Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Free Grocery Store Tape Influences My Life

Come back with me to a time long ago in a sticky place I like to call Southern Indiana. We had a grocery store in the town I grew up in. It was right next to the pizza place and the gas station. Of course this was outside the gated community in which I lived.

Don't get me wrong, we were the weirdos of the community. I mean what kind of family lets their daughters be shepherds in the staged nativity scene which was part of the Christmas celebrations each year. Shepherds were boys, not girls. There were a few other weirdos who lived in the gated community so at least we weren't alone. We were actually double weirdos to everyone who lived outside the gate but who is counting?

Getting back to the title, my life today is influenced by a give away tape my parents got for me at the grocery store. I don't remember much except that I played the tape and acted it out for my imaginary audience all the time. The part that sticks with me is when a squirrel or chipmunk - some high pitched animal - sang this:

Integrity means being fair in every situation. Doing what is right in every part of your day. We must do, we must do, what is right, what is right, in each part, in each part of our da-a-a-ay!

So there you go. I'm sure my parents had something to do with my strong since of integrity but to this very day I hear that song in my head.

LM (=

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Worst Mom EVER - close call but nervous..

I am good at a lot of things. I can do funny tricks with my tongue. I can make myself laugh on command. I am also pretty good with computers, applications, servers, and all that technical stuff.

I am not good at gardening. Last year I made my first garden and I thought it was successful because we grew veggies! The fact that maybe 6 out of the 20 or so plants we put in there lived was a baseline for improvement. This year we are only focusing on strawberries and they are twice as big as last year!

Here comes the worst mom ever part. When I picked my wonderful son up from school before Mother's Day he had a present for me. It was a little decorated pot with some sort of plant growing in it. (= It melted my heart.



Worst mom ever action number one: I sat on it.
I put it in the backseat but my son was concerned that it might fall over. I grabbed the plant and put it in the front drivers seat while I strapped him into his car seat. Instead of moving the plant to the cup holder like I had intended, I spaced and sat on the plant. Luckily it survived and the only problem was that it looked like I shit my pants because of the soil. (=

Worst mom ever action number two: I put them into a coma.
When we got home I doted on my son and we put the mystery plant by the window in the kitchen. I've been watering it and all was going well until one day I checked on it and both little seedlings looked DOA. I gave them some water and one perked up.



Worst mom ever action number three: I don't know what the hell to do with them!

Last year I tried to grow seedlings with my son and all of them bit the dust. I do not want his special mother's day present to join last year's seedlings in plant heaven. They are tiny. Do I put them in a bigger pot? Do I plant them outside? Am I giving them too much or too little water? What the hell kind of plant is it??

The real bitch is I tried to research how to do this stuff last year and they all still died. As important as this plant is to me, I just hate to spend the time researching again when I don't even know what kind of plant it is. Can anyone help me get out of being the worst mom ever? (=



LM (=