From the Redneck Diva:

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Little boys will often answer with fireman, policeman, or Spiderman. Little girls want to be teachers or actresses or hair stylists. My answer, however, was almost always “a mommy” or “a housewife.” Oh sure, over the years I had times where I wanted to be a police officer, an actress, a lawyer, or a teacher, but as I got older, the desire that was utmost in my heart of hearts was to be a homemaker, a mommy, a wife.

Back when FHA stood for Future Homemakers of America, I joined and took the name literally. I truly was a future homemaker. My life’s goal was to get married, have babies, and stay at home to take care of my family. I loved Home Ec, I was an officer in my school’s FHA chapter, I could cook up a storm (even if my sewing skills left something—okay much—to be desired) and threw myself into my dream of having a home of my own. My high school teachers and guidance counselor were disappointed, saying I was selling myself short and not taking advantage of my gifts and talents, and they continually pushed the teacher issue. I relented and enrolled in college, attended a semester, and quit. I got a job, found a country boy, got engaged. My dreams were soon to become a reality—or so I thought. He dumped me. I was devastated. I mourned not only the loss of a love, a relationship, but also the fact that I was further away from my All-American Housewife dream.

When I met my husband, one of the first things we agreed upon when we decided to get married was that when the time came, I would stay home with our kids. He knew full well the burden of providing for the family fell solely on him, and he took the job on with pride. I worked in a hospital pharmacy for a while after we got married, still dreaming of babies, a bright, sunlit kitchen, a yard full of toys, and me keeping an immaculate home, sewing clothes for my children and cooking well-balanced meals every nigh—all with a smile on my perfectly make-upped face.

Anyone else out there laughing hysterically yet?

The time came to start a family. I quit my job and opened a home daycare so I’d already be a stay-at-home mom when the blessed event occurred. After some fertility issues, we finally had a baby, and she was the center of our universe. She was wonderful, and she was happy, and she was perfect. She slept through the night, she rarely cried, and she lulled us into complacency. My house was clean back then. At the time, my husband was working 60-80 hours a week, so it was mainly Abby and me and all the time in the world to clean and learn colors and read books and sing songs and nuzzle her chubby neck that smelled like Baby Magic all the time. Per the advice of my veteran homemaker mom, I almost always had makeup on and my hair fixed every day when my husband came home from work. Mom had stayed home with Sis and me until I was in my teens; she was my role model and my hero, so I listened. And at age 24, I was the Queen of the Homemaking and Mothering Universe.

Then came child #2.

You’ve heard the phrase, “motherhood ain’t for sissies,” right?

I learned quickly that with two children under the age of three, a house and its keeping will get away from you faster than you can say, “Where’d I put that can of Pledge?” My boy was everything my daughter was not. Where she was quiet and self-entertained he was noisy and high-maintenance. He pushed buttons, flipped switches, destroyed, explored, and agitated the living daylights out of his older sister. He turned our previously neat, tidy, and quiet home upside down. He wasn’t bad, he was just different. There were days it was all I could do to feed the three of us something other than peanut butter and jelly or Kraft macaroni and cheese, much less get out of my pajamas and brush my teeth. Makeup? HA! Vacuuming? Dusting? Scrubbing the bathtub? Bah, humbug! I was doing good just kicking a path of brightly colored toys down the hallway so no one broke his neck. Why put the darn things up when those two wonderful, darling children of mine were just going to drag them out the second they hit the toy box? We were a family of four crammed into an 800-square-foot house, and we were drowning in Fisher Price, Sesame Street, and crumbs under the dining room table.

So we bought a house on 40 acres with over twice the square footage of the house we’d had in town. We had a toy room! The kids’ rooms were clean all the time, and even the toy room was moderately tidy. The kids were three and five at this point, and we spent our days playing in the yard. I vacuumed and dusted and even took an occasional nap. I had again gotten a handle on this homemaker gig.

Then came child #3.

She cried a lot at first. So did I. Don’t get me wrong. I was happy, but I was bewildered at the realization that quite possibly this mom/housewife thing wasn’t as easy as I had once dreamed. I had always excelled at every endeavor when I was younger, so why was this so difficult???And why did I feel like I was FAILING?

And again, my mother came through with wise words of comfort and said, “Just enjoy your babies. They will only be this age once. Today they are older than they’ve ever been, tomorrow they’ll be older than they are right now ,and if you spend all your time worrying about being perfect you will miss out.”

And suddenly, it hit me: Why try so hard to perfect something that I had actually done a pretty good job with up to that point? I wasn’t perfect, but I was a good momma. My home would likely never be featured on the pages of Southern Living, and we outgrew it shortly after we moved into it, but my kids were happy, healthy, well-adjusted, moderately polite, and they were the whole reason I was doing what I was doing. I was so caught up in being Super Mom that I had lost sight of the three reasons I was a mom to begin with.

Now, the kids are 8, 11, and 13. Instead of Fisher Price and Little Tykes, we are focusing on Marvel comics, the latest issue of Bop magazine, and glitter—lots and lots of glitter. Board books about Elmo and what Brown Bear sees have given way to The Spiderwick Chronicles and Fancy Nancy. I haven’t rocked one of my babies to sleep in a very long time. The heavenly scent of Baby Magic has been replaced with the likes of Love’s Baby Soft and Axe body spray. Everyone knows their colors, can ride a bike, and feed themselves with a fork. I don’t worry about ear infections, developmental milestones, and potty training anymore. Those worries have somehow morphed into concerns over bullies, boyfriends, and violence on TV.

