I Won't Be Bullied

No one likes a bully, but we all have to deal with them at one time or another in our lives. There are playground bullies, school bullies, neighbor bullies, work bullies, etc. Basically, in any and every aspect of our lives, we can find bullies.

I for one, while not advocating violence, refuse to let myself be pushed around. I will stand up for myself, never back down from defending myself and take physical action when I have exhausted all other options.

The other day, yours truly was taunted. It started out subtly. I noticed myself being stared down out of the corner of my eye. I gave no reaction, but carefully kept monitoring the situation.

Soon things became more blatant. The staring was more obvious and in much closer proximity. I made full on eye contact to show that I was aware of the presence and the hostility. I needed to show that I was not intimidated.

Before I knew it, we were only about 2 feet apart. I continued watching my back, unafraid and going about my own business. Then I heard it, "You want a piece of me? You think you can take me?".

Surprised and extremely irritated, I did what had to be done.

I showed that cheesecake who's boss.

I'd like to see it just try and taunt me again.

Will I Ever Learn?

If you let Smallest Weasel sleep in your bed because she had a bad dream, she is going to fall back to sleep very quickly and start dreaming that she is a kick - boxer.

When Smallest Weasel is going for the take down sweep in the ring all night you better believe you are going to wake up with bad back pain on the only day that you have available to get some yard work done.

So, despite knowing better you will start working in the yard and Boy Weasel will ask if he can give the 100 lb Mastiff puppy a bath in the yard. You will say yes because you are delusional with pain and Boy Weasel will get the dog wet and soapy before the dog decides that she is afraid of the hose and Boy Weasel realizes after being drug around the yard that he is not strong enough to hold her back when she bolts away in fear.

You will then step in to hold onto the dog and finish her bath. You will soon realize that you are not strong enough to hold back a scared 100 lb puppy either and wind up falling flat on your face and aggravating your back pain on the front lawn.

Soon your neighbor will need a ride to drop off her car for repairs and will ask you to help out and you will.

You will drop off your neighbor just in time to realize that two Weasels and a stray Weasel friend need rides to two separate track practices and that dinner is not yet prepared because you didn't plan it yet.

Mr. Weasel will agree to take care of dinner on the grill while you play chauffeur.

Once all the Weasels are home safely and Mr. Weasel has fed them, it will be bedtime for the youngest Weasels and yourself. You will take your pain medication and lie in your bed grateful for the comfort. As the medicine starts working a severe, violent and loud thunderstorm will begin.

When the storm moves in, Smallest Weasel will come to you afraid and want to sleep in your bed. And when Smallest Weasel sleeps in your bed, you just know that you going to wake up with back pain but you also know that you are going to get a blog post out of it.

We Need To Talk

You know I love you and the special time that we get to spend alone together. I cherish your company and affections, but when I am tired and heading off to bed, I am ready for sleep.

This is not the time to start fooling around. I am at the end of my day and usually exhausted. When you follow behind me and playfully plant yourself onto my side of the bed, with that come hither look in your eyes while I am getting changed, I just get annoyed. I'm not in the mood.

When I climb into bed and you start pawing all over me, you really test my patience. You ignore me all through the day, when I have the energy to offer myself and my time to you. You are never around when I'm ready to spend time with you.

I don't find it nearly as endearing or cute as you do when you stick your butt in my face or start rubbing yourself all over me. It's not attractive. Really.

Not only does NO mean No, but 'leave me alone' and 'get away from me' should be pretty clear cut instructions. I am not your plaything. Don't expect me to be welcoming of your advances when I am tired. Let me rest.

Don't get me wrong. I still love you, but if you continue to torture me at the end of the day, you will find yourself out in the dog house.

Recipe For A Successful Morning

Let's face it, mornings aren't always smooth and easy no matter how well prepared we think we are for them. This is where experience is key. Luckily I, with 16 years of mothering experience, have come up with some helpful & handy tips to make life a little easier and today I shall share them with you.

• Make sure that you wake up at 4:30am fully aware that the 4th grade Invention Convention project that you only found out yesterday is due today is only 1/2 complete. Wake crabby husband and groggy 4th grader. Work on it together.
• Elicit the help of 6th grader to make and pack lunches while you continue work on the project. She is the most logical choice, in that she only ever does 1/2 of what she is expected, no matter the request.
• Have husband volunteer to make up a can of soup for 2 of the lunches and then forget, so that when you open the microwave to extract the soup, it's not there.
• Make sure to be fresh out of dog food so that the 75lb puppy can request a meal by jumping on you repeatedly over the course of 2 hours.
  
