Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? That’s Right! Bear Grylls!!


“E wants Kielbasa for dinner,” I told Jeff over the phone last Thursday.  “Can you grill them tonight?”

Seems reasonable, one might think.  I’m just a silly woman, so no way could I fire up the grill and cook that meat in the outdoors by myself.

“Those bitches don’t know jack about grilling meat.”

Turns out something died under our deck, however, which Jeff discovered that morning before work.  He went out back to investigate two boards that had popped up, warped to a crazy degree, and there in the hole was a deceased something.

So, I ran with the phone to the other room, to look out the sliding glass door, while he informed me of his plan to get some gloves on the way home from work and remove the deceased something’s remains.

“It’s pretty big, but I can’t tell what it is,” he said.

“There are a lot of flies,” I told him.  “And crawly things around the deck.”

“Game over. I win!!”

Well, forget it.  Flies and crawly things?  He changed his mind.  No kielbasa for E.

Bear Grylls might have enjoyed a fine dining experience, but we weren’t even willing to go close enough to remove it.

Good thing it wasn’t a zebra under our deck. Or was it?

Thursday turned into Friday turned into Saturday.  Hot days, for sure.  Saturday was somewhat sweltery, even.  The kind of day that might find an egg frying on a sidewalk…or maybe a coyote slow-roasting under a deck.

Satan is so silly. He’s gotta know I don’t *do* phone.

We weighed our options.  By “we”, I mean Jeff is 100% in charge of all dead bodies on our property.  I’m happy to micromanage all sorts of projects, but Jeff is our circle of life correspondent.

Turns out it costs a lot more to have someone come out on the weekend.  Oh, holiday weekend you say?  Double it.

“So you see, it’s like this… We can come today and it’ll cost you $eleventy-hundred million, or we’ll come by in three days and remove the liquefied, putrified remains for $6.”

No can do!  We’ll let it rot for a couple more days and accept the less expensive removal, thank you.

So, Saturday turned into Sunday.  The neighbors erected a tent in their backyard.  The bouncy castle inflated to epic proportions–not the cheap little one, but the “impress your guests” sized one.  They had a slip and slide.  They had balloons on the mailbox.

They had a dead body in the neighbors yard.  The downwind neighbor.

Vomit cleans up quick and easy with paper towels.

While Jeff was out running an errand (Fine, he was grocery shopping!  Happy now?  He was getting our groceries.  So what?  I’m educating his children!  I *do* do something useful. Not that I’m prickly about it.), someone knocked on our door.  I knew it was the neighbor, probably wanting to alert us there was going to be a party, or that there’d be a lot of cars, or inquiring about the smell of rotting flesh wafting from our backyard…  Neighborly stuff.

Then again, it might have been an alligator.

So, we ignored the doorbell.  Knocking?  I don’t hear anyone knocking.

“Are we going to answer?” one of the kids asked.

Umm, no.

“WTF is the smell coming from your yard???”

I also crept into the sunroom and sssllllloooowwwwllllllllyyyy pulled the blinds down.  Eased them down so no one would notice their descent.

I guess their party was fine.  I didn’t hear anyone vomiting in the bushes, so I’m sure it was okay.

Monday was Memorial Day.  We marched in a parade with our Scout Pack.  We did lunch at Chili’s for my friend’s son’s birthday (who I later flipped off by accident…he’s 9 now, so he can take it).  Then we got home and Jeff said he’d be outside if I was looking for him.  He was gone a long time!  I checked after awhile and he had done the body removal.  Why he waited for the 5th day is beyond me, but he did it.

I wish I had taken pictures of Jeff doing the removal, but he didn’t tell me that’s what he was doing. Maybe next time. Until then, enjoy this guy.

He still doesn’t know what it was.  I’m kind of pissed.  I wanted to take a picture of the boards, but I waited five days too.  Jeff said the ground was still moving long after the host was triple bagged.  Is it wrong that I still wanted to see it?  The smell held me back though.

