dailydiatribes

I thought I better rush to assure you gentle reader that Renee gave me drugs of only the most legal, non addictive, non mind altering sort.  I believe it is Sulfatrim or something like that and it's an antibiotic.  Whatever it's called, it seems to be doing the trick because my nose has slowed down to a steady drip instead of a flash flood!  Renee is the premier family doctor in the greater Birmingham area so call her for all your health care needs!

So today Anna gets up and does the whole rolling around on the floor "my stomach hurts" act and then manages to produce a bowel movement that was slightly loose so she is home with me today.  I can hardly contain my rapture.  And God did not even speak to me through the BM (you'll understand after you read the book Renee!!!)

I was up most of the night because one of the wonder drugs I was given, Clarinex, revved me up, so at 1:00 a.m. I was ready to party!  I played on the computer for an hour, read a book, cursed my life, tossed and turned and finally got to sleep around 4:00 a.m.  Ok, my fault, I thought I could handle the drug, but apparently not.  Now I am zombified and home with a sick child.

Tim came home yesterday in a car I like to call the "Mid Life Crisis Mobile", or to the layman, a white Porsche convertible.  His car was in the shop, so our friend Greg gave him the convertible to drive.  What a pal!  Of course Tim is now trying to figure out how to purchase it.  I told him to go ahead, he had my blessing, but the first official trip made in the car would be to the jewelry store where I am going to pick out a ring that is no less than two carats and it isn't going to be one of those tacky diamond clusters.  Oh hell no, it's gonna be a rock so big I have to get a sling to hold my arm up!!  We'll see what happens.

Yesterday I received two hoax emails:  one about the boycotting Citgo because it's owned by Venezuela and the other was about sending Christmas cards to the ACLU because it's trying to eliminate Christmas.  Why do people feel the need to forward that stuff?  And when I sent the Snopes link to the Citgo offender and advised her to check it, she said she didn't have time. 

Well, I don't have time to read bogus emails, so don't send them to me!!  And the same goes for prayers.  I love to pray; God and I converse every day, although not through my bowel movements.  But I do not feel any holier by forwarding an internet prayer to nine people in the next five minutes.  So far, no miracles have been achieved by performing that action.  I am not a size 2, Osama Bin Laden has not been found, and my breasts have not magically been lifted back up to their original anatomical position.  So just know if you forward me a prayer, I am going to run the risk of eternal damnation and hit delete!

Well, Anna is now dancing around the room with a feather duster singing the "Fairly Oddparents" theme song, so I guess it's going to be a long day!!  She is going to be in for a real shock when she realizes I am dead serious about the no playing outside when you miss school rule!!!

Well, the snot fountain at my house continues and I finally dragged myself off to Renee's office today to seek help.  When I called to make the appointment, Joan put me on hold and when she came back on she said "Now what did you need?" and I said "I need a lot of drugs now!!"  She laughed and when I told her my name she said "Oh my God, you don't even sound like yourself!"

This little tale is scary on two levels.  One, Joan at Dr. Harmon's office knows me well enough to know when I don't sound like myself.  Ok, granted, her stepson did used to work for us, but still!  And two, I sounded that bad!

So I got in the car and off I went and Renee gave me drugs and I am hopefully on the road to recovery.  I went to Winn Dixie to get my prescription filled and I had to wait a few minutes and I became quite intrigued by the condom display.  Well here is a topic I can go on about for hours!!  It seems the world of condoms has evolved past the lubricated/non lubricated days.  And there is a whole line of condoms marketed just for women called "Elexa". 

First of all, let's look at the men's Trojans.  First they had the classics like lubricated and non lubricated.  Simple, tasteful, elegant enough for every day use.  Then you get into ridged and non ridged.  Hmmm, sounds like Ruffles to me; what exactly am I supposed to get out of the ridges?  Vaginal abrasions probably. 

Then they got exotic.  How about the ones with warming lube for shared pleasure?  I swear to you this was the name of the condom!!  What is so mutually pleasurable about that?  It sounds like a scam to me.  I mean come on, sex is already Hot and Wet right????  Isn't that kind of the point???  You need a special Trojan to simulate that state you're already in trouble my friend!!!

