Ok, I’m going to try something out here. I will be “live” blogging while watching American Idol. I use the term “live” loosely because of the whole DVR thing. Here goes: 

8:01 -For the love of all that is holy, how can anyone watch this “live”! Philidelphia is the city of brotherly love? Seriously? I did not know. Hundreds of thousands of people came out to audition and it’s going to be narrowed down to just one?

:04 - Randy looks thinner again. Is it the glasses? I need some of those glasses. Also, thumbs up on Joey Catalono less 204 lbs. Good start. I don’t think I can do 3 weeks of William Hung.

:10 -  Enter, SexyFace. “That’s why Mr. The Bee Gees is so special to me.” (please be good, for the love of William Hung, please be good) “I wanna love a girl from the hair to the nipple.” This week’s contortionist complement (from Paula). “I love how you phonetically learned that song.”

19: James Lewis the Philly tour guide. Oy.  It is at this point hit fast forward

29: All I’m sayin’, if Temptress Brown can sing, I want her to win. “Make me mad enough and I’m gonna break your bones.” (please let her be able to sing!)

31: Oh no.

51: Why yes, I’ve also enjoyed the song Allentown by…Bon Jovi. Sparkly vet student, you are so not coming anywhere near my imaginary dog. Peace, love, and chicken grease. OMG, she DID look like Willhem Dafoe!

 And we’re at the 1/2 way point. It only took me about 18 minutes w/ my trusty DVR (Buckeye Cable is going to start owing me a commission).

:17 - Milo the 39 year old.  “I write songs that nobody else has heard.” Great, otherwise that would be plagiarism. No worries Simon, in America we also call it creepy.

:20 - The Cage Fighting Horse Girl. Sold! You already know Simon’s going to dig her.

:28 - Anyone who walks in wearing a cape, I immediately fast foward. Crap! Not fast enough. I’m going to be seeing hairy Princess Leia in my sleep for awhile.

:40 - Chest Hair Dude, I hope it was worth it for you. And then the music changes and we meet Chris Watson who sang Uncle Cracker. It’ll be interesting to see if he can hang.

:49 - Actual Princess Leia. You know, I don’t care how old I am, if I ever tried to leave the house in that get up, my mother and sister would hunt me down hog tie me. Then, saying the eff word in front of your grandparents…classy!

:54 - The singing nanny. And you know there’s a philadelphia mom w/ twins out there who’s going to be SOL for her next hair appointment. Yep. And that’s a wrap.

It took all of 42 minutes! Bright side…it HAS to be better than last year? What did you think?

 Dear Mr. Grinch:

 You’ve been misunderstood, I think. Plenty of us hate Christmas. I mean really, it’s enough already with the trees and the lights and the gifts, the gift returns. I would like to personally extend an invitation to you to come to my house for dinner. Yeah, yeah, I know, another party. Another shin-dig git-together. It’s enough already. You don’t have to bring a gift. I won’t bring one for you. I WILL make your favorite roast beast. You can have the whole thing to yourself. I’ll make another one for your dog too, only don’t feel you have to rig him up to your sleigh. I’ll send a car (ok…so admittedly I have no idea how to “send a car,” but I’ll look into it. I can always send my Dad. He has a very nice car and he’s retired now so I think he’d be cool with it). Make it any day you want. Look in your book, your palm pilot, your blackberry, whatever you do, just let me know.

I promise we won’t sing songs or count our blessings. It’ll be your show. My only request, and I think it’s really up your alley, is please, please, PLEASE, will you bring your giant sack and pack up all of my Christmas decorations. Just really, all of it. Pack it up, get it out of here. I just…I just can’t stand doing it myself.

Thanks,

Robin

Merry post Christmas y’all. All is well with our household. New Webkinz have been adopted, we have remote control cars, Death Star transformers, new clothes. Also, it appears that my answer to the Great Butterscotch Debacle seems to have worked. My daughter has accepted the non-robotic stuffed horse into the pack and all is right with the world.

