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Secret Stash

I went out into the garage to find my handheld garden tools. They are always put in the same spot up high on a shelf to keep my dog from stealing them because he loves chewing on the wooden handles.

He also loves chewing our kitchen floor.

And socks.

And underwear.

And toilet paper off the roll.

Yes, his poop is a magical array of recycled treasures.

When I got to the shelf, the garden tools were not there. I looked everywhere when I remembered that my son had used them the day before.

I figured that he left them in the garden so I searched and searched but I couldn’t find them. I finally gave up and asked him where he put them.

“Somewhere,” he said.

I followed him to his room to rummage through his stash. He is a hoarder of all the random things in our home and likes to hide them.

I found plant stakes, rocks, wheels that were broken off of a dinky car, some plastic thing that he said floated, a dried up dandelion, a raisin “for later”….and so on.

He finally fessed up and told me that they were back out in the garage stuffed way at the bottom of his outdoor toy box.

Stinker.

He loves hiding things which is why I thought that this Playdin Zip-Itz toy would be perfect for him to put his stash in.

zee

 

The rest of it is up to your child’s imagination.

Playdin’s Zip-ItzTM  are adorned with rainbow teeth zippers that open to reveal secret pockets, Zip-Itz are perfect for hiding all kinds of treasures.

My son has the above Playdin’s Zip-ItzTM    named Zee. Each Playdin’s Zip-ItzTM  comes with a little story about what assembly line they came from and a little bit about their unique personality.

My son thinks that Zee “likes taking naps but I don’t so he won’t. Ever.”

That’s a true story. Kid never naps.

There are many different styles including a few that are perfect for boys looking for a plush companion.

They even have pillows!

pillowzipit

 

Zip-Itz are available at www.Playdin.com and www.amazon.com for Zip-Itz ($16.99), Zip-Itz Made in the USA ($19.99-$21.99), Zip-Itznew Deluxe Edition ($24.99- $29.99), Zip-Itz PillowzTM ($19.99-$21.99) and Zip-ItzMinizTM ($6.99).

They also have a line called Cotton Candy CutesiesTM  which are truly sweet plush characters with wispy hair that looks just like cotton candy and reminds children to play sweet. Each scrumptious cutesie has a distinct personality based on their flavor.

licorice

The cutesie names include flavors such as Rainbow Cookie, Orange Cream Soda, Bubblegum, Hot Cinnamon, and more.  There are currently 11 styles available, all for $13.99. Cotton Candy Cutesies are available at www.playdin.com and www.amazon.com.

So if your child likes to stash things, I recommend that you check out Zip-Itz.

I’d still keep hiding your garden tools though.

 

 

*Disclaimer: I received a Zip-Itz for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own.

Marshmallow Jar

I twisted my way out of the blankets that my cousin and I had shared and jumped onto the floor. They were already at the table drinking their warm tea and mulling over the campground newsletter. I swiped away the beach sand that had peppered the camper’s floor from the bottoms of my feet and plopped my rump on the cushion next to my grandma.

Papa said, “So Mrs. Cooney, what’ll it be for breakfast?”

I smiled wide as I pointed to the eye catching box on the counter. Papa placed the bowl in front of me and began pouring a heap of cereal that was way bigger than my stomach could ever hold. He had this funny grin that reminded me of my parents faces when I was about to open an epic present or to tell me that my mom was pregnant for the umpteenth time.

I watched as the cereal rose to the rim of the bowl as he filled it with milk. I grabbed my spoon and plunged it in, fishing for the marshmallow nuggets.

“This can’t be,” I thought in disappointment.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

There were none.

I looked up and my Papa was holding a mason jar full of all the marshmallows that he had handpicked from the box.

“Now you’ll have as many as you want,” he smiled.

Every time I have that exact same cereal and taste the purple ones that my son plucked out “because they’re your favourite momma!”, my mind goes straight back to that memory when I was 5 years old. I can close my eyes and see every detail and feel my soul being infused with nothing but goodness and love.