“Trust me, you don’t want to see it.” Jeff assured me.

Jeff replaced the deck boards with new ones and life returns to normal.  This is just another footnote in Beeler history…  Well, the new and improved history, now with rotting animal corpses!

Imagine my surprise when I googled “rotten animal corpses” hoping for something funny…and got this! We love Bear Grylls something fierce in this house. ❤

My apologies to the neighbors.  I hope you had a nice time at your party.

Chuck Norris Redux and Why My Kids Are in a Chain Gang


My house is a pigsty, I re-realized this morning, while we were feeling somewhat restless in each other’s orbits.

Jeff eventually took the kids to the beach, and I said I was going to stay home and clean the barn we call home.  Like the scrubby kind of cleaning, where you vacuum the vents, use products, and everything.

Shit yes, I love to clean my house. Look how happy it makes me to serve my family.

I was obsessing over blog stuff before they cleared out, metablogging if you will, and read to the kids a list of countries from which my international friends are checking in.  Since February 25, I’ve had readers from 70 different countries.  That’s surprising to me.

Then they started showing up at my house. It was really awkward.

The kids are into geography.  We have 13 maps on the walls of our main living space.  We kinds/sorta homeschool on weekends and holidays to make up for all the goofing and video game playing “we” do on “school” days.  And Target shopping.  And Costco visits.  And all-day play dates, parties, and park days.  And, well…maybe we don’t homeschool so much as we live our lives with curious minds.  They suck everything in.  Especially free samples.

I don’t think he really loves me. He just wants me to spend $300 on frozen lasagna and toilet paper. Costco sells over a billion rolls per year. Saw it in a documentary.

Geography of Vanity lesson done for the day, I was then looking at my most popular post stats.  Far and away, Chuck Norris is the winner.  He brought in almost 1200 readers, while my second place maternity pants invited only 200.  That one is only a couple of days old, so maybe I should give it time.
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N wanted to see if he could find my blog using Chuck Norris keywords.  We think it’s funny that Chuck Norris really does win at everything, even a popularity contest between crap in swimming pools and a pair of pants.

You think it’s a joke, but it’s true. Chuck is badass.

With a couple of tweaks, N found my blog and proceeded to correct my grammar and spelling on old posts, to which E commented “You made all those mistakes in front of everyone!”

Let’s go with annoyed and secretly proud, too. Then let’s also go with an opening bid of $12.50 for the both of them.

These guys are Damned. Lucky. I’m their mom.  Far better people than I would have had them breaking rocks by the roadside by now.  Maybe even in a chain gang.  Instead, I kicked them out of the house.

Precedent set. This kid corrected his mom’s grammar and spelling too.

So, while they were gone, I cyberstalked people online, took a few hours to nap in the middle of the day, made up conversations between the cats *with* the cats, got the brush-off from my mom on the phone, cried the rest of the afternoon because my mom was cheating on me with my other sister…  Then began cleaning the house about an hour before I figured the boys would be home.

Sometimes the conversations are short, so we just make beautiful music together instead.

Apparently it looked like I got a lot done.
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“It looks like you got a lot done,” Jeff said.  He must have really low expectations for my domestic skills.
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It’s pretty shortsighted for me to be admitting this in print, seeing as now he knows how much I can get done in an hour or less.  I only got one room done, but Jaysus H., the Queen of England could suck soup out of the carpet, it’s so clean in here.

Assume the position, Betsy, or there will be no soup for you!
(nods to Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi)

Speaking of weird visuals, N informed me before they left for the day:
“E found a glitch in Minecaft!  He discovered a way for all the animals to lose their torsos.  They’re just legs and floating heads.  The sheep also lost their faces!  They walk around and graze just fine, so it doesn’t look like they mind.”

Bwahaha Ditto on your base.

