Monthly Archives: August 2011

Three Is the Magic Number

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

For the past week I have been making the rounds to all of the schools with all of the kids to meet teachers, secure lockers, and drop at least a couple of Benjamins (in $15 increments so I could write as many checks as possible, natch).  By now everybody has attended their sneak previews and school information days.  They have their backpacks and their supplies and their bus schedules.  Yes, friends, because school starts in just three more days.

Looking back over the summer I recall lots of sun, fun and road trips.  We hung out at the pool and at the beach and we saw lots of relatives and friends.  We did everything and nothing.  Almost everybody got to have an OK Day (every day is an OK Day for Kid A and Kid E doesn’t get one until he stays in his bed all night, every night… so I’m not holding my breath).  Sheepdog even joined in on the fun with us whenever he could.  We really had a great summer.

But I have had enough quality time with these people.  Seriously.  I’d like to be done now, please.  Thank goodness that the new school year is beginning next week, or else I’d be signing everybody up for sleep away camp.  Or farming them out for some manual labor so they’d be so exhausted when they got done that they’d just fall into their beds and sleep for 12 hours straight.  I could buy a pile of bricks and just have them move it from one spot to another and then move it back again when they were done.  They wouldn’t even have the energy to complain or request anything or fight with each other or me.  Bliss.

For the next three days I'm going to hang this picture on my refrigerator with the caption "Don't bug me or this will be you... except I won't give you a bagel."

Maybe I’ll just jot down those ideas for next summer.  It’s always good to have backup plans.

I just have to hang on for three more days.  We may go to the pool again.  I’m sure that Kid A will have plans with her friends.  Kid B says she still needs some more clothes for school.  We have talked about swapping Kid B’s and Kid C’s rooms, so we may tackle that project.  Sheepdog is going to move some other furniture with House Captain and set Kid E up in a new bed as well.  There is an Open House for Sunday School at a church we are thinking of attending this Sunday – maybe we’ll check that out too.  Or maybe we’ll just play video games until the school bus honks on Monday morning.

Whatever gets me through the next three days, right?

Wish me luck for the weekend…

Grandma Steals

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Every so often I get the purging bug.  I go through closets, drawers, storage and – dun, dun, dun – the playroom.  We try on clothes to see what’s now outgrown, we put game pieces back in their boxes, we find things that have gone missing.  And we get rid of the stuff we no longer need or use.  It is truly one of the most satisfying things I do.

For me, I’m sure the need to clear out stuff stems from growing up in a house that had a lot in it.  My mom always did and still has every nook and cranny in her house filled with things… things she once needed, things she needs now, things she may need in the future.  Having all of those things around made me feel cluttered and overwhelmed, so I went in the opposite direction when I set up my own home.  My closets are rarely filled to capacity.  I have dressers in this house that have some empty drawers.  I have a few empty hangers that have no clothes on them.  There is even some space in my garage.

Occasionally we will acquire more stuff and areas will become filled and I will eventually feel the need to clear more stuff out.  I have gone every route over the years to get rid of things… garage sales, consignment, online auctions and sales, bulky trash amnesty day, donations.  There are some great causes that will even send someone to my house to pick up that which I no longer want or need.  I love the feeling I get when I give away something that once served purpose in my life so that it may now serve a purpose for someone else.  I also love when I make 25 cents on a pair of pants that cost me 40 dollars.  I know you can’t hear it, but that last sentence was dripping with so much sarcasm that I have to wipe the rest off of my keyboard.  Still, getting rid of things I no longer need feels good to me.

Sometimes, though, the same can not be said for my kids.  When they were little, they wanted to keep every single thing that crossed the threshold.  Forever and ever and ever.  So I let them.  Fortunately, they quickly changed their minds once their rooms became unlivable amidst a sea of papers and projects and plastic crap.  And the purging gene was passed along the generations…

Yet every once in a while I have to clear out some things that take up a lot of space and that the kids haven’t touched or even thought about in over a year, except of course when they see it in the pile to be donated to Goodwill.  Then it becomes their “favorite toy ever” and they insist that they “play with it every single day.”  When I relent and let them have the thing back it almost always goes back to its job as a dust collector after just a few days.  It is complete B.S. and drives me bonkers, so I started clearing out many of those things when the kids were out of the house so I could do my job without tiny protesters shouting “bad mommy” jeers me.

