Results tagged "Humor"

((Huge Sigh))

There she is. Taking my picture again.

Can’t a dog just take a nap around here without interruption? I mean — I already wag my tail around these kids that she allows to stay in the house, can’t I just have one moment of peace? I know, I know. She’s all happy and proud because the vet said that I lost nine pounds. As if that’s anything to be surprised about… My last appointment was 6 months ago — What? Doesn’t she know that unlike a certain 3 year old around here, I listen?!

And she’s happy like ALL THE TIME.

Remember when she worked in an office? How whack was that? All the screaming over the telephone about press proofs and color matches…UGH – and the money. I mean it smells nice but I never did get the point. I did all I could by laying my head on her lap to calm the crazy down. But now. Taking my picture again. Hopefully this time she won’t go and post it all over the internet like she did last winter when I was “fat”. Hasn’t anyone ever heard of a “winter coat”.

And yes. I get that she loves me…. Despite the fact that she moved my dogbed four inches to the left…. Not the one in the TV room, the other one that I sometimes remove the stuffing from. Because, if that “new one” is going to scream about absolutely nothing, can’t I let out a little frustration every once in a while?

But I’m not some pathetic character dog that enjoys social media and internet attention. Because. I’m stout, stoic, and if being eleven years old hasn’t taught anyone around here anything — I’m in charge.. And I’m not going to stand for all of this laughing and playing around all the time. Don’t people know how to control themselves? Just the other day that 3 year old had a water pistol and thought it would be fun to test it out on me. And you know what? I let him. And I smiled the whole time. Dammit.

All I want is for everyone to behave. And bacon. I’d really like some — Did she ever think of that?

Getting back into IT.

And by “IT” I mean multiple things.

Anything resembling a routine is laughable, but I am finding the time to sit at my desk for a few minutes. {My desk which has now moved to our living room. Because moving my office to the basement was a huge mistake. I’m pretty sure that we’ve discussed this many many times. Yes, I like having a serious living room where you aren’t supposed to touch anything but I’m finding that rather unrealistic given the size of our accommodations. And kids too — they touch everything. No, the toys only become a bother when they try to strangle me. The basement was nice, but the amount of dust was irritating. Whatever, things will get back to normal eventually. Everything is in a constant state of motion. This is my life — get over it.}  I’m getting into it. I’m even working on a few design and blog projects WITHOUT procrastination. And while it might take a little bit longer than it used to, completing a project kind of feels like winning the lottery. Not that I’ve ever won… well… anything, but I would imagine that it has nothing to do with Charlie Sheen, and everything to do with feeling accomplished while enjoying the task at hand.

The other thing that I’m getting back to is regular life. That is to say — doing the mundane ritualistic things that one ordinarily does but pays absolutely no attention to. For example, laundry — which is now neatly folded in various baskets throughout the house… putting the clothes away has yet to be addressed. Dishes, cooking, cleaning… For a while — with the almost 3 month old and almost 4 year old — these things were nearly impossible. Finding the time to fit them in — between feedings, playing, and tantrum control has also become a task wrapped up within itself… Homemaking. Good times. Hello Sisyphus.

But I’m not the only one talking about this… Why just the other day my BFF Gretchen Rubin of Happiness fame and whom I’ve been known to stalk, posted a list of “If I Can’t Accomplish Anything Else Today, I Can Do These 10 Things”. I read her list which includes several obvious things like wearing her seatbelt and making her bed, and realized that I don’t really start my day with a goal in mind, but if these were the only things that I was able to accomplish in a day — I might drive myself insane. That, perhaps, I need my list to include something that leads to satisfaction, which in my mind might make for a pretty nice day…. She also mentions things like touching with affection, which (ew) we all do, but do we really need to TALK ABOUT IT? So, I’m taking it up a notch with my own list. A list of ten ITS that I need to do in order to keep my world order — which perhaps defeats Gretchen’s point entirely, but whatevs — MY BAG.

1. Make sure that my family is happy — and not just with me, but with everything going on with them. If they aren’t happy, I, in turn, will not be happy and the rest of this list will be useless…
2. Read something interesting…
3. Talk to someone on the outside — having kids sometimes leads to living in a sheltered cocoon where time stands still…
4. Caffinate…
5. Eat something yummy…
6. Straighten something… which goes back to #1, but if there is unrest, it must be solved immediately. If all is well, then I’m sure there’s something around here that needs to be TENDED.
7. Stretch… believe it or not, this is the easiest to forget about…
8. Go outside…
9. Laugh…
10. Take a picture.

