How Full House Led Me Astray

September Writing Challenge - Prompt # 11:

Landmark

I recently had the chance to go to EPCOT for the first time. The night of my EPCOT visit, my sister-in-law, Amber, and I started talking about the episodes of Full House where they go to Disney World, and we decided to watch them (there are two - it was one of those epic “to be continued…” situations). 

Amber and I talked about how, growing up, we didn’t know that the big Disney World ball (technically Spaceship Earth) was in a separate park from the iconic Cinderella’s castle. We didn’t know Disney World was multiple parks! 

Amber only recently learned about the multiple parks. I tried to remember at what point in my life I found out that the big ball was in a place called EPCOT. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing it might have been when Scotty went there when he was about sixteen. He was probably the one who broke the news to me - and for the record, sixteen-year-old Scotty was not a fan of EPCOT, but forty-one year old Scotty loves EPCOT (besides Scotty becoming an old man, a lot has changed at EPCOT since 1997). 

Amber and I decided we blame Full House for all of our misconceived notions about Disney World. In the show, the Tanner family goes to Disney World and makes everything look like it’s in one park, but they actually visited Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and EPCOT! Amber and I were raised on trickery!

Going to EPCOT and seeing the ball was emotional for me. It’s an icon that has symbolized Disney World my whole life, and being in its presence made me tear up a bit. I did see it last year when Scotty and I went to Disney World on a spontaneous trip with our friends Chad and Carlie, but we didn’t go to EPCOT then, so I only saw it from a distance. Seeing the famous landmark up close was surreal. 

I ended up loving EPCOT, other than having very sore feet and having to deal with horrendous heat. I survived by dunking my head in the sink every time I went in a bathroom and keeping a fan on myself at all times. I am not attractive in any way in Orlando - I’m in survival mode. On our first day there, I attempted to do my hair, and within three minutes of being outside, I looked like a wet dog. I knew that’s how it would be, but I still tried. From that point on, I kept my hair up and wet. I had moments in EPCOT where I had to fight off a complete breakdown because I was so sick of the heat and my feet hurt so bad.

But despite all that, the rides in EPCOT were so much fun! They just opened Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind in May of this year, and it is one of the coolest rides I’ve ever been on. I rode it twice, and I cried both times because I was experiencing something so amazing.  I did the same thing on Frozen (also in EPCOT) and on Avatar: Flight of Passage in Animal Kingdom. Soarin’ got me, too, even though I’ve been on it dozens of times in California. I also cried during the parade in Magic Kingdom, and well, I already confessed that just seeing the big ball got the tears flowing. 

While I was at EPCOT, I thought, “I’m glad I came once, but I don’t ever need to come back.” That was the heat talking because at 7:00 pm when the sun was going down, and the temperature became bearable, I didn’t want to leave! And all I’ve done since is think about how I wish I could go back. I don’t know if I ever will, but if I do go back, it’s gonna need to be in January when the average high is 72 (which honestly is still too hot for me when I’m acclimated for the 30’s). 

The Blessings and Woes of Creativity

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #25:

Artsy Fartsy

Arts and crafts are a big part of our lives, but the supplies and messes from my kids' artistic endeavors are the bane of my existence. It's a love/hate relationship... a blessing and a curse... 

(Ever since I used the "cliche" prompt last week, I've been hyper-aware of how many cliches I use, but the cliches say it all! Arts and crafts are a wonderful developmental and entertainment tool, but they are also a nightmare). 

I believe in creativity, though, and I think it's so important for my kids to be able to invent, produce, and design. They need to have access to glue, paint, stickers, and pipe cleaners - it’s so good for their brains. Not so much for my kitchen table. But that's one of the benefits of having an old, refurbished table - it can take a hit. And it has. 

There's no shortage of arts and crafts supplies in my home. You can find them in the pantry...

You can find them in the storage room...

You can find them in my bedroom closet...

Please note my sophisticated labeling system

You can also find them in our garage, in our sheds (we have two), and in each of our children's bedrooms. 

