Floss-ophy

Ya gotta look at the little picture.
If you look too hard and too long at the big picture of life you'll just develop a twitch along side an overwhelming urge to hide under the bed. And I could do it too. Ever since I got those bed risers that lift the bed another half foot off the floor I've been very aware of how easy it is to crawl under there and just...chill....be at one with the dust bunnies and lost cat toys and ouiji board (cause every one has one of those under their bed right?)
The idea behind bed risers is more storage space, the un-spoken underlying idea that they don't mention in those commercials and Bed Bath and Beyond flyers is that the storage is for you!
When you look too hard at the big picture of life and sensory overload is imminent, the dark and dusty and surprisingly cool coffin like confines of the under-the-bed-ness is just a belly crawl away. Waiting like a secret hug from your furniture. Ahhhh...
Luckily my husband doesn't find me under there too often, striped socks peeking from under the bed skirt giving away my position as I hum and contemplate putting glow in the dark stars under our box spring to complete that *drifting in the dark void of space* feeling that relaxing under the bed offers.
I can avoid that *hide from the world and all it's annoying problems* feeling by deliberately NOT looking at the big picture. Instead I narrow my vision until I'm practically microscopic eyes woman and look at something small. Something manageable.
The earth could spin off it's access, spewing it's excessive piles of non-recyclable garbage out into space like a great vomiting orb of humanity infested planetoid that it is and I'd be ok, because I'd be there relaxing under my bed marveling at the ingeniousness of my tooth flosser. (I like how I felt compelled to specify TOOTH flosser as if I flossed other things and didn't want there to be any confusion as to what sort of flosser I was speaking of)
I try not to incur the wrath of my dentist. No one can lay a guilt trip on you faster than
1) a Mom,
2) any puppy from any animal shelter commercial and
3) your dentist.
Mine suggested I floss more and I agreed, what with him having shiny, sharp, pointed objects in my mouth at the time of the afore mentioned suggestion. Also, annoying mouth maintenance chores like flossing are less annoying after you're grown up and have already sunk thousands of dollars into your mouth in tooth repair. *gulp* If there's anything I would do with a time machine it's go back in time and slap the crap outta me for not flossing when I was 6.
BUT I am pleased to say 31 year old me needs no slapping!
I've been very diligent and with the use of these little clip on to a handle type disposable, pre threaded floss dealies was actually getting the hang of every day flossing with out it being a 4 hour event that ended with me cutting off the circulation in my finger tips from knotted and tangled floss. Let me just state that only people with giant mouths and little hands can floss their teeth easily and un-painfully with JUST floss. So, hence the need for a flosser doo-hickey and of course as I started using those little plastic doohickies that clipped into the handle I started feeling the weight of them on my conscience as I threw them away. As a crafter there's only so many things I can save to reuse and make arty stuff out of and I draw the line at used tooth flossers.
They're so small, just a little "C" shaped bit of plastic with floss threaded between but those little bits of plastic add up. Sure there are oil spills and toxic waste dumps and Styrofoam everything littering endless miles of road in North America, there's plastic bags clinging to tree branches like alien flowers, there's massive piles of STUFF every where that needs addressed or else it'll choke us off this planet in another few generations but....I can't always think about the BIG picture or else I'll need a little recuperation time under the bed again.
But the little picture, totally doable. I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna pull out a tired phrase and use it one more time and squeeze out every last bit of usability from it, I make the LITTLE picture my beeeeeotch.
I decided to put my foot down and refuse to believe that my only tooth flossing options were disposable flossers that I could actually use without cutting my lips and pinching my fingers OR just regular floss that meant I had to start playing favorites with my teeth, no attention for you molars. No!
This is why the internet is my best friend. Like seriously don't ask me to start rating family and friends and the internet in my life because the top 2 positions would create world war 3 and some shunning the likes of which the world has never seen. But suffice it to say I think of an idea, a product and I ask my bestest non-carbon based friend if such a thing exists and it tells me YESSSSSSS. (I should say I feel sort of guilty at the amount of love and slobberly attention I bestow upon my monitor because I know in my heart of hearts it's not actually responsible for all the awesomeness it displays. But my computer is all tied up inside and behind the monitor and what am I supposed to do? Tell the screen this hug isn't for you, pass it along? You're beginning to see the allure of the underside of my bed now aren't you?)
But as I was saying I found it. The holy grail of teeth flossing........*insert respectful moment of silence here*.....a RE-THREADABLE FLOSSER!
A plastic handle that should in theory last for fricking ever, probably longer than human teeth actually, and it can be threaded and unthreaded and it's soooooo easy to use that it causes a person to make inappropriate sounds of pleasure from performing the most hated of dental chores.
Now of course the only thing I need to do is look a little harder at my floss because I have heard tell there are eco-friendly options available for it too. Sweet. I can not fix the world but I can fix my negative impact upon it. One itty bitty bit of dental waste at a time.
Today is a good day, definitely a nap on top of the bed and not under it sort of day thanks to my new Flossaid Dental Floss Holder!

