Aselin

As I've shared before, I have a really hard time turning down food. You can trust me in most other areas, but if you have a plate of cookies lying around, a crudite platter nearby or an unattended cheeseburger - well, you've been warned.

Last week, as I was finishing up my teaching duties at the local elementary school, I'm winding my way out of the building through the office. I have my own classroom, so to return the key I must go into a makeshift copy room where the key vault is situated. This copy room has all the modern necessities, copy machine, coffee maker, microwave, tanning bed. OK, not a tanning bed, but there are a lot of appliances that have nothing to do with copying packed into this little room.

There's no one in the office so I let myself in, hang up my key, and as I'm turning to leave something catches my eye... LEMON BARS!!! I poke my head out into the office and there's still no one there. My heart begins to beat a little faster as I behold their lemony goodness. Anyone with good taste knows that lemon is the best flavor of a dessert, and The Bar holds a particular place on my dessert pedestal.

A flood of thoughts go into my mind. There is already one bar gone, so another wouldn't be missed. These are set out in the public domain, and have no requisite "Hands Off" sign to keep miscreants away. I have spent a number of hours doing good and probably in all my goodness, actually deserve a lemon bar.

The first time I checked the office I was looking for someone who might give me permission to sample a bar. The second time I checked I was making sure the coast was clear. Swiping a bar I turn to make my escape when the door swings open perfectly timed with the insertion of the bar into my salivating mouth. Panicked, I stuff the whole thing in take a quick chew and smile at the attendance officer who I don't know by name, as I make my way into the parking lot.

OH MY HECK!!! This thing is not a lemon bar. In fact, I don't think it was food at all. Stuffed to the molars with some bizarre unidentifiable slime I look for somewhere to spit it out when the smiling principal rounds the corner. Wide eyed, I wave and pretend I'm in a rush to get somewhere. Actually I was trying not to vomit at the front door of the school. People frown on that sort of behavior.

The glob in my mouth has the consistency of tapioca pudding mixed with raw egg. It has kernels of corn in it. Maybe green chilies - but that could have been a backwash of bile induced by the noxious slop I was trying to hold without the herd of PTA ladies headed my way. They're waving at me, calling to me, I'm dry heaving and waving back.

Classy.

I jump in my car and scramble around with no success for a napkin to deposit the putrid wad. I decide I'll pull a block away from the school and spit the glop out the window. Waving to the PTA I peel out, kernels of corn and raw egg slime start seeping out of the corner of my mouth.

I'm not sure there is an "appropriate" place to spit, but I find an area less likely to be encountered by a jogger and move to discharge what has now broken down into a sort of mushy blob. I realize I don't have the skill or power to launch sufficient distance, I have no napkin, so I spit the ooze into my palm, intending to throw the thing away from my moving vehicle. Just as my arm swings wide, the orb looses form and breaks up into slimy chunks. Some of which do not make it out of my freshly washed van.

Using my finger I try and pick sticky chunks of corn from the open window bay. I'm pretty sure I got most of them, and use my sleeve to finish polishing off the evidence of my crime.

What had promised to be a beautiful, lemony moment had turned into some sort of Candid Camera skit. I'm sure I'm caught on surveillance and the staff is laughing hysterically at the trap they set for me. Fortunately, my offense is limited to a sphere where the rest of my family will not find out.

Driving my daughter home from school later that day, I roll up my window. A long, smelly, corny ooze smears a long stripe up the glass.

My consequences have been long, and painful.

I can not turn down food. An invitation to lunch would make me drop everything and leave in the middle of surgery, if I were a surgeon of course.

So imagine my delight when I get a spontaneous text from a friend inviting me to lunch. With glee, I eschew the glamor that is my daily life and peel out in the driveway to eat, I mean meet my friend.

Lunch was delicious, as food is wont to be, and the conversation was delightful. Having the usual pressing items on my list, I ignore them and suggest a pedicure. (This is why I have no productive friends).

I have a particular salon I have come to favor. Their polish lasts an unusually long time making the amortization of the investment more prudent. The sign above the salon is a catchy slogan like "Nails Only." We enter the establishment and are immediately intoxicated from the fumes of productivity. I settle in to the massage chair and start to flip through People magazine. My sister in sloth settles in for a manicure. Half way through my treatment she heads to the back room where they wax eyebrows. Every nail salon waxes eyebrows. Apparently it's not something that requires a lot of skill, but I certainly can't do it myself, so it's worth the investment.

