That movie with the killer trees - Topic for the podcast?

My husband listens to a lot of podcasts.  Also, we think that we are hilarious when we talk to eachother and whenever we think we are especially funny, we think that topic should be added to our podcast.  Of course, we don't actually have a podcast.  And, if we tried to record a podcast, I am sure we wouldn't remember any of our great topics.  Here is the conversation from today.

Me:  You know that M. Night Shyamalan movie about the trees that kill people?  I never saw it, but I think that the movie should end up that people with allergies are immune to the killer tree pollen.  The poison pollen would get stuck in all the snot.

Hubby: Oh so the trees killed with chemical warfare, not with very slow stabbing?

Me:  Yes.

Hubby:  I bet they didn't kill Marty Casey from Rock Star: INXS because he had that song about living with the trees.

Me:  No, I bet they killed him because he was into tree rape.  His song was about living IN a tree.

Hubby:  Only the most radical trees thought that.

Me:  I bet all the trees wanted to go after the people who did the songs about cutting down the trees and putting them in a tree museum.

Hubby:  Yeah, trees don't get irony.

Me:  And they don't like bad music.

Hubby:  And they wanted a cut of that tree museum entry fee.  The trees are not selfish, they understand there is overhead.  There is maintenance on the parking lot that replaced the trees.

Me:  Then there is the installation of the parking lot outside the tree museum and the tree museum curator.

Hubby:  We should discuss this in the podcast.

If you were a guest on our podcast, how would you elaborate on this topic?  Maybe you actually saw the movie or know the name of it?

Alien Nail Polish

These are not my feet.





I do enjoy a good pedicure, but I am very cheap so I rarely get one.  However, on the few occasions that I have gotten one, I have paid very close attention so that I can replicate the technique at home.  I have learned that you must layer the nail polish with 1 clear layer, 2 color layers, then another clear layer.  Piece of cake.

Being sandal season, I have recently done my toe nails in silver using the 1-2-1 technique.  One morning when I woke up, the piggie who doesn't get roast beef, was naked.  The nail polish wasn't just chipped, it was gone.  Later in the day I found the nail polish, in tact, on the floor.  I figured this was a freak occurence and I just repainted the poor piggy.  When I was in middle school, I was way into painting my fingernails and adding jewels to them.  When you do this, you have to use a lot of coats of clear polish in order to get the jewel not to fall off.  When I would do this, I could peal off a sheet of polish from a nail if I was careful, but it was a lot of effort. 

A few days after the touch up, I woke up and found the piggy that goes to market WAS NAKED!  The same thing had happened.  It wasn't chipped, the polish was completely gone and I found it in one peice on the floor.

So, what do we think is happening? 

• It might be alien nail polish.  It might be like the green goo that promotes healing on Marvel-Agents of shield. 
• I thought that maybe someone was removing the nail polish in the middle of the night, but finding it as a little nail polish sheet on the floor would be hard to do.
• Maybe I am a very violent sleeper and I kick the polish right off?

Very Strange.  What do you think?

To quote the butthole surfers...

..."you never know just how you look through other people's eyes."

This morning I was shaving my legs using conditioner (#TMITuesday).  Sometimes I use conditioner, sometimes I don't, it depends on what is in the most supply in the shower.  However, using conditioner reminded me of a few conversations from my past.  One conversation was with one of my cousins and she told me that she always uses conditioner, because when we were young I told her that was the best way to shave your legs.  I do not remember telling her that.  However, I do remember when a different cousin told me the same thing.  This got me thinking, that I remember things that people tell me way better than I remember things I tell other people.  In my mind, I am a leg shaving information gatherer, but in the mind of others, I am a leg shaving information giver.

You have a lot of time to think while you are shaving your legs.  For a while I thought that maybe I do lots of little good things for/to people and I just don't remember them.  Then I started to worry that maybe I do a lot of bad things for/to people and I don't remember them.

