AAA Batteries Shock Pen Albuquerque…How I Found my Mojo

It’s been a while, and I am sorry about that. For some reason my writing mojo went out the window for a while.

I couldn’t add winning search terms, because for some reason people who “found me” decided to have a month of being damn normal.

What did happen that I could’ve/might’ve/should’ve but didn’t blog about?

I couldn’t find much creative stimulation about my search terms results: “taking a toddler to basketball game” and “dslr camera blog.” What happened to all my crazies??? Surely you didn’t ALL get locked in a padded room sans internet access at the same time!

A Facebook dad kicked ass in Creative Parenting 306, and I shared a few thoughts and a thumbs-up, but by then the subject was (I’m sure) old news.

It snowed in Texas…that was somewhat newsworthy, but once I jotted out a Facebooks status update about it I realized I’d pretty much exhausted the subject.

I revamped my photography website with some fresh info, and opened an online portfolio that shows up well on my Kindle Fire (LOVE my new toy)…much easier to show people samples in person without lugging around $200 worth of prints.

I went crazy in Vistaprint. I have postcards with a senior special and pretty new business cards and flyers…but didn’t see anyone being especially interested in reading about it.

My son has taken to calling me “Baby,” if I don’t answer to Momma on the first attempt. The Guru calls me that when I’m in his good graces, and The Climber knows I’ll answer to it. It’s funny…but this is pretty much the whole story.

See, my life got too boring to blog about. Sad.

Then, tonight, in a shining moment of internet happy…

“aaa batteries shock pen albuquerque”

YESSS! My crazies have finally spoken! Yesterday, someone stumbled upon little old me in the vast world of “the net” just by using…

I have to type it again…

“aaa batteries shock pen albuquerque”

And there, in this simple nonsensical phrase, I found my mojo.

See ya soon.

~T

 

Movin’ on Up…now I am a Photoblogger, too!

Ha!

I realized something terrible today…

I didn’t have enough to do on The List. At least, not enough that captured my interest, was vital to my (or my kids’) existence, or that was random enough to keep me amused for more than two minutes.

So I added a photoblog to The List.

I have actually been considering one for a few months now, and decided to go for it. So if you are interested in pictures as well as the random rants and ramblings you find here…enjoy!

Snap Happy Hippie

 

Photographers are also Quite a Pain in the Ass

A while back I listed the reasons writers are…um…difficult people to deal with in many cases. I feel that, as a photographer as well, I should make a list for them, too.

See? I am truly a pain in the ass for soooo many reasons! 😉

So, photographers are a pain in the ass because…

• They see the world in little rectangles, as they would appear in a photograph.
• They will often “frame” these things with their hands to size up an imaginary shot…quite distracting to be in the middle of a conversation when suddenly the person you’re talking to “frames” you, squinting with one closed eye. Do you continue talking, or strike a pose? Depends on the photographer…
• Even in the most casual of situations where most people would happily snap a quick photo and move on, a photographer has to stop everything to fuss with someone’s hair or clothing, shift everyone over a half inch, and complain about the light (or lack thereof).
• “You would look so great in sepia!”  Seriously? Is that a compliment, or are you telling me my color is all wrong and should just be removed from the equation??
• You are NEVER allowed to touch the camera. There could be a rabid dog scaling the wall outside about to come in the window and the only escape you have is through a door that has “the camera” sitting nearby on an unstable table. You must navigate that door WITHOUT TOUCHING THE CAMERA…or the consequences would make you wish for the return of Cujo.
• The camera is named, and referred to in casual conversation much the way a beloved sibling is mentioned. Pretending to be confused as you ask again “Who is Lucy?” causes hilarious drama.
• For a simple photo of you and your lover, you get to watch the photographer talk in baby talk, squeal and laugh, fix your hair, crawl around on the ground, climb trees, fix your hair again, and suddenly exclaim “There it is!!!” as the camera goes off on a series of rapid-fire clicks.
• EVERYTHING is a prop. “There, hold that grilled cheese just like that and SMILE!!”
• “Say CHEESE!!”  Or fuzzy pickles, or happy!!
• If there is a lightning storm within a twenty mile radius, you will find the photographer happily sitting out in the rain under a cardboard box, snapping six hundred photos of a section of sky.
• If you manage to get a photographer to go on a trip of any kind without THE CAMERA, prepare yourself for whining that rivals a four year old with pneumonia…or a teenager deprived of their phone and music.
• You might as well just resign yourself to the fact that a photographer in the family means hundreds or thousands of photos of yourself in the most awkward situations. There is no stopping them, and “I don’t photograph well,” is taken as a direct challenge.

