How to be adored

Bill often will say that my bandmates and I can be ... well, uh ... mean.

I think he's a pussy.

We three girls are nothing but delightful and hilarious.

(Yes, we do have a fourth member of the band, but he's a dude and therefore denied entry due to our vagina stipulation. But I should mention that Scotty "Boom-Boom Chuck-Norris-on-drums" Davis is an integral part of our little band. Boom Boom is to Riveter such as Billy Preston was to the Beatles — and by saying that I'm in NO WAY implying that we are anything like the Beatles in that from all accounts it seems that the Beatles were actually able to play lots of things on their instruments. Plus they coordinated their haircuts and that's just something we won't be doing.)

The following is a series of e-mails sent amongst the girls of Riveter and punk-rock legend (in his own mind) Bill Halen (aka my long suffering husband and oftentimes our sound guy):

(I should also note — because I seem to be enjoying the parentheses today — that I'm reprinting these e-mails without consent and that they may or may not be exaggerated depending upon whether you want to fire us or something equally bad. So if necessary, just pretend that I made this all up ... which I did not ... maybe.)

Me: I just heard back from Michelle at the Quincy. She's putting us on the calendar for October 25th. Woot! to that.

Bill Halen: Good times!

La La: Kick ass!

BH: I'll do sound for a free drink and added to the guest list!

Me: We can add you to the guest list, but I'm not sure about the free drink.

Kelley: how bout a free kick in the dingdong? or maybe just a free drink.

BH: You guys are mean! Geeeshhh, girl bands, hruumph!

Me: Consider yourself lucky. There are lots of guys who would pay to have Kelley kick them in the dingdong.

Kelley: yeah, alot of guys would pay for me to do that! (wha?) I'll make sure to not wear my really pointed shoes, would that be better?

La: You buy us drinks, Boy-Bitch!

Kelley: yeah, you buy us drinks you ho!

BH: Ok that's it, the price keeps going up with your shinanigans...now I want
drinks, guest list, cheese and crackhoes, pay up beeoutches!

Me: You get to help us load in and out. You get to do the sound. You get on the guest list and you get Kelley to kick you in the dingdong with her pointy shoes.

BH: Ok, only if she sticks a marshmallow on the tip of her pointy shoes. I don't
wanna leave a mark.

La: Yeah, and no farting when you get kicked, either.

Kelley: a marshmellow? wha? OK, why don't I just not kick you in the dingdong. pussy.

La: This is the best conversation ever. This is exactly why we should be reality stars.

Kelley: precisely. but the bottom line is, Bill, that I would never actually kick you in the crotch because I like you so much. but I might threaten to kick you in the crotch if... for example: we were doing sound check and I got shocked in the face.

BH: That is totally fair, but what if instead of a shock to the face you got cockamole on you faceadilla? That would suck or blow depending on what side you were on. Oh, I like you too!!!

Me: OK Bill, are you happy now? You got to you use the "cockamole on your faceadilla" joke.

Kelley: wow. little did I know that I was setting myself up for THAT. I have no quick comeback for the likes of that one, Bill.

See? I told you we were nothing but the epitome of grace and elegance.

Where did they all go?

Where have all the Paul Newman's gone?

Mama needs a brand new bag

I have issues.

Yes, I'm sure there's a collective gasp of disbelief.

Oh, but it's true.

I like to have my stuff, the way I like to have my stuff. I fold towels exactly the way my mom taught me. I shower in the exact same way every day ... blah, blah.

But yet other areas of my daily life are completely chaotic.

Our hall closet is literally jammed full of bottles, boxes, bags of crap. Crap that we need, but can never find because it's so disorganized.

My mom once proclaimed that we have a lot of "junk drawers" in our kitchen. Except for the silverware drawer and the drawer where we keep our dish towels, it's true that the rest of our drawers are a complete mess.

The dichotomy of organization and chaos in our house is pretty astounding.

The same goes for my purse/bag situation.

I have a nice, grown-up, black, leather purse that has my ID, credit cards, cell phone, camera, etc. that I carry everywhere. But I don't like it.

It's too thick and the strap is too thin ... it's uncomfortable.

Then there's my bag.

My bag is what I carry to work and band practice and class and places where I need more than just my purse stuff.

