They Don't Teach You This In Sex Ed...

I had a dentist appointment today. The kids are going tomorrow. When I called to make our cleaning appointments they asked me if I wanted to just make all appointments (mine and the kids) on one day. No thank you... don't they know that 45 minutes in the dental hygienist chair is my idea of a vacation?

While there the dentist talked to me about getting a bridge in the very very back of my mouth. When I was a kid my parents did not take care of me. Seriously... they let me run around without my shirt on and never took me to the dentist. Some would say I was borderline feral. It is a miracle that I am a functioning human being and not living in a van down by the river.

Anyway... I asked the dentist about simply putting a implant on this tooth that I have been missing since my 10th birthday because my dad didn't think I needed all of the teeth in my head. "How much does it cost to fix that broken tooth? WHAT? Are you crazy? How much does it cost to pull it? 50 bucks? Pull it!" Seriously, do not listen to my mother when she comments on this blog. We didn't even have air conditioning when we were kids, and we only had 3 channels to watch on the television... and we had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel!

So, the dentist told me that I could not get an implant because the teeth surrounding the little missing tooth were not virgin teeth and they would benefit from the protection of the bridge.

Huh?

I guess that means that both of those teeth have cavities-or in my case fillings. Virgin teeth do not have cavities or fillings in them.

Apparently my mouth is full of slut teeth. Damn promiscuous teeth. My mother will be so ashamed.

Warning... He Has A Brain And He's Not Afraid To Use It

Hope and Aaron are going to school this year... that is right, I am no longer homeschooling them. Part of me is sad and the other part of me is flipping thrilled! Don't get me wrong, I loved homeschooling my kids and I am still homeschooling Emma this year, but just the thought of waking up every day and not having to explain Algebra for 2 hours in the morning makes me want to do a happy dance. Yes, yes, yes, I am aware that my children will be spending the same amount of time on their homework as they did in an entire day of homeschooling but I am OK with that. I don't feel as much pressure with homework as I did with all the responsibility of educating my children being solely on my shoulders. Now I feel like I have help... help in the form of paid brilliant teachers! YEAH!

I am starting to feel a wee bit guilty about thrusting my children at poor, unsuspecting, innocent teachers. Just yesterday Aaron asked me if he will get in trouble if he were sent to the Principal's office. I told him that he would get in trouble and I would not think it was funny at all if he took after his mother and thought it was funny to torture poor Sister Rose Ellen. I don't care how many singing math equations he has to memorize.

Then I started to get curious. I asked Aaron if he really thought he could behave in a manner that would merit a trip to the Principal's office.

He said that no, he did not think he would be a bad kid... but he was worried about what would happen if he knew more than the teacher.

Huh?

I asked him to explain and this is what he said, "Well Mom, say I know more about a subject than the teacher does and she is telling it to the class all wrong and then I cannot control myself and I have to correct her... right there in front of the entire class. I mean, what if she doesn't know ANYTHING? Will I be sent to the Principal's office for being smarter than my teacher?"

Oh, his poor poor teacher. Welcome to my world lady... welcome to my world.

Check It Out...

http://ourstopinmaine.smugmug.com/

Go the "The Troops" Gallery

Click on Aug 11 4:15p.m.

These are all of the men and women that left Offutt AFB yesterday heading on deployment. When the plane does a stop-over in Maine, they are greeted by about 30 devoted Americans who cheer and applaud for every military person that walks by. How amazing is that! Americans are so fricken' cool!

The first one to find Carl wins! Like most of my contests, the prize is simply the fact that you won. Someday I will have endorsements that will allow me to send you all kinds of free prizes... but until Oprah pays me for mentioning her name so much, or until Matthew McConaughey sends me a check for all of the publicity he rakes in from my site... well we will just have to settle with the satisfaction of winning and not the prize that goes along with it.

*Advertisement paid for by no one. I am June Cleaver and I approve this message.*

Today I Started My Countdown...

