It seems my penchant for getting song lyrics wrong has somehow infused into the genetics of Squirrel #1. Who says you need biology to pass on craziness?
Case in point was Eli singing along to Husband's Atlanta CD.
The song is supposed to go:
"Singing sweet country music
Breathing clean mountain air."
Eli's version? "Singing SWEEEEET crunchy music..."
I've had some doozies myself. I though Guns N Roses' "Take me down to a Paradise City" was "Take me down to a very nice city" and Go West's "King of Wishful Thinking" was "King I've Wished For, Baby". Or even Elvis Presley's "Memories" was "Mammaries...pressed between the pages of my mind" I didn't quite get how breasts could be pressed in your mind but who was I to question the King of Rock and Roll?
But perhaps the cake topper was thinking the Spin Doctor's "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" was "Cinnamon Carefree Gum". Go ahead..."Cinnamon, Cinnamon, Cinnamon Carefree Gum"...you can see where I could think that.
No?
Oh well. Perhaps it's time for some ear wax removal.
Family
Friday, May 28, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Advice to a New Father of What NOT to Do
I come by funny honestly. It runs all through my family and outlaws are no exception. Take Exhibit 1, which was in an email that one of my brother-in-laws (who shall remain nameless since I didn't ask his permission to reprint this) gave to my only brother Jeff as Jeff anticipated the soon-to-be-happening delivery of his first child.
"Some advice to Jeff on what not to do when your wife is in labor. I may have a friend of a friend of a relative who may have done these things:
1) Watch professional wrestling (early labor is boring).
2) Eat cheeseburgers in front of your wife who can only have ice chips (early labor is boring and a man gets hungry).
3) Complain that the recliner you are in is uncomfortable (not a good idea).
4) Buy a morning paper, eat breakfast, sit on the can, and chit chat with co-workers while they overhead page you in your deaf ear and wait for your wife to push until you get back to the room (that last stage went so fast).
Anyway, you have my prayers, God is in control, birth is truly a miracle, and fatherhood is awesome!"
By the way, William Jefferson (named after my dad and Jeff, not Bill Clinton, as some would think) arrived at 11:48 today, weighing in at 9 lbs. 4 oz. and measuring 22 inches. He already has lots of chubbers so we know for sure he belongs to our lineage. Only hope the neurosis that plagues us all skips a generation. If not, he'll be added to the rest of us who are heavily medicated for your safety.
"Some advice to Jeff on what not to do when your wife is in labor. I may have a friend of a friend of a relative who may have done these things:
1) Watch professional wrestling (early labor is boring).
2) Eat cheeseburgers in front of your wife who can only have ice chips (early labor is boring and a man gets hungry).
3) Complain that the recliner you are in is uncomfortable (not a good idea).
4) Buy a morning paper, eat breakfast, sit on the can, and chit chat with co-workers while they overhead page you in your deaf ear and wait for your wife to push until you get back to the room (that last stage went so fast).
Anyway, you have my prayers, God is in control, birth is truly a miracle, and fatherhood is awesome!"
By the way, William Jefferson (named after my dad and Jeff, not Bill Clinton, as some would think) arrived at 11:48 today, weighing in at 9 lbs. 4 oz. and measuring 22 inches. He already has lots of chubbers so we know for sure he belongs to our lineage. Only hope the neurosis that plagues us all skips a generation. If not, he'll be added to the rest of us who are heavily medicated for your safety.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
You Might Belong to Farmer Bill If...
SPOILER ALERT: This post will probably only be funny to my six zany sisters and my equally nutty brother but alas, after reading through a forwarded email my sister Beth received entitled "You May Be a Farmer's Wife If...", I figured I'd do my own adaptation as an ode to my Pops - The One and Only "Farmer Bill"
You Might Belong to Farmer Bill If:
1. You walked thousands of miles of soybeans all while trying to wear the least amount of clothes possible so you could work on your tan...and wound up with a doozy of a summer sock tan nonetheless.
2. You watched Farmer Bill fall asleep in his chair in the evening with his "Hog Farmer Today" magazine. When you would wake him up and tell him he ought to go to bed, he'd snort awake, turn a page in his magazine, vow he wasn't sleeping, he was just "resting his eyes" and promptly fall back asleep.
3. You swallowed a bug at max velocity while you were riding in the bed of the pickup truck pretending you were Kate Winslet in "Titanic".
4. Your date nights ended with a goodnight kiss accompanied by the smell of hog manure if the westerly winds were just right.
5. Your make out sessions with boyfriends were interrupted by the "tink" of pitchfork tines on the car window and your dad lowering his voice six octaves to let your date know it was time to "call it a night".
6. Your dad's wardrobe consists of items all labeled with seed corn company logos.
7. You hurriedly whispered to your dad at the side of the 4-H Hog Show ring to point out your show hog since you hadn't bothered to work with the hog all summer long. And you should have known which one was yours because, as a former confinement hog, it went bucking into the ring, circled several times, and promptly pooped on the judge's shoe.
