FunnyBlog

Home of the free

Land that I love

Since the 50’s the Mormon Church Leaders have encouraged Mormon families to set aside Monday nights as a Family Night. Monday nights are called Family Home Evening, we turn down outside commitments and spend the night at home with our family. We can read, pray, hold family meetings, sing, or do other fun family activities. In my family, Monday nights has to include a song, prayer, lesson, game, and treat. Because my family is very patriotic, we also have another tradition: The Flag Ceremony. The girls act as a color guard and we have The Pledge of Allegiance, and afterward we sing “She’s a Grand Old Flag“. It is really fun to watch the girls march around the family room with their flags every Monday night. Come on over and see what I mean.

This flag tradition started when I was a child. My parents were patriotic. Much like most people in this country, my great-grandparents, on both sides, were immigrants. My mom and dad started the flag thing during family home evening when we were kids and it slowly escalated into a full-blown production. We had a very long hallway in our house (all those kids + all those bedrooms = that long hallway) After, the flag ceremony, we would all march up and down the hall singing, “She’s a grand old flag”. After a while, my brothers got bored of just marching and they decided to surprise my parents, who always waited in the family room until we all decided to come back.

One night, my oldest brothers encouraged us younger kids to find a creative object from the bedrooms and to put it on top of our heads. Like in The Sound of Music, we always lined up, oldest to youngest. Of course, we did as we were told. We all got our objects, lined up in the hall, and marched out to the delightful surprise of mom and dad.

The objects started out: shirts, blankets, hats, toys. But the longer this game went on (which was quite some time) the objects got much more creative: underwear, laundry baskets, furniture, wastebaskets. (You get the picture) Looking back on this, we probably didn’t display the most reverence for the flag, but through this simple consistent tradition, my brother and sisters and I all formed a great love of the flag and of our mighty country.

Last summer, I was the Assistant Director, of the Knoxville Cumberland Stake’s Girls’ Camp. The Director was a good frined of mine and we worked REALLY hard at preparing a rememberable camp for the 100 girls that would attend this week-long camp at Pickett State Park.

One item of business that was especially important to me was the Flag Raising and Lowering. After reading my family’s history with the flag this won’t come as a surprise to you. My friend also knew of my love for America’s flag, but she didn’t seem to share my sentiment. I have been a leader for The Boy Scouts of America, and so I have witnessed how boys were taught about the flag. I felt like this camp was a rare opportunity to bring the girls up to speed.

Well, as the camp went on, it became more and more obvious that teaching the girls how to handle the flag was not a priority. I tried not to get frustrated as I wasn’t in charge, my friend was. One day, toward the end of camp, we were sitting together during a cheap attempt at a flag raising. I said to her, “What is the deal? Why don’t you care about this flag stuff?” She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Hello, I’m Canadian!”

Both of us just cracked up. I had forgotten that she was Canadian born. She is so “American”. When dealing with 100 teenage girls for a week, it is needless to say that this small bit of humor provided us with just 15 seconds of much needed laughter.

Moral of the story: Unless you are talking to Tom Brokaw, don’t expect your Canadian friends to love the flag as much as you do, and don’t try to have flag raising ceremonies with a Native Canadian leader.

My Fortune

Proud Daddy

Since Friday, my husband, LG, has been reformatting my hard-drive. It seems that this blogging business has been a little much for our 7 year old PC to handle. This is the reason I haven’t been on much. I still am and will be working out kinks in my system.

I came across this picture, and I just LOVE it. Look at how Happy the new daddy looks. This was Sophia when she was two days old. Sophia is LG’s spitting image now, but we never would have guessed it when she was so little. I love my husband, and seeing him as a GREAT father makes me love him even more. He is so tender with our girls and me, his wife, too. I am so FORTUNATE.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are days that I want to strangle the guy. After all, he is a guy and we all know that us women and men have our differences. Take for instance, last night. We were sitting at the kitchen table for hours talking about our plans for the future; mostly, about whether or not it will be worth it for him to do the joint JDMBA. (Another year of this poverty seems like pure torture to us and our kids)While we “discussing” LG kept playing with the girls’ new plastic paperclip toys. It was so distracting, and I kept asking him to put them down while we talked. He would put them down, but somehow he would have them back in his hands ten minutes later.

