IHOP

This conversation happened once between and friend and me in high school...

Her: "Where do you want to eat?"
Me: "I don't know...how about IHOP?"
Her: "I've never been there.  How about International House of Pancakes? It is right down the road."
Me: ..............*staring and waiting*...............
Her: "O.M.G."
Me: "Yep."

The pancakes: divine. The omelets (albeit super unhealthy): delicious.  (I've heard they put some of that crack pancake batter in the omelets - idk if that is true.) Soft drinks: Pepsi brand...WIN! But the mecca of pancakes has one thing that I covet: butter pecan syrup. Liquid. Gold.

Now, I've purchased butter pecan syrup before and it just doesn't stack up (get it?!) to that of IHOP. I mean would it kill them to bottle the stuff for sale at my local supermarket? Or even in there restaurant? It isn't exactly ideal to sneak a sticky bottle of table syrup into one's purse but the thought has crossed my mind.

I don't know why they even bother with regular maple, strawberry, blueberry and the red-headed stepchild boysenberry. All anyone needs is butter pecan.

Since I'm working on behaving myself at meal time, I didn't have a big plate of pancakes drowning in BP like I would have wished.  I did not, however, eat all of my meal in favor of a bite (or 2) of V's.  It seemed like an even trade.

I wonder if I took my own bottle in if they would just, you know, fill 'er up??  I need something good for Toaster Waffle Sunday.

C.
 

Heart Conditions

The heart.  It is an extraordinary organ and pumps our very life blood throughout of body.  Without a heart, we would be dead...much like the cadaver heart my good friend, Stephanie, dissected in her higher education class today. But the figurative implications can be just as interesting...

Emotions happen within our brain - in the limbic system located just beneath the cortex.  But for an unknown period of time and for an unknown reason, we have associated emotions with the heart. There are countless theories on the subject but no one true story. It is also unknown how the stylized version we associate with love came about. If we are lucky, we'll all get to see a version of this on the 14th.

Wuv. Twew wuv...to love with all your heart. Unconditional love. For me, there are only two people in the whole word that could never do anything to make me not love them - my mom and my son. I thought I knew love when I married my husband...and I love him very much. I would give my life to save his. But when my son was born, a whole new level of love was opened up. 

A mother's love is very primitive...it's not something I think about. It is not something I work hard at. It just is.  Mama Bear. And if there is real danger coming my cubs way, you better believe I'm gonna rearrange said danger. But something else happened when my baby was born - empathy for other children... You never want something bad to happen to kids, but once you can put yourself in the position of that happening to YOUR kid, oh how things change.

Now imagine those people who are "heartless". Those that are apathetic to situations around them...those that do not give a rip about what happens to anyone else. They have a living heart but why is there an emotional disconnect to their organ? Perhaps they just haven't had the right life experiences for their hearts to work right. I'm not sure where I'm even going with all this but it just makes me think - was I ever like that?  Yes, we all were.  Infants do not know empathy or sympathy. They don't know how to love. They just know they need food and want to feel good.

So often we guard our hearts - past experiences tell us that is the right thing to do. But then that moment comes along when you are lucky enough to finally open up and let love in, and your world changes forever. And just as babies find out, it feels good to love.

C.

T.E.A.M.

Every since I could start, I have been playing team sports.  I love to compete and hate to lose. I learned from a young age what it meant to win as a TEAM and to lose as a TEAM. "You're only as strong as your weakest link."  Little did I know that this would ring true outside the field/court. 

To become "one", a team must train together, learn strategy together, make mistakes together, and practice together. A team gets rewarded together and punished as a whole.

To be successful in most situations, you must know how to work with other people - whether in the workplace, in a relationship, or on an actual team roster. A team can be as small as two and countlessly large. The branches of our fine military exemplify what can be accomplished when all cylinders are running at full speed in perfect unison. We have our freedom. I wouldn't be able to blog without it.

Tough Mudder is a race - a long, painful race that requires teamwork - which A. you must sign a death waiver to participate, and 2. has this as part of their pledge, "...I put teamwork and camaraderie before my race time....I help my fellow mudders complete the course..."A TM never leaves a man/woman behind.  I will say with pride that the Iron Mudders held true to that pledge. There was no 'I' in our team...there was no 'me' in our team.