Since I'm not teaching in the classroom this semester (yay, online class), my bag carries my purse (yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me either), the book I'm reading and a giant, plastic ziplock baggie. (When I am teaching in the classroom, I've often got my class notes, etc. in there, too.)

In that baggie, I have a small notebook and a kajillion folded pieces of paper. Those pieces of paper are song lyrics, flight reservations, sympathy cards, recipes ...

Last week at band practice our non-girl drummer, Scotty Boom-Boom Chuck-Norris-on-drums Davis commented on my plastic bag of papers. I fiercely defended my right to keep all my important and not-so-important stuff in a plastic baggie.

But he's right. I need a better system.

I need a smallish, large bag (see my issues) that can carry a cellphone, iPod and cable, camera and cable, lip balm eyedrops, wallet, checkbook, whatever book I'm reading at the time, small notebook and a giant stack of papers.

And it needs to have a long strap that I can wear bandoleer style.

Is there such a thing?

Dork night

Toward the end of my pregnancy, I started getting bloated. I looked like the corpse of a pot-bellied pig dredged out of a lake after a week and a half.

And my blood pressure started going up.

A week before my due date, my doctor put me on bed rest ... and I was thrilled. I got permission to lay my bloated carcass on the couch and watch TV. It was awesome.

During that time, I started watching a brand-new TV show. A show unlike the sit-coms and medical dramas, I'd watched in the past. It was at the forefront of a new genre called reality TV.

That show was the first season of Survivor.

I watched that show while I was on maternity leave and since I've seen every season.

I'm not bragging, I'm just saying I'm one of those people.

My name is Robin and I watch reality TV.

But I'm not alone. (Thank goodness!) My dear friend, Tracee, has been making the trek to my sofa every Thursday to watch Survivor with me for ... gosh, how long as it been, Trace? A couple years at least.

A couple seasons ago, we thought it would be more fun if we devised a game to play along.

I had to take a break from our Survivor game the last couple seasons, but we are back at this time.

And better than ever, I must add.

Last night we watched the 2-hour season premiere and took notes. We got to know the characters and started looking for possible winners.

We also did this:

We crafted up our Survivor bulletin board.

What?

See, this season, not only are Tracee and I playing, but so are my gramma and my mom. So we had to get organized. We each have our own square where we'll have our weekly ballots. There's a place for pictures of the contestants along with a place for those voted out.

Yeah, I know. We're dorky dorks. But sometimes you have to let your innerdork shine.

Ours are blinding our husbands.

Let's just pretend mommy's on vacation tonight

So tonight begins the fall television season for me. And it's going to be a jammed packed night full of TV watching.

So please don't call me tonight. Or drop over ... unless you want to sit quietly and look at the idiot box.

Oh and if you're my kid, don't need anything from me after 7 p.m. tonight. I know you're sick, kid, but isn't that just a better reason to go to be early and not be all, "I can't breathe" and "I think I have rickets."

Mommy's gotta watch the 2-hour season premiere of Survivor and the 1-hour premiere of The Office, so she's going to be too busy to get you tissues or water or a college savings account or whatever else you think you need to get through the night.

Daddy gets home at 8, you can survive on water and bake Cheetos until then. Mommy's gotta watch TV.

Sick day

There are chewed up tissues all over the house.

Margaret has a cold and the dog is loving it. Quincy loves to chew on used tissues. Could there be anything more disgusting? Oh yeah, eating cat shit — which she does all the time.

I love cats and dogs. But you never see a cat eating dog shit. So ...

Yeah, so Margaret's sick. We decided about 3:30 a.m. last night after she got up for the kajillionth time because she couldn't breathe that she needed the rest and wouldn't be going to school today. Shortly after that Bill jumped out of bed and said, "Do you want to come watch Conan with me?"

At 3:30 a.m.? No thank you.

But Bill wakes up many nights at 3:30 a.m. and watches Conan O'Brien. He loves himself from Conan.

But I don't care how much you love some guy's hair, there no way in Hades I' m hauling my cookies out of bed at 3:30 a.m. to watch TV.

And just because I'm awake at 3:30 a.m. doesn't mean that I want to take advantage of my lucidity to watch late-night TV. Bill does, though, all the time.

Yeah, he's got insomnia. But he seems to enjoy it a little too much. It's like he enjoys his alone time with Conan in the middle of the night.

What's up with that?

Who else would it be?

