Small Successes Thursday Test

This is a test for a project I've been invited to take on.  If you would care to participate to verify this thing works, play along and use Mr. Linky below after you've listed three successes over at your blog.  I'll click on your link from Mr. Linky below and verify that I have in fact done this correctly.  It will count as my fourth success if it does.  If not, well I still have Wednesday to work out the bugs.

Hello!  Welcome to everyone visiting from Family & Faith Live!  My name is Sherry and I've agreed to host Small Successes Thursday.   This is the new spot for anyone grappling with the meaning of life or cleaning of laundry. No promises on my take being the last word on either subject.




It's important for moms to recognize that all the small successes in our days can add up to one big triumph. So on Thursday of each week, we do exactly that.

To participate, just write up a list of 3 of your recent Small Successes and post it on your blog along with the Small Successes button. I'm working on creating a button for you to access with the appropriate non tech looking user friendly link.  But in the meantime, email me and I will email back the code for the button on my blog.  (I adjusted the button to lead back here on my blog only but can't figure out how to post that info without granting access to rework my blog).  You are not required to use the button, but please do link back to the main post here. Then you can add your blog here using the Mr. Linky form (please link to the individual blog post, not the home page of your blog).


If you don't have a blog, you can share your Small Successes in the comments. To get us started, I will share my small successes for this week:

1. I mailed a birthday card to my niece who turns two this Friday.  Normally I'm notoriously tardy about these sorts of things so this is progress.





2. The quest for order in the home continues undeterred by my brood's capacity for chaos. This week we cleaned out two bins of junk.





3. I got a haircut without engaging in martyr type practicality where I wouldn't go until some one else needed it more.





Now it's your turn. Please tell us all about the ways you got it right this week!  Mr. Fred and It Works! are obviously me.

Editing My Life

There are a few rules for writing humor. Today, I am explaining them as a means of illustrating that not everything I write is 100% pure unvarnished truth...it just feels real because sometimes, reality is a bit too much to bear.

I also want to give pure credit to Leigh Anne Jasheway Bryant who gave a lecture at the Erma Bombeck conference, detailing these techniques.

1) Exaggeration: Blowing things up to create humorous effect. Exploding Toilets that have the water drip down through the vents onto the computer. Well, okay, that actually happened at our last house, but saying that it happened three times...okay, that happened too...Exploding toilets that had water drip down through the vents onto the computer while I was using it...three times...now we've exaggerated.

2) Minimizing: The opposite, dwarfing something huge to make it manageable to minimize the suffering, creating humor. The pile of laundry was the size Mt. Kilimanjaro. I downsized it from the planet Jupiter.

3) The rule of three: Humor comes in threes. Shakespeare always has three couples getting married at the end of his plays, there were three stooges...look to the future for either Jeb Bush or Chelsea to run. Late night comedians are praying for this outcome…and in the interest of full disclosure, having watched late night humor lately, perhaps the rest of us should as well.

4) Clichés: Parody...in honor of the Tuesday Primary: Hillary as Alfred P. Doolittle, fresh from an evening of straight shots with beer chasers...

I'm getting elected in the morning,
Ding, Dong, the polls are gonna rise!
Bill come and kiss me,
and you also Chelsea,
and get me to the polls on time.

I was the presumed nominee here,
guaranteed a win for the DNC!
Please vote for Hillary I cry so don't hate me,
And come and cast your vote in line.

If you are dying, vote absentee.
If you died already,
we know,
you would have pulled for me.

For, I'm stumping here in Pennsylvania,
To be the Gina Davis Commander in Chief
I know I'm a shrill one
But just please vote Clinton
And get yourself to the polls on time!

Obama:
I'm gonna win the nomination.
I'm spruced up and looking oh so fine.
Let's bowl a ten frame,
Don't forget my lapel pin,
and get me to my poll on time.

I'll give another moving speech today.
Sleeves rolled up, remember Hope and Change!
Ignore all my past friends
and their pedaled influence
I never knew it at the time!

If you are bitter,
I'll understand
Vote for me
and you'll become
a transformed man.

For we're running for the nomination,
To win in all in 2008!
And in this campaign
We'll beat John McCain!
Just get us to the dance!
Give us this one chance!
Be sure and get us to the polls on time!

5) Definition: Describing one thing by defining it as another. You know you're a mother when...you pray for rain on game days weeks in advance. This blog is 100% fiction...except when it's not.

6) Observation: Storytelling, which usually uses every other technique mentioned here. It's what I do naturally. The car floor was carpeted with French fries. (usually coupled as in this case, with either minimization or exaggeration, I'm not saying which).

