Category: random ramblings (Page 1 of 2)

Now Hiring

I really only make 2 things in life: babies and ideas. They’re my best assets. I was basically raised to sit around and have ideas. In fact, I bet my first words were, “A guy ought to…” However, ideas  generally stay in my head or perhaps escape in a very excited voicemail and then are left to die with the wind. So sad. Good bye, genius idea!

On the off chance that I might ever get my brilliance to take the form of a physical representation in society, the first person I would hire with my newly minted millions is the gal who would make my next 15 ideas work. (Or at least a portion of them.)  Let’s face it, I would probably be Kristy. But she won’t want to move, so I will have to put out an ad on Craigslist. I swear, I could change the world if I could just find someone to make my ideas actually happen – to come up with the actual thing. Don’t worry, I’ll be a part of it. I’ll go on Shark Tank and defend it.

The entire prospect of finding me a Doer led me to ponder what else I might outsource with said millions. So I composed a brief list.

1. Personal Dresser. This has already been established.

2. Personal Assessorizor. Once I’m in the clothes I wear the same scarf or red necklace every day. Can someone please tell me what socks are acceptable for these flats?

3. Personal Gas Attendant. It takes no less than 962 buttons to buy a tank of gas. If you’re an Mperks member, add 14 more. This person doesn’t have to ride around with me or anything, just show up at the gas station at the appointed time so I don’t have to get out of my car.

4. Gardner. I know, a throwback to the 1960s. Or the 2000’s if you live in Genoa City with the Newmans. In either case, I love fresh veggies and despise weeding. JJ remarked again this summer that my participation in the care of the food patch has decreased exponentially every year. This year I couldn’t write it off to pregnancy or that I just gave birth, so he caught me.

5. Hearing aid battery replacer. I swear I’ve spent a good year of my life finding and replacing batteries for the things. The oldest is almost to the self-care point where he can be responsible, but every few weeks I’m reminded once again that “these don’t work!”

6. Personal Phone Call Maker. To the doctor. To the mechanic. To the hairdresser. (Scratch that! Ruby’s does online appointments! Also, it’s a Beauty Revolution. Go there, my friends.) The act of quieting my children and waiting patiently for someone to answer my questions requires more patience than I can muster sometimes.

7. Personal photographer and digital memory organizer. First, I don’t have pictures of my family because I never take them. And once I do, I put them in one of 132 places in my digital world. So if someone could just come and snap our finest memories and then put them in an easy-to-understand format, I would be so endeared. Actually, make sure you also monitor for Shutterfly coupons and print off some for free every time we get a coupon, and then put them into albums. (I actually asked for this for Christmas one year and was utterly disappointed when no albums were under the tree. And we only had 2 kids at that point. Making up for lost time would be a nightmare.)

So, what say you? What jobs will you outsource with your imaginary millions?

Shave me the effort

My sister once told me if she could choose any time and place to visit, it would be my Grandma Mary’s farm growing up. She had some great stories. Like when she rode home with her older sister, Glenna, after play practice and Glenna was “sweet on” the boy driving (note: I believe they were in a horse and buggy) and that boy put his arm around Glenna. Incredulous, as soon as they got home, Grandma Mary told her dad. When she went upstairs to dress for bed, Glenna came in her room to tell her, “don’t you dare tell dad that boy put his arm around me!” And apparently Grandma Mary just nodded and ducked under the covers.

Who wouldn’t want to see that play out? Or at least ride in a horse and buggy and watch the play. Or see Glenna’s face when the boy made his move.

Sports fans probably choose to experience events like watching Jackie Robinson get his first hit in the MLB. History buffs might return to some defining moment of a great war. (I’d love to hear in the comments what moment you would choose).

I would go back to the very first person who decided to take a razor to her legs. I would bust into her bathroom before that Schick got too close and beg for a second thought. This decision has the power to change the image of beauty and it will require a lot of time spent in the shower, I would say.

Why do we think we're better off shaving?

Thanks Betsssy for capturing this moment originally as not many put pictures of shaving legs up for a CC license.

At some point in our collective history women had hair on their legs. They accepted it as part of the curse and blessing of being a homo sapiens, along with walking upright and opposable thumbs. And then some woman, probably not in her most glorious of moments, thought, “if we take the hair off these legs, they’ll be smooth.” Why did she consider this as an option? What led her to this silky smooth discovery? What, exactly, was the problem hairiness, like all the other mammals?

Little did she know what would happen just two days (or, as is the case for some of us, 2 hours) later. STUBBLE. Oh, you can always let it grow back. <- LIE. The itching. She didn’t account for the itching.

