Goo Goo Dolls Redemption

Two Fridays ago I went to a Goo Goo Dolls concert at a casino near the Oregon coast.  I was supposed to go with my husband, but he came down with a man cold, so I took my sister instead.  (Graci, Nan.)

The concert looked like this:

And sounded like this, sort-of.  There's some weird distortion going on.  Also, my camera sucks:

And through the entire thing I felt like this:

Yep, that "man cold" turned out to be the flu, which I had.  I pretty much almost died, but it was worth it because Goo Goo Dolls sound really good live, (even whilst yaking up a lung), and now I don't have to say that the only concert I've ever been to was The Dixie Chicks.  Because up until two Fridays ago, that was a true story.

Why The Dixie Chicks?  Well, it wasn't my fault, and that's all I'm saying.

Do you realize that The Goo Goo Dolls came out with their first album 15 years ago??  And for that reason, I should not have been shocked that 98% of the people attending the concert were overweight, over-the-hill, and bald.  But it did surprise me, and it was depressing, too.

But I was right there with them.  

Ugh.  Now I feel like I have to go watch Wheel of Fortune.

You Might Be A Crappy Parent - McDonald's Edition

I did the unthinkable last week.  I took the kids to Playland at McDonald's.  

Maybe that's something that most moms do all the time, but I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've been in one of those things since birthing Cameron nine and a half years ago.  I hate Playland.  It smells in there.  The food is gross.  And more importantly, I don't like other people's kids.  

Take the little girl in this picture, for example.  She stood on the outside of that blue room and alternately licked the Plexiglas window and screamed, "I hate you!" at decibels that made my ears bleed.  Over and over and over again, at no one in particular.

Where was her mother, you ask?  I'd like to know that, too.  I presume she was one of the women dressed in skin-tight jeans, heels, and cashmere sweaters that was camped out at a table in a corner, completely ignoring every child in the joint.  Who the hell wears heels to McDonald's?  Women who are trying to impress their so-called friends and the teenage guy dipping the fries in hot oil, that's who.

While I was sitting at a table in The Dreaded Playland writing a grocery list and keeping an eye on my kids who were incredibly well behaved, I was tempted to stand up on that table and shout, "Do you all see my kids?  They're the ones who are behaving like human beings, not animals.  Take notes!"

But I didn't.

After my grocery list was complete, I sat for a few more minutes watching my boys and growing more and more proud of them by the minute.  About ten minutes later, (which felt like ten hours), the human Bratz Dolls in the corner all stood up and started calling their kids out of the tubes and tunnels.  

Guess what happened?  

Nothing.  

Their kids ignored them, of course.  So the moms took turns hovering at the bottoms of the slides and entrances to the tunnels; grabbing their kids by the ankles whenever they could and dragging them backwards out of the toy.  I was impressed that none of them chipped a nail.

But there was that one elusive two year old girl who was just too quick for her mother.  So as this girl passed my son, Ethan, near the entrance of the tube, the mother shouted to Ethan, "Can you grab her?  Right there!  The little girl in the pink!  Grab her!"

Um.

Yeah.

She totally did.  

Apparently it's my kid's job to corral unruly children of incapable mothers.  Part of me wanted to tell that woman to get her butt up that tube and get that kid herself, but I was pretty sure she couldn't bend at the knees in those tight pants, so just watched my seven year old do what that mother could not, thinking that at least Ethan was getting a lesson in respecting adults -- even if the adult was an incompetent stranger.

But that wasn't the end of it.  My poor Cameron got snagged in the same kind of issue.  A man who, like the woman before, could not get his child to come out of the structure shouted up to Cameron, "Could you please go find a little boy named Carter?"

Yeah.  

He totally did.

And I was completely lost for words.  Cameron went searching for Carter while Carter's dad stood outside the structure like a big dumb waste of skin waiting for my kid to produce his child.  

What has the world come to?

At that point I'd had enough.  I called my kids, "Cameron, Ethan, Drew!"  and they came running like the Von Trapp kids  at the sound of a whistle.  Except I didn't need a whistle.  And all the way to the car I told my kids that they are never responsible for other people's kids.  And while I appreciated that they were respectful to those moron adults, they had my permission to roll their eyes and ignore the next mother who asked them to do her job.  My kids were there to have fun.  Not babysit.

