Family Biz-ness

Dearest Mommacita,

Since we now share a house, I have a few ensy bensy items of business. You know..... Communication. It's what makes the world go 'round. I've heard you say that before and you know I have. Don't act all surprised.

So. First of all, what's the deal with you not blogging very much since I've been here? You have a couple of fans er uh family that likes to check in with you. You have been very much the L word. (Not that L word, this L word: LAZY.) Every one of your peeps likes to keep up on how you have yet again embarrassed yourself Momm Cit. Is my constantly growing belly so entirely amusing/beautiful/fascinating/incredible that you can't talk (to it) and blog at the same time? Multi Task Mommcita. Every President must be able to multi task.

Second of all, let's talk about the remote control. I LIKE TO HAVE IT. You are really bad with it Mommacita. You are slow at fast forwarding through commercials, plus I am used to having it because my husband is nice like that. So I need it from now on. Kapeesh?

Which brings us to our third item: Dancing With the Stars. OH! MY! GOSH! MOMMACITA! You totally know what you've done. I cannot STAND that show and I know you don't like it either, so please quit pausing on it when you are scrolling through the guide. I know (geeze, who doesn't?) that you saw Susan Lucci in person one time because somehow (who knows how) you found yourself with Grandma Margaret at the Regis and Kathie Lee Show in New York,

and I know that her skin was flawlessly beautiful that day and I know she is a size 0, and I know you only wanted to see her costume but we both just can't afford any more pausing on that show. Think of the unborn.

Item four: Thank you very much for giving me your Lancome gifts with purchase and cute little cosmetic bags in varying colors. You're the Mommacitabombacita. And now I can look absolutely fetching when I skype with my man. I mean hot. Hot's the word we 20 somethings use now a days. So change fetching to hot.

Item five: Let's discuss the talking to my belly issue. I know you can't help yourself. I'm pretty excited about the little man myself. But a navel (mine) is not a microphone. No matter how many times you tell me it is, (I repeat), a navel is not a microphone into the womb. If you should happen to say around the vicinity of my belly: "Hello Little No-Name Man, this is your loving GranMocita", Little No-Name man can hear you just as well as he could if you happened to be using your so called microphone. So now that I've cleared that up, we're on the same page: you don't need a navel. My navel. In fact you could maybe do your belly talking from across the room. In fact, lets just say for the record, that the next time you sing "I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home" it would probably be just fine and dandy to sing that from across the room. NoName will get it. I feel his chi and he is smart.

Thank you for taking the time to read this note. Family Bizness was always my favorite part of FHE. Remember how us kids used to slide off of our chairs, roll around on the floor clutching our guts going out of our gourds with boredom during it? Remember those good times? So great to be back!

No, seriously, I love staying with you, because you are my beautiful, outstanding, and adoring Mother. And you're hot.

Love, Schneeblers

PS I miss MattMan

Big Dreams

Last night I had a dream. Wait, wait, don't move on to the next blog because your eyes glaze over when someone (one of your children) tells you about their dream (every morning). This is a good one.

Anyway, I'm at this cooking contest with my family. We are guest judges. Because we are experienced eaters. And on the last night of the contest the judges can order from a menu that the contestants created and then the contestants have to deliver what you chose from the menu to your house. (the word house is a foreshadowing people)

So being the pigs that we are, we order every single thing from every single contestant. It was expensive (we had to pay...which stunk because we were guest judges and why should a guest judge have to pay?) and I felt the guilt of over purchasing. So they start delivering food. The last contestant chef that delivered comes walking in with pretzel rods dipped in chocolate and rainbow sprinkles (I dream in color). I think to myself: Pretzel rods dipped in chocolate with rainbow sprinkles? Wha the? Those aren't even as good as the ones we had for the Glitch affair. You call yourself a Top Chef?

Then someone (I think it was Jake) yells out: Anyone got any hot sauce?

And since I hadn't started to eat yet and since I am a giver I decided to venture outside to find some hot sauce. I give and give and give for you I say as I'm walking out the door.

While wandering around in the parking lot of the condo that we stayed in at our recent reunion, I bump into Dr. Gregory House from the TV show House. And he is one of the competing chefs and he is on his way to delivering a life size TV made entirely out of chocolate.

I start with the begging. "Can I have a bite of that? Pleeeeeeeeze? Oh it looks so very deliciouseoso and we mistakenly ordered those bogus pretzel rods so please please please let me have a bite of that TV??"