My house is a little neater now. Some days. Instead of kicking a path of brightly colored toys down the hallway I find myself picking up sweaty basketball uniforms, scraping the hairspray off the bathroom counter, and tripping over cords charging the many electronic devices my children own. Rather than killing myself trying to make the house a showroom, I’m focusing on making my kids into the adults they’ll someday be.

After all, they’re older than they’ve ever been, but younger than they’ll be tomorrow. And no amount of dusting, vacuuming, and mopping will change that.

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

From the Redneck Diva:

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows I am a horrible klutz. And by horrible I don’t mean I’m bad at it—I’m actually pretty good. If by “good” you mean “I can trip over dust,” then yeah, I’m good. If there is something to trip over, bump into, or wind myself on I will find it. Even if it’s broad daylight, there’s 20 feet around a single object with a spotlight on it and neon flashing signs saying, “DON’T TRIP ON THIS!” it’s almost guaranteed I will trip over it. Neither of my parents are clumsy, so I don’t know where I got it. Family get-togethers aren’t occasions where we all sit around sharing stories of our collective bumps, scrapes, falls and stumbles because I seem to be the lone klutz in the family. In fact, I think I’ve cornered the market on both sides of the family, steps included. I’m just that good. Good and clumsy.

My mom is usually privy to my falls for some strange reason. If I had to pick a person who has witnessed nearly as many of my accidents as my mom it would have to be my sister. And while I have no doubt they both love me dearly and would do anything for me, I know that if I ever fall and break something, my trip to the hospital will be slightly delayed until they stop laughing and regain enough control to drive a vehicle again. I’m fairly certain that if they were ever to fall I’d laugh, too, but they never give me the opportunity to find out.

I have slipped on ice so many times I quit counting. When I was in junior high I fell up the band room stairs. I have tripped over carpet; not even shag carpet—it was Berber. My husband, after 17 years of marriage, still marvels at my ability to bump into things that aren’t even in my path.

When I was a teenager one of my chores after school was to unload the dishwasher. The way our kitchen was laid out, when the dishwasher door was open you had a very narrow walkway between the edge of the door and the cabinet across from the dishwasher. Even if you don’t have a dishwasher (and bless your heart if you don’t) you probably know that a dishwasher door is pretty hard to miss. I mean, they aren’t small and they jut right out there in the middle of things, right? Granted, they don’t send off a signal like when a truck backs up or anything, but well, they’re kind of hard to miss. So when I got home from school every day the dishwasher door was usually open, thus signaling the need for unloading. And one day I kind of…fell in the dishwasher.

Yes, I said I fell in the dishwasher. As in my body propelled itself forward with such force I landed inside the dishwasher.

My mom heard a stupendous crash from the kitchen and came running out of the utility room across the kitchen to see her oldest child lodged head-first inside the dishwasher. Then she started laughing hysterically. I think I remember her asking if I was okay as she helped me back out of the gigantic kitchen appliance and, still giggling, checked my sole wound—a deep dent on my shin bone. My kids love to hear her tell that story on me.

A few years ago when my and my sister’s kids were all still little and easily entertained without the aid of electronics, Mom, Sis, and I decided to take the kids on a “park marathon” and visit as many of the public parks in Miami as we possibly could in one afternoon. We hit ‘em all and the kids were thoroughly dirty and tired by the time we finished at the last park. The kids were all lollygagging on the jungle gym after we told them it was time to go, so to get their attention we adults decided to tell them goodbye loudly and walk toward the cars. I was ahead of Mom and Sis for who knows what reason and this gave them the perfect view of what was about to happen.

I stumbled. On what? Oh, I have no idea. Could’ve been a little piece of gravel, could’ve been a blade of grass, could’ve been a pesky piece of air for all I know. I really don’t have to have a reason to fall; sometimes I just do. And, as with most of my falls, I am aware that I have just created a potentially hazardous situation for myself by merely walking and, because of my vast experience, I have become an expert at tucking and rolling. I still have a scar on my knee from a fall I didn’t have time to tuck, roll, gasp, or blink, so I know the importance of such skills as the tucking and the rolling. So on this particular day, as I tripped over that pesky air in the parking lot, I had enough presence of mind to tuck and roll; however, apparently I not only tripped over air but also a switch that slows down time because Mom and Sis said I fell in perfect slow motion. They said it was the most graceful fall they had ever seen. I tripped, I gasped, I turned my hip, I bent my knee, and I rolled slowly over and over about four times until I stopped and time sped back up again just in time for my mother and sister to begin guffawing, cackling, and absolutely hee-hawing until one of them declared they couldn’t breathe and the other one said she was pretty sure she wet her pants. They still speak of that incident, my epic slow motion fall, and instantly begin giggling.

Last week Mom, the kids, and I took off to central Oklahoma to visit my sister for Spring Break. She just moved 200 miles away and I had yet to see her new apartment. After we arrived and got settled, she took me on a tour of the apartment. The first room was the main bathroom, and my goodness, you could put a twin bed in that thing and still have room to shower, shave your legs, and brush your teeth all while doing a little jig. I’m telling you, it is a HUGE bathroom.

We stayed up late that night visiting and finally turned in after 1 a.m. The next morning Sis had to work so Mom and I got up at 6:30 to see her off and start our day of sight-seeing and shopping. Mom headed to the kitchen to start coffee while I stumbled down the dark hallway to the bathroom.