Ok, maybe I don't dislike other people's kids.  I just dislike crappy parenting.  

And my kids will probably never see the inside of a McDonald's Playland again. It was so much work this last time, I doubt they'll care.

(This would be my one year old who came when he was called.)

So in case someone who needs some tips stumbles upon this blog, here it is:

If you ever ask another child, especially a complete stranger, to do your dirty work for you, you might be a crappy parent.

Washington Can Kiss My Butt

OK, so our "vacation".  My husband goes to Washington every year to fish for salmon.  He kills it. This year he brought home something like 16 fish, far short of his record, but we're already getting the smoker heated up.  

There were a few awesome parts of our "vacation"; we got to see our nephew sealed to Andrew's sister and husband, I finally met my sister's daughter, Juliana, we spent a lot of time with Andrew's mom, and visited with family.  Like, a ton of family.  We went to the beach, the zoo, ate at some of our favorite restaurants, and I made two trips to Portland's Rose Gardens, which is high on my list of favorite places in the world.

And then comes the bad stuff.  The stuff that forces me to put quotations around the word "vacation".

We ate at a restaurant called Yummy Mongolian Grill in Vancouver.  I think I must have put too much oil on my food concoction, or maybe the meat was tainted or something, because I had diarrhea so bad after that lunch that my hemorrhoids made a comeback and I had to take several Imodium tablets. I haven't had it that bad since I was a kid and stood in my bedroom crying while liquid poop ran down my legs and soiled my Rainbow Brite underwear.

I love the Oregon Zoo.  They really know how to rock an exhibit and make it look like the animals actually prefer to be in captivity.  But better than that, the animals there love to get kinky when I visit.  I have seen polar bears get busy, lizards doing some lovin', and my all time favorite, a mandrill exploring himself shall we say? in front of a class of first grade kids who didn't know they were going to get sex ed on their field trip.  But this time?  No animal lovin took place.  It was such a shame.

And to add to the pleasure of the zoo, Poppy posted about Lorikeets at the Oregon Zoo not long ago and it made me super excited at the possibility of scaring the crap out of my kids.  So, like the sucker I am, I paid three dollars for three little cups of nectar to entice those damn Lorikeets to land on my kids' hands and scare them into therapy - but no dice.  The birds all just sat up in the trees chirping at our stupidity.  Three bucks wasted, and no permanent damage to the kiddies.  

Then there is the constant rain in the Pacific Northwest.  You wake up every day to clouds which may or may not burn off by noon, (most likely not), and you have to change your kids' clothes four hundred thousand times a day to keep the mud and wet off your furniture.  By our third day there I was ready to down an entire bottle of Prozac.  

The icing on the cake though, and I'm talking some big, fluffy, sugary icing, is that my husband may or may not have a criminal record after this trip.  Having been law abiding citizens our entire lives we're not really sure how all of that works.  

There was an unfortunate encounter with a game warden at Andrew's favorite river, and there may have been charges of illegal fishing after dark as well as fraud against the state of Washington.  Andrew was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He really is innocent, but try telling that to a game warden who I am sure is Hitler's great-nephew or something.  Long story short, our kids are going to open their presents on Christmas morning and inside the boxes will be a letter which reads, 

"Dearest Children,

The best Christmas gift you could possibly get this year is the knowledge that your father is no longer a wanted man, so I have paid off the astronomical fines that were so wrongly inflicted upon your family.

Merry Christmas!

Love, Santa"

Cause really?  It was that bad.  But at least he wasn't thrown in jail like the officer threatened.

We hope that guy dies of monstrous hemorrhoids inflicted by unceasing diarrhea caused by eating at the Yummy Mongolian Grill.  In fact, I think I'll send him a gift card.

In The Parking Lot At Smith's

There are some days as a mother that taking the easy way out doesn't always mean it'll be carefree...

I had five kids in the car and needed to stop at the grocery store for hot dog buns. Needing only one thing, it felt insane to unload everybody, keep everyone together and calm in the store, get the buns and then have to re-load the car. 


Toddlers really are a huge chore. 


So on this occasion, I decided to send my older two kids into the store by themselves to retrieve the buns while I waited in the car with the little guys.

