Category Archives: humor

Blogger recognition award

Posted on by

Today I was nominated for my 3rd blogging award, The Blogger Recognition Award, by the deliciously witty Agatha Chocolates. Of course,  I am incredibly honored to even be noticed by someone who can combine chocolate with mystery writing in such an amusing and yummy fashion. I actually used one of her posts “chocolate tears” to test the deductive reasoning skills of myself vs my 15 year old and 3 year old…… we don’t need to talk about the outcome…..

The rules are as follows:

  1. Write a post to show your award.
  2. Acknowledge the blogger who nominated you.
  3. Give a brief story of how you started your blog.
  4. Give two pieces of advice to new bloggers.
  5. Nominate 15 bloggers who deserve the award.

So….. how I started my blog……

It was actually an experiment done for my sister, who knew I always loved writing and journaling life events. She was all hyped up on this “mommy blog” thing and convinced me that my humble experiences would not only be earth shatteringly interesting to the rest of the (blogging) world….. but that I would have offers of free services and products thrown at me by companies dying for my opinion about their stuff.

I am expecting a call any day now. Aaaaaaaaaany day now……..

Hey, Kim…….

Advice to new bloggers?

  1. It’s not all about YOU. I originally started writing these posts….and didn’t actively search out other bloggers. Followers trickled in, and I was always excited to see it, but didn’t initially think about following anyone else. Duh. Once I learned more about navigating word press, finding bloggers with similar and sometimes completely opposite interests, I found myself enjoying the experience so much more. I followed people, realizing I cared and wanted to know more about them, what they were going to say next. Now I feel I actually have virtual friends, blogs I follow and look for if I haven’t seen a post in a while. I want to know about that bad kid in the neighborhood who keeps sneaking into one persons house, I want to know how this other persons divorce is going to pan out, I want to know how many ways I can use cheese or chocolate to improve my life! So don’t just focus on your blog…. open yourself to the whole experience…THAT’s the fun part.

2. My second piece of advice is just to say that following a schedule didn’t work for me. I originally tried to post so many times per week….and it was too hard with this deadline looming over my head. I was supposed to have a format, posts planned ahead of time…which I find impossible to do. I tend to write off the cuff, often the day something funny or blog-worthy happens, I will sit down at night when the kids are finally in bed, and just plug away ’til it’s done. I probably won’t get “famous” this way, and perhaps this is why Dove is not contacting me-YET-to commit to an intensive blog review of each and every flavor of chocolate they offer…… so I guess I’ll buy my own damn chocolate for now. Unless  you want to send me some. And I will totally review it for you.

jp.jokeroo.com

 

And now, for my nominations:

  1. Neat Habitat
  2. All in a Dads Work
  3. Deconstructing Doctor
  4. A mum in Spain
  5. God, guts, and glory
  6. Heather needs a nap
  7. Anthonymize.net
  8. The shameful sheep

 

The taste of failure

Posted on by

Still on my cooking kick, trying out new recipes, usually healthy-ish….

Today, to prepare for Ramadan, I tried to make something Arabic to impress the husband. It’s actually one of MY favorite things, not so much his…..but I’m pretty sure he likes it.

Maklube, or Maklouba, according to this recipe I found on Pinterest. There are a LOT of ways to make this dish. some with meat, some without. My favorite is with eggplant… It’s a layered dish, with your rice dividing layers of meat/veggies, whatever you put in it.

There is a degree of technical difficulty, as you have to flip the whole thing over onto a plate and end up with a beautiful stack of yummy layers.Garnish with nuts/parsley and I like to eat it with yogurt as well.

That’s pretty much all the information you can trust me for on this one, as I failed in this endeavor on many levels.

But, in the effort  be transparent, lest anyone think I really am as perfect as I seem……

I give you……my failure

eeewwww, oily eggplant

 

Things started out well enough, until I used about 6 cups of oil to fry up one eggplant because the oil just kept disappearing with each eggplant slice I added to the pan. I did salt the slices like instructed, and also rinsed off the salt (which I guess I shouldn’t have) . I patted dry, but didn’t squeeze it dry….apparently this matters.

I didn’t have cardamom, a key ingredient in the “spice mixture” used for the rice. I chose to plow ahead without.

