Football Pads and Therapy

Last year both of my sons played football for the first time, tackle football. We went several days before the first practice and picked up all of the pads. I was a little mystified by the sheer volume of stuff I was going to have to shove into their little pants.

**The fact that I am now able to label the above photo shows what a long way I have come....last year I was wondering why he needed two "cups" and why they were so soft - see knee pads...**

That was before I bought the actual pants and saw the 8 billion little pockets and hidey holes.

Getting those pads in and out of the pockets so that I could wash their disgusting sweaty stinky practice pants was sheer hell. I literally had to do it with my door closed and the TV volume all the way up...It was the only way to shield their little eyes and ears from the site of their mother, soaked in sweat wrestling the pads in/out of the sadistically small pockets while she cursed the pants, pads, coach, heat, maker of said pads, maker of said pants....I even considered washing the effing pants with the pads in, until I was told by a sanctimonious (not the one who washes and replaces the pads) father that it would damage "the integrity of the pads." Well screw my integrity, but you better not mess with the pads.

Anyway, because I procrastinated I ended up having to put the pads in by myself for the first practice. Did you read the part above where I thought the knee pads were some kind of soft "cup"? We got to the field and I realized that the thigh pads were in backwards-- instead of cupping the leg they were cupping the air. We were gonna have to reposition-and it went a little something like this:

Me sitting on bleacher -hands down boy's pants attempting to wrestle thigh pads into submission:

Me- "Be STILL this won't take a minute" (which we both knew was a damn lie)

Boy - " MOM!!! They will see my underpants!"

Me - "Be stilllllllllll"

Boy - "OOWWWWWW! THAT WAS MY WEE WEE!"

****crickets chirping parents turning to look****

Me- *grinning in my best "nothing to see here!" fashion* "Beeeeeeeee stilll I am almost...."

Boy - "OWWWWW!

Me -"Screw it."

I had waited until we got to the field before doing the snap pads...how hard could it be?

Got it done with no cursing and even better -did not look like some pervert. I was in the zone baby! I don't need no stinkin' man to help me! Notice the coverage the pads provide the lower part of the spine and ribs....

The boys ran onto the field and practice began. It was going so well, until the coach noticed that the boys were moving a little funny and that their jerseys were poking out in odd places. Magnuts kinda looked like the had a tail....He called them to the middle of the field for closer inspection.....apparently the "snappy pads" go like this:

I had them upside down.

All this aside...they have knee pads, thigh pads, hip pads, tailbone pads, shoulder pads, helmet pads, chin guards, mouth guards....a pad for every part-but their genitals....Who decided it was more important to have a butt crack pad than a cup?

In 20 years when the boys are grown and suddenly stop repressing the memory of "the repositioning", I am sure to be called to explain to a therapist why it was that I had my hands down their pants at football practice. Cross your fingers that the therapist is a woman who once had to wrestle pads into football pants herself......

Oh No She Didn't!

Yes I did- the ultimate in bloggy crazyness-2 Meme's in two days! You know what this means doncha!?!? I am caught up! There are no MeMe's sitting in draft pointing their little wordy fingers at me and clucking in judgement!!!!


I was tagged by Crazy Working Mom for this 3 Word Meme. The instructions are pretty simple, answer each questions with three words.

1. Where is your cell phone? In My Purse

2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend? My Lobster Rob

3. Your hair? Starting To Gray

4. Where is your father? At The Lake

5. Your favorite thing to do? Watch College Football

6. Your dream last night? Had Triplet Girls (woke up in a cold sweat)

7. Your dream car? Paid For Kind

8. The room you're in? My Clean Office

9. Who did you hang out with last night? All Three Monkeys

10. Your fears? Death of children

11. What aren't you good at? Telling People No

12. Muffins? Warm with butter

13. One of your wish list items? 3 College Scholarships

14. The last thing you did? Drank Morning Coffee

15. Your computer? Huge Dual Monitors

16. Your pet? 3 smelly dogs

17. You are wearing? Blue Night Gown

18. Your life? Good So Far

19. Your mood? Morning Muddled Mind

20. Missing? My Free Time

21. Your car? Ugly Grocery Getter

22. What are you thinking about now? Question Number 22

23. Your work? Stay Home Mom

24. Your summer? Endless Kiddy Siege

25. Your relationship status? Married, with children

26. Your favorite color(s)? Blue and Green

27. When is the last time you cried? Reading Harry Potter

28. When was the last time you laughed? 5 Minutes Ago

29. School? Glad it's over

30. Favorite 90's group? Barney And Friends (I had little kiddies from 95 on, the early part is a drunken haze)



My husband has been standing over my shoulder as I answered the questions----he had his own answers, unpublishable answers, funny but sick. I knew I married him for a reason!

