I May Not Be Able To Stomp The Yard But I Can Stomp A Roach

Spawnette and I have taken up a new type of entertainment. As a single mom, cheap entertainment is always the best kind; she and I are reality TV junkies. WAIT; don’t stop reading just because we have lowered ourselves to the very depths of Dante’s sixth circle where those of us are strongly at variance with the accepted opinion that she and I are not the coolest of cool.

Because we are.

This nightmare I speak of….well it would have been if you were there….all started when Spawnette was flipping through the channels and stumbled across Mario Lopez hosting “Randy Jackson Presents: America’s Best Dance Crew!” (Don’t forget the exclamation point!) I’m not much of a dance show connoisseur, I don’t do that whole “Dancing With The Stars” thing, but when a girl like me catches a glimpse of a man/boy like this all hell breaks loose in Cougar World.

So there I am, chopping away at onions and garlic for my noodles Florentine in a light cream sauce when it hits me from behind. The thomping. The stomping. I can’t keep my feet still. There are men all over the television screen gyrating and moving making the most hypnotic beat I’ve ever heard.



Spawnette and I immediately began to duel in the middle of the kitchen floor and if I don’t say so myself I R-O-C-K. Throw in a little hambone and we were ready for the next crew:



By the time I was through showing Spawnette who da boss was she was sweating up a storm and I was looking for my first place trophy.

Hey, you wanna throw down? Cause I be flippin’!

WEEEEEEEEE Are The Champions!

FINALLY!!! The boys came away Friday night with a Championship win. The final score was 17 – 7 and both the pre-game and post-game celebrations were AWESOME!

(Z is middle right)

(Isn't he handsome? Cougars need not apply.)

We arrived at the stadium a couple of hours early to tailgate before the game. There was great food and much laughter in preparation of a challenging game. Here we have my brother and my daughter hamming it up for the camera. Actually, in the second shot I was just trying to get a photo of the sun setting on the stadium BUT Spawnette had to get into the act.

(His ears aren't REALLY that big, he just pulled his hat low for a "special Kodak moment....man, he'll be pissed when he sees I posted this picture. LOVE YOU FINNIE!!!!)


(Scary shot of her mouth.)

After the boys pulled of a much deserved victory I hoofed it down to the field. Looking around I also noticed that no other parents (other than Satan himself who happened to jump the wall) were down on the field. I am such a hoodlum, I know.

(Come on guys, it was a long day; you were expecting me to look sexy???)

Spent Saturday with my sister and family. Here I am with my niece "Legs"…..she just turned fifteen....she’s kinda tall.


(Hellooooo??? Can you see me???)

Hope you all had a MOST fabulous weekend as well!

Some Things Never Change

Many of my blogger friends talk of their kids and I realize that I’m older than I think because most of the kids I read about are in elementary school. Not mine; I have the dreaded beast of terror, destruction, and destitution that we call teenagers. Funny, though, no matter how well we try to train them day after day, week after week, they revert to their toddlerism days and do things that just plain crack me up.

Spawnette was just recently working on a project required of her speech class. They were to “invent” a product, design advertising and marketing materials, and present it to the class. She came up with some kind of walking, talking, breathing, and don’t forget to do the dishes and laundry telephone. The phone would have been a tad large and wouldn’t have fit in my pocket but that’s the price you pay for maid service.

A package of poster board and a box of markers later I present to you her first attempt at marketing.

It says: I ♥ U

Some things never change, do they? At least it was the dog and not the furniture or living room walls.

The Best Birthday Gift

I just hung up the phone and had to share this little tid-bit.

While eating lunch at Jimmy John’s a message was left on my phone. As I don’t like to be interrupted while partaking in a Big John sandwich, I left the phone in my car for a peaceful and enjoyable meal. As my lunch buddy, Will-I-Am, and I jumped back into my gas-guzzling SUV “Gawaine”, I see my phone blinking and realize I have a voicemail message. Flipping open the bane of my existence I see that Spawnette has called…..or so I think. I figured that she called to wish me a Happy Birthday because she failed to do so over our morning cup of coffee and the hour it takes for her to get ready for school each morning.

Nope, not a call from Spawnette.

