Livin’ Life On The Lamb

M I L K

Milk. That’s the word of the day. Gila Man has said it about 600 times in the past 2 days because I forgot to buy it and then WE forgot to buy it and we had to tell Mr. B that we were out of milk.

M I L K

Except that Gila Man doesn’t say “milk”. He says “melk”. Like “melt” but with a “k” on the end. It’s ok that he ldrinks out of the carton, that he puts the dishes in the sink without rinsing them, that he wears his clothes for DAYS on end before he feels that those clothes have earned a spot in the dirty clothes hamper. Actually, these things bug me too, though I can deal with them. I do deal with them. But the “melk” thing, man, that’s just going TOO far!

Just thought I’d vent a little. Thanks.

After spending the ENTIRE day outside on Monday preparing the front yard for the holes that needed to be dug for the trees we just bought and getting sunburned pretty badly, I started using sunscreen on my face so I wouldn’t have to go through any pain again. Then Tuesday, I was having a rough night and was lonely and waiting for my hubby to get home when I found a package of oreo cookies. Now, I didn’t eat the whole thing, I just ate half, because when I was done with the package (and the two cups of 2% milk - not fat free!), there was half of the tops of the oreo sitting next to me on the floor. Ahem…needless to say, my face ain’t lookin all that great.

Then comes the call. From my good friend Jeanette. I have a few questions about her upcoming wedding. She answers them. Then she asks one of her own: “Will you be in the wedding?”
“YOUR wedding?” I ask, incredulously.
“Well of course MY wedding, silly!”
“Um, well, sure. I mean if you’re sure you WANT me in your wedding, I would LOVE to be in your wedding!”
“Do you have a black dress?” she asks.
“Sure.” I reply (it’s my ugly frumpy FUNERAL dress, but I’m not gonna tell her that)
“That is so great!! See you the day after tomorrow!” She says excitedly and hangs up.

So now I have to go find a decent black dress to wear to the wedding. This sounds like fun to me, if I can get away without Noah and Helaman and actually SHOP, ya know?

So I set the boys up with dinner and head to Ross. Because, hello? We don’t just have the money to run out and buy random new dresses from wherever new black dresses are sold! Sheesh. Upon entering Ross, I immediately find the rack with the dresses on it. LOTS of dresses. LOTS of black dresses. Not very many MODEST black dresses.

Some of you might say, “Who cares? You’re just going to a wedding, just wear the sleeveless/lowcut/highcut/see through/hoochie momma dress!”, right? But I have a VERY, VERY firm belief that I should wear what I would want my daughter to wear (should I ever, ever get pregnant and by some miracle have a little girl). That I don’t need to show off my body in order to feel good about myself. So I have to keep searching, and searching, and searching. And I am not having any luck finding a decent black dress for the wedding. I start to get so desperate that I start to pray. Really! I’m praying to my Heavenly Father that if we need to be modest and not walk around half naked then he needs to (pretty, pretty, please) throw me a bone here!

Naturally, when I am sure all hope is lost and I will have to wear Ugly Betty’s Frump Girl Outfit to the wedding, I find it. A black dress. With sleeves. Down to my knees. But a little low cut. All I have to do is head to the junior’s section to find a black tankie to go underneath it and, voila! A cute, modest dress to wear to a semi-formal event that I won’t feel embarassed about when I see the pictures afterward. Worth the time? Oh, of course. I mean, wouldn’t I (someday) want my daughter to understand the pricipals that I believe in and put in a little effort to what she chooses to wear? Of course!

Now about my son going pee in other people’s backyards…..

Note to self: it’s YOUR blog, you may vent, not vent, write or not write. Hence the reason it’s YOURS dork. Go back to your blog.

Alright! I get it. I finally got offa my duff and got my booty back in the gym. Considering my first adventure when beginnning a workout, I thought I should take this one a little slower. I dropped Noah off in the babysitting room and headed for the treadmill. Now all the treadmills face the same direction - out the window and towards the pool - so we don’t really see each other. But you still have to walk past the other treadmills to get to the one you want, and while doing so, I couldn’t help but notice the outfits that some of these women were wearing! Now, some of these ladies looked great, but some, seriously, needed some help. In the end, though, everyone is sweaty and yucky with stringy hair and nasty smelling feet, so what does it matter what they’re wearing, right?

