It's MY Pleasure

I've worked a lot of fast food in my 34.9 years. Let's see...there's Tom's Place when I was 15, Captain D's was right after that, and then it seems Hardee's fell in there somewhere during a summer home from college. And there's one simple thing all of those jobs had in common.

 

They all sucked.

 

Big time. I HATED them.

 

Captain D's was the best, even though I would got tossed into the ice machine on a daily basis. That's just what you get for being mouthy, I suppose. Can anyone say sexual harassment?

 

Anyways, the training time for each of those jobs was about...hmmm...let's say 30 minutes. You could learn everything you needed to know to earn $4.25 an hour in exactly a half hour. No more. Seems like I watched a couple of VHS tapes on "customer service" and then they fed me to the angry, hungry people of the Searcy, Arkansas fast food industry. I was all "trained up" and ready to be attacked.

 

And attacked I was.

 

So, no, I didn't magically know what was in a Seafood Sampler or a Deluxe Platter. But I learned. Fast. AND, in all of my lacking mathematical skills, I somehow learned how to count change back IN MY HEAD without using a cash register. I'm still pretty damn proud of that skill. You see, I'm a words gal. Math is for people that can't spell. But now, thanks to my on-the-job training at the best fast food seafood restaurant on the planet, that sophisticated math formula guy from Good Will Hunting ain't no match for me.

 

Point is this: I made minimum wage, which in my 15-year-old mind equated to minimum caring. I didn't care that your hamburger had tomatoes on it instead of lettuce or if the chips I gave you were salted or unsalted. But you know who does care?

 

Chick-fil-A. They care. They even tell you about it every chance they get with their "it's my pleasure" crap. And once, just ONCE I want to come back with, "do you really? Do you REALLY care?"

 

They don't. They can't. But what matters is that Chick-fil-A somehow gets their people to say it all the time company wide. And what's up with the lines there? They always seem to have like 8 lines running simultaneously.

 

I mean that place has more employees than Springdale has Mexican restaurants.

 

But listen Chick-fil-A execs...your kids meal toys completely blow. They're **gasp** educational toys, paperback books, or random cow printed toothbrushes. Thanks for letting my educational resistant kids trade in your toys for a free ice cream cone. A little bit more sugar won't kill 'em. Will it? Hadn't killed 'em yet.

 

But then again I'm really just figuring this parenting thing out as I go, so I really have no earthly idea. I'll keep you posted.

Andy Griffith meets Green Acres

There's just something about small town Arkansas that I love. Well, love might be a strong word for it. Maybe like. Or relish. Or perhaps appreciate. No...I love it. I do. I think.

I've always lived in the country. I grew up on a dairy farm for cryin' out loud. Fences break. Cows get out. It happened all the time. And nobody cared. NOBODY.

Oh sure, drivers would stop by and ask, "This here your cow? Might wanna get it back in the fence before someone thinks it's a deer and shoots it dead."

"Thanks," I would respond. "I'll do that."

Truth is I hated it when people would stop by and tell me crap like that. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I didn't know if it was our cow. How was I supposed to tell? All cows look the same to me. And even if it was, how was I supposed to get it back into the right pasture? And how was I going to do that exactly? Run behind it and flap my arms yelling, "SOUIEE?" How? Tell me, how? Ugh.

If I saw a cow in my backyard today I would think to myself, "Oh, well hello there Mr. (or Ms.) Cow." And then I'm sure I would muster up a couple of "moos" like I do every time I encounter a bovine of its kind. I've gotten quite good at my cow impersonation over the years. Ask me sometime; you'll be impressed. But, I digress.

But for some reason that I have yet to figure out, my next-door neighbor sees a cow in her backyard this evening and decides to call the police. That's right.

Really? Is it that big of a deal. I just about laughed out loud when I saw the police car in the street in front of my house. Maybe that's what you're supposed to do, but not where I'm from. Besides it would have taken the sheriff way too long to get out there. It just wasn't worth it. And remember? Nobody cared.

No worries, though. For the next 20 minutes, Mr. bald, unnamed Police Officer looks around in some brush with his handy, dandy flashlight for a "beige" calf as he called it. It was comical really. He wouldn't actually enter the brush, of course. He just shined his light through some grass so thick there was no way we gonna be able to see anything on the other side.

