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Yes, I have read Fast Food Nation. I have mourned the cows in the feedlot. I hold a personal crusade against High Fructose Corn Syrup and Trans Fat. But it all leaves my mind whenever I see that Golden Calf…er…Arches in the distance. I have drunk the watered down Orange Drink, I have tasted the shortbread communion wafers shaped like Grimace. The part of my soul that looks after my health and well-being has been sold to Ronald McDonald.

My love affair began as a small child when my parents used to buy two cheese burger Happy Meals for the four of us and then tear each burger in half. I remember vividly the first time I was allowed to order off the adult menu. I was with my pastor’s daughter, who bought me breakfast. When total came up $6.66 she declared “I am NOT paying that. Give me another hash brown.”

Happy Meals gave way to Big Macs, a large Dr. Pepper and those FRIES. So delicately crisp when hot and fresh, that quickly give way to wooden crumbles when cold. If I am really feeling decadent, a hot fudge sundae for 99 cents. I have spent all three of my pregnancies downing 69 cent vanilla cones to help soothe my heartburn. Yes, hand-dipped gourmet ice creams have their place, but sometimes you just want cheap, nostalgic indulgence on a cake cone.

Still, until recently I only had a casual relationship with Ray Kroc’s goldmine. We’d haphazardly show up, order a couple of Happy Meals that usually came with some unfortunate toy that I’d later have to sneak out of the house (the Shrek quiz cards were especially horrible, and found their way into the garbage can AT MCDONALD’s). There was no rhyme or reason…until now.

I was recently told that if you save 10 proofs of purchases off the bottoms of your Happy Meals they can be redeemed for a free one. This is of course, not advertised. If I had known, I probably could have earned about 100 free meals by now. So now, I jealously guard my boxes, I tell everyone about the promotion and sometimes they graciously give me theirs, I have even snuck a few out of the top layers of garbage and then immediately washed my hands (which prompted my husband to say “I don’t even know you anymore.” Um Yes…you do! There is no way that sort of behavior could have surprised you).

As I mentioned in my previous blog right now Mickey D’s has Lego Batman and Madame Alexander Wizard of Oz Dolls. I am a woman POSESSED! I have decided to only go to McDs when they have toys we really, really want, and then we will load up. I will check the website, and make plans. So far we have Lego Batman, The Joker, Mr. Freeze (my favorite), Penguin’s Boat, Joker’s Helicopter, and the Batmobile. We still need Robin and Batman’s boat. We also have Dorothy, Glinda, The Wicked Witch, The Cowardly Lion, The Flower Munchkin, and the Winkie Guard. We are missing two Munchkins, the Mayor (but I don’t care about him so much), the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and my FAVORITE, The Flying Monkey. But they will be mine. Oh YES. They will be mine…er…Alice’s.

The people who work at McDonald’s don’t fully seem to understand the quest. I try to tell them if you have ANY of the Happy Meal toys that I don’t have I WILL buy all of them. I will eat a Happy Meal, the baby will eat a Happy Meal, whatever. But they just act annoyed. Dude…I am your JOB SECURITY.

After two weeks of Happy Meals I am getting a little sick of it. After this is Hot Wheels and Barbie, and I can take a break. But until then, I will sometimes choose milk and apple slices to minimize guilt. I will contemplate how switching to all white meat chicken didn’t change the rubbery consistency of a McNugget, and how the breading feels like armor after all these years. I will relish the flavor of the meat, which does not resemble any other beef I have ever tasted. And I will wonder why new jeans are so tight.

*UPDATE*

The Glorious SHERRI brought me a FLYING MONKEY TODAY and SCARECROW. She is DIVINE.

In other news, my Winkie Guard is missing. I am quite fond of him.

*BREAKING NEWS*

I have found my WINKIE GUARD. Oh Winkie Guard, I think I love you most of all!

*FINAL NEWS UPDATE*

Today I bought Five Happy Meals, and my search is complete. I got Lollipop Guild Munchkin, Lullabye League Munchkin, Tin Man and The Wizard. Also Lego Robin. And now I can worry about something else for a while.

How many people in life can say they have met their hero? By accident or design, such an occasion is rare. But my life has been full of rarity, and I count myself among the blessed who have touched the pedestal my heroes rest upon.

Erma Bombeck was the reigning queen of schlumpy housewives. For her to be a woman’s hero would have been no big deal, especially during the golden years of her reign, the 60s and 70s. She certainly was my hero. Only it was 1988, and I was 10 years old.  If I were in a freak show I’d be The Girl Who Time Travels because all of my references are so dated. It comes from being half-raised by my grandmother in a 100 year old farmhouse where layers of history are excavated just by moving a glass or lifting a book. I read my grandmother’s copies of “If Life is a Bowl of Cherries What am I doing in the Pits?” and “The Grass is Greener Over the Septic Tank” multiple times and what I didn’t understand I just filed away for later. But I knew I loved this woman, I loved how she took the dust bunnies out from under the bed and made them perform like trained monkeys. I got to meet her when she spoke in Evansville and I don’t know who was more excited, me, or Erma. It could not have been every day that she would meet a 10 year old girl so enamored of Housewife Humor.

