No Cool-Whip.

So back to my daughter's business venture. The phone rang today, a number I didn't recognize. The female caller asked for my daughter. A few minutes after retreating to her room, she emerged and informed me that one of our neighbors had called to tell her she would pay her $5 to come scoop dog poop. "I'm going to be RICH this summer."

"Did you go ask her if you could pick up her dog poop? When did you do this? Which neighbor?" Standard grilling procedure ensued.

"I put signs under everyone's doormats who have dogs." She raced around, gathering her things.

"How many phone calls should I be expecting? Do I get a cut for being your SECRETARY?" I actually swear every time the phone rings because it is ALWAYS missing and it is NEVER for me.

"MOM!" She didn't want to be late for her job. Can't shirk those doodies you know..

After she left it dawned on me that this would be the first time poop had been picked up in this lady's yard because the snow JUST MELTED. What a deal she was getting! $5 to have someone else pick up an entire winter's worth of mooky sticks.

My daughter returned home about 45 minutes later, out of breath and pink-cheeked. "I picked up FOUR Cool-Whip container's worth of poop! Do you know how much poop that is? That's a lot of poop mom. FOUR Cool-Whip containers!" She said it at least three more times.

Now all I can picture, instead of creamy Cool-Whip, which I sometimes like to eat by the spoonful, is a Cool-Whip container full of dog shit. I can't get the vision out of my head. I don't think I will ever be able to eat any sort of whipped topping again. Thanks a lot kid.

To top it all off, she managed to find an empty ice cream container to point out to me that she could have FILLED THAT TOO! Now I can't eat ice cream either. On the up side of things, my diet should now be a breeze!

Area 51 in my own living room.

My preteen daughter carelessly left a "diary", of sorts, lying around the house today. I opened the cover and read the first page.

"I have started this notebook to record my science questions and observations. This book will bring my nature senses back to life. With good will, Cecilia"

The next several pages did, in fact, include nature observations and questions. "Why are lemons sour?" "Why are pine cones poky?" She either has not yet discovered the answers to these pressing questions or she is keeping the information "need to know."

Not so much a diary as it is more of a scientific journal. Last I checked she wasn't involved in any top secret government experiments, so I felt it fair game for blog fodder. If I disappear from existence after writing this then I guess it would be safe to assume she's involved in Black Ops.

She can add an entry when she gets home from her play date. "Why does cabbage smell when you cook it and why does it make my mom fart SO LOUD?"

There ya go, Cecilia. I've embarrassed you AND me.

The Sky is the Limit

"Lose 10 pounds and two inches? Why would anyone want to lose two inches!?" My 10 year old just asked this of me as she surfed the 'net.
I squeezed my own waist to illustrate why someone would want to lose two inches. "OH!" She said, snorting. "I thought that meant height!"
Oh dear LORD no! If that was the case, I'd be eating Twinkies and HoHo's three times a day to GAIN inches. I could use a nice 5'7" instead of my measly 5'4 1/2". Don't forget the half! Although, since they can't put halves on driver's licenses, mine actually says 5'5". Whoa. Rebel. If I die in a fiery inferno, they won't be able to identify my body because the height won't match up. Oops...guess I shouldn't have let that one slip. Now my worst enemies know how to off me and not get caught.

Much to my delight, the weather has greatly improved this week. This, in turn, improved my mood and my driving skills. Much to my dismay, my eldest daughter announced that the return of nice weather and melting snow would resurrect her "business". Last summer my little entrepreneur went door to door in our neighborhood offering to scoop poop for people with dogs. That's right folks, she's gonna sling some slop and bring home the bacon. She's pretty excited about it all. Normally the tooth fairy is her only form of income and as she is currently lacking any loose teeth, she's gotta go where the money is. I will totally expect her to list "tooth salesman" on her first job application because that is just how she rolls. That, coupled with "Canine fecal removal specialist" ought to land her a corporate gig right out of the chute! Heck, she may even be able to skip college with that on her resume!

So, for all you underachievers out there, aim high. Don't hesitate or you'll miss your calling! After all, we aren't getting any taller!

Vanity aggravated.

Yesterday the mayor of our city visited my daughter's school. Two kids in each class were chosen to ask the mayor a question and guess who's kid was chosen! You guessed it, mine. My daughter, who can't walk past a mirror without stopping to stare at herself and WATCH HERSELF TALK, also has a smart side.

The kids that were chosen got to sit in the font, in a sort of "panel". The mayor spoke to whole school about his life growing up with an alcoholic father. His father was also a smoker and the mayor told the children of his father's eventual death from lung cancer. My ten year old daughter repeated the mayor's story to me using probably the same words he had. She had, after all, hung on every.single.one of them.

