Phantastic Phriday Gnome Style

***In honor of it being Phriday, and in rephusal to submit to boredom,and since it's been awhile since I've phantastically ph'ed, I have decided that the Letter F shall phrom here on out be replaced with a PH (except phor in pictures which I have no control over)***

Once upon a time there was a little gnome. His name was Gnorbert. Gnorbert liked to roam the phorest looking phor pharies and big brown bears. On day Gnorbert got a cold and had to spend the day sleeping in the garden.

Yep...that's the extent of my creative juices phor the day. Luckily there are a phew days lepht bephore NaNoWriMo and ... well I can at least hope the juices juice up!

Until then all I can leave you with is Gnorbert and his cold and how a wicked witch phound him and gave him some GniteQuill and he slept happily ever aphter.

Don't phret. Next week will be better. I'll get some sleep and ... oh who am I kidding. I've ophicially gone wonky! Here's hoping I get my juices and my mind back bephore next week!

Have a great weekend :)

WARNING!!

The thing you have to know about being sick as a mother is...

There is absolutely NO time for being sick!

After two days of taking it easy ... my house now looks like this ...

This is actually pretty tame ... I've tried to keep up on the kitchen ...
It obviously hasn't worked!

My desk has been ransacked and there was
an obvious paper explosion in my absence!

Laundry has gone unfolded...
And this is only half of it!

And apparently the temporary decorating committee
has yet to be informed that Halloween costumes
are NOT a trendy center piece.

So as you can see ... I am HIGHLY recommending that all you moms out there take your vitamins and Airborne and Zicam and Echinacea and all that other herbal stuff that keeps you healthy.

Or else your floors will end up covered in THESE!!!

I'm off to get to work! Wish me luck...this could take 5 days just to get caught up!

What goes undone when you are ill?

Calling in Sick

Dear Bloggers,

I will not be coming in to work today so there will not be a regularly scheduled snarktastically wonderful blog post.

Unfortunately I am

... feeling better but feeling too lazy to write.

... lacking ideas and/or full of too many to put into one post.

... too busy watching Playhouse Disney with my 4 year old

... more interested in laying in my bed all day.

... unable to concentrate on Bejeweled thus completely incapable of coming up with post ideas.

... um ... my dog ate it... wait ... I don't have a dog.

So you will have to wait until tomorrow to enjoy my awesomeness.

Sincerely,

Poppins

In the mean time I am going to need you to leave a million comments about your best excuses for calling in sick to work. It is apparent that mine are pretty lame so I'm gonna need your help coming up with a better one.

I refuse to go Roll around in the Mud

So my head feels like a brick.

This is NOT a good status to put on Facebook.

Suddenly I'm hearing,

"Oink Oink"

Now that's just not nice...

Actually it went more like this...

Marybeth Head feels like a brick...but I refuse to acknowledge it. Body aches, but it must be from all that working out I haven't been doing. And the scratchy throat is due to lack of water. Need to go get a drink!

52 minutes ago · Comment · Like / Unlike

Mindy

That's how "IT" starts, take caution now, and keep your kids away it spreads like wild fire!!!

51 minutes ago · Delete

Marybeth

That's what I'm afraid of. I keep downin the drugs and popping the vitamin C. I don't have time to be sick!

40 minutes ago · Delete

Kathy

Oink Oink!

35 minutes ago · Delete

Linnaea

OMG I was going to say the exact thing as Kathy, must be because my mom's name is Kathy ;-)

31 minutes ago · Delete

Kathy

your mom is a genius! Just sayin' ...

28 minutes ago · Delete

Marybeth

I'm thinking about unfriending you girls just for the suggestion! LOL

26 minutes ago · Delete

Linnaea

LOL to both of you! I'm crossing my fingers that you don't sprout a curly tail in the next few days ;-)

8 minutes ago · Delete

Write a comment...about how much my friends suck!

