Hurricane Irene and the Crazy Hillbilly

As you know now, the East Coast was pounded like a five dollar hooker by Hurricane Irene this weekend. Especially on Saturday. Nothing like going to your car to get your cell phone charger and coming back with soaking wet yoga pants and getting blown around the yard in the dark. FUN!

SO Sunday once the weather calms down, we take a trip to Shrewsbury, PA, which is not far from our house, to meet my husband's cousin and his family. We went to this great Japanese Hibachi place where the chef cooks in front of you and throws the food at you. It was awesome. But I digress.

After dinner, we are heading home, and Suburban Cowboy decides to go "off the beaten path". No biggie right? Oh you have NO idea. This is a man who always, no matter where we happen to travel to, ends up in the ghetto. Since we have moved to Southcentral PA, he has managed to find every spot of Deliverance country he can. Last night was no different.
We are driving and he misses the road he needs to turn on, so he takes the detour that his cellphone GPS tells him to and all of a sudden the nice paved road becomes gravel, then a dirt road with potholes. There isn't power in some areas and there are limbs over portions of the road. And its REALLY REALLY dark.
Suburban Cowboy is giggling, and I think he was imagining he was driving in a big old redneck pickup truck instead of our minivan. I am making snide comments the whole way, and he is just laughing at me. Until we got to a section where there are really hardly any houses and there isn;t a whole lot of light either. Then Suburban Cowboy slams on the breaks.
"Well there's a man in the road," he cries out. And sure enough there was. So we stop,thinking maybe its some Volunteer Fire Fughter to warn us about danger ahead or something. Nope. Not quite.
There is this man in dark sweats with a haircut that looks like it was done by a mental patient, twirling a flashlight like its a baton. I would have driven off. What does Suburban Cowboy do? Rolls down the window and talks to him.
"Whats going on man?" he asks the friendly gentleman with the crazy on.
"Waiting for the electric company. Power's been out all day.Waitin for the electric company," he says. I am thinking...Have you been out here all day? Does the electric company KNOW you even live out here?? Please don't kill us. Suburban Cowboy must have sensed there was going to be a breach in my inner monologue, because he put his hand on my leg to shush me up. He nodded to the guy and rolled up the window.
"Why would you talk to him? The only people you talk to in Deliverance Country are people with flares and flashlights and reflective vests!" I remark. He laughs. Really?!!
"Calm down. You watch too many horror movies honey."
"Um did you know that some horror movies are based on factual events?"I chortle.
"Really? Which ones?" he asks with a smirk. I should take him back to Flashlight Boy and leave him there.
"Let's see....Texas Chainsaw Massacre..based on the serial killer Ed Gein. Amityille Horror...well that one is pretty self explanatory.....all those exorcism movies...oh yeah and DELIVERANCE!!" I reply. He laughs.
"Seriously? You did not even hesitate to think first. You already KNEW. THAT is scary. And what is the worst that could happen out here in the country?"
"Hmmm...some mutant inbred hillbillies will have a nail strip across the road, puncturing our tires, we pull over. The offer to "help" and the next thing you know I am some hillbilly sex slave and you are dinner," I respond. He looks at me, just looks at me.
"Wow. You are SO not allowed to watch horror movies....EVER." he replies. I cross my arms and look out the window. A few minutes later, we see a road blocked off. And guess who is standing in the road? A volunteer firefighter with a reflective vest and flares. I point it out to him and he reminds me of my previous outburst.

Damn him. I will just watch horror movies on my phone. He's not the boss of me.

Boobies, Boobies, Boobies and Veggies

My youngest, Stinkerbell, is OBSESSED with boobs. Particularly, mine. She will squeeze them, poke them, snuggle them, like they are her own personal Pillow Pets given to her by God Almighty. I, on the other hand, am not amused with her fixation with them. And here is why.

