The Internet is my sinkhole.

I'm bubbling with words, y'all.

So much thinking going on in my head and I want to get it all out on to the page - but I just can't seem to put it together coherently.

The inside of my head is like one of those houses on hoarders. It's all covered in broken appliances and trash and cat poo.  But in between all the ten year old pieces of mail and receipts for groceries that have long ago rotted, there is real gold in there. Real thoughts that need to be spoken.

I have this fantasy that I go somewhere that there is no Internet, no TV, no radio, no distractions. Just me and my computer and my words. How on earth do people turn out books these days? How do they keep themselves from being distracted by all the shiny squirrels running around? Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and YouTube and Ellen DeGeneres and men who get swallowed up by sinkholes and snowstorms and the latest dumb drama going on in that Facebook group they lurk in.

Every time I start to have a thought that I think might really be valuable, another damn shiny squirrel goes running by and I'm clickety clicking away.

I need a retreat. The Internet is my sinkhole.

Maybe I won't have to drive anywhere between now and Monday....

My drivers license is expired. It expired on my birthday last week. I fully intended on getting it renewed before my birthday, but evidently I can't renew it online this time so I have to go to the DMV to do it.  Which doesn't sound so bad... except it is that bad. Down here, we can make an appointment to get our license renewed, or we can go wait in line all day long with all the other procrastinators who didn't make an appointment.

I hate waiting in line. Waiting in line is quite possibly the most irritating thing in the universe to me. It's time suckage.  Not that I always use my time wisely or that I'm even very productive... but being forced to spend hours waiting in a line forces me to think about all the things that I could be doing if I weren't waiting in line.

I have thirty loads of laundry to do. I'm only exaggerating that a little bit. I might not be exaggerating it at all. I'm not sure.  I could be doing laundry if I weren't waiting in line. The kitchen could really use a good cleaning. It's probably getting dirtier while I'm waiting in this line. There is probably some sort of bacteria growing rampant right now in my kitchen sink on a dish that was left in there overnight. It's going to be out of control by the time I get out of this line. I probably have some things I need to ship. If I weren't in this line I would have shipped them. Customers would be happier if I weren't in this line. All of my problems would be solved if I just didn't have to wait in this damn line!

So I decided to make an appointment. I didn't even really procrastinate that much because it was late January when I logged on to make an appointment to get my drivers license renewed. I didn't think that was procrastinating, but I guess it was because the earliest appointment they had was March 4th. But by March 4th my drivers license would have already been expired.  My only other option was to wait in line.

So I weighed my options. Wait in line for hours, driving myself crazy, and get it renewed before my birthday; or make the March 4th appointment, pay the $20 extra fee, and pray I don't get pulled over for the 9 days that my license would be expired.

So my license is expired.

Now, if you're a deeply committed Domestic Spaz reader (and if you are then you actually probably should be committed) you might remember back in 2008 when I was last at the DMV they had me take a little eye exam. And I failed it. But due to the nature of the safety measures put in place by the lovely people at the DMV, they just let me have my license anyhow.

This time, I thought that maybe, just maybe, they'd probably make me take that little eye exam again and maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't just let me have my license anyhow.  So I figured it was probably about time for me to go ahead and get my eyes checked.

Have you been to an eye doctor lately? I hadn't before yesterday. Times have changed, y'all.  There was this little box I could check on the paperwork that said something like "If you don't want to stumble around blinded and crying fluorescent yellow tears for the next few hours, check this box and we'll just take a picture of the back of your eyes instead of dilating them." 

Yes, please.

So they took a picture of the back of my eye and my new awesome eye doctor took the time to show me the picture on the computer. He pointed out the dark spot that showed where my vision was actually focusing and why I couldn't see correctly. He told me how beautiful and healthy my eyes were. Shucks.

Then he showed me all kinds of other messed up eyes. Scarred eyes, diabetic eyes, eyes with glaucoma, eyes that were practically blind. He took the time to show me all these pictures and explain them to me and I was all "This is the coolest thing EVER."

