My mom had a little accident earlier this week.  Perhaps if she’d seen this first, it could have been avoided . . .

How To Wax Your Floors Without Slipping And Severing Your Spine

Every once in a while, I check my Google Analytics just for kicks.  A while back, Cathy had a hilarious post about keywords that brought visitors to her blog.  I decided to have some fun tonight and do the same.

My top 10?  Here they are:

1.  “her icy feet”+“into bed”:  What the heck???  I have no idea.  But apparently I write about freezing Mike regularly enough for it to rate as a keyword.
2.  “mike became toilet”:  Ummm, yeah.  No idea, but it’s awesome.  I think he should use this as his epitaph.
3.  “sweaty balls scented candle”:  I swear I’m not making this up.  WHO SEARCHES FOR A CANDLE IN THIS SCENT????
4.  “dog off girls belly”: don’t even know what that could possibly be about, but it’s a funny mental image. 
5.  “healthy kids meals for icky eaters”:  love the typo, and love even more that keywords “icky eaters” landed someone on my blog.
6.  “hot soccer mom”:  apparently they haven’t actually MET me.
7.  “i was mortified when i pooped my pants” - hey, i haven’t blogged about that!  EVER!!! i resent that keyword direct to my blog!
8.  “richmond twin hickory swinger parties” - oh sweet, it isn’t just a myth, then.
9.  “wild soccer mom pics” - again with the soccer mom porn??? sheesh.
10.  “stuffed monster”: i have two!

You really, really, can’t make this stuff up. 

I know I’ve griped about my Stepford neighborhood before.  It’s a little scary - when one person puts up something fashionable, it’s worse than high school when Uber-Popular Girl wore the first pair of Gasoline Jeans two-tone acid washed jeans and everyone couldn’t get to Prange’s fast enough to buy their copies and have their very own camel-toe.  Only in my neighborhood, it tends to be more subtle.  For example, the epidemic of cobwebs that happens during Halloween.  One person covered her bushes in webs - within 3 days, the entire street looked like a big spider had barfed up a giant white hairball on the prim landscaping.  I rebelled, of course.  Last year the wreath epidemic began, but didn’t come full circle until this year.  It looks something like this (but this picture isn’t of a neighbor’s house, and you have to multiply the wreaths in this picture by like, 100):

Now, literally every house minus about 10% have window wreaths on EVERY AVAILABLE WINDOW.  I’ve never seen so much artificial greenery in one place.  Not to be outdone by each other, the neighbors now are warring over what can be DONE to the window wreaths - like adding lights, candles, giant baubles, and fake fruits.  It looks like a preppy Mardi Gras on my street. 

(In case you are wondering, no, we don’t have window wreaths. I may not wear black lipstick anymore, but I will not conform to the wreath police)

This year, the wreaths have been joined by herds of suburban white lit reindeers.  You must have at least two - some have 4-6.  Always in twos, the reindeer sometimes have moving heads which make them look like the loch ness monster at night.  No, we don’t have white lit reindeers.  But all the neighbors do.

So imagine, if you will, a neighborhood of 20 houses.  Each house has at least 2, if not 4 or more, reindeers on the lawn.  Imagine, if you will, someone deciding to spice things up a bit.  Imagine, if you will, walking your 6 year old to the bus stop and seeing what can only be described as A LOT of reindeer-on-reindeer action.  One of the more unfortunate houses has a reindeer gang-bang going on - one poor doe with 3 bucks mounting her from every direction.  And my neighbor’s looked like this:

Apparently someone either very drunk or very young decided that reindeer porn would be funny, so they made every reindeer in the neighborhood a little more jolly.  I have to agree that it was very, very funny. Juvenile, but funny.  Some of my neighbors are out of town, so their reindeer have stayed in compromising positions and each time I drive by, I howl loudly and obnoxiously.  Perfect. 

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I also volunteered at the Jingle Bell jog today.  It’s basically a Christmas Holiday program at school where the kids wear bells sing, dance, and the teachers perform too.  It was tons of fun.  I would have gotten pictures, but I swear Lily is the midget of the school and is very hard to shoot when she’s buried in a bunch of gangly kids.  The kids performed, and their PE teacher made the Kindergarten and 1st grade teachers dance too.  It was really funny until she made us get up on stage and shake it with them.  How I wished I were Jennifer then, because she has all those dance moves ingrained in her psyche.  I have the rhythm of a brick.  I’m posting some pictures and videos below. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-CbjAoyKa0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUIZ7JND-fg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drVz40_TVZA

We dropped Lily and Arden off at Little Gym’s “Parent Survival Night” - quite possibly one of their favorite things to do.  It’s basically 3 1/2 hours of wild monkeying all over the gym, and it wipes them out.  We had some credits we used to pay for the majority of it, so for $15 total, we have some time to ourselves.

After dinner at the Grapevine (and watching Mike grope the David statue outside), we went to the very exciting Wal-Mart to finish Christmas shopping for the girls and buy the necessary ingredients for Lily’s requested birthday treat:  chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting.  We are basically done Christmas shopping for them, and only have about 4 more people left on the list.  This would be more exciting but the reason we have so few is that we have cut way back this year.  I’ll be doing a lot of baking this year as gifts. 