We will be in Walmart, and she will be sitting in the cart against her will, shooting me death looks. I will start talking to her to get her out of her dark mood and she will more than likely perk up. Then she will lean forward and smoosh my chest against her face. Or just all out squeeze "the twins". In public. And bystanders laugh while I turn the color of the Kool Aid man. SO I have tried to talk to her about the fact that she cannot do that, especially in public. So when she does this,I calmly remind her "We talked about this." She usually stops.

Now she will also ask me when she will get boobies like mine. Sometimes I ignore her and other times I will tell her she will get them when she is 40. And again that placates her.

Not Stinkerbell, like her sister, treats veggies like an accessory to meals. She will eat corn and thats it. I have tried to get her to eat peas and broccoli to no avail. Then I came up with a GREAT IDEA. A few weeks ago, she refused to eat broccoli. My response?
"If you eat the broccoli, you will grow boobies..." She ate every piece of broccoli. Yay me! SO I continued to remind her of that .

Well my lovely little plan backfired on me this past weekend. We went someplace where she was once again messing with the boobies and I told her "We talked about this." And she stopped. Later that night, I made stir fry. With broccoli. She looked at it and made a face. Without thinking, I said
"If you eat the broccoli, you'll get boobies.." SHe looks at her plate, at my chest and then me and without missing a beat goes "Mommy, we talked about this.."
I had to turn and look out the window because I was laughing so hard. Suburban Cowboy was in the next room in tears he was laughing so hard.

Well how the heck am I going to get her to eat her veggies now???? LOL

Mom, STOP LAUGHING!!!!!!

OK folks, this week(well actually it was SUPPOSED TO BE on Friday) I am linking up with http://www.mommamadeitlookeasy.com/
I am sharing my AWESOME with her…and please..do it too..its a great way to meet some fellow bloggers….

Since becoming an adult, there are very few “normal” things I believe in. When you are a kid you believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the fact that if you make ugly faces and someone smacks you in the back of the head when you are making the aforementioned ugly faces, your face will stay that way. Until you are about 12, you believe your parents actually KNOW what they are talking about, and then that belief resurfaces right about the time you become a parent yourself. Usually when you are calling your mother/father and telling them about a certain escapade your little tyrant angel has instigated in your house. Usually their response is raucous laughter. Yeah.

Back to what I believe in as an adult. I believe in Murphy’s law and its evil, sinister counter part. The Mother’s Curse. Yep that nasty little piece of devilry. I am sure at one point in everyone’s childhood,their mother shouted it out. “I hope you have a child that drives you nuts!”
“I hope you have ten children just like you!” This statement was usually precluded by a prayer to whatever deity your family believed in, asking said deity to “Give me strength”. And you just laughed. Ignored it. Did not give it a second thought. Right?

Now if you were a decently behaved child, chances are, you have had the misfortune to marry a man/woman who was a hooligan growing up. So your mother in law not only laughs at him/her, but they laugh at you as well. No support whatsoever.
I was not only a hooligan growing up, but my husband, Suburban Cowboy, he was the boy king of the Smart Aleck Hooligans Tribe. We are so screwed.

Two weeks ago, Stinkerbell went to bed with her big sister Princess Bacon. The boys were downstairs playing a game together. EmoKid goes upstairs to go to the bathroom and immediately comes rushing down the stairs, horrified look on his face. Crap.
“Mom, you have to go upstairs now!!” he yells. I look up at him from the couch, where I am FINALLY reading a book that does not involving Dick, Spot and Jane fetching something.
“What. Happened. Just tell me,” I reply. I can feel the aneurysm already. He shakes his head and I follow him upstairs. I should have just left the house altogether.
Stinkerbell is lying on her bed in her underwear(her preferred summer sleeping attire) and her skin, her creamy white skin, is COVERED in dark navy blue ink!!! I struggled to breath as I looked down at the WHITE wall to wall carpet in her bedroom(yeah my landlord’s idea…brilliant eh?) and I try not to scream. She had taken an exploded pen from the bathroom garbage and pretty much finger painted her body and the carpet. I finally managed to breath, tried not to cry and hauled her into the tub. She is staring at me, waiting for me to snap and I am scrubbing her, crazed out of my mind. I am washing my inky child at 9:30 at night and its NOT COMING OUT!!! I finally get her out of the tub. The white tub is now also a bluish gray and the baby looks like an outtake from Miami Ink. I dry her off and put her to bed, and stare at the carpet. I use my rug cleaner that I ran out and bought at Walmart , Resolve and some carpet stomping pads…and it still looks like a Smurf massacre occurred in their bedroom. We are going to have to replace the carpet when we move out. Yay.
So I call my mother and relay the crisis to her. And guess what the lunatic mother of mine does? You’re right if you guessed she laughed at me. And here is why.