Right, at the pinnacle of our conversation, the paperclip chain violently split in two and one half went flying through the air and down the heating vent. The other half were laying as guilty as could be in his hand and simultaneously, we both looked down at them. He then instantaneously tossed the leftover paperclips to the other side of the room like a red-handed robber. NORMALLY, a little thing like this would set me off. Little scenarios like this are caused by “the man gene” (all guys have it). They just HAVE to play and fidget. But, lucky for LG, I am medicated now and so I was able to just chuckle about “the man gene” just forcing my husband into playing with those darn paperclips, until like always, some kind of destruction occured.

Her name is Pixy

What happens when you don’t buy your kids a dog

This morning, as we were running out to go and help the knee-surgery friend again, Sophia pulled a rock out of her “special” drawer. I think it is a 3-yr-old thing to like rocks because every time we go out to play, she comes back in with a pocket of them. (I can faintly remember Abigail doing the same thing at this age) Well, all of the rocks are special to her and I usually can get them either back outside or in the garbage without her noticing. So, I was slightly surprised when she pulled out this rock, which is brown, has the face size of 2 quarters, and the thickness of her little finger.

I am trying to rush both Phia and Bella out the door, and to my even bigger surprise, Sophia says,”Mom, I am going to take my pet rock, O.k.?” I said, “Sure, of course you can bring your pet rock” (hmm….i didn’t know she had one, but, whatever, she probably learned about pet rocks on Sesame Street, and off we went. Well, I was very entertained the whole morning as we ran arround town; I learned more and more about this pet rock. As we were getting out of the van, Sophia says,”Mom, I can’t forget my pet rock, Pixy.” I said, “Pixy, what is that?” “That is my rock’s name, Mom”,was her reply. I said,”Did you name her?” She said, “Yes” I said,”Where did you get her name?” “I just made it up”,was the response from my all-knowing 3-year-old.

Well, she took the rock out to let it rock in the rocker at the dr’s office. She held it in her lap, talked to it, showed it off to my friend’s kid and her sister, Bella. We later went to pick up Abigail from school and we all ran to Wal-Mart to pick up some stuff for my friend. While I was trying desperately to reign my kids in and find the specific baby food on my freind’s list, Abigail and Sophia decided to fight over the rock. I reminded them to be nice and to stay by the grocery cart, and I also confiscated the rock. Sophia cried, but I told her that the rock needed a nap, and she could play with Pixy when she got home. This sufficed.

So, we get home, and the rock comes out. It is nice out today and the girls wanted to play outside. The next thing I know, Sophia is wailing. I mean absolutely freaking out, as if someone had died. I run over to where they were digging to see what the problem was. I ran as if someone had cut a finger off. Abigail quickly explained that Sophia had buried her Pet Rock and she now couldn’t find it. I didn’t want to not validate Phia’s feelings by laughing hysterically at the sight of he “rock” back where it came from in the first place. To her, this rock was buried alive.

So, I sat there for fifteen minutes, with that darn shovel, reassuring my sweet, sweet, sweet, tender-hearted daughter, that I would find Pixy and all would be well, while digging frantically. I kept coming up with different little rocks and I knew they weren’t Pixy because they weren’t even the same color or size, but after about five minutes, I was worried that I would never find her, and I thought that I could trick Phia into believing that one of the other rocks was her beloved pet. She never fell for it. I offered a prayer of thanks when I finally found her real Pixy. By this time Sophia had wandered to the other side of the yard. You would have thought I was three to hear the excited tone to my voice as I yelled over,”Sophia, I found her, I found her….Here’s Pixy.” As my 3-yr-old ran over to retrieve her most prized posession, I couldn’t help but think,”Supermom to save the day” and I handed it over with a very wide smile that said,”I love your pet-rock too.”

Appreciate your package!

United Postal Service: I couldn’t hack it.

When I was eighteen, a friend of mine dragged me along with her to apply for work at the UPS warehouse 20 minutes from my house. My friend’s mom had convinced her that UPS was the greatest place to work because it had the greatest benefits. My friend didn’t want to go alone and because I needed a job and thought it would be cool to work with my friend, I went along with her to apply.

