Contest

For the past few days, I’ve been going through old photos. Not old, so much as neglected. You know the ones, the hundreds of digital photos that are stored on your hard drive that you email out once (if ever) to the grandparents, and then forget about? Yeah, those.

So anyway, I used this HP Photo Book where you simply drop your digital pictures in a program, select a design, and then the little scrapbook fairies that live in the computer (they’ve got paisley wings and their wands are pinking shears) arrange them into amazing memory books. I added text, and Voila! Jessica’s baby book was complete! While she is still a baby!

This coming from a woman who has never printed a digital photo in her life.

So Matty came in and obviously impressed with my unprecedented creativity asked, “Where’s mine?”

Since he’s only seven, his baby book still isn’t complete. So then I made a Matty book. And so all things are equal, Stevie and Amy books, too. I took photos from photographers, other family members, my phone…What I didn’t have stored on a computer, I scanned. I put them all in these seamless pages that looked as though we’ve been followed by particularly creative paparazzi our whole lives.

And it only took me 4 minutes.

No, it probably took a little longer, but not much since you know I don’t have much time these days.

So I thought I’d offer up a contest of sorts.

The first person to identify these people in this photo wins a Photo Book (a blank one for you to fill, not of my children of course!)



A winner for who can tell me what happened to the dog in this picture:



And still yet another winner for the cleverest caption for this:


Post your comments here and we’ll judge shortly. I’ll even throw in a copy of my book, so start getting creative!

(P.S. The kind folks at HP have offered a 20% off coupon for the Photo Book which will be available starting next week!)

Some Interesting things I've learned this week:

1. The mere suggestion of a clean shirt and matching shirt to a seven year old means that I'm "trying to be the worst mom in the world again."

2. Pine nuts are aphrodisiacs. (No, not personal research but an informative waitress last night.)

3. I need a hair cut. No, a real one. I passed a mirror yesterday and thought, Who let that basset hound in the house? I need serious length taken off, and I'm considering going short.

4. Some of my best ideas come on the treadmill at the gym. There's a happy little bonus. And my clothes fit better, too.

5. We eat really well at restaurants when we don't have the kids with us. But spend 8 times as much.

6. I am really nervous for Amy's hearing appointment on Monday. And I don't know why.

7. Every once in a while, some of the things in my scattered world actually come together into a happy circumstance.

Research

I don't normally do must research when I write column except for some basic spell checks, but since I am smack dab in a dry spell of suburban wisdom, I decided to put a call out to my diva posse.

I should have done this years ago, because you crazy ho's are cracking me up with your replies. Thank you--your comments are being compiled into the cistern of my brain.

This shouldn't be surprising coming from the crew that chose these colors at the pedicureallooza on Saturday: Katharine the Great, Midnight in Moscow, and An Affair in Red Square.

Slavic whores.

*My apologies for the hapless soul who just Googled slavic+whore and found an aging, overwhelmed mom talking about nail polish.

Yabba Dabba Do!

Oh, in a couple of hours I am going to slide down a brontosaurus' back, punch my card in that dodo bird's beak, and end this week of the nebulous work that I do. Pucker up, Wilma, I'm hoomee!!

It's a party tonight, Matty's first baseball game in the morning. Pedicure/beer with the girls, Lightning game, then a Buc's vs. Rams game on Sunday.

And an $18k babysitting tab Sunday night.

Brain iPod

You know how everyday you've got some sort of life soundtrack playing in your head? Today mine was skipping on an annoying Scritti Politti chorus.

Not that it was a bad day, but it was just one filled with B-tracks and long live versions of self-ingratiating guitar riffs.

So I'm ending it now with a good book hoping that tomorrow will be a little bit more in tune...

G'night.

We're outta milk

Well, I didn't make it to Publix last night. Now the kids are going to have to put orange juice or heavy cream in the cereal for another day.

No, instead after the obligatory Target run for posterboard for a school project, I criss-crossed two counties in order to find some bar in which to meet my husband and some old friends. And instead of spreading out construction paper shapes across the table and gluing them to recently-purchased posterboard to help me in my quest to catch my breath, we littered the table with huge burgers and copious bottles of Miller Lite while watching amateur boxing.

Yeah, amateur boxing. Not really on my agenda for the next 40 years, but what can you do? And, I will deny this later so don't bring it up, but it was a good time.

However, now I can fit a wallet in those hot pants with nary a seam.

Still on the inhale

I am stretched so thin right now that I should fit into a size .5 pair of hot pants.

Please join me in my daily afternoon rain dance so we don't have to lug them all to batting practice. I need my Tuesday night.

And not even to do anything selfishly fun--just to run to Publix for milk.

Hapy Birthday to...lot of folks

We celebrated some birthdays last week amongst the Diva posse..



Unbeknownst to me, it is possible to celebrate birthdays at restaurants without ball pits.



So in between reading the remaining 800 pages for the book review that was due two days ago, we had a little fun.

Pep talk to myself

Take a deep breath and focus. If you are smart enough to figure out that Amy has been yelling "Underdog is here!" rather than "What the hell?" then you can figure this little puzzle out.

Friday Minutiae only fit for conversations in my head, and my blog

It's Friday? How did that happen?