Then there was one, I kid you not, that was minty and was supposed to give you a pleasurable tingle.  It is called Mint Tingle.  I do not needy minty pleasurable tingles in my nether regions.  According to the website, it is the first food grade condom on the market.  Um, yes, I need a nutritional analysis with my Trojan please!!  And what about you diabetics out there?  Does it list the carb count or glucose??

I like that they come in sizes: Regular; Large; and Extra Large.  Hellooooooo... who is going to buy anything but Extra Large???  Not likely a guy is going to go to his pharmacist and say "I find the fit of the large a little loose; do you have anything smaller?"  Yes Hell WILL freeze over first before any guy admits he is anything other than hung like a stallion!!  The Extra Large is called Magnum and comes in a black package.  Kind of a racist marketing ploy if you ask me!

Then there is one called Twisted Pleasure with a special twist at the closed end to stimulate your partner.  All I can say is thank God it's at the closed end...wouldn't do you much good at the top now would it?  It doesn't say what kind of twist it is which disappoints me.  I may have to go buy the sample box which contains all three types and conduct my own trials.

I actually asked the pharmacist, because I was so riveted she had to call me over, if she thought there was a real difference between condoms marketed for men and for women.  She didn't know but she had always wondered herself.  I wanted to ask her if we could break open a couple of boxes and conduct some market research right there, but I didn't think she'd appreciate it.

Well, I went to the Elexa website to check out their products, which are marketed at women.  I was most intrigued by the Elexa vibrating ring, which is battery operated and designed to heighten sexual intimacy.  What happens if the battery catches on fire after you've inserted the ring??  New meaning to the term "hot sex"!!  It also comes with a condom since, after all, it is marketed by the Trojan people.  Alas, my intrigue ground to a halt when I saw the small print at the bottom informing me the vibrating ring was not available in the state of Alabama.  I guess vibrating rings are too sinful for us to use here in our great state.  More's the pity since I was thinking they would make great stocking stuffers this year.  Sorry folks!

Elexa also markets a cleansing wipe, which fortunately is available in Alabama.  It's to "give you and your partner an extra bit of freshness before and after an intimate encounter".  I guess if you have that not so fresh feeling, this is the product for you!!  Very helpful for removing excess warming lube or minty gel from your crotch before you put your panties on!

I think I really could go on and on for hours about this topic.  Obviously condoms are a big, uh excuse me, extra large business and there is a lot for us condom neophytes to learn! 

Sorry I haven't been on in so long.  Life comes at you fast, or so the commercial says, and with the joy of the kids going back to school comes the inevitable grind of activities that sucks up all my free time.  My kids are not overscheduled by today's standards, but I have three kids, so that means every afternoon is committed to someone's practice!!

Today, I am sick.  No one is sick better than me.  I have it honed to a fine art.  I am not one of those annoying women who soldiers on stoically, serving the family while infection rages through her body.  Hell no, the minute I have a tickle in my throat, I take to my bed for the day.

I have not been feeling well since Saturday, and every day since it has gotten a bit worse.  Today I woke up and knew it was going to be a sick day.  So I got the kids off to school, got a big glass of ice water and hunkered in for the duration.  As far as I am concerned, it's a vacation from life!

I have slept most of the day, waking only to take those phone calls that keep coming regularly.  It's nice to be popular, but it does cut into my  nap time.  I also had to wake up every hour on the hour to pee.  Something to do with that large glass of ice water I took to bed with me!

I am not sure what is wrong with me:  it's either a cold, a sinus infection or leukemia.  My nose was stuffed with cotton and then I took a decongestant.  After about 15 minutes, every time I stood up, gallons of fluid rushed from my nose before I could even grab a tissue.  I'm not sure which is worse!  I was talking to Kathleen on the phone (hey Kiki!!!) and I sneezed so hard I actually think I dislodged an organ or two.  I know my eyes are protruding more than usual.  I also shorted out the keyboard with the enormous quantity of mucous that went flying!  Nothing like a good summer cold to keep you real!!

Anna has to take something red to school tomorrow and I am planning on letting her take my eyeballs.  I need to go take a warm shower to loosen up the crud in my head but I am hot, which means I want a cold shower, but that will not help my nose at all!  I hear crackling in my ears and my fillings hurt.  In short, I am dying!! 

The problem is once the kids get home, I have to get up; no one else can ferry them to their various activities but me!  But by God, from 7 am to 3 pm it's all about me! 

