The man your man could smell like. . .

Check out this hilarious commercial.

Old Spice


Thankfully, my man smells like a man, man.

Boppy-head guy

My children and I are stalkers. We are stalking boppy-head guy.

Here are the facts:

Boppy-head guy stands on a corner that we pass in our daily route to and from school.
He is apparently employed by a company that buys gold.
Presumably he is paid to stand on this corner and hold a sign advertising for this company.
He listens to his ipod and bops his head along to the music.
We often see 7-11 cups in the nearby snow.

We ponder many things about this situation:

1. HOW can this gold-buying company justify the expense of having a man stand on a corner, miles away from their location?

2. WHAT kind of music is he listening to that causes such emphatic head bobbing?

3. WHAT is in the 7-11 cups we see parked in the snow? My daughter has surmised that they hold slushies.

4. Doesn't his neck get sore from all the motion? (I tried to mimic his vigorous head motion and was in pain within seconds.)

We feel a certain kinship to this man, though we don't know him at all. The children look for him as we approach this corner and have attempted to determine his hours. My daughter has even written a song about him in her head. I feel like we should wave to him and bid him good day. Maybe tomorrow.

What's next?!?

While strolling through JCPenney this afternoon with my daughters (how lovely that sounds!), I came across a clothing display that made me stop short.

"Look at this!!" I said in horror to my 9 year old. "They're stonewashed jeans!!"

Yes, yes it's true. I found an entire rack of jeans, looking as if they had stepped right out of the pages of my high school yearbook. Who would have thought stonewashed jeans would make a comeback. Shaker sweaters, yes. Skinny jeans, perhaps. But stonewashed jeans?!? They were truly better left in the pictures we all have from 1987, with our big permed hair, huge belts (which are also back, I've noticed), and (take a deep breath) stirrup pants.

I'm almost afraid to ask. Is the mullet next to return?

We've been fairly busy around here. . .

I haven't been writing much lately, as you can see. That is, in part, due to all the fair-ing we've been experiencing around here.

Two weeks ago was the Science Fair. This week it was the Learning Fair. Being a former teacher, I know the value of independent projects such as these. But, in my current role of parent, I think fairs stink. What they boil down to is a lot of research, experiments, board-assembly, report-writing, and bibliographies (can I get a collective groan for those?). I suppose I wouldn't mind my child doing any of these things, if he/she was able to do them alone. But of course, being grade-schoolers, they cannot. SO - enter Mommy.

I have done some rudimentary math (because that is all I am able to do anymore, since I no longer use my brain in a productive manner). I have determined that I am 4 years into a 14 year fair-stint. We started in 2006 and will finish in 2020. 2020!!!!! I am exhausted just thinking about it. I will be 47 (!) in 2020. Will I really have the energy poor K needs from me? The jury is out on that one.

Before it is all over, we (by "we", I mean the children, of course!) will have completed 30 projects for these two fairs. I think, in this case, recycling is perfectly conscionable. Will anyone really remember my first daughter's projects by the time my last daughter's turn rolls around? I think not.

I'm sure I won't even remember them (don't forget I have had severe brain cell loss since having children)!

Exactly how many kids constitutes "very much"?!

The children woke up this morning to see Valentine's Day cards from my mother- and father-in-law on the dining room table. There were four on one side, for my nieces and nephew, and five on the other, for our five kids.

My five year old looked at our cards, then looked at the cousins' pile.

After a moment, he said, "They don't have very much kids, do they?"

superbowl

superfood

superfriends

superloud!

supercommercials

supertired. . .

Is there an echo in here?

This morning, my 3 year old son was crying over some injustice in his life (I think I said he couldn't have another cup of juice). In an effort to distract him, I poked him in the tummy to get him to laugh.

He laughed for a moment, then pulled away from me and said, "Would you like it if I poked you in the tummy?!"

My do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-done-unto-you-logic is coming back to haunt me.

How many syllables. . .

. . .does the word "mom" have? One, right?

Not if you're my tweeny-almost ten-but-going-on-14-year-old daughter. If you heard her say my name, you would be quite sure there are 5, maybe 6 syllables (or at least one syllable drawn out over much time, and with excessive inflection).

"Mo-o-o-o-o-m!"

That's what I answer to these days.