Remember that time we went to Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

This was that:

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: harry potter, hogsmeade, hogwarts, photographs, Pictures, universal studios

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The only reason to have kids is to create clone humans to take your place when you kick off.

Any other reason to breed pales in comparison to nature’s need to reproduce your genes. Unconditional love, feelings of worthiness, premature ejaculation, and one-upping your sister all fall into a distant 2nd place for reasons to spawn.

Patrick and I are raising our girls for us to each have our own Mini Me, as you can see in this photo I took this past weekend at Star Tours.

We’re successfully raising goofball, Star Wars-loving, Disney World-going nerds who will do pretty much anything for a laugh to replace us when we die.

You’re welcome, universe.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anna, claire, Disney World, hollywood studios, instagram, star tours, star wars, walker

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In the weirdest, most Awesome twist of how the world’s energy works, while I was writing this post, I received an email about Susan Niebur, Why Mommy, of Toddler Planet, who has been suffering from metastatic breast cancers and is currently going through an extremely hard bout.She’s written about how she sees strength in LEGO mini-figures, and her friends around the interwebs are sending virtual mini-figs to help her with her fight.

…and leave you with the image of a very tiny and very strong lego girl inside me, fighting the cancer with her minature sword, side-by-side with the new medicines that at once starve the cancer cells of estrogen and deprive them of their ability to grow and divide.  She is fighting, and I will fight, and my little ones will not crumble, but cheer me on in this new trial. Susan Niebur, Us Lucky

My sister works for LEGOLAND, but seeing as I get anxiety attacks when I try to build anything from my imagination or from a manual, that has no bearing on this post. And really, the fact that she works at LEGOLAND has nothing to do with this either. It really just means that we get to go to LEGOLAND for free. Neener.

Over at Curvy Girl Guide, my super Awesome friend, Nanette, wrote about the new LEGOs for girls. LEGO Friends, as they’re known, has just been released to the masses after a 4-year study conducted by LEGO to try to market to the 50% of the kid population that happens to be female.

Having two girls of my own, I make every effort to guide them into choosing what they want to play with, not what is being marketed to them to want to play with.

Being the socially liberal girl that I am, I was at first miffed at LEGO for making a “girl” line of LEGOs. I read the blog posts and news articles and saw the protests and petitions to get LEGO to stop “marketing to girls.” At first, I was with the angry mom mob.

But when we went to the store and actually looked at them, my girls flipped over getting a set of “Friends” that was both pink and pretty but also challenging for them to build. They spent their Christmas gift cards on getting two sets that they’re dying to put together that they can play together with their already-built Buzz Lightyear ship.

With Anna, my eldest, she has always steered towards more “boy” toys like Toy Story and Star Wars, but Claire has always steered towards more “girl” toys like Barbie and princesses. They’re all of 18 months aparts, so I know there’s no gender bias in how we’re raising them, but they are who they are and they like what they like.

They both love All Things LEGOs, and while I’d love for them to want all of the LEGOs despite the theme of the box, as long as they’re using their brains to build figures, I don’t care what color the bricks are.

There’s nothing made for both girls and boys that is perfect and 100% without any bias.

And when is someone going to get all peeved off at boys not wanting to build a LEGO Pet Care Center or a Friends Salon?

While my girls are busy building houses and dog show sets, I’ll be keeping my distance from the anxiety-causing build-a-thon and thanking LEGO for making a mini-figure with chest hair.

For Susan.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: lego friends, lego mini figures, why mommy

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My dad has skin cancer.

Over the past 10+ years, he’s had basal cell cancer, squamous cell cancer, and melanoma; the trifecta of skin cancer.

The last thing he’d ever want is your sympathies, so stop it.

He’s a ginger who’s spent nearly every un-working hour outside doing things like building massive projects like the gazebo over the lake where I was married. He’s a fair-skinned child of the 50′s who plays at least 4 rounds of golf a week.

His face, arms, back, and shoulders have been carved up removing the cancers, but with all of the other sunspots and freckles, it’s hard to see the scars.

My responsibility as a fair-skinned, spotted Anglo whose father has had all three types of skin cancer is to have my skin checked by a dermatologist at least once a year.

My daughters have the fair, freckled, spotted skin passed on from me and Patrick. Claire has been to a dermatologist twice in her young 6 years for unusual-looking moles. Both were “fine,” but we have to keep an eye on the moles and be diligent about applying sunscreen on her especially.

Better safe than sorry.

Skin cancer is exactly by what that idiom is defined.