I am taking a break from the massive undertaking of cleaning out Anna's bedroom.  It is truly frightening just how much crap one 5 year old can accumulate.  This is day two of the clean out and although the room is not clean, 13 Hungarian midgets were discovered lurking in the bottom of the toy box and were set free as were two dozen alligators and a flock of geese.  All had been cohabiting peacefully in the depths of the closet.

Seriously, this has been the hardest job ever!  I have got so many different categories going for the sorting that I can't even keep track of them all!  There are baby toys to keep, baby toys to toss, books to keep, books to store, books to go to GoodWill, Barbies with heads, Barbies with no heads, empty liquor bottles (not really, just testing to see if you are paying attention!!), and thousands of other categories.  But I am being completely ruthless, throwing out McDonald's toys left and right.

The problem with this job is the sheer number of parts each toy has.  Back in the old days, you were happy to get just a doll.  The accessories were separate and were purchased bit by bit and treasured accordingly.  Now, thanks to new trade agreements with China, each doll comes with an entire trousseau of tiny plastic pieces, that cannot, under any circumstances, be thrown away without express written consent from the owner.  Every Barbie and every Pony comes with a brush.  That translates into roughly 437 plastic brushes in Anna's closet.  I am throwing away 436 of them.

I am really good about not buying things for my kids every time we go to the store.  They rarely get a toy and if they do, it's not much.  But it almost never happens.  So how then, did we get the contents of Toy's R Us in our house???  Birthday gifts account for some of it, I suppose, and maybe Christmas, but there has got to be a darker force at work here.  Obviously, late at night, when we are all asleep, some evil creature steals out from beneath the Barbie shoes and waves a wand and causes the clutter to multiply.  That's got to be it.

And speaking of evil, I am getting really freaked out up there alone in her room.  She has these twin talking baby dolls Roseanna's mom gave her and they are the scariest things I have ever seen.  I didn't realize they were switched on when I threw them out of the closet.  Suddenly, behind me I hear "I like peanut butter."  You want to talk about things that cause incontinence, scary little voices like that top the list!!  I turn around and there it is beaming angelically at me.  The part of me that has read waaaaaaayyyyyyyyy too many Stephen King novels imagined it reaching out with it's little plastic hands and gouging my eyeballs out while it prattled on about peanut butter.  I hate my imagination.

Anyway, I have sorted 3,000 Legos, which are not to be confused with the waffles Anna eats for breakfast in the morning.  I have stepped on and flipped the basket of toy horses three times.  I have gouged my knee on a small metal car.  I am ready to start drinking heavily while I incinerate the whole room.  I hate cleaning house.  On the plus side, given Anna's demonic tendencies, I have not discovered any traces of animal sacrifices or any suspicious openings that look like portals to hell, so that is a good thing!

Sigh, I guess I'll go back up there and face down the talking twins of terror.  Maybe that can be my next novel, if I ever finish up with the Bodice Ripper.

Several years ago, my beautiful friend Wendi Vincent, who is totally in touch with her inner redneck (her phrase, not mine, but she lets me borrow it on occasion), gave me a towel inscribed with the saying "Stop Me Before I Volunteer Again".  It's funny, but at the time, that did not really apply to me.  I had a young child at home and I did as little as possible.  But those days are behind me now.

Apparently, in my zeal to fit in at the new school, I signed up to do everything possible.  I am deeply afraid I even signed up to be a surrogate and bear triplets for one of the teachers.  I signed up to be a room mother, to be a library aide, to be an office helper, to work concessions, and to do everything possible without ever getting paid.

It was fun to check all those little boxes by the volunteer positions.  It made me feel very accomplished, like I was going to be a big helper at the new school.  Imagine my horror when people actually started calling me on the telephone and asking me to perform these tasks.  Who do they think they are?  I didn't actually mean I wanted to do these things, I just wanted to look good to the new PTO people. 

So now, here I am, volunteering so much it's like a full time job.  I am all of the following:  Anna's room mother; Abby's room mother; office aide; library aide; chaperone for band trips; chaperone for band events; concession sales; and maybe some other stuff they haven't even called me and asked me to do.

 I am now afraid to answer my phone, for fear someone is calling me to make good on my promise to repaint the entire school with a Q-tip.  Or maybe I volunteered to be a substitue lunch lady and they are calling me to come in and wear a hairnet and sling mystery meat.  There were so many sheets to sign and so many boxes to check and I just don't what they all said.