Madeline L’Engle…I have not read nearly enough of her but what I have read is beautiful and funny and frightening.  I met her I beleive in 1992…she was kind and had a wonderful eastern accent. We talked about L.M. Montgomery. She loved Emily of New Moon, I’m all Anne of Green Gables. Touching her hand was touching greatness.

In 2003, shortly after the birth of my son Jarvis my mom brought me a book from the library. It was a memoir called “A Girl Named Zippy” and it was by a woman named Haven Kimmel. “I really think you’ll like this.” It looked a cute, fun read. I imagined it would be corny tales from the farm, told by a zany woman who wears purple with a red hat that does not match.

Wow. I was not expecting that. First of all, she’s no old lady, but instead is the exact age of my Aunt Dawn, who is FOREVER YOUNG and also not old at all. And the book was not just screamingly funny but also haunting and sad and dark and did I mention funny? Let me quote an example. The protagonist, Zippy, is talking to her mother about how to honor her now out-grown bicycle, and considers propping it against a shed, planting some flowers and maybe even putting up a sign so people would know what a treasure this old bike is.

“Like a shrine, you mean,” said Mom, blatently trying to teach me a new word.

“Yes, like a Shrine.” As far as I knew, Shrines wore absurd hats and drove miniature cars in circles during the Mooreland Fair Parade, and were praised, inexplicably, for burning children. Although actually, if I were perfectly honest, I could think of a couple kids who could use a good frying.”

After I read that line I very nearly gave up writing. I mean seriously, what is the point?

The thing that got me the most about this book and it’s follow-up, “She Got Up Off The Couch” were the details, the things I recognized. Her upbringing in Mooreland, IN in the 1970s felt so incredibly FAMILIAR, to the point that if I ever write anything autobiographical I would have to go through her books with a fine tooth comb and make sure I didn’t write about the same things, because it would not be hard. And while being compared to Ms. Kimmel, while being a huge honor, could also be literary death, with us both being from the Hoosier State.

That’s the thing about her novels too…the way she describes things and really zeros in on the landscape, on personalities, on the details that had no name until she described them. It’s little things …like a description of a glass lighting fixture filled with dead bugs. But make no mistake about Ms. Kimmel, she is whip-smart and funny and poignant but sometimes I feel like I will need a master’s degree in 20 different subjects just to help me understand what she’s talking about. And that spurs me on as well.

I confess I’m a comfort reader, and I read all of my favorite books, including ones from childhood, in rotation. So Zippy and Couch have taken quite a beating. They have been read in bed, and in the tub, and in the car. They have been stepped on, and had food spilled on them, and it’s all in the name of love, I promise. And with each reading I just loved them more and more, these books are my good old friends, now.

When I discovered Haven had a new website and blog I was extremely happy. When she actually answered some of my comments I was hopelessly geeked. And when I found out she would be speaking in Indianapolis well, let the circle be unbroken!

My husband has more than once left me at home while he traveled to the Transformers Convention (yes, the toy, not the electrical tower), including once, driving all the way to Texas. I told him “This is my Transformer’s Convention.” And he knew I was right. So on Thursday all five of us drove up to Indy to spend the day. It was meant to be two days, but I didn’t get a paycheck I was expecting. So, no hotel, and instead of a whole day at the Children’s Museum we had only two hours, which may someday be proven to be child abuse. There was a poop incident, and we had to rush to see everything, and we couldn’t really spend any time discussing the things we saw. We are going back.

We had to rush quick to McDonald’s and to the boy’s joy yes, they had LEGO Batman and to my joy they had Madame Alexander Wizard of Oz Dolls, and Alice accidentally wound up with two. Then we had to hoof it to the little independent bookstore, Big Hat Books, and wouldn’t you know it, there was a STREET FESTIVAL going on and we almost didn’t make it.

But I made it, and there was a canopy set up in the back, and wine served in paper cups. The proprietors were ASTOUNDED that I had driven 4 hours to be there. Just as I was getting up to get some wine I saw she was coming. Amazing that someone who was essentially a feral child looked so elegant and poised. She was very thin, thinner than in photos. The lady sitting next to me said “I wonder if that’s her.” “Yes, that’s her,” I said and felt like running and hiding. But instead I just sat down.

The explanations of the chapter titles were miniature lectures on myth and psychoanalysis, she quoted both Freud and Scooby Doo in the same story. The reading of her book was hilarious, and unlike some writers she actually has the right voice to read her own work (I submit to you Erma Bombeck, and Dave Berry, who should have always hired voice-over artists.) The book itself…what can I say? It’s disturbing and full of the Kimmel touch, of remembrances and descriptions of things I didn’t know you could describe until I saw them there, it made me feel smarter and dumber at the same time. I have to go load up on Freud and Jung and Edith Hamilton now, but it didn’t make me enjoy IODINE any less.

