Wear Your Sunscreen.

Yes, this is your virtual mom talking to you. Put it on. Before you go outside. Yes, I'm talking to you. Even you.

I'm telling you this out of personal experience. Me, the freckled, blonde polish gal, has probably got a spot o' the cancerous skin.

And this started a few years ago. Okay, well I mean it probably started on the roof of my Liberian house when I slathered veggie oil on my stomach in the vain attempt to get the ultimate tan. (wanna know a secret? Freckled, blonde polish gals can't achieve the ultimate tan. not unless some finger paint is involved.) Shirts couldn't touch my stomach for about two weeks after. I walked around sucking my stomach in all concave-like and looking like skeletor.

Then I did the old tanning booth in college. Gah!

But the weird red rough patch on my face wouldn't go away. Now, I've had a weird little mole under my belly button and I carefully measured it and then finally let the doc scalpel it off. (ugh! I felt like I was in a SAW movie! My imagination? It's wild! No wonder I can't go to the dentist without being heavily medicated.) The mole? Benign.

I went to my family doc. He's really nice. Maybe not too accurate in the diagnosis department, but he's nice. He told me it was eczema. A few years, one island nation and three seasons of my house pool later, I went to my friend's dermatologist. My friend and I were all it's probably some sort of icky yeast infection !YUCK!

Nope. the derm took one look at me, with two blonde babies crawling alll over me as I sat patiently in the chair, and she shot me with her liquid nitrogen gun. Multiple times. Then she gave me a prescription for a cream that would seek and destroy all weirdly multiplying skin cells. She was all like, 'you can wear a turtleneck to cover up the red, angry patches' and I was all 'it may be winter, but we're in SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA and I haven't worn a turtleneck in many years' and I thought she was over reacting.

Then the skin cream worked. Really well. Me? I looked like I had some sort of infectious disease all over my face, neck and chest. Turtleneck? I needed a turtleneck hoodie with eye holes, basically. I had to wear high necked shirts to the gym for fear people would run screaming when they saw my sweaty, blistery, oozing skin. Nice picture, huh?

Everyone got the brunt. I had to dress really weirdly. I wore black. I didn't wear anything that would draw attention to the elephant woman I was. Not even sequins. For a whole six weeks. Hubby? He wasn't allowed to even glance in my direction.

Then yesterday I went back. Understanding that I'd have a few more red spots shazammed from my chest. The good news about yesterday? I found the Loma Linda Starbucks drive-thru finally. The bad news? I had to get my forehead biopsied.

My doctor, the effervesent soul that she is, sat down and told me, 'for this kind of thing where you have it is really the best place.' To which I responded, 'Yeah, if I could grow a MONO-BROW!' How dumb does she think I am?? I had a large circular bandaid right between the eyes and a big red scab under it. Kind of hard to miss. I can hear the children whispering to their mommies right now, as I leave Target, "Mommy! Did you see the 6 foot woman with the THREE EYES???"

Oh well. We'll know in a week if I have to have my forehead mined. Grrr..

The Lost Olympic Sport

Yes, I'm talking about kickball, folks.

Maybe not in Winter, but if we get on the bandwagon now, we might make it for the next Summer Olympics. It's the perfect sport - really, you don't need any real determinable skills to play (check out the photo of me playing) which means that any aged person can play. It's cheap - a playground ball and some plastic cones. You don't need expensive equipment like skiing or snowboarding. You don't need fancy outfits like iceskating (although THAT would be fun - sequins!) You don't need a real strategy (again, the fact that I do indeed get picked to be on a team. Besides the fact that I'm married to a team captain and he'd better pick me or it's the couch for the next month.)

We have a standing date each month with some other (crazy) families to kick each other's kickball booties on the local field. Then we hoof it back to the old homestead to nurse our wounds with a few beers or Caprisuns, depending on the age of the participant. A nice way to spend a couple hours on a Sunday afternoon.


In all honesty, we aren't a civil bunch. We'll take out your child just as soon as give you a welt from the playground ball. Don't say you weren't warned,...



And, really? There is no escape. You play ball before you are allowed egress from 'Kickball Thunderdome' I don't care how cute or young you are. Kick it!




Yeah, I missed the ball. But I tried. I get points for trying.

Talking to Dumb People

So, we were having a light dinner conversation. The big J, who is dabbling with doing something in the medical field because he doesn't want to waste that human anatomy elective credit he naively signed up for in 7th grade - since it has ingrained itself on his memory as he drags a bag of flour mascarading as a baby around school and co-parents with a fellow jock and is totally harrassed by everyone. Ha! I say. Bag of flour? Let those little whipper snapppers spend an hour at my house and you have a perfect ad for birth control, or perhaps celibacy. J has sworn off girls before he even found them interesting because he knows that sex might result in his little sister Fifi. 'Nuf said.



Anyhoo, we were somehow talking about school and he was asking why in the world you even need to study certain subjects. "You don't need to know history if you're a doctor," he said.



I'll be honest. I'm a lone wolf in my household, near and far. My dad was an enginerd. My husband is one, his dad and sister are too. Then you throw in a couple of math and computer science geeks, and I basically have to talk to myself during most family get togethers.



