I now have proof I am not along in my Craziness!!!

I have discovered a book that proves I am not the only crazy person who thinks about how they would survive in a post-apocalyptic world. YAY!!!!!! First for those who don’t know me you need to understand I am a huge geek - I mean huge. This means I love most any form of science fiction and horror stories. The scarier (but not necessarily gory) the better.

I think it all started with watching Friday Fright Night with my Dad when I was about 7 years old. This was a local TV program that would run old Werewolf, Dracula and The Green Slime type movies all night long on Friday nights. The trick was staying awake to see them all. I admit I watched a lot of them with one eye peaking out of the blanket pulled over my head but I loved them. Loved them!

Anyway, I was in the book store just before Christmas picking up books for my kids (more proof of my geekiness – I always give my kids at least one or two books for Christmas) when I spotted “How to Survive a Zombie Attack” by Max Brooks. Oh, My, GawD!!! I thought I was the only person who watched/read these sort of movies and thought about how they would survive them. I am not alone in my craziness!!!!! Not only that but someone has actually written a book about it. More information for my plan!

I’ve done this sort of planning since I was a teenager and read “The Stand” by Steven King. Come on think about. Most of the world has been wiped out by some sort flu like pandemic and you have survived but have started having these crazy dreams about some old lady out west telling you to come join her. Would you go?

Admit it, you’re thinking about it.

My husband makes fun of me because after watching “28 Weeks Later” I started a very serious conversation about how I would get our entire family out of the city and escape on a boat. Preferably a sail boat, so we didn’t have to worry about gas. And we’d have time to stock it with supplies. (Note that this is what the survivors did in new version of “Dawn of the Dead” although they didn’t have time to stock supplies. I thought it was brilliant). I also threw in how I would never be one of the first people to repopulate a city like the people in “28 Weeks Later”. I’d give a couple of years before I took up residence. I went on and on about how we’d survive and he just sat there saying “uh-huh” and shaking his head at me. Although, the other day, he did comment that he is comforted to know that when the dead start walking the earth I have a plan.

Now to come up with a plan to escape the T-virus from “Resident Evil” before we all mutate.

Guarding Her stuff

Christmas is over and New Years is coming. We have survived the chaos (mostly). Other than battling a second round of colds and fevers we’re in good shape.

My children have been out of school for over a week and are starting to work each other’s last good nerve. Precious is used to having the house to herself during the day so not having the older kids leave has totally thrown off her routine. She has taken to announcing that everything in the house is hers and is running from toy to toy guarding it as only a 3 year old can – by screaming at the top of her lungs. The biggest thing she has taken to protecting is the computer. She discovered NickJr.com a couple of weeks before Christmas and loves it. She normally would get her time during the day but this week has had to wait her turn. This has been misery for her. It has hit the point that she refuses to leave the computer even to eat once her turn has started because she is afraid someone will take the computer while she’s away. At this very moment she is asleep in the chair in front of the computer. Yes, curled up in the big office chair asleep.

We’ve tried unsuccessfully to move her 3 times now and each time has resulted in her waking up and throwing a fit. I even tried just rolling the chair away from the computer but that woke her up crying as well. She definitely gets the concept of squatter’s rights and is guarding her territory – even while sleeping.

Where’s the Daddy? A Christmas Story

My husband spent yesterday afternoon looking for an extension cord for the small Christmas tree in the living room. In this process of looking for the extension cord he found my grandmother’s manger set. I haven’t set it up for years because, well, I have 5 children and didn’t want it broken.

My husband decided that now that the children are a little older we should have the manger set up. So, he set the manger up on the table by the front door. He put the Baby Jesus and Mary in the stable but he set Joseph and the 3 wise men along with the camels and a cow outside the manger looking in. Not your normal set up. Well, this caused some confusion with the neighbor’s daughter who is 4 years old. She walked past the manger on her way out the door to go home and noticed the strange set up of the manager. She looked at my husband and asked “Where is the Daddy?” Now my husband, being the devout Muslim that he is, said, “There is no daddy.”

Now begins the confusion:

4 year old neighbor (whose family is Mormon): “But where’s the daddy?”
My Husband: “There is no daddy. God willed Jesus to be born. It was a miracle called the Immaculate Conception.” Now, how many of you knew Islam believed in the Imaculate Conception? I didn't and I've been married to this man and dealing with this culture for 20 years all together.
Princess (my 6 year old) after pondering this for a moment: “Well then who is Joseph, Mary’s boyfriend?”
My husband (wondering how he got himself in this mess): “No, Joseph was Mary’s husband, but he is not Jesus’ daddy. Jesus did not have a daddy.”
Princess: “So, Joseph was Jesus’ Step-daddy?”
My husband: “Well, sort of.”
Princess (who, by the way, had announced that Frosty the Snowman has a wife named Sally so now they can have children just this past Sunday): “So, how was Jesus born if he didn’t have a daddy?”
My Husband (really trying to keep a straight face): “Jesus doesn’t have a daddy because God willed Jesus to be born.”
4 year old neighbor: “But where’s the daddy?”
My husband (giving up before he digs himself in any deeper): “I think you need to go ask your Mom about that.”