It’s funny how our minds work that way.

Certain sights, smells, touch and sounds can trigger a memory that I had forgotten, imprinted underneath all of my life experiences. With it comes vivid recollections of specific events and all of the emotions that were associated with it.

For me, scents evoke the strongest memories. Like smelling fish washed up on the shore conjures up adventures of being at the beach and my Dad swimming in the tightest and most embarrassing cut off jean shorts.

Those recollections of years past have always been pleasant and innocent. Now? Now they are drowned out by these jagged, dark, cold, and unforgiving ones.

When I smell cut grass or the summer air laced with fragrant flower blooms or the smell of the elevator that leads to my psychiatrist’s office, they spur the emotions that I experienced which I’m assuming occurred at that particular time when the memory was formed.

It comes in ferocious waves that push my chest inwards and creates a chain reaction of  heart racing, stomach churning and the intense need to run away from whatever is about to “NOT” happen. It’s the preparedness of my body and mind that are somehow hardwired into defense mode at all times. All it takes is a scent to flip it on like a switch. Just like in this very moment as I’m sitting in my green Adirondack chair.

I remember a book, Bloom by Kelley Hampton on my lap, the sun partially peeking over my neighbor’s roof and through the branches of my evergreen tree, my boys running in the yard laughing, my feet dragging against the cold grass.

And feeling like I wanted to die.

I want to move forward but I’m paralyzed by the emotions that I thought I’d obliterated into tiny fragments. It’s as if my brain was shook like a snow glob dispersing the glitter throughout the dome; memories floating together in chaos.

My mind can’t separate them from past and present.

There was a time when I had control of what I needed to feel when memories would rush in. Then I’d let them go.

I see myself as being my 5 years old again, plunging my spoon into the bowl of cereal and then frantically searching for the marshmallows. The goodness.

Instead my brain is stuck swirling that spoon through the junk that no one wants to eat.

“Now you can have as much as you want,” I hear my Papa say.

At 32 years old, I don’t want any.

A To Z: Crap That You Won’t Care About Me

I apologize in advance if you have a passionate hate of reading 26 stupid facts about anyone.

A. Attached or single? The escapades of my vagina are none of your business.

B. Best Friend? Your Mom

C. Cake or pie? Preferably a cake without mullet hair in it. Don’t ask.

1st Birthday and 1st second degree burn

1st Birthday and 1st second degree burn

D. Day of choice? I’m unemployed…stay at home mom whatever you call it…all the days bleed into each other. I don’t even know what month it is.

E. Essential item? Birth control.

F. FavoUrite ColoUr: I just wanted to point out that in Canada, we throw the letter ”u” in random words. I wished that autocorrect and spellcheck weren’t so racist.

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G. Gummy Bears or worms? My vet has a jar full of heartworms in his office.

H. Hometown? In a quiet quiet province there was a quiet quiet town.

And in that quiet quiet town, there was a quiet quiet neighborhood.

In that quiet quiet neighborhood, there was a quiet quite house.

We were the family that lived 3 doors down.

I. Favourite Indulgence? Acupuncture.

J. January or July? Well they both had bronchitis. The best child name that I have ever encountered while working as a pediatric ER nurse was Luscious Titts. Not kidding.

K. Kids? Ruin your garden and your thighs.

L. Life isn’t complete without? The two sheets of metal and a polyethylene core that holds my spine together.

M. Marriage date? 10 years this September. In dog years that’s too long.

vegas

N. Number of brothers/sisters? My mom dropped kids like it was hot. The last one fell out when I was 12.

familyshot

O. Oranges or apples? Reminds me of that one time when my best friend and I chugged Growers Apple Cider because we wanted to make our town’s festival to celebrate strawberries more exciting and she ended up spraying her liver on someone’s lawn.

She never stopped walking or talking the entire time.

Never phased her or me.

This was actually a normal occurrence.

