uh...what?

NEW BLOG!!

2011-05-18T12:12:00.003-05:00

I have a new blog for anyone who might still be interest in my random ramblings. I created it as a safe place for anyone to read. A lot of what I have posted on this blog I would not want certain friends or family reading. The other one I am willing to share with anyone, including those who are on my FB. You can find it at:

http://wawaswrants.blogspot.com/

Hope to see most of you at the new digs.

uh...what?

2010-11-30T22:04:00.002-06:00

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

2010-03-08T21:08:00.003-06:00

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...

2010-01-19T15:01:00.002-06:00

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...

2010-01-18T08:31:00.005-06:00

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??

2010-01-15T19:34:00.001-06:00

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

The October wrap-up

2009-11-03T14:34:00.003-06:00

Adam was nice enough to point out to me the other day that I hadn't written anything on my blog "in like...forever." I guess he doesn't realize how busy I am each day robbing and killing people in Mafia Wars.
　
Since I don't have a really great memory and can't remember much about what I've done this month, I'll just start (and finish) with what's happened in the last week.
Of course there's Halloween. Emily takes dance class at our local Family Museum and she has for the last three years. This is her fourth. Every year we get a yearly membership so that Blake can play while Emily goes to class each week. Along with our membership we also get a free ticket to their yearly Scarecrow Shenanigans. This year's Shenanigans was last Sunday. Here are some highlights:

Blake dressed as a Vampire:

Emily dressed as a hippie:

She also made vomit out of cooked applesauce, some jello and a host of breakfast foods:

She dissected a real cow's eye (this is the lens she is holding):

　
We watched the Limelight Dancers while Blake checked himself out in the mirror:

We went on a hay rack ride:

...and had a generally good time:

Of course we decorated the house for Halloween. Here's our skeletons doing the YMCA:

We carved pumpkins. This is my creation:

...and that's about it. Oh yeah. We also added to our little family last Friday. Internet, meet Hank. Our new 10 week-old shih tzu:

Happy fall, everyone!!!

gack and gays

2009-10-10T10:28:00.003-05:00

Ungh. It's been a month since I've blogged. I blame my employer. They've blocked all blogs from our computer system so I'm unable to access my blog, or any blog for that matter, from work. Work was where I used to do most of my blogging. Work was where I STARTED my blog. Now it's all blocked and I have to find time at home to do what I used to love doing. But that's that I guess.

So last Friday was the big Miss Gay Iowa pageant. Jim and I went in '08, sadly missed last year due to no funding and we almost missed it this year for the same reason. We just didn't know if we were going to be able to afford it all, especially a hotel stay for three nights. That's when I remembered that a good friend of mine lived in that area and I asked if we could stay with her for the weekend. Her exact answer, I believe was, "Duh. Yeah." and so we were psyched to be going.

We got to her house around 6pm after some horrid traffic in Iowa City and left for the pageant a couple hours later. We didn't get dinner so we stopped for some McNuggets on the way. A friend of Jim's snagged us a reserved table that wasn't being used and the drinking began. One long island ice tea turned into two, three, four then five. Getting the fifth LIIT (OMG--did anyone realize that the anagram for that is LIIT?? How appropriate.) is I think the last thing I remember. I don't remember drinking it. I only slightly remember asking Jim where the bathroom was and I remember sort of telling him I couldn't get in because apparently I was going through some wrong door. I absolutely do NOT remember walking the half a block to the car and I don't remember a whole lot after that until I woke up in the bathtub, dry heaving at 7am. From what I'm told I totally Linda Blaired in Jim's car. I sat there with this look on my face:

*sorry--will have to post this picture later. Blogger's being a dirty whore*

Then I looked at Jim and growled out a bunch of puke. I did it several more times with Jim saying to me, "Amy Warren I need you to open the door and puke outside." Of course I never opened the door and he would have to do it. Since the pageant venue and the house we were staying at were a 20 minute drive, these pit stops were taking place on the interstate. Then Jim would tell me, "Amy Warren I need you to get back in the car, the cops were coming." Of course they weren't but I believed him and I would shut the door and say, "OK, go."

So it wasn't just puking that I was doing in Jim's car. It was a whole trifecta. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. I have no idea how I got down the stairs to where we were sleeping in the house but when Jim got me inside and came back in from cleaning up the big chunks he found me downstairs in the bathroom, naked except for a bra and sitting in the bathtub. I'm told I growled a, "turn on the water." to which he did. When I woke up at 7am, dry heaving, the water was warm because I had the sense to keep letting some out and put hot water in. Also Jim was in the bathroom with me (he had shut the shower curtain after the first time he came in.) I was told to wiggle my toes. I complied. I told Jim to get me a pair of shorts and a tshirt out of my suitcase. Then, something to this effect was said, "When you get out of the tub, be careful because there's a lot of water on the floor."

"OK."

"...also...your pants are here on the floor and your...panties. Be careful with those too. You had an...accident..."

"..."

Yeah. In case you didn't understand my trifecta reference earlier, when I let loose in Jim's car. I let loose. I puked. I peed. I schatt my pants. Ungh.

So I put on my shorts and t-shirt and laid down in bed under the warm covers. I got up off and on through the day but basically slept until 3 in the afternoon. At one point Jim had brought me toast but I was only able to eat a very tiny piece. At 3:00 I knew I had to eat something and take my insulin, etc. I still felt really crappy. I drove us into Iowa City and we stopped at Village Inn. I ordered a sandwich and soup but was only able to eat about half of the soup and none of the sandwich. It just didn't look appealing. My meal came with a piece of pie and I was actually able to eat that. I took my sandwich in a box and we headed to Wal-Mart for cleaning supplies. I had some cleanin' to do back at the house.

We spent a couple hours cleaning and I was starting to feel like myself again. I went inside to eat my sandwich and take my insulin and a shower. Saturday night was a dry night for me. We had fun relaying the story from the night before and I got to be the designated driver. I didn't even want to SMELL alcohol.

Sunday morning we went to a local casino for their breakfast buffet and then Jim and I did a little gambling where I won $65 and ended up about $35 ahead. That night was the finals and we took our house host with us. Again I was DD and Jim and Audrey had a good time ordering different martinis off the menu. I was perfectly content with my Diet Pepsi.

