Boring is Good...

Well, we weren't excommunicated.

I didn't even get to go. His Highness came down with some "sick bugs," so we had to stay home. I asked the Cat Daddy how it went, and he said "fine." I replied, "That you're aware of, anyway. Did you see anyone talking to the Leader afterward?"

OK so I was being a little naughty on that one. It's so rare that I get to give the Cat Daddy a hard time, though, that I felt I had to take the opportunity. But no one came running down the aisles, demanding the Cat Daddy's immediate release from the stage--with stoning to commence in the parking lot--or anything like that. In fact, no one said much of anything.

We traded off in the evening, and I went to small group while the Cat Daddy stayed home with His Highness. I had a chance to ask around, & from everything I heard, it was just a morning of great music and good worship.

Benevolent subversion--it's a beautiful thing...

Soon to Be Excommunicated...

(Bear with me--much of this is my secondhand re-telling, and probably got a little embellished along the way. By me.)

When the Cat Daddy got home from worship team practice last night, he informed me that we might get kicked out of church after this weekend.

"What!?! Why?!?"

Because the music is just too awesome.

OK, that's not entirely true. I mean, from his description, the music will in fact be cool and fun and rockin'. The thing is that when the Cat Daddy plays on the worship team, he brings his fancy-schmancy bass guitar pedal, which has all sorts of cool patches and pads and whatnot. So when he asks the leader, "What do you want here," and the leader replies, "Well, what do you have," they end up sitting in a circle playing with space-age-sounding bass tones. And pretty soon they hit upon my personal favorite, which is a sort of doodly-doodly-doodly sound you might hear when you're jumping into warp drive on the way to the Restaurant At the End of the Universe. And of course everyone immediately said, "Oh yes, this is exactly what we need to hear here."

Then the leader said, "No one's ever heard this in church before," and the Cat Daddy said, "Well, that's not entirely true." He used this same patch fairly often at our last church, the cool one in Mass. That's not to say it is automatically the perfect thing to use here, or anything. It IS to say that he has experience with it, so he has a good sense of when it is and isn't appropriate, and isn't simply playing crazy space-music for the shock value or anything. He was going to go a little crazy with it, but the wise and balanced sound guy said, "Trust me, that will be pushing the envelope too far," so the Cat Daddy toned it down.

I think the worst that will happen will be complaints from some of the grumpier old folks. My philosophy is that, as long as it blends with the band as a whole and creates good music it should be just fine for the most part. After all, it's hard to argue with good music. Then again, the Cat Daddy replied, some folks will argue with anything. True. True. Now if that happens, there will be some hashing out to do...we do, in fact, want to respect & honor even the grumpy ones. There's a balance somewhere in there.

Either way, after hearing about all of this I'm all motivated to get my butt there on time, 'cuz it's gonna be a fun morning for worship music. My plan is to bring several cute children (I'll have some extras this week) and sit up front. They will enjoy the music, and dance, and be extremely adorable, which will be endearing to even the toughest critics. Then I can say, "See? It's for the children."

Looking forward to it...

Paperback Swap...

I discovered this website a few weeks ago (courtesy of Mrs. Z.), and I think it might have changed my life a little bit.

Sort of like a combination of the public library and Netflix, Paperbackswap.com is a website where folks trade books (any books; not just paperback ones). Here's how it works:

First, you sign up.

Next you pick 10 books that you would like to get rid of (or, at the very least, don't mind parting with), and post them on the site. You punch in the ISBN's, and they ask "Is this the book you have?" and you say "Why yes, that is the book I have," and you're good.

Then they give you two credits you can use to order other books. Most books are worth 1 credit each. So when you find a book you want, you say, "Hey, I want that one, please," and the old owner sends it to you.

