Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category

Susan’s Wacky Travel Tips (Road Trip Edition)

Friday, November 11th, 2011

travel-tips-for-road-trips-with-children

Here are the top 10 best travel tips for road trips with children:

  1. Forget barf bags. Pull over and open the sliding door.
  2. If you have a family of 6 or more, you should probably get two rooms, or you’ll be stepping on your children during the night.
  3. Choose motels without neon signs, bullet holes, or sirens going off in the parking lot. (Honey, if you’re reading this, please pay attention for next time.)
  4. Charge your children a dollar for every time they say, “Are we there yet?” and you’ll have enough money to buy them snacks at the next gas station.
  5. Wear ear plugs, and you will enter a peaceful haven of bliss. If someone tries to get your attention, just smile and nod calmly.
  6. If you don’t have a headache, go ahead and play music or listen to a book on CD. Or play games and pretend you’re excited about playing them.
  7. Try to drive your spouse bonkers by singing rounds with your kids, old MacDonald with so many animals that couldn’t have possibly been at the farm, or cheerfully singing “This is the Song that Never Ends.”
  8. Stop at sights along the way to give the illusion that you’re actually on vacation.
  9. If your motel bed is broken and the toilet overflowing and you’ve just walked into the room, go ahead and ask to be put into another room. (They actually gave us two rooms for the price of one!) Otherwise if you sleep on the broken bed, you will feel like you are constantly trying to dig yourself out of a grave. (If you’ve slept on a broken bed, you know exactly what I’m saying.)
  10. And now for number 10… Drum roll, please… Take lots of pictures, because you want to remember this miserable road trip as having been fun, dang it.

You Know You’re Getting Older When…

Saturday, October 29th, 2011

getting-older

You Know You’re Getting Older When…

  1. You think the bags under your eyes are a sign that you’re tired. They’re not. Those bags are here to stay.
  2. You call your child every name but his, and then say, “What’s your name? Don’t lie to me, because you live here, and I’ll find out!” (My husband must have gotten that line from a movie.)
  3. You have two cups of coffee in the morning and still feel like you’re asleep.
  4. Once you’re downstairs, you forgot why you went down there.
  5. You keep waking up during the night for no apparent reason.
  6. You see gray hairs growing out of your head, pluck them out one by one, and look around the corner to make sure your husband is still under the delusion that you’re a young thing.
  7. After having a fabulous time with your husband the night before, you wake up having thrown out your back.
  8. You no longer care that there are toys all over the floor. You just kick them to the side, and that’s good enough.
  9. You start backing out the driveway only to realize you forgot to open the garage door. (Don’t laugh… This actually happened to me.)
  10. And now for number 10. Drum roll please… Someone says to you, “Remember when…” and you really don’t remember.

You Know You’re the Mother of Boys When…

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

mother-of-boys

You know you’re the mother of boys when…

…the noise pollution in your house exceeds the volume of the thoughts in your head.

…on the way to the kitchen to make dinner, you get hit with a nerf dart.

…you can’t find one of your boys in a tangle of arms and legs on the living room floor.

…their conversation about electronics goes over your head.

…they make silly faces to cheer someone up.

…you accidentally step on Legos in the middle of the night.

…the first thing they do when they get out of the car is run.

…you catch your boy red-handed, and he doesn’t deny that he did it.

…your kids would rather climb trees than stay in the house.

…every stick in the forest becomes a weapon.

…you read a great work of literature, and half your kids are standing on their heads.

Feeling Warm and Toasty

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

feeling-warmBack when I lived in England, I was engaged for a year, so I was trying to save money. I lived with a little old lady who was very stingy with her heating. Basically there was none. I woke up morning after morning with ice inside my windows. I’m not joking. I was so cold my bones hurt. I could see my breath every morning as I breathed. My blanket was not very warm either, so how did I survive?

It wasn’t the ancient space heater that hardly put off any heat at all if I put in $2 every hour in coins. Yes, I had to put coins in to get electricity. So I gave up on that. My fiance gave me a heating pad for Christmas, and he made sure it didn’t require electricity. (The plugs are different in England anyway, and he was living in the United States.) All I had to do was click a metal disk to set off the heating pad, and the next day I could boil it and use it again.

I also had a hot water bottle. I used this first. I poured scalding hot water into the hot water bottle. Then I would drag it all around my icy sheets. I would go to sleep with it, and whenever I woke up in pain from the cold in the middle of the night, I would crack the disk on the other one, and aaaahhhh….. I could fall back to sleep and survive.

Now that I live in the United States, I actually have heat in my house. But my husband likes the thermostat a lot lower than I do at night. He complains that my hands are icy, but whose fault is that? I mean, I know I just brushed my teeth with cold water, so it’s technically my fault that my hands are freezing, but my hands would warm up much faster if I wasn’t in Antarctica. Then he begrudges me when I want to turn on my heating pad. He calls it my other lover.

I thought of changing this blog entry into a poem entitled “Ode to a Heating Pad,” only to get laughs from my husband. But I’m too tired for that right now. Maybe I’ll go take a nap with my heating pad…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Okay, this poem took me about 10 minutes to write, and it was super fun.

Ode to a Heating Pad

 

When the cold winter winds blow,

When darkness fills the sky,

I’m not shivering under my covers;

And here’s the reason why:

 

My heating pad is cozy;

My heating pad is hot;

My heating pad fabulous;

I’m so glad it was bought!

 

I have no need for riches;

I have no need for men;

As long as I have my heating pad,

I’ll never be cold again!