For example, Kids D and E once had a Hot Wheels track that did not disassemble or break down in any way.  It was plastic and bulky and not even a very fun track.  They used it for a while and then it went off to a high shelf to suffer the shame of toys no longer loved (Shout Out! Toy Story movies) until I decided to get rid of it to make space for more plastic crap that was actually in active playroom rotation.  I made the rookie mistake of leaving the track, along with several other items to be donated, in a pile on my dining room table.  The boys saw it there when they came home from school and I was immediately barraged with cries of dissent.  But I held firm.  I was getting that track out of this house.

Actually, we made a sort of compromise.  Grandma and Grandpa happened to be visiting that weekend and Grandma was looking to add to her grandchildren’s playroom in West Virginia.  Now Grandma is also one to never get rid of things… she still has toys that Sheepdog and his sister played with as kids (both wonderfully sentimental yet yucky at the same time, as no amount of Clorox is going to get all the nasty off of that 25-year-old Barbie Dream House).  She indicated that she might like to have a Hot Wheels track so I said she could have ours and I reminded the boys that they could play with it whenever we went to visit.  They were mollified by that and then (as I predicted) it was out-of-sight-out-of-mind with the track.  They didn’t miss it for more than one minute as they happily played with the bajillion other toys that we own.

A fun little side note on how quickly kids forget things… the first time we went up to visit Sheepdog’s parents in West Virginia after I gave Grandma the track and she set up her new playroom, Kid D was wandering around their house after our very long drive, just kind of checking things out.  He was deciding what fun toys to play with first when he made a very concerned face and pulled me aside.  Then he whispered to me with all of the seriousness he could summon, “I think Grandma stole our hot wheels track.  I just saw it in her playroom.”

I reassured him that Grandma is not a thief and I reminded him that we gave her the track the last time she was at our house.  I think he believed me but then he added, “I’m gonna keep an eye on her just in case.  Next thing you know she’ll probably try to steal some kisses from me.”

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Keeping Up With the Kids – Feathered Hair

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Hair plays a prominent role in my life.  I am constantly concerned with the concealment of the grey in my own hair, whether I should grow it long as Sheepdog would like or cut it all off for the sake of convenience (oh, how he hates that!), the removal of unwanted hair, whether or not Sheepdog is losing his, and unclogging drains that are filled with the long hair of the four females in this house.

In my short time as a blogger I have written about Kid E’s mohawk, Kid A’s hair looking like mine did in high school, boys’ lettuce hair, and my big Jersey girl hair in general.  It is not like I have a shallow obsession with hair – mine is usually pulled back in a boring ponytail every day – but stuff about hair just seems to come up.

So when Kid A was on Facebook the other day and she made the comment that one of her friends (the one who wants to be Kid F) got her hair feathered I thought, “Well, that’s an interesting choice.  But I guess even the 70’s styles are an improvement over the leggings and tunics and neon crap from the 80’s.  I mean, Madonna made cool videos and all but her hair was over-processed and frosted and ugly.  Charlie’s Angels were way more fashionable.”

As Kid A tells it, I then made a wind-blown whooshing/ flipping movement with my hands on both sides of my head and asked to see her picture.  I wanted to see what an updated feathered hairdo looked like.  Um, it was nothing like I thought.  Less Farrah Fawcett and Scott Baio; more Ke$ha and Steven Tyler.  Much, much more.

Feathered hair, then (belt buckles optional)

... and now (face glitter and talent optional)

Feathered hair now refers to putting actual feather extensions onto your own hair as a type of accessory.  Feathers can be straightened, curled, washed and blown dry.  You can go to a salon and have it done or you can DIY with glue or micro beads and clamps.

I also found out that what type of feather you use makes a big difference.  The best ones come from roosters, but salons are having a hard time keeping them in stock and many activists liken wearing these feathers to having an abortion or wearing real fur.  So, unless you wish to have someone potentially give you a red paint shower as you walk down the street, you should probably stick to the synthetic ones.

