Category Archives: marriage

Winning!

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

I am the all-time Champion in my house of the most useless game in the world.  Hey, at least I am winning at something.  I have seen so many movies and so much television that I can identify actors and actresses on a movie or show and then link them to a part that they played in a much older movie or show.  The farther back you go and the less they resemble the former, the more street cred you get for the call.  And thanks to the site http://www.imdb.com (the International Movie Database) there is a go-to fact checker that can confirm just how awesome I am almost immediately.

Sheepdog tries to claim superiority sometimes (his IDs always come from completely irrelevant movies or shows that nobody except him ever saw, so I don’t count those… I know that George Clooney was on “Facts of Life,” but I wasn’t watching it live; I was out having fun in high school), but even he can not deny how incredible my latest call was.  Last night we were catching up on a couple of Raising Hope (FOX, Tuesdays @9:30/ 8:30c) episodes.  When we got to the one called “Kidnapped” they had an actor playing a police officer in a gas station convenience store.

After less than ten seconds of his screen time I screamed, “Press pause!”  Then I threw down the gauntlet by claiming that I knew who the actor was and a universally identifiable role that I can link him to.  Could Sheepdog say the same?

“Give me a minute!” he barked back as he squinted his eyes and waited for something to connect in his memory.  Nothing did and I got impatient because I thought I might just explode from my own awesomeness.

“Jurassic Park!  Somewhere near the Badlands, Montana!  Dinosaur dig!  The kid that says to Dr. Grant, “That’s not very scary.  More like a six-foot turkey,” I yelled excitedly as I made slashing motions across my chest and belly.  “Kids smell!  Babies smell!”

Sheepdog looked skeptically at the screen and shook his head in denial.

“No way.  I don’t see it,” he claims.

“Challenge accepted,” I said.  “Go check the database.”  I had so much adrenaline pumping that I was vibrating.

I’m sure you can already guess by now that I won.  Same kid.  There was something in his eyes.  I didn’t even need to hear his voice or watch the nuances in his mannerisms.  It really was a most excellent get, if I do say so myself.  It was almost as good as the time I was watching High School Musical (don’t get me started… it was under complete duress, I swear!) and I identified Ms. Darbus, the director of the school play, as the character Cassie from A Chorus Line  (1985), starring Michael Douglas.  BAM!  That was amazing!  But it was completely wasted on my kids and Sheepdog, who had never seen A Chorus Line.  I surely made them watch it after that.

Whatever… I am still the all-time Champion in my house.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Protecting the Family Jewels

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Youth sports can definitely be a highlight of childhood.  You get to play hard, get sweaty, experience teamwork, learn how to take direction and constructive criticism, and set and reach goals.  You know… the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.  But youth sports can also be fraught with drama, expense, parents’ expectations, coaches’ shenanigans, and injuries.  While we are always shooting for the good stuff, and we can’t really control the coach who wrecks the fun by cheating during the 9-year-old’s baseball finals, we do have the ability to take reasonable precautions against the injury part at least.

Last season Kid D played with a tee ball team and they recommended that the kids wear a heart guard under their uniform.  I didn’t even know that they existed.  A heart guard is a light, compression shirt with a tough, high density, dome shape over the chest that absorbs impact energy and forces it away from the heart.  They wear them to reduce the chances of commotio cordis, which is what can happen when an impact to the chest is transmitted to the heart muscle.  Depending on when during the heart cycle the impact occurs, it can affect the heart’s electrical activity, causing an arrhythmia and possibly death.  Scary stuff.  The kid wears a heart guard.

This year he plays machine pitch baseball on a 7/8-year-old’s team.  It is the first time that they don’t have the coaches’ (semi-) controlled pitching AND they also rotate in the position of catcher.  Guess what protective gear is recommended this season?  You guessed it… the kid needs a cup.

"If you can't be an athlete, at least be an athletic supporter." - Principal McGee, Grease, 1978

Since the purchase of anything penis-related falls under Sheepdog’s parental jurisDICtion (heh, heh), I sent the boys out to buy a cup together.  Apparently the sales clerk was a young girl, so when Sheepdog inquired as to where they might find the protective gear, she directed them to the display and then made a hasty exit, adding quickly, “I’ll leave you two to figure out the sizing…”  Um, isn’t that her job?

