A Charmed Life

She Moves Her Body Like A Psycho

"Mad dogs and Englishmen", Dave remarked to me this afternoon, after I returned home from my midday, 9.3-mile walk in the 90-degree heat.  I like to take my long weekend walks while Seph is napping, but next time we're in the middle of a heat wave, I think I'll get my lazy behind up early, instead.  I didn't realize quite how exhausted I must have looked until I was walking under the freeway overpass (my "carrot-on-a-stick today was walking to the Coinstar to trade in a whole bunch of change for an iTunes gift card), and a young man honked his car horn at me and yelled, "You look hot!".  I didn't for one second believe that he was referring to how said lazy behind was looking in my black spandex running tights (hey, they wick sweat, that's all I care about).  Instead I felt my face, which had stopped sweating, and immediately drank some more water. 

What was I doing, walking such a distance in the heat?  Well, not like we were going to be headed to any San Diego beaches, that's for sure.  After the tragic fatal attack of a triathlete by a great white shark this week, I'm starting to think maybe being a couch potato is not as bad for your health as previously believed. 

The truth is, my left knee is still clunking ominously after a few miles of running, and I've been taking it easy on it for one extra day a week, substituting a very long walk for a short run to minimize the high-impact pounding.  I've also, for the first time, starting using the elliptical trainer- the one where your arms move, too.  Let's just say, I've discovered a way to make myself look even more ridiculous than simply sporting spandex. 

I know what you're going to say- elliptical machines are easy, right?  Sure they are, as long as you don't think too hard about what you're doing.  A long time ago I read a poem about a millipede who was tooling around just fine until someone asked her which foot went first when she started to walk.  Now put that poor millipede in Lycra and a sports bra and give her an iPod so she can garrote herself with the headphone cords and you have a basic idea of what my first ride on this beast looked like.   I flailed and flopped around madly like a reject from a Peter Sellers movie.  Then I got the rhythm, until a song I didn't like came on (how did that happen?  I picked out all the music on my iPod), and I reached over to hit the "fast forward" button and ended up RUNNING BACKWARD on the machine.  The good news is, I got my heart rate up, all right!  A friend remarked that this "sounds like a commercial!", and I agree...I just don't know for WHAT.  Coordination?  Ace bandages?  A remote for the iPod??

I am still tired and falling asleep at my keyboard...I'd get up and go to bed, but I can't remember which foot goes first...have a great Monday, everyone!

Demeter Reader

demeterreader
Originally uploaded by Debbie Svoboda

It's time for another "oldie but goodie".  As in, Deb hasn't been taking enough pictures of her adorable child because what aperture do you use for a tantrum, anyway?

This is Seph at 14 months, on our "Roamin' Holiday" in October 2006.  Bonus points to the first reader who can guess why I posed her in this particular spot.  A hint:  This is Ostia Antica, outside of Rome.

Happy Love Thursday!

Resisting A Rest

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not Monday yet.  It's called "I'm the Mommy so I make the rules".  Or, you know, poetic license.

Seph is entering a stage where Bedtime has become The Unspeakable Evil, to be avoided at all costs. Her first line of defense is rather benign and consists of her running away from her otherwise beloved princess pajamas, yelling, "Noooo!  I go dwessed!!!"  Then she breaks out the big guns with "I hungwy!!".  It doesn't matter how much she's had to eat for dinner, either.  She turns into a nocturnal Hobbitt and demands "second dinner". This is very distressing to a good Italian mamma like myself, because what if she really is hungry?  The one time I let her "cry it out" on and off for two hours after her bedtime?  She really was hungry.  She plowed through two hard-boiled eggs like a bodybuilder and was out like a light. 

Once I've called her bluff on dinner, she switches tactics and turns to bargaining. All I can think is, her uncle is an attorney, and this is in the genes.  She  must have picked up on my love of reading, because her last line of defense is to lug her giant pink Disney Princess book (a birthday present from the aforementioned uncle) over to me and beg, "A tewwy?  Peeese, a tewwy??"  ("A story, please?  A story?"  Also, I think my spellcheck is going to explode.)