And what were we gonna do if we found it? It's not like we had a rope, a chain, or um...hello, a cattle trailer to transport the runaway mooing creature back to it's home. Did we just get the pleasure of screaming, "there it is!" and looking around for others to be jealous of our newly found discovery? Seriously.

When it became obvious that we weren't gonna locate this alleged calf, Mr. bald unnamed Police Officer then strolls over to my neighbors pool and proclaims, "Well, that's a short fence...I could get over this thing and jump right in."

"I will if you will," I offer.

I mean, my neighbors have NEVER invited me over to swim. I figure if the policeman is doing it, then it must be okay. Right?

No such luck. Our night ended with no calf, no swim, no flashing lights, no cruise in the police car, no taser demonstration like on The Hangover...nothing.

There's always next Saturday night.

Hello fanny pack. Meet my cell phone.

Ah, the fanny pack.

It's like a Baby Bjorn for old people.

And to my Aunt Callie, it's like heaven with a self-adjustable waist strap...the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm exactly 5 years, 1 month, and 28 days away from owning one. That's right. I figure by the time I turn 40, I'll be able to carry around all of my necessities right there within arms' reach. No more purses with annoying straps falling off my shoulder. No more worrying about someone stealing my purse in the front of the shopping cart at Wal-Mart while I walk away to get the barbecue sauce.

And no more asking the kids, "Has anyone see my purse?" Ah, never mind. There it is. Right there on my waist for all to see and adore.

And the options and varieties are endless.

There's this one for the fashionable:

Or this one with a handy, dandy pocket for my cell phone:Of course I seem to be the only one left on the planet that doesn't have an iPhone, a Droid, or at the very least a Blackberry. Ken doesn't believe in any phone that gets internet access. Not even a little bit. Zilcho. Nada. I know Ken...$60 a month (for 2 phones) times 12 month a year = $720 a year. I get it.

So what. My cell phone was super cool when I got it almost 3 years ago. And it's better than the flip phone that Mark Paul Gosselaar used in NYPD Blue. Beat that.

It doesn't have internet access...or email...and doesn't allow me to see pictures when people email them to me. Big deal. But that doesn't stop me from picking it up every now and then and pretending like it's touch activiated anyway. One of these days it just might work.

And on a side note: if I see one more teenage girl that can text on a cell phone faster than I can type on my computer keyboard, I'm seriously gonna take her down.

So for now, I'm stepping down off of my soapbox and taking my antique cell phone with me. And if someone sees me in 5 years, 1 month and 28 days donning a fanny pack, please just shoot me and hide my body. Wait a second. Shoot me. Unstrap the fanny pack. And then hide my body. Mission Accomplished.

Dear Old Man Who Lives Across the Street, Part 3

Dear Old Man Who Lives Across the Street,

I have a fabulous neighborly idea.

I know how you are probably on a fixed income, so I've been thinking of ways I could help you out in this crappy economy. I'm SO thoughtful, right? Anways, I really don't know how to ask you this in a non-awkward way, so I'm just gonna come out and ask...

How would you like to be my nanny, or...uh...ahem...manny?

It's a brilliant plan. I mean, let's think about it for a sec:

• My boys don't have grandparents close, and you NEVER have company, much less grandchildren.
• You live right across the street (hello...can we say convenient?)
• They seem to be in your yard an awful lot anyhow

Maybe it would help if we don't think of it as "babysitting" per se. I mean they're hardly babies, anymore. At ages 9 and 5, you'd really just have to feed and water them occasionally, make them brush their teeth once every other day, and keep them from playing in the street.

Now, I know what you're thinking. I did let them play in the street that one time, but the nice policeman did slow down and wait for me to hang up the phone before coming over to talk to me. I mean, it is a cul-de-sac, for goodness sake. What a great town.

So, assuming you have chicken nuggets in your freezer, juice boxes in your pantry, and something more up-to-date than a VCR in your living room, we're all good to go. Any chance you own a Wii? Oh, never mind...just give them a couple of empty cardboard boxes and a couple of pocket knives and they can basically carve themselves out a battleship or two. And, unless you suggest it, they probably won't even stab each other after they're done.

You won't even have to put them to bed because somehow I managed to have the kids that need very little sleep to function. They seem to have the uncanny ability to stay up into the wee hours of the night but still get up at 6:00 am the next morning. Unbelievable.

But you will have to actually speak to them in some fashion. You see, shyness isn't something these kids are accustomed to. They can spot it quite easily from approximately 200 yards away, and before you know it, they've already come up with more than a half-dozen ways to use it to their immediate advantage. Kids...you just can't teach 'em this stuff.