We got the job and were so excited. I have no idea why we were excited, but my best guess is because we felt all grown up with a real job. I think that I mostly ACTED excited for the sake of my friend who was trying to please her mom. We were to work every morning from four until eight or nine (if we didn’t work fast enough). We thought that this work schedule was IDEAL because we could get work overwith and spend our days on the beach….we we were wrong. We also thought that our work would provide a FREE work-out, which was true.

This was not an ideal work schedule for two girls between their freshman and sophomore years of college. We couldn’t stay out late or then we wouldn’t be able to get up. And, it was summer time when the possibilities of things to do at night in Southern California are endless. We were also WAY too tired after work to do anything but go back to bed.

So, I just want to fill you in on what UPS workers do so that you can appreciate your package when it comes to your door. First, I would drive down the freeway half asleep in the dark; it was a good thing that there were no other cars on the road, so that when I swerved across three lanes it didn’t really matter. Then, we would line up and be assigned a partner and a truck. It was then our JOB to UNLOAD the whole trailer bed of the parked semi. No, not in our four hour shift, but in ONE hour. Two people to one truck.

You open the door and you literally look at a wall of cardboard. All different kinds and sizes. You start hauling them down the conveyer belt, sweating within the first ten minutes. You get so EXCITED when it is a small package, but when you lift it, to your utter dissapointment, you need both hands because it is filled with either all gold or steel. Then, you gear up for the HUGE box and you wonder who in the world would have a refrigerator delivered via UPS, and to the MOST wonderful delight, it is as light as a feather.

The worse kind of packages that I ran into were the ones that were marked…LIVE ANIMALS. They had little holes in the side of the box that were lined with little metal screens. One time I finally got the gumption to look inside…..to my relief, it was just a bunch of crickets. I probably would have quit on the spot if it was mice. (I have this thing about mice)

So, I work and work my butt off. One thing that I do give my parents credit for is teaching their children to be HARD workers. I would be so happy to maybe have a ten minute break, when my nameless friend would come running over begging me to help her catch up…she weighed less than 100 lbs. and was really out of shape. Of course, I was the nice friend and went and helped her too.

I was relieved when my friend quit after her second day. I would no longer have to help her. What I didn’t realize is that she wouldn’t be in the car to keep me awake on the drive. Once she was gone, it took the pressure off of me to keep the job, and after a good 8 days, I jumped off of the UPS ship, also.

But, now, I really appreciate my packages whenever they are delivered.

Kids say the d a r n d e s t things

Watermelon

Following up on my last entry. Kids are so FUNNY! They cannot resist at stating the obvious. When you are driving down the road you will hear, “Mom, there is a cow.” “Dad, you are driving too fast.”

At the grocery store, “There are Fruit Loops, there is Cocoa Puffs, those are Cheerios.” You get the drift.

One day, I got out one of the girls’ piggy banks and as I was getting it down off the shelf, the lid slipped off and change spilled all over the kitchen floor. It was no surprise to hear,”Mom, you spilled all the money.” I laughed and said,”Oh really, I know, Sometimes I am so clumsy, Should we pick it up?”

A little while later, in the same day, I got a watermelon out of the fridge. No joke, this is what I hear coming out of a little voice behind me, “Mom, you are fat, just like that watermelon.” Well, gee, thanks. No, “oh really”, was going to work for this offense. We have taught our girls to only refer to things as fat, not people. I think that she thought this was OK, because she was talking about the watermelon.

I tried not to crack up as I gave her the very brief reminder that it isn’t nice to call people fat. I resisted from saying what I was really thinking,”Hey, you little snot….would you like me to crack this watermelon over your head, so that you can feel what it is like to get pregnant and fat and give birth to a child that will just call you fat one day.” Of course I wouldn’t say that, all I could think of was, “Aren’t you clever with your use of words; you are only three and you just used a really good analogy.” What in the world? You know I must be a mother.

That’s so Special!

It’s a GREAT word

We have taught our kids to use the word special. They each have a SPECIAL drawer where they can put their SPECIAL things. We have taught our kids that each one of them is SPECIAL. Each of them are different and they each have SPECIAL talents. They have their favorite SPECIAL clothes and toys. You get the picture. The word special works for almost everything.

Special didn’t work out so great last year when we were at Dollywood. We were all walking past the River Raft ride, trying to work our way through the crowd. Right next to us, there was a man with a wooden shoe. You know, one of his legs was shorter than the other and he wore the shoe to correct the difference of height in his legs.

