The only thing that seems REMOTELY what Paul would say is a sentence w “food” and “squirrel” in it.

However, when I leave Paul a voicemail, it translates perfectly.

Case closed.

Roy at Becca's 3rd birthday party

He looks like a really sweet man, but watch out. Roy is a ninja.

There is no other explanation for his behavior. Let me paint a picture for you.

Family Christmas gathering. Picture it. We are crowded into the clubhouse at The Home (where the Tire Shanker lives), there are almost 30 of us if you count on paper. Which you have to because no one sits still long enough to be counted. Tyler usually gets counted 6 or 7 times. There are 9 kids under the age of 10, plus some tweens rolling their eyes in the corner.

But no Roy. Hmmmmm, how does he get out of the chaos that is getting kids to NOT touch Mt. Gift-a-lot? The next thing you know we are about to eat so we gather in a circle for grace and Roy is leading us.

WHAT?! Where did he come from? When did he slide in without kids screeching and launching themselves at him? Hmmmm. I’ll have to keep my eye on him to see when he disappears. Maybe I can hide in the back of his getaway car.

We have lunch. We break out dessert. Roy is accounted for. $5 gift exchange Roy even gets his gift stolen—maybe he is NOT a ninja. Who would steal from a ninja? Mt. Gift-a-lot melts down as gifts are torn into, exclaimed over and occasionally broken. Not necessarily in that order. Maybe I am the ninja. With the eagle eye I am keeping on Roy. He seems so normal. Maybe I am mistaken in my belief of his ninja-ocity.

Roy in his super-suit

Nope. The next thing I see is his little red car zipping down the road while the rest of us are knee deep in wrapping paper and toys while being spun around by little Chapmans hopped up on compliments of Mommom.

How does he DO that? Another clean get away without anyone noticing. I got my eye on you Ninja-Roy.

I’ve got my eye on you.

I need to use my free time (read: time I usually spend doing chores) to exercise for mental and physical well-being (and everyone else’s emotional well-being).

Said workouts create mounds of stinky clothing. Seriously stinky, people.

However, because I used free time for exercise, there is no more time for chores. And stinky laundry piles up until it’s a bad Shel Silverstein poem and I have to get up 40 minutes early to do laundry.

Which makes me uber sleepy and cranky.

Which makes me force a nurse I work with to insert an IV drip of caffeine.

It’s like we need to live in The Matrix to get it all done. But there is no LAUNDRY in The Matrix. Just trench coats and leather pants and I am sure they are dry clean only.

Crap, I just remembered I need to pick up my dry cleaning at lunch today. Which means I won’t be running like I thought. At least it cuts down on the laundry.

Maybe I CAN bend time after all!

I did not volunteer to chaperone.

Anna, of course, did fantastic. She is so independent it did not faze her at all to leave us for 2 nights. She didn’t really want to come back she had such a good time! We sent her with 2 disposable cameras so she could take pics. [There was something in the packing information about a swamp and we might want to think twice about sending “real” cameras.] So when she got back I promised her I would get the film developed straight away.

Luckily she was at Robin’s that week b/c the CVS instant photo now gets sent out and returned within 1 week. That is instant south of the Mason Dixon line apparently. When I picked them up I gave them to Anna (after looking at them of course-she REALLY got some nice shots. I will scan some in and post here), she was tickled to death at the prints, which she doesn’t see very often because I digitally scrapbook and only print out the finished 12×12 product.

“Susan!” she exclaimed, “These are old time pictures!”

Ouch.

My name is Susan S. and I watch MTV’s “16 & Pregnant” and “Teen Mom“.

I am not (too) ashamed, and it gives Paul something to laugh at. I figure this is part of the whole “in sickness and in health” part of our vows. It also makes me feel really good about my redneck life. Here’s what happened.

On a recent episode, the girl from NC from Season 2 (there is ALWAYS someone from NC) was being screamed at by her skanka-docious baby daddy (not sure they were boyfriend/girlfriend, I could not keep up with the break ups and make ups). Because he is such a hillbilly (what we Yankees call a BNR, “born n’ raised,” or “local”), MTV had to put captions on what exactly he was saying. Not because he was mumbling—remember, he was SCREAMING at his teen mom-to-be. Nope, it was because no one could understand what said redneck was screaming.

Then he dropped the D-bomb. And they transcribed it like this:

“Yadda yadda yadda ….  You dad gum piece of s**t”

I was really confused now because that is NOT how Roy Williams wrote it in his book. He says “dag gum” or “dang gum” when he is REALLY mad. But “dad gum?” I had to ask my source. Elizabeth, my sister-in-law. I sent her an email asking about the difference between the three curse phrases.

