Chuck E Cheese - Why I'm not going back

Well, I have a slight rant.  It's been quite a while since my last rant, so I'm totally over due, right?  This time, I have my sights squarely on Mr. Chuck E. Cheese .  Now that I'm thinking about it, what the heck does that "E" stand for anyway?  Esquire? A quick Google search reveals that the "E" stands for "entertainment".  Hold on while I hold my sides and laugh.  Wow. Really? Okay, well I guess if "entertainment" also means the brutal, simultaneous violation of all your five senses as a parent, then, ya, I'd say the "E" is right on!

Hi, I'm Chuck E. Cheese.  I will make you question your will to live

So maybe you don't have any kids, or maybe it's been a few years since you've been forced to go to a Chuck E. Cheese establishment.  Let me paint a real pretty picture for you. Chuck E. Cheese is for kids.  It is not however, at all, in anyway shape or form, for adults. 

So your kid excitedly brings home a birthday invitation from school.  They are thrilled.  I am thrilled they are being counted as a friend of someone else in their class, enough to garner a party invite.  Me, priding myself on fun, kid-picked themed parties with all the well-planned trimmings, have always opened these invites with a mixture of hope and curiosity. Will I find a kindred spirit party mom?  Let's face it, school birthday party invites are a really great way to meet other parents and connect.  I know tons of people that just drop their kids off at a total stranger's house and come back a few hours later without a second thought in the world (what, do they have a death wish?). How can you be so trusting? What is wrong with you I want to say!  

Bye Billy.  Mommy and Daddy don't love you as much as we love shopping without you...

Well I, being on the overly-cautious side, always offer to stay, help, hang out with the parents, make sure my kid is okay and having a good time.  If I just so happens that I find a fun kindred spirit mom, or some awesome party ideas for my blog it's a win win.

Let's face it.  If you open the envelope, and get that Chuck E Cheese invite... your heart sinks.  You know... deep down...the parents have given up.  Just phoning it in, really. You might as well just buy a store bought cake, play the sad trombone sound, and call it a day.  Oh I know they make it enticingly easy there for busy grown ups at Chuckyland.  No set up, no clean up after,  and no mess. Kids like pizza.  Kids like video games.  Sounds like a winner in theory... until you get there that is.  Hey we are celebrating the one year anniversary of life of your child.  You only have one day a year to make it special.  Do you really want to hand the whole day over to a creepy bugged-eyed rat in a dirty costume? Any kid would answer with a resounding YES... but is it worth your grown up soul? (cue evil music here)

Your soul looks nice, can I... EAT IT?

That's right SOUL.  I pert near lost my soul last weekend when I begrudgingly took my excited 7-year-old to Chuck E. Cheese.  Her first time. Maybe it won't be as bad as I remember, I thought.  My older two children had been in years past and I had gone, I remember it not being fun, but it was tolerable, right? I can do it, right?  No. The Answer is NO.  The answer from this day forward will always be NO.

We walked into the dimly lit establishment on a bright spring morning. So, I ask myself, is 10am too early for brain assault and pizza?  Apparently not.  It was like coming from the beautifully smelling, cool morning air into a dank cave of despair.  Literally.  The first two smells that hit me full frontal, were the smell of piss...and burnt cotton candy.  It was overwhelming. Shortly after that, the smell of dirty socks and feet added a nice secondary wave to the olfactory invasion. I almost turned around and left, it was that bad.  How can they serve food here? It smells like a sewer!  A sewer where spun sugar is burnt mercilessly and twirled on sticks by sweaty feet.  

Don't forget the sound.  It's loud in there.  Not just loud, like, hey here's a bunch of clanging machines and screaming kids in a small confined area regular loudness, but like DEFCON ONE loud. 

It's about to hit the fan... Joshua

Like, turn everything up to 11 and pray for the best.  Jackhammers performing in unison with the Blue Angels flying in formation overhead during a 21 shot gun salute at a rock concert would be a happy, peaceful alternative to the noise level at Chuck E. Cheese.  Mind NUMBING would be an understatement.

Dirty.  Everything is dirty.  Tables are sticky, chairs are sticky, the floor is sticky.  Should a floor be sticky??  Well it should, if it's made up of carpeting possibly stolen from a Carnival Cruise ship reject pile from 30 years ago.  I can only image the layers of packed-in filth of three decades of kids running, playing, barfing, and well, obviously pissing. I know they probably say they clean it, but personally I can imagine it never having been cleaned.  Like ever.  I picture the Chuck E. Cheese vacuum cleaner covered in dust and cobwebs in the utility closet, still in the original box.  There were cups of dirty game tokens were sitting on the birthday girls' table ready to hand out.. some were actually stuck together with some unknown substance. Yikes.  I take a scan of the room, and all the toys and machines in the building I can see (I'm imagining) that are never wiped down or sanitized, and that every sick kid in town has wiped both their runny nose, or alternately scratched their backsides, and then the start button within seconds of each other.  I had only been there 10 minutes and seriously felt like I needed a shower.  Ebola and MRSA everywhere.... Where was my hand sanitizer?  In the CAR.  DANGGGGIIITTTT.

The party room is a big room, full of cafeteria tables.  That's right, hey birthday  kid, you're not that special.  We're going to celebrate your birthday with countless, nameless others strangers at the exact same time, in one big, loud, room. 

Chuck E says "You're not that special!!"

There's a large video screen in stage in front of you, and a robotic rat yells every so often that the Chuck E. dance is about to begin and a "show" is about to start.  The announcement that Chuck E. himself was coming was so deafening, I literally had to cover my ears for fear of permanent hearing loss damage.