I realized the recipe I used was complete, but probably I needed many more instructions….it was most likely geared to someone who had a clue about Arabic cooking and didn’t need hand holding.

At some point, I decided it must be done cooking…. so I turned off the burner and let it set about 15 minutes. Then I flipped it over onto a serving platter ever so carefully.

Major clue of failure: There is not supposed to be a big puddle of broth appearing around the base of my food tower

Clearly, it was not done….but it was too late to put it back in the pan. I chose to continue on my path of dinner destruction.

First, I drained the broth. Then I added fresh parsley and almonds with pine nuts to  mask the flavor garnish.

It doesn’t actually look too bad…..

How did it taste? Perhaps I needed to remember salt…. and less oil. Hmmm, did I burn the eggplant? Maybe a slice, or two…..

It wasn’t terrible…but it wasn’t great. Or even really good to be honest. The older kids got their dad to take them to dinner, and the poor little ones were stuck eating this with me. They made a valiant effort.

I did save some for the husband, the majority went into the garbage as there was no way anyone is going to be looking for leftovers of this stuff.

Here is what it looks like when made by someone with a clue:

chefosama.com

This is the actual photo from the recipe I used, from Chef Osama. He seems to know what he’s doing.

I’ll try it again, because I love it (when other people make it). I think next time I’ll just ask one of our relatives who not only cooks it well, but is aware of my deficiencies in the kitchen….. so they can give me all the little secret steps that might have saved me from feeding my family a brick of greasy eggplant tonight.

cupcankles

Posted on by

Cankles, according to urbandictionary.com, are calves that become feet-without taking an ankle break.

This word has a negative connotation, right?  Imagine my distress when I see my little 16 month old nephew toddle across the kitchen today, supported by his own little set of cankles….

 

although these images from www.cafepress.com illustrate a movement to not only accept the cankle in our  young ones, but to support and embrace it….. the word cankle still sounds kind of harsh and judgy.

It doesn’t inspire the mental image we want to take away when thinking of our sweet, dimply, jolly little guy. You may call him Rubenesque…but you may never call him fat.

We tossed around some variations of the word…. baby + cankles = bankles????  No…….

Then the sister came up with a brilliant compromise to describe the transient phenomenon of baby cankles…

CUPcankles!!!

Doesn’t it sound adorable and kind of delicious?

One day, when the nephew is a strapping young man, complete with toned calves and visible ankles, we will remind him of his sweet little baby cupcankles. Until then, we will enjoy them 🙂

mother/sister confusion

Posted on by

The other day, my sister and I went somewhere together. Sometimes, we do that.

We went into a building and passed by a security guard. He looked over and smiled at us. “You must be mother and daughter, huh?” He kept smiling and continued “You look just alike, you probably get that all the time, huh?”

I smiled, but my mind was racing….. did he just….?  did he just ask me if I was her MOTHER?

Looking at my sisters smiling face. No, she wasn’t just smiling. She was laughing.

We continue on, stepping into an elevator. I’m inspecting myself in the reflection. “It’s the sweater…. it’s a total mom sweater….”. I asked one of the people in the elevator, “do I look like I could be her mom?!”  He looked confused. “NO!”, I helped him with the correct answer. “I DON’T!”.

Then he smiled knowingly, “you’re sisters huh?”

Clearly….. the first guy may have been completely blind. I don’t even remember him having eyes to be honest.

I give you exhibit A. A recent photo of two SISTERS at a play together…..

And exhibit B: 4 kids in the train at the mall. They all look under 10 to me. No mom-looking people here……

And exhibit C:

Hmmmm, so maybe I do tend to look overall more subdued. More mature in a very young and not mom-ish way. Definitely don’t look like I gave birth to that lady with the chopsticks….

And finally, exhibit D:

Oh, well isn’t that precious. She was my little bitty baby sister….. and I doted on her and probably did pretend to be her mommy back then. Just look at that little face…..

You know what? It’s really ok. I do kind of feel like a mom to her sometimes, I practiced my parenting technique on her before trying it out on my own kids…. thanks to the mistakes I made with my sister, my oldest has turned out pretty awesome.

Oh, I love that little sister of mine. Even if I am going to have to ugly her up a bit before we hang out together next time…. 🙂

 

I’m a sucker

Posted on by

Sometimes the three year old gets in trouble. Hard to believe, I know.