When it came time for questions I could see that it was my duty to do the one thing that no one else would and ask about the people in the memoirs…”Where Are They Now?” I could see the question made her a tiny bit uncomfortable, and I was uncomfortable asking it. I kept waiting for the woman who told Haven that she was so glad that she finally wrote a book that used her education to do it (and oh my, while that woman was talking it was all I could do not to curl up in a ball. I was so embarrassed. ) But she then gave us an answer that was joyously funny and tender, and I quit being sorry I asked.

And when I met her, she was kind and sweet and when I told her who I was she was genuinely delighted to meet me and my children, and initiated a hug and if I had been thinking clearly I would have thought “I have touched the hem of her garment and now I can write” but I was so happy that I just thought “Oh, how nice!”

I’m pretty sure I babbled incoherently and said stupid things, however. For instance, I introduced her to my son, Jarvis, which is her maiden name. I read the book after he was born, and I decided I named him after her without knowing it. But when I told her this I said “I asked my mom, ‘Why does she keep saying Jarvis?’ and mom said ‘Honey…it’s her last name.” Well, that’s not quite what happened. The first time she is referred to as Jarvis I sat straight up and was so confused…because I was really digging on this book and then, HELLO, there is my son’s name which I promise I had no idea was surname until that moment. So, still stupid, but not quite as stupid as I described it. Though one of the nice things about Haven is that everyone else looks kind of dumb in comparison, but she’s so nice about it that you can’t even care.

So, in honor of someone who feels like an old friend, I am going to reccomend the books of Haven Kimmel. And if you don’t like what she has to say, pay attention to the way she says it.

My life was a problem, had always been one, but everything seemed to really come to a head that day in the dentist chair. I laid back in the orange vinyl seat, my mouth stuffed with gauze. I had just been assaulted with a needle as thick as a pencil lead, not once, not twice, but six times. Twice for each tooth. Nothing burns quite as much as a shot in the root of the gums except for maybe childbirth, but thankfully at age 16 that wasn’t a pain I knew. But this was a pain I knew, and in addition felt something I couldn’t articulate. Each shot equalled one year of loneliness.

I laid back and stared at the brown paneling. Dr. H had left the room to let it all sink in, and I cried silently. As the Novocaine activated and slowly turned my mouth to rubber this thought stayed sharp and stabbing. Any chance I had at being pretty was about to be twisted out with a pair of pliers.

I kept telling my mom that I still had baby teeth, but she didn’t believe me. After holding my brother Ed down on the couch and yanking out a tooth that turned out to have a root like an icicle I think she felt it best something she shouldn’t worry herself with. When they wanted to fall out, they would. But nothing is ever that simple in this family. I kept noticing that while my smile was even and somewhat straight, my canines weren’t pointy but instead looked like a couple of pieces of shoe-peg corn.

Finally, at age 16 my dentist noticed this and decided to do some X-rays. Sure enough, my canine teeth had not descended. Being part of my body they decided to be difficult and artsy and were in fact, hiding. Instead of lining up neatly along my gums and doing their job of dissolving my baby teeth roots they were squatting in the roof of my mouth like a couple of teenage runaways. One tooth doing this seems insolent, two seems like a conspiracy. My eye teeth were like siamese twins refusing surgery. They wanted to be together. Separating them was their only shot at a normal life, but being part of my body they were terrified of gainful employment.

The dreaded word was spoken. Braces. Braces when you are 12 are a rite of passage, a necessary ugly duckling maneuver on the way to swan-hood. All the beautiful girls in their magenta and orange sweaters from PASTA, white jeans, and matching bow flats had braces. The cheerleaders with their sun-browned skin and hot-rolled hair and bangs teased in rows, blooming out of their foreheads like a prom corsage.

They all had braces and so I wanted some. I wanted to be them. I grew so attached to one of them, Ashley Wells, that I made up excuses to hang around her. We didn’t have any classes together, and the lunch table was obviously out. I discovered she always brushed her teeth after lunch to dislodge food particles stuck in her braces. Doctors orders. I took to bringing my own travel toothpaste and brush to school and casually began brushing my teeth one sink over. When questioned about my aberrant behavior I made up something about having cavity prone tooth. This actually turned out to be true, and I was cultivating a good habit. But I was embarrassed at being found out. I gave up on lunchtime brushing and popularity.

Now, they were all having their braces taken off and reveling in their straight, bleached teeth. And my yellow teeth were finding a commonality 4 years too late, which seems to be a trend with me.

So I was dispatched to Dr. Helman, an orthodontist, for a consultation, and he sent me to his brother Dr. Helman, a dentist, for the preliminary surgery. My miniature canines would be dispatched, along with a tooth on the bottom that was crowding my other teeth like a fat guy on a bus seat. So far so good. Then I would have braces put on the remaining teeth.