"Well great, Skerrib," you might say, "But what if I want more than 2 dang books?" This is where your books come in. When someone else orders one of your books, the site will help you print an address label, and once the book is received you will earn another credit. So the more books you give away, the more new (to you) ones you can get. When you receive a book it's yours to keep...unless you decide to pass it on after you're done and earn another credit. And the only cost is the postage you pay when you send someone a book.

If no one has a book you want, you can put it on your wish list, and when it comes available the site will notify you. AND it keeps a running tally on where you are in line for that title, how often it has been exchanged in the past week, and roughly when you can expect to get it. For example, I was something like 228 of 247 for The Tipping Point, and it had been exchanged once last week, so they were estimating it would be 228 weeks (4-ish years) or so until someone sent it to me. Well, I didn't want to wait that long, so I caved & bought it cheap off of Amazon last week. But that's neither here nor there.

It's a great site if you get in trouble for spending too much on books, or if you have a sucky library or something. We have a fantastic library here in Cheyenne, but between it, half.com, and now this site, I've got an awesome reading bag-o-tricks. Plus, for you bibliophobes, they have a CD swap and DVD swap as well. I don't normally swear about media mail, but this little site is just plain kickass.

True, I don't make any money like I could at half.com or ebay, but I also don't have the stress of trying to collect money, giving a portion of the profits to a middleman, and all that. And I like the grass-roots, free love (book love, that is) feel of everyone trading books with one another, happily retreating to our little corners with brand new books we didn't have to pay for.

Go on, check it out: Paperback Swap

Grossest of the Gross...

Poop is a major theme in my life right now.

Last week, the boyz and I were getting ready for a motherific time with our moms' group peeps at the local McD's. Each month we have a discussion group--we all eat, then send the kids off to climb and play and scream while the moms discuss various topics. This month we talked about finding me-time, as well as ideas for playgroups, field trips, and so on. The stuff of young childhood, and all that.

So while we were getting ready for all this fun I was putzing around the house, only half paying attention to what the kiddos were doing. I knew that the Littler One was hanging around the dog door, but I didn't hear the characteristic "flip, flop" that means he's just gone thru the dog door, so we were good. I did hear His Highness opening and shutting the sliding glass door, but whatever.

Soon, though, His Highness appeared. He was crying and looking very distressed in general.

"Mommy! The Littler One's eating poooooop!"

"Really? He's really eating poop?"

"Yes! He's eating pooooooop!"

It was fitting for His Highness to be so concerned for his brother. When His Highness was little, he stuck his hand in his diaper one time and pulled out a handful of his own poop. He looked at me with mischievous eyes and I said, "Don't do it." Well, he did it and was immediately very sorry indeed. We never again had to tell him not to eat poop.

Anyway, I walked over to the back door and saw the Littler One seated comfortably on the deck, munching away on what could have been a hunk of beef jerky, except that instead of beef jerky it was dried dog poop.

EW.

What's worse, the Littler One seemed quite content with the state of things. He looked at me as if to say, "Oh, hey Mommy! Look, I found a crunchy snack; aren't you proud of my resourcefulness?"

Frankly, I was a little impressed, but this was outweighed by extreme disgust. I scooped up the Littler One, wrangled the poop jerky out of his hand, and took him inside. Along the way I lectured His Highness about not letting his brother outside, making him use the dog door instead, and so on. As I gave the Littler One the once-over I saw a smug sort of look on his face, which in children his age usually means they're munching on something with what few teeth they have. Sort of like chewing baby-cud, except not really at all.

I knew what this meant. I had to do a mouth sweep. So I did, and came out with little bits of what had previously been dried jerky-poop, but was now fully-hydrated, soggy, dribbly poopy bits.

EW.

And he bit me. The Littler One has 5 teeth at the moment and quite enjoys biting anything that manages to find its way between those front top & bottom razor blades.

I rinsed my finger, wiped his mouth & overalls, and went back in. The second sweep went something like OUCH--sweep--whine--OUCH--sweep--whine. Then I got smart and wrapped a washcloth around my finger. It's as helpful as a mesh suit when swimming with sharks.

