"" Lulu's Sandbar: August 2009
Welcome to my sand bar - trying to push past my boundaries and serve up humorous observations on life...

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Don't MAKE me call your mom!!!

This is the phrase that myfriendTeri and I use when we haven't spoken in a week or so. As in..."I haven't heard from you and I don't know where you are in the world right now - don't make me call your mom to find out because then she'll worry and then I'll worry and it will all go really really bad."

So please don't call my mom because you haven't heard from me - although she would love to hear from my fives and tens! - because then I'll be in trouble. Prolly get grounded, and I have a baseball game and Kenny Chesney to see this weekend!

Apologies to my regulars for not posting and for not getting caught up on all y'all - it's been a lackadaisical week for me....last weekend we visited the cutest grandchild ever, and then this week I've come home from work every day, I've sunk into the couch and just....clicked through the channels. Over and over. Deep in thought..........

ok, deep into reality shows really.

Which requires no thought, except to gasp, "WHO is VOTING for gawd's sake??!!" when Ishaara got voted off AGT and "Ish!" when one of the new male chefs on Top Chef makes a sexist comment, and "What is THAT??!!" for the halter diaper on Project Runway.

No cooking, no cleaning, no laundry, no blogging, no crafting.....just vegetating and mourning the end of summer.

So I'm back, and I'll try to check in all week. I promise. As long as you don't tell my mom that the dust in the house is two inches deep....

(BTW - I tried to find a cute clipart jpg of a mom shaking her finger? The number of perv sites that come up around the word 'mom' is mind-numbing.....)

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Mad Lulu



OK. So the appliances are fixed, for the time being - but they could turn on us again at any moment. I don't get it! It's not like I overwork them or anything......especially the oven.

This post was supposed to be about Woodstock. But that's so last.....Sunday.

And then it was supposed to be about the two great awards that I got - one from Diane and one from Green-Eyed Momster. Diane's award is a Super Comments Award, and GEM's award is Your Blog Rocks my Face Off!. And I so appreciate these awards, but as I've said before, I'm still technically challenged - although I'm getting better! - and do you think I can get the awards onto my blog? Oh hell no. Or heck no, if you're still observing your "I'm going to clean up my language" New Year's resolution. Me, I'm living in a 'resolution-free' zone.

But as usual, I digress.

This post is about a cool hipster site on AMC TV to MadMen your deck self. If you're a fan of the show, you'll like this. And even if you're not, it will waste a few minutes while you're waiting for the next act on AGT.

Here's me, doing a Mad Lulu presentation for work this week. Except I don't do advertising for the Huge. Or show pictures of women in underwear. Although that would make the staff meetings soooo much more interesting - as it is, the men always complain when we want to talk about anything not work-related. It's all "Mathity-math graph ical..mumble blah results. ...yadda...plan....compile the profiteese pipeline havarti cheese." And we just want to talk shoes, really.

It's all about the shoes. And the havarti cheese, sometimes.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

The Appliances are Fighting Back










The refrigerator refuses to fridge OR re-fridge and the freezer refuses to freeze. (Why does the REfridgerator have to re-. Why isn't it just the frigerator? Isn't the food cool to begin with, giving it a chance to spoil and poison me, and that's why you have to put it into the fridge? Why does the right side have to keep REdoing what it does, while the left side just does it once and maintains?)

Either way, the friggin' box isn't cooling or freezing. For a while there, it was a bit schizo, with the freezer thawing and the fridge freezing. But now, it's just decided to crap out altogether.

And do you think that we can find the stupid receipt for the extended warranty? Of course not. The ONE TIME that we do purchase the extended warranty, we cannot find it.

I have grocery receipts for 2001. I have tax records going back 10 years, 3 years over the recommended saving limit, I have 20-year-old counted cross-stitch patterns, I have my husband's old high school yearbooks AND his shotglass from his college fraternity (I Felta Thigh, I think it was called). I have my third-grade report card, my daughter's third-grade Mother's Day macaroni necklace, 12 separate sets of mortgage refinancing documents, notes from high school BFFs, copies of checks going back to 1994, my size 2 pants from the 30 seconds that I fit into them back in 2002.