I'm sure Miss Gay Iowa 2010 won't ever be forgotten, especially after I pulled a hat trick in Jim's car. I'm also sure Jim will never let me in his car again after even one shot for fear I'll technicolor yawn on his sleeve, pants, seats, ceiling, shifter, seat belt, etc. again!

The Creature on our Fridge

2009-09-08T21:20:00.003-05:00

We've been fighting with Blake since just after birth to keep him out of the refrigerator. Last year we got one of those locks for the fridge door and that worked for a while but soon he figured it out and we've been back to square one for several months. He gets in it before everyone else is up, or while we're doing other things. We're constantly finding pasta or chicken or packages of lunchables torn open and under his bed, dresser or wherever he wants to stash them. Today was the last straw.

Blake is horribly, HORRIBLY afraid of Halloween decorations. Two weeks ago we had to go to Factory Card Outlet and that was the day they started putting their Halloween stuff up. They didn't actually have anything OUT just the ginormous sign on their door that says HALLOWEEN. Blake TOTALLY freaked the hell out. I said, "Fine. I'll just leave you hear all by yourself outside." "OK." he said. WTG, Amy. That worked out well. I said, "I can't leave you out here you HAVE to go in with me. We're not even going to LOOK at the Halloween stuff. We're going to the other side of the store."

"I just want to hide here under your shirt." he said and started lifting up the back of my shirt. He screamed and cried and I had to pull on his arm so hard to get him in the door I thought I would end up dislocating it at the shoulder but I got him in. I kept my promise and we went to the other side of the store and he declared himself "very brave" at the registers. Sure ya are, buddy.

So, today after we found four hot dogs STILL IN THE PACKAGE in the trash for no apparent reason and two boxes of lunchables torn up in his room (not the little ones either, the expensive mamas with the candy and drink pouch) we had HAD IT! Adam went to Factory Card Outlet after dinner to find something horrible to hang on the refrigerator. He came home and we affixed this bad boy to the fridge.

It has a sensor so when you come near it it wiggles and shakes, it's eyes light up and says things like, "Let me out of here!!" Blake hates it. We are all loving it. If it works we're adopting it, naming it Tammy and starting her a college fund.

Fucktards and a birthday...not necessarily in that order

2009-09-07T23:16:00.002-05:00

I'm getting pretty stoked for Emily's surprise party except I've only got two confirmed guests from her class and one neighbor girl. Three neighbor boys are coming, at least I assume, but they don't "count." They don't get to get one of the fabulous rocker girl parting gifts I'm putting together. I've got so much cleaning to do this week it's re.dick but whatever. At least I'll get some alone time this week during the day while the kids are in school so it will be a bit easier to do just that. I've also got to get the cake ordered at some point.

Blake's bus fucktards are still pissing me off and I can only blame my own laziness for not calling the principal to complain. I'm not usually like that when it comes to things involving my kids. Last Tuesday Blake's bus that was supposed to arrive at 3:55 came at 4:50. That's not a typo. Four motha-fuckin' fiddy! At 4:40 I called the bus barn to find out where the hell my kid was. I told them my son rides bus 19 and wasn't there yet...supposed to be 3:55...what the hell? The guy said, bus 19 is here, the keys are hanging up and the driver is gone. I FLIPPED! I was like, WHERE THE HELL IS MY SON?? He said, are you sure he isn't on bus 27? Oh. Yeah. Sorryboutthat. He said the bus was running about 20 minutes late. TWENTY MINUTES???? It's 4:40! I said, when EXACTLY is this bus supposed to arrive because the last I was told it was 3:55. "Oh, no." he said. "Let me check but that's not right." He comes back to say the bus should be arriving at 4:04. "OOOOOOHHHHHHH. Well now that makes a big difference, doesn't it? Still wanna tell me the bus is running about 20 minutes late?" "He should be there in about 10 minutes ok?" "mmm." Was all I could muster out of my mouth because of the shear anger that was building up inside of me. I hung up, mumbled a bunch of stuff about his mother and the size of his manhood and waited the ten minutes for Blakey to get there. The next day when the bus arrived at 4:37 and I was mumbling to myself about not calling the principal, the bus driver had the BALLS to say, "Not bad. Better than yesterday, huh?" I gave him a look that told him I wasn't afraid to rip his nose off with my teeth and put Blake in the car. I hate those fucktards.

Oh yeah, I didn't die.

2009-08-30T22:14:00.002-05:00

Geez, it's been a while since I posted last and maybe some of you think I died from complications of having a ginormous hernia, but guess what bitches? I didn't so HA!

I've been getting better a little bit each day. I had a follow-up appointment with my surgeon on the 21st and at that time I had a large lump--a hematoma--where they removed one of the hernias and it was VERY sensitive. In fact it would hurt to have clothing over it. I had already been told to prepare for it and I was also told it would go away. My surgeon agreed it was normal and said I would just have to bide my time until it went away. We talked about when I would be able to go back to work and although I don't have a strenuous job in ANY sort of way, the thought of sitting in the office for eight hours straight without really being able to get up and move about did NOT sound appealing to me at all. Being AWAKE for eight hours straight at that time didn't sound appealing either. My doc said it would take me about a week and a half before I felt pretty normal so he gave me the go ahead to work anytime after the 30th and he had that about spot on. Yesterday and today I've felt somewhat close to my old self. My first day back is this coming Wednesday. I still have the hard spot, but it's going away and it's definately not as sensitive as it used to be. This week I'm going to concentrate on getting back to a 3rd shift schedule. I've been staying up late and while the kids are in school I'm going to take a nap. I haven't worked a 3rd shift, (or ANY shift) since August 9th so I'm a little out of practice. Hopefully I don't fall asleep. Or if I do hopefully no one catches me, lol.