My daughter was staring this shoe down, and I was trying to drag her away, hoping that she wouldn’t embarass this man. She was so very observant and didn’t appreciate my gesture; she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Mom, wait, I am trying to see that man’s shoe. He has a SPECIAL shoe!”

What do you do? She was 100% correct. The shoe was very special. She may never see one like it again in her life. I just smiled and said as softly as I could,”You’re right, he does have a special shoe.” and we kept on walking, this time a little bit faster than before.

The Famous Sarcasm

Steve Young: If you were a single Mormon girl in the early 90’s, you wanted to marry him!

When I was a freshman at Utah Valley State College, back in 1991, I worked at a Malt Shoppe in Provo, UT, called Stevenett’s. It is now just, The Malt Shoppe, but you will still see the same faces, just years younger, cruising the place on Friday and Saturday nights.

Well, this one Saturday night when I was working, a really famous visitor decided to grace the place with his existence. I had heard of him and I wanted to marry him just like all of my 5 roommates, but I really had no idea what he looked like.

We were only open until 11PM on Saturdays, because the Sabbath starts at midnight and that would allow all the Mormon workers to get the place clean and home in time. This night, everyone was out on a date or hanging out with friends. The weather was great. It was 12:30 and our line was still out the door. I was frustrated.

So, this guy with outdated muscleman pants, a Jackson Hole baseball cap, and a highschool football T-shirt makes his way to the front of the line. I was working the register and thinking, “Boy, this guy is cute; he just needs some new clothes.” He was friendly; he smiled and asked, “what’s good?” Remember, I just want to go home and I am sick of these customers. I said, “I don’t know, you have been standing in line for at least a half an hour, have you not had a chance to figure it out?” He was taken back a bit. I polished it off with,”I like________, but everyone’s tastes are different, and so I can’t tell you what you will like.”

He sat there looking at the menu, and I questioned, “What is Jackson Hole?” He said,”You have never heard of Jackson Hole.” I said,”NO, sorry, I am not a Utah Native.” He said, “Where are you from?” I said, “Where are you from?” He said,”I asked you first.” I said you probably haven’t heard of it. He said,”Try me.” I said, “California.” He said, “Heard of it.” I said,”Carlsbad, bet you haven’t heard of that?” He said,”Actually, I have vacationed there a few times. It is a great place.” and he continued on to tell me about places he had visited in my town.

I said,”So, where are you from?” He said,”Several places actually, Connecticut, Utah, California.” I said,”Oh, you’re a military kid.” If you haven’t figured it out by now, the guy I was giving attitude was Steve Young. He is obviouslly not a military kid, but I am sure he found this rather humorous considering I was either making a really good front that I didn’t know who he was, or I was just a total idiot.

He later asked me what I was doing after work (I like to claim that he would have dumped his sister or his date and hung out with me), but I think he was just being nice. I told him I was preparing my talk to give in church the next day. He said,”Oh, that is why you want to go home so bad.” I said,”yep.” At this point, another guy came and took over the register for me and I went back in the kitchen. The cook said,”You sure were striking the fancy of Steve Young.” I said, “Who?” He said, “That was Steve Young.” I was mortified.

The next day, my roommate was in charge of a fireside (something that Mormon’s do on some Sunday nights…an extra gathering.) After hearing my claim to fame, my roommate decided that I had to give the opening prayer. As I walked up she claimed that Steve said that I looked so familiar and that she told him about the night before. She said that he said,”Oh yeah, she is hilarious!” Who knows if that conversation really took place, but I think if it is true that Steve Young thinks I am hillarious, then you should really continue reading my blog, right?

The Dilemma

Tupperware…no housewife can live without it

For about four days, we have had the rankiest smell protruding from the hallway where our office and bedrooms are located. Of course, it was my job to figure out where in the world it was coming from. I searched and searched to no avail.

Finally, yesterday, I decided to stay home and do nothing but take care of my household duties, not because my house was a sty, but because it was time to tackle the laundry. Well, even after I tidied everything up, emptied the garbages, and cleaned the laundry there was still a REALLY bad smell.

