Very few things get under my skin. Seriously I’m like the easiest going person I know. I’m not bragging, it’s just the truth.

Everyone knows I hate the stick-figure family decals on the backs of cars.

And improper use of grammar drives me absolutely bananas. You’re equals you are. Your equals YOUR. Why must we keep having this conversation?

But those things aside, I feel like I need to spread this message.

Stop using LOL.

I’ve never been more serious.

If you LOL me there better be something terribly wrong with you. As in you’re about to die.

In fact, I’ll put this out there. Let’s just agree that if you use LOL when communicating with me (via email, text, blog comment, whatever), you’ve been abducted by terrorists and are being tortured. That will be my cue to dial 911.

Because…and I don’t mean this the wrong way…LOL is about the dumbest thing you can say to someone. While I appreciate that whatever just happened made you LOL, the bigger picture is…I don’t believe that you actually laughed out loud. I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just KIR (keeping it real).

When texting became popular a few years ago I think I said something like, “Let the transformation from personal relationships to robotic responses begin!”

And here we are with our LOLs and our OMGs and our ROFLAMOs…and all those other stupid impersonal capital letter groupings that make me want to punch someone really hard in the face.

I can’t be the only one who feels this way. But in case I am, just know that (not always but in this case) I’m right and you’re all wrong.

To recap: LOL is a mayday call and ONLY TO BE USED IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY.

(I wonder if President Obama has to deal with these kinds of difficult issues or if it’s just me)

Knock-knock.

Who’s there?

Me, who’s been stuck at home for the past two days with two sick kids. I’m about to lose my shit and I need a good place to hide for a few hours. Are you going to open the door or am I going to have to kick it down? I’m strong enough you know. I’m an ex-gymnast.

….

Hello? Mom?

We’re not home.

I can’t wait for the day my kids come back (after moving out) and I can pretend I’m not home. What must that be like? I’m guessing it’s pretty awesome. But also kinda mean. And yet, it’s marked on my calendar. Yep, in the year two-thousand-and-twenty-five I can officially not answer the door if I don’t want to. But wait, let’s think about this. In 2025 I’ll be (41 plus 13 equals 54) fifty-four and I’ll probably be knee-deep in Alzheimer’s and forget where I put my calendar and I’ll just open the door and let them in. This plan sucks.

Anyway, it’s true about being at home with sick kids the last two days. Their symptoms are fever and achy bones. What is that disease? Because Dr Google diagnosed them as having either Dengue Fever or a yeast infection. I’m beginning to wonder where Google got his degree because he’s kind of an idiot.

But just because I’ve been at home playing nurse maid to the sicklies (which includes fetching them water and changing the channel on the TV for them after every half hour because they’re too weak to press the button on the remote for which I’m not at all losing my nurturing spirit OR my patience) doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten anything done. Oh I have, mister.

With the help of my good friend, Jen, my home is now organized.

See what we did in the pantry.

And then we moved to my closet and bathroom. She’s a genius.

If you entered the cutest muffin pan giveaway, you’ll remember I said I would announce the winner on Tuesday. Well, since now it’s Wednesday I guess it’s as good a time as any to tell you that Sara (comment #49) WON!

Thanks to everyone who entered. Be on the lookout for the next giveaway!

Also, HELP ME……..

Disclaimer: I was not paid by the Jelly Belly corporation for this video review. Because if they *HAD* offered to pay me I would have been fired.

Yesterday marked a pretty big milestone for me. My first born turned 18.

And throughout the day I experienced a range of emotions that went from elation to depression to excitement to sadness–and a whole other smegma of feelings in between.

When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she answered with the answer that only my kids answer when asked this question. A rainbow cake.

And I was grateful to have something to do (bake a cake that’s somewhat time consuming) other than focus on the fact that I was now the mother of AN ADULT.

I had two options.
A. Write about my feelings.
B. Show you how I make the rainbow cake.

