Damn. Felix Mendelssohn is out of my network.

Seriously people, can I get an introduction around here?

You know who else is on LinkedIn? Bach, Beethoven, Mozart… I don’t mean to be crass, but I was under the impression that you had to be alive to have a profile. I guess I was mistaken.

I said: “Yes. This might sound strange, but I am looking for the Wienermobile.”

All three of us stifled back some laughter and he said “Actually, I know exactly what you are talking about and it was parked out front earlier.”

I was excited. When I woke up that morning I saw this from my hotel room window.

THE WIENERMOBILE!

I know. It is kind of stupid, but did you know that they don’t just let anybody ride in The Wienermobile? I know this because the commoners who were walking by (and by commoners I mean people who weren’t at my conference) weren’t allowed on. But the wiener lady let Laurie and I get into the giant hot dog!

We’re laughing like that because the wiener lady would not stop saying things like “Does one of you want to sit shot bun?” and “We’re all wieners” and “It is bunderful.”

Really. She did. And she did it deadpan.

And she didn’t stop as we drove around Houston.

To be frank with you it was fairly surreal.

The wiener lady gave me these stickers. That said “I tweeted from the Wienermobile”.

So I did.

And it was good.

When we got back to the hotel we ran into Tanis and took some more pictures because 1) It was a blogging conference and that is what we do and 2) IT WAS THE FUCKING WIENERMOBILE!

You would think that that would be the end of my story, but you would be wrong.

When I got back to The Four Seasons I ran into my new friend Paula who had hours earlier uncovered a Wienermobile conspiracy! Paula had been for a wiener  ride (not a euphemism) earlier and she asked the wiener guy about the Wienermobile that crashed into a house in Wisconsin last July. He denied that it was a crash and instead the weenie driver backed up under somebody’s porch and got stuck, but FOX News reported the driver lost control.

And the video is gone.

Paula is a self-proclaimed sausage expert. I’m not kidding. She had almost as many sausage related anecdotes as the wiener girl had hot dog puns (or hot dog buns if you will). Cover up? Conspiracy? Story nobody cares about? You be the judge.

Either way, I got to ride in the Wienermobile.

The kids are going ape shit. They already tried to wash the mirror with bright purple foaming kids soap.

My local twitter prognosticators are saying that school probably won’t be back in until Tuesday at the soonest.

I know that one to two feet is a lot of snow but wow.

When I was at the grocery store yesterday there was a huge run on hot dog and hamburger buns. I’m still fairly new to snow, is one supposed to barbecue during a blizzard? Is it like the Fourth of July? Because my plan was to sit on the couch with a blanket and read a nice book or something.

I just got a text that said there was a run on Spam at Costco. SPAM. It is a snow storm not a nuclear holocaust.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I understand we stand a chance of getting 24 inches of snow. I understand that 24 inches is an assload of snow, but can’t we all just calm the hell down and stay inside?

And by stay inside, I mean after school on Friday, and only until Monday morning.

That isn’t that big of a deal except that we aren’t very religious people.

My children believe in God and they like to tell me that. A lot.

Sometimes I think they like to rub it in because I am an Atheist, and while I support their beliefs I’m not really sure where they came from. None of their grandparents or parents currently practice any religion and if any of them have any strong beliefs either way they aren’t really talking about it.

My children believe in God and they believe that he is an invisible giant with no feet.

And I say If he is invisible how do you know he is a giant? And how do you know he isn’t a she? I want to be supportive. I want them to know that I am a well-wisher for whatever belief system they choose to ascribe to. I have chosen my own, but that doesn’t mean I think that they have to believe what I believe. I want them to be able to think for themselves. I want them to be able to choose for themselves.

My children believe in an invisible, giant God with no feet.

Their deity inexplicably has no feet.

And they are (well, at least the boy is) scared of the puppet devil.

And I’m not sure why.

I have no idea how to deal with that. How to I explain the the puppet devil isn’t real when they know I don’t believe in God either. I mean sure, I say, Well, he is a puppet. He is felt with some guys hand up in there. And they say Why can’t you see the guy? and I say Because he is squatting down where the camera can’t see him and that just isn’t good enough for them.

For right now my kids believe in an invisible giant God with no feet and the puppet devil.

And I’m not sure to what to do with that information besides tell you about it.