I think I’ll just stick to trying to stay one step ahead of my grey hair.  That’s enough to keep me busy for now.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Hunting For Tail

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Let me share with you a story I heard this weekend about Sheepdog’s very first hunting experience…

According to his mom, Sheepdog has always been infatuated with guns.  That is no surprise to me.  Now, Sheepdog’s dad is not really into hunting or guns and his mom is a Bill Clinton-kissing (she wishes!) liberal and very anti-gun, so neither of them was excited about the idea of their little boy heading out into the wilderness with one.  But when Sheepdog was somewhere around ten years old he had bugged and badgered his dad to take him hunting so much and so often that his parents finally relented.

Sheepdog’s mom held firm on one caveat… whatever Sheepdog shot, he had to eat.  He agreed to her condition without hesitation.  They borrowed a .410 shotgun, acquired the proper permit, and went off into the woods behind their house (hopefully not anywhere near the elementary school – which is also right behind their house – but I didn’t clarify and, frankly, don’t want to know) for Sheepdog’s maiden hunting experience.

They were gone for about an hour.  Sheepdog’s dad had figured that he would go into the woods to humor the kid, as he didn’t expect he could hit the side of a barn.  His mom was even more skeptical.  She had fallen asleep on the living room couch while they were out, only to be awoken by her beaming son standing over her, holding a giant (and very dead) chestnut squirrel by its fluffy tail.

To hear Sheepdog tell it, that squirrel was as big as a rabbit.  Also to hear him tell it, it tasted like chicken.  Even then he was preparing to survive and take care of his family after The Apocalypse.  That’s my man!

“One of my favorite clothing patterns is camouflage. Because when you're in the woods it makes you blend in. But when you're not it does just the opposite. It's like "hey, there's an a(**)hole."” - Demetri Martin, comedian

One additional note to this story…

Apparently it is customary for real hunters to keep a trophy from each of their kills (a la Daniel Boone and his cap).  Many have the heads of their kills mounted on their walls.  You may have seen or heard of people with animal tails hanging from their truck antennas or, for those hunters not yet old enough to drive, hanging off of their bicycle handlebars.  Taxidermists make a living off of this stuff.

Ew… vomit, but to each his own.

Sheepdog was old enough at the time that his mom did not go into his room.  Boys at that age are apparently best left behind closed doors (“I was combing my hair!”) until laundry or cleaning day.  One of those arrived and his mom went into his room to try to wrangle the entropy.  When she entered her senses were assaulted so fiercely that her eyes teared up and she started to retch.  She searched blindly for the source of the stench and to her horror she saw that ten-year-old Sheepdog, now a proud hunter and marksman, had pinned his very own trophy on his dresser mirror… the dead squirrel’s rotting tail.

I am beginning to rethink this whole “having boys” thing.  Uh oh.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Country Roads

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Please forgive me if I am a tad hard to understand this morning.  I find that I am writing with a southern accent today, probably because I’ve been in West Virginia visiting Sheepdog’s parents all weekend.  Y’all just please bear with me.

Sheepdog's hometown is so small that it says "Welcome to Jane Lew" on both sides of this sign

Sheepdog grew up in a small town in the middle of West Virginia.  And by “small” I mean population of 406, but that’s only if you include the greater metropolitan area.  They have a fire station, a park, a car wash, a laundromat (which – until recently – was called the “laundermat”), a church, a Dairy Store, a Dairy Mart, a Dairy King (not to be confused with Dairy Queen), and an elementary school.  There were less than 50 kids in his graduating class.  It is a town that has very nice people who take tremendous pride in their families, their town and their state.  Oh, and a few of them root for the Mountaineers.

His parents live in a beautiful stone house at the top of the hill on Main Street.  It is the same house that Sheepdog lived in from the time that he was less than a year old until he went off to college.  Sheepdog’s mom is an obsessive viewer of the HGTV and her house is always beautifully decorated, re-decorated and eventually re-re-decorated.  She also keeps their yard (which is a farm-like two acres) meticulously maintained, with beautiful landscapes, vegetable gardens and lush flower beds.  Sheepdog’s dad is a retired power lineman (with the resultant Popeye-like forearms) who keeps busy working on the ever-evolving Honey-Do lists that his wife continues to produce.  They’ve been married for 46 years and they haven’t killed each other yet.

