Stumbling Towards Perfect

....and so I pulled up to my parents' house and turned the car off. It was a nice day and I walked across their lawn.... and noticed smoke. Coming from behind me. So I turned around and saw smoke billowing out of the hood of my car. So, being 38-years old and a responsible adult with children, I promptly ran to my daddy who was in the garage tinkering with his lawn mower and yelled: DAD! MY CAR'S ON FIRE!! And that's when I noticed that he was actually not my father but a repair man sent to fix the broken piece of crap new lawn mower that my dad just bought. I apologized to the strange man and turned to my dad, who was insisting on hovering over the strange man and yelled: DAD! MY CAR'S ON FIRE!!! And, well, obviously I do not get my dramatic flair from my father because he just casually looked out towards the street and mumbled something about it probably overheating. IS IT GOING TO BLOW UP?! WHAT IF MY CAR BLOWS UP?! And, being that he was completely embarrass...

The other night Dotter, who is 10, announced that she was going to make cookies. And she was going to take those cookies and deliver them to the people on her list. And all I had to do was drive her to deliver the cookies that she made to the people on that list. And I immediately thought are you serious? I just spent the entire day working my tail off and I'm tired and I'm hungry and there's forty-seven loads of laundry to do and what the heck is in the toddler's hair? And then I thought huh. This must be what nice people do. Just decide to do things for others for no other reason than to make people happy. So, even though I was exhausted and facing an endless mound of dirty clothing, I decided to support Dotter. Because I like nice people. Especially nice people that deliver cookies for no other reason than to make my day a little brighter. And I figured if I supported her now, maybe she'd remember it when she was older and would bring me cookies when I was...

Receive the envelope. Swab your cheeks. Drop in the nearest mailbox. Be The Match.

So, I was reading outside and heard a noise coming from inside the house and figured I ought to investigate. It sounded like... a motor, whirring. I followed the sound and it takes me down to the basement. I'm a few steps from the bottom when I see the guest bedroom door open and the light on. There's Big V, standing in the doorway, vacuuming his penis. In his defense, he was fully clothed, standing next to a plugged in Kirby, using the hose in a sweeping motion across the front of his shorts like he was trying to vacuum off cat hair or something. After a few minutes he catches me staring at him. "What?" he asks, continuing to vacuum himself as if this is the most natural thing in the world. " You're standing in an empty room vacuuming your junk and you're asking  me 'what?'" "I had to vacuum up the cornstarch." *crickets* He switched the vacuum off and started winding up the cord. "Remember last night when ...

If you see a spot on your nose you'll probably call the dermatologist. The nurse will hand you a gown and tell you to take off all your clothes but you'll be cold so you'll keep your socks on. Then the dermatologist will come in, take one look at you and say, " Oh, I do not like that at all !" before she even officially starts the exam. Then she'll repeat it three times while you're standing in front of her, naked, while she looks over your entire body with a magnifying glass. Then you'll feel awkward as she slips your socks off so she can look between your toes. Then you'll apologize for having your socks still on and get bright red when it suddenly dawns on you that no one has ever slipped your socks off before and then you'll keep talking because when you feel socially awkward of course it makes total sense to you to say If I'd known you were inspecting me this thoroughly I would've taken out my toe jam. And my belly butto...

SISTER:   Alex wants you to see how he likes to read.... ME: Which is ironic because I read the SAME WAY! (Also I think I may need someone to call an ambulance.)  SISTER: This is so funny!! Everyone is laughing. And the Teen Bean was so confused about what was going on in this picture. Hahahaha! ME:   I don't know why it's funny. Big V just shook his head and LEFT ME HERE and now I can't feel my left leg. Or my spleen. I'll probably be paralyzed and horribly disfigured just because I tried to one-up an uber-flexible kid. Damn this getting older crap. ME:   Also, I should note Big V didn't even ask me why I wanted him to take a picture of me reading all bent up like that. It's like he expects this. SISTER:   LOL! I totally just snorted when I read this. And if I read it to explain the snort, [my husband] will look at me like I am not okay. ME:   Oh, sure. That sounds just like you -- pretend to be the "normal" one just to...

I sleep with an eye mask. You know, like a grown-up version of a Pin the Tail on the Donkey blindfold but way less sexier. My two plain black ones (the ones they give you on airplanes) both broke, so now I'm using one of the kids' and it has this creepy pimped out frog on it. It kind of scares Big V when he rolls over and gets greeted by a wide-eyed gangster amphibian. I didn't always wear one. In fact, if you know me at all you'd probably be shocked to learn that I purposely put something around my head that could easily symbolize the choking hands of a sociopath. Albeit a sociopath with bad aim, since, really, the point is to choke the life out of me while I sleep, not play a rousing game of Guess Who? Except now that I think of it that's exactly what a sociopath would do because sociopaths are notoriously slow and calculating (probably because they have bad aim) and creepy. And everyone knows there's nothing's creepier than laying there with a strange...

Actual Facebook Status: "I have to go clean out my belly button now." (my little girl is taking after her bigger sister...well, and her mother, but let's not dwell on that.) Illustrated by Becca: (Yes, another one. How awesome is she?!)