This is How I Blow Bubbles

Oooo and check out what I wrote on the BlogHer site HERE and take a minute to share your favorite "feel good" meal idea for a chance to win $100 grocery gift card from Kraft! Who couldn't use 100 bucks for groceries?

The contest for the diaper bag is still going on over at my review blog HERE.

And lastly, have you guys heard about another crib recall by Simplicity/Graco? Over 1 million Simplicity and Graco brand bassinet/co-sleepers have been recalled after 2 babies died because of defectively designed frame rails.

Cara Smith, Deputy Chief of Staff for the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, has asked for volunteers to help get these cribs out of homes, and off the second-hand market.

"The challenge we have is trying to reach those parents who have these bassinets in their homes or those people selling them on the second hand market. We’re looking to form a group of volunteers who could help us in this project by visiting their local second hand store, thrift shop or garage sales and let us know if they see these recalled bassinets for sale. If so (or if they think it may be recalled) we have a toll-free number they or the store owner could call and we’ll take it from there."

Here's what these cribs look like. If you have one, or know someone who does, call the toll free number 1-888-414-7678.

Kodak Moments

The other day, I mentioned to my dad that I'd like to take a photography class. My dad used to be Mr. Photo-Guy. I mean, wherever we went (especially on vacations), there he was with the camera and the 80,000 lenses and filters. "Just stand over there. OK, now climb up in that tree. Just one more picture. OK, now let me change the lens. OK, stand over there. Look that way. OK, now look at your sister. Get back up in the tree....." Meanwhile, 4 days of vacation have passed by and we have yet to leave the hotel grounds. On the bright side, he has 4000 pictures of my sister and me in a tree.

Anyway, my dad gave me a couple of his old photography books to borrow: The 9th Here's How book by Kodak, published in 1974 and Adventures in Color-Slide Photography by Kodak, published in 1976. There are probably some good helpful hints in them, but the little kid in me couldn't stop giggling at the pictures long enough to read anything.

Before and after grandpa looked at Medusa.

"Huh? Platypus tail? I don't know what you're talking about...oh this? No, silly. That's just my tie."

Name 3 things wrong with this picture. The grown man playing with the kitty? The gorgeous blanket? The guy's plaid pants? The overall orange color that burns your retinas?

"I solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I didn't steal the bone."

"Oh you have GOT to be kidding me. I'm not even English!"

"Look Dad! Look! Fido can fly! All you have to do is poke him in the butt with this stick!"

"I know you're busy riding your chicken and all, but I just wanted to come over here and tell you that I love your hat! It's almost as sexy as my pants."

"OW! The pain! I think I broke my hip!"

"Darn kids making us lie on the ground. Just smile, honey and let's get this over with. Then we'll rewrite our will."

Ahhh remember the days of playgrounds with metal equipment? With 50 foot slides o' death and those things that spun around like a centrifuge until kids went flying off and/or puked? Ahhh good times, good times.

Yes, the family portrait. A little stiff; a little formal. I think this family can do better, don't you?

"Now you sit over there, Bobby. No, there. Move over 2 more inches. Yes, right there! Now Sally, look at the camera. Ok, Timmy, you hold this wreath and pretend to hang it up. Martha, tilt your head a little. There we go. Now everyone, we don't want to have a stuffy, posed picture like last Christmas, so look natural!"

There are no words. Oh wait, maybe this is a photography lesson on turning the camera around on the peeping Tom outside your window. The naked, peeping Tom. Hmmm, actually scratch that. There are no words.

"And here's a picture of Mother and me at home on Scrabble night."

"The most important lesson in taking good pictures is to always have your lucky pet armadillo on your camera. It distracts people from the comb-over area of slightly thinning hair."

"OK, I'll distract and confuse the bear with my pants; you take the picture."

Is the groom wearing make-up? Do the best man's glasses weigh 4 1/2 pounds? What color was the bowl the groom used to cut his hair? And most disturbingly, why is the best man looking longingly at the groom??? Ohhh, that's not the best man? That's the father of the bride, you say? Oh well, then everything makes perfect sense now.