Our trip up here this summer ended up sandwiched between two things that could not be changed on our family schedule.  We left Atlanta at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning and drove through the Blue Ridge mountains in the fog and rain to get here.  It has been raining hard every night since we arrived.  We have to be back in Atlanta by tomorrow afternoon, so our original plan to hit the road at 3 a.m. on Tuesday was thwarted by the potential for middle-of-the-night fog in the mountains.  I don’t know about you, but driving along a highway that was literally built on the side of a mountain in the pitch black dark of the early morning combined with dense fog that does not allow you to see much of anything – neither the side of the mountain nor the 18-wheelers that continue to drive over 70 m.p.h. no matter the weather – does not sound appealing to me.  So we’re pulling out this afternoon, just a little bit earlier than we planned, and hoping that the elusive sunshine holds out.

We’ve been making the most of our short but sweet visit by simply spending time together.  We got to see Sheepdog’s sister, her husband, her two kids and their new puppy, Mabel, on Saturday night at dinner.  We hung out with the neighbors (who are as good as family) last night.  And we’ve been visiting with Sheepdog’s parents (“Grandma” and “Grandpa” for almost 16 years… we are not switching to “Me-Maw” and “Pa-Paw” even though that’s what their other grandkids call them now) every waking moment.  It has been a really nice, relaxing trip.

Ren McCormack's got nothing on Kid A

My favorite part so far was when Grandpa offered to let Kid A (who just finished driving school) drive the tractor around the property.  She was very cautious and hesitant because she was following every rule applicable to driving a car on the road.  I think she even had her permit in her pocket.  But she had all of this beautiful land to drive and drive and drive until her heart was content.  She probably gained more confidence driving that tractor around their property for thirty minutes than she has driving my truck around an empty parking lot for hours.

And that’s just one of the many great things about small towns and Country Roads…

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue ridge mountains
Shenandoah river –
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin’ like a breeze

– “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, 1971

“It’s always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you’re going.” – Anthony Burgess

Y’all wish me luck for tomorrow…

Living in My Basement is Not an Option

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Kid D really got into reading the Wimpy Kid book series by Jeff Kinney this summer.  We borrowed the movies and watched both DVDs a few weeks ago.  He really thinks they are funny, so I decided to get him the Do-It-Yourself Book, which is a kind of fill-in-the-blank diary for boys (so they clarify many, many times that it is indeed NOT a diary because that would be too girly).

He has been so cute to watch every night, reading and writing in his book.  He takes it very seriously.  Sometimes I hear him talking to himself, either reading aloud or working out an answer to a prompt in the book.  Every once in a while he will ask me questions, like “What’s the longest I’ve ever gone without bathing?” or “Have I ever been sent home early by one of my friend’s parents?”  When I ask why he wants to know he just guards his book and holds it close to his body and says, “Oh, no reason.”

So I felt very special last night when he invited me to read some of his journal (it is apparently much manlier to call it that) with him.  I crawled into his bed next to him and he showed me some pages and read me a questionnaire and the answers he chose.  Now, it was really for classmates but he chose to answer with family members instead.  I have to say that his answers were spot on.

The person who’d have the best chance of surviving in the wild:  Dad (Sheepdog)

The person you’d want to do your homework for you:  Kid A

The person who doesn’t have a “whispering voice”:  Kid E

The person who you wished lived in your neighborhood:  his cousin W

The person who’s most likely to do something crazy on a dare:  Kid C

The person who you really wouldn’t want to get hold of this book:  Kid B

The person who you wouldn’t want to get in a fist fight with:  Mom

So the rest of the man-journal had some cute and often funny answers.  That is until we got to the “Predict Your Future” page…

In case it is too small to read I will tell you what Kid D predicts is going to happen.  My 30-year-old married son, who is the father of two with a dog whom he calls “Cool,” will be working as a math “techer” (thank goodness he doesn’t want to be a spelling teacher, right?) and pulling down either one or 11 G’s a year (I can’t tell which, but they both suck and he’s below the poverty line either way), is still playing video games on a regular basis (enough that he brings them to work with him) and he will be living in the house he currently resides in.

