Do You Know Lydia

The top 10 things that you don’t know about Lydia:



1. I have been on a cheesy TV talk show.

2. I have 24 first cousins on my mother’s side.

3. I have a soul mate who is not my husband.

4. I once got kicked off a movie set.

5. I went to college tuition free.

6. I knew that I would marry my husband by our third date.

7. I have met Richard Simmons.

8. I’m adopted and I found my birth family.

9. In elementary school I was an awkward unpopular dork.

10. I spent a summer working on a dude ranch in Montana.

 
Which one of these topics would you like me to blog about?

I Miss My Pre-Kid Mind

How did I end up here? I am standing at the counter of the BJ’s tire Center with no wallet and eighty nine dollars of melting groceries. My newest journey of ridiculousness began by taking Dylan to school late and walking him into the office for his first ever tardy pass. Being late for Dylan’s drop off made me twenty minutes late for my tire alignment. Being late for my tire alignment is going to make me late for my 10:00am play date at McDonalds. On the bright side Dave has been nagging me for two weeks to make the appointment, after being 14 days late another twenty minutes is basically negligible.


Alice and I drop off the car and then bop over to the main BJ’s Wholesale store to waste the 30 minutes the mechanic guy says that it should take. To insure that we make it to our play date on time I gave him my cell phone number so he could call us the second the car was ready. I am always thinking.

After about fifty minutes later I am checking out with a carriage full of stuff that I didn’t realize that I needed. Hanging out in stores does that to me. I dig in my purse for my BJ’s card. No BJ’s card. No credit cards. No wallet! I take a deep breath and try to calm down. Then I dump my purse out on the conveyer belt. Why do I carry all of this crap with me? I quickly dig through the pile. Socks? Why do I have three pairs of Alice’s socks in my purse? Wait! My check book! I have my check book. I wave the check book around like a winning lottery ticket. After a quick visit to the service desk for my number I am rolling my cart over to the tire center.

As we approach I notice that my car in parked in front of the garage. Wow. Alice and I have perfect timing they must have just finished. I wonder why he didn’t call me. I pick up my phone and see 2 missed messages. My darn ringing is off! I check the time of the first message. Dang! The car was done twenty minutes ago. But, I can still get to our play date. I’ll only be a few 15 minutes late.

I explain my situation and show the mechanic guy the check book and the sheet of paper where I have copied my membership number. Then he tells me as nicely as he can that I they are not the same company as BJ’s Wholesale and that he needs a credit card or to see my license. Oh it gets better. The only way that I can go home to get my credit card is to drive my car. They can’t give me my car until I pay. The nice car guy does offer to give me, Alice, and our cart of groceries home to get the credit card. Then we’d come back pay and be an hour late for our play date!

Then I make my Hail Mary pass. I ask in my sweetest voice if there is any way that I can call Dave and get a credit card number over the phone. He thinks for a moment as Alice lies on a chair upside down, her feet up in the air her head dangling off the front. The guy looks at Alice and agrees.

Five minutes later Alice and I are in the car driving home to get my wallet and drop off the perishable grocery items. I am hoping that I can get to McDonalds only 25 minutes late. Five minutes I am parking in my drive way. I run inside with an arm full of stuff throw it in the fridge. I go into the living room and grab my wallet, I also see my calendar. I decide to bring it along so my friends and I can discuss our monthly play date schedules. I also decide to throw in my new book in my purse. Oh and a bottle of water. I jump back into the car and arrive at McDonalds 45 minutes late. I greet my friends in the playroom and apologize, and then I go back up to the counter to order a coffee. Where is my wallet? No! I grabbed my calendar, book, and water, but not the darn wallet! Seriously? Seriously!