Tag

Auburn Gal Always tagged me for this MeMe...and I am just now getting around to it...sorry!

5 Things I want to do before I die:

1. See my children as happy adults

2. Hold my grandchildren (My Mom says being a grandmother is the best!)

3. Learn to make a decent pound cake

4. See Ireland

5. Learn to make my Mom's fried chicken



5 Things I can do:

1. Create web pages

2. Hold my nose and blow air bubbles out of my tear ducts

3. Tread water with out actually treading (natural floatation devices)

4. Knit

5. Make magic with a Béchamel sauce



5 Things I can't do....yet:

1. Hear the word "duty" and not snicker

2. Beat my husband at Fantasy Football

3. Make a pound cake that doesn't have a slight corn bread taste-seriously-I live in a place where that is a huge character flaw

4. Get my entire house clean and organized and keep it that way--wait till the kids move out

5. Say that I have ever seen a bad Peyton Manning commercial--"laser rocket arm"--he just kills me!



5 Things that make a man attractive to me:

1. Good teeth

2. Good sense of humor-makes me laugh

3. Intelligence

4. Ability to notice that dishwasher is full of clean dishes and willingness to unload it

5. Eyes



5 Celebrities that I crush on:

1. Harry Connick, Jr - Mom, thanks again for calling me from his concert and rubbing it in.

2. Dennis Quaid - love the grin

3. Josh Holloway - Sawyer on Lost-could eat him with a spoon....

4. Hugh Jackman

5. Peyton Manning



I have no idea who to tag-so if you are feeling MeMe consider yourself tagged!

Kitty From Hell

I never write a post in the morning, they are usually written the day or days before hand....Until this morning. I was getting my morning news fix and saw this from AP:

Oscar the Cat Predicts Nursing Home Deaths

This fricken cat lives in a nursing home in Providence, RI and is their very own little grim reaper.

"After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He'd sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours."

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! ARE YOU FRICKIN KIDDING ME?!?! I would lock my arse in the bathroom every morning and hold my breath until the little hairy harbinger of death passed me by.

Based on this:
"Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," he said."
and this:
"one (family member) wanted Oscar out of the room while a family member died. When Oscar is put outside, he paces and meows his displeasure."
I think that it is safe to say that this cat is a minion of Satan-marking the helpless and sucking their very souls from their bodies as they die. "Not friendly to people" NO SHITE!

As you can probably tell this story has gotten to me. I started thinking about my own Grandmother who lives in a nursing home. We call her Flo and she is not what most people would consider grandmotherly...in fact she would be almost the exact opposite. I can actually picture her, "tippy toeing" her wheel chair (she sits forward in it and uses just the balls of her feet and toes to propel herself around) all over the nursing home with a pocket full of kitty treats. She would love that place, you cut in front of her at lunch-cat nip under your pillow.

Anyway..Oscar recently got a wall plaque commending his "commpassionate hospice care" for playing Death's version of "eeny meeny miny moe." For the love....

Comment Part II

First of all - Thanks for all of the feedback on To Comment or Not To Comment.

It was nice to hear some of my own thoughts verbalized by others. I especially related to something Margaret said, "Some, quite honestly, I feel I am not "cool" enough to comment on.". I feel the same way about a bunch of the blogs I read. There are a few that regularly have 80-100 comments (like MetroDad---I feel your pain Phoenix! LOL) that I have been reading forever that I have never commented on. Even if a post was particularly funny--I just can't bring myself to add my, "Bwhaaahaaahaa" to all of the others. That makes me a lurker, huh?

Super B's Mom brings up another good point-you have something great to say, you are scrolling down to do it, and someone else has already said it, DOH!

Willowtree said, "Some bloggers just want a huge list of readers and rarely comment on other blogs. I like the community aspect, and a certain level of reciprocation. " I couldn't agree more. I feel like I am keeping up with my friends lives when I read their blogs...people I have never met in my life and maybe never will (still not over missing MamaDramaConQueso..I am sick I know).

Slackermommy says that she does a bit of A, B and C. I would be willing to bet that those who include choice C (Post even though you're not saying anything new just to let your blogger friends know you stopped by.) are more likely to be bloggers and this kind of gets back into Willowtree's point of reciprocation. I also would choose A, B, and C unless I chose D.....Hey I can't believe it either but I just outed myself as a lurker in the first paragraph.