Behind the curtain she disappears. I'm engrossed in Jon and Kate's divorce proceedings when I hear a muffled "Aaouw" from the waxing stall, I mean room. I look at the patron next to me and smile and awkward toothy grin. She nods trying to reassure me it was a one-time odd noise. Moments later we hear it again. It sounds distinctly like someone is being poked with a safety pin while being smothered with a pillow. My reassuring buddy now looks a little afraid.

I'm not sure what to do. My feet are submerged, the massage chair is mid-cycle, but that is my friend in there. "I-i-iiiii" comes from behind the curtain. As I am wrestling with what to do, (don't take me to an emergency) the curtain from the stall parts and my pedicurist emerges.

Without a word, she sits down and with a flourish, finishes my feet. I ask her if everything is OK, to which she nods yes and runs back to the stall. I shrug, and resume reading the upcoming roster for "Dancing with the Stars." "Eeeee-oof" What the heck is going on in there?

I have now been sitting a good fifteen minutes, unattended. No further noises have emerged from the stall so either my friend has expired or everything is going better. A few minutes later she emerges, looking just fine. We pay, chat as we return to my car and slide in to the plush minivan seats. The second her door shuts she yells "WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT?"

Shocked, I have no idea. My pedicure was fantastic. In fact this episode was three weeks ago and it still looks wonderful.

She then reveals that she asked for a bikini wax. The bikini wax is a tricky endeavor. Those parts are delicate, and quite frankly, I wouldn't trust mine to just anyone. My deeply wounded friend reveals that the first rips didn't go so well, and the few hairs that were removed didn't satisfy the technician who decided to tweeze the remaining ones. P-u-l-eeze. Even if you've never had a bikini wax you can figure out that you don't tweeze down there.

As I sit stunned, listening to her tale of beauty torture, I can't figure out who I blame: my pedicurist who had no business attempting a bikini wax having only mastered the eyebrow level at beauty school. Or my friend. The sign is VERY clear, this is a NAIL salon. Just like I'm not going to my podiatrist for a root canal, I'm pretty sure even my limited intelligence would have done a little wax reconnaissance before I stripped down and acquiesced to this scheme.

She clearly holds me partially accountable for her mishap. I did suggest the salon. Well, yes, I did for NAILS. I read the signs. I believe the signs, and I have avoided any scars to prove otherwise.

Life at my house is nothing but excitement and blue-ribbon parenting.

As I have discussed earlier. Hubby (Grrr) encouraged and enabled our children to purchase a bearded dragon. He tries to deny it now that the thing has blown up in our faces a couple of times, but since our children cannot yet drive, and most of their purchases were made at Petsmart, without a consenting driver they could not have accomplished their evil plan.

So "Jimmy" is here. Before he arrived I was all, "I'm not doing ANYTHING with this @#$# new pet." Now I find myself watering the dumb thing, feeding the dumb thing and buying crickets for the dumb thing. Aaaah motherhood.

Buying crickets for Jimmy is quite the ordeal. Fortunately, the cheapest purveyor of crickets is close to our house. I have formed a friendship with the owner of the store, so when I come in, she invites me in to the back room to chat while she counts out twenty dozen crickets at ten cents a piece.

The back room of a pet store would make Alice Cooper scream. The first time I entered the room the stench was unbelievable. There was a rooster, two dogs, tanks of worms and all sorts of ick. There are rows and rows of cages where all kinds of rodents breed willy-nilly. I think rodents can be cute until I realized that these rodents were not intended to BE pets they are intended to FEED pets. This explains the many happy snakes in the shop.

Of course there are also three large metal trash cans that hold the three sizes of crickets for sale. Small - like a tic-tac, medium - like an almond and large - like a prune. The trash cans are too tall for the crickets to escape - theoretically, but I still get the heebie jeebies trying to have a casual conversation back in the lair.

Each week I walk out of the store having paid for a bagful of vermin I pay my exterminator to keep out of my house. It goes against every fiber of my being. (Grrr)

After a number of weeks the proprietor mentions that I can order crickets by the thousand. They come delivered and cost about what I was paying for a few hundred. Sounds great!

I'm driving home with the box of 1,000 crickets in my passenger seat. Stopped at a light I get the creepies when I realize the strange sound is a thousand crickets crawling all over each other writhing in the box of cricket creepiness. It was an eerie sound Hitchcock must have used because I haven't felt that creeped out since color movies were released.

Now that the crickets are home I realize they must be transferred to the "cricket keeper" so they can be fed and kept alive. How does one transfer a thousand crickets from box to container? All I know is that 1. This is definitely NOT my job and 2. This will only be done in the closed shower of the guest bath.

