Advice...or something

The Best Advice Ever Given? Well..not exactly. I just liked this book cover.

But after attending my nephew's wedding, and seeing my newly-married cousin over the weekend, I was thinking about advice for the new bride.


So I was reading a few articles recently (I told you I like to read magazines) about “How to Get Your Husband to Do Stuff You Want.” There's a title to grab you, right?


Most of the advice from the magazines seems pretty obvious to me now, but I do remember a time when I thought he should just do what I want because he LOVES me. And wants me to be happy. And can intuit my wants through our magical psychic bond.

Yeah, THAT didn’t last very long….

One of our big fights when we were first married was about how to do the dishes. He thought you needed to wash dishes before you put them in the dishwasher; I thought that it was the POINT of having a dishwasher for IT to do the work. Call me crazy.

And then there was the issue of when exactly is the dishwasher considered FULL? According to me, it was when you couldn't possibly cram one more thing in there, but my husband had other ideas.

But anyways, there was a lot of, “You’re doing the dishes wrong;” “ No, YOU’RE doing the dishes wrong,” for a while. Until we both learned something, that I will illustrate here with a little parable. Wow, it’s almost like Sunday School, isn’t it?

True story: A few years ago my neighbor was going out of town, and at the last minute asked me to have my daughter (who was about nine or ten) come feed her dog while she was gone.

Actually, now that I think about it, she was already GONE, and she had asked me only to have my daughter come feed her fish before she left, but then suddenly it’s: Oh yeah, there’s a dog too. She had not offered to pay my daughter anything for the fish, and she did not offer to pay her for feeding the dog. But I didn’t want the dog to starve to death, so I said okay.

So for about four or five days I had to take my daughter over there, unlock the door, make sure she fed the dog and walked it and make her clean up if it had pooped the house, which it HAD most days. It was annoying, but I did it, as a favor to my neighbor. Also, I paid my daughter myself, to make sure it got done.

Then my neighbor came back in town and called me.

To say, Thanks for feeding my dog; I really appreciate it? Or to say, Let me give your daughter some money for her trouble? Oh nooooooo.

She said the dog had thrown up and she wanted to know WHAT exactly my daughter had fed it.

Uh, the dog food you left? I said.

She said we must have fed it too much, or at the wrong time or something, because now it was sick. She said the food bowl was too full and that if the dog ate too much food it would throw up. So WHY, she demanded, did we feed the dog wrong?

I was actually speechless here, but what I wanted to say was, You’re WELCOME!

I mean, first of all, the dog had not thrown up the whole time she was gone, because we didn’t see any barf; we had only had a few poop accidents. Besides, if the dog has food issues, shouldn’t you have told me that BEFORE? When you asked me to FEED it?!

But mostly I said nothing. And the next time she asked me to feed the dog while she was gone --oh yeah, she DID ask me again!-- I said I was busy. For the rest of my life.

So my point is, When you ask someone to do something for you, DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT THE WAY THEY DO IT! Or they won’t ever want to do things for you again.

And that’s why these days when my husband does the dishes, on rare occasions, I do not say, “Why did you run the dishwasher with three forks and five plates in it?” or “Why are half the dinner dishes still in the sink when you said they were done?” I say, “Thank you,” and leave it at that. (Oh, and complain about it later on my blog, but that’s just a technicality, right?)

And there’s some advice for the new bride. For whatever it’s worth.

Quote of the Day

http://www.ohmyachesandpains.info

Sometimes we have a Quote of the Day for our family.

Usually it's when someone says something that sounds completely ridiculous when you put it out of context, such as the things I wrote about before in "Stuff Parents Say." (Remember? "How would YOU like it if your sister put cheese in YOUR phone?" Yeah, I thought you'd recall that...)

Or it's something that just so perfectly typical of the person who says it, like ET's "Go outside and pee on a tree, dumb butt," which I wrote about in "Sibling Love."

But this Sunday we had some competition for Quote of the Day.

The first stand-out quote happened in the morning when we were all getting ready for church. Everyone was downstairs and ET was the last one upstairs getting dressed.