When I was four, she left me alone for a half hour in my playroom while she started dinner. There was a tv in there and apparently Michael Jackson was on the tv. I was a HUGE fan of Michael. So what did little old me do? I grabbed my NON-WASHABLE brown Crayola marker and stripped down to my underwear. I then proceeded to cover what exposed flesh I had with the brown marker. She walked in to find her precious baby looking like she had just come back from Carnival in Rio. And it was not washable. She scrubbed me and scrubbed me, and it would fade a little, but that’s about it. My father came home, saw me and walked out of the house and back in again. I had rendered the man speechless. My mother just shook her head and searched in the cupboards and drawers for her emergency pack of cigarettes. It took over a week to fade. Preschool loved me though. About as much as the time I gave myself a haircut and a shave.
So yeah, the mother’s curse works. Very.well.

Missing-Reward Offered Once I Can Find My Purse

This post is based on a writing prompt from the lovely ladies over at studiothirtyplus.com
“Write a missing ad for something that you have lost in your life. It can be any of the aforementioned items (animate or inanimate), or something else you seem to have misplaced along the way.”

Missing, one adventurous, clear thinking mind. Yes, I am missing my mind. I lost part of it around 5 pm on September 11th , 2004…shortly after the birth of my third child, and the rest was lost on July 20th 2007 when my fourth child was born. I am not sure if this is a case of a missing mind, or if foul play was involved. The FBI will not return my calls.


I have been unable to finish sentences, organize thoughts or my underwear drawer,or call my children by the right name. I often have to result to calling them “boy child” or “girl child” depending on the sex of the child I am currently wishing to strangle/ talk to. I am also looking for my keys, my driver’s license and also what I weighed in high school. If you could help me find those things as well, I would greatly appreciate it.
I would offer a reward, but since I have lost my mind, I cannot seem to remember where I put my purse. Maybe one of the children know, as they seem to be able to find the aforementioned purse, to steal the gum out of it.
Maybe I will find it when my youngest leaves the house. Or maybe I will be be forced to sit on the couch, smiling and drooling, watching reruns of Teen Mom.

Kick Ass Chili and the Laughing A-Hole

This is the first time I have done a writing prompt on Mama Kat's site...and apparently I cannot type in my own URL correctly...no I am not drunk...the paint job my girls did to my nails is just really distracting...lol