But this was not going to solve the problems of the holes left where my meat-tearers needed to be. A solution of fiendish cleverness emerged from my orthodontist’s brain. They would unearth my teeth through surgical excavation, cutting a giant hole in the roof of the my mouth. I sort of imagined the discovery of my teeth as being akin to opening the tomb of Tutankammen or unearthing a frozen Mastodon.  And the similarities don’t end there. My teeth would literally have to be dragged into place with CHAINS. Brackets would be glued, chains attached and rubber bands would be tied to the chains, and the other end tied to my braces. It would take months, maybe years.

But at the time I wasn’t thinking of how painful this would be (and trust me, it was awful.) I wasn’t mourning the loss of bubble gum, or thinking about how for two years I wouldn’t be allowed to bite into an apple (one of life’s supreme pleasures, I have learned) or even a sandwich. I was thinking about those holes in my smile, and the metal they’d be covered with. How once again, there would be something making me other,only this time it wouldn’t be a Carol Brady haircut or a shorts outfit printed with frogs, but something in my face.

I contemplated this in the orange vinyl chair, tears streaming down. I tried to pretend it was because those shots really hurt. I laid back and listened to the cracking of bone and twisting of root, but I knew it was really the sound of my heart breaking. The teeth laid one by one on the white paper tray like bloody flower petals whispering “He loves me, He loves me not” before they are ripped, scattered and forgotten.

Whenever I remember my childhood it always seems like my memory’s lens is covered with a grey film that can’t wash off. There is a darkness that no one seems to beleive or understand, not even myself. I was always lagging several steps behind my peers, perceiving things (often wrongly) with gut-wrenching intensity. Aside from my general human wickedness, I was just sad. I remember my mother telling me a story she had read that I can barely stand to repeat or remember and hearing it as a second grader just ruined me. I literally fell into a depression that I could not escape for months, and my whole life seemed defined by that moment. I could not succeed in school. I could not care. I could not love God. I could not move one foot in front of the other to do anything I was supposed to do for any length of time where it would matter. I could muster the strength for a couple of days, and then I would collapse again.

I told myself, if you just got married, you’d get better. Then, if you were a mother, you’d HAVE to get better. Then, if you just took the right vitamins and ate the right food, you’d find your golden ticket to wellness. I shunned pharmaceuticals as a crutch of the weak and foolish. I didn’t take drugs when I was birthing my babies, even the 10 lb girl I was in labor with for 36 hours. What I failed to recognize is that birth was 36 hours, but my life had been going for 30 years or more and I was still being tortured by who I was.

I finally realized, after visiting a psycologist and talking to a good friend, that I had nothing left to lose by trying to fix my broken brain chemistry. Depression and mental illness run in my family on both sides. And most assuredly, it is an illness, like diabetes or other chronic, deadly conditions. It was not being “sad” so much as physical heaviness and constantly feeling like my brain was full of rocks. I was constantly cycling, from super mom who makes homemade chicken stock and cookies to a semi-comatose sack who is constantly irritated and could barely speak to her beautiful children. It had to stop.

I’ve been on the generic for Prozac for over a month now, and…I’m astounded. I am even. I am level. The moments of profound, nasty irritation are essentially gone. The “edge” is gone…that thing that made me brittle, that filled me with anger, that made me feel like I was falling down a well and pull myself up onto the bucket before my lungs exploded. The water never reaches past my knees now. I can now honestly say that if I am stressed, or sad, it is from actual circumstances that I can cope with, rather than my body just rebelling against me for no reason.

I have damage control to do. I have to re-establish bonds with children that I have tormented with my ugliness, my hatefulness. And I have to work out my faith with fear and trembling, because for years I beleived I had a spiritual problem to be healed from. It can shake up your love for God when you feel he has let you down. I’m not sure it’s him, more things I have believed in my stead-fast ignorance . We’ll be alright, we always are. I just need to work it out.

To all the friends who I have dumped on over the years, I apologize. It was always amazing to know that I was making a complete ass out of myself in front of people whose griefs I could not comprehend. There were things jumping around in my brain that I was unable to cope with, and I’m sorry you had to listen to the incoherent ramblings of a sick person all the time.

To everyone who feels the way I have…you are not a bad person. You need help. It’s not your fault. Please don’t hesitate to seek help, to give yourself a foothold in this world.

Any Questions?

I apologize to all the McKinneycake fans out there who have missed this blog. I will attempt to rectify the wrongs I committed my neglecting this holy calling and get back into the swing of things.

Part 1- The Job That Got Away

My father’s family insists that when I was a child, I wanted to be a comedian. I have no memories of such an aspiration. Actress? Check. Writer? Check. District Attorney? I didn’t actually know what that was, but if it meant being extremely elegant and standing up for your beliefs and dating a hot man-beast like Catherine Chandler did on my favorite show Beauty and the Beast then yeah, I could be that.

