Redneck Physics

you might be a redneck if ....you've used a bucket for a headcoil

"Crank her up!"

Mrs. Romney

We at the IP don't generally vote, yes, please don't tell Padre Pio because I'd be in a whole mess of trouble. My husband hasn't missed an election probably ever and me I rarely watch or listen to political shtuff. I don't think I voted in the last election because I didn't bother to get my voters registration card. Generally I avoid it like the plague unless there's something that strikes my attention. Mrs. Romney got my attention.

Now in actuality I didn't watch the convention last night. I was working and trying to watch sports. I ran across the convention while she was speaking and it took me less than 1 minutes to figure out she's the real deal. I think I watched her for a total of 40 seconds, Christie for 15 seconds and Santorum for maybe 90 seconds - what can I say I was enthralled by the blue of his tie and I have a short attention span which is why I like sports.

Take football, it takes 3 hours to play 60 minutes of ball. Why does it take so long? Well there are lots of pauses: timeouts, ball spots, huddles, changes, halftime, tv timeouts. You don't have to pay attention to the whole thing, just key moments. So I watch in spurts and get the key moments. It's a gift.

So in my 40 seconds I figured out Mrs. Romney is genuine, actually that took less than 10 seconds. She's likeable and endearing.  Will it get me to vote for Mr. Romney? It'll make me take another look and believe me at this point I don't want to look at either of those 2 jokers (Romney/Obama) because I look at them and the only difference I see is one is white and the other is wheat but they are the same, essentially. Mrs. Romney made me consider that he's not white, he's complicated and THAT I get and understand. Also that's endearing. So I will look again... in 15 second spurts and this time I might even try to find stuff out about him.

Hotels!

Why is it that the more expensive the hotel, the less the amenities you receive?

What's up with that? If I'm paying north of $200 for a room, I expect internet access. Seriously, internet access is pretty much a standard staple of hotels these days but the swankier the hotel, the less chance I've had to have internet included. Oh, and no breakfast, really?

Swanky hotels can't throw in breakfast unless you're an elite member? Fortunately I'm an elite member but still I can opt to stay at a less swanky hotel which mind you if it's a new hotel, chances are the digs are better than the "swanky" hotels and I get internet access and breakfast.

So that's why The IP here has been quiet. I've been traveling in hotels where I'm too cheap to pay for internet so I got a lot of work done instead. Hmmm, I bet my company pays those hotels extra to not let me have internet access.

Nipples and Dimples

The peach pit was making verbal notes of ladies swim suits, particularly that many of the two piece variety are barely better than wearing your underwear in public.

Well not thermal underwear, but you get the picture. 

For the record, we have not had any sit down discussions about what garments are and are not appropriate to wear, except for church and mass going attire:

-no flips

- no cutoff shorts

- no shorts (unless it's daily mass)

- no shirts with stains 

- no clothes with holes (This one was established because Monkeyboy tried to get the priest to bless the hole in his sock. This was when he was 10 not when he was oh 6 and it would be understandable. A proud IP moment indeed.)

- no tank tops

But I digress, so back to the Peach and swimwear: She said, "Some of those swimsuits women wear are so tiny! Mom, they barely cover up their (hands gesticulating to her chest) dimples."

Monkeyboy's wife

He and the Peach have been playing the game of Life. If you've never played, it's essentially a game of racking up debt in a make believe world with the end goal of making it to retirement with all sorts of mishaps along the way. Peachy has ended up with busloads of children and Monkeyboy has tried to bypass the mandatory marital stop. Apparently he married in the game of Life and his first question was "how do you get divorced?"

So I asked him: "Marriage is for what?"

I was going for "Life" and the little twerp knew it but I did set him up : "for people who need someone to shrew at them"

Having not shrewed at my husband I can only imagine where he's obtained this gem of knowledge.
He mentioned later that if he did get married his wife would have to be blind, deaf, dumb, mute and have no sense of smell. That was really his only qualification for a wife.

Unfortunate acronym

New Photos from Mars Rover Curiositas

Sent by a friend of mine from Father Z's blog. Too good not to share!

Happy Anniversary

We had a bit of an accident yesterday. We were suppose to go biking. This was how we were going to celebrate our 17th anniversary, that and dinner. Nothing really turned out how I thought it would. I suppose you could say that's a commentary on my life, marriage and family.

One of the buckles securing the bike rack had a major fail and the bikes came tumbling, sliding off the roof, down the back window, crashing glass all over my precious monkeyboy and Peach pit. He sat motionless taking in the situation. She went into full crisis mode complete with shaking, crying and associated hysterics. Papa pulled over as instructed (because my crisis mode is to go by the book, assess the situation, get everyone out of danger and call emergency). The police arrived, stopped traffic and moved the bikes off of the freeway.

Miracle #1 No one was injured (Peach had a small cut) and here I mean no one in the falling bike path, moving cars and all

Miracle #2 No other accidents occurred

Miracle #3 Somehow none of the bikes was damaged and we made it back home with kids, bikes and a renewed sense of gratitude

Perhaps I've mentioned before how I never planned to get married. I didn't think it'd happen and I was ok with that. Trust me when I say that I was not even remotely attracted to my now husband. He wasn't my type but when I went to hug him goodbye at a get together, I just knew. It hit me like the bike rack slamming into the rear window and everything changed.