Child #1 was in charge of the endeavor. After closing her in, like an episode of Fear Factor, she attempts to open the box. Next thing I know all heck broke loose. There was screaming and dancing and pounding on the walls, glass and ceiling. Hubby was shouting, children were shrieking - yelling, "they're in my pants! they're in my pa-ants!" Hubby is yelling that the door of the shower is going to be broken if everyone doesn't calm down.

"Take off your pants!" I yell from the other room, 'cause you'll remember, I don't do anything with this bearded dragon.
"I don't have any underwear on!" comes the hysterical reply.
I'm giggling, but the struggle going on in the other room is getting pretty serious.

Finally extracating her from the enclosure hysteria is still in full swing. Screaming, kicking, hitting the wall - it was a full on panic attack. Hubby is calmly restraining the Tasmanian Devil when I come in to see what the heck is going on. Kid #2 is still in the shower trying to catch loose crickets in their hands while Kid #1 has lost all sense of control. I reach for them when I get whacked in the face and kicked in the shin.

Now, what happens next will be left to your imagination. I will give you some suggestive tidbits to spur you along. What would the "Mother of the Year" do with her writhing panic-stricken child? Well, I didn't do that. You know in old movies what they do with a hysterical woman? Even women who think they have crickets in their pants? Yeah, well I may or may not have done that.

Needless to say, calm was restored rather quickly after my gentle nature prevailed. Dad and kid #2 caught the rest of the crickets and got them into the enclosure. None of the crickets escaped the bathroom, so it is safe for you to come visit.

I can't wait until our second shipment arrives.

It has been brought to my attention that my last post was less than uplifting. So in the spirit of not being Debbie Downer I would like to share some positive things about having a slipped jaw disc.

1. Despite yesterday's decline in the Dow, I am singlehandedly increasing Advil stock.

2. I no longer have to attempt to eat those pesky cruciferous foods.

3. Wearing a nifty mouth guard makes people notice me.

4. It is not corn on the cob season.

5. I can finally store a wad of chewing tobacco in my cheek without people noticing.

6. This episode is helping me achieve that svelte physique I've always wanted.

7. Lhaso Apsos have been flirting with me.

8. When I sneeze I gross my kids out.

9. Over the phone people mistake me for Barney Frank.

See, this is much more fun than I intimated in my last post.

Thank you to everyone who has missed me lately. I am so grateful I even have readers at all!

I will get back to normal soon, but for the time being I have done something terrible to my jaw. I can't open my mouth completely - which many people are thrilled about, and I can't close my mouth enough to get my teeth to touch - which makes it hard to chew.

My doctor says it will get better; I have to believe him. For now, any creative thoughts I have are clouded by quite a bit of pain. While I no longer look like I am storing nuts for the winter, I am slowly starving to death. (Dramatic sigh).

For example, tonight my darling unnamed child #1 made dinner. She made a fabulous Jambalaya which I normally would have gobbled like a rabid dog. At the table, against better judgement, I was trying in vain to chew a carrot between my front teeth. This is a skill one would think takes little coordination. One would be wrong. The small surface area between my four front teeth make for a tricky balancing spot. Looking like an over-sized squirrel, carrot kept springing from my mouth, requiring me to hold up a napkin like a drop cloth in order to catch orange projectile bits and corral them to my plate. Let's just say any comedy found in the skit was lost as I gasped and winced any time I overextended my jaw. (Dramatic sigh)

I do have things to chronicle: our trip to DC. Our attempts to get in to the White House. Marvin the tour guide. A rash of lost pets in our area. Oranges and poop. Boughten candy. Doggie day care... but the titles are all that come as I attempt to remain still, attempting to stave off the pain.

So thank you all who have missed me. I miss you too, but my mind is an Advil numbed vacuum. (Double dramatic sigh)

As long as I can remember I have been plagued with an overactive brain. I don't have ADD, but I do have a terrible time turning off my brain at night. As soon as my head hits the pillow my brain snaps into action planning tomorrow, making lists, figuring out world peace treaties - you know, really important late night stuff.

This malady is partially how this blog came into being. Prior to this venue being opened up to me I just filed these musings away, where they probably should be still, but alas, here they are.

Usually a bout of writing puts me right to sleep - as I suspect my writing does for many people.

I was fortunate enough to spend this past week in our nation's capital. One of the blessings of travel is that for me, if done right, I am so spent at the end of the day I actually fall asleep rather quickly. Such was the case in D.C. Waking at dawn to get three kids and hubby ready for the excursion of the day, figuring out public transportation, walking 78 miles before lunch, and sitting rapt during the "Monuments at Night" tour which lasted until 11:30 p.m. only to do it all again the next day made for great beddie bye time for me. I loved it.