Okay, as I take in shallow breaths so I don't have to fully taste the smell in the air... I still an trying to remember, that Chuck E. Cheese is suppose to be fun for KIDS.  I'm here for her.  My kid is so thrilled to see her friends, they head immediately for a climbing structure in the middle of the room.  

She runs back to bring me her boots.  Heck yes child.  Please take off your feet protectors and really grind your socks into that fore mentioned "carpet".  Excellent idea.  Note to self: Burn socks later. 

So we go through the whole party.  Pizza, (the kids ate it, with that smell so strong in there, I couldn't even fathom trying to eat something), presents, game tokens, and running around in socks, (if you are seven, and are so inclined).   Flash forward to the end of the party, because this is where it goes down hill quick.  About 15 minutes before the party is up (yes, I'm counting every second until we can get the heck out of there and back-timing my escape, thanks for asking), and by now I have a pounding headache, am literally nauseous, overheated, and super irritable, I'm thinking this would be a good time to cash in our tickets and stand in line for those awesome $1 store toys they have lined up as prizes.  We head over to the ticket machine, and my daughter has, I'm going to guess, one billion tickets.  Some are in sets of two, there are a few with four or five tickets attached, but most, I'm going to say 97.4% of them are individual tickets - and you are going to want to trade in a good portion of your life to turn them in here.

This handy item will gobble up tickets and print out a receipt on how many tickets you have.  Ingenious really, however, see that dark black speaker on the lower right hand side?  Well it makes a sound that I believe is suppose to be a "gobbling up" sound.  Chewing, grinding, not exactly sure.  What I DO know, is that it sounded like a demon, and was turned up to deafening levels, on TOP of the DEFCON ONE level ambiance of the regular room noise.  Here my baby is so very patiently feeding tickets one by one into the mouth of this thing, and I was of course standing right next to her, hunched over like Quasimodo (cause the ticket eater thing is 2 feet off the ground) trying to help, and this thing was SCREAMING in my ear.  I even took a video of it, because I had the time. That's right. It took her 15 minutes to feed all her individual tickets in.(Imagine you have a screaming head ache, are nauseated by the overwhelming stench of the room, squatting uncomfortably, then turn the volume up and stick your ear next to this for a while).  I'm not sure with the video compression if the loudness factor will shine through, but you get the idea.

By the end, I was sweating, shaky, so ready to punch Chuck E right in the face if he happened to dance by. 

We get our receipt of 360 tickets, and realize a giant line has formed over by the crap-o counter toys.  It's already 15 minutes PAST the end time on the invite, and now I realize I'm going to be at Chuck E. Cheese even longer than I thought I could ever stand it. While we are waiting in line there, my baby realizes she doesn't have any shoes.  Say what?  Oh, that's right (as I gaze down at her jet black - formally white socks), she took them off under the party table.  I tell her to stay in the the long line while I run over, and of course, another whole party has moved in to where our table had been.  "Happy birthday nameless other chap", I think as I walk with my head near my knees like a Romanian acrobat scanning under all the tables. Darn. No boots. Look under all tables, no boots. Stop a dazed-looking worker with a name tag, she says they have a lost and found!  Sounds promising.  She disappears behind a door.  I wait.  I wait.  She never returns.  I can't leave my baby alone in line for that long, so I run back and she's all alone crying in line because her boots are lost.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to watch her crying in line, AND hunt down her boots with the confused minimum wage workers before we get up to the front of the line so I can help her pick out prizes. Time was ticking... it was like an evil game show.  

I talk another worker into looking in the lost and found box for me, and a few minutes later, she comes out with some boots!  Hey, black boots!  Oh wait.  Not. Our. Black. Boots.  Dang it.  My baby bursts into tears and we are almost up to the counter to pick our our cheap arse toy prizes.  I decided to call the original birthday mom on my cell phone, to see if maybe she grabbed the boots and took them home with her.  As it starts to ring, I look across the room and SEE the mom at a new table on the other side of the restaurant, so I run over there and sure enough, she has our boots!  Sweet.  Bless you lil' mama. You might have just caused me two hours of mental misery, but you saved my kids boots. I'm going to call us even. I run back while triumphantly holding the boots high over my head, and I see my baby's mouth drop open in joy across the room that mommy had found her boots! Hooray!  Boots = We can LEAVE!

She had been through the line by now... but where were her arm full of prizes?  We had stood in front of that screaming demon ticket eater for what seemed like an eternity to get our 360 flippin' points, and my baby didn't have any prizes.  Dollar store crap or not, we stinking EARNED those points.  

I (I mean we) at least had a Chinese yo yo and a plastic bracelet coming our way. Three hundred and sixty points is the back row of the bottom counter baby, we could have had a clapping hand, a pen with googly EYES!  No one was behind the counter. They are lucky they were gone.  I was about to go all Chuck Norris (another famous Chuck) and roundhouse kick someone into next Tuesday.  My baby's receipt was all gone, and she was holding... a miniscule bag of cotton candy.  She had traded away all of her ticket points for the only thing she wanted... and she was happy.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that sneaky Chuck E. Cheese lady had pulled a fast one over on her while I was running all over the world to find her boots.  "Let it go" Elsa would say.  She was happy.  She loves cotton candy.  She has been having a great time today.  Chill out mama.  But that screaming demon ticket machine ... my ears are still ringing... Let it GO... So - Speaking of going....

