My Go Red, Dress collage

Spring Break...

Of course my kids complained all week about how boring Spring Break was and how so and so was in Hawaii, and so and so was in California. Well hey kids, we did fun stuff too, HELLO. Budget conscious much,children? Mommy needs a new job. But aren't you happy I am home for you?
Older child: "No, I want you back to work so we are not poor, I can dance and I want another pair of vans" Younger child, he won't fail me" "Yeah mom, I want some more ds games, so maybe you should get a new job" Nice, I have made such an impression on my children, so I was going to give them some fun things to talk about for their Spring Break. See "this is how we roll" for our day in Seattle. For gosh sakes we broke up a drug deal? Hmm, did the Smiths do that in Maui?
Then we went swimming with the Spencers at the Gym Pool. I sat and read a book and pretended I had a fruity drink. See kids just like the pool in Vegas.
Then we had movie day at the nice theater, Lincoln and Saw "Hop". As an easter themed movie I brought all the kids goodie bags full of easter candy heaven. When Hayley and I walked in and I saw Karen waving, I waved back and said loudly for all to hear "We are here now the movie can start" My daughter actually kicked me. Oh bring it on. So when a hip dance song came on, Karen and I were dancing erratically with lots of arms in our seats while all the girls tried to pretend not to know us. But they would not go that far since I had the candy. But about halfway into that movie we had to find things to entertain ourselves. Cause clearly we were not getting that 90 minutes of our lives back. I am so having tshirts made for me and Karen that say "embarrassing my children: Just another service I provide" Plus I was giddy for it to be done since I was going to be dropping Hayley with Scott and heading to Hood Canal for my spring break of solitude, books, some collage crafts and Glee marathon.
I was disappointed in most of the Second Season Glee episodes. The Jumping the Shark phrase came to mind. But I did get to collage which is me making use of all the catalogs I get that my spouse bitches about. I rip them up, glue them in a design and paint modge podge on them. I love it! It is my version of knitting. Photo attached is of the Go Red logo. I made this one to inspire me to interview well for that job! Cross your fingers for me!

Need to start moving again....

So my exercise train has slowed down. I am getting in a few classes of bodypump and shbam a week. But it is not enough. The fatigue and the stress of waiting to hear if I can get a job at my dream location is weighing on me. But I am glad that Kristen got me to go Shbam tonight. I almost didn't due to a bad ride with the red curry train at lunch with Tamese. But Kristen and I were there.
It was a large and ecletic group of "flygirl wannabes". Women of all sizes, ages and dancing ability! The thing I noticed today, from my position with K in the back row, besides the flashing butt cracks on those that need to go up a size in their work out pants, was that it seems that there were an abnormal number of shoulder blade tattoos going on. Is this the new trend? Seemed it was the tramp stamp or the lower back butt crack ones for a while. Are those out of vogue now? Age didn't seem to be an issue on the ones I saw today. With my high school drill team training I can follow along pretty accurately and my arms are sharp. Plus if there is any marching in a routine I am all over that.
But I look around and just am amazed at the amount of people in the room that can not even hear the beat or coordinate their left from their right. It does not seem to be an age affliction. Some of the worst ones are the young sorority girl types. Maybe they are too hung over, who knows. But I am telling you it is so good for my ego, Kristen and I actually look decent. We stay on track and we are moving and sweating that is all we can ask for. And when we have to do the "shake em" moves, you know what "em" is. Us chesty, breast fed more than one child, women, we can shake it for sure. We might give ourselves whiplash but we go all out. Today we decided before next week we need to find out what bra Karen uses cause she is well endowed and those babies are so well strapped down they don't move.
The instructor Jen is our favorite. She is fun, she is enthusiastic and she makes me want to perform for her. Except today I was still recovering from my tummy issues so I spent more time being distracted by the other dancers. I was snarky mom tonight. Jen kept catching me smiling and laughing and was like "yes that is what I want to see, smiles and enjoyment of the movement" Uh, no, Jen, sorry I was laughing at that chick in the front that is acting like the white half sister of Beyonce that they keep hidden in the basement. Gasp! Bad DAWN, I know! Sorry.
We ended the class with a Flashdance song, shoot me now, was what I was thinking. And I do not do a conga line ever, so Jen next time you try that fun trick with 40 sweaty people leave me out of it or it's gonna get ugly. At least I like having Kristen there, I know if I pass out she is strong enough to take control and know what to do. Plus she would have my back in an anti-conga line battle.
Okay, I will admit it, it is time to go back to Hot Yoga. It will be like starting over so I better review the start of this blog and "what I learned about hot yoga" before I go again. My hip is not healing with the rest and ice and etc, so I might as well go back to what seem to be working. At least it was so difficult and made me so delusional that I won't notice I am still fat.