We were marginal Catholics, and suffering from severe lack of catechesis but nonetheless we married in the church and proceeded to live our birth controlled marital state with a complete carefree attitude. After all we weren't ready for kids. We were "good" people, but the thing is how do  you measure good if you don't have a yardstick? We didn't have a yardstick but we had a notion, an idea, a generally acceptable practical attitude right? Everyone else we knew was on birth control and only freaks did anything else. There was nothing wrong with abortion in my view and so it went until 5 years later we got pregnant with monkeyness and we asked:

"What the hell did we do before we had kids?"

I'm sure we did something. In fact I know we did, but none of it mattered. None of it. It paled in comparison to this little ball of fur with wide eyes looking innocently back at me just like he did when shattered glass rained down all over him. It's that innocence that blows me away. My kids, a decade into their lives, are better catechized than I was when I married. They know why marriage can only ever be between a man and a woman. They know what is good and how it's measured. They know what birth control is and abortion too. They've seen the scared and frightened women walking into abortion offices. No one goes there happy except those who show up to pray for the women, the doctors, the workers. These are amazing people, profoundly saddened for the situation but immensely joyful and peaceful. Only in a Christian can the marriage of those two polar opposites make any sense.   

My life is summed up in our two kids. They are the very best of me, and yet it hasn't turned out at all like I planned and I planned, but I didn't plan for this. I never planned to go from barely Catholic, mostly agnostic totally pro-choice, to fervent in my love for Christ and everything else loving him demands. Living a life in Christ doesn't mean it'll be easy but it does mean when it all comes crashing in all around you, you'll find the courage, strength, peace and grace to make it through. "When" not "if". 

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you."

"When you walk through fire, you will not be burned."

"When", my absolute favorite word in the bible, "when".

Olympic coverage

I think we've lost something as a society. NBC's coverage of the Olympics has made me pause and rethink this whole disastrous coverage.
Are we really a "show me the money" kind of people? Do we really just want the "money shot"? I have to think so because that is what NBC is giving us, except on the weekends when apparently 12 hours live of the worm crawling event is the going thing.

What makes the Olympics so great is that yes, even the ping pong event has the best athlete's in the world - please, I'm sorry I can't even blog that without balking. What's amazing about it is that here you have the best of the best, fighting to win. No one competes on this level because they want to lose or because they are there accidentally. I'm sorry, but no one stumbles onto the Men's rings or into the ladies balance beam competition. Yes, they are talented and want to win. They have years of training (Does anyone really train for ping pong? Oh, sorry table tennis. Nope ping pong.). What's especially captivating about gymnastics is these guys are good for one maybe 2 Olympics because that sport is just brutal. Brutal. Honestly, Phelps could participate in 2-3 more Olympics, if he wanted.

Nevertheless, I want to cheer my country. I don't care if John Orozco finishes 50th (he finished 8th). I want to see him perform or hear it. When my countrymen do well I applaud. When they struggle, I still want to applaud because out of all the billions of people on the planet these people do something they are gifted at and whether they medal or not, that's not the important part. I want them to medal - who doesn't want their country to finish first? The really important part is that they let us come together as a nation in support, in union and thanksgiving that we have such talented and gifted people in our nation and share in their victory, defeat or train wreck as they implode under the pressure.

We would do well to learn from another any other nation struggling to even medal. There you see the difference between them and us. The entire country (practically) knows their athletes, and is aware of the competition, and watch (if they are even able) with expectant admiration. We've become so flipping arrogant and focused on the money shot that everything else comes secondary to it and that is the crux of what irks me about NBC's coverage. It's not NBC. It's our country. It's not the best part of my country but it is part of who we are.That's kind of sad.

Double busted!

 "Going outside in your underpants, while you're putting on your jammie pants!!! That's gotta be at least worth double maybe even triple."

I just can't catch a break. Well at least no one busted me as I came down the stairs but really he's gotta have eyes in the back of his head. He was nowhere near a line of sight. How on earth did he see me? The kids are right, he knows EVERYTHING!

In my defense (yes, I'm defending my trouser-less state) I was just in a hurry to say goodbye to him and give him a kiss, but if now he's going to charge me double or triple because I'm undressed,  um he might want to pause and think it out again. Gee, things have really changed in almost 17 years of marriage.

NBC's coverage of the Olympics SUCKS!

During gymnastics coverage, they don't show scores especially as it get's to deciding the medal. What's up with that? The announcers will comment on the scores but do they even mention the score. Um, oh no. Why bother?

Men's gynmastics - where to even begin? The chicks are pretty and fun to watch but men's gymnastics is relegated to what late night airing? What's up with that?

- No Rings. Not once, not once did they show men on the rings during the team final or qualifications. No one. Zipola. What, is it no longer an event?

- they break away to show coverage of something else then pan back to gymnastic coverage where every medal contender is shown on the rotation but magically they are all on the high bar rotation or floor rotation. Whatever, you guys suck as far as coverage goes.

- what's the point in watching when they don't even show the event, not in it's entirety but can we at least watch the Americans on each event?

This whole tape delay business is just stupid and outdated. Seriously, they show them in the evenings and then completely miss covering events or giving a recap. It's tape delayed, you can't update the story before airing it? Really?

I'm done. Not interested in watching anymore. I'll catch the scores in real time as I'm apparently not going to watch them anyway.