Month: June 2013

It All Started with a Banana

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

Ages ago, the best product reviews EVER made their way around the internet. If you ever have some friends over for a little heavy drinking, sit around the old laptop and read these Amazon reviews out loud for a device called the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer. The upgrades the company made over the 471 model are outstanding, and the reviewers have spoken.

Seriously. This little plastic device that you smash over a banana to make circular slices has almost 5,000 reviews. You must read them all. Click right HERE and the internet will take you there.

And in the spirit of the Hutzler 571 review fun, the public has once again taken to the internet to tell us exactly what is awesome about a pair of running shoes. Pinks ones, to be exact, pink ones that were worn by a certain state senator from Texas during her astounding eleven hours of blocking a really mean vote. This time, don’t be drunk when you read the reviews. You’ll wanna be sober for these bad boys.

Some of my favorites include:

“Marathon shoe for marathon filibustering
The next time you have to spend 13 hours on your feet without food, water or bathroom breaks, this is the shoe for you. Guaranteed to outrun patriarchy on race day.”

“Men, do not try these on!
I tried on a pair at the local mall and suddenly Texas Republicans started telling me what to do with my genitals. They started explaining reproduction to me like I was a seventh grader. Unfortunately, being male, I had no way to shut the whole thing down. I’m so confused…”

“These shoes (and a woman’s body) have a way of shutting the whole thing down
An essential tool for running down the clock in a state 773 miles wide and 790 miles long! These shoes are perfect for those days when you must spend 13+ hours standing, not lean on your desk or take any breaks – even for meals or to use the bathroom. The snazzy hot pink color brings out your inner badassness and helps you to “humbly give voice to thousands of Texans” and stop a “raw abuse of power” in its tracks. Raise a feminist army and lead the charge when your competitors cheat and change the rules on you. These Mizuno’s are built to protect your feet from mudslinging and add sunshine to the political process. Highly recommended for fierce women and anyone who’s not a Greedy Old Prick (GOP).”

Have a nice weekend, y’all…

Johny Depp Is Trying to Kill Me. And So Is a Herd of Sheep.

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I’ve been on a mini-staycation with the kids, which means that they’re out of school and I quit doing anything productive in order to hang out with them. And that was my first mistake. I gave them too much love and attention, and now they think they can talk to me whenever they want to.

Before you judge me for that Mom of the Year Reject statement, please envision the scenario that happened last week in which I bent down to pull up my pants in the bathroom and slammed the back of my skull into my daughter’s chin. Yes, she had decided to come talk to me, despite the fact that I was using the bathroom at the time. That’s how I got to stand there for about five minutes holding a cold washcloth on the blood while my pants remained at my feet. Good thing we were in the bathroom already where the washcloths are, huh?

Now that my kids have 24-hour-a-day access to all things Mom, I’ve noticed a running theme with both of my children. They both appear to be addicts who get really hyper and strung out-acting when they don’t get their fix. But because this is the Lorca household, they can’t be addicted to normal childhood summer type things like TV and popsicles. No, my children, ages thirteen and ten, are addicted to Johnny Depp and sheep. Respectively.

Without ever admitting it because it would just be weird, my daughter seems to have developed a crush on Johnny Depp. And, seriously, what human alive, man or woman, DOESN’T have a crush on Johnny Depp? I mean, he’s awesome. I can’t name three bad films he’s done, and that’s including the 21 Jump Street years. And like a good mommy, I dug my own grave by buying my daughter a couple of Johnny Depp biographies for her birthday earlier this month. Now, she follows me through the house (and yes, even into the bathroom like her younger sister) to read me interesting facts about Mr. Depp. The first few were actually interesting and sparked good discussion, such as the fact that Johnny Depp actually was in the movie Platoon, but his scenes were cut because he apparently is a better actor than Charlie Sheen. The rest of the information? Not as interesting, especially when delivered while I’m working in my office, trying to sleep, or attempting to poop by myself.

Sheep. Where do I even begin? Our younger child has developed an unhealthy fascination with sheep. Not toy sheep, stuffed sheep, live sheep, or eating sheep…with BEING sheep. In case you can’t tell, that word is plural right now because not only has my daughter morphed into a sheep, she has declared me to be her “sheepy mommy” and we can only communicate with sheep noises, including our own ways of saying “I love you” by bleating at each other. Much like Johnny Depp, it was briefly cute and adorable and now I kind of want Johnny and the sheep trapped together on a desert island.

Sadly, I was stupid enough to share that remark out loud, and my older daughter reminded me that Johnny Depp played Captain Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie where he was, in fact, marooned on such an island. He managed to escape the island after his companion, Elizabeth Swan, played by Kiera Knightley, built a signal fire with the stash of rum that Johnny Depp had previously buried on the island that last time he was shipwrecked there.

The really upsetting thing is that I’m somehow the bad guy for rolling my eyes, pulling out my hair, and screaming, “I don’t care!” whenever Johnny Depp or sheep make an appearance, so like a good mother, I just nod my head and take another long drink of whatever I’ve managed to pour myself.