Saturday evening Margaret, my mom, Bill and I sat our on our back patio talking and playing games.

Mar sat cross-legged on her chair and started saying "Aaahhmmmmm" as she moved her hands from a praying gesture into a Gyan mudra gesture.

After staring at her with raised eyebrows, my mom finally asked her what she was doing.

Exasperated, Mar replied, "Aaahhhhhmmmm. This is what they do. Aahhmmmmm"

My mom asked, "Who's 'they'?"

Without pausing, Mar replied, "The Amish. Aahhmmm."

Well, duh.

Whachoo talkin' about Willis?

I love this picture of Bill. It was taken by our friend the Shock Doctor at our neighborhood block party.

It needs a good caption, don't cha think? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

What's on your shopping list?

I found my shopping list had been amended to include "butt paste" yesterday. And that is why living with an 8-year-old is never dull.

Click over here to see a picture of four generations of women in my family. It may take all four of us to finish a puzzle, but we have a good time doing it.

They just don't make ads like they used to

Again thanks Markel aka the dude who finds all the great stuff on the Interweb.

Husband logic

My husband called me at work laughing just now. "So, can you pop popcorn with a cell phone?" he asks.

He was, of course, referring to my post from yesterday linking to my Haute Mamas blog video where my co-workers and I try to recreate the myth that you can pop popcorn with cell phones.

Spoiler alert! You can't.

But it was fun to try.

(Click here to see Richie and me on GJSentinel.com's 60-second update. We're haute.)

We're going to be doing more "experiments" like this in the future so keep checking in with the Haute Mamas. Oh and if you have any ideas of things you'd like to see us do, leave a comment. We're game for most things (and by most things, I mean things in which we keep our clothes on, thankyouverymuch).

When I revealed to Bill that no, you cannot pop popcorn with cell phones, he laughed more and said, "Of course you can't, there's no heat source." (If you click the snopes.com link on the Haute Mamas blog you can read how they edited the footage to make it seem like the popcorn was popping.)

Whatever. Smart guy.

And while he is a smart guy, he has some crazy logic sometimes.

Recently our cleaning service came to try to make our house presentable. We just aren't very good housekeepers. Things were dirty.

You should've seen how excited I was to see that the inside of our microwave was clean. Oh and behind our toaster, too.

We're fancy now with our clean house (or what used to be our clean house ... several days of living in our clean house has made it not so clean anymore ... I wonder why that is?).

While we were admiring our clean house, Bill decides that we need to get a new vacuum.

Me: Why? Ours works good enough to vacuum two rooms of carpet.

Bill: Yes, it's good enough for us, but not for them.

Me: Huh?

Bill: What happens when the belt slips off and they can't vacuum.

Me: They'll clean something else instead.

Bill: Yeah, we need to get a new vacuum.

Me: (blinks incredulously)

So we're in the market for a new vacuum — not because I've wanted one for the past two years, but because someone else is using it.

Does that make sense?

I don't think it does, but I've been lusting after a Dyson for a long time, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut (for once).

Dispelling myths one slow day at a time

Yesterday Richie e-mail me this video:

Pop Corn téléphone portable micro-ondes
Uploaded by sassiere

It seemed pretty easy and straight-forward so we decided to give it a try. Click here to see our own video of cell phones attempting to pop popcorn.

Watch out snopes.com, here come the Haute Mamas.

When advertising goes horribly wrong ...

I can add nothing to this masterpiece.



Thanks Markel!

Block party 2008

Our annual block party. Planned and organized by all the other neighbors (because I'm a bitch).

We* got a permit to block off the street and a local cyclery, Brown's Cycles, lent us an assortment of fun bikes and a whole bunch of Green Machines — which are fun until one particularly surly Green Machine decides to throw you off in the middle of the street resulting in various minor scrapes and bruises.

*And by "we" I mean, someone other than myself, because all I did was bake three batches of brownies.


Yes, that is my daughter eating the forbidding cotton candy.

I mean, people, seriously, it's whipped sugar. But since I was too distracted (and remarkably not drunk — I wasn't in the mood for beer and too lazy to get something else) to watch her, Margaret smiled when she said, "Don't be surprised when you hear that I had six cotton candies."

But the best part was the the cops only showed up twice.

Once they were invited by us. The nice officer spoke about how important it is to have a strong community, blah, blah and gave us ("us" meaning the kids and myself) "Junior Officer" badge stickers.