It's ok girls...it's just a headache. No need to fry me up like bacon just yet!

Speaking of bacon ...

My husband and I were shopping on Saturday and he says to me,

"Do you think bacon is on sale this week due to the Swine Flu?"

He's such a funny man!

Now I'm off to do a little 'unfriending' on facebook!

A Functioning Capacity of Zero!

So I lay down to sleep last night, exhausted from the long weekend.

And I lay there...

And I lay there...

And

And

And

I don't fall asleep! ARGH

So after two hours of on again and off again sleep I am entirely non functioning today.

This is the point where I learn to like coffee...right?

On Publishing....

As many of you know I have been eluding to some news regarding my writing career...

WELLLLLL

You have to go HERE if you want more details ;)

So who is being punished again?

Discipline and Punishment ...

Funny little things.

Both meant to teach our children (and/or adults) order and keep them on the right path.

So here is where I am having an issue.

Poppins, "You are being naughty, you need to please go sit on your bed right now."

Child, "I don't want to go sit on my bed."

Poppins, "I'm sorry you feel that way, but I wasn't asking, I was telling." (The only time in my life where telling is ok...sorry....writer joke)

Child, "But I want to watch TV."

Poppins, "And I want a million dollars, you don't see me getting my way. Now go sit on your bed."

Child, "But that's boring."

Poppins, "Exactly"

Child, "But....."

And so on and so forth until eventually ... you know what comes next ...

Tears

Screaming

Fits

Meltdowns

You know ... the kind that comes shrill cries and screams of "I don't want to!!!" and "You always make me sit on my bed!!" and all sorts of other things that are not true but still make the hairs on your back stick straight up.

In the mean time you are thinking...

Chocolate

Sunny Beaches

Happy Places

Patrick Dempsey... I mean Peaceful Serenity

And all this happens in about 1.3 minutes but feels like 12.9 hours.

This is how punishment and discipline happens in my house. Fortunately we were graced with a particularly difficult child and no matter what the punishment, the battle of wills rages on before it is ever carried out.

I love it...I love setting up consequences that punish me more than my children.

I'm not really complaining a whole lot but mostly just laughing at how torturous lovely parenthood is. Its just been one of those weeks over here in the Poppins household. Me of all my forceful and cruel tactics of making my child sit on his bed or pick up his room. I'm practically the meanest parent alive!

Do you ever find yourself the one being punished in the midst of discipline?

What if He was a She? or She was a He?

While lying in bed last night ... (ok I totally just wrote 'I was lying in bed last night' and then deleted it because it was too passive....am I a writer or what!!) ... so while lying in bed last night I was thinking about all my writer friends (it's not what you think, I promise!) and all the blogs I read and thought it was funny how there are two Natalie's.

Then I proceeded to think about how I love the name Natalie, so much in fact that if my son would have been a she instead of a he I would have named him Natalie.

Then I thought about my other two kids and remembered what their names would have been had they been born the opposite sex.

So here is a run down of my kids names had they been born ... well not as the ultrasounds had promised!

Logan would have been Natalie

Preston would have been Annabelle

Mikayla would have been Ethan

Sometime I get sad that I didn't get to use the other names, but at the same time I don't feel like I could have used them on any other children. Am I a strange carrot or what!?!!?

So you tell me, did your children have alternative names? Did YOU have an alternative name?

Oh and Happy Birthday to my little Preston (almost Annabelle) who turns 7 today!!!!

Ya like my writing?

Then you should totally become a fan!

Sorry for the lame post...it's been one of those weeks! (What? It's only Tuesday? CRAP!)

Will have something more interesting tomorrow...I hope ;)

My Awesome Weekend!

There are two major words that do not go together well in the same sentence...

Me

and

Renovation

But as most stories do, let's start from the beginning.

This beginning starts with a toilet ... a very old toilet.

The Husband (I so enjoy calling him "The Husband"!) and I had been dealing with a leaky toilet for over a week when I (The Wife!) said, "This is enough! It must be fixed!"

