Camel Cricket Toe

With my heart's rapid beat, I slowly opened the back door. I must have peered at that back yard for two minutes, making sure he had not come back. The only thing that separated me and my clothes line was the dew covered grass, not a snake in sight.

I knew I had to do it. With basket in hand, I put my feet in onto the concrete patio and closed the door behind me. If I saw him now, I'd have to jump onto the chain link fence and pray it would hold me off the ground.

My confidence grew and I was soon at my clothes line. One shirt after the other, I hung my laundry to dry. As the basket quickly emptied, I outstretched my arms to hang the last garment. With visions of "Pet Sematary" in my mind, only instead of a crazed rabid dog on the other side of the sheets, I imagined a king cobra with a large muscular outstretched neck ready to kill me at any minute, I quickly tried to finish.

As the last pin was clipped securely on the Alabama tee my husband wore yesterday, it happened. In less than a second the snake's fangs sunk into my foot's flesh and I felt my heart fall out of my chest. In the heat of the moment and pure reflex, my foot flew up in the air and slammed down on the ground and for a second, I was sure my toe was broken (again). However when I looked down, all I saw was a dirt covered toe with red peeking through the mud. My blood colored polish was barely visible through the soil but no snake could be seen. That wasn't a snake at all. It was a camel cricket. He'd decided to hop on my toe and had no idea how close he came to death this morning. Relieved my toe wasn't broken and that my heart continued to beat, I went inside and wondered how long I'd be suffering the snake aftermath.

The Alabama Chicken Snake

 We had a friend over today. He snapped at my husband before crawling under our house. I was a little concerned I wouldn't get any sleep, sure that every strand of hair brushing my neck was a snake coming to kill me...

however, our cat chased it back to the woods.

He strolled around the house, under the house, and even in our fire place outside on the patio, but we like to keep these visits short anyway. He was non-poisonous and typically we country-folk throw most non-poisonous snakes under the category of chicken snake.

Cup Size

Listen, I've tried to keep my kids as little as possible for as long as possible. So much so that I've even held onto to the baby fat I gained during pregnancy. My kids are now 7 and 10. It's time to get over it don't ya think?

I opened the cabinet this morning and realized we are still using tiny plastic dishes we've had FOR YEARS. I'm ridding our kitchen of these tiny things today (I'll hang on to maybe one or two) and we are moving them up to the adult dishes. They use the adult dishes for the most part anyway so it's just ME...I'm the one who needed to hang on to these plastic cups...and I'm letting go...they aren't big enough anyway!

Fluent in Rap

During my last spin class at The Gym, I sat next to a lady who frequents the place and is often found inside the spin room. She has all the proper gear for cycling indoors from her specific shorts down to her shoes. This lady is very fit, really pretty, and can likely set a mean table. She's very social with all her luncheons, charities, etc.

During spin class a rap song was blaring over the speakers and she began to giggle along with the instructor as they tried to figure out the lyrics. She looked over at me and asked me if I knew what they were saying and what the heck it meant...and I gladly translated.

"I'm very fluent in rap you know," I confidently told her. I decided to push farther and add, "In fact, I listen to a lot of rap. Gangsta rap too!" She smiled and found the words, "Well, isn't that a fun fact."

Haha, you just never know who you are sitting beside in spin class. That homely, sweaty, white lady could have Flo-Rida playing inside her head or Easy-E or Tupac....one reason I like some of it isn't for the grime, the grit, the hard-core lyrics, it's writers like Tupac who could put together words at a higher level, use symbolism and actually be brilliant. Some of the other stuff just cracks me up and I like to laugh.

I will say that now that my kids are getting older, and can actually hear some of the words despite their hearing loss (if they hear only one word, it'll be a curse word) I have limited opportunities to play this type of music. And, to be quite honest, I have enough of it still in my head that I don't NEED to hear it much anymore. But there you go, just a little 'fun fact'.

Fo Shizzle

I've reached a point with my children (didn't take me long) that they realize how uncool I am. I don't necessarily want to be cool anyway.

The other day, I started dancing and singing a song I've heard on one of those stupid tv shows, and then once I achieved just the right amount of eye squinting lip curling dirty looks from my kids I followed with, "What? I'm the new Big Time Rush member!" thinking I was cool for knowing such words! Both heads shaking they returned, "It's the Fresh Beat Band!" and then they LEFT THE ROOM so they could make fun of me!