Finally satisfied that I had removed all the poopy bits, I released the Littler One with strict orders to stay inside (because he listens so well) and went off to scrub down.

Before I had kids I remember hearing gross stories and thinking, "Gosh, I wonder if I'll ever have stories like that." As if somehow I could avoid the grossest of the gross.

Now I'm wondering if I was smoking crack at the time...

As I'm Heading Out To the Gym...

Cat Daddy: You need to work on finding where that damn whatchamacallit is, Skerrib.

Skerrib: The damn whatchamacallit; I'll get right on that.

Skerrib: I have no idea what you're talking about.

Cat Daddy: Well, figure it out.


Sometimes, there is no way to win...

Brownie Advice...

Picked up this little gold nugget on Allrecipes.com (I think)--

Refrigerate the brownies before you cut them. They cut all nice & smooth, that thin little top layer doesn't get all over the place, and your knife stays way more clean. Alton Brown recomments de-panning them and using a pizza cutter, which I've tried and had decent success with...but in my experience, refrigeration gives the greatest flexibility in utensil choice, and therefore is the ultimate in brownie cutting manageability.

Once they're cut you can warm them back up, or eat them cold. Or maybe put some ice cream on them, or something.

Obviously it's longer to wait for awesomely-awesome brownie goodness, but in most cases it's totally worth it. Yum...

A Sunday Anatomy Lesson...

I like Sunday mornings because they're a little different. Usually they're more laid back than the rest of the week, 'cuz church doesn't start until 10:30. So we have time to sit, & putz, & generally just hang before we go crazy getting out the door because we still manage to run late most of the time.

I also like it that His Highness's imagination has mushroomed in recent months. We'll overhear him using our pet phrases with his toys as he makes up stories and scenarios. He'll come to me and start a conversation with "Mom, I'm Mickey and you're Minnie," or even "Mom, I'm Minnie and you're Mickey," and we'll be off & running with fun stories, and voices, and good memories of the Disneyland trip he took with Grandma & Daddy .

It is a little awkward, though, when the educational specialist is evaluating his development and asks him questions like "What's your name? Are you a little girl or boy?" and he replies, "I'm Minnie, I'm a girl." Luckily this particular specialist was reasonable. While she didn't declare him an imaginative genius, she understood that kids don't always perform on demand (her words), and gave me the chance to explain that yes, he is aware of his name and gender. And in the end she decided that he is a delightfully normal little boy (my words), and said he'd do well in preschool next year. And then she got to watch him throw a tantrum when he found out we couldn't stay at school for the rest of the day. It was the best ever.

So yesterday morning we were putzing & playing before getting-ready-for-church time, and His Highness decided that we were engines (the train-kind). I asked him who was whom, and was informed that His Highness was Percy, the Littler One was Henry, and I was Thomas, which of course I took as a great honor. So we chugged and choo'd, and sang songs from his Thomas musical pop-up books, and all was grand.

Finally it was getting close to time to go and I said, "Your Highness, my jeans are almost done in the dryer; let's go get the rest of me dressed. I need a shirt and socks and shoes." So we paraded into the guest room (home of Mt. [clean] Laundry), where I began dressing.

HH: You're putting on a bra, Mom?

Me: Yes.

HH: Why you wear a bra, Mom?

Me: It supports my boobies.

HH: I can wear a bra?

Me: Do your boobies stick out, or are they flat?

HH: They stick out!

Me: No! They're flat. Ladies' boobies stick out so they need a bra to support them. Boys' boobies are flat, so they don't need a bra. Do daddy's boobies stick out?

HH: Yes!

Me: No! Daddy's boobies don't stick out. They are flat--so he doesn't have to wear a bra.

HH: I want to wear a bra!

Me: No! Bras are only for ladies, not for little boys.

HH: I'm big!