That race changed me. All I was concerned about was getting our whole team across the finish line together - and we all (5 of us) had the very same concern.  Not one person thought of finishing without the team.  There was a job to be done and it required all members to be fully onboard to complete the challenge.

It is much easier to get to the goal when everyone is on the same page. Had someone bowed out early, it would have been detrimental to the morale and strategy of the group - in the race, at the game, or in the office. "There is no quit in here."

Take that philosophy into your everyday life.  And if you find that you have an 'I' in the 'A-hole'...

C.
 

Thanks, Darlin!

The scene: Brothers BBQ
The characters: Me, Sloan, and two employees
The situation: Sloan and I go in to pick-up dinner to take home. There is a gentleman in front of us and I am perusing the menu really just deciding on the side dish.  I ask Sloan what he prefers - this or that - and he goes with 'this'. It's our turn:

Employee 1 (E1): Hello Darlin!
Me: Hi.
E1: What can I get you, Darlin?
Me: (getting a bit irritated) I would like 'blah blah blah' with 'blah blah'.
E1: Is this for here or to go, Darlin?
Me: (more irritated because last time I checked a 6yo and I don't look like we can put away a pound of meat and the excessive use of Darlin) To go, please.
E1: What's your name, Darlin?
Me: Chantel
E1: Ok, Darlin. That'll be up in a few minutes.

SCRATCH MY EYES OUT! STOP CALLING ME DARLIN! I'd also like to add that she was at least 14 years my junior. Wearing hipster frames, skinny jeans, and a nose ring.  Nowhere in her normal vocabulary does "darlin" live. I get that it is a BBQ joint and perhaps she is trying to make me feel more comfortable by upping the country-anty.  She's doing it all wrong.

I, personally, cannot stand to be called names of endearment by strangers that are younger than me. If you are trying to be nice, either use my name that I just gave you or stick to ma'am. Stop calling me darlin, sweetheart, sugar, honey, or anything else you think is cute. You don't know me. I'm not your sweetheart. The only time you can get away with that crap is if you are a 65+ elderly person - then I like it.  Otherwise, those words are reserved for people I know and like.

I maintained my composure because I had my son with me and I'm not one to make a scene or get into a confrontation. But even he noticed the ridiculousness, "Why did she keep calling you Darlin?" "I don't know, buddy. I just don't know."

C.

She's OBSESSED!

2-1/2 months.  That is how long we have had the lizard.  2-1/2 months. That is how long we have been feeding a creature that lives in our house other live creatures that live in our house. Gross.

Lily noticed the thing right away and would watch him, aka Petey, from the safety of Sloan's bed. If she was feeling adventurous, she would get a little closer and just sit and watch.  She is over him now. Maggie, on the other hand, just noticed the little bugger this weekend.  O.M.G.

I know what you're thinking, "Come on...not another dog post!"  Well, it is another dog post but please understand that I have more of these "people" than I do people in my house.  They are characters. They play a part. :)

Maggie is a bird dog.  She NEEDS to get the bird! It's like I'm taking away her birthday when I don't let her.  Lily has enlisted her help chasing down the squirrels SHE has beef with in the backyard.  Vicious.

We were minding our business vegging out watching TV and Mags is nowhere to be found. I ask where she is and about the same time I hear her whine.  I go upstairs to see if she is locked in a room and nope...she is locked out of a glass lizard aquarium. Her sights were set. She was focused. A little later we hear her scratching at the tank! Oh sh*t!

Today has been much of the same.  She has been up in Petey's grill all day! At this point, I think the lizard is starting to tease her intentionally...just perched up on his factory manufactured plastic rock saying "Nananahbooboo!" If he isn't careful, she will knock over that tank and will be a goner. In the meantime, I find it humorous that she sits and stares. "I'll get you, my pretty..."

C. 

Pinterest Project #2 - Sticker Art

I've seen this one on Pinterst a lot of times in many variations - a DIY art project.  Looks easy - canvas, stickers, paint.  You make your own 'saying' with the stickers and viola! Custom art! Today I decided to give it a whirl. Since Valentine's is just around the corner and I've been thinking about this one for a while, it is a perfect time for me to do "love in different languages". Turns out, I'm not the only brainiac with this idea this year.  Nuts.

Equipment: blank canvas, paint, paint brushes, sponge brushes, stickers in various fonts, tweezers, push pins, newspaper, music.