I majored in geography, for gawd's sakes. That statement alone was enough to make even the most drunk fraternity boy run for the hills because they thought I was going for my MRS degree as opposed to my BA degree, which is a bunch of BS, obviously. Besides the fact that I am indeed married. With five children. And drive a suburban. But that's beside the point...



So, trying to make a salient point, I pipe up this bit of wisdom that was passed to me during my introduction to the UDub - people take electives classes so they can engage other people in conversation. These classes are dubbed 'cocktail electives.' But then I had to define a cocktail party and why people stand around just talking, and my point was going nowhere, so hubby came to my rescue with this shining nugget: "You have to study that stuff so you know how to talk to dumb people."



To which my 10 year old (no longer my favorite child) said, "Ohhhh, so that's how you two met,..."



Very funny. Ihope you know who buys the ice cream in this household, young man.

Muddlin' Winter Olympics 2010

Well, not everyone can make it to the Winter Olympics. We had ours just a little south of Whistler,..

So fast, you had to hold on to your hat,...

Hanging on for dear life,...

And the winner: Catchin' air with your grandkids:

That Grandma has amazing form:

A '10' for keepin' those legs straight and catchin' air! Way to go, Grandma!!

They may say 5 and under, but don't let that fool you. This is a tough run. Some of us needed a binky pull before hitting the slope.

'

Gotta keep the glasses on straight during the runs,...

The anxious fans,...

The big contender: Mt. Rainier. So what the volcano is 'sleeping' We were just fine with the rabble rousing snow.

Happy Valentine's Day

So, it's Valentines for all creatures, mothers included, right??? So, I'm going to sit here at the kitchen island, drink some red wine and eat See's candy, while others toil.

I told my kids "Alright, the girls can have dessert, but the boys don't get squat until they clean their rooms."

To which my 13 year old asked: "What kind of dessert is squat?"

Parellel Universes

Do you ever wonder what your pets do when you're gone? Well, I'll tell you what mine did,...

While I was at the urgent care clinic after a week of feeling worse and worse every day,.. getting the edict from the physician's assistant that I do in fact have walking pnemonia,..while my overworked hubby bounced two girls in the waiting room as the nurse gave me a breathing treatment and a shot of antibiotics in the bum.

(I normally have low blood pressure and low body temperature, and then today with the mucus situation, I have low oxygen levels, which prompted her to ask, "Do you ever feel light headed or dizzy?" To which I responded, "Why, yes, but I thought that was just part of my personality.")

While I was gone, my dogs, the Fuskey and the #&)#%(* German Shepherd were partying lilke it was 1999. Here's how it went down, I think: the Fusky, with her carbohydrates-from-Trader Joe's fetish decided to finish off my freshly made pumpkin bread. Then, with all that fiber (how much fiber is there in half a loaf of TJ's pumpkin bread? Quite a lot by the looks of it,.) she proceeded to poop upstairs.

Then, since she didn't share with Miles, the #&$)(#*$(*N German Shepherd, he got mad and took it out on the B's new Hello Kitty backpack, recently purchased to transport her new tap shoes in. Thankfully he stopped chewing when he hit the metal taps; the shoes are unscathed. Because I needed something with a nice clunking sound with which to smack them with when I got home.

Yeah, yeah, .. they behave when they're ran around the neighborhood for several miles each day. Which I haven't done because I've been busy coughing up a lung.

I wouldn't have even gone to the doctor, but you know how these things work - I've been planning a girl's weekend with my sorority sisters up in Portland for two months now. The last time I took off sans child? Five years ago. Do I ever get sick? Not really.

So, of course, I would have something totally crappy happen to me right before jumping on a plane to go up to the raining northwest from Cali. Ya know, if it had been a kidney or stomach thing, I might have been able to ignore it, but the fear of my head exploding on the airplane from too much sinus pressure? That made me go to the doctor.

Which I don't like because I find it humorous that it seems like all the people who go into professions where they constantly have to deal with people? They don't really like people. So, after the stupid physician's assistant (yeah, I don't even rate for a real doc, I suppose) scolded me, "You've been feeling this way for two weeks and only NOW you come to the doctor?" I scolded back (I have five kids, DON'T USE THAT TONE OF VOICE WITH ME.) : "If you'd read my admission form correctly, you'd see that I just started feeling bad on Sunday night, and most of the time, if someone comes in with a cough and a stuffy nose, before a week, you just say it's a virus and send us home anyway." Ha. Take that and a bunch of spittle spewed your way, thank you very much.

So, she got back at me with the shot in the bum.

Then, we went to Von's to get some more drugs, so I treated the girls to hot cha cha. Which Fifi promptly spilled, but I didn't know until I'd turned the aisle to see the trail of slippery chocolate behind me, much like Gretel. Then, while I was trying to figure out, do I 'fess up or just go down the next aisle like nothing happened, Fifi disappeared into the card section. Only a few mangled Valentine's Day cards later, I had them by the scruff of their necks back home, to be met by white fluff all over my living room floor.

I do need a vacation.