I had a big blog post planned today to dissect my fifteen seconds of fame from my appearance on CNN Headline News this weekend.

Then my eardrum burst.

Ya. Spontaneously. Without any warning.

Who knew that something so tiny could cause incredible pain? I’d have eased my misery with a swill of medicinal mommy juice but the glands in my throat seemed to have swollen so much that I can barely swallow.

It’s like the Universe has put a pox on my head. My husband says it’s because I didn’t show enough cleavage on the video tape.

I dragged my sorry arse out of bed to make an emergency appointment with the local doctor. Pox or not, I need to have the giant red hot spike removed from my head. I need drugs, dammit.

So I hobbled to the kitchen to get the phone book and dialed the local clinic.

“Hi,” I croaked, “I’m in desperate need of medical assistance. I need to see the doctor as quick as possible and I’m willing to grease some palms to make it happen.”

“What’s the nature of this visit?” a bored receptionist yawned on the other end of the line.

“Well, sometime in the middle of the night, tiny little demons visited my bedroom, crammed a rod of fiery pain into my ear, bursting my ear drum and followed that up by pouring hot acid directly into my throat. They then did a little voodoo chant while holding hands and dancing around my bed, wishing for all the snot in the world to congregate and rest inside my sinuses. I think I’m dying.” I manage to croak out while raging white hot pain emanates from my ear.

“I see. So you’ve got a cold.”

“No, I’ve got the pox. A cold doesn’t cause this much brain damage.”

“Uh, huh. I can’t fit you in until late this afternoon. Name please?” I can hear her clicking away at her typewriter while she is chewing gum.

“Tanis Miller.”

Pause.

“Tanis Miller, the REDNECK MOMMY?” She asks, somewhat incredulously.

“Um, ya?”

“I saw you on CNN last night! I couldn’t believe someone I knew was on t.v!”

“Um, thanks?” I coughed. I was starting to see stars swirl around my head. “Is there any way you could squeeze me in any earlier? I’m really sick.” Heh, I’m not above capitalizing on my new found fame.

She laughed and for a second I thought I was in.

“Honey, you get yourself on Grey’s Anatomy and introduce me to McSteamy and I’ll let you pick your appointment times. Hell, I’ll even drive the doc herself to your house. Until then, you just have to wait in line with all the other rednecks we see.”

Damn.

So much for my fifteen seconds of fame. Guess one redneck ’round these parts is the same as another.

There are moments in life that are so unexpectedly sweet that when they happen you can’t believe your good fortune and you spend the rest of your day smiling and shooting rainbows out your arse.

Like when you take out an old coat and find a crumpled twenty dollar bill inside a lint filled pocket.

Or when you buy a lottery ticket and actually win something. (Because that is totally possible. They keep handing out those free tickets just to sucker you back in with false hope.)

Or when your daughter scores the only damn goal her team has seen this entire season and it’s made only sweeter because she’s playing against kids four years older than her and twice her size.

So sue me if I jumped up and down, cheering and screaming like a raging soccer mom lunatic. That little victory was hard earned and made sweeter by the ability to brag that it was MY daughter.

Ya. We She rocks.

I love those little unexpected gifts life brings. It’s like finding a pretty little chocolate resting upon on the pillowcase of life. (Okay, so that is a horrible analogy, but I never professed to be a poet.)

Those little nuggets of goodness are all the more sweeter now that we know just how dark life can get. I tend to cherish them harder and hold them closer than I ever did before our son died.

Which is why, when I received a phone call from a dear family friend, I wrapped myself in the unexpected glow of warmth and thanked the Universe itself for my latest unexpected gift.

This gift was even better than watching my daughter’s triumphant smile after her victory on the soccer field. This gift was even more precious than the time I was snooping and found unexpected photos of my son in my friend’s photo album.

This gift made me smile and then weep with joy (and only a bit of sadness). This gift was a reminder of a life once lived, a love forever shared. I can’t believe I didn’t even know it existed before that phone call.

