Category Archives: random

Boo!

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

It is that time of year again.  The air is cooler and the sky is darker but somehow more colorful at the same time.  Things are shutting down in preparation for the cold weeks of winter… swimming pools, outdoor activities, trees.  Orange and red and brown and yellow gold are the colors that line our streets and yards and front porches.  Sometimes autumn sneaks in gradually, but other times it comes crashing upon us with very little warning.  I can’t believe it is October already!

And along with the first signs of autumn come Halloween things.  Pumpkins and costumes and candy corn.  Apple cannons and corn mazes and hayrides.  “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and gourds and black plastic spider rings.  These things are everywhere I go… the grocery store, a neighbor’s yard, Yahoo’s home page. (No, I don’t get out much).

So it is not much wonder that I have been thinking again lately that our house might be haunted.

Boo!

Okay, how does a (relatively) normal person come to the conclusion that she is living with Casper?  Seriously, go and poll your friends.  Asking “Do you believe in ghosts?  Because I do.” makes people question your sanity, and they might even stop letting their kids play over at your house.  Unless your friends are all kooks or they already know you’re a little different and they have come to expect these kinds of things from you at random intervals.

So I’ve got that going for me.

Maybe I don’t actually believe that I have a ghost in my house.  But I am serious when I say that I think there is still some residual negative energy floating around in here.  We bought this house from a man who had just gone through an icky, nasty, angry divorce (his own words) and there was definitely a bad feeling inside this house that Sheepdog and I both commented upon when we walked through.  I can’t really describe it any other way.  But we loved the house and the neighborhood so we bought it anyway.  Oh, and sometimes when I fold laundry on my bed upstairs I often see something in my peripheral vision moving around near the stairs.  Did I forget to mention that?  Now I sound like the kook.

So say I choose to believe that there is some paranormal activity going on here or even just an excess of yin.  Being a girl who likes to take care of business instead of ruminating, I decided to do some research.  I googled “getting rid of negative energy in my home” and came upon an article that advised the following steps:

1.  Clear stale energies.  Open everything that is closed (doors, closets, windows, etc.).  Then, walking from the front door in a clockwise pattern, circle each room and go into the next while ringing a bell.
2.  Use salt to cleanse.  Sprinkle it everywhere.  Be sure to sweep up the salt and throw it into the trash outside of your house.
3.  Feed your ghosts rice.  Sprinkle it around the perimeter of your home, beginning at the front door and walking in a clockwise fashion until you come to the door again. 
4.  Scent the air.  Use smoke from incense or from herbs, such as lavender for transcending problems, eucalyptus for healing, or mint for prosperity. 
5.  Use light and sound.  Tinkling wind chimes and bright crystal rainbows or lit chandeliers are both excellent ways to introduce beneficial and cleansing energy to your space.
6.  Take a salt bath yourself.  Salt will purify you and remove negative energies from your body. 
 
Figuring I’ve got nothing but the previous homeowner’s lingering divorce energy and maybe even a ghost to lose, I tried to follow the directions with at least a modicum of seriousness and (temporary) conviction.  Because otherwise what would be the point, right?  But I couldn’t bring myself to actually go and buy herbs to burn or special sea salts for sprinkling or bathing.  And after opening every cabinet, window and door and ringing the only bell I could find (an old bike bell… whatever, it dinged just fine) and then sprinkling freshly ground table salt then brown rice (it was what I had in the pantry) in each and every corner and cleaning it with the dustbuster , I sprayed lavender Febreze and waved around some Vicks VapoRub (eucalyptus) and splashed a little soft mint-flavored Listerine.  Then I lightly blew a whistle and clicked a flashlight on and off on all of the rooms.  Afterwards I took a shower and rubbed some epsom salts on my elbows and feet while I sang the new LMFAO song, “Sexy and I Know It.”

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, yeah.

Following my makeshift space cleansing I have to say that I felt a little silly but also a little lighter and happier.  Plus, my heels and elbows were super-smooth!  I think my the kooks might be onto something here and I just may have restored the yang in our home.  I actually recommend the process if you too have some unidentifiable icky floating around in your space.  I also recommend skipping the rice part, as it is almost impossible to clean it all up afterwards.  Damn you, Uncle Ben.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Harp Therapy

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

I was talking with my grandfather (“Pop Pop Pop” or “Three Pops,” as he is often also called) the other day and he told me a great story.  It was so good that I thought I would share it with you.

Imagine that you are an old, old man.  Your body is betraying you in the ways that broken down, worn out things eventually do, but your mind remains sharp.  That is probably because you continue to challenge yourself each and every day with puzzles and crosswords and sudoku and interesting people who have interesting conversations.  And you have the occasional fist fight from your electric wheelchair with the a-hole who insisted on shooting off his stupid mouth about how the Marines are better than the Navy.  Wheelchair be damned, you kicked that punk to the curb.  Respect.