8. You learned to drive stick shift by barreling down field waterways in the black Ford pickup truck.
9. Anyone seeing you in your designer suit and high heels at the company board meeting would be shocked to learn you can double fist vaccination syringes and "process" (code word for remove the manhood from the boy piglets) hogs. And how you are tempted to repeat the procedure on the horses patoot in the meeting who keeps using words like "synergy" and "win-win situation".
10. You know the difference between a gilt, a sow, a boar, and a barrow.
11. The maddest you ever saw your dad was when he was sorting hogs. But somehow, the worse thing he called the infernal creatures was "shyster".
12. You tried to pressure wash your sibling at close range to see if the epidermis could really be removed, and were rewarded with a howl and a lingering red mark on your sibling's appendage.
13. You know that a "honey wagon" does not really haul honey.
14. You joined FFA because the guy-to-girl odds were CLEARLY in your favor...and you faked your way through lots of "Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE)" projects to keep from having your cover blown.
15. You watched your dad's steely determination to outbid everyone in the room for you at an FFA Labor Auction as your mom was wildly flapping her arms and making throat cutting motions (evidently because of the fear that dad would end up bankrupt against the Powerful Neighboring Farmer if he didn't stop bidding). PS Dad - I would have worked for you for free.
16. You put on your "feety pajamas" after your bath, then went cross country skiing on carpet and tried to build up enough static electricity to shock your dad by touching his arm.
17. Your dad still has permanent divots in his shoulder from where your chin rested as he sat on the floor by your bed and read from "The Picture Bible" every night.
18. You know how to make "hospital corners" on your top bed sheets because of Dad's military experience.
19. The jingling of pliers still reminds you of the only forewarning we got that Dad was heading up the stairs to lift us out of bed by one ankle and swat us for snickering and playing around when we should have been going to sleep.
20. You still remember the stories he told about "Middie and Shaddie" and the hapless bear that was repeatedly bitten in the rump.
Happy Father's Day, Farmer Bill!
You Might Belong to Farmer Bill If:
1. You walked thousands of miles of soybeans all while trying to wear the least amount of clothes possible so you could work on your tan...and wound up with a doozy of a summer sock tan nonetheless.
2. You watched Farmer Bill fall asleep in his chair in the evening with his "Hog Farmer Today" magazine. When you would wake him up and tell him he ought to go to bed, he'd snort awake, turn a page in his magazine, vow he wasn't sleeping, he was just "resting his eyes" and promptly fall back asleep.
3. You swallowed a bug at max velocity while you were riding in the bed of the pickup truck pretending you were Kate Winslet in "Titanic".
4. Your date nights ended with a goodnight kiss accompanied by the smell of hog manure if the westerly winds were just right.
5. Your make out sessions with boyfriends were interrupted by the "tink" of pitchfork tines on the car window and your dad lowering his voice six octaves to let your date know it was time to "call it a night".
6. Your dad's wardrobe consists of items all labeled with seed corn company logos.
7. You hurriedly whispered to your dad at the side of the 4-H Hog Show ring to point out your show hog since you hadn't bothered to work with the hog all summer long. And you should have known which one was yours because, as a former confinement hog, it went bucking into the ring, circled several times, and promptly pooped on the judge's shoe.
8. You learned to drive stick shift by barreling down field waterways in the black Ford pickup truck.
9. Anyone seeing you in your designer suit and high heels at the company board meeting would be shocked to learn you can double fist vaccination syringes and "process" (code word for remove the manhood from the boy piglets) hogs. And how you are tempted to repeat the procedure on the horses patoot in the meeting who keeps using words like "synergy" and "win-win situation".
10. You know the difference between a gilt, a sow, a boar, and a barrow.
11. The maddest you ever saw your dad was when he was sorting hogs. But somehow, the worse thing he called the infernal creatures was "shyster".
12. You tried to pressure wash your sibling at close range to see if the epidermis could really be removed, and were rewarded with a howl and a lingering red mark on your sibling's appendage.
13. You know that a "honey wagon" does not really haul honey.
14. You joined FFA because the guy-to-girl odds were CLEARLY in your favor...and you faked your way through lots of "Supervised Agriculture Experience (SAE)" projects to keep from having your cover blown.
15. You watched your dad's steely determination to outbid everyone in the room for you at an FFA Labor Auction as your mom was wildly flapping her arms and making throat cutting motions (evidently because of the fear that dad would end up bankrupt against the Powerful Neighboring Farmer if he didn't stop bidding). PS Dad - I would have worked for you for free.
16. You put on your "feety pajamas" after your bath, then went cross country skiing on carpet and tried to build up enough static electricity to shock your dad by touching his arm.
