I Can't Live, If Living is Without Cookies

The majority of my brain is dominated by my sweet tooth. The part that normal people have that thinks about practical stuff like finances, the weather, what shoes are appropriate to wear into the rain, in my brain that part thinks about pie. The part that some people have that gets all existential and thinks about God, heaven, where we go when we die, reincarnation, in my brain that part is reserved solely for thoughts about York Peppermint Patties. The part of the brain in some people that thinks about the future, climate change, greenhouse gasses, the ozone, in my brain I'm busy thinking about soft serve ice cream. The part of my brain that would plan out what I'm making for dinner, what would be appropriate to serve for a meal, how many servings of fruits and vegetables I've eaten that day, that part is wondering whether I've got enough butter to make chocolate chip cookies. And if I do, I make them.

As a kid I can recall having my thoughts occasionally consumed by fantasies of candy. When I would get this candy, it was a dream come true. It didn't even matter if it was a candy I didn't like, I still ate it. I would suck the chocolate off of Raisinettes, just because I was unwilling to waste candy. I would behave through the entire grocery store, in anticipation of the checkout line where candy was waiting for me, begging me to take it home and eat it. Then when I asked, my behavior couldn't be the reason I was told no. I rarely got candy or sweets when I was a kid, so when I did it was a treat.

As an adult, my circumstances are different. I stay home all day, with 24 hour access to the pantry. If I want a candy bar, I can go to the store to get it. If I want cookies, I have the ingredients to make them. This availability is not good for me, because my willpower is poor at best. Ask the bag of chocolate chips I bought Wednesday about my willpower, oh wait, you can't, cause I ate them all.

I need to go on a diet. Not a strict, no carbs no fat no fun diet. Just a no entire batches of cookies, shared only with Ava diet. Its not even that I need to diet really. I just need to have more willpower.

It will probably help to get out of the house more, because then I won't be sitting next to the open pantry, wondering what I can bake. Without food at my fingertips, I won't feel the need to eat it all the time. Except I have hours of homework to do, and the computer is right next to the pantry. That 72 oz bag of chocolate chips I bought at Costco isn't helping any. Stupid bag of chocolate chips. This is all it's fault.

In reality, I will never be the girl who orders salad at a restaurant. I just don't have it in me. That doesn't mean I have to eat an entire batch of cookies, but I probably will because no one is here to stop me.

Townies

A new game has been invented. Hello, U.S. Patent Office? This game, played daily by Alana, has been named....drumroll please......Town.

To play Town you must: Get out every single house/barn/pet hospital/Dora's house/Rapunzel tower/Weebles treehouse type thing you own. Then take them into the living room or kitchen. You cannot play Town in your bedroom. It must be played in common areas, preferably a walkway.

Then: get all princess/prince/Zoobles/My Little Pony/fairy/mermaid/Strawberry Shortcake/random figurine of a person/animal/whatever you might have on hand. They are the citizens. They are to interact/have conversations/fight/all get on the roof to escape giant spiders. That's what people in a town do.

Listening to some pop music or a Disney movie soundtrack on your iPod will earn you bonus points when you play Town. So will incessantly asking your mommy if she would like to play Town.

Your parents will both have unique ways of playing Town. Your daddy might make the bears shoot lasers/guns and fight with the princesses. Your mommy will probably make Buzz Lightyear do laundry and the bears type at the computer, while the Zoobles all take naps. Your sister, on the other hand, is more of a Godzilla type creature when it comes to Town. She might participate occasionally, but mostly she'll just destroy it and knock stuff over.

Town is a serious game, with serious social situations. Like when Strawberry Shortcake moved to Town and didn't know anybody and was scared but then they all told her their names and everyone was friends. Or when the laser bears attack the princesses. Or when Flynn Rider is spotted out and about Town with Ariel. Both Prince Eric and all of the Rapunzel's have a serious problem with this, but it's undetermined how they found out. Maybe gossip is a big problem in Town, or maybe because the houses/towers/pet hospitals are all too close to each other, and should be moved to your room, where there's more space and your mommy won't step on the citizens.

Left Behind

When I was eleven I was scheduled to go to summer camp. Escape the suffocating heat of Tucson in favor of the mountains of Prescott. I was packed. Ready. Canvas shoes with no laces. Check. Permed hair. Check. Kind of childish Alvin and the Chipmunks suitcase. Check. Purple sleeping bag. Check.

I was excited. Till the day before I was scheduled to leave. At least I thought it was the day before I was scheduled to leave. The leader of the group I was going with called my house. He wanted to know where I had been the last week when they were leaving for camp. Why I had missed camp. Why?