We should have left it alone.

So the toilet was so old that all the bolts and metal parts and pieces were corroded onto the tank.

Toilet - 1

Poppins Family - ZERO!

He said, "I'm going to need a pipe wrench."

So I get another bright idea after well over an hour of The Husband cussing and swearing and trying to break these bolts off.

"Why spend more money on more tools!" I rationalized. "By the time we get done buying parts and tools for this stupid commode we are going to have spent too much money."

And this is a very rational statement mind you...but what came out next may possible have been a slight bit .... I think crazy is the word I'm looking for here, but I'll totally go with insane!

"Lets stop wasting our money and just go buy a dang new toilet!"

Apparently The Husband thought this was a good idea too so he plopped the old toilet off and what we saw wasn't exactly pretty. (So graphic in fact that I decided not to include the pictures. I don't want to go scarring young eyes and then get sued and ... well you get the point)

The toilet has given us an Epic FAIL here. It must go!

So off to the lovely Home Depot we go. I opted to stay behind, but The Husband thought I should go for moral support.

Husband FAIL

After we picked out our Glacier Bay High Efficient Toilet with an 8 rated flushing power ...


... I say "Lets go look around!"

Have you ever been to the Home Depot? Do you know what's there? Thousands of home improvement projects just screaming to be done!!!

NEVER under any circumstances do you EVER say "Lets go look around!" at Home Depot.

Its like an alcoholic saying, "Lets just have one drink!"

But we go look around. And Poppins (that's me) bless her naive little soul gets such a great idea and says,

"Lets re-tile the floor too!"

Poppins FAIL

Ok bear with me...I know this is getting long but the disasters that take place after this point are well worth the novel length post...

We pick out our new floor tiles, you know, the awesome peal and stick squares! They rock! We chat it up with some customer service reps about what we might encounter and they give us two scenarios.

The existing linoleum is either

1. Glued only around the edges and should be a breeze to remove.

or

2. Glued through the entire way and may take some scraping to get up.

But he also adds that sheet linoleum is rarely glued the entire way!

Customer Service Rep EPIC FAIL!

Not only is the existing linoleum glued through the entire way, but it seems that someone had a massive glue spill in the process of laying it down. That's right friends this stuff is not budging.

And the best part....

There is not only one layer of linoleum super glued to our floor, no, that would be way too easy. There are TWO layers of awesome over glued funness (this a a word today... no need to question it) stuck onto our super awesome bathroom floor.

How lucky are we!

It gets better...

While we are checking out just what we have in store for our Toilet Installing Extravaganza we notice one other little problem.

The 'Toilet Flange' (Oh my goodness how hilarious is that...Toilet Flange... Flange is a great word to begin with, but when coupled with Toilet! Fantastic!!!) was corroded and it was an absolute mess underneath that area.

So the flange is busted, the glue is over powering and the Bathroom is a MESS!

Oh and did I mention that the pipe that feeds the water also has a leak! Sweet lord of home improvement awesomeness, how could you love us so much!

So......two more trips to The Home Depot, two days of glue scraping, one afternoon of tile cutting (did I mention that my bathroom is NOT square?) and possibly a few tears later ... we have a newly tiled floor and a toilet sitting in our living room.

Yep that's right...we still have more work to do.

And I was kinda thinking it would be really cool to put in a new sink, repaint the walls and put up a new towel rack!

Seriously....why stop when we are having so much fun!

(So....did any of you think I was going to talk about something else????? Cuz you are so going to have to wait for that news!)

Where you can find me...

HERE on If You Give a Girl a Pen. Check me out. I'm awesome! As are all the writers on this site.

Things of Vast Proportion

Definition: vast
Pronunciation: \ˈvast\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin vastus; akin to Old High German wuosti empty, desolate, Old Irish fás
Date: 1585

: very great in size, amount, degree, intensity, or especially in extent or range
synonyms see enormous

— vast·ly adverb

— vast·ness \ˈvas(t)-nəs\ noun

There is always the big great vast vessel!


