uh...what?

Yeah, I haven't posted in a while. Where have I been? Facebook, duh! Honestly nothing much has been happening. I still have the same job, same kids, same husband. Same everything. I have been looking for a full-time job, something that is on "our side of the river." What that means is in Iowa. The area I live in is in Iowa on the border of Illinois separated by the Mississippi. Driving over the bridge to my job, especially during 3rd shift and in the winter is HELL!! I hate it and after last winter and one particular ice storm where I slid across the bridge for quite a ways, almost crashing the car and then once I made it OFF the bridge I almost skidded off the highway I decided no more. I'm done. Well guess what? My year of searching for a full-time job I would like hasn't paid off yet. So as our area gets our first snowfall today, though small, I am motivated to take another look at my resume and get my butt out there. It's never too late.

So...did you miss me??

Dinner with The Great Trash Heap

I was talking to my friend Jim the other day about our blogs. I said I hadn’t written anything on mine in a while because I used to write my blogs at work and now I can’t because they’ve blocked all things blog from the work computers. He said, “They blocked Word? E-mail?” and while writing my blogs in Word and then e-mailing them to myself is a very practical solution, one which I have partaken a few times, I just don’t like it. I like to physically go into my blog, read a few blogs and get inspired to write. I will say though, I still have found something or some situation every day where I think, “God, I have to blog about that.” But in the end I end up scrunching it up into a 100 character Facebook post which typically doesn’t do the blogable situation justice.

For example: This past weekend we went out to dinner with the kids. Emily dressed herself in true Emily fashion and wore a rocker girl type t-shirt, black Capri pants, lavender and pink rain boots, a white Willie Nelson bandanna she had won the night before at a school carnival and hot pink sunglasses. At first we wanted to say something to her about it but then we thought, “Meh. Who’s she hurting really?" Plus, she’s showing her own personal style. She was satisfied with her clothing choice.

Not long after we sat down a couple came and sat across from us. He was a ginormous guy with a shaved head and goatee. She had naturally brown hair but the back of it at the bottom had been dyed blonde quite a while ago and she had seventy-ninety-teen bobby pins and hair clippies holding it up off her neck. Also her bangs were probably at once purple but neglect had turned them more lavender-ish. She had on a lot of eyeliner that looked like it was applied in the wee hours of the morning and not really looked after since. She was also a big girl and they both had a cute little girl with them who looked to be about three.

I don’t have an issue with big people, as I am a big girl myself, however I have a very firm policy when it comes to people and what they wear, no matter WHAT their size and here it is: Just because it comes in your size, doesn’t mean you should wear it. This woman did NOT live by that policy. She didn’t even live by anything close to it. She was wearing jeans that I’m sure left black and blue marks around her waist. I’m certain that when she unfastens them at night her front-butt goes, “THANK JESUS!” and squeaks out a faint, “mommy…” when she puts them back on. Her shirt didn’t even come close to touching the top of her pants and the jacket she had on was laughable, at best. The entire time they ate she bitched at her kid. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but from what I saw the kid didn’t seem to be doing too much wrong but mommy had a bad attitude. Daddy? He just sat there looking at them. Based on his actions he was pretty used to it.

She was also the kind of person that had to look everyone up and down that came in after her. Not just casually as they walked by her either. Oh no. Like, “I’m going to turn completely around in my seat, crane my neck around this pole and check you out” kind of look. When she was done checking each person out she would turn back around and roll her eyes. As though we were all there for her to judge. Suddenly all of us were the crazy-costumed off-key singers on the auditions portion of American Idol and she was our Simon Cowell.

Here’s the best part of all of her judging. The minute she had sat down in her booth her body broke free of whatever clothing it could. I could see a good 2.5 inches of her ass crack. Her side fat was literally bursting out of the top of her jeans. Her tiny t-shirt had rolled up in an attempt to escape so now I could see a pretty big portion of the middle of her body. At this point she may as well have walked in wearing a bikini. At no point did she try to correct any of her wardrobe malfunctions.

When it came time for us to leave Adam and Blake headed towards the doors and Em and I stayed behind a minute to put on our coats. Little Miss Ray of Sunshine poked her head out from her booth, leaned over her side fat and looked Emily over twice. Then she looked at her miserable man and rolled her eyes. I thought, "oh no you didn't, honey!" Seriously? You're gonna come up in DENNY'S looking like THAT and then roll your eyes at my eight year old? If Emily would have noticed her being judged by this horrible Jabba the Hutt then I probably would have said something. I probably would have gotten beaten, but I probably would have said something. Instead I just shook my head and we left. It must be a terrible burden to be so fucking perfect.

a forgotten conversation...

Here's a conversation I had with Adam that I had wanted to post here but forgot about until just now.


Me: I want an electric blanket for Christmas.
Adam: No! They're dangerous. Don't you remember 'The Burning Bed'?
Me: That had nothing to do with an electric blanket and everything to do with the fact that she POURED GASOLINE ON HIM IN HIS SLEEP AND SET HIM ON FIRE.
Adam: Is that what it was about? I never saw it.
Me: Of course. Well if Michael Jackson wouldn't have died, you probably would have had MANY opportunities to see it on cable.
Adam: Why? Was Farrah Fawcett in it?

