Just So You're Not Shocked When the News Breaks

I've always had a PCH... pretend celebrity husband.  He's my freebie.   The one who if I meet at Albertson's while buying groceries, I can run away with, no questions asked, and Big Daddy will understand.

I think he's okay with this, because he thinks it will never happen, or maybe he's just ready to pass me off to the next poor, unsuspecting schmuck.

It might never happen, but it could.

Sooner than he thinks, actually.

My long-standing PCH is Robert Downey, Jr.   I fell in love with him in a movie called "Only You."   If you haven't seen it, do.    He plays this amazing guy who's in love with this girl, and she's in love with him, actually she's in love with his name. Then she changes her mind, so he has to win her.    It's filmed in Italy and has some breathtaking scenery.  Just see it.  It'll make you smile.   And even if it doesn't you get to look at this...

Yummy.   I don't think he'd have a hard time winning me.   He's funny. He's smart.  He has those huge brown, puppy dog eyes, and a slight naughty boy air, all wrapped up in that pretty package.  Don't tell Big Daddy, but his resemblance to Robert Downey, Jr., is the main reason one of the reasons I keep him around.


At different times, my PCH has also been Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs.

Because you just have to love a man who can keep his sense of humor while dealing with crap.  And who sings opera for fun.


I also have been pretend married to Desmond from LOST.   Yes, I realize his real name is Henry Ian Cusick.   He'll always be Desmond from LOST to me, though.

He has this crazy accent and brown puppy dog eyes like my original crush, Robert, or as he likes for me to call him, Sweetie-Pie, Honey Face, Kissy-Kissy.  Yes it's a long pet name, but it works for us.

Don't judge.

Where was I?  Oh that's right.  Me and my Pretend Celebrity Polygamy.

Right..... So,  Desmond from Lost.   If you've ever seen an interview with him, you know he's also crazy smart. Crazy.  Smart. Not crazy and smart.  There is a difference.  An important one.   He speaks like a gazillion languages and has done a ton of Shakespearean plays, even working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which is the crem de la crem of Shakespearean companies, as you hoity-toity people know.  

My latest PCH, however, is this guy right here.

Mr. Adam Levine.   It's not just that he's a rock star who writes catchy lyrics that just beg for me to respond to them.  

Tap on my window. Knock on my door  I wanna make you feel beautiful.

You do??   I wanna feel beautiful!   It's fate!

Don't mind spending every day 

Out on your corner in the pouring rain

Look for the girl with the broken smile 

Ask her if she wants to stay awhile

And she will be loved

You want to repair my broken smile?  You are so committed to making me feel loved, you'll stalk me in the rain?   Ok, Adam.  If you feel you must, okay. 

When it's cold outside and you got nobody to love 

You'll understand what I mean when I say 

There's no way we're gonna give up

You're committed to our PCM (Pretend Celebrity Marriage)  like I am?  Whew, what a relief.  I'll even overlook the fact that you used got in a sentence.  

He's also loyal to his fans.  He's funny.  He loves his pets.   What girl can resist a guy who loves animals? He had a dog that recently passed away and was heartbroken.   I could help him get over that grief.    

Because you see,  Maroon 5 will be on the Today Show on Friday for their summer concert series, and I'll be right there in the Today Show Plaza. I'll be easy to recognize.  I'll be the mom who will be stock-still, like a deer in the headlights caught in the  presence of  amazingness.  I'll be the one with the stupid expression on my face as I make googly eyes at my PCH.   And while I will  also be in the presence of my RLH  (that would be my real life husband) and chaperoning 25 middle school and high school students on their first ever trip to New York, I know that when my eyes meet Adam's across that plaza over all those screaming fans and Cupid's little bow goes *thwang* as he shoots his arrow....... it's all gonna be all right.  I'm prepared to be his muse.  It will be a tough life, but I'll do it for the music.  

You know, I just thought of this... my first blog post ever even involved him!   That's it.  Definitely something larger than us all at work here.    Done.  Deal.  

