Insane, got no brain.

As Sayde and I were walking out the door last night to go to Tae Kwon Do, I yelled to Lennie, "Peace Out, Yo!" Here is the conversation that followed:

Sayde: "Yeah! Peace Out, HO!"

Me: "No! Not Peace Out, HO. Peace Out, YO!"

Sayde: "Peace Out. YO HO!"

Me: "Close enough. You're insane in the membrane."

Sayde: "Yeah. I'm insane in the breadbrain."

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This morning, on the way to Connor's preschool, I "jokingly" told Lennie he put too much Splenda in my coffee. This joke is only funny to me, since the day before, I "jokingly" told him he didn't put enough Splenda in my coffee. So, he "jokingly" told me that he was going to kill me. As I laughed and said, "That's not nice," a curious wee voice drifted towards us from the backseat, "Daddy? Why are you going to kill Mommy?"

Great. Good job, Lennie. I can only imagine what he told his teachers today at school.

The obvious solution? From now on, I'll just make my own damn coffee.

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Me: "Hey Sayde, what's the Spanish word for beach?"

Sayde: "I don't know."

Me: "La Playa."

Sayde: "La Playa."

Me: "Connor," (who was standing next to me during the above conversation) "What's the Spanish word for beach?"

Connor: "Beacho."

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Dr. Zibbs wrote a list of his favorite (and not so favorite) comedians, which got me thinking about this skit about Nursery Rhymes from Ricky Gervais. Everytime I start giggling, Lennie shakes his head in pity. I swear, if you laugh, I will not judge you.

This and $4 will get me a Cappuccino

Well Ladies and the two Gentlemen who read my blog (Lennie is not included here because I don't count the people whom I have to physically force to read my blog), today is my 100th post. I considered going out like Seinfeld. You know, calling it quits while you're number 1. Except for that I'm not number 1; I'm more like 5,742,001, and I'm not calling it quits. Because, as I figure it, the world needs me. Why, just today someone found my blog by googling the simple word, "parenting." I feel sorry for those fucking kids.

And, I ask you: where would the internet be without my little pearls of wisdom about farting, little mermaid erections, and dudes who put frozen shrimp in their pants? No where cool, I can tell you that.

So, in keeping with what other bloggers seem to do for their 100th post, I will hereby torture you with 100 things about me.

1.Besides "parenting", people have found my blog by googling "there's a demon in my house"
"how do I get a raisin out of my nose" and "minivan stench." I like to provide a variety of useful information.

2. My blog got it's name because I once spent an afternoon walking around the mall with a nice squishy raisin stuck to my ass. This never would have happened before I had kids.

3. Other things that never happened before I had kids include:

4. Catching puke in my hands

5. Being puked on (ok, well a few times I puked on myself, but that was in college and therefore does not count)

6. Picking someone else's nose for them

7. Wiping someone else's ass

8. Sniffing someone else's ass to see if smells like poop

9. Being totally vulnerable by the Intensity and Desperation of Love. MUSHY SAP ALERT.

10. I have my Girl Scout Gold Award - yes, that one was indeed random.

11. My first job was as a babysitter. I quit after a kid hit me with a baseball bat and then his Mom paid me $3.

12. My next job was a lifeguard. You can't believe the amount of drunk people that fall into pools.

13. I met Lennie in 7th grade. He was my lab partner and I had a crush on him.

14. Although we didn't start dating until senior year of high school when I finally got rid of the permed hair and rainbow bangs.

15. I hate libraries.

16. I could live happily the rest of my life eating only pretzels and Diet Coke.

17. Animal crackers and Nilla Wafers could substitute for pretzels if need be.

18. It sucks when massage therapists talk the whole fucking time.

19. I can move heavy furniture all by myself. Ask Lennie, he hates it. Once he came home to find that I had dragged a king size mattress up a flight of stairs during my 5th month of pregnancy.