Now, the way I see it, either Sheepdog and I are dead and he has inherited this house (I don’t know how he landed it over his four siblings, but whatever…) or he plans to live at home with us forever.

Whoa, buster.  Not.  Gonna.  Happen.

See, I love, love, love my kids.  I enjoy their company and I like doing things with them.  I think that they are interesting and funny and silly.  I like being their mom and I couldn’t ask for a more rewarding job than to teach them and guide them and raise them.  Until they graduate from school and – pay attention because this is the really important part – move out of our house.

And I do not think that it is too early to let them know what our expectations are either.  So in no uncertain terms I told six-year-old Kid D that he will graduate high school, then most likely go on to college, then he will promptly get a job that will pay enough to support him (and Cool and the Gang if that’s how he’s really gonna play it) in his own place.

I made sure to let him know that I will welcome him back for holidays and visits and he could even maybe live several miles away (no less than 2.5) and can come over for Sunday dinners, but he will never, ever be allowed to live here.  That would definitely lead to a fist fight with mom, and we know how he feels about that.

Wish me luck for the weekend…

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P.S.  Despite the fact that I just told Kid D that I will – at some point in the future – no longer let him live with me, he wanted me to let everyone know that he did in fact give me his permission to share the contents of his journal for purposes of this post.  So I’m not really a jerk for sharing his private thoughts and feelings with you all.

Summer Has Jumped the Shark (Week)

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Da……….dum, da………dum, da……..dum, da…….dum, da……dum, da…..dum, da….dum, da…dum, da..dum, da.dum, DAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Did I feel it?  Was I paying attention?  Do I remember what I was doing when I first felt that this summer could be O-V-E-R, dead and gone as far as I was concerned?

No, no and odds are either standing in the neighborhood pool making sure nobody was dropping a deuce near me or sitting inside my air-conditioned house because it was so hot I couldn’t even contemplate stepping outside to walk down to said pool (the pool water is now hovering near a lovely ninety degrees – refreshing!).  But I don’t really remember.  I just know that it has definitely happened.

I am sick of the unrelenting, unholy heat that qualifies it as child endangerment to send your kids outside even just to get the mail, let alone to play outside all day (you can drink from the hose and pee in the bushes!).  I am sick of my kids being in the house all day, every day.  I am sick of hearing them bicker with one another.  I am sick of hearing loud crashes, having a mini-heart attack, then hearing a (not really) reassuring “I’m/ He’s OK!”  I am sick of the middle-of-the-night thunderstorms that wake everybody in the house up with their thrashing winds and window-rattling thunder and bone-jarring lightning strikes, yet they don’t even cool anything off the next day.  I am sick of stepping on teeny, tiny Lego pieces that have been strewn about my house for months now.  I am sick of washing bathing suits and pool towels (well, let me be honest – I stopped washing towels around mid-July), and I am especially sick of trying to put those tiny little liners back into bikini tops after they fall out every single wash.  I am sick of reruns on TV, I am no longer friends with Netflix, I haven’t been able to find a great new book, and I am even a little bit sick of the internet.

Bruce: Hello. My name is Bruce. Anchor, Chum: Hello, Bruce. Bruce: It has been three weeks since my last fish, on my honor, or may I be chopped up and made into soup.

Then I stumbled upon Discovery Channel’s Shark Week Top 10 Shark Attack videos.  This stuff is SICK!  I mean I am scared to death to watch and have to pretend it is not real, yet I can’t stop looking at the ocean train wreck/ shark porn that is unfolding before my eyes.  Even the reenactments are realistic and as frightening as my imagination can handle.  Being a girl who loves the beach and ventures out into the waves on a regular basis, I have to know that there is always the possibility that a shark could be out there looking around for some num nums.  I just figure that it’s not going to happen to me.