Except that what they wear doesn’t really bother me - it’s what they SMELL like. And I’m not talking about stinky smells, either. Some women go to the gym looking like they just rolled out of bed; messy hair, goobers in their eyes, scratchy voice. Some women run a comb through their hair, grab a small bite to eat, and brush their teeth before showing up to work out. And then some women arrive at the gym looking like they just left the beauty parlor; hair neatly done in a super-cute do, faces covered in flawless makeup, and they smell like they just had a pow-wow in the Dillards perfume isle. It’s this latter group that I’m going to whine about, because, people? It is NOT ok to walk past my treadmill while I am running jogging on the treadmill and I’m already out of shape and feeling like a 90-year-old asthmatic with emhysema flaunting your $6,000 an ounce NASTY smelling perfume! I nearly tripped over my own two feet because my vision went blurry because you didn’t want the treadmill on the end, you wanted the one RIGHT NEXT TO MINE! There are 12 treads in the room. Why did you choose this one?

Then she started walking. Then walking fast. Then jogging. Then running. Then running FAST. So stinky-chested woman chose to choke me out of my spot and probably chose that spot because I made her look good. With me in my second-hand Nike pants and her in her Tommy EVERYTHING, stinkin up the place and running fast on the treadmill. Sheesh, there should be rules about things like this. Really! But not rules about me being out of shape, more like rules about being in too good of shape. Does that sound like a possibility? Ok, maybe next time I’ll just walk around the track.

So I have spent most of the past week organizing our outdoor shed and our garage. My washer and dryer are in the garage, so it’s like an extension of my house and I like to keep it as clean as possible. Every two weeks or so, the garage starts to get dusty, cluttered and the laundry starts to pile up. That’s when I take a day and tackle the mess and manage to get it clean enough to use as a dining room. Today was one of those days and let me tell ya, I TACKLED it.

Since the weather was so warm and nice and there was a soft breeze blowing, I thought I’d dive under the bed and bring out the “summer clothes” bag and see what would be appropriate to wear on this lovely spring day. I found a cute pair of bermuda shorts and my favorite white flip-flops, got dressed, and headed out the door.

Nine hours later, I am standing in the bathroom, gingerly taking the bobby-pins off of my sunburned scalp (I had rolled my hair back in those cute little corn-row things and every inch of scalp that showed is red). I look down at my once white legs and this is what I see: an inch above the knee, red. An inch below the knee, white. The outsides of my calves, red. The inside of my calves, white. The tops of my feet, RED. The strip where my flip-flops fit, WHITE. Yikes! Welcome to summer white girl.

Alright, you remember the first one of these “rantings” from me…the one about what happens before men go to bed and what happens before women go to bed. Didn’t read it? Find it here. Well, I got in a little trouble about that blog because my husband really does help out around here, I was just a little “perturbed” that he gave me a hard time when I finally got to go to bed.

Ahem…so this post is going to be a little bit more about the simple differences between men and women WHEN PACKING FOR A TRIP.

Sooooo, Helaman leaves for Brazil on Wednesday. This Wednesday, REALLY! And he is totally, completely excited about it. I mean, if I have to hear the words, “When I go to Brazil, I’m gonna (fill in the blank).”, I’m gonna rip his lips off!! Ok, maybe not. I’m just a little jealous that he gets to go on a tropical vacation without me. Which is fine because as hard as Helaman works at work and around here in our new home, he MORE than deserves a break. He has needed a break for about 2 years now, and it’s finally coming to him, YEAH! So, I was talking about…Oh ya, the packing part.

As Helaman is preparing for his trip (where is he going, oh yeah, BRAZIL), today he said, “I guess I’ll have to go after work tomorrow and pick up a few things for my trip.” Tomorrow is MONDAY, and he is leaving WEDNESDAY! Now, I know he’s a guy and everything, so there isn’t much to pack. It’s just himself - no wife or kid to pack for - but let me tell you about what I’ve been doing this evening (besides recovering from a major migrane).