20. Right along with #19: I'm stubborn.

21. I bite my nails when I'm stressed. Right now, they are nubs. I must have subconscious stress.

22. If left to my own devices, I would go to bed at 3am and wake up at noon.

23. I think it would be cool to buy a big boat and spend a few years traveling the world (and then I wake up)

24. I love hiking. I wish I did it more.

25. My biggest fear as a child was being eaten by sharks. It was a recurring nightmare.

26. Despite that, I still want to learn to surf.

27. I used to have 7 piercings. Now, I'm down to just one in each ear. I'm a suburbanite, what can I say.

28. Never thought I'd be driving a minivan either.

29. My other biggest fear as a child was animals. That is, until my parents got me a hamster when I turned 7. That little thing bit the shit out of my fingers but I still loved it. Then, they got me another hamster, and now we had one of each sex. Lots and lots of little baby hamsters ensued.

30. I have a lot more fears now. Most of them involve something happening to my kids.

31. I love a good bonfire. Marshmallows on sticks, stories, sitting on logs. Love it all.

32. I would kill for some ice cream right now.

33. I am content to leave a job only 1/3 of the way done.

So much fun, I broke my brain.

Brain clogged with sunscreen.

Can't. Write. Today.

The one where I humiliate myself

Remember way back about 10 days ago when I went insane? Sure you do, it was the day I vowed to post a picture of myself in a bikini on my blog. So much has happened on my short trip to certifiability. On the first week, I ran 52 and a half miles and dropped 5 pounds. OK, not too bad. Then the dreaded week two; so far, this second week, I've run 40 miles and lost a whopping 2 pounds. While normally, I'd be going ape shit over losing 7 lbs in 2 weeks, but after running all those fucking miles? Somehow 7 lbs seems like a cruel trick of nature.

*Ahem* Here's me straightening up and smacking myself upside the head.

While I didn't reach my goal of 10 pounds, I did however really increase my endurance. If you haven't ever noticed before, I can sometimes release a bit of anger from time to time. Normally, my blog is a nice little receptacle for that, but I also blow a lot of steam off on the treadmill. Usually, by the end of my run, I'm listening to hard core metal or watching ultra violent movies and thinking about how I could totally kill a lion with my bear hands if I had to protect my kids. That is, unless one of my children should make the mistake of walking in the room during the last few minutes of a run to tell me that the other one "Won't get out of my bedroom, even though I said to go play in your own room." Then my eyes roll back in my head and I start saying the strangest things, like, "GET OUT." But, I'm off on a tangent. I really did increase my endurance, and I'm sure that now I could easily kill any frail and toothless lions that try to attack my children, and then I could outrun the rest of the pride at super slow speeds over great distances.

So, even though I didn't quite make my goal, in fair assessment, I did alright. I give myself a B+ mostly for effort. And now it's time to pay the piper, here's that picture I promised you:


Oh darn. Something's wrong with my camera. Here, let me try again:



There we go.

Advice from Dr. Connor

Believe it or not, I actually do participate in some textbook parenting now and then. For example, this morning the kids and I were having a discussion on the dangers of smoking, and all the reasons why it's bad for your body. When the topic moved on to brains, Connor wanted to know exactly what a brain was. After I told him it was something in your head that made your body work and helps you think, we moved onto how we can take good care of our brains. Sayde said, "Don't smoke and eat healthy foods."
"Good one," I said.

And then there's my other child...

Here's a useful tip from Connor about how to take care of your brain:
"Keep it in your head!"

That sounds like the keystone of a good life to me.

Weekend Update

Yes, I know it's Saturday night. However, I'm confident enough in the awesomeness of my social life to write a blog post at a time when 10 years earlier, I'd just be putting the finishing touches on my mascara to go out for the night. And, by social life I of course mean sitting on the kitchen floor talking to my dog while I give him leftover scraps of chicken. Don't be jealous.

It's been 7 days since the mania began. I didn't quite hit my goal of 56 miles this week, but I did make it to 52.45 (if you throw in the miles logged on the Stairmaster, which I totally do because I think actually they can be counted as vertical miles, in which case I've climbed Mt. Everest a bunch of times already. Piece of cake, I don't know what all the fuss is about.) The good news is, I've lost 5 pounds. The bad news is, it was all on the first day. It's a teensey weensey bit frustrating because I've taken shits that make me lose 5 pounds. 52 and a half miles later, I was hoping more for something like this:

But instead, I got this:

This might be the photo I post at the end of next week if my slug of metabolism doesn't get the point.

