**Imagine me peering up at you, with my head still on the table**

I’m a soccer mom.

The girls are both going to be in spring soccer, and practices start next week.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they’re excited to be involved in some sort of team sport.  It’s good for them.

On the other hand, there are days I feel like I’m still 25 and I should be worrying about what adult beverage I’m going to have and where I’m going on vacation.

Now it’s about soccer shoes, shin guards, practices, games, and getting a good folding chair where I can place my ass while this is all going on.  It’s about getting homework done, not spoiling the kids but letting them have a fun childhood.  Bedtimes, baths, brushing teeth, eating good food, doing well in school, making friends, birthday parties and loving your sister.

This was my plan, don’t get me wrong.  But it feels like I created this plan just a few months ago instead of 15 years ago.  Time sure flies when you’re having fun…and taking care of two small humans.

Now, I just need to know…is it mandatory that I get one of those soccer ball stickers for my car?  God, I hope not.

Check out this rockin’ contest from Hampton Hotels! It’s the Hampton Chain of Friends Sweepstakes. How awesome would that be?  Getting an entire hotel for you and 100 of your closest friends?  Cool.  Makes my head dream a bit…(insert the boo-da-doo-da-doo from Wayne’s World)

First, it’s not hard for us to get 100 people together.  Christmas Eve dinner is 30-40 people, and that’s just immediate family!  Where would I take 100 of my closest friends, and what would we do?  Let’s see…

I would have to pick a place that everybody could drive.  Not everybody can afford airfare.  So, at first I thought Cleveland.  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, some bar hopping in The Flats, some nice dinners…but what about the kids?  Not everybody could get sitters for the weekend (including myself!)  So, then I thought it would be cool to have 100 people go to Williamsburg.  We could take the kids to Busch Gardens.  And Colonial Williamsburg.  The grown ups AND the kids could have fun.  The Hampton Inn & Suites in Williamsburg has an indoor pool AND an outdoor pool.  The kids can swim, the adults can relax.  And we’d be with 100 people that we like.

I’m gonna put it out there to the universe….that’s what I’d love.  OR, you can all enter and invite me for the weekend if you win!  Where would you go?  Let me know…’cuz I’ll need to know what to pack.  Oh, and if it’s a kid-free weekend, I’ll start recruiting babysitters early!

Friday, the 2oth, was the day that I was getting to celebrate.  Now, I knew that we were having friends over that evening for a deck party.  Tony told me to take the day to myself and be back by 6:00.  Hey, I wasn’t going to fight him on that!  I left the house, and headed to lunch.  I had a nice, quiet, lunch at Friday’s.  No kids bugging me, asking when the food was coming.  I sat at the bar.  It was fantastic.

Next, I headed to the bookstore.  And I didn’t look at one children’s book.  Again, awesome.  Peaceful.  Off to Kohl’s.  I got a piece of art for my new, grown up walls and a new pair of shades.  I poked around the new Kirkland’s that opened near me, and then off to Target.  I bought all new make up.  Lotions.  Soaps.  (OK, I did buy Play-Doh, but it was the one thing I forgot on the back to school list).  Then I went gambling.  Nothing like playing the slots  And you know…even when you go to the Casino with somebody, you always end up splitting up.

So, when I was done I got in the car to go home.  I blared some of my old CD’s (instead of listening to whatever movie the kids are watching).  I listened to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.  Can’t listen to that with kids in the car.

I got home, gathered my new belongings, and headed up the steps.  When I opened the door, bunches of friends were there IN COSTUME to greet me.  They had planed a 70′s themed party.  It was fantastic.  All the kids had tye-dye on, one of our friends wore classic black roller skates, and Tony looked like this:

There was a ton of food, a fantastic tiramisu cake,  a variety of adult beverages, and it was just a darn good time.  Of course, I had TOO MUCH fun.  We played drinking games that I hadn’t played in FOREVER!!!  We played Drug Dealer, we played Flip Cup.  It was all good.  I fell asleep next to Tony, on the deck, about 1:30 in the morning.  He dealt with the kids all night, and then tucked me into bed.  I spent the entire morning of my ACTUAL birthday on the couch.  But the kids did this for me:

I was a slug all day.  About 5:00 I decided that I needed something greasy and spicy to make me feel better.  I ate the most awesome Italian Hoagie with sausage, hot peppers, green peppers and mushrooms.  It DID make me feel better.  A little.  I still felt it a bit on Sunday, but I made it through.

So, 40 years old.  And what happens today?  The kids went to school.  My baby went to kindergarten.  Which made me feel extra old.  And YOU KNOW how much I’ve complained about the fighting.  But I still cried after they got on the bus.  Hmmph.  Go figure.

40?  Not the end of the world.  I’ll take it

Hey, it made me giggle. Not a lot of time to write again today.  We just got back from the girls’ very first Girl Scout meeting.  Man, holding those three fingers up and doing that hand-hold-squeeze-the-next-hand thing sure brought back some memories.  Memories that were from a very, very long time ago.  So, they need to memorize the little Girl Scout thingie, and prepare yourselves…’cuz there will be nuts, magazines and cookies to sell

Don’t worry…I’ll set it up so you can pay me via paypal.  Easy peasy.