So Sheepdog calls me to ask whether Kid D is a Pee Wee extra-large or a Youth small.  I tell him to check the sizing recommendations on the packaging and give him the kid’s current weight.  Besides, how am I supposed to know?  I have no brothers and I have no penis.  I’ve never bought a cup before.  I’ve only seen jock straps in the locker room scenes of 80’s movies.  I can’t even picture how my six-year-old is going to wear those elastic straps around his tiny heiney anyway.

Turns out, they don’t have to wear the strappy things anymore.  Now they make compression underpants with a pocket in the front.  In this pocket you put a plastic (highly protective with names like “ultra carbon,” “bioflex,” and “titan alloy”) cup.  As always seems the case with boys and their family jewels, protection of them is of the utmost importance.  I will bet money that NASA develops this stuff.

And as always seems the case, Sheepdog would never buy anything for a jock that had the word “small” associated with it, so of course he came home with the extra-large version.

Kid D thought the whole thing was hysterical and he spent the better part of the afternoon making completely inappropriate (but funny) ball jokes and acting out shots-to-the-crotch in slow motion, all while sporting his new plastic bulge in his shorts.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Have You Heard About the Lonesome Loser?

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Today was officially the first day of preschool for Kid E.  I have to say that it was kind of a letdown.  We didn’t make a big deal out of it last night.  We didn’t pick out a special first day of school outfit.  I almost forgot to take him in on time (and no, it was not because I was playing video games… smart asses) and I didn’t even stop to take his picture out front.  I already did that stuff three weeks ago when he went to camp.  He gave me a high-five then went into the room without so much as a glance in my direction.  So I just paid his tuition and went outside to my car.  It was then that I realized that I had my freedom back, at least for three and a half hours each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  I got kind of tingly thinking about what I was going to do today.

As I was climbing into the driver’s seat I heard music pumping from the speakers outside of the pizzeria next door.

Sit down, take a look at yourself
Don’t you want to be somebody
Someday somebody’s gonna see inside
You have to face up, you can’t run and hide

Damn you, Little River Band.

I really do not like it when the universe smacks me on the head and demands that I pay attention.  But there was my message, coming at me on the voices of Australian rockers.  And I have learned that you either pay attention to these messages, or you’d better get ready for a fight that you will probably never, ever win.

So today I will make a plan.  Today I will set goals.  I will write them on paper and I will post them where I will see them every day.  And I will be productive and proud.

So actually I thank you, Little River Band.  And I think that’s Australian for “light a fire under your butt.”

For my easy-going friends

... and for my Type A peeps - Holla!

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Sheepdog Does Not Like Pregnant Women

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

This is an email I received this afternoon as I walked into the grocery store:

To: Stacy
From: Sheepdog
Subject: List of 5
Beyonce is off the list effective immediately.  Please install either Gabrielle Union or Zoe Saldana.

That was it.  And I know exactly why he sent the message… he must have just heard that Beyonce is pregnant.  And he took her off of his list because he does not like pregnant women.  And I knew it was coming.  He is so predictable.

I take full responsibility for this.  You might find it strange that the father of five children has such an aversion to those who are ripe with child.  I give you that it may seem odd on the surface, but if you do the math you will realize that I have been pregnant for just under four of the eighteen years that we have been married.  That is almost a quarter of our whole marriage that I have been knocked up, craving weird things, and complaining about sciatica, morning sickness, swollen lady parts and Braxton-Hicks.  No wonder he doesn’t like pregnant women.  As a group we/ they are not always the most fun to be around.  I always say that I loved being pregnant, but Sheepdog remembers a completely different experience.

He also gets really disgusted about what pregnancy can do to a woman’s body.  I think he was in awe of the creation of life and all that jazz when I was carrying Kid A, but that sh!t got old fast.  He was affected more than I was by the weight gain, the body morphing, the waddle-walk… and that’s nothing compared to the horrific pregnancy phenomenon that occasionally occurs where a once beautiful woman changes from head to toe so much that she doesn’t even look like herself anymore.  It’s like the baby pokes them from inside with an ugly stick.

Debra Messing from the television show "Will & Grace," before

... and then this happened

Now, don’t go judging Sheepdog harshly.  Sheepdog is actually a man who thinks that all women are beautiful.  So much that I often have to tell him to chill about it.  I think that man was born with a little extra testosterone or something.  And he is wonderfully sweet to me no matter what I look like, even when I was about-to-blow pregnant.  He is just that much happier knowing that he will never be married to a pregnant woman… never, ever again.