Or a vast amount of time
(although I'm more likely to witness a vast vessel before that!)


A Vast Mountain



Vast Wilderness

I think at this point we can all agree that vast is a LARGE amount! Right?!?!

So when I had a Publishing House told me they were vastly interested in reading my work ... I about fell in love with them!

I'm off to make some last minute revisions. Wish me luck!!!

But there are Starving Kids out There!!!

I write one comment on a blog and it totally gets my noodles pumping. Why can't that happen every day!

So my dear writer friend Jill (Check her out ... she Rocks!) is talking about underestimating things ... time being one ... food being another. I mean I'm sure none of you have ever underestimated how much food you intended to eat. I know I do it pretty much every day have never done something like that!

Then I made a comment - trying to come up with a good excuse - that my mother always made to me as a child.

"There are starving kids out there!"

Which was always followed with,

"Do you think they'd want to waste their food. You should be grateful for the food you have."

After which I would think,

"These peas suck, do you want me to put them in a box and ship them to the starving kids? Cuz I'll totally do it. I've got no problem with sharing!"

So after making this 'starving children' comment I started thinking...that is the most horrible comment EVER! I mean think about it. In a matter of words we are saying something insanely inappropriate.

"You have tons of food and these kids have none. So be happy that you aren't a poor starving child with nothing and in remembrance to those children... Eat up!!!"

Seriously?!?!

Now I don't know about you, but in reality this thought makes me completely NOT want to eat. There are starving kids out there. They don't get to eat, but I'm suppose to go shove my face with food (whether I like it or not) and rationalize how this is somehow helping these kids.

Is anyone else bothered by this? Granted when I was 6 or 7 years old I totally understood what my mom was trying to say, but now that I'm an adult ... I find it slightly entertaining that our parents said this to us thinking it would get us to eat our food.

Ahhhh Parenthood. Full of ridiculous threats and irrational comments! Isn't it grand what comes out of our mouths at the spur of the moment?

Now you better comment on this blog or I'll tell your father and you won't see the TV again for at least a year! And during that time you'll be washing the floor with your toothbrush!

Busy Week!

I'll be online all week ... but completely ignoring everyone. GASP!

This week is The Muse Online Writers Conference and I intend to devote as much time to it as possible. So my blog posts will be sporadic and/or non-existent this week.

Wish me luck!

Dream Interruption

I am going to interrupt my "Flash Backs" to talk about a dream I had last night. Please forgive the vast craziness of my dream, I tend to have quite an imagination.

I was riding on a bus from my home to my hometown. I had arrived in my hometown and if you know the area, I was riding down Leonard right before Turner and where you get on the expressway. All sorts of things were happening on this road. My old boss from High School who now runs the Haunt was taking down signs that were meant to redirect people to some sort of event (Having nothing to do with my old job OR the Haunt ... weird) Also some sort of festival was taking place it seemed. It was just strange.

I got out of the bus and was trying to chat it up with my old boss and he was telling me how disappointed he was that the signs hadn't worked when all of a sudden a big construction-like dump truck comes barreling down the hill. (Now I am fully aware of the fact that this street is not on a hill of any sort BUT in my dream it was...) The truck is going incredibly fast and the back attachment was swaying back and forth. No breaks were being applied and there was no sign of this truck slowing down. Something was wrong and going down a hill was only increasing the danger.

Now here is where the dream became something for me to remember ...

Going down the hill was obviously not helping with halting this truck, so the truck driver did something interesting. He turned the corner and went UP the on ramp onto the expressway, no doubt thinking it would slow him down. Unfortunately it didn't work. This truck was about to cause massive destruction and all the surrounding cars and people were going to feel its wrath. So instead of fully entering the expressway the trucker gave a sharp turn right and ran straight through the barrier and off the edge of the express way crashing the truck, and most likely ending the driver's life.