Well the best news of all was that we could GO.  I am sorry to say I had to spend an extra 43 minutes inside the hellmouth that is the chuck e cheese (I really don't feel like I need to give it the capitalization anymore, it doesn't deserve it) and we were high-tailing it for the door. We come squinting out into the beautiful sunlight and I start to deeply breath in the fresh, sunny spring air with all my might.  The first non-piss filled fresh air I have had in 163 minutes.  Hallelujah.

Funny screen shot:  I actually have a screen shot of my text message to my hubby when everything was going down on that day, it cracks me up now:

Ooo Bonus story time!!  We get out to the car, and I realize... my phone is still connected with someone.  Oh that's right.  I unknowingly have been leaving a 10 minute muffled message on the host mom's voice mail.  Holy buckets.  I was so grumpy at the time, who KNOWS what I mumbled while we frantically searched for boots, got ripped off at the prize counter, and escaped into the bright noon-day sun.  I pray with all my might she realizes it was a butt dial call and deletes the message and doesn't listen to the whole thing.  Please dear Lord.

I walked in the door when we got home. Totally spent. Like I had run a marathon, or had just been to Haiti on an oppressively hot day. I slumped down in a chair, took one look at my husband and I said... "never again".  If we ever get another chuck e cheese invite, you are going.  He calmly agreed and gave me two aspirin he had waiting for me in his hand... Oh yeah, also we need to burn some socks.

The End.

Too Hot Crock Pot!

I was mid-stew a month or so ago, when my trusty Rival, low-tech, one giant knobbed crock pot up and died.  It was a sad day.  She was a good and faithful kitchen companion who dutifully cooked soups, stews and sauces for the family for years on end. This picture below doesn't even do her justice, after 10 years of use she was not as shiny or streamlined, and she only had three settings:  Off, Low, and High. "Warm" at the time was only a newfangled notion of the future. 

Well after we had a touching goodbye ceremony (bagpipes were played, doves were released followed by a moment of silence), I started thinking ahead to what would replace her.  I got pretty excited.  Oo, maybe I could get a fancy new high-tech digital one with features like switches to warm when the cooking cycle is over, or a built in meat thermometer!  Hubby came through with a new one for my birthday.  It had all the bells and whistles!  My new found joy was quickly turned into a bit of worry, as some of my friends on facebook warned that I might not like the new crock pots so much, because they cook things too hot.  

Well that weekend I decided to make my crock pot spaghetti sauce that simmers slow all day.  I started it on high (as I normally do, with the idea of turning it down to low shortly after).  Well within a few hours, the whole thing was boiling.  Not just bubbling merrily, but a HARD boil.  I turned it down to the "low" setting.  It was STILL boiling.  Alright, I guess I'll turn it down to the warm setting.  Guess what? Still boiling.  Um... what the heck was going on??!!  Off I went to the googles to find out.  Turns out the government recently changed the rules.

Yes, they decided the American public (with 40 years of crock pottery experience) were entirely too stupid on their own to slow cook food all day.  They decided to raise the temperature of all settings by 20-40º on all new pots in the last 5 years.  The high setting is now close to 300º!  The low temp is around 250º and even the warm setting is over 212º.  I know this because that is the temperature water boils. Before the low temp was under 200º, probably closer to 180º.  So in essence, they have made the notion of LOW and SLOW cooking null and void.  If meat boils it changes the molecular structure, making it tough and stringy.  You no longer can "set it and forget it", by putting a roast in the morning and come back and dinner time and have it ready and waiting for you.  With these new crocks all the liquid would be burned off and your meat will be tough and dried out.  You have to sit and baby sit your meal all day, adjusting temps, adding water.  No way would you leave and go to work, you might come home to the whole thing boiled over all over the counter or maybe it could even catch on fire!  Yikes.  

I was so upset by this.  It boiled the living snarf out of my sauce, which was done in half the time, by the way.  I decided there must be something else out there!  I did some on line research, turns out a LOT of people are ticked off about the higher temp pots.  Old recipes don't work any more, food is overdone and you can no longer cook low and slow, the whole POINT of a crock pot.

Well I just found the answer (cue angel music and heavenly light here)!  It's not called a crock pot technically, but you can use it that way. 

It's a Nesco professional 6qt roaster oven.  It works just like a crock pot but here's the best part, you can control the temp, from 125º to 400º!!  Hallelujah.  Now I've found something that works just like my old trusty crock pot.  Set it and forget it here I come! Low and slow, remember me? I'm BACK! PS. By the way, it also can roast, bake, stew, etc. It is also non-stick and has a removable cookwell for easy cleaning.

So I went right out and packaged up the other "HOT" pot and took it right back to the store.  We should all boycott these new pots that simply do not work correctly.  Too HOT means you can cook low and slow.  Find a pot where you can control the temperature and you will be golden.  Wait, you will be yummy and tender and delicious and falling off the bone, and your children will sing your praises and actually clean their plates, and your hubby will write sonnets in your honor, and your in-laws will take the kids for the weekend, and you will live happily ever after.  Amen.

Play-doh the clay of Satan

If there is one toy I could pin point as pure evil in this world, it would have to be my nemesis, play-doh. Oh sure, it looks harmless, it's colorful, the kids adore it, what on earth could I have against play-doh? Well many things. First, it has it's own smell. Back in high school I worked at a daycare. They had elevated play-doh to an almost worshiped substance there. It was revered and utilized daily... which meant I was cleaning it out of the carpet fibers and little bitty plastic kids chairs, and tiny fingernails daily as well. Back then it seemed play-doh had a much stronger scent, and it was quite overpowering. I think those fine people at Hasbro have toned it down a bit because when my kids cracked open their first play-doh (a gift mind you that I had set aside to take back but but the box was gleefully ripped open when I wasn't looking and therefore we had to keep it) I was expecting to be blown away by the stench, but alas it was more a mere gentle whiff of the play-doh of yesteryear. It seemed softer and more pliable too. Back then the nasty stuff would leave a chalky residue on your hands when you were finished, but this seemed less powdery, perhaps I should give it a second try. I thought hey maybe times have changed, technology has caught up with the preschool set... but indeed, I was wrong.

