Night Magnification

If a good night's sleep and sweet dreams can be attributed to a benign entity such as the Sandman, then a night of insomnia must be brought on by a mean kid burning insects on the sidewalk with a magnifying glass.
First, the Sandman. How benign can he be if he puts sand in your eyes to make you sleep? I mean I've had days when it just FELT like there was sand in my eyes and it was not a happy experience. If you even have a speck of something it hurts like crazy. How would sand feel? I'm thinking maybe he's not such a good guy afterall.
Now, the mean kid with the magnifying glass. I compare it to that because night time makes everything so much worse and so ridiculously real? Do you know how many times I have lain in my bed awake, thinking horrible thoughts?
Oh no! My kid is at a party. What if they have a beer, get pulled over on the way home, get a DUI, get arrested, get kicked out of school and lose their job? What if their entire future is ruined because they had a beer?
The night your child is 15 minutes late and you lie there thinking, "Oh my gosh--what if they've been in a car accident. They are probably injured or dead on the side of the road. They may be paralyzed. My child will be wheelchair bound, eating from a straw for the rest of his/her life. She/he may suffer traumatic brain injury and be a vegetable.
Or the picture of a crumpled car on the side of the highway with the EMS using the jaws of life to extricate your kid from the vehicle. Holding their intestines in their hands. Picking up limbs from the raod.
The best part of night fears are the sound of the door opening when they finally arrive home. The blessed relief. The surge of anger for the worry they just inadvertently put you through. The sweet, "Mama, I'm home."
Finally, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.

Trivia Overload

I have read somewhere that everything you see, hear or learn is stored somewhere in your brain, it is just a matter of retrieving it. For that reason, I have always pictured the brain as being some sort of closet. Some things you can reach in your closet with ease while others require searching and dislodging other articles to find. Apparently the entire front section of my "closet" is dedicated to worthless trivia no one ever needed to know, but which I can retrieve at a moment's notice. Other things are buried in the far recesses of my closet, apparently having been boarded up and carpeted over...these are things like algebraic formulas, western civilization and any kind of geography.
Falling out of my closet every time I open the door are things like all the songs of School House Rock, the names of cartoon characters, the theme songs of shows I have never even seen and the names of actors from movies I have never viewed.
Unfortunately, this spills over into other aspects of my life. I have found recently that while I apparently suck at remembering faces, I have a knack for remembering weird trivia about people. My daughter is constantly comparing me tosome kind of weird stalker because I will meet someone or see them and after they tell me their name, facts just start coming to mind. "Oh yeah, Jane Smith, you have six kids and were in labor for 32 hours with the second one. Your mother's maiden name is Jones and she has asthma." I mean this may be a woman I wouldn't recognize if she came to my door, but all of a sudden I remember everything she ever told me even if it was just in passing. Sadly, I also apparently creep people out because while may not even have met them, I may know things like their accomplishments because of working for the local paper. That's why if a teenager waits on me at a restaurant and read their name tag, I think to myself, I that's Bobbi Sue. She is the daughter of so and so and plans to attend USA University. She enjoys biology and art and wants to get a degree in ... whatever. You get the idea. I guess that's the weird stalker part.
It seems like there should be something constructive I could do with this talent. I have to admit, though, I have no idea what it would be. Maybe I should just slam my closet door shut so I can't see what's in it. That's what I do to the real closets in my house and it works for me there, so...why not?

Van Hater

I guess I will start with an apoology to those readers who drive a van. While I'm sure you are perfectly responsible, nice, caring person while on foot, a bicycle, in the grocery store, riding a unicycle, on an airplace, in a boat or just generally anywhere other than driving your van, once you get behind the wheel of your precious minivan, you become my enemy.
There is something about minivans that lead the driver to believe they are the only vehicle on the road. I have seen semis change lanes and accelerate when they see a minivan entering the highway they are on. I can hear the driver's thoughts now: (Oh dear Lord, it's a soccer mom in a minivan! Take me far, far away to keep me safe and so I will live to see my family another day.)
My daughter and I have often discussed how much we despise vans. She used to work at a fast food drive-in and would constantly tell about the vans who drove in with 16 kids piled up in the back. Me, I really don't care how many people are in the van. I just want the van parked at YOUR house.
I used to think minivans accidentally ran you off the road because the visibility was bad in those particular vehicles. Now, I think something evil lurks in one or more of the parts that assemble the contraption. This evil leads the driver to believe thay can merge onto a highway regardless of how much traffic is already on it. The evil tells the driver it can change lanes without using a blinker and the car next to the van can move OR ELSE. The evil tells the driver he/she can read their mail while driving because it (the van) will do the driving for them.
Now, I understand there's lots of room for hauling kids, equipment, car seats, bicycles, furniture, small houses, etc. I also understand sometimes you need a vehicle to haul these things and/or people. I just want to encourage you to resist the evil. Resist the urge to turn around in your seat when you hear a French fry drop. Resist the urge to push other vehicles off the road. Resist the urge to text on your phone, dress your child, put on your socks or do your laundry while driving the evil beast! Go home! Park the evil minivan and get a posturepedic bed and never leave your room!