Phew... what a day. I know that most of you read me in order to get a chuckle or to make your bad day at work a little more tolerable-thank you for letting me make you smile. Today I just don't have anything good to say. I have given you little outskirts of my personal life... you know I am married, that I have children, that I am Catholic and that I drink, but you don't really know the inner works of my life. That is my choice-basically because my life is really boring, so I use humor to liven it up. But today I am going to take that chance that you may want to know a little of my personal life. You may want to know what today was really like. You may really want to hear about Carl leaving and my heart feeling as if it is going to implode. So here goes...

Carl and I met in 1990. We started dating that summer and went off to different colleges in the fall. We kept in touch and knew that we really liked one another. When the next summer came around... that is when we fell in love. We spent all of our time together and made plans for a future, a future that would include children and mortgages. At the end of that summer, we were separating again-Carl going off to Arizona and me heading back to Southern Indiana. I will never forget the day that we said good-bye. He drove over to my parents house before he headed out on his 30 hour road trip back to school. We hugged, we kissed, we gazed into each other's eyes... and then he turned to leave and I thought I would no longer be able to breath without him. I watched as his car turned the corner away from me and I crumbled to my feet. 4 months later we were engaged and 18 months after that we were married.

Carl's job has always taken him away. There have been years where he was gone over 200 days. Separation became a way of life for us... it became normal. I could handle the separations simply because they were 30-45 day trips. The longest we have actually been apart was during the war and that was for 5 months. I was pregnant with Emma at the time and that proved to be a blessed distraction from my husband's absence. I had never felt the pain of the separation the way I did the first summer we fell in love. As time passed and as jobs changed, Carl leaving was no longer a focal point in our marriage. It was now normal for him to be home. When he would go away on a 2 week trip, we looked at it as a welcomed break from our regularly scheduled lives that would offer us a fabulous reunion in a short time. If my husband never had to leave my side again I would have been happy.

Last night Carl and I did not want to fall asleep because we knew the moment that we fell asleep when we woke up THIS day would be here. The day we have known about for 8 months now. The day we have been avoiding and ignoring. The day that when I would think about it I would instantly grown teary eyed and my heart would begin to race causing me to quickly shove the thought out of my mind.

I woke up and made him eggs and bacon. I took a picture of him eating breakfast. We drove to base and waited to say good-bye. We chit-chatted happily, but every once in a while he would look at me and I would look at him and the air would leave our lungs. Last night I broke down after dinner. Our last family dinner for a year. I broke down the way I did our first summer in love-with uncontrollable-ugly tears. Carl just held me. I broke down later in the evening as well and again, Carl held me. You have to know that I love him the way heroine loves her hero.

Finally the time had come to say those final good-byes. Hugs and kisses, "be good for your mom" was said, I love you's were rampant, a final plea from me to tell them he can't go... and the last time he would have to tell me that he had to go, and we watched him walk away.

We drove to the observation deck to watch his plane take off. We stood on the very tip top of the hill so that he would definitely be able to see us-to possibly be able to feel our love for him, and we waved with all of our mights as he screamed past us. I know we were all thinking the same exact thought... "Come Back!"

So that is the story of a good-bye. We are all sad in the Cleaver house and when I am sad I become a hermit. The kids are like me and I am looking forward to finishing this post and huddling under blankets on the couch with them. The enormity of the year ahead of us is too overwhelming to think about right now. Next week I will be back to normal... but today I want to cry. I want to be sad. I want my husband back.

All I see on the horizon is the day that he comes home. That is what we are working toward... to have his toothbrush making water marks on the sink again.

Plant It And It Will Grow...

I am obviously the Internet's leading expert on crazy because when this hit the news you all flooded my inbox with links, jokes, jabs, and "I can't believe you haven't reported on this yet!" So here it is!

