How To Tell Your Lawn Guy You’re Very Sorry

I was pulling out of my driveway yesterday when I saw one of our yard guys running up the hill from the backyard.  He was screaming and waving his arms for my attention.

I stopped and rolled down my window.  This man was a mess.  He was out of breath and talking fast and I am nearly certain I could see his heart beating through his shirt.

He came running up at me like he was getting away from a gunman.

“SNAKE!!!!”  He was yelling it in the voice and mannerism of a fourteen-year-old girl.

I quickly replied, “Oh, no…no, no…”

He interrupted me and said, “It’s a big one! Ahhhhhh!!!  It’s the biggest snake I have ever seen!”  He is still running at me.

I cannot help it.  I am smiling and pulling my eyebrows down, (the best you can with a wee-bit of Botox) but my nostrils flaring was giving my laughter away.

I begin again, “Noooo!  No. No.  Was it by the deck?  That’s not…”

He now feels like he has gotten away from the big bad snake and is running in front of my suburban across my driveway with a high step as if he had just made a touchdown.

He runs over to my side of the car and yells, “It’s out back!  It’s the biggest, (he has his arms stretched out as far as they will go) snake I have ever seen!”

I tell him that it isn’t real and that my kids leave it around to scare each other and us and he wasn’t the intended victim person, (but anyone will do.)

He threw himself on his back and rolled around screaming and laughing.

I continued into the road smiling again wondering how long before he realized he was rolling around where our dog does her “business.”

Can you send your lawn guy flowers?

I think he has had a bad day.

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

Follow us for…

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

Related articles

• A Mailbox, a Snake, and a Lesson (cmbratcher.wordpress.com)
• How to Get Rid of Snakes Around Your Home (answers.com)

An Update With Nothing Dead to Report

Our Tom Sawyer, (Peter) caught a squirrel with his live trap within four hours.

It was immediately let go after enjoying its apple.

Peter has had requests to catch some bunnies in a neighbors vegetable path and relocate them.  He is so happy to go over in the evenings and set up his little trap.

I think it is genetic.

Here is the story about his long line of trapping ancestors back to Native American and French fur traders.

The live trap he begged for is working much better that the method I suggested.  My method kept him BUSY for hours.  I like methods that keep little boys busy!

A Mother’s Guide on How to Trap a Rabbit

1. Box
2. Twine, Very Long
3. Stick
4. Carrot
5. Patience and the Ability to be Very Quiet

Yes I know they are doing it wrong but it is a process.

A father goes to the hardware store and buys a box trap.  

A mother lets them try for two months in glorious silence with gratitude that the boys are busy.

Here is the story about his long line of trapping ancestors back to Native American and French fur traders.

-Abbie, allthatmakesyou.com

Follow us for…

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

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.

Get Some Pants On

I may not ever understand my three sons.

Get your pants on!

Sunday Dinner Cancelled, Bring Vodka and Mop

“Sunday family dinner is cancelled.  Bring vodka and mop.”

This was a particularly unbelievable story that began with an innocent shopping trip to the grocery store to make the perfect Sunday family dinner.

I was dressed in a sundress and floating about my kitchen putting away the groceries and planning the meal in my head.

The kids were outside playing with their friends.

Jim was outside golfing with friends.

All was right in the world.

Then I dropped a can of whipped cream.

It just bounced and as I bent over to pick it up it shot diagonally like a rocket.

So I twisted myself and tried to catch it on the bounce.

Wait that isn’t a bounce!

HOLY CRAP BAGS…IT IS SPRAYING UP MY DRESS AND ALL OVER?

It is shooting all over my kitchen like a Jimmy Neutron jet pack and I am on a three-second delay trying to choose which random direction the can of whip cream will take after the next interaction with any hard surface.

It is a micro fine spray, and it is making its way around my kitchen like a naked picture of a teacher in High School.

I can’t form words as I shuffle around making a sound like, “ahhhhh–ooah-oooooh-eeehh-OOOOHHH!!!!”

I cannot catch the stupid thing.  It finally spins across the wood floors as it runs out of jet fuel.

I look around and I am amazed that all of that fit in that little can.

It was all over the floor and the cabinets and up the walls about 8 feet.  We have dark cabinets with lots of crevices.  It was sprayed up into things at a funny angle.  Up and into things like my dress and under my pony tail.  That picture is of only half of the kitchen.  I may have helped it travel by kicking it on accident.

Whip cream hates me and I hate whip cream now.

Whip cream is sticky and creamy and I am fairly certain was developed by the same terrorists as the “automatic candy dispenser” or “Christine” as I like to call it.