It’s a message from her history teacher.

From Spawnette’s phone.

History is currently her lowest GPA so this solidifies my thoughts and visions of Spawnette sitting in class texting instead of paying attention to the rise and fall of Sparta.

Again…..I am wrong.

I return the call as requested and this is what I am told.

“Hi Ally’s Mom, This is Mrs. World History Teacher.”

“What’d she do? Is she in trouble?” I quickly ask with the hopes of getting the humiliation over as fast as possible.

“Oh no, no, no, she’s not in trouble at all. In fact I wanted to thank you.” She responds.

lift of the right eyebrow “Thank me?”

“Yes”, she continues, “I had to leave the room for a moment to use the lady’s room and right before I left I put on he overhead what I thought were questions for the class to copy down and answer. Instead, I had unknowingly put the answers up and then left the room. Everyone noticed however, Spawnette was the only student to do anything. She went up to the front of the class and removed the answers from the overhead and replaced them with the questions. The other students proceeded to give her quite a bit of slack but she reminded them that they were there to learn, not cheat. I just wanted to take a moment thank you for instilling the integrity and honesty in your daughter that I am constantly preaching about in class. I wish I were able to make twenty more of these calls but I can’t. So thank you.”

Wow…..is that a cool call to get from a teacher or what.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!



(That’s a meat cake, YUM!)

Don’t Look In The Mirror

Spawnette called around four o’clock this afternoon asking me to chaperone her and her friend, “Visigoth”, to see an “R” rated movie. Nothing sexually explicit or raunchy. No, they wanted to see a scary movie.

I love scary movies.

I got the movie time, location, and cash and was ready to go. As this is a weekend with FAPOS (i.e. dad) I told Spawnette I would meet them at the theatre and take the two of them home afterward.

Five o’clock the call comes.

They cancelled on me.

Well damn, those were the only plans I had for the weekend. I have nothing else to do but wash clothes, dust the house, scrub toilets, and bathe the dog and they had the balls to cancel on me?? Well piss on it, I went by myself.

I went to see the early show of the new Keefer Sutherland movie. He’s not one of my favorites but the girls had psyched me up for a scary movie so I purchased my ticket, got my snack (you cannot go to the movies without popcorn; it’s sacrilege) and grabbed a seat right in the middle – halfway up and halfway in…..the perfect spot.

It was the 5:40 show so I wasn’t expecting too many others in the audience. There were eleven others besides myself and one really creepy guy that had his hands behind his back while walking the rows the full ten minutes before the show started.

I failed to mention that I have this irrational fear. Okay, one of many but let’s not go there today because I’ve been in a pensive mood for the past two days.

I don’t look into mirrors in a dark room. I don’t want to lift my eyes and see someone looking back at me. Someone from the other-side, dead, no longer living, with milky white eyes and a death pallor to their skin. You know that lost, malevolent soul is going to reach through that mirror, grab you by the throat, and slither over the edge to finish you off.

Mirrors in dark rooms are scary.

I went to see Mirrors.

I rushed home before the sun set, turned on lots of lights, and am now sitting at the kitchen table with the hallway door closed and the dog by my side.

Cooper weighs a hundred pounds.

Cooper is a pussy.

I’m not going to the bathroom until my bladder is ready to bust so I guess I should slow down on the beer. Only one problem; the movie has now made me apprehensive of all reflective surfaces. Jeez-mo-ninnies, there are a LOT of windows in my house.

Great, I’m a pussy, too.

SHIT…..my backdoor isn’t locked and with my luck that scary guy from the theatre will come bursting through the storm door, grab me by the throat and slither over the table to finish me off.



I. Love. Scary. Movies.

Public Humiliation

Is it just me or do other parents wake up in the morning with thoughts of how they will embarrass their children in public on any given day? Does anyone else find the need to plot revenge for impertinence or come up with strategically planned and properly executed practical jokes knowing your kids will roll their eyes and pretend ignorance of your existence?

When the spawn were young and impressionable, grocery shopping and trips to the mall were fun. It was a smorgasbord of slap-stick comedy and props and took nothing more than juggling tangerines at Publix to get a belly-rumbling laugh from either one of the two. Now that the spawn are fifteen and sixteen “respectively” (insert your own chuckle here), the acts of sabotage are more difficult to achieve.