I have more of these pictures, but I don't want to scare you too much in one night. The rest will have to wait.

Oooo, go over to my review blog and check out the diaper bag, fully loaded with Johnson's products.

Leave a comment there for a chance to win.

*****Edited to add - now through September 30, when you eat at Chili's, they will donate a a portion of their proceeds to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. When you dine on September 29, Chili's will donate 100% of participating restaurant's sales! Help St. Jude find cures and save children with cancer and other catastrophic childhood diseases. (And get out of cooking one night too!)

Sunday Sound Out

This is my view today. Lovely, isn't it? Wish me luck because I'm going to have the kids all home tomorrow as there's no way to get to school!









Dawn, Are you still involved in Mamas Like? I follow the reviews, but haven't seen any from you lately. Just wondering what the scoop is.
I haven't been. :( I love profiling work-at-home mom's shops, crafts, and services, but I've just been having a hard time trying to find time for everything. I have several hundred emails from people wanting a review on Mamaslike and just can't get to them. It's one of those times that instead of buckling down and just plowing through it, I don't know where to start so I just kinda shut down. Angie's been keeping up with it and she's going to be adding another person, Jackie, to help out with reviews soon.

I wonder what makes some people sleep with their eyes open?Higher intelligence?
Yeah, that must be it.

So I was wondering what happened to the email updates? I stopped getting them about mid-August. I resigned up on here because I was missing laughing my butt off at your kids stories.
I don't know. If you signed up with Blogarithm, that's probably the problem. I've heard from a lot of people that Blogarithm stinks at sending out updates. You might want to subscribe to Google Reader. Thanks to the advice of you wonderful readers, I discovered Google Reader and I'm LOVING it! If you missed my post about it, you can go HERE to see a video that explains it.

By the way, did you always know you wanted tons of kids?
Before we got married, Joe and I talked about how many kids we wanted. He said he wanted 2. I said, "Yep, I want 2 or 3." Not sure how we ended up with 6, but I'm glad we did! :)

What do you think about the moms who cook separate meals for each kid?
Whatever - each to their own, right? I personally don't have the time nor patience for that. I cook one meal a night. They can eat it or not. The end. I do make exceptions when I cook something new or something weird that I know the kids don't like. In that case, I'll let them make themselves a sandwich if they want. For example, last night I made meatloaf. I was going to make mashed potatoes to go with it, but I didn't have time so I just threw some rice in the meat mixture and popped it in the oven. The only problem? I didn't use Minute Rice. I used regular long grain rice and when the meatloaf was done, the rice was still REALLY CRUNCHY! Needless to say, several opted for the peanut butter sandwich entree tonight.

okay, she's WAY too clean to have been sucking on that ketchup bottle like that- where are the pics of it in her hair? Behind her ears? Crusted in the nostrils? Or do you just want pics of CADEN like that- maybe girls are cleaner??? hahaAlways love your blog Dawn...I needed that laugh today! Thanks.
LOL Peggy! Like THIS POST? And yesterday, Brooklyn came to me with this red stuff all over her head. I couldn't figure out what she'd gotten into. I moved closer to get a better look and smelled what it was - WINE! I'd had a Mary Kay party earlier and hadn't cleaned up all the wine glasses yet and Brooklyn dumped half a glass of Shiraz on her head. She had 4 showers yesterday. Don't ask.

Speaking of my sweet friend Peggy (Coleman's mom). I wanted to copy something she wrote on her Carepages today. In case you guys don't know, September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Yesterday, in fact, was Childhood Cancer Awareness DAY and I didn't even know it!

"...On our way home from church we picked up the Sunday paper. Anyone look at the TARGET ad today???(Target is, I mean WAS, my favorite store, so I always grab their ad first) Today I grabbed it, and I wanted to cry. Then I got angry…


If you don’t know by now- September is CHILDHOOD CANCER AWARENESS MONTH- right? YESTERDAY was NATIONAL CHILDHOOD CANCER AWARENESS DAY- What about "POWERFUL GOLD?" Have all the carepages and caringbridge sites not been saying this enough? Have we not emailed enough people? Have we not written letters to newspaper after newspaper, Have we not worn our t-shirts, gold ribbons, put our stories out there hoping to make a difference, signed petitions, gathered signatures, joined groups, walked our laps,organized fundraisers… sent letters to our 'leaders' in office, screamed it from our rooftops enough to get some awareness??? Have we done enough to make a difference? Today made me wonder…have we done enough for our kids?obviously we have a LOT more work to do.