Life lesson#26: Underage livers = booze intolerance.

pukecan

P. Phobias? Spiders, dentists, and dead people. I once offered my entire pay check to a co-worker to dispose a trauma patient.

Q. Quotes? 4 year old: Mom, I farted at school and Devon said that it smelled like popcorn.

R. Reasons to smile? That my boys are healthy and they do a great job taking care of me when I suck at life.

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S. Season of choice? Cinnamon.

T. Tag 5 people: I’m about to tag a line of ants with my flip flop.

U: Unknown fact:  32B when I’m on my period.

V. Vegetable? I’ve never been in a coma so I don’t know what that would feel like.

W. Worst habit? Swearing on my blog. You’d be surprised to know that I don’t swear that much in real life.

Words like fat, ugly, stupid, and dumb are prohibited in our house.

Then why do I swear on the blog? Because what you read is straight from my uncensored brain.

X. Xray or Ultrasound? Last weekend I had an ultrasound of my ass crack.  

Y. Favourite food? The ones where the main ingredients are high fructose corn syrup and love.

And baby cheeks.

cheeky

Z. Zodiac sign? I’m a virgo. I share my birthday with my grandma.

She’s dead.

I was tagged by my slewt in crime, Leighann. If you’re not reading her blog then you’re stupid because she is brilliant and my better half of funny. You’ll want to eat her first born. She’s adorable.

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This Is Right Now

I felt the edge of my calendar at the bottom of my purse and pulled it out. Tissue lint had collected under the plastic cover and in the month of May, I had a date with an oblong character with one eye in the middle of its face and morbid limbs scribbled in green crayon. The boy child. I laughed as I traced my fingers down to the last week which confirmed that I had the right date and the right time.

It was still very unusual that there was no one in his office at 2:30 in the afternoon.

I shrugged my shoulders and took a seat. I diverted my attention to the gold framed picture on the wall.

It reminds me of the 80′s with its pastel hues. It would have been something that my aunt would have hung in her house because she was a ma-ma-ma-material girl with a badly teased perm.

I’m not sure how one acquires such voluminous height. I imagined that it involved a ladder, Aqua Net, and “She’s a Maniac” playing in the background.

You’d have to be if you’re smoking a dart while engulfing your coif in flammable hairspray.

Off to the right of the picture, there is a partial view of a quaint white house with a perfectly manicured garden of cascading flowers on a trellis. It isn’t anything like my yard. My yard is more of a “Oh, I see you have a kid and a dog as evidenced my the shit on my shoe. And why does your neighbor have an odd obsession with solar lights. Aren’t you worried that a plane will mistake it for a runway?”

garden2

The painted house is more “Hey, let’s drink champagne and talk about how our flabby thigh skin was removed and stuffed into our lips. And man are they chapped. Wait…chaffed. Mewha ha ha money.”

We would never be friends.

My psychiatrist, Dr. B, poked his head around the doorway and signaled me to come in.

“So how are we?” Dr. B said as he followed behind me.

I wished that I could have explained how I felt in words. I pressed my hands over my chest as if I were about to give myself CPR.

“I feel like there is this pressure. An uneasiness that comes with the weather shifts, certain smells, and sounds. It makes me physically ill. I hate going outside because it all triggers this, this dark heaviness that weighs down the air. I don’t want to go outside. I don’t know what is happening.”

Without any hesitation he said, “Posttraumatic stress disorder. Everything that has happened to you, the rash, the PPD and so on, have all started here. You’re remembering all of–”

Over and over and over again. 

My present is colliding with my past.

A lost soul casted in the middle of a twisted nightmare without an exit.

I’m terrified of what was and what could be.

“You’re right here. This is now,” he said.

If this is right now, why won’t all of those emotions associated with the atrocities let me go?

Am I holding on to it?

I took a deep breath and exited his office. Before I reached the wooden door that led out into the hallway, I caught a glimpse of the gold framed picture. I somehow knew that this was where I needed to start in order to make it through this.

