My Redneck Came Out All Over Highland Park, Illinois Today

I KNOW, I'M TYPING IN ALL CAPITALS. I KNOW THAT MEANS THAT I AM SHOUTING. AND THAT IS BECAUSE I AM! I JUST SPENT AN HOUR IN LINE AT THE CAR WASH WATCHING ONE CAR AFTER ANOTHER HAVE PROBLEMS. FOR MY PEEPS DOWN IN TEXAS LET ME EXPLAIN THE CAR WASHES UP HERE IN THE ARTIC CIRCLE. ON EITHER SIDE OF THE CARWASH ARE GARAGE DOORS. YOU PAY AT THE LITTLE THINGIE AND THEN DRIVE UP TO THE DOOR. THE DOOR OPENS AND YOU DRIVE IN. THEN WHEN YOUR CAR IS CLEAN THE DOOR ON THE OTHER END OPENS AND YOU DRIVE OUT. WELL, THE DOORS WERE NOT WORKING PROPERLY TODAY. WHEN I GOT UP TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE (AFTER I PAID) THERE WAS A LITTLE OLD MAN IN A VAN IN FRONT OF ME. AS SOON AS HIS WASH WAS OVER THE GARAGE DOORS OPENED AND THE ONE IN FRONT OF HIM SLAMMED DOWN IMMEDIATELY BARELY MISSING HIS VAN. HE SAT THERE HONKING AS IF SOMEONE WOULD OPEN THE DOOR BEFORE HE FINALLY GOT OUT. HE ASKED ME IF I WOULD GO IN AND TELL THE GAS STATION ATTENDANT OF HIS PROBLEM. THEN THE CAR WASH STARTED GOING AND THIS POOR LITTLE OLD MAN WAS GETTING SPRAYED FROM ALL DIRECTIONS WITH A HIGH-POWERED SPRAYER WHILE I WAS YELLING TO HIM TO GET BACK IN THE VAN, TURN OFF THE ENGINE AND STAY THERE. HE DID. I LITERALLY HAD TO CLIMB OVER A HUGE MOUND OF PLOWED SNOW AND WALK TO THE STATION. I WENT IN AND TOLD THE VERY UNFRIENDLY LADY WHAT WAS HAPPENING. SHE SAID "STUPID OLD MAN JUST DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO USE A CAR WASH!" I SAID, "WELL, I SAW THE WHOLE THING AND IT WAS NO FAULT OF HIS." SHE SAID, "WELL YOU ARE STUPID, TOO AND YOU JUST LOST YOUR CAR WASH." I WALKED OUT THE DOOR AND THE LITTLE OLD MAN WAS DRIVING OUT. I STOPPED HIM AND TOLD HIM WHAT THE LADY SAID. HE WENT INTO THE STATION. I TOLD EVERYONE IN LINE BEHIND ME WHAT HAPPENED AND THEY ALL LEFT. I GOT MY RECEIPT AND WENT BACK IN THE STATION TO GET A REFUND. THERE WAS A POLICE OFFICER STANDING NEXT TO THE REGISTER (LUCKY FOR HER). SHE HANDED ME ANOTHER RECEIPT WITH ANOTHER CODE ON IT FOR A CAR WASH. ARG!!! IN MY BEST REDNECK TEXAS ACCENT I SAID "I DON'T WANT A CAR WASH ANYMORE! I WILL NEVER DO BUSINESS HERE AGAIN! IF THIS WAS THE LAST CAR WASH LEFT ON EARTH THEN I WOULD HAVE A VERY DIRTY VAN. I WANT MY MONEY BACK. FURTHERMORE, I THINK YOU ARE RUDE AND DISRESPECTFUL OF THE ELDERLY." SHE GAVE ME MY RECEIPT AND TOLD ME TO WRITE WHY I WANTED A REFUND. I WROTE DOWN HALF MY COMPLAINT AND ASKED FOR ANOTHER PIECE OF PAPER TO FINISH. SHE GAVE ME MY MONEY AND OFFERED TO EXPLAIN THE CAR WASH TO ME. I SAID "IT WASN'T ME! I KNOW HOW TO USE A STINKING CAR WASH. IT WASN'T EVEN THE LITTLE OLD MAN'S FAULT. YOU ARE RUDE AND, AND, AND. YOU'RE STUPID!" And then I walked very quickly out the door with my head held high while all the customers behind me were laughing, at her I hope. It wasn't my most graceful moment. I wasn't the patient witness that I always try to be. What would Jesus do? Well, I know he wouldn't have yelled at the lady and called her stupid. But I think he would have stood up for the little old man anyway. If everyone was a little more patient and compassionate then life would go a lot more smoothly.