And then my new awesome eye doctor gave me contacts and I could see. Like, perfectly. 

So now I'm all ready for my appointment on Monday. Except for the myriad of paperwork I need to track down between now and then to prove I'm really me. Good thing we only have to do this every 4 years.

Things are never quite as scary when you have a best friend - Bill Watterson

I'm really lucky to have a lot of best friends.

Remember when you were in grade school and you had only one best friend? It may have switched around from one person to another, but it was an elite position that could only be held by one special person who shone the brightest of the bunch.

Thank goodness all that garbage is over.

Nowadays I have lots of best friends and I cherish every one of them. 

Some of those friends I talk to on an almost daily basis. If I don't hear from one of them for a couple of days I start to worry. These are the ladies that run in my circle. We're in the same place in life - married (or in my case, permanently partnered), raising kids, frazzled with messy houses and car repairs and busy schedules.  

They're the ones I talk to when Bug throws an apple through Munchkin's bedroom window, shattering it all over her bedroom (yes - this happened).  They teach me to laugh at life and hold my hand as I step through the inevitable disasters that come from being a mom.  I cherish these friends for so many reasons. When I lose my mind, they're there to pull me away from the insanity, hand me a drink, and make me laugh until I cry. Every girl needs friends like these bitches. ♥

Some of my best friends are more distant, but just as loved. They're friends I've collected over the years. Some from childhood when I was learning how to be a friend, some from those tumultuous teenage years when everything was so full of importance and passion, and some from the years when I was learning how to be on my own.  Out of all the girlfriends that have walked through my life, these are the special ones that I will never let go of. 

I don't speak to them every day, sometimes I don't speak to them for a month or more. But they are no less important. They are anchors.  These are the girls who I would drop anything for and rush to their side in times of sadness. They'd do the same for me. When their name shows up on the Caller ID it might just be because they're checking in, but it's more likely that something important is going on and they're calling for support and love. 

They are lifers. They are the ones I'll be playing bridge with on an oceanfront balcony when we're in our golden years. 



When I think about all of my besties, I feel so full of love and fortune. I can't imagine my life without them. 

May the fork be with you.

About a year ago The Man and I found ourselves in a bit of a dilemma. We were out of forks. And spoons. Butter knives, we retained.... but forks and spoons were nowhere to be found.

"But where could they have gone?" we asked each other in disbelief. Even after the entire kitchen had been cleaned and all dishes and silverware washed, dried, and put away we would stare, baffled, at the empty slots in our utensil caddy where forks and spoons had once been.

Did the fork really run away with the spoon? All 12 of them? Had some cutlery obsessed thief been sneaking into our home and stealing them? What could have possibly happened to all of them?

Eventually we turned to the kids. Of course it was the kids. Those sweet darlings who might sneak a bowl of ice cream into their room, leaving the bowl and spoon stashed under a bed or in a drawer so no one would know. Perhaps Munchkin had brought all of our forks to the barn stashed in lunch boxes and they had been lost forever in piles of muck.

At any rate, we were out of forks and spoons.

After a brief period of using only disposable plastic forks, The Man and I ventured out to purchase some more silverware. But this time we were a little smarter.

We bought two sets.  One nicer set for The Man and I... and one $9.99 set with 24 forks, knives, and spoons that were just barely dishwasher safe. I cleared out another drawer in the kitchen, put a silverware tray in it, and we instructed the kids that they were only to use the silverware in that drawer.  They weren't to touch our nice, new, fancy silverware.

Here it is, about a year later, and you might guess what has happened.

The Man and I have plenty of nice silverware that we use on a regular basis.

The kids? They're down to one fork, three spoons, and a plethora of butter knives.

They're now using a box of 500 forks I purchased from Costco for a birthday party. When that's gone I think I'm going to encourage them to make their own silverware out of rocks and bits of wire they find while scavenging the neighborhood.

Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance - and other P Words.