Video footage of my darling Bug. The ONLY video footage that exists in the world because we were too poor during his life to be able to afford a video camera to capture his beautiful soul.

(If only we had a crystal ball back then and knew how important it would be to document his moments. Sigh.)

Now I have him, captured forever alive and cranky and in his glory. For a few brief moments I get to experience my son’s sweet kisses and remember the warm feeling of his sweaty hair and how he clung to me for comfort for a few minutes. Not that I forgot, but it is so wonderful to see it in front of me instead of just inside my head and heart.

Because now I can share it with you.

You never know what sugary surprises life has in store for you.

You also never know when a bad haircut and forgetting to wear any lipstick is going to come back and bite you on the arse.

I’ll just try to over look that. How bout you do the same?

**Note: The video is around four minutes long. Just click play under the big screen at the bottom and his piece will start. **

I love the great outdoors. The blue skies, the sweeping wheat fields, my yard filled with animal scat. (Damn moose think my carefully mowed slightly shaggy grass is their personal litterbox.)

There isn’t much I don’t love about the outdoors. I don’t even mind the bugs. Except for hornets, wasps, bees and horseflies. Then you will see me shriek like a school girl and use my children as a personal shield as I run for shelter. Better them than me. They’re younger. They’ll recover faster.

I jest. Though not about being scared of bugs that are capable of imparting great pain. But most creepy crawlies don’t even register on my radar. Not even the pesky mosquito. It’s all part and parcel of enjoying nature’s bounty on the wrong side of the window pane.

When I was little, I use to collect grasshoppers and catepillars and tadpoles and what ever else I could get my dirty little paws on. I’d find old jam jars and poke holes in the lid and then watch my little captives starve to death, essentially. I was such a thoughtful child.

Oneday, I encountered the most beautiful insect. It was a fuzzy black and yellow caterpillar. I marveled at how soft and fuzzy it was and imagined what a beautiful butterfly it would morph into. I imagined it would have the wing span of a dragon and feather’s of a beautiful peacock.

I was delusional even at a young age.

I hurriedly found an old plastic ice cream bucket, grabbed a few twigs, a couple of fistfuls of grass and a few leaves and set off to imprison collect the fuzzy caterpillar of my dreams.

At first, I only found one. But with the persistence of an idiot determination of a small child, I had soon managed to find almost a dozen.

I had a colony! I played in my bucket of worms, er, fuzzy caterpillars all day. My mom had to threaten to squish them all to get me to come in for supper. Immediately after supper I rushed back to my bucket to play with my new friends. It was childhood heaven. I had named them all, and constructed a whole village in my head, assigning each fuzzy friend it’s own personality, job and family.

I reluctantly went to bed and carefully left my friends perched in their bucket, waiting to be reunited upon my morning return. Only, there was no joyful reunion. The wind knocked over my bucket, scattering my town and our family dog ate most of my town’s people.

But I had other problems other than the complete devastation of Tanis Town. I was diseased. Apparently, my darling colony were toxic to touch for hours upon hours at a time. Who knew that letting my furry little friends crawl up and down my arms was a bad thing?

When I woke up the next morning, my hands felt funny. I couldn’t really bend my fingers. I opened my eyes to look at my hands and screamed! My hands were swollen and covered with blisters. All over. In between my fingers, up my fingers, the palms of my hands, the backs of my hands and up my arms.

I looked like I had the plague. And oh, how it itched. It took more than a week to gain the use of my hands again without popping a pus filled blister or wanting to scratch my skin off to the bone. I was devastated. My little furry friends turned on me. I banished all love of caterpillars from my heart from that day forth and vowed that the only good caterpillar was a squished caterpillar.

Decades later, I still feel that way. I avoid anything long and tubular (just ask my husband. Heh.) I hate worms and caterpillars with the burning rage of an eight year old who was called “Worm Girl” by her older brother for weeks.

This of course, sucks, since I live out in a rural, heavily treed area. It’s a bountiful forest for the fuzzy creatures and they rain from the heavens (okay, the leaves) if you shake a tree or brush past a branch.