Posturpedic

First, I want to say, I absolutely love my bed. My husband and I decided to invest our stimulus check in a good night's sleep, so we bought a memory foam mattress and the posturepedic bed that has the adjustable head and feet as well as a massage feature for those days that just, well...suck. When your back is aching or your feet are throbbing, there is nothing better than climbing in your posturepedic bed, perhaps elevating your head and feet a little, watching some tv and feeling the vibration move along your back and legs. (I love it so much, I now go to bed at 5:30 when I get off at 5 p.m. I walk in the door, say hello and go put on my jammies.) It is so wonderful, when we were shopping, my son fell asleep on one of the show room mattresses. When we woke him up to leave, he had to wipe the drool off his chin and flip the pillow over!
But of course, that is if you are in the bed alone.
Unfortuantely, my husband suffers with restless leg syndrome. He likes to have his feet elevated at a 90 degree angle. This is a problem when you are sleeping on your side and your feet suddenly are lifted skyward and you are bending in the middle in a direction your body is not intended to bend. Another annoying scenario is when you come home from work at 2 a.m., after spending 16 hours at work. You're tired, frustrated, and your feet hurt. All you've looked forward to for the last five hours has been going home and climbing into the heaven that is your bed.
You get home and BOTH the feet and head are elevated at 90 degree angles. There lying sideways like the stuffing in a taco, is your husband. Sound asleep. Snoring loudly. On the one hand you think, "Poor baby, he must have had a hard time getting to sleep." Then the real side rears its ugly head and you yell, "Are you kidding me??? Where am I supposed to sleep?" Of course the bed now has a remote which is nowhere to be found. It is probably wedged firmly under the buttocks of your snoozing husband. This where authors of horror stories come up with their diabolical plot twists. Horrible means of torture keep coming to mind, many of which involve placing large objects in small orifices, such as shoving a 2 x 4 up the left snoring nostril.
Another question, why is that when women can't sleep, we just lie there and worry about stupid things. When men can't sleep, no one sleeps. Any ideas?

Long time, no blog

It's been a long time since I've had a chance to sit down and blog. I had a wonderful weekend visiting my darling cousin in Missouri. I went with my best friends (my sisters), and we all had a blast! We spent most of the trip cracking each other up. It was considerably quieter on the way home, as we were worn out and all had sore butts from the six hour drive.
When I came home, I was excited to see my little boy home on vacation. Okay, my little boy is almost a foot taller than me and is in reality a grown man, but he is still MY little boy! I can still see past the facial hair at the toddler face that used to be.
I feel so blessed to have all my little chicks back in their nest!
My guys went camping/fishing while I was in MO. They both came home sunburned. My little red haired boy looked like a lobster in spite of having applied sunscreen. My husband, usually not prone to sunburns, has a very peculiar pattern on his back where the boy apparently was either drunk, distracted or uninterested in putting sunscreen on his dad's back.
My sisters and I talked on the way home about camping/fishing and decided we would rather have buzzards pecking our eyeballs out while we lay naked and on display before having to suffer the torture of sleeping in a tent with mosquitoes eating our flesh (and probaly leaving behind West Nile virus), the sun burning our flesh and the water pruning our flesh. (Hey, no matter how much flesh you have, you still want it to be in one piece, unless you have bugs trained to perform liposuction!) We also hate sleeping on the ground, listening to the chirp of those annoying crickets, the sounds of wildlife and just generally, the outdoors. I want to sleep in an environmetally controlled room, on a posturepedic bed with afan blowing on me all night long. Is that too much to ask?? I think not.
When they found out they had no actual campsite, Husband suggested they throw their sleeping bags on the ground and just sleep wherever. Apparently my fellas have differing ideas as to what "camping" and "fishing" are. Husband came home surprised the boy wasn't a major outdoorsman. (??? Does he know the boy at all?) "Boy kept saying he went fishing with his buddies all the time and they went on a float trip. I figured he was into camping and fishing."
The husband thinks of camping as a time when you sleep under the stars and commune with nature. The boy thinks of camping as sleeping in a three-room tent doused with bug spray. (Come on, I did contribute some DNA to him!! Quite a lot actually.) Needless to say, Boy was not open to the idea of either sleeping under the stars with the hum of mosquitoes on the lake to lull him to sleep, nor sleeping in the pontoon chairs purchased for the fishing. "I really didn't want to drown in my sleep," he said.
As for fishing, the husband wants to actually catch fish and perhaps cook 'em up. The boy thinks of fishing as a time to sit outside, consume beer and and BS with buddies or his pops.
As for me, roughing it is spending time at the cabin with no central air. I love the cabin. I get to spend quality time with my sisters, mom and the Captain. We hang out and play games, BS, vent, snack and drink. Can you have a better time? I think not.