The front page of the Target ad is FULL of PINK, (not gold for the kids) but, PINK items...You can get a pink vacuum, pink pots and pans, a pink steam mop, a pink 10 speed mixer…*BIG SIGH*, all to raise money for BREAST CANCER, because quote, “Target proudly supports breast cancer research and education”. Thanks Target…thanks. Do you not make a whole lot more money off your toy department than the bra department in your store?

Now don’t get me wrong. I mean, I'm a woman, I have breasts. I support breast cancer research…I do. I’m not saying we shouldn’t support a cure for it, but I'm also a mother watching her son fight for his life because of cancer. I’m not angry they’re donating to Breast Cancer Research. There are women I LOVE who have fought the monster. I don't take anything away from their fight. I’m happy they’re getting funding, that it’s saving lives…I’m happy they’ve made so much progress in curing it…I'm happy for the awareness that's everywhere. I've bought the pink items... I’m not saying we all shouldn’t support it.

What I AM saying is CHILDREN deserve the SAME AWARENESS AND SUPPORT!!!Read the fine print in Target's ad…”Dyson and Target will partner together to give $30 of each upright purchase and $10 of each hand vac purchase to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation- total donation $1.4 million…” It goes on…more #'s...I stopped there. I’m just so **** angry. What I’m angry about is…WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS??? It's an insult to these little heroes, that so few are recognizing what they go through, or too few care. Couldn't Target also proudly support THEM?Especially the timing of this ad. Could they have put the pink items on sale in OCTOBER, when it IS national BREAST cancer awareness month?This is the Weekend of CHILDHOOD CANCER AWARENESS DAY, the MONTH OF SEPTEMBER…CHILDHOOD CANCER AWARENESS...HELLOOOOO???? Is anyone aware??? We obviously aren't shouting it loud enough, and I’m frustrated.

*Each school day, 46 children are diagnosed with cancer.
*On the average 12,500 children and teens will be diagnosed with some form of cancer each year in this country.
*One in 330 children will develop cancer by age 20.
*Although the 5 year survival rate is steadily increasing, one quarter of children will die 5 years from the time of diagnosis.
*Cancer remains the #1 disease killer of America's children - more than Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Asthma and AIDS combined.
*In the U.S. almost 3,000 children do not survive cancer each year.
*Over the past two decades, only ONE new cancer drug has been approved for pediatric use.
*Currently there are between 30-40,000 children undergoing cancer treatment in the U.S.
*As a nation, we spend over $14 BILLION (that's with a B!!!) per year on the space program, but only $35 MILLION on Childhood Cancer Research each year.
*There are 15 children diagnosed with cancer for every one child diagnosed with pediatric AIDS. Yet, the U.S. invests approximately $595,000 for research per victim of pediatric AIDS and only $20,000 for each victim of childhood cancer.
*Research funds are scarce as most money is diverted to well-publicized adult forms of cancer, such as breast and prostate.
*Right now, this second, somewhere in America, there are 7 children fighting for their lives who won't live through the day."


Sweet Coleman's Cancer Fighting Face

Ooooo! And according to Mimi (and she knows what she's talking about!), Curesearch is the best place to donate money for childhood cancer. If you want to donate in Julian's name, HERE'S a link for you.



OK, so I was asked to give my 2 cents on back-to-school must haves for the website, TastyBaby.com. Here's the thing, all these moms gave their actual back-to-school ideas for actual, real products. And then there's my wisdom smart aleck comments. I just never learn.

Click HERE to see my review of Mr.Clean Magic Erasers and check back later this week because I have got some FANTASTIC (like $400 leather diaper bag fantastic!) giveaways coming up!