Chef's salad at bedtime, no.  A story?  Very reasonable, so why not?  Why not, indeed.  The stories in the book are a little advanced for her attention span at the moment, but she's a Disney fanatic so I tell her about the characters and the plot, anyway.  Guess which story is in the book?  Sleeping Beauty.  Here's me trying to explain: "This is Princess Aurora.  Her other name is Briar Rose. She's called "Sleeping Beauty because somebody gave her some bad..oh crap, can't say "medicine"...stuff, and it made her go to sleep! Ohh, double crap...I mean, sleeping is good, but not for her, and...hey, let's read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves!  You moron...your child loves apples...you wanna scar her for life??  Oh wait, here's Cinderella instead, let's read that one! 

Seph: (pointing to Evil Stepmother) "Who eez dat?"  Mommy:  That's her evil stepmother, who's mean to her...like you, putting her to bed without eggs...it's not her real mommy, though...oh great, teach her a nice rigid definition of "family"...

Seph: (pointing to Cinderella sweeping the floor) "What doing??" Mommy: She's sweeping the floor, because her stepmother and stepsisters are mean and make her do all the work...oh man, this is so coming back to haunt me the first time I assign her chores...

Luckily, after tonight's storytime fiasco, she decided to be Sleepy instead of Grumpy and went down without a fuss.  Now I'm the one who won't go to bed.  I'm finished writing my "tewwy", so maybe I'll go fix myself a snack. I hungwy.

Now go hug your mommies!

Burning Ambition

Wow, is it Wednesday already?  You know what they say.."Time flies like the wind...fruit flies like bananas!"  At least when it's Wednesday I remember I'm supposed to actually sit down and write something here.  Lately I think most of my blood is going to my poor, overworked quads instead of my brain! 

At least, that's my excuse du jour.  The sad truth of the matter is, despite my smarter-then-the-average-bear IQ (around 140, just smart enough to know that I'm too dumb for Mensa) and nerdly little glasses, I am...an airhead.  I open my mouth and 90% of the time, I sound intelligent and highly-educated,  The other 10%...like, omigod, I totally can't believe I said that!  ::vapid giggle::

I could blame it on genetics.  My mother earned her bachelor's, master's and PhD, all while working at least one full-time job and raising three kids. However, when asked, "what color was George Washington's white horse?", she'd get stuck and have to think about it.

I could blame it on being follicularly-challenged.  I was as blonde as my daughter until my third birthday.  Maybe the lack of melanin in my hair allowed the sun to bake my brain. 

Or I could take it as a blessing.  After all, I've never had the burning ambition to be a sooper genius.  Really smart people know how screwed the Earth is and it makes them miserable.  Look at what it did to poor Stephen Hawking.  You can't tell me it's just the ALS talking...uh, or not talking.  He's simply so blindingly intelligent that he's figured out the human race is going to die out unless we manage to find and travel to another planet with clean air, water and Internet access.  It's driven him round the bend, I tell you. (Still don't believe me?  Check out how much Al Gore has aged, in comparison to Bill Clinton.)

No, my only ambition in life has been to be a writer, and there's nothing I like to write about more than the crazy, true stuff that happens to me.  I honestly don't care how ridiculous I end up looking, as long as someone's getting a laugh out of it. Well, royalties would be nice, too, eventually.

So this week's story is about fire.  I'd bet the 96 cents I have left in my iTunes account (hint, hint!) that none of you reading this has ever set a Bunsen burner on fire before.  No, I don't mean lit the burner itself, I mean to set the entire thing aflame.  Junior year chemistry class, where the otherwise very nice teacher made it clear that anyone accidentally setting a fire would receive a "zero" for that week's lab. The hose from my burner was kinked a bit tight, and the flame hit the cloth-like covering over the hose and ignited the whole thing within seconds.  Imagine, if you will, a skinny, beetle-browed version of myself, hopping anxiously about like Beaker from the Muppet Show, trying to extinguish the flames before the teacher reached my side of the room.  No, I didn't go for the readily-accessible fire extinguisher, because I would have given myself away, gotten an F for the day, and my mother would have hit the roof.