The nightly throbbing foot pain and stinging chapped hands from being over sanitized were no match for my exhaustion.

Curled up one lovely Tuesday night at the Embassy Suites I was happily slumbering away when the nemesis I thought I had left at home struck. 3:a.m. and the fire alarm goes off. I admit I lay in bed WAAAY too long having a loud discussion in my head "I don't smell smoke," "It's probably on another floor" "I'm not wearing 'outside' clothes" "#@%# fire alarm"

I finally decided I should at least try and save the kids so I bundled up, remembered (somehow) to grab a my key and herded my incoherent children down the stairwell to the blaring shriek of the alarm and the three fire trucks pulling up outside the building. I was looking for an adventurous vacation, but this was not what I had in mind.

We assembled our little family among all the other displaced patrons in their jammies and began to wait. One of the many reasons I dislike groups of people is the lack of leadership that always seems to accompany them. There we sat, having no idea what was going on, milling around in the street like zombies for long after the fire trucks had aborted the mission. One of the other patrons told us it was OK to return to our rooms. This duty should have been performed by a uniformed staff member, but hey, there was a leadership vacuum and I appreciated whoever got sucked into it. At 3 a.m. I am likely to follow pretty much anyone.

Nestled back in our beds it took a good hour for the adrenaline to dissipate from my blood stream. The brain was active and workin', much to my dismay. Morning came all too soon.

I learned something new about my overactive night brain during this experience: night brain is amazing at holding grudges. Retribution must be had. Vengeance should be mine! I spent the next morning giving the stink eye to any patron I passed who looked like they were stupid enough to have pulled the fire alarm at 3 a.m. Charges should be filed. Seriously.

Night brain is still mad as I sit here - in the early morning hours of tomorrow, cursing the prankster and realizing that in D.C. right now it is 5 a.m. I hope Karma kept them up too.

I run with a bunch of delinquents. Those among us that you shake your head at in the grocery lines, the post office, you know - shameful people who really aren't safe to be among the general population.

This week I spent time with a couple of friends who separately shared their recent run-ins with the law. My personal goal is to stay far under the radar - literally. I try not to be noticed. I don't drive a red car. I shield my face in the bank line. When I see "photo enforcement zone" signs I look over my shoulder, despite my speed. I like anonymity from the law.

Not these ladies.

After a particularly stressful day, friend #1 asks her hubby to join her in picking up their children. Like most Neanderthal Y-chromosome carriers, he didn't get why it required two people to drive a few blocks and he declined her invitation. Stupid man. Justified in all her emotions of abandonment, lack of support and whatever drama us girls can come up with she jumped behind the wheel of her souped up minivan.

Souped up because like most of our minivans, if you scraped the stuff off the back seats and floor there are enough discarded ingredients to make a nice minestrone.

Peeling out of her suburban driveway she's headed the few blocks to her destination when her phone starts to ring. Trying to reach for it (which of course is her husband's fault) she stops abruptly (screechingly) at a stop sign. Coupled with a little erratic driving, which was clearly her husband's fault, post stop she caught the attention of the law. Sirens blaring she was pulled over.

Like most innocent people, she couldn't figure out why she was stopped. After speaking with the fine officer she was informed he thought she was drunk.

Yep. Drunk on love. Dang Mormon drunkards.

My second friend e-mails me this morning a story of her legal troubles. After three photo radar tickets in a short period of time, she realized she had a problem and did what any self-respecting American would do, she went to court.

Entering the vestibule of justice, she approached an man who seemed to have some authority and asked if she should sign in. "I don't know, I'm just here" he said.

A couple of minutes later the judge walks in and asks the same man what he is there for and he says a name strikingly similar to my friend's name. Looks at my friend who gives her name, and then another man who responds with a name that starts with... let's say for anonymity's sake "Q" Because it starts with the same letter as her name, she realizes that they must group these hearings alphabetically, which makes sense to a left-brained delinquent.

Being the one of the friendlier criminals, my friend leans over to the man and asks "Is your name "Q" too?

Without missing a beat, the man looks at her as if she is a complete idiot and replies, "Lady, I'm your arresting officer."

Friends, they live among us and they drive!!!

Oh, drunk friend #1 got off with a warning and the card of a marriage counselor. Friend #2 lost her case and went to traffic school. Both have been infraction free for a few weeks now.