Meaning I squeal like a pansy ass A LOT in the summer months. My kids know this and take great delight in terrorizing me by holding the fuzzy creatures under my nose. My husband scoffs when I tell him, EMPHATICALLY, that I am allergic to those critters and to keep them the heck away from me.

Yesterday, we spent the day outside worshipping Boo and his fabulous paternal talents. (RE: He spent the day chopping wood while cracking the whip to get the kids to mow the lawn. I sat on our pretty deck with a lemonade in hand and supervised.)

When everybody came in for the fabulous supper I had made (what? It still counts if I drove in, picked the pizza up, took it out of the box and served it to everyone) when my daughter started to scratch her head at the table.

“What? Are you confused by something?” I inquired while her brother started teasing her that she must have cooties.

“No,” she shook her head and began eating her pizza. It wasn’t long before she was back to scratching her head.

“Is something wrong?” her father asked.

“No.” She scratched a few seconds more and then resumed eating.

Scratch, scratch.

Scratch, scratch.

Scratch, scratch.

Finally, after watching my daughter rip out her hair while the rest of us enjoyed our dinner, I put my pizza down and looked Fric in the eyes.

“What is the matter with you? Do you think you have lice? I told you not to share hats with the girls on your soccer team,” I lectured as I leaned forward to peer in my daughter’s hair.

She shook her head no and started to protest that she doesn’t have nits, when we heard a sudden soft plop. And then another plop. And another.

Everyone looked down and reacted at the same time. Three little tent caterpillars fell from my daughter’s head.

She screamed and started flipping her hair one way and then another to get all the creepy crawlies out of her hair.

I screamed because my sworn enemy was being tossed from the soft locks of my precious daughter and if she didn’t settle down, they could land in MY hair.

Boo laughed and continued to eat his pizza.

Frac, screeched with only the joy of a sibling whose head isn’t under attack from the creepy crawlies. Eventually, we all settled down and order was restored to our dinner table. Not that her or I were hungry anymore.

Thankfully, there were no more creepy crawlies hiding in my daughter’s scalp. The three little hanger-on-er’s were lovingingly squished by my husband’s thumb. My daughter had brushed her hair until it glistened. And I sat there reliving my own wormy nightmare from the past.

Just another typical Redneck family dinner.

Frac looked at his sister with an evil twinkle in his eye and then grinned.

“I always knew you had worms for brains, sis, but now I have proof.”

Growing up, I was never completely comfortable with who I was or how I looked. I was never particularly popular and making friends was never an easy feat for me.

Something to do with that dreaded ‘foot in mouth’ disease which seemed to plague me from the moment I learned how to speak.

In the beginning, I was a short, stringy haired, not quite albino-looking child who tripped over her ginormous knobby knees. I then morphed into a tall, sickly thin teen with wasp bites for breasts while rocking a spiral hair-do and teased bangs. All the while wearing home made clothing my mother lovingly made for me, instead of the designer duds everyone else in my school rocked.

Nothing says “KICK ME” quite as loudly as a paisley purple ruffled shirt you mom lovingly made for your twelfth birthday.

My nicknames ranged from ‘geek’, ‘loser’, and ‘pimple’s arse’ to the more creative ‘Skinny Minny Miller’ and my personal favorite, ‘Tuna Faced Tanis.’

How I wish I could relive those junior high years. They really were the high light of my life. Heh.

Like most adults, I survived those trying years and grew up and out into the fabulous supermodel mom I am today. Mostly unscathed and slightly delusional, but hey, I survived.

With time, I grew into my body and my personality. I know who I am and for the most part, I like it. As long as I don’t read the shrink’s assessment of my personality too often.

I’m comfortable with who I am. I even like how I look most of the time, even if I do wish that my boobs didn’t fall into my arm pits every time I lay down or tickle my belly button when I run around nekkid.

(You’re jealous, aren’t you?)

Heck, I gave birth to three nine pound bowling balls kids and once weighed over two hundred pounds. It stands to reason I’m gonna have a little jiggle with my giggles.

