Meg Huxtable

This post is part of Writer's Workshop at Mama Kat's Losin' It!

Prompt: What celebrity Dad would you have picked for yourself as a child?

I would like to start this post by saying that my father is Carl Winslow.


He looks like him, he talks like him, he makes the same faces, and he's has the same mannerisms. Anyone who has met my father and then happens to be watching Family Matters feels the need to inform me that Carl is my dad, but on television. Only plausible difference between my father and Carl Winslow is the fact that my father isn't black. He is, however, Italian and very dark so it could be confusing.

But, let's face it...the last person in the world you want to be your dad growing up is not the person who is exactly like your dad (although, having the money from the show would have been favourable).

No, I wanted Heathcliff Huxtable.



He was funny (hilarious), and a great father, and a doctor, and just a fantastic human being.

I wanted nothing more but to be his kid. Meg Huxtable.

This could have been me:


Damn you, Raven. Damn you.

It's Just over that Mountain!

(part of Writer's Workshop at Mama Kat's Losin' It!)

For as long as I can remember, my family has gone camping and boating at one specific lake about 5 hours from our house. It wasn't just our family--it was us, my uncles, my aunts, my grandparents, and all my cousins. As kids, we just couldn't get enough of the water, and hated when we had to come in for the night.



On one particular trip, we were down at the lake for a longer period of time than we usually stayed, so the decision was made to take a day off of boating and just hang around the campground. As a 10 year old, this did not exactly thrill me. So, some time around that afternoon, my cousin and I (who was also 10) were complaining about being bored. Our uncle pointed to a mountain in the distance and said "well then go to the lake, it's just right on the other side of that mountain!"

And we were off.

Several hours and at least 5 different "mountains" later, we still hadn't reached the lake. I'm sure it didn't help that we were forced to take our 8 year old cousin with us in her flipflops, either, but we eventually gave up and turned around.

If anyone ever tells me "it's just right over that mountain!" again? I'm not falling for it.

Lesson learned.

Fee-hee-hee-heeeny!

This post is brought to you by Writer's Workshop at Mama Kat's Losin' It!

..well, and it's also brought to you by me, since I'm writing it. ;)

Prompt:
A list of 10 old TV shows you’d like to make a comeback.


1. Boy Meets World (REUNION please?!)

"What are you, new?!"

2. Friends!

"Crap Bag. No middle name. First name Crap, last name Bag."

3. Gilmore Girls

"I'm going to make out in the coat closet. Don't eat my chicken."
"That's going on your tombstone."

4. Will & Grace

"Knock knock, anybody homo?"

5. Reba

"I've got one word for you: letitgo!"

6. ER
I'll ignore the cast photo here, since there were like 8 billion people on this show. Oldschool ER though, not the last few years.

7. Dawson's Creek


8. According to Jim


9. What I Like About You


10. Still Standing

Dude, Just Close the Closet

Writer's Workshop!

Although I'm rather late on it this time around. But I'm avoiding grading super long character diaries (in retrospect this was a horrible assignment to give--I have to spend wayyy too much time grading them).

This week's topic: One pet peeve that shouldn’t drive you crazy, but does.

My pet peeve?

Open Closets.



They drive me insane.

I don't know why. I hate when the closet is open. It bothers me a lot. I mean...it has doors for a reason. You opened it, why can't you close it?

Closets always feel messier than the rest of the room to me. But, when it's closed, no one notices and everything looks clean and shiny.

This applies to every room in every type of building. If there's a closet, it should be closed. End of story.

I mean...doesn't this just look like crap?



It would look so much nicer if it were closed.

Dude, just close the closet.

Make it Melt

This post is part of Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop.

Prompt: The last time your heart melted.

Exactly 2 weeks ago, the midget and I both turned another year older. Brady turned 3, and I turned...well, another year older.




Now that she's three, she constantly says things to me that just make my heart smile. I save messages she, somehow, manages to leave on my cell phone because there is just nothing that's much more adorable.

But, the last time she really caused a full on heart-melting was about a year ago, after she had just turned 2 years old.



She had gotten up a little before me. I could hear her playing with her toys in the living room for probably about a half an hour before I joined her. I should say that this is not unusual...she gets up before me all the time.

But, on this day, I walked into the living room. She heard me come in, turned around, yelled my name and ran to me with her arms up. I should also say that this is quite normal, as well.



However, her royal cuteness wasn't done acknowledging me. She put her two tiny hands on each side of my face and exclaimed, "Mammay, I love you."

This is the first time she had said this without someone prompting her too. She then wrapped her arms around my neck tight and put her head on my shoulder. And my heart was lava.

I just love my midget.

What? No teacher? Normal.

This post is part of Mama Kat's writer workshop!

Prompt: Describe a moment when you saw someone hit their breaking point.

In my senior year of high school we had this English teacher. In all fairness, she was a good teacher and got is interested in things we weren't interested in before, and was a good confidant at times.

You know, times that she wasn't being completely insane.

