HOW TO: Be deliciously minty-fresh

Used to be that when you wanted to have fresh breath in the middle of the day, you'd have to put a tube of toothpaste in your pocketbook along with a toothbrush in one of those plastic cases and sometimes the lid would come off the toothpaste and it would squeeze itself all over your wallet and your keys and your cassette tape of "Listen Like Thieves."

Then, through magic or just pure genius, someone came up with the idea for the Colgate Whisper and MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER. I really hate the way gum and mints feel in my mouth, so not for me the minty mid-afternoon freshness of the mint-popper or the gum-gnasher. Not unless I wanted to keep buying new wallets, anyway.

Et voilà! If you'll look at my little bitty toothbrush up above, you'll see that there's a dot in the middle. Before using the toothbrush, that dot is filled with a button of non-foamy gel toothpaste gel that you brush over your teeth without water. Seriously, I brushed my teeth while waiting in line at the bank's drive-thru, and although I did snare a few weird looks from the people in the cars next to me, I have to say that my mouth felt lovely and tingly fresh. You'd think those people would have been appreciative of my committment to oral hygiene, but no. Ah, well, Rome wasn't built in a day! Soon I'm sure that EVERYONE will be using up otherwise wasted time in drive-thru lines by healthily brushing their teeth.

So what a nice invention! I am sold! And if there were some way you could make the little tiny toothbrush disappear into thin air after using it, that would be even better. I hope someone is working on that, because I didn't happen to have any tissues in my purse or paper napkins in my glove box and I had to slip it into my coat pocket, which made me feel a little gaggy and almost made my whole clean mouth experience counter productive when I threw up in the car.

PURCHASE HINT: You can buy these tiny toothbrushes at place like CVS or Walgreen's or Wal-Mart for way too much money, like $3.48. But if you'll go to the Dollar Tree, you can buy the exact same deal for, yep, one slim picture of George.

HOW TO: Make me want to pull your hair

I have a pet peeve. Oh, shut up. Okay, I have a LOT of pet peeves. But I swear to you that this one is at the top of the list.

I ate lunch in a casual restaurant today, meaning that the clientele there were mostly business people who'd left their offices to come get a club sandwich and some iced tea, but also a few moms and their babies meeting friends and breaking the cycle of cabin fever that threatens to have us SAHMs getting all Jack Nicholson on our husbands and children. The business people talked quietly to each other, or read the newspaper, or pecked away at their laptops or simply stared off into space, quite obviously lost in bitter contemplation of their lack of inherited wealth.

The mommies sat and talked to one another and allowed their babies to make horrible messes on the floor, which they blithely stepped over on their way out the door and left for the wait staff to clean up. And I'm not talking about a few cracker crumbs: I'm talking about a shredded and gummed-wet placemat and big chunks of baked potato and about a million Cheerios and a discarded baby wipe that had been used to clean Junior's grubby little face. A mess.

I used to have babies and my husband and I used to take them to restaurants. They used to make messes. And if it was anything beyond the gentle dusting of cracker crumbs one could reasonably expect of a high-chaired baby, my husband and I always stooped over with napkins in our hands and picked up the worst of our offspring's litter. I never thought it was okay to just leave a pile of garbage for someone else to pick up, and neither did he. Our kids, our responsibility, right? And besides, what better way is there to model that responsibility than by showing your kid that it is bad manners and just....piggish....to leave your nasty mess behind for someone else to clean up?

So this baby at a table near ours created this pile of debris that was very nearly knee deep by the time her mommy tore herself away from her friend and grabbed up her purse and the diaper bag -- which was big enough to hold a Shop-Vac -- and said, "Whoopsie, boopsie! You just made such a mess, kitty cat! Look at all that icky-wicky ucky-yucky stuff on that floor!"

And then she scooped the child out of his high chair and just left, a half-empty container of Gerber baby applesauce spilling its contents onto the tile floor, cracker wrappers and all manner of disgusting crud left right where it was sitting, poking me in the (figurative) eye.