I am not a person who thinks that everything I do is nice, but I TRY to be nice to everyone.  There are times that I have been mean and many of those times stick out to me and cause guilt whenever I think of them.  There are times when you are mean for a reason, like a jerk woman just asked if you are pregnant, but then there are reasons you are just mean on accident for no reason.  I still cringe at the thought of the time in kindergarten I told the shy girl she couldn't follow me around because she wasn't my friend.  There is the way we used to hide from and run from certain cousins just because we decided they were the one that was "bad" that day.  Then there was the time in middle school where a kid I knew from a summer program said hi to me and I just walked away because I didn't know what to say.  There are countless others that I can't list here because you would think much less of me. 

Anyway, the question is, are there tons of other times that I have been perceived as unreasonably mean and I just don't remember them?  OR, do mean things stick in my head easier than nice things?  The topic of  how other people perceive you has come up a lot recently in conversation with friends.  That is when I realized that it is hilarious to say, "To quote butthole surfers...".  For those of you that don't know, The Butthole Surfers are a band and their most famous song has "you never know just how you look through other people's eyes" in the chorus.  I think in general, when talking with friends, we decided that our friends see us better than we see ourselves.  Is that because we are insecure about ourselves?  Or is that because our friends are nice and assume the best of us? I wonder how casual acquaintances see me.  Of course, it has long been my motto that it is none of my business what other people think about me.  I would go crazy if I was trying to make every one think well of me.

What are your thoughts about this?  Are all people hard on themselves?  Do you think some people are just smug and always think they are great?  I like to think that I have pretty high self confidence.  To quote Ahbed from Community, "I have self esteem pouring out my ass."  But, even with all my confidence, I still have a lot that I am insecure about.

I've fallen and I can't get up!

Yesterday I was working from home because my husband had to go to training for work and he wouldn't be around to help our boy get on and off the school bus.  This should not be a dangerous venture, but I managed to make it so.

Around lunch time I decided to go to T-Smell and that reminded me that I hadn't started dinner.  We were supposed to have roast in the crock pot and I figured that even if I started it at 11, there would be enough time for it to cook.  I am a little on the short side, and my husband is a little on the tall side.  This means that he puts away a lot of stuff on the top shelf and I can't reach it without standing on something, normally a chair.  This was the case with the crock pot.  I climbed up on the standard climbing chair and wrestled with the crock pot to get it down.  All of a sudden I was laying on the floor.  My lower back hurt and my legs hurt and I was sure that I would be stuck there until someone came home to find me.  I was screaming and wishing that I had one of those med alert necklaces.  It didn't help that my book club is reading a book where an elderly woman fell down and couldn't get up and was left laying on the cold floor for hours.  I was sure that would be me.  After I calmed down a little, I realized I could at least roll over and crawl around.  I was still screaming but managed to crawl towards my phone.  It wasn't long before I realized that I could get up.  I could walk around, but, my foot still hurt.

It turns out I am a giant crybaby.  I was in total panic mode off and on for a while after that.  Since I could get around, I figured I didn't need to call 911.  After making myself some lunch, I decided to return a call from my mom, and as soon as I heard her voice I started my freaking out again.  My poor mom, she didn't even know who was calling her.  My mom called and sent my sister over.  My Mother in law dropped by for something else and both of them took good care of me.

I picked up my sweet boy from the bus stop and he was cute as he helped me out of the car.  He insisted I had to tell daddy.

My sister is a darling, she came and watched the kids as we went to urgent care after the hubby got home from work.  Urgent care is probably not a very pleasant place to work.  It took all evening, but they looked at it, gave me an xray, and wheeled me out to the car after putting a splint on my foot and telling me to get crutches.  The most surprising thing to me was the xray machine.  I never got an xray before.  I pictured it looking like this:

 

In reality, it is a table and the xray machine comes down from the ceiling.  Who knew?  I feel that old timey cartoons had been fooling me for years.

