T.M.I. But That’s Why You Love Me

Warning: T.M.I.I went to get a spray tan.

I wore a thong so I wouldn’t be completely nekk’ed in front of the lady spraying me. I’m modest. 😂

I wear a sundress so it doesn’t mess up my “tan.”

I come home and go in my bedroom to take off the permanent wedgie, the thong.

But first, I walk through my bedroom with the sundresses hiked up and snap that torture devise out of my bottom with tremendous relief.

Just as I turned the corner to walk around the bed and look ahead into my window I see one of the painter men on a ladder watching me.

I thought they were done with our bedroom windows. 

Now I have to get one of those bank tube things to send them the check when they are done so I never have to look or talk to them again.

Happy Friday!

Abbie Gale 

AllThatMakesYou.com

Boy in the City

You can take the boy to the city but he’s still going to find a way to act like Tom Sawyer.

Peter won’t shoot the animals in the game.

He shoots next to them to watch the video game lizards run.

I gave him a dollar to play.

Was it a waste to let him play it of he didn’t “play?”.

Ha ha!

They are all three such good boys.

His big brothers thought it was cute that he won’t even shoot a video game animal.

They came over to the table to tell me this fact as I was taking his picture from the booth and posting it here on my blog.  I thought this fact made it a much better story.

School starts Monday and I am going to miss my buddies.

Booooooo!

Abbie Gale

Epic Embarrassing Night, Again, Enjoy

Yet another awesome moment for me as I love to provide entertainment for my friends in real time and then share them with my friends online.

Last night we went to a dinner party at our club, but really they sat tables up around the pool and tennis courts. It was a beautiful night. Perfect weather, they had live music and ice sculptures and shrimp cocktail, prime rib and even nachos.

You know that based on what I have said I must be beginning another story that includes an awkward Abbie moment. You so wont be disappointed. I went to this shindig knowing I was dressed up and in close proximity to water. This is why I walked ten feet away from the side of any pool. I know I have a mark on my head with these men. Any one of them would gain tremendous satisfaction of being the guy who tossed Abbie into the pool with her giant orange patent leather espadrille, wedge, platform shoes.

Here is the real deal. I can barely swim. I grew up with a 12 foot deep pool in my backyard and I still sink. I would not be able to swim at all with these giant wrap around and buckle orange cones around my ankles, they really are cute.

Here is my sweet niece in my orange summer shoes. She liked them enough she wanted her picture taken in them. We had so much fun playing with clothes when she came this summer.

Now mix in the fact that I have an undiscovered genetic disorder that makes me gasp for air when I am underwater and it would have been a trifecta of embarrassment when I sank to the bottom of the pool while holding my nose. There would be clapping and cheering while no one noticed I drowned.

They all “owe me one” for various stunts I have done to them, (read about me tipping over their canoes during river trip last month) and I know I have it coming but it cannot be in a pool during dinner and an ambulance call. That would be really embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as when I tackled one of the husbands on the golf course and put him in a headlock, in front of his wife and other men, (I am 5′ 3″) because he ran off with my golf cart key. I have told you, I am Monica Geller.

Here I am taking my picture with my teams winning score in golf.

There are probably more people that would like to toss me in that pool.

I didn’t even realize how easily I could outdo my pool fear in my head, and all alone while just standing. But I did.

Jim asked me to walk up into the tennis pavilion to take a look and help him pick out some golf shoes. The tennis pavilion is like a raised square gazebo. The golf shop set up a little display and the men were getting their party loot or swag.

I wasn’t really interested and he was trying on shoes and not listening to me when I said to pick out the cool looking ones. He was trying on the ones that looked like ever other pair he wears.

I am standing in the middle off all these tables with my super cute orange giant shoes that I knew ROCKED when one of our friends looked at them and said, “No one told me there would be hookers here.” I told him he was jealous and that if he was nice I would let him borrow them as I am sure he wears the same size as me.

Karma, Karma, Karma. As I am standing there and looking so sassy and smart in my hooker sandals I am holding a vodka-cranberry that I have not yet drank and I have my legs crossed at my ankles. Suddenly! an earthquake shook the tennis pavilion and a drunk golfer shoulder checked me.