I wanted to follow her and say, with all the wisdom of my middle age, "Look, sister, have you ever heard of that whole 'do unto others' thing? Because if you haven't, I'm already worried at what you're going to be unleashing on the rest of us a few years from now. But if you HAVE heard of that and you STILL left that mess on the floor over there, then shame on you, you nasty thing. Go back over there and take a napkin in your dainty little hand and pick up your kid's crap. Nobody's baby is so cute that you can feel free to leave a disaster area under that table.

"And don't give me that line about how 'these people are paid to clean up messes' because you and I both know that the mess your kid left? It is WAY above and beyond the usual run of messes a member of the wait staff should be expected to clean up, especially during the lunch hour when they're all so busy, and especially since that table won't be habitable by anything but hyenas or billy goats until it's done."

So get yourself back over there, little missy, and clean that crap up and stop feeling like you are just too good to dirty your precious hands in picking up after yourselves and if you leave a restaurant floor looking like that where everyone can see it and judge you, then what in the world must your bathrooms look like at your house? Hmm? So stop being so selfish and rude and MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!!!!"

Phew. I feel better now. Or at least I will until the next time I'm in a restaurant and see some parents walk off and leave a mess under the table.

HOW TO: Eat using chopsticks

A Cooking with Cam video where he not only does some razzle-dazzle on the stove, but also gives a chopstick-using lesson, which will probably be lost on me. Chopstick lesson starts at around 1:44 on the vid.



And to make myself feel completely awkward and inferior, here's this little sweetheart eating her noodles for lunch with complete chopsticky prowess.

HOW TO: Throw a Dirty Santa party

Susan sent an email to me and Carol this morning saying that she was really mad because the weather forecasters in western Kentucky had stated unequivocally that there was going to be so much freezing rain yesterday afternoon, they weren't sure whether to tell people to build arks or buy zambonis. The freezing rain ended up not coming and Susan was annoyed because her Un-Intellectual Book Club (hey, that's what she calls it, not me) members were supposed to have their Dirty Santa party last night and three ladies didn't come because they were worried about treacherous roads on the drive back home.

If it had been just about anyone but Susan, I would have asked what a Dirty Santa party was, but knowing her as I do, I was kind of scared. I noticed that Carol didn't ask either, so she either already knew, or was suffering from the same misgivings I had. You just can't tell with Susan.

So I looked it up on Google, keying "What is a dirty Santa party" into the search field. It turns out that I could have trusted Susan because Dirty Santa is something I've participated in several times. They're actually a lot of fun, and the last one I can remember doing was at someone's house -- my mom's? Beth's? Juju's? -- where we tusseled and fought over those gifts and laughed so hard, we were tearful and soundless with mirth.

If you'd like to throw a Dirty Santa party, check out this link from E-How.com. It's probably too late to plan one for this year unless you're just a little glutton for punishment, but they are a lot of fun, no matter what present you end up with. Although I feel I must add that hair-pulling and/or sticking out your foot to trip the person who stole the $20 Bath and Body Works gift card from you is not considered sporting.

How to: Give me acid indigestion

The girls and I spend a lot of time watching television shows on HGTV and TLC with the result that we can tell you right off the top of our heads what price a three-bed, two-bath, semi-d house in Toronto can fetch in the current market, how to de-clutter a closet to maximize storage space and what kind of jeans to wear if you have cellulite saddlebags.

So the other night we were watching some show we'd never watched before called "My First Home" or something like that? And it turned out to be the most annoying show I'd ever seen in my life and I'm still not over it. I don't know what the other episodes are like -- surely they can't all be that bad -- but I'm cautious about finding out because I like myself without an aneurysm.

This particular episode featured a young couple, newly married, who wanted to buy their first house. He was a teacher and she was a bank teller or something like that, so you get the impression that they weren't rolling in money, right? They were in their mid-twenties. Their realtor was a childhood friend of hers, and like most couples setting out to buy their first house, they had a list of requirements as long as a wet Monday on what kind of house they'd be willing to move into.

Their first desire was to live in a house with several acres of land. Their second? An older home, someplace with three bedrooms and several bathrooms and big gracious rooms. Initially, that didn't seem to be too much to ask, and I expressed mild interest to Meelyn on what type of house their agent would come up with, especially since the mortgage loan amount the couple had been approved for was not exactly a stellar sum.

"Will it be some tumbledown old shack, infested with spiders, featuring linoleum from 1934 and sitting on four acres of unmown weeds?" I wondered.