You get up and out every single day.  Your calendar is more full now than it was 20 years ago.  You sign up for every field trip they make available to you.  You go to the casinos to play poker and the race track to play the ponies.  You go see the Phillies and the Eagles play.  You visit with your daughters and sons-in-law and your grandchildren and their children too.  You run for leadership positions at the Veteran’s Home and you win (by a landslide), mainly because people know you know people who matter and you know how to get things done.  It is still about the respect.

When you were a young man you made some less-than-stellar choices.  You may have participated in some less-than-noble activities.  But you had fun.  You lived hard and fast.  You lived by a code and you earned the respect that you got.  Looking back you realize that you may have hurt some of the people who you loved the most.  Sometimes you were selfish.  Sometimes you got angry.  Sometimes you made justifications to get what you wanted.  But also you were generous.  You were a big man who lived a big life.  Understandably, some of your regrets are big too.  It brings tears to your eyes these days, something that rarely happened back in the day.

But that is what happens when you turn into an old, old man.  You have more time for reflection.  More time to think.  More time to try to make amends.  And more time for annoying doctor’s visits to deal with your traitorous, failing body.  Some of the things that are happening to you make you want to ask for forgiveness, both to clear the air and to allay your fears that all too often start to creep in.  Fear of lonely, fear of old, fear of dead.  Fear of The End.  Fear of where you might go… you know, after you die.  I mean how bad is too bad to still get into heaven?  And the fear gets more tangible as time passes, especially when the doctor tells you that you need another surgery.

So you go to the hospital and you hold your oldest daughter’s hand and you listen as she says she loves you (and you grumble “me too” back at her) and you get on the gurney and you count backwards “ten, nine, eight…” as you fall deep into the fog of anesthesia.  And for a while you exist in suspension, floating around yourself, watching what the doctors and nurses do to your broken body as they try to mend it.  It does not really matter if it is a dream or if it is really happening.  You are still pretty sharp in the mind.  Sharp enough to recognize that the fear is still lingering.  Sharp enough to realize that you are in a white room with a cloudy haze over everything, like you are observing through gauze.  And you hear music.  It is beautiful and light and graceful.  And through the anesthesia you see that a beautiful angel is playing a giant harp, and she is beautiful and light and graceful too.  And you feel peaceful and you think of church (…even though you haven’t been inside of many) and you think of heaven and you think of God.  And you are confused, but happy because you thought maybe you were so bad that you might not go to the Good Place.  You begin to think that you are dead and that this is the beginning of The End.

Is This Heaven? No, It's Iowa. - Field of Dreams (1989)

But as that possibility is registering, you are overpowered by exhaustion and you fall back to sleep.  It is a deep, dreamless sleep.  In a few minutes or hours or a day, you wake up again.  This time the room is still white, but there is no beautiful angel playing beautiful music with her harp.  There is only a nurse who has come to check your vitals and tell you that your surgery went extremely well.

“The doctor will be with you shortly,” she tells you.  You are now wondering if you made the whole thing up.  You decide to be vulnerable and say something to the nice nurse.

“I think I died.  I was in heaven and an angel was playing gentle music on a harp.”  She stifles a little chuckle.

“No, hon, that was just Dolores.  She volunteers here and she brings her harp from room to room to play for the surgery patients.  It is therapeutic.”

“Therapeutic, my ass!  That’s a damn good way to give an old man a heart attack,” you say.  Then you wink at the nurse and tell her she can make it up to you by taking you to the track so you can bet on some horses.  This old man’s still got a whole lot of living to do.

********************************************************************************************

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Tales From the Check-Out

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Scenario:

You are shopping at the K-Roger, loading up on your groceries for the week.  It is Sunday afternoon, so unfortunately everybody else in town is doing the same thing.  When you get to the check out there are so many people there that they actually have two full-order lines open in addition to the 15-items or less and the self-check lanes (and why in the world do they build ten regular lanes when they never, ever use them?).  There is a register clerk and a bagger (or two) in each lane so things are running as smoothly as they possibly can.  But the queues are still three or four or five shopping carts deep, so you wait.

While you are standing around you check out the trashy mags and tabloid headlines.  You learn that Plastic Surgery Malibu Decathlete Ken walked his step-daughter down the aisle on Saturday, that somebody is calling out the Fresh Prince as a Fresh Princess and saying his marriage is a sham, and my fantasy elevator tryst with Ben Affleck was not as meaningful as I thought because he and his beautiful wife are apparently having a third baby.  Sigh.

Finally you are on deck.  The cute teenage couple in front of you only has a few items, so it won’t be long now.  Then you notice what the two of them are actually buying…

14 oz. bag of M&Ms candy (2 for $4 on sale);
11 oz. bag of mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (2 for $6 on sale);
a pack of Wrigley’s 5 gum, cobalt flavor;
and a 3-pack of Ultra Ribbed Trojan Stimulations condoms

Now, this is a perfect time for someone to say something to release the tension that has been mounting as all of these people wait in grocery lines.  Many are getting impatient and could use a good giggle.  Several fantastic quips want to shoot out of your mouth like automatic weapon fire:

“Oops, somebody forgot the whipped cream!”