The SpongeBob Band-Aid on My Left Buttcheek

Today was one long series of unfortunate events of the sort that Jim Carrey would never survive. It began with last night’s craft project and concludes with the character Band-Aid on my ass…

Last night I took some old photo frames that were the same size and color, sanded down the sides until they all matched perfectly, and fitted them together into a frame collage. It was gorgeous, if I may say so myself, each frame was black with gold trim so together it looked pretty fancy.

In this new set of frames I placed some black and white prints of kittens in costumes that I had been saving for years that came from a calendar…many many years ago. I have not seen a calendar similar to this, ever. I was saving the prints for something special.

I proudly hung the completed piece of art in my bathroom on a blank wall that has been bugging me. As a freelance writer with two kids out on the Back 40 of Hell’s Half Acre, I don’t exactly have much money. Extra things like home decorating items and wall art are luxuries that we just can’t buy. So anytime something can be made cheap and still looks classy, we are quite delighted with it.

This morning, things went pretty much as usual, my son woke me up at the crack of dawn to dance to CMT (his favorite early-am activity). I drank coffee that took an hour to brew (Hard water = a coffee pot that drips water at the rate of a slowly leaking faucet). I fixed us all bowls of our favorite cereal (none of the three of us like the same kind on the same morning…it is apparently against some cosmic rule).

I subsequently dumped out a bowl each of Cookie Crisp, Cinnabon-Something-or-Other, and Fruity Pebbles when I discovered the milk was a little…sharp. Eggs were rejected for the fact that I had exactly two eggs, and three hungry people. The kids got Pop-Tarts, I got another cup of coffee.

After that it was back to CMT and Legos for the munchkins, and I went into the bathroom to put on makeup and do something with my hair. My son gave me two minutes to get good and into the application of my eyeliner (very black, btw), then came marching up behind me with a TV remote in hand, headed for the toilet.

I leapt across the room, screeching “Nooooo!” and saved the remote in the nick of time, while apparently drawing an impressive black stripe across my face. Unfortunately either the high-pitched noise, the sudden shudder of the room from me jumping, or karma from the last bug I squished, something managed to dislodge the nail holding up my pretty creation from last night.

The entire thing came crashing down into the bathtub, shattering into dozens of splinters of glass and wood (insult to injury: the places I glued were mostly intact). Even the photos tore just enough to render them mostly useless in the future.

My saving grace in that moment was that the entire mess was limited to the interior of the bathtub, so it was fairly easy to scoop it all out, then shake out the bath mat and rinse the tiny shards down the drain. Plus, I could do all this with the munchkins and their curious little fingers locked safely out of the room until the glass was cleared.

It also gave me a few minutes to bawl like a baby and mourn the loss of the cool wall art that I would have dragged all house-guests into the bathroom to look at for the next month.

Once all of that was done, and the rest of the morning passed without any bloodshed or major malfukulations (yea…….sound it out…..there ya go), we all trooped out to Plainview to pay a bill that was due today.

I took with me all the money I had, which was enough to pay the bill and buy the gas to get back home. I did not consider that we would be passing roughly 137 snow-cone stands and a dozen ice cream trucks on this journey in 103 degree heat (but it’s a DRY heat…ha). I couldn’t buy the treats; couldn’t even stop for my gimongous iced tea from Sonic as I had hoped. We got the bill paid and the truck back up to a quarter tank with about 17 cents to spare.

By this time, the kids were sweaty and mutinous…

The bribe I got them out of Plainview on was that it’s Tuesday…and Meemaw (my grandmother) ALWAYS goes to the pizza buffet night in Lockney, and we have a standing invitation to go eat with her each and every Tuesday. We have been doing this for over a year at least a couple times a month, and not once has she allowed us to pay for our meal. Therefore I felt fairly safe in the drive to Lockney.

Nope. This turned out to be the one Tuesday that she wasn’t home, wasn’t in town, wasn’t anywhere to be found. If looks could kill, the tiny lightning bolts flying at the back of my head from the backseat would have taken me out right there on Main Street, crashing the truck into the newly remodeled pizza place.

I pacified the kids with a trip to visit my parents (they LOVE Grandma and Papaw), and got lucky. Mom had some money she was saving for me from some of my storage stuff she’d sold for me.

Therefore, I got to feed the angry, hungry minions!

It wasn’t pizza, but Dairy Queen fries and chicken saved me from a sure overthrow of the throne tonight.

Getting back home was uneventful, as was most of the rest of the evening. The kids watched iCarly and George Lopez while I got a few things written for “work.”

My son drowned my favorite makeup brush in the bathtub and my daughter had a hissy fit because I wouldn’t let her wear a pageant dress and boots to bed. The cat scratched the smallest one for dragging him around by the tail, and the screeches that ensued scared the loopy cowdog outside. The dog howled for half an hour, and the kids went to bed mad at me…for some reason, it was all Momma’s fault, as always.