All of a sudden I'm a News Helicopter recording the scene. (What? You've never been a Helicopter before?) Nobody else was hurt and the building it slightly hit was in tact. The only person who suffered from the crash was the driver.

All I can remember is feeling so strongly about that driver. He KNEW he couldn't stop the truck and he knew people were going to get hurt because of it, so instead he risked his own life and crashed the truck to save everyone else.

I was touched.

I'm not sure why this dream effected me so strongly this morning. I just couldn't help but think this man was such a hero. I was proud of him.

Then I wondered ... would I have had the strength to make such a scary decision? Would I ever be able to be a hero if the moment presented itself? My instincts tell me that I would without a doubt, but if I really sit back and think about it...I know there would be a doubt...or two.

Would you have had it in you to drive your truck off an expressway to save hundreds of lives?

Just a quiet little reflection for the day...I promise I'll get back to something absurd tomorrow.

Was I a Sports Jock?

And on to the next question.

Sarah Wood said...

What was your favorite childhood sport? Basketball is what comes to mind when I think of you :)

Oh Sarah...you would know! Basket ball was ESPECIALLY my favorite the year I played for your school. What was that? Sixth grade? (Sorry, but you totally asked for it!)

When I was in Grade School I belonged to a Catholic school that didn't have many students. My graduating class in the eighth grade had a whole whopping nine kids. Seven girls and two boys.

When it came time for sports I was limited because no one else in my class was much interested. My parents were immensely supportive of my need to play basket ball, so they enrolled me in teams at the surrounding Catholic schools that would take me.

In sixth grade I ended up at Sarah's school and that was the BEST year for basket ball. Our coach was a drill Sargent, but our team was awesome and if I remember correctly Sarah and I became quite good friends! I can't tell you how grateful I am to facebook for letting me get in touch with her again.

Isn't that the best part about sports though? Meeting new friends that you might not have talked to had you not been the on the same team? The friendship with my BFF in High School was started during my Sophomore year while playing tennis. One conversation about "Stroking Yellow Fuzzy Balls" sparked a long lasting friendship that hopefully will never end.

Whereas Basketball and Tennis were awesome sports and I highly enjoyed playing them, they were also a blessing to my life.

What was your favorite sport as a child? What was the reason? Was it because you had an awesome team or was it for the socialization?

If you haven't had a chance to request your story about my childhood visit THIS post! Leave a comment and I'll quench your thirst for knowledge!

The Enchanted Closet ... in my mothers bedroom

I asked last Thursday if there were any stories or things about me you'd like to hear.

Tabitha Bird said...

What about... "What was you wildest dream as a child that you actually tried to make come true?" any flying off roof tops or trying to ride the family dog like a horse? Or is that just me...

Well as we learned yesterday, I didn't have a dog to ride as a horse, so that was totally just you Tabitha! LOL

This did remind me of a crazy story though...

I wouldn't say it was in my "wildest dreams" to find the magical passage way located in my mother's closet which led to the basement . However, I couldn't help but think it would be the coolest thing in the world at the ripe old age of six.

During a frustrating game of hide and seek with my brother and sister I insisted I KNOW how they got downstairs so quickly without me knowing. That is when they told me about the magical passage way!

Magic ... in my own house ... right under my nose! How could I not have known about this sooner? Imagine all the possibilities! And the smile on my brother and sister's faces ... it was obvious they had been waiting until this very moment to tell me. I was finally ready to be let in on their secret. I was worthy.

I ran to my mothers closet and pushed through all the clothing. I threw aside the old shoe boxes and ignored any Christmas presents that may have been hiding. Christmas presents were nothing compared to this awesome secret.

I slammed on the wall, pushed on the wall, jumped on the floor, tried the other walls, I searched and I searched - for almost an entire hour - for this mystical portal I knew HAD to exist. Had they forgotten to give me the fairy dust?

