Yesterday, I was looking at a catalog that contains therapeutic socks.

Not just looking at it, but seriously considering the purchase of compression hose because, good gracious, I'm almost 40 and after cooking up lunch for hundreds of kids, my dogs are really barking.  So are my spider veins.

I went to a night club the other night with some friends and I wore a sequined sweater...and tennis shoes.  At one point, I had to step off the dance floor so I could clean my glasses.  Mmm hmm...go ahead and picture all of that hotness.

The bonus?  None of the skeevy men in the club hit on me.  Though, there was that elderly guy with the motorized cart who asked me if I was single.  I thought about saying yes just so I could get a ride back to my hotel room.  Note to self:  If you're going to be walking a lot, don't forget your orthotics.  Or, a scooter helmet.


But even though I paid for dancing at that nightclub with bruises to my shins and calf muscles strained so hard that it shocked me, I didn't let it stop me from shaking my groove thing and having a whole lot of fun.

And, if that makes me consider support hose, then bring on the nylons.

Labels: Friends, Getting Old, Ramblings

1.  You know how they say that everything is bigger in Texas?  They're liars.  This is but one, tiny section of the most massive hotel I have ever seen.  Really.  Ever.


2.  Everyone from the south is just as sweet as pie.

3.  Which is probably because of the weather.

4.  Or, the whiskey.

5.  When you put hundreds of women together in one space, there is bound to be some crying.

6.  Add said whiskey, and there will be some massive meltdowns y'all.

7.  Old friends become your enemies when they keep you out too late and make you have so much fun that the next morning (really, the same morning) it will feel like your brain is oozing out of your right ear.

8.  And, there are razorblades under your eyelids.

9.  But, vendors handing out ice cream in the exhibit hall make it all better.

On yesterday's show Oprah revealed that, in 1963, her mother gave a baby girl up for adoption; which means Oprah has a baby sister!  It's true.  There was a DNA test and everything.  A DNA test worth its weight in gold.

This is Patricia.  She is Oprah's new half-sister.


Not to be confused with Patricia, Oprah's former half-sister, who died in 2003.



Oprah, Patricia and her other sister Patricia, not to be confused with Larry, his brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl...



...are all the children of the same mother.  Her name is Vernita.



Not to be confused with Oprah's father, Vernon.  Though, this is not really Oprah's father, it's just his bust.



Not to be confused with breasts.

And, just like that.  We've come full circle.

Labels: My TV Addiction, Oprah Cliffs Notes

For the past 14 years, I have been in an ever-constant battle with my weight.  I blame a lot of it on stress and anxiety.  Those 14 years were full of home renovation, a high-pressure job, a husband who works solely on commission in the bursted bubble of a housing market and two premature babies...one of whom threw in congenital heart disease just for good measure.

So, yes, I've been stressed.   But, I won't deny that a good portion of my jiggling thighs is because I love chocolate.  And beer.  The three of them together equals the perfect storm of cellulite.

The thing I have come to realize, as my 40th birthday nears, is that burdens don't go away; they just change.  Life is never going to be easy.  It's time to acknowledge that and work with it, instead of against it.  I don't want to fight myself anymore.  I want to fight the fat.

Tonight, I completed my first of 36 boot camp sessions.  I was excited, but to tell the truth, I was scared of not being able to walk afterward. 

My friend Melisa is a group fitness instructor and I talked to her just before I went to class.  She told me that because I'm social that I would love the atmosphere, that I would have fun and that I should "embrace the pain".

What she failed to tell me, is that I should also embrace the vomit.

Apparently, the instructor saw it coming when my beet-red face turned crisp-cotton-white, which is probably when I felt the room spinning.  She stopped the class.  FOR ME.  Which is really not embarrassing at all.  You know, if you're made of stone.

After she got me a Gatorade, things improved.  Not a lot, but enough for the walls to stand still.  I fought through.  I did not quit.