Me: Fine, you're big, but you're still a boy, and bras are only for ladies.

HH: I'll wear a little bra, and you wear a big bra, Thomas.

Me: Nope, no bra for you, Percy.

It was a little strange keeping track of things for a moment there, but in some ways imagining ourselves as engines made it a little bit easier.

I mean, can you picture Percy in a bra???

Where Customer Service Is Off the Radar...

The Cat Daddy called on his way home and said, "Would you rather eat and then go to Sam's Club, or go to Sam's Club and then come home and eat?"

That is what he said, but I suspect what he meant was, "I want to go to Sam's Club tonight--wanna eat there?"

I replied, "Definitely eat first, unless you want to just eat there." So then it was settled; we ate there.

For all my anti-WalMart sentiment, I have mostly positive feelings about Sam's Club. I'd prefer Costco, but Cheyenne hasn't gotten one of those yet, so Sam's it is. We do pretty good about getting stuff we use, and staying away from the giant cartons of (delicious) junk food. We look at it, and then sigh just a little bit as we walk past without grabbing 10 lbs of creme puffs or the vat o' cookie dough.

His Highness adores Sam's Club. He will pick out every Sam's Club truck on the road, and says "Hello, Sam's a-Cwub! Good-bye Sam's a-Cwub!" anytime we drive by. If you suggest going to Sam's to have a hot dog and soda, he gets giddy talking about the ketchup and mustard.

As with WalMart you get all types of folks at Sam's--entertainment central--but without the big crowds. Not sure if it's the size of our city (or lack thereof), or if we are just really fortunate about picking calmer times to go, but somehow we always seem to go when no one's there. This is good, because we feel better about giving His Highness some license to run ahead of us a little bit and burn off steam.

Our membership was due, so tonight the Cat Daddy went over to order dinner while I took care of the renewal. By the time I joined him we were all sitting down to our gourmet Nathan's hot dogs. Well, they guys were. Call me crazy, but I don't care much for Nathan's (this is one reason I would prefer Costco--they serve Hebrew National). So I got pizza instead.

After dinner we decided that a little ice cream was in order. In the course of deciding who would go order, and who would stay at the table and wrangle kiddos, the Cat Daddy was describing to me how the guy serving the food had been a little grumbly. I'm not sure exactly how it went down, but it involved eye-rolling, and audible sighs and such. It sounded kind of entertaining to me, but I didn't have the gumption to try to provoke what the Cat Daddy was talking about, so in the end he decided to go up & get the ice cream. He did share about the experience when he got back.

Now, we'd never gotten ice cream from there before, so we weren't sure what everything was. Like, how big is the ice cream "cup," and such? So the Cat Daddy asked the guy what was in the "Four Berry Sundae." The guy very sullenly replied, "It's four different kinds of berries with ice cream. The picture's right above you." The Cat Daddy said, "Sorry, I didin't know that," and went with the sundae.

I was greatly amused by this story. The Cat Daddy hadn't noticed the picture, but it was, in fact, directly above where he had been standing. And it's about 20 feet tall, I'm guessing. OK maybe not 20, but definitely 8-10'. And the guy cut him no slack whatsoever. In fact I'm pretty sure he was shooting daggers at us with his eyes when he walked by as he was wiping tables.

So, sorry Sam's Club hotdog guy. Whether we annoyed you directly or just happened to catch you on an off-night. I'd be grumpy if they made me wear a hair net too...

From the Underachiever's Manifesto (II)...

"...Let us all join hands and do less together. Then maybe let's all take a nap...

...Constant comparison with people who are smarter, more successful, and more beautiful than we are breeds frustration and jealousy. Striving is suffering...

...If there isn't at least one important person in your life who thinks you're living below your potential, then you've got work to do."

From The Underachiever's Manifesto (I)...

"Despite everything you may have heard about striving for excellence, mediocrity is the key to happiness...

...Think globally; underachieve locally."