Jillibee'sness

Scary Thismess

I get to spout off once a month on whatever I want to spout off about to a cherished group of homeschooling parents.  Anything that happens once a month has the potential to be a pain or at best is patiently endured.  My monthly musings are in that category for some I suspect but I feel lucky to get to do it.  I want to share my latest blot and a song I just made up.   I hope you enjoy it.  And remember, no real family members or pets were or are in danger of being injured as long as I have an outlet for my frustration.  So read and share my blogs...you'll be helping a whole family.

I don't have much time to write this month.  I am behind on all my Christmas stressing.  I know there is some controversy with the word "Christmas" and so I will find a different word to describe my insanity this time of year.  It does, after all, have very little to do with the birth of any kind of deity and everything to do with being the perfect mother/neighbor/daughter while being driven perfectly mad.  I think I will use the word "Thismess" to describe the state I work myself into this time of year. 

To be non-religious I won't tell you that "Thismess" for me, a semi-religious person, carries the added weight of completely missing the "reason for the season" and other pithy guilt producing bumper stickers.  Even without God being mad at me for missing His son's birthday, I feel like crap this time of year for not measuring up to the hype of the season.  For instance, I don't have any money this year so I could not save the money I don't have buying things my kids don't need the day after Thanksgiving.  I am supposedly throwing a Christmas party this weekend, but I didn't get around to inviting people till the very last minute and so far all I have done to get ready for it is wash the cushion of my brand new couch that my cat peed on.  Oh and I spent two days in bed worrying that now it won't be the best party ever and feeling sorry for myself that I have so much on my "to do" list, starting with "get out of bed".   I can't find a cheap flight to go over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house and it will pretty much kill her when I tell her so unless some last minute Christmas miracle takes the place of "Thismess" reality. 

I have been a crab all week and threatened to leave my husband when he squeaked out that he was tired of hearing me whine about the couch and it was never his idea we have a party in the first place.  I bet this would work to the tune of the "12 Days of Christmas?"

12 Days of Thismess (best sung really fast to the tune of the real version)
By Jill Brehm Enders

On the first day of Thismess my true love yelled to me, "The couch cushion's full of cat pee!"

On the second day of Thismess  my true love yelled at me, "Don't yell at me for the couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the third day of Thismess  my true love said to me, "I'm sick of your whining, don't yell at me for the couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the fourth day of Thismess  my true love begged of me, "Call off the party,  sick of your whining, don't yell at me for the couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the fifth day of Thismess  my true love informed me, "You need counseling!
Party's been called off, you're whining, don't yell at me, for the couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the sixth day of Thismess  my true love sighed at me, "In bed all day you're laying, you need counseling! Party's been called off, you're whining, don't yell at me, for the couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the seventh day of Thismess  my true love blasphemied, "Why did God make women? All day in bed you're laying. You need counseling!   Party's been called off, you're whining don't yell at me for a couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the eighth day of Thismess  my true love scolded me "Get off your butt you're sulking. Why did God make women?  All day in bed you're laying.  You need counseling!  party's been called off you're whining don't yell at me for a couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the ninth day of Thismess my true love chided me, "The baby should have pants on, get off your butt you're sulking, why did God make women? All day in bed you're laying. You need counseling! Party's been called off you're whining don't yell at me for a couch cushion full of cat pee".

On the 10th day of Thismess  my true love questioned me, "Why are the cats bleeding? The baby should have pants on, get off your butt you're sulking, why did God make women? All day in bed you're laying. You need counseling! Party's been called off you're whining don't yell at me for a couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the 11th day of Thismess  my true love questioned me, "Why are you smiling? Why are the cats bleeding?  The baby should have pants on, get off your butt you're sulking, why did God make women? All day in bed you're laying. You need counseling! Party's been called off you're whining don't yell at me for a couch cushion full of cat pee!"

On the 12th day of Thismess  my true love gasped at me, "Did I just eat poison? Why are you smiling? Why are the cats bleeding?  The baby should have pants on. Get off your butt you're sulking! Why did God make women? All day in bed you're laying.  You need counseling!   Party's been called off you're whining don't yell at me for a couch cushion full of cat pee!"