7) Misdirection: Humor goes in directions one doesn't expect...like I want a shop vac, wet/dry for Mother's day. Seriously, 3 Horse power straight vacuuming power to win the war with fast food and dirt everywhere. I discovered I wanted one when I went to a friend's house to pick up a desk she was giving my daughter. Her husband was cleaning out his garage and attacked the Suburban. My car floor is now so clean, you could eat off it...except...now, there isn't anything there to eat.

Happy Earth Day! Plant a tree. Recycle. Kiss the dirt. Drink your tap water and try not to exhale more than necessary.

New at Subway, Eat Fresh...

It always happens this way.

I was going to drive to Austin for a graduate class. My husband shut the door, handed me a diet coke through the open window and said, “Drive safely, don’t speed. I love you.”

I got busted going 87 miles on 290 North, Bonnie Raitt blasting on my CD player, half way there.

After spending a week dieting and exercising, and discussing healthy eating habits with my children, my oldest caught me making my super fabulous extra bad for you fudge sauce for ice cream sundaes…and of course alerted the others, such that I had to share and suffer lectures from my children about being healthy.

This latest come-uppance comes courtesy of my son.

Friday was the beginning of his spring break. He came home. He promptly unplugged completely. The backpack sat at the front door, unopened, unmoved, unloved for four days. My husband asked him at a band meeting after the band leader made reference to report cards…”Where’s yours, son?” “Oh. It’s in my backpack.” He replied indifferently, and rattled off his grades.

Four days…four days and it never occurred to him to mention his report card. I was off.

Pointing out that if he couldn’t get out of being lost in space long enough to remember a report card, maybe he shouldn’t be sent on a band trip for five days to Florida, I started listing the other examples of him forgetting things earlier in the year. His gym shoes, his wallet and his lunch bag all had been casualties of carelessness.

I was working up a full head of steam and hitting my stride, talking about being responsible, about paying attention to your surroundings and to detail, how adulthood required this on a daily and systemic basis…and…the phone rang.

That afternoon, I had picked up sandwiches for dinner. I had left my cell phone at Subway.

So, I’m ordering a toasted Crow with provolone and some humble pie dressing to go.
for more tasty helpings of humilty and hilarity, try http://www.humor-blogs.com/! It's so much easier when someone else gets taught a lesson.

First Impressions

When I first saw my future husband across a crowded room at a Notre Dame Freshman mixer, I decided not to introduce myself. He was too serious. Glancing at my outfit, which I thought I projected cool (Actually, it screamed stuck-in-the-early-eighties, saw-and-liked-Xanadu) he thought to himself, “Look at that girl in the silly hat. Bet she’s pretty superficial.”

We were both right.

In graduate school, my advisor called me into his office to discuss the beginning of my program.

“You’re from Texas.” He said, looking at my papers.

“Yes.”

“Well, I heard all the women down there are beautiful and tall. What happened to you?”

I stood up as tall as my five foot two inches would allow and said, “Well that’s true. Down in Texas I’m pretty average, but up here in Boston, I’m stunning.”

I became his assistant. In retrospect, I'm not sure it was a reward.

Meeting my future father-in-law for the first time, my luggage had made the decision to spend the evening at O’Hare. I had to beg and borrow from girls in my dorm to put together an outfit that did not smell like a three hour bus ride. One friend offered to do my hair and gave me sideburns that matched hers and three inch high curled bangs. I’m still recovering.

Interviewing in New York City for a teaching position, there was a carnival going on that day on the playground. The person scheduled to paint faces had not shown and I had just finished talking with the vice principal. For the next two hours, my fingers were covered in grease paint and cold cream. The principal came by the school grounds to put in an appearance. “Who’s that over there?” he asked the vice principal.

I got the job.

When we moved to Maryland, it was the dead of winter and the roads were coated with ice and the grey snow that always grips February. Alone in our rented townhome, I spied a woman walking with a child close to my then one year old son’s age. They were just following the sidewalk. Running out onto the snow barefoot, desperate to make a connection with someone in the area, I must have been a frighteningly mad sight as I screamed. “Hey! Hello! I’d like to meet you!”

We became friends despite that rough intro.

And speaking of introductions....

Hi. My name is Sherry Antonetti and I’m a freelance writer.

While my background is special education and English literature, I currently stay home and help shepherd our eight children through their various stages of development. I also write. Why? It provides my offspring with an edited version of their childhood that is as honest as those multi-hued elegantly pasted scrapbooks. These stories are mythic in that they reveal truth without being completely factual.

It is also loads of fun for me.

Pass the fuchsia curly cue scissors please.

Thank you for considering my voice amongst a sea of bloggers and I hope I made you laugh.