Cameron was horrified at the prospect of being sent in sans-adult, because buying hot dog buns without a grown-up held the potential for emotionally disfiguring embarrassment. (I'm sure he was picturing not being able to find the bread aisle or not having enough money at the check-out stand.  Or just someone looking at him.  Oh, the horror.)

Ethan was thrilled at the idea of being asked to complete an adult task, and immediately held his hand out for the money.

I only had five dollars cash in my wallet, so I explained to the boys that I needed two packages of buns, but that they could not cost more than two dollars each or there wouldn't be enough money to pay sales tax. I told them to bring me my change, and then told them how to get to the bread aisle and sent them on their mission.

We waited in the car for a few minutes. Drew climbed into the front seat to push all the buttons and flip all the switches he could find on the dash, check himself out in the mirrors, change the radio pre-sets... Bryan, (my nephew), and Trent jabbered and whined in their car seats.

And after a while, I saw my boys coming back towards the car with dejected faces and five dollars still clutched in small hands.

"What happened?", I asked.

"The hot dog buns cost TEN DOLLARS!", Cameron with complete disbelief in his voice.

We were at Smith's, not some organic, whole foods, green store where the prices are all jacked up, so I figured he must have read a sale tag wrong.

"Are you sure it didn't say 'ten for ten dollars'?"

Their faces lit up with understanding, and they ran back into the store while I shouted at them that in that case they should get three packages!!  (We like chili dogs.)

As I watched them scamper back towards the store, I heard a gagging noise and turned to find Drew with a disgusted look on his face, holding an old can of soda, Coke dripping out of his mouth.

I have this bad habit of leaving half-finished cans of soda in the car and then putting trash down the opening when they've gone flat and nasty. So Drew had just taken a big swig of garbage juice, and I'm not sure exactly what I had put in that can, but after boiling inside a container of carbonation and 100+ degree temperatures, whatever it was resembled a squid tentacle.

Being the good mom that I am, I laughed until I cried while Drew spluttered and whimpered and inspected his tongue in the visor mirror. I vowed to clean out the car when I got home.

No sooner had I calmed down from my hysteria, than I heard another, more ominous gagging sound from the backseat. I turned around and found Bryan with his entire foot in his mouth, gagging on his big toe as it tickled his uvula. That was not funny. 


Kid drinking garbage juice - kind of comical. Vomit all over the car - not amusing in the least.

"Bryan!", I yelled, "Get your foot out of your mouth right NOW!"

Bryan looked at me as though to say, "I don't know why you're freaking out; I do this all the time."

And then I was pretty sure I knew who had puked his breakfast up on my living room rug that morning.  Up til then, no one had fessed up.

I turned just then to see if Cameron and Ethan had finished their shopping yet, and sure enough, they came skipping through the parked cars, holding a sack full of buns. Ethan grinned at me and shouted, "Mom! We had enough money to buy candy bars!"

Those little turds spent my money!

"I told you to bring me my change!"

"We did!", Ethan retorted. "We saved you all the pennies and one nickel."

Great. Remind me to never send them with my debit card.

So, Friends, in the end, it would have been easier to just unload everyone, drag our butts through the store for our one item, and then load everyone back up.

Lesson learned.

A Very Serious Contest

Friday night, Andrew and I went on a date with about thirty other people. The monthly cruise night with the V-Dub Club of Northern Utah.

Andrew loves his bug. It is old, it is smelly, it is a money sucking beast with a really loud motor. The neighbors love to comment that they heard my husband leave for work again this morning! (So far none of them have offered to buy us a quieter car, so they can bite me.)

My relationship with Andrew's bug is better these days. I used to hate it because it never ran for more than a week without needing a new fuel pump or transmission. But since it was worked on this last spring, it has been so well behaved that I would almost go so far as to call it reliable.

But not quite.

Anyway, back to the date.

You can't take a parade of 20 V-Dubs on the freeway without at least one breaking down. Especially when it's 100 degrees outside. You just plan for it, and then it's not irritating. It's funny.



And even though a lot of people think that Volkswagens are just smelly hunks of rusted metal that are polluting the earth and waking them up too early in the morning, there are plenty more who appreciate their coolness. We got lots of honks and thumbs up on this cruise, and I swear that none of the fans looked like pot-smoking hippies.