I signed up for Tae Kwon Do.

Well, I was tricked into signing up for Tae Kwon Do.

Let me back up a little bit.

My five year old son has been dying to take Tae Kwon Do ever since he found out that his best friend at preschool was taking it. I finally got around to signing him up for it a couple of weeks ago.

There was a special where you got your first four lessons and a do-bok (that is how you say little white outfit in Korean) for $79. It isn’t cheap, but he was all about it and my husband and I both thought he would get a lot out of it especially in the area of body control.

You know how little boys are always running in to things.

After two lessons (which he adored) his twin sister decided that she might like it too. So I signed her up.

Last Tuesday I took them in for his fourth lesson and her second lesson. Before the class even started I was whisked in to the office where the Master sat – not one of the underling masters but The Master, the main man, the guy that owns the joint.

It was time for the hard sell.

I don’t have the exact figures but signing the two of them up for a year came to somewhere around one million dollars.

Okay, it was significantly less than one million but also significantly more than I had in my bank account. In fact, thinking about it makes me want to vomit, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Both children love it, it is marvelous exercise and a lot of their friends from school are in there.

Then The Master says to me “What about you?”

I am thinking: There is no fucking way. There are like four other adults here in the kids classes and they all look like gigantic tool bags. The last thing I need to do is spend another $800 to look like an asshole.

My subconscious has a filthy mouth.

I am saying “No. I really can’t afford it.”

Then The Master drops the bomb. “I will give you one year for free if you take the class with the children. It helps them learn at home and stay involved.”

Oh Shit. I think. How can I turn down a year of free Tae Kwon Do? This would actually give me something to write about on Loser Moms.

The Master said that he would give me the free year, but I actually had to show up. If I didn’t actually take the classes he was going to charge me.

So I said yes.

But I was scared.

Really. I didn’t want to do it. My kids were through the roof excited, but I was very apprehensive.

I didn’t want to look like an idiot.

What if I sucked at it?

What if it was hard?

What if all of the five year olds were better than me?

But I had committed to this.

So yesterday I had my first lesson. It was awkward. I had no idea what the lady was saying. Some other parents I knew were there watching their children. But when we broke up in to groups I knew everybody in my group. It was me, Ian (5), Claudia (5), Paige (5) and Emma (6).

I think I probably did look like a tool, but it was kind of fun.

And I wasn’t too bad at it.

And Emma’s mom was really nice about it. She gave me a thumbs up and everything.

So yeah.

My name is Sarah and I am a white belt in Tae Kwon Do.

***

Cross-Posted on Loser Moms

Claudia: W – E .

Ian: No, not that kind of we.

Claudia: W – I – I .

Me: agape

I wasn’t just making it up either. We were making her a Pandora playlist. She wanted to thumbs up Children of Bodom and Amon Amarth.

When I told Gabe this story he said that those bands weren’t grindcore, maybe death core or black metal, but not grindcore.

At this point in the story I need to back up a few weeks. Gabe and I were having an argument about which one of us was more metal.

In our defense we had just been to three wine tastings, so it wasn’t like we just talk about this all of the time. Well, okay, maybe we do, but in this particular case we had been in Napa all day drinking wine.

We called the children and had a family vote. The vote was ‘Who in this family is the most metal?”

Gabe voted for Gabe.

Ian voted for Ian.

I voted for myself.

Claudia voted for Ian, Claudia and Daddy.

This vote would make Gabe and Ian tied for the most metal and me and the girl who has both Barbies and Polly Pockets on her Christmas list tied for least metal.

I skipped my Sophomore homecoming dance to go to a Sepultura show. I sang on an Iced Earth album. I’ve been to Morbid Angel’s house. I grew up in Tampa! How could I possibly be the least metal person in any family?

But as I found myself reading the wiki for grindcore I kind of wanted to cry because a truly metal person wouldn’t need to google a wiki (which would be a fantastic name for a disco band) to distinguish between grindcore and deathcore. Would they?

And there is nothing metal about crying.

If you can’t read it says FInd Children: Find the widest variety of children on the web. Buy Now!

The Gagging Sounds are Coming from Me

Originally uploaded by Sarah606

In all honesty, while neither is my first choice of beverage, I have no prejudices against Budweiser or Clamato.

It is the thought of the two of them mixed together that makes me wretch.