New Gus-isms

• As I was getting ready to leave for a business trip, Augusta started writing me a love note to tuck in my suitcase. It consisted of "A-U-G-U-S-T-A M-O-M D-A-D" over and over. I suggested she draw me a picture on the note. She rolled her eyes and said, "Excuse me, MOM. It's called a love NOTE, not a love DRAWING". I stood, corrected.
  

 

• Augusta told me, "I love you". I replied, "me too." She said back to me, "me twenty!"
  

 

• I was sad when she stopped calling them "hoowee hoops" and started calling them hula hoops.
  

 

• After a field trip to the school, she came home and announced, "I smell like a MONKEY!"
  

 

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You should watch this:
http://animoto.com/play/0M11jH3aIYN8Brj01K3cnQ

Don't put the tissues away so quickly - you will need them for this:
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Title goes here, blog below.

I've been seriously lame about keeping up with this blog. That's a shocker. I can't keep my house clean or my dishes out of the sink, what possibly made me think I could keep a blog going? So, for lack of commitment to actual topics, once again I'll resort to the random samplings my brain produces:

Loved the little bit of the original Battlestar Galactica theme that played on Caprica Friday evening.

Heading to Florida this week for work. Sorry I won't get to visit my family – just no time to visit and no car, and I'll be 2 hours away from them. Sorry family, next time!

A woman I strongly dislike lost her job Friday at the company I work for. After my initial elation, I felt ashamed that I reacted the way I did. No one should have to start over in this terrible economy. Not even the devil incarnate. In all seriousness, I should be ashamed of myself for making light of someone else's misfortune. I'm better than that. I still don't like her, but I still didn't have to be all 'walking on sunshine' about it, especially around others.

My very cool almost-4-year-old requested to watch the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie tonight. I freaking love that kid. Speaking of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, a friend of mine won a radio contest and will fly to London on Monday to attend the premiere of the new Alice in Wonderland movie. I can't think of a more deserving person to win such an awesome prize. Congrats Amy B, and have the time of your life!

A friend is having her first baby on Monday. Happy birth day, G-man!

Eric Stolz is hotter than donut grease. Still.

I can't wait for Flash Forward to come back. I want to flash-forward and see what happens, but I'm living my life spoiler-free these days.

"The Invention of Lying" was cute. I love Ricky Gervais. I wouldn't mind if he made a ton more movies.

What business does wrestling have on the Sy-Fy channel?? Seriously, I gotta know. And why did they find it necessary to change from "sci-fi" to "sy-fy"? How geeky does this make me sound? Rhetorical.

'Aliens'. Saw it again on tv recently. Ripley's so badass. I forgot Paul Reiser was in this. Oh, I had such the crush on him back in the day.

ALS sucks. Can we just get that out on the table? It took my friend Kathy yesterday. She was an awesome lady. A nice, genuine person with an eye for color, a flair for fabrics and a keen eye for design. She was a member of my quilt guild and was really a very cool lady. I will miss her. I wish I'd written her the letter I'd planned to write her since I heard that she was sick a few years ago. Don't wait. If you think you should, do it.

That's all for now.

Should we just start another group instead?

A girlfriend of mine asked me recently if I'd be interested in helping to plan our 20th reunion. First of all, TWENTY YEARS?!? Really?? It sure doesn't feel like 20 years, though I'm reminded of it each and every time I wash-that-grey-right-outta-my-hair. But this isn't really about us getting older. I went to our 10 year reunion. I came to the conclusion that we all looked the same but wider. Some of us had been in contact via email, or found each other on various websites like classmates.com but for most of us, it was a surprise to see what everyone looked like. We got to listen with awe and a twinge of jealousy to our friends who'd "made it", cheer for those who'd gotten married or just had their first babies. Others, like me, hadn't done anything of consequence but we all stood around and talked and laughed and caught up with each other. The thing was, we were hearing about it all firsthand, for the first time. A lot has changed since the last reunion. Now with tools like Facebook, we all "see" each other so regularly that I wonder if it will all be anti-climactic? Will we have anything to talk about other than Farmville and Vampire Wars? Will any of us be as interesting and witty without the aid of Photoshop and Google? More importantly, will we all be tweeting the entire event as it unfolds? OMG!!! You'll never believe who got FAT?!? Oh come on, we're all thinkin' it.