And that is when Elizabeth writes back, “I would say dag gum…but DEFINITELY NOT dang gum!!!” Yup, the 3 exclamation points are verbatim transcription. This is certainly a hot Southern topic. Then it got better when she clarified further:

They have different meanings!!!

She then directs me to a website that she said would be super helpful. I am thinking it must be dictionary.com or OED.com. Nope, it is such a redneck site that my iPad would not even OPEN it. Goodluck.

www.vaiden.net/convert.html

Tyler observed this fact too. He commented, “Not many cars this morning. Here’s a car–it must be a grandma.”

Paul and I looked at each other a little confused. Tyler further explained, “Grandmas get up real early.”

Note a couple fun things about this landscape: 1) burn marks from when I fertilized last year, and 2) tear drop of tall-ass grass (we lost the cat a few times before I forced Paul to take the time to mow) left when Paul ran out of gas with juuuuuuust this little bit left.

The photo was taken on March 29th. I am writing  this post on April 12th and we still have not gotten gas to finish it. Good news is that the rest of the grass has grown to mach the tall-assness. Bad news is that now we are losing Maggie in the tall-ass grass.

Its more like, “I REFUSE TO DRIVE 1 MILE FURTHER UNTIL SOME GREASE SLIDES DOWN ME GULLET!”

So we stop. Well, he stops. Then I walk down a couple places and get tacos.

Recently we were in the grocery store and look at what I spotted:

Look at these Midwestern-wanna bees!!! AS IF a hamburger bun makes a burger into a slider. Psshhht!

Posers.

Anna can’t find the pants I just put on her bed.

Paul can’t find the milk on the bottom shelf of the fridge.

Tyler cannot find anything.

They all yell to ask if I can find it for them. Usually while I am sleeping.

[full disclosure: no one can ever find the mayonnaise--for some reason we always end up with the jar with the cloak of invisibility]

Tables were recently turned when I could not find the Chuck It to play ball with Maggie. I had seen Tyler with it the day before so I called Paul. Over the phone he was able to direct me to the exact place in the back corner of the yard where Tyler had ditched the stick.

Because this is where you would look for the play-fetch toy.

It’s not weird! I feel like I know them so well? I know Jenny loves Juanita Weasel and Will Wheaton (especially when the latter is collating), Erin’s son is afraid of wind, Kristin rides her bike to work sometimes like I used to and Jen wants to punch the same people in the throat that I do (although full disclosure: I often fall into the “punchee” category by accident—I’m working on that). I’d be super excited to have these women be in my posse, but long distance relationships are super hard.

Explaining fake friends to a 10-year old girl is also hard. Paul is aware of my very real admiration of these fake friends and when I was telling him a story about The Manic Mommies like it was something that happened to me at work that day, Anna asked who Erin and Kristin were.

“My fake friends,” rolled right off my lips before I could consider the implications.

[insert sounds of crickets chirping while Anna considers what I just said, probably wondering if she misheard my non-Southern accent.]

“What are fake friends?” she asked.

Reality began setting in for me. Humor began setting in for Paul. “People who I consider my friends who I have never met and don’t know me,” I said confidently. Fake it till you make it, right?

“If you’ve never met them, why do you want to be their friend?” She obviously doesn’t know The Bloggess and I have the same mental status and conversations with our husbands.

I explained I listened to their podcast (and subsequently what a podcast was) and read their blogs (and what a blog was) and that I thought they were fantastic women that would be fun to be friends with. This prompted the question that is probably on every female’s mind from age 3 on up, “Why don’t they want to be your friend?”

So I deployed Paul’s never-fail conflict resolution strategy. I took a deep breath and waded in…

“What?”

By the time she rallied her questions again, Tyler had swerved his bike in front of her and she went off to chase down the newest injustice.

But I am proud to report I did change poopy diapers without hurling on Avery.

Ironically, after Paul and the kids picked me up and we had dinner and grocery shopped we arrived home to…. What????

You guessed it.

Poo.

Maggie’s bloody diarrhea all over the kitchen and living room.

Welcome home, Poo Sue.

It takes a village to get out the frickin’ door!

I’d always thought Paul was just dawdling—I am constantly ranting about the fact that he is slower than me at EVERYTHING—except that which matter. Let me give you a for instance.

