Monday, October 24, 2011

“Fun” facts about me and Deep Thoughts from Jack Handy

I try to use air quotes ironically, if at all.


I gained another 2 pounds at my last ob appointment, which is awesome by my standards (65 lbs with Chuckles and 60 with Bobo).

My due date was officially changed to March 24th.

I think the world would be a better place if I did the traffic studies.

I’ve only given the finger while driving 3 times. But I have wanted to do so 16 times today already.

I have never smoked pot.

Even though I sometimes drive stick, I think driving stick shift takes too much brain power, but I will insist that my own children learn how to do it.

The car I drove today is 13 years old, and yet still gets 35 mpg. Yay for the ’99 Accord.

My other car is a “mom car”.

I silently judge other people way too much.

I walked a 4k on Friday and lived to tell the tale.

I do not own any apple products, with the exception of actual, you know, produce apples.

I have never purchased a song download, a ringtone, or an app.

My average household spending for clothes and shoes is usually less than $150 per year. We’re going to blow that this year with the Cub Scout uniform, maternity clothes, new running shoes, a knee-ripping epidemic in first grade, and two coats/jackets whose zippers failed catastrophically with metal fatigue. For now, Chuckles and I are pulling our zippers up with our fingers (to be fair to my coat, it is 10+ years old).

It took me just 37:39 to walk that 4k (which isn’t much slower than I could run it in). The “winner” did it in under 14 minutes. That’s fast. Like 5:45 per mile fast. But he only looked to be about 22 years old, so I figure kids have a lot of energy.

Last night for dinner, I made a recipe I saw on America’s Test Kitchen a couple of years ago.

I call it dinner, not supper.

I have decided not to give a crap about breaking Bobo of the binky.

I don’t really take many photos (of my kids or anything else). I didn’t grow up in a house that did that, and it’s just not that important to me.

I am incensed that a 5-pound bag of sugar now only weighs 4 pounds. Ditto a 12-ounce can of soup being 10.75 ounces. It’s messing up my fancy recipes that require cream of mushroom soup in a 12-ounce can.

I was recently at a family party and overheard someone say that no one flosses anyway and was shocked! Am I really the only rule follower out there? Here I thought I was all bad since I only floss about 5x per week. (Note: I also floss my kids’ teeth.)

However, to prove I am not perfect, I have been known to, ahem, “help” clear my nose when blowing just doesn’t cut it, if you know what I mean. Pick pick pick.

I do not have cable television (nor satellite nor U-verse nor Roku).  We have an antenna and digital TV, which was supposed to be awesome, sucks (the picture is unusable when it's windy...at least with analog you could live with the static...digital just isn't there).

I talked to a woman over the weekend who had unplanned, surprise twins 5 years ago. I do not think I said anything stupid.

I watch Wheel of Fortune more than any other show on TV (it’s on 7 days/week and never has any objectionable material in it at all so is OK with kids…plus Bobo is learning his letters this way and asks for The Letter Show).

I am learning how to parent and discipline different children differently. It’s a humbling experience. My two kids could not be more different. One needs a gentle touch and the other needs MORE (more everything…mine goes up to 11).

That makes me a little scared to have another (hi Muse!) but gives me confidence that I will be adaptable.

I try hard not to compare my kids to each other (and to others), but I fail. I think I took too many comparative blah blah blah AP classes in High School. I make comparisons on everything. I note similarities and differences everywhere. What I don’t do is verbalize these comparisons to the kids.

There are two rules in my home that are the most consistently enforced: (1) no shoes on the carpet and (2) we don’t fight about clothes. You will often see an adult on hands and knees crawling back through the living room to fetch an errant lovey before we get in the car or a child at the grocery store in pajamas.

I really don’t think first graders should get homework because most of them are not in control of their own schedules enough to do it by themselves. And then it’s just my homework. And I have enough to do already. I’m thinking 4th grade might be a good time to start. Or possibly middle school.

I’m a little sad that I’ll never have a daughter. I was kind of looking forward to raising a girl the same way I raise my sons to see whether the girly behavior is nature or nurture. I’m fairly mannish for a woman, so I was looking forward to playing ball and building blocks with a daughter. I have tried to get my boys interested in playing dolls with me. They will humor me for a few minutes and then move on.

I was asking my husband why in the world peanut butter and jelly are still sold in glass containers. It seems that from a cost perspective, it would save money in terms of shipping costs, etc to package and sell those in plastic. He looked at me like I had a third eye. The next time at the grocery store, he pointed out that almost all of it is in plastic…just not the kinds we buy. Apparently, no high fructose corn syrup in your jam gets you an express ticket to a glass jar. Also, buying peanut butter whose only ingredient is peanuts also gets you a glass jar. Who knew?

Muse just rolled, and I am the only one who gets to know that.

I don’t believe in cold medicine. I also deny the existence of ghosts.

I’ve never been to Europe, but I have a passport and have been to 3 countries outside the US…one of which I would never like to visit again.

Athletic shoes are referred to as "gym shoes" and are frequently worn on the weekends while running errands.

I think I would run a great meth lab and would meet all applicable safety and environmental regulations, but I am not the entrepreneur type, so it will never happen.

During Prohibition, I probably would have had a still at home, though. (Have you been watching Ken Burns’s documentary?)

Generally, I do not find long hair on a man to be sexy. Ashton Kutcher just looks skeevy.

Real men have facial hair. 

Marketers do not have me as an identifiable demographic segment, and it has been 5 years since I saw an ad that “spoke” to me (that was an ad for Canon printers, by the way).

I get a thrill when I remove a particularly bad stain from a favorite piece of clothing, and I just figured out how to remove yellow underarm deodorant stains from colored clothing. I feel like a rock star.

Once, in high school, we sporked a girl’s front lawn. She was a friend, and it was a friendly prank. We would have even helped remove the sporks from her lawn if she’d come out and noticed them. However, she didn’t come out until the next morning, and we were long gone by then. When we saw her Monday morning at school, she was on crutches and in a cast. She had come out in the morning, wanted to take a look at the extent of the sporking, and fell off her front porch breaking her ankle. I still feel kind of guilty about that, but I want to file it away under freak accident. These days, she’d probably sue. Torts!

I pronounce the word caramel differently depending on context.  It's a CARE-uh-mell apple (like an Affy Tapple), but it is car-MULL corn (like Fiddle Faddle or Crunch-N-Munch).
 
My name is Carrie.  It is pronounced like the word carry.  It rhymes with Mary, marry, fairy, Harry, hairy, Gary, Larry, and non-dairy.  People from Philadelphia get this wrong.  They pronounce Carrie and carry differently (and put a horrible, grating nasal sound into my otherwise fine name). 

5 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if it says more about you in your actual facts, or by what you chose to pit in and leave out :). We're watching that prohibition documentary. Fascinating!

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  2. I love this post. I keep wanting to come write something more substantial, but that's not happening, so... I love this post. That is all.

    FYI, if you ever travel to Europe- those gym shoes will mark you as an American. If you care about that sort of thing, buy some nice leather "European comfort shoes" and you'll blend in better. Provided you don't carry a fanny pack. Which no European would call a fanny pack, because their fanny is, um, a bit more towards the front than ours, if you know what I mean.

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  3. P.S. I love your blog/style/sarcasm!

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  4. Also - you can't tell us you know how to get the yellow pit stains out, but then not tell us the secret!! :-/

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