He then walked her home, but did not warn her mother about the conversation that had taken place. I gave her a call later that evening because I felt I should warn her. I just knew that this Sunday in the middle of church that lovely little girl is going to repeat her interpretation of the story of Baby Jesus as told to her by Mr. M. I can just hear it now. “Jesus doesn’t have a daddy. Mr. M told me so. Did you know Joseph was Mary’s boyfriend? ” I like my neighbors, so I thought I should try to give them the heads up. My neighbor thanked me for letting her know because her daughter didn’t say a word about it after she walked in the front door. The neighbor said she would go over the story of Jesus with her girls tonight just to be safe. She also pointed out that my husband could spared himself all of this if he had just set Joseph in the stable next to the Baby Jesus. I giggled and said that I had already pointed that out. He agreed that next time he would just stick to the standard set up.

Like my new haircut?

It is never a good sign when the 3 year old comes upstairs and says "Mommy, how do you like my new haircut?" Now she's the fifth child, so I know hair will grow back and honestly looking at her I can't tell she's cut her hair. She has so much that it really doesn't look any different. But I know the older children are downstairs cutting paper to decorate for Christmas and don't doubt that Precious has cut her hair. It's my own fault, I have had my nose in my laptop working most of the weekend. We are having some production issues with the new system at work so I've spent very little time really paying attention to the children all weekend. I just set them up on a project and do a walkthrough every so often to make sure no one is too out of hand. There are lots of messes being made in the family room at the moment. Princess and the Imp are in the process of building forts all around the room, which consist of every toy and chair we own being used to build a miniature version of the wall of China in our family room. This will also include every sheets out of the laundry strung from the sofas to the top of the tallest nearby toy or chair. It makes me wonder why I've bothered to wash the sheet because you just know that someone is going spill something any minute. Son #1 and #2 are making snowflakes for the front, which do you think any of the paper cut outs from the snowflakes will be dropped in the trash can? Oh no, that's what Mom has a vacuum for. Now I also need to figure out where the pieces of cut hair are so I can get that all vacuumed up. It's always an exciting weekend at our house.

How do you handle the Holidays

Sorry, I know I’ve been away for a while. Life just gets in the way sometimes.

Well, the topic that always seems to come up around this time of year; came up again last week. The topic of “Just how do you handle the holidays?”. It’s probably the second or third most popular question I get.

Why, do people ask you that, you might be asking yourself?

Actually, the answer is very understandable. Not only are we an unusually large family but we are a multicultural, multi-religion family. So, it is a question I tend to expect once people get to know me and know that I’m not offended by such questions.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, I am a typical mid-westerner with blond hair (thanks to my stylist) and green eyes who is from a small town in Ohio. I am often told I’m not what people expect if they have seen my name before meeting me. The reason for that would be my last name. To help build a good relationship with my husband’s family I took his last name when we got married. I didn’t legally change it for many years and four children later, but that’s actually a whole separate story that I’ll tell another time. However, it is a name I’ve grown into and have come to have fun with. Not to give away to much personal information on the internet, my last name is not only an obviously Middle Eastern last name but it’s obviously Muslim. So, when blond hair, green eyed, very pale me walks in the room people are a little confused. I’ve actually had a mechanic at the body shop look at everyone in the room but me calling my name. I later realized that he had walked right past me and looked outside first for some who looked more like he expected. It’s kind of humorous. Preconceived notions always make me laugh.

For many years I had a lot of fun confusing people with my name. My first job out of college I was Technical support representative for a software development tool. There would be time while we were waiting for the tool to finish its task that we’d make small talk with the customers. You know, “What’s the weather like there? Where are you from? etc.” The “where are you from question” came up most often with the foreign engineers and they just made it too easy to have fun at their expense. This is how the conversation would go:

Engineer: “So, where are you from?”
Me: “Ohio”
Engineer: “Where are your parents from?” Smugly, thinking he’s figured it out.
Me: “Ohio”
Engineer: Now a bit confused sounding: “Where did your parents grow up?”
Me: “Ohio”
Engineer: Now really perplexed: “Where did their parents grow up?”
Me: Trying not to laugh “Ohio”
Engineer: Always being polite “Not to be too personal, but aren’t you Muslim?”
Me: “Not a problem; no, actually I’m not.”

This is generally where I’d let them off the hook because they are so thoroughly confused and explain that my husband is from Iran. In 5 years of working phone support only one person ever actually figured it out on their own. That person was another American woman who was also married to an Iranian. They lived in Chicago. Maybe it’s something about women from the mid-west.

Well, not only is Hubby from Iran but he is a Shi’a Muslim. Now here’s where I start blowing the stereotypes out of the water.