Finally…

Finally, the kids were in bed and I was alone (well, reasonably so, the kitten in the house doesn’t count). I poured a glass of bourbon and diet coke because I am NOT a glass of wine kind of girl, and I ran the bathtub full of bubbles and bath salts.

I sank into the tub and slid down…and immediately jumped back out, splashing water and bubbles all over the bathroom.

Yeah, there was a piece of glass in the bath mat that had evidently survived the cleanup efforts of the morning.

Yeah, I cut my ass cheek.

And yeah, considering that I am really not a Band-Aid kind of person, it is quite an admission for me to tell you that since the location of the cut was just so that shorts were uncomfortable, I decided to put a bandage on it.

There are dozens of bandages in my house, in every shape and size, in Tinkerbell, Hannah Montana, Cars, Toy Story, and more…lots to choose from.

I put SpongeBob on my buttcheek just for spite.

Mommy Points System

The mommy job is all about gaining a certain number of points per day. It’s a lot like Weight Watchers…everything you do adds (or subtracts) points, and by the end of the day you need to be in a certain range to have successfully completed your day’s work as a Mommy.

You start the day with a few points to begin with, because you deserve them for just taking on the roles of:

• Mother
• Cook
• Chauffer
• Nurse (boo-boo kisser and Band-aid dispenser)
• Party planner
• Fashion coordinator
• Hair stylist
• Nose wiper
• Maid
• Referee
• Activities director (and Travel agent)
• Conscience and Voice of Reason
• TV/DVD/Stereo/Computer fixer
• Battery replacer
• Librarian
• Teacher
• Judge and jury
• Zookeeper

Therefore, all mommies start the day with 50 Mommy Points!

Your goal at the end of each and every day is actually up to you.

Level 1 Mommies: Stressed out mommies with multiple children, full-time jobs, and a single status are perfectly justified in their goal of not gaining points, but simply maintaining their 50 Mommy Points and making sure the kids are healthy and accounted for by the end of the day.

Level 2 Mommies: Middle of the road mommies usually end the day with about 150 Mommy Points, kids in bed drifting off with a movie, the worst of the clutter tossed into a closet, and tomorrow’s jeans in the dryer.

Level 3 Mommies: Super Mom…well, she finishes the day with 300 Mommy Points, a roast in the crock pot for tomorrow, the coffeemaker set to start brewing at the ass-crack of dawn, everyone’s outfits for tomorrow laid out and coordinated according to each other and the weather…and a perfectly pressed red cape hanging on the door ready for the next morning.

 

Here it is…the POINTS LIST!!

Good Morning!!!

Good Morning Momma!!!

Congratulations, the act of not hiding out under the sheets all day is an accomplishment! It’s a little like starting the semester with an A…you just have to keep it! Good Luck!

+50         Getting out of bed.

-50          Hiding under the covers until someone calls the authorities.

 

Starting Out:

Once you’ve made it out of bed, the day has to begin, whether you want it to or not. Here are the Mommy Points you can gain (or lose) right out of the gate.

+10         Putting on real clothes before noon.

+15         Those clothes are clean, dry, and match.

+5           Brushing your hair and teeth.

+5           Applying makeup and styling hair in something other than a messy ponytail.

+5           Getting the children dressed in real clothes before noon.

+10         Those clothes are clean, dry, and match.

+10         Children’s hair and teeth brushed.

+5           Little girls’ hair styled.

-25          Wearing PJ’s until it’s time to go back to bed at night.

-10          Limp hair tied back in a messy bun (that you put it in three days ago).

-15          Any child leaves home wearing shorts, snow boots, a sweater-vest, and a necktie.

 

Feeding Time:

Breakfast:

+5           Cereal.

+10         Instant oatmeal, cream of wheat, or malt’o’meal.

+15         Scrambled eggs.

+25         Eggs (any style BUT scrambled), pancakes or waffles, bacon or sausage, toast or biscuits.

-5            Pop-Tarts.

-10          Cookies.

-25          Drag the kids out of the cat’s food bowl and bribe into car with chocolate.

Lunch and Dinner:

+20         Home-cooked and healthy.

+10         Sandwiches and apple slices.

+5           Lunchables.

-10          McDonald’s.

-15          Chips.

-25          Mixing up the doggie bacon with the kids’ bacon.

-45          They need food?

Snacks:

+5           Fruit, raw veggies, baked chips, rice cakes, granola bars, or trail mix.

-5            Candy, cookies, cake, or anything with caffeine.

-20          Whatever they can scavenge from the yard or the neighbors kitchen.

 

Safety and Security:

+5           Playpens.