Lawson almost burned the house down!

This morning I was sitting in the livingroom preparing Chloe's reading lesson and Lawson wanted another oatmeal-to-go bar that we had for breakfast. I told him he could and he went to the kitchen to heat it in the microwave. Lawson and Grace have become very good at using the microwave and can even reach it (it is a built-in microwave over the stove). He knows to open the bag and put it in for 10 seconds. I guess he was eager because he hit the 1 button twice and the 0 button twice! He came running into the livingroom and told me "I set the wrong time on the microwave!" I said "Just push cancel or open the microwave door." He ran back in the kitchen and the yelled "I think you should see this!" But I could already see the thick smoke pouring out of the kitchen! I ran in there and stopped the microwave. Before I even opened the door there was thick smoke pouring out of the microwave and even the tops of the cupboards! I opened the microwave and then despite the fact that it was 16 degrees outside I opened all the doors and windows on the first floor of the house. I told the kids to go upstairs and close all the doors. I aired the house out for two hours and it still smells awful! And the weird part is the smoke alarm didn't go off. It goes off every time I make bacon but not when we have a real emergency!

I could have done that!

Okay, we live in military housing and employed here are several maintenance people that will come over and fix things. Now, I don't know how much they get paid but they dress decent and drive decent cars so I figure they do as well as the rest of us. So, I put in a work order last week to have my ice maker fixed and the bathtub in the master bathroom was draining slowly.
The house is brand new and we are the first people to live in it. Everything in the house is new as well. This is our second refrigerator. The first one was brand new and wouldn't even come on the day we moved in so they replaced it with another brand new one. The ice maker is making ice but it won't dispense the ice when you push your cup on the thingie in the front of the door. So, the dude comes over and looks it over. He says "Do you have a bowl I can empty this ice into?" I give him a bowl. He starts putting the ice into the bowl and some of the ice at the bottom is stuck together. I hand him a butter knife and suggest that he try it. He breaks up the ice and removes all the ice from the ice bucket. He tries to remove the ice bucket from the refrigerator door and it won't move. I say, "It looks like it is frozen at the bottom. Do you want me to get a hair dryer?" He dries the ice and frees the ice bucket from the door. "It's fixed!" He declares.
I wonder how much he got paid to have me show him how to fix my ice maker.

You Learn With Your WHAT?

Okay, this was science class today. I asked Lawson to read the title of the page which said "You learn with your eyes" He said "You learn with your ass." It was an honest mistake by an emerging reader but needless to say we didn't get much further than that. I had to excuse myself and go laugh my head off.

It's pretty cold.

I have been getting lots of emails and phone calls asking if it is cold up here. Um, yes. This morning it was -22 with a windchill of -48. We lived in Wisconsin for three years and never saw it that cold. Billy went out to start up his truck and it made this horrible sound which I translated as "Get out of me, I'm not going anywhere! And why does that little brat always get the garage?" (The little brat being my minivan) So, Billy is on his way to South Bend, Indiana today and will be home on Sunday. Tonight the kids and I are going to church for small group and youth group. Today is the day that we are supposed to mop the floors but I'm in a little bit of a predicament. See I have one of those industrial size mop buckets, you know the big yellow ones with the wringer. And I have a gigantic yarn mop that is too big to be rung out by hand. I usually dump the used mop water outside when I am finished mopping but last Friday I didn't because it was so cold that if I dumped it in the driveway it would create a sheet of ice and the snow was too deep to dump it where the grass usually is. So, not knowing what to do I just left it in the garage. And it is frozen solid, as is the mop. So, how am I going to mop the floors? Well, I just bought a 24 pack of large yellow microfiber cloths so after sweeping the floors I'll just give each kid a cloth and have them wipe the floors down. It might just be easier than mopping! Have a great day and I don't want to hear anyone else south of Kansas whining about how cold it is!

I need to find a new babysitter...

This was a funny conversation yesterday:

Grace: Are we going somewhere?

Me: Megan and I are going to Sam's Club to buy groceries.

Grace: But who is going to watch us?

Me: Daddy is on his way home from work and he will watch you.

Grace: Daddy doesn't really watch us very good.