It was time for my built-in mother detective skills. I started my search with the little bed that is constantly made on the floor next to ours. It is made of an egg carton mattress, three or four quilts, and a bunch of pillows. We refuse to let the girls get in the bed with us because we want to get SOME sleep.

Unfortunately, there was nothing in the kids’ makeshift bed. I then moved my search on to the other side of the bed and looked underneath. Jackpot….under the bed was a sippy cup turned over sideways and Serafina. (one of the girls favorite stuffed kitties) Now, what you have to understand is that there are different types of sippy cups. The one under our bed was the kind that I use when I give the girls juice. (the sippy part has a constant open hole, making it possible for orange juice pulp to get through) This also makes it possible for ALL of the juice to get through, especially when it is tipped on its side.

IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH, consider this a warning. So, I push the bed aside and pick up the cup; there was a little curdled OJ inside (how does OJ curdle…who knows?) It SMELLED SO BAD. And, then there was the kitty……can you say the smell of maggots rotting in the sun? Serafina must have soaked up a bunch of the orange juice and she sat there waiting for someone to come and relieve her and the rest of the house from the stench. Who knows how long she had been there. So, I smiled with pleasure, knowing that me, Supermom had saved the day again and I moved quickly to take care of business. I wiped the wood floor with Clorox wipes (thank goodness it wasn’t carpet); I then washed the cat with Clorox (thank goodness it was white), and washed the cup with Clorox.

Later, during the day, over the phone, I relayed this story to my sister, Shannon. Shannon asked me why I didn’t just throw the cat and the cup away. I explained that the cat was their absolute favorite and they would have died. I had washed it and it was fine. (a little less fluffy, but fine nonetheless) I also told her that I could have thrown the cup out, but, why? If I dealt with the cat then I knew I could deal with the cup. So, Shannon says, “You have to throw the cup away or then it becomes like ‘the blue cup’ ” This brought instantaneous laughter……

So, here’s the last part of my story. When we were kids, my mom had a bunch of colored Tupperware cups, much like the ones shown above. I grew up in the 70’s and so, of course, we had the colors that are shown above, but we also had primary colors. Well, one day, my brother decided to urinate in the blue one……Who knows? Brothers do the weirdest things. (maybe you males can understand, but we sisters sure didn’t) So, we ran and told my mom that he had peed in the cup, hoping that she would remedy the problem. Well, all she did was pour out the urine, rinse out the cup, and wash it with some bleach.

To us kids, there was NO WAY that cup was rid of the pee. Every night, my mom would set the table and all of us kids would await which color cup we would get. We knew better than to ask for the one we wanted because we all wanted the same one. My mom would just go down the table and put one down at the top of each of our plates, one at a time. Every night, you could hear the howl of whichever unfortunate kid got the blue cup. How cruel, huh? It’s no wonder I need therapy.

So, if you haven’t caught on to the dilemma yet, it is this: When a mom is faced with a DISGUSTING situation, should she clean it up or get rid of any offensive matter? I think that the answer to the dilemma is this: you can clean it, as long as the kids don’t see whatever it is while in the gross state. If they do, you better just throw it away to save yourself the therapy bills.

Fortunately for me, yesterday, our girls never saw Serafina in her worst state. No howls of undelight for this MOM.

Tennessee Judiciary

Courhouse for the 6th Circuit of the Eastern District of TN

Alright, here’s another funny story.

My friend had knee surgery on Monday and because her husband was unable to go with her, I offered to accompany her. She gladly accepted my offer, so I got my mother-in-law (she is such a saint) to take the kids.

When we got to the same-day-surgery unit, I instantly realized that these people were all thinking that we were a “couple”. I had just had my haircut short, we both had wedding rings on…etc.etc. When I went in with her and she had to get her gown on, it became a little too much for me to keep quiet about. I just HAD to tell the nurse that, “I AM HER FRIEND, her husband couldn’t be here today.”

When the orthopedic surgeon came out and called for my friend’s family to come and get the scoop….I stood up. He had a VERY surprised look on his face. My friend is very wholesome and innocent and I could see the look of utter astonishment in his eyes. My husband got a chuckle as I told him the first words that I said to the surgeon (we’re going back to my obsessive need to explain myself). I said, “I am just a FRIEND of hers; her husband had to work today.” The surgeon looked somewhat relieved, but also dissapointed…go figure?

