Those Crazy Kids

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . September 25, 2010 . 2:44AM

It’s been a month since I’ve been back to school and the one thing I miss, more than most of the other fun summer things I’ve given up, is the biweekly ritual my friends and I have known as trivia night. Every other week we pick a night and we go to the local Mexican place where we have to get there 30 minutes early to even get a table for our group. This was not always the case, but some evil snitch told everyone else how cool trivia night was and now the whole town knows.

So, we make a deal that whoever can get there early shows up 30 minutes early to get us a table. I don’t know about the rest of the group, but I start to look forward to trivia day about two days early. It’s not the amazing Mexican cuisine, though the food is easily the best Mexican in town. It’s not the stellar service, because the waitstaff is highly overworked on those nights. It’s not the celebrity sightings, even though we’re certain we saw a country singer the last time we went because in Nashville we leave our celebrities alone.

The whole day of our trivia night feels special and around 4pm, the texts start flying. “Is it trivia night?” “You coming?” “We’re so in. See you there.” “Can you get the table?” “Yep, got it. I’ll be there early. How many?” “Are you bringing a guest?” “Cool beans. I’m so excited. We’re gonna WIN tonight!”

It’s everything that happens in a two hour time span that makes that time together special.

AJ is the runner. He immediately goes up and gets our tickets to put our team name on there. We always choose the same name and it’s one that sends me into giggles every time. Either April or Bryan has to be the team writer. I’m not sure how this happened beyond my utter lack of attention to the questions and their ability to write fast. We can count on certain people in certain categories and me for no categories.

And, up until the last time we went, we never got close to winning. Last time, we got third. It was a proud, proud day.

The one thing that we can guarantee is that there will be a lot of laughter. Many attempts will be made to screw up the other teams by saying the wrong answers loudly. AJ will say the right answer loudly several times until I threaten to take away whatever junk he’s gotten from the bubble machines by the door if he doesn’t knock it off. April, who is as mild-mannered as they come, will look around suspiciously at people who are using their cell-phones (against the rules!) and may even scare a couple of them into leaving with her glare.

But there will be lots and lots of laughter.

I miss it, terribly.

I can’t wait for winter break.

It’s time for Trivia Night.

I can’t get that song out of my head!

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . September 16, 2010 . 12:19AM

Yesterday, AJ and I were sitting on the couch and I heard him singing. He loves to sing, but rarely does it in front of people. I remember when he was in the womb and he’d bounce to certain songs when they’d come on the radio. He’d kill me if he knew I was telling you his favorite song was “Lucky” by Britney Spears. No joke. The kid would bounce like a fiend when it came on, as it was popular at the time, and you could see the outline of two little fists coming out of my stomach like little Alien movie wannabes. It was both frightening and exhilarating for me as a mother-to-be to recognize that my son had a personality even at that stage.

I’m really glad he has no idea where this blog is, nor does he read it, or he’d likely never speak to me again for telling you what I just told you.

Anyway, the boy loves music. He’ll sing in front of people when we play Rock Band but only because it’s “for the music.” I told you he has personality. When I tell people my kid is cool they don’t really believe me and they don’t really understand until they meet him and realize that he actually does seem to process things differently than other kids his age. There’s a 36-year-old hair band member in that 9-year-old body. At 3, his favorite song was by Bon Jovi.

I digress, I digress. I have no idea why anyone reads this blog because all I do is digress. I’ve turned into my 80-something grandmother.

So, AJ loves music. Yes, that was like 4 paragraphs ago. Get off my lawn. I heard him humming on the couch. Wait, that’s not true. It wasn’t just humming. It was full out song. “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she commmmmmmmmmmes, when she comes. She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.” I’m sure they learned the whole song. This was the part that was stuck in his head, though. For an hour I heard this until finally I looked at him, made sure he saw me, gave him my most charming grin and sang loudly, “She’ll be coming round the mountain, she’ll be coming round the mountain, she’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes!”

He couldn’t stop laughing. The giggles overtook him, then me. We laughed loud and long together. He gasped at me, “Ma-Ma-Mama, I couldn’t help it! It just got stuck in my head and wouldn’t go away!” We sang it a couple more times and laughed louder and longer. We often sing together in the car. Lately it’s been songs from Glee. Yesterday it was songs from elementary school.

Now if I can just get the theme song for Veronica Mars out of my own head, I’ll be set.

The big 3-1!

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . September 15, 2010 . 3:56PM

Thank you to those that made last Saturday really special. I think this says it all.

Burnin’ down the house

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . September 4, 2010 . 7:03PM

It’s never been a huge secret that I don’t know how to cook. Those that have been my friend or family know that I routinely burn things as simple as soup and popcorn. And yes, I stand beside the microwave while the popcorn is popping and count the pops in my head. It still burns. I also kill plants. It’s amazing to me that I’ve been able to keep my animals alive, let alone my child.

So, a couple weeks ago, I was on a frozen pizza kick. I’d been home more frequently than usual and thanks to Netflix and their amazing instant streaming capabilities, I’ve been watching a lot more television than I normally would. I preheated my oven, stuck in the pizza and waited my 11 minutes.

…

…

At which time smoke started rolling from the oven, the smoke detector started bleating like an angry sheep and my dogs started howling like I’d stuck them all with needles. I’m certain the look on my face was not only sheer panic but also an incredible what the heck is happening to me when I realized that there was literally nothing I could do to stop the noise. It was 99 degrees outside so opening the windows meant undoing what the air conditioning had spent all day doing.

So, I did what any normal person would do. I searched for the batteries, which I couldn’t find. Then, I flapped doors in the house like an angry chicken until, 25 minutes later, the unhappy smoke detector quieted its banshee yell. Then I scraped the black off the bottom of the pizza and got down to business.

I mentioned this to the other adult that lives in my house who laughed and didn’t bother to mention that I could stop the angry noise by holding the button down for two seconds.

Fast forward to the next day where, lo and behold, it was pizza for lunch again! I’d made sure that the pizza stone was clean and ready to go. The oven was clean and there was no way the alarm was going to go off again. I was all ready for a good pizza. No black!

The oven hadn’t even hit 375 when the alarm started shrieking. The dogs started howling. I was a deer in headlights.

I ran into the kitchen and the oven was smoking. I have 9-foot ceilings so my 5’10″ self had to stand on a chair to reach the detector. I twisted and twisted the detector to try to find the batteries at which point the detector sparked and fizzled. Apparently, when they are wired into the ceiling they don’t like to be twisted. When I did this, all the lights in the left quadrant of the house went off.

Well…I stopped the smoke detector. Luckily it was just a broken circuit and the smoke detector is replaceable.

And hey, the pizza came out perfectly.

Someday I’ll learn how to cook. Or maybe just stick with the microwave. But not for popcorn.