11.5 - a poem

Kara Goucher I am not

I walked a little, not a lot

11.5 kinda sucks

For this pain, I paid 80 bucks

13.1, is in two weeks

My left shoe really reeks

When I run, my right hip hurts

I'd rather be hairy, and living in yurts

Ok, I don't mean that really

I just hate running on terrain that is hilly

A new shirt and free beers,

Good times with the bestest - CHEERS!

Wordless Wednesday?

It appears wordless Wednesday is a copout day. A day to post, but not to think.

I'm so jumping on that train today. Minus all the words above and below.

So, more like wordy Wednesday.

Enjoy the musical stylings of the B-rox:

Full Hands.

As in, my hands are full. With a little smartass boy.

Conversation at lunch:

Me: "If you could be a shoe, what kind of shoe would you be?"

B-Rox: "Mom, that's dumb. Only girls think things like that. I'd be a dinosaur, with a long tail. Because that's interesting."

Me: "Oh."

School is teaching him sooooooo much.

It also happens to be teaching him spanish. Which he loves. It's his second favorite day of the week, aside from share day.
Last week we had construction workers in our house re-building all the damaged areas. (which, still isn't finished... but I'm not going to rant...) The two main guys happened to be mexican. Gustavo and Johnny.
They were pretty friendly, and were talking to Braxton about the leak.

Gustavo: "Is your house messy because of a leak?"
B-rox: "Yes. Thanks for fixing it. Leaks are No Bueno."
Gustavo: "*Roaring with laughter*"

That is my son. Someday he'll realize how funny he is - and then we're all in trouble.

The Name Game.

Naming Braxton was extremely difficult. The story I'm about to tell, hasn't been told before and may scare away many readers.

Or, you can just feel free to make fun of me in the comment section. I'm easy going like that.

We looked at names for forever.
Mark wanted Wahoo. No, I'm not joking. Wahoo Delanoe McDaniel. He said "That's a strong name to give a boy". I took over naming from there... with a little veto power given to the hubband.

I wanted Elias. Veto.

I wanted Aiden. Veto.

He wanted Roderick. Veto.

He wanted Wahoo. VETO VETO VETO.

I wanted Finnigan. Veto.

Eventually we settled on Braxton. Believe it or not - he was NOT named after Braxton-Hicks contractions. Common misconception.

The middle name proved to be even tougher. In my family, middle names usually have some significance to family relations. Ross, Lee, Michael... So, the first name I turned to was Hubband's. One of my favoritest names ever. Andrew. Braxton Andrew McDaniel. I was set.

Turns out - Hubband doesn't like his middle name. Though, he thought the initials BAM would be awesome. For weeks we couldn't decide on a middle name.

One day we were sitting on the couch (and by couch I mean futon. Because we were domestic like that. And by domestic I mean poor) watching X-men. The original.

**Little note I should have mentioned earlier: Hubband and I thought it was way awesome we were about to name a kid a name with an X. Because that is uncommon, and we are slightly uncommon folk.**

Anyway, back to the movie. In case none of you are as nerdy as us. X-men rule. Especially when one Sci-fi hero does a crossover. Sort of.
Jean-Luc Picard's character is named Xavier. (Hence, X-men... get it now?)

After listening to this, I started thinking about how cool it would be to double Braxton's awesome factor.

Braxton Xavier. It had a ring to it. Two X's surely had to make him an official X-man. So. Braxton Xavier McDaniel he became.

Our own official X-men. or is it man? I'm confused as to what to do here... help me out folks.

We haven't told this story because we know certain people who would heckle (will heckle) us if they knew.

The other day Braxton was watching a super hero cartoon and the X-men made an appearance.

Braxton's exact words were "Mom, it is so way awesome that the X-man has the same name as me".

Someday we'll explain that this was NOT a coincidence.

Thoughts on 2010 Olympics.

*Air Guitar during the national anthem is ok - as long as it's your anthem they're playing. Though, to agree with Mr. Perkins, no shout outs!

*Shaun White. Pretty bad ass. Which, made me think last night - if the B-rox were to become a world class snowboarder, what would his nickname be? He has the hair thing, but it's platinum blonde. I don't know. I call him Boogeyman. (I'll explain the naming evolution of the B-rox in another post.)