I probably need some sort of intervention or a weekend away which ever comes first. I hope you are all doing much better than I am and if you sent me your Christmas card already you are probably NOT my real friend.  You KNOW what that does to me!  So, in this pentultimate time of year let me be the very first EVER to wish you a MERRY THISMESS!

Widgets for Jesus

I love being a mom. I just hate the stuff you have to do. Not all the stuff. I don't mind the listening, cuddling, advising, playing, part. I hate the dishes, dinner, driving, diapering, dressing, disciplining part.

All D's. How appropriate. If this were a report card I am pretty certain I would get all D's. (A “D” is a slap in the face.  At least an "F" says, "I didn't care enough to show up". A "D" says, "I showed up and made an attempt and still this is the best I can do").

Truth is, I feel like much of mothering and wife-ing involves making widgets. I never wanted to make widgets. I hate them. I suck at them. I don't really notice them when people make good ones or buy new ones. And yet... I have to make widgets from morning to night and sometimes in the middle of the night, every single day and night. If I don't make good ones my kids die.

And just because there is not enough guilt in that charge, I like to believe that my widgets are judged by the Almighty. Widgets for Jesus. Great.

Because I hate them I take my time about getting to them, and every day the widgets back up like the chocolate on the “I Love Lucy” show conveyor belt. I am making and sorting and organizing widgets as fast as I can, but they come so fast I can't keep up with them. The pile of widgets always lands by the front door and is the first thing "they" see (whomever “they” is) when “they” come over inauspiciously to be friendly or neighborly (but we all know “they” really come to judge my widgets). 

It’s no better outside the house. The wobbly widgets made in haste or forgotten are always the widgets that visit the in-laws.

Widgets make me sick. When I get sick they just back up even more and wait for me in a huge pile to address as soon as I get better. Or they gang up on me and kick me when I am down. They yell at me that I am not really sick, just lazy. They keep coming and coming and coming and get between me and my pillow, even when I am in my bed.

And if I don't keep up with them and do them well my children will get sick and die.
When the widget making doesn't go well I want to yell at the kids. But I am really yelling at the widgets. Widgets multiply and speed up in response to yelling. So I try not to yell, but sometimes widgets are flying like tennis balls from every direction and pelting me in the face. I am supposed to keep this face smiling. I am supposed to keep my voice tender while I manage widgets. I am supposed to keep my mood level while I make widgets. EVERYONE knows that! Who is EVERYONE? “EVERYONE” is the plural of “THEY”. 

EVERYONE goes on T.V. and writes books and magazines about how to make beautiful pot-pouris widgets and love it.  All my friends who have read the books and surfed the Internet tell me about the widgets they are working on.  My parents who made widgets when I was little, my relatives who never made widgets but would have made great ones for their kids if they had them, point out what is wrong with my widgets. EVERYONE in the Bible and every other religious book tell me how to make widgets and what happens if I don't do it well -- Jesus and Buddha and Moses and Grandma Moses...EVERYONE!!

EVERYONE knows: Good moms make good widgets. Bad moms make bad widgets. Kids with good widgets get into Harvard. Kids with bad widgets get into trouble. Even if the bad widgets are made with a good attitude, kids with bad widgets struggle to succeed. However, kids with good widgets made with a bad attitude become serial killers. How can this be?  Even widgets have widgets?  It is not enough that I make good widgets. I am supposed to be spontaneous and funny and friendly and open and flexible and consistent and firm and patient and creative and structured and careful and trusting while I make widgets, or that is a bad widget even If it is a good widget.

It’s enough to make me want to give up all this widgetry.  But as I explained, if I don't do widgets well, my children go to therapy. Or they die. (But even if I were great at widgets and every widget was perfect all the time and I made them with the perfect attitude and sunny disposition, my kids could still go to therapy and die.  But that’s not the point.  Widgets have nothing to do with the point).