Play Ball!

It is that time of year, Baseball Season has started. It is the time of year when my husband gets sad about our daughter. She still chooses to compete in Dance and not Softball/Baseball. Poor guy, he had such high hopes, she played boys baseball for a few years until dance took over. She is good with no practice. I think he imagines a UW scholarship down the road and the College world series. But no it is not to be at this point. He has to settle for our 8 soon to be 9 year old son playing AA coach pitch for another year.
Here is Henry the first practice "Baseball? I didn't sign up for Baseball, who said I wanted to do that, I want to play Basketball"
Me "Henry you play every year, Daddy and I really like watching you."
Henry " I want to play basketball"
Me "that season just ended, you will play again when it starts back up, now you play baseball"
Henry "I am not playing baseball"
Me "yes you are"
Henry "no I am not, you can wear my cup and play"
Me "very funny young man" (of course I am thinking mommy's balls are too big for that cup), "but we are going to practice at 4:30"
We got to practice and he had a great time with his new team. The deciding factor seem to be that his team is the "Mariners" this year. Scott is only hoping that he pays attention this year, doesn't pick grass in outfield or get beaned at first base cause he is chatting up the runner on base.
So I went shopping at Sport Authority to get him new gray baseball pants since last years are white and look like knickers and he could be waiting for a flood. Also, he needs a new cup since the puppy chewed up the one from last year. They are required to wear them which I never understood because really what's to protect at this age. But then I saw a kid take a ball off the cup and that sucker ricochet pretty hard. So there I am at Sports Authority looking like a lurker or perv. I was holding up pants and seeing if there were any kids in the store about his size to see if I was getting the right size. Then I found the hidden rack of cupville. Holy Crap, this is what Dad's are for damnit. There is an entire wall of these things. Come on I don't even know which way is up on the thing. Plus they are different colors and have gel sides in some of them, boxers, briefs, wth is a slider short. This should have been a Dad job and I immediately decided that their Dad would be the one to go buy Hayley her first box of tampons when needed.
So I fingered the many packages and was lurking about when a handsome man about my age walked by. I startled him by accosting him. I nudged him towards what I am now calling the wall of doom.
I said "Please help me out here since you have the parts and I don't, but which size would I buy for my 8 year old"
Him "Well my 8 year old is big so I would get this one" (bright blue) flustered he says "I mean he is a big kid."
I say before I can help myself "Isn't that what all the Dad's say?" "Okay, mine is a tall skinny thing of about 55 pounds and I don't want to question his or my spouses manhood by buying the one for 5-6 year olds called PeeWee cup; so do you think I could get away with the neon green one for 8-9 year olds? Can you pad them like a training bra to make it more comfortable? Do you go by like crotch/hip size or the volume of the junk you put in the cup?"
At this point he was slowly edging away from me...looking for a sales person to save him from the crazy lady.
"Thanks for your help I think I will go with the green one, my son likes green"
He quickly switched aisles. I can't wait to see if he is a dad on our team or if we play his team.

