Quoted

"I know up on top you are seeing great sights, but down on the bottom we, too, should have rights."

-Dr. Seuss

Mo Aquarium

I forgot that I let the kids take a camera to the aquarium with us. Please forgive the unfortunate state of their hair. It was a long drive and we always seem to forget to bring a brush.

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Quoted

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."


John F. Kennedy- January 20, 1961

Fishes

The kids get two full weeks out of school for spring break. Last November during their fall break, I took Emily and the little girls to the aquarium in Chattanooga. At the time, it was cheaper to buy a one year family membership than it was to buy seven individual tickets. At that point I decided that we should visit at least twice more to really squeeze the full value out of the membership.

Emily felt that one trip was sufficient so this time it was just me and the younger kids. After two weeks out of school, I think they were bored enough to be really excited about going to the aquarium...again.

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Memo from Mama

The second in a multi-part series wherein I dispense the knowledge, advice and (more often than not), complete nonsense handed down to me from my mother and other assorted old ladies I have known.


Don't be one of these women that make their guests take their shoes off before entering your home. It's just ridiculous. I don't care if your carpet is white and brand new. It's rude. Get a good vacuum cleaner and use it when your guests leave. Hospitality is about making people feel comfortable in your home. It is not making them feel as if they are barely good enough to enter it.

I'm serious about this. Do not embarrass me.

Love,
Mama

Quoted

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

- Groucho Marx

Southern Living

Remember when Southern Living used to be an actual magazine? I can remember visiting my paternal grandmother and being able to pass a long boring ( I was a kid, give me a break) visit by reading one issue from cover to cover.

In an effort to drive Kevin batsh** insane by subscribing to even more magazines, I gleefully requested it. I thought longingly of the beautiful garden I would create, the delightful ladies' brunches I would prepare and the great deep-south weekend getaways we would take. All inspired by this magazine.

Imagine my shock and disappointment when my first issue arrived in the mail. I thought it must be some kind of free sample. No way this pamphlet could be the venerable Southern Living. I whined about it to Kevin and he reminded me that Time and Newsweek used to be magazines also. Now they honestly are little more than a weekly newsletter. Times are tough in the publishing world, I get that.

I began flipping through in an attempt to salvage my magazine nostalgia. Always read the end of a Southern Living first. That's where the recipes are located. The main reason the magazine exists. The red velvet cakes, the cheese grits, the shrimp salads. If you live south of Cananda, every good thing you ever ate probably originated in this recipe section. I found the section and hit immediate paydirt... banana pudding. I defy you to find a more southern dessert recipe than banana pudding. Imagine my shock when I discovered that this recipe utilized Nutter Butter cookies. You heard me. A recipe in Southern Living magazine that utilized a store bought cookie as an INGREDIENT. Five generations of women in my family just collectively flipped in their damn grave. ( And , yes, I realize that banana pudding generally includes Nilla wafers. The difference is Nilla wafers are integral to a banana pudding and cannot be replicated at home. Trust me.) I took a deep breath and kept reading. Maybe it was a fluke. A convenience recipe tossed in for the busy gal. (Note to editor : Busy gals ain't reading your magazine and they won't be making a banana pudding from scratch even if it does include Nutter Butters.) I knew I was mistaken when I saw that the next recipe used Cool Whip. Cool Whip is not even food. It's just a bunch of chemicals held together with corn syrup. I'm not trying to tell you how to live. If you want to eat crap, eat crap. But surely I don't need to read Southern Living to find recipes for crap.

I've paid for eleven more issues. Maybe next month, I'll get some good advice on how to prepare a delightful canned ham for Easter. Or perhaps a lovely trifle made with Chips Ahoy. Fiddle De Dee.

Deep Thought

All the professional painters I have ever known were alcoholics. Every time I start a new painting project, I remember this and understand.

Scenes from Kline Manor

While cleaning Emily's room, I found this book.Emily is way past this stage but Savannah, Kaylee and Anna are just about ready. So I gave it to Savannah to read. The next morning as I was combing their hair, we had this conversation:

Savannah: "Mom, that book you gave me talks about EVERYTHING."

Ava: "Yeah, even your crotch."

I suppose this should not be surprising coming from the six year old who came home from school last week complaining that her penis hurt.

Quoted

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

- Camus

"That's What She Said"

I never watched The Office until last year. Half the family got sick over Thanksgiving so we spent about four days watching every available season from Dylan's Netflix Queue. I still miss the new episodes pretty much every Thursday night, but I will catch up eventually.