Then I came home and started typing and searched the internet for a photo of the boot camp to insert in this post.  I typed the name of the workout facility into Google, hit images, and saw this picture...


Thank goodness for that Gatorade.

My mom and I were recently discussing the names of her grandchildren.  I have three sisters, and between the four of us we have 12 kids.  Eight of them are boys. 

Their names are Stephen, Paul, John, Peter, Matthew, Daniel, David and Adam.

Do you think anyone can tell that we're Catholic?

Labels: Kids, Ramblings

This morning, I opened the living room blinds to see the sun creeping up in the east.  The sky was lavender; a mix of pink and blue.  Blue!  We haven't seen a blue sky for a long, long time around here.  You will have to excuse the hyperbole, but it feels like forever ago.

I have considered the purchase of a "happy light" to get me through this gloomy period.  The winter months in Ohio are so dark, cold and gray.  Always gray.  Well, except for today of course.

Things seem so much more hopeful when the sun is out.  Life is brighter, happier and significantly more beautiful.  The gray days make me irritable and longing for summer, when daylight hangs around until my children are already tucked into bed.  On the rare occasion that we see the sun in the winter, the warmth on my skin makes the slush beneath my feet just a little more bearable.

There are only so many Chai tea lattes a girl can drink to keep her warm and only so many layers of fleece.  I need the sun.  I need its glow, the color it brings and the way that it produces a contrast between a frozen landscape and the sky.

The sun makes me feel good.  Today, I feel good.

You know how you have a day off, but your kids still have to go to school and you scream, "This is going to be GLORIOUS!", and it immediately goes downhill when you shovel the driveway for the fifth time in a week, and drop off the kids at school (which is not the same as dropping them off at the pool) and they argue the whole time, then you go to the ob/gyn and get a pap smear, and after that you go to the grocery store for the first time since December 23rd and trudge through the snow with a very full cart, then go to the pharmacy and find out they don't have your medicine in stock, and after you take your boatload of food home and put it away you go to your mom's house to shovel her driveway, and you're sweating, and coughing, and it's heavy, and your coffee is cold, and then a man comes across the street with his snowblower and finishes the job for you, and that man is 90 years old, and he smiles at you, and having crossed his (snowblown) path makes your heart happy and the day ends up being glorious after all?

Yeah, me too.

Labels: A Day in the Life, Question of the Day, Ramblings, The Places in My Neighborhood

I started blogging roughly three-and-a-half years ago.  I didn't plan on having it take me anywhere.  I didn't know that I would end up loving it so much that it would become my passion, or that blogging would lead me to conferences and Twitter, which would lead to my new job.

My whole life has come full circle, right here for the world to see.

Okay, so maybe the world doesn't read my blog, but I'm pretty sure my Aunt Shirley does.  Sometimes.  In fact, the 30 or so hits I used to get each week have grown into thousands.  I don't know where you people came from, but I'm glad you did.

I love it here.  It is my home.  And, much to my husband's chagrin, I like to redecorate. 

Out of all of the celebrities I have met through blogging, like her...

Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi.  Couldn't the pretty have been shared a little?  Not fair.

...and this fella...

The center of our solar system, also known as the Jimmy Dean sun.

...there are none whom I consider to be more inspiring than this lady here.

a)  Don't look at my hair  b)  I told you not to look!  c)  Nice glow in the dark necklace, Momo

That woman next to me is Ree Drummond, also known as The Pioneer Woman.  Also, I am in no way comparing Ree to the Jimmy Dean sun.  Though she can make a room brighter just by walking in.  Just sayin'.

Ree is one of the most popular, female bloggers in the world.  She is an amazing photographer, mother and author (of a cookbook, a romance story and a children's book...how well rounded can someone be?).  To top it off, she's about as down to earth as a person can get.  I want to be Ree when I grow up.

Now, I don't take a lot of advice about what to do with my blog.  I follow the advertising guidelines of my publishing network (Hi, BlogHerads!), but that's about it.  This is my hangout for crying out loud.  Stay off my lawn!