Much to my surprise, the realtor took the couple to a "historic home" (house agent-speak for the above truthful description) that had been completely renovated inside. The outside retained the historic character, but the interior had been completely gutted and remodeled to reflect a more modern sensibility -- an open concept with modern cabinetry, soothingly neutral colors and new light fixtures, appliances and cable TV and internet hookups. Since the house was sitting on a nice, big lot complete with a barn, I felt a little sad for the two of them because this cute place was at the very top of their budget.

To my surprise, however, they were giving it some serious consideration, already intent on modifying the brand-spankin'-new features of the home.

"Well, we'd really like to have granite countertops in the kichen and baths," she said, disdainfully noting the attractive laminate topping the fresh, clean cabinets.

"And we'd want to have hardwood floors throughout," he said, scuffing a scornful toe on the pristine wall-to-wall carpet.

"And definitely tile floors in the entryway, kitchen and bathrooms instead of this vinyl," she added, wrinkling her nose distastefully.

Yeah? Wouldja like to have those things? Well, newsflash for you here, young'uns: WHO WOULDN'T? Who wouldn't like to have expensive granite countertops in kitchen and baths, who wouldn't like to have gorgeous American hardwood stretching from great room to staircase to hallway to bedrooms? Who wouldn't want to have some nice quarry tile in the foyer?

But you know, you have to start somewhere, and if the house you're looking at is already at the top of your budget and it has none of those things you so deeply would like to have, maybe you should realize that you have Moët & Chandon tastes on a Bud Light budget and set your sights a little lower. Understand that those granite countertops in your parents' kitchen? They worked a long time to get those things and you shouldn't just expect to have them yourselves when you're just starting out, you spoiled, ridiculous brats....whoops! Sorry! Aunt Shelley gets a little irritable between the hours of five and seven-thirty every afternoon, but it's nothing a glass of (on sale) wine from the grocery store can't take care of. Just to take the edge off.

Anyway, these two dipwads, after looking at two other houses that were so far beneath their expectations that they both practically flinched when they walked through the respective front doors, they decided to spring for the top-of-the-budget place, BUT...

BUT!

They decided to take out a bank loan -- using what as collateral, I don't know -- so that their "upgrades" could be installed before they moved in because asking a couple of twenty-five year olds to move into a house without granite, hardwood and quarry tile? Well, that is JUST. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN. Even if they're strapped for cash for the next twenty years. At least when they're pacing the floors, worried and wondering how they're going to pay the mortgage, they'll be pacing on that nice hardwood. Geez.

How to: Get a bathtub/shower sparkly clean with FlyLady-ishness

I took these pictures in our upstairs bathroom this morning, the one the girls and I share. My husband, offended by the number of bath poufies and floral-scented body washes (see the top picture, haha), decamped to the downstairs bathroom three years ago, unfortunately just after I'd spent my birthday money re-decorating it in a pink-and-cream color scheme, featuring roses and camillas, right down to the switchplate and the soap dispenser. He suffers, and not always in stoic silence.

Anyway, the bottom picture is an illustration of what I use to clean my bathtub/shower combo on a daily basis, based on FlyLady Marla Cilley's methods of doing a little bit here and a little bit there, to save yourself having to do a GREAT BIG HUGE AMOUNT two hours before your weekend company is due.

I will be the first to admit that our tub/shower combo isn't the best. We have an enameled cast-iron bathtub that is ordinary white. The outdated tile that used to line the three sides was removed by the former owner and replaced with a three-piece surround. It's pebbly-textured and probably just made of some kind of plastic, rather than the nicer fiberglass. The fixtures are okay, although I'd like to replace them, but the nicest feature is our really awesome hand shower, which hangs on a bracket over our heads until we wish to remove it. The biggest shower problem we have is our lack of soft water, which has stained the bathtub and fixture-wall of the shower with faint rusty stains that have proved to be impossible to remove. I know this. I've tried.

The faint pinkish stains just really bother me, but since it's obvious they're not coming off, I've decided that the next best thing is that the rest of the tub is going to gleam with shiny cleanliness.

