Tag Archives: humor

April 21, 2014 · 11:21 am

Naming names.

I have a crippling habit of tendency to give names to inanimate objects.

I should probably stop, but Keri gets attached to things, m’kay?

So a little over a week ago when GiGi, my beloved Samsung Galaxy S3 started having serious issues functioning, I couldn’t contain my concern. (I’m not pointing any fingers at what caused her illness, but I’m pretty sure it rhymes with “smelly jean sore point tree.” If that means nothing to you, it’s ok… not the point anyway.)

She was fading fast, and no amount of the phone version of using Doctor Google was really helping.

I had to stop the powercycling madness.

So, after one last night with her sleeping on my chest, I took her down to the Sprint store and had her put down. There were tears, I can’t lie. (Mostly because there were also witnesses. Lots of witnesses.)

I suppose it is best not to acknowledge the depth of my phone obsession by giving the device a name. Lesson learned?

HELL NO.

I emerged from the Sprint store with Samy the S4 all activated and full of GiGi’s information essence, beginning the story anew. (Mommy loves you Samy. )
THE QUEEN IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!

It isn’t a new story. Not even close. In 1981 my family got a brand spanking new Ford Courier pick up truck which we promptly dubbed “Freddie Ford.” Freddie was a good little truck and when I got my license over 10 years later, he was my first car.

But teenage Keri was wildly mildly unprepared for the responsibility of driving, and so both Freddie and I ended up rolling into a cow pasture outside of Boulder just a few weeks before the start of my sophomore year of high school.   He wasn’t really totaled, but he wasn’t drivable either. So he sat on one side of the family garage for months, his various engine liquids leaked out from around his headlamps and made it look like he was crying.  I would pass him each day, and the guilt regarding his condition would be refreshed.  Oh Freddie, I am so sorry for what I did to you. You were a good family member and I took you down.

:::pausing to look for tissue:::

Years later I got my first Ford Escape, and in honor of Freddie, I named him (or rather my cousin did, I believe, because freak runs in the family,) “Frederico Escapé. ”

Now, after years of driving Escapes, my time with Frederico Escapé III grows short. Alas, Ford went and jacked up the body style of the Escape so much that Frederico Three’s name will retire with him as I move into a new era of vehicle choice.

Which makes me feel guilty about this Frederico, and those that came before, and even for the incident in the cow pasture all those years ago with Freddie the Family Ford.

I am forsaking them. I just know it.

It is this thought process that confirms that I probably shouldn’t name inanimate objects. Things aren’t people. That car does not feel bad because you are heartlessly throwing it over trading it in, Keri.

Really.

Hmmm….

What’s a good name for a Jeep?

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April 14, 2014 · 12:47 pm

Last Week I Lost My Notebook.

Last week I lost my notebook.

Just a cheapy, typical , one-subject, wide-ruled situation – totally unassuming and nondescript.

“BFD, Keri – hit up the Walgreens for another. Problem solved for 50 cents. Talk about something interesting, m’kay?”

Yeah…

No.

(To the replacement part, not the interesting topic part – I am consumed by the loss, so it MUST be important, get on board with me here, people.)

What I should really say is “I lost my ability to navigate though life, in written form, and now I am completely hosed and lost and not sure where to start to pick up the pieces. Excuse my while I cower under my desk.”

I write shit down.

If I don’t write shit down, I don’t remember it.  Like AT. ALL.

If our house was the United States of America, that notebook would be the Nuclear Football.  (I also like this analogy because that makes me “The President”.  Hell yes.)

In the days since it disappeared into thin air, I keep stumbling into the many ways I am dependent on the information it contains.

Last Thursday when I got home and couldn’t find it, I convinced myself it must’ve been left at the office. (It wasn’t, it isn’t, it is just gone. GONE!)

“What’s for dinner?” inquired The Mr.

“Oh I…..”   (DEAR GOD) “I. Don’t. Know.”

Because my menu plan is in the notebook.

Now I realize that sounds crazy.   It is dinner, right? Open fridge, take out ingredients, make food, feed family. Done.

Oh, ho ho – not even close.

Ingredients for dinners get pulled from the freezer, having undergone various stages of prep prior to storage, days before their appointed meal.  Use the right protein in the wrong way, and the ripple effect for other planned meals could mean chaos!

Reaching in and randomly grabbing things to cook with no plan? We’re not animals, folks, come on!

Also, I have found that this kind of haphazard culinary roulette frequently results in a situation where the cook is standing in a kitchen FULL of ingredients and thinking “there is NOTHING for dinner!”   You just can’t see the forest through the trees sometimes.

This ties into another major hole the notebook’s disappearance has ripped open in my world: that of the grocery price list/kitchen inventory.

A running tally of what I currently have in my very full freezer and pantry; along with a grid of all of the staple items I have to buy on a regular basis to keep Jr, The Mr, and yours truly all chug-chugging along every day, and how much those items cost at 4 different stores.

All of that information gets used along with the weekly circulars from the stores to create the shopping list and menu for the next week (also all “safely” contained in the notebook.)

Yep – I am THAT crazy. That kind of crazy works really well for me.

Here’s the thing – I also have to write down things like “start laundry before conference call,” and “extra snack to school for Jr,” and ANYTHING else I actually want to accomplish, because Keri forgets.

Keri forgets EVERYTHING.