BLIZZARD???!!!!!

In all the three years that we lived in Wisconsin we never had a blizzard. We are currently under a blizzard warning! I am waiting for Billy to get home so that Megan and I can go to Sam's Club and stock up. I just finished shoveling snow, again. It looks like we got between one and two feet so far. We are supposed to get an additional 5 inches from the blizzard. They said it would be worse in the northern suburbs. And that is where we live. We have shoveled so much snow that we don't have anywhere else to put it. Would y'all like some down there in Texas? I'll be glad to shovel it down there! I will try to find time in my busy schedule to take some pictures but you know how that goes. So, y'all enjoy those nice warm temperatures down south. But don't say "I told you so" because winter here is worth the beautiful summer we will have.

Pranks

I told Billy recently that I thought we were failing as parents. We just don't play enough pranks on our children. They are sleeping comfortably in their beds each night fully trusting of us. And that's just not right. We need to play more pranks on our kids! So I sat the kids down tonight and explained pranks to them. I told them that they were free to play pranks on me, too, if they thought they could. The kids were nervous to say the least. My kids take after their Daddy and are not near as crazy as I. So, the kids informed me that we needed rules for the pranks. We compromised with me agreeing that nobody would get hurt and they promised not to mess up anything. I tried to teach Grace and Chloe the art of the prank by smearing peanut butter on Megan's doorknob but Megan is smarter than we thought.
I finally got her later when after washing my hands in the bathroom I decided to fill up my hand with handlotion "just in case an opportunity arose." And an opportunity was just on the other side of the door and has a very soft face right now.
In the spirit of the moment I got the neighbor, too! I came home from the store to see our neighbor shoveling snow so I pulled up behind her and blasted the horn. She jumped clean out of her snowboots! She said to expect revenge.
This is so much fun! I'm cooking up a big one for Billy! hehe!

Why I Love My Frog

I was asked today whether I'm a "cat" person or a "dog" person. I am neither! We were recently given a frog. Okay, Lawson actually won the frog in a raffle.
Lawson recently told me that "Mom, I think you love that frog more than me." I gave him a big hug and said "No, I love you so much more than Froggy." He said "No, I mean I think you love that frog more than I do. You can have him." I was so excited.
This is why I love him (or her, I can't tell.)
He doesn't make a sound. He doesn't beg for food or steal it off the kitchen table. And he sure as heck doesn't jump up on the kitchen counters and help himself. He patiently waits for me to drop his food in his aquarium. He happily eats whatever is provided even though it's always the same thing. He never complains, even when his aquarium is dirty. He never scratches on the door to go outside or come inside. He doesn't get fur everywhere. I'm pretty sure he will never get fleas. He doesn't poop or pee all over the place and I've never seen him on my bed. He doesn't chew on shoes or chase cars. He doesn't bite the mailman or jump on children. He doesn't make me feel guilty for not playing with me. I don't have to walk him in the cold, rain, snow or dark. I don't think I'll even have to take him to the vet. I've spent less money on him than I have toilet plungers. I love my frog.

Are they cookies or pancakes?

Okay, for all of you that know me you know that I am very neat and organized. I sort our clothes by color, season, and fabric. All the toiletries are neatly arranged in the bathrooms in perfect rows like a grocery store. The kids toys are organized into bins according to type. I can sort 5 items of dirty laundry into ten loads. Our photos are stored chronologically in albums. Even the garage has organized bins that are labeled as to contents and stored neatly on shelves. But the organization ends where the pantry begins! If you opened up my pantry you are sure to say, "What the heck?" This, Dan Hoffman, is where I hide my clutter. Believe it, or not, there is only food in this pit of despair. I don't store bags of clothes for charity, broken things to fix, batteries, light bulbs or anything of this nature. All of those things have their exact perfect locations to be stored. But for the life of me I can't organize the pantry! I hate trying to decide if a can of green beans should be stored with the vegetables or the canned goods. It just doesn't make sense to me. I have several large Tupperware containers in which to store flour, sugar, powdered sugar, etc. I labeled these at one time, but some have labels on two sides with two different things labeled on one container. A few months ago Megan found an awesome chocolate cake recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box. She made it several times and then the last couple of times it was awful. We couldn't figure out what she was doing wrong and Billy actually begged her not to make the cake ever again. Then I found that Megan was using what she thought was flour and it was actually powdered sugar. There was a label on one side of the container that said "flour" and the other side said " powdered sugar". Megan was a little peeved at me to say the least. I promised that I would assign a container to each ingredient and never veer away again. Well, all rules are automatically canceled when you changes houses, right? So, a few weeks ago I was unloading the groceries out of the van and I tore the giant bag of pancake mix. At this time I hadn't filled all of my containers with baking supplies ( and I wasn't sure that I ever wanted to). So I found the largest and only container that would house a bulk-bag worth of pancake mix from Sam's. It wasn't labeled. But everybody knows it should be flour. A couple of weeks later I put flour in the container with two labels that should be powdered sugar. Let the holidays begin! Billy and Megan enjoy baking cookies all the way from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve. But every time they made a batch this year they couldn't figure out what went wrong. Billy blamed Megan and Megan blamed Billy. Then they started blaming The Pampered Chef, KitchenAid, and even Betty Crocker. Yesterday Megan made chocolate chip cookies. A light bulb went off in my head and I asked her "which container are you using the flour out of". She showed me and I said "That's pancake mix." Billy and Megan have both ordered me to get that pantry organized or they will stop baking. I sure am going to miss cookies. Or were they pancakes?

