The color of snot - or, My Neti pot is my best friend.

I feel like my head collided with the snot truck. The brown one, not the yellow or green one.

According to this article, my brown snot means I'm a smoker. I'm not.

I just spent half an hour looking up what the color of snot means. Apparently I have a cold. Or an infection. Or I'm dying. It's a bit unclear at the moment.

I do know that I didn't go to work today and took a four hour nap after Noah got on the bus. Then I took advantage of cyber Monday and got some good deals. Then I took another nap.

The excitement of my day is using my Neti pot and seeing just how much snot I can blow out into the sink. I'm all kinds of gross, I know. It saddens me that Rich doesn't want to watch.

That's all I've got for today.

Love you.

Boogers - a "best of" post from the past

I have a yucky cold. Rich and Kiel have it too, although I was the only wimpy one to stay home in bed today.


I'm jealous of Kiel's cold, because his boogers come in ice cream flavors. Last night they tasted like chocolate, tonight like vanilla. Just to be clear, that's what he told me. Despite his generous offers I have not tasted them.

And because I feel icky, and Rich wants to watch a movie, I'm going to cheat and re-post something I wrote for the now defunct Philly Moms Blog a couple years ago

Are booger eaters smarter than booger wipers?

I was at a birthday party recently with my 7 year-old son. While the kids were making their party favors several of the moms were sitting around talking. Of course our conversation turned to kids, and as we witnessed one of the boys mine for nostril gold, the conversation turned to kids and boogers.

One of the mom's commented that kids are either booger eaters or booger wipers, and then speculated that whether or not a kid was a booger eater or a booger wiper was genetic. It turned into quite the conversation as we compared notes and yes, our own personal booger history (booger wiper!). I was surprised at how some of the moms even knew if their husbands were eaters or wipers as kids (mine claims he was, and still is, a wiper).

Since I'm not linked genetically to either of my boys (I have both an eater and a wiper, btw) I really couldn't comment on the theory per se, but it certainly is an interesting twist on the nature versus nurture debate.

While clearly a silly conversation, it did get me thinking. So, like all good pseudo-scientists, I turned to the internet to see what it had to say about booger picking and found this little gem about booger eating. It appears that a few years ago Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, a lung specialist in Austria, gained some notoriety by endorsing the picking and eating of boogers, especially by children. According to Dr. Bischinger people who pick their noses with their fingers (the finger is key, yo!) are healthier, happier, and more in tune with their bodies.

Apparently, the finger is key because it allows you to dig into the nooks and crannies that a handkerchief or tissue can't reach, keeping your nose cleaner. And the only comment I have to this is, "well, duhh!"

He also claims that "eating the dry remains of what you pull out is a great way of strengthening the body's immune system. The nose is a filter in which a great deal of bacteria is collected, and when this mixture arrives in the intestines it works just like a medicine."  

 

I suppose this makes sense in a rather ewwww kind of way if you discount the effects of stomach acid, etc.. However, as I sit here enduring day three of the cold from hell, I can't say I'm at all motivated to test out his theory. Nor am I very concerned that my career as a pharmacist is at risk.

I just wish I had this little gem of information during our momversation about eating and wiping. Because if Dr. B's theory is true, now I'm wondering if there isn't a genetic link between booger eating and intelligence.

"Oh just look at my little Johnny, such a smart boy eating his own boogers! He takes after his daddy you know."

So how about you? Are your kids eaters or wipers? Or as my Facebook friends pointed out, flickers? Or is flicking a subcategory of wiping? And what about those of you with booger farmers? 

Oh my, who knew there could be such complexity to boogers!

Observations of a cat, a booger, and a boy.

Don't forget to go here and enter my business card giveaway! They'd make great "mommy cards" or blog cards too! 
Or here to enter to win a $50 Safeway gift card! 

Or here to win the new Shaun the Sheep: A Woolly Good Time DVD! 

 ~~~~~~~~~

Before I met Rich I lived in Kalamazoo. I owned my own house and was dating the boy next door. Well, technically it was the man across the street, but that isn't really what this story is about. This story is about his cat. It is also about boogers and my two-year old.

Cat, boogers, boy.

Right now you are asking yourself how these things can possibly be related. And if you are my husband, or my ex-boyfriend (who occasionally reads this blog - Hi ex-boyfriend!) you are really wondering how I'm going to tie all of this together considering the cat and the boy were separated by approximately eight years. (Boogers as we moms know are timeless.)

My boyfriend had an awesome cat named Huxley. He was a big old boy cat that liked to act all fierce and tiger-esq, but in reality was a big old wuss that didn't own his own front yard. That didn't bother me one bit though, because I loved that cat.

While his owner and I were dating we pretty much lived equally between our two houses.  Huxley got used to this dual residency and in the way that animals do, he always knew what house his owner and I were waking up in. If we were at my house you could count on Huxley being there either outside my back door, or under my bedroom window in the morning. If it was the weekend and he felt we were sleeping in too late, he made sure we heard him, even though my bedroom was on the second floor. If we were across the street at his house he would knock on the bedroom window when he was ready to be let in the house in the morning. While he didn't come in my house because he was afraid of my cats and dog, it didn't stop him from making sure one of us let him in his own house and fed him every morning.

I like to think Huxley came to think of me as his momma. Not quite as good as his dad, but always there for a cuddle or to feed him. And to let him into his own house when it was raining or cold and his owner wasn't home to do it. 

So Huxley thanked me in the way that all good cats show appreciation to those they love. He left me gifts outside of my back door. Gifts he was very proud of. Gifts of the dead animal variety.

And tonight it hit me as I was putting Kiel to bed and he was exploring his left nostril in preparation of handing me his booger.

Those hard won boogers that Kiel excavates from his nostrils and then proudly hands me are much like the dead animals that Huxley gave me. 

Disgusting? Certainly. 

Given with love? Absolutely!

~~~~~~~~~~

See? 

Cat, boogers, boy. 

I'm really not that hard to follow at all.