Dr, House: *#$@ No! Absolutely not! (he actually said astrick, pound sign, dollar sign, and at sign in the dream.)

Me: PLEASE! I'll kiss you if you let me have a bite.

Dr. House: (eyebrow raises.)

We all know Dr. House is a pig and would trade a kiss with anyone for anything.

I see an open window for chocolate and I follow him into a dark bar where he is supposed to deliver the chocolate TV and I know I have to work fast.

"It's dark in here and no one will notice if a bite is missing" I coo.

I take a bite out of the TV (on the bottom corner where no one will see) and then I lay one on him.... a big wet slatherey kiss (I'm nothing if not honorable in my sleasyness).

And then I wake up laughing. And as I start to recall the dream (I just kissed Dr. House in order to get a bite of a chocolate TV???) I laugh out loud even harder which is not the norm for me when I just wake up. It's probably not for you either come to think of it.

Things always seem so much funnier when I find myself laughing out loud all by myself and then I become silly. So between the dream and my laughing alone I proceed to laugh for a good 5 minutes. Gaw Faw style.

I'm a widow who will kiss any old crusty needs-a-shave meanie for a shot at a chocolate TV. And then laughs about it. alone. for a long time.

Analyze THAT would ya.

I was Saved! I was Saved!! SAVED!! Do you GET IT? SAVED!!

The following conversation took place on a cell phone while traveling on the dark lonely road on the way home from the temple:*

RING RING

Mommacita: Hi. I was SAVED tonight.
Schneebes: What? Saved? What?

Mommacita: Tonight I was SAVED. SAVED!!! You've heard the word saved?
Schneebes with a wee bit of panic: You mean you were saved in a CAR ACCIDENT?? (Which totally means "WHO the heck is going to take care of me and this baby now??")

Mommacita: A car accident? No. No! It's a different kind of saved. Really Truly Saved.
Schneebes: (yawn) What kind is really truly saved?

Mommacita: OK. Well, tonite I'm all done at the temple, see....
Schneebes: (yawners) yeah?

Mommacita: And I go to the rest room, to rest before the big trip home...
Schneebes: (yawner-ers) um hm?

Mommacita: And I'm traveling through the women's locker room.....
Schneebes:

Mommacita: Are you there?
Schneebes: Yes. yes Mothercita. Yes I am here. (even more yawning)

Mommacita: And I'm in the doorway of the locker room, ready to step out into the lobby. THE LOBBY!
Schneebes: I think I see where this is going. (big breath. bigger yawn)

Mommacita: And right as I was at the doorway of the locker room, right at that moment in time, tiny tiny angels put their tiny tiny hands on my head, and with a brute force that only tiny tiny angels have, they forced my head to turn to the left and I caught a glimpse, an ever so slight glimpse of my reflection in a mirror.
Schneebes: I thought I told you I thought I knew where this was going. (which totally means do you really have to tell the rest of this story?) (doesn't bother yawning)

Mommacita: And in the mirror, the bless-ed bless-ed mirror, (that the tiny tiny angels who love me very very much forced me to look at) I saw my brown skirt, and my black slip tucked neatly into my underpants.
Schneebes: (inhale)

Mommacita: And there were three women who saw it all. They saw the clueless woman clumping out of the restroom in a boot and a very tasteful bronzie kind of sandal that was undoubtedly bought for a wedding a while ago and the said clueless woman had her skirt tucked into her meshy underpants and then just in the nick of time she miraculously looked in the mirror (they didn't understand why) and then the three women saw a look of horror on clueless woman's face and then they saw her quickly pull her skirt out of said underpants and then they witnessed the clueless woman looking around sheepishly and then they noticed her adopt a look that said I meant to do that and she left the locker room with confidence. And the three women were impressed, and were not at all tempted to burst out laughing with uncontrolled hysterics but they just admired her from across the locker room in a quiet, dignified, and tolerant way. And they wondered what her name was and if she would ever consider being their friend.
Schneebes: (exhale)

Schneebes: Were you wearing spanx?
Mommacita: No.

Schneebes: Are you hereditary? Because I'm pregnant here.

*the writer of this post may or may not have exercised artistic licence when quoting people other than herself during the writing of this post.

I am So Beautiful. To Me.

I Looooooooooooove hair appointments.

I just love them. I love everything about them. Except smelling someone else's perm.