I come from a large, loud, opinionated Italian family. When my grandfather first met Suburban Cowboy, he told him that he should marry me because I had nice, wide child-bearing hips. Thanks Papa. Did I mention they were also embarrassing and closet kleptomaniacs??My mother will go into a restaurant and empty them out of little tubs of jelly. WTF??? I cannot see the reason why she does this, but she does it EVERY time!!!
Now my grandfather was tough and crusty, but I loved him dearly. He was the one who let me watch Children of the Corn and eat TONS of junk food the one and only time he babysat for me without my grandmother.He was the guy who listened to people’s cell phone calls on his police scanner. He was the one who taught me to make kick ass chili while listening to Italian opera.And he was the one who cried when my oldest son was born, and who called me every day of my ninth month until my oldest daughter was born. Well shortly after my 2nd child was born, he passed away. I was heartbroken to say the least.
I was somber during the wake. I had just had my second child two weeks before. The day of the funeral, I read a poem in his honor and sobbed half way through it. Suburban Cowboy held my hand and rubbed my back while I sat in church. My father was strong and crushed.
On the way to the cemetery, I was in a limo with my mom, my aunt and my older aunts and some cousins. Everyone was crying and just crushed. Out of nowhere…I start to hum. My mom looks at me and elbows me. I look at her and shrug. I stop for a bit and start to hum again. My mother shoots me a “death look” and I bite my bottom lip. Then I recognize the song I am humming. “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen. My mother’s eyes widen as she realizes what I am humming and I bite my bottom lip, but its too late. I start to giggle. Not little girl, airhead cheerleader giggling mind you. We are talking “mental patient on the way to get her lobotomy” giggling. My aunt’s head snapped up and she glared at us, because by now, my mother was trying not to laugh and she was doing this sort of air snort out of her nose thing while I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face. I am shaking my head and at this point, bending at the waist laughing quietly. My mom is crying, literally crying and laughing at the same time, clenching my arm. My great aunt looks at her and smiles.
“Linda,whats wrong?” she asks, beginning to laugh herself.
“Oh nothing, my daughter is an asshole Aunt Gertie,” she replies. I finally lose it totally and fall back against the seat laughing loudly.
Imagine us pulling up to the cemetery, getting out of the limo, laughing like we just got done hitting a Ladies Night at the local bar. My father just looked at us and kind of raised his eyebrow to my mother. She walked over to him, wiping her eyes like I was.
“Your daughter, is an asshole,” she replied and then went to sit by the coffin

It's Because We're Amish Mom

Normally, I try to bar shut my bedroom door in the evenings when I get home from work and I am changing. Nothing like seeing stretch marks and wiggling naked white flesh to have my kids earn their future therapy sessions right? Well EmoKid is fiiiine with the whole “not barging in on mom while she undresses and cries in front of the mirror” routine. He would prefer it if I was never naked, semi naked or in a bathing suit in public ever again. I am fine with that.
But Ferdinand will bust in on me when I am peeing , just to ask me to make him a sandwich(sure…let me whip out some bread right here and make one for ya Son!) or Stinkerbell will come in and provide me with a meltdown made just for me because Ferdinand breathed in her time zone. They don’t , however, bother Suburban Cowboy when he is “thinking” on the commode.
The other day I was changing and weeping, when Princess Bacon strolled in.
“Mom…whats a baka missa?” she asked. I stopped and looked at her and then wiggled into my jean shorts.
“Huh?”
“A baka missa, you know when a girl becomes a teenager?” she replied. I held back a laugh. EmoKid is walking in at this point too, he must have sensed I was clothed.
“Princess Bacon, you mean a bat mitzvah..its when a Jewish girl turns thirteen,” I responded.
“You know, Jewish people don’t talk to other people,” replied EmoKid. Really? I stood there and rapidly tried to figure out if I had huffed Resolve Carpet cleaner when I was pregnant with him or if he had suffered brain damage when I squeezed him out.
“Yes they do EmoKid, don’t be ignorant. Who told you that. And being Jewish is a religion . Like us, we are catholic, that’s a religion,” I replied, with a tid bit of exasperation. Next thing he will tell me is Justin Bieber is male and Paris Hilton is worthwhile to humanity.
“Ohhhhh, I get it. Kinda like us being Amish,” says Princess Bacon with all the insight of the aforementioned Paris Hilton.
“What?!” I reply.
“Yeah dad is Greek and you are Amish,” she responds. One. Hundred. Percent.serious.
“Princess Bacon. I am not AMISH. I am Irish. That’s a whole different thing honey,” I reply, chuckling a bit.
“Yeah cuz if we were Amish, we’d be like the Jewish people and not talk to other people either,” replied EmoKid as he walked downstairs.
Wow. I mean wow. How do you even respond to that? Seriously!
Maybe I will move to Lancaster(its only an hour and a half away) and become Amish, by myself, and not talk to anyone who is not at least five foot tall. Because, you know, Amish people don’t talk to ANYONE, and that’s coming from EmoKid, and he’s an Expert!
I sooo have to get a lock for my bedroom door.

**Over and out**