The notebook never forgets.

The notebook is gone. The EVERYTHING is forgotten.

I am reborn a notebookless, clueless, forgetful mess. One who has NO idea what is in her freezer and no hope of remembering to buy a new notebook.

Because really – where the hell am I supposed to write that down?

 

 

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April 8, 2014 · 11:25 am

Balance vs Bigger Pants.

MMMMMMMM.

MORE!

 

Someone who revolves life around eating and drinking the way I do has two choices, the way I see it:

  1. Do some exercise to keep things burning and keep plowing through the calories
  2. Keep having to buy bigger pants

Each of these options has treated me well at various stages in the life of Keri.

Each of them has also done me mega-wrong at some point as well.

Since I have really cute pants in the line-up just now, and since (in spite of my constant allusions to it being so suburbany-stupid-big,) I could conceivably run out of room in my closet if I keep going the new pants route, incorporating some purposeful movement into things tends to win out lately.

Prior to the arrival of Jr., I was the “go to the gym to work out” type. Spinning and Deep Water Aerobics were favorite classes, and it all happened at 5:30 am at the fitness center attached to the university where I worked, leaving me plenty of time to put myself together in the cushy locker area and trot across the street to start my work day.

Maybe it is the three years of intermittent sleep-deprivation that came as a free-gift-with-purchase with Jr., but I look back now and think “How the HELL did I ever get anywhere by 5:30 am? How did I not fall off that bike more? (Side note, I actually did fall of that bike once. It was spectacularly embarrassing and to this day I blame faulty padding in my cushy-assed bike shorts, but whatever. )

There is no working the family schedule with that kind of sitch at this point anyway, so I don’t have to pretend that sounds even remotely appealing anymore.

Last year I did a membership to the rec center located close to us, and worked my visits into midday hours when Jr is ensconced at day care or hanging with NeNe-the-wonder-grandma.

Fitting in was not something that really happened for me there. I opted out of another year of that.

When it isn’t snot-freezing cold or swass-inducing hot, (Google it,)  it is nice to take it outside into the Colorado sunshine (although my outdoor activity reputation does lean more toward the “happy hour on the patio” variety, I confess.)

HOWEVER, at this point, the option that sees the most action in my suburban existence is the vast selection of OnDemand workouts courtesy of cable TV. With baby monitor in hand, dressed in jammies, in the semi-dark of the 6a.m. living room, and with nobody to judge me but the dog. (Which he does harshly, if the volume of his sighs is any indication. I swear I’ve seen him roll his eyes a few times.)

The unintended bastardisation of the demonstrated movements that takes place during these early morning displays is nothing shy of mortifying, I am sure.

If The Mr. ever wants to win big on America’s Funniest Home Videos or achieve viral YouTube success, capturing one of those sessions would get him quickly to his goal. :::making mental note to check for cameras in living room:::

BE THAT AS IT MAY – I have found some selections that have kicked my ass, leaving me dripping and panting and finding ways to use muscles I didn’t know I even had.

My ridiculously uncoordinated exhibitions are over-and-done-with before the rest of the fam is even starting to stir, and I am on my way to planning my day based heavily on what to eat (and what to wash it down with.)

No muss, no fuss.

No witnesses.

 

Now, let’s get nachos, yes?

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March 31, 2014 · 3:29 pm

Monday morning drop off.

This morning was the first time I actually dropped Jr off in the pre-school class room instead of his “twos” room. He is not two.  He is three.  Also he has been slowly spending more and more time in pre-school, and last week was there all day except for the very beginning and end of each day.  He was a bit trepidatious,  but saw a teacher he likes playing with blocks that he loves, and after one extra hug, off he went to join in the fun.

He was ready.

As it turns out, I was not.

I walked out to put his lunch in the fridge and ducked into the dark, quiet gym to try to get the tears out of my eyes (believe me, they know that Keri is a crier at his school, but I was surprised that it hit me like that, and wanted to pull it together. )

I could hear him giggle and start to tell his friends about his birthday party over the weekend “I got a fire truck and a bike and CUPCAKES….”    I gave up trying to stop the waterworks and decided to make a run for it and just get to the parking lot and let go.

Back in the Keri Mobile, I was winding up to do just that, when another mom came out and climbed in the minivan next to me.  Then she suddenly jumped out, shut the door and ran to the sidewalk where she stood clutching her chest and staring at the van.  I looked up at her in a teary haze.

“That’s not my car!” she exclaimed.

She got in someone else’s minivan.  In a parking lot in the burbs.  Because there are so damn many out here.  This struck me as VERY funny, in my over emotional, crazy mom state.  I laughed so hard, it probably looked like I was being tickled by the invisible man or something.

She giggled and turned red, then walked to the next (fairly well identical) van, got in, and drove away.

I half expected the owner of the van to climb in and pause, sensing a disturbance in her swagger wagon force, but she just drove away, sitting where a stranger’s buns had been only a few minutes before.

It was a roller coaster of emotion to deal with before 8 a.m. on a Monday morning.

Keri had to stop for a coffee.

 

 

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March 22, 2014 · 8:50 am

A Suburban PSA. Just Sayin’.

Attention women within a 20 mile radius of me right now:
Hang up your damn phone and concentrate on piloting that mini van in a way that shows you have any understanding that you are sharing the road with others.
That is all.

Just Sayin’.

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