Kids have a much greater chance of needing therapy from a poorly made consistently sharp widget, or dying from a dangerously defective or rancid widget that is carelessly made long past the expiration date and served on lead based widgets less than 20 minutes before swimming in a non-widgeted pool, It is solely the job of the mother to keep all this stuff straight and present it in a way that keeps the family from wanting to suffocate her with the dry cleaner bag (which is clearly widgeted that it is not a toy).

Maybe I take myself too seriously. I might be giving myself too much credit. I could probably make every widget wrong and still end up with good kids or not even make any widgets and still have kids that turn out OK. But why risk it?

So I think I will just keep showing up and making weird widgets until I improve my widgetry.  A day will come when there will be no more kids to make widgets for and then I will long for the days when I was making widgets. On that day, I will judge my daughter in-law for not making widgets as well as I do after 20 years of practice.

That is probably the only reward consistent widget making has to offer. I hope that day comes and that the kids will be alive and not in therapy.  I will know that I have finally succeeded in this widget pursuit when the kids grow up successful and never visit me because I will be so self-righteously widgid in my widgiosity that no one can stand me or my re-widgin’. 

What I did for boys

I have a house full of boys.  I hear them downstairs trying to stay awake.  They are giggling like little girls.  I have vowed to be the last one standing and so I have decided to blahg to pass the time.  Let's see, what should I tell you tonight? I think I will do something different and tell you how I spent my day.  I woke up early to clean the house so the boys could trash it.  I then went to a soccer awards ceremony with a dozen boys and some dads and I ate pizza to pass the time while I tried to look impressed that for the 6th year in a row my son got a trophy just for showing up at the games.  Today was my son's rescheduled birthday (I was too busy the month of his actual birthday) and we were having half a dozen boys over to spend the night so after leaving the soccer boys, I went shopping for goody bag toys for more boys.  Then I came home and tried to keep these boys from trashing my house too badly until it was time to go to Chuck E Cheese (you guessed it, he's a boy).  While there, I ate pizza again while waiting for the boys to be done being boys there.  After that I went to the hot tub with the boys and watched them all swim a lap in the unheated swimming pool to test their courage.  I fought it, tried to prevent it and then when I realized I was the only one in the hot tub who was not in the polar bear popsicle club I dove in the cold pool and swam a lap myself.  I was short of breath and panicked by the end of it because that water was REALLY cold, but I hope that I have created a lasting memory for someone even as I try to erase it from my own.  Then it was back to my house for more trashing of my house and oreo ice cream cake that I hate but ate a slice of anyway.  So, it should come as no surprise that I hate my husband.   He is a really big dumb boy.   He got annoyed with me for getting annoyed with him for wrestling with the boys after I had declared it a no pillow fight zone in order to settle them down.  He did not connect those dots that "since I want them to calm down and sleep, so I don't want them to wrestle and horse around with pillows" is the same thing as "since I want them to calm down and sleep I don't want them to wrestle and horse around with you".  I guess he thought pillows were the stimulant I was trying to avoid.  That would make sense, since we all know pillows are the leading cause of sleeplessness.  Pillows are always present when we wake up, therefore it must be the pillows that keep us awake.  DUMB!  I would have liked to fight with him for being a big dumb boy but he was watching Saturday Night Live and it is hard to yell at someone who is laughing at something you don't want to let him see you laughing at too. I hate Saturday Night Live tonight too, there are too many boys on there.  It is very strange to walk through a day like this.  It is not uncommon for me to have a full 15 hour day with no time for myself, but when I do something so clearly not about me from start to finish I feel both empty and full at the same time.  Most of the day I hovered above my self and watched myself speak softly and gently and patiently or joke around so that my "no" was not too bitchy.  I also saw that I ate pizza and sweets and since I was hovering just above my head I had no chance to drop in and stop myself.  I think I deserve a break for today, today never really happened for me. As long as I sent my body,  I did not really have to be there today.  I could just float around and marvel at what my body was calling a life these days.  On days like today, just showing up and not losing it was all that was required of me and I did that. I showed up, I did not lose it (neither my cool nor my weight).  I am waiting to collect my trophy. 

