My life feels quite surreal as of late. After I got off from work today, I had to drive into horrendous traffic to make it to Borders Book Store and buy out all their copies of
The Wall Street Journal. Over the last week, Wendy has done a couple of phone interviews with a reporter of theirs by the name of Kelly Spors. Today, the article was published in which Wendy was touted as one of the few “Super Affiliates” on the Net.

As I write this, I’m pondering our situation. One of the largest, most prestigious financial publications in the world saw fit to track down my Wife for her professional input as a pioneer of her trade. Her insight will perhaps be digested by some of the most powerful and influential business minds of our era. This is the very same woman who just made me some Rice-A-Roni and Taquitos for Supper. Yes, very surreal.

Anyone who has worked a good length of time in retail can relate to this topic. This is perhaps our greatest frustration outside of thieves. A parent who allows their child to terrorize the store. We in retail toil long and hard to keep our stores neat and clean and all it takes is a single child on a rampage to ruin our day.

It starts at the front door as the five year old boy and his mother come in a grab a shopping cart. It’s about now when the “little guy” pulls the wad of chewing gum from his mouth and throws it on the carpeted floor. The Mother, noticing this, says in her sickly sweet calm voice, “Now Peter, don’t do that”. Then she continues on.

Peter then makes a mad dash to the toy section and proceeds to start ripping action figures from their packaging. Mom is now on the other side of the store contemplating the latest shade of Cover Girl nail polish. By now, Peter is bored with the Action Figures and starts spraying silly string, meanwhile Mom has moved on to mascara.

Twenty minutes pass, by which time play-balls can be seen bouncing down the aisles and several bottles of bubbles have been opened but only a few have spilled on the shelves and carpet. Mom has finally decided we don’t carry a blush dark enough for her liking and perhaps it suddenly dawned on her that the world is full of Perverts and she hasn’t seen her Tot in 30 minutes… but I doubt it.

She turns the corner just in time to witness little Pete take a wiffle ball bat and start beating the bejeezus out of the wind-chime rack. After the sound of 87 wind-chimes simultaneously falling to the floor dies out, Mom’s sickly sweet calm voice can again be heard… “Now Peter, don’t do that”. Lil Pete pays her no attention and grabs a Snicker bar from the shelf, rips it open and takes a healthy bite. The sickly sweet voice says “No Peter, put that back, you’ve already had candy today. Mommy has to pick up her medicine”. Peter throws the half eaten candy bar on the floor.

While mom is at the Pharmacy counter stocking up on her Valium and Zanax, Petey has discovered the neat little machine that dispenses coupons. He pulls one out, throws it on the floor and another magically pops out! Lil Pete thinks this is so very kewl and for the next five minutes these coupons are flying around like confetti!

As Mom’s monthly fix is now secured, she turns from the counter, wades through Pete’s pile of crumpled coupons and that sickly sweet calm voice rings out… “Come ‘on Peter, time to go!” leaving behind in their wake, utter destruction and mayhem.

One of the parenting lessons I’m still learning is that my children do indeed listen to conversations going on around them. Never take for granted that your child is tuning you out in favor of the Cartoon Network or the merry melody being generated from their hand-held Nintendo. The snippets of information they pick up is amazing! For instance, a couple of days ago I’m at my keyboard typing away when my youngest boy Mark, who is six years old, comes to my side and says…”Daddy, that commercial on T.V. is a big liar!” Of course I ask him why he thinks that to be so, to which he replies “because they said Dell is the best computer in the world!” After a hearty chuckle I told him he was indeed correct about the commercial being a “big liar”, then it dawned on me that Wendy and I had a conversation earlier in which we were complaining about how noisy and slow the Dell we own is.

Another lesson that Wendy learned the hard way is that young children have zero discretion. Several years ago she was standing in line at the grocery store and Erick turns around, points at the lady in front of her, then loudly proclaims…. “EWWWWW, Mommy…. She FARTED!!”

I could go on and on with such stories but I am sure some of you have stories of your own. Care to share?

