Annie Yearout
About this author:
I love to write funny for me and for the Writing Mamas. It's a joy to tickle the funny bones of friends and family. Inspiration? Daily life. A quiet essay about a water hole or a special visit is also a joy, those tiny moments described in an honest, gentle way. I'm currently working on a novel for tweens, we'll see what becomes of it!
My Articles:
Wanted: Playmate for My Husband
Wanted: Married weary female mother of three seeks playmate for my late-30s-year old husband. Must be fun loving, not tired all the time, peppy, happy, consistently cheery, and able to have dinner ready at the end of the day.
Must not be blond, under 26 y/old, or a former capital “P” Playmate. Absolutely no “secretaries” or “assistants” or “flight attendants” need apply.
Must like late, weekday nights out at Bimbos, the Warfield and the Fillmore. Must know what the Boom-Boom Room is and how to get there. Must dig all kinds of music, have a working knowledge of the ‘80s greatest hits, and be able to karaoke Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” in its entirety with a pool cue. Any air-guitar experience a bonus!
Reunion
The flight home from Boston to SFO is over five hours and we don’t have our kids this time. That means five hours of flipping peacefully through Newsweeks and Oprahs and lip-reading the actors’ lines in the straight-to-video box office bombs that United forces you watch despite your best intentions to read War & Peace. Thank God my headphones don’t work. I look out at the clouds, so puffy.
My husband and I are on our way back from our 20th high school reunion. We went to the same high school outside of Boston, were in the same class, and, later in life, re-found each other and ended up living “happily ever after” with three kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. Ok, scrap the fence, but the rest is true.
This was my first reunion since graduation in ‘87. Teens of the ‘80s – Madonna, Billy Idol – with hardly a Rebel Yell and always ready for a holiday, our class of 85 students skipped through our four years, high on Fresca and high-school hormones. We were “a good class” without extreme bullies and with a strong female force.
The Waterhole
It’s hot. 103 degrees and my dog, Ansel, won’t move anymore. Not even to join me today for my daily escape to the nearby waterhole on the South Fork of the Merced while my kiddos nap.
We’re in Yosemite at the family cabin that great-grandpa Floyd Alvin built in the 1950s. The original olive green décor inside has come in-and-out of fashion three times since, I think. I can’t keep up.
It’s our first visit ever for a full week, and by day two, we’re all covered, completely, with the fine, soft dirt that coats the ground of the High Sierras. Our Yosemite tan, I tease. Cancer free and it washes off with an easy scrub.
Extraction
Have you seen that e-mail going around about the way to remove things caught up in your kids’ noses? I think it was originally sent to me via my twins group – which was then followed by a group replys of – “Hey, we had that happen, too!” and “Ohmygod, that is the coolest home remedy ever!”
It’s as simple as closing your little rascal’s mouth completely, airtight, and then blowing gently into the one nostril that DOES NOT have the alien object imbedded in it. A little blow and – poot! – the offending item flies out of the clogged nostril.
When I saw this e-mail come through, I was in the later group: the, “Wow, what a totally cool thing to know as a mom.” The avoidance of speeding down Sir Frances Drake to Marin General Hospital with a large pea up the schnooz is right up there with flying across country with three kids under age four. Both as high in the fear/terror/I can’t-believe-I’m-in-this-situation level of the parental horror-story scale as you can get! Both worth avoiding like the plague (or today’s Bird Flu), so I burned this e-mail tidbit into my memory with hopes I’d never have to use it.
Worship
My son, who is 5, FIVE, cinco, not 4, and “not a baby, Mommy!” just found out that my half-brother, who is 17, SEVENTEEN, definitely not sweet 16, and “almost in college, Mom!” is coming to visit this week.
Let the worship begin!
In my son’s eyes, my younger brother is a walking god. A mystical man whose feet barely touch the floor. Who’s much cooler than Dora’s cousin Diego and even Barry Bonds (whose alleged transgressions we haven’t broken to him yet.) And, of course, he’s much, much better at everything than anyone else (except maybe Daddy, but we can’t really go there).
Follow us on