1. Hubby is obviously very open minded (he married me didn’t he? See my religious beliefs above and read any of my other posts).
2. He’s also extremely supportive of my career. He knew I was not the Susie homemaker type when he met me and he's okay with that. When we met I actually used to refer to marriage as the "M" word and actually never planned to marry or have children kind of ironic, huh?
3. He cooks and does laundry (again see some of my other posts).
4. He also cleans and changes diapers.

We approach our marriage as a team. What one of us can’t get to the other will. We also play to each other strengths – He’s a better cook than me, so he does most of the cooking (I get to make breakfast on the weekends). I love to shop and actually enjoy running errands, so I most of the grocery shopping and the running around that needs done (with and without a child or two in tow).

I digress, as usual, so, how we handle the holidays is to celebrate both the Christian and Muslim holidays. We approach the time more as a time for family than a time for religion but have taught the children the stories of both Jesus and Mohammed. We will leave it up to kids to choose which religion they follow when they get older. We do stress our morals and acceptable behavior to them but that’s about as far as it goes for now.

We’re in luck, since we live in a very diverse neighborhood, it all works. This is how our street looks. Next door is a family from India who is Hindu, across the street is a Mormon family and another Muslim family lives next to them, who are interestingly enough from Chicago. The Mom from that family is fairly religious (but not pushy) and wears a Hijab (which is the scarf to cover her hair and she’s always in long sleeves and long skirts or loose fitting pants). She and I always have a good laugh when people compliment her English. She’s American born and raised. Those darn preconceived notions again.

Where was your last date?

I was sitting at my desk last week when my new boss came over to the Admin Assistant, who sits across from me, and asked her if she was single. At first she did not know how to answer this question since my boss has only been with the company a few weeks. Seeing her hesitation he said “Just come here for a minute. Michelle, you come too you should hear this too.” Not sure what to expect, we followed him over to the desk of the Manager of our Technical Support team (let’s call him MTS).

Boss: “Now tell them what you just told me.”
MTS: “Well my in-laws are in town for a few weeks and my wife and I took advantage of them being here Saturday and went on a date.”
Boss: “Tell them where you went.”
MTS: “Well, we had some things that we needed to pick up, so while we didn’t have kids along we decided to stop at Target on the way to dinner.”
Boss to the Admin Assistant: “Now if your boyfriend looked at you and said we’re going out to dinner and then took you to dinner how would you react?
Admin Assistant: “Well that depends, is he buying something for me?”
Me: “Now, wait a minute are you saying you’ve never had a date with your wife that started out with running some errands.”
Boss: “No. My wife would never go for that.”
MTS (a little apologetically): “Well it was my wife’s idea.”
Me: “Don’t feel bad my last date with my husband started off at Wal-Mart then moved to Burlington Coat Factory to buy some shirts for my son. Only after doing some shopping did we stop for dinner.”
Boss: “You’re joking, right?”
Me: “No. Actually we have a running joke about a Christmas Eve date we have a few years ago. My parents had taken the kids, so we left to go out to dinner. On the way out we decided to check for one last gift. That stop took longer than expected, so rather than go to a restaurant we stopped at a carry out for dinner. We ended up eating subs sitting in the car in the parking lot that night.”
Boss: “And you’re still married? For how long?”
Me: “Yes, 14 years. But we were out without children and that’s what matters right?”
MTS: “Yes. I’m with you. It’s not about where you go, but that you go there together without children.”
Boss (to the Assistant): “Agreed, but if your boyfriend looked at you and said let’s go out on a date to Target; how would you react?”
Admin Assistant (laughing): “Well, after this conversation with two people who have been married for a while, I think my answer should be: Sure! Apparently that’s how happily married people start their dates. Maybe I’d become one of those happily married people”

I don’t know about that, but most of our dates the last few years start off with some sort of errand or school meeting first. I hadn’t realized that till this conversation took place … I think I’ll repeat this conversation to my husband. See if I get a date that is just a date out of it or if he just laughs and says “See it’s not just us.”

Funny on the way to work this morning

Ok, So I’m listening to the listening to one of the local Baltimore Rock stations this morning on the way to work and I hear “…this week in Goshen, Ohio …” well of course my ears perk up…that’s my home town…on the radio...in Baltimore. Maybe someone there has found the cure for cancer!!!

So the new cast goes:

“This week in Goshen Ohio the high school cheerleading coach is arrested for posing topless with a 15 year old cheerleader at a party. Andrew Emerson, a Teacher at the school, has also been fired for hosting the party and serving alcohol to underage students.”

Oh, my GAWD!!! Andrew Emerson, a man I know as Mr. Emerson (who was a teacher there when I was in high school ... he must be pretty old by this point), has been fired and the cheerleading coach posed topless with minors!!!! Glad to know my home town is working its way into the history books somehow. Excuse me while I try not to run my car off the road laughing... oh I mean in shock.