A Blonde and 3 Boys

Welcome Back!

The boys took advantage of the nice weather and put up our Christmas lights! I am glad that I was out shopping while these pictures were taken!

Jack screwed in some new Christmas bulbs. (UGH!)

Seriously, boys….I don’t find these pictures that funny.

We added a new area of fun little colorful lights. I love these lights! Yep, Jason has shorts on…like I mentioned, the weather was wonderful!

These will be great pictures in my December journal…WHAT? Yep, trying for again for the umpteenth time. Will let you know how it goes….

Hello!

Last week brought some very chilly nights and days…very frightful weather! But something that wasn’t frightful, was our fountain!

It was like having our own little ice sculpture in our backyard!

Jack stood on the water in the fountain.
We told him not to do that, his foot will go through.

Well, that didn’t happen…until the next day when it was a bit warmer!

Jason had put some “anti-freeze” in the water, but it was just too darn cold! Glad to have a little bit warmer temps this week!

Hello!

Just wanted to share a picture of what the boys and I encountered, unexpectedly, several times this Halloween season.  We saw it most often when we were driving down the lane at night and “It” was standing there in the yard, or by the bushes or in the window.

This is Jason with one of the several masks he enjoyed wearing this Halloween. How is it lit up? He carefully placed his cell phone on the mask.

One mask Jason donned,  Sam did not realize we had, so when he dove down the lane with a friend he yelled, “I don’t know who it is!! We don’t have a mask like that!”

Jason loved it. Fun times for all.

Hello!

We are still discovering and learning about Miss Charlie every day. This weekend it was during a walk she taught me a lesson. I now know  Charlie does so much better off a leash when walking.

 When we first  got Charlie, she didn’t like to be on the leash, so we quickly learned to let her roam our yard without a leash, but on walks, she needs to be on a leash. I take her to a local park that has a large circle walking path. We try to get one lap or half-mile in on the leash and then I let her roam in the middle to do some sniffing, still on the leash.

While we walk around the sidewalk  it takes FOREVER! She stops. She goes into the grass to sniff. She will sit. She won’t walk.

Well on Sunday, I had had enough of this lolly-gagging. I decided I am just  keep going when she tries to stall  and correct her with a little jerk on the leash. It worked well for about 60 seconds when she stopped. I corrected her, but she still sat. I have read/watched/ been told to just keep going without looking and they will follow (which she WAS doing)  so I kept walking, but the she was NOT following me.  I finally looked back…

She had actually laid down and I was dragging her! I laughed out loud! I have only seen this on videos, but I have a drag dog!!

Long story short…I took off her leash and she walked around the path with absolutely NO problem. Even a squirrel was near and she did not chase it! So either she was delirious from being dragged for a bit or she just does better off a leash. We will find out tomorrow…which I am sure will be another adventure in learning!

Welcome!

So, my sister and I have had this conversation more than once and have always wondered if we were the “Only Ones!” I came across this article and laughed, but TOTALLY related!!

My places are Barnes and Noble, the library and Hallmark. Yea..I don’t get the last one.

Enjoy a laugh for a Friday
and dare share your “poo-place” in the comments today? 🙂

(PS…Excuse the language in the article, but I did not write it. Also, my family told me this post is totally gross and I have issues…So I apologize if I offend any of my readers.)

Do You Have To Poop Every Time You Shop? It Turns Out This Is A Real Phenomenon

I swear, I thought something was a wee bit wrong with me until about a week or so ago when a friend of mine confessed to needing to poop every time she went to Target. When she asked her other friends to chime in, many of them had the same experience.

What is going on here?

My next stop was Google, where I suddenly found that there was a whole online tribe of us who poop every time we set foot in a store. Target seems to be the most popular poop stop, but it appears that shopping, across the board, has a pretty profound effect on one’s digestive system.

I am not a scientist by any means, but I spent some time the other day trying to get to the bottom of this (see what I did there?). I conducted some super-scientific research, in the form of Facebook comment-interviews among my friends. Incredibly, many of them professed to having a Pavlovian-type of relationship to certain stores — where as soon as they set foot in them, doodie calls.

First, let’s talk about the kinds of stores that do it. It seems like the bigger chain stores unleash the turd monster for a lot of folks. Besides Target and my own beloved CVS, HomeGoods, Michael’s, Jo-Ann Fabrics, and Costco topped the list of places to reliably make people feel the urge to “drop some kids off at the pool.”

Bookstores like Barnes & Noble were also a popular spot, with one friend confessing that the books section of Goodwill always does it for her. Another friend says she needs to go every time she sets foot in her local library. This almost makes sense, because so many of us like to read on the can, so I could see how being close to a room full of books could rev up our dump machines.

Some of my friends confess to actually relying on their trusted poop stores to get things moving if they are backed up. One goes out of her way to browse at Marshalls just to get the crap factory rolling. She swears it works.

Another friend shared that she was extremely disappointed that the bookstore Borders had closed because that had been her go-to poop date.

As for why this phenomenon happens, theories abound (again, none of them scientific). Some say it’s the smell of the store that gets their digestive juices flowing (maybe the way that just smelling food could do that to some people?). Others say it’s definitely the fluorescent lights, which isn’t so far-fetched as far as I’m concerned because fluorescent lights have triggered nausea and migraines for me, so why not number two as well?

A shit-ton of my friends think shopping in general overwhelms them in an excited kind of way, and that this helps release the chocolate hostage. They may very well be on to something there because there is definitely a lot of science out there about the brain-gut connection

According to HEALTHbeat, a Harvard Medical School publication, our emotions can actually have pretty profound effects on our poo-ing. “The gastrointestinal tract is sensitive to emotion,” HEALTHbeat says. “Anger, anxiety, sadness, elation — all of these feelings (and others) can trigger symptoms in the gut.”

But what’s funny is that among my friends, the emotions they feel as they enter their favorite poop store actually vary quite a bit. Excitement tops the list, but others say certain stores relax them, bore them, bring them comfort, or totally stress them out. So it’s definitely hard to say what exactly it is about the brain-gut connection that is sending them all to the public crapper.

Whatever it is, it is definitely a thing. And one of my friends echoed a sentiment that I started to feel as soon as I learned that this was a real and common phenomenon: “I’m just excited to find out this is a thing. I really thought it was just me,” my friend said.

Right?! I mean, I didn’t exactly think I had a serious disorder because I had to release the Kraken every time I wandered the Kleenex aisle at CVS, but it’s nice to know that I’m not alone, and probably not a total freak of nature. Probably.

 ~Wendy Wisner