I have receipts for 5 separate toasters, none of which I still have. I might even still have the top from my wedding cake, 24 years later. In fact, with the amount of stuff I have saved, I almost qualify for my own TLC show on hoarding.

But no warranty receipt for the now-non-refrigerator.

Mr. Lulu is downstairs, alternately swearing at the phone where he's been on hold and ignore for the last 15 minutes with a major U.S. appliance company whose big shiny box is currently NOT bringing any good things to life in our kitchen except for the giant ants behind it (yup, we're having a late summer insect infestion as the topper to our day) and trying to vacuum behind the nonrefrigerator.

Me? I ran upstairs to blog about it, of course.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Going back to school.....

I can't believe that it's time for school to start! Of course, we have year-round schools here, so the traditional start of the school year is very complex around my neighborhood. Still, everyone seems to be starting next week - sheesh! When I was growing up, we didn't start until Labor Day and although I complained with the best of them, I was always ready to go back.

New books, new school clothes, new boyfriends, football season, fall colors......what's not to love?

But still....

Memorial Day - and my LuluandmyfriendTeri trip was just yesterday....wasn't it? And what happened to Independence Day? I haven't gotten into bikini shape....ok, two-piece bathing suit sh-....ummmmm.....swimsuit..

Aw hell.

I've got no shape. What happened to all those spring workouts that were going to give me the taut arms? (actually, I know - I stopped at my neighbor's house Sunday and apparently she got all the workouts in - shoot. And I like her, so I can't hate on her because she's got great arms, she's all nice and what have you.....siggghhhh. Where was I? Oh yeah....time getting away from me. HElloo....irony knocking....ANYWAY!)

The real point of my post?

Going back to school time makes me think about all the angsty, greasy, twitchedy, hormoney high school years. I'm feeling your pain, parents of teenagers!!!

But here's my confession. I liked my kids' teenager years. I really enjoy the teenagers in the neighborhood - and NOT in a creepy way, shut up. I like to talk to them and find out what's new in their world, the latest texting stats, who's zooming who, and counting how many times someone can use the word 'like' in one sentence - because it's like, you know, I was really like so, it was like really cool when we talked about music and like I was like you know so like I was all clappy and stuff.

Clappy. I 'best-practiced' that word from Miss Y. Corporate geeks - you know what that means!

So I'm off to the Huge tomorrow - see you Thursday!

Oh and btdubs - although I took the AGT video section away, it doesn't mean that you're absolved from watching the show - there will like, be a quiz, like...sometime. Whatever. Peace out.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Must.....drink.....

...water, of course...

It's 99 degrees here today, with 110 degree heat index. Which apparently means that you need to time your egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk according to a bit stronger heat, because it feels like 110. Not 99. Because they're so different.

Right.

All I know is that I was sure happy that I took a shower and put on lotion before I went to the 5:00 pm baseball game! Let me just say that it was hard to be all clappy for the boys with the bats when I was sliding out of my seat, with all that nice lotion sweating off me. And surrounded by folks who decided to forego the shower. And the deodorant.

But hey! Here's something that will cool you off nicely! Head over to The Fifty Factor - yay!!! A Giveaway! Free Stuff! No sweating, no clunker exchange, no refinancing needed!!

My blog hipster friend Joanna has hit 100 posts and she's gifting US!

Now for that - I can be clappy and throw out a few sweaty OTTs. Go Jo!

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Sad Tears, Happy Tears and PHLEGM

Hi. HI! HIHIHIHIHIIIIIIIIII!!!!!

I'm back! I had to fly Mom home, and then turned around and jumped on another plane to travel for Monday/Tuesday, had a work dinner last night and I'm FINALLY back!

I'm bezhausted, but I'm here.