Then she hollered, "Mom! Baby Boy is upstairs and he's EATING my deodorant!"

That's right. He'd knocked down the safety gate, climbed the stairs, and decided to find out if Cocoa Butter Kiss Secret tasted as good as it smelled.

Maybe it did, because he actually took TWO tiny bites...

Then after church we were supposed to go to my sister-in-law's for a Father's Day lunch, but we ran into a little trouble, causing me to speak Notable Quote #2:

"Can we come over a little early? We got kicked out of church."

What had happend was, the lady from the nursery had come to the sanctuary DURING THE OPENING HYMN to tell me Baby Girl had a weird rash and could I come get her because they didn't know if it might be contagious.

Well, I knew it wasn't from eating personal care products, since that was the other one.

Actually, I knew she had a rash, because she has very sensitive skin and often has rashes. And I was pretty sure this one was prickly heat, seeing as it's like NINETY-EIGHT DEGREES OUTSIDE every day right now!

And she's not used to those kinds of temperatures, since she lives in paradise full-time these days...

Anyways, one of my friends who is a nurse actually came out of church with me and looked at it. She said it was most likely heat rash.

But we still had to leave the premesis once I'd removed the twins from the nursery and they'd begun running up and down the church halls, and it was only 11:15 a.m. So I piled all the kids in the car.

Which brings us to the final contender for Quote of the Day (drum roll please)...

"Stop beating your sister with a rubber glove!"

I was getting gas on the way to my sister-in-law's house and the kids were "entertaining themselves" in the car with a box of rubber gloves.

Why would we have a box of rubber gloves in the car, do you ask?

Well...on Saturday we visited my 90-year-old great-aunt at the nursing home. She is the sweetest lady; she always wants to give you something when you visit her.  But when you're in a nursing home, there's not that many things you have around to give away. So she gave me a box of rubber gloves.

She tried to give me a box of adult incontinece wipes too --"to wipe the babies' faces," she said-- but I declined. I was a little afraid the Depends Undergarmets weren't far behind...

I tried to decline the rubber gloves too, but once the kids saw them it was all over.

They were blowing the gloves up like balloons, wearing them and making weird noises, making them into bracelets... and, of course, pummeling one another with them.

So that was Sunday morning, before noon...

Don't even get me started on the REST of the day!

A Gulf Coast Wedding

So, last week I went to Gulf Shores, Alabama.

I know, I know. You’re thinking, Wait a minute! You LIVE in Hawaii? And you’re going on vacation to the beach in ALABAMA? On the Gulf Coast, where the big OIL SPILL is?!?!

Yep. I guess I MIGHT be a redneck…

So anyways, we went down there because (1) we go every year with the family, and (2) my husband’s nephew was getting married on the beach.

We were really excited about the wedding. I’d never actually attended a beach wedding before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. They told us they’d reserved a minister, and planned where it would be and all, but you can’t really reserve a spot, since the beach is public and anyone can walk by.

So when we got there I was a little surprised to see that there were four --count ’em, FOUR-- other weddings going on around the same time.

I feel bad about the guy we met coming in who asked me how long until the wedding started. I told him he had thirty minutes, but I guess he was with another group, since I never saw him again. Whoops!

So there we all were, standing around waiting for our respective weddings to start and pretending we were the only family on the beach.

One group had chairs. They thought they were SO special.

Another couple had no spectators whatsoever; it was just them and the minister, who also appeared to be the photographer. I was wondering if he planned to slap on some Elvis sideburns and be the entertainment too.

This is our bride.I think she was the prettiest one there!

Our bride and groom were trying to avoid seeing each other before the ceremony, which isn’t easy on an open beach! I think the groom was relegated to his car while the bride was having her picture made in various locations on the beach. I hope they cracked the window for him…

For us, controlling the twins was the main problem. They were dressed in their special smocked outfits their grandmother made, but that didn’t keep them from wanting to bolt into the surf and/or dump sand on their heads.

We had to strap them into their strollers and then drag the strollers across the sand backwards like rickshaws. It was tough going! They didn't seem to like it much either...