 Oh…except we all have raging colds. It started with my son on Friday and has now pollinated everyone. We spent the afternoon at the doctor’s office (oh…and on the off chance anyone in that waiting room is reading this…so sorry :). Apparently, listening to the noises made by the Death Star transformer and Puppy Grow over and over again is not charming to anyone (who knew). So anyway…over the last few days I got to thinking. I’ve come up with my billion dollar idea. We have to figure out how to run cars on boogers. Seriously.  I know all the mom’s out there can back me up on this one. It’s an infinite supply! I could probably run our van on my kids alone. We just have to come up with a name for it. Boogoline? Mucousoline? Sneezel Fuel? (ok, that last one was bad…the rest were brilliant though

Ugh.

Ok, I stole this idea from LPC. I’m stuck in the 4th grade. Which…is probably just about right.

This is, apparently, MY blog’s readability level.

I think maybe it’s my overuse of elipses…And. Incomplete. Sentences.

I probably risk alienating some friends by talking about this. But, in the long run, I think it’s worth it. I think we’ve all been there. You make a friend, or you have a friend. A friend from work, a cousin, someone you’ve known since High School. You talk, you laugh. You go out, you exchange Christmas cards, whatever the relationship. You think you know that person. You think you can rely on that person, tell your secrets to them.

 Then it happens. They do that thing that we all hate. And…I realy think we ALL hate it, at least on some level.

They start sending you forwarded emails. Maybe just one or two at first. Maybe they even preface the emails with something like, “You know I never forward this stuff, but I knew you’d think this was funny.” So, that first time, you read it. It’s some kind of angel prayer, or maybe it’s a joke about how men can’t handle anything. You chuckle, but in your heart, the seed of doubt has been planted.

Then, a day or two later, they maybe forward something else. They make another excuse. The forwarded message is just not dang funny.

Usually by the 3rd or 4th time, you know your “friend” has a problem. Your getting all sorts of random crud. If you don’t forward this, some little boy in Darfur is going to starve, you’ll break his spirit, keep this chain going or no other miracles will ever happen… They are specific to our professions as well. I can tell all of my friends now, I have GOTTEN the one with all of the actual quotes from court trials (Q: Mr./Dr. Coroner, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people? A: Um…all my autopsies have been on dead people). Seriously, it was chuckle-worthy, but I’m good now, thanks.

At any rate, you can safely classify your friend as one of “those” people. Again, I know you all know who I mean. You might even be one of them. An email forwarder. You hate to do it, but after about the 15th email in about 4 days, you’ve got a decision to make. Do you spam block them or do you just manually delete anything that comes from this person. Frankly, I choose to manually delete. Somehow, spam blocking seems so cold. They are still, after all, my friend. What if something major happened and they sent me an email about it.  Of course, if they were REALLLY close friends, they’d pick up a phone and call me about it.

Do you think A & E could do an Intervention episode about email forwarders?

Awhile back, I got in to an email tag-jag with my cousin (I think I just invented a phrase). We started passing ebay listings back and forth featuring our favorite/most memorable childhood toys. I had this one…

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mattel-1974-Growing-up-skipper-doll-NRFB-Look_W0QQitemZ200177971101QQihZ010QQcategoryZ15963QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting

I wish like crazy I’d have kept her. Growing up Skipper (there was also a Growing Up Ginger). The running joke was my Dad would grab my mom’s arm and start cranking, hoping for results. I’m thinking I ought to invent a Pre-Menopausal Skipper. You crank her arm, her hair turns gray, her gut sticks out and all she does is laundry. Whatdya think?

Robin

WARNING: This post is not for the feint of heart. 

He’s home! We can have edible food again! Here’s what happened with my camera while the dh was gone.

The kids have named him Sparky. I think it’s supposed to be ironic. Like calling a bald buy Curly.

Sooooo, we will have meat. See, now in my neighborhood, nothing brings the menfolk around like hangin’ deer. Seriously, we’ve had a steady stream of neighbor/in-law viewings since my husband brought it home. Woot!