I wish I could say that the details are foggy and I don’t remember what happened, but truth is I know exactly what happened—I fell. In my sister’s bathroom. Face first on the floor with no warning, no tucking, no rolling, no nothing. One second I was upright and walking, the next I was face down. Boom. Mom said she heard a muffled “whump” and called my name. I didn’t answer, what with my face planted on the floor and all. She hollered my name again. No answer. I was still face-down on the cool linoleum and I heard her coming down the hall. Oh yes, I was quite conscious and aware of what was going on. No blissful knocking myself out in that auditorium of a bathroom; there was absolutely nothing in the way to bang my head against. I again heard my mother call my name, more frantically that time and next thing I knew, instead of blinking blindly at the floor, I was able to see because Mom had reached the doorway and had flipped on the light.

She said my body lay in such a perfect still pose that morning, she could’ve drawn one of those chalk outlines the CSI folks on TV draw around bodies at a crime scene. And even though the light was on and she was standing there, still I didn’t move. Why, I’m not sure. Maybe I was hoping for a delayed unconsciousness. Maybe it was because I was still tired and decided to finish my night’s slumber right where I was. Maybe it was because I was stunned at the suddenness of my fall. Or maybe it was because my mother was laughing so hard at me that I, too, began to laugh, thus rendering myself unable to move. I heard her gasp for air amidst guffaws and ask, “Are you okay?” and then I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, rolled to a sitting position, looked up at my darling, precious mother who was doubled over laughing and asked the simple question, “What on earth does that woman mop her floors with?” which of course, threw us both into gales of laughter again. She held a hand out to me, but I declined because she was still laughing so hard she was probably weak and I’d have pulled her down with me. Oh, wouldn’t that have been a story to tell?

After I got up and we made sure I wasn’t wounded or bleeding or hurt in any way, she said, “I HAVE to call your sister!” and she was off like a rocket to find her cell phone and place the call. I heard her laughing and relaying the story to Sis, who of course made me laugh again. She handed the phone to me and Sis said, “I meant to tell you that bathroom floor is really slick in your sock feet.” This threw me into such a fit of laughing that I saw black spots and could hardly breathe. When I regained my ability to speak coherently I then said, “I was barefoot!”

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

From the Redneck Diva:

So, it’s just been a month since my last Diva Dish, and honestly, I really thought I was only two weeks behind. I seem to have lost a couple of weeks somewhere and a bit of sanity along with them. It’s been a whirlwind of major electronics going kaput (including my laptop *sob*), our dog eating yet more of our property (anyone want an adorable chocolate lab?), our pellet stove going out, my teenager dealing with the death of a classmate, and me getting some strange, horrible virus that mimicked the flu for 48 hours and then a whirlwind trip to the clinic for an ultrasound on my leg because of fear of a blood clot.

So really, I kind of have a pretty good list of excuses, don’t I?

In times like these past few weeks, I tend to perform the most classic of cartoon reactions to cataclysmic events and extraordinary circumstances: I start waving my hands in the air, running around in circles, and screaming at the top of my lungs. Okay, not really, but I might as well be doing just that—and in my mind I really am. I like order. I like routine. I like things to be simple and normal and…predictable.

I was the kid who never truly “played” with her Barbies. I spent an inordinate amount of time, however, dressing them, combing their hair, and then standing them on stands where I could admire the fact that they were perfectly neat and orderly. When I was done playing, I put them back in their original clothes and put them up in my obsessively organized cases. My little sister had naked Barbies with chopped hair, magic marker tattoos and roughly 4,267 shoes (and not one matched another) and at the end of the day they all got stuffed in shoe boxes or Zip-Loc bags and shoved in the bottom of the closet. Based on the comparison of our Barbies alone you can probably tell that Sis has always been a little more adept at rolling with life’s little speed bumps than I have.

Motherhood, however, has made me a tad more flexible, and for this I am truly thankful. My children have forced me to hold it together and sometimes enjoy the chaos of life.  My oldest likes order as much as I do, but sitting with her and coloring for hours—sometimes outside the lines, but most of the time inside—or rocking her and singing silly songs that made no sense (even though in my head they really needed to rhyme) was the beginning of my realization that order wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. That boy of mine only furthered this realization. He has a sense of curiosity about everything he encounters. Taking a walk with him was never about taking an actual walk. Walks with him were about squatting down to inspect an ant trail or kicking a rock or seeing how close we could get to a squirrel before it would run away. He liked to scream and make noise and his energy and love of chaos keeps me breathless. My youngest is a drama queen who can never ever be figured out. She is happy one minute, crying her heart out the next. She is the epitome of chaos, but in a totally good way.

I wouldn’t want Stepford children who have perpetually clean rooms…wait, I reserve the right to take that one back at any point. I love the absolute upside-down feeling I sometimes get when I have a houseful of kids, only three of which I gave birth to. It’s noisy and messy and the sheer chaos they create is a part of my life I wouldn’t give up for all the neatly labeled containers in the world. If it weren’t for these kids and their friends and their crazy little lives I’d be even less capable of dealing with life’s little unexpected turns of events.

Yesterday, my mom and I were in my pantry looking for something. I was taking a moment to gripe while standing in my horribly clutter-filled utility room. I was exasperated. She said I needed more room in my pantry. I said I just needed a bigger house. She chuckled and said, “Well, maybe just a little more organization.” I sighed, put my hands on my hips and retorted, “Well, if we would just cancel our trip to Disney World this winter then we could start building on to the house!”