OK, none of that happened. Go back to legs crossed at ankles. Giant platform heels, little girl (me) rocking ankle because she is bored looking at golf shoes that all look-alike because her husband is making her. Karma. My one ankle rolls but because my legs are crossed it sends my other leg off-center. I am holding my first FULL cup with ice and cocktail so I am concentrating on not spilling. As I am trying to correct my shift in center I yell, “oooohhh! OOO!” and then “AAAAHHHHHH” then you hear WAAAHHBBUMMPP!!! when my feet flew up higher that my waist and I land on my right tush SO HARD I roll up to my shoulder. There is cocktail and ice that rained down like ticker-tape to all four corners of the tennis shop turned golf store. I am laying on the ice and drink and in my white skirt with legs in the air and they are, of course, finally uncrossed. I look around and I have a circle of men around me looking down. One of them announced “Jim, at least she is wearing underwear tonight!”

I know Jim. His face tells me his instinct is to run like he doesn’t know me. It is like the time we were facing a skunk and he pushed me forward and ran in the house. But he didn’t, he helped pull my embarrassed butt up. He was impressed with how NOT graceful my Olympic falling moment was. I think that gets you more points in the falling Olympics. I am a gold winner!!!

I have a sore right hip today. I have ANOTHER “stupid Abbie story” and I have to go figure out what I did to pi$$ off Karma and make it right.

Really though I am so happy I didn’t get tossed in the pool, white skirt and pink underwear.

Have you had an epic fall? This one may tie with my bowling alley fall. I love telling that story! Wearing Other People’s Ugly Shoes. Ok, Wearing Other Peoples Ugly Shoes is funnier. Have you read both and which do you think is funnier?

Abbie Gale, allthatmakesyou.com

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Things Every Mom Says Or Just Mine

I love that Twitter is trending #ThingsEveryMomSays because if gives me a chance to share one of my favorite quotes my crazy mom used to say…

 

“Honey, I HAD you to do the dishes. You should be thanking the dishes. It is because of the dishes you exist.”

Every year I think my mother was smarter than the year before.

Here is a story about my mom called “Back Back Before You Could Just Go And Buy Boobies” that includes the obvious mention of boobs and chicken poop and how you can use one to get the other.

Recently, when asking one of my 12 year olds to empty the dishwasher, he replies with, “I’ll give you $20 to do it for me mom.”

I say, “That is terrible. What would I be teaching you if I were to say yes?”

My 12 year old replies, “OK, fine $40.”

Now I am thinking I may just take his money to teach him a whole new lesson. I turned around and shot him a look, completely accidental, and he began unloading. Lesson learned…12 year olds these days have too much cash.

When they were little they would sneak and “wash” the dishes!

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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Articles

• Ten Things I Learned at BlogHer 2012 (allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com)
• How to Get the Most into Your Dishwasher to Get the Most Out of It (samsung.com)
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• “That is Because Their Parents Don’t Love Them.” (allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com)
• Our Most Embarrassing School Art, To Date Anyway (allthatmakesyou.wordpress.com)
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Ten Stupid Things I Learned at BlogHer 2012

Ten Things I Learned from Attending BlogHer in NYC

1. Turn off your phone and do not even answer if it is your kids. Chances are they will only call when you are talking to a “cloth diaper mom.” You will find yourself yelling into the phone, “NO, YOU MAY NOT WATCH THE HANGOVER 2! WHERE IS YOUR FRIENDS MOM? THAT MOVIE IS RATED R TOO! LET ME JUST SAY THAT NO MOVIE THAT IS RATED R IS APPROPRIATE!” The other mom with small children will look at you as if you are raising barbarians. Secretly, you are so happy your three boys called before they saw a woman in a movie shooting Ping-Pong balls out of her “place between where the babies exit out,” (you can click that blue link to find out why I wouldn’t teach my boys the word vagina.) You also secretly cannot wait until this woman’s kids are older and she gets hers.

2. That 5% of the 5,100 people who attended BlogHer in 2012 are the long time bloggers that really know what they are doing and have learned through their own successes and failures. Then there were approximately 3,000 people there with the objective to get something for free, go somewhere for free, get a discount on something back home to make it almost free or build a relationship with a vendor who will start sending them something for free. Those women had a pretty good offensive line. Then there were the rest of us.