As far as I know, my Mother coined the phrase “Belly-Up to the Bar”. It’s basically a call for my children to come and eat! The Architect who invented this table built opposite the kitchen deserves an award. It’s such a convenient way to “slop” the hogs in between sit down family meals. The food goes straight from being prepared in the kitchen to their expectant mouths with a simple flick of the wrist.

I knew these days would come, and in reality It’s just barely starting. Be that as it may, it still doesn’t negate the fact that I’m having trouble keeping up with appetites. Four gallons of milk per week, a box of cereal demolished in a single sitting! Pounds of cheese, multiple loafs of bread, dozens of eggs… it numbs the mind. To this end, I’ve taken to shopping Sam’s Club again and buying everything in bulk. Simple things like ketchup and mayonnaise I’m bringing home now in vats instead of jars. I couldn’t find enough room in the cabinets to store all the food which prompted me to create the “Granary” which is a topic I’ll leave for another blog.

I feel like one of them “momma” birds with a nest full of chicks with their mouths constantly open screaming for food. Erick is only 12 years old and is in a size 10 shoe for men, I wear a size 9! WTF is up with that? I’ve always been under the impression that having big feet is an omen of tallness. I am not a tall guy, like 5′8″ at best, Wendy is pushing 5′2″ and I fail to understand how we bred gargantuan bottomless pits!

The Sunroom is 100% complete, YAY! I’ll have pix of its construction later. For now, I’m just happy to have a place to put all the excercise equipment she’s accumulated!

In a previous blog, I stated that one of our most treasured household possessions was our wood burning stove. Perhaps “The” most treasured item of everything we own would be our bed. I know it’s so 80’s to have a waterbed but we’ve been married almost 20 years and have owned nothing but! This is our second waterbed and we’ve had it for about 7 years now.

It is equipped with a heater, which enables one to slide into cozy warm bliss on a frigid winter’s eve. This bed is also the perfect height, not too short, not too tall! Adorned with a fine set of Egyptian cotton sheets & a down comforter with a chenille Duvall and plenty of big fluffy pillows, the bed is the epitome of comfort! I kid you not.

The size is a California King so the boys can all pile in first thing in the morning (they love to do that). We also got a special padded liner for it that makes it less “wavy” and more firm. Add to that a set of Captain’s drawers underneath for extra clothing storage and how can one go wrong?

I figure the average person spends over 1/4 of their life in bed, why not make it an enjoyable experience?

Our friend Jennifer brings this yummy treat over on special occasions. This one was a present for Wendy’s birthday. Wendy goes crazy over this stuff. It’s like popcorn mixed with I think a marshmallow cream and peanut M&M’s. I think it’s the “salty-sweet” that appeals to her. I’m quite fond of the stuff too but Jennifer knows the key to my heart lies somewhere between Red Velvet cake and Snicker-doodles!

One of the challenges I had to address when building our house in the “stix” was connectivity to our high-tech lifestyle. I was spoiled at our previous residence with a high speed cable connection. I knew I never wanted to go back to a regular 56k dialup connection but I assumed I could acquire DSL through our local phone company. As it turns out, I was wrong! Apparently, one has to live within a certain distance of a DSL base station or the signal weakens and degrades the further out you go.

That left me with only one really viable alternative, satellite. I found out that there were two types of satellite dishes I could buy. The first would allow me to only receive signal for my television. The latter accepted both TV & Internet. I signed up for a plan that took care of both and amortized the equipment investment over a 1 year period in my monthly payments.

I must say that going from high speed cable to a satellite was like slowing from a sprint to an easy jog. It was definitely better than dialup but still left much to be desired. Beggars can’t be choosers though so I was just sort of happy to have something in between. A few months ago, we got an offer from Direcway to upgrade our modem to a “premium” for an extra $10 a month. They claimed much faster speeds would be available so we signed up. After installing the new modem, WOW what a difference. I still can’t say it’s as fast as a cable connection, but fast enough for little ole me up here in the mountain!

This type of flower is growing wild all over the hill in back of my pool. So of course I snap a pix and bring it here. Anyone wish to be so kind as to identify it for me?