Now here is the think about being six when your brother is thirteen and your sister is eleven ... they don't want to play hide and seek with you. A six year old will remain completely oblivious to this fact because, um hello, who wouldn't want to play hide and seek!

So my hour spent searching for the magical mystical portal leading to the dark and dreary basement ... was the best pestering sisterless hour of my sister and brothers entire week!

I think my sister and brother suck. Just saying .....



Do you have older siblings? What was the craziest thing they ever convinced you to do? Or are you the older sibling who sent your baby brother plummeting off the top bunk after you convinced him he was a super hero?

If you haven't had a chance to request your story about my childhood visit THIS post! Leave a comment and I'll quench your thirst for knowledge!

No Pets Allowed!

I asked last Thursday if there were any stories or things about me you'd like to hear.

Jessica said...

Hmmmm, did you have a favorite pet?

Actually, I did not have any pets growing up. Before I was born my family had like seven dogs and I think vowed never to own a pet again after that.

I didn't even have a gold fish!

This is how bad it was.

The local grocery store chain in our area, Meijer, used to have "Kids Week". They would have contests and kid related activities all weekend. With one contest you could win a gold fish.

I was ecstatic when I won that beautiful little gold fish, but my parents were dead set about the 'No Pets' rule and I actually had to send it off with my sisters friend!

It was just a gold fish!

Moral to the story ... never own seven dogs ... you're likely to not like pets ever again. Instead, buy your kids a gold fish, they'll be just as happy!

So did anyone have any pet free parents like me? Or did you have seven dogs too?

If you haven't had a chance to request your story about my childhood visit THIS post! Leave a comment and I'll quench your thirst for knowledge!

Toddlers are Trouble

I wanted to start my Flash Back Montage with an old memory, but as I was reading Billy Coffee's Blog this morning I flashed back to a shared memory of me. One I do not recollect, but my father loves to remind me of.

One afternoon my mother was out and about and my dad was home watching me. As with most two/three year olds, afternoon time meant nap time. My father graciously tucked me in, gave me a kiss and headed downstairs to do his own thing.

About ten minutes later there was a knock on the front door. My father walked over, not doubt irritated to be interrupted from his task.

"Hey Bob," the neighbor said politely.

My father smiled at the neighbor and noticed giggling to his right. He reluctantly followed the neighbor's arm down to see me bopping up and down with giggles.

One can only imagine the look on my father's face at that moment in time. I know mine would have been full of guilt and embarrassment. How could he not notice his child leave the house!?!?! (I was pretty darn sneaky!)

But it gets better....

"Thanks for bringing her back," my father thanked the neighbor.

"Yeah it was no problem," he says. "But you better keep a better eye on her. I found her playing in the middle of the road."

GASP! (Apparently I was an adrenaline junky as a young child!)

My father scooped me up, probably yelled at me a bit and put me back in bed. When he came downstairs he locked the front door and went back to his task. (Or TV show...probably a race or football...that is what men do when we're gone isn't it!)

Five minutes later there was another knock on the door.

"Hey Bob," the neighbor said.

"Road?" my dad answered.

"Yep," the neighbor replied.

Needless to say ... nap time was over! Score one for the toddler!

This was the best bike ever. It was my mini Big Wheel! I ROCKED!

Hope over to If You Give a Girl a Pen for my new Post!!!

Flash Backs

While writing my awesome autumn post yesterday - with the super cool flash back pictures of me - I got an entertaining idea!

October has officially turned into the month of Flash Backs! I'm not sure if I'm going to do it once a week or every day, but I'm totally pumped about it!

So here's where you come into play ... I want you to come up with questions about me ... and my childhood. Ask away. I'm going to conjure up the stories and post the pictures to go with them. I can't wait. So bring it ONNNNNNN. Ask away (with in reason of course) The more questions you ask, the more stories I'll share!