Not In So Many Words...

You readers have been so supportive and compassionate these past two months. You have read my confessions and encouraged my efforts with your comments. I feel it is only fair that I reveal to you the true nature of my past.

Although I have told everyone that I was born and raised in NJ, the REAL truth is that I was born in a subterranean village several miles beneath the earth's crust. The residents of these villages, the Magmites, hide from "topside" citizens, too ashamed of their grotesque features (which look like a cross between shrunken heads and the melting Nazis from Raiders of the Lost Ark). Upon my birth, I was branded a "freak" because of my human, "topside"-like features. (Think Marilyn amongst the Munsters). When I was old enough to fend for myself, my Magmite family forced me into a sack, dragged me miles to the earth's surface and thrust me out into what I have come to think of as my "adopted-world". Though I was raised by the good natured Anderson Family, I have never forgotten my true family still toiling miles beneath the surface. I am and always will be a Magmite at heart.

What? You don't believe me?

Apparently, it's all the rage now to re-invent your past in order to score a few bucks for a book deal. Just ask anyone who read James Frey's book, A Million Little Pieces. Who wouldn't believe that a wreck of a man recovering from addicition would have a root canal without the benefit of novocaine, would rip his own toenail off just for fun, would spit in the face of an established 12-step program so that he could pull himself out of the hell that was his life in HIS OWN WAY?????

Yeah, right. Frey's response when the REAL truth came out was that his "coping mechanism" was to think of himself as meaner and badder than he really was. When asked if he did this because it was how he wanted to see himself or because he knew it would sell more books he replied, "Probably both".

Today on Yahoo there is yet ANOTHER story of a woman who wrote a memoir about her life during the Holocaust. Supposedly, her Jewish parents were killed by the Nazis, so as a 4-year old she went to live with WOLVES???

According to Yahoo, this now 71-year old woman did NOT live with a pack of wolves to escape the Nazis, did NOT trek 1900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents, did NOT kill a German solider in self-defense, and WASN'T EVEN JEWISH!!! (click the link top left for more information!)

Yet the best-seller she wrote more than 10 years ago states all of those "facts" and has been translated into 18 languages. The French have even made it into a feature film (but then again, that's the French for you. Those crazy f*ckers think Jerry Lewis is a GENIUS!)

Here's my favorite part of the author's statement: "This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but MY reality, my way of surviving."

I think its time to expunge the genre of memoir from publishing, since apparently anyone can claim anything about their life and it will be published as fact.

In the meantime, look for my new book coming to a Borders near you: "Down & Dirty: My Life with the Magmites"

Give and Take...

There are many key words associated with marriage. Trust of course, is the biggest. Love, respect, perspective, these are all things that greatly enhance a marriage.

And then there's compromise. That give and take that is essential to the success of two people sharing their lives together. Even before Mr. Flossy and I got married, we would compromise to keep the peace. I wouldn't chew gum with my mouth open and he wouldn't make that strange, high-pitched sound that reminded me of a balloon squeak. Neither of us would think of spending more than $100 on something without consulting the other (except for that $400 compost tumbler he had to have..) He put up with my crappy choices in television, I put up with his boxed sets of Grateful Dead.

And now, after nearly 13 years of marriage, we are still compromising. On how we discipline our kids...where we spend Christmas and Thanksgiving...how we manage (or mismanage) or money. And then there are the REALLY important issues:

I will no longer eat black bean soup (which makes my gas smell like a rotting dead animal)
He will no longer eat raw red onions (which makes his breath smell like old truck tires).

Ah compromise! It brings harmony and balance to a marriage.

Oh Poop.....

We live on a nice street, in a nice neighborhood, in a nice town.  It's not a McMansion millionaire kinda area, but its a lovely mixed neighborhood with working professionals, families, and retirees.  It's a quiet, mind your own business, be glad to pop over for a beer, come swimming in my pool with my permission kind of place.  We have been here 10 years and we love it.