Just in case we didn’t meet and because I suck at passing my cards out to people and then wish that I had and because there were 5,100 people there and I only had 100 cards and I came home with 80.

Email: allthatmakesyousmile@gmail.com Twitter: @allthatmakesyou

Facebook: Abbie allthatmakesyou Blog: allthatmakesyou.com

The rest of us wandered and occasionally bumped into one another. We wished we had someone with more experience to talk to but it turns out those with more experience were out together trying to get away from the people trying to “crack into their nut.” I get it. I have long time girlfriends too and I am sure these women have amazing relationships. Do I sound jealous? I am not because I really do get it. They have worked very hard to learn what they have learned and I am sure they had some bumps and bruises along the way. I am thankful for the sessions I attended and I did learn things. I am looking forward to catching a few of the other sessions I couldn’t attend, online.

3. It is IMPOSSIBLE to blow dry your hair and paint your toenails, at the same time. I am sorry Hilton and way to plan for everything with that polka dot carpet! We will call it even stevens since I paid $450 a night for a room with broken seals in the windows and I couldn’t even see out my premium priced views.

4. I may just have to accept the fact that I will never fit in with 5,000 women, as hard as I try. I never rushed a sorority, joined a mom’s group, or went on a “girls night out.” I like mixed company and I like men and frankly they were passing out plush vaginas and I won’t even teach my three sons the word “vagina.” When a table of women hear me say that I wont teach my boys “vagina” and that I refer to it as “the place between where the babies exit out,” they will looked at me like I just said women should not be allowed to vote. BTW, I didn’t get a plush vagina and I would have really loved one. I am the sole vagina bearer in my house and it would have been nice to bring it out on occasions and let it vote during family voting issues.

I need a man in the group, who used to be a boy, to get my sense of humor. I need a man to understand that it is a lot harder for little boys to yell at one another, “You’re a giant place between where the babies exit out!” versus “You’re a giant vagina!” I don’t need Judgy Judy looks and for you to whisper, “My children know the appropriate terminology” to your girlfriend. I just need you to chuckle or a smirk, that is what I do when I get that the person is being sarcastic. My husband is a doc and we all know the proper terms. My mom called mine my, “kitty cat” and I am not a stripper. She did give me a sense of humor because it is freaking hilarious when I hear a little girl get off a slide at the park screaming, “My vagina hurts!”

5. Mc Donald’s employees in NYC are paid wayyyy more than Mc Donald’s employees anywhere else, as evident by the McDonalds employee that sat down next to me and wolfed down a $24 cheeseburger.

6. You need to make connections before you go to the conference to meet people. If you don’t you will find yourself spending an evening listening to a woman tell you about the sex toy lock box business that she tells me is thriving. This leads me to the next thing I learned.

7. You need to be able to keep a straight face or get Botox everywhere so when the “naughty box lock lady” starts talking you don’t immediately begin making weird astonished faces and then decide to fist bump her? Ok, Botox arms as well.

8. If you work for a sex toy lock box company they train you to not blink when you talk about your products. Not one blink. Not one blink. I pay attention to blinks, (my story here about fast blinkers versus slow blinkers.) My guess is there was way too much giggling at training sessions so they just Botoxed their eyelids open. This whole sex-toy-lock-box episode has given me so much to think about and when I say that I am “thinking about” something it means I am hashing it out in public to anyone who will listen, that mean you reading too. I mean, have women not heard of a lock on their drawers? You put a locked box in my house and that is like giving my kids a challenge. That box would end up on a dark road waiting for someone to run it over for my little boys to find out what is inside and in their heads it would be gold coins and Skittles. Locked boxes are asking for trouble in my house.

9. Just because you took off your name badge off, Abbie, it doesn’t mean that it is OK to harass a vendor on an elevator. “But, why do we need to kill bad germs in the air now? Don’t we need to be exposed to germs? And how exactly do you know you are only killing the bad germs? We get new information all the time like, what if a germ we thought was bad turns out to be good for something else?” When the poor man finally breaks down and says his dad invented it, you can’t just say, “Oh, you will sell them gang busters because new moms are sleep deprived will buy anything for their babies” and then try to fist bump him, again…what is with me?