The question she asked was this: What do you want to accomplish in your term as mayor? She had to stand up, in front of the whole school, introduce herself, and ask her question. She told me he answered her question first. He said that he wanted to leave our city better off than when he came. Good answer for a crowd of grade school kids I suppose. After he answered her question he said to her "I like you. You have a lot of confidence." I am not even kidding you when I say that this child was floating on a cloud ALL DAY LONG.

This man made an impression on my kid. Never mind his politics, he made her feel like she was the most important person in the world and she will take that with her forever. I fear the mirror obsession will only get worse from here on out.

Destined for Lameness.

It was brought to my attention today by my 5 year old that we will never ever go to Disney World. I asked her why not? "Because they have a ride that crushes your teeth. Gabriel told me." Gabriel is her friend at school. She also has a friend, Gerry, who was "born with potatoes in his ears."

"Really. A tooth crushing ride. I went to Disney World when I was little and I still have all my teeth."

"Well you have to PAY for it!" She had that "duh mom" tone to her voice.

"I refuse to pay someone to crush my teeth so you don't have to worry about that."

Today she is still convinced of a "tooth crusher" at Disney World although Gerry did finally admit to her that he was not, in fact, born with potatoes in his ears. Now I have to go rough up this Gabriel kid so he'll get her to believe me about the teeth crushers because apparently *I* am chopped liver and her 5 year old classmates know EVERYTHING.

Camera shy?

Today I was offered a regular column in a local parenting magazine. Nothing big, nothing paid, but something that enables me to claim "I am published!" It's been a bit of a rough week around my house, and this really made my day. The editor asked me to send her a picture in case they have room. Hey, it's a small magazine, I'm excited to have 150 of MY OWN WORDS published, a picture is just icing on the cake. It took me, and I am not exaggerating here, longer to find a picture worthy of publication than it did for me to write the story. There are no pictures of me! You'll all say it's because *I* am the one always holding the camera. Sometimes, yes. But mostly, no! I'm too scatter brained half the time to remember to take pictures in the first place. I tote the stupid camera to everything, I just never take it out of the case. I envision myself being run over by a heard of elephants in Africa, because I'm going there, you know, and after my funeral my children are lost because there are no pictures of me. "What did our mother look like? Why are there no pictures? Was she hideous?" Okay, okay, that is absolutely absurd, the Africa part and everything. But really, there are few good pictures of me. There are family pictures of all of us that require a single picture of me to be cropped away, but none of me by myself. The few there are of me by myself are, in fact, hideous. There are either dark circles under my eyes, bad hair, glasses that have slipped down the bridge of my nose or I'm making a face that indicates I may,at any moment, hurl the contents of my stomach onto the photographer. I have decided from now on that at every family function there will be 5 minutes set aside for just photos. Photos of everyone present. Good photos too, not photos of people with their mouths in mid-chew or formed into strange shapes because they are in the middle of speaking. No. These will be look-into-the-camera-and-say-cheese! pictures. That is my New Year's resolution. If you don't like it, then don't come over.

Multitasking a must.

My husband went to a motorcycle show with some friends today. He looks forward to this show all year long. Motorcycle show to my husband is like bridal show to newly engaged woman. He buys tickets ahead of time, plans what he wants to look for or buy, he even orders coupons for $ off the tickets months in advance. It's kind of a big deal. Of course, the forecast called for the weather to turn bad, it always does. When he left, the weather was actually fine. It turned bad here at about the same time I last heard from him. I had sent him a picture of a brand new extracted tooth and he didn't respond. Nothing. Not like him, especially since he wasn't the one driving. Eh, whatever. An hour went by, still nothing. I text messaged him again. "Did you get the picture of the tooth?" Nothing. Another 45 minutes and I decide to call. No answer. At this point I'm getting a bit concerned because the roads have gotten bad here and if they're bad here they're usually worse in the direction he was traveling. A bit more time went by and finally he called me. "I was worried about you, the weather got bad here." "Oh, I was navigating. I need to update the GPS, it doesn't know all the new roads."

Navigating folks, not driving. Seriously, why were men wired like this? A quick text to say "Hey, navigating" would have killed him? So, we had small talk about the tooth and his fairy duties upon his return home tonight. He was trying to hurry the conversation as they had just gotten to the show. We said our pleasantries and hung up. The picture of my husband my mind painted right then made me laugh out loud. He hung up his phone and ran into the motorcycle show, darting from booth to booth like a kid set free in a toy store. "Oooh...look at this! I want one of these! Oooh...wow...ahhh..." I'm sure that in actuality, he sauntered in like the cool guy he is and enjoyed the plethora of shiny new motorcycles on display, but the picture in my mind is funnier and helps me be not mad anymore that he made me worry.