I sent my husband Jim and the boys a text message…

“Sunday family dinner cancelled in lieu of exploding can of whipped cream, think Jimmy Neutron jetpack style.”

I sent my girlfriends a different text…

“Sunday Dinner Cancelled, Bring Vodka and Mop”

–Abbie and I love sharing with you, “All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing.”   allthatmakesyou.com

Jimmy Neutron Photo from this website

Related articles

• Vodka Martini, Vodka Martini Recipe & Martini Vodka | Pottery Barn (potterybarn.com)
• whimsical whipped cream (butterbeanskitchen.wordpress.com)

Revenge on a Parent by Way of Birthday Gift for Kid

If you give my son a gift like this on his birthday he will think you are a…

ROCK STAR PARENT!

I will be asking myself what the heck I ever did to you to deserve you giving my son this “evil doing” machine.

Don’t make me mad, or else I will be buying one for your kid this Christmas!

Link to Buy Terrorist Candy Machine Perfect for the Kid Who Has Parents You Hate

Don’t be fooled.  It just looks all nice and fun.  

It is not.

Look at the speed in which it shows the candy coming out.

Now picture three little boys gathered around and their (sarcastically said) “impeccable timing” and you can just imagine the “hit rate“for the CRACK candy making it into closed hands.

I keep picking the stinkin’ thing up to put it away (like off kitchen table or front porch or couch…) and the stupid thing shoots hard candy across the room as I’m holding it and as I try to turn it off I cause the motion sensors to shoot more!

It was just sitting on my kitchen counter, all alone and childless.  It was looking sad without having a child gazing upon it smiling.

It needed to fulfill its destiny.

It needed to make cavities, jack children up on sugar, and shoot sticky things across my floor to attract bugs.

I think “it” was just looking for an excuse to mess with me.

All it took was some sunshine hitting the motion sensor to invite me to one of its “candy parties.”

It just began spewing jelly beans.

They were skipping across the countertops like Mexican jumping beans and then hitting the hard floor and rolling and bouncing everywhere.

I am now cursing “It” and my “Rock Star Parent” friends that bought it.

(remind me to never move my jaw to the side when getting picture taken again)

It was all “Christine” the car from that scary movie excpet it is a possessed candy dish.

This is what the terrorists are making now to mess with us.

It is a subtle plot.  They have gotten a bit passive aggressive.

I told my kids the candy dispenser has been recalled for impregnating candy with lead.

I also told them parents have been advised to throw it away and have children scrub their  mouths with toothpaste for ten straight minutes.

I also have to scrub my mouth for the cuss words I managed to string together.

If you are a dentist and want that extra week at Martha’s Vineyard I would advise sending these to every family with young children that are patients of yours.

What is the worst gift someone has given one of your kids?

Abbie

All that makes you…

allthatmakesyou.com

You may also enjoy this story I wrote.

Easter, Another Holiday That Tries to Turn Me Into a Liar

It was featured here on BlogHer

You may also enjoy this story I wrote.

Easter, Another Holiday That Tries to Turn Me Into a Liar

It was featured on BlogHer

If you really like then hit the “Follow” button to come along for the ride!

🙂

Related articles

• Captive Candy Coasters – The Candy Coasters by Stephen Mantis Keep Your Sweets Locked Down (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Mona Lisa in Jelly Beans (neatorama.com)
• Mexican jumping beans may influence robot design (w/ Video) (phys.org)

The Father I Used to Have (and Sea Monkeys)

My dad is Simon Cowell, not really, but that is how I often describe his demeanor.  I get that from him.  It is far less attractive on a woman, I am told. He is part of who made me and I like myself, even if I tend to “talk like a man.”

He is straight forward in business and in raising two girls.  He is Simon Cowel if Simon were raised in the midwest and literally worked his fingers to the bone.  But he isn’t the strong silent type that daughters often describe their dads as.

He is the kind of man that when a microphone needs to be passed to someone who is good with words he can step up and rustle up an instant speech that will make you laugh and cry.

Everyone will be looking at him with a smile, head tilt and with a tear.

My dad in Michigan is a funny mix of sarcasm, tough as nails, strong as an ox and as anal retentive about cleanliness as Monk and with an extra heaping of smart ass.

He never used my expression, “act like a butt and people will think your a butt” but he taught it to me.

He would call you out if you needed it and when I needed a summer job in college I wasn’t sent to the steel mill’s office to file, he sent me out with a blowtorch and steel toe boots to cut samples over the “cooling beds” of red hot rebar.  He sent me to the noisy “shear” to catch samples of steel bars to grind down for seam allowance tests and to the “yard” to find bundles of rebar to cut and bring back on a fork lift to the lab and inspect.