Well, I went and sat back down in the lobby, waiting for my friend to come out of her anesthesia (they said they would call me). I decided that after two hours it was time to strike up a conversation with the man sitting closest to me. He looked in his 70’s or 80’s. I asked him who he was waiting for. He said, “My wife is having surgery on her breast today.” (I guess when you get to a certain age, you don’t blush saying the word breast to a woman who is a total stranger.) He went on to relay that him and his wife were in the their 60’s and then he proceeded with their whole medical history. His wife had a tumor in her breast and he had lung cancer in 1996, but came out just fine. (I was astonished when he went for a smoke break a little while later)

Well, as he was talking on and on about his family’s medical history, I thought to myself, “Oh no, I am going to be stuck hearing all about this for the next hour.” I then caught a glimpse of his baseball cap…it said, “Tennessee Judiciary”. Then, I thought, score, I may have just made my husband a contact with a judge or somebody important. I then proceeded to tell him that my husband was in Law School and I made reference to his hat. He said, “I worked for the TN Supreme Court for 29 years.(or some high figure like 29)”

I said, “Oh yeah, what did you do?” He said, “I was in the maintanence department.” Well, there went my contact, unless LG wants to clean the floors of the courthouse for the rest of his life….I don’t think that would pay off the student loans, though.

Well, I didn’t want to make the man feel bad, and so I said,”That is what my dad does for a living. He is in maintenance.” [My dad is a contractor and can do or fix anything, but he maitains all of the LDS church buildings in Southern Utah]. He smiled as if to say, “Well, I am glad that you understand.”, but he didn’t say another word until I probed him for more private family information. It is amazing what you can learn about a person in one hour. He turned out to be a really nice guy; the best guy I know in the Tennessee Judiciary.

GO UT LAW

Everybody needs a cheerleader

I have another confession. Poor LG. I don’t know how he lives with me.

Last year, during his first semester of Law School, I took a field trip to his classes. I really wanted to see what he was doing all day every day, and my mother-in-law offered to take the girls.

So, all was going off without a hitch. (LG had made me swear not to raise my hand, ask any questions, or make any comments) I tend to get excited at times. I really enjoyed his first class. The teacher was good and even a dummy like me learned something (I now have no recollection what the class was about, but at the time I felt enlightened.)

When we were waiting for his second class to start (which was really BAD, by the way, the most BORING teacher, and that is all I will say because LG will probably even make me change this) a girl walked in and sat down in the row in front of us. We had been talking with her friend, and as this new girl sat down next to her friend she greeted me.

Here comes the clencher part of the story. EVERYONE in law school has to have a laptop (mostly so that they can IM during class). So, of course as this girl is getting ready for class, she opens up her laptop. As I saw her laptop, I was VERY surprised to see on her screensaver, a picture much like the one above . I couldn’t believe my eyes: because here is this girl in LAW SCHOOl, with the world at her fingertips and she obviouslly put a lot of emphasis on cheerleading (I didn’t think that UT LAW had cheerleaders…Can you say GO VOL ATTORNEYS)

So, I proceeded to ask her about the picture; assuming that she had cheerleaded during her undergrad, which would have made some sense because more than likely that would have been the previous year. She responded that she didn’t cheerlead in college and that this was a picture of her HIGH SCHOOL cheerleading squad. I was in shock! Is this ALL that this girl felt that she had going for her? What in the world was she doing in law school if she was still glorying her HS days? (Mind you, I do recognize that maybe I don’t understand because LG isn’t the traditional law student and I am not the traditional spouse of a student – I am in my thirties and he is no spring chicken himself)But, still…don’t you think that this was a little bizarre?

So, me and my big mouth, I say, “You think that you would grown out of that at some point?” I am such an idiot sometimes. I just HAVE to say what is on my mind. I regretted the question as soon as it came out and I cried when I got home for embarassing LG. LG had given me that look of surprise. (yes, I am still able to surprise him at times) Luckily, the girl never had a chance to respond because the teacher started class not a second too late.

Well, it was no surprise to me when my husband told me that this girl had dropped out of law school before her second year. I REFUSE to take the credit for her discouragement, but maybe I did cause some introspection and she decided that she was doing the wrong thing with her life. Maybe she decided that she was needed more on the sidelines of her High School’s football field. I hope that she is enjoying herself.