We used to have a huge collection of coffee mugs, I bet many of you do, too.  Some were gifts and some we picked up for ourselves.  But really, how many coffee mugs does one family need?  We pared our collection down, giving away some and putting others into storage.  We only kept our favorites in the kitchen cupboard.  I have my one favorite coffee mug that I use almost every morning.

Doesn’t everybody have a favorite coffee mug?  My parents, not being able to find the perfect mug among our collection, even brought 2 of their mugs to live at our house for when they visit.  Yes, they really did, because the perfect coffee mug is that important.

It was this paring down of the coffee mugs that caused me to be rummaging around in my cupboards on Saturday night.  Boo and Philip were off camping with the Cub Scouts, so I was hosting our church’s ladies craft night at my house.  This way I didn’t have to hire a babysitter for Bip and Pumpkin Girl and still be able to craft.  My contribution to the night, besides the meeting place, was zucchini bread and pumpkin spice lattes.  So you see, I needed coffee mugs.

One of the mugs I came up with was this one.

It made me think back just a couple of weeks ago when I found this on TV:

I went to high school with Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, before he was the Iceman, and he gave me that 49ers mug for my 18th birthday.  It was particularly meaningful because he was a Packers fan.  This was back in the day when the 49ers were a dominate force in the NFL and the Packers were an “also played” kind of team.  So upon discovering him in some pay-per-view special, I googled him and found his website. It’s more of a PG rated site, so click at your own discretion.

I swear to you, I really don’t make this stuff up!

So this morning, I’m sipping left over pumpkin lattes in my 49er mug, remembering my 18th birthday and Chuck Liddell and all my friends at my grown-up dinner at a “fancy” restaurant birthday party and how my boyfriend who lived in a different town wasn’t there.  He wasn’t a very good boyfriend.

And just because the good Lord likes to make me squirm, this old boyfriend is now living in the DC area and works at the very same building that Philip does.  They ran into each other on Philip’s first day of work.  They had lunch together.

I’m not making this up, really.

Another good friend from high school grew up to play in the American Idol house band and was the musical director for Josh Groban’s back up musicians.

And now my latte is finished and it’s time to put the mug in the dishwasher and start school, so enough with the reminiscing.   Amazing the journeys your mind takes with one simple coffee mug.

3 Comments »

You know those cans of refrigerated biscuits?  The kind where you peel off the wrapper, press on the seal and the whole thing goes POP?

Yes, well let’s just say that you were to leave a can of said biscuits out on the kitchen counter for oh, a few hours. Not you personally of course.  You wouldn’t be so foolish, would you? You should know that the warming of the can to room temperature will cause the dough inside to start to rise.  Which, when you  press on the seal, will not only cause the can to POP, but will cause the can to POP with such force as to launch one of the biscuits into the air.  The biscuit will then land several inches away on the kitchen counter.

Consider yourself warned.

4 Comments »

I have a friend who works for a major news agency.  Their website was launching a new feature about busy moms and one of their first articles was going to be about traveling with children.  My friend recommended me to the writer since I’m an expert at traveling with children.

Really?  Who knew?

Apparently, I once sent my friend a multi-page treatise on the Lessons Learned While Traveling with Our 3 Month Old Son.  Imagine, me - going on and on about my new-found knowledge.  Shocking, isn’t it?

So, lo these many years later, I found myself being interviewed over the phone about traveling with children.  The night before, Philip and I had sat down and brainstormed our best tips.  At this point, we have traveled all over the world with our children.  We’ve crossed the International Date Line 4 times with the two older ones, we’ve traveled by car, by train, by airplane.  I’ve been pregnant for a good portion of the trips and we’ve had all sorts of experiences, good and bad.  While we’ve never considered ourselves to be experts, certainly, we do have lots to say about the subject.

I wrote down my main points that I wanted to cover and 10 minutes before I expected the phone call, I sent my children upstairs.  I gave them instructions that on pain of death, they were not to come downstairs.  No screaming, yelling, hitting, biting, or throwing.  Don’t make each other mad.  Don’t touch each other.  Don’t look at each other and don’t even breathe in each other’s space.  For the love of all things holy - don’t bother me during this phone call.

So the phone rings and the interview begins.  I give the correct spelling of my name and brief family history, including travel experience.  I answer the questions intelligently, giving examples and personal anecdotes to illustrate my points.  Thank God I had written my thoughts down because it was hard to concentrate with all the screaming going on upstairs.

The writer was appreciative and enthusiastic over all I had to say.  She told me that the article was due to run on June 2nd.  She said she’d probably call back later in the week after she’d typed up her notes.  She never called me back.