Have a great night!

As I rolled over in bed, I felt a presence.  I open my eyes, and there’s Becca…big ol’ blues staring right at me.  It was 8:15 – past any “respectful” waking time, I guess.  So, I pulled myself up out of bed and headed downstairs with said child.  Before making the coffee, I decided that I needed “just five more minutes” before I was ready to greet the day.  As I laid down on the couch, Becca (and Rex) crawled up next to me.  Becca was happily petting Rex.  Then Chloe, with her anti-gravity morning hair, came tromping down the stairs.  I guess there was no more “five more minutes.”  As Becca continued to pet Rex, she stopped and said, “Mom, there’s a bump on Rex’s neck.”

A bump on Rex’s neck could mean just about anything.  He’s had gum, broken pieces of suckers, liquid ‘gooey’ candy from a tube and other oddities stuck in his fur.  So, with one eye open (and the other about half open), and no caffeine in my body to speak of, I check out Rex’s neck.  There sure was something sticking up.  I thought it was his skin.  I gave it a little tug, and something about the size of an old fashioned watermelon seed was between my fingers.  I hold it up to my face, and then I see it.  The head and the legs.  (Ewww, I’m getting itchy just thinking about it now).  It was a damn tick!  Ugh!  I take it into the kitchen and try to squish it in a paper towel.  No go.  This thing was a fighter.  A big, fat, ugly, full-o-blood fighter.  I had to get tough.  I took it outside and squished the paper towel under the leg of our patio chair.

I had to make sure it was dead, right?  I didn’t want to (OK, maybe I DID want to…just a little).  Ewwwwwwwwwww!  It was like…like…blood jelly.  Completely gross.  I made my coffee and  hoped it would help the heebie jeebies go away.  Then, of course, I had to look up ticks on the internet.  Just because.  I’m going to share a picture with you.  Again, just because.

Photo compliments of University of Nebraska

And that’s how I started off one day of summer vacation.  What followed in the next few days was a big ol’ dose of Frontline on the dog, and some crazy chemical on the lawn.  But here’s a preview for my next post:  the tick was NOT the grossest thing that has happened so far this summer.  Have you ever heard of GWAR?  I’ll fill you in next time!

Yesterday I had our day all planned out.  The weather was crappy.  Windy, cold and rainy.  And I knew it was going to be like that.  So, the plan was to do our little Saturday morning routine at the restaurant and then hang in the house.  I had the girls all prepped for an afternoon of jammies, movies and the Wii.  Perfect.  And while they were doing that, I was planning on catching up on some housework (you know, clean a couple of bathrooms, vacuum, laundry) and some internet work.  But wait…there was more.  After putting them to bed, I planned on reading my new book from Charlaine Harris (Dead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 10)) for a couple of hours before watching Betty White host Saturday Night Live.

It all started out great.  The girls (after a little, um, “discussion” about what they were going to watch) settled in to watch Goosebumps and All Grown Up.  I chatted with Tony for a bit, got some work done, and we all decided to have a snack of ice cream about 3:30.  That is the time of day that my energy hits that gigantic dip.  I brewed coffee and sat on the couch with the kids, enjoying Rugrats:  All Grown Up.  Well, I think I was actually enjoying the inside of my eyelids.  Then it happened.

The power went out.

Thank God the coffee had already brewed!  We sat and waited for a couple of minutes to see if it was just a flicker (because that happens more often than a long stretch of no power).  No go.  The kids continued to play, but I was sort of stuck.  Couldn’t do laundry.  Couldn’t vacuum.  The bathrooms that needed cleaned were the ones without windows, so that was out.  No internet.  So, I started reading my book.

And that’s what I did until the power came back on around 6:00.

It put me in a great mood.  I happily made dinner.  I set the kids up in Chloe’s room for their quasi-sleepover.  I kept on reading.  I surrendered my to-do list for a day of doing what I wanted to do. I mean, I had to diffuse some fights.  I had to freak out when they wouldn’t just LAY DOWN AND GO TO BED AT 10:00.  But I finished my book.

Just in time to watch Saturday Night Live, which was awesome! This was probably my favorite:

And guess what?  I DID vacuum this morning.  And do some laundry.  Oh, and I got breakfast in bed!  (Watermelon , a fiber bar and iced tea from Chloe.  Iced tea and a salami sandwich with a broken up string cheese on it from Becca.  Awesome.)

Have a great Mothers’ Day!!!!

Now I’ll admit, I hadn’t written for quite a while.  Then, a few weeks ago, I decided I felt like writing again.  So I log into my blog.  Across the top of my admin screen, it’s screaming at me “UPDATE TO WORDPRESS 2.9.2 NOW.”  So, I figured “what the hell.”  Writing a post could wait the half an hour it takes to update wordpress.

Um, wrong.

Just like a man who doesn’t read the instructions before he tries to put something together, I just clicked away.  It started off well.  I skipped the back up, since I hadn’t written in so long.  I figured I had a backup on my computer from December (I later came to find out…also wrong.)

