Saturday, August 31, 2013

Job Descriptions

My paying jobs before I had kids, in order of appearance (appearance of the jobs, not the kids):

1. Yard work 
2. House work
3. Babysitting
4. Piano Teacher
5. Shelving and Organizing Books
6. Delivering Papers
7. Folding and Hanging Clothes, Helping Customers Find Clothes that Fit Them and Putting Outfits Together, Occasional Personal Shopper
8. Stocking Shelves with Food and Toiletries
9. Handing out Candy
10. Gardening Help
11. Handing out and Grading Tests
12. Waitress
13. Taking Care of Special Needs Kids During the Summer
14. Janitor
15: Paper Folder
16: Answering Phones, Calling People about Accounts

Now, I do all that and much more, nobody pays me, and my kids try to undo all of my work, usually before I am even finished with it. And nobody appreciates me except when I am doing number nine. 

Silly Sadie

Funny morning cuddle time today:

Me: Do you want to have an awesome day?
Sadie: No, I tooted.

Me: What are you doing?
Sadie: I hiding.

Me: What would you like?
Sadie: Candy!

Sadie: I wuv ooh. (Then came blowing kisses and trying to kiss my face.)

Me: (Yawn)
Sadie: Bess ooh, Mommy.

Sadie: I need some chockit! Mmmmm. Chockit yummy.

This was really almost two weeks ago, but I forgot to post it to my blog. Today, she just climbed onto my bed, laid her head on my lap, and made me sing, "Jesus Said Love Everyone" to her about twenty or thirty times in a row. I tried to stop a few times, but she would start yelling at me and hit me until I started singing again. She said it was her "favite song", but she had probably only heard it once before. 

The Melissa Sue Fan Club

When I started writing my blog several years ago, I began by trying to find a name for it that wasn't already taken. I probably tried thirty before I settled on the current name. I usually forget how that name came to be, but here is the story.

When I was eighteen years old, I was bored one afternoon. I had graduated high school a semester early and moved with my family to another state. I had moved so much when I was growing up that it really didn't seem like a big deal. I actually kind of liked moving because it meant that I would get to meet new people and make new friends. I had tried working delivering newspapers, but my sister who helped me kept throwing up because we were getting up so early, and I really needed a helper or I couldn't get our rural route delivered in time each morning. So, I quit the paper route and got a job at a department store. It was fun because there were cute clothes, and I got a big employee discount, so I knew I would have cuter clothes for college, as well as enough money that I barely had to flirt my way to a free meal once a week. I didn't work full time, so I had lots of time off to do stupid things. Like writing a full-page-essay-format-test-question-with-silly-nonsense-vocabulary-words-to-be-included-in-each-answer-application. It was an application to be a member of the Melissa Sue Fan Club. 

My friends, Mindy and Tyler, were the first to fill out the applications. They thought it was funny, and they told a few of our other friends, who asked for an application of their own. Everybody started assigning themselves jobs in my fan club. When I got to college, my fan club grew. I had at least a couple hundred members and even more honorary members who never got an application. I now had a CFO, President, Vice-President, Chef (who never actually cooked me anything), and lots more. I even had a stunt double, but she must not have been doing her job very well because I have had lots of injuries from performing my own stunts. And my makeup artist slacked off, and it's a pity because I never had a good foundation in cosmetics. (That one was for my mom. You're welcome.) 

I was surprised that so many people wanted to be a member of my fan club, which meant a) they wanted to be my friend, b) they seemed to like my weird sense of humor, and/or c) they wanted to belong to something, even if they thought I was weird. Or maybe d) they wanted to write the funniest answers to my absurd questions and make everyone else laugh when we occasionally would read all the answers together late at night while eating ice cream from the Creamery. Yum.

I wish I still had copies of those applications. I would let you all fill one out if you haven't already. Then I would laugh and maybe shake my head at how weird I was then and how mature I am now. So mature that I won't even take a video of my snoring husband and post it in youtube. 

(Search "snoring husband with shaving cream on his face" when you are in youtube next.)

It won't be Bill, but there might be something funny. 

Does anyone still have an application?

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Throwing Chickens

Overheard in the last few minutes from one kid in the large posse of boys downstairs:

I could throw chickens at you all day long. All. Day. Long.

At least I don't wear underwear under my clothes....

I'm just gonna punch you in the face and see what happens.

I want to get ripped.

From one of the other boys: Gross! You stink!
From the same kid who said all the other stuff: At least I did it like a man.

My boys have interesting friends. He said funny stuff for so long that I just started typing the stuff as I heard it for a minute or two. I should have started earlier for a larger quantity of his stuff, and I would have had more if Sadie hadn't started climbing on me and stuffing bread in my mouth and giggling. He also randomly breaks into song.

What is the last thing you would expect to pull out of your kid's pockets when you are doing laundry? I think a roast beef sandwich from Arby's would be way up there on that list. Especially when I have never bought that kid a roast beef sandwich from Arby's. And it wasn't even in a wrapper!

He got it at a day camp he went to today. So glad it was from TODAY and last Thursday's camp!

Are there things you always wanted to do? I have had two main dreams. I always wanted to be in an improvisational comedy group. I have been watching Studio C with my kids lately, so it's on my mind. I don't know if I would have been any good at it, and it's a little late for that now. The other dream is to write books. I am working on that, but I think I'm on the ten to twenty year plan. What did you want to do that you never got to do?