Actress and writer stuck around for a while, but pretty much anytime I realize that a real job would require a) copious amounts of school and b) Working. HARD. then I would quickly lose interest. There was one job I never stopped considering from at least the age of four, however, when I breastfed my dolls and that was being a MOMMY. Preferably to bunches of kids. It’s the toughest job I’ll ever love and if I had known how colossally bad I could be at it sometimes then maybe I would have run away from that too, but it’s tough to argue with your biological urges. I was programmed to procreate.

And so, upon the death of my precious grandfather I dropped out of school for the third time, got married and got pregnant. I quit my $6 an hour job at the classical radio station and I quit my $8 an hour job working as a hospital file clerk and I got into the business of mommying. I had two more babies and hmm…why am I not fulfilled? Well, the reasons for that are far-reaching and something we will go into in a later blog, but there was something important going on.

As I mentioned in another blog, the writing was kind of important. And it was something I ignored for literally years and years of my life. When I started writing again it was a form of redemption for me. And I began to feel things welling up inside me. Ambition! A desire to help support my family!

I have been making a little bit of money writing for the Evansville Courier Westside, and News 4 U, and Evansville Parent and I was immensely grateful, but we’ve still been living a bit hand to mouth (in the American sense only.) I really wanted to do something else to help out while Hugh finishes his accounting degree.

There was a job I kept hearing about. A job running a website in town, called www.evansvillemoms.com. Job Title? Head Mom.

Now, the idea of having a job running a website seems a bit like a fairy tale, really. Work From Home? A job about being a Mom? That involves the INTERNET (that lovely place I met my husband.) Writing? Promotion? How much could something like that actually pay? Would it pay…anything? But this job kept coming up. From my friend Jenni, who somehow had heard something about it. From a girl named Kara, who I happened to meet while doing a story on the EduKids homeschool co-op. She knew the head mom in Knoxville and had heard rumors of a position in Evansville. I started emailing Knoxville’s head mom but I was still incredibly fuzzy on the whole thing. And then my sister-in-law Jondi saw the job posted on Yahoo Hot Jobs. So I pulled a resume out of thin air (how do you do a resume when you haven’t worked in 5 years, except for a little free-lance writing?) and sent it in.

And I got called in for an interview.

I nearly wet my pants.

Now, I still knew absolutely nothing about this job. There was a certain amount of money that I wanted to make, and it wasn’t much, but I thought it might help out. If the job made that much I’d be happy. And even though I had no idea what this job was really like I decided to go for the gusto.

I went shopping. First I went to Wal-Mart and bought a cute knit top and matching skirt, but ultimately I returned it for something with a bit more panache. So I went to Target where all the truly upscale dames shop, and I found the perfect corporate costume. A blue pin-striped skirt, $5. A white short sleeve button up shirt, $12. Red flats, $9. A red snakeskin bag. $30. And a blue and white polka dot scarf, $7. And I topped off the look with some silver earrings I bought at Kohls the night before. It actually looked smashing. I was complimented on it by someone in line behind me at The Courier Press office, just as I was being given a visitor’s badge that read #1. A very good sign.

I’ll cut to the chase. I was extremely intimidated, especially when I was told the salary. Let’s just say it was considerably more than what my husband makes, and he has a bachelor’s degree. It was also techincally 40 hours a week, and while it was work from home, it was definitely WORK. It was not a job. It was a career. Somehow I knew I was in over my head, and I couldn’t figure out what I was doing there. Over 50 people applied for this job? They were only interviewing three? I was one of them? Whaaa?

By the second interview I didn’t care. I was going to fake it till I made it. That job was mine. If I had to put my kids in public school and daycare (only part-time!), if I had to hire a cleaning lady, whatever, then I would make it work. I would change my clothes. I would tone down my personality. I would find someway to become magically organized, and I would make it work. I had GREAT ideas, and when would I ever find another job that used my talents for writing and working with the public that paid so incredibly well and DIDN’T REQUIRE A COLLEGE DEGREE?

I couldn’t stop talking about it…I couldn’t stop telling everyone about this incredible job that I was sure to get. The wait was murderous. It was all happening the SAME WEEK my brother was getting married and that was the only thing that managed to keep my mind off the culmination of destiny.

And then…it happened. I was having a manicure, and my sister-in-law’s mother got a call on her cell phone. From my husband! It was a message to call back about the job. I did so…with my heart in my throat, yet certain it was good news.

I now know that it was good news. At the time I did not realize this, and I sat, weeping in the beauty parlor and feeling like a fool.

Why did this happen? Why was I led in this direction? There are so many small details that I have left out…maybe even things I have blocked out due to the extreme grief that I was pulled into the weeks after this event. I called my friends constantly, dissolving in tears. I could barely take care of the kids, or cook. I was completely blindsided by this turn of events.