Hence, the FlyLady method. My main tub cleaner is regular ol' shampoo. Yep. Shampoo. The purpose of shampoo is to remove two things from your hair: dirt and oil. It follows logically that shampoo, then, can remove those two things from your bathtub, and the best thing is that you can use it while you're in the shower without having to worry about gassing yourself to death with toxic fumes.

On the dresser there, you can see the White Rain shampoo I bought for one small buck at the Dollar Tree. I use the pink sponge with a little shampoo squirted on it and scrub the three shower walls on Wednesdays and do the same thing to the tub on Thursdays. I wipe down the two shelves that hold all of our beeyooooteee products on Fridays, see above photo with props to Victoria's Secret and Arbonne. I do all of this lickety-split while I'm taking my morning shower.

Once out of the shower, I spritz the walls and tub off with the Clean Shower on a daily basis. Which I am convinced this stuff is part cleanser and part magic potion devised by Professors Slughorn and Dumbledore. I've never seen anything like it for not allowing soap buildup to stick. It also keeps the fixtures shiny-bright, and it smells fresh and good, not all yuckily chemical-fragranced.

I spritz the mat -- which I wash with the towels twice a month -- with the Lysol disinfectant, also daily. Everyone knows to rinse that mat off with the hand shower before they get in there and stand on it. I buy a really nice mildew resistant tub mat (meaning "$8.99 at Bed, Bath and Beyond") a couple of times a year and ALWAYS in the clear color: If some kind of mold starts growing on that thing despite my best efforts, I want to know, like, right away.

So! That is my cleaning trifecta-plus-sponge that keeps the tub looking really nice. I love FlyLady's method for cleaning the tub, sink and toilets every day with a swish and a whisk. Our bathrooms are always company-ready even in the middle of a long, dull winter week.

In which I sew my own microwave heating bags for the girls

Before I get started on this, please let me caution my friend Katie.

Dear Katie,

You are such a good friend to me. You are so generous and loving, you have such a great dry sense of humor, you love margaritas and you are a bountiful fountain of good advice. I really enjoy your friendship and I have a sisterly affection for you, which is why I want you to stop reading, like, RIGHT NOW.


Hear?

I mean it. It may hurt you, either when you faint and fall off your chair when exposed to my hopeless idiocy and wind up in the hospital because you hit your head, or when you crack a rib from laughing and wind up in the hospital from a punctured lung.

Okay. Now that Katie is still reading along anyway has gone to get herself a Diet Pepsi, I will relate to the rest of you the story of the microwave heating bags I just finished making for Meelyn and Aisling.

The microwave heating bags are so lovely, aren't they? I wrote
this post detailing the simple instructions for making a microwave heating bag on December 19, and then this post about the U-shaped microwave heating bag darling Katie made me for Christmas on January 3 and all in all, my holidays were lovely and warm.

Since the weather outside is frightful, I decided to share the love and follow the simple instructions posted ON MY OWN BLOG to make cute bags for Meelyn and Aisling, but here's the thing: I thought to myself, You know, how hard can this be? You just sew everything in a straight line, right? And then put the filler in? And sew up the hole! Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy!

So I decided I didn't really need to read the directions.

I used 1/4 yard for each bag, although they turned out to be much smaller, once I trimmed off all the parts I goofed up on. (I buried those scraps deep in the kitchen wastebasket under some coffee grounds and used tissues so that no one will know how truly stupid I am when it comes to sewing.) That's my mom's sewing machine up there in the picture; Aisling's bag is on the right and Meelyn's is on the left. The folded paw-print fabric in the middle by the scissors is the fabric I bought to make the dogs each a small heating bag for their beds.

Doesn't it figure that I totally screwed up the heating bags I sewed FOR MY CHILDREN, while the dogs? The dogs will have the ones that will be perfect because I will have lots of practice making microwave heating bags by the time I sew theirs. Geez.

So I made Aisling's first, right? I lopped off a bit of the fabric from the end that I believe is called "the selvage," which is Sewing Speak for "the ends." Why the sewing people have to have this special lingo with words like "bobbin," "selvage" and "serger," I just don't know. It's like a club that they want to keep me out of because they know I don't understand and besides, it stresses me out.

