…it’s Q-U-A-K-E-R!
My oats also make this:
Vanilla Raspberry Oatmeal Brulee

In fact here’s me with my main Quaker man first thing in the morning headed down to make some. (Dude, if you have ever tried it, or can even imagine, you’ll know why I’m so stoked in the picture.)

Not everyone has a chefs torch sitting around to make this, but I promise it’s just as good without the burnt caramelized sugar. But what really matters is that not everyone has food in their kitchen to even make breakfast. That’s where Quaker steps it. Just by participating Quaker will donate a case of oatmeal to my local food bank, Gleaners.  Even better? Quaker has given 25 bloggers, including me, the opportunity to win a $5,000 donation to a hunger charity OF MY CHOICE if I can just get you wonderful readers and Facebookies to participate and spread the Quaker word about their Share our Strength: No Kid Hungry Program.

Now here’s what I need you to do to help me get $5,000 donated to some hungry people. (All it will take is a printer, a webcam/camera, a Facebook profile, four minutes and a willing heart.) Official rules here.

1. Click over to Start with Substance to get connected to the Quaker man’s Facebook page and once there, click to become a fan.

2. Once you become a fan at his Facebook page, download the picture of the Quaker Man, print it out, and take a family friendly picture of yourself and/or your family with him, within your four walls. (Don’t mess with the Quaker man, he demands R-E-S-P-E-C-T.)

3. Upload your picture to the fan photo page, come back here and leave a comment here with the link to your picture on Facebook. (I NEEED that comment please to prove our winning Quaker kickbuttedness.)

4. Pictures on Facebook and links in my comments must be posted in the next 24 hours. You have until 9 A.M. CST Saturday the 14th to make moosh in indy. readers THE WINNERS! I am the last blog to post the contest…LET’S GO OUT WITH A BANG!

It’s sooo on.

(Quaker has also provided a coupon for one reader and for myself to get that much closer to oatmeal bliss. But to get it you have to Facebook it up and help the hungry kids!)

When I get into heaven the person who invented the epidural had better be sitting on a plush golden throne with massagers and personal waiters. I will go up to them kiss their feet, offer them cake and show them my boobs. (Okay so maybe not the boobs.)

However when and if I ever come across the the MAN who came up with prenatal vitamins? I will kick him in the crotch, throw lemon juice in his eyes and run in the opposite direction. Only a man would make a woman swallow something the size of their thumb when pregnant or trying to get pregnant.

“Oh but they’re not the size of your thumb!” you say.

Whatever.

THUMB.
Lest you think I have teeny little thumbs lets compare the same pill to a big’ol quarter.

Next I had a box of samples that claimed to be small.

See that? SMALL FILM COATED PRENATAL VITAMINS.
My thumb says otherwise.

The quarter takes the pills claim of being small, gives it the bird and a big B.S. YOU STUPID PILL.

As if the horse pills weren’t enough there has been a new development in the prenatal vitamin front since I was pregnant.
Not one horse pill a day but TWO! BONUS!

Now back in the day I would divide my prenatal into halves, quarters, sixths, hell I’d even stick it on a toothpick and suck on it all day like lollipop. With the introduction of the horse pill’s evil gelatinous brother I’m afraid that prenatals are dead to me.

REALLY! I’m not even pregnant and the thought of swallowing these things makes me ill. 

Dear pharmaceutical companies. If the Flinstones can make a small tasty chewable vitamin when they still drive with their feet why can’t you make a tasty prenatal. SRSLY.

I have confidence in saying that the party starts when and wherever I show up.

There are dozens of other photos on dozens of other memory cards out there that can confirm this fact. (If you have photos from closing night karaoke? mooshinindy (ta) gmail (tod) com.)

Little Debbie (which thanks to a weekend in Nashville I can’t say without a Suthun’ drawl) was one of the sponsors of Blissdom and they provided the snackage after  one of the panels. They had two marketing executive men there pimpin’ Little Debbie, they were either in heaven being surrounded by so much estrogen or scared witless. Actually I’m pretty sure they flip flopped between the two extremes. I know I did.