I really want to be there for my children.  I want them to know I am involved and that I care.  However, climbing a scaffolding to wash the windows at Berry and waving at them through the third floor windows was not what I had in mind.  But knowing me, I probably signed up to do it. 

If we were in a war movie, one of my comrades would step in and take the bullet for me.  Or she would push me out of the way and take the grenade to the chest herself, blowing into smithereens and leaving me free to fight another day.  But in these trenches, there is no one to take one for the team.  There is no team, it's just me, and I need backup!!  I really need someone to come over and answer my phone for the next two weeks and tell all and sundry that I have moved to Tibet to meditate on the deep intricacies of the continuing power struggle between Sponge Bob and Plankton.

So my leisurely days of lunching with the girls are now limited due to my inability to say no to anyone who asks nicely.  Except Tim, I can always tell him no!!!

Well, I went to hell yesterday, more specifically, Wal Mart, to do the grocery shopping.  It gives me such a boost to go to Wal Mart and realize that I am funding the destruction of small businesses everywhere by trying to save a buck on cereal, but there you go.  We all have our demons!

I know I have blogged about it before, but Wal Mart offers such endless fodder for musing.  From the scary, happy-face dude dressed like Zorro to slash prices to the ancient relics on loan from the nursing home who stand at the door to tag your returns, there is much material for the budding comedy writer.  Every time I walk through the doors, I feel as if I have entered some strange nether world of blue polyester smocks and Made In China trinkets.

So yesterday's happy find was in the lunch meat section.  I had forgotten ricotta cheese, and remembered this when I hit the bakery section.  There is a correlation there:  bakery aisle=french bread=garlic bread=Italian food=ricotta cheese.  So I had to go all the way back to the dairy section which is at the back of the store.  As I meandered past the processed meats, my eyes were drawn to the bacon display.

In a fit of cleanliness yesterday, and fear for my family's health and safety, I cleaned out the refrigerator.  In the process, I threw out a package of bacon that had expired a month ago.  It was coated with slime and it looked like it was about to mutate into a really interesting sci fi creature.  My husband was irritated with me because he felt since it was vacuum sealed, it was safe to eat.  My fear was if we broke the seal, we would unleash an alien force upon an unsuspecting world and we would all be eaten alive by a mutant bacon monster.  We tend to disagree on issues like these.

So naturally, after having thrown out the antique bacon, I was looking to replace it.  When what to my wondering eyes should appear....a package of....are you ready for this??....are you sitting down??.....NASCAR BACON!!  Bestill my beating redneck heart, all my dreams have finally come true!!!!!!

I swear I am not making this up!  There, larger than life, was a package of Nascar bacon, with the Nascar logo, and it was $4.79 for the package!!  Now I understand about marketing tie-ins and all that jazz, but come on, you really mean to tell me people are going to pay top dollar for a package of bacon just because it has a picture of Dale Earnhardt on it??  I know folks are crazy about their racing and all, but this is taking the passion a little too far. 

I mean, we all loved Jr., and I am sure he was very manly and ate a lot of bacon, and his arteries were probably clogged all to hell when he hit that wall, but would he have drawn the line at bacon???  "Use my star power to sell cokes", he would say.  "Market me to the beer drinkers of the world.  Hell, I'll even sell a hamburger if I have to, but I draw the line at breakfast meats.  Jimmy Dean and Oscar Mayer are doing just fine without me, so just prop me up by the cooler display and leave me off the lunchmeat!!"

I am wondering if Nascar bacon has a different flavor?  Maybe they have taken some motor oil and mixed just a touch into the curing process to give it that authentic racetrack taste!  And no, I don't know what the curing process is, nor do I want to know.  The less I know about how my foods are commercially prepared, the better I sleep at night!

Anyway, after seeing the bacon, it made my whole trip to Wal Mart worthwhile and I was able to finish my shopping with joy in my heart!!  Now I think I am going to go make a sandwich with my Jeff Gordon Salami!!!

I don't know what it is about karaoke that tugs at my heart.  From the first moment I tried it, I was totally hooked.  For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a singer.  I used to fantasize about being on stage and belting out tunes while the audience went wild with adoration.  I knew I was going to be brilliant because I had such nice white teeth.  After all, in my adolescent mind, that was the number one requirement.  You can't be a singer with crooked brown teeth.