#CTWW Preschool May Not Have Prepared You For Life

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I’m completely busy today, as in, “save the whole cave from a herd of angry mammoths”-busy, so for my change the world post today I’m completely ripping off this guy’s very poignant video about how we lie to children every day and tell them that the things that are great about being in preschool are preparing them for life. Remember that sweet poster about all the things you learned in kindergarten, and how awesomely they apply to the rest of your life? Not a chance. As this guy points out, NO ONE WILL EVER PRAISE YOU FOR POOPING once you graduate college. I mean, preschool. It’s time to stop the lies!

If you can make it all the way through his video without having your whole world view on the education system permanently scarred, I’ll hug a dinosaur.

In actual realistic news, we can also change the world by only listening to Jon Stewart’s take on the whole NSA-Whistleblower thing. Anyone other than Jon Stewart who wants to get on TV and talk about how some guy leaking the news that our government spies on people without a warrant is actually committing treason (eyeballing you on this one, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly), also needs to hug a dinosaur. From underneath. While I praise it for pooping.

It Finally Happened. I Couldn’t Laugh At My Child.

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I never thought this day would come, but it did. My twelve-year-old had to have emergency surgery, and I couldn’t mess with her.

I had great plans to get her home, tuck her into bed, then put weird things on her head while she was asleep and take pictures, pictures that I would then post on this blog. I even told her I was going to, naming awesome things like this weird crocheted Viking hat I was going to photograph her in. The more she cried and begged me not to, the more determined I became.

Then something horrible happened. Apparently, I either grew up, or I developed a conscience. Either way, it’s a very unsettling feeling and I’m not really sure what to do with it.

We got to her surgery appointment, and I had to hold my scared 12yrold in my lap while she cried quietly. That’s not an easy thing to do when the 12yrold is as tall as mine is, and when my lap is making a steady progress towards disappearing like mine is. But the best thing ever happened: during her quiet little tears of fear, I asked her what would make her feel better and she said, “Can you tweeze my eyebrows while I’m still under anesthesia?” I held her close and assured her that I would climb over the nurses to get to those eyebrows, if that’s what it took. (Sadly, I forgot all about it, but even that’s not my fault because she looked really, really bad when she came out and trust me, eyebrows were the last thing wrong with her face. She still has all of her eyebrows, in fact, because now that she’s recovered she won’t let me near them with anything pointy.)

So even though groggy pictures of my daughter with the dog perched on her head never happened (the dog happened, just not the pictures), I did manage to sneak a few pictures with my phone of my daughter’s attempts to communicate via dry erase board. It’s not even in English.

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Does This Dead Bug Make Me Look Fat?

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In an effort to be a good person and store up some much-needed karma points, I’m volunteering this week at gardening camp. Yes, it’s every bit as thrilling as it sounds. Our opening activity each day is to wash the trowels and our physical game is to go weed the large garden. Seriously, if I was an illegal immigrant, I’d be making 25-cents an hour to do this. I’m very much looking forward to the fact that my daughter has to have her wisdom teeth out this week because it gives me a great excuse to NOT go to gardening camp the last two days of the week.

NOTE: I am NOT a horrible person, but yes, I signed my older child up to have her wisdom teeth out tomorrow just because I can’t handle any more time spent with children who are allergic to the sun but whose mothers decided to sign them up for gardening camp anyway. Unless we’re going to teach the kids to grow marijuana hydroponically in their closets under grow lights (which I was all for, by the way, but the state funding for this camp wasn’t on board with it), you’re going to encounter the sun at gardening camp. We also have a few children whose mothers decided gardening camp was perfect for their kids because their kids have the social skills of a wet cardboard box, and plants can’t call you names or take your toys. As for my daughter, I’m making it up to her because she really wants her eyebrows waxed but she’s an even bigger chicken than her mother, so I’m going to pluck her eyebrows while she’s still under anesthesia.

I can handle the twenty-or-so kids who signed up for the camp (I’m pretty sure I should know how many there are, but meh…) and I can even handle the activities designed by a helicopter mom somewhere (the biggest camp rule is No Running… really? No running? At camp?). And we do get to go stick our feet in the creek every afternoon if everyone was good that day. But the thing getting me is the bugs.

We’ve got your typical mosquitoes and wasps buzzing overhead, and I am very proud of myself for not shitting every time a spider crawls out of the ground beneath the weeds I just helped some six-year-old harvest. But I think what’s freaking me out are their sheer numbers. Screw the zombies everybody keeps going on about, it’s the bugs that are going to organize. They’re plotting as we speak and they’ve got the numbers to back up their threats.

While my instinct is to start stomping like the cast of Riverdance with my size-11 shoes every time I see one, I have to realize that I’m setting a horrible example for the impressionable children, and it’s bad enough that their mothers have convinced them it’s not okay to venture outside to pick up the shovel they left on the ground without a fresh coating of sunscreen (seriously, I have one camper who’s allergic to hand gel… how in the world are you supposed to survive tetanusy things if you can’t use hand gel? We have to take her inside for the special soap her mama sent, because soap is also on her list of objects she can’t touch.)

In order to teach the kids a teensy bit of environmental responsibility, today’s lesson is on the environmental impact of killing even one little bug and the chain of events you could accidentally set in place. For now, I will forgo the discussions of time travel and the Dr. Who diagrams, and just tell the little beasties not to kill every single insect they see, and especially not to make that horrible high-pitched noise they use when they see one.