(I’d like to point out somewhat passive aggressively my husband isn’t as good as he once was either. Without gestating live rodents in his belly.)

Do I wish I had rock hard abs and silky smooth thighs that could crack walnuts? Absolutely, just not enough to go to the gym. I’ve made peace with my body and befriended each and every dimple on my arse, the stray chin hairs that keep popping up and my unusually hairy toes.

I want my children to be comfortable within their own bodies and have the inner strength to survive their own teen-aged years of angst. I want them to be able to walk through the next few years of puberty-induced hell and come out forged stronger and better than before.

They’ll need that strength to survive reading my posts about them and my hooters when they get older. Heh.

I want my children to know that no matter how their bodies look when they’re adults, it’s alright. Which is why, I’ve never made a big deal of nudity around our house. (The things I do for my children. I mean, I totally garden topless just so my kids will have healthy self-esteem.)

I want them to know there is nothing bad or disgusting about a human’s naked body.

Unless of course, it’s that old fat person in the public pool locker room who is wriggling out of a wet and too small swim suit in the middle of the aisle and wants you to hand them a towel thereby forcing you to make eye contact with said elder and searing their nekkid arse into a permanent imprint in your mind.

Totally uncool.

It’s not like I wave my nudity around my children and prance around the house in the buff while screeching to Heart. (Not often, anyways.) As they grow older, I do have some tact. But if they wander into my room or the bathroom after I have a shower, I’m not going to cover up my girly bits either.

They’re too pretty to be contained. Heh.

I’ve talked with my kids about their bodies and my body and bodies in general, wanting them to know that as long as one is healthy and has a body that works, one is blessed. All bodies are beautiful. Except for the above mentioned locker room person. Ugh.

Sure I may have a mole here or there, or a scar, or a stretch mark, but the sum of it all makes me unique and makes me beautiful. Not supermodel, million dollar smile beautiful, but well-adjusted and not needing to wear a paper bag over my head to go shopping beautiful.

I’ll take it.

But as I stood in my closet the other day, wearing nothing but my skivvies and a bra, searching through mounds of unfolded yet clean laundry (my mother would be so ashamed), my kids wandered in to ask me a question.

I slipped on my jeans and told them it was not alright to see if my dog would fit in our dutch oven and grabbed my for my shirt. I noticed my children staring at me.

They were mesmerized by my beauty. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Snort.

“What? Do I stink or something?”

Fric looks at my boobs and then down to her own invisible breasts and asked if her boobs would be like mine when she’s older.

“I don’t know, honey. Every woman’s body is different; huge or small, they’re all hooters,” I told her honestly as I thought of my grandma’s watermelon sized boobs.

“I’m not talking about how big they will be, Mom,” she told me, sounding slightly annoyed. “I meant, will my boobs hang down like yours?”

Only if you’re lucky, I thought to myself as I pulled on my top. “How bout you talk to me about the state of your breasts once you’ve had three angry little badgers gnaw on them and suck them dry?”

“Whatever,” Fric said as she rolled her eyes. Poor thing. It must be hard to be saddled with me as her momma.

As I shooed the kids out of my closet, Frac, who up to this point had wisely kept his mouth shut, whispered to his sister in a voice loud enough to be heard across the country, “Fric, did you see how Mom’s tummy jiggled every time she moved? Weird!”

Yes, I want my kids to be comfortable in their own bodies. To accept what ever nature throws their way and to celebrate their own individual beauty and uniqueness.

In order to achieve this, I’m going to counsel them to avoid any state of undress in front of their own children’s prying eyes.

Nothing has sucked out my self-esteem (along with my youth and vitality) quite as quickly as my honest offspring.

It’s the gift they just keep on giving.

Buggers.

When Boo and I started to date (which only occurred once he got his driver’s license and could twist his mother’s car keys out of her hand) I remember marveling at how different our lives really were.

I grew up in the city. I thought nothing of being able to walk a few blocks in any direction and being able to buy a slushee or a chocolate bar.