It's been a busy week. But the kind of busy that's pleasing. As I've been exercising my thighs on a regular basis, I've also had all of these little happy projects that have exercised my mind as well. So it's all good.

On this Friday, I will wrap up the gajillion things I didn't complete before. I only have 300 pages to read for the review that's due tomorrow...but before that, I will report on the idiocy of the title:

1) Why do they call it an open house if it not a house, nor particularly open?

2) I don't know if it was a freak occurance or the cosmos colliding, but Rod Stewart was on 6 channels simultaneously on Sirius radio yesterday at 3:14 p.m.

3) I need a new desk.

4) At this month's meeting of the absurd, I found myself embroiled in the controversy of their own making. I formed opinions that I had to keep in check. I followed up long after I turned the story in. I actually cared about the election, and was genuinely shocked at the results. I am an idiot.

5) With a few rogue exceptions, I hate most of my neighbors. But this week we got a Halloween invitation from one, and another one (practical strangers) knocked on my door yesterday to check on me because I had left the back of the car open with groceries in there. (I took out all of the perishables and then either got busy with something else or knew perfectly well there was more out there but too lazy to retrieve it.) I was shocked at the random act of kindness and concern. But touched.

6) If I do nothing else this weened, I will find the correct smoke detector with the low battery and then shove the phone up the ass of the operator at ADT that calls at 2 a.m. to tell me all about it. As if the constant beeping wasn't enough of an alert.

7)At the gym, the crunch machine on the right is considerably more difficult than the one on the left despite no weight on either. I will be the unplanned blonde on the left if you need me today.

Jumble

I am currently trying to escape the wing fluttering of the biggest dragonfly I have ever seen caught in my bedroom. It's like a pterodactyl, and it's giving me the heebie jeebies. This will probably take me two hours to write since I have to keep running for cover...

And now life can begin again because it's football season, and if you know me at all, you know I loves me the football. And when football season starts, that only means that hockey is right behind, and if you know me at all, you know I love hockey even more than I love football. And speaking of hockey, we went to a nice banquet on Saturday featuring some stars of the sport which we were only going to stay for 10 minutes, and ended up there for 7 hours. I'm not kidding. It was so late when we left that all of the lights were out the tablecloths stripped. Nothing was open for dinner and I was STARVING, so we ended up spending all kinds of cash at The Palm when really, after 6 pitchers of beer, A Grand Slam breakfast at Denny's for $4.99 would have worked out just fine. But that's really not us.

This morning I took Amy to the ear doctor. Sigh. She really is doing so well, but she has to work so hard. So now we have to go through another big hearing evaluation at a different hospital in a couple of weeks. I hope they can give her the push she needs to just get over this last plateau. Last night, for the first time EVER she said, "Love you, Ma. Love you, Da," and I swear, nothing could have sounded more beautiful in the entire world.

On screen rather than in front of one

Lately I've been running in some pretty funny circles.

Which would probably be more like squiggly ellipses than actual circles, but I digress....

My usual interviews take place over a paper cup of Starbuck's latte with an ordinary member of the community, and somehow I have to twist and turn 900 words to make a compelling story. Readers usually give up on word 4, and flip to the veterinarian's ad with a coupon for deworming.

Well, not last night, my friends.

Last night, over a smoky neon glow and a few bottles of Miller Lite at a cramped little table at a Tampa comedy club, I got a fabulous treat and a challenge. A treat to meet 3 Blonde Moms, and a challenge to hold the cold nachos down, and to interview these hilarious women on camera.

That whole "on camera" thing is new.

But fun! I think I held my own pretty well, and I had great hair so my measures of success have bravely been met.




Check them out some time if you get the opportunity, or watch for the interview on Newbaby soon!

Wanna see our acting debut?

I am so going to get an Emmy nod for this.

Weekend Update with SubDiva

It was a weekend of withs and withouts...

Without hair dryer and straightener. I decided my hair needed to rough it, too.

With electricity, plumbing and a coffee maker. If you are going to camp, do it at Disney in a 32' R.V.

Without bugs. I think Disney banned them.

With transportation. Part of the time, anyway. We were one of the families benefiting from Disney's new promotion of granting a million dreams or something. They randomly select people to receive something cool. Ours was a hummer golf cart on the busiest weekend of the year in which every wheeled vehicle was long sold out. We drove around like rock stars for a day, and then got entered into a drawing for a million bucks. If we win, we might be able to buy one of those golf cart for ourselves...

Without T.V. For 5 days. And none of us missed it. The iPhone even ran out of juice and I didn't care that I couldn't recharge it. No Internet. No email. Heaven.

With sore muscles. I carried those girls for 5 days straight and I am feeling every step today. I have bruises and a sunburn, but I still worked out last night. (I'm pretty proud of this, so you're going to hear about it a lot.)

Without pictures. Temporarily, that is. I can't get the memory card in or you'd be seeing Amy with Mickey Mouse and the boys making s'mores.

With friends. Got to sit around a campfire and a pool with some of them. Nice.

Without much patience for many of my fellow humans who seem to choose amusement parks as their stage for bad manners.

With an almost potty-trained toddler!

With a smile on my face because if doctors ordered those types of things anymore, then this weekend would have been one of them.