During the course of this evening with the V-Dub Club, we came to the realization that Andrew seems to be the only member who has not yet named his car. This became a problem for me, because if I'm going to start loving this car, it must have a name so that I can call it something besides "That Piece of Shit".

And that's where the Very Serious Contest comes in.

Andrew needs some name suggestions. We decided to get them from all of you! Aren't you honored? All you have to do is leave a suggestion in the comments section, and Andrew will select a winner. The winner will receive a prize. I cannot tell you right now what it is, because it's a secret, but rest assured that it represents the spirit of what we're naming. (I can tell you though, that it is better than both a beer bottle opener or wife beater tank top!)

Here are the specifics of the bug:


(Andrew's car is the one on the right, but he wishes it was the one on the left.)

Year, Make, and Model: 1963 Volkswagen Beetle

Color: Purple or Blue depending on the light and who you ask. I say it's purple, but Andrew says it's blue. I can see that, I suppose; like in the daylight it's purple, and in the black of night you could call it blue if you wanted to and no one would be able to prove you wrong. Interior is black.

Birthplace: Germany (If you didn't know that, you should probably hang your head in shame.)

Kick-butt Motor Specifics: 2110 cc (2.1 liter), approximately 140 horsepower; in other words, loud and fast, as long as it's not laid up with a clogged fuel line.



Contest will be open until Sunday, July 25th, 2010, when Andrew will choose a winner and I will announce the most awesome prize. Multiple entries are encouraged.

Have fun!

Mom, I'm Bored!

I took some of my own advice, added some from this blog, and created the Boredom Jar today. I didn't decorate mine, cause I have boys and they don't give a damn if there's ribbon on it.

So our rules are that if you complain of boredom, you can draw a slip of paper from the jar, but once you commit to being so bored that you have to have help to pull yourself out of the pending doom of depression, you have to do whatever is on the slip of paper. Even if it says that you have to clean a toilet. Yes, there are chores in the jar. (But not many - I'm not 100% mean.)

The boys were excited to try it, so I let them pull a paper this morning. The slip they chose was perfect. It said to visit someone. We all threw our shoes on and went down the street to see the baby chickens that a sweet little grandma had invited us to see last Sunday at church.

The boys had a ball! They saw the chicks, even got to pet one, fed the hens some scratch, learned how the chickens are taught where to lay their eggs...it was fun and educational! The sweet couple who hosted us were really good with the little kids and I am so glad we went.

On the way home, Cameron said, "All this excitement is making me want to be a farmer!"

My Plane Is Not Going To Crash. I Will Be Back.

I will not be here for the rest of the week. I will be here: (click on the pictures for more information!) (I think!)



and here:




and here:




and here, somewhere:



And lots of other places, I'm sure.

And I know you're jealous. But that's ok. I'm sure you have a really cool TV, and I'm still using this big, heavy box that has no liquid crystals and can't be hung on a wall. So we're good.

Ok, you're right.

I win.

See you next Tuesday!

Gettin' Comfy

I have a sis in law who loves Applebee's. It seems that she and her husband go to that restaurant whenever they go out, (I'm sure they really don't), and over the years I have spent a collective hour of my life telling my husband how boring and unadventurous that is! Why do I care, right? I don't really. But I don't like Applebee's, so maybe I just don't understand.

Every time I try a new restaurant I think of this particular sis in law and wonder if she's still eating good in the neighborhood or if she's found a new favorite. I know - I'm so much cooler than her. (That was sarcasm, and I'm getting to my point.)

So this last Saturday was date night and Andrew and I had planned on a bike ride along a trail we've never ridden before and a picnic somewhere along the way. I was looking forward to it and even hit a couple of bike shops looking for a cute basket to carry our dinner in.

As the day wore on I became more and more exhausted and irritable, just because the week was winding down and I had had my fill of just about everything. When Andrew got home from work I had to admit that the last thing I wanted to do was go on a bike ride, get sweaty, and eat a cold dinner in a mosquito infested prairie. And I was grumpy about it. I seriously needed some down time to just relax.

