Leah Barr

It seems as though this year there is wedding fever among my friends and family. My little sister got married this month and now a friend of mine is getting married next month. I’m in the wedding next month so I had to go buy a dress and a specific bra and undergown skirt thingy. It looks fantastic on, the dress is truly beautiful, but holy crap that’s a lot of hooks and zippers. It’s like strapping into armor, I feel mildly invincible. Matt really liked it too, he said I looked fantastic in the gown. Almost as pretty as I did in the black one I wore to the party we went to, but then that dress is, I believe, his very favorite dress ever.

It’s kid free this weekend.  Matt and I need to take some time and just enjoy each other. I’m hoping we are able to go to that pub in Decatur. It had fantastic food and beer and was so much fun. That and there is the cutest little bookshop/soda shop on square as well. Of course I’ll have to be feeling better than I have been…but then isn’t that always the case?

The kids all had their checkups and are all still human and rather healthy. I was really proud of the boy for not screaming or crying or anything when he got his two shots. He was such a trooper. The girls were easier since they were caught up with their immunizations. I’m just glad to know they’re all doing alright.

Well, it’s off to the kitchen to start up dinner. I think I’ll do ham and au gratin potatoes and maybe a vegetable medley. They’ll all like that.

Is it just me or has everyone on the continent gotten ill? I was speaking with a friend in Canada the other day and people are getting sick up there too. And it’s not just a cold and it doesn’t go away. I’ve been fighting something for almost two months. Of course being asthmatic doesn’t help, but come ON. I am so sick of being under the weather. At least I know it’s nothing fatal, just incredibly annoying.

I’m just glad the kids haven’t caught it. They’ve gotten the normal cold type things but Matt and I have both been sick as dogs off and on over the last few months. I guess that’s just the chance you have to take when married and affectionate, we keep giving each other the plague. I know he was never an affectionate person before but he’s become much more affectionate with me since we got together and he’s the obvious choice for hero to the kids. I didnt think I could love him more than the day I married him, but every day proves me wrong. I couldn’t be more blessed.

Speaking of the evil spawn, shortness has her checkup this evening and blondie and the boy have one tomorrow. Now we get to figure out just how tall they’ve gotten (not that having grown out of all their jeans in the last few months hasn’t been a sign). They grow like weeds, them three. Of course the cat wants to be in on that as well. She’s huge compared to when we got her a few months ago. It’s just one big growth spurt here. Even Matt has put on quite a bit of weight. He’s 1.2 lbs from his goal. I’m so proud of him and he looks fantastic. He’s got color in his cheeks and a smile on his face and I’ve never heard a man hum and sing as he does everything as much as Matt. It makes me very happy that he’s happy.

Strategery. Lock Box. Sorry, that still makes me laugh.

 Because of my religious beliefs I have never had any part in political happenings. I am neutral and have no preference for candidate, party or even nationality. I say this because the following may sound like I have a problem with a particular Presidential candidate and I do not. I simply find the following amusing.

I read and have heard that Sen. McCain (sp?) has essentially said that a vote for him is a vote for war with Iran. Now, I dont know about everyone else, but I’ve always assumed that threatening other countries was NOT the best way to start foreign policy. Is the world falling apart and we just cannot grasp that because of our decadence? Did I miss the memo where I’m supposed to hate other people? Can I continue missing that memo?

I’m waiting and watching and trying not to laugh as I keep picturing McCain being sworn in and immediately turning to the American people and asking for his dice. I know he gets five men at the beginning of every turn but you’re only supposed to attack one other country at a time man, one at a time.

If you’ve had kids for any significant period of time you learn to listen for things. There are certain words and actions that trigger the most insane of fights between children. One that our spawn like to use is, “I never said you could do that.” Once those words are uttered you have just under 20 seconds to act before there is a screaming match on your hands. It usually involves a toy/game/item that one has said the other could use and wants back, but has been known to be used for any number of other reasons. Another sure sign there’s going to be some groundings happening is when one of the kids nonchalantly walks into the living room and picks up something that isn’t theirs and attempts to walk out with it. It’s like watching a train wreck, you can’t look away.

Thankfully I have, despite many attempts to the opposite (including concerts, keeping my mp3 player too loud and blasting music in the car), very good hearing for these things. I may not hear a thing being said to me but I’m hearing a whisper from one child to another with words like “before she sees” from the other room. It reminds me of the time, when I was a kid, that my parents had company over and were eating in our formal dining room while us kids ate in the eat-in kitchen. You could not see the dining room table from the kitchen table and vice versa but suddenly my Dad yelled for my brother to sit down and stop goofing around. The guests were duly impressed and finally my Dad confided he’d seen my brother dancing in the reflection off the microwave.

I think there should be a name for this ability, this super power to fight crime (or at least the evil spawn we’ve brought into the world). I call mine Momdar, but I’ll have to admit my Daddy had Daddar. It’s not a sexy ability and it sure doesn’t make the kids feel like they can get away with anything, but it’s something I wish more parents had.

 On a side note, this ability is easily transferred to knowing what cats and dogs are up to as well. While sitting in my living room, which has no view whatsoever of the master bedroom, I yelled at the cat to get down from what she was doing. I didn’t hear her so I got up and went in the room and shooed her from trying to play with things on my nightstand. When I walked back out of the room, my husband was looking at me with the “how did you know that?” look and I told him, I heard a little clink as her collar brushed against glass and I knew what she was up to.

It only takes a moment of Momdar to get you grounded.

Recently our car broke down, unfortunately (is that ever fortunate?) it was on an interstate somewhere in Middle Tennessee while on our way to my little sister’s wedding. It was freezing outside, night, and not exactly a bustling metropolis. My Daddy came and towed the car to safety and we proceeded to get a rental car for the week so that we could retrieve it from the garage the following weekend.

Welcome to the Dodge Nitro. I asked the young man behind the counter if he could describe it to us so we’d know which vehicle it was. Middle Tennessee apparently has a shortage of strip malls that rental cars want to be in so this one was located inside a SuperWalMart. I personally find super a bit of an overstatement, but I digress. The young man looked at me with a somewhat amused glance and said that it was a bit “boxy”. He. Was. Right. We went to the cars and were faced with a white abomination to nature. You might find my lack of enthusiasm for it’s complete lack of aerodynamics strange but you can rely on my judgement for knowing ugly cars when you find out…I drive an Aztek. Oh yes, the car that looks to be made of legos. That one’s mine.  The Nitro made my Aztek look good, and there’s not much out there that can clear that bar. It got worse, the inside was just as boxy as the outside and instead of a second plug/lighter in the back we were confronted with a regular electrical plug. Now, I don’t know how many of you out there have kids but you have to be familiar with the fact that all of our portable dvd players have only the plug in for cars, none of them have regular plugs. We sacrificed our cell phone chargers for the dvd player and made the best of it. I will say that there was a decent sized back area that held our luggage. It was not as spacious as the one in the Aztek, but then not much is. Azteks are made for carrying mountain bikes and canoes and, in our case, luggage and pets and the occasional dollhouse.

Despite its rather unfortunate appearance the Nitro did have very good gas mileage, Sirius radio and more comfortable seats. All in all I would say that the Dodge Nitro should have the same marketing that the crazy people in that Dudley Moore movie gave to the Volvo: “Boxy, but good.”