10 Things I learned Sturgis Falls Weekend

10. You actually CAN have too many mini donuts.

9. House guests are not the greatest idea when you're the director of the bandshell and are tied to event ALL weekend.

8. Sound guys are named Mouse and Chi-Chi.

7. Sleep is over rated.

6. Mother Nature had great timing with overnight storms instead of storming during the day.

5. The parade can be missed and life moves on.

4. She needs to send a thank you letter to Secret deodorant for keeping her from stinking from sweating all day, every day.

3. It can be fun being the bike police and moving unattended bikes to bike racks.

2. The other directors that she has had all of 10 hours contact with since meeting, are REALLY great people and she loved actually getting to know a lot of them better.

1. It was TOTALLY worth volunteering for the position, and giving her weekend to her home town.

Spring Break summed up in 160 words.

Thursday: 7:30pm departure. E forgets sunglasses blocks away. Return home to retrieve. Pick up boys in DM, continue to San Antonio. Friday, eat at artsy place with acoustic music downtown. Saturday, St. Patty's Day parade in fron of the Alamo. River walk. Half rack of ribs. Sunday, tried Sea World but FAILED due to extreme cost. Took the kids to a park and they loved it. Overwelmed parking lot at tool store. Avatar 3D sold out in afternoon. Great dinner at Freebird Burritos. Avatar 3D with pre-purchased tickets at night was awesome. Monday, tried Enchanted Rock National Park, but so did everyone else. Turned around to check out Fredricksburg instead. Homemade meatball sub dinner with "Up In The Air" (kids watched "Shorts"). Tuesday, traveled to Dallas, traffic sucked, dinner with friends ROCKED! Left Dallas at 12:30am and headed to Kansas City for breakfast with another friend. Home by 3:30pm Wednesday. Hope the boys appreciate it. I know I do.

H A I R

I've been thinking about things recently that make me laugh, and hair is one of them. Let me start this post off by quoting a little bit of a short story, titled "I'm Gonna Kick Your Ass" by my favorite author, Laurie Notaro.

"It was not the firm, shiny loop that initially caught my attention. It was not.

It was the long, sinewy, arms, thin and stringy and so pale they were nearly light green, lifting up the twenty-pound bag of Sensitive Stomach dog food from the counter into the cart. As he lifted the bag, the owner of those arms grunted - no, no, no, forgive me, 'grunted' is too strong of a word, too gracious a word, too complimentary; mewled or whimpered is actually more accurate, much more precise a description - causing me to wonder what kind of nancy was wrestling with the bag, since I was the one who placed it on the counter to begin with and I can barely lift a jug of water with two hands.

And that is when, that is precisely when, I turned and saw it.

The Flippy Hair.

Flippy hair that was so extraordinarily flippy that any girl in the graduating class of 1978 would have eagerly traded her Sun-In Sassoon Gunne Sax Pearl White Tooth Drops soul for just a portion of that flip. Just a portion of it. It had kick, it had zing, it had pizzazz, it had chutzpah. The flip was absolutely amazing, it turned upward, away from the face, Farrah Fawcett-style, in an almost 360-degree loop all the way around the head like a halo. It looked like the creator had taken a bowl, a can of Aqua Net, and a wind tunnel and just went nuts. In the age of Chrissy, Jack, Janet, and nights spent sipping tequila sunrises at the Regal Beagle, it would have been the perfect hair, with the exception of one detail: It was on a guy.

It was on the guy with the linguine arms. And it looked stupid."

Oh how I love Laurie Notaro and her accurate and funny description of hair bad enough she wanted to kick it's ass. The following are some types of hair whose asses I would like to kick.

The Kate Gosselin:

I've seen A LOT of women with this hair cut, and they just look like bitches. They may be very nice people, but that's the image this hair gives off. This particular picture also illustrates my next hated hairstyle.

Skunk Hair:

I have never understood the obsession with dark hair on the lower half of your head and white/blond on the top. Really? What makes this cool? I'm thinking Pepe Le Pew....

Skater Hair:

My boys really want to grow their hair out. They have straight hair, and there's A LOT of it, so it would look so ridiculous. The kids with this hair are the same ones with their pants halfway down their butts with their boxers sticking out. I'm still not sure how gravity allows those pants to stay on.

The Skullet:

What cracks me up most about this, is that I was at Hy-Vee in Waterloo with Tyler (my youngest) last summer, and saw a skullet up close and personal. When the guy was out of earshot I started laughing. Tyler asked, "Whatcha laughing about, Mom?" I replied, "Nothing, Ty." Then he said, "That guy's hair?" So even a 5 year old thought it was funny.