So where did we end up? At the only place that I felt like going to. The restaurant that is my favorite when I'm craving a casual atmosphere and unpretentious food. My fallback. We went to Wingers. And it was good.

While I was sitting there in the booth, sipping my chocolate Coke, (not gross, by the way - I know you just made a face), I was thinking of my sis in law and her Applebee's habit, and then I understood it. Sometimes you just need to go where you want to go because you're comfortable there and it makes you happy.

We can be creative on our next date.

What are some of your favorite things to do for date night?

Andrew is always unimpressed when I take pictures of him eating.

Good Ol' Media Influence

Cameron has been calling me a fart sniffer for days.  You let the kids watch The Sandlot once or twice and suddenly they think it's funny to tell each other they are ugly as a dog's butt, and they all laugh hysterically about it.  It's okay, he can keep calling me a fart sniffer, because I have this picture to show his girlfriend when he's sixteen:

My boys have picked up some interesting phrases from all kinds of movies and TV shows, and I can't say that I'm fond of all of them.  However, Drew is going to see his first movie in a real-live theater this afternoon, (at the $2 theater so that if he isn't on his best behavior we can leave and not feel like we wasted a small fortune), and because it's his first theater movie, I am hoping for a lot of potty humor.  I want those chipmunks to belch and break wind and squeak all kinds of ridiculous words so that Drew has the time of his life.   There is nothing better than listening to that kid giggle.  Makes my world.

A SUCKER FOR "THE BEST HALIBUT IN THE UNIVERSE!"

Andrew and I like to shake things up sometimes and try new restaurants when we do get the chance to eat out.  Often we have bad experiences with this, but the times when we discover a gem make it all worth it.  Last night was not one of those times.

I was having a self-pity day as I had been cooped up in the house for too long and was jealous of Andrew's multiple outings during his day off.  Granted, some of them were just piddly little errands, but at least he was more than a mile from home.  So I sulked and moped until he had had enough and told me to get the kids ready and we'd go get something for dinner.  We all had different places in mind, so the four of us who could write put our dining picks on slips of paper and we let Drew pick one of them out of a bowl.  Andrew's choice won.  Ethan pouted.  I rushed to put on make-up and forgot to blend my eyeshadow which resulted in many odd looks and one inquiry as to whether I had a black eye.  

Andrew's pick was a local drive-in type establishment that we had never visited before.  Andrew had been wanting to try it because a week ago they advertised on their sign that they had "THE BEST HALIBUT IN THE UNIVERSE!"  He is so gullible.  We live nine hundred and fifty miles from an ocean and he actually has hope that this diner might be the fix he's been looking for since we last ate at Mo's in Cannon Beach, Oregon six months ago.  (See below for sample of the real deal.)  This place specializes in ice cream treats, so I had doubts about it's real, non-lickable food potential.

Best ever halibut - find it at Mo's.  Not Pace's.

I reminded Andrew in the car on the way there that if he chewed his food really well and ate slowly, he at least might feel full after his meal of "fish" and "chips", if not nessesarily satisfied.  That halibut was destined to be tiny little morsels of something only masquerading as halibut.  Unfortunately I was right.  His three little fish nuggets arrived in their cardboard tray and he looked at them so sadly and said, "I don't think this is going to be the best halibut in the universe."  Poor Andrew with his naive optimism.  

We won't go there again because none of our food was better than staying home and eating a PB&J.  Maybe if we had just stuck to Sundaes we wouldn't have been disappointed.  And to think - we could have gone to Wingers if Drew had picked my paper slip.  

Today I found Urbanspoon, a great site for dining reviews.  Just choose your city and type your restaurant in the search bar.  You can vote your opinion of the restaurant and read reviews.  It's the best site I've seen yet for critiquing food!

Seafood in a land-locked state.

Saturday night took Andrew and I to The Seafood Buffet in Deer Valley with Andrew's boss and his wife. I am not a buffet kind of girl. I think that the best part of eating in any restaurant is sitting on my lazy tush while someone else brings me food. Besides that, buffet food is not always, (how to put it delicately?), edible. It's been sitting under a warmer for who knows how long, and one can never tell if that gelatinous goo is meant to be coating the fruit or if a shorter person came along and proved the sneeze guard unreliable.