Finally an update, but mostly about Christmas...

Yes, I have long been neglecting my blog. I have been very busy with the holidays and work and life in general. My sister's father in-law had been ill with cancer. Back in November they decided to hire Adam to come out everyday to be with him and help care for him since Adam used to be a CNA in a nursing home. They worked out a payment agreement and everything was great. Adam went out there twice and the day before Thanksgiving he passed away. My sister's in-laws are REALLY great people, always inviting us into their home on holidays and buying the kids Christmas presents. Thanksgiving ended up being a quiet and kinda sad day and Christmas just wasn't the same.

Speaking of Christmas, can I just say that I am SOOOO glad it's over! All of our Christmas stuff is stored out at my sister's house in one of their garages (yes, I said one, because they have a two-car garage, a very large shed and then some sort of big, I don't know, out-building thing that's like the size of a three-car garage where my BIL keeps his plows, 4 wheelers, and whatever else he thinks he needs.

As we went through our stuff we realized that mice had gotten into the xmas tree box and chewed a giant hole in my tree skirt that my mom had given me. I was very sad. Also they seemed to have chewed on the lights on the tree because there were two sections we just never got lit. We bought this xmas tree a few weeks before Blake was born and I was attracted to it because it was pre-lit and it spun. I loved our spinning tree. Well, last year when Adam brought the stuff home he couldn't find my spinning tree stand so he had to buy me a regular one and I had to do without. This year STILL no spinning tree stand and the regular one he bought last year just didn't want to keep the tree in an upright position. We put the tree up on a Tuesday night and it snowed that night. Adam got up at 3am to go plow snow and the tree had fallen over. Ornaments everywhere. It was horrible. The only funny part about the whole experience was that the tree had fallen onto Blake's snow pants so it looked like he was under the tree. I snapped a couple pictures when I decided to stick Blake's boots in the end of the pants to make it look more authentic.

Adam decided to buy me a new spinning tree stand. While while we were at the store we were telling the girl at the register about our tree disaster and the pictures I took. She said it would make a funny Christmas card.



In the end I only lost one ornament that couldn't be repaired, so I guess that's not too bad considering how many were broken.

Christmas came and my sister, of course, went WAAAAAY overboard with the stuff she bought for the kids. We run into several problems with her at Christmas time.

1. She never had kids of her own so she doesn't have other people to spend money on.

2. She makes good money and is good with her money so she has a lot of it to spend at Christmas time.

3. My sister likes to shop. And shop, and shop, and shop.

4. She probably spends EASILY more than $500 on each kid. Easily.

5. Because she buys so much it takes us FOR-EV-ER to open everything.

My sister and I were talking just before Christmas about when and where we were going to do everything. I said I had Christmas Eve off and so did she. My BIL only had to work until 1:00 so we figured we would start as soon as he got home and just unwrap all day. She actually said, "I hope we have time to unwrap everything." Knowing we would have from like 2pm until, I don't know, 10pm--?? she was concerned there wouldn't be enough time. This is how much stuff there was, people!

Come Christmas Eve my BIL farted around after work and once my sister FINALLY called him at like 3:00 to find out where he was (seriously, who would wait that long?) he says he didn't know when we were doing our stuff. He was at a friend's house researching some gun he's been panting over. He still had to go pick up his mom, who as it turns out, also wasn't ready. WTH? Now I KNOW we're not going to get done. And we didn't, though we came close.

The kids got way more stuff than they need. I got a large jewelry box armoire, a giant roll of stamps, an In-Styler, some Hallmark ornaments, Adam and I each got a gift certificate to Texas Roadhouse and that's all I can remember.

Normally on Christmas day we would go over to my sister's in-laws for dinner and to watch them open their presents. See, my sister and our cousin married two guys who are brothers. This means that my sister and our cousin both have the same in-laws, which is kinda cool cuz then we all get to be together for Christmas. Because the FIL passed away it was decided we weren't going to their house for Christmas day to give the MIL a break. They are farm people and she makes the hugest spread of food. Well on her own she decided she DID want a Christmas at her house and she decided to have it the day AFTER Christmas. This made our Christmas extravaganza, the one I just wanted to be DONE WITH, last three days. THREE DAYS PEOPLE!

Enough about Christmas, because seriously...

We are in the middle of Girl Scout cookie time. This is Emily's first year as a scout (Brownie, actually) and we're not doing too bad on cookie sales. I was surprised that they only give you a couple weeks to sell and then that's it. You're done. People do love their GS cookies, though. One of our neighbors bought 17 boxes.

Blake has been pretty sick this month. He has been tested for everything and they were never able to find out what was wrong with him. We fought a fever that would get up to over 103 for over a week. He missed the first week and a day of school after Christmas break. He wasn't eating and would just sleep all the time. Whatever it was finally worked it way out of his system and he went back to school this last Tuesday. It took another day or two for his appetite to come back but he's finally eating again. He ended up losing four pounds, poor guy. I'm so glad he's better though. There's nothing scarier than a sick kid.

Well I hope all of you are doing well! Sorry for the long delay in posts! I'll try to make it up by only waiting like 6 weeks until my next post, instead of 8 or 9, ha!

remember me??

Will be posting a new blog tomorrow, I promise. Right now it's off to bed because I have to work tonight.