Deborah Woehr

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks.

Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.

There is no fast food.

Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of “pretend” bills with not enough money.

In addition…each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week.

Each man must also take each child to a doctor’s appointment, a dentist appointment, and an appointment for a haircut. He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function.

Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flowers outside and keep it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done.

There is only one TV between them, and NO remote.

Each father will be required to know all of the words to every stupid song that comes on TV and the name of each and every character on cartoons.

The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, which they will apply to themselves either while driving or making three lunches.

They must adorn themselves with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep their nails polished and eyebrows groomed.

During one of the six weeks, they will have to endure severe stomach cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

They must attend weekly PTA meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting. He will need to pray with the children each night, bathe them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair each morning by 7:00.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information:

*each child’s birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor’s name. Also the child’s weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor.

*each child’s favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

They must clean up after their sick children at 2:00 a.m. and then spend the remainder of the day tending to that child and waiting on them and foot until they are better.

Each man will have to make an Indian hut model with six toothpicks, a tortilla and one marker; and get a 4 year old to eat a serving of peas.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance.

The last man wins only if…he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment’s notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18-25 years…eventually earning the right to be called Mother!

After you get done laughing, forward this to as many mothers as you think will get a kick out of it and as many fathers as you think can handle it.

I was hoping that last week’s episode would answer my question about whether or not Adama really is a Cylon. Friday’s episode did, in the form of Guyas Boltar’s dreams, where Adama drowns the Cylon hybrid baby. Adama is still hanging in there after getting shot in the chest.

What really interests me about this show is the human realism. In the classic BG, Adama would have bounced back by the end of the episode. Or, at the very least, by the next one. Will the writers of this show let him survive?

I’m dying to know how Starbuck will catch up with the Galactica and if Sharon will help her do it. In the last episode, Sharon had stolen Starbuck’s spaceship.

Then I’m wondering when they’ll finally catch on to Boltar and his alliance with the Cylons. I love his character, although I’m not sure why. He’s weak and easy to manipulate by that sexy blond Cylon (Does she have a name?). I’m anxious to see when he’ll get caught and if his lover is allowed to have that baby.

My birthday is coming up soon. So, it was no surprise when I found a card from a family friend waiting for me in my mailbox. What surprised me was the content of the card. Only a horror writer/reader can appreciate the twisted humor in this card. I’ll share it with you.

DEBBIE

did you ever stare at the flickering
candles on your birthday cake,
while your friends and family
sing that son and then their voices
sort of faded and were drowned
out by ominous-sounding organ music
that kept playing louder and faster . . .
Then dozens of tiny, twisted,
weasel-like creatures with glowing
red eyes burst out of the cake . . .
. . .throwing frosting and still-burning
candles all over the room
while you looked on, paralyzed
with horror as the weasel creatures
started attacking the party-goers,
ripping at their throats and faces
with razor-sharp teeth, turning
the once festive scene into one of
unrelenting TERROR?!

Oh right!
Like I’m the only one
that’s ever happened to. Oh, well, Happy Birthday!

I’m finally starting to invision how my furniture will look in my new house. It’s very strange, packing up and leaving after 13 years. We’ve barely started packing, since we’re STILL trying to move my mother-in-laws things into her mobile home.

Last night, I took my youngest son over to the house after we went to his karate lesson. We got more furniture and things moved into the garage. There’s not much left in the house anymore, thank God. I get frustrated with her because she refuses to throw anything away, including the broken and/or tattered items.

This motivates me to throw out more of my belongings than I’d originally intended. Although it kills me to have to throw out my books, I have to think realistically. The majority of them are trade paperbacks which I’ll never get around to reading. Maybe if I get to retire, but I doubt I’ll read them then.

Since I don’t have time to lug all 100+ of them to the library or a used book store, out they’ll go. I’m going to be just as systematic with the rest of the house. The big reason for this drastic measure is that I don’t want to put my kids through what my husband and I are going through right now. It’s too much.

The important things are the photo albums, the home videos, the family heirlooms, and the basic living necessities. That’s it. Everything else is replaceable or unnecessary.

One of the issues on last year’s Presidential campaign was stem cell research. I can see some definite benefits, such as a possible cure for cancer and other maladies. My husband and I debated on this issue before we cast our vote. He voted for the stem cell research measure.

I voted against it because I don’t know all the pros and cons of stem cell research and cloning. Texas A&M Leads World in Cloning Animals is an eye-opening article that sheds some light on the progress researchers are making as well as some arguments against cloning.