As I headed out of the ballroom I headed straight for the Nutty Bars, picked one up and announced to no one in particular “GOD BLESS THE NUTTY BAR FOR GETTING ME THROUGH MY POT SMOKING YEARS OF HIGH SCHOOL.”

I turned 90 degrees to head down the hall and found myself face to face with Mr. and Mr. Little Debbie.

*ahem*

“Uh, hi. GO NUTTY BARS!” I said. 

And continued on my way.

****************************

I’ll be guest tweeting the living daylights out of twitter tomorrow (@mooshinindy) at the weekly #gno (girls night out) RSVP here!

Last week it was supposed to be about chocolate. I turned it into sex, body frosting and barium poop and I wasn’t even the guest tweeter.

Tomorrow is supposed to be about Photography. Heh. I have a feeling Mom it Forward will be regretting this.

“I HAVEN’T HAVE ENOUGH BEERS TO DO THAT!” 

Do what?

Dance on the bar at Coyote Ugly?

Sing karaoke in front of a bunch of strangers?

STONE COLD SOBER?

You only have one life. I’d hate for you to look back and realize that you missed one of the best nights of your life because you were not drunk enough.

One night left in Nashville, who’s in?

Everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time.
Except for the moosh who positions herself just so, then rocket jumps into her pants and generally lands with her face against some sort of upholstered furniture, giggling.
Pants on one leg at at time, piffle. What a crappy way to relate to someone.

• Today I cleaned my microwave because it looked as though I had cooked a fairly substantial cat in it.
• This weekend I cleaned poop smears off of my kid and the toilet seat because she’s four and let’s admit it, sometimes wiping can still be a little tricky even for a grownup.
• Earlier I somehow got fabric softener on my finger during my last load of laundry just before dinner. I later got Snuggle Ultra Fresh in my mouth when I tried to pick out a piece of especially stubborn chicken.
• Today my period came out of nowhere (okay so I know where it came from) to surprise me a week early with the fact that I’m still in fact, not pregnant.
• At dinner I cleaned up spilled milk twice in less than three minutes. One time was out of the moosh’s eye and/or nose.
• This afternoon I had my hand (covered in a hot pink latex glove) shoved up to my elbow in my (broken) outdoor dryer vent digging out mud, rocks, ant traps and a Nerf Ball, circa 1997. While it was snowing. Hard.
• I was woken up this morning by a four year old knee to my crotch and a four year old head to my jaw.
• Tomorrow I need to seriously consider scrubbing the applesauce that spilled in the fridge (honestly, what is it with spilled stuff in the fridge? It’s stickier than snot before you have time to blink.) and defurring the furry corner of the bathroom.
• I vacuumed dead bugs out of all of my light fixtures today.

and finally

• I spent half the day as a ladybug (with pink sparkly wings!) who wasn’t allowed to talk and was served “bug goo snot” out of a red toy teacup by two little girls, one dressed as Alice in Wonderland, the other dressed as Supergirl.

I say we no longer relate to each other by how we put our pants on, but by the furriness of our furry corners in the bathroom and the number of Nerf Balls in our dryer vents.

“What do I have that she would be jealous of?”

As soon as I said the words out loud I realized I had a problem, and it had been stewing for waaay to long to be considered healthy.

She’s beautiful, lives in a beautiful house, has a beautiful family, had a beautiful wedding, went though her pregnancy beautifully, had a beautiful baby, continues to be beautiful, lives in a beautiful part of town and has a beautiful marriage with no studen loans or vile mildew stench coming from under her rented apartment’s kitchen sink.

I should add that I uttered the words out loud while touring another friend’s brand new out of control beautiful home mere blocks away from a brand new temple. (If you’re LDS you’ll know what a big deal this is, if you’re not, it’s probably like being Catholic and living next door to the Vatican. Or if you really like bread it would be like living next to a bakery. Or if you really liked working out it would be like living next door to a gym. You get my point. It’s a big deal.)