This is mostly a sob story blog.  Poor Catherine, she hurt herself.  But as I look back at the sobbing mess I was, it becomes kind of funny.  I picture myself getting one of the med-alert necklaces and wearing it everywhere even though I am only 36 years old.  I also wonder what would have happened if the kids were here.  It would have been super bad if I was holding the baby when I fell.  So, lesson number 1, don't climb up on stuff while holding the baby.  But if I was not holding her, I think it would have gone better.  I like to think that I wouldn't have freaked out if the kids were here.  I wouldn't have wanted to scare them.  Lesson number 2, being a mom makes me a stronger person.  Lesson number 3, crutches are not as much fun as they look.

Have you learned any good lessons lately that you want to share?  Did you already know what xray machines look like?  Am I the only one that was fooled?

Check out my balls

 

I took a glass blowing class on Saturday and it was lovely.  I have always wanted to be a glass blower, but it isn't really something you can set up in your basement.  I saw this class at Baron Glassworks of Ypsilanti advertised in the Rec and Ed book, so I signed up.  I realize now that my idea of fun is very different than it used to be.  The class was more interesting than fun, and that is ok with me.  There were 8 people in the class and there were two teachers.  There was no way they were going to allow us to insert the metal rod into the burning hot glory hole (that is what they call the furnace where you reheat the glass) without a teacher assisting us.  This meant that there was way more watching than there was actually making things.  Some of the people made really beautiful things.  Mine are just average, but some of them were beautiful.  My turn was toward the end, and by then the poor instructors were exhausted.  I wanted my second piece to be a drinking glass.  I was torn over whether I should make a drinking glass or a paperweight.  I have a bajillion drinking glasses and they have to be tough to survive at our house.  I have always loved looking at glass paperweights, but decided against it because my papers are rarely flying all over.  It was a mistake, but maybe having two beautiful garden gazing balls (as my dad calls them) will distract from how bad I am at gardening.  When you work in the hot glass arts, you refer to this as "reading the glass."  All the best artists do it.  Sometimes the glass just doesn't want to be formed into what you want as your end result and all the best artists can read the glass and turn it into something better.

As much as I enjoyed the class, there was one big distraction.  One of the other students was getting on all my nerves.  In the picture above, she is right behind the instructor.  I had one where you could actually see her, but the hubby thought it was inappropriate to put up a photo of her on the internet.  Instead, I will describe her in such great detail that you will recognize her if you see her around town.  If you do see her around town, ask her if she is pregnant.

This woman walked into the glass studio like she owned the place.  She was VERY vocal.  She let us all know that she is also a glass artist (she is an artist, but she does science as her day job.  I wonder if it is like when my son does science by dissolving candy in a cup of water) with her own studio in her house (craft room).  She does stained glass and fused glass (when the teacher asked her about it, she didn't know many technical details about fused glass.  I think she mostly takes scraps of stained glass and melts them in her microwave).  She only wears dresses and they are always sleeveless because she wears sweaters (this was fun because it was about 40 degrees in the studio if you weren't working with the glass).  She is very athletic which is why she has two bad shoulders and a bad leg and therefore had to sit down in one of the very few chairs.  She had her badly dyed black hair up in a messy ponytail with a flower barret in the front.

Why do I find this woman SO obnoxious?  Is it because I secretly want to be her?  I want to be an artist.  I want to have room in my house for a studio.  I want to have a distinct fashion that labels me an artist whereever I go.  I sometimes want to be friendly.  No, I don't want to be this woman.  I can't stand her.  I will have to be an eclectic friendly athletic artist with a studio and somehow still be the opposite of this woman.