17. Your dad still has permanent divots in his shoulder from where your chin rested as he sat on the floor by your bed and read from "The Picture Bible" every night.
18. You know how to make "hospital corners" on your top bed sheets because of Dad's military experience.
19. The jingling of pliers still reminds you of the only forewarning we got that Dad was heading up the stairs to lift us out of bed by one ankle and swat us for snickering and playing around when we should have been going to sleep.
20. You still remember the stories he told about "Middie and Shaddie" and the hapless bear that was repeatedly bitten in the rump.
Happy Father's Day, Farmer Bill!
Friday, May 7, 2010
Google Search Saves Me From Hiring a R.S.O.
Here is the lastest from my endless hunt to find a good candidate for an opening in the company I co-own...
I posted an ad on a local help wanted website. I get an applicant with a very good resume...had been a vice president of a company doing work in a similar field. I set up an initial phone conversation which goes really well. I am slightly surprised to find that he had been laid off from his previous company but alas, it's the economy, right?
I get ready to schedule a phone interview with the two other business owners and, out of curiousity, Google the candidate's name. I started this practice after I Googled a previous candidate and a hit came up referencing a rape/murder by someone of the same name. Turns out it was a distant cousin with the same first and last name but a different middle name. Sometimes I find out about previous bankruptcies or Facebook pages.
Well, this particular candidate, whom I will call "Matthew Small" so he can't find that I blogged about this, had a hit on his name referencing an arrest on suspicion of child solicitation. Evidently a Matthew Small had yelled very crude comments out the window of his minivan to a 14-year-old girl. I won't repeat the comments but suffice it to say, it involved him wanting to do something with a part of her female anatomy that is named after a cat.
He has a fairly common last name so I look up the size of the town he is in to find out if it's possible that there are multiple people of that same name. The town size is 596 people. This is not looking good. I do another Google search using additional search terms and find that he was indeed convicted of child solicitation and lost the appeal.
I do an inmate search in the state prison records (this is all free to search online) and find he spent 5 months, 27 days in prison. I use Switchboard.com to confirm there are only two Matthew Smalls in the town...a Matthew C. Small and a Matthew J. Small. And the C. one is 96.
This is not looking good. I am not sure of our candidate's middle name so I now do a search on the registered sex offender website. And there is a mug shot of a 40-year-old man in a business suit with a very morose expression.
Finally, I look up his professional licensing and lo and behold, it has his middle name of J. and the same email address as the one he used to email me.
I shudder to think I nearly interviewed and hired a registered sex offender. Naturally he was not forthcoming in his interview. I train the new reps all by myself. Can we all give a "hallelujah" for God? And Google.
I posted an ad on a local help wanted website. I get an applicant with a very good resume...had been a vice president of a company doing work in a similar field. I set up an initial phone conversation which goes really well. I am slightly surprised to find that he had been laid off from his previous company but alas, it's the economy, right?
I get ready to schedule a phone interview with the two other business owners and, out of curiousity, Google the candidate's name. I started this practice after I Googled a previous candidate and a hit came up referencing a rape/murder by someone of the same name. Turns out it was a distant cousin with the same first and last name but a different middle name. Sometimes I find out about previous bankruptcies or Facebook pages.
Well, this particular candidate, whom I will call "Matthew Small" so he can't find that I blogged about this, had a hit on his name referencing an arrest on suspicion of child solicitation. Evidently a Matthew Small had yelled very crude comments out the window of his minivan to a 14-year-old girl. I won't repeat the comments but suffice it to say, it involved him wanting to do something with a part of her female anatomy that is named after a cat.
He has a fairly common last name so I look up the size of the town he is in to find out if it's possible that there are multiple people of that same name. The town size is 596 people. This is not looking good. I do another Google search using additional search terms and find that he was indeed convicted of child solicitation and lost the appeal.
I do an inmate search in the state prison records (this is all free to search online) and find he spent 5 months, 27 days in prison. I use Switchboard.com to confirm there are only two Matthew Smalls in the town...a Matthew C. Small and a Matthew J. Small. And the C. one is 96.
This is not looking good. I am not sure of our candidate's middle name so I now do a search on the registered sex offender website. And there is a mug shot of a 40-year-old man in a business suit with a very morose expression.
Finally, I look up his professional licensing and lo and behold, it has his middle name of J. and the same email address as the one he used to email me.
I shudder to think I nearly interviewed and hired a registered sex offender. Naturally he was not forthcoming in his interview. I train the new reps all by myself. Can we all give a "hallelujah" for God? And Google.
Racing for Hooter "Cancel"
I had a surreal conversation with the Squirrels tonight on the eve of the local Susan G. Komen "Race for the Cure" event to raise awareness and support for breast cancer research. The women on the outlaw side of my family all run or walk each year and normally Mama F takes everyone out for breakfast afterwards (a major incentive). This year, Mama F took a tumble and is recovering from a hip replacement so we are sans a matriarch this year.