What bad mood?

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Let me rephrase that. I was angrily shaken awake this morning by a crabby 3 year old who demanded that I wake up and put on her show NOW. Hoping I'd be able to catch a few more winks while Augusta watched her show, I punched the power button on the remote, zoomed up to the channel of choice and shut my eyes. It wasn't to be. She complained about the show, the volume, the tv was too "sunny" (bright), she was hungry, she wanted MOMMY to give her breakfast NOW, DADDY DID IT YESTERDAY, you name it, she complained about it. I sent her to get changed and she yelled – YELLED at me, defiantly, NO!!!! We went around and around until finally I exploded and sent her to her room. I was so angry, and she was being so horrible and I just couldn't deal with her.

Augusta played quietly in her room (read: made a ginormous mess of teeny tiny scraps of wadded up paper strewn all over her entire room and in drawers) while I began getting ready for work. I stomped all grumpy-gills into her room and laid out her clothes. Getting her to get dressed in the morning on her own is a chore that I'm not cut out for. I typically ask her 5 or 6 times to please get dressed, then by the 7^th time I'm so worked up and cranky that I start threatening to take things away. This morning I was so irritated that I simply told her that 1. I was very angry about her behavior this morning, 2. I was not going to speak to her again until she got dressed and 3. if I had to remind her to get dressed ONE MORE TIME I was going to throw out her coveted Wizard of Oz pillow. She simply said, "Ok, Mommy. I'm sorry for being so mean at you and I will get dressed." I told her not to speak to me again until she was dressed and returned to my bathroom to dry my hair.

A few minutes later, I felt a teeny tiny hand tug on my shirt. I turned off my hair dryer and she said, "Mommy, I got dressed. How do you like my outfit?" I turned to look. I snorted.

I said, "wait right there! DON'T MOVE!!!"

She cautiously said, "why Mommy? Am I in trouble???"

"No!! " I shouted as I darted down the stairs. "I have to get my camera!"

For this is what she'd put together:

I have absolutely no idea to which bad mood you are referring.

xoxoZ

It’s all Greek to me.

Gus makes up words. Today in the bath she swirled up some bubbles, poured them into a cup and said, "Mommy, this is a squirtydortydirtysquirbydabbaopowinaweena." Easy for her to say.

What words do your kids invent?

Leader of the [Brat] Pack

This is a repost of a blog I originally published on myspace in 2008.

I didn't always love being an Army brat when I was one, but now I am so glad that was my life growing up. I had so many opportunities that I'd never have had if my Dad had been in another line of work. We got to live in Germany twice, Washington D.C. a time or two, Kansas a few times. I got to be born in the Great State of Oklahoma (Lawton), I got to have a built-in best friend in each location named Jeremy, my cooler-than-Cheez Whiz older brother who always let me hang with him and his friends. We played some of the coolest games of "war" together, complete with Star Wars blasters and real Army stuff like canteens and field jackets and other things I don't know the official names of, courtesy of Dear Old Dad.

Growing up Brat was pretty rock and roll. Except the moving every 2-3 years part. I still get antsy every 3 years or so, thinking that at any moment, a team of movers should be storming my house to put all my belongings on a truck to take it to the next place. The moving away from friends business sucked pretty much and I cried buckets and buckets and cursed my dad each time certain I'd never fit in anywhere else ever again EVER, then 3 years later I was doing it all over again. Even with all the moving around, I crossed paths with some of my friends in many different places - for example, my senior year boyfriend had lived down the street when we were 3 and his mom had the birthday party photos to prove it, and my best friend from Kindergarten who moved away was again my best friend in 6th and 7th when our dad's got stationed at the Pentagon. My dear friend Kellie from 4^th grade was again a dear friend in 11^th and 12^th. It did get a bit confusing at times though – sometimes I'd see people in the halls at school and wasn't sure if I remembered them from our last station or from last week. Having to make new friends so often did force me to be more outgoing and take a use-it-or-lose-it approach to making friends. Why sit in the house moping all summer when you can be out there meeting people and ensuring you won't sit alone in the cafeteria the first day of school?