But once the ceremony started it was really lovely. We all stood by the water as they recited their vows. People hardly noticed the oil tankers in the background.

Yeah, you were wondering when I’d get to the part about the oil spill, right? Well, to be honest, it wasn’t too bad. There were no piles of oil-soaked bird carcasses littering the beach, which seemed to be a possibility judging from the news reports we’d been hearing before we got down there.

We actually saw almost no oil the whole week we were there, aside from a few occasional spots on the beach. The exception was in the places oil had collected a little, where they had set up barriers in the ocean to stop it from going into any of the canals.

However, tonight I saw an icky-looking photo on Fox News of Orange Beach, which was the very beach we had the wedding on. It’s just starting to really wash up there as of yesterday.

I appreciate the oil waiting until we were done with our wedding. I’m sure all the brides and grooms did too!

Traveling is Stressful, Part 2

I realized I hadn’t written about our trip from Hawaii to Alabama. Since I had a “Traveling” Part 1, I guess I really should write a Part 2.

But it was so VERY difficult I just haven’t been able to bring myself to write anything about it yet. Check out "The Scream" on the left there. That gives you a little idea of how I felt during the trip.I’ll just show a few little snapshots to give you a picture of how the flight was.

Snapshot #1: Me weeping over the American Airlines website after reading the following error message, “Unable to complete on-line check-in; seats are unassigned and flight is closed. Check in at airline required.”

That’s right, after an hour on the phone Wednesday with Duh Man, the seats had STILL not been assigned. The seat numbers I’d made him read me? Those were for the flight coming BACK next month! Just one more reason that guy will never make Employee of the Month!

Snapshot #2: ET cleaning her face at her seat on the airplane, before the lights went off. She said she’d tried to go wash her face in the bathroom and the flight attendant gave her a hard time for going in there twice.

I said that’s the problem with being a teenager, adults just ASSUME you’re up to no good all the time. (Yeah, I remember what it was like. But I still might offer to switch places and let HER be the mother of five, and I’ll be the misunderstood adolescent!) She was still griping about it the next day, by the way…

Snapshot #3: Halfway through the long long flight from Honolulu to Dallas, in the darkened plane, across the masses of sleeping passengers, a scream rings out: One of my kids is pummeling another one in the head.

Their father started awake and separated them. That was the first of about four seat changes for ET.

Snapshot #4: All seven of us (including the babies) racing through the Dallas airport to make our connecting flight; we had less than twenty minutes and the other gate was as far away as it could be while still being in the same airport.

We were carrying about ten bags and two car seats, in addition to pushing two strollers. Boo kept getting behind and yelling, “Wait up!”

Snapshot #5: Me cleaning out Auntie Anne’s of all their cinnamon pretzel sticks so we could have something for breakfast, then hurrying back to the family with the food and five drinks in my arms. (Me: Do you have a drink carrier? Auntie Anne’s Guy: Uh…no… Me: Can I at least have a bag for the food?)

After we’d arrived at our connecting gate, huffing and puffing, we’d discovered the flight had not even boarded yet, so I’d dashed off to find something for everyone to eat. Of course when I came back they were all getting on the plane and I had to rush, pushing the stroller and balancing cups and bags. As we hurried past, the flight attendant asked, “Are those car seats airline-approved?” My husband said, “They were okay on the last flight!” and we kept going.

But in the end, we finally made it to Birmingham and were reunited with all of our extended family. So it was worth the stress.

But we may wait another two or three years until we try it again.

Stuff Parents Say

There are a lot of statements you expect to make as a parent, and I‘ve made them all.

Stop sitting so close to the TV.

Don’t stick out your tongue; your face will freeze like that.

If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?
But there’s some things you don’t expect.

Years ago I started a list of Things I Never Thought I’d Say Until I Became a Parent.

I’ve forgotten most of the list, but I remember #1 and #2. And it looks like as of yesterday I’ve got a #3. But we’ll get back to that in a minute.

