Versatile. Me? Really, now.

April 11, 2012 by 8 Comments

versatile_blogger_award

Here I sit, with 17 minutes–give or take a few– to write a post that deserves 17 hours. And 17 million “Thank you’s” to Jennifer Butler Basile, the talented blogger behind Chopping Potatoes. Somehow, she wandered onto my crazy little blog here, and found me deserving of  “The Versatile Blogger Award”.  

Wow. Just wow. THANK YOU, TIMES 17 MILLION!!!

I feel so honored that my writing caught the attention of Jennifer, and she felt it worthy enough to include “a calibama state of mind” as one of her 15 nominees. Only fifteen. The odds were not in my favor considering the number of phenomenal blogs/bloggers out there in the bloggosphere, and the fact I have only been ‘doing this writing thang’ seriously for 3 months. But anyway, I made the cut. Time to break out the bubbly 🙂

So. Here are the rules, folks:

If you find yourself nominated, then you’ve been awarded  The Versatile Blogger award. And, you need to pay it forward:

  • Thank the person who gave you this award
  • Include a link to their blog
  • Select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly
  • Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award — you might include a link to this site.
  • Tell the person who nominated you seven things about yourself

Here are my 7 things:

1. I am the youngest of 7. The First Six are all pretty much 18 months apart. Then I came along 12 years later. A serious WTF moment for my parents, right? Could explain #4, below.

2. I have a somewhat eidetic memory. Freakish, actually. By that, I mean I can remember sequences of numbers after only glancing at them, or names of people’s pets from years ago….BUT, if I leave one room and go into another for a specific reason, I can’t remember why I’m there once I get there. Go figure.

3. I hate shredded coconut. Especially when people dye it green and use it as grass on Easter cupcakes. The thought of it makes me gag.

4. My mother was an alcoholic. There is a post about it here .

5. I entered a local chili cook-off in 2004, and won 3rd place. My chili is kick-ass. Seriously.

6. Our family pets include 2 dogs and a bearded dragon. If you had asked me a year ago if I would be the caretaker for a reptile of any kind, I would have, without hesitation, said “Hell to the NO”. Proof that things change…and fast.

7. Occasionally, I work as a voice-over actor for films. I would like to do it a lot more 🙂

So that’s me, in a nutshell.

And my nominees are, in no particular order, as I really adore them all:

Single, Pregnant, and Fabulous?!

Momastery

Nobody, Nowhere

The Bloggess

Off Duty Mom

Snarky in the Suburbs

A Life Less Scripted

Sweetness of Life & Motherhood

The Beverly Hills Mom

Momma Swears

My Cracked Pot

Blue Eyed Blog

All Good in the Mommyhood

Hot Mess Mom

Motherhood, WTF?

All of these bloggers are fandamntastic. Check them out. 

And thanks for checking me out 🙂 

xo,

N

Filed Under: blogger shout outs, rants and raves, tributes Tagged With: , ,

Heart-shaped plates

February 25, 2012 by 3 Comments

I feel this way a lot.

In fact, let’s be honest, shall we? Unless you are being paid to feed people, or wear a cape that says “Mommy Badass”, so do you.

And don’t even get me started on the statement that is the bane of my existence. The dreaded “Can I have a snack?”  inevitably uttered 30 minutes after a meal has been served, while I am doing something obviously important only to me. It’s like when the kiddos are playing peacefully for hours, and as soon as the phone rings with an important call that must be answered, it’s the cue for Oldest Girl to have a meltdown, Youngest Girl to get injured, Middle Girl to begin asking random questions and the dog to suddenly be struck with diarrhea and shit in the floor. All at the same time. Sheer insanity.

Regardless, after my vanishing act  night before last, I decided I needed to somehow make amends for the 45 minutes I stole, even though nobody missed me while I was gone. Classic mommy/wife guilt, which is really unnecessary, due to the fact that my attentiveness to my family’s needs normally resembles martyrdom.  Whatever. Today was a good day. Great, even. Everyone was in a pleasant state of mind, there was minimal sibling war, no girly cat-fights over dolls or crayons, and nobody cried. The weather was even beautiful.

So. It was agreed. I would please everyone, and be a short-order cook, which is normally a hat I refuse to wear. My kitchen is not Mel’s Diner. Orders are not taken. You eat what I make, or you fend for yourself.  Tonight, I sucked it up and made an exception.

The Youngest Girl, wanted a hot dog. The Middle Girl wanted a turkey burger with cheese. The Oldest Girl wanted steak. Got it. Wonder which one needs to marry well in order to fulfill her culinary tastes, huh? Anyway, I instructed  The Man to locate the Aim n’ Flame. It was time to grill some meat. The accompaniments would be baked potatoes, along with steamed broccoli and asparagus topped with hollandaise made with real butter AND whipping cream. Everyone was getting their dinner wish 🙂

I even served it on heart-shaped plates.  Yes…HEART SHAPED PLATES!

The presentation alone should have earned me a free pass from kitchen clean-up, right? At least that was my belief. Apparently, I stood alone in that assumption. Not only did I get stuck with every bit of clean-up, I had to take the trash out too.

This pretty much guarantees the next time I need to vanish, it will be out the door, just around dinner time, in search of a marvelous place called a restaurant. Alone. Where someone will cook, clean AND take out the trash.

Just for me.

If they are lucky, I’ll bring home a doggy bag of leftovers from the dinner I ordered 🙂

xo,

N

Filed Under: family, motherhood, rants and raves

Full moon = All bitch.

February 9, 2012 by 2 Comments

I’m a bitch, I’m a bitch…Oh the bitch is back.
Stone cold sober as a matter of fact.
I can bitch, I can bitch…`Cause I’m better than you
It’s the way that I move….The things that I do.