And because she is the wisest person I know, she patted my shoulder and softly said, “But your kids will only be this little once. And really, Disney World is much more important than a bigger pantry and another bathroom.” Then she went back to the other room and left me to stop doing my virtual cartoon freak-out in my head as I stared at my pantry that had bags of potato chips spilling out onto the shelf below, a box of Goldfish crackers that hadn’t gotten quite closed the last time someone had a snack, a package of Oreos my oldest had claimed with a Sharpie marker warning exclaiming they were “POISON!” and “TOXIC!” and “MINE!,” and I resisted the urge to immediately straighten things up. I decided at that moment I would rather tolerate this one area of disorganization in order to see my youngest enjoy the magic of Tinker Bell flying out of the castle, my son “training” as a Jedi and my oldest screaming, “THIS IS AWESOME!” as we ride the Tower of Terror for the sixth time in one day.

Were it not for those three little chaotic miracles of mine, I would have orderly cabinets brimming with maybe some sensible oatmeal packets, fiber bars, and not one single packet of Kool-Aid. There would be no fight over the last Oreo becausethe younger ones don’t believe for a second when Abby says they’re poisoned. The initials KDH wouldn’t be written in the dust on every surface in my living room courtesy of one Tinker Bell-loving eight-year-old. I wouldn’t know the joy of picking up a trail of dirty socks, winding up the cord on the flat iron for the three-millionth time, or trying to figure out how to get Silly Putty out of a comforter. I wouldn’t be as knowledgeable as I am about Wookiees and dragons and flying pixies. I wouldn’t know the craziness that is dance team try-outs or the absolute joy of burping contests. Okay, no, I take that back. My husband and I would still have the burping contests regardless of parental status. I’m pretty sure of that.

But, were it not for those three kids, life would be very organized, very serene…

…and very, very boring.

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

From the Redneck Diva:

Valentine’s Day is this coming weekend, and it is my absolute least favorite holiday. I would rather celebrate National Fever Blister Day or participate in a party for Plantar’s Wart Prevention than be a part of Valentine’s Day. I don’t remember any one particular traumatic event occurring to make me loathe the day so much, but I do, regardless. I always got Valentines and scored heavily in the candy/cookies/treat department as a kid, but still I dreaded the day. As I got older, I usually had a boyfriend who treated me to all sorts of romantic gifts and cards, (well, except for the year I was given a Michael Jackson CD and all I had was a cassette player…and I wasn’t a Michael Jackson fan, but we shan’t rehash that ordeal. I think the guy still has emotional scars from that mistake), yet still the loathing continues.

I am not a romantic person. If I ever was it has faded as I’ve gotten older. I don’t have time in my life for mushy, gushy stuff and, frankly, most of the time, things like that make me uncomfortable. As a general rule, I avoid romance novels and movies. My husband is not a romantic person, either, so we get along great in this department. Occasionally I am moved to write him a quick note telling him I appreciate him taking the trash to the dumpsters before it started smelling really bad. Or I’ll leave a card in his truck expressing gratitude for stepping up and helping out, like the night he took over studying for a spelling test with our youngest because I had a cold and I was trying to say “mother” and she thought I was saying “buther” and she didn’t know how to spell “buther” and thankfully Daddy swooped in to rescue us both. And every once in awhile I’ll find a card somewhere weird like my makeup or sock drawer with him having scribbled a few words of love or thanks because maybe I made him a peach cobbler for no reason.

Call me old-fashioned, but I think if you love someone and appreciate them, you should show them all the time and not just on February 14. I’m not opposed to random gifts of chocolate any day of the year. Even from people who read my blog and this column. I’ll even set up a P.O. box if you think you might feel inclined. [Editor's note: Feel free to send your gifts to Redneck Diva c/o WelchOK.com, PO Box 1, Welch OK 74369. We might forward them on to her.]

Now, I’m not saying I don’t have fond memories of certain Valentine’s Days. My husband and I were married on New Year’s Day, so we were newlyweds in every sense of the word our first Valentine’s Day. We were young, in love, poor, and stupid, as most newlyweds are. I was working part-time, and Paul had only recently become employed after having been laid off from his previous job, so things were tight. When he came in from work that first Valentine’s Day with a gift bag in hand, I was just hoping it contained his paycheck because we had bills to pay and groceries to buy. (See what I mean about me not being romantic?) And in a way it did—he had spent his entire paycheck on a pretty little heart necklace. It didn’t cost much (it had to have been less than $250 because at the time that’s all he made per week), but he bought it because he saw it and wanted me to have it. He was so excited to give it to me and, of course, I cried—probably more from the fact that I knew we were going to have to borrow money to pay that week’s bills but partly because of the romance of it all, too. Now our daughters enjoy wearing that necklace from time to time and love hearing the story that goes with it, one of young love and romantic financial irresponsibility.

And I’ll never forget two years ago when my overworked husband who was just getting over a bout of walking pneumonia got out of his truck with a gaudy red gift bag in hand, dragging his sick and tired tail-end to the house, wearily smiling while he handed me the bag with kiss on the cheek and the words, “Happy Mother’s Day.” I was on the phone with a friend at the time, and she busted out laughing in my ear at his mistake. “Did he just wish you a Happy Mother’s Day? On Valentine’s Day?” she cackled. I laughed and said, “Hey, I’ll take what I can get, sister. And there’s chocolate in this bag so he can wish me a Happy Independence Day and I won’t complain.” It’s still a joke between us and one of my fondest silly memories.

