"the clarification you require to get through your day"

a thought occurred to me in the car yesterday.

on our little road trip to explore the miles and miles of country roads we've so nicely transplanted ourself in to.

on our way out to visit our friends bill & tammi and their kids mckenna and grace.

on our way out to surely overstay our welcome by not leaving until 8 o'clock last night.

on our way out to sponge pizza and cheesey bread off of them.

on our way out to hug their necks and tell them how much we've missed them.

on our way out to laugh manically at everyone who chooses to remain in frozen colorado while those of us with two brain cells to rub together have moved ourselves to the land of warmth and fire ants.

on our way out to sit on a swing underneath the oak trees, to feed deer, watch our kids play in the sand, and to plan gardens.

this is the very thought that occurred to me and the very one that i must now convey to you.

urgently.

riley is NOT the boss of wyatt's belly button.

how do i know this?

because wyatt informed us of this exactly 3,963 times in the car yesterday on our 160 mile roundtrip roadtrip.

so allow me sum it up for you again - in the event you're still operating with the confused notion that riley is, in fact, the boss of wyatt's belly button.

RILEY IS NOT THE BOSS OF WYATT'S BELLY BUTTON.

now you may get on with your day.

More Star Wars Please

you can already file this away in the "guess you had to be there category", but here goes anyway.

we were in vegas last weekend on business. john and i spent a little time at the blackjack tables. now, we're not big gamblers but we do enjoy playing blackjack together, especially if john sits at my right and lovingly coaches me when i attempt to double down as the dealer holds a face card.

that's, evidently, a big no no.

we ALWAYS net a profit and we ALWAYS walk away when we're ahead.

the casinos hate that, by the way.

anyway, we spent some time at the "party pit" blackjack table in Bally's Casino. you get really cool plastic jewelry when you hit a blackjack. now i'm not big on plastic jewelry but last weekend i was rather enjoying my mardi gras beads.

and our table got on a run.

we played for hours, collecting plastic jewelry and laughing so loud the dealers were fighting to get back to our table as a happy table is a tipping table.

they were doing well too.

as i said, though, john and i always know when it's time to cash out.

so cash out time rolled around and we collected our stack of chips and headed over to the Cashier's Cage.

we waited in line as very serious tellers exchanged very serious money for chips and very serious chips for money.

when it was our turn, john sauntered up to the cashier and proceeded to request 2 TICKETS TO STAR WARS ... NO, MAKE THAT THE STAR WARS TRILOGY.

and the cashier didn't think it was funny. at all.

and the more the cashier didn't think it was funny, the funnier it got.

and i wet my pants right there in bally's.

the end.

Showering With Strangers

i showered with a stranger this morning.

i should have expected it, having witnessed the Law of Attraction at work and all ...

you see, i spent the weekend at a family reunion in oklahoma.

got to hang out with my very cool, rodeo-ing 18-year-old nephew ben.

we gave him his high school graduation gift - new macbook with all the bells and whistles.

seeing the look on his face when he realized he wasn't JUST getting the 5 dollar sonic giftcard was priceless.

so he loaded up his new laptop with some songs from his phone's mp3 player ... stuff i hadn't heard before as i'm not really all that in to country music. and he grew up and continues to reside in oklahoma.

'nuff said.

so ben's playing for me his favorites, one of which is a song by brad paisley titled "ticks".

and i must say it's danged funny.

we sat by the pool watching the "young-uns" swim in the dark and by the glow of his laptop i learned the lyrics, which we then sang out LOUD until i couldn't get them out of my head ...

"cause i'd like to see you out in the moonlight
i'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks
i'd like to walk you through a field of wildflowers
and i'd like to check you for ticks"

so you've probably guessed it - the small, dark and decidedly repulsive stranger i discovered in my shower this morning was, yes, a TICK.

all together now ... eeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

he was strategically located on my hip, just far enough around that i'd need the flexibility of an owl to get a good look at him.

so i called in the big guns.

john. a lighter. a pair of needle-nose pliers.

i don't really want to go in to the details. suffice it to say, this morning's tick removal wasn't pretty.

but DANG, i have no idea where he came from, all i know is i haven't had a tick since i was like 10 years old and boom, two days after belting out tick lyrics for a whole weekend i got one setting up house on my hindquarters.

man panties

i'm the mother of a very courageous little boy.

john and i took the kids jet skiing in mexico.

knowing riley's love for speed, john, um, "volunteered" to ride with her. and when i say "volunteered" i mean he pulled my hair, poked me in the eye, and dislocated my knee as we were racing to see who got to her jet ski first.

nah, not really. but we both really, really wanted to ride with her because we both like to go really, really fast.

