*Today I am participating in Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop by answering the prompt: 4.) A long drive…

My kids travel well in the car.  My husband will drive several hours without a complaint.  Me?–I hate long drives and start to lose it quickly if anything goes wrong.  And something always goes wrong.  Here are two videos from long family drives.  I like to record the craziness, to legitimize my fall-outs.

April, 2009: We’re on another road trip to Florida; this time to Orlando to see our favorite mouse.  The problem is, everyone has the same idea and traffic is ridiculous.  If you follow me on Twitter, you would see that I’m not handling it too well either.  The kids, they’re fine; it’s me who’s going crazy.  So in an effort to get my mind off the fact that we have traveled five miles in one hour, I made a video.

But that wasn’t the first or only time that we acted a fool on a long ride.  This happened right after Christmas 2008: This was supposed to be a simple road trip to Savannah; a mere 4 hours away from Atlanta.  Our goal was to leave about 8:00 a.m, but since I was wiped out from Christmas, I didn’t even finish packing until about 10:00 a.m.  We started loading the car about 11:00 a.m. and that was when our road trip comedy of errors began–our rental car was too small for our luggage.  What do we do?  Watch and see:

Yeah, I would think twice about taking any long drives with us!

Visit Mama Kat’s Losin It to write a prompt of your own.

I had a fantastic Mother’s Day with my family!  First I had this waiting for me at the kitchen table:

My husband knows that he can’t go wrong with the little blue box!  There was a peace sign necklace inside.  I wonder where he got the idea that I like peace signs…..

After a long walk with the dog, we went to a Mother’s Day Brunch at the brand new Loews Hotel in Midtown Atlanta.   The lobby was very nice, decorated in a modern, but comfortable way.  There were backgammon sets on the coffee tables, inviting guests to stay a while and have a drink from the lobby bar.

Restaurant eleven, where we had brunch, is located off the lobby and decorated in the same modern style as the lobby. We chose to sit outside on the balcony, which was pleasant, albeit with a pedestrian view.  Literally–we were practically on the sidewalk.

As with any buffet, my kids and I checked out the dessert station first and we were not disappointed.

In addition to the cakes and pies, there were small pots of creme brulee, custards and pudding.   The build-your-own-crepe station was divine.

The desserts were impressive indeed.   My husband also enjoyed the omelet station and my daughter loved the bread (as usual…she has never met a carb that she didn’t like).

The rest of the food was just okay.  The menu was a strange hybrid of traditional buffet offerings such as a bread station, salads and made-to-order omelets and also “small plates” ordered from a menu.  The small plates were included in the brunch price and could be ordered as much and often as we liked.  We ordered one of everything on the menu and except for the scallops, we didn’t order a second round.  The scallops were moist and tasty, but everything else was bland and uninteresting.

Here’s a gripe about some of Atlanta’s “upscale” restaurants: they don’t serve sweet tea.  If you have ever traveled to the south, you know that it is a staple item in the southern diet.   And with the exception of a few who manage to pull it off by serving tea so good that it doesn’t need sweetening (Watershed, Cafe Bistro at Nordstrom), there ought to be a law.   Our experience at Loews was made even more bitter–pun intended–by the fact that our waiter didn’t tell us the tea was unsweet.   There was no amount of sugar that could cut that bitter taste.  So we ordered lemonade.   It was even worse than the tea and clearly made from a powder.

Listen up Atlanta:  If your chef is an international food rock star, if your food has been listed on the most-try-before-you-die list of culinary delights, if your restaurant decor is photographed in every magazine in every major city in the world–get over yourself and cater to the regional tastes of your patrons.  Serve sweet tea, damn it!

Rant over.  Carry on…..

Despite the mediocre menu, I enjoyed the Loews Mother’s Day brunch.  The waiter was attentive and the desserts were delicious.   And any place with a candy station is alright by me.  We got a to-go box and filled it with Jelly Bellys and gummy candy to munch on the rest of the day.

Too bad we forgot to bring our box of candy into the movie theater.  After brunch we saw the movie Babies, a documentary that follows four different babies during their first year of life.  The babies are from California, Japan, Namibia and Mongolia.  Two babies live in a city and two babies live in rural areas.  Two babies have older siblings and two babies are only children.  And there are many other differences as well.

It was very interesting to watch how the dynamics of family structure, environment, economics, parental education, community, culture and parental involvement factored into how the babies were raised and when they reached their developmental milestones.    The audience’s observations and consequent conclusions are going to obviously be made from our own cultural biases, but as least for my family, our thoughts were not predictable.   There was no judgement about this baby who lived in a hut, versus that baby who lived in a fancy high-rise.   Or that baby who had medical care or this baby who didn’t.  That could be the documentary format, because our emotions weren’t skewed, but I think it more because of the subjects–the babies.   In as many ways as they were different, the babies were also so very much the same.  No matter where they lived or how they were cared for, they were all clearly loved.   They were all curious, full of wonder and happy.  And cute–OH MY GOSH WERE THEY CUTE!

(*All of the mothers nurse their babies in the movie and are topless quite often, so if your kids think that babies only drink milk from a bottle, you might want to have that discussion before you see the movie.)

It was the perfect movie for Mother’s Day, but it is great movie to see anytime as a family.  My 15 year old son loved it as much as his 8 year sister.   We all laughed and “aaaaw-ed” though out the whole movie.  Who doesn’t love babies?  I know I love mine!

I’ve done some gross things in my day.   Being a parent, it comes with the territory.  I’ve cleaned up my share of explosive diarrhea.  One time my son vomited a whole meal’s worth of chili.  From the top of a bunk bed.   It took me 2 days to get chili out of the carpet, off the walls and in the cracks and crevices of the bed.  Fun times.

