Tag Archives: zombie

10 Things We Never Dreamed to Dream

Erin: You never know what kids are going to come up with at any given moment. This moment actually began as an obnoxiously olfactory one. Abercrombie and Fitch punched me in the face as I stood in the bedroom door. I was choking on a tsunami of Axe molecules as I managed to croak out, “What’s goin’ on in here?” to the tiny nearly naked boy STILL spraying himself head to toe with the stuff.

“Ace said this makes you grow hair. I want to be a bear.” 

Ellen: Ha! That’s adorable and I admire his commitment to his dream.

Quite frankly, I can’t remember wanting to be anything, but a doctor at any age, and, gee, I’m really glad I picked that.

Erin: I know I wanted to be an astronaut. My family actually nicknamed me Space Puppy, and that was BEFORE the movie Space Camp too, so you KNOW I was serious.

Ellen: Well, aren’t we just a couple of cute clichés. But here’s the thing, I got the degree, but I’m not practicing. You’re not an astronaut, you space out sometimes, but you’re not an astronaut. But really, you made the right choice since there is essentially no space program now. Were there any other dream “bullets” you dodged?

Erin: I couldn’t have dreamt up the life I have now when I was 5 or 10 or even 20.  Once I left the daily grind to stay home with my kids, that’s when the possibilities really opened up.

Ellen: I couldn’t agree more, so without further ado. . .

 

Ten Things We Never Dreamed of Doing When We Were Kids

 

1. Park Rangers

Don’t worry, they didn’t give us guns.

 

2. Taste Testers

If you’re going to dabble in Pinterest occasionally you’ll get a mouth full of Pintershit.

 

3. Cowgirl

Erin mourns the loss of this hat. Should she??

 

4. SAHM Cheer Squad

Give me a “S” Give me an “A” Give me an “H” Give me a “M” What’s that spell? Chronically tired and under-appreciated!

5. Milkmaid

You really never  plan on being a Milkmaid, however . . .

 

6. Unibomber Posse

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

 

7. Zombie Wedding Planner

At least they weren’t picky about the freshness of the flowers or the cake. And we did win a trophy.

 

 8. Swingers

What did you think we meant?

 

 9. Synchronized Swimmers

Don’t try this at home. Years of practice.

 

10. Synchronized Divers

Don’t try this at home either.

We always thought we would have more dignity and make more money. Our guidance counselors really could have prepared us better.

 

Click the link to read some other great posts over at  Monday Listicles !

 

 And don’t forget to click the little pink circle below to vote for us as one of the Circle of Moms Top 25 Funny Mom Blogs. It takes just a minute! Push us, push us real good into the Top 25!

Thanks! Erin and Ellen

 

You can vote once per 24 hours until February 13th. So click it so we can quit begging!

 

 

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Ghost of Halloween Post Past

I’m sitting here sipping my coffee on the deck, enjoying the last of the fall foliage and Indian Summer before Hurricane Sandy hits to blow it all away and I just itch to write a Halloween post. But we haven’t done a ton of Halloweening this year because of my appendectomy.  With me down and recovering, my family has been so focused on the necessities — food, clean laundry, transportation, and preventing me from busting my incisions open — that decorating has taken a back seat. This is the extent of our festiveness.

Decorations: 10% Pic Monkey, 50% carved, 100% consumed by fruit flies.

 

But with Frankenstorm coming our way, the lack of decorating really seems like a stroke of brilliance. While my neighbors scramble to take down corn stalks and dollar store ghosts, I get to sit here scrolling through our blog archives. And low and behold, I wrote a Halloween post last year! That exactly 12 people read because the blog wasn’t live when I “published” it.

So with a little editing, I’m sending this gem into the blogosphere for real. It was originally titled “Halloween is Sucking Me Dry Like a Bingeing Vampire.” Erin and I were trying to get this blog started and I had a ton of other things going on. I was nearly erupting in hives from the time suck Halloween was for me last year. In fact, here is a “snapshot” of a two hour period in my household:

Helped Jellybean (10) to construct a papier-mâché zombie wedding cake
Cooked dinner
Edited a speech by Coco (13)
Braided Coco’s hair so it would be wavy when delivering the speech
Mended the shirt to be worn during the speech
Folded laundry
Shortened the pinkie of a Michael Jackson glove

I know the most surprising thing on this list is why would I be folding laundry when I have two perfectly good children to do this. Well, we desperately needed clean underwear in our drawers  and Coco was writing her speech and Jellybean was not yet woman enough to multi-task to the level of working with flour paste and clean laundry simultaneously.

Would you like a slice with finger or brain?

