WTF, Texters?

I understand that times have changed over the last few years with all the new technology that is out there now. But I don't think that is an excuse for ignoring what should be common courtesies. After a walk through the mall today, I decided to come up with a list of times when texting is inappropriate.

1. When you're at work. This is not ok. Especially if you are in customer service. I walked down a row of stands in the mall, and almost every single person at the different registers was texting. It didn't matter if there were customers, they never even looked up from their phones.
   
2. When you're checking out at a store. What's fair is fair. If it's not ok for the cashier to do it, it's not ok for the customer either.
   
3. When you're at the park/zoo/anywhere else with your kids. Nothing says I'm bored quite like a parent texting as they are pushing their kids on the swing. You owe it to your kids to at least act interested.
   
4. When you're at dinner. Or any other meal. The time that used to be spent talking about your day with the family is now interrupted by the annoying buzzing of a phone on vibrate. Then we wonder why families are falling apart- they can't even stand to talk at the dinner table.
   
5. While you're driving. If I even have to explain this one, you have problems. Have some consideration for others on the road who want to get home to their loved ones in one piece.
   
6. While you're having a conversation with someone. There is nothing more annoying than being interrupted by text messaging when you're trying to talk. It is so insulting when you are looking someone in the eye to have a conversation with them and they can't stop checking their phone for the latest text message.
   

What it comes down to is having common courtesies for the people around you. Stop and think for one second- am I being rude right now? If you are, put the phone away. WTF, Texters?

Family Circus

So we decided to take the kids and go out to dinner today. This is a crap shoot. With two kids under two, you never know what will happen. But we were up for the challenge.

I watched as a mom and dad with two sons under three came into the restaurant. They were doomed from the start. Mom couldn't get one of the flailing boys into his high chair. They ordered juice, but by the time it got there I watched Dad tell the waitress that they had to leave. Mom already stormed through the place with the screaming kid on her hip and was a distant memory. That dinner was over before it began.

In the booth behind us that I was facing, I watched another family of four try to eat. A boy, about two, stood the whole time and raced his toy car up and down the seat, hitting the strangers head who sat behind him every few minutes. Mom and Dad ate in silence, hurriedly shoveling food into their mouths. You could tell that they knew they were dealing with a ticking time bomb and had to finish dinner before it went off.

Across the way, there was another family. This time it was two obviously new parents with maybe a 10 month old daughter. I saw the fear in their eyes that I distinctly remember having the first few times we took Sophie to a public place. What if she melts down? What then? The parents were desperate to entertain her, so they gave her the plastic bag that once held her Teddy Grams to play with. Hey, I'm not judging- she was supervised and being quiet. Whatever it takes. The baby quickly showed them when she clumsily knocked her juice cup onto the floor, splashing a waitress passing by. "Eat Faster!," the parents eyes read.

But John had the best seat in the house. The people in the booth behind us that he was facing win the award. A boy, about seven, and his parents came in. Once settled in the boy informed them that he didn't like his shirt. So, mom told him to take it off. He did. He walked, bare from the waist up to the bathroom, and no one skipped a beat. What ever happened to "No shirt, No shoes, No service?" He did put on a hoodie eventually, but not the way you would think. He had his arms in it, but that was it. The rest wrapped around his back like a shawl. The parents carried on like he wasn't even there, eating and talking more relaxed than anyone else around us.

Upon our arrival to Kosta's I could tell that Sophie was going to be a little testy. She woke up early from her nap and she is definitely the type who needs her sleep. And, it always seems that it is time for little John to have a bottle when we are about to eat. What were we thinking? I got Johns bottle ready and started to feed him while he was still in his carrier. Meanwhile, John distracted Sophie with some coloring as we waited for our food. When it arrived I found myself giving John his bottle with one hand, eating my souvlaki with the other, and still trying to help coax Sophie into eating her dinner.

We had it easy.

Who needs Mickey Mouse when you have Yogi Bear?

The following is a list of reasons why camping is better than Disney World.

1.) Camping is educational. If it wasn't for camping I still wouldn't know what Poison Ivy looked like. All it took was my husband wandering into the woods and unknowingly brushing past some of it. That led up to trips to the ER and what looked like a serious case of gangrene on his leg. Now we know- leaves of three, let them be. Or else.

2.) You learn to be resourceful. If your campsite is about to float away from the massive amounts of rain, you quickly learn how to fashion a shelter from a tarp and some tent poles so you can still have a fire to cook your food over. And if you forget a pot to cook your food in, you learn that foil works great, except when cooking bacon.