Suddenly my smelly little hundred year old apartment back home that always seemed to smell of a sour rag was the bane of my existence. The debt, all the time gone with Cody in school, my inability to get pregnant, my lack of proof that I was, in fact, 26 years old without a hint of grown up hit me like a ton of bricks.

There I was with two friends, the same age as me with so much more, so much better.

I threw myself a pity party bigger than Mardi Gras with free booze.

A few weeks ago I came back to my life in Indiana. Back to that odd smell from under the sink. Nothing had really changed except that I made myself a vow to change myself and that nasty little attitude I had chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool in a Barca lounger at the back of my mind.

So what if I have a small smelly house? I HAVE A HOUSE.

So what if we’re in massive amounts of student loan debt? NO WHERE TO GO BUT UP!

So what if I never see my husband? I MISS YOU MAKE OUTS ARE AWESOME.

So what if I can’t get pregnant? I GET TO HAVE A LOT (and boy howdy I mean A LOT.) OF PRACTICE IN THE MEAN TIME. (See previous sentence.)

I also found that I was relying too much on the approval of others to be happy with myself. (Shocking, I know.) But highest on that list was Cody. I so desperately wanted him to glorify my awesomeness in everything I did. I expected him to come home with trophies for cleaning the house. I wanted him to swoon over how well I had curled my hair or wobble at the very scent of my good smellingness.

But he never did. (Well, at least not out loud with fanfare and praises like I envisioned in my head.)

Then I realized I’m married to a dude.

Dudes don’t do fanfares of awesome over their ladies. (Well, mine doesn’t.)

So I started producing my own fanfares, sometimes to the tune of “Candyman” in front of a full length mirror before I left the house.

And I felt better.

Today in church we were talking about “trying to keep up” with each other. Like high school. Remember high school? *shiver* I can tell you that if I went back to high school knowing what I know now? I’d do a swell job. I wouldn’t try to fit into someone’s mold, the popular style of jeans or even the popular crowd. I’d be nice to everyone and avoid drama like I now avoid sinus infections.

Yet I let what someone else had get in the way of how I felt about myself and my own self worth.

Hello? Casey? You didn’t learn jack crap from high school.

xoxo-the voice inside your head.

A brilliant friend of mine who was sitting next to me today said that she has spent hours exhausting herself comparing her inside to everyone else’s outside.

Let’s talk about doughnuts.

We’ve all seen the pretty perfect round doughnuts at the grocery store, the ones that seem as though their icing was painted on and every sprinkle’s location artfully mapped out by a seasoned professional.

They taste like crap.

Then there’s my favorite bakery by my house. Most of their baked goods look as though they have been sat on. The store is gray and the workers are salty women who wear too much eye makeup. But as soon as you bite into a fluff filled caramel iced bar? You know you’ve got something good. And you would never trade it for the prettiest doughnut from the fanciest most hyped up celebrity ridden doughnut store in the world.

I realize that my friends I referenced earlier are now thinking I’m saying they taste like crap and their whole lives are a farce. But really? The fact that I adore them both so much it overshadows all the nasty jealous feelings my nasty Barca dwelling attitude is able to fling out.

I am no longer going to let myself compare my tasty cream filled insides to other people’s seemingly flawless yet-taste-like-crap-insides outsides. I hope you’ll do the same. And I really hope we never envy each other, it’s such a waste of time. Let me be happy for you when your awesome parade goes by just as I’d appreciate it if you stood up and gave me a little holler during my 4:42 second awesome dance to Candyman.

As long as the Lord and the lady with the crazy hair staring back at me in the mirror is happy with me?

I’ve got all the approval I need.

Now I just need a doughnut.

the moosh: Whatcha dooin mom?

me: Watching the inauguration.

the moosh: *crinkly nose “WHAT THE?” face*

me: We just got a new president!

the moosh: WHO!?

me: Him! (pointing at the TV)

the moosh: Bar-rockin Bamma?

me: Yeah! He’s our new president!

the moosh: BUT WE GOT HIM LAST YEAR.

Apparently I made too big of a deal out of the election last year. Whoops. Never expected that.