What Oscars?

My friend Margaret asked me the other day if I’d seen the movie “Slumdog Millionaires” yet. I almost lied and said yes so I could feel smart and all culturally relevant. But I haven’t seen “Slumdog Millionaires”, I haven’t seen “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and I haven’t even seen “Frost/Nixon”, in spite of the fact that I minored in political science in college and it's like a rule and all to see films about politics.

In fact, I haven’t seen any of the movies nominated for an Oscar this year.

The last movie I saw in a theater was “Twilight” with Riley. Like a good mother I had informally banned the “Twilight” books from our household on the vague unfounded suspicion that they contained a lot of teenage vampire sex.

Being a 7th grader and all, Riley read the first book anyway and then begged ME to take her to see the movie because all of her friends whose mothers aren’t Puritans straight out of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” had already seen the movie like 163 times.

As I’m pretty much all about any excuse to eat movie popcorn I figured WHAT THE HECK and off we drove to the Palladium, a tacky Greek-themed movie theater fronted with huge architectural columns. If you squint from the Bass Pro Shops parking lot it’s almost like you’re standing in front of the Parthenon. Which is good as it effectively eliminates the need for an expensive trip to Athens to see the real thing in person.

Riley and I settle in to the Palladium’s luxurious seats with our $37 snack bar haul of popcorn, Coke and baklava and while I had completely intended to spend my quiet time in the movie texting and downloading free applications on to my new iPhone, I found myself reluctantly caught up in the movie.

AND SURPRISE! No sex. No gore. Good story. So much for vague unfounded suspicions. Which is too bad as vague unfounded suspicions have served me quite well throughout my life.

NOT.

Upon returning home I immediately became obsessed with the “Twilight” series, read all four books within a two week span of time from the comfort of the big brown chair on our porch and completely ignored certain things like changing my underwear and saying hello to my kids.

John says I actually hissed if anyone got close to me and my chair during those two long dark weeks but I have absolutely no recollection of that and am pretty sure he’s making it up to punish me for all the time I spend Googling “Robert Pattison” and writing LORI LIST JACKSON PATTINSON over and over in my notebook.

In summary, “Twilight” darn near ruined my life.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about here, you are obviously in dire need of a teenage girl in your household.

They’re good for you.

First, of course, they are like your own personal portal in to the REAL world. After all, the whole “Twilight” hysteria might have passed right underneath my radar had it not been for Riley subliminally injecting “Twilight” into every conversation.

As in MOM I’M HUNGRY CAN I HAVE A HEALTHY twilight APPLE?

Or MOM YOU LOOK ESPECIALLY THIN twilight AND YOUR HAIR IS NOT AS BIG AS USUAL TODAY twilight.

Or MOM WOULD IT BE OKAY IF YOU AND DADDY twilight WENT ON A DATE WHILE I BABYSIT WYATT FOR FREE twilight?

They also build character in you. The Bible says so:

“… but we also rejoice in our sufferings; because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

I was one of those parents who remained convinced my superior parenting skills would allow me to effectively squash any form of rebellion in my child.

Then she turned two.

The other day she gave me the “slow-blink-while-turning-head-the-other-way-before-opening-eyes-again” move which is way more difficult than your basic eye roll and I must admit, I was impressed.

So this, this is what I confessed to Margaret when she asked me if I’d seen “Slumdog Millionaires” yet and she probably got way more information than she bargained for but that’s just the way I like to roll.

i'll take the chapstick for two thousand pat

this better be dang good chapstick.

you see, we recently purchased a CAR, which is pretty cool given that we'd spent 20 years taking things like snowdrifts taller than our house in to consideration when buying vehicles. this fact pretty much kept us in the SUV/4WD category for a lot of years.

after we bought our new CAR the nice car dealership people sent us packing with the grownup version of a birthday party treat bag ... a bottle of wine ... a couple of nifty coffee cups ... john got a baseball cap and i got a $25 gift card to Saks Fifth Avenue.

cool.

now, as you know, we live pretty close to the Bass Pro Shops but not too close to a Saks.

Bass Pro Shops tossed me out on my hiney when i tried to cash in my $25 Saks gift card on a camouflage teddy. you know, to give john a little valentine's thrill. so, this evening, i resorted to shopping at http://www.saks.com/ with the clearly defined mission of spending no more than the $25 on the gift card. including tax and shipping and the oh so mysterious "handling" charges.

HA

HAHAHHAHAHA

i looked. i mean i really, really looked. then i looked some more.

then it became an obsessive mission ... find the ONE THING on http://www.saks.com/ that costs less than $25.

chapstick.

yep, chapstick.

"sugar" chapstick to be specific.

i was so excited ... evidently sugar chapstick will only run ya $22.50.

tax on sugar chapstick is gonna cost ya $1.41.

shipping and "handling" clocks in at a low low price of $4.00.

"but wait", sayeth you math wizards. "that adds up to $27.91"

well, yes, i did have to put $2.91 on my credit card in order to have my sugar chapstick delivered right to my homebound lips.

i was feeling pretty good, and all, licking my chops in anticipation of my new sugar chapstick jetting its way to my poor chapped lips.

sugar chapstick. i bet brad pitt wears sugar chapstick.

and then i reached for my trusty tin of carmex in order to soothe my newly chapped lips and realized i just spent $27.91 on CHAPSTICK.