Matthew McConaughey says the birth of his son will help bring a little joy to others in the world someday. The actor kept the placenta from the July birth of his son and plans to plant it in an orchard, he tells CNN's "House Call with Dr. Sanjay Gupta" in interview scheduled to air in two parts Aug. 9 and Aug 16.

McConaughey says he hopes it will fertilize the land, a ritual long followed in several cultures.
"It's going to be in the orchards and it's going to bear some wonderful fruit," he says, according to an interview transcript. "When I was in Australia, they had a placenta tree that was on the river ... and all the placentas of all that tribe, all that clan, whatever aboriginal tribe that was, all the placentas went under that one tree and it was this huge behemoth of just health and strength.

"This tree was just growing taller and stronger above the rest of Mother Nature around it. It was gorgeous."

McConaughey also says he and his girlfriend Camila Alves have enjoyed integrating their new baby, Levi Alves McConaughey, into their lives. Already they've started introducing him to the "sights and the sounds" of the world — including a John Mellencamp concert.
"You're never told in our house, 'Shh, Levi is sleeping.' No. Get used to the ambiance. Come with us. That's how I was raised," he says.

I think Matthew reads my blog and is just screwing with me now. Seriously. To be honest with you though... this was not the first time I have heard about this. When I was pregnant with Aaron, Carl and I took The Bradley Method birthing classes. It is a husband-coached, no drugs, happy sounds, good feelings, gentle way of birthing a baby. The method worked for me until I started screaming and my head spun around in circles and I vomited... but other than that, it is a GREAT way to birth a baby. (If you have used the Bradley Method and love it, do not email me and tell me I am misrepresenting it... I loved it too-but if I said rainbows shot out of my uterus during birth, well that wouldn't be honest, and I am all about honesty. Fingers-crossed I promise!) ANYWAY... the couple that was teaching the Bradley Method to us had the placenta from her previous birth IN THEIR FREEZER! Right there, next to the ground beef and Popsicles. They were going to plant it in the Spring. I think that may have been the class where Carl looked at me and said "We are never coming back."

I have also heard of some cultures eating the placenta... or is that wild animals? I can't remember... but in Matthews defense, he is just trying to be one with the earth dude. Look at all that this man does for our planet... first off, he helps it to look pretty because he is so damn hot, secondly, he lives in a tent and surfs to work and bathes in the ocean. Talk about conservation. Lastly, and most importantly, he does not use deodorant which means he is not doing anything to deplete the ozone. I think we should applaud Matthew for all of his efforts.

Two things struck me when I was reading this article. I loved how he used the word "behemoth." I was impressed with his vast vocabulary. Usually when they are so hot they are dumb (like Ashton Kutcher) but to use a word like behemoth in a sentence so easily-well that means he must have used it in a movie and read it the a script. Life imitating art... art imitating life. Very nice. For those of you who need to look up the word "behemoth" in order to know what the hell it means here it is...

Behemoth (Hebrew בהמות, behemot; Arabic بهيموث bahīmūth, or بهموت bahamūt) is a creature mentioned in the Book of Job, 40:15-24. The word is most likely a plural form of בהמה (bəhēmāh), meaning beast or large animal. It may be an example of pluralis excellentiae, a Hebrew method of expressing greatness by pluralizing a noun; it thus indicates that Behemoth is the largest and most powerful animal ever to exist. Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.

I didn't know what it meant either so don't feel bad, and if you did know what it meant before reading the above definition... well don't tell me. Braggart. I think we should all use the word "behemoth" in a sentence today.

Also, I loved where Matthew says that they do not shush friends when they come over if Levi is sleeping. "Get used to the ambiance. Come with us. That's how I was raised." I wonder if they will have that rule when #4 baby comes along and Mama just wants to get a little sleep, or maybe she wants to be able to take a shower, or possibly get a load of laundry in, or eat a sandwich, or go to the toilet, or just sit on the couch and stare into space for a moment without the baby waking up. Yeah, I bet when #4 rolls around the rule in that house will be "If you wake up the baby you are sleeping with the dogs tonight."

