Tell It To COACHIE

So, we’re moving again, which means preparing for the move, which in my OCD profile means that I must lay hands on absolutely everything that we own. On the one hand, we moved less than 2 years ago and we had a big de-crappifying yard sale, so we’re not totally swimming in excess junk. On the other hand, we moved less than 2 years ago, and apparently my brain needs a lot longer than that to recover between moves. I am so mentally exhausted from doing stuff like this:

Dear teachers, dentists, firefighters, doctors, librarians, nutritionists, police dogs, etc.,
Please just give my kids candy. My mother keeps them in pencils.
love, Shannon

The guest/toy room is always the worst. At first I was glad there were 2 closets in there, because I could close them and hide the mess. Unfortunately, 22 months of closing them and hiding the mess eventually has to end. After 3 days, I’ve come up with this:

And this:

I did not match up Barbie’s shoes. I am making progress!?

The food is up high to protect it from bears. Actually the food is up high to protect it from kiddies, so that I don’t end up with sad little toys like this:

I can’t find 2 plastic cookies or the other half of this velcro broccoli. I don’t know which is sadder, the fact that I know what plastic food is missing or the amount of energy I have expended trying to find it.

Of course if the kiddies can’t reach the food, they are more than willing to occupy their time pulling out other random things like this:

Yes, we must get a good look at Mommy’s college classmates before we can possibly get ready for school. I have come to the conclusion that as I lay my hands on everything we own, I leave behind a magical sparkly aura that induces my kiddies to come along behind me and then attempt to lay their hands on everything we own.

Case in point: the other day my neighbor called and asked me to let her dog out. I jotted down the location of their spare key on a post-it on the desk. The next day I sat down at the desk and noticed my note, which said “deer head in shed” and had 3 marker swirls at the bottom. I thought it would make a funny little post, about how I’m leaving cryptic little notes to myself and how every scrap of paper in the house has marker swirls on it because I’m testing every marker I find before clearing it for the move.

This morning I went to take a picture of the note, and it is gone. So is the pack of post-its. Why could they possibly need my “deer head in shed” post-it? I think maybe I’ll e-mail Alberto Gonzales to see if it is legal to keep your children handcuffed while at home.

The other major problem these days? Let’s see if you can guess. What do these items have in common?

They are all things that the ants who invaded our house over spring break did not infiltrate. All other cereal, crackers, candy, etc. - in the trash.

Of course, I always try to have as little food as possible in the house when moving day arrives, so I must admit that the ants are being more helpful than the children. We’ve had the exterminator out here twice, but still the ants reappear.

Now I must return to the sorting before the little varmints return. Any of them.

A month or so ago, while strolling on the treadmill and watching Bravo, I saw a show called “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover.” For those of you who are not my sister Erin, Tabatha was on a Project Runway type hair cutting show called “Shear Genius,” and apparently did not win, but somehow her performance got her this new show where she goes into struggling hair salons and fixes them. I’m lying when I say I saw a show - it was a marathon, and it was so addictive I spent the whole morning lecturing myself about how I should turn off the TV and then explaining to myself how I was drying my hair or eating breakfast or tying my shoes anyway, so technically I was multitasking and TV was allowed. It is a fascinating show in many ways, but unfortunately the most interesting thing is how disgustingly filthy even high end salons can be. Ew. When I went to get my haircut this week, I did a surreptitious once over of the salon, and only saw one cobweb. I’m hoping that was the worst to be found.

In December I took the girls to get haircuts from the same woman who cut my hair. I had taken them to Walmart previously, because, well, see any post from the past 19 months regarding life in Missouri, but in December they told me that they wanted to get their haircut somewhere where there were “pretty people.” Yikes. They are really not that judgmental; it is true that the Walmart hair place is not a showroom for the well-toned or well-dressed. So I took them 45 miles away in an ice storm (is Crystal Gale trying to tell me something?) to have their hair done by my 19-year-old, skinny, tan, blond, dentally perfect stylist. She gave Aislinn a super choppy bob and blew Lauren’s hair out straight (after which I think Lauren was trying to find out if the stylist could adopt her, or at least come live with us and straighten her hair every day) and they couldn’t have been more pleased. This stylist, of course, has disappeared.

The girls have not had a haircut since December, and their social lives prevented them from accompanying me on the harrowing 97-mile haircut sojourn on Saturday. I was going to wait until we got back east at spring break and take them to my mom’s salon which also has pretty people in it. I even let them take their class pictures all shaggy. But unfortunately for them, tomorrow they have a field trip to the state capital for “Gifted Student Day” and it’s possible that they may be meeting with the governor. If they are meeting with the governor, it is possible that someone will take their picture (or not want to take their picture if their hair is totally out of control and in their eyes), so after school today, after explaining that they might even be on TV, I made them suck it up and head to Walmart.

Oh my goodness. It is a very cramped little hair cutting place, and I was so glad that we didn’t have to wait, that I didn’t even look around much until the cutting was underway. Once I did look around, I was sorry. Their was hair color splattered all over the floor and the walls. The walls? I can see how it might end up on the floor, but the walls? Really? As each haircut was finished, the haircutter would push the hair to a corner of the room with a broom, but I’m not sure when someone last gathered up said hair and disposed of it. There was a shopping cart in the back full of white plastic bags, which you might think were full of purchases, but were actually full of trash. It was nasty, and a little surprising because our entire Walmart (except for the hair cut place) has been renovated, rearranged and painted. We will not be returning.