Recently, I’m lecturing her on, say, the best way to clean the windows. (Hint, NOT with her tongue…) She interrupts me, and says “But do you still love me?” In a completely pitiful and forlorn voice.

And so it began. She asks if I love her. I tell her of course I love her. I never STOP loving her. We do this several times a day sometimes.

And somehow it’s developed into…. “Jenna! stop *insert behavior*!  She looks over at me, and says “but mom, I still love you!” And continues what she was doing. Sometimes she actually puts her hand on my cheek, and turns my face towards her. Then she tells me, very seriously, “I still love you…. I’ll NEVER stop loving you!” And then does what she wants…

What she means is, OK, you caught me, but look….I’m saying the right words, so I get a free pass, right?? Right???

Um… yep. Pretty much.

free spirit ?? Yea, that’s it….

Babysitter secrets

Posted on by

I was having a conversation with my sister the other day, about a mutual friend who seems to have such conflicted feelings toward her babysitter.

Seems like the sitter is very nice, happy, friendly, responsible, and loving toward her child. He loves going over there. He is treated like family. Yet….. the friend was reluctant to leave him with her. Found fault with the way she did things, and seemed very suspicious of her.

My sister doesn’t understand how in the world this is possible. Especially since the babysitter is also a close friend of hers…and she can vouch that the girl is in fact NOT torturing or neglecting this child during the time she is watching him.

I decided to fill her in on the whole mom/babysitter relationship. At least how it sometimes goes.

For example, if you look on any babysitting site, there are ads from parents looking for that perfect person to watch their baby. But what they are asking for and what they really want aren’t always the same. In these cases, you need to read between the lines and understand that we don’t REALLY want you to love our kids. Maybe just a little, but not enough to make them love you BACK. Because then you’re competition. And that makes us hate you.

This might be a more honest look into the heart of a mom who has to work, and needs a sitter, but also hates the idea of needing a sitter, and worries about being replaced emotionally.

“In search of a dependable, efficient, no-nonsense sitter for my kids. Please be very kind to them, but also sometimes indifferent so they don’t start to love you, but instead always remember to love me more. No more than 3 hugs per day, which must be initiated by the child and tolerated by you. Absolutely no cute nicknames for them. Please do make them healthy and yummy lunches, but don’t cut the sandwich the special way that I cut it… and no pancakes made to spell their names. Just circles for you. If you witness a “first” moment, ignore it. Pretend it didn’t happen… save it for me. If they tell you they love you, pretend you just stubbed your toe and jump around yelling to distract them from those dangerous thoughts. Must be kind of irritable at the end of the day so they run to me with smiles when I come home.”

Or if you need visuals:

NO

YES

 

I may have experienced this myself…. so it’s possible that I know what I’m talking about just a tiny bit. It doesn’t make sense, but nothing makes sense after having kids anyway… In my own experience, I did finally come to really appreciate that the kids and the sitter DID love each other, and time made me realize that nothing-so far-has been able to replace me in their affections.

I think our friend is going through the same issue. Which sucks, but I guess I’d rather hate my sitter for loving my kids and making me jealous, than for actually being a shitty sitter. Ha, try saying that five times fast, shitty sitter, shitty sitter, shitty sitter….. can’t do it can you??

 

Another pee story

Posted on by

Because you can’t really hear enough about pee, right?

There was an accident in the dining room today, as the 3 year old was playing hide and seek with her brother. A pee accident. Because she couldn’t come out of her hiding spot, so what was a girl to do?

After a tearful (on her part) and somewhat angry (on my part) discussion on the merits of peeing when you need to go vs “holding it”…. we came to an agreement. We agreed to still love each other even when one of us decides to pee our pants, and even if the other person is not very happy about it. And also that we really should take time to stop playing and go pee before it decides to make a grand entrance on a very expensive rug that your father may have a stroke over if he ever found out. She missed the rug…but it was close. Too close.

But as my husband hears the story, he seems so shocked….why did she do it?

Oh, I know.

And now for my next pee story.

I was somewhere around 5 or 6 years old. Playing at the neighbors house, and at some point realized I needed to pee. I think I was in a battle with my bladder, not wanting to allow it any power over me. I would be the one to choose my place and time of elimination, thank you very much! Not some brainless, hollow organ that can’t even stretch enough to let me finish playing a summer afternoon game of hide and seek.

