MONDAY!

Last week, The Jimmy got a flat tire.

Yep!  His back left tire bit the dust.

He was leaving for Utah the next day,

 so he backed his truck into the driveway

with the intention of  'dealing' with it when he got back.

On Sunday night,

I pulled the garbage cans to the curb.

On my way inside,

I checked the doors on his car and mine

to make sure they were locked.

All was well.

Before I went to bed,

I read the "Drama In Real Life" article in the Readers Digest.

I normally love those

but this particular one

was about a serial killer

who broke into a home and tried to kill the family.

What was normally interesting became

completely terrifying when home alone.

I made Lulu sleep in my bed...

on the side closest to the door.

Monday morning,

I woke up and got the kids ready for school.

We have been late for school so much lately

that the Office Staff, Teachers and Principal

have ALL made comments about it.

I hate mornings!

Hate them.

So I was determined to be on time.

I frantically successfully herded everyone out the door

but when I came around the corner
to get in my car,
I was greeted by this...

Yep! 

It is what you think.

Sometime between 9:00 pm and 7:45 am

A Bandito

jacked up The Jimmy's car

and stole the front tire!

Let me repeat ...

A Bandito 

jacked up The Jimmy's car

and

STOLE THE FRONT TIRE

and the spare that was on the driveway

behind the truck.

( a 2-fer deal!)

At first I was confused.

I thought that maybe The Jimmy's amigo 

had come to fix his bad tire...

"But how weird" I thought. "He took the tire that wasn't flat."

So I called The Jimmy

and we freaked out together!

The kids were late for school. 

A Lindsay Police officer came to 'investigate'.

I was a good 6 inches taller than him

which is really just never very reassuring.

But what  he lacked in height and mass,
he made up for with big police words.

Like,

'M'am', 'perpetrator' and 'incident'

He was all business.

He walked around the car,

asked me some questions

and then asked me to find a brace

so that he could take the jack with him to be fingerprinted.

(It belonged to the Bandito.)

I miraculously found a brace in the black hole that is our garage.

The officer put the brace in place

then used his bare hand to lower the jack...

that the Bandito had last touched

with HIS own bare hand.

Was he tampering with my evidence?

"Uhm officer?" I interrupted.

"I don't know a lot about much

but I know that I've seen enough CSI's

to think that you should probably have a glove on."

Man!
If looks could kill?

But he did get up and put on some gloves.

Technicality, I guess.

As the little officer left,

he gave me instructions about the in's and out's of police reports

and pretty much assured me

that nothing would ever come of our missing tire.

"Then officer," I added, "If you ever do find the Bandito,

just shoot to kill!  Shoot To Kill!"

I laughed. 
I was pretty proud of my wittiness.

He just looked at me like I was a total nincompoop.

It was obvious we weren't going to be friends.

For the rest of that miserable Monday,

Lulu had a fever.

She was super sick

and I was totally defeated.

So, we cuddled on the couch

for the entire day

and let ourselves heal.

With all the doors dead-bolted,

of course!

A Riddle.

What do you get

when you cross a

lazy Sunday afternoon

with

3 redheads

and

a bag of mini marshmallows?

Well...



The EYE BALL!

TODAY

while I was sitting at the park

 with Lulu,

I started to scroll through the pictures on my cell phone.

I came across these

 BEAUTIES

and couldn't stop laughing.

Really laughing!

It was sort of embarrassing

because with each picture

I laughed

harder and harder and harder

while sitting by myself

on a bench.

I almost laughed as hard as I did

when I actually took the pictures!

YOU KNOW THE LAUGH...

that deep whimsical

ECSTASY

that causes every single muscle

 in your body to

CONTRACT

to the point where you can't

even possibly hold yourself 

UPRIGHT

for another moment...

and you double over

INVOLUNTARILY

 causing every-single-last-bit of oxygen to

 EEK

from your lungs

while the pressure builds against the 

BACK

of your face

which is paralyzed

with a ginormous 

SMILE

that looks unreal and

feels like your lips are burning and will rip in

TWO

if they stretch any further

and your vision

BLURS

from the tears

that are about to

DRIP

down your cheeks 

and you become aware

that if you don't 

INHALE

 in the next few seconds,

you just might

DIE...

so you 

SLAP

 your hands on the table and

STOMP

 your feet on the floor

until your brain 

FINALLY

obeys your command

and you 

GASP

 for air

which causes a strange sound

that is some sort of bizarre melange of

 TORTURE and DELIGHT

 and just when you think you're about to

RECOVER...

the whole process repeats itself

several times

until you can

FINALLY

regain the use of your hands

long enough to 

WIPE

 the tears from your face...

YEP!  THAT LAUGH.

I don't know if I described it well enough

but just know that

I love that laugh.

There is nothing more therapeutic

than deep, hysterical

laughter. 

I'm sure there are scientific findings

and words that describe

the benefits of such a process.

But really,

I think it's just another delicious gift

from Heaven!

So here are the pictures

that gave way to such the 

BLISSFUL mid-day RUCKUS!

I call them

'EYE BALL'

enjoy.

Rosie

Lulu

O'Neill

Sethie

Eli

Eden

I don't know this person!



The Nativity

I have a darling, little

"Nativity Fairy"

(of sorts) 

who lives in my house.

Every time I try to arrange my

Nativity sets
all fancy and pretty,

A little someone comes along and

rearranges them.

She's won me over with her persistence

and

 I am now

a huge fan of her

CHRISTMAS HUDDLE! 

Aaaaaaaaaaaand BREAK!