*To Be Continued*

Ever since Jarvis saw the trailer for the new Pixar film WALL-E he has been completely entranced. He has worked on perfecting his quavery robot voice, and loves to pretend to be “A curious and lonely robot.” I scolded him for “walking” up to communion at church on his knees and he informed me that WALL-E has wheels, not legs. Whenever anyone asks him to do something with him this summer, such as visit my grandparents at their lakeside cottage he says “I can’t…I’ll be seeing WALL-E.” I’ve tried to explain to him that we’ll only see it once in the theaters and that will leave PLENTY of time to do other summertime activities, to no avail.

Today he wanted to write a WALL-E book. He dictated, and I typed. We worked out a few plot points, but for the most part it’s exactly as it was told to me. He told me there will be no pictures, because, like Harry Potter, WALL-E is a BIG book. I suggested he draw some illustrations for the chapter pages, because he can draw an excellent WALL-E likeness.

So, here are two WALL-E fan fiction stories, and one teaser. Hopefully there will more to come.

WALL-E was on the garbage planet with his girlfriend Eve. Suddenly a big ship came down. The little white robot and WALL-E went into it. There was all kinds of stuff in it. There were no robots in the ship. She thought it was an alarm so she just had to just check around all in the ship. Suddenly another ship came down and there were two ships, then more and more and more ships. And then all villains came out of these ships. Then there was something else. It was Eve but she was caught. And WALL-E had nothing to do because he was little.

Chapter 2 WALL-E saves Eve
When WALL-E saw that Eve was captured what should he have done? WALL-E went after the villains in the first ship and the first ship had Eve in it and WALL-E had somewhere behind so he went behind the boxes so he’d have somewhere to hide so the bad guys wouldn’t know that WALL-E followed them into the ship.

So, WALL-E went behind the boxes. What he found there was a clue. And an unbelievable thing- nothing there! There was something else there. Wall-E kept looking for someplace in the ship to eat.

Chapter 3 WALL-E believes the ship

Wall-E believes the ship is haunted. Wall had the unknowsent to get the ship off until he got his girlfriend Eve. And WALL-E just raced and raced to Eve. At last Eve was saved. WALL-E fighted the villains. And the next morning it was a beautiful day outside and WAll-E and his girlfriend lived happily ever after. The End.

Wall-E and the Velveteen Prince

Chapter 1

The Nice Christmas Day

It was snowy outside and so Wall-E and Eve went out to play in the snow. They made snowballs and then when it was springtime everything got to be good. When it was summer Wall-E played outside with Eve also. Then Wall-E decided to go for a wheel walk today. Eve said “Where are we going today Wall-E?” and Wall-E said “to the park.” Then on the way to the park they went the wrong way. But on the way to the park they got lost. So they went to a house that was a castle. There was a queen. A very, very mad queen. So Wall-E and his girlfriend asked directions to the park. The queen said “If you tell me that I will destroy you guys.” So Wall-E and Eve wheeled away as fast as they can. But the queens workers came and catched them.

Chapter 2

Put them in the Boiling Water

So, as they catched, well, there seemed to be one little thing. Now these two metal robots go into the boiling water. They didn’t burn up because they were metal.

Chapter 3

Fight with the Velveteen Prince

As Wall-E did it good, good things began to go wrong. As we were saying with this story, Wall-E did anything. And so to a very nice Colactos and then the queen had a very large cat that could eat up Wall-E. The cat was named Velveteen Prince and he had a very large teeth and he scratched with his teeth and no part of Wall E came off because he was metal. Wall-E fighted the cat and fighted the queen and fighted the queens workers and Wall-E and his girlfriend lived happily ever after. The End.

Wall-E and the Soldiers

Chapter 1

Science of Science

Wall-E and Eve were at a lab. So at the lab they saw someone that was a soldier. They looked all over the lab and all over the lab there were just soldiers. And also Wall-E went to the solider building and all the soldiers shooted Wall-E and said “Get him, Get him, Get him” but no part of Wall-E got dead because he was metal. The soldier said “What’s wrong…the shooting won’t help! I don’t believe it and he’s not even being dead!” So Wall-E turned into a garbage box so he can be much better. Then Wall-E said “I guess I should run away with my wheels!”

Chapter 2

Wall-E Lost

TO BE CONTINUED…

For several days now I have been finding capless markers strewn about my house. Most of them have lost their tips, and I was beginning to wonder if I had some sort of strange Chupacabra like creature stalking the Crayolas. Something that feeds on washable ink and enjoys gnawing on felt.

My instincts were spot on, except for the mythical creature part. My 1 year old daughter Alice was recently discovered with blue hands, blue spots on her dress and a sweet, blue tinged smile, holding a turquoise marker that had been decapitated. And for the next forty-eight hours I changed approximately 8 diapers that were a frightening shade of kelly green.

When I was a child green poop meant one thing. Purple Kool-Aid. Something about purple food coloring always wreaked havoc on our digestive tracts and we wound up with poop the color of pea soup. This color was far more vivid. It would be right at home on an 80s wet-look mermaid-skirted bridesmaid dress.