Alas, my voice did not cooperate with my dreams.  That is to say, I actually have no voice whatsoever.  I really think I may be tone deaf, although I am not quite sure what that means, which probably means I am definitely tone deaf!  I either sing too low or too high and I can't ever seem to find a happy medium in between.  The thyroid surgery didn't help, since they manipulated my vocal chords.  Well, at least that's what happened to Julie Andrews, so it can work for me too right??!!!

And so karaoke has become an outlet, a chance to fulfill my wildest fantasies, the ones that don't involve vats of Crisco oil and Chris Noth anyway!  There is something empowering about grabbing that microphone, closing your eyes, and belting out the words to a pop song while folks look on adoringly.  Or in my case, painfully!!

I usually like to start my set with Billy Joel's "Don't Go Changin'" because it's a crowd favorite and it's easy for me to sing.  No high notes!  If the crowd is still not sure, I move into something fun like "Margaritaville" or "Desperado" or something cheesy everyone knows all the words to.  It only takes a couple of songs and a couple of beers before people are fighting for a chance to come up and grab the mike.  Then I turn into the dj, telling them what songs are easy to sing and which ones to avoid at all costs.

For example, never ever try Celine Dion.  It's just not worth the subsequent humiliation.  No matter how drunk you are, you cannot match her soprano, not even in your own sodden mind.  There is no greater abomination than trying to hear someone sing "My heart Must Go On" in the throes of a margarita induced illusion of grandeur.  Kate and Leo would be fighting to drown first!!

Another mistake first timers make is Cher.  There is only one Cher and it ain't you.  So don't try to sing it.  And don't try "Me and Bobby McGee"; I have only heard one successful karaoke rendition of that and it was the exception not the rule.  Show tunes are absolutely forbidden, as are heavy metal songs. 

I tend to steer folks toward the fun and easy pop songs.  Anything by the Eagles is good; Hotel California is a perennial crowd favorite and always gets the crowd engaged.  The soundtrack from Grease is absolutely guaranteed to get people fired up, no matter how old everyone is.  From 8 to 80, people absolutely love to sing "Summer Lovin'" because it's just a fun song!

But when I am singing, it's all about the show.  Once I've done Billy Joel, I usually  move on to some pop songs.  As the crowd gets into it, I start getting silly.  One of my favorite songs to sing is "Up Where We Belong".  I like to sing both parts, Joe Cocker and Jennifer Whosit.  I do better with Joe, though, since I am blessed (cursed) with a very deep voice.  Sometimes I can get someone to duet with me; that's the best.

My absolute favorite though is "To All the Girls I've Loved".  Yes, it does make me sound like a lesbian crooning to my lost loves, but I do a mean Willie Nelson!!  And I am not bad with Julio either!  I wish I could sing them at the same time, so I could get Willie and Julio harmonizing, but even I'm not that good! 

I wish more than anything else that I could sing.  Unfortunately, God blessed me with blogging talents instead of singing talents.  When I try to sing, I usually just offend the cocker spaniels in the room and send even the hardiest of souls running for ear plugs.  But by God, karaoke has set me free and I will sing "Copacabana" for as long as I can grip the mike and read the words on the little tiny screen!! 

Little kids are so fascinated by their bowel movements.  I am sure I am not alone in observing this phenomenon.  When you think about how hard you work for a bowel movement sometimes, it's not hard to see why they take such pride in one.  And it is one thing you can truly say you created alone with your own body, a feat that generates great pride in small children. 

When Josh was little, he would observe the contents of the toilet and say musingly "I think it looks like a truck with a little tail and a dog sitting on it."  Or "Look Mommy, I think it's a stegosaurus...roar...roar..."  Even at that age, he was showing signs of creative genius.  Rorschak would be so proud.  What a personality!

Abby is very private, however.  My only memories are of her hiding behind the furniture to fill a diaper.  She was never one to move her bowels in the public eye.  The only time she publicly announced it was at age 2 1/2.  I was outside talking to a neighbor and she came running out of the house, naked from the waist down, screaming "I pooped in the potty!!!!"  Big news at that age!

So the other night, Anna was getting ready for bed and she went in to use the bathroom.  She came out a few minutes later and said "come look, I pooped a whole family."  I found this to be a very difficult statement to process; define whole family.  Were the Osbournes floating around in my toilet, with Ozzie looking up out of the bowl in befuddlement, wondering where the TV cameras were?

