Busy, busy, busy. Work, work, work. Coffee, coffee, coffee.

Here’s something to amuse you. Connie Chung appears to be channeling Marilyn Monroe. She also appears to be three sheets to the wind. And, what’s with the guy just sitting there and not playing the piano? There needs to be background music because this entire thing is painful. This was her swan song on Saturday’s finale of MSNBC’s “Weekends with Maury & Connie.” And it’s the most popular video this week on You Tube. You’ll see why. It’s like watching bad karaoke in broad daylight completely sober.

We took Amelia to an ENT specialist today downtown and the verdict is tubes. July 3 is T Day. That actually works out very well since I am off July 4th and can give her lots of TLC. (And could I possibly use any more acronyms?) My big question is, do we buy special ear plugs for her or just use cotton balls swabbed with a bit of Vaseline to keep her ears dry during bathtime as the nurse suggested? At 15 months old, she’s not yet mastered the ability to follow directions and she is a wild little curly haired mermaid in the bath, especially when I am rinsing her hair. So if you have experienced tubes with your kids and have any wisdom to pass on as far as keeping ears dry during bathtime, please let me know. The thought of not washing her hair for 12 to 18 months is tempting, but that’s just not going to work, unless we go for dreadlocks. Any way, according to her pediatrician and the ENT specialist she is a great candidate for tubes. At 15 months (and one week…today!) she is also soaking up language like a sponge and now pointing at everything and asking, “Dat?” Her actual vocabulary, what we can understand, is still pretty small but I think that once her ears are clear for the first time in months that she’ll start talking even more.

In other random thoughts, I actually uttered the words, “Ya’ll watch Fat Bug and make sure she doesn’t climb into the fireplace” while I was making a down home dinner of fresh veggies (yea for home grown zucchini and squash and tomatoes), hoe cakes, and white beans. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

And, in complete and utter randomness, if this couple ever has a baby, it may be the world’s funniest child. One of the most hilarious pregnancy books I ever read was Jenny McCarthy’s “Belly Laughs.” It made the “What to Expect” pregnancy Bible read like the Farmer’s Almanac.

Happy Father’s Day to the hubby, for surviving the swirling maelstrom of estrogen in our home and for all the things he does for the girls…from walks in the park to bike rides to changing poopy diapers. And Happy Father’s Day to my dad, aka Papa, and the hubby’s dad, aka Pee Paw. The girls are so lucky to have two wonderful grandpas!

The hubby and I took Amelia for a walk on a newly paved greenway yesterday evening after a nice dinner out. Big sister Caitlin is off having a weekend retreat with our parents, which inevitably leads us to the conclusion that one child is a lot easier than two, but I digress. As we walked along the wooded path we came to a circular overlook which offered a nice view of the river below. “This would be such a great place to sneak off and drink beer if you were a teenager,” I said with a snicker. Now that I’m a 30-something mom of two, I suddenly revel in the idea of teens gone wild in our sleepy suburban town. If I see an abandoned empty six-pack of beer and a pack of Marlboro Lights by the park on a Saturday morning I automatically think, “Teens Gone Wild!” Ditto on graffiti. And I won’t go into the obvious, more disgusting telltale evidence we once found by a girl’s abandoned YMCA ID card by the Natchez Trace. At least they were practicing safe sex.

The hubby and I grew up in the same rural county. He lived in “town” and I grew up eight miles from town on a curvy rural road that I maneuvered like a bat out of hell on many a weekend night in my Chrysler Laser. Parties and parking, two clandestine staples of the high school pack…unless you were headed for a nunnery or life as a monk, neither of which are real popular here in the South…for the most part took place in farm fields. After all, cows don’t gossip.

If we stay in the suburbs, I wonder how it will affect our girls. Will they become mall rats, instant messaging their girlfriends and planning their weekends around the best sales? Or if we move out of suburbia, will they learn to be more creative like we were and forced to party under the stars under the watchful eye of a herd of cattle? Which, in retrospect, doesn’t sound half bad.

