Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Red Cups + Rain Boots = Teamwork

It never fails. When Jay goes out of town something will go wrong. I think my very first blog entry ever was when Jay was in Kentucky and everything was going wrong. This time it’s not quite so dramatic. Not even a big deal really but it was a pretty funny scene.

Before I type this I’m going to ask for no judgmental comments. I quite likely could get in trouble with child-welfare services for confessing this.

With that said, while it’s not an ideal practice and I really try not to do it any more than I have to…I still occasionally have to throw Bryson in the shower with me. Yes…I know that he’s four now & I’m most likely scarring him for LIFE!! Most of you are probably thinking “Hasn’t been a couple of years since she told us that adorable story about him asking if it was dangerous to touch girls there?” Well, yeah, it has and I really try not to practice mixed showering with him but here’s the skinny though. Jay tore our front bathroom apart in FEBRUARY. (you read that right, as in the second month in the year). He assured me it would be completed in a couple of weekends. Well, I know my husband so I took that to mean a month or so. Yeah, 5 months later and I still can’t give the kids a bath. Our back bathroom only has a shower and while they’re pretty mature kids for their age I can’t exactly tell them to go take a shower by themselves can I? Nope. So if Jay’s not here then that leaves me. Okay, I just wanted to get my defense out of the way before I begin our story today.

So, it was community shower time at the Looney house Sunday night. While it didn’t take long to realize that the water wasn’t draining very well, it did take just long enough that I had the kids all lathered up and was half way into the process. So as we notice water pooling around our ankles I try to rush up the shower and this just got the kids riled up so they decided to play chase around my legs while I was trying to speed this up. (All of this is in like a tiny stand up shower mind you). So I finally wrangle everyone to get them clean just before the water reaches the spill-over point. I get out and throw a robe, instructing the kids to stand really still. Well, of course to a 4 year old little boy with a huge puddle of water that can only be interpreted to splash in the water, right? So I fuss and dry up the water in the floor and get the kids dried off and attempt to use the plunger on the drain. Not helping at all. I also had to let Bryson try to plunge it because well, he’s a guy and apparently that attitude of “It’s not working just because a girl is trying to do it” starts early. In his defense, Jay did instruct him to be the man of the house while he was away and to take care of us so I couldn’t let him disappoint his Daddy by not even giving it a go. I know this is shocking but the plunger didn’t work for him either.

Naturally I didn’t have any draino on hand but don’t count me out yet because I’m a quick albeit non-traditional thinker folks. I told the kids to get their rain boots and two red plastic cups. We made an assembly line and my children, in p.j.’s and rain boots, scooped up cupfuls of water from the bottom of the shower and passed them down to me to pour in the sink. They thought this was a grand adventure and problem solved! I put some draino in it the next day and it was good to go.

So while the event started out with me thinking “Classic. Jay’s gone for 5 hours and everything goes to pot.” (Side note: what does that mean anyway…goes to pot?) it ended up being a pretty fun adventure that I’ll remember and laugh about picturing my kids in their rainboots singing about teamwork and thinking their momma is pretty fabulous.

My Number One Fan

I just managed to do a complete post from the my entry to this one. I wonder if there’s a class on condensing your thoughts…?

Anyway, I’m writing today simply because it was requested that I do so. Yep! Little ole me has a blog fan who has asked me repeatedly to hurry up and write something new. (I think my head is swelling just a little) Who is this moron you may be wondering? That would be Mr. Justin Miller himself. Deep down I really think he just enjoyed by post in which I gushed about how wonderful he is and really wants me to write something else about him. If I wasn’t sure, then after he surprised me by bringing me lunch at work complete with a turtle cheesecake dessert then that made it pretty clear. So here it is Justin, just for you!

You really are an awesome person and I’m so glad to call you a friend. You’re one of those people who I may not see for a while but still feel 100% comfortable around and can pick up right where we left off. I know that if I ever needed you for anything I could call you at any hour of the day or night and you would be there.

That got me to thinking about how incredibly lucky I am to have so many amazing people in my life. So I’m going to give a tribute of some people that I wouldn’t be here without and can count on for anything. I was going to put it all into one but I think that wouldn’t quite do these folks justice. So I’ll just spread them out a little. Maybe, just maybe (which most likely means maybe not) I’ll also include a photo too! Yeah, don’t get your hopes up but that would make it a little better if I could swing it.

Since you’re the inspiration for this post I’ll start with you Justin. Since I did dedicate an entire blog to you once already, I’ll keep it short. Plus, you’re going start getting on up there with my blog-bragging on Jay if I give you too much blog time (but if you’d like to bring by some more turtle cheesecake then I’ll see what I can do)

I feel like we know each other as well as if we were siblings. We both have a strange sense of humor and banter quite well off one another. I’ve given you love advice while we sat atop of 5 gallon paint buckets and you’ve helped me bandage myself when my gracefulness sliced open my flesh yet –again with the box cutter. (Why didn’t Charles take that thing away from me?) I’m sure we couldn’t count the hours we’ve laughed together or the number of games of rummy we’ve played or the mellow yellows we drank back in the day. I love you & I’m so glad that you’ve found Micah to put up with you. She’s precious and you seem as blissfully in love as I’ve always hoped you’d be someday.


I know this isn’t the blog post you were exactly looking for. You wanted another bizarre story that could only happen to me. Well, you’re in luck because I just happen to have one that I’ll try to post next.

Jamakeover...Derailed

Okay, so the Jamakeover got a bit derailed. Oh, all right, SERIOUSLY derailed. It started off really well…

… My first week weigh-in I checked in at 129.2—Woohoo!! Just sliding in under that frightening 130…week two happened to be the week of my work conference and dun dun dun...death sentence for Jamakeover (Take One I’m now fondly referring to it as). You see, these work trips are fashioned much like a feed lot. You eat an enormously huge and delicious breakfast followed by sitting in a cold boring meeting for a couple of hours. Then you get a break where gigantic cookies are served followed by a couple more hours of meeting then lunch and you guessed it meetings then afternoon snack of popcorn & fudge, candy, etc. followed by a huge dinner. Rinse and repeat for 3 days and all of us ladies are sitting quite plump and feeling ready for the slaughter-hence the feed lot analogy.

So honestly, I haven’t weighed in since that fateful trip because I’ve just been too scared and now a month has passed. Every weekend I find myself saying “Tomorrow I’m starting over” yet that hasn’t exactly happened yet. So it’s another week & I guess I’ll go ahead and give it another go.

But I really wasn’t writing this blog entry to talk about my jamakeover failure I just thought I’d get that out of the way since I left off claiming to have had some life-changing revelation about changing things. Which, in my defense, I really did feel that way at the time…it just got a bit lost somehow.

I would like to say a huge THANK YOU to every single one of you who commented and emailed with words of encouragement. I still have 3 or 4 emails to return and I’m so sorry I haven’t replied to you yet. I promise that I will and actually there are some drafts that I’ve started and haven’t had a chance to finish yet because, well, I am completely incapable of making anything short and sweet. But I genuinely appreciate the wonderful things you’ve said and stories of your own that you’ve shared. You’ll never know how much I appreciate it!

Since this turned into a lengthy post on its own (imagine that!) I’ll just leave it as is and do a completely separate entry for the real reason I was blogging...