Arts and crafts remain the number one source of mess in our family, and even though it often makes me want to pull my hair out (another cliche!), it's probably my biggest parenting triumph. I imagine that someday, my kids look back fondly on this part of their upbringing and say, "My mom always had stuff around the house for us to create with!"

Sidewalk chalk - one of our popular mediums resulting in 

a lot of footprints on the floor and butt prints on the couch

Beauty Tips From Back in My Day

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #33:

Product

I think we can all agree that I'm not a person that anyone should come to for beauty or fashion tips. I'm at peace with that. I peaked in 2006, and I'm pretty much stuck there. But there's one thing I can offer you from 2006 that I still think holds solid, and it has to do with a product... A Monistat product.

Now, I know what comes to mind when you think of Monistat. Calm down, calm down. I'm not going there, but I'm still going to ask you to be open-minded as you read this post. 

The product is Monistat Chafing Relief Powder Gel, and I use it on my face. 

True story!

Many years ago (around 2006), a blogger posted about this product and said she used it as make-up primer. I decided to give it a go, and I've used it as primer ever since! (Here's a post I wrote about it in 2011). I simply rub a light coat of the gel on my face before applying make-up, and it does everything a make-up primer should do, including helping my foundation go on more smoothly.

It turns out, the chafing gel has the same main ingredient as many quality make-up primers (dimethicone) at a fraction of the cost. At the time I started using it, several friends from my blogging circle (which is long dead) switched over from Smashbox and Bare Escentuals primers. 

So there you have my product recommendation! Rub some Monistat on your face! And heck, you can even put some on your thighs. I’m all about killing two birds with one stone.

A Greater Liking

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #16:

Preference

We all have preferences - a greater liking of one thing over another. In most cases, I don’t dislike the alternative, I just have a preference when given a choice. Keep that in mind because I’m about to tell you some of my personal preferences, and I don’t want you to feel like I’m insulting your preferences if yours are different. I’ve been a little sensitive about that lately, as I feel like I can’t say I like something without hearing about why someone else doesn’t like that thing. I’m trying to be less of a contributor to such conversations, and yet, here I go with a list of my own preferences:

I prefer thin slices of pizza. Whenever I'm taking a piece of pizza, I always go for the narrowest one. I think they're easier to eat, and if there are multiple kinds of pizza, thinner slices allow me to enjoy more variety before I'm full. Whenever we have Papa Murphy's, I always cut the pieces really narrow. When we have pre-cut pizza, like Little Caesar's, I will very often cut the pieces in half.

I prefer to only take carry-ons when we fly. We’ve been on week-long cruises and ten-day vacations and have never checked luggage. 

I prefer weather between 45-65 degrees. I'm in my happy place when there's a slight chill in the air, and I have no problem being outside in 45 degrees (unless it's windy or raining). 

You will never see me in a shirt like this

I prefer watching everything with subtitles. I love going to captioned movies at the theater - a rare treat! 

I prefer hot food to be one degree short of burning my mouth and cold food to be one degree away from freezing. I'm an advocate for properly chilled sodas and potluck salads. 

I prefer to sleep with three pillows, and whenever possible, I bring at least one of my own pillows to hotels. 

I prefer driving a van over an SUV. I really like the automatic sliding doors. The day my kids stopped door dinging other cars in the parking lot was a day my life changed for the better! I've always liked vans and have never thought of them as uncool. To me, practicality is the ultimate form of coolness. 

Our van at the beach with a bird on top

I prefer to wear shoes in my house. I know this is highly unpopular, but it's how I roll. I kick off my shoes to lounge on the couch, and then I put them back on if I get up and walk around (usually I wear flip flops or hard-soled slippers). 

I prefer white bread. I like wheat bread just fine, but when I eat a sandwich on white bread, I’m always like, “Oh my heck! White bread is so stinkin’ good!” Also, I prefer to buy Dunford white bread, and I always struggle when we go out of state, and the stores don’t have Dunford.