Lord, let me not eat cake.

I had no intention of blogging about this, but this issue has taken over my life in the last three days and so it has become unavoidable. Today, as I was reading The Nice One's post about setting some real goals for yourself and actually kicking your butt into high gear to achieve them, I found the courage to comment on her post about my personal goals. And from there, it was a short leap to writing about it on my own website. It's a simple goal, really. Totally achievable and not in any way insane.

In 11 days, Lennie's parents are taking us all to the Caribbean to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. It's a totally fabulous idea and I am deeply grateful to my parent-in-laws, and insanely excited to be flying away to a beach. The only thing that would have made it better was if my kids were not invited. Just kidding, kind of. I realize that would have defeated the purpose of all of us getting together, but maybe I can teach Ella to sit in the sand by my chaise lounge and hold a tray of pina coladas above her head, while Sayde and Connor each claim a foot to massage. It's worth a try.


So, anyhoo, my shockingly white flabby ass is in no way fit for public view. Passers-by may mistake me for some hapless beached beluga, the bikini might be the only thing that makes them pause before they attempt to start pushing me back into the water. (I have to give credit to my Dad for that joke. He's been using for years, as is his custom.) Seriously, I went to buy a bathing suit yesterday, and the woman who worked at the store picked out a ton of them, hung them in the dressing room, and instructed me to come out after each one so she could check the fit. "Ok, thanks!" was what I said. "No fucking way in hell," was what I thought. If I don't even have the courage to wear a bikini on the beach, how the fuck am I supposed to wear one in the mall?

I did timidly crack the door once to give Lennie a view of the final selection, a turquoise bikini with a little sparkly pin on the hip, which Sayde assured me was the prettiest one because it had "sparkles". As I crept out of the dressing room, my cheeks ablaze with self-consciousness, I asked him "Well, how is it?" Now, you would think any man who has been married for 7 1/2 years would know the answer to this question. The obvious answer is, "Wow, you look so sexy. You are the hottest woman I've ever seen, and if I didn't have this baby strapped to my chest I would ravage you right here and now." Yes, that's what the smart answer would have been. Lennie, however, likes to live life on the edge and so when I asked him his opinion, he simply replied, "meh," and was then stunned when the dressing room door abruptly slammed in his face.


So I decided to lay the smackdown on myself. No more cookies, excuses or time for slacking, I've got 10 lbs to lose by Jan 17th. Now, before you get all worried that it's too fast, it's not safe, let me first say that the slightly insane can accomplish great things.





Certainly my goal of losing 10 pounds fits right in with his theories... maybe if I try to lose weight while on the plane moving at the speed of light, it will appear to me that I've only lose 2 lbs, but when I get off the plane, I actually will have lost 20? And, everyone else on the ground will have aged a few years?? It could happen.


In order to reach my goal, I've decided to beat the shit out of myself on the treadmill. So far, in the last 2 1/2 days, I've run a total of 20.8 miles. If I can keep this pace up, that would mean somewhere around 56 miles in a week? After that, I plan on brokering a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, and solving the world's green energy problem. I'll give you the update on how I did in the form of sticking my head into the guillotine: no matter what, I will post a picture of myself in that turquoise bikini on my blog before we leave for the beach. What better incentive could there be?

Once Upon a Medieval Times...

There was a little princess who lived in a castle far far away in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. The princess was the fairest in the land and many brave knights battled to win her favor. However, the Red Knight, Sir Gregorio, fought the most fiercely and skillfully. After he defeated the obnoxious villain, the Green Knight, he presented the princess with a scarf of his colors and threw her a flower. The princess's heart swooned. Alas, though it was not to be (because Sir Greorio is my sister's boyfriend's older brother and Sayde is 6 years old) the little princess still waits in her tower for the brave Red Knight to rescue her from the evil Queen who forces her to make her bed every day.

The young Sir Connor, on the other hand is busy eating roasted chicken without the aid of a fork, and testing his skills with battle axes and swords. After the Red Knight gifted him with his own sword, Sir Connor proudly announced, "Hey, I didn't even kill anybody, right?". Well done, sir, well done.