DANCES WITH TWINKES

Alright.  It's a well know fact that I have struggled with my weight since I was 6 mo. old.  Yes, really, Dr. Heng put me on a diet when I was a baby.  There was never a chance for me.  I have struggled and dieted and exercised and listened to a whole lot of skinny people tell me how to eat healthy meals.  Blah blah blah.  For the last few years I have had a reprieve from this.  I had taken off weight and for the first time in years I didn't think about it every waking moment.  It was bliss.  Then I looked away for a moment, left my very active job, and stayed home eating chips and watching TV all day a little.  I realized I had put on a few pounds, but worse!  It has happened to the whole family!!! I am the fat whisperer.  Everyone who comes near me puts on at least 30 pounds.  So, about 2 weeks ago I started back on a program of say it with me: eating right and exercising.  I can't believe I am so out of shape.  Now the funny part.  Since I have been say it with me: eating right and exercising, I feel better.  Could it be that all this misery and depression could have stemmed from the Hobbit Diet?  Wow.  Now I just have to drag the kids along for the ride.  We are moving into a home 1 mile away from a huge park with tennis courts and a splash pad and equipment.  I can't wait.  Neither can the kids.  They can walk anywhere they want.  It is a great location.  We shut off the Devil Box (the tv) and the kid are getting out a lot more. 
I can do this.  I go get second breakfast now:)

I GOT SCHOOLED!!!

Howdy.  Before I tell you about the last month of  my life, let me go back a few years for background purposes.  I had a great mom.  She died in 2003 after a long bout with trying to ruin my life.  I won.  I was raised well.  I was well educated, I learned about the arts from a very early age.  I think my sisters would agree that we were probably the only girls around who would recite Shakespeare while milking the cow.  We would bottle peaches and listen to classical music.  She took me to church every week, and as a result, I am an active member of my local church and have, what I believe to be, a very good life.  Thank you, Mom.  However, today we are talking about housework.  I don't know what really happened there.  My mom was well into her eating popcorn/reading the Enquirer phase when I would have been learning about housekeeping skills.  Her only instruction to me was "That house better be cleaned when I get home or you are grounded."  This was not much help. 

Fast forward 20 years and I find myself with a husband and 3 kids who eat food and wear clothes.  After the rude awakening my departure from the workforce caused, I tried to get a handle on the whole house work thing.  It has been rough.  If you hadn't noticed I have been in a bit of a mental slump of late, so imagine my horror when I remembered that my sister was coming to stay with me for a month.  To my credit, She had a nice cool clean room and a bathroom...that she shared with all my girls.  It went down hill from there.  I think the low point of the trip was when I texted her one morning from my room to hers that there was grape jelly and tortillas if she wanted anything for breakfast.  Ya...so sad.  I think Daph realized she was going to be at my house for a while, and having had a similar breakdown years ago, decided to help.  She carefully dragged me into the kitchen and said  "Do one load of clothes and one load of dishes today."  Hey, I can do that.  So, day after day we went through this and things started to improve.  Then one morning she came into my room and asked me where I kept my 'extra sheets'.  I looked at her with a blank stare.  "What do you mean...extra?"  "WHERE ARE THE EXTRA SHEETS?!"  she said. (like yelling is going to help)  "I don't have any." I said timidly, knowing the wrath soon to come my way.  "How do you wash your sheets?"  " We take them off on Saturday and wash them and put them back on."  Bear in mind, at this point I think she is nuts.  Who has extra sheets?  What next?...extra towels...pillowcases?  Where does it end?  So she tenderly sat me down and explained to me what normal housewives do.  It was alot like the time my folks told me about the birds and the bee's.  It sounded bizarre and logistically impossible and why would anyone want to do this? 

I now have extra sheets.  Thank you Daph.  Now, don't get me wrong I do have some housekeeping skills.  I clean faster than just about anyone I know.  Growing up we never had any kind of cleaning schedule, certainly not the militant set up the Heaton's had.  It was more like Armageddon cleaning.  So, if I had to clean, someone was coming over, I wanted someone to come over, or the house was being appraised.  I am fast but not consistent.  The story of my life.

This story has a happy ending.  My sister finally went home, the house was clean and I have come up with some kind of schedule.  It's not perfect.  Sometimes we just go play, after the dishes are loaded.  In fact!  I have given up most of my evil vices, coke and ativan and we found a house.  All is not lost.  Just for fun I went to my mother in law's (the perfect housewife...no really) house to see if she had these "phantom extra sheets" Daph claims everyone has.  Yup...about 40 sets.  Schooled again.  Bummer. 