(Yes, my name is really Abbie Gale, (I said this 25 times.) My parents were hippies and they named me after the MAN Abbie Hoffman who spent his entire life trying to get pot legalized. He wrote the book, “Steal This Book.” My middle name is really Gale because they were babies having babies and they thought it was cute and they were lazy. Gale, as in a gust of wind hitting a sail because they also liked to sail. I am not giving you my last name, unless you want to hire me. I have high standards for my boys and hope that they get into college one day but if the school learns of their concerns over sperm diameter and whether or not this “sperm” I told them about is a liquid or a solid I will have to home-college them and I don’t even know how to form a proper paragraph.)

10. Wear a vendor badge so people will talk to you. Wear a vibrator company badge and women will chase you down like you have a key to Christian Grey’s house. I may do this next conference because I am much smarter now and very good with PhotoShop. I just have to make up a ridiculous vibrator company name. I am open to ideas. Anyone?

I think I will just keep on writing and keep on building the relationships I have on the computer and if it leads to more, than great. Perhaps one day I will be asked to sit with the “big dogs” but probably not until I learn to use a comma.

Hey, all you BlogHer chicks I didn’t meet, you missed out. I am much better in person as you cannot see my poor punctuation when I am speaking. I also had a rubber alligator in my purse my son sent with me. That is always a guaranteed good time.

You Tube Link (Click here if video above doesn’t work, because I never plan to run for public office)

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

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All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

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The Bethenny Frankel Show Called Me!!!

I have to share this super exciting thing that happened about a week ago. I share this because I realize this is probably as far as my very exciting story is going to go. As usual, my frontal lobe is defective and I ramble things off that perhaps I shouldn’t, even to television producers!

As some of my regular readers know I have been busy updating all three of our boys rooms. I had the phone practically in my hand for about a week straight talking to carpet people, painters, and furniture salesperson. I kept measuring and they kept calling me back with info and prices and since nearly all of these contacts were local I was shocked when, while the phone was in my hand, the caller ID said…

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA!!!!

Who calls me from Los Angeles, California? I might get Temecula or some other former goat town in California but Los Angeles proper?

I answer, “Hello.”

Pleasant young woman, “May I speak to Abbie… Ssss….how do you pronounce the last name?”

I chuckle and say, “It is just as it looks.” and then I say my married last name and then I say, “I tried to get my husband to take my last name when we got married. It would have been so much easier, _______. It even rhymes, Jim _______.”

Nice lady on the phone chuckles now.

Who am I talking to I wonder? This is the kindest bill collector I have ever spoken with. I’m kidding!

She says, “This is _____ from the Bethenny Frankel Talk Show.”

I have instant heart palpitations. Spontaneous combustion is occurring from my ears up and my kids are erupting into what I can tell already is going to morph into World War III in the kitchen below me.

I move into a spare bathroom on the second floor in hopes she cannot hear my boys and in hopes my boys don’t find me.

I am going to sound cool, sound cool. Bethenny, in my world and my head is AMAZING. I get her. We had similar childhoods. I understand her abrasive, at times, personality and I know that it comes from having to be her own parent and knowing how to “talk like a man.” I get her need to show people she is worth something and has value and her desire to have a family of her own, to do it right. I understand her drive and let me try to say this without sounding nuts, (like I would think anyone else saying this about someone they have never MET) I think she is all that with a side of chips.

When hearing about Bethenny’s new talk show I checked it out online and they were advertising an upcoming show about friendship. They were asking people to submit a letter about any friendship their viewers may have had that was special.

I had just posted my story “Two Broke(n) Girls.” It was perfect timing and so I forwarded it on. The best part, they are going to choose two friends to fly out and be on the show.

Did I think I was going to get chosen?

Of course!

The same way people fantasize about winning the lottery, I am fantasizing about my girlfriend and I running away to CAL-i-forn-“I”-“A” to meet Bethenny Frankel! Heck, I think ALL of my neighborhood girlfriend peeps would fly out for that!

Is she calling to tell me we won?!!!!

My hands are shaking!

She says, “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Me, “Yeah. Sure. No problem.” This was said in a much slower and lower tone than my voice really is. Do I always sound like a pot head when I am trying to NOT sound like me?

“Are you married?”

Me, “Yes.”

