Close Encounters of the Weird Kind

When you buy your groceries at Hy-Vee *cue mysterious voice* strange things happen.
(Okay, maybe I'm being a little dramatic. Today I bought my groceries at Hy-Vee. And something strange happened.)

Curtis and the boys and I managed a relatively smooth trip there this afternoon. I swear, we're still struggling with the logistics of this "three little kids" thing - so sometimes I'm exhausted and short-tempered by the time I even get them all dressed to leave the house - but we had a pretty easy day today (insert Hallelujah chorus here). Anyway, we completed our necessary shopping and made it out of there for under $30 (woot!). I was putting the groceries in the back of our Jeep while Curtis got the kids buckled into their seats, and when I turned around to grab the next bag, I nearly jumped out of my effing skin - a woman had appeared out of nowhere and was standing thisclose to me.

She was an older lady, I'd say mid-sixties. (Yes Mom. I just referred to someone a smidgen older than you as "an older lady." But remember that I once also thought 30 was old.) She was round, her brown hair streaked with gray, styled into a fluffy puffball of curls atop her head. She had on some sort of grandma-esque embroidered sweater that buttoned up the front, and her cheeks were flushed. Rosy. She reminded me of, like, a cross between my high school home ec teacher, Mrs. Haynes, and Mrs. Claus. As in Santa's wife. 

I don't have a picture of Mrs. Haynes for reference so you'll have to, you know, use your imaginations and stuff.

Out of the blue, the lady spoke. "I used to work here for two years, and I liked being out with the people," she said.

Right away when she spoke I thought she was either drunk or doped up on painkillers or something. Her speech was just a little too slurred. And my eyes gravitated instantly toward her teeth, which were varying shades - some pearly white, some buttery yellow, in no particular pattern. Like this:

Mmm, coooorrrrn.

Anyway, despite thinking WTF?, I just nodded and smiled politely. Then she went on: "But I don't think my back can handle lifting the heavy stuff. It's iffy."

"I don't blame you," I said after a brief hesitation, which totally did not make sense but I was just too caught off-guard to think of anything coherent. (And anyway, judging by this lady's behavior, she wouldn't have known "coherent" if it came up and bit her in the ass.)

After letting her weird-old-lady gaze rest on me for a few seconds longer, she turned and headed toward the store.

Curtis closed the car door and grinned at me. "What was that about?" he asked.

What, indeed?

I'm still wondering.

All I Want for Christmas is My Beard Removed

When I was pregnant with my first child, I wasn't surprised by the stretchmarks. I wasn't surprised by the weight gain (well, until it reached eighty pounds and I was all, "Um, wasn't this supposed to have stopped like sixty pounds ago?"). I wasn't surprised by the swollen feet. I expected all this, at least to some degree.

But you wanna know what did surprise me about my pregnant body?

The beard.

I grew a beard.

Not one stray chin hair. Not two or three. But a straight-up beard.

As you know if you're a reasonably educated person, the scientific equation goes like this:

Woman + fetus(hormones) = beard - attractiveness = (O)mG(w)TF?

( ... Or, you know, something.)

Even after the pregnancy, the beard lingered. I would remove the hairs, they would keep coming back - like those people that keep showing up on different reality shows. And then like a karmic kick in the teeth, I sprouted new, equally stubborn hairs with each pregnancy.  I added to my family, and my beard did the same. Take the above equation and multiply it by three, and the answer is "one bewhiskered bitch."

I keep it at bay - I don't walk around looking like the lost member of ZZ Top or something - but I swear: every second I spend in front of the mirror, removing the hair from my chin, chips away at my femininity. I mean, how much more dude-like can you get than a beard? What's next, a thicket of chest hair a la Robin Williams? ... A penis?

That's why when I make out my Christmas list this year - which it's almost time to do - I'm going to ask Santa Claus to bring me a certificate for some laser hair removal. (He'll likely understand, as he himself has a substantial beard.) Because when I lean into Curtis for that New Year's kiss to ring in 2010, I'd like to do it without scratching his face all up with stubble.

Anybody had experience with laser hair removal? Anything I should know before the beard goes bye-bye?

Butterboobs

Curtis and I have this ongoing ... butter battle, for lack of a better explanation. See, I love me some REAL butter. Not margarine. Not canola spread. Not I-Can't-Believe-It's-a-Yellowish-Semi-Butter-Like-Concoction-in-a-Plastic-Tub. But real, honest to goodness, comes-from-a-cow butter.

"It doesn't spread," Curtis always complains. And I'll grudgingly admit that he does have a point there - I mean, straight out of the fridge, butter isn't exactly the right consistency to slather on a piece of bread. But real butter is just soooo much better that who even cares about that small and insignificant detail?

My husband does. Apparently enough to gripe about it every. single. time we have biscuits or toast or whatever else requires butter. So -  to a.) avoid having to hear it, and b.) take away his chief complaint, therefore proving that butter is indeed superior and that I WIN - I always lay out a stick to soften if I know we're going to need it.