So yesterday's blog post was fun. :)

The feedback I received from it was along similar lines - that it was a private affair I should keep between me and my ex (which implies I communicate with him).

I don't think it's out of line at all for me to bash my ex a bit on my blog. I've shared a lot of personal details about myself and people in my life in my posts and I don't think they need to be limited to when I'm feeling warm and squishy about someone.  If I had named him and posted a link to his facebook page that might have been over the top, but I took it way easy on him. Way easy.

But that's the end of the blog real estate that he'll be getting. On to better and more interesting topics.

Since it's the beginning of 2013, we're going to talk resolutions. This year I noticed a lot of resolution hate on the Internet and I was surprised. What's with all the negativity toward setting new goals for yourself in the beginning of the year? Sure, the chances of keeping a New Years resolution is pretty slim. When I look back at the resolutions I've made over the past decade or so, they're all just the same resolutions over and over. Which means I haven't kept one of them yet. But this year will be different. (I've said that before, too.)

I love New Years. It's in the running with Halloween for my favorite holiday. It's a holiday that celebrates friendship and forgiveness and hope and optimism. And champagne. It's a day off from work with no obligation. It's a free day. Is there a better way to start the year?

Every year I make resolutions. This year was no different... except that I narrowed my list down to one. One single resolution.

My mother will be so proud. I'm going to stop procrastinating. Procrastination is like a dirty word to my mother. She is the antithesis of procrastination. When I was growing up, our Thanksgiving table was set the week before Thanksgiving. Things were planned, calendars were filled, we never ran out of toilet paper or milk. If there was a task to be done, my mom had it done before anyone else even knew that a task had been thought of.

Oh, the apple fell so far from the tree with me that you might as well call it a lemon.

I've been a procrastinator my whole life. Why do today what I can put off til tomorrow? Perhaps the problem will just go away on its own?  Why study for that exam a week ahead of time when I can party all week and fit in a cram session the night before the test?

And we wonder why I didn't do so well in college.

So this year, I'm really going to work on procrastination. It's going to be a journey. It's a 35 year old habit that I'm trying to break here so I imagine it's going to take some practice.

And on that note - I'm off to put the laundry in the dryer.

Here's a big giant middle finger for my ex-husband - and oh hey, I'm gonna blog more.

I stopped blogging for a while, did you notice?

For a while I thought I was going to scrap this blog. Completely. Never to return again.

But you know what? I like it. I like having my very own soapbox and I like having a place to write. I just hate feeling like I have to censor myself. Censoring myself makes writing, something I love to do, so unenjoyable. It makes it a task on the to-do list instead of a hobby I'm passionate about.

So why would I censor myself?

The most recent reason boils down to my ex-husband. Through the grapevine I learned that not only is he reading the blog - but he's taking the pictures I post of Bug and Munchkin and posting them on his own facebook wall like he's father of the year.

So let's get something straight. Bug and Munchkin don't know him. At all. Not even a little bit. And they don't ask about him, either.

The last time we saw him Munchkin was about two weeks old.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to paint a picture of myself sitting at home crying because my husband walked out. That's not the case. I'm the one who left. I left because he was a cheater and a liar and a manipulator and there was no way in hell I was going to raise my children to follow in his footsteps. I left because I was tired of sitting at home taking care of a child, trying to pay the bills, and making a home for us while he went out with friends and spent our money on fun.

But I'm not going to turn this blog into a lynching. Suffice it to say, he wasn't there for us in the way we needed him to be so I left him.  And he put on a show like he cared for a little while. But in the end it was pretty obvious that he was just fine with being single again and that whole "being a dad" thing was kind of putting a damper on his social life.

By the time Munchkin was just a few months old, he had completely stopped even trying to contact us. Neither of the kids have ever once received so much as a call on their birthday from him. Nothing.

And to be quite honest, that's fine with me and as far as I can tell it's fine with them, too.

But for him to post pictures of my babies on his facebook page like he's their dad and he has something to be proud of? It infuriates me.