According to the Top 10 Shark Attack videos, neither did those people.  Well, except the guys who jump into the water in aluminum cages simply because sharks are there and they want to film them/ study them/ get penciled into their dance cards.  I mean, thanks for all of the great up-close, color pictures of humans being shark brunch and all, but who does that?  Those dudes are loco.

I am simply amazed that people get back into the waters in those locations where shark attacks are prevalent.  I was really surprised to learn that the United States leads the world in shark attacks, with 36 in 2010.  Australia (which I would have guessed was the leader) only had 14 and South Africa had eight.  After looking into the numbers in more detail, I have decided that I will never go into Florida’s waters ever, ever again.  But I really didn’t like Florida all that much to begin with.

So I’m counting down the days until that big yellow bus pulls up to my driveway (one of the perks of having so many kids is that the bus stop unofficially relocated to our house).  Today marks eleven.  I can do anything for eleven more days, right?  I can put up with my kids as they are fighting and whining and circling around me, seemingly ready to attack at any minute.  I can even refrain from punching them in the nose (because that’s what I’d do if they were actual sharks).

Yep, Summer 2011 is almost over.  Then comes Fall, with school and alarm clocks and schedules and activities and sports and homework and projects and da……….dum, da………dum, da……..dum, da…….dum, da……dum, da…..dum, da….dum, da…dum, da..dum, da.dum, DAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Wrangling the Entropy Tip #6, Happy Birthday Every Flipping Week!

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

It has been said that I have a fairly large family.  Actually it all depends on what circles we’re hanging in, as mine is nothing when I’m hanging with my Catholic, Mormon or Ethiopian peeps.  Five kids ain’t Jack to them and they call me names like “baby-making slacker” and laugh snidely that we can drive everyone around in one car that does not have the name “Blue Bird” soldered on the side.  But considering that the average American family still only has 1.86 children, we’re technically still above the curve.

Figure also that I have three sisters and Sheepdog has one.  Those sisters each have a spouse plus 3, 3, 3 and 2 kids each, respectively.  Add our parents, the siblings and their husbands, Sheepdog plus me and our five kids, and we are celebrating birthdays and important holidays and milestones for fourteen adults and sixteen kids each year.  It’s a lot to coordinate.  So much that it becomes a pain in the butt and I don’t always want to do it.  So I don’t do it all.

No, I do not pick my favorites and only send them presents (great idea, but it tends to lead to some family drama).  Nor do I universally ignore birthdays and skip Christmas (although some years I would like to).  We go in together on presents and we share the responsibility of buying the gifts.  It works for us.

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The Joint Birthday Gift(s)

On my side of the family we have all agreed that $25 per family is a fair amount to spend on kids’ birthday presents, especially when there are so many of them (kids, not presents).  Now, $25 is not really a lot of money anymore when you take it to a Target or Toys R Us or http://www.amazon.com.  So we decided that we would pool our money and get $75 worth of gifts (one big, several small… whatever works based upon the kid’s wish list).  That way, too, only one person has to do the shopping and wrapping and card making.  The gifts are very personal (not just a gift card) and it doesn’t feel like so much of an obligation or a chore because you are not doing it every few weeks (which is seriously how often gift-worthy occasions come up around here).

This was the signature page for my niece's 2nd birthday card. And it doesn't even include her mom and dad or her siblings.

The UoweME List

My sisters and I keep a running list because we are always rotating who does the shopping.  This also comes in handy for bridal and baby showers, graduations and flower deliveries.  We agree upon a dollar amount, pool our money and buy something a little bigger than we would be able to buy if we each bought gifts separately.  We give the responsibility of maintaining the list to one person and settle up quarterly.  If the buying/ spending is done equally then we rarely have much to settle up.

The Christmas Pollyanna/Secret Santa gift exchange

At Christmas we assign a cousin to each kid (Kid A gets Cousin 7, Cousin 7 gets Kid E, and so on until all of the cousins are giving to and receiving from somebody).  We give those Christmas presents a $30 limit, with some flexibility.  So instead of buying a dollar store piece of junk, or overshooting your Christmas budget every year, we buy nice gifts that the receivers actually want.  Everybody gets fewer gifts overall, but it’s quality over quantity.  Win/ win.