So, it's a plan. Are you free next Friday night?

Hugs and Kisses,

H

It's like Walking...Just Faster

Who doesn't love the Olympics? There's just something about all the hard-work and camaraderie among the athletes that make me want to suit up for a trip down the luge or something. And Bob Costas...don't even get me started on all that yumminess.

Truth is the Olympics make me feel like a complete imbecile.

You see, I was the scrawny, freckle-faced girl that every team captain avoided picking until there was no one else left to choose. I was that kid...I was incredibly slow and remarkably uncoordinated. I couldn't win a game of "flag-tag" if my life depended on it, and basketball...wow. Whoever assumes that a 4-foot-8, 80 pound 6th grader can possibly muster up the strength to actually get the basketball anywhere in the near vicinity of the goal, much less through the hoop, is completely asinine. Who does that?

And then there was Coach Christian. Good God. Why in the world this man was allowed to teach P.E. to middle school children is completely beyond me. Let's just say it's a good thing I was a late, late bloomer.

I'd really like to say all that has changed now.

But, of course, it hasn't. So about 18 months ago I took up the only sport I thought I can manage. I figured running was the perfect exercise for me. And why not? It's like walking, just faster. Right? It requires no coordination or complex, thought out game play; it's just one foot in front of the other over and over again. And several months ago, I started running with my friend, Meghan. It's the most opportune time for me to catch up on all the "news" I otherwise would have missed out on. Did I say perfect sport?

So, I suck at sports...so what. I'll obviously never make it to any Olympic games, unless of course they change the rules to allow the syncopated rhythm clapping game as an official event. I love that game, and whenever I can find someone crazy enough to play it with me, I can take on even the most talent percussionist.

We all have our talents :)

Perfect Attendance is for Losers

Ah, 1983. What a great year in the grand scheme of my life. Ronald Reagan was president, Sally Ride (rock on, sista) was the first woman astronaut, and Ghandi won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Right. Of course, without the help of Google, I wouldn't have remembered any of that crap. I mean gimme a break; I was 8-years-old for cryin' out loud. I was much too busy fighting with my siblings over who Mom and Dad loved more, who got to sit where in our awesome red and white striped van, and which of our three (sometimes four depending on the weather ) TV stations to watch. So unless current events and 80's movie trivia somehow got subliminally mixed into a random ABC Afterschool Special or our 8 track of Bing Crosby's White Christmas, chances are I didn't know about it.

All I cared about was who I sat next to on the 45-minute bus ride to school, who I played Chinese jump rope with at recess, and who I would be moved next to in Mrs. Dixon's 3rd grade classroom because I couldn't keep my gigantic mouth shut for .5 seconds. In addition to all of these childly duties, I also had to keep my kick ass pair of brown KangaROOS clean and stain free. It was a hard life after all. But I somehow managed.

And then my best friend, Julie, had a fantastic idea. WE'LL JOIN GIRL SCOUTS! Yes! It all made sense. It would get me out of riding the bus home one afternoon every single week. It would have been a phenomenal plan if we would have done something besides hold hands, sing songs, and stroll over bridges...sometimes all at the same time. I mean really. Even in 1983 I had better things to do.

So, here I find myself in 2010 in not too different of a situation. Fabulous. Here we go again.

I don't claim to be the world's best parent. I didn't join the PTA, I don't volunteer at the school (except for the fun stuff), and I almost never do speech therapy homework. I'm not perfect by any stretch, and I'm really just figuring it out as I go. The mere fact that my children are as level headed as they are is nothing short of a God given miracle. But there is one thing that I have learned in my almost ten years of motherhood. Perfect attendance is for losers.

That's right...L.O.S.E.R.S. Losers.

Why in the world I would care that my 9-year-old has perfect attendance in **insert secret, undisclosed after school activity here** is absolutely outside my realm of thinking. Really? REALLY? I can see his high school graduation now..."And is there any graduate out there who never missed a **insert secret, undisclosed activity here ** meeting in the school year 2009-2010? If so, please stand up so we can recognize you." Right. Not gonna happen.

Here's another thing I know. NOBODY CARES. Nobody. It won't matter to anyone in 50 years. Hell, I'll probably be dead by that point, and if Levi still faults me for not taking him to his **insert secret, undisclosed activity here** every single time the doors were open then so be it.