Robin

P.S. The title was a “Little House” reference, in case I was being too vague

I may have mentioned, I teach at E.M.U. In my program (paralegal studies), we have a variety of different students. Many are “non-traditional” in the sense they are my age or older and are embarking on a second career. The other half are more traditional, twenty-something co-eds. I find it a really stimulating mix as their viewpoints and politics are diverse. Generally, I do keep the political stuff out of the classroom, but evey once in awhile, someone will speak passionately about something and it can spark engaging and lively debates. We are in the middle of one now and though my job may be on the line by taking a side on this, I feel my integrity–no–our national identity is at stake.

I think Marie Osmond should win Dancing with the Stars.

I know, I know, she is not the most technically skilled dancer. Helio and  Mel B. have her on that. But…she’s Marie Effing Osmond!!! Come on!!!!

I wanted to BE her. I had every purple/pink tattered lame gowned doll. Every record. Donny is great too and they put him on the cover of Tiger Beat, but I never loved him in that way. I mean…he was my brother!

My Grandma Kordowski used to make us microphones out of clothespins, tin foil and twine. My sister and I would stand in front of her console stereo and belt out “I’m leaving it all up to you-o-o-0″ while the family threw money at us (ok, not at us…but to us).

The young kids, they don’t understand. They see flashy Mel B. and Maks, cute pixie Julianne. They think the dancing matters.

I argue that if it wasn’t for Marie Osmond, there would be no Dancing with the Stars. The cheesy-glittery-family-variety show line of descent goes from Sid Ceaser and Milton Burle DIRECTLY to Donny and Marie.

We owe her this. Mel B. has the Spice Girls (and frankly, the Osmonds paved the way for them too). Helio…he’ll always be cute.

Marie. It’s about respect. It’s about teeth and dimples. It’s about time.

Robin

(P.S. Having said all of that, the dancing doll creeped me out too.)

UPDATE: What????!!!?? I’m just sayin’. What, Helio??? I love the guy, don’t get me wrong. I even understand how it finally went down w/ Marie. But WHAT????? M & M was robbed!!!!!!!

… What???!!!!!

First up…our Thanksgiving table. I think I’m going to start a regular feature here on Befrazzed. Something like “Holiday Decorating Ideas from Big Lots.” With the exception of the plates and glassware, everything on this table came from the Big Lots bargain bin last year. My daughter contributed the Native American theme.

Also…this is what we ate.

I kid. We ate the squirrel, not the boy.

And finally, I include this because I just like it.

Cheers,

Robin

Those who frequented my old blog know that I’m not one to wax sentimental, at least not often or for very long. But, yesterday was pretty special. I spent Wednesday evening at Detroit Metro with the kids and members of my husband’s family waiting for his brother to return home.

His brother is Army Sgt. Dan Dec and he was returning home after nearly a year and a half in Iraq. Frankly, the turkey we’re making seems pretty much irrelevant. (don’t worry mom…I’m stilling making it!) I’m thankful that Danny is home safe and I can’t help but think and pray for everyone else who isn’t.

Here are some photos of our evening at the airport (They’re not great…I apologize. Still working out the new camera). I wish I could take credit for the flags and signs, those were courtesy of Danny’s mom and my sister-in-law. My contribution to the bells and whistles homecoming was to help facilitate a news crew  (or try here if that didn’t work, go to the “video player” and click on Happy Homecoming)waiting back at the house (You will find…we do nothing half-assed in this family…whole-assed all the way!)

I hope we didn’t overwhelm the boy too much. I think he appreciated it. I hope the kids remember welcoming him home for the rest of their lives. He flew commercial and we waited in the terminal for about an hour. As you can see from the pix, we weren’t exactly inconspicuous. People waited with us. Busy as they were, they had familes of their own and places to be, but there was a small group of complete strangers who waited anyway. One woman was tearing up even before he got off the plane. “I think I’m just as excited as you are,” she said. Even after their own family members had disembarked their respective flights, they hung around. They wanted to see a soldier’s homecoming and I am thankful for that too. He deserved it.

 (This photo is blurry, but I was trying to show how big he looked compared to my daughter)”

Happy Thanksgiving and I promise to return to the snark next time

Robin