The Day Before Take Off

So last night I had to get underwear for my son, which was awkward, cuz he's 13.
"Bob the Builder?" I asked him, jokingly. He offered a tense laugh and then replied no thanks, but boxers, not briefs, if you don't mind.
"Oh," I said, feeling a little taken aback. "Why? Whats the difference?"
"There's a difference," he said. "Everyone else wears boxers."
"Oh," I said, again feeling taken aback. "But who sees your underwear anyways?"
"Mom," he implored. "That's not the point. Boxers are cool and briefs aren't."
"Well," I said. "I just don't see how they could support your-" my voice trailed off as I made a cupping motion with my hand. "Your sausage and eggs," I concluded.
"Mom! Really!" he said, now sounding kind of annoyed for some reason.  Teenagers, I guess.
"Actually," my husband said. "Boxers are better. Wearing constricting underwear can lower your sperm count."
"Oh really?" I asked. "And we shoddily be concerned about his sperm count? When he's THIRTEEN!!"
"Well, I'm just saying..." my husband said.
"Fine," I said, "I'll get the boxers."
It felt the marking of some invisible line in the sand. From boy to man.
Weird.


In other news, finally we are all packed for Mexico, thanks in no part to my husband.
Last night, while having my head in the fridge, sweating and swearing and scrubbing off a bottle of sweet and sour sauce that had apparently spilled at some point, after having already scrubbed the floors and the toilets, my husband was tackling the very serious chore of cleaning out the junk drawer in search of  a peg for his crib board.

"Do you really think you'll need a crib board in Mexico?" I asked, annoyed, both at the congealed pool of sauce- because who does that? Spills a bottle of sauce and then just leaves it to congeal??-  and at my husband, who simultaneously was annoyed with the state of the junk drawer. He threw a cook book in the garbage, with an exasperated sigh.
"Hey that's my cookbook," I told him, pulling it out of the garbage.
"Well when have you ever used it?"
I looked at it. "Easy Casseroles" it said on the cover with a picture of a deep brown dish that seemed to have hotdogs poking out of some kind of pasta, or maybe beans. It was hard to tell. It resembled something the dog puked up after getting into a package of sausage.
"Well," I said, hesitating. "You never really know," although ya, okay, he was probably right. I probably wasn't going to be cooking up a hotdog casserole anytime soon.

But anyways. That's not the point. The point is that of all the cleaning and scrubbing and laundry that had to be done- my husband picks these two chores to focus intently on:
-vacuuming out under our bed and washing the dust ruffle
-organizing the junk drawer
And not only did he focus on them, he complained about these like these were the heaviest, hardest, and most necessary chores. Like I should be thankful to him, because in the event of visiting dignitaries ending up on our bedroom floor for some reason and looking under our bed, he would save us a load of embarrassment. Because apparently I wouldn't believe what was under there!

But I don't care about that.
Because tomorrow we leave!
PS- I gained back the four pounds I lost.
PSS- I really don't care about that anymore, either.

Blogcations and Vacation and Unposted Posts

So apparently I've been on a blogcation. I really hadn't intended to be away this long. But then I just got caught up with the holidays and all that stuff. And then after that every idea I came up with to write about was crap.

I was going to write a post called "My year in incidental expenses" but then I thought- do people really care that I had to shell out a hundred bucks to get my dog dewormed this summer? And then I was going to write a post about hand sanitizers, because I don't buy antibacterial soap- don't beleive in it- but it's getting virtually impossible to even find just plain soap anymore, everything has ANTIBACTERIAL written all over it.  But then I thought- do people really care what kind of hand soap I buy? And then I was going to write a short story using all of my blog titles from 2010, but that quite quickly became impossible because I've used such weird titles like "But Stephen King has a penis yo" and "Strange Entrance Paths" and "The sixty forty rule" and the story was really going in a strange direction. Anyways, my dashboard is full of drafts in various stages of completion, and NO published posts yet.
Shame on me.
2011 hasn't been a very good year thus far for me blogging wise.

Anyways. I'm back, and I'm gonna write something whether or it sucks or not.
The main going on in my life right now is preparing for Mexico, which means, for me- losing ten pounds. Or trying to. Easy peasy, I thought initially. I'll just skip breakfast, drink an instant breakfast for lunch, have a sensible dinner, walk everyday, no snacks, no calories in my drinks. The first few days were good. Great.
But then I started gagging on those instant breakfast thingys. Turns out after a few days they don't taste so good.

And then it got cold outside. Like really cold. -20 ish.  And I really don't want to walk outside in the cold. My ears were all red when I got home, and that can't be good for you. Plus there are people that don't even shovel their sidewalks and it's all icy and slippery. Frankly it's just hazardous.  I mean- I want to excercise, I just don't want to break my hip. I mean- what kind of a vacation would that be?
Exactly.

So long story short- I've lost four pounds. And I'm leaving in four days. Six pounds in four days? Doable? I don't know. At this point I'm like whatever. I'll just drink a daquiri- maybe two- when I get there and then all my reservations will fly out the window anyways and I'll be happily prouncing about in my little bathing suit- six pounds or not. I mean- haven't you ever seen anyone who's had three kids before? Yes, I do have a slightly unsighly roll at my waist that looks strikingly like a batch of unkneaded bread dough. But it's too late to worry about that. Oh well who cares. People like bread dough. Don't they?
And if they don't, well, they should.

So I probably won't be around much again for the next few weeks. We leave on Friday for two weeks in Peurta Vallarta. My family is crazy excited about it and the anticipation is palpable in our house right now. Last year we went for first time and were vaguely excited about going. Having never been there before we were excited, but only in an abstract way, like the way that I would- perhaps- look forward to retirement. It's like "Yeah- it'll be nice, but it's a long way off." And then on top of that,  the week prior to leaving I watched a Dateline special called like (and don't quote me on this) "Gone in the Night" and it was about all these slayings in Mexico and abductions and that left me with a seriously bad taste in my mouth.
But this year I have no such reservations. If I get beheaded I get beheaded, what can you do?

I'll leave you with this, the lyrics to a song that we are forever quoting in our house right now: Toes, by Zack Brown.

I've got my toes in the water, ass in the sand

Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand

Life is good today

Life is good today.