Yes I’m doing something that requires a bikini in 28 days. No I’m not going to tell you what.

Why not?

Because.

So there.

(For those of you who know, SHHH. Or I’ll bust an Avada Kedavra. Don’t think I won’t. Try me, I dare you. For those of you who don’t speak Potterese it means I’LL KILL YOU AND IT WILL HURT.)

I’m posting this project because I want to be accountable to all of you, dear readers, if I’m the one in the corner wrapped up in lots and lots of fabric in 28 days.

Are you angry?

Well, sorry.

I’m a tease, just ask my husband. (Well, don’t. That could get awkward.)

Here, look at my kid popping a bubble with her tongue.

That should distract you.

Hopefully you’ll see me dressed in a lot less in 28 days.

(Whew, never thought I see myself typing that.)

I’m using someone else’s blog today. Find me if you can.

I’m from Utah. Where “redneck” means you’re wearing a red turtleneck and “white trash” is the stuff over there in the recycling bin. The most I was ever exposed to redneck and white trash “culture” was from Jeff Foxworthy jokes and Kid Rock music videos.

Until I moved to Indiana.

The thermometer goes down and the freaks come out y’all.

Cody and I have called the cops four times in the last two weeks. The amount of liquor that is consumed by my neighbors combined with open windows makes prime time television boring and unnecessary. Just last night the guy across the street claimed his girlfriend doesn’t put out enough because she “won’t get her fat ice cream eating rear off the couch.”

Then there was the guy the cops caught in our car last Sunday night trying to take whatever he could get his mitts on. Oh and then there was the guy down five houses screaming “GO TO (you know where) GO TO (you know where) F U! F U! MY MOTHER IS DYING. ” While screaming so hysterically that it almost sounded like he was laughing.

His mom wasn’t dying. He was just drunk and bored apparently.

The guys behind us hang out in their backyard with a gun shooting at rabbits. The local pastime is fishing crawdads out of the stream to cook for dinner. If there’s no crawdads don’t worry, there’s plenty of leeches the kids can play with (and do!). Our last two neighbors were taken away in cop cars after only living there for a month. The houses to our left and our right are empty. Wanna place bets on who’ll move in?

Y’all, for the sake of making it through law school with the least amount of debt possible we are not living in the best of areas. All we can count on is the weather getting cold enough to drive the crazies back inside behind closed windows and doors. Until then, pull up a seat, the show’s about to begin.

From what I can tell there are several deadly pooptastrophies one must endure if they are to be a parent to the three and under crowd. I have checked most of the poop traumas off my list and lived to see another day.

free range poop-check

self change poop-check

and again

the scared poop-check

the close call poop-check

blowout poop, corn poop, black bean poop and sick poop? check, check, check and triple check.

Today was the another self change poop while “supposedly” napping. There was fingerpainting involved, along with two stuffed animals, all her blanekts, two pillows and a bookshelf. I live a glamorous life people, don’t be fooled.

In an effort to tempt the fates, the one deadly diaper poop sin I have yet to check off my list is the tub poop/swimming pool poop. BRING IT ON UNIVERSE. I’m the closest you may get to a poop ninja.

the moosh and I don’t see much of the man in our lives when school is in session. I haven’t seen him for over 36 hours, the moosh, even longer.

the moosh did see a mannequin dressed very similar to how the moosh daddy dresses and ran up to it screaming “DADDY! MY DADDY!” and ripped the arm off trying to get the mannequin to follow us.

It’s been a sad sad pathetic day for all involved.

So I had my eyebrows threaded tonight. Meaning I had hairs ripped from my face by a spool of sewing thread in a woman’s mouth. (Confused? Watch the linked viddy-oh above, there’s no explaining what happened to me tonight in words.)

No, it doesn’t hurt, it’s no shiny unicorn marshmallow kisses either. It is less painful than waxing, much less tedious than tweezing. But far more embarrassing than announcing that you orgasm on a treadmill to a room full of 800 people. BUT HOW? Here’s how.

“Your eyebrows, they are uneven, you must let these ones grow.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here, for you to make them even.”

“I’m going to have to thin this one out a lot. It is very thick, not at all like your other one, you wax yourself?”

By this point she’s looking at me like I’ve committed the most heinous crime possible against eyebrow grooming. I just shrugged.

“Okay, I done, you see how even they are? I had to take a lot off this one because they were so uneven.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay, I do your lip now.”

“Um, but, I…”

“I do your lip, it needs to be done. Sit back.”

At this point I’m feeling like a Sasquatch with a ‘stache who lets blind people tweeze her eyebrows with a dull butter knife while landing a jet plane. It really helps that two of my friends were RIGHT THERE watching, shocked at my heavily follicled being. When I was done she pointed a finger at my other friend and said “You! I do you next! I make you even!”

It’s one thing to volunteer yourself for the humiliation (HI MOM!) but it’s another thing to be picked out of a crowd by the eyebrow Gestapo. (BTW, you’re loverly Meg, totally even.)

So for now I’m well groomed, albeit red puffy and irritated. I am even.

And a little hurt deep down inside.

If you are not related to the moosh in anyway this may be a complete bore. It’s about a minute of why I don’t get to listen to my iPod anymore on our drives around town.
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5666642888171960951&hl=en

One of my dear sweet friends has suffered a miscarriage.

If I learned one thing while pregnant it was that miscarriages are all too common and all too much a mystery.

If I have learned one thing while blogging it is that we are a community and that we reach out to each other in desperate times of need.

While respecting anonymity I ask that you reach out to not only her, but the countless numbers of women who have gone through this experience. Words so often fail us in this situation. I know they do for me. Please, leave a comment with your own personal story, anonymously if you wish (please use my email address if you truly wish to remain completely anonymous, smooshbeth@gmail.com) or any words of support you’ve been given that have helped you.

I hope to keep this post forever as a tribute to the babies we’ve all lost and the lessons we’ve gained. Let’s make this a big warm fuzzy for them.

After telling you about tiny grandma’s neti pot habit a lot of you have questions about the neti pot.

Is it sexual?

Is it drug related?

Is it something little tiny people have to do so they don’t get lost?

Well, while I am no authority on the neti pot, someone out there is and wrote about it on Wikipedia. All I know about a neti pot is that my mom swears by it and you look like this when you use one.

In one nostril and out the other.

Consider yourself educated.