I don't know what ever happened to this teacher. She quit after us and moved, then moved back, and no one has really talked to her since then. If one day she finds this and reads this then she'll just have to suck it up and come to terms with the fact that she's nuts, or at least was nuts at this point.

Anywho. To the breaking point.

In my senior year I didn't have a first period class and that was also her planning period. The next bell I had her. Our class was small, only 11 students, and at this point I was only on campus half the day and was teaching the other half of the day. But, a week or two before we had started a bookclub with this teacher during lunch--when I am usually gone. But, my schedule was flexible and I could change it if I needed to.

Right before my second bell class I was standing in the hallway outside her room with some friends. We had previously talked about a teacher meeting during lunch that day with 2 of the other teachers who were in the book club with us (shut it--I was a nerd and proud of it). This teacher came out of her room and this conversation ensued:

Her-"Are you going to be here for lunch today?"
Me-"I can be. Are we meeting?"
Her-"Well since the other teachers are in a meeting..."
Me-"Okay, then I won't. It doesn't matter, I can do whatever."

She then proceeded to stomp off, declare that she was not teaching the seniors anymore, and lock herself in her classroom.

Um....yea.

So we spent our class period in a big conference room with another teacher, and we're all sitting there just laughing because we all witness this psychotic outburst. The next day she "agreed" to teach us again, but it was obviously an unforgettable moment. Ehmm. This wasn't the only crazy moment of the year with this particular teacher. She occasionally left in the middle of the day because she felt like it, yelled at us for not knocking and then yelled at us FOR knocking, and occasionally went off on a random student just for fun. But this was, by far, the best.

I'm just saying...sometimes medication is good.

My Heaven

This post is part of Writer's Workshop over at Mama's Losin' it.

Prompt: Post a picture and a description that fits into this quote for you: “How far to heaven? Just open your eyes and look. You are in heaven” -Shankar

I always love B. Even when I hate him I love him. B just being B is amazing to me. I mean really, we should get married or something ;)

But, B around kids is the epitome of love for me.

He's always been great with Brady, but I had never seen him around little babies before. Brady was almost a year old when he started coming around. But, this weekend we had two week old RJ here with us too. Although B declined to hold him on the excuse that he didn't want to break him, he put his finger in RJs hand and played with him while he was on my lap, even sticking the pacifier back in his mouth if he dropped it. We had the TV on, but B spent 90% of the time watching RJ instead. I never thought he'd be so smiley around such a tiny baby.

I just love my hubby.

And I love this picture of him and Brady with all my heart:



That's my heaven.

I Wanna Be MADE.

This post is part of Writer's Workshop at Mama Kat's Losin' It!

When I saw this prompt this week, I knew I couldn't pass it up. I had an encounter with MADE. And I was not in high school. How, you ask?

Pfft.

Since I was little, all I wanted to do was gymnastics. My grandma taught me how to do a cartwheel when I was five and it was all downhill from there. My father always wanted a son sports star, but he was stuck with a girl so he pushed me into every sport imaginable. I played soccer, softball, basketball, volleyball, and random other things on occasion. I did dance once on my own accord, and quit after a few weeks--rhythm is something I don't have.



But damn did I have good balance.

We built our own house (literally...my dad, mom, uncles, grandpa built the house) in the mid-90's, and for a long time the basement was unfinished. It was just concrete with a few poles, and a washer and dryer. And a pile of nice, smooth, long, skinny pieces of wood.

Welcome to the birth of the homemade balance beam. It was amazing, and I can't tell you how many cartwheels I did on that ridiculously unstable board, and I (almost) always stayed on it. Balance beam was my event--I could out-trick any kid my age on that thing.

Except I never got to take gymnastics.

I did once, with girl scouts, a few years before that. It was a week-long "camp." But gymnastics was too expensive and too risky and too non-boyish, and how could I possibly have time to do that when I was playing 4 other sports?



But I watched the olympic gymnastics faithfully, and as long as I can remember Dominique Moceanu has been my sports hero. I just settled for the homemade balance beam in my basement, the backyard cartwheels, roundoffs, and back bends, and the front tucks on the trampoline.



So when MADE came on, I held onto my dream. I said "hey, if that tomboy can be made into a pageant queen, then I could certainly be made into a gymnast." So I watched, hoping some mind-reader would eventually show up at my door and tell me that I was about to be MADE into a gymnast.

I guess all the mind-readers were on vacation, because that never happened. But early on in college, MADE came up with a new website. I think it was iwannabemade.com. I got on it and played around for awhile, and then grew some balls and submitted my story about wanting to be made into a gymnast.

A few weeks later, I was seriously surprised to see an email in my inbox from MTV. No, not one of those automated "thank you for your story" emails, no. That would be lame and I would not tell you about it. No. This email said "We are very interested in your story. Please tell us this this and this and we will get back to you about filming. We'd like to film and air your MADE story in the 2007 season. Thanks, MTV."

Or something like that.

I was floored. I said, "they WHAAA?!" and then I never emailed them back. Because I was in college. And too cool for MTV MADE.

We won't talk about the cartwheel I may or may not have done in the middle of work the other day. No, we won't.