~ Elton John

     Alright.

     After a whole day of snapping at everyone close to me, being the brand ambassador for road rage, wondering why my “only for emergencies” Xanax didn’t seem to be working, and coming to the conclusion that the pharmacist had, in fact, given me fucking placebos…..I finally figured it out.  Looked up at the sky on the drive home from a 3 hour stint at my second home (aka the gym where my daughters train) and saw the reason. Color me cranky people, it’s…

                                                                      A FULL MOON. 

     Had I known of this impending occurrence, I could have prepared the world by skipping the makeup today and simply writing BITCH on my forehead with a black Sharpie. But I didn’t. I will be more careful and stay abreast of the lunar happenings from now on. Promise. Okay, half-promise. Because I’ll probably forget, considering I suffer from C.R.A.F.T. these days. You figure out the acronym. Remember, I’m cranky tonight, and can’t be expected to do everything for you! Geez….

     So, this is an apology of sorts. To The Man, whom I am certain feels like the bat whose head got bitten off by Ozzy on stage all those years ago. Except probably worse, because that poor creature only got its head bitten off once.

Hi dear. I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you tomorrow since you’ve been silent  for hours in fear of, well…pissing me off just by breathing. I’ll make it up to you somehow. I love you. Really.

     Oh, and to The Girls. Who can’t even read the blog, because I won’t allow them to, even though only one of them could really decipher the words and meanings and such anyway. I screeched like a dying cat at The Oldest Girl today for sharing my blog address with her good friend, so her friend’s mom could read it. Mind you, I’m trying to build a following here, but somehow panicked at the thought of that child’s mother, whom I have not met yet, reading this PUBLIC blog. Good Lord. What kind of crazy witch am I today? Don’t. Answer. That.

     I should also add that The Youngest Girl had a full-on, 5 year-old, “ragdoll with rigormortis” meltdown about what to wear to school this morning, which prompted me to tell The Man he needed to dress her before I sent her  to school wearing only her monogrammed backpack. I had given her several choices, none of which agreed with her fashion mood apparently. What more could I do? At least I recognized I needed a “time-out”, right?

Honestly, the only one in the family who didn’t catch the wrath was The Middle Girl. Perhaps because she agreed with everything I said, completed every task I requested of her without whining, and did her best to remain relatively quiet and just “blend in”. Obviously, she knew about the full moon, which wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest because she is quite brilliant, that one. Catches on quick. No doubt, this will serve her well life 🙂

So. Here I sit, apologizing to people who are now sleeping, trying to figure out exactly what I can possibly do to make up for the bitch I was today. If you have any suggestions, leave them in the box below, will ya?  Wait…I’ve got it! I’m going to get some sleep and pray to God that Mercury doesn’t go into retrograde anytime soon 🙂

Sweet dreams. I mean it.

xo,

N

Filed Under: family, just me, rants and raves Tagged With: ,

Drive-thru etiquette

December 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

         Let me begin by confessing… I am a Chick-fil-A junkie.

     Despite the negative press the chain is receiving lately on social networking sites for their strong religious convictions, charitable contributions to organizations deemed anti-gay and their beliefs about what makes a family, I really love their food. Btw, who knew the Fellowship of Christian Athletes hated homosexuals? Not me, and I was a member in high school, and that point was NEVER covered in the meetings. Seriously.

Apparently, I am somewhat of an anomaly…a Christian who believes marriage should be based on love, rather than sexual orientation. Everyone should have the right to marry the love of their life. Period. Raising a family and creating a stable, happy home environment also has nothing to do with which side your bread is buttered on in my opinion. Therefore, I cannot boycott the business. There. I said it.

Why? Because I’m a Southern girl who managed to hang on to her roots while living in the cultural mecca that is Hollywood. You see, I grew up with CFA back in Bama, and had to wait 15 years for them to open one in Los Angeles, close enough to my home so I could scoot on over there and back in less than an hour…..WITH traffic 🙂 So, to all my beloved gay, lesbian, and bisexual friends, if you see me “check in” on FB at one of the shiny, new CFA locations here in Los Angeles, please don’t boycott me, because I support you 100%. I just need my sweet tea and fried chicken sandwich fix every once in awhile:-) Whew….glad I got that out there!

Now for the point of the post: DRIVE-THRU ETIQUETTE. Last night, I was in line at the CFA in Northridge, with about 25 other cars. I swear they needed their own Rent-A-Cop directing traffic. Not surprising though, I’ve witnessed this before. As usual, I only had about half an hour to make the round trip from the girls’ gymnastics facility to CFA and back. Well….that train got completely derailed by the car 3 ahead of me, when the person pulled up to the menu board and WHIPPED OUT A LIST as long as my arm. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to jump out and scream “You know, they cater. Try calling ahead next time and hauling your a** inside to pick it up!” but I didn’t. Only because 2 of my 3 girls were in the car with me and I didn’t want to cause a scene. Oh, but the fury I could have unleashed had I been childless. They really would have needed a Rent-A-Cop then! But I digress. My point is, the drive-thru is for people IN A HURRY or, those unable to go inside because their children are dressed only in gymnastics leotards and it’s 40 degrees outside. Of course, I was the victim of both things last night. So, if you find yourself being the “food runner” for a group of folks, park and go in…..PLEASE! Because you just never know when a childless, Southern bitch in a hurry  jonesing for some sweet tea might be behind you.

     Although I can say with certainty you’d be safe at McD’s….I hate that place. But watch out at CFA and Taco Bell 🙂

Filed Under: funnies, random thoughts, rants and raves Tagged With:
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