I'm So Glad It Wasn't Me

In response to the 6th picture thing, here is my lovely niece and my beautiful daughter cheering at a football game. Tatum went to that cheer camp last summer, and one of the perks was being able to cheer on the field at one of the games with the real cheerleaders. Woo hoo! She was extremely excited and took her role as pint-sized pom pom shaker very seriously.
Oh yeah, and Reese threw up like 10 more times the other night, so much for indigestion. When I was typing it on here, Aaron started reading over my shoulder and said all disgusted, "Her puke isn't even cold yet and you're already blogging about it." He just doesn't realize how much his own clever comments fuel the blogging fire.

IN DENIAL

About an hour ago, Reese threw up. In the sink in the bathroom. It could've been worse. Whenever one of my kid's upchucks, I start searching my memory for the reason. Because there has to be a reason other than that they are actually sick with an illness that they are going to pass around the entire house until we all feel like we have this disease we'll never get rid of until we die, and I'm spraying doorknobs and light switches with scrubbing bubbles in a VAIN, FRUITLESS ATTEMPT TO PUT AN END TO THE CARNAGE!!!
So I came up what she had for dinner. If I would've been thinking clearly, I wouldn't have given her so many acidic things in one meal. She had juice (tropical), strawberries, and barbecue sauce all in the same sitting. Who wouldn't spew that mess right back out?!
About 10 minutes ago, she came running out of her room, and I ran in the bathroom after her, and she barfed again. A much larger amount this time, and her nose got in on the action. Poor kid.
My husband came home a few minutes ago, and I told him what happened, and then I go on to lay out my acidic food theory. I do this every time, and he's extremely supportive and in complete agreement. He's following me around making retching noises and grinning and saying "You're next!" " You're gonna get it!" "BBLLAACCHH!" Thanks jackass.
I still say it's the barbecue sauce. She never eats barbecue sauce.

Eat Your Heart Out Ariel

Last week, my sisters and I went to go see a musical production of Footloose. It was my birthday present, yes- one month later, the show was here one night only. We decided dressing like we were going to prom in the 80's would be a FANTASTIC idea. The weekend before we hit like 6 thrift stores- who knew how hard it would be to find the appropriate garb, I figured it would be lining the walls. But we all found something, and they were all different eighties' styles, so we made a nice collection of funky formal wear....

I'm late eighties, sporting royal purple velvet. The real seller was the swatch of shiny pleated material at the top with the diamond square in its center. Bonus: you could see my black bra straps. In the middle we have mid-80s, reflective teal with poofy sleeves ( sadly you can't see the giant bow in the center of her back), and to the right flowy pastel pearled early eighties.

My niece was mortified. "What if you're the only ones dressed like that?" "Uh, we probably will be." And we were. But everyone seemed to get it, and we received a lot of grins and compliments, particularly Sally Shoulderpads. I think they put that meshy material in them to make them like that, she was crinkling all evening.

Anyway, the show was great, I love singing and dancing and music and applause, etc. The only slightly disappointing thing was that we were literally the only ones there in 80's gear, because they didn't even stage the play in the 80s. It looked more like late 90s to me. Not a leg warmer in sight. Ah well.

My sister got us all t-shirts. Mine says "I NEED A HERO."

My sister got us tickets to see the Full Monty at the college that she works at next weekend. We decided it would probably be too much to dress naked.

Off subject, my husband and my daughters and my nephew are camping out in the backyard tonight. This is my nephew's first night spent away from my sis, hopefully he'll last (he's 3). I stayed out there to sing some songs and tell stories by the campfire, and then I hustled back in here!! Cause it's too freaking cold for me! They all have like two of everything on. They're going to watch movies in the tent until they pass out. Like the pioneers did.

I can see I'm going to have to draw a picture of Skanky Smurf to convince you of her vileness.

Portrait of the Duchess of Droop

Don't look directly at it, you may turn to stone, or you may be left with scorched sockets where your eyes used to be.
Are you ready?
Are you sitting down?
Have you had any alcoholic beverages today? (that could give you a false sense of lack of fugliness?)
Side effects may include nausea, vomiting, dry mouth, dizziness, puckered va-jay, unwanted body hair, and a third arm sprouting from your back.
If you are nursing, pregnant, or plan to become pregnant, this photo is not for you.......

TAAA-DDAAAA!! Keep in mind, this is a professionally shot photo. A person who has made their career out of taking pictures snapped this, and Broom Hilda has pulled out all of the stops to try to make herself look as appealing as possible. You should see her fresh out of bed with three days worth of grease in her hair and plaque on her teeth. I wanted to get a closer one of it, but I was afraid of being busted. She has these hanging in the kennel right by the door, so I was in fear of her imminent arrival. I had a lookout, but still!!!
Good news! Actually, GREAT news! The plodding Princess of Plop is about to be fired! Hip Hip Hooray! I've been waiting three long years for this day to arrive. She has finally been caught stealing. I always knew she did, even though I never saw her do it and had no evidence of it happening, simply because that is the kind of person she is. DISHONEST. And thinking she's owed things. You know the type. She invited another employee over for dinner that I guess she thought she'd made good friends with, good enough to make comments like "Oh, you can just take one, no one will miss it....." There were also many items in her pit of despair that could've easily come from the clinic, and a few that could've ONLY come from the clinic. SO we have placed locks on all supply rooms and closets until the new guy starts next week, at which time the guy who does our drug tests/background searches, etc., will be coming in to escort the pile out of the clinic for GOOD!!!! It's just a shame to me that she's been there for so long, I mean, there have been plenty of reasons to give her the boot that don't involve thievery. Unless you're talking about stealing people's souls and smiles!!!!
This calls for a pot luck lunch! Minus the Slop Surprise!

