Shut up? Really?

"A closed mouth rarely has room for a foot."

I've always wondered what kind of tattoo I'd get if I wasn't such a major woos. Back in high school/early college, I thought a butterfly would be totally bad ass but then I found out that tattoo artists use needles instead of permanent markers to burn the image into your skin. If I wanted to be branded, I'd been born a filet but I get why people singe their bodies. It's to remember important people, events, flavors of ice-cream, you know, things you wouldn't want to forget. For me, I'd have the above expression as my tat.

I cannot tell you the number of times I've said something and then cringed for decades later (please see OOPS for further examples). It isn't that I'm a conflict-heathen and that I jump on the roof of people's cars with a baseball bat and threaten to knock out their "My child is an honor roll student AGAIN" bumper sticker if they ever cut me off AGAIN. I actually avoid conflict at most costs (do not dare ask my parents, siblings or husband) but I definitely believe that there is a time and a place for baseball bats and crazy eyes. Let's take for example, oh, I don't know, off the top of my head...the splintering of my shed.

So, Irene uprooted a monstrous tree in our backyard and in the weeks following, the tree slowly descended but it would get trapped up by the other trees around it. As it came down, we could tell that in time it was going to take our shed out (which was fine for Papa Bear because he always wanted to rebuild the shed) but we figured we'd get some "professional" tree remover's to come in and take care of it so that it didn't. These professionals put some dental floss over the top of the tree to try to "hold it up," and instead of cutting it away little by little, they thought they'd just take a chainsaw to the base of the tree and cut it the remainder of the way down. Guess what happened? No, go ahead....that sucker smashed the daylights out of our shed. In a single moment, I saw weekends just flying out the window with my husband now cutting up this tree (since $600 is only to knock it down 2 feet). I saw weekends flying out the window of my husband building a brand new shed (for a house that we were putting on the market in a month). I saw the thousands of dollars dancing prettily out of our empty bank account since not only did we now have to pay these jack-wagons but now we had to rebuild the shed.

I came out and in my best 4-year old temper tantrum-y voice said, "That didn't work." And they laughed and said, "Nope." So, what did I do? I stormed away. That's right. I was shaking, crying, mentally screaming but to the professionals? I merely slammed my screen door closed (and um, yea, slamming a screen door isn't really effective).
So, although I love the above expression, I'm going to tweak it just a tad.

"A closed mouth rarely has room for a foot but if the foot belongs in someone's ass...."