Most Eggcellent!

Today my little guy became a world record holder.  Really!  Believe it or not, there are world records for launching rockets with a raw egg in them and depending on how high your rocket goes and successfully returns to earth with the egg intact, you can rank.  Well...little dude set the record today for his age division.  I can only imagine how exciting it must be for him.  I always pegged him for wanting to be in the Guiness Book of World Records for something weird (or at least very uncomfortable), but I think launching an egg over 2000 feet high resides somewhere in between weird and normal, and it didn't hurt a bit.  Well, unless you count the poor little egg that he smashed to smithereens after the judge certified it whole and unharmed.

Me:  "I can totally picture you as a little old man telling your grandchildren about the day you became a world record holder...so awesome!"

Little guy:  "Why'd you say 'little'?"

What's next?

It happened.  I knew it would.  We redid the floor and toilet in one bathroom and now the entire rest of the house looks like ca-ca-pookie.  Suddenly the shower in that bathroom is seriously sub-par and it became the first target.  Dave ran out to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and got one of those shower tower shelf thingymabobbers.  It took about 30 minutes just to get the darn thing out of the box and all the pieces out of their individual packing materials (what's with all that?!?!).  I went into the kitchen to sort out the recyclable from the trash and to make cookies and could hear squeaking, pounding, tapping, doors opening and closing. 

Tap, tap, tap, tap....Dave walks by, clearly on a mission, with that oh-so-familiar look on his face that I know and love.

"I have to read the instructions."

Our Four Course Meal

Had one of those total family pleasin' dinners here tonight.  Homemade baked home fries, delicious tilapia, thinly sliced avocado, and, the best of all, canned corn.  Delish!  Course it took me an hour to make, and the family only took five minutes to eat it all.  Course there was some kiddo fighting at the table, and it ended with peace and both boys thanking me for the great meal (unprompted!!!).  Course I got caught cussing during the meal prep and for some reason Dave said something about me needing to take my collar off, and it ended up that he was talking about our dog who was being brushed.  Course meal times at the table all together are precious, indeed, and when the kids go to their rooms to do their thing Dave feels free to shake his groove thang all over the living room (think Elaine on "Seinfeld").  Perfect night!

I'm absolutely convinced that I would look like this today, with

tats all over my back, had the massive tattooing trend hit during my 

era of desire for such things.  Happy that I have just the two 

little tattoos I have, one is on top of the other...

thinking that really only counts as one, then, right?

B.Y.O.T.P.

We, in the Parsons house, are quite focused on the bathroom concept ever since we finished upgrading one of ours last night.  It's officially our favorite room in the house.  If we find ourselves accidentally heading into the "other" bathroom we quickly alter our trajectory (no matter the stage of pants-downness) and hustle to the "good" bathroom.  It truly does rock.

This has me thinking of the significance that bathrooms, going potty, and all surrounding topics have had in our home since our first kiddo was born.  And, in a house of boys, potty humor is always on the tips of our collective tongues.

I have a small notebook, one of my most precious possessions, filled with quotes and landmarks from my kiddos' childhoods.  I took it out tonight, as I'm apt to do on occasion, and found that a HUGE percentage of our noteworthy entries are toilet/potty related.  Here's a small sample:


"Mommy, I ate a big, big, big, big, bugger in the bathroom!"

Vocabulary..."little bubble poop" = fart

"Mommy, my bum bum is eating my big boy pants."

"I poopdied!"

"Yeah, my gas bombs smell bad, but they're awesome!"


Yup...feel the bathroom love, people!

My Superpowers

My kids apparently think I have superpowers.  They're right, of course.  Big guy thinks my superpower is sandwich making.  He thinks I make the best sandwiches in the history of everything mayonnaisey, pickley, and mustardy.  He's convinced that I went to sandwich making superpower school at Thundercloud Subs (where I worked all through college), and that's where I earned my cape.  He's probably right.  Little guy thinks my superpower is chocolate chip cookie making.  I've been making them since I was a wee one, following the directions on the yellow Nestle's bag, year after year after year.  Sometime in the past five years or so I started messing with the recipe and created my own version that apparently tops all others.  I don't think little guy has any theories about where I got my superpowers, I don't even think he cares.  He just wants those cookies.

What do my superpowers get me?  I'll tell you what they get me.  They get me TONS of hugs and "I love you"s before, during, and after I use them.  Awesome!

Shizzy-fuzza-what?

We sat around playing rummy tonight, Dave and I.  And, as always, Dave was determined to be a slang trendsetter.  Me?  I firmly believe that slang invention should be left to the experts...those half my age and members of the hip crowd.  Poor Dave is SO not that, not meeting either criteria.

