!!

I should have known all along!!

It all comes back to the adult-kid/tadpole-frog-tadpole thing!!

Your babies will always be just that in your heart …
YOUR BABIES…

Even when they’re 35, they will still all be MY kiddos!!

With this sudden insight fresh in my mind, I raised my hands to the sky, the clouds parted and I shouted “WHHYYYYYY!”

After I finished my dramatic calling to the heavens scene in my mind, I came back to reality…

All I could muster was a deep breath and a sigh…

My friend listened carefully as I shared with her my new perspective…

She agreed and added that it was like when you are a kid and your parent is trying to teach you to swim and says ‘swim to me’ while holding their arms out, and as you swim, they keep taking steps backward and you never quite reach your destination….

I guess that’s the way parenting is…

Lets Recap:

• Tadpoles grow to be frogs but forever remain your tadpoles!

• Total Freedom from Parenting is a Lie that some bitter person made up to watch the rest of us make total fools of ourselves… and then suffer!

• Parents trick their children while giving swimming lessons! (That’s just WRONG!)

• I occasionally hear gongs in my head (but usually only when I think of something REALLY important… and sometimes it’s more like a bell, or occasionally a glockenspiel)

Larry Tate! We Need You!!

You know how sometimes, when you're flipping through a magazine, you occasionally come across an ad really 'grabs' you?
I'm no expert, but I do know that the aim of the advertisers is to do just that... To be both captivating and memorable…
But what happens when the person who is in charge of the ad campaign, you know, the guy with the same job that Darrin Stephens (Samantha's better half) holds at McMann & Tate, is building an entire series of ads for a type of food...
Let's just say, for the sake of argument...
The Council for Beef?

I'll bet you know where I'm going with this...

I can guarantee you that if Darrin ever brought this idea to Larry Tate, he would have been given an ultimatum -
Come up with something different or find a new job!!!

(Which of course, would have prompted some kind of Bewitched-type of shenanigans, and hopefully Uncle Arthur would pop by for a visit before the end of the day... because he was one of my favorite of Sam's kooky relatives… and everything would have worked out perfectly before dinner...)

The reason I am bothering you with this today is the fact that I am deeply disturbed by the latest Beef Ads that are popping up all over...

They are clever... I'll give them that much...
But quite frankly, every time I see one of them,
I seriously think of becoming a vegetarian!

They are gross!
I feel that they should have to come with the following disclaimer:

WARNING!!
The image you are about to view, is disturbing!
Parental guidance is advised...

After Looking at this ad again, and trying to keep my Cheerios down,
I'll leave you with one final thought (for dinner)...

PIZZA!

Miss Spoken...

Have you ever thought someone was waving at you and then you waved back before realizing that they were waving at someone behind you?

So embarrassing!

The other day, I saw a lady I hadn’t seen in a while and greeted her by name (with enthusiasm)…

I said Hi to her husband by name too… except exactly 1.6 seconds later; I realized that the man I said Hi to, wasn’t her husband at all!

What to do in a situation such as this?!

I wasn’t sure….

So I acted like I meant to call him the wrong name!

That’s how I roll!

How about when you’re having a conversation with someone and go to use a word, but then changed your mind at the last millisecond and your mouth and brain don’t have time to sync with each other so what comes out is a ‘hybrid word’

e.g. “That woman really bugs me” then your mind, at the last second tries to change the word bugs and insert the word annoys instead… The hybrid word you have just created is -“bunnoys”

Hopefully your friends aren’t as cruel to you as mine are, and will let you slide…

Mine call me out…

IMMEDIATELY!

‘Did you just say bunnoys?!’ which is usually followed by laughter…

MUCH laughter!

I don’t mind so much, because allowing them to do that to me gives me license to inflict upon them guilt free reciprocation…

My BFF Marge is still experiencing the effects that one of her blunders had on many of us…

This is a CLASSIC!

She likes to think she is ‘cool’…

I adore her…

But to be honest, she’s not really that ‘cool’…

She likes to use the latest “lingo” with regularity

Unfortunately for her, sometimes she hears it wrong….

Like the month or so, when every time she made a mistake she said “My bag”

Lord knows how many “My Bag’s” she blurted out before someone broke it to her that it actually should be “My Bad”…

Before you feel too bad for ol’ Maggie, I should probably tell you that although we like to tease her mercilessly about her verbal bungles…

It’s only because we can’t tease her about much else…

She’s beautiful (my brothers are all secretly in love with her and swear that she looks like a dark haired Nicole Kidman)

She’s kind, thoughtful and the best friend any girl could ask for…

Plus she’s a good sport about it…

…It’s almost like she’s encouraging us to keep doing it…

That’s exactly what happens when we let people into our ‘circle of trust’…

We become vulnerable…

And that helps to build strong bonds with our friends…

Who in turn abuse us…

It’s truly a beautiful thing!

