I am a disorganized stay-at-home mom, which means that I am the grocery store two to three times per week. Nearly 100% of the time, my five year old daughter and my eighteen month old son are with me. Which is why I was appalled to see this image in the checkout aisle on a quick run to Publix today

What the HELLL???????????????

I am so furious, it is difficult for me to express myself without cursing. It just so happens that Jade spent the night with her grandmother last night and The Hubs went into the office late, so I was solo on this trip. But just two days ago, I was in Publix with both of my kids!!!!!

Let me be clear, if I had been with my children today and they had seen this smut, I would have probably done something radical, like….I don’t know snatched down all the magazines and asked the check-out clerk to remove them or something like that.

As it is, I spoke with the manager and strongly suggested that those magazines be removed from the checkout line, placed in the magazine section and covered up with one of the boards they use in gas stations to cover up Playboy.

This is soft pornography. Not only is she topless but his hand is creeping into her pants!!! I won’t even get into my issues with VIBE magazine for publishing this garbage. Publix has a duty to it’s customers to protect us from offensive images unless we seek them and having this degrading, detestable imagery in the checkout aisle is deplorable.

While I was typing this post, I called that store to see if they had removed the magazines. The store manager got on the phone, apologized profusely to me and explained that the magazines are stacked by a vendor and they hadn’t any idea about the offensive nature of the cover until I pointed it out to them. He thanked me for bringing it to their attention and assured me that it was now off the shelves.

I guess I feel a little better.

Ugh.

But if you agree with me and you see this in your local store PLEASE say something. Ask them to remove it, tell them it disgusts you and you shouldn’t be forced to see it when you check out.

Friends, it’s been a while, but let’s not dwell in the past. Let’s jump right in!

Ahhh. I just returned from a much-needed getaway to Chicago.  I was there with some friends and let me tell you, I had a blast.  We shopped the Magnificent Mile,

ate deep dish pizza,

and of course stopped by our girlfriend’s house.

She wasn’t in, but you know, we didn’t call first, so what do you expect?

Yes, we did all the typical twinset-and-slacks mommy stuff. But we did something else too. We got drunk.

No, not like that!!! ‘Got drunk’ is probably the wrong phrase. We went out club hopping and probably had three or four drinks a night. There may have been some singing on the ‘L” and maybe a few staggers. Is that drunk? Drunk is such an ugly word, let’s say tipsy. There, tipsy. That sounds much better.

It felt so…..wrong. I mean, here I am, a responsible wife and mother of two and I am hanging out in the streets (as my grandmother would say) until the wee hours of the morning , with several other responsible wives and mothers and we are inebriated. But it was so much fun!!

We giggled, we danced, we flirted…..it was almost like being in college again. No cares, no curfews, nobody to answer to, no one to cook for in the morning, no hating husbands to appease. It was awesome.

Is that bad?

When is the last time you’ve been drunk (or tipsy)?

10. It was my family reunion weekend, but we couldn’t afford to travel to my reunion (which would have required flying) so we went to my husband’s family reunion which was just a four hour drive away.

9. It was a four hour drive.

8. It was held in a podunk town.  I don’t like podunk towns. Small towns I like because they are cute and quaint and have character. Podunk towns are different. Podunk towns are just old and backward and ugh.

7. We stayed in the best hotel in town and this was one block from the hotel

As a matter of fact, if you look closely on the left side, you can see the hotel.

6. By the time we arrived at the hotel to check in, they had given away all of the rooms with double beds (even though we reserved a room with double beds), so Jade, O, The Hubs and I all had to sleep in the same bed for the entire weekend.

5. I didn’t get any sleep the entire weekend.

4. It was so hot and so humid that my hair was a huge frizzball the entire time. I just kept smiling, even though I knew my hair looked crazy. There’s nothing worse than looking a mess and wearing a scowl, so I just pretended that I was gorgeous.

3.  We all caught colds from the hotel air conditioning blasting directly on us.

2. It was a four hour drive home.

1. As soon as we put the kids in the bed, the biggest, scariest thunderstorm started shaking the house. The kids were so scared that they ended up….yup, you guessed it. In our bed.

Top Ten Reasons Why My Weekend Was Great

10.  We went out of town and I got to meet some of my hubby’s extended family.

9. Across the street from our hotel was the town welcome center and guess what! They had a real bale of cotton in the lobby. A real bale of cotton!!!!

500 pounds of cotton. A crop that has so much meaning and history for our country.