I may have my own downfalls and setbacks and negative qualities, but I don’t mess around with getting skin checked.

I was that 16-year-old lifeguard laying out at the pool getting sunburns to “get a good base tan.”

There’s no such thing as a good tan. At all. Never.

That one bad sunburn I got on my legs when I was 16, the one that was so bad that I still remember the pain, doubles the chances that I’ll have melanoma. There are countless other sunburns I’ve had in the last 35 years that I don’t remember, but every one of those doubles my chances for melanoma.

It’s crazy-pants dangerous.

Please watch this video produced in Canada by the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. It’s important.

Then promise me you’ll get your skin checked.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dad, skin cancer, video

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I started to write a lunchbox love note on this notepad for Anna, but she didn’t think it was a good idea.

Anna:  Second graders shouldn’t be reading about diarrhea, MAMA!

Me: Why not? It’s science.

Anna: Don’t you think that’s inappropriate?

Me: Quit using big words, kid.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: love note, lunchbox notes, when diarrhea strikes

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Since I’m medically certified as crazy enough for prescription medication by my pill-pushing psychiatrist, I no longer understand the Instant Cry routine Claire has implemented. Her arsenal of tactics to get what she wants has evolved from throwing her wee body on the ground in protest to the Instant Cry where she’s perfected the art of popping out tears in less than 1/2 a second.

As a teen girl with teen girl problems, I recall using this effective method of attention-getting on my boyfriends. They’d tell me they couldn’t make it over to pick me up for school because of some bullshit reason like lack of gas money, and I’d do a 180 of emotion to full-on weeping. I can’t say it worked every time, but for my more sensitive high school boyfriends, my crying charm got me what I wanted.

I’d want to go to Taco Bell, he’d want to go to Hardee’s, I’d throw a tantrum, and we went to Taco Bell.

His mom wanted him home by 11, I wanted to stay at my friend’s house until 12, I huffed and puffed, and we stayed out until 12.

I don’t think this method of getting what I want would work today. Mainly because Patrick has been around too long to know the difference between a real cry and my fake stomping, but also because my highly-medicated brain is prevented from producing any emotion beyond extreme highs and lows. ZOLOFT FTW!

By now, I’m convinced that Claire is a 14-year-old trapped in a miniature 6-year-old’s body, complete with tear-popping meltdowns, a love of anything trendy, unexplained melodrama, and the necessity to be asleep for a minimum of 11 hours a day.

She’s gorgeous, so people tell me they assume she can get away with anything. But as her mother, I’m legally responsible for not letting that happen. Her big blue eyes have no heart-melting affect on me.

Aside from ignoring the whines, cries, and general disagreeableness, I have no idea how to parent my child. I thought her sister was going to be the difficult one to raise, but after she got over her selective mutism, acute anxiety, and speech delay, Anna is pretty close to being the Perfect 7-Year-Old Child. If she continues on the path she’s currently living, she’ll end up a well-educated successful woman.

Claire? Not-so-much.

I’m thinking of just teaching her how to use her emotional powers for evil against boys to get everything she ever wanted. If only my mother had taught me the ways of Candy Spelling, I, too, could be set for life as a wealthy Stage 5 hoarder. Instead, I lost my ways as an emotional manipulator and ended up a middle-class Stage 1 hoarder.

My daughter has the potential to BE something: A Stage 5 emotional manipulator with a Sugar Daddy.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: emotional, girl, raising a 6 year old girl, tantrum, teenager

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My Family: Setting a bad example for future generations.

I was raised in an abnormal household of two un-divorced, full-blooded parents with a full-blooded sister. It’s a wonder I even turned out to function like a semi-normal person with all of the surrounding abnormalities.

I’m pretty sure the chances of me becoming a semi-well-adjusted person after being brain-washed by my parents who planned to have me after being married several years into a stable household are slim.

It’s just not normal! I can only hope to hide from the world my shame as someone who is different.

There may be hope for my abnormal family life after all. Though my parents are still married and have been for 42-1/2 long years, there’s sunlight on the horizon of the agony of their longtime marriage.

My parents have turned into their parents, and I can now justify their asylum commitments.

Growing up, each of my parents separately urged me and my sister to kill, or at the least commit, them if they ever turned into acting like their own parents. Now in their 60s, my mom and dad bicker and fight and argue and mumble under their breath at one another more than I ever witnessed my grandparents doing. I just spent 12 days at my parent’s house. Covering my ears and singing loudly when they started nit-picking at one another was my only way of coping.

