New Ab Workout

For those of you looking for a new way to work your abdominal muscles, do I have a workout for you! I call it the Respiratory Infection Ab-ercise, or RIA for short. This thing is going to be all the rage, and the best part is that it does not cost a cent to get started*.

Here is how to begin:
If you have small kids, take them to a park, church, preschool, or daycare, and let them play with the other kids. This is a nearly foolproof way to bring some sort of bug home with you. If you do not have kids, you can borrow a grandchild, niece, nephew, or a friend's child. In a pinch you can ask to borrow someone else's kid at the playground, but do this only as a last resort, as parent's tend to find it creepy when childless adults hang out around the playground and ask to borrow other peoples' children. If you have absolutely no access to small children, do not despair, sometimes (as in the case of our test subject) a severe allergy attack can bring on the same symptoms.

If you rarely get sick (or do not live with small children), some additional preparation may be required in order to bring about symptoms. One of the easiest ways to bring on a lowered immune system is lack of sleep. I recommend starting a good book that you will have difficulty putting down. If you have small children, sleep deprivation is not hard to come by; in fact, it is a natural byproduct of the parenting process. If you do not enjoy reading, or find that you possess too much self-control to allow yourself to stay up all night reading, drastic measures may be necessary. I' am talking about World of Warcraft, the most addicting massive multi-player online role-playing game of all time. After a few days of playing WoW, you will have no desire to see your family ever again or to engage in frivolous pursuits such as eating and sleeping. Yes, your body will be exhausted and the perfect place for a respiratory infection to set up shop.

Once you have a respiratory infection, the RIA practically takes care of itself. Your lungs will fill up with fluid and your body will try so hard to expel those fluids that your abdominal muscles will clench in agony virtually all day long. You will cough (thus working your Abs) all day and, if you are fortunate, all night as well. This will interfere with your sleep, but do not dismay - sleeplessness further inhibits your immune system, prolonging your intense Ab-ercise experience. If you are lucky, your cough will be so severe that you will not be able to keep down any food or water, and while fitness is really the focus of the RIA program, minor weight loss can be an added bonus. While you may be tempted to let your respiratory infection develop into full-blown pneumonia, this is not advised; the doctors and medication that follow bouts of pneumonia tend to counteract the severe cough reflex that is necessary for RIA to work your muscles effectively.

A few days on the program is usually sufficient to bring about noticeable change in the strength and tone of your Abdominals. While no guarantee is implied, participants in a recent study** experienced dramatic results. They described results from one week on RIA as being similar to an entire month's worth of Abs of Steel.

Disclosure: While it is true that the RIA program can bring on extreme discomfort, Bonnie F, Inc. (hereafter referred to as "the company") recommends that you get over it. After all, no pain, no gain! By choosing to participate in RIA, you agree to release the company from all liability related to injury or illness resulting from RIA.
* Although RIA does not have startup fees, there may be hidden costs later in doctor bills.
**By study, the company means a case study performed on one Bonnie F, the author of this blog.

American Accent Quiz

I found this quiz on a blog that I read occasionally. Jenni, I can't wait for you to take this so that I can laugh at you. :) I think this is sort of funny since I have lived in Texas my entire life, but I guess that's what happens when your dad is from NY and your mom is from Idaho.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West   Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The South
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Goodnight Ladies

I am so proud of my daughter! Sometimes I let BittyBit watch a show in the morning, but often I make her wait until after nap time. That way she has an incentive to actually take a nap. She wanted to watch a particular show that comes on in the morning, so it wasn't available to watch when she woke up this afternoon. I suggested Meet The Robinsons instead, but she said,"No, I want to watch Goodnight Ladies". That is what she calls The Music Man. I sang show tunes to her a lot when she was younger, but I hadn't sung any Music Man songs in a long time, but the other evening BittyBit began singing "Goodnight Ladies" at bedtime. I told her that the song was from a movie and asked if she wanted to see it. She watched some of it the next day but lost interest about half way through. Today she sat down and sang along while she watched the entire thing.

Blog headers

I made my own blog header last December when I first started digging into Photoshop. There are so many digital creations out there, but most individual designers (of digital scrapbook papers and embellishments) do not want their designs used in blog design, so I decided to create my own stuff. I did have a few items that were ok for projects like this, but everything else I made from scratch.

I offered to make a blog header for my mom, back before I made mine. After she saw the header I made for this blog, she said I could design one for her. I didn't know as much about photoshop, so I didn't have as many creative options at my disposal. It is suited to her personality though, so I think I was successful.
I figured out how to mess with html today. I told my sister back in January that I would make her a blog header, and I finally finished it today. In my defense, I never said when I would finish it. :) I was somewhat lacking in inspiration, but I knew that I wanted to create the papers and embellishments myself. After browsing through some Microsoft clipart, I got the inspiration for this layout.The clipart had flowers and circles and the stripes in the background, but it was done in mostly greens with some pastel colors on the flowers, and the picture didn't have any depth. I created these flowers and layered them to look like they were pieced together in a 3-D collage. I created the background paper from scratch, as well as the background for the title font. I like this one much better than my own blog header, so I will probably redo mine sometime soon.

New teeth and photography lessons

LittleMan cut his second tooth three days ago. At this point, it would still be incredibly difficult to get a picture of the teeth, but when they have emerged a bit more, I am sure they will be more visible.

I am so smart
Most of the moms I know take tons of pictures of their families. Even those who started out barely able to find the shutter soon blossom into competent photographers. Many of these moms also choose to scrapbook to preserve these memories. One common problem we all face is that because we are usually the one behind the camera, we have thousands of photos and only appear in a handful of them ourselves.

Some days I am more than fine with this (especially the mornings that I can barely roll out of bed and don't want a picture to remind me that I didn't get any sleep and didn't bother fixing myself up), but occasionally I would like some proof that I was actually with the family on that last family vacation.

My solution? I taught BittyBit how to use my old Kodak digital camera. It has been gathering dust on my desk since I bought my Canon, so I figure that with proper supervision, she can learn how to use it and eventually might take some decent pictures. I see only positive things coming out of this. She finds the process of taking pictures highly entertaining. She likes taking multiple pictures, so one of them is bound to be my good side (unlike my husband, who will only take control of the camera when I beg, who usually takes one shot, then when I ask, "Did that picture turn out ok?" -glances at the camera and says,"Yeah"-when what he means is you were blinking and there was something in your teeth). She actually did a good job for her first time using it. More than half of the pictures were in focus and after the first few, I showed her how to center her subject in the viewfinder, so most of the photos contain the subject she was trying to photograph.

Of course, some of the pictures turned out like this...I guess her photography skills still need some work, but with a little practice, she'll be a professional in no time!