ProlificMom

I must confess that I was unprepared to be the mother of boys.  Actually, I will probably never be prepared to be the mother of boys – and I have three of them. Two are now teenagers.

How do you prepare for what boys can do when you grew up with only sisters?  My father was the only male in our house and I don’t ever remember walking into the bathroom and seeing the toilet in the upright position or even unflushed.  As long as I have known him he has been well trained, clean and organized – nothing like the three wild dogs who call me Mom.

When I was growing up, the worst things I remember doing were 1. Poking my sister in the breast with a  sewing needle because I didn’t want her to boss me around, 2. I touched a hot burner with my bare hand after my dad told me not to touch the stove because it was hot, 3. I got kicked off my best friends horse after he told me to stop kicking it in the flanks – what are flanks? 4. I tied green sewing thread across the yard from the tree to the front porch at about the neck level of a two year old….not a good surprise for my little sister.  5. I held a lit, black cat fire cracker too long and it exploded in my hand – more than once.  Sometime my ears still ring at night and I have to sleep with a fan on for static noise to drown out the ringing. 6. And I once held my sisters mouth shut while I blew into her nose.  But I never did any of the things my boys have done.  At least I don’t think so.  I don’t know where it comes from.

On a recent Sunday night I stayed up late to do laundry.  The last two loads were boys clothes.  I added a few of my own garments to wear to work the next day.  At midnight the buzzer on the dryer sounded off and I promptly opened the door to remove the clothes.  As soon as the dryer door opened a razor blade fell out and landed next to my foot.  I didn’t even want to know why.  My main concern was whether or not any of the clothes had been slashed.  Thankfully, after careful inspection, they had not.  Then, as I opened the front loading washer and began to remove the second load of laundry my sense of smell was assaulted by the distinct odor coming from a big ball of poop about the size of a super bouncy ball lodged in the rubber door liner!  I carefully removed each piece of laundry and inspected it for poop.  Finding none, I reloaded the clothes, removed the big ball of poop from the liner and restarted the machine, selecting the heavy duty setting with all of the selections turned on – hot water, extended wash, extra rinse, extended spin, stain clean – and I used an extra dose of 3x detergent.  This smell would be gone in no time.

The next morning at 5:30 AM I moved the clothes from the washer to the dryer – a process we call the hokey pokey – popped in two dryer sheets and then I took a shower to wake up.  After slathering myself with cocoa butter scented lotion I used baby power scented deodorant.  At 7:00 am I finally removed the clothes from the dryer and got dressed for the day.  On the way to work, I noticed that I could still smell the poop.  How could this be?  So, I stopped at the dollar store and bought a bottle of heavy duty fabric refresher that eliminates odors.  Back in the car, I sprayed myself down from head to toe before I entered my office for the day.  Unfortunately, I still smelled like a big ball of poop.  That is all  I could smell all day long.  I couldn’t wait to get home and change my clothes.   When I got home I asked the mister to sniff me and tell me what he smelled.  He crinkled his nose and gave me a whiff.  Then he made a bad face and told me all he could smell was something that smelled too sweet.

I don’t know what everyone else smelled, but all I smelled all day long was that big ball of poop.

Its snowing in Texas again.  I can’t believe it.  The kids were released early from school yesterday and school was closed today.  This gives them a 4.5 day weekend.  The boys have been VERY BUSY “working” outside in the snow.  They built a fort, shoveled the sidewalk and driveway, and built a snowman.  I got to help #5 decorate the snowman. He has a skrewdriver nose, button eyes  and mouth, leftover ribbon scarf, some old kid sunglasses and beach hat.  I think he looks very crafty.

All For the Love of a Cat

Please put the cat down and eat your lunch.

Thanks to the in-laws for their Christmas gift of a $50 Applebee’s gift card, we celebrated on new year’s eve with a night on the town.   First, we had dinner at Applebees.  I recommend the Smothered Chicken.  It was fantastic and I still have some leftover in the fridge.The gift card paid for most of the meal and we covered the rest.  Eating out has gotten very expensive since four of the five kids no longer order off of the kids menu.  Even if two of them share an entree, its pretty expensive.