And without leaving this post totally unended… and just hanging out there like some 90′s grunge junkie that didn’t overdose, what about you? What is your IT?

Afterthought: Bonus # 11. Internet… as a verb, noun and adjective.

When Will was born in 2007, I made a pact with myself to stay on top of the pictures that we take… and for a while I was really good at this. I would order prints monthly to send and add to our own library. This was in addition to emailing out digital versions almost every day to family and close friends. Being completely sensitive towards the fact that babies and children change on a minute to minute basis — and not living within an hours drive of any of our closest, I wanted to make everyone feel like they were watching Will grow. And it worked… that is up until sometime last summer when I totally lost control of the process and simply stopped ordering prints. I don’t know if it was because we became so busy with summer and the events of the year OR if it was because I was going through different cheap and therefore useless cameras — not really liking any and/or having them break consistently up until buying a really good one this past January. Regardless, I was behind. Hundreds of pictures behind, and the catalogue that I had started to compile grew only in a digital sense, which is frightening because NEVER TRUST TECHNOLOGY. Not even the devil knows what wrath would emerge should ANY of these pictures disappear… Because, you know. LIFE. Even the backup of my backedup backup needs a backup — and that might not even be enough.

SO, for the past few days I’ve been dealing with this situation, spending my spits and seconds of free time going through photographs from the past year… Ordering away and preparing the print books for their arrival… I found myself really enjoying this process… reliving all the fun times — ALMOST as if all of the “These are the Days” Natalie Merchants out there were finally being heard by my cynical ears for the first time… If only for a second. Okay – less than a second… OH WHATEVER — Maybe I didn’t hear anything. Natalie Merchant sounds like Elmer Fudd to me anyway. Sorry. That’s just the way it is. I saw her in concert once where she sang and danced with her back to the audience… It never really made very much sense to me other than maybe she wanted us to acknowledge her ass. Which, AHEM, I just did.

And without calling too much attention, at least not in terms of our faces and daily lives (or asses), here is one image of many that I feel compelled to share…

This is my sister Kate and my son Will playing in the surf last summer. I love this picture because — not only does Kate look beyond amazeballs as a silhouette, but it also encompasses what we did almost every other day last year — WENT TO THE BEACH. And it seemed endless — an endless summer of the beach and now that the weather this year is finally ready for it, I have to wonder when we will make it back…. Because HELLO, the only thing that infant babies hate more than losing sight of their food source (aka, my boobs) is the big wide open beach. We haven’t attempted to take Josephine yet, at two months old I’m not quite sure how she’ll handle it… I will have my boobs with me though, so she might not argue too much. I’m also not so sure how much Kate will like having her bathing beauty self being outed on the intergalactic airwaves… if only my boobs could appease everyone.

Okay Okay… This is it, I promise. After this post I will go straight back to the usual.

Not that I know what the usual is… Or that this blog has a typical rhyme, reason OR direction. But would you LOOK AT HER?! Already BORED! AND she’s currently a BLONDE. Please note that by using the ‘e’ in blonde we are adding the emphasis of ownership — that of being a “blonde” vs. the act of having blond hair. This could all change as life goes on, but I may reach out to other notable and original “blondes with an e” for assistance, you know, should things get out of hand — for now we (AHEM, a nuclear BRUNETTE family) are kind of tiptoeing around the situation… But it shouldn’t be a huge surprise, I mean, the GENES ARE THERE… My Mom and Sister are Blonde — Mr. Sal has a few on his side as well… AND it could go the other way at any moment.. Aside from nature altering courses, she could wake up one day and be all DUDE – I WANT BLUE or RED or BOTH. While the rest of us forget what it was like to be young and free and full of self-expression. Art for Art’s Sake. Live Free or Die. The possibilities are endless.

It’s only a matter of time until she realizes that she’s Blonde, until then we are basking in cuteness. Just wait until the day that we’re all “Hey, what do you want to do today?” To which she replies — WHATEVER, I’m BLONDE.

I started off today with the long list of complaints. It was so long that I even heard myself saying “How long is it?” as I tried to find the end. One after another, after another after another… blah, blah, blah. On and on. Blathering until I decided that it was pretty safe to say that I was in the middle of some sort of meltdown… Either that or I was on a direct path to annoy myself to death.