Our marriage isn’t perfect, and, of course, we argue about things like money and, well…pretty much just about money, but we’ve worked hard to make it 17 years. We’ve weathered lean financial times, infertility, the loss of our first child, times of insecurity, exhaustion, and frustration. We’ve spent many a night awake and worried over feverish babies and comforted each other when grandparents, aunts, and uncles have passed away. We’ve gotten mired down in the everyday routine of life with children, and we’ve both wondered where we lost our younger selves. I’ve gone to bed smelling of spit-up, feeling far less amorous than he would have liked me to have been, and he’s pouted when he couldn’t have that new Harley because there just wasn’t enough give in the paycheck for another payment. There have been times I’d rather have a root canal than watch one more minute of The Outdoor Channel with him, and I’m sure he’s gotten tired of my obsession with watching the lives of the Duggar family unfold on the screen. He hates meatloaf, and I love it. I don’t like to fish, and he could spend days on end standing on the riverbank with a pole in hand. We both share a deep-seated love of camouflage. And Disney World. And roller coasters. And the three kids the doctors told us we would never have. Neither of us is as thin as we used to be, and we both have considerably more gray hair. We love each other more than we did 17 years ago because there’s so much more to “us” than before.

Our days of teething and potty training drama have given way to cell phone bills, teen-aged daughters with boyfriends, and a pre-pubescent son with an attitude, and in the near future will give way to teenage drivers. I know we’ll encounter more obstacles and triumphs over the coming years and only God knows what the future holds.

But one thing I do know is that when that husband of mine drives in that driveway at the end of the day, he’s coming home to me and our three wonderful kids. No, he doesn’t have a Harley, and we own one vehicle that wasn’t even manufactured in this decade, but, all in all, we have a pretty good thing goin’ on. And I don’t need Valentine’s Day to remind me of that.

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

From the Redneck Diva:

“Why is the sky blue?”

Huh? Seriously. Huh??

I had a ten-year-old child before I was ever asked that question. I hear of parents who get that question all the time, but I was a mom over ten years before I got it—and I haven’t gotten it since. Apparently my kids don’t really care. Frankly, neither do I. It’s blue and well, who cares why? I don’t need to know why the sky is the color it is, only that it continues to be there every day to hold up the sun and keep the ozone at bay and give me a place to fly a kite occasionally. Color is a moot point. Existence is the key.

But there it was, hanging in the air of my mini-van that day, awaiting answer: Why is the sky blue? There not only my ingenuity as a parent was tested but also my overall intelligence as well. If she had been three, I could have answered with, “Because that is how God made it. Isn’t it pretty? What other things are blue? Yes, Cinderella’s dress is blue! You are so smart!” And then we could’ve gotten a Happy Meal and forgotten all about the sky. But she wasn’t three. She was a tween, and a simple “Because” didn’t hold as much water as it had before. As they get older, they want the whys and wherefores and real, honest explanations that make sense. “Because” isn’t usually a viable answer for a child above Pre-Kindergarten, and now all three of my kids are above Pre-Kindergarten. These days I occasionally actually have to think as I parent. Oh how I miss pre-school.

I am sure that somewhere in my education I learned why the sky is blue. I’m fairly positive it was in science, probably the earth kind. I was probably in junior high at the time. I was also probably very hormonally freaked out and boy-crazy during that particular lecture and that is why now, at the ripe ol’ age of 37, I still do not really know exactly why the sky is blue. Oh, please don’t tsk at your computer screen like that. I am truly thankful I got an education; however, the main thing I remember from any science class in high school is why your nose runs when you cry. Of all the things I have filed away in my mom-brain, it is information dealing with snot and other bodily functions and fluids that are at the fore. I guess you can call that an occupational hazard.

When I was a kid, and I asked my parents a question the pat answer was, “Look it up.” We had a bookshelf in the dining room with a dictionary, thesaurus, and three different sets of encyclopedias my parents bought when they found out they were pregnant with me. Oh, the knowledge beheld on those tomes! I did a report in second grade about oranges and got all of the information from the gigantic blue encyclopedia with “O” on the spine. I plucked it right from the second shelf where it had been waiting my entire eight years and, in careful block letters, wrote on a sheet from my Big Chief tablet everything I could find about everyone’s favorite citrus fruit. That was the beginning of my love of those encyclopedias. I loved reading and words— BIG words—as a kid, and I still do. I was a rather precocious speller from an early age and was given the nickname “Walking Dictionary” in junior high because of my ability to spell correctly and always know the definition of any obscure word I used in teenage conversation. (“Facetious” made my friend DeLisa giggle. I used it a lot. Because she was.) On more than one occasion in high school, a teacher came to me to spell a word for them or regurgitate a definition with merely the blink of an eye. Occasionally I needed more information on a topic or I would come across a word that I didn’t know (gasp!). If I asked my parents, I got the answer, “Look it up.” They said they were showing me how to do things myself, to be resourceful and self-reliant, but now I know the truth: they didn’t have a clue. Or they were just trying to get a return on their investment in three sets of encyclopedias.

It’s a positively eye-opening moment when you realize that while, yes, your parents did a bang-up job raising you, they were not perfect. For me, it was a moment I breathed an audible sigh of relief and realized that if they could do it, so could I. It was only when I became a parent myself that I truly appreciated the ingenuity they utilized and their ability to redirect away from the fact they didn’t know the answer. It was then I realized my desire to be just as good at it. They bluffed their way through my formative years, and I am following in their footsteps. I may not know how to solve an algebraic equation, but I can answer my kids’ questions with more questions or diversions—and sometimes the exclamation, “Hey, look! A quarter!” and make myself scarce while they dive for it, only returning to break up the resulting knock-down, drag-out and scold them for being greedy.

So that day Abby asked why the sky was blue, initially, my instinctive response for the question was “Look it up,” but then I remembered that we don’t own a set of encyclopedias because I don’t think they even make encyclopedias anymore, so I said what has become my pat answer:

“Google it.”

