And The Guest Blogger is.......

Shelley from I'm Changing My Name To Ouisa is my guest blogger today. She is a very dear friend to me (I'm on the phone with her as I'm typing, Hi Shell!).

This woman has the most infectious laugh I have ever heard in my life. She is a former member of the church where my husband pastors. She and her family just moved away from the church in a cow pasture (that's what we call it; and, I know, the blog is really outdated!) to live in a cow pasture. How's that for cruel irony? She can now tell you everything you never wanted to know about tractors, hay and cutting cows. Ask her about Sweetums (did I get that right?).

This is one of the most hilarious posts I have ever read from Shell. She is always funny, but this one hit close to home since we had a similar experience that I'll blog about next week. Enjoy the read and love her in comments......she will love you back, I promise.......


New Car Smell :) (My Title, since Michelle rarely titles)

Yesterday, I forgot the cardinal rule of being a mother of three.......Never trust them....don't turn your back on them.Okay, I used to drive a really nice vehicle. A beautiful Chevrolet S-10 pickup. The most beautiful shade of blue you could hope for. I kept that baby squeaky clean. No trash in the floor, no dust on the dashboard. Man, it was smokin'.Fast forward fourteen years and three kids later. It is just something that I have had to let go. A messy, nasty ride. The grocery getter. If I had a rocking chair tied to the top, I could win the best Redneck ride ever. So, yesterday, I lost it. I opened the back door of my mini=van and trash spilled out onto the ground.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't stand it one more minute. I grabbed my 12 (excuse me, almost 13 year old) son and headed down to the friendly neighborhood car wash and vacuum place. Then spent a good twenty minutes sweating and fussing about all the twelve pounds of dried up french fries I found between the back seat the and wall of the car. YUCK...... I could have filled a recycle box with all the trash that came out of that back area. Stink? Oh, don't even get me started. I found a half eaten box of chicken nuggets in the bottom of the overflowing trash can. Apparently, they had gotten wet at some point and we were definitely trying to win a science award for growing cultures in the garbage.So, I'm all proud of this nice, clean van. I could just cry it looked so good. And then it happened, I think it was the heat that did it..........my son says, "Mom, look here, it's one of them fragrance machines". And because I was gagging over the smell of those rotten chicken nuggets, I said to myself, "Self, I bet the car would smell soooooooooo good. Ooooh, they have a baby powder scented spray. Who doesn't love baby powder???? I'm no communist, I love the smell of a freshly diapered infant and the smell of their heads, is just wonderful. But I digress, I dug four of my hard earned quarters out of my pocket and ching, ching, ching, ching, in they went. And this nozzle from H -E- double hockey sticks starts spraying this fragrance.Now the instructions are 4 quarters for 40 seconds of spray. AND that you should spray under the back of the front seats of the vehicle. I was ready to stop spraying at 3 seconds. But, in these hard economic times, I really couldn't justify wasting 37 seconds of sprayed fragrance, could I?

The smell was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo loud. We had to drive with the windows down. When I got out at home, my head was throbbing...It was a mistake and I was so sorry. BUT, not as sorry as I was today. Yikesarama. That is some strong stuff.

Okay, I am chuckling as I read this because when my 6 year old daughter got in the car today, she wrinkled her pretty little nose and said, "Mom, did you spray bug spray in here or did you just toot?"

Don't trust them.......and never turn your back on them.