“Do you have children?”

Me, “Yes, three boys.”

“Oh…how old are they?”

Me, “7, 12, 12.”

“Oh, uh..”

Me, “We have twins. They are the ones that are 12.”

What is wrong with me?!!! Really, I had to explain that the 12 year-olds are the twins and not the 7 year-old and one of the 12 year-olds? I am so distracted by the sounds of my boys screaming, “Mom told you not to give me Charlie horse! I’m telling!”

She asks, “And how old are you?

I tell her my age.

I am now running down the back stairs while I hear my three boys running up the front stairs and fighting like a giant “Fight Club” tumbleweed every step.

I am in a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top with no bra, a very thin tank top.

She asks, “And your husband’s age?”

I answer with his age (I am not telling you and you will find out why in a moment.)

I am now running through our garage towards the driveway.

She says, “Awwww, that is so cute. You and your husband are the same age.”

I am now running down my driveway, but really bouncing, in broad daylight, while I hear my boys who were “against” each other have now turned on me.

I hear the boys screaming things like, “WHERE ARE YOU MOM?!”

Another yells, “I see her! She is outside on her stupid phone, walking down the street.”

Here they all come out of the garage and after me…

I say to the nice girl who works for Bethenny Frankel, “Oh yes, not only are we the same age we are born the same week AND with baby Jesus’s birthday right between us.”

WTF did I just say? What DID I just say?

I am fully prepared to run onto the golf cart path, barefoot, and with my cell phone, sans bra, and with my husbands underwear on as I realize this is a once in a lifetime chance for…I don’t even know what yet.

She is now laughing instead of chuckling. Thank God.

I am thinking, she doesn’t know me and my sense of humor. You can’t say things like that to someone you don’t REALLY know. What if she is Jewish? What does that have to do with anything? What if she thinks I am a religious freak and I really use the term, “baby Jesus” regularly in my speech?

She says, “Have you read “Fifty Shades of Grey?”

When I submitted the “Two Broke(n) Girls” story they were also chatting on Bethenny’s new site about “Fifty Shades of Grey” and how it has changed their reader’s sex life. I, the ever-present smart ass, replies with my post I had also just written that week called, “Poor Husbands and their Wives’ Naughty Books.”

They weren’t calling about my “Two Broke(n) Girls” story?

I answer, “NOOO! I can’t read it because my dad will read it first on his Kindle and then he will want to have a book club discussion and I am not discussing a mom porn book with my dad and I cannot borrow a girlfriends hard copy because, well… I don’t know where it has been and what if a page is sticky? My mind would make it into something worse when it was probably just candy hands. Frankly, I feel like I have already read the book since all my naughty girlfriends are giving me the “blow-by-blow” of the three books…”

That is how I talk. Commas do not enter into my speech and my frontal lobe, which is supposed to filter what we say, has apparently completely stopped working.

She is chuckling again, “Yeah, I just wanted to call and see if you had read it yet.”

I say, “Crap, I was hoping you were calling about my post about friendship and the reference letter I wrote to my BFF’s new neighbors when they meet her and decide they hate her at first, (like I did) and why they should give her a second chance. It is honestly funnier than my “Fifty Shades of Grey” post.”

Did I just try to give someone advice on what to put on their talk show? Did I just hint that my “Grey” post wasn’t good?

OH-MY-WORD! What if I get invited to be on a show about the “naughty book?” If I don’t get banned from my kids southern schools for my post about the gay marriage vote in my home state of North Carolina I will FO SHO get shunned if I go on a talk show about a sex and bondage book.

Sign me up as I am sure this means they won’t ask me to come in and be a “scissor mom” or count “Box Tops” for the school PTO after that!

We talked for a few more minutes while I continued to ignore my kids chasing me down the street shouting things like, “ARE YOU TELLING DAD ON US?!” and, “WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?!” and, “YOU SAID YOU WOULD GROUND HIM IF HE PUNCHED ME IN THE SHOULDER AGAIN!” and, “I WANNA TALK TO DAD!”

She told me she, “liked my energy” and I continued to try to act cool, like talk shows call me regularly. I may have said my group of girlfriends were, “The Real Housewives of North Carolina.”