I’ll give you an example. A few months ago Spawnette informs me there are still a number of items she needs before going on her ninth-grade class trip. The next day. It’s Easter Sunday. In a small Southern town. Where the hell did she think we were going to go? But ah-HA, there WAS a store open. One bound to be extremely crowded on this Easter Sunday afternoon. And what store would that be? None other than the dreaded life-sucking parasitic desperado…..Wal-Mart.

I despise Wal-Mart. It leeches tolerance, kindness, and patients out of all humanity. It turns sweet, blue-haired ladies into the vampiric creatures of small children’s nightmares. Its horror descends upon the unsuspecting leaving nothing but bloody stumps and appendages behind. It’s every human being’s nightmare come to life in 3-D Technicolor. It is hell.

I do not want to go shopping; I hate shopping. And I really do not want to go shopping in the only store open this lovely Easter Sunday. Spawnette is a browser. She has difficulty deciding upon which pair of white socks she will wear every day of the week. All her socks are the same. We. Will. Be. There. For. Hours. Hours of shopping are unacceptable so I must put my thinking cap on to devise a way to get in and out of hell as quickly as possible. What gets Spawnette moving faster than a speeding bullet? Humiliation and embarrassment. Wow, the ideas were endless. Should I change into my flamingo and trailer pajamas, grab my green frog slippers, and roll some pink curlers into my hair? Pajamas – check. Slippers – check. Rollers – SHIT – I don’t have any rollers. I looked for a breast plate and helmet so that I could do my impersonation of King Leonidas but failed to locate the necessary costume for an authentic reenactment of the Battle of Thermopylae. Crap. I had to call in forces and submit to the deviously scheming thoughts of Spawn. He liked the King Leonidas idea and went off to construct a leather skirt and wrist bands. “Good luck with that, Honey, let me know when you’re done.”

And then it hit me; I had just organized my arts and crafts and sewing materials. I had brown fake fur and some tartanesque material. I had plastic swords and daggers and a nice leather belt. I had the makings of William Wallace and I was raring to go. I slipped on my work boots, wrapped the pieces of fur around my shins and tied them on with yarn. I threw the plaid material over my shoulder and fastened in to my waist with a belt. Dagger in boot and sword in belt I left my room and headed for the front door hollering over my shoulder to Spawnette that Spawn and I would be waiting in the car. (He never did come up with leather for the skirt and wrist bands so he settled for a little kid’s plastic police helmet and a big foam sword.) Would you believe she was so busy primpin’ and make-upin’ that she never did notice our attire? Until, that is, we got out of the car in the parking lot of hell. She whipped her long hair over her shoulder and with piercing eyes and lips pulled back in a snarl she told me I wasn’t to walk closer than ten feet behind her and I was not to say one word to her because “I will not respond to ONE word YOU have to SAY!!!!”

Walking into the building I ran into a supervisor from work; he told me I looked good.

We were in and out in under 25 minutes.

Learn. From. The. Master.

Wanna see what I looked like?

Cooper thought that I looked HOT, even with my highlander scowl.

What A Drag

No, Spawn has not taken to purchasing sequined gowns, stilettos, and really big wigs. In fact Spawn hasn’t been home in almost a month. Spawnette has been gone this week as well and to top it off, my mom left for ten days and my longtime boyfriend decided he could no longer do the long distance relationship thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the slovenly lifestyle I’ve been living this week. I come home from work, throw on shorts and a T-shirt, and have Cap’n Crunch for dinner if I want to. The TV stays off and there is always a book or twenty-seven to keep me occupied for the quiet evenings at home. Coop is with me…..wherever I go…..following, following, always there…..and he’s great company. Never demanding (unless his food bowl is empty); always with a kiss on the end of his tongue. But I must say that without my mother, the spawn, and the Man around providing me with inspiration and awkward situations to write about I’ve come to the realization what a big bore I am.