$27.91 on CHAPSTICK. oh yeah, i got a smokin' deal.

all i've got to say is it better taste better than the grape Bonnie Bell lipsmackers i used to wear on a cord around my neck in grade school. well, i wore it looped around my neck until the day i left it hanging on my mirror and my little brother dustin broke in to my bedroom and ate the entire tube of grape Bonnie Bell lipsmackers and got sick.

i'll let ya know how my newly sugared $27.91 lips turn out.

would you like some sasquatch skin with that?

in case you missed it, college football season is in full swing.

also, our beloved colorado rockies just got spanked in the world series last night.

"so what?" you ask.

well, in our household, football PLUS baseball EQUALS ...

"sports on television"

a lot.

and "sports on television" means my kids are exposed to very "manly" advertisements for such consumer products as beer and beef jerky.

and it just so happens that, while i'm not a big eater of beef jerky, if i WERE i'd buy one brand and one brand only just because of the ads ...

Jack Link's Beef Jerky presents "Messin' With Sasquatch".

so we're in costco the other day and we walked past a display of beef jerky. not the jack link's kind, but the costco kind.

and all of a sudden wyatt points at the display and announces "there's some sasquatch".

oooooh, this is good ... he actually thinks beef jerky is called "sasquatch".

so being the exceptional mother that i am i snicker a little under my breath and tell him WHY YES, YOU'RE RIGHT, THERE IS SOME SASQUATCH.

john catches up with us and before i have a chance to share with him that our 4 year old has concluded that beef jerky is called "sasquatch" wyatt looks up at his daddy and asks him - while pointing at the bag of beef jerky - is that made out of SASQUATCH SKIN?

so, of course, we had to buy some, just to let him know what sasquatch skin tastes like.

it's salty.

but, of course, you already knew that.

act your age, not your shoe size

so we pretty much live out in the sticks. we've got our wal-mart and our home depot and an entire antique shopping district but as far as "real" shopping goes, well, we've got to drive all the way in to san antonio.

and as we do, we find it necessary to pass by the evil "bass pro shop".

now, i'm not saying there's anything intrinsically "wrong" with bass pro shops ... it's just that being married to the guy i'm married to we rarely pass BY the bass pro shops where we don't have to stop and GO IN TO the bass pro shops.

and that's just not my kind of shopping.

camouflage bedding.

beef jerky.

fishing boats.

turkey jerky.

guns.

alligator jerky.

did i mention that this bass pro shops it's absolutely HUGE? and that they carry jerky?

which means i can lose john in about 10 seconds flat only to find him 2 hours later caressing a 12 foot long smoker/grill you can actually hook up to a trailer hitch and cart around town.

it's enough to make me curl up underneath the stuffed elk and cry. you know the stuffed elk over by the indoor fish pond stocked with thousand pound catfish that terrify my 4 year old. actually, i find them kinda scary too.

you may have seen us going in to bass pro shops before. i'm the 43 year old adult splayed out on the million degree asphalt kicking and screaming. that tantrum-throwing adult? yep, that's me.

riley and i did discover a little somethin' way up on the second floor the other day, though, right behind the "bow hunting" department.

they carry women's shoes ....

and not just the hip-wader-slogging-through-the-swamp-frog-gigging kind of shoes but REAL shoes. girly shoes.

you know, the kind where your toenails show.

so, naturally, riley and i proceeded to go to town trying on shoes while john and "his" son were downstairs, lost somewhere in the bait aisle.

and that's when i realized my riley, my precious little 11 year old daughter, has surpassed me in shoe size.

in fact, nothing in the bass pro shops inventory fit her.

she's already a size 11+.

so we went toe-to-toe and it appears her big toe, the boss of all the other toes, is the culprit.

he's huge.

he's the goliath of big toes in the big toe world.

even in a pair of flip flops* her big toe hangs over the edge like a cliff diver eyeing the rocks below.

*sidebar: we used to call these "thongs" but daughter informs me that today's proper use of the word "thong" implies fabric being crammed up your fanny crack and therefore it's not appropriate to announce in the middle of the bass pro shop shoe department that we're intersted in TRYING ON THOSE THONGS. which, of course, gives me license to stand there saying THONGS THONGS THONGS THONGS over and over thereby driving her in to a humiliated pre-teen frenzy.

now, i have to admit, my first thought was "oh dang, she's outgrown everything i'm going to be able to buy off the rack ... she's going to require custom-made italian shoes for everything ..."

but then i was overcome with the "she's only 11 ... how BIG ARE HER FEET GOING TO BE?"

and then i looked over and realize this sweet little 11 year old girl also understood the unspoken - all the cute shoes she sees in nordstrom and macy's and neiman marcus and sometimes target aren't going to fit her.

and just when i think she might be tearing up she comes up with this AT LEAST WHEN SOMEONE TELLS ME TO ACT MY AGE, NOT MY SHOE SIZE I CAN TELL THEM I AM.

and i'm relieved 'cause she's let me off the hook ... i don't have to justify marrying and procreating with a 6'7" man who is the carrier of the "huge foot" gene.

last night we were "chatting" about uncompleted chores and she looked at me, serious as can be, and told me to "stop messing with the sasquatch" ...

sasquatch? did she just call herself a sasquatch?

AWESOME. THAT'S ONE LESS HALLOWEEN COSTUME I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT.