So my kids called 911. . .

This was written on a day that nothing burned down and plenty of good things happened. I was within two miles of my gas running out and I filled up my tank, I got some knitting done before my class this weekend, got my kids to where they needed to be. But. . . I took a shower in the late afternoon and got a pounding on my door shortly after I got out, "Mom! Nine one one is on the phone!"

I stepped out, I'd been hollaring at a child to find a hair brush for me. "Yes?" Apparently one of my younger children had called them and I was asked for my information. I looked at the caller ID to make sure it was who they said and gave it to them. A police officer came over within 30 seconds (we practically live next door to them) and I started rambling about my house fire. I think that may be part of why they called 911, because I had told them that in an emergency to call them and that was why I started rambling as I recalled the fire. Oh-- I had to share, I knew he'd understand.

Over the years, several of my kids have called emergency services and I never know who did it. I am torn between putting the phone up too high for them to reach it (a four and a five year old) to just banking on them doing it only once per child and letting the matter rest.

The officer spoke to my kids and told them that it is OK to call 911 in an emergency. Of course no one admitted to calling, so it was the dreaded phantom who breaks into bags of chocolate chips, gets into cookies and then glues the ends of the packages shut, sneaks into preservative laden dips and puts them back into the cupboard instead of the 'fridge where they belong and risks giving us botulism, etc.

In 20 years when I am 60, will this be something that I will recall or care about with the raising of children? Will there be something besides 911 to call for emergencies?

I am grateful for the response, but my nerves. . .

Now. . . some music for inhaling. . .

Carrie Prejean is not my idol

I normally don't write about current events in SM&OT because my life and my family occupy me enough. I do, however, get into pageants. Beauty pageants are just fun. Certainly there are women out there who do them who do them only because they are closet sociopaths who would otherwise be axe murderers if they didn't have pageants to do. What the public sees as a glow on their faces is actually a glower. What I have seen as a married contestant have been women who like to look great and who enjoy looking at the pageant criteria and applying it to themselves. Mrs. & Ms. beauty pageants are about a married woman or a woman past the Miss age, taking her talents and skills and applying them to her family and community. There are public speaking engagements, often singing and MC-ing, they pose as role models and spokeswomen for various groups. Aside from often keeping them busy in addition to raising families and volunteering, pageants offer women a chance to exercise talents that often go by the wayside once they become mothers and wives.

I have to say that Carrie Prejean makes me able to stand someone who I swore that I would never speak of, the notorious Paris Hilton, famed for her crotch shots and actions that only served to get her ink and clicks, although she did handle David Letterman's jibes with a lot of class.



I'm going to link over to Shannyn Moore's page because Shannyn writes about this better than I do, but go over and watch Prejean's performance with Larry King. Larry asks her several times about what made her decide to settle with the lawsuit that she had vowed to fight. Larry is a journalist and is supposed to ask these questions. He backed off after he asked a couple of times and Prejean called him inappropriate. When King switched over to a caller, a gay gentleman who asked her a question about her stance on gays, she removed her mic and acted very self righteous, repeating that he was being inappropriate. Larry, in my humble opinion, was not being inappropriate. He is a newsman, not her personal publicist.

I really hope that Carrie's actions cost her interviews with legitimate newspeople, and considering who she had declared as her hero before she quit the interview, her actions will get her a manicured-toe-hold with the people that the right has been exploiting for the last 25 years.

Thank you, CP, I am certain that the libertine (I say this with admiration) Ms. Hilton appreciates how you have made her look not only smart, but smart with an impressive, wide span of emotions while you look like you had your upper lip glued to your front teeth. I can stand Paris Hilton now!

A Crumpet Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day (called Armistice Day by me because that is stuck in my brain becaue it was what my grandparents called it) was celebrated "quietly" in the Crumpet household. I keep wanting to get the kids out to honour the veterans, but for now, any event that has to do with my kids under 10, there are emergency trips to the bathroom, lost boots, traded gloves (and tears when one kid isn't aware of some "trade") and jackets that are either three sizes too small or too large. Couple this mess with services that start before 10AM and Tea may as well stay in bed. The kids would in theory be happy and I, in theory, would get a little extra sleep.

I discovered that my 11 and 13 year old children will gripe at anything. All was quiet and they ambled out of the TV room, "We've been watching TV for the last hour and a half!" Lord, have mercy! This was a problem? I would be glad for this if they were bored and wanted to go to the library or to some event scheduled for remembering the fallen soldiers and thanking them, but they thought it would be fun to do something like. . . the water park in Anchorage. I only wish we could afford that!

My husband brought home the makings for lasagna and sat down to help our sons who are in 4th and 5th grades get some homework done that they have been sloughing off at completing. They have to be ridden constantly to do their work properly and it is very, very frustrating. One is worse than the other, but they are both slacking in a major way.

I had to make lasagna at the same time I was making cookies. My kitchen is a tiny hallway and it was very frustrating. In 12 years of marriage, I have made lasagna once at it is just easier and less expensive to make it in a purchased, pre-made pan. The way I make it, I use ten kinds of cheese and it gets complicated. Just the basics makes me wonder why we live; it tastes bad to me. I brought Cloud in to help (she didn't mind) with the cookies and everything was just too crowded. (My rebuilt kitchen will be huge with two ovens and three sinks and lots of cupboard space.)

Starshine got into Cloud's lipstick but she got caught. (In the past I wasn't sure if it was lipstick or marker, but she got sloppy) and she actually got into trouble and had to applogize to her sister and scrub up the mess that she'd made, on her face and her clothes. She was so precious in her eyes welling up with tears and saying, "I'm sowwy. . ." Natually, she was more sowwy (sorry) for having gotten caught, but my husband raised his voice at her and her little heart could barely handle it! It is hard to not let them fall into your arms but she had to cry and see that no one was symathizing with her for having gotten into her sister's things. She cried to Mudd and he said, "I got into trouble for it last year!"

Poor baby!

Calamity Jane built a snow fort with some friends and went outside with her sibs for a bit.

We spoke at dinner about what Veteran's Day is about and why Mom still calls it Armistice Day.

Guy informed me that I get moody when he back talks me. The little brat gets full of himself, challenges me at every turn, and says I get moody. Gotta love it!

I want Magenta

"Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8-color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64-color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64-color box, though I've got a few missing. It's ok though, because I've got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle at my disposal. I have a bit of a problem though in that I can only meet the 8-color boxes. Does anyone else have that problem? I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation.. so when I meet someone who's an 8-color type.. I'm like, hey girl, magenta! and she's like, oh, you mean purple! and she goes off on her purple thing, and I'm like, no - I want magenta!"

John Mayer

My house has a soul . . .

Today I was chatting up a very wise guy and I told him that I didn't like my house and he said, "And this is OK; this isn't yours and it doesn't feel like yours."

I told him that this house has a soul. He says he has felt it and asked me, "Does it like you?" I had never considered that. He told me that he feels a warm presence. He's been in when it is just cold and yet he feels warm. He suggested that I think about whether or not the soul of my rented home likes me and maybe we can warm up to each other.

I like it already.