I prefer camping in a tent to camping in a trailer. I don’t really have any desire to own a camp trailer, and when people invite me to sleep in their trailers, I’m not really interested. I like my air mattress, my sleeping bag, and a chill in the air.

A few years ago I bought this cabin-style tent. 

It’s great for tall people, and it has lights inside.

I prefer to stay in a hotel rather than camp when we go to National Parks. 

I prefer to pay full admission to go somewhere on a non-crowded day over fighting crowds on a discount or free entry day. 

I prefer to not leave my house after 7:00 pm. Evening events are hard for me. I just want to be in my stretchy pants in my own home. 

I prefer crunchy peanut butter. I'm not loyal to a brand, though. 

I prefer Coke to Pepsi (but let’s not kid anyone, I’ll drink Pepsi just fine!)

I prefer to say "intristing" rather than "in-ter-est-ing." This is a conscious decision I made after watching this video several years ago. 

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Now tell me, do we share any preferences, or am I alone in my strange ways?

Brought to you by heartburn in the middle of the night

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #20:

Learning

I originally took today off from blogging. Whenever I do this writing challenge, I pre-write most of my posts and schedule them a ways out. Otherwise I would never keep up. Some of the stuff you’ve been reading was written over a month ago! (Just think, I could be dead and still have posts scheduled, and you would never know!) Anyway, I got down to my last three scheduled posts, and I knew I wouldn’t have a lot of time to write over the next few days, so I decided to space my remaining posts over the next week by only posting every-other day.

But then… I woke up with heartburn. And here I sit in the middle of the night propped up against pillows in my bed.

Since all of my posts of late have been pre-scheduled, I haven’t taken the time to whine about Scotty coming home from South America and immediately getting COVID. But just to add to the fun, I started with bronchitis four days before he came home, and guess who’s still coughing her guts out 18 days later? Not the COVID patient! Scotty had two really bad COVID days, and then he just had some lingering cold symptoms for a few more days. He worked from home for a week, and strangely, no one else got it. That’s our third round of COVID in the family where no one else got it. Friends have said, “When we go it, we dropped like flies! It went through the whole family!” to which I reply, “We prefer to do our COVID one at a time!”

With Scotty traveling and then us being sick, our routines have been off kilter for several weeks, and due to some stuff happening this week, nothing is functioning as normal. I was so excited to get into a back to school “routine,” but it’s really just been “fly by the seat of our pants” sort of month. 

So here I sit in the middle of the night with horrendous heartburn and the most annoying long-term cough with nothing else to do but blog.

(How’s that for a long introduction to a post I wasn’t going to write because I was planning on catching up on sleep tonight?)

Anyway, in order to somewhat fulfill the prompt “learning,” here’s something I learned at girls camp back in July, courtesy of a young lady named Stacey:

If you go to the bathroom, and the toilet water splashes your butt, it’s called “Neptune’s kiss.”

And you know this is bonafide camp education material because of the bugs in the background of the photo.

Remember, my friends, to be ever learning new things!

September Skills

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #29:

Skill

A couple of years ago, during my September Writing Challenge, Nicky figured out how to do backflips on the trampoline.  

He’d been wanting to do backflips for years but hadn’t mustered the courage (and as a wimp of a mother, I was fine with him playing it safe). When he finally figured it out, he was so proud of himself! I was pretty excited, too, because I got to witness him fulfilling a life-long dream, and as a bonus, he didn't break his neck.

Earlier this month, Nicky somehow gathered the guts to try a backflip on the ground - something he has wanted to learn how to do since mastering the backflip on the trampoline. He made his first few attempts while I wasn’t looking. Thank heavens - because I would have been a wreck! Then he tried a few times in front of me, and I nearly had a heart attack.

But then I saw him nail it!

As soon as he did it once, there was no stopping him. Once he got the hang of it, he assured me that he can feel what his body needs to do, and he knows how to catch himself if he's not going to land it precisely. I'm much more at ease now (but still... please don't break your neck, son! You are, after all, over six feet tall and nearly 200 pounds. I don't know how you get that much body to flip around).