My Standardized test ate my home schooler

Please excuse me for the month of September my Star 9 test ate my homeschooler.  I have a type of immune deficiency.  I  have no immunities to fight off criticism (mostly from myself) and comparison is my allergic trigger.  That is why I did not want to have my kids take the Star 9 test last year.  My husband (who has a strong immune system) did however, and in a weak moment I decided to compromise so he would let me get a pony or a frappucino or something.  That is why 2 weeks before the test I tried to start preparing (up to that point I was in denial and in rehearsals with my children for a musical they were starring in).  That is also why the night before the test I was cranky and mean as I sat with my kids who pretended not to understand the difference between contractions, possessives, quotations and plural possessives.  I knew they were just being difficult after all, I had explained it once and there was no reason they should be confused even if we had spent the earlier part of the evening covering geometrical terms, basic algebra and analogies. This was NOT too much to expect, not from MY geniuses. 

Surprisingly my kids enjoyed the test taking.   They got to eat Jack in the Box for breakfast every day (they told us to feed the kids a big breakfast and since I am a night person, this was the best I could do). They were not affected in the least by my stress over this test, in fact, my son declared that he had decided just to guess on the long division because it would have taken too long to work it out and he was tired of working on the test at that point.   There were no contractions etc.... in fact, much of what I drilled into their heads was not even on the test. So, it should have been no surprise to me that my kids missed a couple.  Actually both did quite well for any normal mother's kids.  They were advanced and proficient and got a few 100's.  But I am NOT a normal mother.  THAT was NOT good enough for me.  "What about the GEOMETRY?   What about the WRITING STRATEGIES?!   I am a failure!!"  They will not get to be in the gifted program if I ever put them in public school which I don't plan on doing but  that is NOT the point...   I FAILED THEM! 

My oldest boy was in public school until 5th grade.  He was diagnosed as gifted.  In Indiana where we lived, it took several days and tests and professional recommendations to determine that.  He missed 1 on the whole standardized test every year that he took it.   He also used to tie all the furniture together in the house with yarn and would often forget to sign his name on his Weekly Readers and receive no credit for the homework.  Today he is an 18 year old.  No one cares if he is gifted or not.  It doesn't come up.  He does amazing things with computers and forgets to put toilet seat lids down.  He knows a lot about a lot of stuff but not a lot about where stuff goes when he is done using it.  He thinks outside the box as is evidenced when he leaves things out of the box he is supposed to put them back into.  He is learning to drive and can not just figure it out intuitively, as he found that out the 2nd time he failed his permit test.  He has to study and practice, even though he is gifted.  Traffic cops don't care if you are gifted or not. 

As a freshman, he is learning about love, loss, responsibility and whom to trust.  He is knocking on doors and having some slammed in his face.  He is challenging everything and his brilliant mind leads him into all kinds of terrifying theories as far as I am concerned.  But he is not my pupil anymore.  The world is teaching him now, there are no standardardized tests from the world, all of us get different versions even when they are the same testing circumstances.

Just for the record.  I was labeled gifted too.  Unfortunately, the areas I am gifted in do nothing to compensate for the areas I am NOT gifted  in.  I can not sing my way out of a bounced check.  My creative powers are helpful in coming up with excuses or probing deeply into my complex psyche to explain why I am disorganized, disheveled and late but they don't protect me from the consequences of such a state.  I guess gifted is as gifted does.

I was not thinking of any of this when the school year started.  This is the thinking of someone in their right mind.  I was in someone else's mind (the left mind which is a dangerous place to be when you are right brained).  I just kept looking at my kids as some how defective, cruelly neglected at the hands of their punctuation hating mother.  Like a person who looks at her donut and says, "Where is this middle part?"  I was ready to send my kids straight to public school to learn how to be a hole human being. To make it worse, everywhere I turned people were reading John Holt or debating Saxon while all I could do was clutch myself in a star 9 induced paralysis of all my curriculum muscles.   (Mess-schooler Dystrophy I think is the medical term for what I had).  It was grueling to read all the TVE posts chattering with enthusiasm about the pre-school Russian group and the sentence diagramming club while I looked in horror, as if for the first time really seeing, my tremendously disadvantaged children who are lacking in geometric proportions and have been algebraically disfigured by their simple equation minded mother. 