From Walmart we made our way to McDonald’s because we are red-blooded Americans, dammit! Actually, it was McTeacher night where the teachers from the kids’ school work behind the counter and the school gets a cut of the cash for four hours. There were some teachers, some parents, and a lot of McD’s people working there, but apparently no one was assigned to sweep the floor or clean off tables or perform any of those magical chores that make McD’s tolerable (although they were on top of the trash). Miraculously and luckily, we did not have to brave the bathrooms.

Now I am home, in my own semi-clean house, where the main problem is that the ants are done with their long winter’s nap and keep showing up on the countertop. There is no food out, we keep killing the scout ants that come up looking for food, so I don’t understand why they keep coming. But I killed them all this morning, and so far I haven’t seen any more. Unfortunately, about an hour ago, I accidentally put a plastic bag of brown sugar down on a still hot burner (CURSE YOU ELECTRIC STOVE!!!). Now my kitchen smells like a maple syrup factory. Something tells me a new front may open in the ant wars tomorrow.

Today about 2:30 we got an automated call from the girls’ school.  The automated calling system is new, and the few times it has been used, it has always brought boring information - the type I usually hang up on before I hear the message is finished.  Today’s message was a little more interesting:

“Hi, I’m Blah Blah, principal of Blah Blah Elementary.  We are contacting the families of all of our students who walk home from school.  Due to the spotting of an injured coyote on the walking trails today, the district will provide transportation home for all walkers.”

At least I know that if we can somehow stay uneated for the next 48-hours,  we will be safe on Sunday and Monday in St. Louis.  Then what?

Everybody has those dreams where something that is going on in real life is incorporated into the dream. Once many years ago, I had a dream that I was standing near a canal in Bethany Beach, and as I stepped down onto the dock, a crab pinched my big toe. I woke with a start to find my preschool aged sister standing at the foot of my bed with a big smile on her face, grabbing my toes. Given the soccer player that I was in those days, she’s lucky that I didn’t accidentally kick her baby teeth out when she startled me awake. Another time I dreamt* that I was standing in line waiting to sharpen my pencil when someone stabbed me in the back with an already sharpened pencil. When I woke up I found that I had rolled onto a straight pin in my bed (I was a bit of a slob back then, but really HealthTex, did you need to put 15 pins in every shirt that you sold? There were always way too many pins floating around in my bedroom.)

Last week I had a dream that I was at a family picnic, and we were all gathered around the picnic table when someone handed me a brown paper lunch bag and told me there was a dead turkey chick inside (why turkey? I don’t know – I don’t think I even know what a turkey chick looks like). For whatever reason, I stuck my hand in to pull it out, and the chick clamped onto my finger with its teeny little turkey chick feet and wouldn’t let go. When I pulled it out of the bag, it was a bright yellow fur ball, with googly eyes and plastic feet – kind of like this

but faker and crazier looking. However, in the dream it was very much alive and squeezing the crap out of my finger. I thought that it was clamped onto my index finger, but when I awoke, my pinkie was really sore. Now, a week later, my pinkie is still sore and stiff, but I don’t know why.

In theory, the injury may have occurred while I was sleeping. I do occasionally sleep with my hand hanging off the bed, so maybe I pinched it in a corner of my headboard, or maybe one of our kiddies squashed it into the bedrail while sneaking into our bed. Then again, maybe I hurt it during the day, but I didn’t really feel it until I was asleep. It could have been a housekeeping injury (stop laughing) brought on by excessive sweeping in my attempt to keep our house free from ants and mice. Maybe I just hurt it while rushing around attempting to get things done in my typical graceless manner.

But what if rather than a pinch or a bang, I was injured by a mysterious bite?  Given the recent story of the boy who was bitten by a bat and never knew it and ended up dying of rabies, I felt I had to investigate the possibility that some rabid creature could have snuck into my bedroom, bit me, and then fled from the house undetected. So far, I have not noticed any little puncture marks in my finger, but I still need to fish out one of the kiddies’ magnifying glasses and take a closer look. I checked under the bed and did not find any animals in their death throes (or healthy ones either thank goodness). I’m starting to think I’’m in the clear, but I don’t think I can rest easy until the pinkie recovers.

* I had to stop and look that word up. It doesn’t look right does it? But it is.

This is the new grill I got for the HP for Christmas. I realize that it is not a very impressive sight on a bleak winter day with it’s grill cover on backwards. Actually, I think it looks a little bit like ET when he was dressed up in his Halloween costume. Anyway, under that grill cover is a rather large, expensive (and worth every penny) grill that has unfailingly turned out wonderful food this past month.

The HP loves his grill. Most nights, regardless of the weather forecast, even if he has spent hours drooling and snoring on the couch, he gets up and puts the grill cover back on before he goes to bed to protect our investment and our future dinners.

You may notice some fluffy white stuff on the left side of the grill. No, it’s not snow, it’s this:

The lining of the grill cover, torn open and pulled out by God’s dumbest animal. Of course, these holes are not enough, the rodents have split the seam at the top too. We are supposedly getting snow, sleet, and freezing rain today, so it is not a great day to have a rip in the grill cover. I may go out there later and attempt to patch it with some duct tape, but first I need to have a few drinks to steel my immune system against squirrel cooties.

When I was an enterprising desperate college student selling souvenirs at the base of the Lincoln Memorial years ago, I would always see foreign tourists pointing and laughing at the squirrels scrabbling around, as if squirrels were somehow cute and unusual. I wish I had asked some of those tourists where they were from, so I could move there and be free of these pests.