Thoughts of Lincoln

 "I do not wish to get any closer to you than I currently am. Please take me away, Swing."

 "Slave, you are going to be quite sorry when we reach my people and I tell them you disallowed my free speech of hitting. Now giddy-up."

 "This creature is large and humorous! Ha ha ha!"

 "While you two sit around doing SQUAT, I do the real work around here. Pushing my six-wheeler. In circles. Like a MAN."

 "See this guy? I like this guy. He's fluffy, and smaller than me. Cool guy. And when I pet him in the special way he loves that's like soft-ish hitting, he likes to give me high-fives with BOTH PAWS AT ONCE. Special bond here. Yup."

 "Male bonding going on here. Please leave now."

 "Yeah, I've been in a firetruck before. Saved ten people and a puppy. True story. What, you don't believe me? Take a step back. Now."

 "I take this very seriously. The hat . . . it's symbolic. Of redness. And seriousness."

"I'm trying to show my happy face. I think my face is breaking."

You Get What You Pay For. Especially When It's Free.

  A little while back, we got a flyer from our local Toyota dealer with scratchers on it. We got to scratchin' and--SURPRISE!-- we won! Of course we knew it had to be too good to be true, a scam of some sort. There were only four prizes listed--a new car, $5000 in cash, $100 in gift cards (with a picture showing itunes, Starbucks, and Walmart giftcards), and another awesome-looking prize I can't remember. Anyhoo, we called the dealership and we were assured that we did in fact win one of those four prizes, we didn't have to listen to any car sales spiels, etc. So we figured, hey, why not?

  I drove down to the dealership and, after being questioned for a few minutes about my car (I quickly informed them I love my car and couldn't afford a new one even if I didn't), they awarded me my prize--gift cards! It was the worst prize listed, but hey, I wasn't going to sneer at free money-like things on a card.

  Unlike what was shown on the flier, however, the giftcards were not for itunes, Starbucks, Walmart, or any other place I might actually want to spend money. They were $25 for four different internet shops. A leather one, a pots and pans one, a electronics one, and one that could be SkyMall's inbred cousin. I figured, okay, I'll just buy one cheap thing at each store. I'm getting free stuff out of this, I don't care, whatever.

  Looking at the websites (which I refuse to list because I'm not giving them any traffic), it was obvious they were all owned by the same company, since they were all the exact same layout. They were all also hecka expensive. Not that you didn't see that coming. But, McKay and I managed to find a little something at each place.

  Here are the goods:

  A set of speakers, a hair trimming set, a leather bracelet, a cheese grater, and a duster.

  The good:

 I quite like the bracelet, actually. It was $27 dollars, so I ended up paying about $5 for it including the shipping (that's where they getcha), but I feel like it was worth five bucks. I can swing that.

 

  Whew. It took me WAY too long to get these two pictures next to each other and be able to type underneath them again. Get your crap together, blogger, that should not have been so difficult. And all of that just to say, I have no quarrel with these objects. They both function as they should. Carry on, cheese grater and duster.

The Bad:

  McKay picked the hair trimmer set because his current hair-buzzy thing (can't think of the name right now) is dying. This one, however, has never worked at all. Lincoln currently uses it as a cell phone, holding it up to his ear, walking around the living room and laughing/garbling to himself. The scissors are also reminiscent of what you give to first graders with Elmer's glue and tell them to get crackin' on a collage. McKay said they (the scissors) don't really cut at all. They're pretty good at bending hair, though. If that's what you're into.

  Here is a video of the speakers: 

And, yes, we were listening to a Dave Barry book audio-style. Dave Barry audiobooks remind me of long car drives to Utah as a child.

   So, yeah. Mixed bag there. But when car dealerships are giving away hundreds of giftcards, I guess your expectations shouldn't be too high. You can live vicariously through me, though, I've done the work so you don't have to wonder about those scratcher flyers ever again. Unless you're in the market for a moderately satisfactory cheese grater or duster. Then by all means, go for it.

Watching Preview for "World War Z"

Little Girl in Preview: Daddy, what's 'martial law'?

McKay: It's an excuse for Ben Affleck to show off his moves.

Me: That's Brad Pitt.

McKay: Oh, uh, yeah.


   And, this, ladies and gentlemen, is why McKay never gets the pink slice of his Trivial Pursuit pie.

Playing Taboo With Friends Last Night

Man Giving Clue: Kiss me, I'm--

McKay: JEWISH!