It's still the same old clay. It gets hard and crusty within days of hitting the open air, begins to crumble on contact, the colors get mixed up, it falls on the floor collecting hair, dust, crumbs, only to be scooped up and mixed back in with the parent ball so by day three you've got this dense dry cluster of floor garbage mixed in (a thought that gags me for some reason) and a clump so hard your 2-year-old can make a ball out of it. Then there are the accessories. Many times it comes with some sort of device meant to smoosh the play-doh through a tight space, to make hair, legs, squiggly things, although the brainiacs at Hasbro headquarters must never spend time playing with their product because they leave no easy method for prying the play-doh OUT of the contraptions. It gets stuck in there and hardens making it impossible to use it again. It makes one want to pitch the entire disdained lot out the back door. Grrrrr.

So apparently I am not the only woman to suffer from a hidden play-doh hatred. Just the mere mention of play-doh to a group of tired mommies will bring out cries of anguish and disgust. I have yet to cross one mother that does not detest the vile stuff. How is it that a toy that is loathed by one set (the grown ups) is adored by the small fry? It's the first toy they ask for, the first one out on the table with these little faces looking up at you saying mama play with us. How can you resist? So you cave fully knowing you'll be crawling around under the table in a few minutes dabbing the crumbs and sweeping the rest. I must love my kids a lot because I let them use play-doh. I should be nominated for saintly mother of the year for that one alone. I'm pretty sure the devil sits on a giant dry, cracked, hairy crumby throne made of multicolored play-doh, just another reason I'm not going there in the next life.

Fruit and Meat - an abomination

So I have a little rant here, and I wonder if you can guess what it is? Well if you look to the picture on the right here and say to yourself, "My, what a delectable looking pizza" then you really won't appreciate what I'm going to say next. Fruit and meat. Meat and fruit. Sweet and savory. Repeat after me people, they do NOT belong together. I feel almost as strongly about this as I do about the fact that KFC and Taco Bell should not be available in a single restaurant form.

Now normally I save my blog for more amiable musings however the horridness of mixing fresh fruit and cooked meat in the same dish makes me want to gag. Get that pineapple out of my pizza, get those walnuts and strawberries out of my salad, your apples and raisins out of my stuffing, and for gosh sakes get your stinkin mangos out of my salsa! All I can say is WHAT UP PEOPLE? If you are going to go to all the trouble to heat up fruit then it must be paired with sugar and... let's say a crumble crisp topping for starters. Fruit is naturally sweet and therefore predestined to be enjoyed in dessert or treat form. Mixing it with cooked flesh could be considered in bad taste at best or an abomination at worst. Meat on the other hand is savory. An earthy, scrumptious, canine tearing sustenance. It screams for spices, rubs, sauces, and especially gravy. Why go and muck it up with some poor hapless fruit that would be much better served in a cobbler or pie?

If you are one of those people (and you know who you are) who actually enjoy the aforementioned combination and have no compass of what it tastes like to me, I shall give you an example to best describe it's assault on my taste buds. Remember the episode of Friends where Rachel tries to cook a trifle? The pages of the cook book have stuck together and she accidentally makes half trifle, half shepherds pie? I think the exact layers are, lady fingers, peas, strawberry jam, ground beef. When Joey takes a big bite he declares it "TASTES like FEET". Now you know what fruit and meat do to my pallet. Thank you.

Ticket Bas$%*ds

Capitalism is alive. Capitalism is well. Capitalism is breaking the hearts of little 9 year old girls everywhere.

So it's been a few years since I had to use Ticketmaster (well call it TM for short - or should that be TB?). Heck most of the concerts I've been to were more of a first come first serve basis where you camp out and the earlier you get there, the better your seat. I was recently drafted for a mission from my dear sis to play the role of "super aunt" and help procure Hannah Montana tickets for my niece. She was a member of the fan club and had a presale password to buy tickets before they went on sale to the general public. Since I'm an online wiz I took her up on the challenge and the second the presale started I was clicking away. The presale tickets sold out in literally seconds, with the only offerings being the nose bleed sections with the most expensive ticket price of $66 per ticket. (tickets were suppose to be $25 - $70). Thinking my sis wouldn't want to pay that much I didn't buy them at the high price and sadly I had failed my cute lil niece. I felt jipped.

I started researching complaints about TM/TB and found they are one GIANT monopoly. They control 90% of all large venues and 79% of smaller ones. If you want to go to ANYTHING you will have to go through TB. They have jacked up the prices but 30-40% after the ticket price with mysterious "fees" like the "convenience fee", the "facility charge", and of course taxes and shipping fees. They offer the worst seats first it seems, and come to find out they sell most of the medium to good tickets to ticket brokers (aka professional scalpers) who then jack up the prices to outrageous levels, with one ticket costing hundreds of dollars.