Let's start with the stickers selection.  The sticker aisle(s) can be quite intimidating as I found.  I wanted a nice assortment of fonts.  I found some nice ones and then took a closer look - these don't really look like the letters as far as the outline goes.  Make sure you are selecting letters in which the holes are cut out - i.e. in the loop of the 'e'.

After you have your stickers picked, buy them. Then go home.  Decide on your color palette - I picked three: silver, purple, and yellow. Paint the base coat (this is the color that will be under the stickers). I painted two areas yellow so that certain words would stand out from the rest.

Now, wait. Turn on the ceiling fan and walk away.  This  baby needs to dry before you get crazy with your stickers.

Once the paint is dry comes the painstaking task of putting your stickers on.  I used tweezers because I had some dainty stickers and it helped keep my hands out of the way. This took much longer than I anticipated.

Make sure those suckers are nice and stuck before you move to the next step.  Some of mine kept popping up. Attach the push pins to the bottom of the canvas at all four corners.  This will keep your project from sticking to the paper since you will now be painting the sides. Cover the entire surface with your final color. I had to "pounce" on the letters with my sponge brush to make sure the paint got around the edges of the stickers. Also use caution when pulling the paint over more delicate stickers.

Now, wait again. Catch up on Words with Friends, play some solitaire, watch the Chipmunks with your kid(s)...just give this one some time.  Once the whole thing is dry, pull your stickers.  I used the tweezers for this as well.

It sort of worked. The paint bled under the stickers in a lot of cases. 

This required me to get in there with a steady hand and tiny brush to touch it up. 

This little project took me about 3x longer than I expected.  I'm only a little satisfied with the end product.  I'm not sure if it will actually make its way onto any of my walls. 

The languages represented are Romanian, Dutch, Finnish, French, Croatian, Italian, Swahili, Welsh, German, English, and SMS.

C.

 

 

She Poops....She Scores!

Let me tell you about my morning....

It all started regularly - getting my boy and myself ready for school and work, respectively. I come back home after the school drop-off and as I'm about to leave, I have some very sad looking puppy dog eyes looking in my general direction.  Ok, girls, you can come to work today. And in dog-speak, "YIPPY!"

I only brought 2/3 of the gang.  I thought I would give Lily a mental break. :) So I prepare for the drive by placing a towel on my front seat 'just in case'. I needed it....

I get a block down the road, and Dahlia, the Duchess of Dook, drops a tootsie roll in the passenger seat. OMG! REALLY?! You went out before we left! Both dogs are now in my lap.  I pull over after cursing at the dogs to get in the back seat and lean over to open the door and whip the turds out...except I don't get the door open enough and one of the bootycakes goes into the door pocket. Blood pressure rising... "How the hell am I going to get this out?!?!?!" I had a napkin in the glove box (WHEW!) and attempt at getting this thing out without it touching me and it breaks in effing half. Breathe, Chantel. No breathing...just yelling! I finally get the poop out and look in the backseat and my dogs are terrified! Frankly, they should have been. I don't take kindly to poop in my front seat!

I apologize to the dogs for yelling and get back on the road. It was quite a hassle because they are quite jealous of each other and if one is in my lap, well then both need to be there. Obviously. I finally get them both to the passenger seat and now here it comes - the real reason I prepared with a towel.  Dahlia gets carsick.  She is a puker. Puke #1 out. And then back in. Yes. Puke #2 a little later.  Out and then back in except this time I nearly lost my cookies too.  Maggie was looking at me desperately to sit in my lap to get away from the carnage.

Now that we are both sick to our stomachs, I roll into the parking lot at work only to find D tossing a third pile right in between my seat and console.  FML.  I mean really.  How am I going to clean THAT up?!?! Serenity now...serenity now... I guess I'm cracking the windows.

At work.  All is well.  I give the girls some potty breaks and Maggie is a good soldier and goes outside like an animal is supposed to. But not, Dahlia. No, sir. She waits until I go get some complimentary pizza and wings to make her own Lake Erie on the carpet. Why? WHY?!

I try to do something nice.  Maggie was a perfect little gem all day.  But D, now the Duchess of Puke, or Devil, is on my shit list. (Isn't that punny!)  Now to do something about her cuteness so that I can stay mad at her...

C.