Monday Morning Musings - Excuse Me But Your Buh'uns Undone

My husband is from Missouri. I hail from the great state of Texas. My children? My children are Utahns. I'm OK with that for the most part. I'm half Utahn myself since I have lived here so long. (I hope my Texas kin don't hear me say the likes of that, they'll freak out!)(I can just hear my sister Farrah saying, "Yeah. It's true.") There are certain things my kids do, being Utahns, that I just have to let 'em do. I mean, they're from Utah, and that is my own doing. For instance, they freak out if there isn't fry sauce for their fries. But there is one thing that neither Steve or I can allow. At all. It is like swearing at our house. The way they say mouh'unh (mountain) or buh'un (button) . I swear. I cannot. Let. That. Be. Emily has learned how much this annoys the heck outta me (Did you hear that? I said heck. I told you I was 1/2 Utahn.) And since she makes a habit of pushing my buh'uns (buttons) she takes great joy in mispronouncing these words on a regular basis. Repeatedly. For my benefit.

So apparently the mean girl thing starts early these days. There is this girl at preschool who is not nice to my sweet little Addy girl. She is always telling her she doesn't like her hair because she never has anything in it. She is always telling Addy to wear bows or flowers or other foofy things in her hair. Addy and I have had some long talks about how cute her hair is without anything in it and who cares what that girl at school thinks, if she (Addy) likes her hair the way it is, that is all that matters. I even went in and talked to her teacher who in turn talked to the girl about being nice. I thought we had moved past it. But the other day Addy was putting a flower headband in Aubrey's hair and she said, "Here Aubrey, wear this in your hair and all the girls at school will like you." OK. That broke my heart into about a billion little pieces. My four year old should not have to worry about girls liking her or not liking her because she does or does not wear her hair a certain way. It breaks my heart again just typing this. My poor girls are stuck with a very non-foofy mom.

Aubrey came up to me the other day and asked, "Mom, what do boys give you when they like you?" I asked her if a boy gave her something. She said there is this boy who took some string or ribbon he found and tied it into a bow and gave it to her. Then she said that she was sitting at her desk reading and he came up and sat next to her and put his arm around the back of her chair and asked her what she was reading and then he sat there like that "reading" along with her. I added the quotes myself. I might have to pay a visit to Aubrey's class and check out this fresh little boy.

Addy and I were driving Zac to an orthodontist appointment and it was lunch time so Zac and Addy were eating lunch in the car. Z looked back at Addy and said, "OH GROSS! Her water bottle is full of floating food!" And Addy held it up, shook it and in delight exclaimed, "IT'S A SNOW GLOBE!"

You know how I said before that my phone was on the fritz? Well it is fritzing out big time now. I have got to get a new one. I just feel it is so ridiculous that I have to rely so heavily on something like a cell phone. So I am punishing myself by not going out and getting a new one. Well, that and the fact that I don't have a ridiculous amount of dough to hand over in return for a new phone. Thankfully Emily taught me how to use the voice command button on the side of the phone. That button, or as Emily says, "That Buh'un. Buh'un. Buh'un. BUH'UN!" Until I smack her to get her to stop. That button that always annoyed the heck (← Utah) outta me because I was always accidentally pushing it, has come in very handy since she taught me how to use it last night. I can actually call people now! I just can't get text messages and people keep sending them to me so if you really want to talk to me you are gonna have to do it the old fashioned way. And in the mean time I will keep having conversations with my phone like this:

Me: Call Steve.

Phone: Did you say call Tina?

Me: No

Phone: Did you say call Chase?

Me: No

Phone:Did you say call Kids?

Me: No

Phone: Did you say call Camille?

Me: NO!

Phone: Sorry, command not recognized.

Since I can't see my screen, I can't set my alarms (which I was magically able to turn off last week during Spring Break). So you know what I had to do the other night? Set an old fashioned alarm clock. I couldn't even remember how. I swear this is the image that popped into my head when I was trying to figure it out: A monkey holding the alarm clock and turning it around in his ape hands then hitting it while making monkey sounds. I finally was able to set something that I thought might be, but wasn't quite sure if it actually was the alarm or not. And guess what? It was the alarm. And guess what else? It about gave Steve and me a heart attack when it went off the next morning. How did people used to wake up to that and remain sane? I think those old alarm clocks with their heart attack inducing blaring screeching loudness might have really done some damage to people and that is why society is so screwed up today. I miss my peaceful little piano fluttering melody on my phone that used to wake me up.

I didn't completely mind being woken up that morning, as horrible as the wake up call was. Because I was having a horrible dream. I dreamt that Emily's friend who just moved had both her parents die on the same day. Her dad was in a plane crash and then her friend and her siblings couldn't find her mom so they called me to come over and help them find her. When I got there there was blood everywhere and the house was all torn up. I told the kids that their mom was dead and I was pointing out everything to them like I was some kind of detective. I was like, "Well, you can see there was a struggle here, and then because of the trail of the blood leading to here you can see she tried to get away." It was awful and as I was detailing the whole crime scene to them, I looked out the window to see my mom's house with a bunch of people walking out the door to go to my dad's funeral. I told the kids it was time for me to leave because I had to go to the funeral. I went and was sitting in the church with this whole funeral thing dragging on when the alarm went off. So you see why even though it was an unpleasant way to wake up, it was better than still being asleep at that moment.