No, it turned out that the family was actually a whole group of poops, with two big ones and some smaller ones.  Aaaaah, now that makes sense.  There was a Daddy Poop, a Mommy Poop, and three little baby poops.  I am thinking I might be able to turn that into a children's book, Goldilocks and the Poop Family.  And it can be all about Anna and the relationship she develops with the family of poops she created.  "Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Anna.  She went to the bathroom and from out of her bottom came the poop family.  There was a Big Daddy Poop, A Sweet Mommy Poop, and three Little Baby Poops.  Anna was so surprised when the Daddy Poop spoke to her.  "What the hell did you do that for?" he asked her.  Anna's little eyes filled with tears."  Well, never mind, I will work on that as soon as I finish the bodice ripper!!

  Last night, she went to the bathroom and when she came out, I asked her if she had pooped a family and she looked at me like I was nuts.  "NO, that was last night," she told me in disgust.  "This is just two ball poopies."  Of course I had to look, I always have to look and sure enough, two ball poopies.  I guess she just calls 'em like she sees 'em!!

My friend Nancy told me there is a lady in Mountain Brook who gets paid to write her blog.  I am thinking with my current subject matter, someone may pay me not to write one!  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to head to the bathroom and tell Ozzie to move along!

Yesterday was not a bad day.  Until the children got home, that is.  I went with Wendi to her first radiation treatment and we went to lunch and had a lovely day.  Then the bus came.  Not only am I a proponent of year round school, I am a proponent of round the clock school.  Could they just keep them until bed time?

Well, it wouldn't have been so bad, but yesterday was a Holy Day of Obligation.  For those non Catholics out there, it's one of those days where you better go to Mass or else!  It was the feast of the Assumption of Mary.  This is the one where Mary is sucked up into heaven, quite unexpectedly, because she gave birth to our Savior.  It's one of those Catholic, not in the actual Bible but it sounds good kind, of celebrations.  I can see you cringing Margie!!!!

So I loaded up the kids and off we went to St. Mark the Evangel for the 6 pm mass.  I packed a bag of activities for Anna, thinking it would keep her busy during the mass, since Tim was not going to leave work to join me.  Heathen!!  Little did I know, it was not enough.

It started out well enough.  We walked in to the sounds of Hail Holy Queen, an old favorite of ours.  Unfortunately, there was no choreography to go with the music, but you know how stuffy catholics are!  Anna was happily exploring the bag of things to do and entertained herself right through the homily.

It was after the homily that things started to go downhill.  Many of you are familiar with Anna's demon heritage.  We suspect she actually may be Beezlebub disguised as an angelic seeming 5 year old, although we have never located the numbers 666 tatooed anywhere on her body.  But last night was one more proof that it is so.

As we stood, Anna wanted to be perched on the back of the pew in front of us.  I don't have a problem with that because she's too heavy to hold and it helps me keep her contained.  But last night, she decided it would be fun to lean backwards and bop her head up and down and all around.  Every time she leaned back, I'd pull her up.  She'd smirk at me and then drop back down.  Five minutes into the game, I am sweating and my back feels like I've been hauling pianoes all day.  So I moved her down to the kneeler.

She popped right back up and climbed onto the back of the pew.  I put her down.  She climbed back up.  I put her down.  She climbed back up.  By now, I was imagining how satisfying it would be to whack her on the head with the hymnal.  But I hissed at her "Stop it right now or I'll take you to the bathroom."  She smirked at me and kept going.

So I hauled her up and started to drag her out of the pew.  Only she resisted me, which made me madder.  By now, I did not care if I was accused of child abuse.  All I cared about was getting her out of that church so I could beat the demon out of her.  But of course, she resisted and hooked her feet around the kneeler, which just made me madder.  Josh and Abby were looking at me in terror, knowing that Anna was about to be Dead Girl Walking and they were telling her to let go and just go with me and get it over with.

I yanked her by the arm out of the pew and her shoe came off.  So all the way out of the church (and of course we had sat near the front) she yelled "I need my shoe...I want my shoe..."  I marched her straight to the bathroom and gave her fanny a couple of whacks and told her we would stand there until she could be quiet.