Although, if Mr. McConaughey is raising his boy in the same manner that he was raised, I say more power to him. 20 years from now I will be writing about crazy hot Levi, who doesn't wear deodorant and has been known to play the bongos naked.

Matthew, if you are reading this... keep it up my friend. Keep it up.

Thanks Patrick and Lori for being the very first to notify me of this Matthew sighting nano seconds after it broke... way to be on Matthew alert!

Did I Even HAVE A Great-Great-Grandma Cleaver?

Thank you for all of your kind words. They will be a help to me when I am in a ball of tears at the sight of a big spider in the bathroom at 2 a.m. and my Chief Spider-Killer is not here.

We just returned from a forced-family-fun trip to Okoboji Iowa. If you have not heard of Okoboji or have never visited Okoboji... well you must be living under a rock, because anyone who is anyone goes to Okoboji. I think I may have spotted one of the Olsen twins there... either that or it was a bag lady at the Piggly Wiggly. Not sure.

This turned out to be another trip where in the future, when I am dead or in an insane asylum, my children will look at one another and say, "Did Mom go with us to Okoboji? I can't remember seeing her there." Because I am not in one of the pictures taken because I spent my entire time following around a cranky one-year old who did not like sleeping in a hotel room with all of her family members. How dare we think that we could sleep in the same area as her! The nerve! I always say that my great-great grandchildren will not know what I looked like because there is not one picture of me around this place. They will know what great-great-granddad Carl looked like, all suntanned and beautiful, but they will not know how beautiful I was. If there are any pictures of me to be had on family vacations, I usually look pale and tired and have a pruned butt from sitting in 6 inches of water at a baby pool all week. Ahhhh... memories.

No, there was no boating for me, no skiing, no water sliding, no nothing at Okoboji. Although, I did get one spin around the lake on the inflatable tube with my friend Lori. We were laughing so hard that Lori had to jump ship because she started to pee (damn those weak birthing bladders) and my uterus is resting nicely at the bottom of Lake Okoboji. Nothing like a lake-enema to wake you up and make you walk funny.

So now we are back and Carl has requested all of his favorite meals before he leaves. Tonight it is meatloaf (ugh... leave it to a man to love a loaf of meat covered in Ketchup), tomorrow is brisket and for Sunday we have the pièce de résistance... Christmas/Thanks/Easter Turkey dinner-complete with jellied cranberry sauce.

I have decided to spend the next few days in a constant state of buzz. The liquor store down the street already told me I have purchased my limit for August. Can you believe that? A liquor store cashier cut me off. Mercy. I figure if I am buzzed everything will be funny. "Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion." If you can name the movie quote I will send you a prize. I don't know what the prize will be... or if I'll really send you anything, but play anyway. You never know what I am capable of after I have been cut off by a liquor store cashier. Good Luck!

There Is No Easy Way To Do This...

We have a week left before Carl deploys to the desert. Have I mentioned that to you all? I am sure I have... yes, he is deploying for 365 days-for those who have a hard time with simple math, that equals one year.

It is always a horrible place to be in when you have a good-bye looming over your head. I want to make everything a pleasant memory, but that doesn't always work out. My heart wants bunnies and rainbows and my brain demands hand grenades and sword fights. I think it is a way of protecting myself... I am talking about the numerous fights we seem to be getting into for no apparent reason lately. Something inside of me is very messed up to think that it will be easier to say good-bye to him if I am pissed off because he left his boxer shorts on the back of the toilet tank instead of tossing them in the hamper.