The Pot and The Kettle

I realized I have a scalding case of it sometimes.
I was driving home tonight from the gym- where I was so fartacious I thought I was going to have to hang on to the wimp bar to keep from floating to the ceiling- and this kid was flying down a driveway on his skateboard. He never went past the end of it, but I had no way of knowing he wouldn't, and it scared the crap out of me. The driveway was actually crowded with sullen, sloppy new-pubers mingling and slouching. I scowled and thought "That little bastard! It would've served him right if I'd hit him! Don't those punks have anything better to do than......." If memory serves, I was not a motivated or thoughtful teen. Unless by motivated you mean willing to try almost anything once, and by thoughtful you mean always thinking of myself.
I'll also catch myself eyeballing some scraggly, bearded, mountain man types when I'm out and about and I'll be thinking, "Yeesh, what cave did he crawl out of? That's one scary dude, I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley. I bet he'd......." My husband looks like he should be tapping his bare gnarled foot and whistling dixie into a moonshine jug.
You know the romance is alive when you make your husband let you smell his armpit before you agree to the horizontal mambo. "And did you wash your hands?" "No, BEFORE we eat." We try to make every time like the first.

FLOAM

It's not as easy to make things with as they want you to believe. Give me a fat hunk of Playdough any day. And what is the snot-like substance that's half-ass holding the little pellets together anyway?

So I looked up my stats, 317 out of 664, and 14 out of 48 women in my age group (30-34). Bonus: My legs feel like someone's been pounding on them with a sledgehammer. I have to brace myself on either side of the toilet and slowly ease back until I feel cool lid hit my cheeks.

And I have to tell you, I saw someone CHEAT in the race. It was me and two guys running within a few feet of each other, and we came into this neighborhood that made a big horseshoe. The course involved going all the way around the horseshoe, the arrows don't lie. Well there was a street that cut across to the end of the horseshoe almost right at the start on the other side, and this dude veered right on it and loped on over to join the people finishing the horseshoe. And it was BIG too. Me and the other guy watched him jog away then looked at each other like "What the ??!?!?" Then we just continued doing what we came there to do, run a freaking half marathon. I mean, why even sign up and pay if you're not going to run the whole thing? It's not like the first prize was a million dollars, or his ticket into the college of his choice or something. The only person you cheat is YOURSELF. Chump. Also, we all had chips on our shoes that logged our distance and time. HELLO. He's dishonest and a dumb shit.

My sister got me a cake (a rich, chocolate one mmmm) for my personal victory, and she had them put my time on it-" 2 hours, One minute". "It may still be frozen in the middle", she says, "They had one thawed out but they misheard me , so they had to get another one out of the freezer." "Oh yeah, what time did they put on the first one?" "2 hours and SIXTY minutes." Hmmmmm.......

2 Hours And One Minute

That's how long it took me to run the 1/2 marathon this morning. Not exactly lightning speed, but not a snail's pace either. I was quite happy with it, I actually finished faster than I thought I would. My goals were A) to finish and B) to run the whole way. Mission accomplished.
I was nervous, this was my first race, but not actually about the race itself but about getting lost. I know, I know! After I started running I realized there was no possible way, you'd have to be blind and seriously mentally challenged. They had arrows spray painted on the ground, and people all along the way directing traffic and passing out refreshment ( I got to do the "crumple and throw" thing several times). Not to mention the fact that there were 1700 people running, they had a 5 mile too and the races started together.
I was so nervous I had to have my husband stop at a gas station on the way there so I could paintball their pot with my explosive pre-race jitters shitters. And I HATE crapping in public bathrooms, but I had to and it's a good thing I did, otherwise I would've won first place for the dirtiest drawers. Lucky for me (but not so lucky for them), they had just cleaned their bathroom.
Anyway, I really enjoyed it, it was a cool thing to be a part of. I didn't stay to see where I'd placed ( I was STARVING- they had some snacks there but I wanted a MEAL), but it should be posted on their site soon.
My girls running to me and marveling at my "medal" was definitely one of the biggest highlights. They are my biggest fans, and would've made me a winner even if I had crawled over the finish line in last place.

Break A Leg

I picture some rotten, teasing older brother yanking these off of his little sister's favorite baby doll and heaving them up over the wires while she's sobbing hysterically. The little bastard.

They're over one of the roads on the back way to the gym, and my sister told me she goes the other way when she remembers to because they give her the creeps. HA!

What sucks is that you can't tell how small these shoes are. There's no way the kid that these fit threw them up there. I suspect the same bullying brother. Unless they belong to some angry midget body builder."I'm sick of my tiny feet!"

There's also some other thing hanging that I can't identify and doesn't look especially interesting, so I didn't photograph it.

This evening I'm irritable because:

A) even though I feel great (no sore throat, no cough, no snots) I'm losing my freaking voice. I sound like Mariah Carey smoking two packs of Marlboro Reds a day.

B) I went to go make myself a frozen pizza for my dinner and it's GONE. I get pizzas with meat for Aaron and no meat for me, if it doesn't have meat it's not a main course in his mind, so he generally leaves those kinds of things alone. Not this time, they have BOTH been consumed. I was really looking forward to my provolone pie. Damn hyena.