As we watched the students make their glasswork, this bleepity bleep bleep "artist" looked at me and said, "wow!  Are you pregnant?"  People who live in a civilized society should never ask this question.  Women who also carry their excess weight in their midsection should also never ask this question.  However, I know it happens.  Had that been all she said, I wouldn't have even paid attention.  I responded, "no, I just had a baby."  She should have apologized, instead she said, "Are you pregnant?  Wow, you must have JUST had that baby."  After that, I punched her in the lady parts...emotionally.  She still wouldn't stop.  Then she exclaimed, "wow, you are still a really new mom."  I am never rude to people.  I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that I have been rude to someone's face and I regret all of them.  At this point, I decided I could be rude to this person.  I wish I would have been more rude, all I did was look at her and then turn away and ignore her while I was watching the other students.  After that she started talking to one of the guys in the class.  He was really friendly and she thanked him for being so friendly, "Thank you for being so nice.  I like to be friendly and I like to learn things.  It is so nice to meet someone so friendly."  I would like to say that is when I turned around and told her off while I jump kicked her in the face, but I didn't do that.

So, as usual when I wish I came up with a really good response to something, I thought about it all weekend.  It is none of her business if I am pregnant or not.  I didn't need to tell her that I just had a baby.  Lets work on some new responses, here is what I have so far:

• Why?  Are you?  Are we preggo buddies?
• Why do you ask?  Do you think I look fat in this outfit?
• I can't tell you because you look like the kind of person that would try to cut a fetus out of someone.

Oh, and sorry to be misleading with the title of this blog.  You can't really check out my balls because I didn't get them back yet.  They are still in the kiln.  I will post a picture when I get them back.

The second time I have ever wanted to get in a fight with another mother

Saturday night was party night and much partying ensued.  HOWEVER, before the partying I almost had to beat up another mom.

The party was in Clarkston and my folks live in Grand Blanc, so the plan was to meet my parents at Halo Burger, one of my favorite restaurants, to hand over the children.  We went to the one with the giant play structure, also known as the one that is NOT personality plus.  It started out great.  We ran into my cousin Mike and his family.  They are a delight.  I got a delicious cheesburger and Cherry Coke.  I managed to nab a dinosaur shaped chicken nugget (they like to call them drummies) from one of the kids.  The kids love to play in the giant play structure and that allowed me plenty of time to chat with my cousins and my parents.

After the kids were in the play structure for a while, I heard a nice pretty mom say that one of the kids in the play structure was sick and throwing up.  An ugly big nosed blond mom started screaming at the top of her lungs, "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!  WHERE IS HER MOM?  WHO'S KID IS SHE?  EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWW!  THAT IS SO GROSS!"  Then she started gagging.  After the first mom who was nice and pretty mentioned that someone was sick, I looked and found that it was my lovely, beautiful, sweet, smart, two year old daughter that was sick up at the top level of the play structure.  She was puking right through the cargo net section that you are supposed to climb through.  It was pretty gross, but there was no need to gag.  Without notifying the loud, ugly, obnoxious, blond mom, I climbed up into the play structure.  Finally my short stature was good for something besides being adorable.  I was able to wiggle up to the top.  I tried to call my sweet little darling towards me, but she was too scared.  I had to climb through the tube to get her.  As I crawled through the structure it started to move really weird.  I was very sure that I was breaking it and that we would both fall through.  Luckily, I was able to get my little sweetheart and bring her back down.

After we got out of the play structure, the terrible mom was making snide remarks and what not. I made sure not to look at her...not because I was embarrassed, but because I was afraid I would leap at her and punch her in the face.  I was fuming all the way to the party.  Luckily, getting back together with great friends that I hadn't seen in a while was wonderful, and my rage subsided.  Unluckily for my mom, my sweet little darling puked the whole time we were gone.

The first time I wanted to beat up another mom was the day I had to take my sweet darling out of the movie Brave because she was crying and a mom yelled at us that she was going to get security to escort us out.  It was dark that day, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same evil woman.

Happy Valentines Day

I took Friday February 14th as a vacation day from work.

 

I know what you are thinking.  TMI Catherine, we don't want to know about how you had so many romantic plans for Valentines day that you couldn't fit them into one evening so you had to take the whole day.

 

No no no, it was not about being romantic, it was to help out with my son's kindergarten party at school.