I. Am. Boring.

I have yet to do something to make myself giggle. I don’t roll my eyes at myself. I don’t tell myself I’m gonna take my phone away if I don’t start talking to me in a better tone of voice. I don’t complain about what’s for dinner and stomp my foot in a fit of anger because something on the plate is green. I don’t make excuses to avoid doing the dishes and I actually brush my teeth and go to bed when I’m supposed to without being told fourteen times that it’s way past my bedtime.

I. Am. Boring.

I need a hobby. A hobby that takes me out of the house. Out of the house in something other than cargo shorts, Vans, and a T-shirt advertising Guinness. Something that does not take place at the retirement center six blocks from the house. (Although those velvet paint-by-number classes look fun; everyone needs a velvet Elvis!) I enjoy photography but haven’t had the opportunity to hone my skills lately. SHIT…that huge glob of mendacity just disgorged itself from my lips, didn’t it? That is what my father, in his all-encompassing wisdom would have called “an excuse”.

G-R-E-AAAAAA-T. I hate it when I’m right. I hate it when those light bulb moments take place illuminating my self-deception.

I. Am. Not. Boring.

I. Am. Lazy.

Summer Jobs

I love my kids. No really, I do. They’re funny, inventive, creative, boisterous, argumentative, belligerent, cantankerous, hormonal, quarrelsome (but we call this petulant because it sounds way cooler)……..WAIT! I’m trying to tell you how great they are and I got side tracked by this morning’s “conversation” with my daughter as I was leaving for work. Yeah, early morning conversations with teenaged girls are my favorite. Goes well with a nice, hot cup of coffee. Lots of sugar and milk. In the coffee, not over my daughter’s head. Here I go digressing again…….that’s what I do people, and I do it oh so well!

Back to my opening comment; I love my kids. Now that final exams are over and school is out for the summer I had a brief moment of peace before I realized that SCHOOL WAS OUT FOR THE SUMMER! I’m not married. I work a full-time job in addition to my many mommythingsIdothatnooneelsecandobecausetheydon’tdothemright. Oh for the love of God what the hell am I going to do with the offspring?!?!?

We took this past weekend and spent it at the beach. I figured we all deserved a break. There you go guys, there’s your vacation! Hope you had a good time now get a job. Is that cruel?

Yea, I thought not.

Spawn is off to Pensacola to work with FAPOS for the next three weeks. One down, one to go.

Spawnette. Ahhhhh, Spawnette. *Big sigh*

“Sweet Pea? Have you thought about getting a job for the summer?”

“I’ll work at that shoe store by the lake.”

“Honey? Not gonna happen. You come by your shoe-whoreness naturally so nope, don’t even think about it.”

“I’ll work at the mall.”

“Sugar? How are you going to get there? You don’t drive and I work all day. On the other side of town. In the opposite direction. Is there anything close by that you would be happy doing?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to fill me in?”

“’Kay.”

“And?”

“I wanna be a Movie Critic.”

“A Movie Critic? Now that is an aspiration I had not aimed for when I was 15. Tell me Sweetling, how are you going to become a movie critic?” (As I think to myself of her difficulties speaking, let alone writing, in complete sentences. And she wants to become a movie critic?!?!?)

“You know that list you made?”

“Which one? I’m a compulsive list maker.”

“The one you just updated.”

“That narrows it down to about twelve.”

“The color-coded one.”

“Oh, the updated list of our DVD’s?”

“Yeah.”

“And how does this help you get a job as a Movie Critic?”

“I’m gonna watch all the movies.”

“And?”

“I’m gonna rate them for you. “

“That sounds arduous.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind, go on.”

“I figure if I watch four movies a day everyday of summer break I can be done before school starts.”

“Perfect, Honey, I’ll let your dad know so he can send you a paycheck.”

“Sweet....hey Mom? We’re out of popcorn.”

Spawnette Is Learning To Drive

Don’t really need to say much more than what’s expresses through the photos below.

What A Lovely Drive!

Well THAT'S Gonna Leave

A Mark in The Dash

Hangin' On For Dear Life!

Actually, she’s not that bad of a driver any more. I was very comfortable with her behind the wheel.....because we WERE in a neighborhood with no lines on the roads and NO other cars in the streets. She even came to a complete stop at all stop signs. And she waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited and waited for ALL of the traffic to pass us by.