The blog post that has nothing to do with babies.

(Our plastic child can sit on the floor keeping company with lighters, tequila, knives, credit cards, car keys, lasers, bleach, candy, pure sugar, razors, scissors, rock music with swear words, prescription meds, a hammer, dangerous reading material among other things and.....nothing. Plastic children are safe, predictable, if not a little boring, and will never cause any trouble. Plus I can decoupage her if I get the urge.)

Hey I'm all for not having the human race dying out but....holy moly there's a lotta babies popping up..er..out...around the blog world lately.
I think it's actually some sort of mini baby boom and we should all satisfy our voyeuristic tendencies by counting backwards 9 months or so to see what was so baby making fantastic back then. I could be wrong but I am gonna guess that all the baby making madness occurred during that dry spell that happens between the seasons of good tv viewing.
That little window of time when one block of shows has their season finales and the next block of premieres doesn't start for 3 weeks. There's nothing on tv, sooooooo a whole new generation of little humans was created. I am secretly going to call all children conceived during this time period "Re-run-lings" in my head.
Do not get me wrong, kids are great (at a comfortable non birthed from me distance) and like I said some one needs to keep the human race going but I feel a little superior at times cause NAHHH NAHHHH aint gonna be me. I'll be sipping Margaritas with the only kids I need. Fuzzy four legged ones that can only sass back in "Meow" language. (Okie, now that was just bragging. And everyone knows the unspoken rule that you can't diss the *beauty and wonder* that is creating life nor can you extoll too much the benefits of forgoing the *beauty and wonder* of creating new life because it'll make all the new Mama's jealous.)
We are not going to have kids.
And there are not many things about that decision I could regret except maybe the mini sandwiches that baby mamas get at baby showers. You can't convince me there aren't a few women out there who got knocked up just for the wee tuna on whole wheat cut in to tiny triangles. Those sandwiches alone are what got me through many a relative's baby shower. Those tiny little minuscule bready delights stuffed with cheddar and ham are what lured to me to neighbor after neighbor's baby shower where we sat around with strangers playing weird games (and not Nintendo based ones) whilst waiting for the food to be unveiled. Those sandwiches alone are also what my Mother hauls out of her Mama torture bag of tricks and takes photos of at all the Canadian based baby showers I can't attend so I can see the sandwich nirvana I'm missing.

(evidence of torture by own Mother, plate after plate of beautiful teeny tiny sandwiches that I can't have)

She's no fool and we've got a good thing. I thrust plastic grandchildren in her face and she tortures me with miniscule food. It's a fair trade.
There's a lot of reasons FOR having kids. Someone to work the farm when you're old and grey..er..or keep you company in your golden years and love and affection etc. BUT in all fairness there's a lot of reasons NOT to.
I couldn't begin to list them all, and I am sure for every one I have, there's a Mama out there who needs no argument against any of my reasons other than the sweet and pure love that only a child can bring. I don't think one decision is really better than other EXCEPT one is better than the other for ME. :)

Reason number 382 why we are not having children.
The *pretend* child we have, aka the only grandchild the folks can expect from us, was given a lovely hair cut the other night. You see I was in the middle of creating the un-dead and realized I didn't have the right shade of blonde hair in my craft supplies. So I fetched our darling plastic daughter that we keep stored in the closet and only bring out at Christmas (reason number 291: storing your children in the closet is probably a no-no) and with hardly any hesitation hacked off a long hank of blonde hair...muah ahh ahh. If there's no rule about butchering your children's hair for making zombies then there ought to be.

Reason number 4587 not to have children. I've never been good at sharing. Seriously, the new Nintendo Wii game.....lets say I could even afford the new game..or the Wii system AFTER all the expense of creating a human being there's no way in hell I could sit idly by and let some one else beat the new Zelda game before me. That's not mean...that's honesty right there. Also, I'm pretty sure there's some Motherhood rule that says parents shouldn't devote 50 plus hours of gameplay to the new Zelda game if they have children...something about matches and cleaners and world domination...I dunno for sure I was only half listening to that parental lecture cause I was distracted by how many rupees I'd collected.

