Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

This morning Maddie brought into my room a pink paper she had colored to show me. She reported proudly that she had colored it for Dad to take to work to share with his friends because they might not have any pictures. Sweet sentiment. Next thing I hear she's downstairs talking to Brian and says, "Okay Dad, now I'm ready to kill you!" Without so much as looking, I already know she has a foam sword and is ready to chop off his head.

Monster strikes again

Today i baked a cake for a baby shower tomorrow. guess who dragged a chair across the room and found it! We call him monster for a reason

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I Can and I Can't

I can do all sorts of things. I can change a tire on the side of the road. I can replace an alternator even when it requires rolling the engine. I can change the brakes and the calipers too. I can put the car up on ramps and change my own oil. I can check all the fluids under the hood. I can check the fuses and change a headlight then fine tune it to point the right way. I can jump start my date's car in my prom dress because he doesn't have a clue what to do with those long cable things. I can put in a new battery. I can and have done all sorts of things for the trucks we've had over the years. I cannot, however, no matter how hard I try to slam it just right and how many times I open it up again and slam it again and again and AGAIN...I cannot close the hood of those same dang cars and trucks. I'm just retarded like that I guess. So, honey, tonight I put oil and antifreeze in the Honda. Checked all the fluids. We're good to go, but before you drive to work...you might wanna latch that baby down like it's supposed to be. I stopped slamming the hood down after four tries for fear of waking baby Abby peacefully sleeping 20 feet away in her bedroom. What's the point? I can't do it anyway. Love ya! Acutally, this reminds me of the time when...no...I wasn't going to mention the time you got knocked out while tightening a lug nut and have tatoo makeup to prove it. I could tell that story, you know I love to, but not today. We'll save that one for another ay. Today I was actually thinking of the other time when we worked on the big blue boat of a car together at my parents while we were in college. Ahhh. The beautiful Pontiac Grand Prix. Who knows what we were doing, but Dad has all the tools, so we went there. Remember how you couldn't quite get the hood to close right after we were done working. But we were tired and just didn't care that much anymore. Remember how it latched (you must have done it since I don't have that skill)? It was closed tightly, but a tiny bit cockeyed. Weird. You did it a few more times but it still sat a teensy bit off. We just cleaned up and went in. Three weeks later my dad called to see where we had put one of his tools. I'm thinking a crowbar/cheater bar of some sort but can't recall exactly. We claimed to have cleaned up everything and I put it all away since I knew where it all went after 20 years of living there. I insisted it was in the drawer. He insisted it wasn't. I insisted he was wrong. He insisted we check our tools and our trunk. We did and I triumphantly reported that we did not have his silly tool. Finally he told me to check under the hood to see if it had fallen somewhere and stuck there. I checked. Nothing. Just like I suspected. But wait...remember how the hood was just a teensy bit cocked? Yeah. That darn tool was right there. Safe and sound for three weeks by the cockeyed hood, lodged just so against the front grill but out enough to prevent the passenger side of the hood from going down flush like it should.

Puh-prise!!!

Maddie with face gleaming and a smile from ear to ear, "Ben, I have a puh-prise for you!" She walks into kitchen and jumps up once landing squarely on her feet in front of him in a big show of **TA DUH** spreading her arms out as she unveils her big and fantastic surprise, "It's just me in a ballerina costume!!! See!!!" Her eyes light up as she contemplates the amazing surprise she has just revealed to the world and the anticipated rounds of applause and cheering that will now ensue. Ben looks up from his project at the kitchen table making a garbage truck out of an old 12 pack soda can box. He moves his eyeballs just enough to see her over the top rim of his glasses but not shifting his head position at all. He comments, "That's not a very good surprise, Maddie," and returns to his work again unimpressed. Well Maddie, them's the breaks I guess. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And Ben isn't beholding it today.

School Graffiti

Sucks to think you spelled your graffiti wrong on the school wall when you thought you were so awsome...errr...awesome. Oops!

Life at the Bus Stop

My life resumes with glamour jobs like waiting for the bus with princess Maddie and monkey boy Jakey.

Point of Reference

I am the sort of person that doesn't concern myself with the specific numerical values of different things. I just look at how close or far from a normal position something is. Like when I purchase ground beef in bulk then weigh portions on the kitchen scale to put in the freezer in little one pound ziploc bags for easy cooking later. I throw some beef in the bag and if the marker falls two tick marks from my chosen magic location we're good. This method of relative estimation carries over into weighing myself on the scale every couple of days. I don't really read the number directly to know that I weight 142 lbs or 167 lbs. I just look at how close or far it hits from the nearest multiple of ten and figure that I'm up a pound or down a pound from the day before relative to the nearest big thick multiple of ten line marked on the scale. I have been monitoring the gradual ten pound weight gain since the week of Thanksgiving. Ten pounds. That's kind of a lot in my book for six weeks. I sure had a nice month and a half though of eating everything sweet. The results are beginning to show. I have at least stopped the upward climb and plateaued two pounds below the magic black line. I hadn't checked the scale in three, maybe four days. I had tried to stop my indulgent ways and felt pretty good about what I had eaten in the last few days. I even had carrots instead of popcorn or ice cream last night while we watched a movie after the kids were in bed. Boy did I feel amazing when the little black dial on the scale hit the big black line yesterday morning! Wahoo!! I did it. Magic carrots! I lost the eight pounds! I rule the world!! Errr...wait...what did I weigh before? Oh yeah. The devil is in the details. I was up two pounds, not down eight. Grrrrr! Being over thirty sucks. No more eating whatever. What I do actually has consequences now. Welcome to my new reality.