Last week I got an email from a blog friend asking me for some help. Lola, from Lola’s Diner wanted to know if I would help her tweak her profile on Match.com. Lola has recently re-entered the dating scene and she wanted to make an impression.

Lola is one of my oldest blogging pals and I would do anything for her.

I am flattered that Lola would ask me to help her write a witty blurb about her. I am sure it is because she thinks I am a gifted wordsmith. I’m not. The moment you ask me to write about anything I get complete writers block. I start checking my email, I run a load a laundry, bathe the dog, anything to avoid having to write about one particular topic. I can blather on until the cows come home about anything until you ask me to talk about cows coming home and then I am stuck.

So I let the email sit there for a bit.

Lola sent me another email a day or two later and asked if I could help write her tagline.

At least that was a lot fewer words. Something catchy, something unique and witty. Sure I could do that.

All I could come up with was several different lyrics from Commodore songs.

“You’re once, twice, three times a lady”

“Lady, you bring me up when I’m down”

“Oh, oh sail on…”

Lola was pleased with my attempt, and ever so polite when she mentioned that lesbians don’t really care for the Commodores. She suggested I pick something from Melissa Etheridge or the Indigo Girls.

I like the Indigo Girls, Retrospective is a staple CD in my car. I couldn’t think of any lyrics to their songs except:

“Galileo’s head was on the block…”

and the song about Minnesota and the river but I was unable to come up with any lyrics, couldn’t remember the tune and didn’t want to go out to the car. I do remember it was a song about unrequited love and that probably wouldn’t be suitable.

This was hard.

So I wrote back to her and asked what her profile looked like now. I figured I could read it and maybe add a few suggestions.

Her profile was well written, funny and interesting. I suggested she remove one word.

That’s all I could contribute.

Which isn’t surprising given the fact that I am a straight woman who hasn’t had a date in well over six months. I can hardly get my writing mojo on to try to attract men, how the hell was I supposed to try to attract women.

I couldn’t even write my own profile on Match.com. I had to have JD from Idothings do it for me.

Lola, you don’t need my help and you shouldn’t want it. The only thing I was able to attract, when I wrote my own profile, was a guy who had the worlds worst set of teeth. You don’t need that. You are doing just fine on your own. Any woman would be lucky to have you consider dating her. I can’t make that any better than it already is.

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This is hilarious and Jim Carey makes a great Ronald Reagan.

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Today is National Cupcake Day which is ironic considering all the press Lisa Ellis is getting for having her naked body turn up on Wyclef Jean’s cell phone. If it were National Titty Cupcake Day it would be perfect for Miss Ellis. Of course she is busy looking for a new job right now so it probably doesn’t matter to her.

As you all know I can’t have cupcakes today or for the rest of the week because I am still off carbs! Don’t forget to enter the contest to win three bars of Happy Goats Soap. I’ll be picking the winner on Friday.

As a single mom I let my kids go online for way too long and I let them watch way too much TV.  I don’t monitor much for my son anymore but I do for my daughter. She is allowed to watch kid shows and go to online sites specifically for her age group.  Because I am an often broke single mom I don’t give my kids a credit card to use online. We do a lot of trial offers but I don’t buy games for my kids. My son has a job and can buy his own and my daughter can just keep whining.

Not allowing them to use my credit cards or my Paypal account makes me think I have a little control over what they do or don’t do.

Not anymore.

Two sites are out there that want to really mess with parents. I am sure this was the goal when they were created.

The first one is Kwedit. The tagline is Play now, Pay later. The site is for kids, who don’t have credit to be able to buy games online with only their word. They must promise to pay the debt in 7 to 14 days by going to a 7-11 and paying the bill. If they keep their promise and pay their kwedit limit gets increased. If you have kids go to this site now and block it on your computer. I’d rather give them my credit card than have to drive them to a 7-11 once a week. Thankfully we don’t have any 7-11s anymore.

The other site to keep you kids away from is Chatroulette! Chatroulette is a bunch of people on a site with their webcam and sitting in front of their computer waiting for someone to talk to them. Kinda like speed dating or something. The site was created by a 17 year old Russian kid who had no idea what the hell he was doing. He had no agenda, he just thought it would be neat. Right now it might be filled with normal people who are just curious to see who is out there but eventually it will morph into a site for pedophiles. There is no logging in, no profiles to create, no information stored. Just a place for perverts to sit and wait for their next victim.

Don’t you just love the internet? There is something for everyone.

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My father died three years ago. I know he died because I was in the hospital room with him as he died. I was at the funeral and even arranged for his ashes to be contained in a Mason Jar. My father loved canning vegetables and had amassed quiet a few cases of the jars. He was also cheap and so it seemed like the logical thing to do. I don’t know if he would have approved, I think he would but I could never really tell with some things. The rest of the family got a few laughs out of it so it was worth the odd stares from the funeral director and the priest who presided over his funeral.

That isn’t what we are here for today.

When my father died none of his affairs were in order. He wasn’t planning on dying, ever, so there was no need, in his mind at least, to get things together.

For weeks following his death we went about changing all of his accounts that were to remain in use, to my mother. If you have ever been through this process you know that a death certificate is necessary to cancel cell phone accounts, cable, bank accounts and anything else that needs to be changed or stopped.