You'll Spray Your Eye Out

We get up nice and early to make sure that we aren’t late dropping Dylan off at school again. I pick out Dylan’s clothes and go in to wake up Alice. I see a lump under the blankets. I pull them down a bit and see what looks like an electrocuted shiatsu. The kid’s hair is going everywhere but down. She turns her face away and pulls the covers back over her head. Once I wake her up she can never fall back to sleep. I know that she’ll be up soon. If not I am sure that the static coming from her hair will jolt her out of bed. I pick her clothes out of her dresser for her and then go to Dylan’s room to grab his. I go down stairs, I need to drink more coffee and give Dylan his clothes.
A few minutes later a dressed Dylan and I are sitting at the kitchen table. He is eating the chemically mutated cereal that Dave bought for himself (Silly man. We are parents now, nothing belongs to us nothing is sacred). I am drinking coffee a nice morning so far. Then a little fuzzy porcupine shuffles in to the room clutching her blanky. I make her toxic cereal and hope that her electric hair doesn’t react with the spoon and spark a fire. As she eats I am transfixed by the beautiful color of her golden sparkling brown feathery hair floating in the sunlight. I giggle. What the heck happened to this poor kid? Bath. That’s right. Last night I escaped over to my girl friend’s house to mock Miss America and Alice had a bath. Daddies don't use conditioner. She must have gone to sleep with wet hair apparently on some live electrical wires.

How am I going to fix this? The girl who never lets me brush her hair? Actually brushing her hair would just make this mess worse. If I was going to make this kid presentable I would have to move quickly. As Alice ate I ran into the bathroom and looked for her detangling spray. The only way for me to touch her hair is by surprise attack. Then I remembered that she used all of it up on her Ariel doll. What I did find was a broken bottle of something called Vinyl Glam. I am assuming that this is a kind of fancy hairspray? I of course don’t recall the instructions that the hairdresser gave me oh so long ago. Also the darn cap was gone just a tube on top. Time was ticking away. I turned the bottle upside down and pressed the top to my palm. Nothing. Tick tick tick. I slammed the upside down bottle again. Nothing. I looked down at the top to see why the tube wasn’t releasing. Pressed again and spray shot out of the tube from an angle and hit me right in the eye.

IN THE EYE! I have like one minute to initiate my attack before my target finishes eating. I pumped the bottle into my hand and sprayed the stuff all over my hands, arms, and shirt. I stumbled into the kitchen with my stinging burning eye. I rub my hands down her head and then quickly take cover. Alice immediately scream, strikes out and then raps her arms tightly over her head sending her cereal falling to the floor. Is this reallt my life? The floor is a mess, the kid is screaming, and I am surely blind not to mention my eye lashes are all stuck together. I stagger to the sink and splash water in my eye. I look at the clock with my good eye. We are going to be late. I somehow clean the floor, calm Alice down and get her dressed, of course putting her shirt ovwe her head sent her somewhat slat hair into a static afro. We are all in the car seven minutes before school starts. My eye still hurts and my eye lashes feel like they are scotch taped to my lids. We drive to school and Dylan is running in the door with a minute to spare. A typical morning.

February Is Finally Here

I must admit I love Valentine’s Day. No, not because of the 14th when our husbands, wives, and significant others are forced to go out and buy us crap to prove how much they love us. Okay, I do like that part a little bit, but my favorite thing about Valentine’s Day is hearts. My favorite color is red and I love hearts. I collect hearts. I collect natural heart shaped rocks that I pick up on the beach, mountains, or even once on a construction site, I keep the large ones in my garden. I have pottery hearts, sea glass hearts, gold, silver, wooden, and fabric hearts, I even have one inside of my chest; I carry it with me where ever I go. I also love all sweet little romantic trinkets. What can I say? I am a sucker for beautifully made tokens of love.

I love Valentine’s Day because I have an excuse to cover my house with hearts, flowers, girly linens, and every other impractical objects d'arte that crosses my path. I am a thrift store diva so perhaps I fall in love with objects d’crap, but I love them and they make me smile.

On my blog this month instead of a mish mash of cute and quirky items I have a large selection of items that I absolutely love. I searched the internet for cool unusual bits and pieces that you won’t see anywhere else. I hope that you enjoy my Valentine’s Day display. You can forward picture and link to your Valentine as a hint. Or you can just buy them off of the site. I get no compensation or payment in anyway. I am too unorganized to set something like that up. So feel free to buy something for me too. You can email me for my shipping address.




Kisses, Lydia