So here‘s the beginning of the list:

#1. “Don’t put that sucker back in your mouth after it’s been on the cat.”

Yep. That one was when ET, my oldest daughter, was about four. She was licking a lollipop, sticking it on the cat’s back, and then licking it again. Ewwwww…

#2. “Stop feeding your baby sister boogers.”

That was around the same time, so ET was four and GG was one. They were sitting in the back seat and ET was picking her nose and then placing the product in her baby sister’s mouth. GG thought this was a great game, by the way. Double ewwwww…

So now we come to last night. We are visiting our family in Alabama and the kids were playing with their cousins upstairs while the adults were talking downstairs. Then GG came down complaining that there was cheese in her cell phone.

First of all, you’re probably thinking a ten-year-old is too young to have a cell phone. Well, I TOTALLY agree. However, the cell phone policy I established when the oldest kid started begging for one was: If you can buy it with your own money (including the minutes) then you can have one. Ergo, I’ve got a ten-year-old as well as the thirteen-year-old with cell phones.

So GG brought me her phone, and sure enough, there was a bunch of soft cheese jammed in the DC outlet. I could tell it was the snack cheese that ET brought over here in her suitcase.

I called ET down and asked her if she’d put cheese in her sister’s cell phone. She denied it. I wasn’t sure what to believe about that, so I just said, “Leave your sister’s phone alone.”

And that’s when I added a statement to my list of Things I Never Thought I’d Say Until I Became a Parent.

#3. “How would YOU like it if your sister put cheese in YOUR phone?”

Except I couldn’t get through saying it before I started laughing so hard I couldn’t finish talking. I mean, what kind of a statement IS that?

But we still don’t know for sure how the cheese got in the phone. It could have been ET or Boo. Maybe one of the cousins did it. My husband theorized that a man made entirely of cheese came in and used the phone, perhaps to call his Cheese Wife. (There is also a strange, cheesy substance on the cat’s back, which may support the Cheese Man Theory. And yes, that’s the SAME long-suffering cat who had a sucker stuck to his back!)

I guess we’ll never know what REALLY happened…

Traveling is Stressful, Part 1

We are going on a trip to the mainland on Friday. (That’s what they call the rest of the US here in Hawaii, "the mainland." Not “the States” like we did in Germany because obviously, we are still IN the US, even though it doesn’t seem like it.)

So why am I already writing about travel being stressful, when we haven’t even LEFT yet? Oh, so many reasons…

First of all, since we arrived here less than a year ago, our trip to Hawaii is still pretty fresh in my mind. And it was tough. Thirteen hours on a plane with five kids is no joke.

My husband had come ahead of us to get housing, and report to his job, so my mother came with me to help with the kids. Which was a fun vacation for her, as you can imagine!

But they split our seats up all over the plane, so we couldn’t sit together. You can imagine how I felt when I saw the seating arrangements, with Baby Boy and Baby Girl seated far away from me. I was like, Should I just hand some stranger the diaper bag and say, See you in thirteen hours? The people on the phone had said they would be able to fix this at the gate so I could sit with my children, but it turned out the best we could get was three seats together, and then two and two.

So my mom sat with one of the babies, I sat with the other baby and the six-year-old, and the two older girls sat together. I hate flying anyways, but that made the trip so much worse, not being able to see all of my kids and know that they hadn’t killed each other. Yet.

So I have been really dreading this plane trip. And one of the things I was comforting myself with was, At least this time their father will be there to help with the kids, and we’ll all be able to sit together because I made the reservations eight months in advance.

But when we looked over our reservations this weekend, I saw that there were no seat numbers on the itinerary. This made me really nervous, so I decided to call the 1-800 number for Cheap-O Air, the company we made the reservation through, just to make sure.

First of all, perhaps dealing with a company called Cheap-O Air might have been a mistake. In retrospect, the name just doesn’t imply excellence.

So I called them on Tuesday, because I had to spend Monday psyching myself up for it. (I really HATE making these kinds of calls) I waited on hold about fifteen minutes to get a person, and when I finally did the lady told me there were some changes in my itinerary.