The week after he learned how to do a backflip, he participated in a male cheer team. For homecoming week, our high school did a powder puff football game where the girls played football, and the boys cheered. When I showed up to the game, I was a little stunned to see my son in a girl's cheer uniform with a big bow in his hair (he had told me they were going to wear matching t-shirts, but no. They had about 40 boys in skirts). 

It was pretty funny to watch, and those boys cheered their hearts out for the entire game and performed a dance routine for the half-time show (none of them will ever question the athleticism of cheerleading after that experience).

I wondered if Nicky would try and sneak in some backflips out on the field, and when I saw him in his uniform, I thought, "Uh-oh! Will the skirt trip him up?" He isn't usually an attention hog, which I've always appreciated, but there have been a couple of times in his life where he has really thrived on the energy of crowd. This was one of them. 

I have to say... that was a really excellent backflip! Skirt and all! 

Thirteen Candles

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #7:

Beginning

We’ve hit a milestone here at the Brittish house: we have our first teenage girl!

Daisy turned thirteen on Wednesday.

I’m not sure what sort of things are coming my way now that she’s thirteen. I mean, I was a teenage girl myself once, so I sort of know, but I also don’t know. The teenager spectrum is too broad to make any solid predictions about my own posterity. 

When I was pregnant with Daisy, we decided not to find out what we were having. It took so much discipline to follow through and to look away from the ultrasound screen (I had to be monitored for placenta previa, so go figure that when I’m trying to NOT peek at my baby, we end up having to do extra imaging). When she was born, and Scotty told me we had a girl, it was one of the most memorable moments of my life. She had dark hair adorned with a little white bow. She was my smallest baby - the only one under 8 lbs. It took us til right before leaving the hospital to finalize her name. I remember bringing her home and whispering to her over and over, "Thank you for coming to our family!" Scotty and I were both head over heels in love with her and would fight over who got to hold her.

Daisy quickly grew into a miniature version of myself... but somehow, also a miniature version of my mom and a miniature version of my mother-in-law. How she is all three, I'll never understand, but sometimes I throw my hands up in the air and yell, "I AM RAISING MY MOTHER!" or to Scotty, "I AM RAISING YOUR MOTHER!" And in our worst head-butting moments, I think, "WHY ARE YOU LIKE ME?" 

Daisy is wonderful, though. As much as we butt heads, she also amazes me. There are times when Eva and Zoe are out of control and Daisy is the only one who can fix it. She is very thoughtful and loves doing things for others. Her teachers have always given me very positive feedback about her, and they always say she is reliable and a good student. I have seen her stand up for what's right a few times recently on her own, without parental influence. 

To celebrate Daisy becoming a bonafide teenager, here’s a list of thirteen things she loves:

1. Texting - she has a Gabb phone. She’s on it constantly. I don’t see any smart phone privileges coming her way any time soon.

2. Squishmallows - she has over 20.

3. Lotion - she’s always complaining that her hands are dry. “Mom, do you have any lotion? Mom, do you have any lotion?” 

4. Chapstick - she is Napoleon Dynamite. Her lips hurt really bad.

5. Music - she loves being in charge of the Alexa and the car radio. She also sings a lot.

6. Friends - they are everything. 

7. Tie dye - 90% of her wardrobe is tie dye.

8. Mini Disney backpacks - she has two of them and takes them everywhere.

9. Baby animals - who can blame her? Squee!

10. Dancing - she used to fight me about going to dance class, but now she enjoys dancing and practices a lot at home. 

11. Going shopping - she’s always saying “We should go to a store!” She used to always want to spend her money right away, but now she saves it up and shops smarter. 

12. McFlurries - she asks everyday if I’ll take her to get a McFlurry. 

13. Chicken nuggets - they’re a bit of an obsession in our home, but Daisy is the biggest “nuggie” fan of them all. 

Happy Birthday and Happy Teenagerhood to my first daughter! This is the beginning of my life raising teen girls!

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