I spoke to my wise brother-in-law, Brandon today.  We discussed how we don't want our kids to end up with some of our more hideous traits.  He mentioned that we merely have to evolve.  Do better than our parents did or follow in their steps concerning things that went well.  OK.  I can do this.  For heck's sake, I can milk a cow and recite Shakespeare.  Evolving is a piece of cake.

EVIL CHIPMUNKS FROM HELL

OMG! So there is really no way to make this long story short so I may as well just launch.  My in laws have a beautiful summer retreat at Panguich Lake, about 80 miles away from St. George.  It is a wonderful escape from the 100 plus degree summers we endure.  It was my husband's first love, and is spoken of in our family with the same reverence as The Oak Ridge Boys and the gospel.   Almost every summer the family hosts a reunion with Jared's 80 billion cousins, so we started bringing up an RV to accommodate our family and to serve as an escape pod for me and my anti-social tendencies.  Each year it just took a little work to get things ready after the long winter.  Well, it's that time again and my good mother in law called to let me know that I had to go up early to clean the RV.  She had taken a peak in our motor home and had noticed that some furry visitors had spent some time there and it would take a lot of time to clean it.  It was not a job that could be done the day we drove up for the start of the reunion.  She said it was a huge mess and mentioned that the chipmunks had placed pine cones in the drawers.  Right...like they opened the drawers with their little tiny paws and put their treasures in with our hot chocolate.  I did not buy the story.

It is a well know fact that Alice and I have slightly different ideas about spring cleaning.  I assumed this was just a well intentioned/fear mongering way to motivate me to get things ready for the reunion.  So, we went along with it and decided to venture up and see all the so-called "devastation" for ourselves.  Besides, it would be nice to get away from the heat and piddle around changing sheets and dusting.  Seriously...how much trouble can a few chipmunks be?

AAAAARRRRGH!!!!!

We opened the door and walked in.  It was like isle 5 of Robert's Crafts had barfed all over our motor home.  There were leaves and sticks and...stuff everywhere!  I made my way to the cupboards and couldn't open them.  Those furry little freaks had jam packed every single drawer with pine cones.  Oops! someone didn't put the seat down in the bathroom last fall so we had a toilet full of pine cones.  They were everywhere. They had gnawed off part of the couch and made nests out of it.  Somewhere in the distance I could hear laughing.  It was Mike and Alice rolling on the floor as they heard my shrieks of horror with each new discovery.  Even the varmints were enjoying the show!  I could hear them up in the trees heckling me.  Nature sucks.

I had decided that our only option was to light the thing on fire and push it off a cliff.  Too bad they ATE ALL THE MATCHES.  Too bad I had promised my kids I would stop swearing.  Luckily my in-laws had quit laughing long enough to bring us a vac and Jared took the first shift of vacuuming up the endless supply of pine cones and debris.  Oh.  did I mention I had brought up a guest? Ya, I dragged my sister up with the promise of a relaxing weekend. Yes, this is the sister who uses a moist towelette to open doors and puts the mayonnaise away before you have a chance to make the sandwich.  I'm sure she wont mind a little hanta virus. 

It actually was going better than I thought it would.  We took a break and went down to have a wonderful lunch my mother in law had made for us.  Even in the wilderness, she provides a well balanced meal complete with a table cloth and centerpiece.  Things were going well.  It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and a cool breeze was blowing.  My sister had put away her face mask and was enjoying lunch when my mother in law came up to her and pulled on her hair and said "Oh, its not a wig".  Mike was thinking that it was a wig."
What the hell?  I mean, where do you even go with that comment?  Sadly our happy break was over and we went back with our hanta masks and moist towelettes to clean. 

There are some things I never thought I would say, like "Oh good, its just a nest."  or  "did you get EVERY pine cone out of the toilet?" or "The squirrels are yelling at me.  After about five hours and a gallon of bleach, it was clean.  All the surfaces had been cleaned and sanitized and we had removed three garbage bags of pine cones.  Alice and my sister cleaned the windows.  We packed up and went home to the land of Internet and cell service and all was well in the land.  My sister just tends to spend a little more time looking in the mirror these days.  As for me and Alice?  I think it was a draw.