Then one night, while singing my children to sleep with the solos from Pirates of Penzance after having created an elaborate (and if I don't say so myself, funny) story with a moral applicable to a hard relationship issue, it hit me; we are NOT all the same.  Unlike a lot of kids in school, most grown ups in life get away with being less than in some places and more than in others.  I forgot this while preparing for the standardized test.  (I should have realized that something with "standard" in the title was going to be a challenge for me).  I was trying so hard to be all the things that "they" said I needed to be to make my kids the kind of kids who will grow up with "that" kind of mother, that I was not being "my" kind of mother.  So the net result was that they had a mediocre other kind of mother (cause I could not pull off being just any mother) instead of a brilliant my kind of mother (cause everyone is brilliant when they are a kind mother and it is easy to be a kind mother when you are not trying to be some other kind of mother).

So now we are back on track.  I spend some time each week on readin'/writin'/rithmaticin' and some time on the stuff they really love to do and lots of time in my car driving them to distractions and driving us all a little crazy and back.  I pray and hope for the best and try not to succumb to my allergic response whenever I hear or see someone else doing something amazing or standard and/or thinking we should be doing the same.  It is hard to be doing the same when we are doing differently. As my friend First wife would say, "Viva le difference"!

Boogey man bubbles

There once was a chicken who had trouble laying eggs.  She was the laughing stalk of the flock (or so she thought).  Then one day she had an egg.  It was a LARGE egg.  It nearly broke her in half.  Because it darn near killed her, she figured it must be a very special egg indeed.  She gave up going to the yard to cluck with the other hens.  She gave up eating, sleeping and every other pleasure a hen can have to guard her very special charge.  One day the egg hatched.

Out came the scrawniest, palest, little chick you ever saw.  That is if anyone ever saw this chick.  No one did though.  That  hen was so certain that her chick was the most precious gift the world had ever received that she decided it was much too nice a gift to give to just any world.  She decided to save the chick until the world got better and when that wasn't happening she decided to save the world so it would be better enough for her chick to one day go out in.  That's a big job though, and hens are not so different from humans.  They put off doing things that are hard.  That is why hens never file their tax returns.  So she soon tired of wallpapering the world to suit her taste and instead wallpapered her nest and read lots of books on how to raise chickens.  Because this hen was so worried about doing everything right and so worried that something might go wrong she never did anything.  She kept that chick in the nest and sat on it just as she had when it was an egg.  That poor chick suffocated and died.  The End

That was mean to end it like that wasn't it? 

Ok, she squashed it and it died.  The End

Still not happy? 

Ok, sitting on it kept it from getting the sunlight it needed so it never grew and was sickly until it died.  The End

Are you still mad at me because the chick dies?  Well, I have news for you, every chick dies.  Every hen dies.  I think we are all so worried that  someone might die, that we don't live; for fear we might accidentally die.  Isn't that silly?  I think we think if our kids get the highest test score or jump through hoops the best or can recite the Bible in Greek they will be immortal.  Nope.  They will just be boring hoop stars who people avoid at parties because nobody understands a judgemental word they are saying   Then they will die.  Hopefully they will grow very old first, but eventually they will die.  We all will.  The End. 

When my oldest baby was a real baby (he is 18 now) I felt like I wanted to build a tower for him to live in.  Towers are costly though, so when he came in my room one night and told me he was afraid of the boogey man I said "I know, me too!" and I put us in a plastic bubble so we would be safe.  But when he started showing signs of maturity I did too and I noticed that I looked an awful lot like the boogey man (I should not have installed a mirror in our bubble).  So I got out of the bubble (ok he kicked me out) and got into therapy instead.  Now he is just a newborn man and darned if he too bears a striking resemblance to the boogey man some days!! 

So our bubble is empty.  I have not put anyone else in there yet.  It's a bad idea, kind of like putting wet toys in a closed plastic bin.  Even though they are clean, even though they are shiny, even though they are cute to look at from the outside; though they smell nice at first, eventually they will not and if you keep them closed up too long when you finally do open the lid a big cloud of yuck comes out and everyone can smell it so no one wants to play with them.