The kids had a great time posing for pictures but I think the people in the surrounding tables may now be blind  from my flash going off constantly.  Don’t those shutterbug moms just annoy you at restaurants?  We ate until we were completely stuffed.

mugging for the camera

goofing off again

After dinner we headed to the movie store and rented the final install of the Jason Bourne trilogy.  I think we are the last family in Texas to see this movie.  It was everything I heard it would be – a great action thriller.  And yes, we let the  children watch all that violence – but we watched it with them so we could talk about any issues that needed to be addressed.

Death by Brownie

After picking up the movie we went home where we ate desert which I had prepared before leaving for the restaurant.  I try not to buy restaurant deserts because they are so expense for a family of seven.  About an hour before leaving home I baked a pan of brownies in my bunt pan and left them on top of the stove covered with foil.  They were still warm when we came home.  I like using this pan for baking because its easier to cut slices for the kids.  All of my breads/cakes get baked in this pan.

Our new year’s desert:  Death by brownie.  My secret ingredient – about 1/4 cup of Hershey’s chocolate syrup added to the mix.  It doesn’t matter what brand of mix you get.  I use Great Value brand and I always add this extra ingredient to make sure its extra moist and rich.  Then I get a large scoop of ice cream and cover them both with more Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. UMMMMM, GOOD!

Death by Brownie

We watched the movie while eating the brownie desert and then groaned from being too full. This one fell asleep at 9:00 while rocking in his XRocker chair while these two updated their Facebook pages:

Rocked himself asleep by 9:00.

Updating Facebook

Finally, we ended the day by playing Yatzee and watching Dick Clark’s traditional new years eve show from Time’s Square on TV.  It was great to see him ring in the new year again. This has been a year of great trials and triumphs for the ProlificMom family, but through it all I can say that we have been truly blessed by God.  We are looking forward to a FANTASATIC 2010.  Oh, and In now just 3.5 months away from turnin 40.

Where I’ve Been:

You’ve probably been wondering where I’ve been lately.  First, I decided to change my habits.  Instead of staying up late and blogging past the midnight hour, I have been making myself go to bed at 9:00pm.  This has drastically improved my life.  I’ve been a lifelong insomniac and there is no end to the reasons for staying up late.  After all, there are not enough hours in a day to do everything I need to accomplish.  But I’m getting older and I have too many day time responsibilities, so  my life has to change.  No more late night blogging for me.  I’m just going to have to find another time to do it.  Being a full-time working mom is a challenge

I fell in love at Goodwill:

So, here is what I’ve been up to.  I started reading other mother’s blogs and learning about being frugal and shopping at places like Craig’s List and Goodwill and Freecycle.  Now, instead of having a problem with insomnia, I have a problem with Goodwill.  Its addictive – like crack for moms.  Recently, I innocently went to our local Goodwill store to drop off a few bags of donated clothing and decided to go inside.  One hour and $85 dollars later I walked out totally smitten, in love with thrift shopping.  Its totally addictive.

Goodwill finds – Before (the after will be in a later post):

Here are only a few of my thrifty finds.

Look at these three beauties!  the Tall one is a very heavy Stiffel lamp and I didn’t  pay more that $8 for any one of them.  And I got two perfect lampshades for $2.50 each to go on the smaller lamps in my bedroom.  I can’t wait to show you.   This is my before shot when I was taping them before painting.  Stay tuned for more on these beauties!

Sorry, but this photo is turned on its side.  Just look at this beautiful mirror.  It is plaster cast and heavy as a boat anchor. Just wait till you see what I did with this thing.  There is an interesting story literally behind this one.  It was my most expensive purchase at $8.50.  Check back on a later post for the full step by step before and after on this vintage mirror.

And finally, this was just too cute to pass up for $2.50 and I painted it brown and hung it in my newly refinished laundrey room.  I can’t wait to do a blog on that one.  It’s now my favorite room in the house.