The kids are adjusting well to school and I am LOVING the quiet time I get in the afternoon. I am NOT loving Blake's bus fucktards but there's not a whole lot I can do about them. They started out saying they would be dropping Blake off at the stop at 3:42 but for the first two days of school they weren't there before 4:15. They told Adam 4:15 would be the new drop-off time. The following week Blake didn't have school on Monday and on Tuesday the bus didn't get there until almost 4:30. The following day they called me at home at 4:06 and said the bus was waiting on me. I said, "OK, now they told me the new time was 4:15." They said, "Yeah but someone dropped out and takes a different bus so the new time is 3:55." I knew they were lying because how can ONE kid affect the bus schedule so much that now they are able to arrive up to 35 minutes sooner??? Does he put his feet on each side of the doors and kick and scream when they try to take him off the bus?

So, the next time I go by what they say and I arrive ready for a 3:55 drop-off. Wouldn't you know it they got there at 3:58. Hmm. Maybe that kid was a freak of nature after all. The next day? 4:15. FUCK! They act like I have nothing better to do than to sit and wait on their asses. Christ.

I don't have any big plans this week except hopefully a haircut tomorrow and on Thursday night we're going to the circus. I'm looking forward to it.

Adam had to get new brakes on his van today. They started grinding last night when we were heading down the road to go out for a bit so we turned around and took my car. This morning he started calling around and found a place that would put on new front brake pads for $120. I was out doing some shopping when Adam called with one of those, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" I always ask for the bad news first and there was going to be more work that needed to be done on the brakes. It was going to cost $240. Nothing like doubling the price. Luckily Adam's check on Friday had been a big'un so we had the money for it, but it just wasn't something we were planning on. Of course, when are these things ever planned, right? Oh yeah, and it turns out he didn't even have any good news so that sucked too, lol.

Emily's birthday is in two weeks and we've decided to throw her a surprise birthday party. I've given it a rocker girl theme. It's going to be all pink and black decorations and I got a bunch of stuff from the $1 bins at Target today for the attendees. I got gift bag two-packs that are black and white hounds tooth and the other is pink with an outline of the Eiffel Tower done in houndstooth. I also got glow bracelets, and rocker buttons. I'm going to pick up pop rocks and probably either colored hairclips or fuzzy pimp hats I found at the dollar store. I want to find some nail polish too. Oh, and I got some rub-on tattoos. I also got pink, black and houndstooth sticker letters I'm going to put on the outside of each bag in the each girl's name. I got blow up guitars and microphones and some signs to hang around the house. I found cute pink and black plates and napkins at wal-mart but I'm going to pick those up a little closer to the date.

Emily thinks her party is the following weekend so when I made out the invitations for the girls in her class I printed them on pretty stationery and explained in them that it was a surprise and that she thinks the party is the following weekend and PRETTY, PRETTY PLEASE DON'T SAY ANYTHING BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE AND I AM ABLE TO STAY UP WAAAAY PAST YOUR BEDTIME AND YOU SLEEP PRETTY SOUND, DON'T YOU??????? So hopefully they don't say anything. I also printed "Please open when you get home" on the envelopes and told Emily I did that so they don't disturb the class and open them during class time. I asked her to pass them out as close to the end of the day as possible. I hope she remembers. Now I just need to come up with some rocker girl themed games and we'll be all set. Anyone have any ideas???

ER visits minus George Clooney suck!

2009-08-15T20:34:00.002-05:00

Adam and I have a small DJ business. Not sure if you knew that. We are DJ'ing the wedding of one of Adam's bandmates next month. On Thursday I took Blake to school then came home and decided to work a bit on our music list. We had downloaded some new music and I wanted to add it to our list of songs we have. Also I had noticed the last time I looked at the list that it was a bit out of alphabetical order.

I ended up working on the list for a few hours and right around 2:00 it hit me very hard and very suddenly. I had to go to the bathroom. LIKE. NOW!!! I went to the bathroom and suddenly I had some sharp stomach pains. Weird I thought but maybe it was just because of the sudden bathroom-ness??? I thought if I laid down for a bit it would go away. So I did. I laid on the bed for a couple minutes when I sent a text to my neighbor.

"Suddenly I feel shitty. Bad stomach pains."
"Maybe you're pregnant and don't know it. Abby watched those shows on TV all day Monday."
"Shut up. I hate you."

At this point I thought I was feeling better but when I got up I wasn't. In fact a few seconds later it hurt worse.

"Still feel like crap" I text to my neighbor.
"How far apart are your contractions?"
"I hate you."
"When you go into labor, which hospital do you want to have your baby?"
"OMG. I'm going to take a hot bath. Text me at 3:15 because I have to get Blake from the bus stop."

I take a hot bath and it's not helping. I didn't even stay in there until 3:15. I lay naked in bed for a while. My neighbor texts me:

"Is the pain on your right side?"
"Yes."
"Push on your stomach just above your hip bone. Does it hurt to do that or shake your hips?"

I'm laying on my left side and pushing, not exactly sure where above my hips I should be pushing, but it hurts, but not any worse than when I'm not pushing. I shake my hips. Yep. That hurts.

"It hurts when I shake my hips."

Then I decide to lay on my back and push above my hip. OH. DEAR. GOD. IN. HEAVEN. IT. HURTS. TO. LAY. ON. MY. BACK.

I swing my arm over and grab the side of the bed to try to get myself back onto my side. I start crying from the pain. I realize there's no way I'm going to be able to get Blake from the bus. I'm going to have to call Adam at work.

I call him crying. Tell him I'm in pain and he has to go get Blake and then come home and take me to the hospital. Blake's bus is supposed to be at the stop at 3:42. It was now 3:16.

"Can you make it there in a half hour?"
"I can try. Are you going to be ok? Are you going to call an ambulance?"
"No. You're going to take me after you get Blake."
"OK but if it starts to hurt more you call an ambulance, do you understand?"
"Yes." but I had no intention of calling an ambulance, lol.

So I'm laying in bed, in pain and I'm trying to figure out in my head how long I have to suffer before Adam gets there. My neighbor texts me and says she'll get Emily from the bus stop and have her come to her house. She'll take Blake when he gets home. She rocks despite the pregnancy comments.

Adam calls around 3:30 and says he's almost at Blake's stop. I figure I only have about 20 minutes before he gets there and I can be on my way. I figure I better get dressed. I decide a t-shirt and pants is all I'm going to wear. No bra. No underwear. I'm not really sure why I decided no underwear. I guess I just didn't want to mess with it.