As soon as we left the bathroom, she made a beeline for the doors leading to the sanctuary.  I grabbed her and told her no, we would wait until she calmed down.  Then she started screaming, so I had to pull her over to a corner and tell her to stop.  Then she made a beeline for the steps leading to the choir loft and I had to grab her and yank her down.  She was completely out of control.

By now, day of obligation or not, I was completely sorry I had ever gone to church.  Mary is a mother and I am sure she understands there are times when you just cannot make it to church.  Not that I think Jesus threw tantrums of this magnitude, but I am sure there were other kids in Nazareth that maybe weren't quite as well behaved as the lord.  Surely Mary has seen it all!

I finally manhandled the Bad Seed out of the church and we stood in the parking lot for several minutes, with me doing Lamaze breathing and trying to quell my murderous thoughts.  When we had both sufficiently cooled down, we went back into the narthex.  And damn, if that little demon didn't run straight into the sanctuary before I could stop her.  At this point, I was really, really afraid I was going to do something bad.  I opened the door and there she was, making her way back to our pew, determined to get her shoe!

Communion was actually still going on, so I got in the back of the line and went up to take Communion with murder in my heart.  I looked at the crucifix over the altar and asked Jesus to forgive my desire to murder my youngest offspring as I received the Eucharist.  Then I headed straight for the pew and told Josh and Abby we were leaving now.  Anna was nowhere to be seen.

We headed out the door and there she was, in the back of the narthex, smirking at me.  I told her she better get over to me right now or she was getting left behind and I stalked right out, not caring if she was behind me or not.  We got into the car, she started telling me she was not going to buckle herself into her seat.  "Fine," I snarled, "maybe the police will pull us over and take you away from me!!"  Dr. Spock 101!!

At this writing, Anna is still alive, whole, and unblemished.  However, she is grounded from playing with anyone for the rest of the week!!!

I have come up with a new excuse for my excessive goofing off....I am going to label it as "Alzheimer's Prevention".  You may be aware extensive studies have shown that people who exercise their brains regularly have a lower incidence of Alzheimer's.  These exercises include crossword puzzles, computer games and reading.  So I have devised a new program to ensure my mental capabilities for many years to come.

I start my day by sitting at the computer for two hours, playing Pogo.  Pogo is my favorite gaming site and it has every kind of game you could ever want to play.  Right now, I am hooked on jigsaw detective, where you solve 80 piece puzzles in order to solve a bigger riddle.  I mean come on, this is mental exercise equivalent to three hours of tae bo!!  I would much rather kick mental ass than physical!!  Plus, it increases hand eye coordination and develops patience, something I am sorely lacking!

After I can no longer use my hands, I move on to the newspaper.  First, I read the celebrity bits, followed by the society pages and then the comics.  If I have time, I read the headlines, but I usually have to work that in during the course of the day.  After I hit the highlights, it's time for the crossword!

The great thing about the Birmingham News is that there are two crossword puzzles:  one in the comics section and one in the classified section.  I switch back and forth between them until I am done.  I also do the jumble, but that only takes me, like 30 seconds, so I don't really count that as mental exercise.  I am ok at crosswords.  It depends on which one it is.  The ones with the three part quotations are brutal.  You usually have to fill in quite a bit before you can work out the quote.  You can imagine how taxing it is on my brain.

By this time, my brain is reeling from it's mental workout, so I usually turn on the Weather Channel to see where the latest hurricane/tsunami/tornado is heading.  I might fold some clothes if my hands aren't too worn out from typing; it depends on what games I have played on Pogo for the day.

After my break, it's back to Pogo for the card games. I love Canasta and Spades is pretty good, if you get a decent partner.  I usually try to put in at least another hour, because the more I stimulate the brain, the better.  I am actually building brain cell density, which will protect me against the losses aging can inflict.  It's similar to the effect weight training has on bone mass:  the more you train, the greater the mass.  Needless to say, my brain is completely massive at this point.

If it's Friday, I usually have to work in time for a People magazine session.  People comes to my house on Fridays and it is the highlight of my day. How stimulating it is to discover what Brangelina is up to (those cheeky monkeys!) or to see what Paris Hilton wears to do the grocery shopping.  Heady stuff, the kind of issues that swell your brain to astronomical proportions.  I highly recommend it!

So the next time you call me and I tell you I'm on the computer, you will know I am just following my APE program...Alzheimer's Prevention Exercises!