Momish said, "I will read through the others because I love to see what other people have said (some of the funniest and touching things are said in the comments section). I have often learned about new bloggers that grab my attention by the comments they make." I would not have a blog at all if it were not for a comment ( Magnuts ) I made on MamaDrama and the reaction it got.


Absolutely Bananas, Chase, Blue Momma, and Paulette Foley all confirmed what I already suspected-bloggers love comments-period. Seriously, I got excited when I had my first spam comment...how dorky am I??? So how come, in light of this proof that bloggers love feedback, am I ever reluctant to post a comment?


Mom2Emnroo mentioned, "blog world etiquette." I wish someone would write a little bloggy manual. If you do please include things like:


1. How often can I comment on a person's blog without seeming like a stalker?

2. How long after being tagged for a MeMe do I have to get it done?

3. How do I pick 5 people to pass along an award to?

4. When picking these people if I pick someone "famous" who really does not know me does that make me a giant bloggy looser?

5. Should I put a link on my page for every blogger that reads and comments on my site?

6. Should I post every day even if I don't have much to say?

7. Is it better to just have one pretty good post per week?

8. If I wait 24 hours and then comment on each comment left about a post....and someone leaves a new comment days later do I need to go comment on that one too?


So, if you have your own questions to add to our "Bloggy Manual" post a comment. If you have answers for some of these quandaries please share.

Wrap It Up....

MonkeyBoy is the child that will take 1 hour to tell you about a 30 second commercial, he likes to be VERY descriptive. For a while we just sat and endured, then we started giving him the universal sign for "WRAP IT UP" (moving one or both hands in a circular motion-kinda like you were helping someone back into a parking space). "Mean" you say....Well unless I have 45 minutes for him to act out and recite all of the dialog from the commercial for the new Simpson's movie I gotta twirl some arm. Lately MonkeyBoy gets this sly grin and pretends to not see my arms flailing about....Anyone know where I can get one of those giant hook things they used on the Gong Show?

We do this because we love him, really! I have had conversations with him about how important it is to be able to give a QUICK but complete description. Say that he witnessed a bank being robbed.....Yeah he could probably give the police a great description but the first 45 minutes would be-- that the bad guy first went to the young teller and she then handed him a $10, then a $5, then a $20 then a $10 then a $20 then a $5 and so on until he told them bill by bill how the guy got away with a million dollars...then and only then would he get to the part about the bad guy. That he had double knots in his Nikes, pants that were too short, a shirt with a small stain on the sleeve, an earring in his nose, and ran to a small rusty greenish car with stuffed animals in the rear window and Burger King wrappers in the front....But FOR THE LOVE OF GOD- the bad guy would be in Mexico before he could finish his statement.

I think that it is amazing that he is so observant; and we are really working on helping him seek out KEY details and then relate them concisely. Consider the fact that he has to do book reports that will one day turn into essays and then term papers.....

Have any of you had to deal with something like this?

Monday

I had planned to use the answers to Friday's post in today's. My brain feels like mush at the moment. I got up at the crack of dawn Saturday for no apparent reason; by 6am I had decided to make the 10 mile trip into town to get a copy of Harry Potter. It was no problem, our Wal-Mart still had several large stacks of the book.

I got home and dove in. I had promised myself that I would try and "drink it slowly" but I was only kidding myself. At around 4pm I had gotten down to the last 50 pages or so and decided I needed a quick break and wanted a tiny little bitty drinky. I took a few minutes to get dinner started (apparently my family still expects to eat even though I was in the middle of something very important..) and to make the littee bitteee drinkeee and was finished with Harry Potter by 5.

The BEST of the series. Think of how many series, tv or books, that have ended poorly. I don't just mean sadly but just in a crappy stupid way ( I believe that some say The Sopranos would be a good example of this). This was such a good book, and the ending was smart and didn't leave me feeling like there were a hundred loose ends that would never make sense. It even left me with a new character to add to my list of favorites...

I have tried not to say anything here that might be a spoiler and will wait until more have had a chance to finish the book before going into any real detail. So for those who are reading it-HURRY UP! I need someone to talk to about this book!!!!!!!

To Comment or Not to Comment....

Ok, so you are reading one of your daily must reads and think you might like to post a comment. When you get to the end of the post you notice that 60 people have already left their two cents, what do you do?