Yep, I did and collectively between that and the other things that slipped past my lips and the three screaming banshees that followed me everywhere, I realize I will probably never hear from that nice girl again.

I have had so much fun telling my girlfriends the story that it is (ALMOST) just as good.

Follow me or start hammer tweeting (here) Bethenny Frankel or post on her FaceBook wall (here) or comment (here) on Pinterest, (I will send you an invitation if you aren’t on even he, he) to give Abbie at “All that makes you…” a second chance because surely I have enough stories for my own show. I have “dirty” school noodle art.

Oooooo…Bethenny could bring in that British Nanny to make my kids stop calling my phone and computer and blog “STUPID.” I think a shock collar and remote I keep in my pocket would work. They say “stupid” and I say PAVLOV’S DOGS! For Pete’s sake people I am kidding! I just did it again! I just told the “Nanny Show” how to do their job.

-Abbie, and I hope we can share all that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry and cry laughing. allthatmakesyou.com

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/bethenny-frankel-prefers-good-conversation-celebrities-talk-show-article-1.1092336?localLinksEnabled=false

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Boy Versus Racoon Versus Macy’s

I promise you there is more to this than it appears. Just keep reading.

“Exactly what would a raccoon want to eat the most?”

Yes, our eight-year-old Peter asked this. Yes, I know what wretchedly mean creatures raccoons can be and I know they are smart, can be trained as pets, and I also know they can have rabies.

“What time does Ace Hardware close in North Carolina?”

“What time do we have to leave by to get to Ace Hardware back home before 7:00?”

“Please do not say no before I say all of this. Promise mom? Let me say EVERYTHING before you tell me no because I have thought about this and I know I can hold the live trap on my lap on the way home because I know the car is already full from our suitcases and us and the dog but it is a short drive from the hardware store to our house and I am afraid if we don’t go buy my live trap until after we go home and unpack the car Ace Hardware will be closed and I will have to wait until tomorrow to go buy my live trap.”

Don’t we totally look like we can fit a live trap?”

WTF, WTF, WTF!!!!

I am going to kill my husband and my father-in-law for showing Peter my father-in-law’s traps.

Oh yes, my FIL still traps. Yes, it is barbaric and no he will never stop. Don’t yell at me in the comments as I have been trying to get this man to vote for the right person every election for the twenty-one years I have known him and there is no changing him.

He lives on the marsh his French fur trapping and Native American ancestors lived on.

They have just changed the dwellings in which they sleep. Currently, my father-in-law resides in a modular home, (do not call it a double-wide or else they will knock your teeth out as it has a full unfinished basement and a back-porch.)

The motor home has been forever “for sale” on the back forty. I felt the need to snap some photos of it in case one of those shows like American Pickers or Antiques Road Show stops by and decides the “seventies mobile” needs to be in a museum. All the years I spent trying to keep this monster out of the background in the pictures I take while we are in Michigan and now I am snapping pictures of it to make us laugh when we are old.

“A Mere Blessing” I have never seen this man go to church a single Sunday.

I have known my husband long enough to remember the old farm-house they knocked over with a tractor in 1991. They put the modular on the exact spot the farm-house once sat.

I wrote a little about my husband’s childhood here in my story about my “WTF” license plate coming in the mail, randomly.

Jim’s dad even still sells the pelts and I even have to hear, every freaking year, how he got better prices in 1984.

Will someone please bring back wearing dead animals so I don’t have to hear my FIL complain about the prices anymore. Oh, and you have to make wearing MUSKRAT coats cool, (again?)

I still married my husband after watching his father, (duration of six dating years or as Jim says while I was waiting to see if he actually got into medical school) sit in front of the television, in the living room, with a five gallon bucket, and dead animals in a pile while he stretched their fur on wire thingies and then hang them all over the basement ceiling to dry.

I know that sentence is weird but that is how I would say it if you were sitting across from me.

Think about how much fun it is to trip the circuit while blow drying your hair, (when you are in town visiting) and you have to venture into the basement or as I like to call it…

The Dead Zone.

There is no switch to flip to turn on the basement light. You have to walk across the basement, in the pitch dark, and feel above your head for the chain to pull.

THERE ARE DEAD THINGS HANGING ALL OVER FROM THE RAFTERS ABOVE YOUR HEAD!!!