Michelle Thew, CEO of the Animal Protection Institute of Sacramento, Calif., faults Texas A&M for trying to clone a dog and promoting the idea of pet cloning when millions of animals remain in shelters.

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. What’s the purpose of cloning domestic animals? Livestock, I can see since our country’s population continues to boom. But then there lies another problem in how we’re going to feed these animals.

The idea of cloning ourselves doesn’t sit well with me. It would be great to find a cure for cancer, especially where babies and children are concerned. Perhaps we can live another thirty years beyond the national average. But then there is the problem of social security, which is already overburdened by the Baby Boomers.

My problem is that all this goes against nature. Will we create newer and bigger problems? I’d be interested to hear what you think about this issue.

Things were running smoothly with the move until last weekend. Then we found out that moving my mother-in-law out and into her mobile home was going to be a bigger undertaking than we first imagined. The garage is still full of memorabilia and stuff that she has no room for.

So my husband rented a dumpster to get rid of the latter. Well, yesterday he went over to the house and saw that there was no dumpster. That upset him immediately. What made it worse was the notice from the city, stating that they are going to close the street from Mon-Wed so the can repave it.

That puts a big crimp in our schedule. The painter is supposed to come out on the twenty-fifth. After that, we’re having the floors redone. We decided to put off tenting the house because there is no time to tear out the overgrowth in the front and back yards.

Yesterday, I was beginning to think that our moving into that house is a big mistake. Too many things are going wrong. This morning, my husband started talking about omens when his back went out. He’s fine now, with a little help from Advil.

I’m reminded of that movie called Money Pit, which starred Tom Hanks and Shelley Long. It was a black comedy about a couple who were moving into their first home, which involved working on a major fixer-upper. The one scene I remember vividly was the clawfoot bathtub falling through the ceiling and shattering on the first floor.

We don’t have it that bad. At least I hope not, lol.

I got some great news at work today. The hiring session is finally over for the year! Woo-hoo! Now I can catch up on the projects I’ve had to set aside.

I was forced into buying Microsoft Products because the cheaper word processors (1997-2000) just didn’t cut it. That, and my son’s Cub Scout leader was always sending me correspondence in Word and Excel. The biggest gripe I have with Microsoft is how they rape their customers not only with the price of their products, but the bloat they contain.

I’ve yet to use every feature in Word, which with all it’s bells and whistles, lacks the ability to convert documents into a .pdf file. This forced me to shell out more cash for Adobe Acrobat, which also costs a pretty penny.

Word is good for business documents, but the grammar checker sucks for creative writing. I’ve also tried to implement graphics into ebooks with crappy results.

Today I found a comment on this blog from Randyh, asking me about the compatibility of WordPerfect on Mac OSX. I haven’t used that program in years, and decided to check out the review I’d written way back when. That’s when I found the link to iWork on Amazon.com.

The screenshots impressed me enough to consider buying it. The $79 pricetag is another plus. But before I buy anything, I always research to see how others like the product. The reviews on this page have made me reconsider replacing Word. As it turns out, the export feature of Pages doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped. And, most importantly for me, Pages isn’t a word processing program but a page layout program.

So, I will stick with Word and its quirks until something better comes along.

I’ve decided to give myself a break from packing today. It’s too hot, and I’m itching to finish Chapter 11 of Prosperity. The word count is somewhere around 39,000, which isn’t too shabby. My goal with this revision is to have history repeat itself (from God’s Last Twilight). I’m no longer sure if Amanda will get out of Prosperity alive (or sane). At the very least, I want to depict a real threat against her.

Although she is very different from Cora Sonnet (the minister’s wife, who was brutally murdered in God’s Last Twilight), she looks almost identical. There is a saying that everyone has a double.

David W. Boles of Urban Semiotic wrote an excellent article about the dangers of posting your kids’ photos on your blogs. You will never see picture of my kids on any of my blogs. I’m very private, where they are concerned. Follow the link below to read this discussion.

http://urbansemiotic.com/2005/07/13/take-your-children-offline-now/

Update: I found another excellent post that offers common sense guidelines on this issue of posting pics of our kids online. RazorKiss did a great job of balancing out this issue. He/she made a valid point about how we should not live in fear of these people. That doesn’t change my stance, but it was good to read the perspective from someone who has had experience with net pedophiles.

Photoblogs and Pedophilia