So the day of the "public" sale comes today and my sis decides to go TO an actual TB store in person to get tickets. I am recruited to try the online version again from another state at the same time to see if one of us can get them. This time we luck out. Well I don't, they offered me the very last row in the very back of the arena for $50 a pop. I think, I'll refresh and try something better. Nope. 20 seconds in they are sold out. My sis calls and says she was able to get 2, and her friend got 2 as well. All the tickets are near each other.. would you think they costs the same?? Well you'd be wrong.

My tickets: nosebleed near last row: $50 

Her friends tickets: nosebleed near the last row $60 

My sis's tickets: nosebleed near the last row $40

Now remember my nosebleed tickets at the presale I didn't buy: $66

Remember people that's the price BEFORE taxes, and about $17 in fees PER ticket

Is there any rhyme or reason to these prices? Wouldn't tickets on the floor be the most expensive around the $70 level and the nosebleeds be at the $25 price? A quick check on eBay and Craigslist shows that even these now crappy seat tickets are selling for $200 a ticket. This is crazy, what 9 year old girl and her mom can afford a $400 concert?

A few popular music bands have tried to sue TB as a monopoly. They have slowly been buying up smaller ticket sellers until there are none left. They can charge what they want, back door sell to scalpers, promise tickets together that when you get them are not together but they are not refundable (even if it is their mistake), and make a HUGE profit in the meantime. Heck I'm not against profit.. I'm against gouging the general public out of their hard earned cash. Even big sports teams have tried to sue them with no success. They cannot be stopped. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. They ain't kidding.

Here's a link to consumer complaints against TBhttp://www.consumeraffairs.com/entertainment/ticketmaster.htm

Which way to the library??

So this little sign always cracks me up whenever we venture over to my husband's home town of Covington. Simple in it's message of course but it made me wonder if it might be a touch too simple?

Now if your looking for that place that holds all dem books with all da learnin' in them, then you've come to the right place. Looky here Ma, there's a person with an open book and an arrow pointing you in the direction of said person or book. In my fourth denominational thinking (as my dad so calls it) I picture a small video in my head where the camera rolls past this sign to three or four people sitting slightly off to the right of the sign holding books in the same pose. But if the average Joe uses their super-sleuthing deducing skills, I believe this sign will lead them to the local public library.

Here's my beef with this sign. If you're on your way to the library, shouldn't you know how to read the words "library"?? Do you really need a picture of someone reading a book to know where you need to go? And if you can't read the word "library" then maybe you shouldn't be going there in the first place.

Then this made me wonder about other signs. What if the restroom door signs with the male and female symbols on them were replaced with pictures that depicted what goes on behind closed doors? Is it only then people would know what to do in there?

I say this library sign is a slap in the face of our collective intellect. They say a picture is worth a thousand words... but in this case a picture is worth just one, the word "library". But it also has a very loud invisible parenthesis following that shouts (DUMB ASS)! It screams: "You're too stupid to read the word library, so we're going to SHOW you". Then hopefully you can follow the arrow to the correct building and get yourself some "edjumacation", you stupid ignorant prick. Hey is that sign yelling at me? Golly I love this country.

Big belts and crappy hair

What's UP with fashion today? I've never been a trend maven, but I've been noticing the 80's are creeping back into the main stream and it's worrying me a bit. A few months back I was shocked, nay perplexed that stirrup pants and leggings were making a come back. I couldn't help but flash back to my absolute favorite outfit in 7th grade: White stretch pants, white loafers (no socks), over sized hot pink with white polka-dot shirt, with matching earrings and don't forget the banana clip). Another crazed 80's trend making a come back was mini skirts over the top of black leggings. Don't forget to slash up your sweatshirt to wear on top of that and about 50 Madonna bracelets on your left arm...

So I'm not opposed to belts, of course I haven't worn one since maybe the third grade (and it was rainbow, thank you). I've noticed all these wacky belts EVERYWHERE. They're not just for holding up pants anymore, and they are not for wearing around your waist for that matter. No these belts are HUGE, cover up your entire rib cage, start at your hips and sit up under your boobs. WHAT?? They make you look like you've been severed in half and held together with strips of buckles and leather.

  

Then there's the hair. I can't stand it. Technically it's probably more 70's hair than 80's... and MEN are the surprising culprits. It's way too long. Then it flips up on the sides in that ever so metro sexual way. It looks dirty, it looks unkempt, it looks like they rolled out of bed. Spikes I can handle, tousled I can handle, but stringy dirty mops... yuk. Hey I thought Justin Timberlake was gonna bring sexy back... well I'm still waiting JT. My hubby laughs at my solution when I see a gent with ugly tresses... I want to KICK it off their head. 



Oh and don't even get me started on Senjaya from AI, his hair gets girlier every week. I don't want to kick it off as much as I want to pour acid on it and rub it off with an old towel.

That's all for now

Love you Forever... or until mommy DIES!

I must be one cold-hearted, non feeling bitty. My sis in law gave me a bedtime story book as a gift for baby #2. She says she cries every time she reads it. Matter of fact, she almost started crying telling me she cries when she reads it. I'm thinking, wow, this must be a good book. Never could I have been more wrong. The book in question is apparently a "classic" (for the life of me can't figure out why) that's been around since 1945. How did I go this long without knowing about it I'll never know but I am so relieved it was never read to me when I was an impressionable child. The title of the book? "Love you Forever".


The story starts out ok, very sweet actually... but then it get's weird fast. Starts with a mother and her young infant son. After he's sleeping she crawls across the floor and then rocks him singing a lullaby. As the boy ages and starts to do bad things the mother continues to crawl across the floor, when he's nine he starts swearing in front of grandma (the little punk), when he's a teenager he smells and eats pizza, still she's crawling. Here's the ringer, now he's grown up, an adult who moves out on his own. Late in the middle of the night the mother straps a ladder to the roof of the station wagon, drives across town, breaks in through a window, CRAWLS across the floor and rocks her full grown son singing him that same creepy lullaby.