What's my prob?  Dogs and poop.  DOG POOP.  I love dogs, dogs are cute and funny and they make the whole world a wonderful doggy filled place.  However, I do NOT like dog poop.  Specifically, I do not like ANYONE's dog pooping on my grass or even better, at the end of my driveway.  It's really quite a hassle when my kids step in dog s**t right as they get on the bus....or when it sticks to my car tires and tracks into the garage, or I have to shout at my kids, playing on their own lawn to watch out for the logs that are not logs.  

I have tried signs.  

Sign 1:  Please, my children wait for the bus here!!  Pick up your dog poop!  Arrow pointing at pile of poop.  

Sign 2:  Do I crap on YOUR lawn?  Pick up your dog's crap!  Arrow pointing at pile of poop.  

I had to stop the signage as my 11 year old threatened to run away from sheer embarassment.  The offenders, who walk their cute little pups, have read my signs....there is NO way they couldn't have. Hell, they probably had a good chuckle and rewarded their dogs for holding it all the way around the corner and then bowel explode at my house.  And....they continue to let their dogs crap over and over and over on my property.  You lazy friggin idiots!!!!  You can't take a plastic bag with you to clean it up?  How much time does that take?  This is a decent neighborhood for god's sakes.....have some pride!  You may ask why I don't confront the offenders.  Well, last summer their was quite a bruhaha over teenagers drinking and dumping cases of beer all over the neighborhood.  I opened my mouth in meek protest and was severely punished for it.  (think-threats, angry confrontations, 4 bags of trash dumped on my lawn).  So, I learned my lesson.  Say nothing.  Do nothing.  

But here I am thinking I might have three options....

1.  Ignore it and continue to drag buckets of water daily out of the house to wash the crap away.

2.  Buy video camera and record offender and show local dog officer (yes it is a $500 fine to allow your animal to defecate on someone else's property.)

3.   crap in their yard.

So glad I was able to get the crap off my chest....

One more greenie....

I completely forgot to mention in the previous blog about my KICK ASS re-useable shopping bags!  I purchased 10 of these suckers about three months ago.  I keep them in my car and pull them out when headed to the grocery store.  They are AWESOME!  I feel a giant sense of smug satisfaction sauntering out of the store with all my groceries nicely packed in these bags while the many other fools, ahem....I mean shoppers.... wheel away loaded down with nasty plastic bags.  

Furthermore, I have to haul my groceries up a flight of stairs and guess what????  I make TWO trips opposed to the 4-5 trips I would have had to make with plastic bags.  Why, you ask?  Well, you can load two times the stuff in each bag, and they have long handles so you can wing them over your shoulder like a purse.  Sweet!

You can buy them for about $1 each at every supermarket these days.  Here's another incentive.....I have heard rumblings, from the cashiers, that eventually shoppers will be charged 5 cents per plastic bag.  

If you can do only ONE environmentally responsible thing.....get these bags!!!

It Ain't Easy Bein' Green!

Funny that Fitfreak chose this topic, I was just moved to write about it myself when I saw a woman at the mall carrying a Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee in a plastic cup that WAS THEN PLACED INSIDE OF A STYROFOAM CUP!!! ARRRRGGHHH!

Now, I'm no recycling freak, I used to toss tin cans and plastic away with abandon! Till I moved in with crunchy granola roommates in Jamaica Plain, need I say anymore??? My throwaway days were OVAH!

Al Gore has changed all that, he scared the CRAP out of me with An Inconvenient Truth (actually he HALF scared the crap out of me, half BORED the crap out of me, I confess I snoozed during some of it but the part I was awake for was freakin' SCARY!)

So here we all are trying to reduce our "carbon footprint" (ah, such a trendy phrase!) Use florescent, not incandescent. Turn down your thermostat, carpool, RECYCLE, RECYCLE, RECYCLE!

I remember when I gave Fitfreak shit about her lack of recycling, she said, "We really don't use very many plastic bottles!" and I said, 'Oh really, you don't use KETCHUP, MUSTARD, MAYONNAISE, WATER, GATORADE, SHAMPOO, CONDITIONER or ANY HAIR PRODUCTS???? You don't microwave LEAN CUISINE MEALS or buy STRAWBERRIES IN PLASTIC CONTAINERS??? HUH????? DO YOU??