3.) Camping reminds us of a simpler time. There is no technology around to distract us from each other. This is a true test of relationships. You really get the chance to find out if you actually do love your friends and family. The good news is, if you find out you can't stand someone, there are plenty of places to hide the body.

4.) It's cheap. You can camp at a state park for about $20 a night. This way, if you get sick from drinking strange water, you aren't in a foreign country that cost you thousands to get to. You can call it a trip and try it again the following weekend bringing jugs of water from home that don't have parasites.

5.) You don't need to shower everyday. Or at all. If you start to smell, all you have to do is take a dip in the nearest body of water. Or blame it on something in the wild, like a skunk. Problem solved.

And that's why I love camping.

Vince Vaughn is funny because...

1.) There's a real big gap between getting your ass kicked and having a dancing, singing sprite fool you with trickery and then strike your throat before you even know you're in a fight.


2.) I happen to know everything there is to know about maple syrup! I love maple syrup. I love maple syrup on pancakes. I love it on pizza. And I take maple syrup and put a little bit in my hair when I've had a rough week. What do you think holds it up, slick?


3.) Alright, let me be the first to say congratulations to you then. You get one vagina for the rest of your life. Real smart Frank. Way to work it through.



4.) Mom! We are on high alert here. I almost killed you right then! You do not even realize!


5.) Listen, Lassie, and listen good. I'm not saying he's not gonna get married. I'm not saying he's not gonna have kids. If it does happen, his wife is gonna come home, and find him with his Tiajuana lover clubbing each other over Yanni's greatest hits.


6.) Yeah, it could have been the soft mattress. Or the midnight rape. Or the nude gay art show that took place in my room. One of those probably added to the lack of sleep.

David Letterman vs. Sarah Palin

I was going to try and stay away from topics that were too serious on my blog. After all I am a very light-hearted person and I never take life too seriously. But it's my blog and I'll be serious if I want to.

I have been catching bits and pieces of the whole mess caused by a joke David Letterman made about one of Sarah Palin's daughters on his late night show. I am pretty sure I have never actually seen a whole episode of Letterman's show in my life- not for any other reason than I just never stumbled upon it. Maybe I go to bed too early. I also don't have a real interest in Sarah Palin one way or the other. This being said, I consider myself fairly objective in this matter.

I did see a clip of the original joke that Letterman made on his show. I can understand where Palin is coming from. I am a mother of a daughter and if anyone ever said anything about her in a negative or degrading manner I would take action too. But just as Letterman's joke went too far, is Palin going too far in seeking revenge?

I saw a clip of Letterman's original apology. Apparently it wasn't acceptable because he still made light of the situation. But he is a comedian and making jokes is his job. Palin then retaliated by making public comments implying that Letterman was some sort of pervert or pedophile. I feel like this was going a bit too far on her end now. How does something like this end? After all, two wrongs don't make a right.

Last night Letterman took another stab at an apology, this time taking it seriously. I believe he should have done that in the first place because maybe then this would have been dropped by now. But now that he has apologized for his unintentional implications, maybe Palin now owes him an apology for hers.

I saw some articles and blogs online basically calling for Letterman's head on a platter. What more can he do to fix this? He said sorry- there is nothing more he can do to be redeemed. He extended an invitation to the Palin family to come on his show and they declined saying they would not boost ratings for him. I wouldn't either. But will he ever be forgiven for his mistake?

He can't erase the jokes he made, so an apology is about all he can do. I don't believe he should be fired like some people are suggesting. If people don't like what he has to say, it's simple: don't watch his show. I've had no trouble avoiding it and I didn't even try.

Maybe it is time for people to start treating everyone with a little more respect and then these things can be avoided all the way around. When is everyone going to be able to put this behind them and move on? I'm ready.

Don't give me your crap.

How do you tell someone nicely that you don't want their used crushed velvet hot pants? Even if the ass on them wasn't worn completely thin, I still wouldn't put my daughter in them. And I don't want your dirty helmet and teddy bear knee pads either.

With the amount of crap that people give me, I would swear there is a sign on my front lawn that says "Amvets Drop-Off Site." Why don't people understand that if they think something is garbage, chances are so will everyone else? Don't give me your crap!

Along with the hot pants and helmet, here are some other crappy things people have given me:

• A fridge without door handles.
• A 1980's lamp that looked like a giant sea shell.
  
• Stained baby clothes. I have enough of my own! And if you couldn't get the stains out seven years and three kids ago, I can't get them out now.
  
• A 25 year old faded picture of Jesus.
  