So Sheepdog once again finds himself adjusting his List of 5.  His list at one time or another has included Selma Hayek, Jessica Alba, and other beautiful women who made the mistake of procreating and thus alienating Sheepdog forever.  I guess I’m lucky that he still likes me after all the times I’ve been pregnant.  Not so much luck for Mrs. Jay-Z, I guess.

I will confirm this with him when he gets home from work, but I’m guessing his inner-monologue reaction to seeing Beyonce round in the belly went something like this:

“Wait… what?  My dirty girl is pregnant?”
“Heh, heh… she did It.”
“Crap, now I have to change my list.”

And thus, the e-mail from this afternoon.  He really is predictable.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

My Greatest Fear

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

I recently responded to a form that posed the question What three things scare you?

I am afraid of:
3.  fire
2.  losing Sheepdog
1.  something bad happening to my children

Answer number three is easily traced back to five or six-year-old me watching in the pitch dark of a moonless night as a house just down the street from mine burned to the ground.  Monstrous, black and gray clouds of dense smoke poured out of the window openings like sand flowing out of a beach bucket that, instead of traveling down to a pile on the ground as sand should, defied gravity and floated up toward the heavens.  I remember standing amongst my neighbors and thinking about the family that lived inside that house, wondering if they had been asleep like I was when the fire started.  Did anyone get hurt?  No matter the answer, their lives would be forever changed.

Losing my spouse, whether to death or divorce, scares me too.  Sheepdog may drive me crazy on a regular basis, but that is mostly because he challenges me.  He doesn’t accept my bologna, no matter how confidently I may present it.  He is my stabilizer and my sounding board.  He encourages and inspires me to be a better person.  He also makes me laugh.  He is my teammate in this crazy relay race.  He is my best friend.  I may get sick of hearing even more than I can imagine about bikes and/or guns, but isn’t that better than the alternative?

As far as my babies are concerned, I worry about any and every one of the following… cuts and bruises, broken bones, heartbreak, wounds suffered at the hands of a bully, sickness, suffering of any kind, emotional scars, terminal illness, death.  And then some.  I don’t worry about them hourly – or even daily – most of the time, but they are there festering in the part of my brain that recalls the smoke and the smell of burning things.  It is the same part of me that is scared to navigate life alone, without someone who gets me like Sheepdog does.

The community where I grew up was turned upside down on Saturday by fatal accidents.  The community where my kids are growing up has been devastated over this past year by more than one unthinkable loss.  And the ones who died were all children.  It is my greatest fear.

The sharp knife of a short life. - The Perry Band, "If I Die Young"

My mind is twisted and tangled with thoughts.  I wake in the middle of the night, wondering.  How do the families affected by these tragedies go forward?  Death happens every day, but some deaths affect us more powerfully.  How do you get through the day when you send your child out the door and he doesn’t come home?  Will something bad happen to my children?  How can things like this be prevented?  Do I have enough faith?  Why, just why?

Words like fate, luck, misfortune and happenstance all come to mind.  The struggling part of me sheds tears for the ones who lived lives that were just beginning, that didn’t get to experience enough of anything.  Moreover, I feel an immobilizing and chest-crushing pain for those who must live the daily struggles that occur in the wake of these incidents… friends, teachers, coaches, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers.  They are the ones who must overcome and live through my greatest fear.

Rest in peace, young ones.  May God watch over you.

Live in peace, family and friends.  May God and angels watch over you as well.

Sometimes bad things happen.  It is a fact of life.  Neither you nor I have any control over it.  We are defined by how we react to the things that life throws at us.  So speak more kindly, love with more passion.  Be grateful for what you have and the life you live today.  Forgive and have patience.  Leave each place better than it was when you got there.

Doing these things will not exempt you from tragedy.  But you will live a life that means something, and that seems to be the best way to pay tribute to those children who were taken from us too soon, before their lives really even got started.

My deepest sympathies go out to the Mainland community.

Guess What We Learned in School Today?