• Have cats climb all over the tri-fold presentation board as you are trying to work on it.
• Have 7th grade boy empty the dishwasher after he eats breakfast. Have him move like molasses so that this tasks takes so long that he can not be asked to finished making the lunches that the 6th grader only 1/2 completed.
• Be sure to have the 5 year old wake up channeling Adolf Hitler, having missed his nap on D-Day.
  
• Stir with a cranky, attitude filled teenager asking for money and a husband who must rush out of the door to get to work.
• Listen to the news that the glorified rat Punxsutawney Phil claims to have seen his shadow and think to yourself, "He can't tell his shadow from a hole in the ground!"
• Remember that it is primary election day and listen to a bombardment of commercials with all the candidates pushing a platform of "cleaning up corruption in Illinois and try to refrain from wetting your pants while laughing that hard.
• Go wash up and change clothes because those fools actually expect you to buy what they are selling and that Illinois politicians are easier to bribe that a 5 year old with a sugar addiction.
• Pack everyone and all of their gear into the car to head to school for the drop off. Bring a granola bar for the 5 year old, who didn't eat breakfast because she was busy throwing fits and getting wrestled into clothes, knowing that she will not eat it even if it was a Hershey Bar, because that is her mood. Warn them "There are to be no phone calls today".
• Hit the store and buy dog food.
  
• Head back home and realize that your system for doing busy mornings could help the world be a better place.

I should write a book.

Cheapwads Chafe My...........

I have had it up to my chapped hands with green bathrooms. Ever since Al Gore nazified our toilets back in the 90's, before he discovered the internet and invented global warming, the corporate fashion of having green bathrooms has become so en vogue that it has completely run amok.

Now, I am all for waste not, want not, but what we have here is corporations waving the flag of environmental friendliness as a guise to actually just be cheapwads.

Case in point, the bathroom facilities at your local members only warehouse shopping mart.

Here you will find things so green, that they need not paint the walls to give you a sense of environmental tranquility, that is, until you try to use them.

First of all, the heat is kept at an energy saving 66 degrees. This saves them money right away in a two-fold fashion, A. They have lower heating costs and 2. Half the time I turn around and decide to just hold it rather than risk frost bite and icicle formations where I would rather not have them, thus saving on all water and paper usage while visiting.

Now if you are brave enough or desperate enough to use the facilities, you will enter the stall to find a funky looking commode complete with flushing instructions. Lift the handle upward to dispose of liquid waste or push downward to dispose of solid waste. What if you had hot wings for lunch or Mexican was last night's dinner? Do you have to hit a call button to get a judge's decision?

Either way, you soon reach for bathroom tissue and find yourself stuck with recycled John Wayne style toilet paper. You know, it's rough, it's tough and it takes no...yada, yada, yada. That stuff is so thin that you need to use half a roll and still wish you you wearing disposable gloves while using it.

* Side Note: Toilet paper should never be recycled.*

Now if you have figured out in which direction you should flush, you get to move onto hand washing supply rationing. The automatic faucets that I swear are operated by someone behind the mirror laughing their butt off as they watch you try to wash, lather and rinse you hands in a trickle of tepid water that they keep shutting off as you attempt to use it. I know they are there and I hate them.

If you are lucky enough to rinse off the soap enough to be ready for drying and have resisted the urge thus far to go completely postal in a public restroom, you have one of 3 options available. 1. The automatic paper towel dispenser that rations small sheets of recycled toilet paper that rip the flesh from your hands without actually removing any of the moisture and make you wait stupid amounts of time waving in front of them in hopes of 'Please Sir, may I have some more', before giving up and wiping your hands on your jeans, leaving them cold, damp and prone to becoming chapped, b. The automatic blower hand dryer that has been around for ages, takes forever and still shuts off before your hands are dry, leaving you to finish by wiping them on your jeans or spending 20 more minutes in the restroom under the dryer with an angry, cold, chapping mob lining up behind you, or 3. The Super Mega hand drier 5000 that threatens to blow the flesh right off of your bones with a jet engine that pierces your ears with 300 decibels and sends small children running and screaming in fear out of the bathroom and you have to chase behind them with cold, wet chapping hands because they are your children.

None of this is friendly to the user. Washing your hands in cold water is not green, it's cheap. Warm to hot water and soap actually kills germs comfortably for the washee. As opposed to dragging your germ filled hands around the rest of the store but it does bring you back into the store a few days later to fill your antibiotic prescription. The lack of decent hand drying options gets you to buy industrial amounts of hand lotion while you are in the store when your hands begin to crack and bleed and the most effective money saving cheap-o-matic device is making the entire restroom experience so awful that you opt out of using them all together in favor of a bladder infection.