Yeah, that’s right. DEATH.
And it really didn’t take very much to lead me to this place of disregard. Complete and total ignorance of how happy I actually am… It took so little for me to land there, in fact, that I am questioning my tolerance. There was a time that I was able to work with and exist around complete and total idiots — sexist, deranged, airheaded… you name it — I tolerated, and things were constantly going wrong… leading to weekly fits of anxiety — you know, basic internalization of all things bad for you. I even once had to be put under anesthesia to have the world’s smallest camera sent down my esophagus to measure the amount of stress I was hiding within bodily confines… Only to wake up shouting about deadlines and totally scoffing at the idea that I was stressed out. Is it possible that so much time has passed in not having to deal with certain character types or tough situations that now I am not able to handle the smallest obstacles? Have I become weak when faced with… anything? But where and how did this actually “happen”.

There really wasn’t anyway to predict this — things were going along quite nicely, actually… And just when I began to let myself think that… ‘hmmm — maybe NOW is a good time to relax,’ thus letting life and what have you simply happen, it did. But not the kind of LIFE that I was predicting– you know, a carefree existence paralleling with shameless gluttony and overindulgence… Because in the scope of things, everything that I’m about complain about is quite meaningless… that is given the larger picture of — you know, LIFE.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have things rather good…. LIFE is awesome, for lack of a better word and if only to appease my still bleached out split ends. I have no reason to complain. But then things started breaking down. Last week it was the dishwasher — which is no real BIGS because with flowing water and soap, we can pretty much clear up that situation… but the convenience was lost for days. I scheduled an appointment last Wednesday that we waited for all afternoon with a 1-5 window of time… only to find out at 4:45pm that the appointment had been rescheduled in error for Friday, 1-5. The next day, I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for 1:45 — when I arrived they said I was an hour early for my 2:45 appointment. In both scenarios the operator and receptionist told me that the mistakes were my fault. Which they weren’t, but I took each pill graciously — deciding to fight the larger battle should it rear its ugly head… And then the babysitter quit. Then the car needed maintenance. Then my computer started coughing up hair balls. Then my 2 year old started acting like a 3 year old. Then all of the babysitters answering my classified ad couldn’t speak English. Then there was laundry. Then I didn’t have time to read anything. Then I didn’t have time to write very much… or design… or think… or clean. Then it rained. Then my computer’s server exhausted it’s last breath. Then I demanded. Then I was rude. Then I was reminded of how I used to handle situations. I felt overwhelmingly icky and out of control.

And then, as I sat down to vent it all out to the internet… completely sick and tired of listening to myself sigh (loudly) and blame it ALL on anyone that crossed my path — that is with the exception of the Bluedog who totally looked at me all “Dude, CHILL OUT.” — Everything evened out. The former babysitter showed up, returning the book that I was obsessing over even though I haven’t looked at it in 10 years… apologizing and explaining her abrupt departure… crying almost at how she had left things but more likely because she had reached forty million and couldn’t count the rest of the hairs standing straight on my head. A few good candidates for her replacement called — AND the computer that was laying on it’s deathbed awaiting a logic board transplant (a couple $1,000 to replace) was downgraded to a video card replacement (about $200).

And so, while I’m typing this as a reminder to stop annoying myself to DEATH and just wait things out until signs of improvement begin to appear… I think I’m also, in some round about way, apologizing to the universe for acting so selfish about LIFE and everything that it dishes out…. How easy it is to put on the blinders and act selfish and full of complete and total irreverence.

I asked Kenny to be a guest this week because of a line that he wrote on his blog, in what I assume was his first post… “And I want it to be known that I’m super excited about being a
father…but kids kind of freak me out.”…

Which pretty much sums up the way I have always felt about kids… Because I know a lot of people that have decided to not have kids… and I can understand that too… while I also know some that have or want and shouldn’t…. but we aren’t changing the universe today, now are we? He also, unknowingly, took the following guest post to express a feeling of panic which I experienced two days ago when my 2.5 year old told us he was going to jump into the deep end… and then JUMPED INTO THE DEEP END with no floatation device present… he was and is fine… I, however, am still learning to walk with rubber legs… Now I’m all, “Hey you NO FEAR… Who the hell told you to THINK FOR YOURSELF!?!”

And with that juxtaposition… Thanks Kenny…

I was going to write this post about how a good friend commented on how ‘great I am at cooking for kids’, to which I very strangely became self-conscious and immediately organized two consecutive nights of grown-up dinner parties… And house guests arriving tomorrow to stay until Thursday… Because I can’t help but think that I MUST be good at other stuff too, and OBVIOUSLY her comment was insinuating that I was BAD at everything else. But then I threw that idea out with the bath water (sans enormous toddler-baby) because, whatever — just who am I trying to prove anything to, hmmm? Martha?