Anyway, we're playing cards, he and I, and he's beating the "shizzinizzle" out of me (am I even using that word correctly?).  Now, that one I like, AND I suspect was come up with by "experts".  I don't watch TV so I'm not up to speed with the current vocab, but Dave does and I'm betting he was taking words for test drives.  Soon though, it's apparent that he's diving into his own well of creativity when he tells me how much "fuzunzle" (fun) he's having kicking my booty.  I'm not the best loser out there, by far, but someone telling me how much "fuzunzle" they're having doing it is not a mood improver.  We finish the game (thank goodness!) and he tells me, "You're welcome!"

Me, being the sore loser that I am, not willing to let him have the last word, I put on my best snarky face and say, "Wuzelcome!"  He beamed...not sure if it was the win, the "he got me"-ness of it all, or overwhelming pride in his wife's new word.  Regardless, I'm glad he was happy.

So, bring it, people, use my new word.  You don't even have to thank me for it as you're already "wuzelcome"!

Tap, tap...you cwazy!

I kept hearing people talk about New Year's resolutions today.  I've long since sworn off of those...basically, I'm not a fan of setting myself up for failure.  That and I simply don't understand waiting for a particular day to come before making a significant change in one's life.  I mean, gee, just start that day, right?

I've had some big changes in the past couple of years.  Some imposed upon me due to medical issues, some out of pure, personal choice.  So, at the risk of sounding like I know what I'm talking about, which I decidedly do not (really, I don't have a clue), I figured I'd just put out there my wacky little life in a nutshell, or rather, nutty shell.

I'll start with the things that have been imposed upon me because of my medical issues.  (Feel free to skip this paragraph and move on the the cwazy section below.)  There are two.  One, my blood clot, and two, my anemia.  I've been on meds for a year-and-a-half now to keep my blood thin enough to not knock the heck out of my clot and send it directly to my lung.  It was a real bear to get my blood to the right level of thinness and I've had to severely restrict my diet to enable the meds to work.  My inner five-year-old is very happy to have the excuse that "Eating this could kill me" in reference to salad, broccoli, spinach, and brussel sprouts.  My outer 44 year old thinks it's a big drag.  The other thing is that I have to take iron twice a day (on an empty stomach) for my anemia.  Believe it or not, it's a total juggling act, and I've got alarms that remind me to take my meds three times a day...ding, ding, ding...serious old lady alert!  My point with this is that when it's directly survival/health related, with immediate ramifications if you screw up you make life changes right now, no questions asked.  Quitting smoking or drinking would be much easier if partaking caused the partaker to have their arm swell up like a big purple sausage by that evening.

Now, with my goofy self imposed ones, this is what gives me my cwazy status 'round the house.  During the summer I decided that creating something to completion, every day, was something I wanted to / had to / needed to do to make my life more blissful.  It was imperative at the time and I almost desperately craved doing it each day, I ached for the fulfillment it provided.  It's changed over the months and now it's the icing on my cake, the soft quilt I get to snuggle in, it soothes my soul.  And, yes, still utterly and completely adds bliss to my life.

But...I'm a tremendously busy wife/mom/teacher and my time is thinly spread across my many priorities.  Picture chunky peanut butter (the good kind you have to keep in the refrigerator after opening) being spread across a piece of bread, the bread tearing a bit under the pressure, the lumps uneven.  Yes, my life is messy and full of lumps, just like that.  The thing is, I have A LOT of things I want to do, and I really do like them all.  Enter the multi-tasking genius/weirdo I've become. 

Every day when I get home from work I want to do the following before I pass out from exhaustion:

• hang out with my family
• do some household chores (this is more of a "have to" than a "want to")
• draw/paint
• blog
• check in on facebook
• make/eat dinner
• exercise at least an hour every day
• get to bed by 9 PM

My wacky, cwazy solution to these probably unrealistic expectations of myself is to vigorously march in place during pretty much all of it, as exercise is always the hardest thing to fit in, right?  OK, I can't really draw/paint or get in bed when I'm marching, but I'm telling you, I am known to do every single other thing WHILE I march in place.  "What are some things you can do while marching?" I'm so glad you asked!

Typing, cooking, eating (yup!), hanging laundry on the line (this one is a little embarrassing as I'm sure neighbors see me), dishes, folding laundry, helping with homework, reading, making tomorrow's lunch, etc.

Dave walks by me and says sweet nothings to me like:


"Tap, tap, tap, tap...."

"Are you there yet?"

"Where are you going, anyway?"


And, what's most awesome is when he spontaneously starts marching alongside me.  "The family that marches together, starches together...."  Yeah, I dunno...it's romantic, though, for sure.


So, I encourage you to get on my cwazy train, try something new, make it work, multi-task to your heart's delight no matter the opinions of others or how darn goofy you look.