And a Chuck Norris fact I hadn’t known before today:
“Chuck Norris’ iPod came with a real charger instead of just a USB cord.”
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OMG  I wonder if he took the sheep’s faces, and all the other animal’s torsos?

Swimming Pools are Full of Urine and Feces: Don’t Go in the Water!


So my friend posted on FB that my blog makes her “cry and pee a little.”  That’s cool, and I admire her honesty.  It was a good share.

Some people like to share their toys, thoughts, feelings…incontinence. It’s all very powerful.

That also got me all spun out on a Google Images binge.  I always learn so much while googling random keywords.  Today I learned that at least one of your friends is a filthy animal.

Is it this one?

In a slightly outdated (2009) online survey of 1000 adults, 1 in 5 confessed to peeing in the swimming pool.  Not sure which pool, but if you’ve been in *any* pool with more than four other adults…  One of them whizzed all over you for free.  Lucky you!

My quick bit of research uncovered costs ranging from $10 to $50, probably more if you leave the alley, but some people are willing to do it for free. They pee in the pool too.

At least two in five were probably lying.  So, odds are good that of the four others, two more are too embarrassed to admit they use any captive body of water as a toilet.  Years ago I remember reading about some guy that relieved himself in the coffee pot at his office.  He’s probably peeing in your pool too, as well as the vat of sangria you made for later.

I’m not saying it’s not a nice toilet. It’s a unique and fabulous toilet.

(Side note: didn’t find the original story I remembered, so subbed a different one…)

So, what’s the big deal?  Pools are filtered, cleaned, chemically treated.  It’s safe to have four friends over to swim at the same time, not to mention their babies in non-absorbant swim diapers, their “potty trained” toddlers and young children…  They swim for a couple of hours, get liquored up on juice pouches and hose water, and don’t need to use your bathroom?  Riiiight.  They are *so* using your bathroom.  The one in your backyard.

See how happy? It’s because they love those thermal vents.

That cute baby has loose, mustard-seedy, breastfed stools.  He’s wearing a swim diaper.  He shat in your pool.  It’s in your eyes.

Since a lot of your friends don’t shower before they get in the pool (35%, check the link above), there is also a lot of contamination from make-up, hair product, lotions, dead skin, toe cheese, old sweat, and all of that other nasty stuff I’m too damned polite to mention.

This is not a bad idea.

When is the last time you cleaned inside your belly button?  You are swimming in your friend’s scabs and puss.

Calm your shit down though!  The pool is chlorinated.  The chemicals make it safe to swim in the cesspool of your friend’s yeast and smegma.  Your open wounds (bandaids are in the skimmer with your neighbor kid’s 10 feet of hair) are safe!

Michael Phelps admitted in an interview with some late night guy that he pees in the pool. So, go ahead and pee in the pool too. You might win Olympic gold one day.

Not true!  You’re not safe!  I read another article, thanks to my keyword searching and insatiable curiosity, that all that organic matter is reacting with the pool chemicals and will give you cancer.  And make you sterile.  You know what?  Your unborn children might one day be born with genetic mutations.  I’m pretty sure you already have asthma.  Michael Phelps might have made you sterile with all that Olympic kidney waste.

This dog’s mom and dad made sweet love in a chlorinated pool. She was born in a bun. IN A BUN! With condiments, even.

I learned all about it in this feel-good article, also from LiveScience.  Check it out and let your friends know their unfortunate pool diseases won’t be covered by your Homeowner’s policy.

Raymond and Joyce don’t care anymore about what happened in the pool. They never really cared, but now they *really* don’t give a flying whatnot.

Wait.  What did it say?  “While the new study did not examine actual effects on humans, it suggests such research might be warranted.”

You’re publishing an article, LiveScience, that incites mass hysteria at the pool, telling all these bleeding, skin cell sloughing, incontinent people that they’re going to die slowly and in great pain because their organics are not playing nicely with the disinfectants…but you haven’t studied “actual effects”?  No proof?

