© 2010 – 2011, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

*Today I am participating in Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop by answering the prompt: 4.) Begin each line of your post with “have you ever”.

Have you ever…jumped out of bed and put on your exercise clothes only to get so distracted by the demands of the household that you realize 2 hours later that exercise is not going to happen today?

Have you ever…decided instead to go to the grocery store because there’s no milk and bread and Lord knows that even if you have a pantry full of food no one can exist without milk and bread?

Have you ever…grumbled that if your husband would have just picked up some milk and bread 2 days ago like you asked then you could be exercising instead of going to the grocery store?

Have you ever….noticed that your dog did get bit after all when the neighbor dog attacked him yesterday and that you can’t go to the grocery store, but instead now you must google “dog bites dog” to determine if the bite is worth a trip to the ER or can it wait until tomorrow when the vet is not closed for Memorial Day?

Have you ever….googled “dog bites dog” and got concerned and then called the ER for confirmation and they said, yes, bring him in right away?

Have you ever….arrived home from the pet ER shaken, but relieved that the bite wasn’t too serious and that you had a credit from another emergency and it didn’t cost the arm and leg that you were prepared to pay, so now you are leaving for the grocery store again, but check your email and see that your iPad is waiting for pick-up at the Apple Store?

Have you ever…rushed to the Apple Store with baby girl in tow to pick up your iPad, only to walk in with 10 other people who got the same email and must live the same distance from the mall as you because now you must wait for a very long time?

Have you ever…stood in line at Panera Bread downstairs from the Apple Store–iPad finally in hand–ordering lunch for you and Girly, planning to head straight to the grocery store as soon as you eat, when your cell phone rings and your son is ready to be picked up from orchestra rehearsal now, an hour early?

Have you ever…ordered your lunch to go instead, rushed to retrieve The Boy from rehearsal, drive past the grocery store, drop the kids off and finally, FINALLY make it to the grocery store?

Have you ever had a Memorial Day like that?  I hope that I never do again.

© 2010, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

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!

© 2010, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

My friend Renee likes to play this game, “tripping or not tripping;” she tells me what happened and asks if the offending party was out of line (tripping) or not.

So let’s play: Tripping or Not Tripping?

Picture this: I am at a school function chatting with my husband and two male parents/friends–let’s call them Tweedle Dee  and Tweedle Dum.

I say to my husband, “Can you give me a ride?  It’s too hot to walk back home.”

And Tweedle Dum says, “Oh don’t be a _____.”

(Think: a vulgar word that juvenile guys use for “wimp” that is also a name for a cat.)

Get it?

Now, I didn’t hear this.  But my husband (foolishly, in my opinion) said, “Did you hear what he called you?”  And repeated it.

Say what?

Tweedle Dum must have been loopy from the heat or something because

I. Don’t. Play. That.

But I was very close to other parents and children.  I couldn’t do what I wanted to do…..which was to read him up and down, inside and out.

And when I get going, there is no off button.  It would have been UGLY, right there in front of the whole school.

So, against my nature, I did nothing.

And I’m still mad.

My verdict: HE WAS TRIPPING.

So tell me what you think: Tripping or Not Tripping?  What would have you done in that situation?  Cuss him out or let it ride?

© 2010, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.

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.

© 2010, Funkidivagirl.com. All rights reserved. Republished only with permission.