Before all this transpired, I decided, since I was finally back in the area, I would join the family team and bring along the Squirrels (walking, of course. I don't run unless I am being chased by a knife-wielding man). About three weeks ago our racing tags and t-shirts came in the mail.
Tonight, I set everything out in preparation for tomorrow. The girls asked what "Breast Cancel" was. I explained that it was when you get lumps in your breasts and the lumps need to be cut out and sometimes the whole breast has to be cut off. This led to Kate's eyes widening and asking, "How do they cut them off?"
Rather than go into the whole scalpel issue, I very tenderly (ha!) told her, "They lop them off with a knife."
Eli looks at me skeptically and says, "I sure hope they put you to sleep for that."
I assure her they do to which Kate asks what being "put to sleep means". I tell her it's when the doctor gives you some really good drugs so you don't have to feel the hurt.
Kate then asks how you get a new breast back. I realize this conversation is probably going to be repeated verbatim at an inopportune time, like at Kindergarten story hour, so I have a brief moment where I think it's probably time to stop talking but alas...I delve into explaining silicone implants to a five-year-old. I tell her that they are kind of like squishy balls that get put behind the skin.
She brightens, "I have a squishy ball! I keep it at school to squeeze so I don't fiddle with things at my desk." (a teacher-inspired aid to curb the ADHD).
I assure her that "stress balls" probably aren't what doctors use. Although I am sure there are plenty of men who would place hooters in that same category.
Before all this transpired, I decided, since I was finally back in the area, I would join the family team and bring along the Squirrels (walking, of course. I don't run unless I am being chased by a knife-wielding man). About three weeks ago our racing tags and t-shirts came in the mail.
Tonight, I set everything out in preparation for tomorrow. The girls asked what "Breast Cancel" was. I explained that it was when you get lumps in your breasts and the lumps need to be cut out and sometimes the whole breast has to be cut off. This led to Kate's eyes widening and asking, "How do they cut them off?"
Rather than go into the whole scalpel issue, I very tenderly (ha!) told her, "They lop them off with a knife."
Eli looks at me skeptically and says, "I sure hope they put you to sleep for that."
I assure her they do to which Kate asks what being "put to sleep means". I tell her it's when the doctor gives you some really good drugs so you don't have to feel the hurt.
Kate then asks how you get a new breast back. I realize this conversation is probably going to be repeated verbatim at an inopportune time, like at Kindergarten story hour, so I have a brief moment where I think it's probably time to stop talking but alas...I delve into explaining silicone implants to a five-year-old. I tell her that they are kind of like squishy balls that get put behind the skin.
She brightens, "I have a squishy ball! I keep it at school to squeeze so I don't fiddle with things at my desk." (a teacher-inspired aid to curb the ADHD).
I assure her that "stress balls" probably aren't what doctors use. Although I am sure there are plenty of men who would place hooters in that same category.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Declaring War on the Wattle
Nothing inspires weight loss like seeing a really bad photo of yourself. The latest was a picture from the church picnic taken of my profile when I was busy trying to get two Squirrels to eat more than just their cookies before running off to play (and coming back five minutes later declaring they were STARVING and needing a SNACK). I discovered that I had developed a WATTLE! YIKES! What is a wattle? The clinical definition is "a fleshy growth hanging from the neck of certain animals". Well, this "certain animal" is mortified to have what amounts to a double chin (I am the one in the aqua long-sleeved shirt...it doesn't help that I am sitting by Mister Buff Man of the Universe named Josh and his delightfully cute Down-to-Her-Pre-Pregnancy-Weight wife named Jill).
Granted, I knew I was no longer my high school size 6 self. I finally gave up that illusion when I moved down south (to the land of fried foods and sweet tea) and the pair of Levi 501 jeans I had kept from high school no longer made it up past my thighs (despite my efforts to unhinge my hips and wiggle in...much to the amusement of Husband). I slowly crept up into double digit dress sizes and told myself that I would begin exercising tomorrow...
But truth be told, I absolutely hate all forms of exercise. I lose hearing in one ear and start feeling asthmatic when I run, I biked across Iowa and only lost three pounds (See "Post Traumatic Butt Disorder" post), and yoga and belly dancing, while fun, aren't real calorie burners.
But seeing the wattle in the picture has put me on the war path! Between that and knowing that there will be vacation pictures posted of me with the F family out at the Outer Banks (think brain scarring pictures of me in swim wear), I am motivated to at least walk a few miles each day.
And maybe...just maybe...someday I may even be motivated to actually change the weight on my driver's license to match somewhere closer than the 30 lbs off my current weight (which is what is currently recorded on my driver's license). Unless I have soaring success and get down to that weight again. FAT CHANCE!
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