Three Apple Cores Down Under or The Great Toilet Adventure

Since the last blog post (Which, if you are paying attention was only TWO days ago. Yeah me.) several friends suggested I blog about apple cores and toilets. This may sound like a strange combination. It is.

But not for our house.

My ten-year-old loves apples. Not likes, or enjoys, or even is extremely fond of, but loves them. We can't keep enough of them in the house. He'll eat a ten pound bag in a day. We have to lock them up. Really.

The eating isn't the bad part. It's the disposing. You would think that any child who eats so many apples and is told so many times (at least ten a day) to throw his cores in the garbage, would have a thorough understanding of the concept. Not so. He has Fragile X Syndrome and certain things just don't stick. This is one of them. We find apple cores (and more things than you can imagine) scattered everywhere. Under beds. In drawers. Behind dressers. In closets.

And in toilets.

This wouldn't be so bad if he didn't flush them, but he gets some strange satisfaction out of seeing them swirl around and disappear down the hole. The only problem is everything, and I do mean everything, that follows doesn't go down the hole. Um yeah. Nasty.

We've become champion toilet removers. My hubby and I can empty, remove, de-clog, and replace a toilet in seven minutes flat. Most of the time. Not this time. It was bad. Soooo bad. Soooo clogged. Soooo foul. I hesitate to go on. I may be scarred for life.

We took the toilet off, turned it upside down, and stared at the mass of brown, reeking mess oozing from said hole. Someone needed to reach in and clean it out. You guessed it. Me. Up to my elbow.

I spent the next half hour scouring my arm. I don't know if an apple will EVER look appetizing again.

Shamed into posting, and the three reasons I stink at this.

Over the weekend I attended a get together with some writing buddies I met at the WIFYR Workshop last June. If you haven't heard about it check out the web-site. It is an amazing conference! http://www.foryoungreaders.com/

While hanging with my writing peeps the subject of blogs came up. More than once. And, needless to say, I was ashamed, horrified, and otherwise humbled by my meager blog. Now, you might have noticed that I don't post very often. There's a reason for this. Several actually. I'll list three.

1: I have no life. Plain and simple. I sit down and read other people's blogs (people with lives) and wonder, What do I have to say? What have I done that's blog worthy? Somehow changing the batch of laundry for the sixth time today, or sticking my hand down the toilet to retrieve three apple cores doesn't sound as exciting as anything anyone (and I do mean anyone) else has done. I have no glamour in my life. I do have dishes. (See, not glamorous. Even if you have a really good imagination.) I also have carpool, which could be glamorous if I drove a convertible, but I don't. I drive a MAV. Otherwise known as a Mother Assault Vehicle, or a van. Not exciting.

2: I'm neck deep in revisions on my novels. Yes I have a couple of them and they still count if they're not published, but not as much as if they were. And I have four kids who do strange things like shove apple cores down toilets and dirty an absurd amount of clothes and dishes leaving me no time to blog.

3: I don't have a Ham radio license.

Despite these three very good excuses. (Especially #3) I will here and now vow to blog at least once a week. And if that fails, there is always the once a month option.

Getting kicked out of D.I. on New Year's Eve

For New Year's Eve my mom, sister, and I went to the local D.I. to search for books. (For those of you who aren't from around here, it is a non-profit thrift store.) And, yes, I think the fact we went to a thrift store on New Year's Eve pretty much proves we don't have a party bone in our bodies. But, neither did the other 107 people that were there either. The place was hoppin.

We had only been there five minutes, when a deep masculine voice came over the loud speaker and informed us the store would be closing in ten minutes. It was 2:50 p.m.! Who knew places closed early on New Year's Eve? Obviously not me, or the other 107 people.

Five seconds after the announcement, they shut off the lights. Five seconds! What was I supposed to do? Stop in the middle of the shelf of used books I was salivating on and feel my way to the register? I still had ten minutes to find something to curl up with by the fire. (And I mean a book, not one of my 107 fellow shoppers.) So, I did what any sane, book loving person with ten more minutes on the clock would do. I planted my feet and hollered to the ceiling, "We don't need lights to shop!" and kept looking. So did my mother and sister. Although I must admit, they didn't yell anything at the invisible man in the ceiling. They are much more socially acceptable than I am. And ninety of the 107 people agreed with us. They stayed, too.

This didn't make the invisible man happy. He continued to announce that the store was closing. He even gave us directions to the registers. We ignored him.

Then, he sent his minions. Visible ones. They fanned out through the store, asking, ordering, begging us to go to the registers. One of them told us to leave because he had a life, too. I mean really. Did he think we had lives? We were refusing to leave a thrift store on New Year's Eve.

After a few more announcements, we graciously agreed to go, and followed the herd of shoppers to the registers where we stood in line for twenty minutes! I could have been drooling on books and annoying the invisible man. Well, there's always next year.