I cut that bit of fabric off because it seemed like the bag was going to be way too long. Then I cut the fabric apart where it was folded. Then I turned the upside piece of fabric around backwards because every dummy on the planet knows that you have to do that. And then I plopped down at the sewing machine and impressed the heck out of myself by whizzing along in some lines of stitching that were more or less straight -- veering more towards the less straight if the truth be known -- and went around the rectangle of fabric with much back-stitching to make sure everything was nice and strong, remembering to leave an opening big enough to both turn the fabric inside out and also to put the dried beans in, which was my choice of stuffing.

Only. Yikes. It turned out, when I snipped the threads and whipped the little bag off the machine, that I had only turned the UPPER piece of fabric print-side-in. The lower piece was still discouragingly print-side-out. Oh, the HELL that is sewing. The unmitigated, hideous HELL of it all. I tried to rip the flannel bag open with my own dainty hands, but due to all that backwardsy sewing, it was pretty tight. I ended up having to just cut all the stitching off and re-sewing the whole thing, making DARNED SURE that both pieces of the cute ladybug print Aisling chose were facing inward.

Somehow, I managed to fill the bag halfway with beans without spilling them all over the floor; I just spilled them all over the countertop. Yay. Mindful of the spillage factor, I carefully returned to the sewing machine, which was sitting there trying to pass off its spurting laughter as coughing. I gave it a withering glance and it hushed up.

All I had to do was sew up the little hole, right? Does that seem like it would be too hard? Well, it was. First of all, the bag was too short to sit on the table while the opening was stitched shut, so I kind of had to jostle the beans around and re-distribute them in a way that allowed the bag to sit on the machine's edge, as Meelyn's is doing in the picture.

It probably would have gone more smoothly if I hadn't accidently sewn over a bean.

The machine protested, but at first I just thought it was being like a horse and not minding me because it could sense my fear. So I continued grimly on until the machine yelled, "OUCH! GEEZ, I'M SORRY I LAUGHED, ALREADY! THAT HURTS, YOU BIG BULLY!"

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."

I pushed the sewn bean back down with the others and carried on with the closing stitch, heaving a sigh of relief when it was done. It doesn't look all that great, but in the picture? I put the ugly side down so that none of you could see it, especially Katie, who probably needs smelling salts about right now.

One down, one to go! I knew how to do Meelyn's bag, especially the part about turning both sides of the fabric inward, so I pulled her fabric out of the Jo-Ann's bag with and air of casual expertise. I lopped off the SELVAGE, checked to make sure my BOBBIN still had thread on it and wondered for a few seconds what a SERGER is all about and then started sewing.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" said the machine, happily buzzing along, bean-free, as I pressed its pedal with my foot. "RRRRrrrRrrRrrRrrrrrRrrRRRRrrrrr!"

I was so casually expert-like, so nonchalant, so practiced, that before I knew it, I'd sewn the whole bag shut. I know you think I'm kidding. I know you don't think anyone could possibly be that freaking ignorant. But I assure you -- one could.

The thing is, I didn't realize my mistake until I was done with the sewing and went to turn the bag inside-out before filling it with the beans.

"Hey!" I said indignantly. "Who's the big dope who sewed this- .....oh, crap."

Once again with the cutting off of the stitches, the re-sewing, the humiliation. My right eye developed a tic, and I began to wonder why it would be a bad thing for the girls to be cold at night. Maybe I have this all wrong, I thought desperately. Maybe it will....build their characters?....if they're cold while I sleep in cozy warmth? I'm sure that's right.

Somehow, I got that bag sewed up the right way, turned it outside-in and managed to fill it with beans, which was very hard with my eyelid twitching and jumping. I carried the bean-filled flannel bag back to the sewing machine, where I managed NOT to sew a bean this time, sewing up the open part with ease. That was, in fact, the only easy part of the entire sewing-in-a-straight-line endeavor.

So if you don't mind, I am going to go warm up my own microwave heating bags -- the ones someone else sewed -- and go lie on the couch for a while. Hopefully my eyelid will stop spasming very soon.

How to: Make a microwave heating bag

My mom got me this microwave heating bag from her church bazaar last year, I believe. Or maybe she got it when she was in Colorado? I don't know. All I know is that it is my best friend, my most beloved companion, this simple craft made of flannel, a little thread and some buckwheat hulls. There it is, posing attractively for you in my microwave.