"I love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be".

Shortly after that, she's too old and decrepit to go stalking, so the son comes and rocks her, calling her "mommy" in the song instead of baby. Then, she dies. The man then goes in and sings the same song to his infant daughter.

Now the people that LOVE this book say it's a story of a mother's never ending unconditional love. Other people who detest the book find it creepy that she's stalking and rocking a full grown son. Here's my problem with the book. WHY IS SHE CRAWLING?? Maybe when the baby is tiny, you might crawl so they don't see you, but then you drive across town, breaking and entering into your grown sons' house... and still you crawl across the floor? If she can handle a stick shift and a ladder, she's obviously capable of walking. And the sing-song refrain is odd too.. 'as long as I'm living'... that's a nice thought to put in a kid's head right before bed. Hey, Susie, we're all mortal, oh yeah, and mommy will DIE one day... sweet dreams?That's nice.

What's with all this morbid stuff for kids anyway? Grim fairy tales, Ring around the Roses (about the plague), Rock-a-bye-baby (nice lullaby about an infant falling out of tree), and other stories and songs from the past that have death, dying, and maiming as the underlying theme? When you've got this beautiful, tiny child in your arms, the last thing I want to do is remind them life sucks and I'm gonna die. This world's a wacky place, let's try to keep the children loved and safe as long as possible. Oh yeah, and whatever you do, don't read them this book.

Michael Landon Jr. - He ain't no Pa.

See this guy? Do you know who he is? Well he's Michael Landon Jr., and all I can say about him is that he ain't no Pa Ingalls. Why oh why do I detest him so? Well although he followed in his father's footsteps and started work behind a camera, he sure took this idea of "creative license" to a whole new level. A LOW level, I might add. Now while ML Sr. did veer off the original books by Laura Ingalls Wilder in order to keep the TV show going for all those years, his son ML Jr. had to go and RUIN the my absolute favorite Christian pioneer book series by "trying" to make them into TV movies.

The series in question is the "Love Comes Softly" series by Janette Oke... the amazing story of Marty, a pioneer woman who at the age of 17, finds out her new husband of 3 months is killed while they are on a wagon train west and is left abandoned and alone near a small town on the prairie. That same day a man from the town approaches her and asks her to marry him, a marriage of convenience, in order for her to take care of his little 2-year-old girl Missie who doesn't have a mother. If at the end of the harvest she wants to return east, he will pay for her passage home, but she must take his little girl with her. Oh did I mention she's 3 months pregnant? Anyway, the book series follows Marty's entire life and how her situation turns out. I HIGHLY recommend reading them.

So this Michael Landon Jr. character comes along and decides to make this a TV movie. BRILLIANT I think at first. Now everyone can see this wonderful story evolve on film. So my step teen (a huge fan of the series) and I wait with great anticipation at the first airing of this show. The story starts out right on target. Things are progressing smoothly... then, something odd happens. Although the people have the same names and roles as in the book, they start veering from the story line. poignant and touching stories are changed and "slicked" over in the most annoying Hollywood fashion, to the point where by the end of the story, everything is MUCH different than the book. The way the book tells the story is very realistic, and it would of been no problem to relay it to film, but somehow ML Jr. decided to opt for the trite and predictable changes that make the whole movie not even worth watching! Matter of fact the second TV movie in this same series is so far off the story due to all the unnecessary changes that the only thing that remains is the name of the characters.

I realize that no movie can really be just like the book, some things need to be taken out because of time, or whatever, but to completely change what was already a good story, baffles me. So I guess this is another reason for people to get back to reading. Oh and here's a tip for all you would-be producers out there. If you're going to make a TV movie about an amazing book, you might want to try reading it all the way through before you start filming.

Growing up with the Prairie

So take a good look at Pa Ingalls. Dreamy, ain't he? Good ol' Michael Landon. He's got those long flowing locks, a twinkle in his eye, and boy can he saw large planks of wood into smaller ones at the mill (ever notice that's all he did there?) like nobody's business. 

We weren't really allowed to watch much TV growing up, but nary a day passed that we all didn't sit down and catch the loving family antics of Laura, Ma, Pa, and the whole Ingalls gang. Where we truly believed that Ms. Beadle was the nicest teacher around, that Nellie and Willie were pure evil, and that Mrs. Olsen sure was a major bitty. We just couldn't seem to get enough of that quality family programming with the feel good thought provoking endings. I don't think a single episode of LHOTP went by without Pa shedding a tear or playing his fiddle, or Laura wearing that red gingham dress.

This of course led to my current uncanny ability to actually know which exact episode is airing at any moment, based on watching only the first 15 seconds of the show. I'll be like, "Oh this is the one where Nellie pretends to be crippled", or "Oh this is the one where the wild dogs attack the kids while Ma and Pa are away". My sister and I use to pass the time on long car trips trying to quiz each other on random LHOTP trivia. Like how did Ma show she was irritated in bed? (Eat popcorn angrily), or why did the girls have such nice blue dresses for church (Ma was suppose to make a dress for herself but selflessly ended up making the dresses for the girls instead), or why did Laura sell her horse Bunny? (To buy a new stove for Ma for Christmas). So go ahead, throw your hardest LHOTP trivia at me, just see if you can stump me. If you too are a Little House fanatic, trying stumping your friends, it's FUN. 