The guys who worked for him for 20 years would say, “He is about the meanest man I have ever met but he knows what he is doing and I respect him.”  They would also say, “Your dad sent little old you to do THIS job?”

I am sure that the 98 pounds of me with three layers of flame retardant clothing, steel toed boots, protective ear gear and face mask had to look a little funny on me.

He also never said another of my favorite phrases but he taught it to me, “for the love of God, I figure if a man can do it, I surely can.”

When family emergencies arise and you have to be in a hospital waiting room you have to find the humor in this 6′ 3″ man who wont touch the arm rests on the chairs.   Yes, he is that “Monk” from the TV show who doesn’t like germs.

When I was a teenager I came home and discovered my shower head was missing from my bathtub.  I went to tell him thinking we’d been robbed of plumbing fixtures.  He informed me I was “grounded from showers” for not “squeeging” the ceramic tile after I showered to keep water spots from forming…INSIDE THE SHOWER.

He is the kind of man that really does sleep three to four hours a night and carries a bottle of bleach around with him in case anything needs a good scrubbing.

This is why this story will never get old to tell. I

may have been eight years-old. My dad had just mowed the yard and he is hot and thirsty.

My sea monkeys that I mailed away for, that took six weeks to arrive because there was not internet ordering back then, were on our kitchen table.

These were going to be my new pets.  I couldn’t be allergic to sea monkeys, right?  They are underwater and they are cute and the cartoons on the box show them smiling and waiting to be my petsll!  

I am going to be the luckiest girl in town with my own little Sea Monkey Circus.

Photo from “the yeti speaks” here.

My dad had just come in from mowing the yard and grabbed the closest glass of water to the door. He began drinking and I began the phenomenon that occurs when you cannot speak because you are so mortified.

I did the action movie arm outstretched with a slow motion face of “AAoooowwwwaaa!!!!” then “Noooooo!…!…!”

He is downing the glass with his eyes closed and enjoying the cool, refreshing glass of water while sweating and visibly tired from yard work. As he opens his eyes and sets the empty glass down I finally reach him and am sobbing while tugging at his arm.

I am looking to be consoled.

He is looking at me like I have gone mad.

I finally am able to inhale enough to exhale a sentence from my hypervenhilating…

“YOU DRANK MY PET SEA MONKEYS!”

His face.

My God…his face.

His eyes were huge and his head led his body into the kitchen sink.

Turning knob for water. 

Face, mouth, and eyes looking up at ceiling, allowing water to run in and out.

Other hand’s desperate blind feel for the little black levered sprayer.

He is now spraying the water directly into his teeth.

I am silent as he begins the rabid gurgling and spitting.

My tears of horror and sadness are now tears of laughter as this grown man is using his fingernails to pick between each and every tooth.

Will telling this story ever get old?

Nope.  

Me laughing 30 years later…

Once, when I was in college, he asked me NOT to park my dirty car, (boyfriend lived on a dirt road) in his driveway.  He owned a couple of car washes and he said it was as if he were a barber and I was walking around town with a bad haircut.  BTW, I never got a free carwash.

He taught me to work, and that too, I am grateful for.

He also taught me to love unconditionally my children, because in the end, he didn’t. In the end, when my mother died and he remarried he decided he wasn’t my father anymore.  He adopted me when I was three, when my mother married him.  He was the only father I knew for 21 years and I have always loved him.

Even with the rift between my dad that has now spanned 18 years I am still grateful for the gifts he gave me that made me who I am.

I am also grateful that I know to tell my boys that I will love them forever and that they will always be my children.

Happy Father’s Day to my husband Jim and thank you for being the best dad to our boys.

Happy Father’s Day to all of the dads out there and to both of mine.  Happy Father’s Day to all of the people that don’t have their dads anymore or may have never had one and may you, too, find the blessings of the father figures you have had in your life and be thankful for them.

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

Related articles

• Happy Father’s Day for Fathers and Mothers (maggiemoosetracks.wordpress.com)
• WARNING: Don’t Eat The Sea Monkeys (whatareseamonkeys.wordpress.com)
• Happy Father’s Day (primroseblog.wordpress.com)

Why Summer Vacations are Longer for Mother’s of Boys…

Why summer vacations are longer for the mothers of boys…

Little boys find it amusing to go “number 2” and leave it for their brothers to find.

They call it “leaving a deposit?”

What makes this funnier to little boys…

To write the persons name it is intended to be found by on the toilet seat…

In permanent maker.