Our new routines.

Okay, several weeks ago we started "morning routines". Everyone has to get up, make their bed, get dressed, brush their teeth and hair, and put their stuff away and be in the kitchen by 7:30 a.m. They have done very well except for the occasional kid trying to get away with doing part of their morning routine. So, last week, we put Grace in charge of morning routines. She is to check everyone's room and appearance before they are free to go downstairs. Grace was picked because out of all four kids she is the only one that consistently gets it done the first time.

Last week we started an organized chore routine instead of Mom and Megan doing it all. Megan and I each have a helper or two that follows us around and helps with the "chore of the day." These are the "chores of the day": Monday: change sheets on the beds
wash bathroom rugs
do all laundry

Tuesday: clean out both refrigerators (yes, we need two)
clean the kitchen trash can
clean the microwave
disinfect kitchen counters and scrub kitchen sink
empty all trash cans and put trash and recycling
in the alley for pick-up Wed morning
Laundry

Wednesday: bring trash can and recycling bin back to
garage after pick-up
clean all three bathrooms
Laundry

Thursday: dust furniture
clean mirrors and windows
Laundry

Friday: vacuum carpets
sweep and mop tile floors
Laundry

Saturday: yardwork (when there isn't snow)
straighten and sweep the garage
clean out the van and vacuum if needed

We also have a kitchen clean-up routine. I am the main cook and all four kids take turns each meal helping me prepare dinner and set the table. Megan is the clean-up supervisor and the other three kids take turns helping her clean the kitchen. Megan likes this because she has had
this chore all by herself for 8 years and she knows that by teaching the younger kids she is working herself out of a job and she is happy about that.

Bedtime routines have always been a headache because Lawson and Chloe won't clean up and we wind up threatning all kinds of things before they finally get it done. So, we put the main troublemaker in charge of bedtime routines and it has been a dream! Starting at 7:00 pm Lawson is to see to it that Grace, Chloe, and himself take showers, brush teeth, put on pajamas, clean rooms and the bathroom, and choose one book each. When all this is done, and Lawson has inspected, they head downstairs to read with Mom and Dad and give goodnight kisses and hugs. Then they are in bed at 8:00 pm.

Chloe was upset that she didn't get to be the supervisor of something so we put her in charge of reminding people of their tablemanner infractions at mealtime. She is the worst with table manners so this has helped her, too because she has to set the example.

I know this sounds like too much work but believe it or not it has made life so much easier for Billy and me and the kids love having the chores and the important "titles". So far it is working wonderfully!

If you have any other ideas for us I'd love to hear them.

Sometimes it's okay to laugh during the prayer.

This evening Billy, Lawson, Grace, and Chloe were putting together a puzzle while Megan and I made dinner. We were all playing around using our best Texas-hick accents. A while later we all sat down to eat dinner and it was Chloe's turn to say the prayer. This is what she prayed (again, in a Texas accent):

Dare Gawd, Thank yew fer dis wunderfall fowd. I luv yew Gawd an Jeezus. A-MAN!

There was not a dry eye in the room. We were rolling on the floor laughing. We were sure to explain to her later that in the future that would be inappropriate and she would be in big trouble. But we let her off the hook that time because I'm pretty sure that God was laughing, too.