Adam calls at 3:50. Still no bus. Great. It's happening again. The fucktards are late just like yesterday. The day before, Blake's bus didn't show up until 4:15, a half-hour late. Four o'clock comes. Still no bus.

Ugh.

At 4:15 Adam calls again. No bus but one of the parents had called the bus barn and found out they had forgotten a kid at the school (fucktards) and they had to go back. They said they would be there in 10-15 minutes.

I think I'm going to die!

Adam finally gets home a little after 4:30 and we head to the ER. I give a urine sample and I get a gown and an IV. I give my story a couple times to a nurse then finally a doctor and a CT scan is ordered. It's been a couple hours and I send Adam home to eat something and take a shower. I drink some contrast dye mixed with fruit punch, which was lovely, and watch Family Guy.

Adam got back just before I went to my CT scan. The scan took all of five minutes. A half hour later a new doctor comes in and says they didn't find anything with the scan but my white blood cell count is up and oh, did you know you're diabetic? No, but isn't that wonderful?

New doctor seems really stumped and says appendicitis or a gall bladder attack doesn't come on as quickly as this did so maybe it's a cyst on an ovary or maybe an ovary is twisted. They order an ultrasound.

Ultrasounds are done and they determine I have two hernias, YAY! New doctor says he's not sure it's something that surgery will want to operate on but we should probably admit me to get my sugar down. Totally not what I wanted to hear.

Adam decides he's going home because it's almost midnight and he has to work the next day. I FINALLY leave the ER and go to a room around 1:30. After vitals, a history and a long lecture about diabetes and exercise and losing weight, my nurse gave me some pain pills and left me alone at 2:50am. She said she would peek in at me at 3:30 and if they weren't doing anything she would give me morphine. But if I was sleeping she was going to leave me alone.

"Ooooh! Morphine!!!" I thought. I'm totally staying awake to get morphine.

She also said she was sending in the patient care tech at 3am to check my blood sugar and then again at 4am. Also at 4am the lab was coming for an obscene amount of blood.

Well, unfortunately I was only able to stay awake for about 2.3 minutes and the next thing I knew it was 4am and a crazy looking woman from the lab was coming in to draw that obscene amount of blood. Thirty minutes and two fresh bruises later she was finished and I dozed off again. Right after that they were back to do more vitals and I just decided to try to stay awake. It was pretty obvious I wasn't going to get much sleep.

The surgeon came in around 9:30 and decided he was going to operate. He said the hernias wouldn't get better without fixing them surgically. I was given a surgery time of 3:00. I called everyone to let them know.

The surgery turned out well. They were able to do it laproscopically so I have five small incisions. I also have a belly button again. I haven't had one in several years. See, when I had my c-section done with Blake, they found two hernias then and repaired them. I had a belly button after that but not for very long before it poked back out again. I always figured maybe I had another hernia but it never hurt so I didn't think much about it.

I was back in my room around 6:15 and not long after that I got to EAT! I hadn't eaten since around 11:30am on Thursday and here it was almost 31 hours later. They served me a small cup of cream of chicken soup and red jell-o. I didn't care that cream of chicken soup should only be used for cooking, not really for eating by itself. It tasted soooo good.

They told me the sooner I could get up and walk around the quicker I would heal and I figured it would get me out of there quicker too so Adam and I went for a little jaunt around the unit. We came back to my room and were both nodding off so I decided to get some sleep and Adam made a home on the couch in my room for the night.

I slept fairly decently and for the most part everyone left me alone. I got up for good around 5am and watched a hella-marathon of The Golden Girls. I was told breakfast would come between 7:30 and 8:00 and I counted the minutes until it got there! After eating I took a shower and of course two of my doctors came while I was in there. One was my diabetic doctor and the other a general practice physician.

The GP physician came back in a while later and she said she would start discharge papers. Whoohoo! Just before lunch one of the surgeons came in to talk to me about my surgery, check my incisions and sign off on my discharge. He gave me instructions and was on his way.

I ate my lunch and my nurses came in to make sure I knew how to check my sugar and give myself insulin. After they were satisfied with all of that I was outta there.

Adam and I stopped at the pharmacy and $222 later we were back at home. The majority of our costs were from my insulin. My diabetes doctor said he doesn't think I'll be on it for long and then I'll go to an oral medication so hopefully we don't have that expense for very long.

Adam and the kids are gone for the night and wont be home until tomorrow morning so I have instructions to veg out on the couch and watch movies. I'm feeling a bit restless so I've been playing around on facebook and here on the old blog. I feel bruised, beaten and sore but I'm sooo glad to be home.

I've got a prescription of vicodin with two refills and it looks like I probably wont be able to work this Wednesday night either. (I was supposed to work last night and tonight). We'll see how the next few days treat me. It seems like with each passing hour my stomach gets a bit harder and a bit more purple, but they tell me it's normal. I definitely feel better than I did Thursday afternoon but I'm still getting around pretty slowly.

Fucktard update

2009-08-10T23:45:00.002-05:00

The bus people did actually call today and they also managed to screw up Blake's schedule. The woman was like, "He'll be picked up at 11:33..." I interrupted to say, "But he's eating lunch before class. He's in the lunch program."

"I don't know what that means."
"Well it means he has to be at school by 11:10 to eat lunch."
"I don't know anything about that. I'll have to tell my supervisor and we'll have to get back to you."
"Do you know when??"
"Probably not today. Maybe tomorrow."
"It'll have to be by tomorrow, Wednesday is the first day of school."
"Yes."
"OK..."

I just know I'm going to end up driving him to school on the first day. *sigh*

It's getting closer...

2009-08-09T04:06:00.002-05:00

Only three more days until the first day of school. I'm getting a little anxious to put my little boy on a bus and just let them drive off with him. He'll be starting afternoon preschool but will be in the lunch program before class. The fucktards at the bus service haven't "created the preschool bus route" yet so I still don't know what time he'll be picked up or when I have to come get him. The only things I know is where the bus will be picking up and dropping off and that he will be eating lunch at 11:10. I'm guessing he'll have to be on the bus around 10:45 and that I'll pick him up around 3:45. Once the fucktards figure it out on Monday, they say they'll let me know. I have a feeling I'll still end up calling their lazy asses.