As I wiped my daughter’s turquoise-tinged bottom so many times that day I knew this moment needed to be recorded for posterity. Poop happens. It’s an integral part of parenting and a source of great humor. So, if you are not a fan of toilet humor then I do apologize. You might want to stop reading now.

Right now Linus is really obsessed with poop. I read in a potty training book that it is completely normal for a child to describe his or her bowel movements in great detail, but that still did not prepare me for his “Baby Jesus in the Swadding Clothes Poop.” In retrospect I probably should have salvaged that one and sold it on eBay. He has also lovingly shown me a Mama Bear and Baby Bear, and a poop that truly was shaped like a Mouth, as well as a myriad of snakes and letters of the alphabet. It’s gotten to the point where I have started mentally describing my own bowel movements. I very nearly called Jarvis in to show him the wonderful J I had made, but I stopped myself in time.

One of Linus’s favorite toys is a skinned male torso that sits next to the children’s encyclopedias. (Incidentally, this is one of my favorite baby shower gifts ever, from my dear Fritzi, who knows better than anyone how much I’d prefer a human anatomical model over another rattle any day.) This torso comes with cards that describe various internal organs and when you insert them into the torso said organ lights up. I explained to my boys what each organ was and what it did. Now Linus loves to grab the visible man and bark like a cigar-smoking gangster “YA WANNA KNOW WHERE THE POOP IS?” He then inserts a card that makes the small intestine light up like a neon sign at a tapeworm diner. “THEEEEEERE’S the POOP!.”

Of course, Jarvis has also had his share of poop moments in years past, such as the day Hugh found him calmly sticking a toy flute into his diaper and smearing the contents on the living room floor. He then looked up and said rather matter-of-factly “I have poo-poo.” Yes. Yes you do.

My most disgusting poop story also comes from Jarvis. I’m not sure I need to reproduce it here. Let’s just say that when you are changing a newborn it’s important to remember the word “explosive” applies, and changing diapers naked is never a good idea.

Linus seemed like an ordinary baby. He was sweet, and either looked chronically worried or extremely smiley. The first few months of his life not much seemed to set him apart from any other baby, except perhaps for the solitary blonde, wiry curl that stood up in the middle of his head like Charlie Brown. His first word was “quack quack” and after that he just sort of exploded. He started walking Christmas Day in 2005 at 10 months of age and that was it. He stopped being a baby.

Language came next. It seemed he immediately started speaking in complete sentences with very little baby preliminary. If you asked him a question before he was a year old he’d answer “key-cars” which I eventually realized meant “because” (and by realized I mean “Jill told me”). It wasn’t long before he was saying please and thank you. By 18 months he could say “I’m a studmuffin!” and “Look at me, mommy! I’m swimming…in a boat!” while he floated in a life preserver. At 22 months I scolded him for screaming while I tried to change his diaper and he angrily protested “Don’t be rude Mommy, don’t be selfish! I was not screaming, I was talking!”

From 18 months on his uniform was a backwards baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses. He could not be persuaded to wear a cap forwards. We thought perhaps he found the brim annoying, but no. If he put on a fireman’s helmet, it went on backwards too with the neck protector over his eyes. We finally determined he must have a backwards head. He was very pleased with himself and would announce “It’s like a costume! I’m a cool dude!”

A passion for putting pieces together came next. Mr. Potato Head Theater commenced every morning on top of the 2-shelf bookcase outside his bedroom. Linus was the director, author and costume designer. Architecture is also a forte of his, particularly building Frank Lloyd Wright style homes out of Duplo blocks. By the age of two and a half he was working 25 piece puzzles in less than 5 minutes, 100 pieces in less than an hour.

I have previously mentioned his brother’s flair for the dramatic and mimicry ability. Linus has developed a secret identity of his own, but unlike his brother’s characters like Scooby Doo and Donald Duck, his have sprung from his own mind fully formed. I believe it all started when a lovely little blonde at his pre-school sat next to him on the staircase, put her arm around him and coquettishly suggested that they might get married. He balked. “No, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do…I’m going to marry my mommy.”

The rest is likely my fault, because I protested our upcoming nuptials. While Jarvis and Linus fought over my hand I repeatedly reminded them that I was their mother and already married to their daddy, and if I married one of them what would Daddy do? Linus suggested that Daddy could stay home.

So now, my little son is married. He is a grown up. A daddy. He doesn’t have parents, because he’s a big man. His name is Chocolate-Covered, and he has a wife named Strawberry. Strawberry wore a white dress when they got married, and CC wore a blue tuxedo. They have five children. Banana, Telephone, Candy, Video and Computer, though I have recently been informed that Video and Computer met their demise from eating yucky old spaghetti off the floor. My son is nothing if not morbid. Oh, I forgot. Strawberry has one more baby. Alice is no longer my daughter, but is Strawberry’s baby girl. A baby girl Named Lukey Skywalker.