Oh, and a few holidays back, my football playing, stud of younger brother who would probably never admit to watching LHOTP as a kid shocked us all when we gathered around to play one of the quizzes on the newly released DVD's (yes of course I own them). To our amazement he got every single answer right. He sheepishly shrugged but we all knew that he too had grown up on the prairie, even if it was involuntary.

There's a wasp in my Newton!

So it's probably a good idea that you don't know everything that's in the food you're eating. Like back in junior high when I learned how hotdogs were made and I stopped eating meat for a couple of years. Or maybe the fact that most food that is dyed red is actually made from a certain type of squashed bug. Well if it weren't for that darn Discovery Channel trying to "teach" us stuff, I never would have been swayed away from what once had been a delectable "fruit and cake" treat.

The now infamous show featured figs and the pollination of fig trees. A certain type of wasp would come down and lay their eggs in the figs, fertilizing the fig flower at the same time, and then the baby larvae would grow inside the fruit and use it as subsistence until they hatched. Now that show was on years ago, but I got it into my head that when you bite into a fig Newton, those little crunchy things I thought were fig seeds were really WASP eggs. I stopped eating them all together. Luckily in recent years those clever people at the Newton factory came up with new flavors like strawberry, raspberry, and apple, so we could potentially be back in the fruit and cake business someday soon.

So flash forward to when I meet my husband, who happens to love love love his Newtons and it is then I remember the wasp egg factor. Of course no one really wants to believe me, so I jump on my trusty internet research ban wagon to search out the truth. Guess what? I'm RIGHT! Sort of. Each fig plant needs it's own special wasp to pollinate it. The female wasp squeezes into the fruit, lays her eggs, loses her wings in the process, fertilized the fig, then dies IN the fig. Then the wasp larvae grow eating off the fig and the wingless males are born and mate with the females who do have wings. The males die (in the fig) and the females fly off with their home fig pollen stuck to themselves to go find another fig to pollinate and start the whole process over. Those crunchy little pods (or nullets/galls) are formed by wasp pollination. So the wasp larvae eat off the fig to survive and in turn, the fig digests the dead wasps to produce the energy to grow into figs. The female wasp and half her offspring give their lives so you can enjoy a fresh Newton snack cake. Mmmm Tasty. Now don't say I never taught you nothin'...

Web links for wasp-fig relations below:
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pljune99.htm

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0501.htm#newton

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pldec97.htm

I name you "BATTLE SWAN"!

Seeing that I'm a little over 2 months away from having our second child, I've been on the baby name hunt. It's a lot trickier than you think. Some parents now a days have gone completely mad on trying to come up with a unique name for their baby. Alternate spellings, abuse of double letters, using too many "k's" and "y's" where there should only be "c's" and "i's", and even plain old making names up. If you want a good laugh check out this site that backs my theories. http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/

While searching out a classy, feminine, not too popular name that also has a great meaning, I came across a few names that meant something so wacky I wondered why anyone in their right mind would consider naming their child that.

Asela (Spanish, Latin) "Donkey foal."
Bethany (Hebrew) "House of figs"
Blaise (Latin) "Lisp, stutter."
Claudia (Latin) "Lame."
Hagar (Hebrew) "Forsaken."
Jael (Hebrew) "Mountain goat."
Mallory (Old French) "Unlucky."
Mara (Hebrew) "Bitter."
Nira (Hebrew) "Plowed field."
Olinda (Greek) "Wild fig."
Rue (English) "Regret."
Silja (Scandinavian) "blind one."
Swanhild (Old German) "Battle swan."
Vega (Arabic) "Falling vulture."
Wava (Slavic) "Stranger."
Yumiko (Japanese) "Arrow child." 

If your parents are inspired to name you after a baby donkey as a newborn, you should probably spend the better part of your life with a bag over your head. Or why don't they just save you the trouble and just name you "Jenny"? Fig Newton fans can really get a double bang for their buck if they named their daughter Bethany Olinda, or 'House of Figs and Wild Figs'. That's fruit, FRUIT and cake. Consider the name Vega (Falling vulture) - heck if you're named after a dead and falling bird of prey I guess you've got no where to go but up? Or is that down?

But my favorite is Swanhild. I pictured a great army of Vikings, swords drawn and drooling, running at full speed into battle, and in front of them all is a beautiful bevy of white birds with long graceful necks... complete with little miniture Viking-horned hats. I see the other army crying and cowering in fear. The battle swans are HERE.

Minivans - A work of the Devil

The minivan. Elevated station wagon, suburban godsend, or glorified toaster? My distaste for the minivan started right from the beginning. I came from a big family with four kids, and when you have four kids, you need something BIG to lug them around in. Growing up we always had full sized vans. Vans with three rows of seats. A van where you could literally sit 9 feet behind the driver and them not being able to hear you over the 8-track due to the large distance. A van that held two parents, four kids, three friends, all their gear, and at least one dog. I guess I'm just a big van snob. Oh and our van was extra special, even "tripped out" for 1970's standards. It was butterscotch and white, with tinted windows, and sticker that said "keep on vanning" in the back window, and as a bonus came with two huge silver side pipes that got very HOT. Many a neighbor kid burnt the back of their legs getting out of our "hooptie van" as we so affectionately called it. Road scars, my dad proudly called them.