For the siblings and our spouses, we set up a similar gift exchange but we do couples gifts that have a $100 limit.  Sister B and spouse buys for Sister D and spouse, Sister D and spouse buy for another sister and spouse, etc.  We each submit wish lists or ideas so that everybody is also getting something that they want.

For our parents, we get ideas from them and then go in on the gifts together.  This cuts down on returns, limits everybody’s overall shopping and because all of the presents are from everybody, it ensures that there are no favorites (my gift was nicer/ more expensive/ more personal than your gift, so of course mom loves me more).

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Now, a few things need to happen for these systems to work.  My group happens to be my immediate family, but any group with similar buying interests would work just as well.  Maybe you have a circle of friends and you all buy birthday and other holiday presents for each other and/ or each other’s kids every year.  You also need to have similar budgets.  And there can’t be any slackers in the group either.  Everybody has to step up to shop for, pay for, wrap and deliver some presents in order for it to work.

So go find your own group and give yourself a break every once in a while.  It’ll be your own little present.  So, you’re welcome.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

I Like Nice Boys and He Likes Dirty Girls

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

The idea of a list of celebrities that you can get with and it doesn’t count as cheating has been around for a while.  Friends covered it in “The One With Frank Jr.” wherein Ross eliminated Isabella Rossellini before he laminated his list… which he did just before he bumped into her at the coffee house.

Ross: Oh no, no, wait, wait! Isabella, don’t… don’t just dismiss this so fast. I mean, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Isabella Rossellini: Yeah, for you.

The odds of us meeting and then hooking up with these celebrities are in the neighborhood of Slim and None.  That improbability is what makes the game safe for a happily married girl like me.  I don’t actually want to break up any families, starting with my own rather nice one.  But I do enjoy me some good-looking men, so I’m certainly up for playing.  Plus, it’s a great way to learn about people.

The kind of person that you are attracted to says a whole lot about you.  Are you drawn to bad boys?  Do you go for women with great personalities, regardless of their looks?  Are you drawn to rocket scientist types?  Does your ideal woman sport a sleeve of tattoos and a pierced anything?  Someone who is great with kids?  Mary Ann or Ginger?  Or are you looking for a big, strapping, manly man (who is perfectly good at expectorating)?

Sheepdog and I are always updating our lists.  Here’s my current one …

George Clooney

Ashton Kutcher (on the left)

Rob Lowe

Jimmy Marsden

Ben Affleck

That’s my list.  Obviously, I have a type.  And also I like men in their underpants.  For this purpose, I overlook their politics or their movie roles or their marital status, although I would like to point out that mine are all fairly well-behaved, nice, family men.  Kind of like Sheepdog, now that I think about it.

And speaking of Sheepdog, here’s his current list…

Minka Kelly

Blake Lively

Beyonce Knowles

Eva Mendes

Keira Knightley

Kind of not like me.  Dirty, dirty girls.  And that Beyonce scares me to death, frankly.  But this is his fantasy list, so go for it Sheepdog.

One last thing… this past Spring Jennifer Garner and her husband, Ben Affleck, were in Atlanta while she was filming a movie.  There were several sightings of each of them in Sheepdog’s office building in Buckhead, and rumor had it that they were working out at the fancy gym that is on the top floor.  Of course I took this opportunity to ride those elevators like it was my job in order to facilitate a chance encounter with someone who has been on my list for over a decade.  Sadly, it was not meant to be, because I never once saw him let alone got to tell him he was on my list.

Sheepdog quickly got sick of me showing up at his place of employment under the pretense that I missed him and wanted to take him to lunch.  He knew exactly what I was up to and called me out on it.

“So what?  You are riding on the elevator for like an hour (stalker), and Ben does happen to get on with you at some point.  What would you even say?”

I was not about to let him get the best of me.  So I said, “If Ben Affleck got on the elevator with me I would play it cool and very obviously and slowly look him up and down.  Then I would say loud enough for him to hear, ‘Very nice, but in my fantasy you were wearing one of those matching track suits, like in Good Will Hunting.'”