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

From the Redneck Diva:

My dish this week is later than usual (and by “usual” I mean I’ve done it twice so far and both on different days of the week so, yeah, whatever) because I’ve been caught up in the hype that is the great state of Oklahoma in a great state of panic: the few days prior to an impending ice storm. I, personally, have called it “Icepocalypse” all week, others have called it “Snowmageddon” and the Weather Channel has called it the “Southern Plains Triple Threat”—all very cool names, in my opinion. What is it about a major weather event that causes us to feel that we need to give it a name? Does it somehow make it more real to us? Does it make it easier to prepare for the mayhem that is to follow? Maybe it’s the fact that virtually everyone on the planet is involved in some sort of social media, and we give things names to ease communication. Like this: You’re chatting along in a chat room (do they even have those anymore?) or you’re popping out tweets to your Twitter feed every three minutes, and you start talking about the weather and no one pays the least bit of attention to you. But give the weather a cool name like THE GREAT ICE STORM OF IMPENDING DOOM, DEATH, DESPAIR AND WIDESPREAD DESTRUCTION (TGISIDDDWD, for short) and suddenly you are a weather icon of epic proportions and people all over the country are sending out prayers and donating to your local Red Cross chapter and lighting candles and creating Facebook groups (“I survived TGISIDDDWD 2010!”) and creating t-shirt logos and, well, you get the picture.

I love all things weather, and I always have. Friends and family member call me when they need a weather forecast or update because they know I’ve been geeking out in front of The Weather Channel all day long. Spring- and summer-time storms are my favorites, but I’m not opposed to a little winter excitement, either. Back in the days before Doppler radar and fancy satellite imagery, weather forecasting consisted of fuzzy views of a radar map with that little arm sweeping around to refresh the image every so often. It was all we had and I, for one, was mesmerized by it. There were no text messages from NOAA, but my Papa did have a weather radio that invariably scared the snot out of me when it would start chirping. We weren’t informed nearly a week ahead of time that something was headed our way. We got about four hours’ notice, sometimes less. There was no Twitter or Facebook on which to proclaim the precipitation of the hour. Yesterday I had to empty the text message inbox on my phone three times because of all the Twitter updates I was getting from Oklahoma City and Tulsa folks who were keeping those of us up north informed of what was to come. When I was a kid we didn’t run to the cellar a good hour before the tornado was bearing down on us—Mom drove the Nova at a high rate of speed to Papa’s cellar while we girls kept an eye on the twister in the rearview mirror. Of course, when I was a kid they also didn’t forecast an ice storm of “probable historic proportions” only to have it fizzle out to a minor snow event. Back then, they would have been patting themselves on the back to have gotten the snow in the forecast. My, how times have changed.

If the storm that is upon us now had happened when I was a kid we wouldn’t have known a full seven days out that Something Wintry This Way Comes. We wouldn’t have made four trips to Walmart in two days to pick up inordinate amounts of toilet paper and an unreasonable quantity of bread. We wouldn’t have gone through every closet in the house to dig out every flashlight and lantern for a bulb and battery check and have to announce to our youngest child that indeed, the Tinker Bell lantern is dead for good and must be thrown away, and yes, we’ll get a new one at Disney World, I promise. We wouldn’t have done so much laundry that the washing machine sighs every time we open the lid and we wouldn’t have the children strip when they walk in the door from school so we could do just one more load before we lose power and water and the drains freeze up until April. We wouldn’t have lugged ten bags of pellets for the stove and a 40-pound bag of dog food into our bedroom so we could walk around them for however long it’s going to take to burn up ten bags of pellets. (My guess, April when the pipes thaw.) No, we’d have met the storm with very little planning aforethought. We would have been caught unprepared, eating sandwiches on the crushed bread Mom dug out of the freezer (which was probably there since the Carter administration) by the light of mulberry-scented Home Interior votives Mom bought at the neighbors’ party last June, pulling mattresses into the living room so we could sleep by the fireplace, forced to snuggle with our annoying 12-year-old sister because it is so cold we can see our breath if we move more than six feet from the fire, listening to Dad grumble about this and Mom worry and fuss about that—whoa! Pardon my flashback to 1988. And that gigantic run-on sentence.

Today I am thankful, yet somewhat disappointed, that the weather hasn’t lived up to the expectations of a storm worthy of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS and a Facebook page all its own. I love the quiet that comes with a winter storm—like the world has been encased in a sound-muffling layer of Styrofoam and everything takes on a clarity you don’t find any other time. No, I wasn’t looking forward to the possibility of losing power like we did in 2007, eating grilled cheese sandwiches cooked in the dark on a griddle perched on a dining room chair in my bedroom because that’s as far as the extension cord from the generator would reach. Or the sound of the trees on our property cracking and breaking and crashing to the ground. Or going more days than allowable with a shower. Or being cut off from the Internet and satellite TV. But I was looking forward to reading a book by the light of the bay window until the sun goes down, then playing board games by candlelight, snuggling with my kiddos, and maybe even writing a story, blog post, or column by hand (although I’m sure my hand muscles would’ve begun screaming almost immediately) [Editor's note: And your editor certainly wouldn't be thrilled about transcribing your hand-written column]. I do love my computer, iPod, and cell phone, but sometimes being cut off from conveniences makes us to slow down and concentrate on our immediate surroundings and focus on what is right in front of us. It’s something we could do on our own, but we won’t until we’re forced. Instead of reading 300-some Twitter updates about everyone else’s winter weather experiences, we are suddenly immersed in our own.