I'm Building an Ark

It's been raining all night and all day here. Every street that leads out of my neighborhood is closed because of flooding. I think I may have to start gathering animals 2 by 2. Of course, the flooding by me is nothing compared to the flooding, damage and destruction in the Turks and Caicos, Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, and Texas.

No, those pictures are not of a lake. That's a street. Or it was anyway.

I'm not sure if THIS LINK will work or not, but it's pictures of Texas in the aftermath of Ike. It's pretty bad. Pray for those who have lost their homes and loved ones.

9-11

Remembering

Let the Learnin' Begin!

It was Open House at the grade school tonight. I went into Lexi's classroom, listened to her teacher talk, looked at the papers she'd written/drawn, and took the requisite peek in her desk. Lexi had a paper hanging on the wall that read, "I wish I was a cat because then I could go to the bathroom whenever I wanted." You know, as opposed to being a human since she can only go to the bathroom between 2:00 and 3:00 pm. I felt the need to explain to Lexi's teacher that she actually can use the bathroom whenever she wants to at home.

Then I went to Jackson's classroom. I took a peek in his desk and found half a dozen wrinkled papers just shoved in between his books. I started thumbing through them and found this...


Yes, it's Booger Boy.
There were also drawings of giant cannibal peanuts eating their peanut families.

That there is some prime time learnin' goin' on, folks. Brings a tear to my eye. Of course, I wasn't quite as proud as I was earlier today when Clay burped so loudly at the library that a ceiling tile crashed to the floor, the sprinklers were set off and no less than 5 librarians turned and stared at us in shock and disbelief. To Clay's credit, he didn't burst out laughing, but immediately apologized which confused me and made me wonder if the child standing next to me was really my kid or an alien replica.

Yep, it's going to be a fun school year.

The Condiment Food Group

Forget the soft food TMJ diet. I'm doing Brooklyn's diet.

For breakfast, she had 2 potato chips she found umm, somewhere.

For lunch, she had half a tortilla with melted butter and cinnamon.

For a snack, she smelled a banana and licked the peel.

This is what she had for dinner...

Yep, that's a straw in the empty ketchup bottle. Forget the burger, hold the bun, no cheese please. I'll just take the condiments thankyouverymuch.


Mmmm ketchup.

I remember stressing over stuff like this when I had 1 or 2 kids. Will they get sick if all they eat is ketchup and banana fumes? Should I call the doctor? How can I get them to eat a balanced diet? Somewhere along the line, however, my attitude changed. You want to go all day and eat nothing but a piece of cheese, 2 grapes (with no skin, of course), a teaspoon of milk and a cotton ball? Knock yourself out. Less cooking for me.

Preschool is Not All About the Cookies

I think I may have found an easy diet to follow. It's called the, "Damage your TMJ until it hurts so bad you cry when you chew" diet. My jaw had been hurting for a week, but I went to my dentist today when I realized that my teeth no longer touch on my right side when I close my mouth. It hurts!

I don't know what I did to injure my jaw to begin with. I don't clench my jaw or grind my teeth at night. In fact, my jaw feels better in the morning after resting it all night.

According to my dentist, a muscle in my jaw is damaged and the way to get it to heal, is by letting it rest. How do you rest your jaw though? You have to use it to talk and eat every day. So, he told me to follow a soft/not much chewing diet for the next 6-8 weeks.

Slimfast anyone? Carnation instant breakfast? Scrambled eggs and oatmeal for the next 2 months? Sounds DE-LISH.

I'm falling apart, I tell ya. Just falling apart.

Clay had his first day of preschool today. The older kids have been telling him about the fun things he'll do at preschool; namely the gingerbread hunt. They explained all about how they got to make gingerbread boys while they were in preschool. While the gingerbread boys were cooling, the kids went out to play and when they came back, the gingerbread boys had disappeared! The kids had to go on a hunt and follow the clues to find them.

They had talked about this ad nauseam and Clay was excited to begin preschool.