But, when the intelligent and successful Ree Drummond tells you that you should "change things up", you should listen.  She wasn't talking to me, specifically, but rather to her audience in her "Ten Important Things I've Learned About Blogging" section.

A couple of years ago I did change things up when I requested a custom blog design from Courtney of Judith Shakes Design.  She took a mish-mash of my ideas and made this page exactly the way I wanted.  It was a dramatic and brilliant alteration for which I am not responsible.  Dang it.

Now the time has come, once again, to "change things up".  I'm eventually leaving this platform and going where there is more to offer.  I'm getting a new custom theme, custom icons, a new twitter background, new page templates, miscellaneous graphics, all of my posts transferred and SO much more.

Courtney at Judith Shakes Design is doing ALL of it.

Courtney is about eighty shades of smart and I am not.  I want professional results, so I'm letting a professional handle it.  I'm taking Ree's advice and running with it, but I'm letting someone else do all of the exercise.  Wait...I am smart!

I didn't plan on this blog taking me anywhere, but it did, and I don't want the same scenery for my entire journey.  I'll create the experience, but Courtney will be my travel guide so I don't get lost along the way.

And, if YOU book space on the Judith Shakes Design calendar for a design project of at least $300, Courtney will give you $50 off with the code - MOMO4EVER.

You.  Are.  Welcome.

If you're a blogger, come and join me.  Let's go places we never thought possible.  Life is too short to just stand still.

Labels: BlogHer, Bringing Home the Bacon, My TV Addiction, Things I Would Change, Tooting My Own Horn

I am not a small woman.

I know this.  I own this.  I have never been petite.  I will never be petite.

It isn't easy to be big.  It, especially, isn't easy to be big when you need to put on a bathing suit and actually allow people to see your thunderous thighs.

I mean, really.  It's one thing that everyone can see my gigantic, looks-like-I-play-in-the-NBA, hands, but allowing it to all hang out is something else entirely.

Last week, my family and I rented a vacation house for a night to celebrate my daughter's 12th birthday and the birthday of one of our friends.  While looking for the rental unit, one of the requirements was that the house have a hot tub.  Unfortunately we found one.

So, there I was.  Not only was it snowy and freezing outside, but the 104 degree hot tub overlooked beautiful scenery and I had been suffering from a stiff neck for days.  It seemed...appealing.  While the adults were all scattered among different parts of the house, I decided to bite the bullet, put on my bathing suit and climb into the hot tub with my daughter and our friends' two kids.

If anyone won't pass judgment on you it's two 12 year old girls, because they are so concerned about themselves they don't even see your thighs.  Plus, there was a nine year old to distract them...or irritate them...same difference.

I walked outside, removed the towel from my waist, climbed the steps and, under the gaze of three children, I dipped myself into the hot tub.

There.  That wasn't so bad, now was it?  Sure, I'm big...but, it's not like the water went pouring over the edge.  I leaned my head back and let the jets pound against my stiff neck.  I can't believe I was so worried about what everyone thinks of me.

Which is when my daughter looked across the water and said, "Um...Mom?  I think you need a tissue."

Labels: Kids, Ramblings, Shameless Statements

You know how you enter a new year all starry-eyed and sure that things are going to be, at least, 20 times better than the year before, then right after the ball drops, your husband spills his glass of punch on your living room area rug, then your son spills sparkling grape juice all over himself, and then nine hours after that you take your husband's car to the shop and it needs $500 in repairs, and then the shop calls back and says, "Whoops, we mean $700!", and five hours after that you find out that your sister-in-law, who is also your dental hygienist, isn't at the family get-together because she's home with a vomiting virus, and she just happened to clean the teeth and floss the gums of every member of your family two days prior, and then you play in a poker tournament with 15 people where the top three players get paid, and you go out fourth, then you spend the first night of the new year not sleeping at all and on the second day of the new year your dog throws up all day?

Yeah, me too.