Maybe it was my diatribe. Maybe it was the Living Green page a day calendar I gave her for Christmas that helped. Whatever it was, I thank you, the planet thanks you and most of all AL GORE thanks you!

Green is a beautiful color...

I love to throw things out.  It makes my insanely euphoric to dump papers, whatnots, crappy toys, junk mail and all things that land on my kitchen counter....out, out, out.  As a matter of fact, I can count at least four times I have had to don the rubber gloves and pick through the trash for that oh so important paper that one of my kids had to have signed by me, or completed for the next day, or was vital to soverignity of our nation....whatever, you get the drift.  My children don't ask me if something is lost or misplaced....they glare at me with those eyes and say "mum, did you THROW it out???"  My answer 9 out of 10 times is....yup.  

So in this vain, dump day is my happiest day of the week.  Weeeee, it's Friday!  Time to load up the car and dump all that useless crap that floats around the house all week and causes me to have panic attacks.  (I am neatfreak....see previous blog for more information).  I friggin LOVE the dump.  Oh, how invigorating it is to heave those laden bags of trash into the giant pit!!!    Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I am FREE at last!

So, one day Flossy got on my case about the amount of trash I dumped and my complete lack of recycling.  She was adamant about saving our planet, and I was, ......well, not.  (Let us please note that I do recycle my cardboard boxes and daily newspaper but that was about it.)    She would screech at me.....What about the plastic water/milk bottles, the bottles of Pellegrino Mr. Fitfreak downs, or my fav Fresca cans???    "Too much of a pain",  I said.  "Get a conscience!", she said.    

Fine, fine, FINE!  Guilt usually works with me.  So off I go to purchase a laundry basket for plastics and a bin for the bottles.  I was quite sure that there would be little to throw in to each bin and the whole damn effort would be a complete and total waste of my time.  WRONG!  I am amazed and PROUD to report that this family of 5 has gone from 6-7 full trash bags a week to 2-3!!!!  The recycling bins for bottles, cans, plastic and newspaper/boxes/paper are FULL every week!  I was completely and totally shocked!  I really and truly didn't think we used that much stuff that could be recycled.  

Now I am even more pumped for the dump.  I swing my two bags of trash into the pit and hop, skip and jump over to the recycling area.  Like a recycling fairy, I dump my bins into the appropriate areas and leave with a great feeling of doing something right!  Mr. Fitfreak thinks it is all silly, and whatnot.  But here is my attitude, no matter what you believe about global warming or the environment.....isn't it worth it to make even a tiny effort to do something that can help???  My tiny effort equaled into four less bags of trash being burned and polluting the air each week.  Thanks Flossy!

Let's Talk About Sex

Okay, file this under TMI, but I'd like to know how people squeeze in sex without their kiddoes being aware of it? Mr. Flossy and I just had a quickie this morning, and thankfully the kids were both sound asleep, but on a previous morning we finished only to have our nearly 10-year old anxiously call out "Daddy are YOU OKAY???" He thought there was something wrong with MY HUSBAND'S BREATHING! We assured him that Daddy had a little stomach ache, which accounted for the groaning and he seemed to buy it.

Most nights, the kids fight us about going to sleep. Even on a good night, the older one might still be awake until 10 p.m. By that time, I am snoozing myself and GOD HELP MR. FLOSSY IF HE WAKES ME UP FROM A SOUND SLEEP TO HAVE SEX! Sorry, but has anyone seen one of those horror movies when a perfectly normal person suddenly morphs into a hideous demon? Yeah, that's me being woken up for SEX!

Luckily for the husband and I, God invented America's Funniest Home Videos. On Sunday nights from 7-8, our kids are GLUED to the television down in the playroom. We can hear their screams of laughter through the floor as people on t.v. get nailed in the balls, fly off a skateboard or accidentally run over their cat with the lawnmower (oops!). Conversely, they cannot hear our screams of pleasure through the floor (okay, maybe not SCREAMS, but still...).

The only downside to this arrangement is when AFV is pre-empted due to a very special two-hour Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

Damn that Ty Pennington!