+10         Baby backpacks and carriers.

+15         Fenced yards with sandboxes and NO jungle gyms/trees/monkey-bars.

Lovin' the Great Outdoors!

+45         Going outside anytime the kids do.

+10         Helmets and pads for appropriate sports.

Floaties!

+5           Handy supply of Band-Aids.

+10         Seat belts and car-seats for any outing.

...but he IS buckled up!

+10         Jackets, gloves, hats, and other appropriate clothing when there is white stuff everywhere and you can see your breath.

+10         Sunscreen and bottled water when you step outside and start sweating.

-20          Losing a child for any amount of time.

+15         Finding that child within a few minutes (and a few miles).

-35          Not noticing you have lost a child until the police bring them back.

-10          Leaving the dog in charge, that only works in Disney homes.

A Girl and her Dog

 

Random Common (and not so common) Happenings:

+25         Time playing outside and doing things that don’t involve TV.

+15         Limiting TV to age-appropriate shows.

+10         Setting the Dish to turn to your child’s favorite show every day at the same time.

+15         Enforcing naptime.

+5           Board games and coloring.

-5            Video games (except educational…those cancel out to no loss or gain).

-20          Setting the Dish wrong, and not realizing that your child has been watching Criminal Minds or Law & Order S.V.U. every day for the last month.

+5           Considering that an educational experience and double checking the TV from now on.

+25         Your child knows how to pretend.

+30         Pretending with your child, even if it means wearing the tiara and drinking air tea.

-10          You manage to get overheard by the 4 year old when discussing how much money you should leave for a tooth…and cannot come up with a fast enough answer for “But I thought the TOOTH FAIRY left the money!?!?!?”

-35          You do the same as above, about Santa Clause.

 

Bathing:

+25         The kids go to bed clean, no matter how they got that way.

+10         Real bath with warm water and tear-free shampoo.

+5           Water toys in the tub.

+15         BUBBLES!!!

+2           Water hose in the front yard (summertime ONLY).

Swimming in a Horse Tank

-500       Toddlers and babies in a tub without you in the room. L

 

Better Home and Garden:

+25         Everyone has clean clothes every day that come from the closet or dresser clean and folded or hung.

+10         Everyone has clean clothes that come from a laundry basket or dryer.

-15          Everyone runs around naked waiting for the wash cycle.

+50         There is NOTHING sticky on any surface in the home.

+25         The house is cluttered, but relatively presentable.

+10         When company comes over, a quick tossing of random things into a closet is required, but nothing major.

-15          There are trails to get from room to room.

-25          The last time you mopped was when your water broke on the kitchen floor.

-50          You strongly suspect that there are things growing in the fridge and under the couch.

-2            Pets drink from the toilet.

-25          Kids drink from the toilet.

 

The Bedtime Routine (or lack thereof):

+25         You read a bedtime story.

+25         Pajamas and sheets are always clean.

+5           The kids get to watch TV before bed.

-5            The TV is on all night.

-10          The baby sleeps in a dresser drawer or laundry basket.

-20          Pets sleep in the kids’ rooms.

-35          You don’t know if they went to bed yet or not.

 

Okay ladies, this is by NO means an all-encompassing list, just a few guidelines that you can customize to fit your own personal needs.

Good Luck!!!

Art Kludge…so cool

see more There I Fixed It

This was just cool…I love the window with the heart carved into the lead!! I want to learn to do this!

The Best Procrastination Excuse

Oops! Hi Mom!!

This is why I often look back on the day and realize I didn’t get a damn thing done that I wanted to…

But…isn’t he adorable?  😉

The Munchkins and the Cop

Thought I’d better add an introduction for those people who live in my house. The ones who leave trails of clothes and dishes and other random crap all around my nice clean house.

Dylan.

The littlest one had his first birthday a few months ago, and pretty much rules this household. He is a tiny prince of his universe, quite sure that we are all here to serve him…and we do nothing to convince him otherwise. He loves all the animals we have running around here, and he’s always ready with a smile for anyone.

My little man and his kitties.

Cheyenne.

The middle one is almost five, and has embarked on the adventures of Pre-K school this year. She has her mother’s stubborn streak, plus some, and LOVES to dance for my videos, and pose for photos. The little drama queen asked me the other day why her shoes are not Sketchers…because “Mommy, that is the kind of shoes you HAVE to have to be cool, and don’t you want me to have friends?”

The little drama queen...

Jayson.

Then there is the biggest kid, the cop I married a few short years ago. He is stubborn and leaves his clothes in a pile beside the bed, but he is also funny and sweet, and I wouldn’t trade him for anything. He is my best friend, the one I laugh with. That, I think, just might be the secret…always laugh together.

The gun's name is Black Betty