Everything went chugging along, until I got the message that said “You must be running MySQL 5.0 to upgrade.  Upgrade failed.” (OK, maybe I shouldn’t have put quotes there…but that’s how I remember it).  And that was it.  No going back.  I wasn’t able to do ANYTHING.  I started getting tons of spam comments, waiting for me to approve them (174 to be exact).

I neither had the time or the desire to dive into the project it would be to just get wordpress up and running again.

But tonight I did it. I did all sorts of technical crazy stuff.  I switched databases…I imported from the old one…my alarm is going to go off in six hours.

So, for now, have some ugly.  I’ll make it pretty and tell you all the stories from Christmas up until this crazy, snowy February.

Good night!

ANYWAY, that was the last time I smoked.  The next day I went to work…at the restaurant…you know, where there’s ALL THAT FOOD?!?!?!  I couldn’t stop eating.  I just didn’t know what to do with myself.  At 10:30 I had roast beef and mashed potatoes.  A couple of hours later I had some funnel cake fries (they really are super yummy).  An hour later…nachos with cheese and jalapenos.  It was crazy.

Thankfully, the gym that Tony and I decided to join opened the next morning.  So, I headed off to the gym, determined not to gain the weight that normally comes along with quitting smoking.  I’ve done pretty well with at least GOING to the gym.  And here’s the best story about that:

Thursday morning I decided to take a Zumba class.  I’ve always liked the dance-y stuff, and figured it would be fun.  Because it was the first day they were actually having classes at the gym, there were only two other women in the class with me.  I announced to everybody that I had just quit smoking, and that I hadn’t exercised since, maybe, high school. I asked that if I decided to just quit and lay down on the floor, would they politely just ignore me.

I hung in for the class pretty well.  It’s a 45 minute class, and around minute 35 I decided that I needed to be done.  I thanked the instructor (I really did enjoy the class) and told her I’d see her the following week.  Chloe and I headed out to Kohl’s for some shopping.

And then it hit me.

I thought I was going to have a stroke in the middle of Kohl’s.  Chloe and I sat in the shoe section for a while, and I told her that if mommy fell down onto the floor to just go and get somebody who worked here.  I figured that no, I probably wasn’t having a stroke.  But the fact that I had a Fiber One bar for breakfast and then proceeded to dance around like a horny club going 21 year old for a half an hour might have been the problem.  After I felt a little better (and ate a sucker to get through our shopping trip), Chloe and I headed to McDonalds for a Happy Meal and some grilled chicken wraps.

So, I haven’t died of exhaustion, stroke, over eating or nicotine withdrawal.  And I haven’t killed or injured anybody.  I don’t think I’ve even made anybody cry.  I’d dare to say that’s a pretty good first week of not smoking and diving into exercise, don’t ya think?

Anyway, this past weekend, I got to catch up on some movies.  Now, seeing that a couple of weeks ago I stayed up to watch Ryan Reynolds on Saturday Night Live and DID NOT GET TO SEE HIS ABS, I needed to see some abs.  I figured that I would stick with Ryan Reynolds, and watch a movie that I had seen before…Waiting.  First of all, if you have ever worked in a restaurant, you NEED to see this movie.  The only character that is missing is the gay guy.  This movie is very true to life, and completely hysterical.  If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, you just won’t get it.  Really.  The best thing about watching this movie (aside from the quick shot of Ryan’s abs)?  I watched it on my iPhone.  Completely cool.  The girls were in the tub, I was watching the movie.  I watched while I was vacuuming.  I watched while they were watching iCarly in bed (I just had to throw out a “Spencer is so funny!” every once in a while).

Renting a movie on my phone was super awesome.  The next time I’m somewhere (like jury duty, or the doctor’s waiting room) I’m gettin’ me a movie.

Later that night, I decided to stay up and watch Drew Barrymore on SNL.  I have this habit of flipping through the channels during the musical act.  Well, I found that Marley and Me was just starting on HBO.  Two hours and a box of kleenex later, I just wanted to hug my dog, my kids and my husband.  I know there were mixed reviews on this movie, but I think it really showed what normal life is like.  Crazy, unpredictable and full of love.

Sunday night Tony and I were home together.  After the kids went to bed, we had the energy to stay up for a movie.  We decided on The Haunting in Connecticut.  Tony was sucked in because it was based on a true story.  I was up for being scared, because Halloween is right around the corner, you know!

I liked this movie, but it wasn’t fantastic.  After poking around on the web, I found out that the ‘true story’ wasn’t really all that true.  But, I still jumped a few times, and going into my bathroom in the dark five minutes after the movie was over was a little creepy.  The creepiness went away after about fifteen minutes, though.

So, how about that?  I saw three movies in one weekend.  Prior to that weekend, I was watching a ‘grown up’ movie about every three to six months.  I love that the kids are getting old enough to deal, sleep in their own bed all night (usually), and play practical jokes on me

I don’t think I can until tomorrow.  This one was a little too close to home.  Home.  Collier Township.  Many of my neighbors go to that gym, and our friends have family who were in the gym.

Too close.

Happiness tomorrow…