Okay, Tuesday was so exciting and drama filled I had to break it into two posts. I have made entries about "you know you are fat when..." This week the opposite has happen. Twice in one day I was told I needed to be fatter. First, by a friend that said I had the perfect personality for The Biggest Loser show if only I was a little fatter. Huh? Is that good? What personality is that? One that would make for good TV? Isn't that the annoying, outgoing, loud, low filter, won't take any crap, like to scheme person.....oh I get it. Okay. Kind of like my friend Tamese that won't let it go until I officially try out for Big Brother. The thing about that one is it seems that a lotta naughty stuff goes on there. I may be snarky and talk a big game but getting caught on camera doing the nasty of some sort with a 25 year old, yikes, so not good for the career or marriage. I would be the one walking into the room yelling "really people this is not an audition for porn, you do know this is called "Big Brother" which means there are cameras every where. Do you really think America is so dumb that making a tent on the bed with the blankets and when it looks like the blankets have what looks like a one sided teeter totter under it, do you really think they don't know someone is getting shagged?" And that we are all yelling "sluts" at our tvs. So no I won't try out for that one. The biggest loser maybe, except I need to be a little more obese and I am not sure I could tolerate Jillian for five minutes. Now Survivor I could do if it was not for the not eating, the bugs and the no showers. So back to the second "compliment" that I am not fat enough. I attended a seminar on weight loss surgery Tuesday night. First of all I went to the wrong Swedish in Issaquah, where I found a gal my age and her mother and an aunt also looking for the meeting. Once we figured out it was across town I told them I would lead them over there. Except they moved kind of slow and that annoyed me. I don't think they were that excited about the meeting. Finally got there and it was similar to my cardiology appointments. At my pacemaker checks I always feel so youthful in the waiting room because I am usually sitting there with 4 or 5 folks over the age of 70. And if I bring my cute little 8 year old son, watch out, I am like a rock start amongst those folks! So at this meeting of about 10 of us I was by far the thinnest. I was super nervous to walk in late when I saw the attendees thru the window, I thought they might stone me out of the room or eat me. The doctor was dynamic and certainly talented, well respected and knowledgeable. He was detailed and I liked the way he ran his program. It made sense and seemed the prudent way to assure the best results for his patients. Clearly I was only interested in the least evasive procedure, the lap band. I have been trying and trying to lose the weight I gained this past two years. It is now a medical emergency, I have to get my blood pressure down and other health annoyance would be cured by dropping the pounds. The lap band unlike gastric bypass does not do the work for you, you still have to diet heavily and exercise but it gives you that extra tool to control your hunger. Plus I learned at a certain bmi with my health history I now qualify for the insurance to pay for it. About half way thru the meeting there were some side conversations going on and I was talking to the man next to me in the back row. He looked exactly like Santa, beard and all. He actually seemed to have been researching this and brought up some points I had not thought of and I was able to ask the doctor what I thought were important questions. One of the pack I led over keeps turning to me and she says "can you please stop talking and asking questions because you shouldn't even be here!" I looked at Santa, shrugged, said "no I won't stop talking", in my head I said "bitch, really, you must be hungry to be that cranky, and hey another person thinks I am not fat enough, yeah me!" After the formal meeting I approached the doctor who was talking to Ms. Old Cranky Pant's Daughter. He made a comment to her about that she seemed a good candidate for the surgery and would have good results. Hee hee, he had missed the part during the meeting where she shared that she was currently banded, as in she had already had the surgery elsewhere. She was there to support her mom. Funny, the doctor is saying she would totally be a good candidate and she had already had the surgery a year ago...oops. When I talked to him it became clear that my BMI has to be at least 35 for the insurance to pay and if it is under 40 you have to have certain medical conditions. I have those conditions covered. It also means you jump thru a bunch of hoops for 3 months with monitored nutrition counseling, exercise training, etc. Hello if I had those tools I would probably lose enough to put me below 30 bmi then I wouldn't qualify but I would still be above my optimum while fighting not to gain back with all the medicines I deal with etc. So sounds like a fiscious cycle to me. Plus if I put what height my license says and my weight I fall closer to 32. If shrink a little since I have always been on the shorter side of 5'8 and wear heavy clothes, shoes and maybe hold my purse (he also suggested not peeing that day), when I weighed in we can maybe get me to like a 34.7. Which means I would not be able to lose a single pound during that three month wait period which seems so against everything I am trying to do. So yet again too fat and not fat enough. I can't win! The meeting was fascinating and educational. I of course could not help looking around at these severely obese people and feeling thankful I was not there (yet). But I was really tired by 9:00 from my earlier Cagney and Lacey reenactment with Wendy and I was having a hard time keeping my snarky self in check. Cause when the 300 pound plus woman started asking what specifically the rules were for after surgery I had a really hard time not yelling "uh duh, less food, more exercise. or you will puke" Hello, did you not take an anatomy class in High School, look at the picture if your bowel is now in smaller three pieces and the food can only go to track one and intestine A is now only so short, gee what do you think will happen if you over eat? Then when we were told that we would be on a 3 week liquid only diet after the surgery (that pretty much rules me out cause if I didn't get to chew something for 3 weeks I am pretty certain I will commit a crime of some kind). One lady asked if alcohol, red wine of course, would count towards the liquid diet. Again, where did that snort laugh come from in the back row? Santa? nope, that was me.