When I got pregnant with Amelia two years ago I knew I wanted to cut back on my work week. I also wanted to take some unpaid maternity leave. So I went through our expenses and tried to cut as much as possible. I won’t lie to you, people. I am SO good at spending money. Really, I could be paid to be a professional spender of money. Your money. My money. Your mama’s money. Send it on. I’ll spend your hard-earned cash in lightning speed. But we did live on a tight budget last year, aka TYOAB. (The Year Of Amelia’s Birth).

Mir at Woulda Coulda Shoulda has a great new blog,Want Not, which focuses on ways to save money. Several bloggers blogged about it and you, too, should check it out. Mir is not advocating radical spendthrift type advice, like making deodorant by melting shards of Speedstick in a saucepan. It’s good, practical advice for people who like nice things. And really, who doesn’t like nice things?

So, here are some money-saving steps we made:
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I’m entering unchartered territory as the girls get older…the obligatory birthday cupcakes. I made a batch of two dozen strawberry cupcakes with vanilla icing last week for Caitlin’s class in honor of her 4th birthday. A mixing bowl was unearthed from its dusty confines. Cupcake bling in cheery pastel colors was purchased. And although they weren’t from scratch, it did require some egg cracking and actual mixing with my electric mixer, which has been used as about as infrequently as Jessica Simpson’s brain cells. I’ve set the bar low all these years and headed straight to the baked goods aisle at the grocery. I mean why bake when you can buy? I’ll admit the kitchen is not really my comfort zone. The hubby? He loves to cook, although he’s definitely not a cookie baker, and can pan sear a mean tuna steak or whip up an incredible pasta dish from scratch. No recipe or cookbook guidance needed for him. Me? I need a little hand holding behind the stove.
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So Sunday afternoon I’m barefoot on the patio, balancing a diaper-clad baby on my hip who protested being put down for a nanosecond, and attempting to light the grill (it’s a gas grill and I can assure you I wasn’t holding her OVER the grill). I nearly singe my thumb off and before I know it I yell out the most horrendous of the horrendous curse words you can blurt out on the Sabbath. Especially when your neighbors are outside. And especially when you didn’t make it to church that morning, but went to the pool and then proceeded to go to the grocery with your hair still in a damp ponytail from swimming and braless underneath your sundress. Also at some point over the weekend Caitlin decides it would be a hoot to start peeing in the yard. Really, I just need a NASCAR sticker on my pickup truck and a 2-liter of Mountain Holler in the fridge in the trailer and I’m all set. Oh, and a coonhound and a packet of chewin’ tobacco. Pass the biscuits, ya’ll.

p.s. This post is in honor of Britney Spears who told Matt Lauer during an interview that her excuse for driving with her baby boy on her lap was because, “We’re country.” You were in Malibu, not Louisiana honey. It ain’t the bayou.

Edited to add: Britney’s interview airs Thursday morning on the Today show AND tomorrow night on Dateline. NBC is squeezing the juicy bits out of this interview, are they not?

Update…because I just can’t stop obsessing about Britney…I Tivo’d Dateline last night and saw about one minute of it and I could not GET PAST THE GUM SMACKAGE.

This is my first entry for author Joshilyn Jackson’s Blogging For Books monthly contest (aka B4B)! Julie at Mothergoosemouse posted her entry last week and I thought it sounded like a great idea. The day before I had been contacted to review Joshilyn’s recent book, Between Georgia, so it seemed like fate had slipped into her little black dress and was just twisting my arm to write something for B4B already. Check out the details of Blogging For Books on Joshilyn’s blog, Faster Than Kudzu (what a great Southern name!) The topic was magic and I’ll admit I couldn’t think of anything to write about, until I received a little inspiration at the dentist. You don’t have to have a blog to enter, so if you enjoy writing and need a little inspiration, visit Joshilyn’s blog for more information. The finalists’ entries will be read by Shanna Swendson, author of Enchanted, Inc. and its sequel, Once Upon Stilettos (the B4B winners will receive their very own signed copy!)
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