In fact, the last time that Andrew tried to drag me into a buffet, I whined and complained and flung snobbery about like a whip until we eventually struck a deal - we waited in the parking lot of a Hometown Buffet and agreed that if the next person who emerged from the restaurant was grotesque in any way, we would move on to a restaurant of my choosing, but if it were someone normal looking, ie; bathed in the last two days, no fanny pack strapped around their middle to smuggle leftovers, and able to walk without waddling, then we would go in.

We sat there for twenty minutes and no one came out.

So in we went, and even Andrew agrees that he's never had a more dissatisfying meal. We have not been to a buffet since. See how smart I am?

I figured that this seafood buffet would be a different story, seeing as it's a fancy-schmancy five star restaurant. (I never knew that "five star" and "buffet" could be uttered in the same sentence? You toss "seafood" in with "buffet" and now you're talking potential food poisoning along with all the other yummy buffet qualities.) We got all gussied up and drove just a little past Park City to the Deer Valley restaurant.

I had promised myself that I would try sushi at the restaurant, and not just a California Roll, because that's cheating. I also wanted to try an oyster because I hadn't had one since I was eight and my family had just moved to the Pacific Northwest. We had gone on a little beach outing one day and happened upon a roadside stand that was peddling fresh oysters. We were all trying to be brave and open minded about the seafood in the Northwest, so I tried an oyster, and if I recall correctly, I was the only one in the family who liked it. However, I was a bit of a show-off, still am, so it could have been an act. That's about as exotic as it got, unless you count the time that Dad brought home shark from the grocery store and fried it up in a pan in the kitchen.

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure that it was really shark that Dad brought home. He told us that it was shark, but he isn't exactly Abe Lincoln.

Tangent: When I was six years old, I went on a camping trip with my family. My parents brought their bows and arrows so as to practice their archery. (My parents aren't red-necks, so this must have just been a phase.) Dad was practicing his shot when my sister and I decided to have an adventure in the woods. When we got back, Mom was cooking dinner, which we were informed was a squirrel that Dad had shot with his arrow. Mmmm! Squirrel! I was so excited to try it, and very happy to find that I liked it! So much so, that I wrote about it at school the next week:



Some years later I learned that it wasn't really squirrel that we dined on that night around the fire, but chicken. My dad has always enjoyed telling me big, fat lies, which I always believe and then always share with others, making myself look like a fool.

Now where was I?

Oh, the Seafood Buffet.

So, inside the restaurant, I filled my first plate with selections from the "Natural Bar". I chose three kinds of sushi and an oyster on the half-shell. You might be thinking that I am intelligent enough to put two and two together and figure out that "Natural Bar" plus "on the half shell" meant uncooked, but you'd be wrong. (Because it's a common practice to cook a shellfish and then put it back into it's little shell home. It's all about presentation...) I had no clue that that damn oyster was raw until I caught a whiff of it right before I slid it into my mouth and it left it's slimy, ocean water trail from the tip of my tongue down the back of my throat.

I do know that it's uncivilized to gag and throw up on the tablecloth at a five-star restaurant, so I choked the thing down, chased it with a glass of ice water and came to the conclusion that I had sampled a fully cooked version of oyster at that roadside stand so many years ago, and that even then, I was most definitely faking my appreciation for the delicacy.

Oysters are nasty. And if you ever feel the need to try one "on the half-shell", just imagine licking a barnacle on the bottom of a deep sea fishing boat, and you'll get over it.

Also, eel sushi is not high on my recommendation list, and I am fully confident that people who like sushi are only pretending because they think it's hip and cool to eat raw fish.

I'm glad I tried those things, just to be able to say that I did it, but if I had had to pay for that dinner, I would still be sad. Because even the dishes that were cooked were nothing to get excited about. Even I can make a killer roasted garlic mashed potato. Now all this probably sounds like I am just a huge snob who doesn't like seafood and can't appreciate a good clam when I see one. But I will take a dinner at Red Lobster any day of the week. I don't think that love of a chain restaurant puts me in the snob category. And I will give The Seafood Buffet it's due credit, because I escaped without food poisoning, and I felt adequately pretentious the entire time I was there. Okay, and the prime rib was excellent. So was the chocolate raspberry dessert. Dang! I should've brought my fanny pack!