A. Only post if you feel your comment is important and needs to be said.


B. Read through a few of the comments and move on, no point in just repeating what has already been said.


C. Post even though you're not saying anything new just to let your blogger friends know you stopped by.


D. Don't post no matter what, your comment will surely be lost in the sea of the 60 others already posted.


I hope that you will ALL comment! Feel free to choose more than one option and to explain why you chose it. I will be explaining my neurotic commenting habits in a future post and hope to have some feedback here to make me look a little less crazy.


Also, if you are a Blogger I would like to know how you feel about the 4 options above...As the writer of the blog and not the commenter.


So discuss.....

Smokin' in Japan...

I was surfing and found these signs, they are hilarious! They say things like, "A cool cowboy flicks his cigarette butt into the street. But he lives in an old movie."

or "Don't smoke in a crowd, coats are expensive"

"The only things that should be stuck in the snow are ski gear and your own face."

"The sparks blew off. Luckily they were stopped by my sleeve."

"Before passing gas I look behind me. But I don't bother when I am smoking."



There are a ton of them click here to check them out.

Diaper Alarm...

The point of this goofy thing is to notify you immediately so that the baby does not start crying, however they say, "there is a chance that the alarm will make the baby cry anyway."

The description says, "We are re-assured that the electrical current is safe...." Sure, let me just jam this little electrode down your diaper so that the scary animal can sing when you pee.

Imagine how the "cause and effect" learning of your children could be screwed up. Either they stop going to the bathroom because the freaky animal sings/scares them or they are really messed up as toddlers....Picture little Johnny whizzing on the sofa and having a meltdown because Spot is not singing....

Google Weirdness....

I love reading these lists from other bloggers, so I thought I would do my own. These are the referring URLS:


"http://f#cklist.org" *obviously I added the #* I admit it, I checked it out to see how in the frickin world I could be found through a site like this. I only got as far as the main page....I still have no idea how I am linked through them.


"Mantra + Boobs" Hummm, a member of the IBTC (itty bity titty committee)? You need Judy Bloom, and it goes like this "We Must, We Must, We Must Increase Our Bust" lather, rinse and repeat.

"Little Summer Pee" huh?

"Mama's Big Boobs" and a "Mama's Boobs" You need help.

"Boobs" No lie, I had 30 visitors find me by searching for this.

"Smelly Foot Torture" ,"Giant Scrotums","Vulture Poop" - 3 topics of conversation that are GOLDEN with 10 year old boys and somehow led people to 36year old woman's blog.

******************************************
We have baseball again this weekend so I'll be back soon - have a great weekend!

No Crying...

Will you watch a movie or read a book that you KNOW is going to make you cry? I won't.

I absolutely hate crying...not as much as I hate snakes, but close. I just can't stand it, it does not make me feel better; I have never understood the phrase-"go and have yourself a good cry." It makes my head and stomach hurt.

There is only one movie that I have ever watched that I knew would make me cry-"Steele Magnolias." You know that part after the daughter dies and they are all at the cemetery? You are just choking on tears and they start talking about making t-shirts that say "I hate Weezer." I love that.

Once at the lake, very late at night, I could not sleep. There was a book on the bedside table and I, the fool that I am, cracked it open and started to read. I should have just gone down to the kitchen and snorted some hot sauce, or maybe slammed my fingers in a car door a few times..It was all about an older couple and the husband was loosing his wife to Alzheimer's . What a fun read.


So, while I may miss a lot I just can't watch something that was intended to make me cry. I have to change if the episode of MASH comes on when Col. Blake dies. I have never seen The Pursuit of Happyness because I know it would tear me up. I cried like a baby when they killed "the Eel" on Chicago Hope (who saw that coming?!?).

So y'all, am I just weird?

Too Gross....

While surfing yesterday I just came across the most disgusting "gadget" ever.


THINK:






BUT WITH POO:







Introducing the "Turd Twister." Each comes with 10 turd templates.....






Ok, that is just about all I can say about this...for more info go to:

http://www.turdtwister.com/

Learning To Listen....

Last week I got an evening call from one of the Moms on Magnut's baseball team. She had to work the next day and needed me to keep her children for a few hours. No problem....When I met her the next morning to pick them up I really should have paid more attention when she was telling them, "Mrs. Reevesfarm has my permission to use the belt." SHUT UP! WAH!!! Ladies and Gents that should make the little mental alarms in your brains go ape shite.

We started the morning at our house with no problems. I decided that taking them to lunch should be smooth sailing too (plus I had nothing in the house to feed them). Lunch went very well, so a short trip to Wal-Mart should be easy breezy, no? IT WAS NOT, IT SUCKED AND I WISHED I HAD A BELT. Not really, well kinda......It was so bad that as one point I lost the ability to form coherent sentences....Miss-D told me "Use your words."