Ahhh, so this is the point where parents, realize we know nothing that's playing on the  top 40 stations, we pop in a Snoop Dogg CD because it's familiar, and we say "Fo Shizzle!" because in our minds, we are still cool.

Please Don't Come in Wildly...

We are doing our best to ensure our children turn out as nutty as we are. It looks like all the hard work is paying off. We awoke to yet another note from the 10 year old. It states...

Please don't come in wildly be calm cuz I want you to open the door, look at the picture card I made (I just put them by each other and made a pic) Put the 3D glasses on! Pic is by cardboard fence don't touch!!

...and he has an arrow pointing to the glasses he's propped behind the door knob.

Congratulations. We never know what we'll wake up to. The child needs to work third shift for sure when he gets older. He gets 'busy' after we go to bed at 8:30 pm and works on his projects for like an hour or so before he too collapses. It's unclear how he pulled his chain around front and rigged a screwdriver to gently hold a flashlight...or even why? But he knows the rule of not locking your bedroom doors at night (my children are deaf so this is an essential rule!)
We are also pretty convinced he's gonna be OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) just like my sister who counts words on her fingers and my dad who is very clock oriented.

Either way, he's a fun little guy to watch and at this point he prefers the number five over four, he gets very irritated if things are by fours not fives and he's almost always needed things to be in patterns. So we wonder what will come next?!?! My sister is gracious enough to explain things I don't understand, like what goes through the brain that makes a person take a certain amount of steps into a building or repeat sentences in your head until they end on a 5th or 10th finger....

Home Video

My daughter loves making videos. She gets in trouble on occasion due to the fact my batteries are usually powerless when I need them but I do love ever so often going back and actually watching what she films. Sometimes I actually find out the TRUTH of what happens during little fights between her and her older brother! She loves the camera!


 Adorable at 7, here she is...in a 2 1/2 min clip.

Dirt and all there she is. The kids have had to find creative ways to entertain themselves since we've been busy painting, you'll see some things out in the yard, some hand trucks ("elevator") and obviously this was right before I painted the porch! Enjoy, she'll pay me back one day!

My husband awoke this morning around 4:30 am to get ready for work and found cardboard notes all around the house...a little boy wanted to be sure he got to ride his four-wheeler in the mud today after all the rain we got last last night.

They were EVERYWHERE, haha.

We enjoyed our 4th. We don't go crazy with the fireworks, they are too expensive and we are always disappointed. But the few we got (for 50 bucks!) were enough to get the kids all excited!

Dear Teachers...

Today is July 1st. For stay-at-home moms, this means that in just 6 more weeks, school begins. For teachers, this means...wholly crap I only have six more weeks of sanity as they book last minute vacations to try and pack as much fun possible into their FREEDOM.

When I decided to be a stay-at-home mom, I sat down and made a chart. The chart listed the days of the week, and which chores I would do on what days...(what a joke). What I found after my first few days at home with small children is that you won't vacuum on Mondays and Thursdays...you might vacuum three times on Monday, and then not touch the vacuum for eight days. You won't change bedding on Wednesdays, you will change it four times some weeks and then not at all other weeks because you've forgot all about it during the mountains of other laundry you've done. You'll go weeks without dusting sometimes because you rarely sit down long enough to actually look closely at your furniture.

So let's just say, for those of us who have become accustomed now to having our children in school, while taking care of our homely duties, it's a bit of adjustment having them here...every...single...day. So without blinking, we typically welcome the school year back with open arms. The kids are getting bored now. They miss their friends.

However, we've worked so hard this summer at renovating our home that we've barely had a summer break this year. So this time, I'll actually be sad to see the six weeks wind down. I've not had enough time yet. I want cookouts, I want to swim, I want a tan, I want my hair to naturally lighten from the sun....I've not had enough time.

But Dear Teachers;
As we approach the 2011/2012 school year beginning August 15, I am still a substitute teacher. I am prebooking for August 16 for those of you who go in that first day, and suddenly feel ill. There isn't anyone gonna stand there when you tell them you threw up saying "Ok, show it to me next time." So book in advance if you feel a virus coming your way.

**Disclaimer**
This DOES NOT APPLY to Kindergarten teachers. Sorry, I'd be more tempted to rock the poor babies that cry the first few days so I'm gonna let you dry up all tears the first few weeks before I volunteer to do K. (just kidding!)

Have a wonderful Fourth of July everyone! I plan to not vacuum on Saturday, not do laundry on Sunday and not dust on Monday during this long weekend. It's so much easier accepting NOT TO DO lists!