He has nothing to be proud of. He has no reason to brag about how awesome they are, how beautiful they are, how talented and smart and funny they are. He had no part of that. None. They are amazing in spite of him.

The best thing he ever did for them was walk far, far away. And I hope he keeps on walking.

This post was hard to write.

When I was in elementary school, I had a lot of friends. I was a safety patrol, got good grades, was in a close-knit group of girls, and was basically a pretty confident and happy kid.  My life was happy and safe and I had no idea that things would ever be different.

That is, until I rolled into the halls of Jefferson Davis Middle School in sixth grade.

Before then, I knew I was a little chubby and that the glasses I had to wear weren't the height of fashion.  I didn't think much about clothing or hairstyles.  I was just a kid who loved horses and riding my bike and having sleepovers with my friends.

But sixth grade changed everything.  Most of my friends ended up at different middle schools so I was forced to make friends with all new girls who had mostly come from the same school and had already formed a tight bond with each other.  Evidently my clothes weren't the "right" kind of clothes and I was developing a lovely case of pre-pubescent acne, so things weren't off to a great start.

I remember two episodes of really, really horrible bullying when I was in 6th grade. I know there were more, but two of them really stick out in my mind when I think back.

The first was a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday because I had piano lessons on Wednesdays and my mother picked me up from school.  She was running a little late this afternoon so I was waiting around for her, my multi colored folders clutched to my chest. I was wearing an outfit entirely of red plaid.  Red plaid button down shirt and red plaid shorts.  I paired the outfit with my red framed glasses, red socks, and black knock-off Keds. Picture it.

A group of girls came to stand around me. They were older, probably eighth graders. They started talking to me, asking me questions. "Who are you waiting for?" "Where are you going?" "What's your name?" 

I answered each of their questions politely as they asked them... but every once in a while I would feel a sharp jab in my behind, like a tiny bee sting.  I didn't know what it was and it would happen so fast.  Finally, I noticed one of them had a safety pin hidden in her hand. They had been poking me with the pins as they talked to me. There was nothing I felt I could do, either. I was so much smaller than all of them and there were at least four of them and just me.  There were no teachers around, no adults at all. I was at their mercy.

Finally my mom pulled up and I quickly got in the car, bursting almost immediately into tears as we drove away.

The second time that really sticks out was on the bus. Our bus was really overcrowded, to the point where we had three kids sitting to each seat.  The bus driver assigned us seats to make sure we'd all have a seat.  My seat was in the middle of two popular eighth grade girls. I remember sitting between them, trying to take up as little room as possible, my arms crossed so they wouldn't encroach on anyone else's space, my legs tightly together and my books on my lap.  It was then that the eighth grade boy who was assigned the seat directly in front of me turned around.

"Don't you know you're too fat?" he taunted me "You shouldn't be allowed to sit anywhere near girls as beautiful as these. You don't deserve to breathe the same air as they do. You're ugly and fat. You're an ugly, fat cow." He went on and on, the whole hot, sweaty, and sticky four mile bus ride. It felt like an eternity.

I hated him, but again, there was nothing I could do. I wouldn't cry in front of him. I didn't talk back to him. I stared him in the eye the whole time he talked to me.  The girls giggled and told him to stop, but they enjoyed it.

There were other small events where I was bullied that year. It got to a point where I refused to ride the bus home at all and started bumming rides from my best friend whose mom was the school crossing guard or I'd walk across the street to my cousin's house and tell my mom I'd missed the bus. A few times I just walked the four miles home.

I never told my mom and dad how bad things were. I was humiliated, embarrassed to be such a dork, ashamed that I didn't stand up for myself. I felt weak and powerless and I didn't want my family to know that side of me.

That year crushed me. I went from a happy and confident kid who made good grades, to a sad, uncertain girl who didn't do her homework and barely skimmed by. I wonder how things might have been if I hadn't undergone that bullying.