What have we learned here?  Your kid smells like mold? The boogey man within ate your chick?  No, no no!. That is not the point at all.  What we have learned is that everybody dies no matter what we do.  Everybody is scary not just the people "out there", in fact, it's the person "in here"  (I am pointing to my chest if you can't see me...if you can, then I am calling the police because it is the middle of the night and you have no business being here) you have to tangle with. 

We can't keep our kids locked up in an air tight US approved receptical for  very long without something stinky happening.  However, if we can give our children enough air to breathe they might just breathe new air into OUR stale thoughts and they might just come back and breathe new life into our tired old wings when we are old and cynical (or just annoy us with their new fangled ideas).  Or they might just  tear our nest to shreds and kick us in the head with their sharp claws as they fly away never to return.  I've seen that happen more than once.  Either way we all die so I guess it all works out in the end...badly, but it all works out.   The End.

So, since everyone dies I ask myself 2 questions at the end of the day:
1) Did anyone die?
2) Did I kill anyone?

If the answer to both is "no" then all in all it has been a pretty good day.

The end.

p.s. Even though that is a good ending, I want to put this tag in for a public service.  When my oldest son told me he was afraid, I did not really confess to being afraid of the boogey man nor build a bubble.  I actually quite calmly said in answer to my son's observations that there were monsters under his bed, "Really?  Wow.  Good thing I got this spray!"  I handed him a can too.  Since they were imaginary monsters, imaginary monster spray is just what you need to eradicate them.  Had they been real monsters we would have used something much stronger.

Luckily, we have only had to face a few real live monsters.  Those are times for prayer and teeth gnashing (better if it is not done in that order).  If there is anyone reading this who has REAL and present monsters, this blog probably does not apply.   There are times we have to all sit on our chicks and there are times we all need to rally around the hens siting on their chicks.  I am not thinking of any of that at the moment.  Nor am I thinking very long about why I think death is the whole point here, nor why I think death is something bad.  That will be addressed in some other blog.  I am just thinking about the type of hens that we can all be sometimes and why we should not be this type of hen.

LIfe can suck the life out of you.  Life can be the fox in the henhouse.   I guess that is why I am writing this for those of us hens who are not in real and present danger.  When we run around pecking at each other because we are certain the sky is falling and the fox is breathing down our chicken necks, it dishonors those for whom that is true and it wastes the few hours of painless living that each of us are blessed with.  So quit your squawking and flapping and fly a little already!

Enough hen pecking for tonight!

The End

smiling eggs

Today I woke up really tired and did not want to go to the picnic where all the home schoolers from my online support group would be.  I did not want to shave my legs.  I did not want to wax my lips.  I did not want to make gooey brownies that I bought last night to make.  I did not know what to wear.  I did not want to get the baby ready.  I did not know what he should wear. I did not want to drop my oldest boy off at the doctor. I did not want to put in the effort to make my other 2 kids look good enough to impress mothers and attract new friends.  I did not want to do anything with my daughter's waist length hair.  I felt guilty because I was going to go with a friend and had not gotten up to call her and now it was too late, she would have gone alone.  I was so mad at myself I barked at my kids and looked for a good reason to be so barking mad. I took my son to the doctor and made the middle kids scramble around and get ready.  When I got home my middle son had made egg salad sandwiches for the pot-luck.  Instead of being charmed by his efforts, I took the knife he had been using and attempted to make them look like finger sandwiches but my haste and the condition of the bread made them look like arthritic finger sandwiches. I hid them in seran wrap and barked for my kids.  I actually heard myself barking while helping my son tame his curly hair and flashed forward to the way I will feel when he brings his shrieking fiance home and I over hear her barking at him about his hair, so I decided not to repeat my sin with my daughter.  I just let them be and did not scrutinize them any more. I would just flee the scene of the crime. On my way out the door I gabbed a bowl of hard boiled eggs.  My daughter had drawn smiley faces on the eggs to distinguish them from the uncooked eggs.  I grumbled on the way to the picnic and got lost and arrived late.  When we arrived there was evidence of an exquisite sampling of homemade goodies now mostly absent.  My eggs and arthritic finger sandwiches were ridiculous AND un-necessary.  I put my eggs on the table and my buddy whom I had stood up laughed good and hard with me and at me.  I guess she was not holding a grudge.  I found kindness from a 12 year old boy who gave me the sandwich he was holding when he realized it was the last one and since it was his second he insisted I take it. That is BIG for a 12 year old boy.  So shines a good deed in a dark heart.  My heart grew 3 sizes that day or perhaps my blood sugar was appeased.  Whether it was my heart or my blood sugar, the rest of the afternoon was spent laughing and talking with my friends and enjoying my children.  We all had a good time and no one said a word about my waxed lip or shaved legs.  The moral of this story - sometimes you just have to grab your smiling eggs and head out the door.  Life is really that simple.   This blog is not worth writing or reading tonight.  But it is my smiley egg and my new motto is: done badly is better than neglected perfectly.   