I came home from work read to change clothes and jump in the car to go ride mountain bikes with Paul and Tyler. As I pulled in, Paul was in the garage telling me all he had to do was put the bikes on the car. SUPER! I hustled in to change closed and headed back out. 20 MINUTES LATER we got on the road. “All I have to do it put the bikes on the car” really includes the following:

• Put air in Paul’s tires,
• Put air in Susan’s tires,
• Put air in Tyler’s tires,
• Remove Paul’s front tire
• Remove Susan’s front tire
• Tinker with Susan’s bike
• Tinker with Paul’s bike
• Tinker with Tyler’s bike
• Configure back seat to fit Tyler’s bike in the car (including moving Tyler’s booster seat)
• Paul’s helmet from closet to car
• Susan’s helmet from closet to car
• Tyler’s helmet from cubbie to car
• Fill Paul’s camelback w water, put it in the car
• Fill Susan’s camelback w water, put it in the car
• Fill Tyler’s camelback w water, put it in the car
• Paul’s shoes and socks from closet to car
• Susan’s shoes and socks from closet to car

So guess who got to do all that? ME! Almost ready my ass!

Anyway, at Elli’s, we set lofty a goal on our last day: a bath for both girls. Not Elli and me “the girls” but Sydney and Avery.

“How hard could that be?” I thought to myself.

“All we have to do is put the bikes on the car,” the voice in my head reminded me.

OMG. We started breakfast at 7:30am and ended up 10 minutes late to the airport 7 hours later. Baths, eating and naps were the only activities. Seriously. How is that possible? And my sister is a Midwesterner! A very together, fast moving Midwesterner!

They are lucky they are so cute.

Avery was crying during her bath and Sydney said she would hold Avery's hand, "to help her not be sad."

I’ve been to Harris Teeter a few times since my smack down with the WWOTS and have not seen HER lurking about the flowers like the hornet she is.

I think Tara must have fallen on her in the recent storms we had.

Kind of hard to see (which makes it more funny, really), but the fitted goes east/west, flat sheet goes north/south

He didn’t have time to fix it before leaving for work (hilarity for another post- it takes Paul 2 1/2 hours to get ready in the morning). So he was asking me to rotate the fitted sheet. Now a good wife would have empathized and made the fix. However, Paul is not married to a good wife. He is married to a vengeful wife. What comes around goes around. Know what I’m sayin’?

I am not a HORRIBLE wife though. A horrible wife would have put the dirty fitted sheet back on the bed after rotating. A horrible wife also would lie to her husband. Not me.

I told Paul that under uncertain terms would I be rotating that sheet for him. I told him several times that day. I sent him the photo above of the disaster lurking when he got home. I laughed about his discomfort. A lot.

I had changed to a set of plain white sheets. Hee hee. Score 1 for me!

This past weekend Paul and I were watching the Carolina game (we used to say we were watching Carolina play, but they have not really been doing much of that this year) when Anna and Tyler came in from the woods with Anna’s laptop.

[Yes, that's right--the laptop went into the woods. That's not the point of this post though. Let's stay focused.]

Anna and Tyler were really excited about this new song they found on YouTube (yes, they were surfing YouTube unsupervised–also a scary non-point of this story). Here is what they showed me–its TOTALLY worth your 3 1/2 minutes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

He just thinks my face is cold is all!

Paul is convinced Barton tries to kill me, but he loves me. He wouldn’t do that.

Would he?

So I’m a champ at this. Most of the time.

Not lately though. I have had the usual crazy dreams:

• Losing my engagement ring and 1 of the wedding bands,
• All of my teeth falling out,
• Generally being lost (although not that unusual than when I am behind the wheel of a car),
• Falling off a cliff.

You know—the basics. Most of the time.

Not last night though. Last night I dreamt of Lionel Richie:

This is one of the last things I put on my Pinterest board before falling asleep.

In my dream I was in a school about to go to a concert in one of the classrooms. The school was really old and run down and dumpy—not the place you would think would host a concert. Not to mention classroom acoustics—BLECH. I kept checking my notes to make sure I was in the right place (overlapping with my generally being lost dreams perhaps?) and guess who passes in front of me into the classroom?

LIONEL RICHIE! Complete with the fro!

Of course I immediately squeal, “I just pinned the funniest picture of you on Pinterest!” Then proceeded to tell him about the picture with the tear off tabs posted on the telephone pole. But I had to then explain what Pinterest is. But then we were running late and the other performers were coming in. It was a crazy mix of performers: Aretha Franklin (in all of her 70’s glory!), Sarah McLaughlin (maybe I see too many ASPCA
commercials?), I can’t remember who else.

NOT LIONEL RICHIE. What the hell? I dream about Lionel Richie and I don’t get serenaded? I gave him the business about it too! [I wonder if Paul has nightmares about me giving him the business.] Lionel just shrugged and said the show was designed to rotate singers and he was too busy promoting the show this time to perform too.

Perhaps HE is the one who posted his own mug on the telephone pole?