So today, we're in the classroom, just sitting there listening to the teachers talk. Clay turns to me and says, "When do we get to eat cookies?" He was under the impression that every day was gingerbread day in preschool. I told him that he wouldn't be eating cookies today. Deflated, he turned back to the teacher who wasn't saying anything of interest to Clay. He sat there a couple more minutes before turning to me and saying, "Well, this sucks."

I'm so proud.

I've posted the winner of the Zivio wireless headset on my review blog HERE.

Sunday Sound Out

Yay, you got some Dansko clogs!! Don't you just love them??? I didn't know they came in Flintstone!! LOL
Yep! They also come in patent leopard Flintstone!

Ok, I need to know where you got those shoes. They're so cute and they look absolutely comfy! Can you share?
Will I share my shoes? Nope. But I got 'em on eBay.

I can't believe the little monkey actually sleep with her eyes open! doe she always do that???
Pretty often. It's totally creepy!

What eventually happens if no one heeds to Brooklyn's tantrums?
The earth stops spinning?

Oooh! I love the look of the blanket you were crocheting. Any chance you might share the pattern?
Sure!
ch (multiple of 3 + 2 chs) loosely
ROW 1 (right side): (sc, 2 dc) in second ch from hook,
* skip next 2 chs, (sc, 2 dc) in next ch; repeat form * across to last 3 chs, sc in last ch
Loop a piece of yarn around any stitch to mark last row as right side.
ROW 2 Ch 1, turn; (sc, 2 dc) in first sc and in each sc across to last sc, sc in last sc.
Repeat row 2 until piece measures desired length.
It's super easy!

Is that a picture of you Dawn? Man does Brooklyn look a lot like you did.
Yep that was me and my grandma. I'd stayed with her while my parents were on vacation and when they came back and it was time to go, I held on to my grandma and didn't want to leave.

Okay so I'm just catching up and I noticed you mentioned a little something about library fines last week. A friend told me about a great website called libraryelf.com. You just select your local library, plug in your information, and it will send you reminder emails when you have stuff due. It's a great thing and has saved me from who knows how many fines over the past few months.
Awesome! Thank you for the tip! I signed up for the email reminders! Hear that Suburban Correspondent? <---click that link. She's hilarious! (She and I are working at financing new wings on our local libraries.) Nice job, Clay! Totally cracked me up... So after you saw the grandma knees what did you realize you needed to start with?
hiding the rubber bands

Dawn! Why on earth did you not get a video of Disco Bob?!?!? You get video of gorillas eating their boogers, but you can't get a video of a spazzing middle aged roller skate dancer? :-)
I know. I've disappointed my readers. :( Believe me, I wanted to. I tried to, in fact. But I was reprimanded for using a flash and was told I could only take pictures of the rink without a flash. Unfortunately it was too dark to get any good pictures/video. Oh and the guy was actually only about 21. That's somehow even sadder, don't you think?

Ok I totally forgot that Andy Gibb was in the video! Does that mean I have to admit to how many times I've watched it?!
I think you need to watch it one more time because Andy Gibb isn't in Xanadu.

ONJ is one of my all-time favorite singers. Barry Manilow is THE favorite for me. :) Are you a Fanilow?

SOOO many great answers! You might also say it's the stuff that comes out of my nose when I do the NETTI-POT, which I MADE A VIDEO OF today after our lunch and I will post SOON!
I'm SO not going to your site any time soon, Manic! Warning to all my readers, don't go visit Manic's site unless you want to see her washing snot from her nose!

question- have you moved to becauseisaidso.com? or is that on hold?
Ugh, there have been many factors holding up the launch of my new site. It's coming along, but it's not quite done yet. Soon...

I would love to see Mike Rowe spend a day with a mom. Now THAT'S a dirty job!
I've thought the same thing myself!

Question for Sunday Sound Out:How long does it take you to suck down a mai tai?
Well, as you can clearly see from these pictures, it takes me a long time. I just slowly nursed my drink along while everyone else was on their second one!

Manic, Lynn, Shawna (don't let the "gardening nude" scare you. She doesn't really garden in the nude. Well, maybe she does, but not on her website anyway. Check out her way cool Live Smarter project.), and I had lunch at Stir Crazy on Friday. We talked blogs and business. It was quite serious.