Teflon wars

I belong to a group of concerned women.  They are very concerned about everything.  They recently had a big discussion about how concerned we needed to be about how the George Foreman grill was coated with Teflon which would emit poison gas and kill us and more importantly the family we are trying to serve our non-fat food to.  Then the other concerned women were  concerned that the concerned women who had posted about the teflon might cause women to be overly concerned so they posted about that. So the original posters counter posted that the concerned women were not concerned enough.  These dear women get very concerned about something and start debating it every time a plan flies into a building or a wave covers an entire city.  Instead of just posting what they are really feeling, which is "OH MY GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE AND I HAVE TO TEACH MY CHILDREN ABOUT HOW SCREWED UP WE ARE AND WATCH THEIR ANGELIC FACES HARDEN WITH REALITY OR PRETEND WE ARE NOT SCREWED UP AND HOPE NOBODY TALKS TO THEM WHO HAS NOT BEEN PRE-SCREENED AND SUBMITTED A TRANSCRIPT FOR MY APPROVAL"  or better stated "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" they instead just start arguing over stroller usage, semantics, inappropriate humor, commercials or in this case, Teflon.  In these moments of tension I like to jump right in the middle and throw a pie in my face.  It doesn't solve anything but I think it makes people forget to be concerned for a moment.  I wonder if it might work for gang violence.  I should try that.  What you are about to read is my most recent posting in reply to the aformentioned (or should I say "a FORMEN shunned") debate.

>Oh I just love when the subject gets back to food. I am fairly certain the last time I posted was to express my outrage that Carl's Jr hamburgers did not give me Paris Hilton buns.  Now to learn that George Foreman could be againstmen is shocking.  How can that be that a prize fighter such as he can not make a grill safe for me?  I am happy to report that I have only used mine twice because when after the second meal I was no thinner than I had been before I started using it, I just knew it was not good for me.  I am always happy to learn that my grilled zuchini is just as dangerous as my frenched fries.  I have preached to my parents for years about their alchohol and tobacco consumption and now that they are almost 80 I just shake my head and walk away.  These are their extra-credit years and they have no health problems (unless you count mine I have gotten as a result of second hand exposure to obnoxious behaviour).  I am rolling around with my diet coke when I discover that it crosses the blood brain barrier and that sounds much scarier than an obesity related disease I might contract.  Of course Dr. Snopes came to my rescue and said that the diet coke scare is just a hoax, but I am not taking any chances.  I am also happy to report that we the huddled masses of outrageous BMI numbers scored a victory recently when it was reported that being too big was better than being too thin.  I am guessing that we have a powerful and large lobbying group to fund some of this research but I am not delving into that too deeply.  What am I saying exactly?  Just this - I don't have enough self control to stop or start things I already know for sure to be bad/good for me, I don't have enough time to not step on a crack and break my mother's back or walk under a ladder but it is always good to know what it is that will be my undoing when I leave it undone so I appreciate the information as well as the reminder to lighten up...none of us have found the key to immortality - YET (but I suspect it has something to do with having a lot of money, attention and a very small waist line...so I will strive for all of the above while doing everything in my power to sabbotage those efforts)Your rambling also mortal mother,
Jill