Monthly Archives: February 2014

Ice-Capades in the ATL

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Unless you are completely unplugged, y’all may have heard that we have had a little winter weather down here in Georgia.  Twice.  In the span of two weeks.  These events resulted in six official days off from the public schools (an “early” dismissal, followed by three full days at home the first go-around and then three more days off this past week).  Today marks the end of the 4-day Presidents’ Day weekend, which punctuated our impromptu vacation with an exclamation point.

“No big deal,” says everybody I know in the Northeast.  “We have had so many snowstorms this winter that they are about to loop back to the letter “A” in naming them.  Our kids haven’t had a regular, 5-day school week since before winter break.”

True.  But that’s what you get when you live above the Mason-Dixon.  Eleven and a half years ago, Sheepdog and I made the conscious choice to pack up our U-Haul and leave that bittersweet nonsense up North.  Sure, we would miss the peaceful, thick flakes that fall so quietly and leave everything looking like a Thomas Kinkade painting.  Of course, we would lament our lack of white Christmases.  We would even long for the occasional snow day here and there.  But in the plus column…  no more grey slush.  No more filthy cars from November through March.  No more bruised tailbones from slipping on ice in the driveways and parking lots.  No more gravel and sand giving our vehicles microdermabrasion of the chassis all winter long.  Heck, I didn’t even buy winter coats for my kids in 2005 or 2008.  It rarely dropped below 40° F those winters and when it did, I just told them to wear two sweatshirts!

But ever since I sold my like-new ice scraper and snow shovel in a yard sale for 25 cents each (they sat in the garage, mocking my northern roots, for more than ten years), it seems like everybody from Mother Nature to Jon Stewart has been busy making fun of us down here in the bible belt.  One day we are pruning our crepe myrtles, the next day we are doing scratch spins in our electric cars on I-75/85.  And before we know, it will be 108° F in the shade again and we will long once more for the cool days of February.

In the meantime, we’re all just hanging here in the ATL with our excesses of bread and milk and alcohol, trying not to kill our children or spouses due to the incredible amounts of quality family time we have been given.  Nothing to do but sled in our laundry baskets, swim at the indoor pools at Lifetime Fitness, and play an 18-hour, six day game of Risk.

Good times.  Great memories.  Seriously.  When’s Spring?

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

NSFW in the Hair Care Aisle

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

NSFW – (from http://www.urbandictionary.com) Not Safe For Work. Used to describe Internet content generally inappropriate for the typical workplace, i.e., would not be acceptable in the presence of your boss and colleagues (as opposed to SFW, Safe For Work).

Unless, of course, you work in a strip club or in the porn industry, right?

This past weekend, after having been in the house with Sheepdog and the kids for Atlanta’s Snowmageddon 2014 for six long days, I decided to go out and run some errands.  The kids and their friends had eaten us out of house and home during our impromptu vacation, so I headed for my number two most frequent check-in on Foursquare, the grocery store.

I loaded my cart with the basics, then checked the list to see what other goodies the kids were asking for.  One of the requests was “the conditioner that you use that smells good.”  Considering the fact that I have no less than 9 bottles in my shower, I had some detective work to do.

So I moseyed on down to the hair care aisle, and started pulling random bottles off the shelves.

Pop! went a lid.  Sniff.  Eh, I thought to myself.  That one’s just okay-smelling.

So, I tried another.  And another.  And another.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  They were all starting to smell the same to me until…

Pop! went a final lid, and the creamy, white conditioner shot out all over my face, my hair, and my chest.

Oh, how I wish I was kidding.  That totally happened.  And my kids are old enough now that I no longer carry a roll of paper towels in a Mary Poppins carpet bag just in case.

I remember making a sort of moaning, why-me? kind of noise, which – in hindsight – probably did not help my NSFW status.  I ignored the people around me as best I could while I tried to get all of the conditioner off of me, but I was imagining the worst-case scenario at the same time… mothers pulling 180’s with their carts while shielding their young children’s eyes, and dirty-perv men lingering and watching me while they pretended to peruse their Just For Men grey-blending options.  Please, oh please, do not let anybody have a cell phone camera pointed at me right now.

Is that hair gel?

This is what my hair looked like by the time I got to the checkout line

When I was finished with my clean up on aisle 10, my elbows and hands were silky smooth.  Then again so were my face, my knees, my pants, my fleece jacket, and the grocery cart handle.  There was not a rough patch of anything anywhere, but I decided that it actually smelled really good (thankfully, because that smell stayed with me for days), so I threw two bottles into my cart and moved on to the next aisle.

Oh, the lengths this mother will go to in order to check something off the to do list.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…