Aunt Gertie...

Aunt Gertie was my Mom’s great Aunt, which in turn made her my great-great aunt…

She lived in a nursing home for as long as I could remember…

The facility that she was in was a ten minute walk from my Grandmothers house, so often times when we were visiting Grandma, we would take a quick trip over to brighten Aunt
Gertie’s day…

I think we did, anyways, but in retrospect, a bunch of silly kids showing up right before your favorite program; Bowling for Dollars, came on, may not have been as much of a treat as we thought it was…

**On a side note…
I like bowling…
I LOVE dollars…
But I never could see the point in bringing the two together and televising them into one boring half hour in the name of entertainment…
I mean, I like to bowl… but don’t really enjoy watching complete strangers do it… even in person...
String after string after string…
Maybe you do…
If so, no offense intended...
It’s just my opinion….

Through the years, Aunt Gertie never seemed to age…
By that, I mean that she seemed like she could have been at least 100 ever since I was a little girl…
Every time I saw her, she still looked 100…
No More, No Less…

One of the most awkward things for me was that I never could really think of too many things to discuss with her…
I had a mental list of icebreakers, but somehow, I never could find the right time to use them…
A few of those included wanting to know just what the heck that smell was on the floor she lived on… was it food or bad breath or what?! It puzzled me (and it also gagged me, but I learned to take in a few deep breaths when I first arrived and usually, my sense of smell would deaden quickly)
I also always wanted to know just how she could stand it there… I mean, day in, day out… day after day after day… Very sad.

The last time that I went for a visit, I think I was 14 or 15. My sister and I walked over and unfortunately had gotten a terrible case of the giggles before we even stepped foot in the building…
We did manage to suck it up and hold it in until it was near the end of our visit…

We chatted with her and had made small talk for a while, when Aunt Gertie suddenly sat up and announced that she had to “make a call”

Call me dense, but I was so excited to have something to say to her, that I took that statement quite literally, and as she was shuffling away from us, I exclaimed, “I didn’t know you had your own phone!”

My sister looked at me in disbelief…
I mean according to her, ‘EVERYONE knows that means going to the bathroom!’

I felt stupid for a split second, and then I began to giggle… and she began to giggle…. and pretty soon we were laughing hysterically, yet totally silently, tears rolling down our faces…

Then it happened…

A loud and very long (and I’ll say I’m sorry in advance for saying it) wet sounding noise came from the direction of the bathroom…
This went on for a good ten or fifteen minutes on and off…
More silent convulsive laughing ensued…

By now, I was thinking that maybe we should just leave her a note and bolt out of there before she came out…
After all, our faces were all blotchy from laugh-crying and I didn’t trust myself to not completely fall to pieces whenever she finally did emerge from the 'phone booth'...

We decided to stick it out.
I tried desperately to think of anything to make me not laugh…
War…
Falling off a cliff…
Biting my tongue accidentally…
(Hey!… that really hurts and sometimes makes me cry…)

It worked.

Thank the Lord!!

She came out, and unfortunately for us, so did whatever odors occurred in there while she was making her call…

We said our goodbyes and left in a hurry…

I’m talking, quicker than a bunny!

We made it out of the building before we fell apart all over again…

Poor Aunt Gertie!
So old…
So frail…
And so without air freshener…
(How could she take it!?)

She died peacefully when she was close to 100…
She probably still didn’t look a day over 100…

The older I get, the more I think of how I could become like Aunt Gertie…
I’ve told everyone, if that ever happens, be sure to bring me a large supply of air fresheners, snacks and please don’t forget the gum!!

Sugar and Spice...

Having raised four boys, I have always felt like I had a handle on parenting…

If not a handle, maybe at the very least, a fire extinguisher to put out the fires of teenagerdom (not an actual word, but I’ve added it to my list of “should be’s” that I plan to send in to Webster’s very soon)

I must reiterate, however, the lack of clarity that I feel in the murky, unchartered waters that I am treading through in the deep end these days, due to the fact that I am dealing with a fifteen-year-old daughter…

My friend Karen has three daughters…
Whenever I mention new worries that come with having to deal with estrogen, other than my own (and mine could be dwindling as we speak, as I am reminded constantly by my headaches and strong urges to turn the thermostat below the 79 degree threshold that Tony tries to enforce (see here to fully understand)… I’m a rebel however, and it’s blowing like crazy at this very moment, because I’ve turned it to 78 again!) She waves her hand at me dismissively, as if to say "My Poor Little Grasshopper, When you can take the pebble from my hand, then you'll know"
Usually followed up with cryptic advice, delivered with a sly smile “Just Wait”

For what?! I ask… no, I demand to know!