My dad, or me, or someone else, had gotten the dates mixed up. Probably not me, cause I was eleven and not responsible for my own social scheduling. They went without me. I had packed my stuff in vain, cause I wasn't going anywhere.

I got over that initial time of being left behind. Told myself that it was no big deal, camp wasn't really that fun. It's fine. I'll live.

I didn't know that failed church camp trip would give me a complex for the rest of my life.

Whenever I was supposed to go on an away game for cheerleading or any type of field trip, I got nervous. Sweaty palms, butterflies in my stomach, the whole thing. I packed my stuff in advance and waited anxiously for my dad to drive me there, because I was convinced that if I was not punctual they would definitely leave without me. Every away game where we left after school. Every time that I had to be somewhere early in the morning. Every leadership trip. I was so paranoid that I would be late and they would get tired of waiting and just say Whatever, we didn't want her to go anyway.

My dad always got me there in time, but every time I was convinced that I wouldn't make it. That I'd arrive to an empty parking lot and have to go back home with my bags packed. Take my discman and my snacks and return home in shame.

It even carried over into adulthood. My sister and I coached cheerleading for a couple of years and had to ride the bus with our cheerleaders and the football players. I was determined to get there early, because I just knew that the bus would leave me behind if not.

One game we actually waited almost an hour for the football coaches to all get on the bus, because they knew no one was leaving without them. But leaving a cheerleading coach would probably be an added benefit to them. On a side note, if you wanna feel old, ride a school bus with a bunch of teenagers when you're 25. You will feel like a chaperone, I guarantee it.

I've mostly gotten over this strange left behind complex, but I don't go on many field trips these days. I hope it doesn't resurface when Alana goes to school next year. I won't let my kid stay home from camp cause I got the dates mixed up.

Sometimes I'm Confused

Earlier today I saw my neighbor, who appears to be a very strange man, walk past the back of the house. He was wearing pants and socks. No shirt, no shoes, no service. He was carrying a kitty litter box and a small shovel. I was confused and intrigued.

By the way, I'm not some kind of weird peeping tom lady, but I was sitting in our screened-in porch area so I couldn't help but see him. I tried to make it look like I wasn't watching him every time he walked by, although I'm not sure he could really see me that well through the screen. Not that the screen has some magical one-way viewing power. He could probably see me.

Several minutes later, when he had not returned, his strange lady friend walked to the area he had gone into. In the wash behind our house. In the rain. Wearing no shoes. I was still confused.

Then he came back, carrying his litter box, which he had filled with sand. He possibly does not have the money for kitty litter, so he goes into the wash and fills the litter box with sand. Gross.

Other people's actions amuse and confuse me. I don't know why my neighbor goes into the wash and fills his cat litter box with sand. I don't think anybody really knows why. It's one of life's greatest mysteries. Like why Elf is on TV in the middle of July. Or why fire ants keep trying to come into my house, then die because of the pesticide that I sprayed on the threshold of the front door. Maybe they're looking for their lost ant brothers, or maybe they're just suicidal. I don't know why Ava claims to want socks for her birthday, maybe her feet are cold. I don't know why when I sit down here to write a blog my mind is suddenly blank, so then I'm left with one blog update per week, when I used to update it daily. I don't think anyone I'm not related to even reads it anymore. No one comments anyway. It's a mystery.

Loyalty is Expensive

I am, in general, opposed to change. Especially the kind that requires effort on my part. So when the cable company raised my bill $10 in the last couple of months, I just paid it and went about my business. I dislike paying that much for TV, but I did it anyway. I'm not even going to admit on here how much our monthly cable bill was, it's so ridiculous.

I've been a loyal customer with the same company for nine years. Always paid my bill on time. We ordered more than our share of pay-per-view boxing. Kept HBO the whole time even though it gets kinda expensive, but we wanna watch Entourage and Bill Maher so we tolerated it.

If no circumstances had changed, I would've continued to pay that astronomical price for cable. But there was an interference with potential football watching. David cannot miss a Cowboys game. That would be tragic. Because the televised games are given regional preference, sometimes the Cardinals games (boo!), are played instead of the Cowboys. There are options to view the Cowboys games, but they include going to someone else's house who gets all the games, or going to a sports bar to watch them. We chose neither, and decided to get the NFL Sunday Ticket for ourselves.

We happen to be lucky enough to cash in on a deal that Directv has, where new customers get Sunday Ticket for free, a package that includes every. single. football. game. It typically costs $350, so we're saving quite a bit. So we switched. I switched. I changed something. It's a miracle.