Usually his little quirks blow over me like a light breeze, but the past few days have been different. I about threw his toothbrush away this morning because I don't know why he can't just put it away like a normal human being. Why does he have to leave it dripping on the sink so that I have to go back and wipe up the water spot? And then there are his tennis shoes. They are big and he leaves them at the foot of my side of the bed. Every night I trip over them when I get up to go pee. Why does he do this? Is he trying to make me insane? Don't even get me started on all of the desert gear that is strewn across the house right now because he is getting ready to pack. He has been getting ready to pack for a month now... just pack! Get the crap out of my eyesight so that my brain does not explode when I look at one more pair of military boots sitting in my formal dining room!

I know, I know, you are saying "Man June-you are not nice. Give the guy a break!" I get that... and I have been trying my hardest to give him a break, but then my heart will break even more the day he leaves.

You don't understand. My best friend is leaving for a year. Not just a week, or a month... a year. The depth of my sorrow in this matter cannot even be described on a simple blog. I want to scream "Don't Go!" but I can't. It is his job-his life. I know that all of the little things that are driving me batty right now (like the fact that when he drives my van he turns off the radio and the air conditioning so when I get in and start to drive down the street I suddenly realize that I am sweating like a pig and my favorite tune is not playing.) are just a defense mechanism for my heart-the heart that wants bunnies and rainbows but is going to get a lot of pain in a week when he goes.

What am I going to do?

He Was Just Trying To Save The World...

Walendowski is accused of shooting his lawn mower because it wouldn't start. According to the criminal complaint, Walendowski said he was angry because his Lawn Boy wouldn't start Wednesday morning, July 23, 2008. He told police quote, 'I can do that, it's my lawn mower and my yard so I can shoot it if I want.'

I completely understand Mr. Walendowski. I have tried to shoot my lawn mower on many occasions, but found that my son's Nerf gun just didn't offer the satisfaction I was looking for. Next time take a hammer to it. Your neighbors won't call the police on you-they'll just watch out their front window wondering just what kind of entertainment you will be providing next week.

If Mr. Walendowski goes to jail, lawn mowers everywhere will think they can just stop working. Before you know it they will be demanding the same pay as the weed whacker and asking for the week of July 1-7 off. Soon there will be a law passed that a lawn mower can marry a edger and then where will we be? We'll have uncut lawns and weeds creeping over our sidewalks.

Please Mister Jailer... won't you let Mr. Walendowski go free?

It's Just Jokes Baby... Just Jokes

After we had baby #4 my husband and I thought it was time to move on to the next stage of life... the one where you eventually get to sleep through the night and no longer have to look at each other and say "Do you smell poo? Check the baby."

My brain has become very comfortable with the idea that we were done having babies.

Yesterday Carl turned to me and said: "You know, since we already have four kids we might as well have a fifth."

I stood in silence. WHAT? Was he serious? How could this be?

Then he started laughing... he was obviously joking. I was so mad at him that I could have spit nails. He didn't understand why I was being so irrational (he has learned to use the word "irrational" instead of "insane").

I tried to explain to him that although my brain is completely in sync with no more babies, my uterus apparently feels different. When he says things like "let's have another baby" my body immediately starts to ovulate and my ovaries just start tossing out eggs at an alarming rate. I instantly gain 5 lbs. of baby fat around my belly in order to protect the mere thought of another pregnancy, and I could have sworn that a hemorrhoid popped out... I'm not sure.

So a lesson to all you men out there who think if would be "funny" to suggest another baby-STOP! It is cruel and unusual punishment to put a women through that. I mean, when the man I love looks at me and says "Wanna have another baby?" my fallopian tubes do a little happy dance and I find myself buying packages of newborn diapers just so I can get all gaga over how little they are.

Not funny... not funny at all.

Time Again For Another Matthew McConaughey Update...

Matthew, Matthew, Matthew... why do you have to be so weird?

Matthew's description of the birth of his son to OK! Magazine:

"Contractions started kicking in, and we found a great rhythm. I sat there with her, right between her legs. We got tribal on it. We danced to it! I was DJ-ing this Brazilian music. We were jamming!"

Someone please tell me why all of the good looking ones have to be so damn looney. It is a cryin' shame.