This must have been the part where we talked about whether Blogger or Word Press was better.


This was probably when we discussed marketing.


This is when we were laughing because our boobs were on the table debating the pros and cons of advertising on our sites.


Shawna's bowl - she understands the concept of getting your money's worth by piling it high with veggies.


Lynn's bowl. She eats like a bird.


Mmmmm, my yummy lunch. I love Stir Crazy!


Our cute waitress who put up with our goofiness business meeting.

Stand Up to Cancer

(Oops! I just realized I published the following post on my review blog by mistake last night. I guess I should've gone to bed instead of trying to write with my eyes half closed.)


Mimi texted me yesterday and asked if I'd watched Stand Up to Cancer on tv. Ugh, I missed it! I totally forgot about it. My son had a friend sleeping over and they were watching a video and I just didn't remember the show was on. She told me it was powerful and that they'd shown Julian's picture while Forest Whitaker read Mimi's words. I searched online to see if I could watch the show on my computer and found it HERE. So, if anyone else missed it and would like to see the show, you can click the link and watch. I have to say, I was ignorant and shocked when they said that 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer. ONE in THREE! So if you're sitting there with a person on each side of you, either you or one of those people will theoretically get cancer. One American dies from cancer every minute. Every minute! Scary, huh? Check out the link.

It's A...

OK, so I was suppose to announce the winner of the gross food find contest yesterday and I totally forgot. Sorry! The winner was Angela who was the first person to guess strawberry! Congratulations! Email me with your shipping address and I'll get the videos out to you. :)

Most of you guessed strawberry or other fruit. Several of you guessed gum, a few guessed hotdog or other meat. But I just had to share some of the more, um, "unusual" guesses I received.


I'd have said dracula's heart was left under the couch too long.
Don't be silly. Was there a wooden stake through it? Noooo.

It looks like a dead bird...

No, this is what a dead bird looks like. This guy flew into our door and dropped. Another reason for not cleaning your windows.

I know this may result in PETA writing me to complain, but it looks like a decomposed Rottweiler puppy head.

Thankfully I don't have a picture of this to compare, but I'm pretty sure a strawberry and a puppy head look nothing alike.

It actually looks like a rotten giant's tooth.

Just to clarify, do you mean the tooth of a rotten giant? Or a rotten tooth from a regular giant?

That looks horribly like a day-old chick that's had its head ripped off!

Oh my gosh what's wrong with you people?!?!?!

A portion of someone's colon or a strawberry.
No. This is a colon :

I'm guessing a half eaten peach(although it looks a bit like a alien cornish game hen.......)

Yes, no garden variety Cornish hens for us. Nope, we just eat the alien ones.

OMG! Is that a tooth on the lower right amongst the rabies foam?

Not unless someone's tooth fell out while eating the strawberry and got stuck in it in which case, I've got to scrounge up some money so the tooth fairy can pay a visit.

Oh this is easy. It's a 'speriment.

LOL!

maybe Malibu Ken's head?

Nope. Perhaps it's Prince Eric's though?

My 10 yr old said it was a puppy.

Close, but not quite.. actually, no it's not even close.

My 4 yr old said it was a puppy that was all bleeding and moldy under someone's couch bed.

OK, who let the 4 year old watch Cujo?

I think it's the heart that the woodsman cut out of a deer to fool the queen in Snow White.

And it got under my couch how?

Looks like the Thing That Ate Cincinnati.

Nah, it's not big enough.

The partially decomposed, and shrunken head of a capuchin monkey?

Hmmm, that's oddly specific. Not just any ole monkey, but the shrunken head of a Capuchin monkey.

Clay's appendix?

Now if you'd have guessed "tonsils" I might have questioned whether he'd managed to bring his tonsils home in a jar and leave them under the couch.

it's a wombat!!

LOL! We had another wombat last night. I took a picture of it. Looks rather like a cat, don't you think; a cat with freakish alien eyes.


it could be the remains of the head of a mutant miniture bear cub.