 

Every weekday I get up around 6am and I drag myself into the shower.  I am always incredibly jealouse of my sleeping husband who manages to take up the whole bed and all the blankets as soon as I get up.  He gets to sleep in about an hour later than I do and it makes me almost hate him.  Friday I got to sleep in and it was my dream come true...at first.  Originally, I planned to spend the whole day at my son's school.  The teacher had planned a day long party that included counting to 100, pancakes, and wearing pajamas to school.  They were scheduled to do some valentine crafts and the teacher was looking for moms to help out.  Being the daughter of the perfect home room mother, I volunteered to help out all day and I volunteered to bring a few valentine crafts because I didn't want to get stuck with some impossible craft like the glitter fiasco of the Christmas class party.

 

The day before, we were notified that the teacher had been put on administrative leave.  That afternoon the school secretary called me to discuss the party.  She had heard that I was in charge of it.  She explained to me that the kids couldn't have a day long party with the sub because there was a lot of curriculum they had to cover.  IT WASN'T MY IDEA TO HAVE A DAY LONG PARTY!!  I was just trying to help.  Anyway, I agreed that it would be fine if they just had a little party in the afternoon and I could come in then.  Oh, also I accidentally hung up on the school secretary the first 3 times she called me because there is something wrong with my phone.  EMBARRASSING!

 

Because I no longer had to go into school right when it started, it made sense that I would take the girls to daycare and let my husband go to work a little bit early after dropping our son off at the bus stop.  This is what made me realize that my husband is a saint and I will no longer envy his extra hour of sleep.  Normally the hubby has to have the 5 year old ready for school, the 2 year old and the baby ready for daycare, and everyone into the car so they can be to the bus stop by 8:20.  It was hard enough for me to help get the 5 year old out the door in time, but the girls were impossible.  After breakfast the 2 year old was covered in chocolate (don't judge me about her having chocolate for breakfast) and the baby was crying because she was hungry.  Once I was done cleaning the chocolate face and feeding the baby a bottle, the 2 year old wanted to sit on the potty.  I never want to discourage her from using the potty, but I know she just wants to sit there so she can play her video game.  While she was on the potty (she didn't actually GO), I realized I had peanut butter all over my shirt.  Anyway, We didn't get out the door until almost 10:00.  I don't know how my husband does it.  He is magic.

 

Once I had the house to myself, I could think about the craft I was bringing to school.  My mom is a craft master, but it always bothered me that when she would do crafts for kids, she would practically do the whole thing for them ahead of time.  This would make me so mad because I was the kind of kid who wanted to tweak the project a little to make it my own.  Anyway, now that I am a mother, I understand a little bit more why she used to do that.  I had 3 projects in mind because I wasn't sure how much time there would be.  Most of them involved cutting things out and putting stickers on them.  There was the heart paper airplane, the heart made out of hands, and the heart with a cut out heart in the middle.  I was a little nervous that these might be too simple and boring.  I was so naive. 

 



 

 

 

When I got to the school, I quickly realized that there would only be time for one project.  I decided to go with the hand heart because that was the cleverest one.  That was a bad choice.  I had samples and I thought I explained it well.  I should have known I had made a mistake when the substitute teacher pointed out that they were not all good at cutting.  In my defense, 3 or 4 kids did figure out what I was trying to tell them and managed to make a heart out of their hands and put stickers on it.  As a giant point against me, my own son sat down on the floor crying because he didn't know what he was supposed to do.  Most of the kids managed to cut out something and put stickers on it even if it didn't resemble their hands or a heart.  Thank goodness I didn't decide to go with my original idea of a guitar made out of hearts or anything that requires glue.

 

Overall, I would say that this party experience was better than the Christmas party experience.  When we got home my son successfully completed all three of the projects I had prepared.  I think he was just a little overwhelmed.  Now, the only mystery left is to figure out why the teacher is on "Administrative Leave".  I really like the long term "guest teacher", but my curiosity about the original teacher is very strong.  Does "Administrative leave" mean waiting to be fired?  What are some reasons that teachers would be put on such a leave?