When I got home, I grabbed my shovel and knelt down in front of my garden. The smell of the soil and the hot sun on my back began to make my heart race and my chest close in.

This will pass. This will pass. That was last year. This is right now. This will pass.

Then I dug my hands deep into the earth and cried.

When I was done, I wiped my nose with the only clean part of my arm and looked out to my yard.

garden5

It’s not as fabulous as I want it to be right now, but it will be.

And when it is, it will say, “Oh I see that you have a kid and a dog as evidenced by the shit on the side of my shoe. How does your garden ever survive? Paws trampling on the delicate flowers. The onslaught of soccer balls. Is that a trench full of army dudes in the soil?”

I’ll smile kindly while scanning the blooms that I had worked hard on to make them grow time and time again.

garden3garden1

garden4

“I nurture it now so that it can be stronger tomorrow,” I’d say.

“It always survives.”

righthere.jpg

 

GFunkified


Like A Blanket, Only Cooler

I was just about to approach the gas pump when the attendant walked in front of my car. Like the polite young lady that I am, I stopped to let him cross. He gave me a nod in appreciation and I gave him a nod as I drove my car into the yellow caution pole.

The best part is, I destroyed my rear quarter panel.

How does one do that?

I was 21 and on my way to work.

Clumsy.

There are other things that I have done like falling gracefully into our lamp.

My friends claim that I was drunk.

I claim that I was trying to dodge a blue ball.

Could have been both.

Details schmetails.

I was the victim.

I can’t count how many times I’ve cracked my head on the door frame trying to get my son in the car seat or how many times I’ve fallen up the stairs.

Is that considered falling?

Have you ever walked down the stairs and thought that there was an extra step and you feel like your about to fall into a dark abyss?

I do that a lot.

And dropping things.

I’ve dropped my cell phone into the washing machine, small dogs, cakes, my baby brother onto the tile floor, I fell off a canon (don’t ask), and knocked over a stack of soup cans in a grocery store.

I never stayed to pick up the cans.

I blamed it on the elderly woman who had hoarded 10 cases of cat food.

When we got our Nexus 7 Tablet, the first thing that came to mind was, “Awesome!”

The second thing was, “How long is it going to take me to break this?”

I knew that I needed something that was ”Kimberly proof”.

Everyone, meet The Snugg.

logoThe Snugg makes a high quality line of cases for iPads, Smart phone cases, Kindle covers, and Tablet covers. I was able to test out their Snugg Google Nexus 7 Leather Case.

snugg1

Has your tablet screen ever gotten scratched from being stowed away in your purse, satchel, backpack, briefcase etc.? Well it’s high quality, soft, black nubuck fibre interior that’s wipe-clean, prevents internal scratches to your Nexus 7. There is a Velcro tab that holds the Nexus in place.

snugg4

It has cut outs for the connection and headphone ports, camera and sensor on the front and volume/zoom controls. There is an elasticated hand strap for a comfortable, great hold. Or for preventing from falling out of your hand as you walk up and down the stairs like some people who have two left feet…ahem… I love using it at night while catching up on blog reading. It’s just like holding onto a book.

The cover also folds over creating a stand. It’s perfect for us bloggers who are always writing. It’s also great for the little ones. My son loves watching videos hands free.

snugg2

Another thing that I love is its automatic sleep/wake feature. When you close the cover, the Nexus goes to “sleep” and when you open it, it “wakes”. This is awesome since my son and my husband never turn off the device and it’s easier for my son to just open it and have it on.

The Snugg is versatile, stylish and “Kim proof”. And you might as well add 4 year old proof. That says a lot about a product.

It comes in various colours to suit your personality. Pink, red, blue, orange, white, brown leather, black, and electric blue.

If you’re looking for a high quality iPad, Tablet, Smartphone, and Kindle covers, you definitely need to check out The Snugg.

You can check out their products on their website: http://www.thesnugg.com/

 

Ps. Justin Timberlake has one.

 

 *Disclaimer: I was provided with the above product for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own.

 

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