One of the kids snatched my medicine out of the buggy and launched it onto the top shelf of maxi pads; he hid, he ran, he yelled. I just wanted to go, and they were only gonna be my problem for about 30 more minutes. This is when I spotted the candy aisle...

So for all of you thinking-"Oh, Reevesfarm, you should never reward such bad behavior..."

Kiss my arse....I am still twitching...

Magnuts Gets A New Bed

Magnuts got a bed just like his brother's for his birthday. It was ordered last week from a local store named, I kid you not, "Badcock Furniture." When we arrived to pick it up DockLoaderGuy asked me who was going to assemble it. Apparently it is infamous because it is such a pain to put together.

Once all 3 of the giant boxes were lugged into the house and opened I had to agree with DockLoaderGuy. "Some Assembly Required" is a damn lie. They did chop down the trees, cut them into planks and paint them...but the rest was up to us. There were about 25lbs of hardware to be fastened, screwed, smacked and twisted.....oh yeah, and a drill is not recommended. The manual says that construction (my word, they were still lying and calling it "some assembly") should take about an hour. FOR WHOM? Someone on speed who has done it 100 times and is using a drill?

At some point I said that I didn't remember MonkeyBoy's being such a pain to construct. My husband reminded me that it wasn't, for me, he put that one together by himself. Ooops.....

Totally worth it, I love this bed!

Miss-D Makes Breakfast!

I have historically underestimated her ability...I don't mean that I think she is too goofy to do things, I am talking about her being too young. When she was about 18 months old we took her to some kind of "Fun Zone" place...you know the kind with the tubes and slides and ball pits? Like Chucky Cheese but no crazy arse mouse and the pizza isn't $15 a slice...

So we find the area that is just for the little kids, the area marked 4 and under...After we had run off all of the 12 year olds who's parents are no where to be seen, we settled in. There was this little slide, with a ladder. She kept going over to climb up and I kept pointing her in another direction. Finally I just let her try, thinking she would get to the top and flip out...boy was I wrong. She did not even pause when she got to the top, after about 5 minutes she was sliding down on her stomach, upside down; we just stood there with our mouths hanging open.

It wasn't that it was extraordinary that an 18 month old could play on a slide...I just really thought of her as more of a baby than she really was. It never occurred to me that she could do it. We left there and went straight to the toy store and bought her a slide. We set it up in our living room and she lived on the thing for the next year!

So 11 years have passed and I have had another "slide" moment. I was going to make pancakes for breakfast this morning. So I got everything out and she asked to help. I was hovering over her, reminding her not to touch the edge of the pan, etc...Finally, I just let go, she did very well. She produced a tower of perfectly cooked pancakes, without my help.

The fact that I have just now let her cook on her own (read-with me checking in only every 3 or 4 minutes) is ridiculous (My mom is reading this and nodding her head). She has been saying that she wants to be a chef since she could talk. She plans do get a degree in business and own her own restaurant, she has taken a cooking class. She loves to cook and I have got to start letting her do it. I HAVE to get over my fear of her burning herself or starting a fire or cutting her finger off....

I am going to try to remember her flying down the slide with a huge grin on her face, and the giant stack of perfect pancakes that she was so proud of and try to let go, a little......



------------------------------------------------------------------------

**It has been reported that the Chucky Cheese in Birmingham has a FULL BAR! Hummmmm...see a need, fill a need....**

**My husband once worked at Chucky Cheese, he was actually CHUCKY!!! He had to do the little dance and song at birthday parties. His showbiz career was short lived, after being hit in the gonads the 2nd time by rowdy tots he was relocated to the kitchen.**

Getting My MP3 Playlist Right...

My MP3 player is really finicky about playlists. The only way to create one is by making the genre of all the songs you want on that list the same. This won't really bother me as my music taste could best be described as schizophrenic. I like to hear some old school Run DMC Tricky followed by Come by Me (Harry Connick Jr), I'm weird like that.

I was not aware of how many songs I have that are not edited for radio and this makes hitting "play all" dicey. This came to my attention while listening to Radio Head's Creep, in my version he is a WHOLE lot more special......


Seriously, while I love Blister in the Sun I just don't think the FlyingMonkeys are ready for it.

Maybe its got something to do with luck.....

Oh Sweet God...

Maybe I will just change the genre for all of my songs to "mom's cleaning music," that should guarantee the purity of the kid's ears.....