8. I met two women in the hotel dining room who were on a Thelma and Louise kind of trip and we had a great conversation. They had been stay at home moms and now their kids were all grown up and out of the house. It was nice for me to see that there is an end to this and for them to reminisce about the days long past. Very pleasant.

7.  A stranger told me my children were well behaved during breakfast. He just walked right up to the table and said, “You have the most polite, well-behaved children. I know you may not think so, but trust me; I am an ER doctor and your children are extremely well-behaved.” Yay me. I am the best mother in the whole wide world.

6. During the eight hour trip I managed to get a good mindless read in.

5. Jade thinks this was a vacation. LOL!!!

4. I got new clothes just for the trip. Have to put my best face forward for the inlaws. The Hubs couldn’t argue with that.

3.  Hmmm….I am really, reeeaaallly stretching it here. Uh, we stayed at the best hotel in town.

2. The food was great.

1. At least the thunderstorm held off until we made it home. Would have been hell trying to drive in it.

Just trying to keep a positive attitude. How was your weekend?

The Tasmanian Devil is now an endangered species.  When I saw the headline, I was intrigued because I was only vaguely aware that the Tasmanian Devil was indeed a real animal as opposed to merely a character from a Warner Brothers cartoon.  When I read the article and looked at the images, I was surprised at how much creative license the cartoonist took when creating the character Taz.

The real Tasmanian Devil and Taz. You see the resemblance, don’t you?

The stakes weren’t so high in this misunderstanding, but it reminded me of another. And in the case of the latter, when I found out the truth I felt the cold spotlight of ignorance shining brightly down on me.

For third grade, I attended an inner-city public school and as is the case with most inner-city public schools, my classroom was overcrowded and my teacher was overworked. She would frequently shout in frustration, while banging her ruler against the desk, “Be quiet!! You all are acting like a bunch of wild aborigines!”

When we would ask Mrs. Cucci, what exactly an aborigine was, she told us to turn to page one sixteen in our social studies book. There in the bottom right hand corner of the page was a photo of an oil painting. The painting was of a man with dark skin. The painting captured the man in profile. He was standing under a tree, completely naked. He held a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. And he had a tail about 3 feet long .

After third grade, I never saw Mrs. Cucci again. And I never had another conversation about aborigines for the rest of my scholastic career.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t even hear the term aborigine again, until the 2000 Olympics, when Cathy Freeman was the name on everyone’s lips. When she won the 400 meter and people were talking about Cathy Freeman, the Aborigine, I was anxious to see a picture of her, because in my mind I wondered how she could run so fast with that long tail hanging behind her.

I was an adult when I thought this. And when I saw a picture of her and she didn’t have a tail, I thought for a long time that she had tucked it in.

What’s the point of this post? Teachers and parents and other adults of consequence have a tremendous amount of influence over the little humans in their care. Use it wisely.

And just in case you were hoping to see a picture of a man with a tail, here you go.

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Jade’s breakfast art:

How do they build underwater tunnels? That’s amazing!!!

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So interesting….I just saw this article on Yahoo!. It’s all about how the princess phenomenon is more widespread and more intense than in previous generations. It reminded me of this book that I saw at the airport.

Are you serious? Are you really, really, selling this book to my preschool-aged daughter? And by the way, the entire title is Happily Ever After – Tales of Love and Friendship. Dude, this is a Harlequin romance book for 4 year olds!!

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Is it just me or does it seem that routine errands use more gas the more expensive it is? I swear, I just filled up my car at $2.43 per gallon and after running typical errands, I’m already at half a tank!!!

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My baby boy is starting to talk *tear*. He’s growing up.

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I am just sick, sick, sick to death of the Jon and Kate plus 8 drama. SICK OF IT!! I’m not choosing sides, but Kate seems to be the one who isn’t willing to let the reality show go, so I am directing my comments at her.

Dear Kate,
The show cannot go on forever. It will come to an end, eventually. And when that happens, what will you have left? You were blessed with eight beautiful children and you are taking those blessings and pimping them out for material possessions and money. I understand wanting to give your children special opportunities, but enough is enough. Now that the sextuplets are school aged, at-home life for you can slow down quite a bit. The money that your family has made from the show, wisely invested, can go a long way toward making your family comfortable. Please stop it. Please think of your kids and the future. Think beyond the next paycheck.
PS
The video I just saw of you with the kids was disgusting and just epitomized everything that is wrong with this situation. Making the children sit still for ‘appearances’ and denying Mady a drink of water. And let me tell you something, I could almost understand telling Mady to wait, but how callous of you to ask for water and take a drink yourself, all the while telling Mady to wait.
That’s just……well, yeah, that was just bitchy!