The snow still continues to fall here in northeastern Oklahoma, and our satellite Internet and TV are in and out. There’s still a chance we’ll be forced to an electronic stand-still and this momma is hopeful. Then maybe someday one of my children will write about how we played Jenga on the living room floor and laughed until we cried when Daddy got frustrated and called the blocks a bad name. Or how Momma read Where the Wild Things Are and on the pages with no words made up dialogue and gave each Wild Thing a different voice. Or maybe they’ll just remember watching it snow, sitting by the window with their siblings, and for once not pushing, shoving or pinching, but instead just enjoying.

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

From the Redneck Diva:

I am a life-long Okie. I just thought I’d get that out of the way before we got any further because it explains my next sentence: I am addicted to sweet tea. Now, I realize that sweet tea addiction is not limited to Oklahoma, nor are all Okies born with a propensity to crave what some call “liquid diabetes,” but this Okie? I don’t wanna go to rehab. I like my tea strong and tremendously sweet, thank you very much. I want it sweetened with sugar and lots of it. If I don’t feel like I might possibly need to chew while I drink, then it is not a perfect glass of sweet tea.

I, like most of my generation, grew up on Kool-Aid.  We didn’t worry about sugar, calories, or dyes back them. We drank that sugary, colored soft drink from sun-up to sun-down, and that was that. I rarely remember drinking juice, probably because juice was expensive compared to those 5¢ packets of powdery goodness. I have a very strong recollection of class parties where Kool-Aid was served, made with sulfur water because most of us were rural kids and the majority had well water, not rural water like some of the high-falutin’ folks. It didn’t matter about the strong sulfur smell, though, because when paired with Hydrox cookies or cupcakes, it was all just sugar; sugar that conglomerated into a big ol’ sugary mosh pit in our stomachs.

I was about 12 or 13 when I was finally allowed to drink sweet tea instead of Kool-Aid. I was on the verge of adulthood! It was the beverage equivalent of finally being rescued from the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. There was always a pitcher of tea readily available on the counter at our house. At around 14 or 15, Mom taught me how to make sweet tea and the secrets of the universe were then opened up to me, and it was borderline cosmic. OH, THE POWER!

Over the years I have mastered my very own special recipe for the best sweet tea. Well, aside from Sonic’s sweet tea. There is no beating Sonic when it comes to sweet tea. All I can figure is that they must employ magical pixies to make it, and I just don’t have those resources. Mine is very close to it, though. Just ask people who have had it. Seriously. I not even joking or being arrogant. I was awful at science when I was in high school, and chemistry nearly caused me to have a nervous breakdown, but I am the Mr. Wizard of sweet tea, the Mr. Miyagi of non-carbonated beverages. Pour yourself a glass of tea, sit at my feet, Daniel-san, you have much to learn.

The first thing I do every morning is make a pitcher of tea, fill an Eskimo Joe’s cup full of iced tea nirvana, and begin my day. My husband calls my Eskimo Joe’s cup my pacifier. He probably isn’t far from wrong. Okay, really, he’s not wrong at all. My sister has joked more than once that I have so much caffeine coursing through my veins that when I die it will take two weeks for my body to stop moving so they can bury me. I tried to curb my sweet tea addiction when I was pregnant, but decaffeinated tea just isn’t the same. When we were expecting our oldest daughter, for those very brief nine months and a few months afterward, I drank caffeine-free Coke. Decaf tea just seemed so…wrong, like I was cheating on real tea with a secret beverage and real tea would smell the decaf on my breath and I would be SO busted. With my other two children I just lowered the amount of sweet tea consumption and carried on. Looking back now I see why those two didn’t sleep through the night and their older sister did.

It’s January, a month notorious for resolutions and life changes. I have fallen prey to this many times, and every time I fall flat on my face. I have this “Go big or go home” mentality where I end the year with a belly full of fatty foods, my veins running amok with caffeine, only to wake up January first with a rice cake and water bottle in hand, befriending such people as Denise Austin and Jillian Michaels, expecting the world to be different and better. Instead, what invariably happens is that I starve myself and withhold what I crave, depriving myself to pieces and eventually come to hate those muscled women glistening in perspiration while I sweat gallons on my living room carpet. I give up. I berate myself. I get frustrated. And go back to bad habits, waiting again for the next year to start so I can endure two weeks of misery and flop again.

This year I have decided that instead of “Go big or go home” I am going to “Go medium and hopefully hang around awhile.” I am taking a daily vitamin, doing yoga (Okay, so I haven’t actually done any yoga yet, but I will—soon—I think), and I am drinking water. I haven’t given up my sweet tea, and I’m not going to; I am just drinking it in moderation. I feel pretty good about it and am more confident than I’ve ever been regarding a healthier lifestyle and my ability to stick with it. My body isn’t quite sure what to do with all this clear liquid I keep pouring down it all day long and, at one point, I think I heard one of my kidneys whisper to its sister, “What’s up with this stuff? I feel like I’m not being used anymore. This clear stuff just goes through so…so….fast. We don’t have to do ANYTHING!” The other one replied with, “Maybe if we ask nicely she’ll stop. This just doesn’t seem…right.”

Tonight my youngest daughter caught me at the kitchen sink, chugging down ten ounces of water right before dinner in an attempt to fill my stomach and make me eat less. She stopped as she rounded the corner and looked at me strangely. She cocked her head to one side and asked, “Are we out of tea? Why are you drinking WATER, Momma?” I shook my head mid-gulp, took a breath and said, “No, we’re not out of tea. I’m just drinking more water.” She took a step back and said, “Momma, you’re scaring me.”

I think I heard my kidneys laugh.