If you have heard screaming coming from my house “am I gonna die?” last night that was the electric cobalt blue model paint all over the new floor in the basement golf cart garage/workshop.

If you heard screaming this morning it was the toilet seat in the new basement bathroom.

I’m running away (again) to work at one of those Caribbean resorts that doesn’t allow children in.

I’ve been preparing them. I taught them to make their favorite meal, linguini with clams, because they will get sick of Jim’ eggs.

This is within 12 hours of each other with a full nights sleep in the middle. Upon texting Jim the antics he replied that one of his coworkers lost a baby to SIDS.

I can live in our colorful graffiti house.

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

allthatmakesyou.com

Related articles

• A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem (home.tiac.net)
• Analysis of the toilet seat dilemma (piedtype.com)
• ‘Sold!’ Premiere: Rawhide Toilet Seats For Auction In Missouri (huffingtonpost.com)

This Stuff Only Happens To Me!

Have you ever felt like your kids school’s teachers and staff think you are disheveled, bonkers or possibly a stripper?  Well, after the story I am about to tell you you will realize that my kids principal and school counselor probably think I am all three.

The night before the first day of school and because this was our first year of being car riders and to two schools no less, I cleaned out the Suburban as the teachers will get a first hand look inside at the schools drop off and pick up lines.

I wouldn’t want them to see how we REALLY live.

Knowing I will finally have time to do some decorating while they are off learning I pile grocery bags of fabric that I have in my house, pieces of granite we have, cabinet door fronts we have had built…ok piles of examples of colors and pillows and wood…all over my front seat to make it easy to grab what I need and ponder while in the lines at school.  The plan is to sneak off to the fabric stores while I’m kid free. I’m thinking I’m so well prepared and getting something done while sitting.  It was good to think so highly of myself for A DAY…

On the first day of school I’m picking up at the elementary school and the principal is out walking the car line.  Keep in mind I’m still gun-shy of all teachers and principals after my less than exemplary behavior as a child.  

And here she comes to talk to me, while I’m in the car, and at my window and not at one of the windows where the car is clean…

she comes to the “a homeless person lives in this car” window.  

As I’m shrinking in my seat as she asks why I don’t have “the tag” with my child’s name and school hanging from my rear view mirror. I say (remember my kids were always bus riders), “I don’t have one.”

She is making the poop face, (like all principals do;) at my pile of house samples all over the front of my car that looks like I’m a hoarder.  I then say, “Where do we get them?”

She says, “At the open house. Did his teacher not give you one?”

Ok, here’s where I wish I could lie, I say, “We didn’t go to open house.” I am now making the poop face.

We go to all open houses. We’ve never missed one. For the love of God my first grader begged not to go and I have been to them there five years in a row. We know the teacher and made a decision to skip this one and I walked him in on the morning of the first day. Anyway, she continues with her nose scrunched up and handwrites his name on a tag (something tells me she wanted them all computer printed).

I spend the next several days saying to myself, I wish I had fewer “New Adventures of the Old Christine” moments…They only get better because that next Monday morning at the car rider drop off line the school counselor opens the door for Peter. This is the same clean backseat from a few from a few days ago.

Except that the entire time I’m saying goodbye to Peter and good morning to the counselor she is staring at the backseat floor right behind me, you know the spot the driver cannot see.  She too is making the teacher “poop face”.  

At the next stop sign I take off my seat belt and look around to find my husbands bright red gym bag stuffed so full it cannot be zipped up and a pile of black hair sticking out all over the floor of the Suburban. It is a black wig that we all know my husband wore on stage last Saturday night, with our friends at a Hospice fundraiser, dressed up as Kiss…to raise money and make people laugh. It now looks like a decapitated head in my backseat shoved in a gym bag or some kind of weird kinky thing or I can’t think of a reason that isn’t during Halloween week to have a long black wig in a duffel bag at the feet of your first grader. Sometimes I feel like I am Old Christine or Elaine from Seinfeld.

Proof!

– Abbie, All that makes you smile, laugh, think, love, cry or cry laughing!

allthatmakesyou.com

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 say, “39.”

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 say, “39.”

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 the “Two Broke(n) Girls?”

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

Related articles

• Bethenny Frankel’s Talk Show is Loved by Fans (celebs.gather.com)
• Bethenny Frankel to Have Her Own Talk Show? (lifewithbrandon.com)
• Bethenny launches bid for national talk show (boston.com)
• Bethenny Frankel’s Celebrity Crush Isn’t Who You’d Guess!! (perezhilton.com)