Only weeks before my father died he bought a new car and he changed his cable service to Direct TV. He bought the car because he was one of those people who bought a new car every three years. He switched to Direct TV because he wanted to get a new remote and the Direct TV replacement remote control was the selling point that worked for him.

In addition to getting the new service at his home he also signed up for it at the cabin. And then he died.

Six months after his death we decided it would be best to sell the house. Because we were selling the house we were able to easily cancel the account however that was not to be the case at the cabin. Not for the lack of trying however.

My brother and I didn’t think it was necessary to have TV, or cable, at the cabin. If we are up there we ought to be outside and the kids should too. Given the opportunity the kids will spend the weekend in front of the TV rather than on the lake breathing in fresh air. So we tried to cancel it.

We submitted the death certificate and assumed all would be resolved. Not.

We were not able to cancel the agreement. At this point in time, three years later, I don’t even remember why but we were able to change the package to the lowest possible cost. This fall however we decided to shut the cabin down for the winter since we knew no one would be going there. I called the Direct TV people and asked them to put it on their vacation plan.

Of course they had to verify who I was. I am not my father but I have since learned that his death means nothing to them, they don’t care that we sent in his death certificate numerous times. Somewhere, and not only at Direct TV but on several other accounts as well, the certificate was lost or misplaced or honestly I don’t know what. I suppose we could have stopped paying the bill but that would have pissed off my father. So I told them I was him. Luckily my father had one of those names that could go either way, much like he did for a while.

Since I have learned this handy trick it has made my life much easier. I don’t have to talk to fifteen different people, who don’t usually speak English as a first language, and I don’t have to keep sending him his death certificate.

My father also purchased several time shares in Mexico. Again, we sent in the death certificate but to no avail. We continue to use the time shares so the name problem is not such an issue since my brother is named after my father. He can honestly say that he is named the same name as my father, and he can produce identification when necessary.

Why am I telling you this? I really don’t know, I guess to share with you what a pain it can be when someone dies and when I have little to write about.

I’m doing an unscientific study here today.

If you would be so kind to leave me:

Age

Marital Status

Number of Children

URL of your blog or website

I’ll start.

44

Divorced (2)

2 kids Boy(17), Girl (7)

http://www.redheadranting.com/

With a little bit of summer.

These were taken at the cabin last summer.

I miss summer.

I was reminded of the cabin last night when I read this post on Theta Mom. I wrote a comment that turned into a post. It was way too long for a comment so I scrapped it and wrote something a little shorter.

Theta Mom was talking about a 1000 mile road trip she took with her husband and children.  Most people who have kids, or rented them for a road trip, know exactly where this post is going just by reading the first sentence.

1000 miles in the car + kids = someone is going to puke in the car at some point.

I didn’t have to travel a thousand miles for my kid to puke in my car. I only had to go 35 miles for that to happen. Worse, it was all my fault.

It was a couple of years ago when I was still taking care of my mother. Every 4th of July my family meets at our cabin in western Wisconsin for the holiday weekend. We’ve done this since my parents bought the cabin in 1970.

I packed up the kids (we had an extra rental kid with us), the dog, and my mother into the car for what should have been an hour long trip. My car had a built in DVD player which we had never used before.  All the kids were excited to watch TV in the car and I was sure this would keep the bickering down to a minimum.

Wrong.

Oh, the kids were fine, they sat quietly watching the movie. Mom and I bickered the whole way.

We started to bicker when I gave the kids some cupcakes to eat during the ride. 4th of July cupcakes with red, white and blue frosting on them. My mother was appalled that I would let my kids eat in the car. She obviously hadn’t bothered to ever look at the back seat of my car.

That was just the first thing we argued about. I don’t even remember the rest but it was one of those arguments where you know you can’t make it stop, you really want to make it stop, and you know if it doesn’t stop someone is getting out of the car while it is moving. My mother is the only one who has the ability to make me consider pushing someone out of a moving vehicle.

Luckily the kids all had headphones on.

There could have been a warning but I didn’t hear it.

Just as I was getting ready to kick my disabled mother out of my car, and leave her there until I drove back through after the weekend, I heard the sound that stopped the arguing cold.

Blaaaaahhhh

(I don’t really know how to type that sound)

Red, white and predominantly blue vomit had just been spewed all over the backseat of the car. A good portion of it landing on the rental kid.

At least I had an excuse to pull the car over and get out of the car.

Luckily we were driving through a small town at the time so all I had to do was pull into the parking lot of the bakery. How ironic is that?

My son and I went inside the bakery to try and find something to use to clean the mess.  All this bakery had were those little tissue deals that they use to grab the baked good and shove it in a bag. The kind of tissues that have no absorbency whatsoever.

I didn’t care, I was distracted and my mother was speechless. In actuality she was just thinking about what she was going to say when I got back in the car. Remember, that it was my feeding the kids in the car that started our arguing in the first place.

We got everyone cleaned up as best we could and took off again. I mentioned to my mother that this little incident had just saved her life and I didn’t want to hear anymore about it. We drover the rest of the way in silence.

It was not the food that my daughter ate but the movie she was watching. From that moment on whenever we are in the car she has been instructed to stare out the window at the horizon. As long as she does that she is fine, put in a movie however and she pukes. Simple as that.

I was never able to get the stains nor the smell out of my car, so when my son did this last year I wasn’t too upset.