Not to mention the nicks and cuts involved. I remember the day of my junior prom laying on the floor with my foot elevated on the couch because I had gashed my ankle to the point of gushing. I have yet to shave around the area where the foot bone connects to the shin bone without drawing blood. One would think that after 15 years of practice that I would improve my technique.

It gets worse. Years later, this misdemeanor evolves into “the brazilian.”. (WHAT THE?! Seriously people, what kind of person under the guise of genius inflicts such pain on other people? I’ve not undergone such a procedure but I can’t even write about the idea without wincing).

A quick googling will give you all kinds of interesting reading on the great shave, but does not provide me a date and place to stop this atrocity  when a time-traveling Delorian arrives at my door.  Until the interwebs produce more accurate research, I will stand with this gal in blaming the fashion industry. First, they sell us new and more revealing dresses, then they sell us a pink razor to make the look more appealing.

While we’re on the topic, then, I would like to call on the carpet the pointless act of making ourselves more tan and painting the nails of our extremities.  Now a few niche markets make bazillions by  inducing upon me time-sucking and sometimes painful tasks.

Sometimes, it really is a lot of work to be so beautiful, isn’t it?

so many thoughts running through my head

I started about 4 posts in draft only to get about 40% of the way through and be distracted by a shiny thought in another corner of my mind. So instead, I’ll got with a list of mini-posts. 

1. This weekend my mom gave me my final hair washing in The Shop as we know it. Next time I come home, her shampoo bowl will be in the basement, where I will be less likely to beg for a good scrubbing. Mom also gave a trim to all the children, Baby C got her first (and last in the salon) haircut. We celebrated in the way our family celebrates best (with 40 of our closest friends) mom’s last week of paid professionalism. It’s a new chapter for her, one I’m quite excited to see how it unfolds. 
2. I picked up a new read via Kindle app (library loan!) this afternoon – Radical Together, about rethinking the way in which we seek Jesus as a community. I haven’t read the book on which it’s based (Radical), but I did request it via library Kindle and have high hopes of reading it aloud to someone from the couch. But the book I did read contained all sorts of fodder for thinking about how we go about the life of the church. Perhaps I’m 3 years late to the party, but if you’re also not on the cusp of current church life events, I’d recommend it. (And if it takes you longer than a day to read, please let me know. It seemed this was more booklet like in size, though wasn’t lacking in content. I’ve only read a few books via Kindle, so perhaps it was a user error and there are chapters upon chapters left for me to discover). 
3. Baby C got her first tooth. I was quite celebratory about it as she hadn’t slept at all her best for me the past few days while at mom & dad’s, and now I can at least have a reason. 
4. Back to the church thoughts (I had a lot of time driving, the second best place for thoughts to brew, right behind the shower). Long story abbreviated: what if our differences and our personalities and our gifts and our talents and who we are (I bet there’s a great Hebrew word for it) actually has very little to do with us but it’s much more about exposing, revealing a unique part of who God is? We like to think of our gifts as something we can do for God, but what if we were to understand that by living and utilizing our gifts, God shines through us. We’re showing the world a glimpse of who God is, and only we – made in His image – can do it in such a way. Just like 10 artists can paint the same sunset, but each drawing will highlight characterizations of the sunset in a different way. By serving as we’re gifted we allow those around us to experience God in an unique way. 
5. Miss M put herself to bed tonight. She came upstairs as I was rocking C (see #3) and said something, then shut the door. I came downstairs and asked JJ if he’d put her to bed. “Um, no, I thought YOU put her to bed.” So I poked my head in her room. She was in bed. 
6. I posted on FB earlier this week: My parenting thought of the day: if you don’t want your kids to break the rules, have less rules. As a rule-driven personality, it was probably an overstatement. I’ll never get rid of rules. However, I did a lot of thinking about how my kids don’t do everything I asked or expected of them. But I thought, perhaps I’m just expecting out of their capacity. Not that I need to lower the bar, but rather understand and know their limits. And perhaps allow them some creative freedom in how they seek to meet expectations. Maybe I need not be as much a choreographer as a coach. 
7. I wasn’t sure on Ash Wednesday if I would “take my Sundays” or not. I surely will not take a mobile Sunday, planting a little cheat treat when Lent becomes inconvenient. But I did rest from my spending fast today as we got Chipotle for dinner. Let it be said that it wasn’t without effort to cook something first; JJ was going to make fajitas at home, but the chicken went rank. At that point we’re just looking at it being God himself saying, “it’s okay, M. Just get something.” So a burrito bowl it was.
   
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