Anyway, I love hair appointments because as my friend Carol says, they are a day of beauty. Let me repeat for emphasis: A day of beauty. Everything is beautiful on a day of beauty. A day where I don't have to lift a finger. For 1 1/2 hours at least. Which is quite beautiful. All I do is sit there, with an empty head, in the comfy comfy chair, wearing a leopard print cape (which, technically is not part of the beauty part because I'm not necessarily one of those animal print gals:

.... but just to be honest I do own a couple of animal print things (reading glasses that were $5, and a shirt that goes with my brown skirt, and the inside of a couple of handbags) but I do not consider myself animal printish per say so animal print cannot be included in my idea of a day of beauty but because Cindy who does my hair is wild about the animal print jaunrah (sp) I wear the cape to be polite which is a form of beauty in and of itself) and after I am draped in animal print out of charity and love I take out my earrings and then someone transforms me. I become transformered. Into more than meets the eye. Now THAT's a beautiful thing.

I get to sit there and talk to my girl Cindy, who I have gone to for 26 years which is pretty beautiful and she paints my hair with an industrial strength blonding substance and wraps it in foil and I look at myself in the mirror and think: Hmmm, you're Avaunt Guard Beautiful right at this moment Mommacita. I decided to use the term Avaunt Guard after watching Project Runway last night. Which is about beauty. Some what.

And then, the most beautiful thing ever happens. I get to sit under the dryer for about 25 minutes and she brings me a bottle of cold water right out of the frig and I read and I drink the cold water and the warm dryer hums and I can't hear anything but the lullaby of the dryer. I go into a beautiful Mommacita world under there. I remember when my kids were little it was even more beautiful than it is now because of the lullaby part. And the quiet part. And the Mommacita world part. Oh heck. I still love it, kids or no.

And then I get my hair shampooed with a bit of a head rub (beautiful) and Cindy pretends to wax my non existent eyebrows and doesn't charge me which makes me feel included with the rest of the humans on this planet whose parents gave them eyebrows (which is someone showing charity and not judging you for genetic defects and that is quite beautiful) and then I get my head wrapped in a leopard towel which is really quite luxurious as towels go and I go to my seat and have all my hair cut so it will be perky and manageable for the next 4 weeks (beautiful!) And I look on the floor at my cut off hair and feel so happy that it's there and not on my head because my bangs were starting to hang in my eyes and make me nutso. Are you going to make me say that an unnutso Mommacita is beautiful? Because we all know she is.

And then someone besides me blows my hair dry and fluffs it up into my over 50 Mommacita Afro and sprays something on my hair that smells like sweet sweet grapefruit and then the leopard cape comes off (beautiful because remember I'm not animal print per say) and I look in the mirror and think now I am blonde again (so childlike, so beautiful) and then I pay and pick up my still cold bottle of water which is still half full and drink it while I run my errands on the way home. A free cold bottle of water for errands. Pretty beautiful.

I'm thinking this blog is making you wish it was your day of beauty right now. Or quite possibly, like pretzels, it's making you thirsty.

She's HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE

The Schneebersmommacita is here. And she's cute. But she's flaunting her with child belly in my face. Everywhere I turn, there it is. She thinks that because I am a woman who is no longer in the baby business, she can jiggle that belly about were ever she goes. We go to the Dr. and it's all about her. The Dr. asks her all the questions. The Dr. listens to her heart. The Dr. pats her belly. The Dr. gives her the sickeningly sweet gestational diabetes drink to drink. I was offered nothing. There was a drinking fountain for me. Down the hall by the restroom. The Dr. gives her a notebook to read with birthy info in it. Including pictures and indexes. I was given the People magazine about Ellen getting married.

And here's what I, the woman with no womb, did.

I sat with my mouth closed. I tried not to butt in.

I know, you are thinking: "IMPRESSIVE Mommacita, impressive!" But I'm telling you the truthiness right here and now. When she told the Dr. that the women on the island of Dominica give birth on an open deck outside the hospital, with flies other insects assisting, my mouth flew open, my jaw dropped and I yelled, "WHAT????!!!!" and then they both looked at me with the startle reflex and then I started to shake and then I took her home and ran off to the temple and told every old lady who would listen to me all about the horribleness of the horribleness.

I am somewhat traumatized thinking of what could have been, but talking about it to others has stopped the quivering. And shaking. And evil thoughts.

God Bless the USA. And I mean that with all my heart.