Then I would get off of the elevator and actually take Sheepdog to lunch.  Because I am a very lucky girl.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Ouch, That Burns or Why I’ll Never Wear a Low-Cut Dress to the Gun Club Again

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Sheepdog and I went on a date yesterday.  It was actually a double date with new friends, Fat Bastard (self-named, but he’s not even fat – he’s just old) and his Very Cool Wife.  We had talked about things that we have in common and settled on a casual dinner.  But first we decided to bond over shooting some guns.

Sheepdog is always up for a little target practice at the range.  He probably goes once a month to shoot and to grope the cool new merchandise on the shelves.  And by “grope” I do mean moan softly while he touches and fondles the guns inappropriately.  His latest obsession is an AR-15, which is a semi-automatic sport rifle that one would apparently use to shoot most kinds of varmints.  That man really loves guns.

Sheepdog's latest mistress

So our new friends are from the arctic tundra (or Wisconsin) where they apparently grow up with not much else to do but hunting and ice fishing.  The saying goes that the four major food groups there are cheese, beer, fish and venison.  And everybody from there either has a friend, relative or a pet named Brett.  Anyway, they were totally up for some fun with guns so we swung by their house and picked them up.

When we got out of the car there was some talk about me being too dressed up.  I kind of was, but you have to understand that I own sweatpants/ pajamas and I own dresses.  I have nothing in between.  So I had opted to wear a summer dress and (as a favor to Sheepdog) some high-heeled sandals.  We were going out to eat afterwards, so it wasn’t completely unreasonable that I would be in a dress.  It was just a little weird and out of place at the shooting range, but I certainly didn’t care.  Sheepdog, of course, thought it was hot and was all for it.

So we are at the gun club and we put on our eyes (protective glasses) and ears (Monster Beats by Dr. Dre headphones) and we pick out our target practice sheets.  Sheepdog gives us a little safety reminder class and he sets us up in Lane 10.  Very Cool Wife is up first and she shoots the Glock once to get a feel for it.  Then Mrs. Jack Bauer up and busts a cap or two (or fifteen) into the neck and torso of the terrorist holding an RPG.  She was completely bad ass.

By the time I was up I was still a little nervous, as it has been a while since I last went shooting.  I am a safety girl, so I asked Sheepdog to give me yet another rundown.  Soon I felt comfortable enough to shoot.  I like the standard black and white target dummy with a red “X” over his heart.  I shot the crap out of that thing.  I loved the power of the gun in my hands, even though I have never been able to get the grip just right.  I always end up with blood on my thumb from the recoil.  I didn’t empty the magazine, but I was satisfied for the moment and let Sheepdog finish that one out for me.

So the four of us rotated for a while and we each took turns with the different target sheets.  Bullet casings were flying left and right as they discharged.  We were trying shots with both of the guns that Sheepdog brought and we also experimented with distance shooting.  We were having a good time.  It was really fun.  And then…

I was shooting the Glock 9mm again (which is definitely my favorite handgun).  Now, everybody develops a certain stance when they are shooting.  Some people stand loosely and some are more rigid in the knees and elbows – there are dozens of variations.  I choose to stand with my legs apart and my arms fairly close together, while my elbows are a little relaxed.  Risking TMI, I will tell you that this actually causes my boobs to get pushed together, which is neither here nor there except that one of the bullet casings flew up into the air upon discharge and then promptly fell into my cleavage.

One minute I was thinking about protecting my family from bad guys, super proud that I was pumping lead into the target’s face, throat and heart, and the next minute my twins were screaming in pain from the burning hot shell casing that was trapped in between them.  My survival instincts were strong but I was still all Safety First, so I promptly placed the handgun on the counter facing downrange.  But let me tell you that my hands were fishing around for the hot metal in my bra toute de suite.

It hurt at the time, but fortunately my boobs are just fine.  The burn was very mild and almost completely unnoticeable by this morning.  And I got a lesson that I hope all of you will learn from as well… don’t ever wear a low-cut dress to the gun club.  There’s good reason why everyone else there is in crew neck t-shirts and jeans.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…