Not that she had room to talk. Back when I was in junior high, we bought our first house, which had been built in the 1960s.  It came with the original stove, which had the broiler pan on top instead of inside the oven.  She made steaks one night and set the broiler on fire.  I mean it, THE ACTUAL BROILER WAS ON FIRE. And no, we did not have a fire extinguisher.  In her defense, the mental midgets who designed the stove had lined the inside of the broiler cover with thick paper.  Don't look at me, even I'm not that stupid!  I have no idea how we put the fire out...undoubtedly, it was my ultra cool-headed father.

Come to think of it, he put out another dinnertime fire, while out at a restaurant with my mother's parents.  They went somewhere fancy, with candles on the table and a napkin-lined bread basket.  My grandmother passed the basket to my father before the main course was served, and basically made camp-style toast on the spot.  Hmm, is that genetic argument gaining some weight?

My best fire story, though, happened  a few years ago, in this very house.  We were hosting a dinner party, and I had candles lit everywhere.  Among them were two gel candles that I'd gotten as a 30th birthday present and only burned once before. I set them next to each other on the bathroom sink.  As we sat down to eat, the smoke alarm went off.  No self-respecting Wop every burns dinner, so I was confused until one of the guests calmly remarked, "there seems to be smoke coming down your hallway".  The gel candles themselves had ignited, and there were two-foot flames licking their way up the mirror.  I didn't panic, because it wasn't like there was anything else in there to burn...I stood there like a moron, slowly thinking to myself, "I wonder if my little stockpot is deep enough to smother the flames".  Right about then is when Dave showed up with our fire extinguisher.  What do I call this story, do you ask?  Why, "the Bonfire of the Vanity", of course!

Do I have anyone "fired up" to tell a story of their own?  Leave it in the comments, and, um...no flames, please!  Have a great week!

I

Quit Snickering

So I found this old meme over at Reenie's Reach and thought you all might get a kick out of it. It's a variation on a theme that combines different parts of your name or family names to come up with your Star Wars persona or your superhero name.  Some of them didn't work so great for me- for instance, my "gangsta name", a combination of my favorite ice cream and preferred cookie, would end up being "Mocha chip Oreo".  How would I throw up a gang sign for that, anyway?  Pantomime dunking a cookie in a glass of milk?  I suppose it does sound slightly tougher than "Strawberry Shortcake". 

Or how about my "detective name", which is supposed to be my favorite color followed by my favorite animal.  Would you hire "The Green Raccoon" to dig up the dirt you needed?  Actually, come to think of it, that does sort of work.

But my favorite by far was my spot-on stripper name, brought to you by my favorite perfume and my favorite candy bar.  May I present to you...Ms. Vanilla Mounds. Hey, quit Snickering!

Toil and Trouble

Toil and Trouble
Originally uploaded by Debbie Svoboda

Two year-olds are a lot of work, but they're worth it, right?  Right?  (Why does nobody make eye contact with me when I say this?)  Well, at least they're cute, especially when they're squeaky clean instead of sticky.

There's nothing Seph enjoys more than her beloved "bubbles...baff??"  She'd stay in the tub for hours if she could.  Can anyone tell me how to make her "put down the ducky"?

Happy Love Thursday!

Jungle Love

sephfilbert
Originally uploaded by Debbie Svoboda

It's a jungle in here!  My "Love Thursday" photo is a little late this week, because my littlest love has made such a mess of my living room that I don't want to capture it on film!  So, here's a "golden oldie" from almost exactly two years ago, when Seph and Filbert (Purple Hippo of Much Emotional Attachment) were both still babies!

::sniff:: they grow up so fast!  Also, does anyone know how to re-fluff chenille?

Happy Love Thursday!!