We come from a long line of weird. We both have to have a lot of weird behind us for this to not faze me. Ok, it fazes me…but for the love of God there is dead $hit dangling from the ceilings where I have to sleep!

Have you looked at a picture of me? (!!!)

This is me taking my own picture in San Francisco recently. I am smiling because behind is Union Square and I can see Macy’s from my hotel window, all half a dozen or so stories. I was happy because even if I couldn’t be shopping with the people all of the time I could stare at the people all walking around inside like a Richard Scarry Storytime book. I am not a good photographer and so…no Macy’s but I swear it is there…in all its glory!

It makes me happy and don’t judge! I am keeping the economy moving.

Dead former fluffy critters hanging above me with holes where their eyes used to be DOES NOT MAKE ME WARM AND FUZZY!

I do not have pictures of me at my father-in-law’s house holding my thumb up and smiling at what was formerly a mink but now is drying on a misshapen wire coat-hanger.

Don’t I just look like the kind of girl who would marry a man with a “Pet cemetary” in his basement?

I am so happy that our little guy doesn’t want to kill anything. He just wants to take a close up look and let it go, unless muskrat coats come back (???) in style and the prices of a water-rat pelt rise. Oh, I’m kidding! Stop it. We are animal lovers and if nothing else stimulators of the economy lovers! Why can’t my husband be from San Francisco?

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

Story Ideas: This is new and a way for me to remember, possible, future things to write about as I am such a pro, bahahaha! If I don’t do it right here and now, it is gone like the wind. How can I remember the minute details of a situation but I cannot remember to write down a few ideas that pop in my head at the end of writing a story? Anyone else like that? I will make myself crazy trying to remember an idea, that I knew was good, but couldn’t write it down at that exact moment. I also like the idea of running it by y’all and you might be all, “good Lord I am not coming back for another story about her embarrassing herself by getting an appliance stuck in her hair, again!” and you can just tell me that before you stop “following” me and WordPress informs me I can no longer use their service as no one is reading my nonsense anymore and would I also like the phone number to a mental health professional? Anyway, feel free to comment and “shut it” if it’s about my lack of REAL writing skills. I know already.

-Remind me sometime to tell you the cool story about how my husband’s family acquired their last name. It is really awesome and could be complete horse$hit, but were going with it since anyone who really knows if it’s true is dead.

-Remind me to tell you a story about where I worked before I had kids as I have more hunting stories than my husband, (primarily because he doesn’t hunt ever.) Don’t I just look like a girl who can walk around Cabella’s and talk camo and expedition gear and yet I have never been hunting in my life. So much talent I have going to waste it is no wonder I have not mastered grammar when I am too busy playing “name that camo” while walking around walmart. It is really easy as it is nearly always “Mossy Oak.”

Want a window into my mind? This also leads me…

-Remind me to tell you about how I sold my soul and saved a line of trees behind our old house and below a power line, all because I ran out of my back door talking “hunting smack” and throwing names around like “Bill Jordon” and “Realtree Outdoors” with the utility guy. It was good fortune that he wore a size ten boot and it was even better that I have an uncanny skill at guessing a man’s (only size ten) shoe size from great distances, (such as up in a tree.) Thank you Bill Jordon for the hats you signed for me to give to my groomsmen and sorry Jim’s friend that no longer was getting a Bill Jordon hat at rehearsal dinner. You may only understand this if your are from “hunting country” where your vacation time is planned around when opening season is.

PS, Anyone with any advice for “homesick?” I have a nine-year-old niece that is homesick and has a week to go until she goes back to Michigan. I only was able to plunk this story out because my darling husband picked her up like a sack of potatoes and removed her from my hip and took her on a golf cart ride on the golf course in the dark. I am a bit worried he is out there telling her if she doesn’t let me sleep in bed with him tonight he will leave her out in the middle of no where with the toads that make the creepy “baaaahhhh bahhhh” sound like sheep. For shizzel, I am feeling a bit like Jack from “The Shining.”

Gotta go I hear them pulling in. I am sure I will have to go pet the toads they caught on the golf course cart ride.

For real, goodbye!

I have camo boots on but they didn’t get it in the picture.

Kidding.

Macy’s wins, always and forever.