I am looking forward to having the house peacefully quiet four days of the week and not having two kids who have all day to make a mess for me to bitch about and eventually clean. I'm also looking forward to my just-me-all-by-myself lunch at Olive Garden. Not sure what day I'll go but I'm thinking Thursday of this week. I might be still too freaked out to go on Wednesday after putting Blake on that bus.

With regard to Rock/Paper/Scissors

2009-08-05T14:24:00.001-05:00

I found this quote regarding the game, Rock/Paper/Scissors and it made me laugh out loud. Adam and I are prone to many, many games of RPS. I thought I would share it with you.

I understand that Scissors can beat Paper and I get how Rock can beat Scissors, but there’s no fucking way Paper could beat Rock. Apparently, Paper is supposed to magically “wrap around” Rock, leaving it immobile. Why the hell can’t Paper do this to Scissors? No, never mind Scissors, why can’t Paper do this to people? Why aren’t sheets of college-ruled notebook paper constantly smothering students as they attempt to take notes in class? I’ll tell you why: because Paper can’t beat anybody. A rock would tear that shit up in about a minute.

Whenever I play Rock/Paper/Scissors, I always choose Rock. When somebody claims to have beaten me with their Paper, I punch them in the face with my already-clenched fist. I’ll say, “Oh, shit, man, I’m sorry, I thought Paper would protect you. Asshole.”

Classic.

Back To School debt...

2009-08-04T11:43:00.001-05:00

I spent a whole lotta time last weekend shopping for back-to-school stuff for the kids. Except for a back-pack, Blake needed nothing supply-wise. Emily was the only one that actually needed school supplies. I learned the hard-way when Emily was in Kindergarten to buy extra supplies during this time of the year. During Emily's first year of school I would get notes home saying, "Emily needs a red crayon." Or, "Emily needs another orange marker." What I was once able to pick up at Wal-Mart at the end of summer for $0.15 a pack was now $2.37. Now when the supply list calls for one box of 24 crayons, I buy six. One pack of 8 crayola markers? Great, here ya go and there's seven more where that came from. Last year I even bought her two backpacks because the ones she liked happened to only be $5 and I thought for sure she'd put a big hole in the bottom of it before the year was up. Wouldn't you know it that bag lasted the whole year so this year I didn't have to buy a backpack!

I love back-to-school shopping. I always have. When I was little every year my mom and I would go to KMart and she would put a ton of clothes on layaway. I loved that week or two before school would start when we would go pick them up. You always forget exactly what it is you put on layaway so it's exciting to see those shirts, pants and dresses hanging in that clear plastic bag and go, "Oh yeah! I forgot I got that!"

I was really looking forward to this past Friday and going shopping with the kids. I knew we had the extra money to pick up what we needed so that was one less thing I had to worry about. I had to stop at Emily's school first because I had a fear I had forgotten to register her. I went in ready to sit for at least 30 minutes filling out paperwork. Turns out she was good to go. Sweet! Then we went to lunch at our usual Friday spot, Chick Fil-A. When we left the school and I asked the kids where they wanted to go (secretly hoping for a Chick Fil-A answer) Emily said, "How 'bout McDonalds?" Blake said, "No! Not McDonalds! Chick Fil-A is better!" Double Sweet!

From there we headed to Wal-Mart. The first thing I did was let Blake pick out a backpack. I thought maybe it would keep him occupied while Emily and I got her supplies. He is starting his final year of preschool this year and will be riding the bus and everything. He'll be gone Monday-Thursday from about 10:30 to 3:30 or 3:45. I'm going to miss him terribly and I know I will cry on the first day when I put him on that bus but dang, am I looking forward to Blake-free afternoons! I already have a just-me lunch planned at Olive Garden. Soup, salad and breadsticks here I come! The first backpack he saw was G.I. Joe. That was the one he wanted. Then, no. He wanted something else. Then it was Transformers. No, not that Transformers, the other one. Nope, I like this Spiderman one. Not that one it has the Hulk. The Hulk is scary. Eventually we settled on Transformers. I started going around putting Emily's supplies in the cart. Boxes of crayons...check. Number two pencils...check. White Vinyl erasers...check. As I'm going, Blake's putting his own made-up list of supplies in the cart. When I take them out he has a fit. I let him cry for a while when I finally can't take it anymore. His own $0.15 box of crayons shuts him up.

After that we were off to the shoes. I think Blake tried on about five pair before he settled on some skater shoes that he liked. I learned early on with Blake, if he doesn't like, he's not going to eat it, wear it or use it. It's better to let him pick out things on his own, that way you know they'll get used. Emily found some shoes she liked and we were off to the clothes. I got Blake a few pairs of pants and shirts. There has been talk for the last year or more that Blake may have some color blindness. Despite that he has always been very good at dressing himself in clothes that match. Emily, however could care less if she is wearing a flowered shirt and plaid shorts with Christmas socks in May. I made sure to show everything to Blake before I put it in the cart. At one point I asked him if he liked this certain green shirt. He said yes if he had those green pants to wear with it. Done and done.

Emily ended up with a couple pairs of pants, a shirt that came with a vest and scarf and a dress. I made it out $154.00 later, which I didn't think was awful. I also picked up our Gordman's layaway on the way home.

Saturday morning after work I had planned on going to the farmer's market but the rain had different plans. I called Adam and told him I was going to go get groceries instead. He wanted to come along so I had to go home first and wait for him and the kids to get ready. We ate breakfast and made a new itinerary that included paying the rent and going to JCPenney for their door buster deals. I've been having a hard time finding jeans for Emily because while she is average height for her age, she's got a booty and a belly and apparently short legs. After literally making her try on at least a dozen pairs of jeans this week at Goodwill, I found out women's size 0 capri jeans, or ones that come rolled up and can be un-rolled fit her perfect. I just knew I could find her some size 0 capri jeans at Penney's.