That's How We Roll...

So due to the fact that I am still not working, no big vacation for us this Spring Break. I decided to do some fun local activities with the kids that we never do and invite other friends that are also home this week. So today we decided to play Seattle tourist with my friend, Wendy, my kids and three of her kids. Wendy and I could host our own reality tv series I am certain of it. Today was an episode of "Eastside Housewives visit the Inner City". I stayed up too late last night reading a trashy novel so the kids were having to pull me out of bed this morning. I decided to skip the shower and primping because I figured who was going to see me at the Seattle Aquarium? Fish? Plus, being any where around the waterfront or Pike Place Market always makes me feel like I need a shower. Snob? Maybe? But hey there is a reason I choose to live on the EAST side of the Lakes. So with sweats, puffy vest, baseball hat and my camera we headed out around 10. A stop at Starbucks so Mommy could caffeinate herself was required. Then we picked up Wendy and her three girls. So with a van full of 6 females and Henry, we headed into the Big City. Max and Ruby played on the dvd. We parked under the viaduct across from the waterfront Aquarium, near the big antique store. We were feeling pretty smug about ourselves. Here it was, Spring Break and we were educating our children on Marine Biology. So what if we were not in Palm Springs or Hawaii. Our kids were learning about Salmon and touching sea creatures. We learned that training Sea Otters was called "Husbandry". (the scientific caring, breeding of...) I thought this was appropriate, if only I could use a little buoy on the end of a stick to train my husband to cooperate, life would be excellent. After the Aquarium we went down to pier 54 for another Seattle institution, Ivars. We gorged ourselves on chowder, fish and chips and fried clams. Fed the Seagulls and moved on to stop in the shops along the way back to the car. Wendy had given us all gum and this gave us the idea to find the gum wall in Post Alley. this is an alley where on one side of a building people have placed their chewed up gum. Pretty disgusting but quite a piece of Art in my opinion. I was concerned about our parking time because we had a little issue with the meter, I had gone back at 12:30 before lunch to feed it some more money because it ran out at 1:11, when I printed my ticket for an extra 40 minutes it was for 40 minutes from when I purchased it which only gave us to 1:13, so I wasn't sure if a ticket would be in my future or not. So I hustled ahead of Wendy and the kids. As I approached the minivan I saw a group of about 4 men and one woman hanging out in the empty spot on the driver's side of my van. They were looking in the windows. My first thought was no way can I possibly get my car broken into twice in one year. Then a tiny white civic pulled in and I thought well maybe they were saving the spot for their friend to park. At this point I got to the car and looked in the open passenger's window, three of the standing folks were hovered around the driver's side window. I immediately saw the driver taking vials out of his sweatpant pockets.

I asked them "Hey could you please wait to do your drug deal please until I get all my kids in the car and leave" Driver/dealer quickly shoved the goods back in his pocket. The clients looked over the roof of the tiny car and said "sure no problem, how are you? what did you do today?" Me "went to the aquarium" Them "great, that's great, what a wonderful place, you can learn so much". Like I give a flying you know what if a drug buyer thought of my outing was a good idea. At this point Wendy was approaching with the kids and I wanted her to know something was going on. I loudly said, "Wendy, get the kids in the car quickly, they are going to wait for us to leave to finish their deal" Wendy just gave me a funny look and started sticking kids in the van. The female in the group yelled at me "Hey, what's up with that, we are being polite and nice to you and you have to go shouting out our business" Me, glaring at the ho, "really, cause I don't see a cop any where near here, so you shouldn't be worrying about me, cause if there was I would have been a lot louder" At this point the driver of the vehicle starts to edge backwards out of the spot, we almost have everyone in the car, except my daughter who is just standing behind the car watching. One of the dudes says "we should go before she gets his license plate. Hey great idea, I start following the car out and look around one of them and start repeating the plate out loud while my daughter climbs in the van. I am holding my SLR Digital camera the entire time. At this point I hear the ho say "Let's beat her up" "bitch". One of the men, with a menacing look and a fresh black eye himself starts for me. Since all the kids were in the car at this point, I start taking photos of the car and the people. I snapped three photos and tossed the camera to Wendy as I shut the doors to the back. I figured if I was going to get my ass kicked there would be photographic evidence of the culprits. I hopped in the van, locked the door and began backing out as I tried to get my phone out to dial the police. Wendy and the girls are trying to get seat belts buckled as I backed out and went the wrong way on the one way street under the viaduct, cause Wendy pointed out we needed to get the hell out of there before they got my license plate. We explained to the 911 operator what happened. As I was giving them detailed descriptions of people and the vehicle, Henry was throwing out details that I had missed, like "mom she had a red flower in her hair". I thought dang, good job, Henry! Way to be alert.