Goodbye for now and happy thrifting.  I’ll see you at Goodwill.

Today, on the way home from work I had to stop at Walmart to purchase a kitty carrier.  Walmart had all of their leftover Halloween candy on sale  for 75% off.   It was posted by the front door. So, I picked up these favorites for just pennies on the dollar.  How could I resist?  They were calling my name.

Unfortunately, when it comes to candy, I have all of the self control of a 15 year old.  Actually, it’s more like a 7 year old and and eight year old combined.

Right now I am sooooo sick I feel like I could vomit.

To make matters worse, the Mister asked me to go to the store to buy chips and salsa. Although I was already nauseated, while I was there I also picked up this favorite.  It was delicious but now I feel even worse.

Some people just never learn!!!

I LOVE chocolate so much, if you cut me I would bleed Hershey’s Syrup.

So here is the rest of the story.

I was in the store to buy school supplies for #2 and #4. It was the day after Halloween and Walmart had all of their candy in boxes by the front door. The sign said 50% off. How could I resist. It was calling my name.

{and the sales clerk laughed}

Then, on the way to the school supplies I remembered that I had decided to try some kind of weight loss aid, because I really want to lose 15 pounds by new years. Kind of an “old year’s” resolution. So, I stopped by THAT AISLE in the pharmacy department. There were so many different brands to choose from and I decided to go with something new – Full Bar. It seems like a simple concept. It fills you up so you will not overeat and you will not feel hungry between meals.

On Monday morning I arrived at work early and ate half of a bar. They are very large so I figured half would be enough for my trial run. The instructions say to eat the entire bar and drink 8oz of water, then wait 30 minutes before eating a meal.

I am a stickler for following instructions. It really irritates me when someone neglects to follow directions and then comes to me to figure out how to fix their problem. And then, of course, I ask them if they followed the instructions. JUST FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS PEOPLE! OK???

Since I only ate half a bar, I decided to only drink half the liquid, but I really didn’t want to drink water so I drank about four ounces of diet coke. It’s still liquid….uhhh…right?

I was really hungry and I didn’t want to wait 30 minutes to eat. So, I went ahead and ate an entire can of soup. I was starving. This is what I usually have for breakfast except only half of a can. After downing the soup I was still really hungry, so I at the last half of the full bar followed by the rest of the diet coke. But I was still REALLY hungry. I couldn’t get enough to eat for some reason. Then I ate like 1/4th of the bag of chocolate. But I was still hungry!

This is where it got kind of interesting because I then suddenly had to go to the bathroom. Can you say POOP?

CAUTION: This is the part of the story where I talk about poop, but I will refer to it as BM (bowel movement) for those of you moms who are so demure and ladylike that you would never be caught even saying the word “fart”.

I had to go like I hadn’t had a BM in days. Then about an hour later I had to go again – same thing. Then, you guessed it, an hour later I was back in the lou for BM #3. Oh my goodness! Three full BMs in THREE HOURS! And now I was starving AGAIN. So I ate a bag of chips and some more chocolate and some crackers and a fruit bar – and I was still hungry like I hadn’t eaten in days. THEN I had to go back to the lou for my fourth and final very full BM before leaving work for the day. This was ridiculous!

On the way home (a one hour drive) I was so hungry that I felt like I could have eaten my shoe. If only it had been made of chocolate! I couldn’t wait to get home and eat dinner.

WOW! What an odd day. After thinking about it for a while I decide that I probably should have followed the directions on the Full Bar package because I definitely did not follow the directions. I did it my own way and it definitely BACKFIRED on me.

Moral of the story: FOLLOW THE DIRECTION!

Today I waited until after work, ate an entire Full Bar, drank 8oz of water and waited 30 minutes to eat. I only ate a modest portion of pork for dinner and I am completely satisfied. It has been two hours and so far….NO BM.

Last night I had to go to the store to get some school supplies for #s 2 and 4.  On the way to the schools supplies I just happened to pass both of these items.  One of them was selling for half price so I couldn’t  pass it up.

{and the sales clerk laughed}