The Comb-over:

WE KNOW YOU ARE BALD!! QUIT TRYING TO COVER IT UP!!

The Donald:

The $$ version of the comb-over. Donald, I know you think you have to keep your hair because it's an icon in it's own right, but you should seriously consider a new 'do!

I know that I am forgetting several that perplex me or tick me off or just leave me in awe, but at least those few should make you laugh (or in the case that it's your style, piss you off) but you at least know where I stand.

Hair, hair, o' glorious hair!!

Ode To My Snowman Pajama Pants

I was casually shopping at Old Navy several years ago,

When I came across pajama pants covered in snow.

Well, snowmen to be exact, wearing scarves of yellow and red,

And I decided they would be the perfect pants to wear to bed!

They stuck around for many years, even got me through my divorce.

They lived in Urbandale and Ankeny and Cedar Falls of course.

They were big and baggy, and comfortable as hell.

I wore them all winter long and in the summer sometimes as well.

This winter their primary job was as long underwear,

When jeans alone wouldn't do because it was so cold out there.

They started wearing a little thin, especially in the ass,

And I knew their time would be coming soon to pass.

They spent their last day on a farm, trudging through thigh high snow.

I knew it was too much for them, it was their time to go.

They went out with a BANG! splitting across the ass and at the seams.

Thank you pajama pants! Eternal rest, and sweet dreams!

RIP Snowman Pajama Pants

11-2005 to 2-2010

You will be dearly missed.

Michelin Man vs. Stay Puft Marshmallow Man

Have you ever wondered who would win a battle between the Michelin Man and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man if they were the same size? I only ask because as I flip through an old Reader's Digest given to me by my parents (they have different ways of recycling than most of us) I see an advertisement for Michelin, and all I can see when I look at the puffy white (what the hell is this guy made of anyway?) dude, is the very large, very unhappy giant marshmallow that came after the Ghostbusters in the 1984 movie of the same name.


I posted this exact question as my status on Facebook, and got various answers, that sided with both characters, my favorite being, "Michelin is like rubber, Stay Puff is like glue, whater Stay Puff says bounces off Michelin and sticks to you!" (Thank you Eric Benson).




Let's analyze just a moment. Michelin looks very happy. Stay Puft was angry, though you really can't tell from this picture. Believe me when I say he was really pissed before they zapped him. Stay Puft is a sailor though... military training. Michelin has the "big guns." Ok. I really can't tell. I can only picture them now in sumo wrestling garb with black ponytails and goatees.


Seriously. What the hell is the Michelin Man made of? Literal "softness" for your ride on the road?

This looks a little like my diary, circa 1986

I googled myself today and found a comment I had left on a friend's blog. That led to looking through several of my other friends' blogs, and then onto my own. It seems no one is writing. I couldn't find anything in 2010. And it got me thinking... This looks a hell of a lot like my diary when I was a kid. I would write that I promised to write more and months later was the next entry, promising the same thing. Do we all make these promises? Life just gets in the way?

I feel it's healthy to get it all out, and if we can do that with a little humor and a lot of sarcasm, then it might as well be on a blog for all to see and to enjoy. People love to read about other people. So I am really going to try to be a little more consistent with entries. It might be my only way of "meditating" since I can never seem to turn my brain off to actually meditate.

So... Dear Readers. It has been months since my last entry. I am still jobless. I want to start my own business staging homes but am hitting a wall of reluctance with realtors. So I am considering getting my real estate license. I will do more research before jumping on the bandwagon, but it could come in very handy if Eric wants to own rental properties.

My boys are still in Des Moines, and I have discovered that I truly love being the "fun parent." It's not me constantly on Jake to get his homework done. I'll have more face to face time with them than their dad, and don't have the stress of getting them home from school, getting homework done, getting dinner made and getting them to bed on time. I get to hang out and watch movies and eat pizza in the living room and play Nerf and play games and take trips. And once it's nice out again we'll get to do a lot outside as well. It's not so bad.

I'm still making jewelry, though not as much, and my goal this next week is to get it all posted on Etsy.com. It's a very cool site for handmade objects. Hopefully it will help get the word out, and I can make a little money on the side while I am trying to get the staging business off the ground.

Well... that is about all for now. I promise (fingers crossed behind my back) that I will post more frequently.