“Candy and sex!  Is it your anniversary?”

“I think I saw a 9-1/2 Weeks DVD in the $5 bin.  You may want to grab that.”

“I guess we won’t be seeing either of you kids on 16 and Pregnant next season!”

It's always smarter to buy the 36-pack

But instead you hold it all in.  After they pay and take their goodies out of the store the bagging clerk remarks offhandedly, “At least somebody is going to have fun tonight.”

Your stuff would have been way funnier.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

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…

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…

Let’s Agree to Disagree

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

Everything comes down to the He'n and She'n

Sheepdog and I have a great relationship.  He is the yang to my yin.  The out to my in.  The pragmatic to my fly off the handle.  We make a really good team.

We met when we were both twenty-years-old in college.  We got married just one month after graduating.  We were babies.  We both say all the time that we are so fortunate that we still liked each other after we sobered up.  True story.

It helps that we are on the same page about so many of the big things… finances, religion, politics, discipline, priorities, work ethic, what color to paint the house.  Those things really matter when you are dealing with the day-to-day crap that can sometimes drive a couple apart.

But, like every other couple, we don’t always see eye to eye.  Sometimes Sheepdog can be a dummy and he doesn’t see things my way, i.e. The Right Way.  Our disagreements certainly aren’t marriage-ending or earth-shattering, but they are ongoing.  For example, these are a few of our always-on-the-table points of contention:

  1. Tattoos.  Him:  Has two already.  Negotiated for new tattoos every time I suggested we should have another kid.  Another tat would be so freakin’ cool!  Me:  Hell no.  I have a Sharpie.  C’mere and let me give you another “tattoo,” mister.  Oh, and wait until Kids B and/ or C (Kid A wouldn’t even think about it) come home with tramp stamps.  Let’s hear how you feel about tattoos then.
  2. Guns.  Him:  Grew up in West Virginia, where they apparently issue “Baby’s First Shotgun” upon pre-school graduation.  He is a proud, sticker-weilding member of the NRA.  Me: Didn’t touch a gun until Sheepdog taught me to shoot empty beer cans with a 12-gauge, double-barreled shotgun in college (romantic?) and paper burglar targets with a Glock 19 a few years ago.  I respect the gun, but will always be a little scared of it.  I’d rather not even think about them, frankly.  I always manage to forget the code to our gun safe.
  3. Camping.  Him: Avid outdoorsman who would choose to live in a lean-to if I agreed.  Loves everything about the outdoors, including wiping with leaves.  Me: I only use Cottonnelle Ultra.  I see no point in camping.  Camping is for people who are not smart enough to know where to find a 5-star hotel.
  4. Girls in (Really) High Heels.  Him: The higher, the better.  All women should be required to wear high heels when greeting their man at the door after a long, hard day at work.  And nothing else.  Me: I wear flip-flops year round.

We have always called each other out on our B.S.  If I can count on no one else (well, before we had children who couldn’t wait to tell me that my hair looked crazy or that I am wrong about the facts), then I could always count on Sheepdog to give me the hard truth, or at least his version of it.

Except for when he wants some.  Then he knows he had better see things The Right Way.  And maybe I’ll even put on some heels.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

All or Nothing

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

This Week (Argh!)

Next Week (Ahhh!)

It really does work out to be all or nothing, doesn’t it?  This last week of school is just insanely busy.  Then next week starts summer vacation and there will be (relatively) nothing on our schedule.  I’ll bet that by mid-week next week at least some of the kids (and maybe me too) will have started the “I’m bored!” chant.

Today we all have our heads spinning.  I got almost no sleep last night, at least nothing in a consecutive chunk.  Everybody has at least one project, one deadline, one thing that requires our immediate attention.  Except Kid E, and he is sick.  Sick as a dog, because that’s how All or Nothing works.

I just wanted to let you know that I get overwhelmed sometimes too.  Today is one of those times.  Today I feel like I have to do it all…so for you, I’ve got nothing.  And I’m sorry.

Wish me luck for tomorrow…

Top 10 Things

Posted on by Stacy Swiger

11. Do these bike tights make my ass look fat?

Top 10 Most Common Things Said by Sheepdog

10.  You’re gonna thank me for this after the Apocalypse.

9.  It’s Boots and Skirts Season, Baby.  Boots and Skirts!  It is the most wonderful time of the year.

8.  I think I’ve got time for a quick run.

7.  We have a lot of kids.

6.  I have to go out of town for work next week.

5.  It’s OK, I am a fast healer like Wolverine.

4.  Where do you want me to put this N.R.A sticker on your car?

3.  (tie) The Victoria’s Secret models ARE real girls/ You should definitely go with the higher heels.

2.  I’m still hungry.

And the number one thing said by Sheepdog…

1.  We should do that more often.