Book Review

Sweet biscuits, I loved this book. I admit it's not literature but I'm no booksnob. Some days you need to read a funny paperback. It's good for you.
Trust me.

The story is about the Spellman family who own a private detective agency. There is a mom, a dad, a crazy uncle, a perfect son, an imperfect daughter and their precocious little sister. I honestly can't remember reading anything like it before. The characters are so well written that they feel real by the middle of the book. This happens to me a lot, by the way. Some characters become so real for me that I think about them long after I have finished the book. I even wonder how they would behave in certain situations. I'm not proud of this. Just keeping it real.

This book has a smartly written mystery, tons of family drama, a few car chases and a dentist. What more could you want?

Also, Lisa Lutz has written two more Spellman books so ...yeah!

Hyloft!!!

In our ever-evolving quest to corral all our nonsense into yet another storage area, Kevin and I ordered these Hyloft thingees. It's basically a gigantic metal shelf you hang from the ceiling and use to pile all the crap you really don't need but you really can't (for whatever reason) get rid of.









I had plenty of confidence in Kevin's ability to install this contraption. My confidence in the ladder he spent an hour balanced precariously upon was not so strong. I kept my nervousness in check by taking pictures of his butt.

At one point he dropped something behind our deep freeze. I wasn't nervous anymore but I took a picture nonetheless.




Overall, it was put up with very little drama and none of the cursing/hysterics that I am used to from past home improvement projects ( done by my dad). We bought four total. But we're thinking that we may store the extra three in the Hyloft that we just installed...cuz that's how we roll.

Sock Hop

Remember when you used to wait until the last minute to tell your mom that she had to make 6 dozen cupcakes for you to take to school? Well, fast forward a few decades to this conversation between my mom and her 35 year old kid (that would be me, btw).

Me: Do you think you could sew a poodle skirt?.

Mom: I don't see why not. Just get a pattern and I can probably figure it out.

Me: I'm gonna need five of them by Friday.

Mom: Remind me to kill you.

Anyway, she did it and they looked great.

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Quoted

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next.

- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

Happy Birthday Ava!

We celebrated Ava's 6th birthday with a tiny party at home. She has a big 'jumpy place' blowout on the horizon...at some point. Unfortunately, she had been very sick for most of the week prior to her birthday. I sent her back to school on her birthday because she appeared to be feeling better. When she got home that afternoon, she promptly fell asleep on the couch and woke up three hours later with a raging fever. Needless to say, she wasn't in a real 'party' mood. My mom had bought her a cake decorated with the Disney Princesses. She wasn't interested. She sat at the kitchen island with her head lying on the counter. Savannah and Kaylee were looking at the cake and commenting on the decorations.

Savannah: "I call the Ariel ring!"

Kaylee: "I call the Belle ring!"

At this point, Ava lifts her head and with a very grave expression states:

"You call nothing."

This phrase has now been entered into our family lexicon and we will use it for hilarity from here on out.

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Book Review

I can't believe I am admitting that I read this book.

Let me try to explain...

Once upon a time, I had an hour commute to and from work. I passed the time by listening to audio books. These books were checked out from my local library. Said library did not have a very large selection, so by six months into it, I found myself listening to anything I could get my hands on just to pass that excrutiating hour stuck in traffic. Some choices were pleasantly surprising. I discovered lots of authors that I liked enough to actually read some of their work.


I also discovered Nicholas Sparks.


Ugh.


I began with a benign looking audiobook called The Rescue. By this time, Sparks was a fairly accomplished writer and although I had never read anything by him, I had seen The Notebook. Frankly, if you don't like that movie, you can just bite my hiney. That kiss in the rain alone is worth the price of admission. Anyway, I just want to establish that I didn't have any negative associations about the author going into this. The Rescue was so bad, I just had to check out Nights in Rodanthe. It did not disappoint. I must admit that both these audiobooks were so bad that they actually were entertaining. The reader, for some inexplicable reason, felt the need to change his voice for each character and as an added bonus, used a a horribly bad southern accent.


So knowing all this, why would I purchase and actually read another novel by this man? I have no idea. I found it at the Goodwill for 3 bucks. I was in the process of deciding that I could not finish the book I had been plodding through for a while. I convinced myself that this book would be a palate cleanser if you will. A light piece of fluff to meander through while I picked my next book to read. (I get nervous if I don't have a book to read when I finish my current pick. It's a sickness really.)