Warning!

All I can say is
 when your 4 year old

shoves two of her fingers in your face

and tells you to

"smell" them...

REFRAIN!

I promise they WON'T smell like

marshmallows...

even if she says they will!

Boys!

I think

that some of the greatest gifts

given to Mothers

are

9 year old boys!

They're old enough to get themselves ready for school

yet still young enough to say

"I Love You!" as they get out of the car.

They're old enough to watch scarey movies 

(like "Ghost Busters" and "Gremlins")

yet still young enough to sleep with the lights on!

They're old enough to have their own sense of style

yet still young enough to need jeans

with adjustable waistbands.

They're old enough to play competitive sports

yet still young enough to cry on your shoulder

 when they get hurt.

They're old enough to start earning extra money

yet still young enough to spend it all on candy!

They're old enough to go on campouts with Dad

yet still young enough to jump in the freezing pond

with swarming mosquitos!

They're old enough to want their hair to look good

yet still young enough to hate taking showers!

They're old enough to get love letters from saucy girls,

yet still young enough not to care!

They're old enough to tease

younger brothers and sisters

yet still young enough

to give them big hugs and kisses!

So basically,

They're old enough to be big

yet still young enough to be little!

(Samuel, Clayton, O'Neill & Jack.)

It's the perfect age.

Have you missed me?

My Grandma was a widow for 25 years and never remarried.  That is so long!  A few years before she died, I asked her how she did it.  How she could sleep alone night after night for so many years without exploding from fear or loneliness!  She did not hesitate and told me that the key was to go to bed with HAPPY THOUGHTS.  She said that she never watched the news, listened to sad music or read heavy stories before going to bed.  Instead, she would watch David Letterman or Jay Leno and then go straight to bed while still GIGGLING.  I knew right away that she had given me a time-tested survival tip and tucked her wisdom away for a rainy day!

Then, last year as the affects of the recession began to surface around me, I started to experience a lot of anxiety.  It seemed as though everywhere I turned, bad news had planted itself right in my path.  Times had changed and life started to feel HEAVY, especially at NIGHT!  Night after night, I would toss and turn as I struggled to exchange the worries of the day for the serenity of sleep.  It seemed that as I got more and more tired, my fears and worries became more and more overwhelming.  It was a pretty exhausting cycle.

Finally late one night (or was it early one morning), while I sat in my family room waiting for my ever familiar anxiety attack to go away, I started to think about Grandma and the brilliant advice she had given  me years before.  Somehow I had allowed all of the negative aspects of life get me down when really I just needed to find my HAPPY.  So, as soon as my racing heart slowed down and I regained feeling in my fingertips, I got busy.

Over the next several months, I decided to give myself a vacation from the media and  I completely stopped listening to the news.  (Except for the weather and People magazine, of course!  Those don't count!)  Although it was a little extreme, I have to say that IGNORANCE was BLISS!  I needed the break.

But then, since I wouldn't follow the news, I started to read blogs.  All sorts of blogs.  But I was mostly drawn to blogs written by Mothers.  It was a nice distraction to read about the lives of other woman, most of whom I had never met.  But, after a while, even that started to bother me.  Reading about everyone elses perfect children, charming husbands and spotless refrigerators (with pictures included) started to make me realize that that wasn't really helping the cause either.  So, one day as I tried to figure out what my next step towards SANITY would be, I decided that rather than focusing on the lives and events of strangers (in the news and on blogs), I needed to focus on my own...crusty refrigerator and all! 

The idea of starting a blog was a little overwhelming and made me nervous.  But knowing that I would most likely type posts at night, I figured that it would be a great opportunity for me to put my Grandma's advice to work.  But rather than focusing on the humor of Late Night TV hosts, I would focus on the humor of my own life.  That decision changed my entire focus.  Rather than just posting about the everyday happenings of my life, I decided to watch for and notice the fun, amusing and unusual experiences around me.  I wanted my posts to not only make me LAUGH, but to also entertain any poor reader who wandered this way. The more and more I wrote, the happier I was becoming.  Writing was therapy!

For months this blog was a really fun adventure for my family as well.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun my kids were having with it.  It seemed to UNITE us.  As we went about our day, it was not unusual for them to bring me the camera and say, "Mom, look how funny this is.  Hurry and take a picture for your blog."  Or they would tell me a happy story about each other and say, "Wouldn't that be good to put in your blog?"  It was really fun and unexpected.

But then something happened.  Once school started, life seemed to get heavy.  Is it just me, or are things just depressing right now?  I swear, and I kid you not, it seems like every single day I hear some sort of bad news. Not national news, but news that personally is related to me!   "This friend just lost their job and can't find another!" or "This super healthy friend just dropped dead from a heart attack during a bike race!"  or "This friend is moving far, far away because the people in their town suck!"  or "This friend's in the hospital with their sick baby!"  or  "This friend just had a miscarriage!"  or "This friend just got a death threat!"  (FOR REAL?!?  Who gets death threats in America?  That is so Mexico!!!) ...and that's just a sampling of what's been going on!
I am SCREAMING OUT LOUD IN MY HEAD right now!

As you can tell, I seem to have once again misplaced my HAPPY.  Many, many nights I have sat down to write a post only to shut off my computer because I can't think of a single happy-hearted event that has happened.  It's tragic that I've lost my focus!  But, do NOT panic.  I am determined to stop letting the reality of life dominate my happiness and start looking for the funny and pleasant tender mercies that are sprinkled all around me.  I owe it to myself..and amazing Grandma!