Anne Nahm

All right, people. I’m PMSy, back-achy, head-achy, sleep-deprived, trouble-laden, and trying to modify the behavior of a very headstrong 4 year old. Just like I’m telling you now, I was telling my husband these facts over this morning’s coffee. Which was when he chose to point out that if I didn’t want a whiny 4 year old, I had best take a listen to myself and consider my next words very carefully: Ix-nay on the Ining-whay, Anne! the K-I-D-S can H-E-A-R you! Monkey see, monkey do!

So, I don’t know. He may be dead or something now. It’s all kind of fuzzy, but I do remember the satisfaction of pulverizing something, and now my Beating Hand is all achy. And I swear to God, if you point out I’m whining about my Beating Hand, I’ll hunt you down.

Part One of a Two Part Story: All My Friends are Nuts, Going Nuts, or Converting to Nutism. Here is a Pamphlet! Consider Joining us in the Eternal Happiness With the One True Nut, and if You Don’t, Go Suck Nuts until you Choke.

Lately I have been corresponding with an old friend I have not seen in years. For a long time, I used to write her all these quirky little emails. Was my creative outlet. But then I just started a blog and wrote to you all instead.

The upshot being that now my friend is getting a little pissy that my emails to her are short and sporadic. Where’s the funny? She wants to know. I tried to tell her that I don’t just crap funny out my funnyhole every morning, but she has gotten religion since we last spoke face to face, and I didn’t get the LOLOL!!!!!111! vibe when I started going in that direction.

Have considered (briefly) pointing her to the direction of this site. She could dig right in and get all the funny she needs without having to send me an email every couple of weeks asking, “Where’s me my Anne update? I’m worried about you! Are you depressed?!” **

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But whenever I feel the urge to tell someone I know about this little haven of anonymity, I visualize myself, ala Homer Simpson, whispering, “all right, I’ll tell you. But you must remember to keep this secret far better than I have!”

My friend is excited about meeting up somewhere and spending time. Every couple of months, she has a business trip somewhere close to my side of the country, and she gets all wired up for me to fly out and meet her and relive our wild and crazy shenanigans from our adolescence.

I am tenatively psyched. I have to say, I totally love this friend. We have done some hysterical, scandalous things in our youth. But also am nervous because sometimes – and especially with the new religion thing – talking to her is a little bit like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. For instance: Last week, she wrote me and said she would be in Las Vegas in September on business and could I meet her out there for a week? And I wrote back, “gee that sounds great. Bring a wig so that I can take you to the strip clubs without any of your employees recognizing you!”

Cute, right? Except she wrote back. “uhhmmm… I won’t go to a strip club. Sorry.”

And first off, was joking! But also- who are you and what did you do with my friend? Because I’m pretty sure that if you had dunked my friend in holy water 15 years ago, the backsplatter would have burned the priest and the smell would have made it impossible to walk into a KFC again without puking  in your mouth a little. Strip club would have been right down her alley. Strip clubs would have been places to get some under-the-table work*** for gambling money to finance the latter half of the week. Won’t go to a strip club? Is she speaking English? Was there something lost in internet transmission? And don’t tell me I heard her when she said she had Celine Dion tickets for two nights. No offense to Celine Dion fans, but if you want to argue this point with me, please see Exhibit A. I rest my case.

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Anyway, desperate for some neutral place to meet up and further assess the mental stability of my friend (and perhaps to have a safe place to do some sort of deprogramming if it came to that) I came up with this wacky plan of suggesting we both meet up at a mutual friend’s wedding this Fall.

** Except considering how unfunny this blog has been lately, that might not help in her assessment.
***And here, there is absolutely no double meaning to the ‘under-the-table’ reference. For one, I would not besmirch her anonymous internet character, and secondly, the tables in those strip clubs come up to your knees.

More later. Sorry to cut off there, but must tend to children. – Anne

Please, please someone tell me that four years old is just a phase. Screw all this new age talky- feelings-raising- little- people-as- equals-with- love-no- cry-sleep-solution doctrine I’ve been raising my kids with so far. What a huge effing mistake! Now I’m looking to join one of those old timey religions that eschews the following doctrines:

1. I’ve spent the whole day talking to you. Dinner should be eaten in absolute silence. I’ve got a whole bag of ‘Shh!’ with your name on it.  Don’t make me use it.
2. If you pinch me one more time, we are not going to ‘talk about why pinching is bad’ again, I am just going to knock you out of your seat.
3. Because I said so.
4. Go to your room.
5. See number 3.

Seriously, people. I’m starting to understand why some animals eat their young.

This came in the mail a few days ago.

I used to live in a Northern Midwestern town populated almost entirely by the descendants of Vikings. The Easter Egg Tree was a big deal there.

No seriously. Every Easter, all the bald, bundle-of-sticks-pretending-to-be-trees trees would suddenly be covered by tiny painted, hanging eggs. Very festive, let me tell you. People apparently driven to standing in their front yards, in the middle of -10 degree weather, hanging eggs on tree branches. For Easter. Because next to crucified naked men? Eggs in trees. Dude. Smoke something and get back to me on the connection.

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Except not to much imbibing of intoxicating elements up there in Fargo-Land. 10 months of winter will make people squirrelly, I guess. How else can you explain Hulk Hogan? Jesse Ventura? Lutefisk? I swear, sometimes I think Upper Midwestern culture is based 90% in a double-dog-dare.

While I lived there, a friend gifted me with a set of hand-painted wooden eggs for my very own tree. Pretty, no?

They have stayed their box for the past 10 years. I can’t help it. Every time I see an Easter Egg Tree?

I think, “ahhhh! it’s been an egg lynching!”

Here’s a little blurb from CrazyTown: The combo of MILFification process, fear of moving/love of current house, and general deviant thought process has lead me to notice that this tree in our back yard has grass growing in the crux of the branches. Or, as we see in Crazytown, pubes in it’s crack.

And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it. I may have to give it a bikini wax or something.

Don’t see it? With the magic of Photoshop Rotation, I present to you: Ass Tree.

My husband thinks it looks more like Beaver Tree, but it’s my psychotic thought process, and so I says I gets to make the names. Enjoy!

Hi all. My week has been full of going about my daily business while Captain Kirk of House Flipping (pictured here for your enjoyment)

tugs on his massive belt buckle, sits on my porch chairs, and has many meaningful conversations with his sidekicks (including his realtor-brother-in-law, plumber-buddy, and a straight-man house inspector). Has made for interesting eavesdropping. Most recent example:

Prospective House Buyer: We’ll blow out that wall and make a wet bar between the kitchen and the dining room! Then we’ll extend the kitchen out onto the porch.

House Inspector: Uh, sir? I’m pretty sure that’s a load bearing wall. It appears to be the side of the original house.

PHB: We’ll open her up, and if the wood slats are going parallel, it shouldn’t be a problem.

HI: Uh… I don’t think that will work.

PHB: No? Really?

HI: Well, if you do it, you risk the house collapsing.

PHB: Psh.. It won’t collapse. Everyone loves wet bars.

Anyway, in the interim, Susan from Stuff & Nonsense tagged me for a meme about being a real mom. And as chance would have it, I then read Mimi Smartypants’ post on making stuff talk as a way to hornswaggle your kids into doing something. Nothing is more real momish than trying to trick, tease, or tempt young children into doing something you want them to do. Anyway, reading Ms. Smartypants and her parenting brilliance? I did what any mom would do in the face of knowing she would never think of anything funny to say on her own: Linked it here for you.

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Although I have to say, if I made my 4 year old’s underwear talk? She’d probably crap herself. Thereby almost certainly traumatizing the underwear into elective mutism.