Houses were meant to be only a few feet apart. That’s what fences were for. So you could peer through them and see what your neighbour was up to and pray you wouldn’t find the fat dude who lived next door sprawled out on a beach towel, naked as the day he was born soaking up the sunshine.

To me, life was about sidewalks and parks and bicycle rides into the river valley. If I was bored I’d hop a bus to the nearest mall and go see a movie or troll the food court looking for some cute boys to make goo goo eyes over.

Boo, on the other hand, lived not far from where we live now. His nearest neighbour was a few kilometers away and the only fat dude sunbathing close to him was the bull out in the south pasture.

While I peered into the neighbour’s window every time I did dishes, Boo saw fields and cows and nature every time he looked through a plate of glass. Buying a chocolate bar had to be a well planned excursion, not something he could do on a whim.

Boo saw more deer on a daily basis than he did people.

At first it was a novelty to me, this foreign way of life, mixed with a bit of culture shock. I had a hard time understanding that if one wants pizza while living out in the country they either have to resign themselves to cold, chewy cheese pulled from the softened cardboard box that was soaked from grease after sitting in a box on the long car ride home. That, or one had to make it themselves.

I didn’t even know pizza could be made from scratch.

When Boo and I got knocked up unexpectedly started our family, I was living in an apartment in the city while working to save money for university. Boo was living on the family farm, working his cattle and farming for his uncle. We had to make a decision where we would raise our fledgling family.

City or country?

Since Boo’s head just about popped off and exploded into a million pieces every time he had to come into the city and fight for a parking spot, it was transparent I would need to pack up and move out to the where the cows and the deer play.

It didn’t take me long to adjust to my new found way of life. I hit a few rough patches at first.

(Read: I was like a crack addict jonesing for a fix. Just substitute the crack for a Big Mac.)

Yes, there was the night I forgot to close the screen door and a bat came swooping into our living room. I may have abandoned my two month old child in her bassinet as grabbed the cordless phone and ran screaming out of my house. I may have yelled at Boo (who was down the road at the neigbours house,) that I was being attacked by blood sucking ghouls.

I may have sat inside the barn on top of a hay bale, curled into a ball while my husband and Cowboy Bean laughed their arses off and chased the bat out of my house, while making jokes about how I tossed my daughter to the wolves bats to save my own sorry arse.

What can I say? I panicked.

I have since learned bats are friendly disease riddled creatures who are just looking for a few mosquitos to eat and aren’t really interested in sucking my blood until I am nothing but a lifeless shell, withered and dried up.

I no longer blink an eye when my husband runs for his shotgun to shoot coyotes. Or beaver. Or anything else that seems to move out here.

I no longer think it’s strange that most trucks have gun racks mounted somewhere on them.

I no longer wonder why my husband insists I carry a chainsaw in the back of my car, after having had to use it more times than I can count to remove a tree that has fallen on a back road so my car can pass.

Nothing says fun like blowing up beaver dams to make sure the cattle have access to water. Where else would I be able to play with dynamite?

I love the country. I love the solitude and peace. I love the sound of the trees swaying to the music of the wind or the birds whistling near my window.

I love the friendly community and how everybody knows everybody. It’s a gossip loving girl’s dream come true.

I really love the country hair and fashion sensibilities displayed by man and woman alike. What can I say? I always feel so fashion forward. So pretty.

I have never regretted the decision to raise my children out in the wilds of Alberta. (Mainly because I can’t imagine being able to yell at them to get their naked arses out of the swimming pool and into the house while standing on my city stoop. It just wouldn’t have the same ring to it.)

Country living has brought a sense of peace into my life, a peace much needed after the passing of my son. I have the solitude I crave and the close knit community I need.

It also has G-Spot Welders and the odd hillbilly to amuse myself with.

Life is good out here in rural Alberta.

And it just keeps getting better.

As demonstrated when I ran into town the other day to pick up my kids from school. I found this truck parked outside the local liquor store. (I may have stopped there on the way to the school to buy some evening fortification. Maybe.)

How I love living out in the country.

Gotta love these country boys. They really know how to make a girl smile.