I might have agreed if you'd said "mutant full-size bear cub", but it clearly isn't a miniature bear cub.

Is that Anita Renfrow's thyroid?

LOL! I sure hope not!

It also looks like a headless dead mouse I found one time.

OK, what's with all the decapitations? I'm seriously beginning to wonder about my readers! Group therapy maybe?

The tongue of a rabid dog?

Well, at least it's not the head of a rabid dog this time.

Yeah...it's a strawberry morphing into a hamster head.

Can strawberries do that?

I'm guessing a dead slug. Something about the look of little sucker feet on the right side of the image.

Um yeah, those are SEEDS.

Whatever it was, I'd probably called a hazmat warning on it. *grin**picturing the fire dept coming into your house in their hazmat suits to safely encapsulate and remove the offending whatever-it-is*The kids would LOVE it!

Shhhh! Don't give them any ideas!

Ok, I was going to say a decapitated hamster head. Gross, I know...but that's what it looks like to me. And I was eating something. WAS being the operative word there.
I have a very strong stomach...I can't handle staring at it. If you can't handle puke I'm not sure how you cleaned this up.

I can handle this because:

A. It doesn't look like puke.

B. It doesn't sound like puke.

C. It doesn't smell like puke. And...

D. I didn't envision any decapitated heads when I saw it!

And finally there were several of these comments:

Oh gosh Dawn, just as I was coughing up a lung with asthma I clicked and saw your post. I did a double take (and almost lost my meal) because I thought it was a dead mouse head! Please, no more moldy food!!!!

I can't look at it long enough to make a guess. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...

I am so creeped out by that picture I can't even explain the eebee jeebies (sound it out) that run down my spine every time I see that picture. I can't get that image out of my head, pahhhhleeeze tell me what it was in its former life b/c I seriously can't erase that picture from my brain-ICKO!

People, people, have you never seen Dirty Jobs? Or even just changed a nasty diaper where the contents have squished all up baby's back? A moldy strawberry is nothing in comparison.

Lost in Xanadu

So I took Jackson to a roller rink with some friends to celebrate his birthday. Yes, his birthday was last month. Yes, we had a birthday party for family weeks ago. It's a never-ending extravaganza.

Anyway, he and a couple friends went roller skating last night. Most everyone wore their inline skates. Except for a couple people on the rink who were wearing roller skates. You know - 4 wheels not in a line. I didn't even know they still made roller skates! Actually, maybe they don't. These looked like they might have been around since 1970. Anyway, this one guy, wearing roller skates of course, was doing some sort of, hmmm, I don't really know how to describe it. At first glance, I thought he was having a seizure in the middle of the rink. On second thought, I decided he wasn't actually in need of medical attention and was moving that way on purpose. OK, what on God's green earth is this guy doing? The chicken dance? Is he trying to march? Maybe it's the macarena? What the crap is he doing? Oh my gosh! He's dancing! I think he's trying to dance! Is he doing the... is that the... why, I think he's doing THE HUSTLE!

So Disco Bob (I named him Disco Bob. Catchy, isn't it?) is out there stayin' alive and I'm standing on the side lines trying to pay attention to Jackson and gang, but I'm somehow mesmerized by Disco Bob. What makes a grown person want to devote his free time to the lost art of roller disco? I was just waiting for some girl in leg warmers (perhaps Olivia Newton John) to join him.


Ahhh yes, Gene Kelly on skates again, a veritable circus sideshow in the middle of a roller ring complete with tight rope walkers, an Evil Knievel-like jump over a bunch of snazzily dressed skaters, Olivia Newton John blasting off to her home planet, and more big hair than my high school yearbook. What? It could happen. Just be thankful I didn't share the long version where she changes clothes like 24 times! That's 8 minutes and 3 seconds I'll never get back.

You'd think I'd have a point after all that. Hmmm, note to self: make sure your stories have a point in the future.

HERE'S a link to my review blog where I've got a couple giveaways and HERE'S a link to Michelle's blog where she's got a contest too! Check them out or I'll post the long version of the Xanadu grand finale!