*We're proud of you Evan Lysacek. However, you did win gold dancing around on ice with bedazzled snakes attached to your costume. Just sayin'...

*Lindsey Vonn. She's pretty bad ass, too. Though, putting cheese packs on your shin is weird. Haven't you heard of ice? You know - that stuff you slide down at ridiculously fast speeds? Her tumble yesterday - awesome. I've had me some yard sales skiing, but never once was I going that fast. She's got some big ol' bollocks. Kudos.

*NBC. The term, is goofy-footed. Which also happens to be the way I wakeboard. Which makes me wonder, for once - can't I just be normal?

*The quote "We're going to rent the podium from the Canadians" had me cracking up for a good hour. This is of course in reference to Canada's "Own the Podium" campaign.

*I giggle every time I think about how the West coast has to watch the games on a tape delay.
Do you know how many times I've been frustrated with evening football games on the west coast actually being LATE night games for me on the east coast? So you have to watch it prime time. Deal.

*I wish there were more exciting things to watch during the winter olympics besides snowboarding and skiing.

*That being said, the women in the half-pipe yesterday were pretty much a dissapointment. Except Torah. Everybody else - stop falling down. It's embarrassing. (Except the Chinese, they can fall down all they want.) Because who trains for snowboarding? Seriously, stop sucking the fun out of everything.

*I Would like to watch more action, less toupe guy. Less toupe guy interviewing people, and reporting on things we just watched!!!!!
I do not remember toupe guy's name. I'm alwasy a little revolted when I see his awful toupe. Everything else escapes me.

*The clown guy in the long program last night? He should have danced to "There ain't no strings on me".

*Clowns freak me out. Cliche, but true.

*Speaking of music in Ice skating. Somebody needs to man up and skate to some good music. Blues Traveler, Five for Fighting... You know what? I'd even take some Britney. Mix it up a little people. Go Rogue.

*I think we're jinxed. The olympic committee has never released medal projections before, but felt confident about the results they just let leak. The projections had us on top of Germany, and Canadialand, bringing home most golds, and overall.
I think we, as a nation, need to be prepared for some huge disasters.

*I'd like to attend an Olympics someday. (As a spectator, duh, roller derby isn't an olympic sport... yet) Preferably a summer olympics, but I won't be picky as long as I get the opportunity to go.

*I'd like to know if Fox is really, actually, truly, surprised that the Olympics beat American Idol in the ratings race? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

*Back to Evan Lysacek. He's dating Nastia Liukin. Do you think they'll say things like "If you show me your gold medal, I'll show you mine"?

*The Duathalon (shooting, cross country skiiing) is much more exciting when it's James May and Jeremy Clarkson, shooting and driving SUV's. True story.

Notes:
1) I do not hate China. I just think it's ridiculous that they've taken a very fun, awesome sport, and made it into a drill. Their athletes never look like they're having fun. They look like they're doing a job. Their snowboard routines were lackluster and felt soulless. At least when the other women went down - it was fun to watch.

Ok, I really only had that one note. Writing "notes" looks better on paper. Or blog, as the case may be.

**Edited to add a second note:
Korea. Get over yourselves. You fell. Ohno won. Say whatever you like, put his face on toilet paper - in the end you just look like sore losers.

What Peaceful DOESN'T Sound Like...

This is what I get to listen to.

Yay.

Plip Plip Plop.

Then GUSSSSSSHHHHH!

I finally got ahold of the emergency line at Pulte.

They did not install the drain for the laundry room right, and the water has been draining into my ceiling.

I now have my own in-home water feature. The parade of bowls, saving my hardwood floors.Apparently it's difficult for water to drain through latex paint.

Look at all those puckers. You can hear it in the column boxes on either side of the dining room as well.

Drip, Drip, Drip, Drip, Drip. Then Plip, plop, plip, plop. Ting Ting Ting. And now, there is a constant stream from one of them.

By water feature, I definitely meant Chinese Water Torture device.

The video isn't all that awesome. I wasn't concentrating hard enough on it, or something. But you'll get the idea of what's up in my house.

So, in a couple of days - without the ability to do laundry, (and might I add that some of that laundry is the result of Kieran's turbulent stomach?), they'll finally come in and fix it. Then tear apart my dining room to fix all the water damage.

I'm so glad I'm fasting today. Because low blood sugar is totally what is going to help all of this.