But then I went ahead and made kid friendly allergen free wheat bread anyway… Because not only am I slowly defining narcissism — but the only reason those allergens were ever in the store bought bread to begin with was all about shelf life…

We’ve been saying that a lot lately around here…

When really we just need to get back to being normal. Because YEAH SO WHAT Martha Stewart is following you. You still need to do all the things you did before… Before last Thursday. Because YEAH WHATEVER BIG DEAL, you look really unattractive with a giant MOON HEAD. Just let it go. Just get over it. Just MOVE ON  — just like nothing ever happened. Stop telling Twitter how much you love it and then slap it back into remission — IT DOESN’T UNDERSTAND.

So.. while we eat our Turkey Meatballs and stare longingly out into space… just twitching a little bit over the whole not-a-situation-but-sure-feels-like-it kick in the head, we are calming down. And with that I present… Mari’s Random Five.

There is a fine line between getting your point across and being utterly annoying…

And I think I’m just about to cross it.

Thursday morning I was staring at my Twitter account wondering just what had happened to that one follower had decided to, in fact, pack their bags and move on… Just what were they thinking? Was it my Tweet questioning why some women wear spandex leggings as if they are in a perpetual state of exercise when clearly, they are not… Was it my response to Elly regarding the use of the word Internet as a verb… Or perhaps it was my Artistic Things ReTweet of my post about Ende? All intriguing but not without context — I pondered what drove them away, but decided it was time to just let it go and move on when, out of the corner of my eye, I witnessed the small yet daunting “followers” number wink at me, and then jump back up by one.

If you are one of those people that’s all like OH THAT’S NOTHING, I demand that you go away right now.

Martha Stewart is following me on Twitter, and I don’t think that there is an increment of time fast enough to describe how quickly I reacted in following her back… Or the speed in which I sent her a direct message: “Hey, thanks for the follow, please be sure to check out our new food blog, http://willskitchen.com — all about cooking with kids! Fun and Yummy!”. It only took me a few minutes to realize what a total geek I sounded like but HEY, MARTHA is following me on Twitter!

But it didn’t end there. Yeah, that’s right.. it had to go to another level.. IT JUST HAD TO. Now, I don’t really think that Ms. Stewart is doing the actual tweeting… but one never really knows, do they? It isn’t like she doesn’t have anything else to do…. Regardless, I suspected this was an accident, so I tortured myself and only checked twitter every other hour to see if she was still there. She was. AND – she STILL IS. Although we’ll just see about that after this post.

But why me? Is it because I’m double jointed, or because I mix my colors and whites? Or because I mentioned her new crafting book the other day? OR, because my sister is getting married, or because I just purchased a copy of her new magazine Body + Soul? OR, because I obsess about EVERYTHING? Yes. That must be it… And none of this was driving me crazy AT ALL… Because Martha is following me on Twitter and there isn’t anything to worry about.

BUT THAT ISN’T ALL.

Because a few hours ago my new BFF, Martha, Tweeted this:

RT @themarthashow
Do you want to attend our food blogging show? Make sure to get your
request in before it’s 2 late! http://ow.ly/1zsNU

So — it made sense. Will’s Kitchen, OF COURSE. But wait. Martha found me on Twitter through my twitter ID of forthebirdsblog. I only half mention Will’s Kitchen — the domain is there, but it isn’t linked. It’s all very suspect… and so before my head explodes… I am on a mission. A mission to go to this Martha Stewart taping and, at the very least, somehow have Will’s Kitchen mentioned. And virtually… I am taking all of you with me. And with this I request, dear friends.. sit back, relax and if you find a spare moment, loosen up those vocal chords and sing from the highest heights…  alert the world… Will’s Kitchen on The Martha Show or Bust. One small step for man… 

People do the craziest things.

Not to scare anyone, the snow has actually melted… But I was going through a recent order of photographs and I came across this one that made me completely unravel into fits of spastic giggles which only evolved into tears and roars of laughter… Because really, look at Blue’s expression. This was the first time he had ever witnessed sledding. Can you imagine what is going through his head? And, although I am fully aware that this might totally be my own little inside joke that is SO TOTALLY NOT FUNNY, just why would anyone sit on a piece of plastic, IN THE SNOW and slide down a big hill? WHY?