I found some on clearance and after trying on several more we walked away from that department with just one pair. We found two outfits for Blake and while we were in line I remembered I wanted to check out the shoes. Adam tried to protest but finally gave in. I scored in the shoe department getting Emily two pairs of leather mary janes, one brown and one blue for $3.55 each.

After that we decided it was time for me to get new tires on the front of my car because mine are very near bald. We went to Farm and Fleet and I started hitting up their clearance sales. First to the shoes. The kids found rain boots they liked and they were half off. My dad had said he wanted to get the kids rain boots so he ended up paying me back for those. Then I found a pair of boot-type shoes for Blake in his size. They were $20 then half-off. Adam and I decided they would be better than the skater shoes he picked out at Wal-Mart and after I let him run up and down the aisle in them a few times and telling him how much "faster" he'll be able to run in them than the ones he picked out at Wal-Mart, Blake was all for it too. They had a bunch of clothes that weren't just summer clothes on clearance for Emily and I grabbed a couple outfits and some shirts. Once I got to the register I found out Blake's shoes were actually $4.88. Sweet Lincoln's Mullet! So now I think we're finally done with school shopping. My wallet says so, anyway.

Some Randoms...

2009-08-04T11:34:00.002-05:00

Gosselin Random...

I think Jon Gosselin is the biggest douchebag to ever walk the face of this planet. I am not a follower of Jon & Kate Plus 8. I think I've seen two or three episodes and that was a few years ago. I remember thinking, "How in the HELL did these two people ever hook up in the first place??" I have no idea how they met, nor do I give two shits, but I do have a scenerio in my mind as to how it happened.

Jon and Kate go to the same college circa 1993. Jon is a partying, good-time frat boy with lots of friends. He listens to 4 Non Blondes and Ace of Base, plus a little Sugar Ray for good measure. Kate is the hard-studying bitch friend who hates her roommate because she makes friends easily and seems to be breezing through courses even though she is out all night every night having a good time. Kate has just two or three friends but she is close to them and they put up with her being a hard-core bitch because that's just how she is.

One of Kate's friends gets invited a party at Jon's fraternity. None of them know Jon, nor does Jon know any of them. One of the friends talks Kate into going even though she would really rather sit in her room and study for mid-terms since it will be quiet because her roommate is skiing with her new boyfriend all weekend. The party is like something out of Animal House. Kate thinks it's "dumb". Her friends start having a good time. They try to get Kate to have a good time. Kate finds some guy in the kitchen who shares her anger about the party and together they have many drinks with much hard liquor. Kate's new "friend" has to leave to take care of a puking buddy. Enter a drunk Jon. Witness a drunk Kate. See Kate hump drunk Jon in a random room in a passionate, drunk, angry sex kinda way. See Jon really like it. See Kate think that will never happen again. See Amy stop writing like she's all tarded up.

Kate wakes up the next day with a "that will NEVER happen again" attitude. Jon wakes up the next day and has apply cream to the whip marks on his back, but he likes it! He finds out where Kate lives. He bugs her until they go out on another date. He has to get her drunk in order to get more sex. They become a couple with her wearing the pants and him going along with whatever she wants just so she'll spank him later. They get married. They have twins. They want one more kid but her negative attitude keeps them from getting pregnant. They try drugs to help the process. They have six babies at once. Jon never gets sex again. The End.

Here's where the douchebaggery comes in. I used to hate Kate and feel bad for Jon. I think most of America did. However, since we've all had to endure the last few months of Gosslin-mania I'm starting to feel a little sympathy towards Kate and a lot of eye-rolling towards Jon. It doesn't even have anything to do with their divorce, or his new girlfriends. It has everything to do with his hair-plugs and the Ed Hardy clothes.

I see him decked head-to-toe in Ed Hardy gear and I wanna vom in the nearest trashcan. I'm not 100% sure why I feel this way. I guess it's because I read somewhere that Christian Audigier sent the whole family Ed Hardy clothing and he was the only douche who was willing to wear it. Now, because of his horrible taste in clothing and Christian Audigier's bad business sense, we're going to be forced not only to see more of Jon Gosselin's 30-something ass wearing 20-something clothing, but probably his innocent kids too. I just keep waiting for Jon to show up at some skate park wearing those tattoo sleeves they sell at halloween time for people who want to dress like bikers but don't want the commitment of putting 72 tattoos on their arms. It makes me want to kick him in his hair plugs.

Dental Randoms...
Sunday morning I was leaving work and it was raining and kinda blah. As I was pulling out of the hospital a woman was walking into the hospital drive. She was wearing pants and a heavy winter coat. It was orange with brown fur around the hood. She had the hood up over her head and a huge toothless smile on her face. She was probably nuttier than a fruitcake and maybe even smiling because she just kicked a baby bunny all the way down 24th street but I couldn't help but smile too when I passed her. She made my morning seem a little less dreary. Thanks crazy-toothless lady!

Commute Randoms...
For those of you who don't know, I live in Iowa but work in Illinois. The hospital I work at is in the 'hood, but not the deep 'hood. We get lots of shootings and stabbings and the ER is constantly having to go on lock-down.

They are doing construction on the bridge I take to get to work. For those of you not geographically inclined, Iowa and Illinois are separated by the Mississippi, therefore a bridge is necessary for my commute. (: I can get across it pretty easily but the on-ramp home is closed so a lengthy detour is in place. Because of this I started taking another route and bridge home and I love it. It gets me home a few minutes earlier than my original route even without the new detour. I also get to drive downtown along the Mississippi and there is a lot less morning traffic.

My new route does, however, put me right into the deep 'hood. It's never bothered me when I come home because It's 7am and all the drama is usually over and all the gangstas are tucked safely into their beds. Yesterday though, I had to work 2nd shift and so my peaceful route home was a little more scary at 11:30 at night. There were lots of people just wandering around, crossing the street, yelling, running, and just generally being shady. I was so glad to cross the bridge and get out of there.