I've already informed Big Daddy to be prepared for this eventuality.  I've even given him strict directions on how to get all the students back to Texas after I run off.   

He just rolled his eyes.

I might need to give him those directions again.   

I wanted you guys, my loyal blog readers, to be prepared, as well. 

When you hear that Adam's off the market.   Don't be shocked.  You heard it here first.   

I was gonna use this picture for Adam's picture, but I am *so* against the objectification of someone's body I just couldn't make it the big picture.  So I made it the small one.  ;)  You're welcome.  

*** I just realized that I didn't make the above picture smaller.    I was so overwhelmed by his eyes, I forgot.   Eyes, yeah.  Let's go with that.   

The Toe Bone's Connected to the Pizza Bone

Real life conversation at my house....

The Kid, after she falls over the bean bag which I had told her to put up fifty eleven times:  Mom, I think I broke my toe.

*much moaning and gnashing of teeth*

Me:   No, You didn't, and if you did, that's what you get for not listening to your mother!

The Kid:  MOTHER!  I'm serious.  It's turning purple!

Me, slightly concerned and looking at it:   That color is called red, and your toe is not broken.  You stubbed it.  It's fine.

The Kid:   Nope.  It's broken.  I need x-rays and pizza to fix it.    You can find me crawling to my room, because my toe is broken, and you can't walk with a broken toe, everyone knows that.

Me:  You can definitely walk with a broken toe.  I have.   And your toe is  not broken.  And we are not having pizza for dinner.

The Kid:  *moan*  It is broken.  I can feel the broken-ness down deep in the bone.  Where. It. Is. Broken.

Me:  Not broken!!!

The Kid:  Remember, pizza sets broken toes.  I need pizza, STAT.

Me:  No more medical shows for you.

Another Reason Not To Clean... Like I Need One

Here it is... the first day of summer break.   During the last six weeks of being a teacher, the house slides into incredible chaos, even worse than usual.   There just doesn't seem to be the energy, or the will, to do anything.     When the first day of summer break comes, you see the house with fresh eyes and with a sense of, "Holy heck, when did we move into an episode of 'Hoarders'?"

This summer is no different, except we also have people coming over tomorrow, the second day of summer break.   For me, cleaning went into overdrive.  For Big Daddy, projects that had been put off had to be finished.  We couldn't let people see that we live like this.

Years ago, we needed a new stove.  We were stretched tight on money, and I wanted a really nice stainless steel fronted stove.  Big Daddy gave me a budget of 500 dollars.   I took my five hundred dollars and stood in line for 10 hours to get 2 Wii the night they came out.  The next day I sold them both on Ebay for triple the money.  

Then I bought my dream stove.

About a year later, the light bulb in my oven went out, because Big Daddy loves nothing more than to sit on the floor in front of the oven and watch the cheese melt and bubble on his homemade pizzas.    It's almost like an obsession and can keep him entertained for hours.  I know. I know.   It's weird, but it keeps him happy.

Unfortunately after watching Pizza-TV, he never remembers to turn out the light, so my light bulb burned out months after I got my stove.

It seems like just yesterday, but it was five years ago.

Five.  Years.  Ago.

At various points, I've asked for it to be replaced, and I was always put off.  This year for Mother's Day, I asked for two things:  the shelves that I've had since Thanksgiving to be put up and the dang light in the oven to be replaced.

 I'm sure I'm the only one who asks for those kind of gifts, right?

Today, praise be to the great god of fancy general electric stoves, is the day the light bulb was replaced.   It cost three bucks and ten minutes of time, and Big Daddy had a happy wife.  You know what they say.   "Happy wife, happy life."  Big Daddy was all smiles after he finished the chore and went to read the newspaper.

Actually turning on the light, however, illustrated how absolutely freaking disgusting that oven was.

No worries, I thought to myself.   I have a self-cleaning feature on my fancy-schmancy oven.    I locked the door on that bad boy and programmed it for the lowest level of self-cleaning, four hours and twenty minutes, rationalizing that we could always go back for more if it was still nasty.