Random Things I Like Today

1. Eight more pages in my book! Five written, three copied and pasted from my last draft.

2. This video:

  This guy is incredibly hilarious. Watch all of his "Confessions of an ex Disney employee" videos. They're all great, I want there to be 100,000,000 more.

3. Die, Sexy Merida, die! Disney backs off, and little girls get to keep their tomboy Princess. See here for details.

4. Whoa, this list is looking very anti-Disney. But, as you guys know, I'm a huge Dizgeek, don't read too much into this. And this isn't a real point, just wanted to clarify that.

5. Have you guys heard of the whole Coverflip thing that happened a few days ago? An author I've enjoyed in the past, Maureen Johnson, made an offhand comment on twitter about how men tell her they'd like to read her stuff, but the covers are too girly. She then challenged people to take popular covers and switch them as if they'd been written by the opposite gender. Pretty awesome stuff, and eye opening as to how books women write are often immediately labelled as "fluff". Check it out.

Happy Mother's Day

  I thought I appreciated my mother before I had Lincoln, but it was after that I realized--WHOA. I was way off.

  When Lincoln was a newborn and I was overwhelmed, thinking constantly, "This tiny person's survival depends on me. How do I deal with this total shift of my focus and being?", another part of me whispered--"Mom did this. FOUR TIMES."

  When I feel proud of myself for making dinner three times in a week, I think--Mom did this. Every day. For years. With me as a child, sighing and saying,"I wish we were having McDonalds for dinner."

  When I feel proud for (finally) vacuuming the million graham cracker bits and cheerios that are embedded in the carpet, I think--Mom did this. I'm pretty sure every day. She didn't even make a big deal of it, bragging to Dad like I do to McKay.

  When I think, "Gosh, I would love to have a day alone," I think--How many days did Mom get to be alone in the twenty-eight years it took to raise us all? Not all that many, I think. And the few she did, I remember pouting, thinking, "How could she want to be away from ME?" (I get it now, Mom.)

  Though I call her almost every day now, so she still can't really shake me. She still doesn't really get days off. (Which is why I'm not calling today, actually. I thought maybe a break would be nice. I didn't forget, I promise.)

   So to the woman who let me snuggle her on the couch as a child, probably smooshing and smothering her--

  To the woman who never got mad at the number of books I ruined reading in the bathtub--

  To the woman who let me be by myself when I needed to as a broody teenager, but also knew exactly when to knock on my door and hold me when I cried--

  To the woman who still cheers for every small success--

  To the woman who I want to be when I grow up--

  Happy Mother's Day. I love you.

Day 27: What is My Favorite Part of my Body and Why

  Uh.

 This post kind of threw me through a loop.

  I think, like most women, I'm too busy caught up in thinking about the things I absolutely hate about my body. The things I immediately look at in a mirror. The things that I doubt few others care nearly so much as I do about.

  But [WARNING: I feel a rant coming on] isn't that what most media teaches us to do? Here are a million products you don't need to fix problems that shouldn't really be defined as problems! Here are a thousand women with zero body fat because they don't eat! Here are celebrities four weeks after giving birth, looking trimmer than ever, and here are their four secrets! (except for the one real one: tummy tucks. You're not supposed to work out the first four weeks after you give birth. So suck it, celebrities, I know you're full of it). All of us are killing ourselves trying to achieve this "beautiful" shape that only 1% of the population naturally has, and very few can achieve with even great, boring effort.

  So, forget the prompt. I'm going to give you a whole LIST of things I think are beautiful about myself. Because I need the reminder.

1. My waist. I've always had a small waist. The following photo is very out of date (okay, it's another wedding picture), and doesn't give the full effect, but LOOK HOW CUTE THE DETAILS ON MY DRESS WERE!

2. My hair. Wait, does that count as a body part? Whatever. Anyway, it isn't always beautiful, of course, but here are a few photos from my last haircut of it looking amazeballs:

3. My lips. They's cool.

   Haha, remember when I was nine months pregnant and fell out of bed and hit my mouth on my laptop? Good times. Excuse the duck face, some things just need to be immortalized.

4. My eyes. Actually, see last photo. That's a surprisingly good one of my eyes.

5. And, of course, the boobies. I'm not going to put another photo up for that, though, because that's weird that I'm directing you to look at my chest. I probably shouldn't have included this one. Oh, well.

  You know something funny? As soon as I was looking through my photos LOOKING for traits I liked, the easier it was to ignore the things I didn't. I was like, "Whoa, I have awesome teeth!" and "That was a good haircut" and "Man, my smile is gorgeous!". 

  

There's probably a lesson in there. Learn it.