We borrowed a trailer from my parents to go and pick up our new swingset for Noah (pics to follow), and I have to return it tomorrow. I am going to go out and pick up a few things from the Old Place, and then spend the night with my folks. So this evening I have been making a list of things I need to bring, putting piles of stuff together, and making sure that I will have all I need for my one-night stay with my parents. I know I will use the huge duffel bag with wheels because all of the stuff for Noah or I will not fit in anything smaller. I also have to bring one of our dogs with us (Cherrie), because she is really snappy and I don’t want any family who visits to be traumatized by her moodiness. This adds another element to my trip and one that I have to plan for as well.

So, while Helaman has yet to put aside a toothbrush for his 14 day stay in another country, I have an arsenal waiting by the front door, ready to be trucked back and forth to the vehicle tomorrow morning before visiting my parents. This sure isn’t a bad thing, but it’s just one of those funny differences that I just have to smile and shake my head about at the end of the day. (That, and blog about it a little, hee hee)

Alright, so maybe the title is a little long and a tad bit cryptic as well, but as usual, things won’t make any more sense the more you continue to read. But I shall try to elaborate a teeny-tiny bit more.

 Let’s take, for an example, the Seven Dwarfs. They might be all cute and sweet in the movie, but in real life, those hairy gnomes would scare the crap outa me. Unless, of course, they brought all those jewels they dug up with them and laid them at my feet. It might lighten the mood a little.

Then there’s the talking/cooking rodent example. That’s just weird. Cute story, but still creepy to see all the vermin crawling around the kitchen.

 Oh, and let’s not forget the story of Charlette’s Web, where at the end, all these cute little spiders come POURING outa that nice little water-proof egg sack. Oh, it just makes my skin crawl to THINK of it. Ewww! Those of you who know me know that I detest spiders. Don’t know why. Don’t know when it started. Just freaked out by the little buggers.

So imagine my suprise when I picked up a banana this morning to slice for my kid and the birds and noticed a little white patch on the outside of the peel. Thinking it was just a little mold, I opened the peel to see if the banana was still salvagable, and as I did, the white film cracked a little and a teeny tiny spider came racing out of there and onto my counter, where it was quickly squashed. Imagine my horror as I stood over the sink and peeled the rest of the banana and the rest of the film cracked and HUNDREDS of little, teeny, tiny spiders came racing out of the sack and started running all over my sink!!! I freaked out, turned on the steaming hot water and the garbage disposal. Hey! How am I to know what kind of killer spider they might be? Did you see arachnophobia? Maybe that movie is, like, ten years old, but it left quite and impression and there was no way I was gonna let these little creatures run rampant in my home. EEEWWWWW!!!

 So, just thought I’d share my morning adventure with you because I’m so sick I couldn’t scream or even say EEEWWW the way I wanted to. But I sure can move quickly when motivated.

Freakin Charlette’s Web. You can bet your butt that none of these spiders got named, no matter what words they could spell.

It’s shocking how some things can change with the click of a mouse button. Though that might sound silly, to me, at least, it’s true. But I didnt’ have to click on anything to find out about the death of the United States Border Patrolman who was killed in the line of duty this week.

He was putting out a stop stick for an escaping convicted felon (and drug smuggler) who would not yield to law enforcement. The felon, driving a hummer, swerved over to the side of the road to hit the agent and succeded. The driver then completed his escape into Mexico and left the agent to die on the side of the road.

I have a very strong opinion on the immigration problem, and since I have lived on the border of Arizona and Mexico my WHOLE life, it has always been a problem. It’s just now that the nation is seeing what the effects can be, though if you aren’t here, you get a hazy view of what’s really going on.

Did you know that ANOTHER underground tunnel was discovered last week? A tunnel that a small pickup truck could be driven through (and had been driven in, according to the tracks found inside the tunnel). That makes the third tunnel found this year. THIS YEAR. 2008.

Although I could go on and on about this subject, I would simply like to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the family of the man who was killed. His brother is stationed here in Nogales and 5 vans of BP Agents drove to Yuma to pay their respects. A tragedy that could have been avoided, a tragedy that could have been prevented….maybe it could be a lesson learned instead.