Schedule Randoms...
Two weeks ago I sent an e-mail to my supervisor and my manager letting them know that once my kids start school on the 10th, I cannot help out on 1st or 2nd shift anymore. I did this because we had one girl on 1st shift who's last week was the coming week at the switchboard and then she was moving to a different department. I can't work other shifts anymore because of Blake's preschool schedule. I have to drive him to his bus, which is about a mile away around 10:30am and pick him back up around 3:45. There is no one else to do this. This is all me. Plus, my first priority is the kiddos, not the hospital. My manager sent me a response telling me he understands, no problem. Not long after that my supervisor put in her resignation. I was glad I got my two-cents in before the schedule got crazier!

Yesterday I get to work and my supervisor, who is working her last week with us, mind you, had sent me an e-mail telling me I had to work 1st shift next Wednesday. Um, no? Seriously? So I sent another e-mail back explaining why I couldn't. "Well can you work 2nd shift that day?" Really? Jesus woman! Why are you messing with my schedule for a period of time when you wont even be my boss anymore?!?!? Asshat.

...and then he made me a shaker bookcase and matching adirondac chairs

2009-07-30T23:36:00.003-05:00

My sweet little four-year old has an obsession with moustaches. When given the opportunity to say something into a fan, as kids like to do, his choice is almost always, "Moustaches are coooooool. Moustaches are coooooool. Moustaches are coooooooooooooooool."

Last Sunday Adam and I went to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. As we walked in the door I took a quick glance at the offerings in the bubble gum machines. You never know when I'm gonna be able to add to my Homies collection. Besides, I am still looking for that one in the wheelchair. Instead of my beloved Homies, though, I did find the mother of all machines. The Moustache Machine! Sweet Lincoln's Mullet! I knew Blake had to have one, or three.

May I present to you, Straight from his New Yankee Workshop--Norm Abram!

He even let his sister take his 'stache out for a ride. (There's a moustache ride joke in there that, yes, I AM desperately trying to avoid). P.S. I have no idea what's on her face.

Eventually this moustache ended up stuck to the bottom of the television. I thought it was a large Caterpillar and was waiting for it to spin a cocoon. It never did and Adam threw it away.

A pictoral look back at the month of June

2009-07-14T10:02:00.007-05:00

On June 3rd I opened The Flop Shop on Etsy. Buy some. Please. I'm tired of looking at the flip flops I have left.

On June 6th Adam channeled the African tribesman in him and did this for no apparent reason.

Then he did this to my eldest child and he wasn't even provoked.

June 13th found us at the Davenport skate park where Adam's band played along with several other local bands.

Adam's guitarist Karl sat in a tiny chair...

...and I got to see my friend from high school perform in his band. He married my best friend in 2005. They had only been dating since we were sophomores. That was 1990. I guess they wanted to make sure it was the real thing.

It got pretty cold for June out at the skate park and the sun stayed behind the clouds. I made the stupid decision to wear short and not bring a jacket so I pushed a small child out of it's stroller and stole his blanket. That was MUCH better.

Adam's parents visited us from Tennessee during skate park weekend. Adam's dad showed me his packs of Camels and their scary warning labels.

Later the next week I woke up and found that not only had Blake dressed himself in his new Spiderman costume, he had also captured and tied himself up using Adam's sports tape.

He also showed off his new "old man underwear". His too-big boxers that my sister bought him.

That night he shoved the too-big boxers under his tiny sleep shorts and then pulled the sleep shorts as high up his butt as possible.

Guess who really loved the thumb wrestling set he got in his meal at Taco Bell?

Father's Day was spent at my sister's house for dinner. The kids got Adam this visor with attached hair that actually looks really natural on him.

A few days before this picture was taken Emily and I watched No Doubt perform on Ellen. If you haven't seen how Gwen Stefani is styling her hair, it's like this only there's two more knots. Emily loves Gwen and wanted to rock her style. On the last day of the month I put one of the Gwen knots in her hair and she did her own make-up. Ladies and Gentlemen, Emily Stefani...

2009-06-30T01:23:00.002-05:00

So it's been close to three weeks since I've posted anything. I've been so busy making flip flops and just dealing with life in general that I put my blog on the back burner for a while. It wasn't something I intentionally did, but it happened.

I was able to finally open my etsy shop. You can find it at www.theflopshop.etsy.com. Emily and I had our first sale at the Young Entrepreneur's Market this last Saturday and we only sold four pair. I think if the museum, who hosted the sale, had advertised more for it, we all would have been more successful. Instead it seemed the only people buying anything were the ones who had booths and were selling things themselves. Our booth was about the only one that had handmade items. Everyone else had garage sale type things. Old toys, stuffed animals and clothes. Either way we had fun doing it and it was nice spending the day with Em.

This last Friday I also turned 35. It's a little weird saying that. 35. The night before I got kinda depressed about it. I usually look forward to my birthdays. The attention, the gifts but this year was different. I didn't want to be 35. I also didn't want to have another birthday without my mom. I have been really missing her this week, but I'm not sure why. No significant reason I guess.

Anyway, the morning of my birthday I woke up in a little better mood and looked forward the weekend. I had originally been scheduled to work the day after my birthday, which was my weekend off, but the schedule was changed and I was taken off and I wasn't unhappy about it at all. Friday afternoon my sister came to take Blake for the weekend and Emily and I ran some errands before going out to eat with Adam.

We went to a locally owned steakhouse and had a great meal. When we were done eating Adam stood up and told everyone it was my birthday and asked them if they would sing to me. They all went for it like he was asking them to pass the pepper. It was slightly embarrassing but I think our little 17 year old waitress was even more embarrassed. She got a little red in the face.

On Saturday Emily and I had our sale then we met my sister and Blake at a pizza place for lunch and so she could then take Emily for the night. My sister brought my bday presents and she got me a Willow Tree Angel, a digital picture frame and the RENT live on broadway DVD. When I saw the DVD I squealed, "Yay! I forgot I wanted this!!" Which I totally had.

After that Adam and I did some shopping then came home and started cleaning up the house. Adam had bought some Motorola walkie talkies from someone at our sale and he wanted to try them out. He left to walk next door to the grocery store to buy batteries. Right after he left the wind picked up and it started to pour down rain. I stood out on the deck until the wind changed and I got pretty soaked. I decided to look out the back of the building and watch for Adam try to make it home in the monsoon. I opened the apartment door and there he stood SOAKING wet. He looked like he had been standing in the shower for about five minutes with all of his clothes on.