I chose number B.

Here’s what you’ll need.

White cake mix
Food coloring
Frosting of your choosing

After mixing the batter according to the directions, separate (equally) into five bowls.

Add a different food color to each bowl. I chose to do red, blue, green, yellow, and orange (by mixing red and yellow)

Stir stir stir stir stir. Until it looks like this.

Pick a color, any color, and spoon it around the pan. I do five dollops at a time. Then do the same thing with every other color, over and over again, until you’re out of batter.

It’s best you don’t lick what’s left in the bowls unless you don’t mind walking around the next few hours with a brightly food color stained tongue.

After baking, it should look like this.

And then a little while later, it can look like a clown vomited all over it. You know, if you decide to go that route.

When you cut into it, it actually kinda sorta looks like a rainbow. It’s magic.

Happy Birthday, Presley. It sucks that you’re as old as you are because that means I’m older than I want to be. Thanks a lot.

Aside from being the last girl in my middle school class to kiss a boy, I was also the last one to get boobs AND my period. I remember the day Jill came to school wearing a bra. She had to, she said. Her boobs had come in and were poking through her shirt. Her mom ran out to K-Mart and brought back three off-while cotton bras, size 32B.

I stood in the middle of the group of girls as she told us the story. We were fascinated as she went into great detail about her bras and her boobs and what a pain it already was to have these little melon balls getting in her way all the time. She couldn’t even sleep on her stomach anymore, she said. It was too uncomfortable. As I listened to her go on about her size 32Bs, I panned the other girls’ chests. There were definitely noticeable buds there, just beginning to bloom. Very soon, every one of these girls would come to school with a story just like Jill’s. It was inevitable and I knew it. I looked at my own chest. Nothing. Not a hint of a gland or a bulge or a knot. Just two flat pink circles taking up space on my too-flat chest. And this bothered me.

Stupid Jill with her stupid boob story.

It wasn’t long before Jill and the other girls had a new story to tell. It involved blood and maxi pads and the ability to now birth a child. You know, if they wanted to. In health class one day Mrs. Miller sent the boys to the gym to play kick ball while she went into a forty-five minute discussion about Our Changing Bodies.

I remember thinking how unfair it was that the boys got free time while we had to sit and stare at the mole on Mrs. Miller’s left cheek while she explained how to properly insert a panty-liner into your underwear. I noticed that the mole seemed to be bigger than it had been the year before. Yes, it was definitely bigger.

And one time while I was asking her a question about something having to do with the respiratory system, her mole moved. I swear to god. It was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen. It was like it was alive and moving. It seemed to pulsate like it had a heartbeat and everything. I wondered how Mrs. Miller ever convinced a man to marry her with that gigantic black mole on her face. Was he blind, perhaps? Or at the very least, far-sighted? Or was he just into gross stuff like that. Because looking at her mole made me want to vomit. Personally, if I had something like that on my face I wouldn’t be seen in public until it was promptly removed. In my opinion it needed to be studied by scientists. It was that bizarrely human-like.

As she went on about how our bodies were going to be changing over the next few years and how, after menstruation began, what a huge responsibility that was, because of the possibility of pregnancy and everything, I thought to myself, “what did starting my period have to do with pregnancy?”

I was so dumb.

Seriously, it’s hard to even tell this story without realizing what a complete idiot I was back in junior high. But in my defense, it wasn’t my fault. My mom wasn’t one of those moms who talked to her kids about uncomfortable stuff like that. In fact, I looked to my friends for getting most of the useful information I needed. Like about shaving your legs, applying mascara, and which direction to swirl your tongue when French-kissing a boy.

In the spring of my 8th grade year I was running track. I had mistakenly told the coach that I enjoyed running long distances so he put me in all the long distance races. The mile AND the two mile.