I use it by heating it for three minutes in the microwave (it's a big bag that is probably twelve inches long, weighing two or three pounds) and then carrying it upstairs and putting in my bed, where the sheets feel like they've been refrigerated during the day. After it has warmed the place where my feet go, I arrange it along my back and I can't even tell you how comfortingly cozy it is, without the oops factor of a hot water bottle. Because sleeping on sheets that are both cold and wet? The opposite of all that is snuggly.

Here are the instructions for making a heating bag of your own, and before I tell you what they are, I want you to promise you won't be a cotton-headed ninnymuggins and heat it up for so long that it catches on fire in your microwave and burns down your kitchen or something. Keep an eye on it while it's in there. And don't nuke it for, like, fifteen minutes. Three minutes max, and three minutes is for a big heating bag like mine, not one that's the size of a Toss Across bean bag.

Here's a list of things you can use to stuff your warming bean bag:

--> Uncooked rice
--> Wheat
--> Feed corn
--> Buckwheat hulls
--> Barley
--> Oatmeal
--> Beans
--> Flax seed
--> Cherry pits

Once you've picked out whatever stuffer you want in your heating bag, pick out a nice fabric -- mine is that cute, woodsy print with the moose and the fir trees, done in a comfy flannel -- and sew a bag in whatever size you want your warmer to be. SEW IT TIGHTLY, for reasons I don't think I really need to explain. In short, this is not one of those fun projects you should let your six-year-old do with a needle and thread unless you really love sleeping on a bed of rice, like the world's biggest piece of grilled chicken.

When you've crafted the bag ON YOUR SEWING MACHINE, fill it full enough so that it can still flop around and conform to the contours of your body -- about half to three-quarters full should work -- and then sew it closed.

If your heating bag is about the size of a washcloth, you should probably only heat it for about a minute to a minute and a half in the microwave. I've heard that you can put a cup of water in the microwave to make some steam while you're heating it and that would reduce the risk of fire, I'd think. Just be sensible, you know? Work with it until you figure out the amount of time that heats the bag nicely without burning either yourself or your lovely home.

While these could be used to warm a child's bed or even a pet's bed, I wouldn't recommend using the bag as an actual heating pad for the very young or for our four-footed friends. Children's skin is so tender, and a dog may be tempted to eat the contents of the bag, although a cat would probably turn up its naughty nose.

How to: Make me want to inflict bodily harm on you

Aisling and I stopped by Kroger on the way home from religious ed classes at the church today. We needed to buy some eggs for the french toast I was going to make when we got home, plus I needed to go to the pharmacy and get some lancets for my blood glucose monitor's finger-poky device.

On my way back from getting the eggs (farthest point of the grocery, approximately fourteen miles from the front entrance), I spied a mother with her young child coming towards me. The little girl looked to be about four, and I'd say the woman was in her mid-twenties. They were both dressed in pajama-like garments, which are questionable for a pre-schooler, but just flat-out wrong for an adult, in my opinion. Has our society truly become so lazy that we can't even throw on a pair of jeans and a Colts sweatshirt for a trip to the store on a Sunday? Sheeesh!!

Anyway, as they approached, the mother began to cough, a loud, hacking, tickle-in-the-back-of-my-throat cough. Fortunately, they were still about twenty feet away from me, but still, with the coughing and all? COVER YOUR MOUTH, you cretin! Geez! This is the kind of thing you expect from fourth-grade boys, not from women of childbearing age.

I gave them a wide berth, scuttling around a display of tortilla chips in order to avoid whatever airborne pathogens the woman had just emitted with her unmannerly coughing, and went on to the pharmacy.

My transaction at the pharmacy took about five minutes, and when I left that area to go back over to the cosmetics-and-toiletries aisle where Aisling was looking at the eye shadows, I saw the woman and her child again, en route to the restrooms.

Having already tagged them as Germy & Company, I prepared to remove myself from their immediate vicinity again, but not before I had the chance to witness Germy purging herself of a series of violent sneezes, completely innocent of any form of mouth covering or -- as Kathleen Sebilius would prefer it, elbow covering, so that you get spit and germs and maybe some snot all over the sleeve of your coat that you just got back from the dry cleaner.