Now I'm all grown up, with two kids of my own in middle school. I try to talk to them about bullying, try to ask them how things are for them. I try to give them a leg up and make sure they have the "right" clothes and whatever else they need to feel confident.  So far, I think they're doing okay. They don't seem to be facing the same kinds of torture I faced. And I attribute a lot of that to awareness and education. (October is Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.) I think the schools, at least around here, have done a lot more to prevent bullying and make schools a safer place for our kids.

I don't deal with bullying anymore as an adult.  Even though I'm still overweight and I still occasionally wear glasses and I often don't wear the "right" clothes.  As an adult the game has changed and if someone were to call me fat or make fun of me, they'd probably not do it to my face.  (I'm sure it has been done behind my back.)

So I was saddened to read about a message sent to a morning news anchor in Wisconsin, a clear case of bullying in adulthood.  Check out her response to her bully here.  Go ahead.  I'll be right here with a tissue when you get back.

What an incredible role model she is to everyone. Not just her daughters, not just young women, but everyone.  If only we could all be as gracious and beautiful as this amazing woman.  If we could all teach our children to be kind and open minded, to stick up for what is good and right. Just imagine how our world would be.

This is true redneck innovation right here... you may want to take notes

I don't know if your house is like my house, but if it is then you know a little something about what I like to call "The Shoe Dilemma".

Simply explained, this is when one or more of your children can't find their shoes. The Shoe Dilemma has plagued all three of my children on numerous occasions - sometimes it even gets me.  Sometimes it affects only one shoe, sometimes both, but at least once a week we seem to have an episode.  It most frequently gets us when we're already late for something and it results in me screaming and yelling, tears from at least one child, and quite often feet being crammed into shoes that are too small.

Evidently, The Shoe Dilemma is so traumatic in my house that Bug decided the other day that he would just jump in the car without shoes at all, rather than invoke the chaos that would come from admitting that he couldn't find his shoes.

Did he think I wouldn't notice? I'm not sure. I think this was a case of "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it" in his head.

To be fair, my kids are true Florida children. They run around without shoes a lot. True Florida kids play outside barefoot, ride bikes barefoot, run over to their neighbor friend's house barefoot and probably jump in a few mud puddles on their way there. In fact, over the summer I'm pretty the boys didn't put a pair of socks on their feet even once.

At any rate, we were really just going to run a few errands and pick up The Man from his office (his truck is out of service right now, which is a whole other blog entry) so maybe he thought he'd get away with it.

But, by the time we got The Man and conversed, it was decided that we were all hungry and wanted to grab a pizza at a local restaurant. 

It was then that we discovered Bug's bare feet.

So what's a crazy Spaz family to do? Stop in at the Walmart and grab a pair of $1 flip flops? Just go home? 

No way! 

Nothing a little sharpie can't fix. 

(It totally worked, too.)

File this one under "Things That Make Me Crazy" - The Drop Off Circle

I know I'm not the only one that fumes over this. I know there are other parents out there that also get the urge to jump out of their minivan and bitch slap another parent in the wee hours of the morning. I know it's not just me.

You see, every school day I drop Goober off at school. The other two ride the bus, but since the elementary school isn't too far from the house I still drop him off in the mornings.  If you're a parent who drops your child off at school, then you're familiar with the concept of the "drop-off circle".  I know it works slightly different at each school, but the concept is basically the same. 

If the door that your little darling exits your vehicle from is within the "red zone" it means he or she is safe to get out of the car and should do so. In the example shown here, the first six cars should all kick their precious sweethearts to the curb and exit the circle. Then the seventh car should proceed all the way to the position previously held by the first car and another six children will exit their vehicles. Are you all following me?  These are the rules of all drop off circles across the nation. 

This morning, The Spaz Van was behind a Black Escalade in the drop off circle and since we were within 10 minutes of school start time, it was a packed circle. 

As you can see in this picture, the Black Escalade is well within the "red zone" and thus a child should be exiting the vehicle. What you can't see in this picture is that The Spaz is arguing with Goober about his missing ipod and not paying attention to the fact that no child is exiting said Black Escalade.