I felt a little guilty about going out tonight, after three days without the girls, but they love PSN and it was so cheap we had to do it.  I’m glad we did.  When we arrived to pick up the girls, Lily was doing some sort of contemporary interpretive dance - it was a sort of chicken-meets-arabesque arrangement, and from outside the window, it was flat-out hilarious.  Arden was chasing after a new friend, trying to contain her in a hula hoop.  It’s now 10 PM and hopefully they will sleep . . . and sleep late. 

My dad has been wanting to go to DC to see the WWII Memorial ever since it was dedicated.  His goal, he said, was to get there before he died (I guess the idea of seeing it after he’s dead wasn’t all that appealing).  We finally did it.  And in true Kimler fashion, we did lots more than just what we thought we were going to.

When my family went to DC in May to see Meredith Brooks, we ran across a bunch of crazy, camera-wielding tourists riding unsteadily at fast speeds on Segways.  That looked like tons of fun to me, despite the obvious high dork factor involved.  So when we finally nailed down a date to to the memorial, I immediately booked three spots for my parents and I on a Segway tour.  I can’t recommend it enough.  We used Capital Segway Tours - the guides were great, the Segways were fun, and no one ran over anyone else.  Mom nearly bit it once when she passed a turn, and decided to make a last ditch effort to make it, but she managed to hold on in a sort of arabesque-like position until her other foot could get back on the machine. 

I WANT a SEGWAY.  Where I would drive it, I have no idea, and considering the cost of them, I’m sure I won’t be seeing one from Santa under the tree this year, but they are really so fun.  And if you want to see a ton of Washington sites within a 2 hour time span, the Segway is the way to do it.  You can just tune out the people who point and call you nerds, and focus on the people who want to know how the heck you get to ride one of them and “is it hard?, the most frequently asked question I heard yesterday.  As for the jerk who called us nerds, I laughed and threw up some leaves and gravel as I whipped around his lame pedestrian ass.  TAKE THAT, snotball! Eat my Segway zero emissions!

I even had so much fun I didn’t care that the guide took my picture and am still crazy enough to allow it into the Flickr show. 

We got smart finally and left the car in Springfield, and rode the Metro into the city.  It was cheap, easy, and fun - my three favorite adjectives.  I highly recommend NOT driving into the city if you can manage it.  After lunch at a “New York” deli (I think most of their NY ties were still back in NY), we did the Segway training and tour.  We saw the White House, the Capital, a bunch of bronzed guys on horses, the Washington Monument, the Dept. of Justice, a bunch of museums and a lot of pedestrians.  There was more but I was mostly enjoying the beautiful fall weather and how good it felt to be in a real city.

We made a quick pit stop at Starbucks for coffee and to give the legs a break after being stiff-legged on the Segways for 2 1/2 hours, and then headed to the WWI, Korea and Vietnam Memorials.  WWII was very emotional and moving for all of us.  Well, it was for me.  I took some pictures that meant something either to my dad or me, and you can see them in the slideshow.  My mom asked why they didn’t post all the names of those killed in that war, and dad said that engraving over 400,000 names might be a bit much for anyone.  Dad tried to look up his best friend’s name who was killed during the war, but he still can’t find it, which frustrates and confuses us all. 

We spent a little bit of time at Korea and walked by the black wall for Vietnam.  All of them were very moving. 

Since it was only about 3.45, we decided to squeeze in a visit to Arlington Cemetery.  We hopped back on the Metro and got off at the Cemetery stop, which literally puts you right next to the front gates.  Unfortunately they were closing at 5 so we only have enough time to haul our very tired bodies up the huge hill to the Tomb of the Unknown Solider.  Thankfully we made it in time to see the changing of the guard, which was incredible. I also took some video of the guard doing his 21 steps and 21 second pauses - how these guys can maintain that for an hour straight is beyond me.  It was incredibly beautiful, and incredibly moving. 

Our one snag of the day came when we tried to leave Arlington to head back to Springfield, and the car.  Something had happened to one of the trains, so they were delayed. When they finally started running again, they literally looked like cattle cars with people nearly spilling out. We had to wait for the third train before we could even find a car that had enough room for us. Thankfully we weren’t on a time schedule, so the only thing stressing me was finding a bathroom before I peed myself. 

After navigating the maze of the parking deck in Springfield, we found a restaurant, had a leisurely kid-free dinner, and finally made it home around 9.30 last night.  I’m sure my parents are exhausted (me too - as soon as I finish this, I’m SO taking a nap).  It was entirely worth it.  Being able to spend some quality time with my parents, and to experience the memorials with my dad, was great.  WWII in particular had such a huge influence on him and who he became after the way.  Going there to pay homage and reflect was very special, and I think he finally felt like the WWII vets - what’s left of them - finally got some recognition for what they did. 

I also realized how lucky we are to live so close to DC.  We could literally go up one weekend a month and still have only seen a tiny portion of what the city has to offer.  When the girls get a little older, we will definitely be spending more time there.