So, do we show up 90% of the time? Yes. Do I pay attention and keep my mouth shut during the meetings? Of course not. Do I actually remember to take the manual and flip to every page during the meeting to see how we're making progress towards our next accomplishment? Nope, not even close.

Here's the cold, hard truth. I've never even opened the book. That's right all you organized and punctual **insert secret, undisclosed activity** moms. That book has never been opened by me. I have NO earthly idea what it takes to earn any of the accomplishments or even what exists to even attempt to earn. And here's something else. I don't really even care.

But what I do have is a fun-loving 4th grader who's not afraid to make mistakes and speak up in a crowd. He's hard-working, friendly, and loves to make up his own jokes and share them with anyone and everyone who will listen (and even those that won't). And that, my **insert secret, undisclosed activity here** crazed friends, is worth more to me than some ridiculous perfect attendance pin any day of the week. So there. Take that.

**Insert secret, undisclosed activity here** are prepared not their mothers. Instead, I choose to teach independence, responsibility, and the ability to work without being under constant supervision. Good for me. I am a good mother...(repeating under my breath)...I am a good mother...I am a good mother.

So, raise your right hand, extend your three fingers, and repeat after me..."On my honor, I will try to serve God (which I absolutely do), my country (I vote...does that count?) and mankind (hello, I write a blog) and to live by the Girl Scout Law (well, okay, I don't exactly live by the Girl Scout law, but three out of four ain't half bad.)

Bring it, moms. You ain't got nothin' on me.

Christmas, the Way I See It

There's nothing I love more than Christmas. I do. I always have. I delight in Christmas lights. I adore Christmas music, both the secular variety as well as the traditional hymns. And I love, love LOVE watching my kids' sleepy faces as they throw open their presents with delight at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning.

Those are the things I love.

But, of course, all good memories in my cynical mind must come to an abrupt, screeching halt, and I eventually must wake up in the midst of the chaos our society has created for us as we celebrate the birth of our Savior.

1) Black Friday. GOOD GOD. Why in the world we let toy and electronic companies decide what we buy is totally beyond my realm of thinking. These manufacturers undoubtedly have to pay to get their products in the now infamous Thanksgiving Day circulars and for some crazy reason we all fall into their bottomless marketing ploys and buy what they tell us is a good deal. Ridiculous.

2) Salvation Army kettles. I know, I know. I might be sealing my spiritual fate for this one, but SERIOUSLY people. If you ring that bell in my face with your "Have a Merry Christmas" sad face one more time I swear I just might take you down. I LOVE the Salvation Army; I shop at your thrift stores all the time, but until you start taking debit cards at all of your
134, 247 Wal-Mart stores and Supercenters across the state of Arkansas, please don't mess with me anymore.

3) You, your best friend, and your first cousin's girlfriend ...in my stores. One of the biggest perks to being a SAHM is the endless ability to shop in the middle of the day, but it really complicates things when you're there with me. So, please, I beg you, go back to work and leave the shopping to me and my retired friends. I can take them any day of the week.

4) My Family. I love you guys...I really, really do, but when we get together it's like me multiplied by 1,000. 'Nough said.

5) Endless gift exchanges. We're really just exchanging same dollar amount gift cards at this point. Let's just forget it and move on.

6) Christmas dinner at my in-laws. Let's just say I'll never buy my mother-in-law engraved rocks with each of her eight grand kids names on them EVER again.

7) My Beloved Target. You know I love you, Target. But why do you hide all your good deals from me each year when Christmas rolls around? I'm guessing that reason #3, as indicated above, has something to do with it.

8) Christmas Birthdays. That just sucks all the way around for you people. The birth of Jesus is just more important than yours. Sorry 'bout that.

9) Pet stockings. It's a dog. It's a cat. No, they don't realize what Christmas is, and no, they don't feel left out. THEY ARE ANIMALS, so please don't send me another Christmas card with your cats wearing Santa hats. It's almost unbearable for me.

10) Keeping up with the Joneses. Yes, Robert, down the street this one's for you: I can see your 25 blow-up Santas, reindeer, and snowmen from my front porch. AND I can hear that giant Christmas tree that is somehow engineered and synchronized to flash Christmas lights and play Christmas carols all at the same time. Yes. Your yard is kicking my yard's ass. That is clear.

And somehow I still managed to avert yet another Christmas season without a panic attack. Go figure.