On one track meet day, a storm moved in. It rained and thundered and there were threats of tornados. So the track meet was canceled. But not because my coach wanted to cancel it. No, he was pretty sure we could still compete (AND WIN!) even though it was raining side ways. But the principal made him call it off.

I was grateful. My stomach was hurting but that wasn’t unusual for days I would be competing. I always got nervous. I wanted to perform at my peak and everything that entailed, so it was very common for me to literally make myself sick about it.

I’d missed the bus since I was staying after school for the meet, but my friend Amy’s mom was able to drive me home. My mom was still at work.

After getting out of Amy’s mom’s car, I said thank you and waved goodbye. Then I had this overwhelming feeling—like I needed to use the bathroom and it couldn’t wait. I fumbled with my house key. I needed to get inside—AND FAST!

But I couldn’t make the key work (I still have no explanation for this) and decided to drop my sweat bottoms right there in the bushes in my front yard. And that’s when I noticed all the blood.

I started my period in my front yard.

(That’s also the name of my new TV reality show—all rights reserved)

Horrified and freaked out, I pulled up my sweat pants and once again fumbled with my house key, my hands shaking with fear. When I was finally able to get the key to cooperate and unlock the door, I ran inside the house and called my mom at work.
“Hello.”
“Mom. Something terrible has happened.”
“WHAT? Are you OK?”
“No. I’m not. I’m bleeding.”
“Oh my gosh, where are you bleeding? How bad is it? Run to the neighbor’s house.”
“Mom. It’s not like that. I’m bleeding. From my you know what.”
“You started your period?”
“OHMYGOD MOTHER. Don’t say it OUT LOUD.”
And then she started to laugh. “Oh Shauna. You’re not a little girl anymore. Surely I’m not old enough to have a daughter who has her period.”
“Mom. MOM. Can we focus on me please? What do I do? And can we make it stop? I don’t want to do this.”
“Look under the sink in my bathroom. There’s a box of maxi pads. Put one in your panties.”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much.”
“This sucks.”

Later that night I was in my room getting ready for bed when I heard a knock on my bedroom door. My step-dad opened it, came inside, and handed me a paper sack. I looked inside and found a box of maxi pads. My face turned bright red and I thought I was going to die—right there on top of my brand new JC Penney comforter.
HE KNEW? I wanted to die.
I threw the bag on the bed and ran out of the room, leaving him standing there. I yelled out for my mom. I found her in the kitchen, washing a pan.
“You told Don?”
“I had to, Shauna. What if he went in the bathroom and found you in the tub covered in blood?”
Wait. Hold the phone. There was a possibility I would, at some point, to be COVERED IN BLOOD? I couldn’t focus on THAT then. I was too upset.
“Why would he come in the bathroom if I was in there? He’s never done that before! God Mom, you have such a big mouth. This is so embarrassing. I can never look at him again. EVER.”
She told me she was sorry, but I know for a fact she wasn’t. She seemed proud of the fact that I was growing up—and could now, biologically and physiologically, bear children—if I wanted to—and had I, at that point, put two and two together that sex plus getting your period meant the possibility of having a baby—which was what Mrs. Miller was getting at—you know, if I’d understood all that. Which I didn’t.
While most of my friends were switching from wearing bulky maxi pads to inserting tampons in their vaginas, I was still wearing maxi pads. When I asked my mom about tampons I think her answer was something like, you think you’re ready to stick your fingers in your tee-tee?
I honestly had no idea what your fingers, your tee-tee, and tampons had to do with each other but just the sound of all three of those things together terrified me. So I just stuck with maxi pads and never brought up the subject again.
But one day Amy was over and was on her period. And so was I! This was so great! We had something to talk about and compare and what have you. She pulled a tampon out of her purse…
I had seen one before you know. But only because at school one day this girl, Shelley, dropped her purse on the floor in the middle of class and two or three tampons fell out. Some of the boys started laughing and pointing and Shelley got all embarrassed and ran out of the room. One of the boys picked one up and said “Looks like somebody’s on the rag,” and everyone around started laughing. I felt horrible for Shelley. And I made double sure my purse was zipped, snapped, and attached to my person at all times.
So Amy walks to the bathroom with a tampon in her hand. I cleared my throat and asked, “You have any extras?”
“Of course? You wanna try and use one?”
I got a sick, nervous feeling in my stomach, but at the same time I wanted to know what it was like to not have a gigantic, bulky cotton blood soaker-upper in my underwear.
I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.
Next thing I know I’m squatting over the toilet while Amy is explaining how to properly insert a tampon in my vagina. After several failed attempts, it worked. Or at least it felt like it was working. I had no point of reference up to this point. But I kinda liked it. It was way less uncomfortable than having a pad with wings taking up all the space in my crotch.
What I didn’t consider at the time was that at some point I would need to remove it. Amy was long gone—her mom had picked her up a few hours earlier.
Mom was downstairs and I was sitting on the toilet, tugging and pulling on the tampon string. Here’s the thing about vagina muscles—they’re strong. And if you’re not relaxing them, they’re engaged. Like having your head caught in a lion’s mouth, engaged.
But I didn’t know this. I didn’t know to relax. And breathe. And that the combination of relaxing the vagina muscles and pushing and breathing would help you with the task of removing a tampon.
Instead I panicked and screamed, “MOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!”
She heard me and raced up the stairs. She tried to open the bathroom door but it was locked. Naturally. I always locked the door these days. With two younger brothers there was never any privacy. And a girl with a bleeding vagina and pubic hair needed her privacy.
I hobbled, legs spread, shorts at my ankles, to the door and unlocked it.
“What is it?” She asked, panic-stricken.