Lately I’ve been feeling so nostalgic. When I took Jade to the dentist earlier this week, this was playing on the ceiling television. Do you remember this show?

Well, watching this video led me to this one. Oh, these are good memories…

Those were the days…..

On day 1 of the school break Jade, O and I went to the local museum to do some arts and crafts. O and I worked on one project together (and by ‘together’ I mean he sat on my lap and chewed on a crayon while I worked on my project). Jade worked on hers alone. After we finished, she could hardly wait to show the Hubs the projects that we made. She was so excited. As soon as he walked in the door, she handed him my project, “Look Daddy!! Look what me and Mommy made at the museum!!!” Hubs goes, “Oh, that’s beautiful.” Then she handed him her project. Hubs says, with genuine concern in his voice, “Oh no, what happened to this one?”

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On Day 2 of the school break I took the kids to an outdoor shopping center. It’s a huge shopping center and they have a shuttle that can take you from one part of the shopping center to another. Jade was totally obsessed with riding the shuttle. Finally we saw one and we were close enough to the shuttle stop to get on. When I approached the shuttle with the stroller the bus driver sharply told me that I had to take O out of the stroller before we got on the shuttle bus. So, I let Jade get on, unbuckled O and put him on and then prepared to lift the stroller onto the bus. She stopped me again, saying that I had to fold up the stroller. Well, I couldn’t fold it because I had a ton of stuff in the basket. We had been shopping, you know? The bus driver said, “well you can’t get on”.  At this point Jade starts crying and another passenger chimed in that there was plenty of room near the front of the bus. The rude bus driver would not be moved. I had to get Jade off the bus and walk back to the car. Jade was keening. Literally, walking and wailing as we made our way to the car. Evil bus driver lady.

I started Jillian Michaels 30 day shred today. Level 1, circuit 1 only. Hey! You’ve got to start somewhere. I’ll do this for a week and then add circuit 2 and so on and so forth. At this rate, it will be the 30 Year Shred, but at least I’m doing something!!

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O lost the toilet paper thing that goes in our downstairs bathroom. We couldn’t find it for weeks, so in the downstairs bathroom we just had the TP on the back of the toilet like a public restroom. I know, so tacky! At least we don’t entertain frequently.

Anywhoo, while I was emptying the dishwasher on Day 4 of the school break, I noticed something weird in the bottom of the dishwasher.

I took a closer look……..

Yes. There is my toilet paper thingy in the bottom of my dishwasher. Do you know how often I run my dishwasher? During the two and a half weeks that the thingy was lost, I probably ran my dishwasher four times. Good grief!!!

That’s all my randomness for this week! Want more? Go see Keely and the rest of the folks participating in RTT!!!

We all have them, right? They are so comfortable yet so unattractive. I love my granny panties.

Unfortunately, my granny panties look a lot worse than those. I had planned to take a picture of my actual granny panties for this post, but guess what? I’m wearing them!!!!! ROFL!!!!

In any case, if your granny panties are starting to look like this

Then it might be time for you to take advantage of this fantastic offer from Victoria’s Secret!!!

or maybe you just want new granny panties. Your choice!

Hurry it expires today!!!

Is it just me or is profanity slowly becoming more and more mainstream? I mean, what’s the deal? I’m no prude, but good grief!! I don’t even allow Jade to say ‘butt’. In our house, we say bottom. Well, I guess I’m just old fashioned because there is a television show called “Dance Your Ass Off”.  HUH?

And television isn’t the only culprit. Who hasn’t heard of the book that launched this ubiquitous phrase?

But Rory and and Kim weren’t the only ones to push the envelope on book titles.  I saw this book featured at Barnes and Noble. That’s right…walked in the front door and it was staring right at me….

Not only that, but what’s acceptable during televsion shows has changed as well. There was a time when you could only get away with a ‘damn’ or ‘hell’. But now, ‘bitch’ and ‘ass’ have joined the list as well. And people have been dropping f-bombs accidentally on live television and radio.  How long will it be before all the four letter words are broadcasting live into your living room?

Now, please don’t get me wrong…..I am no prude. I have been known to pepper my speech and sometimes even my writing with a few choice words when I feel the need. But that doesn’t mean that I want to be bombarded by it every time I turn on the television or walk into a book store.  More importantly, I don’t want my kids to be bombarded by it. Jade is learning to read now, how am I going to explain to her that she can’t say the words that are so freely tossed around?

Just sayin’.