Then the minivan came along, and yuppie soccer moms everywhere rejoiced. Boxy and clumsy looking, low ceiling, and guaranteed to be going 5 mph under the speed limit in any given fast lane. They were apparently pre-wired with GPS tracking devices that refused to let them pass any Costco or Walmart parking lot. Conducting my own experiments one year, everyday on my way home from work I would keep track of how many minivans would turn into Costco or try to pass it. Almost religiously that left blinker would come on and into Costco they would turn, giving the illusion it was impossible for them to keep driving. Must buy in bulk. Must buy in bulk.

When I was a swingin' single, I was in the market for a new car. I researched the type of car I wanted (good commuting car with great gas mileage) and the chauvinist car dealer tried to steer me away from my car and into a minivan since at the ripe old age of 20 I looked like I was about to pop out two or more kids. I remember being so offended that I had done my homework but just because I was female I should be planning ahead for my destiny to own a minivan. I thought heck, even with two kids they'll still fit in my four door sedan. Right then and there I vowed I would never own a minivan of my own. My friends with kids scoffed. You just wait they said. Once you have a few kids you'll be begging for a minivan. Well I guess that remains to be seen. Baby #2 is on the way and I'm still happy with my cute four door commuter car. There are many family car options out there, I just know for me that it will never be a minivan.

I do have to give kudos to my good friend Jill, who although has succumbed to a minivan, has not fallen victim to the minivan "way". She has proceeded to paint biker flames all over it, and has an Ozzy Osborne key chain hanging from the rear view. Now that's going out with STYLE.

Dorothy Hamill - Public Hair Enemy #1

Long before the Wall-O-80's bangs, long before the mohawk, even before the sexy and shimmery mullet, there was another hair style that swept the nation... Literally. Call it the "Wedge".. call it the "Bob"... or call it by it's true name... the "Dorothy Hamill" cut. If you were a girl with long flowing locks anytime in the mid 70's, your days of beauty were numbered. After the shy and talented skater won the gold medal in 1976, a wave of crazed hair stylists sharpened their scissors and aimed for the heads of the youth of America. No longer would mom's across the nation be bothered with styling and braiding long flowing locks. No longer was tangle-free shampoo needed. Throw out your hair ribbons and bows... the "Wedge" was coming. Simply get out a bowl the exact shape of your head and trim away.

I too sadly became a victim of this fashion trend at the tender age of six or seven. 

A shot us four kids in about 1979.  Me (on the left, Kevin, Megan, and Ryan)

What followed was a life time of what I'd like to call "hair rebellion", or the act of growing my hair out long for the rest of my life. Sure, it took a LONG time to grow out the "wedge"... there was that short time in junior high when it had evolved into a horrific permed mullet, that first year of high school when I looked like a curly cocker spaniel with floppy ears, and then finally by the end of my junior year of I was back to long and flowy curly locks... I style I hold to this day. Sometimes I wonder if Ms. Hamill shouldn't be held accountable for her hair atrocities? If she had just sported a regular pony tail or nifty skaters bun none of this would of ever happened, but on the other hand, the style did end up going great with rainbow shirts, clogs and bell bottoms. How would YOU like to be the sole reason there are a ton a bad childhood photos in the world?? Hopefully she can live with the guilt... lol ;)

I must say... when I wrote this way back at the beginning of my blog seven years ago, I was mostly being sarcastic as I had come across an old pic with my trademark childhood wedge hairdo, which I had no say in.  After watching Dorothy Hamill on the most recent "Dancing with the Stars", she is such a nice person.  Like super nice and sweet.  Like she wouldn't hurt a fly and I might hurt her feelings if she ever read this.  Well if you are out there Dorothy Hamill I think you personally are awesome. Your trend-setting short hairstyle set the 1970's on fire like nothing else, right after everyone who got the memo to name their kid "Jennifer" in 1972. I think long hair and short hair lovers can put their differences aside and be friends.  :)

That's Jenn... with two "N's".

There's a statistic floating around out there that says that 80% of American men have dated a Jennifer at one time or another in their life. There sure are a LOT of us out there. In school there were at least three in every class, so the only way to tell us apart was our last initial. I was Jenny F., a moniker that stuck with me until the ripe old age of 13, when I learned that "Jenny" was another name for a female donkey, or rather, jackass.

After that I decided a slight name change was in order. Of course one could opt for the formal given name of "Jennifer", but that tends to bring up all the times when you had done something bad, and your full name, including middle, would be strung together in the most horrible way and you KNEW you were in big trouble. So that leaves you the option of shortening your name to Jen or Jenn. Over the years and after meeting many Jenns and Jens, I've come to some common conclusions. In my opinion, the one 'n' Jen is sort of taking the lazy way out. Sure Jen will get you through in a pinch. You have all the necessary letters to form the sounds to make the name, but many one 'n' Jens are just that, one dimensional. Oh sure, they're a social breed, lots of friends, and tend to be sporty, popular, and especially gravitate towards cheer leading, however if you're looking for a little more substance and a lifetime of hilarity, try to find yourself a two 'n' Jenn. We're creative, clever, and loyal.

Many a time my theory has been put to the test when one of my guy friends starts dating a Jennifer. I ask... does she spell her name with one 'n' or two? When they say one 'n' I tell them to head for the hills. One 'n' Jens are notorious bad girlfriend material. My one friend Kyle scoffed at my theories and took his one 'n' Jen on a double date/vacation with his brother and fiance. Halfway through their vacation and trapped on an island paradise completely surrounded by water, the one 'n' Jen flipped out, went psycho, and ruined their whole vacation. So if you look around and find yourself in the presence of a two 'n' Jenn, consider yourself very lucky. Like a needle in a haystack, like a diamond in the rough... you've found a rare thing.