So. The post below has been sitting in my draft file since last Saturday. I couldn't finish it originally because I was crying so hard that my contacts got all cloudy and my nose was running onto the keyboard and I hate phlegm. In fact, I hate the word phlegm. PHlegm. Flemm. Flemmmm. Ick. Even the word sounds icky. Yikes, when people hawk up something from their lungs that sounds like it's been there for 20 years....wait, wait. Wrong post. Anyway. Lulu digressing again, to keep from crying.

I don't usually write posts this long, but even after letting this one sit for a while, I still want to put it out there. You'll see why....


So I just got back from flying Mom home after her week with us, and I'm feeling pretty blue. At this point, I never know if she'll make it back another time, and I hate those goodbyes. We had a very nice week, even though she still has that momadar - you know, that radar that makes her ears quiver, I swear! - when she knows that I'm trying to hide something from her. So every time I tried to slip away and blog, she would come upstairs to see what I was doing and hello! - she still reads just fine. So I had to shut down for a bit. I didn't want her to think that I was writing about her, c'mon. ILMMIKS86GOMB.

And after a day or two - I just focused on her and our time together anyway. It was interesting to see how my world slowed down a bit as I postponed blogging and crafting and watching reality TV for a week, just to be with her. And it was good for both of us. We mostly hung out at home, just talking....I was even finding old pictures for her to view, hoping that the pictures and places would tease out stories, even if I've heard them before. Several times. :) But you know, I'll be even more sad when I can't hear her voice anymore....

We shopped, had mani-pedis, did lunch, had dinner with some old friends, shopped, hung out, and shopped. And we did make her watch AGT, although 'make' would be a strong word. It's not like I tied her to the couch or anything - she's tiny enough to slip the ropes :), but she got right into the spirit of it anyway.

I think she finally relaxed by the end of the week. Which is why I hate thinking of her alone again at home.

She was a bit nervous when she got here, and it irritated me at first - she steps aside for everyone as we walk through the airport or the mall, she apologizes for everything, even when there is nothing that she's done to warrant blame. She's always been so feisty and tough - most people would describe her as a firecracker, full of energy. I hate to see her subvert that part of her personality.

The problem is that there are people in her life, that want her to damp down her personality, to make her be quiet, to stop working and stop trying to please people, to stop trying to take care of everyone. People that seem to take pleasure in being mean to her, deliberately mean, just because they can, because she's more vulnerable now as it's harder for her to hear, and maybe she repeats herself more often than they would like. She can't really fight back against their harsh words, because she thinks if she were just different or better, maybe they wouldn't be mad at her.

And I know that no one's perfect - my mom would not describe herself as the perfect June Cleaver mom by any means. If she'd been born in a different place and time, she might have pursued different challenges in life - I could definitely see her as a CEO! But she was - and still defines herself as a teacher, even at her age, and that's important to her. She's done the best she can to be a mom, a wife, a teacher, a sibling, a friend, based on her experiences and talent and strengths and with how she was raised - just like everyone else in life!

I watch her, watching me talk, or watching the manicurist or the salesperson or the TSA at the airport - and every day, she's trying to reassimilate into a world that's increasingly bewildering and harder to comprehend, and she's doing a pretty damn good job.

But as I write this, the tears are flowing because I can't keep her safe from those who will hurt her, as of course! - those hurtful words aren't said in front of me, and she doesn't want me to take them on because it will make matters worse.

Here's my warning to them, not that they'll find me here, but still.

Step back from the Mom. Hear me? Let me repeat myself. Just step away, leave her alone and nobody gets hurt. If I hear of one more word, one more exasperated sigh, one more mean-spirited comment - I will cut loose on you. You will be very very sorry. I know things about you, things that you do not want to get out. You will regret it.

OK. Got it out. Thanks for listening.

Now on to the happy tears - my niece delivered the twins....and they ARRRRREEEE.....boys. Yup, two good-sized boys. So no one was baby psychic except W, who said that each one would be a baby. YAYYYYYYYYY!!! Happy Dance, OTT, Woo HOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Hey. Did I mention that I'm back?