They’d shaved an hour off of our hour and 45 minute layover time on the way to Birmingham, and they’d added an hour to our four-hour layover coming back to Honolulu. Couldn’t you have reversed that? I thought.

But anyways, about my SEATS, I said. She said, Oh yeah, since you’ve had these time changes the tickets will have to be reissued, so I can’t tell you that right now. She suggested I call the airline directly to find out.

So on Wednesday (after more psyching myself up; I did I mention I hate making calls like this?) I called the airline. I spent ten minutes wrangling the bad voice-recognition software:

Fake Computer Chick: What would you like to do today? You can say, “Make reservation,” “Change your reservation,” “Check flight status,” or “More choices.”
Me: More choices.
Fake Computer Chick: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Would you like to: “Make reservation,” “Change your reservation,” “Check flight status,” or “More choices.”
Me: MORE CHOICES!
Fake Computer Chick: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Would you like to: “Make reservation,” “Change your reservation,” “Check flight status,” or “More choices.”
Me: ARRGGHH!!!!
Fake Computer Chick: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.

After screaming SPEAK TO AN AGENT in my most enunciated voice about twenty times, I finally got a person. They said that since I had made the reservation through an outside agency they would have to charge me $15 a person to do anything for me. I’m going, Seriously?

So I hung up and called Cheap-O Air back. I waited another fifteen minutes to get a person, and when I did he didn’t seem really confident in his English-speaking abilities. I’m going to call him Duh Man, for reasons that will soon become obvious. I told Duh Man my reservation number, and my name and address, and he said he would check on it.

After five or ten minutes (he said his system was “running slow” today) Duh Man came back to say my tickets had not yet been issued. Would I like the tickets to be issued?

Uh, YES! That’s why I’m calling you! Duh!

He said to hold again while he spoke to someone in ticketing. After about twenty minutes he came back:

Duh Man: Um, yeah, those tickets haven’t been issued because your reservation was never made.
Me: WHAT?
Duh Man: Um, yeah…
Me: You’re saying I have NO RESERVATION!?
Duh Man: Um, yeah…
Me: But I have a confirmation number! I have an e-mail right here with my itinerary!
Duh Man: Um, that was never finalized or anything…
Me: WHAT?!?! So what am I supposed to do now?!?!
Duh Man: So, um, I’ll have someone from ticketing call you…
Me: When will they call me? Later today?
Duh Man: Um, yeah, today or tomorrow…
Me: They can call me back today?
Duh Man: Um, probably tomorrow….
Me: So someone will call me back sometime? That’s all you can do for me?
Duh Man: Um, yeah… Unless you want to book a hotel or something?
Me: NO I don’t want to book a hotel! Because apparently I’M NOT GOING ON A TRIP!!!!
Duh Man: Well, um, it’s okay…Your reservation’s not until November anyways...
Me: No, it’s FRIDAY! My trip is THIS WEEK!
(short pause)
Duh Man: What was that confirmation number again?

Well, you can see where THIS is going. He spent 30 minutes working on SOMEONE ELSE’S TICKETS!!!

So the good news is, I DID have a reservation, and my seats are together, (I made Duh Man READ ME the seat numbers) and I don’t have to worry about anything, right? Except maybe a HEART ATTACK from the scare this guy gave me!

So traveling is stressful. And we haven’t even LEFT yet!
 
I can't even IMAGINE what the trip itself will be like. Stay tuned for part 2...

See Your Face in Every Magazine

First of all, let me say, I like to read magazines. I like to read books and newspapers too, but right now I’m talking about magazines, okay?

And I like to read them on paper. I like to physically turn pages and read them. My husband has one of those Kindle thingys. He loves it! He brags how he can have a million books on there. (Or some ridiculous number like that--when he starts giving me statistics I seem to get a little humming in my head that makes it impossible for me to recall the actual number later.)

But I don’t like the electronic form much. I like to hold a REAL BOOK. I like the way books smell: the brand-new book smell and the vintage-book aroma. I like a shiny new magazine sliding through my hands as I read it. I even like the black fingers you get from reading a real newspaper. It’s authentic.
But anyways, I DO like to read magazines. But I have to say there are some topics I’m getting tired of, because they are on the cover of every women’s magazine EVERY month.