The problem here is clear: they learned it by watching their parents and their parents before them. My mom’s parents are STILL alive and married after 40 years of wedded bliss and 20+ years of wedded angst. Before they both died, my dad’s parents were exactly the same.

I can hear the "just take the damn picture" and the "would you just shut up and look at the damn camera" said just before this was taken.

Being married for over 40 years is clearly the milestone marker for insanity.

You people who come from divorced parents and split-up families, basically the normal, everyday American household, are lucky. You don’t have the examples set by people like my parents and grandparents that staying together until the end of time is OK.

It’s not OK, because like the abscessed growth on your finger you refuse to acknowledge, never-ending marriage will end in throbbing pain and someone offering to pop it for you.

Though at least when you’re married to someone for that long, you have someone who will squeeze the puss. Just don’t mind when she does it a little too painfully just because she can. She’s earned that benefit. And he’s earned the right to use 16 colorful words to throw at her while she does it.

I’m going to repurpose those drug PSAs from the 90s: “I LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU, ALRIGHT. I learned it by watching you.” We should be so lucky to have learned how to smoke pot from you. Instead, we learned how to make it to old age, married in wedded angst.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: marriage, parents

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It’s been over 4 years since we’ve last talked about my mother-in-law’s obsession with Christmas ornaments. It’s time for a refresher.

Exhibit 1
The Main Tree, filled with nearly 800-ish Hallmark ornaments, Radko collectibles, moving parts, and singing knick-knacks, all arranged in groups of like-themed ornaments. When there is no other sound in the house, you can hear the tree move.

Note: The Main Tree is mounted to the wall to prevent it from toppling.

Exhibit 2
The Star Wars Tree, while much smaller than the Main Tree, is populated with the same ornament per capita, but all ornaments are Star Wars-themed.

Exhibit 2-1
So I married a Star Wars nerd who claims, “The Star Wars Tree is Awesome.” Note: He requested this photo be taken of him.

Exhibit 3
The Barbie Christmas Tree speaks for itself. (Kid shown for scale.)

And thus we end the pictorial tour of my mother-in-law’s Christmas trees.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: christmas tree, hallmark ornaments, mother in law, star wars ornament

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Though it’s not indicative of her size, when she was about 8 months old and crawling, we nicknamed our 2nd baby, Claire Kong.

It should be obvious why (see: destroying everything in her path, creator of messes, pre-hoarder, beating her chest in protest of things she does not agree), and she’s never outgrown her name.

Our living room isn’t huge, but it has a large, open space between the ottoman for the couch and the TV, which to little children means, “LOOK AT ALL THIS SPACE WE CAN COVER WITH ALL THE THINGS!” Our living room floor is clean for 1-2 weeks a year, and that’s when our girls visit their grandparents in the summer.

We marvel at the non-mess of our living room floor. We take pictures of the cleanliness and send it to the girls to prove it can be done. I post pictures on the interwebs to brag about our empty space.

Wide open, clean spaces in MessyHouse are few and far between.

This morning has been like most other Sunday mornings: Sunday Morning on the TV, girls dragging us out of bed to microwave their breakfasts, each of us doing our own things all together. Basically, lazy, and exactly the way I like it.

It was announced yesterday that today would be CLEAN ALL THE THINGS DAY after a lazy morning. I’ve started my laundry-slash-”work”-on-the-internet task, Anna has started her sneak-in-reading-during-cleaning-her-room task, Patrick started his clean-his-area task, and Claire continued being Claire. “Being Claire” means doing her avoiding-all-requested-tasks-while-making-bigger-messes task.

As I do several hundred thousand million times a day, I told the girls to clean the floor you see below, that JUST YESTERDAY was clear of ALL THE THINGS.

Claire’s response to me: “But Daddy made this mess.”

That “mess” labeled “Patrick’s ‘Mess’” is his mid-task-sorting of cleaning the table next to where he sits.

The rest is the result of what Claire Kong can do on one Sunday morning.

And in the middle is her feeble attempt at hiding her handiwork.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: She’s lucky she’s so cute.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: claire kong, messy house

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I don’t often brag about living in Florida. Except I’m lying. Going to the beach in December is pretty effing Awesome.

Just be glad I didn’t take a picture of the margarita I drank while the sun set over the Gulf.

I’m slightly jealous of everyone else’s cooler weather. And I’m definitely jealous of everyone else’s summer weather. But days like today are when I feel it’s appropriate to flaunt my state.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anna, beach, claire, florida, gulf of mexico, nolan, paige, photos, sunset, tampa

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