But in all seriousness, I bet half of you didn’t even blink an eye that I was making a papier-mâché zombie wedding cake. Congratulations, you are my kind of parents. You were doing your own equally stupid things for Halloween, so I don’t seem that far off the bell curve to you.

But the “cake” did have a purpose. At my daughter’s elementary school, they have this great event, started by a great teacher called Trunk-or -Treat.  Parents circle their cars at the fire company’s carnival grounds and the kids trick-or-treat from trunk to trunk.  Sounds simple in theory, right?  But what would be the fun if there was no competition involved?  Of course, we have to decorate the trunks!  It is in its fourth year and as with all good things it gets grander and grander.

The first year we opened our decoration box and threw a bunch of stuff in our trunk.  APPARENTLY, we were not really embracing the spirit of the whole thing.  I got to burn with the shame of “Slacker Mom.”  The second year we did an 80’s theme, but alas, the older gentlemen judging the trunks were not feeling that “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”  The third year we won a trophy (that is still proudly displayed on the mantle) for “Kid Friendliest Theme.”  Check out the “Funky Monkey Hot Tub.”

Cleanliness of monkeys cannot be confirmed. Enter at own risk.

 

Well, our theme last year was “Zombie Wedding.”  (We watch way too much “Say Yes To The Dress” and “Cake Boss”). We constructed a zombie couple out of PVC pipe to go with the aforementioned cake.  We’ll just say I spent $100 on this glorious-ness ::wink, wink:: since my husband reads my blog.  I swear, you give me PVC pipe, wire ties, duct tape, and fishing line and I can out-design MacGyver.

This is what 5 gazillion work hours looks like.

 

But oh my goodness, this trunk decorating dragged on my time so much that my family lived on fish sticks and learned to wear socks more than once. Don’t be too skeeved. We bought more underwear to bridge the gap. We’re not animals. Only deep breathing and wine prevented me from ruining all this fun with a screaming banshee grade meltdown. The killer is that this event replaced a free and simple school Halloween parade.  Kids just brought their costumes to school and walked around the field; simple as that.  But would we really be in the 21st century if we were allowed to keep things simple? If it doesn’t drive you to the brink of madness, is it really worth doing? Okay, I must interrupt this rant about the merits of simplicity with a confession. I did reallyenjoy making zombie breast implants. I disturbed my kids and I could not stop laughing.

NOT FDA Approved

 

But you know what truly made it all worthwhile? Winning, Baby! “Most Creative” trophy went to us! People were standing next to our creeps for photo ops like it was The Haunted Mansion at Disney World. Was it all worth it for the plastic trophy and $10 Wawa gift card?  I must admit, we are competitive enough to say, “Yes!”  But truth be told, Jellybean’s excitement and pride were pretty awesome, too.  I could hear the thump of one more brick mortared into the foundation of our relationship.  And here is the Sisterhood Secret: you  REALLY need that foundation to be strong by the time they reach their teens.  Just ask Coco, who wasn’t too cool to celebrate with the rest of us.

-Ellen

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Virus Part III: The Full Menace

Erin In horror movies, the music rises, the lighting changes, and you know that evil and untoward things are coming. Our story is not like that. No warning, no ominous downbeat, but this foul thing landed in our household and when it unleashed its unholy wrath, we were defenseless.  Skewing this a bit towards the melodramatic, you say? Well, buckle up. It’s a bumpy ride.

Looking back on our innocence on Friday, I actually tear up a little. At 3pm, young Eddie, who is only 4 and not yet the master of the graceful upchuck, booted all over the bathroom. Not a big deal. Five kids. Spit and the other thing happen—a lot.

Eddie proceeded to spew like a geyser for the NEXT SIX HOURS. I was considering getting him an X-ray to make sure he doesn’t have 4 stomachs like a cow.

Ellen– Good lord, woman, are you drinking enough fluids? Delirium is setting in.

ErinAnyway, I washed my sick puppy, put him to bed, and cloroxed the bathroom. Crisis over. Oh, silly Erin, had I not learned how quickly things can go from kinda-bad to serious-sh%#-going-down to flat-out-apocalyptic mayhem?   

Ellen – Can you say Pollyanna? Erin has 5 kids. This is not her first turn down Dysentery Drive. Let’s ask her brother-in-law whose family they nearly killed 2 years ago with The Great Pittsburgh Easter Virus. I’m pretty sure he is still holding a grudge for turning the family celebration into a CDC point source investigation.

Erin Anyway, I might have heard that the preschool had a class-A-bigtime-stinky-virus, but that wasn’t what we had. A Sisterhood Secret is not to put much stock in rumors. I felt free to dispatch two of the boys to overnight sleepovers the next day. Umm, yeah, you can see where this is going. We were now THAT family. 