True Believer is about a science writer named Jeremy who debunks things for a living. He exposes psychics, ghost stories, etc. He travels to North Carolina to do a story about mysterious lights that appear in an old graveyard. Of course, he meets many colorful characters in this quirky small town.

Yawn.

Yeah, you've met all these characters before. Probably in a better book.

Then Jeremy meets Lexie, the beautiful librarian. Fast forward through two days and Jeremy and Lexie are desperately in love. Herein lies the real trouble with Nicholas Sparks. All of his characters seem to fall madly in love in ridiculously short periods of time. Good writers can get away with this. They do it by giving you some insight into a complex character that they have created which allows you to see how they form such a quick connection with another character. Sparks doesn't do this. He doesn't even attempt it. Then we must suffer as these two adult characters have endless conversations about why 'it will never work'. He's from the big city. She's a small town girl. (This occurs after the obligatory sex scene that seems to be written by someone without the slightest inkling as to how sex actually works.) They labor over their differences for so long that you will literally plead for a "Romeo and Juliet" type solution to their problem.




Stop reading here if you don't want me to ruin the ending for you...as if that's possible. Jeremy goes back to New York to be depressed after Lexie convinces him that she plans to marry the redneck town deputy. Lexie's meddling grandma (Did I mention that the grandma is psychic? No? Well she is.) comes after him to explain that Lexie only made up her engagement and that she really does love Jeremy but she's been hurt in the past, blah, blah, blah. Jeremy flies back to North Carolina and agrees to give up his big city life for Lexie. And even though the whole book has taken place over a literal span of three weeks, Lexie announces she is pregnant and, btw, it's a girl. I s*** you not.

I'm not hatin on ya if you like Nicholas Sparks. I love a lot of books that would be considered pure trash (the Stephanie Plum series, for example). But I think that his loyal readers could probably find all the stuff they like in his books in a better novel written by someone else. Just sayin....


**Update**
Oh hell, Sparks has written a damn sequel to this nonsense. I'm not sure I have it in me...

So far

Kevin and I have been married for six months. And they said it wouldn't last...

For the most part, this blended family has come together much smoother than I expected. That doesn't mean we haven't had our share of challenges. There just haven't been as many as I anticipated.

We did get one additional bedroom finished. For all of you who gnashed your teeth and ripped your garments over the fact that we had five little girls sharing one bedroom, please rest easy. The horror has now ended and each child has their own bed. They do, of course, still cry and beg to sleep together on a daily basis so...bite me. I am sure that within a few years, they will be sick of this "endless slumber party" and will be desperate for their own private spaces. We're gonna do what we can, but for right now, communal living doesn't seem to bother them in the least.

I'm about 8 percent complete on getting the house in shape. I have accepted that I will never be done but I wake up every day determined to accomplish...something. I have completed a few of my major house-related objectives. I cleared 90% of the clutter from the main living area and coaxed Kevin into putting in some sweet ass bookshelves on either side of the fireplace. It looks awesome. I often just sit and look at them. It keeps me from thinking about the mayhem and foolishness in every other area of the house.

I also got the master bathroom floor cleaned. By cleaned, I mean 'scrubbed on my hands and knees for the better part of a friggin day'. Let's just say it was dirty. Kevin's former housekeepers had a bad habit of 'surface' cleaning everything. By that I mean if you came in after they were done, everything would look fairly clean as long as you didn't look too closely. Two years of that kind of half-assed cleaning ain't easy to recover from. Also, I should admit that no one cares how clean that bathroom floor is but me. It's a sickness really.

The bedrooms upstairs still need a lot of TLC. I'll get there eventually. Maybe after the kids grow up. Whatever.

The laundry. Holy hell it just never ends. I've accepted that it will never be done. It's best if you accept it too.

On non-housekeeping related issues, the thrill still has not worn off that I don't have to drive back and forth between Hendersonville and Mount Juliet all the time. Kevin and I spent much of our dating years apart due to kids, jobs, etc. We are together most of the time now and I'm hardly sick of him at all :) I keep waiting for us to run out of stuff to talk about. Hasn't happened yet.

The only negative thing I can say about the last six months is that I really have kind of lost myself. This is temporary. I just keep meaning to reconnect with my old friends, relax, and focus on myself from time to time. But most days from morning until bedtime, just seems like a blur of chores, kids and 'stuff'. At six months in, I've made myself take a deep breath and re-access. I know there are enough hours in the day to be a wife, mom, taxi driver, housekeeper and chef and still get my butt to the gym. I may have to give up that 'chef' part. It wasn't working out so good anyway :)