Except for the other night.

I made chili and cornbread. And forgot to lay out the butter to soften beforehand. And everybody knows that if you try to spread cold butter on cornbread? It will totally disintegrate. Curtis would have reason to snark, "See? Told you we should have bought the spreadable kind." It was our last stick, and I didn't want to risk putting it in the microwave and inadvertantly melting it - but dinner was nearly upon us. What to do?

My lightening-fast intellect came up with a solution. This. 

You got a better butter-softening tool, I'd like to hear about it. I mean, come on. This is PERFECT! Portable, accessible, and the butter gave way to a nicely spreadable consistency in minutes.

Again: I WIN. 

This got chalked up as totally normal in my book. But Curtis had to take a picture, and insisted I blog about it to show the world what a ridiculous weirdo I actually am. Hmmph. He may call it weird, but I call it ingenious.

Potato, po-tah-to.

Little Liars

I'm getting kinda tired of being conned, y'all.

I realize it must be fun for Cameron to see me dance like a puppet at his beck and call. He jerks the strings - "Pee-pee, Mommy!" - and I stop whatever I'm doing, no matter how important, and frantically rush him to the nearest toilet.

... And then wait for fifteen minutes while he leeeeeeans first this way, then that way on the toilet, dangling his feet, with a coy smile on his angelic little face. Fingers at the toilet paper. Picks at the genitalia. And ultimately produces no "pee-pee." Then, not only have we wasted valuable time that could have been spent updating Facebook  looking at Twitter doing something more productive, but now we have to struggle with the logistics of washing his pudgy little hands. He's not tall enough to reach the sink, even with a step-stool, so I end up squashing him against the counter and kind of pinning him in place with my front while I guide his hands under the water, usually soaking my own sleeve in the process. This debacle in itself takes, oh, about three to five extra minutes.

And it never fails. Twenty minutes after the first ill-fated trip to the bathroom: "Mommy, pee-pee!"

I fall for it almost every time. Because the times that I don't? The diaper is inevitably whipped off, and there's a puddle on the floor, as soon as I turn my back for 2.3 seconds.

But it doesn't stop with urine. I know that because Colin recently went through this "I'm going to throw up" phase. And even though I knew that 95% of the time he was just bluffing, it was too much of a risk - especially when we aren't at home. Like, one time we were at a restaurant and just after our food came, Colin was all, "I think I'm going to throw up." I couldn't tell by his physical cues, since even when he really is going to throw up he doesn't whine or squirm or anything beforehand. And since I didn't want to risk a booth full of barf - not to mention public humiliation - I took him to the bathroom ...

... where he essentially inspected the toilet for ten minutes, pointed out that "Hey Mommy, there's writing on this wall!" and then sloooowly washed his hands. Meanwhile, back at the table, my food had cooled to a disappointing lukewarm. (Good thing I'm used to it, since it's always that way at home by the time I finish dishing out and cutting up everyone else's dinner.)

I guess these things are just a rare taste of parental manipulation, and they enjoy the fact that I'm pretty much at their mercy. But that doesn't make it any more pleasant.

I'll be sooooo glad when everybody in this house learns to control their bodily functions without help!

"Stuff I Like" Sunday: Moms by Heart

So have I mentioned that I ♥ a good bargain?

Oh yeah ... I guess I did that here. Um, and possibly here too. But can you blame me? The thrill of snagging the deal of the century is a delicious, delicious feeling. I swear I am still riding the high of the cashmere sweater I scored for practically nothing at Old Navy last year.

mmmm, cashmere ...

Anyway, I got that same "I-hit-the-jackpot" feeling when I came across this blog: Moms by Heart. I was seriously so excited that I got a squirmy feeling in my stomach.



Compiled by thrifty mother-of-five Lori, it's a veritable treasure trove of the best deals from eeeeeverywhere. She does her research, y'all. If there is a deal out there, she's got it - and ways to maximize it. There are lists of samples and freebies (and if you've been reading me for a while, you know that I also ♥  me some samples), online and in-store bargains, coupon matchups, fifty-cent or less shopping ... Good thing I'm typing and not really talking because I would like be totally out of breath by now from listing all this penny-pinching awesomeness. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

It is seriously a bargain. hunter's. DREAM.

And don't forget to follow Moms by Heart on Twitter, where a tweet can tip you off to a major find. Or at the very least, knock a few cents off your next tube of toothpaste.

Lest you doubt the credibility of my enthusiasm for this site, I'm telling you that this is in NO way a pre-arranged endorsement. Lori doesn't even know I exist and if she ever reads this she'll probably be all, "Oh crap, I've got a stalker." I just reeeeeeeally like her site ... which is, of course, the whole point of "Stuff I Like" Sunday.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to sit outside Lori's house peruse Moms by Heart for my Sunday savings. :)