That Telephone is a handful! Chocolate Covered frequently has to put him in time out for hitting Banana and Candy while Strawberry goes the store. Chocolate Covered is an attentive and involved father, driving his kids to school and reading them books on the staircase.

Occasionally Linus makes an appearance, but it’s not often. He generally refuses to answer to it. But since his family and identity are a secret that can put a kink in things. I took him to visit a kindergarten class and he refused to reveal his name. “It’s a secret!” The teacher put the name I called him on a cup with a pea seed in it, but she misspelled it. “That’s not right…it’s L-I-N-U-S but that’s not my name!” he declared, further confusing things. I frequently call him by the wrong name at home, and he is forever correcting me. Of course Jarvis did the same thing, only answering to Pluto or Donald Duck for years, but he refuses to believe me.

We received a new piece of information at my Aunt Dawn’s birthday party. Chocolate Covered declared his middle name is…Caviar. “Caviar is fish eggs!” announced my three year old epicurean son. To be fair, he learned this from Spiderman 2. But I defy you to find another three year old who knows this, or one who is such a good father.

I am always amazed at the way reality likes to poke holes in the filmy curtains that swirl in my mind. I’ve been approaching my life as a journalist rather like a kindergartener who is shocked to see her teacher at the grocery store. Real life has not ceased just because I’ve been published a few times. My story was the most emailed story on www.courierpress.com for over a week, and yet I still do not have a maid. Somehow those 73 comments the story garnished did not automatically turn me into an international jet-setter.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Harmonie Haus theater in historic New Harmony a couple of weekends ago for a cover story for the West Side. But being who I am it wasn’t a simple jaunt over to a neighboring town. As a nursing mom with a demanding baby who doesn’t even know what a bottle looks like I couldn’t see leaving her for the length of time it would take to interview everyone. It quickly turned into a family outing. Horton Hears a Who was showing and since the boys are big fans of Dr. Seuss (of course, who isn’t?) we opted to take the whole McKinney clan.

This first thing involved was a 25 mile drive to New Harmony. My daughter Alice began to fuss which I thought was related to her new disdain of her carseat, leading to much arching of the back and grumpy red faces. Next came the unmistakable sound and odor of throwing up. Of course, I had extra diapers and wipes but no extra outfit, so Alice spent the rest of the trip congealing to her straps.

Hugh dropped me off for my interview and I spent the next hour in a beautifully restored home filled with local art. Meanwhile Hugh drove another 15 miles to Mt. Vernon in search of a McDonald’s and someplace that sold baby clothes. He located a Family Dollar and bought Alice the only 18 month size outfit available, a pink and sea foam green pair of long johns decorated with butterflies. While changing her a man walked by and remarked “Cute Baby.” Hugh said “Thanks,” much to the horror of the boys who reprimanded him for talking to a stranger.

Hugh forgot I had another interview scheduled at 5:30 pm and was a bit late returning. I feared setting him lose with three kids might be tossing him to the wolves. I ate a cold Big Mac and even colder fries for dinner, and tried to concentrate on interviewing the theater managers while my children ran wild in the lobbey and begged for Ring Pops and Nerds.

Most of the patrons I tried to interview looked at me like I was asking them to taste test various brands of pickled pigs feet. I did find a few who were willing to talk and add some local color to my article, and the kindly theater manager gave my kiddos a poster of “Horton Hears A Who” and a book on New Harmony history. The kids enjoyed the movie and I enjoyed what I saw of it, which wasn’t much since Alice demanded to be taken out so she could crawl around and slobber all over the concession case.

Hugh and I calculated the cost of gas for driving to New Harmony, then driving to Mt. Vernon, then the cost of a meal for 4 at McDonalds, then driving back to New Harmony, movie tickets, and then the drive back home. By the time I get my check for this article (and believe me, for a freelancer the money just trickles in) we will probably just about break even. I keep telling myself that this is just preparation for the novel I am writing which will be an official Oprah’s Book Club Selection. It’s all about paying my dues.

Before I leave you today, here are a few reasons you haven’t seen much of my blog lately. Enjoy!

A Hollywood Ending

David M. Bailey

Newburgh Herb Festival

Also, I’ve been working with my friend Jane Vickers on her line of stuffed toys. They are called “‘Li’l Monsters” and they are quite adorable. Yours truly came up with a few of the descriptions and names in exchange for some cool toys and funky earrings!

I have also started another blog devoted just to homeschooling:

I have an article coming up in the next Beeyoutiful catalog on Vitex, an herb useful for feminine support. Next month I am writing at least one article for the Courier’s West Side and article on babywearing for Evansville Parent, as well as couple more articles for News4U.

So as you can see, I have reason to neglect my blog but I will try to do better in the future! As long as I have days like this, where I knock over a potty full of pee as I run to the toilet in desperation as my insides curl and uncurl in distress caused by drinking 2% milk for the first time in weeks while SIMULTANEOUSLY nursing my 10 month old daughter I will never run out of things to write about, and I will also never be glamorous.