But nothing–NOTHING–compared to a recent experience that I had with my dog.

I was just getting out of the shower when I heard my husband yelling, “Sherrelle, come quick!”   Thinking something was wrong with one of the kids, I ran downstairs in a towel where I was further summoned outside.  Throwing on a coat and my slippers I go out into the winter morning to see my son standing on the sidewalk holding our puppy, Chili Dawg.  And in his mouth is a dead squirrel.

Let’s stop for a minute and rewind.  Did you notice that my husband called me outside?  To take a dead squirrel out of my dog’s mouth while he watched from the porch?   And this is not the first time that I was asked to handle a dead squirrel.  When my dad removed a dead squirrel from our attic he handed it down to me in a trash bag, because he knows that my husband (who was standing right there) wasn’t going anywhere near it.

I’m not squeamish, but even I have my limits.  A dead squirrel in a trash bag is not the same as one hanging out of my dog’s mouth.  Oh, let me clarify: this wasn’t a dead squirrel (like from the attic); my dog had picked up squirrel road kill on his walk.   It was about 3/4 of a squirrel–minus the head–with blood and guts spilling out.  Yeah.

I actually tried to find photo online to accompany this story and there were many to choose from.  For some disturbing reason people take photos of squirrel road kill.   But I couldn’t bring myself to use a photo…my stomach turned just looking at the Google images.  I don’t believe that I will ever look at a squirrel the same again.

As disgusting as it was–AND IT WAS DISGUSTING–what choice did I have?  My kids couldn’t do it and my husband wasn’t going to do it.  My dog’s health depended upon me removing the squirrel from his mouth.  Which was not going to be easy, I could tell.  He had a death-grip on that squirrel and no amount of cajoling or bribing him with treats was working, so I put on rubber gloves and pried his mouth open.  To do this I was very close to the dead squirrel and the smell and site of squirrel guts was over-whelming.  I dry-heaved several times in the process, but finally pried the squirrel out of Chili Dawg’s mouth and threw it on the ground.   I disposed of most of the squirrel pieces before one final heave told me that I had reached my limit.  My husband (watching from the porch) saw that I could go no further and finished picking up the last bit of squirrel guts from the sidewalk.    I spent the next half hour sitting on the porch washing Chili Dawg’s face and brushing his teeth.

Still naked under my coat.

And that was the most disgusting thing that I’ve ever done.

I have the flu.

That sucks.

At least it’s not H1N1.

That’s a good thing.

Between winter break, my kids sick and now my flu, I’ve been in the house for 4 weeks.

That sucks.

But I don’t have to be anywhere else.

That’s a good thing.

I did have big plans to start a new exercise program and now I can’t.

That sucks.

Well, at least I really don’t feel like eating bad food.

That’s a good thing.

My husband has been out of town all week while I’m sick.

That sucks.

But he is working.

That’s a good thing.

Because my car is leaking coolant and needs to go in the shop.

That sucks.

So I am driving my husband’s car, since he’s out of town.

That’s a good thing.

Except his car is messy and I don’t know how to turn on the windshield wipers.

That sucks.

At least it hasn’t rained.

That’s a good thing.

But it did snow and got really icy and cold here in Atlanta.

That sucks.

However it looks like it’s warming up and the ice is melting.

That’s a good thing.

But I have the flu and I’m inside all day anyway.

That sucks. Being sick sucks.

Hey, I’m alive.

That’s a good thing.

I know it’s already the second week in January, but my kids were sick last week and out of school, so I’m only finally getting around to acknowledging the new year. So, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Have you made any New Year’s Resolutions? I haven’t and I don’t plan to, but I do like to use this time of year to reflect upon last year.  Thank God for my blog because I wouldn’t remember anything otherwise.

FUNKIDIVAGIRL HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2009:

I would say one of the biggest things that our family did in 2009 was get Chili Dawg in May, back when he was a tiny puppy. Since then he has brought so much joy (and chaos, to be truthful) into our lives. We love him to pieces.

As a family we took a couple of memorable vacations in 2009 to Disney World and Jane Fonda’s Forked Lightning Ranch in New Mexico.  Both trips were crazy fun.  I also managed a weekend get-away alone to Key Biscayne, something that I hope to do more of.

My family became food critics, by our own entitlement, and had tons of fun picking the best cupcakes in Atlanta (although, I don’t think I have eaten a cupcake since; I ate enough then for a lifetime).   My son even got local recognition as a real food critic when he ended up on the cover of Atlanta INtown.

My husband started his own social media marketing company, Everywhere.  It’s doing very well, but as everyone knows who has their own company, the hours are brutal.   2009 was a struggle in work/life balance in my house and I blogged about it; I hope that 2010 will be much better and we can find more quality time as a couple and family.

In October I attended my first blogger conference, Blogalicious, and I enjoyed it very much.  You have to understand that this is totally out of my comfort zone–networking is not my thing–so I am very proud of myself.

Not only did I get personal satisfaction out of attending Blogalicious, but contacts made there led to an invitation for me to go to Disney World for a media event.  This was probably the most exciting thing to happen to me professionally in 2009 as I felt that it validated my role as a blogger and social media influence.  And I had a ball and made new friends.  I hope that 2010 brings more opportunities like that.

Most of all in 2009 I have enjoyed connecting with you, dear readers.  From sharing Things I Like to exploring Deep Stuff, I love writing.  Thanks for reading Funkidivagirl.com and helping me to build an online community.  I hope that you stick around in 2010 and beyond; I promise that it will be a funki good time.