Then she breaks down into maniacal laughter and walks away…
(Not really, but I seriously think that she wants to, because misery usually loves company)

My daughter is lovely…

Truly…

But as I’ve mentioned before, Girls are complicated creatures and quite frankly, I feel that I am in over my head for several reasons…

1) BOYS – okay… I adore my boys, but I also understand that their ploy to be any girls’ friend when they were teenagers meant one thing…. They LIKED them and wanted to KNOW them… and by “know them” I mean suck-face with. This knowledge has completely ruined my daughters’ chances for being allowed to hang out one on one with any of her guy friends…
NOT HAPPENING!
PERIOD!

2) Girls are waaayyyy more social, therefore I am constantly being bombarded with new names, faces and plans… It’s not unusual for the discussions to begin on Monday about what she wants to do on Friday, Saturday and Sunday….
It’s exhausting! Many times I put a crimp in the plan (because I am trying my very hardest to ruin her life and so it must be done to accomplish said task)

3) Three words:

• Premenstrual
• Menstrual
• Postmenstrual

It’s like a hormonal firestorm for at least 27 ½ days on any given month!



Having said all that…

I must also mention that I absolutely adore her and she is a joy (at this point, for at least 3 ½ days every month)

NOT really! She is a joy every single day and I am grateful that she’s mine!

At this stage of the game, most days, I can’t confidently say that I’m sure she feels the same about me…

But that’s okay…

Because according to my girl expert, Karen,

That means that I must be doing something right!

Things My Mother Taught Me...

On this Mother’s Day, I would like to share some fantastic things my Mother taught me…

To see things from a positive perspective

My Mom was an optimist…

She always made you feel like things would work out… no matter what!

She had a knack for helping you see the bright side of things…

TEENAGE ME: ‘Mom! My boyfriend dumped me! (boo-hoo… Sniffle, sniffle)

MOM: ‘Don’t worry! He wasn't good enough for you anyways! NOW you are free for all of the other cute guys to ask out!’

See what I mean?

Miracle Worker!

To LAUGH

My Mom could laugh at herself…

She taught me that it’s all right to not be perfect and when you’ve totally messed up, it’s okay to find the humor in the situation and have a laugh… even at your own expense.

I put this to practice almost daily…
Which means that I mess up ALL the time, therefore I laugh A LOT!
(which I hear is very good for your health!)

To LOVE

Mom gave us love unconditionally, always…

I know that’s how a mother’s love is supposed to be, but have also seen that in real life, many kids don’t have that.
I’ve seen parents trying to relive their broken dreams by attempting to fix their own disappointments through their children, which sadly, usually spells misery for the one it’s inflicted upon.

I think that Mom loved us even more because of our shortcomings and encouraged
us to be ourselves… the best ourselves we could be…

To LIVE

Sadly, out of all the wonderful things that Mom gave to me, the one that drives me the most is the one that she didn’t realize she was teaching me…
To live life to the fullest.
Mom became seriously ill when she was still young… in her early sixties…
She fought her losing battle to cancer with guts and grace.

Throughout her illness, she told me over and over again that she was too young for this to be the end…

With those words, I realized just how precious life is…

We never know how many more days we have…

What she bestowed on me was the ability to LIVE today just because it’s here and so am I…

So good, bad or ugly, bring it on! (well…hopefully not so much of the bad or ugly, please)

Each day brings new reasons to practice my motto; Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much!

I miss her so!

Especially on Mother’s Day…

But, oh boy! What a legacy she left behind!

We all carry around pieces of her that she gave to us so selflessly from the moment we came into her life…

Thanks for everything Mom!

We Love You!!

XO!

Birds of a feather...

We were over at Ferry and Tays a couple of weekends ago...

When I heard an unfamiliar squawking...

They all just rolled their eyes...
I ran to get my camera...
Come out, come out, wherever you are...

Ready or not!
Here I come!




One of the wonderful surprises that I
so enjoy about living where I do!
When is the last time YOU had a peacock wandering around in your yard?




He didn't appreciate me acting the paparazzi and following him
around the yard...
Clearly, he wasn't trying to impress me either...
This I know, because he never once fanned his tail out for me...

After listening to several of these glorious creatures make noise all afternoon, I understood why everyone had rolled their eyes at my excitement earlier...
For such beautiful birds, they sound horrible...
They don't have a 'song'
They sound more like one of the contestants on American Idol who come to the auditions all decked out and flashy and expect to make it because they are the 'whole package'...
Or NOT...
Because the minute they open their mouths,
you forget how great they look...
You just want them to stop... immediately!
(if not sooner!)

My sister put it well when she said, "I guess it just goes to show that no matter how beautiful you are, it's what comes out of your mouth that matters!"

I think all of the Idol rejects didn't get that memo....
(nor did the peacocks!)