in contrast, wyatt sometimes tells me to slow down when i'm pushing him around the grocery store in their racecar shopping carts. "too fast" he'll tell me.

too fast? i've only got 2 wheels that are spinning regularly ... the third is tangled up in some kind of string they use to truss up hams and the fourth is not even touching the ground. it's not possible to go "too fast" in a rig like this.

but a jet ski ... ah, there's some speed for ya.

john and i once jet skiied all the way around paradise island and the atlantis resort twice in our allotted time when we'd been warned we'd be pushing it to make it around once.

his hind quarters looked like he'd been sitting on a cheese grater when he was done (something about little mesh swimsuits inside the outside swimsuit ... guys, i feel for ya.)

anyway, i drew the short jet ski straw with wyatt as my riding buddy.

we got on. i "accelerated" enough to move us a foot or two off shore and he started ordering me to "SLOW DOWN!"

bummer.

so, keeping us just out of a stall, we head out in to the caribbean ocean.

my son and i.

the first ten minutes went something like this:

wyatt: SLOW DOWN!

me: I CAN'T GO ANY SLOWER

jet ski: STALL

wyatt: SLOW DOWN!

me: I CAN'T. THE JET SKI IS OFF

then the next fifty minutes went something like this:

wyatt: SLOW DOWN!

me: I CAN'T GO ANY SLOWER

jet ski: STALL

wyatt: SLOW DOWN!

me: I CAN'T. THE JET SKI IS OFF

but then our hour on the jet skis was over and we went to the poolside restaurant for lunch. there, wyatt proceeded to point out very loudly, as an obviously european fellow strolled by in his speedo, that YOU DON'T WEAR YOUR MAN PANTIES OUTSIDE.

and i fell back in love with him immediately.

My Hat Goes To Hawaii

me and my hat are presently wiling away a few hours in the phoenix airport, awaiting our connection to KONA, HAWAII. we're straddling a little round coffee table in the US Airways lounge under the strict supervision of tracey at the front desk, whose primary job responsibility today is to ensure we understand, without question, the "no feet on the furniture" policy.

in spite of the fact i've lived in colorado for 17 years she must be able to still smell the "oklahoma" on me ... i don't hear her warning anyone else of the NO FEET ON THE FURNITURE rule, which she announced to us the minute we sidled up to her desk.

now john's reclining, using his carry-on bag as an ottoman, but occasionally tracey will glance over here to confirm his giant feet aren't actually touching the coffee table.

i just smile and wave and keep on clipping his toenails.

okay, i'm not really clipping john's toenails in the phoenix airport ... that would be CRAZY seeing as you can't even say the words "toenail clippers" in an airport anymore. much less pack them on your person. but i'd really, really like to see tracey's face if she were to catch me mid-clip ... with toenail shards bouncing off the upholestery right and left.

but today i'm going to hawaii so tracey's furniture fetish isn't bothering me. not even the intimate frisk i received from the security screeners in the denver airport, thanks to my underwire bra, could take the bloom off this day's rose.

toenail clippers and bras aside, i'm wearing my hat today and feeling good about it.

i bought this cute little straw hat with the black band about 15 years ago. it was expensive. made in italy. and it looks pretty darn cute on me if i do say so myself. but i've never worn it outside of my house. might sweat on the sweatband or ruin it or something.

i was in my closet the other day, surveying my hawaiian atire options, when i noticed the hat glaring at me. it never leaves my closet. it wanted to go to hawaii. i said yes. after all, what's the point of having nice, expensive stuff if i'm not going to wear it or use it today?

my decision to take my hat to the steamy tropics was liberating. i found myself pouring orange juice in to our fancy-schmancy-wedding-gift-wine-glasses that have never been used ... our harmonica, the "nice" one (i guess you really can't take the oklahoma out of the girl), has now been broken in by wyatt ... it's sticky and covered in cheerio juice and making sweet, sweet music these days ...

i'm a little self-conscious in my hat. i couldn't pack it, being that it was an expensive hat and all, so it's riding in the main cabin with us. on my head.

i wore it in the denver airport. i'm now wearing it in the phoenix airport. people look. not for any reason other than i'm an aberration in the airport landscape. for a while i took it off and then i realized i wasn't wearing MY hat out of concern for what other people were thinking.

"looking good. looking bad."

it owns us and drives us unless we really get how ridiculous it is.

so i proudly put my hat back on. smushing down my hair until the hawaiian humidity kicks it up a notch. and i feel great.

why?

well, in about 7 hours i'm going to be wearing my first lei thanks to tony, our driver, who kindly pointed out that as this was not "fantasy island" he would not be waiting for us with fresh flowers unless we were willing to pay for them in advance. we did.

aloha!