At some point the urge grew from nagging to alarming. I crouched down, begging my body to just HOLD IT IN! I was doing fine, until I lost my balance, fell over and released Hoover Dam.

flikrhivemind.net

I then stood, and took stock of what I had to work with. Warm sunny day, very wet pants. Can’t blame it on falling in a puddle….. but I COULD blame it on falling in a puddle of BUBBLES! Of course, I would tell my parents we were playing with a lake of bubbles and silly me fell in. Surely they would buy it!

I still remember crying, insisting it was BUBBLES and not pee!!!  Isn’t it funny how indignant we get when someone doesn’t believe our perfectly plausible lie?

So I get it. I get that I will have to expect these moments here and there, and remind the youngest to pee sometimes when she’s doing her best to avoid it. And I’ll tell her all the stuff, like I did today, about how it’s bad to hold it in, and not good for your body etc….

What I won’t tell her is that I’ve just gotten sooooo much better at holding it. That’s right, pee, I’m totally the boss of you.

freeimages.com

3 year old confidence

Posted on by

I really hope the 3 year old keeps her spunky attitude. That’s what someone said about her today, “she’s got spunk”. I am taking it as a compliment.

She had to go potty today, just now in fact…. called me when she was done. After I do my clean up job, she walks out of the bathroom singing “Hey mom, pee is #1, and poop is #2!”  She’s holding two thumbs up above her head, as she swaggers past victoriously.

I love that she’s so proud of herself and her poop.

Sunshine blogger award

Posted on by

So I was just nominated by Amanda at Just in Queso for the sunshine blogger award 🙂 🙂

I totally accept and also urge you all to check out her blog, it’s pretty irresistible…. kind of like a yummy, melty, cheesy slightly sarcastic but always in good taste bowl of queso.

So here are the rules for this award:

  1. Answer the 11 questions from the person nominating you.
  2. Nominate 11 other awesome bloggers, and give the 11 questions to answer.

Not too bad, right?

Here are my assigned questions:

1.What is your favorite snack?

So this is actually a really hard question for me to answer… because I am a shameless snacker and I don’t want any of my favorites to feel left out. Let’s say popcorn mixed with jelly beans or sour patch kids is pretty  high up there. All things chocolate of course, and homemade banana splits with plenty of m&m’s, hot fudge, strawberry sauce, peanuts, and whipped cream…. and a brownie… a brownie on the bottom.

2. Where is your happy place?

In my imagination…. it always beats reality.

3. What is a sound you enjoy hearing?

Am I too cheesy if I say something like “the sound of my kids laughter”? Also silence… I like the sound of silence a whole lot.

4. Tell us something weird/interesting about you.

Hmmmmm. In elementary school I once taped a cotton ball over my eye and kept it on all day to garner sympathy and attention from my classmates. Current weird problem is that I can’t stop swallowing my gum.

5. What is one thing you would change about yourself?

Probably my desire to change things about myself…

6. What is one of your strengths?

I’m going to say multi-tasking, and organization. God, that sounds horribly boring and depressing.

7. How is May going for you so far?

I feel pretty good about May so far…. it has seen my lose 3 lbs and let’s hope it doesn’t see me put it and more back on 🙂

8. What is your favorite thing to do with close friends?

Well this is definitely a “what if” question, as I never actually get to see my close friends. Last time I saw my best friend, we met up in the Starbucks parking lot so I could grab my girl scout cookies from her and then drive away, each on to our next duty. On the rare occasion our schedules line up… we usually spend the time asking each other what we want to do, until time is almost up and then we just go eat somewhere close and lament out inability to make decisions.

9. What’s the last movie you saw? What did you think of it?

The jungle book, I took the 2 youngest with me to see it. I liked it! Extra points for the movie popcorn mixed with sour patch kids and reclining theater seats.

10. What is your least favorite “adulting” task?

Waking up early, after I’ve stayed up reading far too late. And all the driving around crap….hate that too.

11. Tell us about a scar you have and how you got it.

Once I was riding my bike home from a friends house, maybe 10 years old. I had my bathing suit in a plastic bag on my handle bars. The bag got pulled between the fender and the wheel and instead of stopping, I tried to untangle it while I kept riding. Drifted to the side, and ran right into the back of a parked car. It’s a little hazy, but I ended up on my back with my chin bleeding. Had to ride home with a wonky front tire and blood running down my neck. I ended up with stitches, and a nice scar under my chin.