Reason number 784 not to have children. Schedules. Holy fricking Hannah it would seem the entire freaking universe lives by the clock..EXCEPT my sweetie and I. Our schedule slowly rotates around the clock, Slowly pushing further a little later every night, sleep a little later every day. We have no set pattern. Just when you think we are getting up at midnight we're actually getting up at 4 am, or 4 pm. I am thinking kids and a schedule like that don't mesh.... I have heard rumors about the youngins needing stuff like sunlight.....

Reason number 32, I hated school, or at least large chunks of it. I can't imagine creating a human and then sending them off to the very institution I so very much un-enjoyed...and as for home schooling..um, did I not mention the 50 plus hours of game play? Plus margaritas. How many margaritas do parents get? Pbbbt, suckkkkas, y'all work on long division, my hubby and I are gonna make brownies, eat half the pan and then do dangerous things with a lighter we can leave laying out in the open because our cats have no interest in playing with it....muahh ahh ahh.

(Dangerous things we can leave in the middle of the living room floor forever and always should we desire because we don't have children. I'm not saying it's the BEST perk of opting to go childless...but it's definitely one of the more interesting ones.)

Reason number 7, adults who said "Oh you'll change your mind some day" with that knowing smirk on their face as if they knew for damn sure a switch would go off when a woman hits 30 and she will wanna help increase the earth's population. It's almost worth it for that alone. Sort of an "in your face" rebellion, ha HA no grandkids for you!

Reason number 9876. The other day we stepped out on to the patio to stare at the lovely, artistic billows of smoke from the fire way off yonder at the military base. Of course we wanted to snap a photo and of course I ended up flailing my arms and smacking a 500 dollar camera out of my husband's hands to bounce off of the house and onto the patio floor........ I fear children. If I could manage to do that on accident to a tiny camera.....a full size kid? Yikes. I'm pretty sure they're worth more than 500 dollars....

Reason number 17, We don't need to make any kids. The friends and relatives are doing a fine job of it on their own. Producing such wonderful little persons that one could not even hope to compete. (But lets see em produce a pair of cats who can occasionally tolerate each other long enough to bump noses though! Now there's a feat!)

Reason number 865, Babies don't use litter boxes. So far as I know.

I fully realize the Universe is gonna punish me for even thinking up such a list by making me have 19 kids in my next life time. Most likely all of which I'll name variations on the theme of Mario and Zelda. It'll be little Links and Luigis running all over the place and I'll be bewildered why such names appealed to me. The Universe is just sneaky enough to do such a thing. In the mean time I'll baby my cats and make my OWN little sandwiches. It's not just Mamas-to-be who can cut a square into 4 triangles ya know.

Disclaimer: Children are wonderful. I am very happy for all the proud parents out there, but I am happy and proud of our un-parentage as well.
To each their own.

And the winners are.....

I know there has been much knuckle biting and anxious nerves this past week as the tension mounted and rose and rode away on imaginative ponies.
We all wondered the same thing.
Who would it be?
Who would be the winners of their very own copy of the August 09 issue of Art Doll Quarterly? In-arguably the BEST issue ever produced, in my own completely biased opinion, since my work is splattered across pages 46, 47 & 48.
The thrill of the drawing, drawing near, was almost too much for any blog writer and blog reader to bear but bear we did with teeth bared, barely aware of anything else in the world at all.
We held our breaths in anticipation. Some of us turned a little blue and conceded that one can not hold one's breath for an entire week.
But the results are in.........
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB (if you don't know that's a textual representation of a drum roll then you do now)
Leslie, Kim, Mackenzie Rose, Mel, MaryBlue, Scribhneoir and Elizabeth!!!

Though art all Art Doll Quarterly winners!

The math wasn't too difficult on this one, those pre-cal classes from way back in the high school days can stay back in the day. Seven entrants into this most amazing drawing for seven free issues being given away equals.....
One hand stuck in the jar pulling seven blank pieces of paper out for dramatic photographic affect.

Thank-you very much to every one who entered! I appreciate your wonderful comments and if you'd all email me at this address
throwthis@alittlecharacter.com
and tell me the name you used when you commented and the address you'd like your magazine sent to, I will commence the mailings!