• Typewriters that are about 30 years old. (Thanks John!)
  
• Fat clothes with the disclaimer that "I won't need these- I'll never be that big again!" Thanks a lot jerk! I hope you get bigger.
  
• Marigolds. I hate marigolds as much as bunnies do.

I'm not trying to be ungrateful, but seriously, I don't want your crap!

I'm not the best mom, but my kids are alive.

Before I had kids I was the best parent ever. I had a list of things that I knew I would never do to my kids and a list of things that I would never let them do to me. As soon as I actually did have my own kids, everything changed. The following list was inspired by a visit from our friends today who also have kids. It is a list of what I thought before I had kids, and how I know I was wrong now that I do have them.

1.) I would never let my kids cry, scream, throw a fit in a public place. I had no idea how unreasonable this actually was. Now I consider it a success when an outing involves less than 3 melt downs. I now have sympathy for the other parents I see whose children are doing any of the above. And for the jerks who stare at me and roll their eyes when one of my kids is having an issue, well I hope you get yours some day.

2.) I would never use one of those germ-ridden changing tables in public restrooms. Those are actually a God send. All it took was a little poop up the back and I was forced to cave and use one. It was either that or I had to find the nearest car wash and hose my child down. I opted for the changing table and just burned the blanket that I laid on top of it when I got home.

3.) I would never make my child use their potty on the side of the road. Now I am just venturing into the potty training world, so I haven't actually had to do this to my daughter yet, but when the alternative is having your kid pee in their car seat, you better believe she will be peeing on the roadside. That car seat was hard enough to put in, I am not taking it out to clean it.

4.) My kids will always eat healthy. No they won't. They will eat whatever I can get them to eat. It's not like I am giving my daughter candy for dinner, but when she pushed her food around her plate without eating any, but is devouring gold fish crackers later, at least she ate something for the day.

5.) My kids will only play with things that are actually toys. Wrong again. They can play with almost anything that won't maim or kill them and would cost less that $20 to replace if broken. If my daughter is happy playing with coasters because they look like pancakes, fine. If she has been content for a half hour playing with an old remote she thinks is a phone, she can keep it. If the magnets we got from vacations we took before we had kids to places we will never be able to afford to go again now that we have them, great. They only serve as a reminder of the freedom we used to have that we will never have again.

So I guess what I am saying is that maybe I am not the best parent like I thought I would be. But so far so good. Every night that I put my kids to sleep and they are alive and well I consider it a small victory. So what if they pee on the roadside?

One regret, maybe two.

I have a rule about regrets. For the most part I really don't have any. The way I see it, everything you experience in your life helps to mold who you are- the good and the bad. I do however have one regret that follows me around like my shadow. This:


In an attempt to be an edgy 18 year old, I thought I would show everyone by getting this tattoo. A girl I went to high school with designed it for me. I gave her a little direction as to what I wanted and she used her artistic liberties to design it. When she presented me with the drawing I didn't love it. But the stoners that I worked with at the beer store loved it so I knew it must have been cool. I was 18 after all and could make my own decisions. At least I thought.

I didn't just go out and do this without running it past my mom though. I did have some respect for her. I told her that I was getting a little tattoo on the back of my neck. I showed her the picture of it and assured her that it would be smaller. She didn't love the idea, but knew she couldn't stop me.

I brought my boyfriend with me who I was only dating for a few weeks. This would prove to him that I was cool and daring. I decided to get it on the back of my neck because with my shorter hair it would get a lot of exposure there. I obviously couldn't see what the tattoo artist was doing back there, but I trusted that my new boyfriend would keep an eye on things for me.

Before getting started the tattoo artist explained to me that the amount of detail that I wanted wouldn't translate to my neck well if it was too small. I told him to go ahead and make it the size he wanted- after all, my neck wasn't that big. He also told me that he would make some changes along the way to make it look better. I trusted him, he was an artist. As he was working on it he raved about how refreshing it was to do something different for once. He was so mellow- a bit of a stoner but so comforting. I was feeling pretty cool.

I think the adrenaline of getting a tattoo may have clouded my vision because when he showed me the finished product I thought it was awesome. I swear that it even had a halo of light and stars around it when I saw it and trumpets were playing in the background.

The first sign that I had made a mistake was the reaction I got from my mother. I made my new boyfriend go into the house with me to show her. I knew she might be a little mad because it was bigger than I planned and I figured that there was no way she would kill me if there was a witness. Unfortunately he had to go home at some point. As soon as he left it was like the start of World War III. I kid you not when I say that my mother literally flipped the couch over in the living room. She shrieked at the top of her lungs and all I remember her saying as she slammed the door to her bedroom was that we needed to go over my definition of little. Apparently my neck is a whole lot bigger than I thought.