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

When we get to have dinner at the table like civilized people we will often go around and everybody will tell a little something about their day.  Last night only Kid B was out of the house for soccer practice, so the rest of us were chatting it up together, all whilst eating a yummy spread of ham, homemade mac and cheese, mixed veggies and a salad (I’m trying to prove to Sheepdog that I really need this new and improved kitchen by reminding him that I can do more than order from the Pearl Lian).  It is a nice family ritual and keeps us all connected to each other.  Everybody had a lot to say last night, mostly about what had been happening the first week of school.

Kid E started with, “I went to school today…” (no he didn’t).  Then he proceeded to tell us all exactly what he ate, what he played, and how many times he went to the bathroom.  I cut him off at the pass and gave the floor to Kid D.

Kid D presumably had something of substance to say, but he is easily rerouted to potty humor (he is the apple and I am the tree) so we then heard some nonsensical story about poop from him.  Enough.  We were eating a nice dinner for goodness’ sake, and I’m trying to butter up Sheepdog for the new kitchen.  You kids are killing me here!

Kid C was kind of giggly and way into her mac and cheese (score for mom’s kitchen!) and she didn’t have much to add to the conversation, so Kid A took over.  First order of business was to ask her father if she could go to dinner and a movie on Saturday night with her boyfriend.  He is a senior and she is a sophomore, by the way.  He’s a very nice boy and I actually like him.  He is very sweet and respectful to her.  At the same time, though, I once dated a boy who was a senior and I remember what was always on his mind.  No wonder Sheepdog feels the need to buy another gun.  Ugh!

Then Kid A talked about what she learned in Spanish class.  I thought she was going to tell a story, but turns out it was a joke.

A guy walks into a bar.  He notices a man in the corner with a teeny, tiny piano player who is accepting song requests for money.   They are causing quite a commotion, so he asks the bartender about them.
“Oh, there’s some homeless man in the alley who will grant you a wish if you buy him dinner,” said the bartender.
So the man buys a pizza and delivers it to the homeless man in the alley.  The homeless man thanks him and then offers to grant him one wish in return.
The man thinks for a moment.  “I would really like a million bucks,” he says.
Before he knows it, hundreds of thousands of ducks start raining down from above.  The man is disappointed and confused, so he goes back into the bar and approaches the man in the corner.
“I don’t know what just happened.  I asked the homeless man for a million bucks, yet he gave me a million ducks.”
“Tell me about it, man.  Do you think that I actually asked for a 10-inch pianist?”
 
I at least hope that she learned it en Espanol.  So much for a nice family dinner… two poop stories and a penis joke.  I’m never going to get a new kitchen now.

Wish me luck for the weekend…

I’m Bored

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Sheepdog and I are always entertaining the idea of moving.  The kitchen is too small, the garage is too small, and I can’t see who is pulling into the driveway because there are no windows on the south side of the house.  Problem is that the real estate market is still swimming around in the toilet, so we would lose money if we sold now.  Additionally, we like lots of things about this house… the general floor plan, the schools, the neighborhood, and the location.

So we continue the crazy dance and we change our decision just about every other month.  Remodel.  Move.  Remodel.  Move.  Definitely we should remodel.  Absolutely we’re going to move.  And so it goes…

You never know which one of us will get the bug to switch up the current plan.  The catalyst can be anything from a shift in the global political scene to an accidental stumbling upon House Hunters.  Last week the stock market was doing a really fine roller coaster impression.  Not much surprise when Sheepdog then called out “Remodel!”  So I drew up a wish list and some rough sketches and we met with our contractor.

What we want to do is a decent-sized project.  We want to blow out a wall to expand the kitchen.  That means taking real estate from the existing screened porch and enclosing that room to make it part of the house.  We might as well put in some mudroom cabinets and a bench and a side porch with a window while we’re fiddling around in there.  We also would like to take the existing deck (which is untapped real estate now because it is either too hot or covered with pollen) put a roof over it, add some walls of windows (that we can close occasionally to keep the pollen out) and make it a 3-season porch.  And back to the kitchen… there are some tweaks in functionality that I’d like to see occur in there, so let’s just gut it and start over.  Oh, and I’d like to re-do the master bath while we’re at it.

Yes… a “decent-sized” project.  We should just move.  Ugh.

This house is currently favorite on http://www.realtor.com right now

It has over 22,000 square feet of house and costs just under $7 million

Sheepdog just shakes his head at me.  What?  A girl can dream, can’t she?

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…

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…