"AAAAAAAAAAAASHEEWWWWWWWWWW!!!! AAAAAAARRRRRAAAASHEWWWW!!! AAAAAACHEWWWWWW!!!!!!"

I was so grossed out by that, I actually looked up and grimly met her eye, giving her my best Teacher Is Displeased stony stare. Naturally, she looked back at me with that SUPER INTELLIGENT LOOK some people will give you, all, "Hunh? Whu'd Ah dew? Whatcher lookin' at me like that fower?"

I wanted to beat her senseless with a box of antibacterial wipes, but restrained myself. Because? It's Sunday and the Lord's Day and I think that would just be wrong, on the Sabbath and all.

How to: Make Sure Total Strangers Hate You

Yesterday, the three teens, Dayden and I drove over to New Castle to eat lunch and spend the afternoon with Nanny and Poppy (Nanny served a taco casserole for lunch which met with everyone's approval, except for the black olives which several people left on the sides of their plates.) We left their house around 5:00 and set off to drive the boys home, Kieren at the wheel.

Meelyn took over where Kieren left off, and as she was driving me and Aisling home, my cell phone rang. I looked at the number -- it was a 317 area code and I thought it might be my friend Tracy, whose cell phone number I have been too lazy/without enough technical knowledge to program into my address book.

"Hello?" I asked cheerfully.

A female voice inquired, "Is Sandra there?" Whoops! Not Tracy!

"No, I'm sorry," I responded politely, like my mother taught me. "You have the wrong number."

"Oh," the voice said, with ungracious truculence, and then abrutptly terminated the call.

"Who was that?" asked Aisling.

"Wrong number," I said, closing my phone and returning it to my pocket.

About three seconds later, it rang again. I looked at the display and noted that it was the same number as before. I opened my phone and said, "It's still the wrong number, hon, and you're costing me money every time you call me."

I didn't say this meanly, but more in a spirit of slightly amused tolerance. Mostly because phones are bad enough without someone you don't even know calling you multiple times. Really, I was doing this dipwad a service, letting her know that she still had the wrong number; I could have just not answered it and let her think that Sandra was looking at her own Caller ID and laughing a short laugh -- "I don't think so" -- and letting it go to voice mail, which is not set up on my phone. But no, I am always thinking of others, so I spent an extra ten cents to let Miss 317 know that she still didn't have it right. That's the kind of helpful person I am.

Miss 317 didn't receive my largesse in a grateful manner, however. "You don't have to be so effing rude to me, you effing beeyotch," she snarled. Only she didn't say either "effing" or "beeyotch." Wow! Rage issues, much! How about a Valium the size of a basketball, sweetie?

Shheeeeeesh.

So! Miss 317 hates me and I'm not real crazy about her, so you, dear reader, got a double helping of advice on how to make sure a total stranger hates you: Words o' wisdom for you to cherish.

How To: Infuriate Me by Holding My Check

Six weeks ago, we had the piano tuned for Aisling's benefit. Oh, why be such a liar? Okay, I also had the piano tuned for my benefit because it hadn't been tuned for seven years and some of the songs she was playing were so discordant by ears began to bleed and then just fell right off onto the floor, kind of like that scene from Blue Velvet.

Anyway, it cost $80 and I paid the piano tuner with a check and then promptly forgot all about it because I was kind of busy getting my ears re-attached.

That $80 was IN THE BANK on the day I wrote the check. It stayed there for days and days thereafter. But time marched on and the check wasn't cashed and then it marched a little further and still no check and by the time that particular rousing John Phillips Sousa was finished, so was my bank balance.

I spoke to the piano tuner's mother on the phone -- she happens to be Aisling's lovely piano teacher -- who said to me in a deprecating manner, "I don't know if you know this, but Brad's check bounced and that cost him $37.50 in fees from his bank and you know, that also puts his account in jeopardy because of checks he's written and...."

I had to stop listening then, I really did. Because I truly admire and respect Aisling's piano teacher, I really do. But FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!!! Why -- WHY WHY WHY? -- would anyone who has been paid for a service like piano tuning or leaf raking or transmission repairing or whatever HOLD ONTO A CHECK FOR SIX WEEKS BEFORE CASHING IT?