Ellen– Yes, Erin sent biological bombs into not one, but TWO, separate sleepovers. What is that scratching noise you hear? That is Erin’s name being added to the top of every Black List in the county.

Erin The phone calls started at 10pm.  Kids were dropping like flies, and I was working hard to keep up, but at 12am, Mom was down too.  I have almost zero recollection of the next few hours as our viral marauders had their way with me. Aliens could have landed, I dunno. . . Anyway, as I was completely sacked out on the couch or taking up residence in the bathroom, I had no time to think about how much worse this could get.

But apparently, it could get a lot worse. Steve took Ace to his soccer game, but exclaimed as Ace(14) opened the door, “You are going to have to find your own way home, because the plague is taking me down. Starting now.”

Ellen– Steve is not that kind of parent. This just shows how awful this thing was. And are you keeping score? Erin has just spread this crud to a whole new pool of victims.

Erin I can only imagine what the parents who gave my child a ride home thought of us. But I was beyond caring. Being wrapped around a toilet does that to a woman.

And now Steve was out too. We were Night of the Walking Dead, except that the best we could do was kind of groan and crawl. The healthy were forced into medic duty with full exposure to The Menace. Good times.  

And have I fully conveyed the virulence of this thing? By dawn, the Evil Viral Menace had claimed Biddie(13). I was a desperate woman now, begging for people to acknowledge my pain and suffering. I posted a pathetically transparent plea for sympathy on Facebook. People stroked my fragile ego and made me feel a little better, except for my brother-in-law. He did bring up the Easter thing.

Ellen– I told you there was a grudge. But she didn’t get to wallow in her little Facebook pity party for long.

ErinAce wanders over and says he STILL has a headache and blurry vision. Still? Huh? He wasn’t sick yet. I shook my head a little as if that would settle the information more coherently in my brain.

Ellen– Yes, Ace, with the unrefined information filter of a teenage boy, decided not to tell his parents that he got knocked in the head during the soccer game. He didn’t want to bother the sick parents. Kinda sweet.

ErinSo phone call to Ellen.

Ellen– Yes, it sounded like he had a concussion, but they were way too sick to go to the ER.

ErinYeah, the ER might have done us in. Our immunocompromised selves would either be further assaulted or end up killing some poor sick little old lady–not the best way to redeem our reputation as the Point Source for this mess in my hometown.

As the proud patient of the World’s Greatest Doctor, I was able to secure a private assessment of Ace’s concussion away from the ER with the caveat that we must wear masks so as not to infect the office. And we had to come in the back door. We were one step away from being quarantined.

Good news: concussion was mild and Ace was not in danger.

Bad news: two hours later, Ace fell victim to The Menace, too. That’s right, folks! 7/7. Seven in one nasty, viral blow!!

In my weakened state, I almost violated my tenant that motherhood is not a pissing contest. I nearly snarkasticly replied to my friend Nicole’s Facebook post: “And we are 5/5 with the stomach virus. Yay! We’re so nerdy that we even have to get 100 percent when it comes to illness percentages!” I was feeling a little competitive. What is 5/5 compared to 7/7? I refrained from posting, but perhaps mentioning her post here is equally snarkastic and competitive.

Ellen– Especially when you kind of stole her idea for the 7/7.  And by the way, MY family was sick, too, albeit it with a much more civilized virus. No love coming my way. Just sayin’.

ErinPerhaps both of you will take pity on me as the Viral Menace has beaten me down and blurred the lines of decency for me. I mean Nicole even sounded downright chipper in her post. I am not chipper. I am not happy. Clearly we had a different strain at our house.

 This thing crushed even my inner Pollyanna. Perhaps some musical cue or lighting shift could have signaled to me that the darkness was about to descend. It would have given me time to invest in Saltines and Seagram’s Ginger Ale. Or, at the very least, to hang a crucifix in the window or some garlic on the hearth.

Ellen– Erin’s birthday is coming up and I’m getting her a whole house fumigation. What’s that? A call just came in from the Health Department. They are honoring me with a medal for community service.

Want to read what came before? Check out Part I and Part II.

Noteworthy: Erin started this blog while still fighting the virus and Ellen did final edit while in the pediatrician’s office with her youngest. We’re hardcore like that.

 

 

 

 

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Facebook warning from Erin posted from the midst of her very own version of “Contagion.” She had not one, but TWO, kids throw up at two separate sleepovers on the same night. She’s not holding her breath for thank you notes. And it only went downhill from there. They all succumbed, all SEVEN of them.  -Ellen

You know there’s a sequel, right? You’re one click away from Part II.