#1: Losing Weight. Oh my gosh. Maybe it’s un-American of me, but I am SO SICK of all this talk about losing weight! Yeah, we’re all fat. We shouldn’t eat so much junk. WE KNOW! Let’s move on!

#2: Getting Organized. How many different ways can you say the same thing? Get rid of your extra stuff! Store the rest of it in cute little bins! Woo-hoo! That’s all there is to it. How can you keep squeezing a whole article out of this topic every month, ALL YEAR LONG?

#3: Saving Money. Okay, don’t buy so much STUFF! That’s it. Seriously. Again, not something we should be needing to keep writing new articles about, month in and month out. By the way, I notice no one suggests we should Save Money by cancelling our magazine subscriptions. Hmmm….

#4. Find the Perfect ___ To Flatter Any Body. Fill that blank in with swimsuit in the spring/summer, dress in the fall/winter. Now I like to look at clothes as much as the next girl, but I take umbrage with the Any Body. Mostly because the models are all the SAME body! Where’s the regular chicks? You can put camouflaging pleats and ruffles all over me, but I am NOT going to look like these size-zero girl on page 48. And neither is 90 percent of the population. If you say Any Body, how about let’s SEE some of them and how FLATTERING the clothes are?

#5. Healthy Meals Your Family Will Love. Just give it UP people! They won’t love it if it’s healthy, okay? You keep trying to come up with new ways to serve the same stuff. So we end up with a long list of ingredients, half of which I can’t even FIND at the store, and I spend all day making something that will make my kids go, “What did you DO to this chicken Mom?” and “Can I just have a peanut butter sandwich?”

#6: Hidden Dangers in Your ____. Just fill in the blank with ANYTHING there. There’s hidden dangers in everything, it seems. I can get skin cancer from using sunscreen? What? Oh, because then I get a false sense of security and stay in the sun too long. I can get cancer from my plastic containers? Whoops! Better check the labels and try to remember which numbers are the BAD ones. (Again, that humming noise in my brain when I try to remember the numbers.) Buying cleaners in attractive bottles could KILL me? Oh, because they look like they could be food or perfume. (Assuming I’m an IDIOT, of course.) And it goes on and on, all the products that are out to get me.

And, all right, I admit that these can all be worthy topics. The thing is, I'm just SICK of them!
Okay, so all those gripes aside, what do I LIKE to read in a magazine?

#1: Interesting Stories About People. Well, that seems like a big duh, doesn’t it? But I mean stories about regular people, not just celebrities all the time. I especially like stories about people whose problems are way worse than mine, like “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” (I also love how it always IS saved!)

Or people who write in for advice, you can’t beat that with a stick! That’s always something different! What SHOULD “In A Dilemma in D.C.” do about her wayward daughter? How about those etiquette conundrums: Should I tell my co-worker his rancid B.O. is killing us all? Inquiring minds want to know!

#2: Miniature Investigations. Recently I read an expose on how big actual ice-cream scoops were vs. how big they were supposed to be. Seriously. It was fascinating. They went to ice cream parlors and got like fifty scoops each, and then went back to the lab and weighed them. (How do you get THAT gig, I wonder?) Result: Ben and Jerry’s was shortchanging everyone, and Baskin Robbins was giving everyone about an ounce more than they should have. And, oddly enough, Coldstone was the most accurate, even though when you get ice cream there it LOOKS so imprecise, with those two metal paddles they roll up your scoop with. Now THAT’S an investigative scoop I can get into! (Pardon the pun.)

I also like when people have a problem a with a company and a magazine reporter straightens it out for them. “You will be receiving a full refund and an apology, Mrs. Chambers.” BOO-ya! That’s what I’M talking about!

#3: Blogs and Fiction. I like it when they feature a blog, perhaps like THIS one. How about it, Good Housekeeping? Ladies Home Journal? Redbook? I’m available...

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