Don't people need the money? I'm trying to imagine living the kind of life where I wouldn't be out the back door in one hot second, leaping into the car and slinging gravel out of the driveway to cash a check for ten frikkin' dollars and....nope. No, I can't do it. I can do a lot of other things with my imagination, like wondering what that thing was I just saw out of the corner of my eye or if that bump on my arm is a mosquito bite or skin cancer or if the pains from food poisoning will be as horrible as I suspect they will if I eat the rest of that taco meat that's been in the fridge for over a week, but I just can't imagine not cashing an $80 check as soon as it touched my hot little hands.

I know good and well that the bank isn't going to see it my way. I am a nonentity to them. But if they cared, I would tell them (and maybe Brad, too) that a person who holds onto a paper check for SIX WEEKS in this age of instant banking with online bill pay and debit cards and PayPal is just begging to find some insufficient funds a-waiting when he finally works up the energy to go to the bank and endorse that personal check.

So now I still owe him $80, plus the $37.50 in ISF fees his bank charged him. And I know quite, quite well that our bank is going to demand its own pound of flesh and that I'm going to be paying them $37.50 as well. Which makes that original $80 payment, which I thought was so very reasonable, all of a sudden a little more dear than I'd intended it to be.

When I was collecting money for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival trip last year, I recall a few times when I held people's checks for a few weeks because I was waiting for everyone to get paid up and, because I am not a numbers kind of girl, I knew I'd be confused if I took one person's check and deposited it at one branch and then got another check a few days later and deposited it at another branch....you see my difficulty. It is very, very hard for me to count higher than ten because I run out of fingers: I can only count to eleven because I have a nose and I'm too stout to be always with the bending over and taking off my shoes and socks, although my most arithmatick time of year is the summer because I'm always wearing sandals...ANYWAY, I wanted to make it as easy on myself as possible.

But now I see that that might not have been all that easy on my traveling companions. So Virginia, Jerri, Michelle and Katie, if I held your checks for too long, I am very sorry.

How To: Understand Women

I don't know who wrote this because it came to my inbox with no attribution, but I suspect it was written by a man. Strangely enough, my husband was the one who sent it to me and I'm not sure whether I should respond to his email by replying with a cheery "LOL!" or a "Thanks a lot for the funny email" (see caveat attached to #7), heh.

NINE WORDS WOMEN USE

(1) Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

(2) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

(3) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

(4) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

(5) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to # 3 for the meaning of nothing.)

(6) That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

(7) Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (I want to add in a caveat here - This is true, unless she says 'Thanks a lot' - that is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome' . that will bring on a 'whatever').
(8) Whatever: Is a woman's way of saying @%$& YOU!

(9) Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to # 3.
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HOW TO: Make Paper Snowflakes

I'm a bit sad at the thought of all the Christmas decorations coming down next Wednesday -- we leave them up until the absolute last gasp of Epiphany Day has died away -- so I thought it would be fun to decorate the big picture window with paper snowflakes, the kind you lovingly cut out by hand. But darned if I could remember how to do it.

So I searched around on the internet and read all kinds of written instructions that said things like "Fold the folded foldy foldedness down to the cross-corner of cross-foldedality and then snip at the cross-fold-center..." and I knew I was in way over my head.

Then I thought of YouTube, and sure enough, I found this instructional video made by a really adorable guy named Chris from Curbly.com. He won my heart when -- after telling me to "fold at a 60⁰ angle" -- he said, "and remember, there's no shame in busting out a protractor."

Although I couldn't really see how a large piece of farm equipment driven by a man who grows corn and soybeans for a big conglomerate like Cargill was going to be of much help.

Get it? Pro tractor? No? Oh, sorry.....

Anyway, I don't like to embed videos here on InsomniMom because it tends to make the page load too slow for people who use certain browsers, but here is the link to Chris's excellent video:

How To Make Picture-Perfect Paper Snowflakes


If you'd like to click over to Curbly.com,Chris offers several different snowflake patterns to make some "holiday magic," as he puts it. What a major cutie pie.



So! The Christmas season may be nearing its end, but there is still a whole lot of winter to get through. Might as well stagger through it bundled in good cheer, as well as our scarves, mittens, hats and coats.



Go along with you, now. Get your white paper and your scissors and get to snippin', with help from Chris.