Recovering Emotionally From River’s Carnivorous Seaweed

Jim has had two weeks off between the fellowship that just ended and going back to his private practice.

I need a vacation from his vacation. We will be back home soon and I might make out with our washer and dryer.

I posted this picture yesterday I took while sitting in my father in-laws backyard in Michigan.

Peter has dragged his net from the back of a kayak in the mountains of North Carolina to the ditches of rural Michigan.

I am not kidding when I tell you he jumped outof a boat in the river to catch a water snake. Seeing that snake wiggle back and forth through the water towards the banks made me happy that he had a net in his hand and couldn’t swim after it.

Here is Peter with his only catch from Michigan.  A praying mantis.  He longed to catch a newt at his Papa’s marsh but it had been so dry he was probably more likely to catch a desert lizard.  

  Our friends all learned to never go canoeing with me and if they do they better be faster than I am in a kayak.

The teenagersall learned that I won’t baby them, as I am an equal opportunity canoe flipper.

FYI, if you ever decide, (after flipping everyone’s canoes) to float the rest of the way down the river next to your kayak so as to foil anyone’s attempt to “get even”…DON’T!

I was on my back, not looking where I was going, with “Crazy Sarah”, (whom I had recently left canoe-less due to a water problem her canoe had after I rolled it he, he, he) when a field of underwater seaweed-garbully-gook-icky-BEsgusting-man-eating-venus-fly-trap-under-water-human-eating STUFF enveloped me.

If anyone in the entire southeast section of America heard a grown woman screaming like a baby girl relentlessly and without shame last week between the hours of approximately 4-4:30, it was me.

What you didn’t hear was our entire pack of friends laughing at me. “Crazy Sarah” was smiling her evil smile while saying, “There are probably snakes that live in that stuff too!”

I kicked in place. I was stuck like a fly in Jello with a fountain of water spewing above me from my futile swimming. I was screaming in tongues.

Crazy Sarah was probably secretly hoping to collect my bones when the carnivorous river vegetation was done with me.

Crazy Sarah and her bone collecting and zombie apocalypse story here…

Karma will always give us a good kick in the pants if we deserve it. I soooo deserved it!

The older boys have “pool noodle battled” all of their cousins in Michigan and discovered all the attention a scratch on the neck gets you when people think you have a hickey.

They also learned what a hickey is.

I cannot believe how much I have missed sharing stories. This blogging thing has really surprised me.

Thanks for letting me share,
Abbie
allthatmakesyou.com
All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

What is a Wordless Wednesday?

I took this photo yesterday at my father in-laws house.

Ok, so I get the wordless Wednesday thing but I have been without any consistent technology and I’m breaking! So until I finish writing, (ON MY PHONE) a post for tomorrow I will leave you with a photo I took yesterday, and a few words.

We are wrapping up a trip to our rural hometown, out of state, and I cannot stop daydreaming about making out with my washer and dryer the moment I walk in the door to our home.

If my washer and dryer had legs and arms we would be running through a field of wildflowers towards one another, arms outstretched. When we get within a few feet of each other my washer would throw its door open and I would toss all of our dirty clothes in and possibly our three boys and definitely our dog.

Thanks for letting me share,
Abbie
allthatmakesyou.com All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

Mad Men and Dirty Dancing in the Mountains

We sneak off to the mountains when summer gets too Warm in North Carolina.

It only takes about fifty minutes and we are suddenly transported into that town from “Dirty Dancing.”

I’m not kidding it is even the same year! It is like “Mad Men,” but in the mountains!

The restaurants bring garlic toast and salads are iceberg and steaks are New York strips.

It is really lovely.

Watching the thermometer dropped 20° is magic. They have to heat the club pool in the summer and no one says a word when you walk in with a bottle of champagne to share with the moms.

Everything is decorated with lattice and the color rose.

Men wear driving shoes and seersucker. The women wear bathing suits with little skirts at the pool while the men are out golfing.

Everyone meets up for a cocktail before dinner and for a nightcap before bed.

To really prove you have entered through a rabbit hole and are now in the past…there is ZERO cell service. We have to talk to one another instead of staring at our screens in our hands.

Thank you mountains for such a bounty of memories and for a flash of the past.

Thanks for letting me share, All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.

Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com