I wore mine proudly until Johnny and Bridget's mean baby stole mine.

And the second time when one of our charming neighbors complained about Bill's band making a racket.

The band played from 6 to 8 p.m. and we had a permit.

Luckily another really nice officer showed up and said he had no problem with the music and actually that it was great we were getting together as a community.

So suck it neighbor who called the cops on us.
And despite the fact that both Greedy and Flendard said that there could be nothing gay about Green Machines, they proved themselves wrong by choreographing tandem burn outs in a might gay fashion.

The video proof is below:

I wrote about politics

Gasp! I know.

I've been very jaded this political season. And honestly I've had it up to here (insert hand gesture indicating somewhere very high) with the whole spectacle.

There are people out there who are all fussed up over this election. And I don't really want to hear about it any more.

I wrote yet another very restrained blog about it all over here.

I left out the part about how people should stop yelling at me and my co-workers — mostly because I like my job and want to keep it. But also because people are crazy and they might come after me so I'm leaving that part out.

On a completely different note, my neighborhood is having a block party tomorrow.

Sounds fun, huh?

As much as I love my neighborhood, our block party irritates me. Mostly because people are all enthusiastic about it and want to do things like have a bump 'n' jump for the kids.

Me? I just want to drink directly from the keg.

But it's always turns out to be a good time because of all my neighbors are good people who take the time to plan fun things. And I can just sit around and drink directly from the keg.

So, tomorrow should be a good time. Wanna come?

Don't say, "It's time to face the hole."

OK, I was raised watching Family Feud and The Price is Right.

I watched a former neighbor's granddaughter win a million big ones on Deal or No Deal recently.

Even though I failed the test to become a contestant on Jeopardy, I still watch it.

I like games shows.

But I don't know about Fox's new game show Hole in the Wall.

It's based on a Japanese game show — which means that it's silly and degrading ... two of my most favorite things.



But there's something about the American version that just makes me cringe.



And it's got nothing to do with the game itself.

It's the silver, clingy unitard that all contestants must wear.

Yeah, it's just way too clingy ... especially in the ... um, down-there area.

Hello Fox TV, please spare us the man camel toe or camel Joe or package highlights or whatever you want to call the outline of man junk.

It's too much.

And that's saying a lot coming from me.

It wasn't all broken sprinklers and flat tires

We did manage to have some fun over our Labor Day holiday. Read about it over here.

And don't forget to enter our free giveaway of servello skin care products. Free skin care products and all you have to do is click and comment.

Easy as pie.

Mmme cake.

Why Sundays rock

Bloody Marys at Peach Street Distillers.

I've been linked

Hey y'all from Good Mom/Bad Mom.

I've been reading Min and Jenny since they were still Mama Drama mamas ... these gals are awesome.

So, it's uber cool for little ole rivetergirl to be featured on their BS Sunday. Thanks Jenny and Min!!

Of course, it had to be the vagina attendant post that got me linked to the big time.

Who knew that writing about my woman parts would make me so popular?

Who let the dog in?

Yesterday after work, we were standing around talking to the neighbors when our dear friend Tracee pulled up with her back seat loaded with their home-grown peaches.

She jumped out of the car and exclaimed, "I just saw Dog the Bounty Hunter down at the blue goodies store."

Because we're dorks, we all jumped in our car and went off in search of Dog and his posse.

Unfortunately they were no longer at the blue goodies store (formerly known at the "big chicken" until the big chicken went MIA — I have no idea what the actual name of that store is), so we went to dinner.

But we were sure to check GJSentinel.com to see if there were any other Dog sightings.

Oh man, not only is Dog and his posse in town, but they are hunting tweakers.

I didn't know it was tweaker season.

Dog and his posse should be easy to spot around town as they are said to be driving around in two gold Cadillac SUVs.

Have you seen Dog?

Labor Day mayhem

Murphy's Law hit the Dearing/McCracken household over the Labor Day weekend ... big time.

You can read about that over here.

These pictures will make more sense after you read the story.


OK, I don't actually mention that Bill was helped in his endeavor by a tie-dyed and kilted Greedy.




Nor do I mention the giant thistles.

Or the giant coral mushrooms.

Um, maybe these photos aren't clarified by the story, but they are still awesome in oh-so-many ways.