I'm going to continue my life under the pretense that I switched because by bundling my internet and TV I can save $50 a month, but the real honest reason was football. I could've talked the cable company down to a better price, but they don't have the football. Football has influenced another thing in my life.

When fall gets here and football starts, I'm facing nine hours of football each Sunday. David already announced plans to watch it all. Hooray.

This post makes it seem like all I've done lately is cancel my cable, but in reality I've spent six hours a day since Monday doing homework. That put me a little bit ahead of schedule, but not too far since my classes are so short.

I've done other stuff too. I promise. Like buy 72 ounces of chocolate chips at Costco, which was a bad idea. Now the voice inside my head keeps telling me to make cookies, and I usually listen.

We also took the plunge and bought a window air conditioner for our bedroom. After seven years of living with only a swamp cooler in AZ, we now have one air conditioned room. Right after my dad installed it, complete with a big piece of plywood to cover the rest of the window and make us look like rednecks, it did not get over 100 degrees here for a week. It wasn't too humid and it was cloudy, so our swamp cooler worked fine. Now part of me wants it to get super hot for a few days, to justify buying the thing.

In what should've been front-page news, I got a new lens. It's pretty huge, my camera won't fit into the case with it on. I couldn't pass up the deal that Target had on it, so I got it. We had every intention of going to the park to use it, but when we got there some crackhead guy told us he had just heard gunshots and the cops were on their way, so we detoured to my in-laws backyard. Benson is so classy sometimes.

I actually zoomed the lens out all the way, and Alana still filled the frame when she was about ten feet away from me. I'm a fan so far.

Alana really has a Rapunzel shirt for every occasion.

David is incapable of taking a picture of me jumping. We tried like ten times, but everytime I looked like an idiot.

David enjoys taking unflattering pics of me when I'm not looking.

Me and Alana



The scrunch-face is Ava's go-to face for pictures. Highlights all of her best feature.

This week I'm probably gonna spend another 30 hours doing homework, so if no one hears from me for awhile I'm not dead, I'm just recalling why I hate MLA format. 





You May Be Right. I May Be Crazy.

Recently the voice in my head told me this: It's a good idea to take two five week long summer classes at the same time. It won't be a ton of work. Do it. Go on. So I did. And it wasn't a good idea, it was a bad one. That involves lots of homework all due at the same time, because they're condensed versions of regular classes. Same amount of work, 1/4 the time frame. I haven't even showered in two days because I have so much homework. The voice in my head is going down for this one.

It also said Let Alana wear the lego bucket on her head while she walks around singing to her ipod. She looks cute. Ten seconds later she walked face first into a wall, then cried for ten minutes.

Sometimes it tells me cookies would be good for breakfast. Or to go ahead and give Secret Life of the American Teenager another shot, cause it could've improved since the last time I watched it. It says that finding a misplaced sippy cup with milk in it can wait till tomorrow. It often wants me to wager all of my money on Final Jeopardy, then I lose with $0. It's been known to tell me to wear jeans in summer, then my legs feel like they're on fire. Don't avert your eyes when emptying ice cube trays, none will hit your eyes. Go ahead and stand at the window staring at fighting groundhog/prairie dog creatures for ten minutes. It won't be a waste of time. Let Alana have Bruno Mars' The Lazy Song on her ipod, it's not at all inappropriate when she sings Let everything hang loose or Find a really nice girl have some really nice....I guess if a song is on a Kidz Bop CD then it's not too horrible.

There's another part of my brain that doesn't suffer from bad judgment, just lack of memory. I can't remember where I put my chapstick, and I have to have chapstick on my lips at all times. I don't know any phone numbers that belong to phones we don't own, but I know my chocolate chip cookie recipe by heart. I can still remember every word of every song in the Little Mermaid, but I forget at least one thing at the grocery store every week, even with a list.

The mind works in mysterious ways. I cannot tell you why I have trouble buying one thing that costs $50, but no trouble buying 5 things that cost $10. It's unknown why David doesn't like marshmallows but likes rice krispy treats. I'm not sure why Alana will only let me brush her hair slowly, because she says it hurts less that way. And Ava will only lick steak, not actually chew it up and eat it. As long as I remember to hug my kids everyday I may be able to keep my mind intact, but it's unknown how long I can retain my sanity.

Studious

Tomorrow is the first day of my summer classes. Who needs an actual summer vacation, when you can have half of one? I'm taking two five week classes, and they're both three credits each, so I'm sure they'll be super condensed and fast-paced.