“Amy helped me use a tampon and now it’s stuck. Do NOT tell Don!”
Mom walked me back to the toilet, told me to sit on it and relax. I sat. I tried my best to relax. She told me to breathe in and breathe out. In and out. And then on the next out she said, “Pull.” So I pulled.
And dammit if that tampon didn’t come out of my vagina and plop itself in the toilet.
What a relief. Also, I’m pretty sure my mom told my step-dad even though I specifically asked her not to. It’s like they needed my every day drama for their own amusement.
I can see why adults have children. And after a few years I finally GOT how periods and babies were related.

See? Late bloomer.

For many years I was a mother to only girls. The rules changed when Ethan was born six years ago. Before then I never had the opportunity to experience certain things. Like mother/son dances.

And now, I’ve done that too. It was one of the greatest joys of my life.

When the note came home from school a few weeks ago, Ethan had me pin it to the calendar so I wouldn’t forget. For more than ten days we talked about the dance. I’d never seen him so excited about something in his whole life. We planned what we would wear. And by that I mean Ethan went in my closet and pointed at the gold ruched dress and said, “You should wear that.”

Every day he counted down…”Only three days til the dance, Mommy…Only two days til the dance…Is it time to go yet?”

The dude was seriously stoked about going on a date with me. Can you blame him?

Finally the day of the dance arrived and Ethan was a little confused. He was unaware he would have to go to school all day and THEN come home and get ready for the big event. Once he stopped convulsing and agreed to climb off the ledge, he went to school. But he did so begrudgingly and made sure I knew he wasn’t happy about it. Noted.

The following is a pictorial of me and my handsome little man as we were getting ready to go to dinner…and then finally, the dance.

Those are great right? Well just know that as soon as we pulled into the parking lot of the school my date jumped out of the car and ran to the gym…leaving me yelling out, “Wait! You’re supposed to walk in with your date!” Then I had flashbacks of dates I’d been on in my twenties. Ethan and I are going to have a long talk.

You have to see this video from dinner. Ethan decided to practice his dance moves while we were eating at Macaroni Grill. It’s not just funny because he’s my kid. It’s just funny. Harley tried desperately to steal the show. I have no idea where she gets that from.