Read about the Full Menace; Part III has been unleashed!

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Halloween is Sucking Me Dry Like a Bingeing Vampire

So I fully realize that this post is taking place well after Halloween.  This is because during the week of Halloween, I and my equally computer illiterate friend, Erin, were trying to get this blog up and running.  The fact that we were spending HOURS trying to learn all of the computer science that we avoided in college, (oh wait, there was no freaking internet or blogs when we were in college), showcased how much precious time I was wasting on Halloween activities.

But despite the fact this “holiday” has come and gone, I still wanted to record for all of motherhood what took place in my house over a two, I repeat, two hour period.  Because yes, I do want a cookie.  So, in said time period, Jellybean (10) and I constructed a papier mache zombie wedding cake; I cooked dinner, edited a speech, braided hair (so Coco (13) could have wavy hair when delivering the speech,) mended a shirt (to be worn during the speech), folded laundry, and shortened the pinkie of a Michael Jackson glove.  So if you are like,” Ellen, you could have put away the Super Woman cape and passed on the laundry,” I have this response for you:  we all desperately needed clean underwear in our drawers. While I generally prefer to have my kids do the laundry; the facts were, Coco was writing her speech and Jellybean is not yet woman enough to multi-task to the level of working with flour paste and clean laundry simultaneously.

Wanna slice with the finger or the brain??

Now out of all of the tasks, I do have to admit that the papier mache was the most fun.  As you can see our zombie wedding cake was epic.

But the most annoying task was shortening the pinkie of the Michael Jackson glove that we ordered online for $10.  That stupid pinkie was as long as the ring finger.  Take a look at your own finger and you will realize how freaky that is!  Now before you judge me on the $10 glove, wrap your head around the fact that it was my ten year old daughter that was dressing up as Michael Jackson.  That is definitely on the spectacular side of awesome.  I will have to delve further into her Michael Jackson obsession at another time.

Now if it never entered your mind to question why I was making a papier mache zombie wedding cake, congratulations, you are a mother.  You were doing your own equally stupid things during Halloween, so I don’t seem that far off the bell curve to you.  At my daughter’s elementary school, they have this great event, started by a great teacher called Trunk-or -Treat.  Parents circle their cars at the fire company’s carnival grounds and the kids trick-or- treat from trunk- to- trunk.  Sounds simple, but what would be the fun if there was no competition involved?  Of course, we have to decorate the trunks!  It is in its fourth year and as with all good things it gets grander and grander.  The first year we opened our decoration box and threw a bunch of stuff in our trunk.  APPARENTLY, we were not really embracing the spirit of the whole thing.  My mommy tiara got a little tarnished.  The second year we did an 80’s theme, but alas, the older gentlemen judging the trunks were not feeling that “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”  The third year we won a trophy (that is still proudly displayed on the mantle) for “Kid Friendliest Theme.”  Check out the “Funky Monkey Hot Tub.”

 

We have a lot of monkeys.

 

You are looking at a winning trunk, Sister!

Well, the theme this year was “Zombie Wedding.”  (We watch way too much “Say Yes To The Dress” and “Cake Boss”). This involved constructing a zombie couple out of PVC pipe and the aforementioned cake.  We’ll just say I spent $100 on this glorious-ness since Frank has promised to read my blog at some point.  I swear, you give me PVC pipe, wire ties, duct tape, and fishing line and I can out-design MacGyver.  But oh my goodness, this dragged on my time so much that I had to practice deep breathing and drink wine to calm myself down.  The killer is that this event replaced a free and simple school Halloween parade.  Kids just brought their costumes to school and walked around the school yard; simple as that.  But would we really be in the 21st century if we were allowed to keep things simple?

Zombie Implants: NOT FDA Approved

And just to give you some insight into Erin’s “fun-loving/not learning from my tribulations” psyche; she stole the idea for her school.  Oy!

Well, to bring this story to a close, we were indeed victorious.  Oh yeah, we won “Most Creative!” People were standing next to our creeps for photo ops like it was Disney World. Was it all worth it for the plastic trophy and $10 Wawa gift card?  I must admit, we are competitive enough to say, “Yes!”  But truth be told, Jellybean’s excitement and pride were pretty awesome, too.  I can hear the thump of one more brick mortared into the foundation of our relationship.  And here is the Sisterhood Secret: you  REALLY need that foundation to be strong by the time they reach their teens.  Just ask Coco, who wasn’t too cool to celebrate with the rest of us.

-Ellen

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