We found a place to park and wait for the police to come follow up with us. As we are sitting there waiting I am watching all mirrors ready to throw that minivan in gear and jump any curbs I needed to if a white crx with yellow duct tape over one of the tail lights was heading our way. At this point, we hear little Grace in the backseat say, "uh oh, I have a ring on my finger" She proceeds to say she wore a plastic ring out of the pirate store without paying for it.

Now the conversation goes like this:

me "shoot I saw that she had that on when they were playing in the treasure chest and I meant to remind her to take it off"

Grace "I forgot"

Henry "Quick, Grace, Give it to me before the cops get here, I will hide it for you, remember it was an accident"

Grace "yeah it was accidentally"

Wendy "did you steal it? did you know you had it on when you left the store?"

Grace "yes, accidentally"

Wendy "you stole it Grace, you are in trouble"

Henry "the cops are coming, lets hide it"

the other girls "is Grace in trouble? cause the police are coming?"

Me "Oh shoot, the store is a couple blocks away, lets just go pay the 25 cents"

Wendy "not a good lesson"

Carly "I want to go on more field trips with Momma Dawn"

I decided to move the car under the viaduct where there was more pedestrian traffic. The older girls took Grace to the pirate store to return the stolen property while we waited for the police to show up. A parking police officer came by and I asked him if he knew anything. He said "yeah I heard that call about the mom and the drugbust" "did you head down there?" "no I am not getting involved in drug deals, I am giving parking tickets" Our finest at work.

After an hour I tell the kids we have done our civic duty and if the police need my photos they will contact me.

For the previous 15 minutes Wendy is reading the facebook posts on our adventure:

Dawn - Waiting for the police after Wendy and I broke up a drug deal under a viaduct. Hey kids what a field trip!

Lori - To think I almost changed my plans today so I could join you guys!

Shauna - What are you two...crazy? (probably)

Scott - Cougar basketball players? (that's funny)

Wendy - Dawn's crazy! I was just trying to protect the kids and get them in the car and get the doors locked!! (ha, I didn't get the bat out of the trunk, I was trying to protect the kids too, but really, after the year I have had I dare someone to mess with me)

Shauna -Plus, what kind of Seattle field trip includes time under the viaduct? :-)

Karen - SO glad I didn't get my act together this a.m. to try and catch up with you guys!!! Wendy - Well first the Aquarium, Ivars, The Olde Curiosity Shoppe, then had to add gum to the Gum Wall in Post Alley. Finishing off the day with a real life drug deal!

Scott - Dawn, I'll be late tonight. I am going to stake out a meth lab in Maple Valley. (Very funny, yep, that is how us McCutcheons roll)

Wendy - For some reason the dumbasses chose to do their "deal" next to the minivan owned by an eastside photographing ptsa mom!

Wendy - The best part was that while we were waiting for the cops to take our statement Grace brought it to our attention that she accidentally stole a plastic .25 cent ring from the store and Henry is schooling her on how to hide it from the police and to say it was an accident!

Lori - I'll be your safe house if you want to come over (in case your home is being cased).

Dawn - Okay, I will get started on the blog update for today's adventure.

Judi - The two of you can always find trouble! Be safe

Lol, I have no idea what she is talking about

"Hot" (as in sweaty) Mommas after Sh'bam tonight