Sociology should be okay, and David is taking it next semester so he doesn't have to buy the book. I think to be fair he should pay me for it, since my pell grant bought this copy. I'll accept other forms of payment, such as housework.

Writing should be a cakewalk, in theory, except I'm faced with my current case of summertime writer's block. Somedays words flow so easily from my fingers, while other days I stare at the screen blankly, with zero inspiration. Alana's very loud off-key singing is one of the factors, but I'm mostly blaming the cold I've been fighting for two plus weeks. I've felt crappy, and crappy translates to no writing, which means I don't feel like blogging.

I'm almost tentatively marginally excited to take a writing class. Writing is easy for me. Or maybe it's just that I'm so happy to not be taking any math classes. I'm done with math. Hooray! No more algebra, until I take chemistry, which will inevitably include some math. Sad.

The past month and a half, when I've had no homework or anything to occupy my time, I've been kind of lost. My kids play together so nicely most of the time, so there's times when I could be doing something productive, but I have nothing to do. I need a hobby. So now that I have something with purpose to occupy my time, I will probably suddenly become super busy and wondering how I will accomplish things. At least that will make the hot sticky months of summer go by a little bit faster. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll earn a couple of A's!

Possibly Illegal and a Small Museum Adventure

I don't believe I've ever waited this long to post pictures and talk about a holiday. I guess technically I talked about the 4th on the actual day, but things happened after that post. Exciting things. Like possibly illegal sparklers, cuddling of kittens and a family photo op. Then my ladies and I went on a field trip to the Tucson Children's Museum. Like, an actual field trip, I'm not just calling it that. We went with my sister and half the city of Benson on a school sponsored field trip. It was fun, but slightly hectic. I could've done without Chucke Cheese, but that's because I'm almost 30 and a little too old for the rides.

We went by my parent's house for a double-duty, double-birthday party cookout. I think this bush and their porch is the backdrop for half of my family pictures. Hey, it's green, it's in the shade and there's a built in seat. It's like it's asking to be in my picture.

There's no clothing more patriotic than Dallas Cowboys clothing. End of story.


Also patriotic: kittens. I personally don't care for cats, but hand me a soft fuzzy kitten and I can't help but gush over it's cuteness. They feel the same way.



After the kittens/bbq/birthday party, we loaded up our sparklers and headed to David's parents house. As far as we know, they were perfectly legal. Then someone on facebook said the cops came and told them to put their's out because they weren't. They somebody else said that only fireworks that you shoot off of the ground were illegal. It's possible that we were unknowingly breaking the law. Fewer things are more American than lighting stuff on fire in celebration, so I think it was justified.

For the first ten minutes we had issues lighting the sparklers because it was so windy/rainy. David and I were both convinced they were duds. A waste. But then, after huddling inside the doorway with a box of matches and lots of determination, we got one to light. Victory!

Ava was uninterested in the sparkly fire, but Alana thought they were awesome. She must've done half of the 40something sparklers, then when we were out she wanted more.

Since half of AZ just burned down there were no fireworks in our town, but we watched some on TV from the comfort of our couch. Not as loud and I don't even have to stand outside, so it works for me.

After that our week was uneventful, until yesterday when we went to the museum. Alana was hyped, because she's been asking to go there for like two months. It's my fault, since I showed her the website, she's been a little obsessed. Her dream came true. She hung on a dinosaur statue, played pet doctor, stepped on virtual bugs and grocery shopped. I think half of what she was excited for was that her cousins were going, and that means automatic fun for her. Ava was less impressed, but still played. I think I took as many pictures of my niece Brinley as I did of my own kids. She just looks so cute with her little pigtails!

Last stop was Chucke Cheese. I was less than thrilled, but it was free, so beggars can't be choosers. The kids loved the rides, especially the under two crowd. One quarter bought them a little bit of excitement. Best part is it wasn't my quarter.

I didn't see my older two nephews once they were set free to play games, I guess that's the beauty of Chucke Cheese. So many video games, so little time. But Alana and Jayden stayed close and they're easily amused. By a ride that goes like 3 feet in the air.

I'll definitely go to the museum again. But Chucke Cheese is another story.

Frozen Fourth

This fourth of July we're staying in, eating tons of frozen treats, we literally have like 5 boxes of popsicles and ice cream in the freezer, including some cotton candy push-up pops, and sitting on our butts.

There are no fireworks here in Benson this here, since they don't want to set the town on fire and they also have no money. So we'll probably light a few sparklers and watch some fireworks on TV and call it a night. Then I'll eat another couple of cookie ice cream sandwiches and consider the weekend a success, except for the part where I was forced to watch Transformers.