One of the best parts of growing up Brat was the travel. I lived in Germany twice – the first time in 2^nd, 3^rd & 4^th grade, then again in 9^th and 10^th. The first time we lived in Germany, Jeremy and I would travel together to the bakery down the street and fill our mom's order for bread and rolls and sometimes there would be enough left over for a few selections from the wall of candy. We'd also take trips through the scary woods where we were sure Bigfoot was buried or scarier still, Nazi bunkers filled with old men in uniforms just waiting for an opportunity like us. Then there were real live trips: my family traveled through France to the ferry which took us to England, then drove up to Scotland – even to LOCH NESS which was the scariest, coolest and most disappointing place my 8 year old self had ever been (was that the monster, Mom?? No, just a branch. ARRRGH!). The second time I lived in Germany, my brother and I traveled by train each Sunday to Bremerhaven for school. We lived in dorms during the week and went home every Friday to spend the weekend with our parents. It was the closest American high school, and the alternative was German school (didn't speak the language well enough) or the British school (spoke the language, but oh, that's a whole 'nother blog). We chose American. I was a freshman, he was a senior, our Mom was a wreck. We had to transfer trains at the station in Bremen which, in case you ever find yourself there, had a little stand outside which sold the best gyros sandwiches in the world. Jeremy and I also traveled to Paris and Egypt (with groups) and to Holland for shopping and American movies (in English, with Dutch subtitles – worth the hour drive and the fumbling for passports). I got to see the Berlin Wall when there still was one– I wrote on it in eyeliner because stupid me didn't bring a Sharpie. Want to teach a teenager to appreciate freedom? Take them to a place where there isn't any. Make them hold their face up to the bus window next to their passport and let an East German with a machine gun approve or deny their travel back to the West.

I got my first passport at age 7. Along with a buttload of shots (literally, though some also went into my leg). My mom always kept my passport in a lockbox at home when we weren't traveling, but as a teenager I was trusted with it. In Europe, sometimes traveling to another country was less than an hours train ride and you had to have a passport or you couldn't enter the country. Years after I came back to the states – years after my passport expired even – I drove from Lawrence to Oklahoma with a boyfriend. As the toll booth appeared in the distance, I got a nervous pang as I realized I'd forgotten my passport. Seconds later I realized that one doesn't need a passport to get from Kansas to Oklahoma, dumbass. And in that moment, it occurred to me that traveling from state to state ought to be a little more dramatic with fanfare and documents to make it more exciting.

There are times I really miss being a Brat. I loved watching my dad get all dressed up in his Dress Blues and go to big events with my mom. My mom always laughed that her job was to make him look good, and boy did she ever. I even got to dress up a time or two and accompany my dad to some pretty glam events. All girls love a man in uniform, and I'm no exception. It's just that my vision of a man in uniform is my Daddy and there's really no topping that.

When I dropped out of school at 20, I received my walking papers from Uncle Sam. I was no longer eligible for dependent benefits – had I stayed in school, they would have extended but because I dropped out, my number was up. I kept my military dependent ID card, though I was supposed to turn it in. I told my dad it was because I loved the picture but in all honesty, it was just my way of holding on to a little piece of my history. My card that said I belonged somewhere. That little orange card gave me a place in the world. When you're a Brat, you don't have a home. But you always have a place. And an ID card to prove it. And sometimes, if you're lucky, some really cool stamps in your passport. And a lot of friends who can totally relate.

GO ARMY!

writing on the Berlin Wall, 1988.

Ottobeuren, Germany 1982

The hills are alive with the sound of snickering.