After that night I realized that I didn't exactly get what I wanted. People asked me if it was a star fish, a poinsettia, even a piece of birthday cake. But worse yet were the vast majority of people who thought it was a pot leaf. A pot leaf! How could they say that my pretty blue star was a pot leaf? And then it was the classic scene from any movie where voices start playing in your head of all the things I should have saw, but was too blind at the time. Every stoner in the world thought it was an awesome idea, I let a bunch of bone heads at the beer store tell me how great it would be, and the pot head who did the tattoo actually seemed stoned when he was doing it! Dammit! I quickly grew my hair out to hide the mess.

After getting engaged to the boyfriend who stood there and watched me get a pot leaf on my neck, I realized that I had to get rid of it. There was an ad on a local radio station that a tattoo shop had a bridal special on tattoo removal. I could finally fix my mistake.

I went for two of the ten laser treatments it would take to remove it. I have given birth twice since then and never felt so much pain in my life as laser tattoo removal. There was nothing to numb the pain. The smell of my flesh burning literally made me nauseous. The marble sized blisters that lasted for days afterwards were so painful I couldn't sleep on my back. And the place I was having it done at looked a lot like those places you see on 20/20 where something illegal is happening. I could just see this place ending up on the news. For some reason, it really did close down eventually. I think it's just better that I don't know why.

There is a reason for this long-winded reflection. Last night John was on the Internet looking to laugh. He went on a bad tattoo website and found this:



Did someone rip off my bad tattoo? It was almost hard for me to believe that there are two of us walking around this planet with a flaming star fish on our neck. I don't think that her tattoo artist was as stoned as mine though.

This is one of my only regrets. I might have two soon. I never put a picture of my tattoo on the Internet before because I didn't want it to end up on one of those sites for bad tattoos. But you know what they say- misery loves company.

Birds really do have small brains...

...And poor eye sight. I can't figure out why I have birds smashing into my living room window at a high rate of speed at least twice a week. It isn't like I have super clean windows. I have a two year old who likes all things sticky. I am pretty sure the old guy in the house behind ours can see Sophie's hand prints on the glass and his eyes have to be 100. This makes me think about the things that I am thankful for that I take for granted.

• Windows. If it wasn't for windows I would have birds nesting and pooping in my house. I have enough on my hands with my two kids who are nesting and pooping in my house.
  
• Hair Spray. Not for the reasons you would think. In fact, there is no need for hair spray when you seldom wash your hair because there is no time. Hair spray is a great weapon against insect intruders. A few squirts and the critters are so stiff they can't get away. It keeps them at bay until John gets home to take care of them.
  
• The dishwasher. Every apartment that I lived in before we bought our house had dishwashers that barely worked. I became the dishwasher which made me start turning on my dishes. Thankfully our dishwasher works great now, so the dishes are safe.
  
• Flip-Flops or other slip on shoes. Who has time for laces?
  

All it took was the terrifying sound of a bird colliding with my window to make me reflect on these modern marvels. Who needs Thanksgiving to be thankful? Not me. I'm thankful for windows.

So it begins...

After much thought and a whole lot of convincing from my husband, I decided to start a Blog. This is a big step for me- I've never had a Livejournal, Myspace, or a Facebook. I never really felt the need to make my personal life any one else's business. But, after being a stay at home mom for about a year and a half and realizing that I was starting to talk to walls, I decided to give it a go.

Following is a list of names I threw around for my new blog:

• Not that Deep- John and I decided it had too many T's. It was also at risk for being taken the wrong way entirely. Imagine the disappointment on some perverts face when he came to my blog and realized I was just a bored stay at home mom talking about birds flying into her windows (stay tuned for this post later).
  
• Just the Tip- This of course was a result of the previous idea and some brainstorming. I decided against it for obvious reasons.
  
• Raising Chaos- I wasn't sure if this sounded more like a 90's sitcom or an angsty band. Either way it was taken by someone who hadn't blogged since 2004.

I settled on Everyone into the Pool. At the beginning of every summer my parents would work all day long on draining and scrubbing our pool to get it ready for the season. After they nearly killed each other getting it ready for the year they would fill it up with freezing cold hose water. My father would yell with the excitement of a kid on Christmas "Everyone into the pool!" and we would all cannon ball in, regretting it the instant the ice cold water touched our bottoms. That phrase seemed fitting for this blog.

What am I getting myself into?