Here are my nominees, if they so choose to participate:

  1. parental ramblings
  2. single family asylum
  3. the shameful sheep
  4. the euphoric Iraqi single mom
  5. passports and pigtails

And the questions below 🙂

1.What is your first memory?

2. Who would you never share a fork with?

3. Are you a dog or cat person?

4. Biggest mistake you’ve made (yet)?

5. What have you done to get rid of the hiccups?

6. What’s your favorite joke?

7. What did you want to be when you grew/grow up?

8. What color do you look best in?

9. Best (untrue) excuse you’ve used to get out of something?

10. Would you ever look in the mirror and say “candyman” three times??? HAVE you??

11. Do you believe in psychics?

Ok guys… I’m looking forward to these responses if you find the time or interest to play along 🙂   Thanks again, Amanda from Just in Queso, an awesome blogger and cheese aficionado!

 

 

 

 

 

Facing facts

Posted on by

Until this past year, I have lived my life blissfully ignoring “recommended calories” when I felt like it. I knew I ate horribly, but figured that box of swiss cake rolls I gobbled in the darkness of the pantry would be offset by the lack of breakfast or lunch on most days.

My night snacking was enjoyable. And again, in the spirit of refusing to face reality, I chose to believe that all the crap I ate right before bed would just kind of….disappear, and I’d have a reset the next day.

Why not, that’s how it’s always worked!

I was blessed by genetics, taking after my mother who had 5 kids, never exercised, and always had a tiny waist. My hip bones stood in proud defiance of the calories I ingested.

But one day, I noticed that my scale wasn’t working right anymore. In fact, it seemed to be stuck higher than I was used to. Then it went higher. I started to worry….. and finally panic as weeks went by, and the number never went down. Instead….it crept up.

Suddenly, I’m noticing a new softness across the midsection…. at the waistband…. and I consider my options. I won’t say I’m not very interested in smart lipo. I absolutely am in love with the idea…… except I would literally be spending my kids tuition to get it, so I sigh, and consider some more.

I’m no stranger to exercise, but still struggling to fit it in the schedule with these kids, and this job, and all this other stuff going on… and let’s face it….. working out for 20 minutes, and then stuffing my face with a chocolate lava cake is probably not going to help much.

I did recently download this app, called MyNetDiary.  It counts calories, tracks weight, give access to all sorts of tips and articles about weight loss, working out etc. I started plugging in what I ate, even more motivating was the option to scan barcodes… if only I ate more packaged food… it’s so fun to scan and see everything pop up for you!

I started this about 2 weeks ago. I’ve quickly become addicted. I put in my current weight, my goal weight, my level of activity, and a date I want to achieve my goal. I weigh myself in the morning, and log my food, even glasses of water.

It really works!!  For once, I feel like I have something keeping me in check when I go scavenging for sweets, although it was depressing to find out that each starburst has 40 calories. I’m actually starting to think about things being calorie-worthy….. am I finally a real grown up?

Today we had lunch with my mom for Mothers Day. Olive Garden…. who can survive that??!!  I ate 2 breadsticks, all the while fuming about the 300 calories they were costing me. Still smothered them in alfredo sauce. Salad, a scoop of shrimp scampi from the lighter fare menu, and half piece of tiramisu.

I think I usually eat a lot more than I did, but for the first time I was aware and made an effort to eat within my limit for the day. Since then I’ve had 2 cups of tea, and more salad. That’s it. I did go over calories, but only by 161—not the zillion it would have been.

And I’ve lost 3 pounds. First thinking it’s a fluke, but it seems to be real. I love to look at the graph and see the downward trend. It’s so motivating!

Oh, I’m not going to give up my pantry snacking completely, one must have some joy in life….. But finally, I think I might be motivated enough to stick to something. And I am working out more, running in fact! (well, jogging…. in a slow and painful, gasping way). In fact, this is how I started my Mothers Day today…..

Now let’s not get all metaphorical…. it’s not representative of the “road I’m going to travel for my health”, it’s not “my life’s journey”…

It’s a track. At the rec center. I ran/jogged/walked on it. But it’s a start 🙂