Santa Really Needs To Rethink His List Criteria

We all are extremely familiar with the snot nosed, little brat that caught his mother giving Santa a little sumptin, sumptin extra for all of his troubles on Christmas Eve. What I wanna know is what on earth Santa was doing at the kids house to begin with!

Seriously, that kid deserves a lump of coal and to step in a pile of the little gifts that the reindeer leave behind in the lawn, at best. What did this kid do so wrong to deserve this, you ask?

Think about it. He catches his mother playing a game of "I bet I know where your ticklish" with Santa and does he stop to think 'that's wrong?' Does he care about the devastating effect of such behavior on his family? Does he consider how many pieces his father's heart would break into if this were to come to his attention?

The answer is no. All he thinks is "Damn shame that Dad didn't see this. It would make for great entertainment". The kid could be put on the naughty list for having words like 'damn' in his vocabulary alone. It never even crosses the kid's mind that this is a quid pro quo for Santa showing up at his house to begin with and the sacrifice that his mother may be making for him. He never thinks of Santa's route schedule and how this will delay Santa from getting to good children's houses before dawn. Not only should Santa not go to this kids house, his parents should go old school all over his butt.

What about all the poor kid who is getting Nuttin' for Christmas? He has a change of heart, promises to be good for next year, but finds that his actions are too late for this year. HumBug! Even Ebinezer Scrooge was given a 11th hour chance for redemption! If this kid really does go straight like he says he will, I think that he deserves a reprieve. Really. Gum in your sister's hair, using penny slugs and a tack on the teachers chair are bad behaviors, but child's play that doesn't compare to being jubilant that your mother is breaking her marriage vows and disappointed that you don't get to watch any fireworks because dad isn't around. I don't condone these behaviors, but kids will be kids and if they really change their ways, I say let Santa come.

I think Santa really needs to rethink his list criteria.

Christmas Tree Awareness

Every December 1000's of homeless and orphaned Christmas Trees are adopted from lots, the back of trucks and grocery stores, some to a good home and some not.

Because of a lack of screening and back round checks of those seeking to adopt a tree, all too often a tree will be tortured by tacky lights and adorned with gaudy decorations. In the worst cases of abuse the helpless tree will even be set fire too, taking its new home with it.
I urge you, my dear readers, to spread the word of Christmas tree safety to your friends and neighbors. Educate adoptive families on proper decorating techniques. Report and shame the abusers.

We can no longer turn a blind eye to these atrocities.
*Photos courtesy of Google Images

Must Be The Money

It's been so long since my last post, that I'm starting to feel like Nuke Dad. With Big Brother looking over my shoulder, I offer you full disclosure that the link I provided should be taken as an endorsement of his site and that although Nuke Dad hasn't paid, nor offered to pay, for the link or endorsement, yet, I am sure that he will feel compelled to drop $10 into my paypal account.

Since Friday I have been busy living life. The Cross Country team performed well at their sectional meet this past Saturday, alas, not well enough to move onto the State meet. They had a great season and have much reason to be proud. (I didn't mention the name of the team or the league because they have no intention what-so-ever of paying me for a mention).

What I really need to get to work on is planning for this Friday's Special Birthday edition of Suburban Wow. Full disclosure, I am a co-host, co-producer and co-writer of Suburban Wow. I make $0 per episode and am being paid $0 for the link. This Friday is Melisa (with 1 S)'s birthday and I need to think up something wonderful to do for the show to celebrate. Full disclosure, this link is her birthday gift and a ringing endorsement that you should visit her blog The Suburban Scrawl regularly.

In other news, over a month ago I won a caption contest from Big Bad Daddy Rant, prize value = a mention on his blog ($10 value USD). After posting that I won though, Big Bad Daddy fell off the face of the earth and therefore won't be able to compensate me for this mention and link.

Have you been over to Being Michael's Daddy lately? Tom has a video up showing how his family goes all out for Halloween and they do go all out. The decorations and effort they put into the whole shebang are fantastic. Go check it out and leave him a comment saying that I sent you. Even though Tom hasn't agreed to this yet, I am sure that he will feel compelled to drop $1 per visitor sent from me into my paypal account once he sees how much traffic comes his way.

Seashore Subjects is another great blog to visit. She is a pretty cool chick to visit too, which is just what I am contemplating doing. As it happens, she and I are old friends and my sister is getting married just minutes from her home. I am hoping for room, board and round trip rides to the airport/wedding in exchange for the endorsement.

If anyone else in interested in making me as rich and this blog as lucrative as the FTC thinks it is, just drop me a line and we can work out a payout an arrangement for linkage, mentions and endorsements.