60 Long Hard Years*

I bring to you these two cute kids who just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on Sept. 1st.

These are my beloved parents Dick 'n' Bertie. My daughter in law Larsa has been known to call them 'the Hinckleys' because of Dick's somewhat resemblance to Gordon B. Just in case you don't see the resemblance please know that it's you, because my Dad was asked to play him in a movie. Biggest Fattest Lie. Gotcha.

Here's a couple more snaps that we got at the big fancy bash:

Now who else can pull off horizontal stripes and be 71/2 month's pregnant?

Schneeblits. That's who!

And down below yonder we have the newlyweds and Dubers blocking out his lovely wife with his big fat ferocious head.

And this little cutie sang "I'm trying to be like Jesus" for us all. I believed her completely.

And this lil' darlin' had some fancy fruit in a fancy cup with a fancy spoon and than had some fancy chicken fingers. And then her Grandma ate her up with a fancy 60th wedding anniversary gold plated spoon.

Here are some highlights of the Dick and Bertie Bash:

No one cried. OK. I had the voice quiver but that's not really crying.

The Chicken Cord On Bluuu was delicious.

Every child, grandchild, and greatgrandchild happened to be there. And spouses. Every single one.

They did a little Anniversary Waltz during the Anniversary Waltz song and the Bertie was grinning like no other.

I wore a new shoe. (and my boot but that's not a highlight)

My granddaughters slathered me with hugs and kisses and love and lap sittings. I had not seen them for 6 months. Too long.

No one's cell phone rang which really really REALLY pleased my mother. And it had absolutely nothing to do with her edict before the party.

My dad was smiling the entire time.

I was reminded that having parents who stay married for 60 years is a wonderful thing to give a child, even when that child is 53. Thanks Mom and Dad. I love you both.

*When someone would ask the Timmers how long he was married, he would always say: 10 (or whatever number it was) Long Hard Years. In a Richard Nixon voice. Then he'd look over at me and laugh his head off. And then he would shake his jowls back and forth. So make sure you read the title of this freaking blog in a Richard Nixon voice, and then laugh your head off. And don't forget the jowl shake. Just a tip.

Ewe

I saw this picture on Creative Soup, which is a great blog written the Schneeblit's friend Brooke. Only she is a graphic designer and she cleaned it all up so it only had the rainbow of pantsuits none of the other garbage around it.

OK world. I have some questions And some statements. You knew I would.

#1. What the?

#2 Hillary, three words. Fire your stylist.

#3. I'm dying to know. Hillary, were you in kahootz with Glamour Magazine, or did they do this to you on the sly? I don't know what I want the answer to be.

#4 Is this a statement on diversity? Because now I'm finding my thoughts are becoming narrow and pinched.

#5 I'm trying to get my sister in law Diana to comment.

#6 Although I will accept any comments out there because I have the tendency to live for them.

#7 Any comment will do because they are air to me. Woo Hoo big fat shock.

#8 If you try to get my sister in law Diana to comment on Hillary Clinton's Rainbow of Pantsuits, then it will be worth your while.

#9 I'm not big enough to offer a prize for comments like some of those mommybloggers. But just know, if you get Diana to comment on Hillary Clinton's Rainbow of Pantsuits then there will be a load of Mommacita satisfaction a coming your way. Never underestimate the power of that.

#10 Does chunky jewelery come in rainbowesque? One necklace for all those clothes would be a my-te-fine accessory solution for the girl on the go.

#11 (I'm mouthing this to you Hillary while I'm clapping my brains out for you) "love you girl, love you."

fierce

Eyes are for Watching Ears are for Hearing

I've been with my family for a few days. While I was warming up refried beans in the kitchen I overheard this conversation between my granddaughter and herself taking place:

Gracie:
Hi Polly Pocket

Polly Pocket who sounds like Gracie but with a really really high voice:
Huuuuuuuuuuullo!

Gracie:
Oh no! Polly Pocket!! You have a broken foot.

Polly Pocket who sounds like Gracie but with a really really high voice:
Oooooooooooh Nooooooooo!

Gracie:
Here Polly Pocket.
Put on this boot.
You have to wear this boot on your broken foot.
And sometimes you can take it off.
But that doesn't mean your broken foot is better.
You really need to wear the boot.
Because you have a broken foot
Now get over here and get your boot on.

Polly Pocket plus Mommacita equals soulsister