That should have been my first clue that something was up.  Just this morning I remembered that the article should be up on the website by now.  I Googled my name.  Nothing.  I went right to the news agency’s website and found the link to their Busy Moms articles.  I found the story about traveling with a baby or toddler.

If you’re an actor who gets cut out of a movie, it’s called ending up on the cutting room floor.  What do you say when you’re an “expert” that gets left out of an article?  Well, whatever it’s called, that would be me.

The writer decided to go with real experts.  She quoted an author and a director of an internet parenting site, both of whom had shockingly similar advice as I did.   I guess that I, with my four children and thousands of miles of actually flying experience with them, lacked credibility.  Not that I’m bitter, of course.  I’m just saying.

I did get mentioned, though! My entire wealth of travel tips was reduced to 2 sentences about how Pumpkin Girl once threw up all over Philip on one of our flights to Korea.

At least my name was spelled right.

4 Comments »

Boo came banging through the front door on Sunday. “Knights!” he said. “Knights in shining armor!” I was cleaning up around the house, now that the chaos of the previous week’s adventures, illnesses and performances were over.

“Knights? ” I asked.

“Yes, knights! In the baseball field! They’re fighting,” Boo gasped.

“Little kids dressed as knights or grownups?” I wanted to know.

“Grownups dressed as knights,” was the answer.

Well, this I had to see, so I called the rest of the family, grabbed the camera (blog fodder!) and headed out to the field adjacent to our house.

Sure enough…knights in shining armor, fighting pretty much in our backyard.

I swear I don’t make this stuff up.

We’ve had geese, fighting rabbits, mallards, Cookie Monster and even a bald eagle or two soaring overhead, but never knights.

It’s a good thing I have a blog. From the White House on Monday, all of us sick in bed on Tuesday through Thursday, Boo and Pumpkin dancing on stage on Friday and Saturday and now knights in shining armor in our backyard on Sunday. If it wasn’t my own life, I’d never believe it.

(You can see both our old flooded out house and our current house in this picture. The old house is on the far left, the new house is directly behind the guy’s head)

3 Comments »

These are some of the recent Google searches that have led people to my little ol’ blog.  In the interest of making my blog a warm and inviting place to be, I have tried to supply the information that people were looking for.

1. How do pirates celebrate Christmas?
Well, since most pirates bore little resemblance to Captain Jack and Will Turner, (either in looks or behavior) I would guess that pirates didn’t do much to celebrate the birth of Jesus. However, Boo says that pirates celebrate Christmas by drinking eggnog - glug, glug, glug!

Yeah, and like I need an excuse to put this picture on my blog!

2. My house is always trashed.
Sorry, you’re on your own here.

3.  itunes I’m getting married to lorri
I swear that was really a search. Even spelled my name right. I have no idea what it means though.  Unless my husband has secret career in song writing.

4. What happens if my vistaprint order is late?
I’m guessing that it won’t arrive on time?

5. Where does Mac and Cheese come from?

6. Does mac and cheese go bad?
This is the number one search phrase for my blog. The answer is yes. No matter how hard we try, mac and cheese will sometimes go bad.  Why?  Poor parenting, falling in with the wrong crowd, we may never know.

7. Songs about Lorri
Another one? What is this all about? Really, I must know.

8. Mac and cheese poems
Honestly, this is getting silly. I’ve gotten this search a couple of times, but I’m afraid that whoever is looking has been disappointed. So to remedy that, I have composed a little something I called “Ode to the Mac and Cheese”

ahem

Mac and Cheese
We love to eat it
When we cook
We don’t have to beat it

Creamy cheese
and pasta, too
Sad to say,
One serving won’t do

Oh warm and comforting Mac and Cheese
Why can’t you have low calories?

9.  How to dress up Mac and Cheese
Don’t bother.  You can dress it up, but you can’t take it out.

4 Comments »

Dear Online Scrapbook Company,

Thank you for your quick response to my inquiry.  As I stated, on your order form, you do not have an option for Washington, DC which means that I cannot order from your company.  Directing me to look for “Washington State” on the list and telling me that I should “have no problem finding it” was not exactly the help I was looking for.

This would be wonderful and accurate advice if I actually lived in Washington State.  Again, I live in Washington, DC.  You know, our nation’s Capital.  While similar in name, the two are in fact, different and are several thousand miles apart.  I need you to list DC or District of Columbia on your list.  If I was to choose Washington, my package would probably be lost.

Because you have chosen not to address my actual problem, I will be spending my money elsewhere.

Thank you,

Lorri in Washington, DC

3 Comments »