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

WELCH—“Divide and conquer.” Didn’t Spartacus say that? Moses? Or was it Mother Teresa? Oh, I remember now. It was me last week as I sat down with the family calendar and the kids’ basketball game schedule.

This isn’t our first year as basketball parents, but it is our first year as the parents of two kids playing. For the last three years we have loaded up the kids, made sure our wallets were full of money for the concession stand and headed off to one gym, in one town, for one child’s games. This year it will take nothing short of military strategy and the grace of God to make sure we get it all done. Our son plays on the fourth- and fifth-grade team, and our younger daughter plays on the second- and third-grade team. Due to the fact that roughly eleventy-thousand kids signed up to play basketball this year, they can’t hold all games in one town each Saturday, so the big kids play in one town and the little kids play in another.

Yesterday, the girl played in one location at 10 a.m. and noon. The boy played at 4 and 6 p.m. in a different location. This was not an issue. This past weekend was actually perfection; next week they play at exactly the same times. In different towns. Twenty minutes apart. My husband will take one and I will take the other, and we will divide and conquer and take full advantage of our mobile-to-mobile minutes and the miracle of text messaging.

As a kid I didn’t play sports. My parents didn’t play sports. I do not come from athletic roots. I abhor exertion and perspiration. I find exercise to be quite taxing, and sweating is just gross. I have never seen the point in sports, and I don’t feel I have lived any less fulfilling a life by not participating in some kind of team sport. I was a quintessential nerd in high school and had my nose buried in a book nearly all the time. I was an eight-year band member and eventually drum major. I went to state in competitive speech—twice. The only sweating I did in band was when I had to don a wool uniform and march at halftime of an early season football game. Sweating in competitive speech was only from nerves, and that’s why God made deodorant. Do you see where I’m going with this? Sports are, by nature, a completely foreign concept to me.

We have perpetuated the non-sport legacy up until now with our own children, and we don’t watch sports on a regular basis at home. When everyone is updating their Facebook statuses with cheers for their football teams, we’re watching The Outdoor Channel or recorded episodes of Saturday Night Live or The Red Green Show. We don’t watch football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, cricket, volleyball, ping pong, or figure skating. And even though we’re rednecks, we don’t watch NASCAR, either. (I know. How can we call ourselves rednecks!? Shameful!) The extent of sports on our TV is the game hunt of the day or the sports-gone-wrong clips on America’s Funniest Videos. Occasionally, we’ll watch a televised tractor pull or demolition derby, but everyone knows those are events better enjoyed in person. Wii Sports? We play it on the sofa. Okay, I play it on the sofa.

I develop a strange, phantom disorder known as “Sportsmomitis” when my children play ball. Sportsmomitis is the inability to put together coherent thoughts and turn them into cheers and encouragement for your child playing an organized team sport. The results are rarely devastating or deadly but almost always embarrassing. The best therapy in the world for that is to bring your 13-year-old daughter and her boyfriend to a game with you. A few instances of their giggling at you for yelling unintelligible words at the kids on the floor or rolling their eyes when you holler loudly, “GO SAM! GET THAT BALL! OH WAIT. OKAY. NEVERMIND. FORGET THE BALL. GET DOWN TO THE OTHER END WITH THE REST OF THE KIDS,” while flailing your arms in a ridiculous manner is enough to quell subsequent flare-ups. Trust me on this.  (Sam never pays attention to what I tell him from the stands anyway, which I’m sure his coach appreciates greatly.) During a pre-season tournament, I was trying to cheer on one of the players named Brody. I got so excited that my Sportsmomitis kicked in and I screamed, “GO-DEE BO-DEEEE! OOPS. GO-DEE BRODY! DANGIT. GO BRODY!” That one actually prompted an audible moan from my oldest child and a strange look from Brody’s parents.

I was much more behaved at this week’s games and when I found my Sportsmomitis trying to rear its ugly head, I remembered the conversation I’d had with my two athletes as I was writing their game schedules on the calendar. I had just discovered that this week’s games are to occur simultaneously and told the kids, “Dad and I will have to split up. One of us has to take Sam, and the other has to take Kady.” This got their attention. I added, “So, which one do you want?” not directing the question to either child in particular because I knew they would both want me to take them, what with me being all matriarchal and Super Mom-ish and stuff. Instead they instantaneously both yelled, “DAD!”

The youngest won, and her dad will chauffeur her to games next week, but the boy made his older sister promise to come to his game and bring a friend so they can keep me embarrassed, constantly reminded of my disorder and free from Sportsmomitis outbursts and gratuitous arm-flailing at his expense.

The Redneck Diva

WELCH—WelchOK.com is thrilled to welcome The Redneck Diva, Kristin Hoover, as a regular contributor. Kristin and her family are regular folks with good, old-fashioned horse sense, more month than money, and the hope, humor, and chutzpah to survive it all. She says of herself:

I was born a semi-diva. I married a redneck. Through the magic of osmosis or just because of a serious lack of sophistication over the years I have found a balance of the two that make me what I am today. And then I write about it all, much to the chagrin of my mother.

Jeane and I met Kristin a few years ago at an Okie Blogger Roundup, and Kristin has received a couple Okie Blog Awards for Best Humor Blog. She’s fairly local to us; she graduated from Wyandotte and now lives in Miami (or parts thereabouts). She’s a delightful gal who puts a humorous spin on the trappings of our rural American life, and we’re thrilled she’ll be gracing our pages from time to time. Her column, The Diva Dish, will deal with all the real-world challenges faced by most of us, especially our readers with kids in school and too much to do. Her first Diva Dish will appear here today at noon. Until then, you can check her out on her blog at: http://www.theredneckdiva.com.

Ed.