Now, the only thing that should hinder the perpetual motion of the drop off circle is when there are people in the crosswalk and the "Stop Sign Man" stops the flow of traffic to allow them to safely cross. Accidentally stopping in the crosswalk is the BIGGEST no-no of the drop off circle and will be met with evil stares and admonishment from Stop Sign Man.

Stop Sign Man stopped Black Escalade this morning to allow children to cross safely in the crosswalk, allowing Black Escalade another chance to deposit their shining star of a child within the red zone.

Again, no child exited Black Escalade.  This, however, was the spot that Goober did exit The Spaz Van as it was safely within the red zone.  He left the car without so much as a "Bye Mom" since he was irritated with me for lecturing him about taking care of his belongings.  Again, I paid no attention to Black Escalade since I was preoccupied with Goober's lack of love for me.  But that's not really the point.

So when traffic started to move again, I absolutely assumed that we would be moving completely out of the drop off circle, considering Black Escalade must have taken at least one of the two opportunities to say goodbye to their beloved angel.

This is what happened next. 

Yep, that's what it looks like. Black Escalade wouldn't DARE make their cherished treasure of a child actually WALK more than absolutely necessary, so Black Escalade stopped right at the gate, ignoring all drop off circle rules. So I, of course, had to slam on the brakes and ended up totally in the middle of the crosswalk.  For the entire time that Black Escalade's prized pet fumbled with the gigantic door and attempted to collect her pink glittery backpack, I dealt with the heated anger from Stop Sign Man. 

I was so furious with Black Escalade that I nearly followed it so I could yell at the driver at my first available opportunity.  But I wasn't wearing a bra and I certainly didn't want to be the crazy mom with no bra losing her mind at some unsuspecting parent - who probably had done her hair and had on full make-up. No doubt she was on her way to a morning yoga class or to grab a vanilla latte with her girlfriends at Starbucks. 

No resentment here. Really. 

More Chick Fil A Propaganda! One dirty liberal's opinion.

(I don't really call myself a liberal. But most of my family does. Hi guys!)

Two posts in one day. It's a record!!

Okay, it's not a record. I think I've done it before. Just not lately.

But today I'm doing it.  And why?? Because I posted that last one.  And when I did, as I always do, I viewed the post on my blog so I could see how it would appear to all of the four people who might read it.

And I saw this:

A propaganda ad right there on MY BLOG!!!

When I was in 7th grade I joined academic games. I was a little bit of a dork. Whatever. I loved academic games. They taught us about propaganda and taught us how to identify it. My 12 year old brain latched on to that concept and has been holding tight ever since.

I understand that some of my posts could be labeled as a sort of propaganda. They're my opinions and I express them and I'd love it if everyone in the world agreed with me. Sort of. That might be boring.  But I'm not shady about it. It's all out there for the world to see. And in case I need to put it more bluntly: (ALERT! Dirty Liberal Opinion Ahead! Conservatives, click away now!)

I think Chick Fil A makes a darned tasty milkshake but I refuse to give them another penny of my hard earned money so they can give a portion of that penny to organizations that wish to take rights away from other citizens. 

So any way, I clicked the ad.

And it brought me to this page:

And I thought, well, of course I support everyone's RIGHT to freedom of speech and religious expression. I support rights. Pretty much all of them. Generally, I think having rights is a good thing and I'm all for them. Hooray for rights!

Did you notice what it says in the fine print at the bottom of that picture? I'll read it out loud to you, just in case.  It says "*Voting in the Chick-Fil-A freedom of speech and religious expression poll entitles you to receive conservative alerts from Townhall.com."

Oh joy! I love to be entitled!  

I think it's ironic that this particular conservative propaganda is using rights as a way to persuade people to agree with their hate-filled agenda. 

We have the right to take away your rights!

So yeah, don't click that, kay? Or do click it. It's your right to choose. :)