Those of you who have used the self-cleaning feature before  know how badly it smells.    We were about 15 minutes in, when we began to talk about going to the movies to get away from the smell.  

Eighteen minutes in, The Kid wandered into the kitchen to make a sandwich for lunch.

"Mom?"  she said in a tremulous voice.   "There's a fire in the oven."

"A fire?"  I ask, already moving toward the kitchen.

"Yep, a real fire.  Like with flames and everything," she affirmed.

There in stark relief to the inky blackness of the oven window was a fire with flames about a foot tall.  It reminded me of campfires at night, licking at the sky, wild and free. Beautiful, in a stone firepit  in the mountains.

Not as beautiful in my kitchen.

Big Daddy came rushing in behind me.   I wish I remember exactly what I said.  A la Sweet Brown, it would have been funny to have said, "Oh, Lawd Jesus, it's a fahre" and then followed it up with "Ain't nobody got time for that", but I was too worried about my house burning down to be funny.

I do remember immediately turning off the self-cleaning cycle, trying to unlock the door, and Big Daddy screaming, "No!"

I remember asking if we should call the fire department, and Big Daddy again telling me no.

Then, with nothing else to do,  we just stood around in a loose circle in front of the stove watching the flames flicker and dance.  

It's seemed like a good plan at the time, and it's always important to have a plan in case of emergency.

Now that I had a plan, I watched the flames more closely.    Where they taller?  Where they spreading?

Thankfully, the answer was no.

I'm glad to say, that eventually, after several minutes, the fire burned itself out.  

Sadly, there's a safety lock on the oven door.   I can't open it until the oven gets to a certain "safe" temperature.    With my new light bulb, I can't see anything through the brownish, smoky haze of the glass.

At least I hope it's haze and not actually what my oven looks like.  It's gonna stink if  that  three dollar light bulb turns into a thousand dollar new stove.  Can you imagine how hard Big Daddy would be to live with?

"If I hadn't changed the bulb, you wouldn't have turned on the self-cleaning.  Without the self-cleaning, there wouldn't have been a fire.  Without the fire...."

It'll be like the worst version of If You Give  A Mouse a Cookie, ever.

Meanwhile, I'm listening closely.  God speaks to some people with a burning bush.   Me?  He used a a burning stove.

Obviously, He doesn't want me to clean today.

I have *so* gotten the message.   Think I'll read a book and put my feet up.  Or maybe catch that movie.

Matter of fact, I may never clean again.

If you don't know the video, I mentioned above... Here it is in song version.   You're welcome for getting it stuck in your head.

Ode to Walmart

Here's a little poem I wrote after a particularly frustrating experience at Wal-hell

Perhaps, you feel the same.

ODE TO WAL-MART

To you, it seems I always go

Walking your aisles to and fro

All the items are constantly changing, 

'Cause the aisles you're always rearranging.

Bananas, clothes, and shampoo

Futons, dog food, and cheap shoes

Plungers, lightbulbs, CDs, and more

How I love to visit my Wal-Mart store!

Get it all in one place

Put a smile upon your face......

That is,

Until you reach the line...

Then the problem you will find 

One checker there and fifty baskets...

Makes me want to blow a gasket

Five minutes, ten minutes, then fifteen

How to fill the time in between?

Feet are tapping and heads are steaming

Little children in line screaming, 

Grabbing at the shelves of candy...

Isn't Wal-hell really dandy?

I hate this place; oh, I hate it so

To Wal-Mart, from now on, I will not go!

I'll buy my things at some other store,

But wait....

Do they  have the things I want and more?

Or will I run from place to place 

With a frown etched on my face?

Somehow, I always end up, right back here

This is the Wal-Mart curse, I fear.

So same time, next week I'm sure you'll find

Me waiting STILL in the Wal-Mart line

Fuming, cursing, and counting the ways

To bring an end to my rollback days....