The camel knows.

Ahh.  Deep sigh of relief.  The armies of stringy, green-haired people with chemically burned skin peeling from their calcium-stripped skeletons DOES NOT EXIST!  Hells yes, it’s safe to go in the water.

Turns out swimming with four or more of your friends, and their disgusting children, probably won’t kill you.

I always heard about a dye that reacts to urine in the pool water, but it turns out I was being told yet one more lie as a child.  Adults should really stop lying to children.  It’s not nice.

Lies adults tell children.

One pool fact that I wish was a lie makes me glad my sensitive skin and allergies to chemicals has kept me out of swimming pools since I was a kid.  Sit down on your crusty, ill-wiped poop because this is disgusting enough to die from.

“Most people have about 0.14 grams of feces on their bottoms that, when rinsed off, can contaminate recreational water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”  I read it online.  It’s true!

The article continues to entice us into Washington D.C. pools with an estimate of 50 pounds of shit accumulating in their area swimming holes over the course of a summer.  Not all at the same time, in the same place, but it’s a little like swimming in a port-a-potty, no?  Well, it’s happening in your local pools too.

It accumulates. It’s not just from one person, but from the deposits of many.

Centennial Beach is full of germy, bacterial crap.  No goggles?  It’s in your brain.

A man made crap hole in picturesque downtown Naperville, IL. Bring the whole family.

I hope this post has been informative and helpful.  Now that the hot weather is upon us, I just want my friends to be aware of the dangers of swimming with four or more friends at the same time.  Obviously, if you only have three friends with you…the pool pisser is likely still at home and you’re going to be fine.  I can’t help you with the fecally crusted substructures, or the smegma for that matter, but I do recommend you leave the fourth friend at home.

And if your friends are absolutely not the type, take a critical look at your partner’s friends.  They are totes the most disgusting, feces encrusted despoilers of the water *I’ve* ever seen, and I just wanted to warn you that they’ll be whizzing on you for free, right out there for all the world to see.  Take precautions.

We never even hit on the crustacean concerns. No joke, just stay home in the A/C this summer.

Also, please use sunscreen.  It’s important to me and I want you to be safe.  Your lotion-in-the-water may cause your friend’s future child to be born with an arm growing out the top of his head, though that’s kinda iffy at best.  I’m almost a doctor and I think it’s worth the risk.

Have a wonderful summer.  Let me know how it works out for you.  And all those future babies.

I’m sure everything will work out fine.

Maternity Pants Time!


I know what you’re thinking.  “Gosh, how awesome that Kim’s having another one of those sweet Beeler children!”

But you’d be WRONG!

Those Beeler children are not sweet!  Err…  I mean, I’m not knocked up!

These are *not* the Beeler children. These children will kill you while you sleep. The Beeler children will wear you out until you just lay down and die. In your maternity pants.

My OB agreed with me, after E was born, that I’m not a good candidate for more pregnancies.  But I have this pair (seriously, I just wrote it pare, then pear, then pair) of maternity pants from 2001 that I AM STILL WEARING!  Yesterday I took them on their maiden 2012 voyage in which I played tennis with my husband and kids.  Today I wore them again to go roller skating with the kids at homeschool skate.

It’s not that I’d be a bad mom, quality-wise… Just a terrible vessel. Also, it might kill me. These parents are terrible parents quality-wise.

I know it’s summer when I get to wear my maternity pants.

They frickin’ rock, in all their lime green glory.

This maternity pants sighting proves at least two things.  One, I wear clothes more than once before washing because it’s great for the environment, YAY Environment!,

Not super funny, but a diagram instantly makes this post more scientific. Plus, it’s a VENN! Venn diagrams are very helpful in sorting information.

and 2) we are an athletic bunch of Beelers this week.  N was outside, under the wide open sky, with sun shining and no electrical outlets.  None of us perished from the grass, trees, breeze, or solar flares.  We almost perished from E’s very bossy tendencies, however.  He’s definitely one that has ideas and opinions, and likes to bark them at all of us from the comfort and safety of family.  He’s pretty quiet outside the family.

“Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause wide-spread chaos.” So be careful if you leave your house. Ever.

I have no idea where E gets those bossy traits.

Not from me! I swear! Jeff is a lying liar.

Moving on, back to the subject of my awesome pants…  A friend commented that she liked them a couple of years ago.  I ‘fessed up that they were maternity in nature.  The ground didn’t swallow me up, so I kept wearing them.  Last year, my sister saved me from myself and helped me get some new clothes.  I think she felt sorry for me because I was still wearing a brown, v-necked shirt that she couldn’t even remember how long ago her store carried…  Ten or more years, at least.

I love that shirt, too.  I can’t wait until lime green and brown are acceptable together in public.

Half my target t-shirts were stained with movie popcorn butter.  Thanks, Jeff!  (buy same size as husband wears, in men’s = two wardrobes for the price of one!)  My favorite pair of jeans actually wore out in the crotch last year!  There was nothing left!  I was sad (dual meaning) and wore them a couple of extra times before declaring them toast.  I’m painfully shy, so the juxtaposition of not being able to talk to people due to diagnosable mental illness, plus my hoo-ha hanging out…priceless.

The rip started like this. Then it grew, and kind of gaped down a little. This is not my hoo-ha. This is a stranger’s crotch, thanks be to Google Images.

Did I mention the social anxiety?  One-two punch, shyness *and* social anxiety.  Maybe they’re the same thing?  Whatever.  “By the power of Grayskull…I have the POWER!”  But I save it for Facebook and blogging.  Sorry.

Word.

But my maternity pants stand the test of time.  They also hold three tennis balls per pocket.  PER POCKET!  That’s right…  Pregnant women need bigass pockets to hold their crap.  Car keys, water bottle, a sandwich, plus whatever else is necessary to be pregnant and on the move.  Non-pregnant people wearing maternity pants could also benefit from bigass pockets.  Skating?  I had a pear of socks, unusually large smart phone, folding money, and an electric generator for my laptop.  And my laptop.  It was glorious.

This year I have a couple of shirts and pants that are younger than my oldest child, which is almost the same as me being in the front row of Paris Fashion Week.  I’m pretty jazzed, actually.  I will continue to wear my maternity pants, however.

I think they look a little bit like clown pants, and I hate clowns, but sweet baby (insert favorite deity name here), I love those effing pants.

I don’t love *these* effing pants.

I just read this to my creative writing critique group (N & E), and the feedback I received is that it needs more bad words.  I love those kids almost as much as I love my maternity pants.

For N and E, who like it when I swear.

The Fort Must Be Defended Against Alien Forces


So I just posted about E’s joy.  Now I’ll post about N to keep balance in the universe.

Different kids find their delight in different places. Read the rest of this entry »

When Kimberly Was In Egypt’s Land…


Today I’m glum, stressed, sleepy and defeated.

It’s been a stressful week and I’m kind of burnt on all the drama.  Everything seems to be such a struggle for us, though I don’t usually post about that stuff.  It’s what I spend the bulk of my time pondering, regardless.   Read the rest of this entry »

Randomness and Haiku


Today is starting slow and groggy for me.  E is an early riser and even he crawled in bed with me and fell back to sleep until 9:30am.  9:30am?!?!  N is late for Physics!  Curses! Read the rest of this entry »

Waterboarding and Bull Goring and Violin… Oh My!


Today was awesome…another one for the record books, in my humble opinion.  N faced a big source of fear and anxiety, E schooled us on lifestyle choices and I was only 25 minutes late to both homeschool groups today!  Yeah!  Also worthy of note:  I didn’t wet my pants in traffic on the way to Evanston.  That’s good for at least a silver star on the calendar, yes? Read the rest of this entry »