After toweling off we had fun playing with the walkie talkies. Adam wandered around the building and outside to see how far he could go and it was pretty far. He came back in and we resumed cleaning. Adam got ambitious and decided to vacuum under the couch cushions. I took them off while he hooked up the vacuum hose and that's when the power went out.

Once we realized it probably wasn't going to come back anytime soon out came the walkie talkies again and Adam started knocking on neighbor's doors, going inside and saying crazy things on the walkie talkie. After a bit all the neighbors came up to our house with a cake for my birthday and an iTunes gift card and we ate cake in the kinda dark.

Once the neighbors left Adam and I headed out to dinner and then the casino. We won $88 so we went to the bar for some drinks. I watched a guy do 38 shots of gin and vodka for his 38th birthday and then walk out of the bar like he had been drinking water all night. Have you ever seen 38 shots of anything at one time? It's an amazing sight. I actually think he did more than just 38 shots because the bartender just kept bringing more and more cups of various things. After a while a friend started passing some out to people in the bar and Adam and I got one. She was the one that said she thought it was vodka and gin. It smelled like scotch tape and tasted awful.

At the bar there was also a group of guys who were out for their buddie's bachelor party. They were dressed like they had been out all day golfing. The guy getting married was a total douchebag. He was dressed like a douchebag (which, btw is plaid golf shorts and a cream polo, in case you were wondering) and he talked like a douchebag. You could tell that his buddies (all three of them) were really sick of listening to him babble on and on. That's what he did the entire time they were there was go on and on about the same thing over and over. I know this because he stood right freaking behind my stool. First he went on and on about how he was marrying his best friend.

"She's my best friend."
"I'm actually marrying my best friend."
"Like you guys are my friends, but she's my BEST friend."
"Everyone always says they married their best friend, but I am ACTUALLY doing it."
"She's totally my best friend. Like, if I came home and said, I crapped in my pants today she would be like, 'Oh.' because she's my best friend and she wouldn't care."

--OK. Let me just interject here and say, if she was your best friend, she SHOULD care that you crapped your pants. Like, if my best friend Jim came over and was like, "Wawa, I crapped my pants today." I'd be like, "WTF?? WHAT?? Why the hell did you crap your pants? Is there some issue I need to know about? Were you sick from something? Did you eat too many prunes today? Does this happen often or do we need to seek out medical attention?" I would hope ANYONE, not just my best friend would be concerned about the fact that I just crapped my pants, if for no other reason than they just don't want me to sit on their couch.

Anyway, later the conversation turned to what the name of his first born son will be. He named off one name which he kept repeating over and over. He likes it because it's the name of his favorite baseball player. I don't remember the name, it wasn't one that I recognized but I do remember, even after drinking the liquid scotch tape, that it sounded just as douche-y as he was acting. After that his second choice is Grady. "Isn't that a cool name? Grady? Grady Insert-whatever-his-last-name-was-here? I like it. Don't you like it? I really like that name. Grady. Isn't that cool? Grady? All of his buddies were silent. They all knew it was a douchebag redneck name.

In other recent happenings, Adam was on the news last week because of a storm we had. A tree fell in our 'hood during a bad storm so our neighbor and Adam were cleaning it up. Along comes the local CBS affiliate and they interview another neighbor. Then it was Adam's turn. Adam starts talking about how we were eating dinner at Hungry Hobo (that's a local sub shop for those of you who aren't from 'round these parts) and that the weather was calm and quiet. Then Adam says, "then it hit like a FRIGGIN' MONSOON. You couldn't even see the cars in the parking lot. It was raining HEAVY!" We DVR'd the event. We like to invite other neighbors over and replay it in slow motion to watch his eyes get really wonky and the serious look on his face when he says, "heeaaaavvvvyyyyy." Classic.

Up next:

A look back at the month in June in pictures.

Done and done...almost

2009-06-02T23:44:00.003-05:00

I got my light box made and all of my flip flop pictures taken. Tomorrow I'll be opening up my Etsy shop and I expect each of you to check it out. I still have about 5 or 6 more pairs of flip flops yet to make and then I'm done for a while. We'll see what happens with the Etsy shop and the entrepreneur's market at the end of the month. I might need to stop making them for a while due to lack of sales (oh PLEEEEEEASE don't let that happen!) or I might need to turn into a mad woman and make several more pairs. Let's hope for somewhere close to the latter.

Dayum!

2009-05-31T03:57:00.003-05:00

God it's been so freaking long since I've posted on my blog. The saddest part is that I've been spending most of my time with flip flops. I know, right? Emily and I are making flip flops to sell at a Young Entrepreneur's Market at the end of June. I told her we would do that and with the money we would have a girl's day out. I said we could go shopping and out to eat or whatever. Without missing so much as a half a beat she said, "WE COULD GO HAVE ONE OF THOSE DRINKS!!" A few weeks ago we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant close to the house. They had a list of non-alcoholic drinks on the table. She was immediately mesmerized. I said, "Emily. You're scaring me." Now it's all she thinks about. I'm going to start an Etsy shop with my flip flops, but I need to take pictures of them first. I think I have about 15 or so finished. It's been a long process but they're turning out really cute and I'm happy with my progress. If I could just get that Etsy shop opened!

I've also been working a bit more where Adam's been working less. He got called back to work but the weather had been so fucking rainy and wet that he can't work. This past week he worked one day. One lousy day. I'm ready for the rain to stop and the heat to begin.

I worked 2nd shift last night while all of my neighbors hung out and had way too many drinks. Drama ensued, as is always inevitable, and I've been up for the last couple of hours worried about a sister neighbor. I hope she's doing ok down there. Adam and I didn't go to bed until 3am and I laid there for a while while he worked hard to breathe. He's having a lot of trouble with his allergies tonight. I laid in bed so freaking wide awake that I couldn't take it anymore. So, here I am at 4:06 in the morning begging your forgiveness for being gone so long.

Well, I really have nothing better to say, I hope everyone is doing fine and has a lot less drama in their lives than I do!

My Mom's Day

2009-05-11T19:00:00.010-05:00

Yesterday my sister had a Mother's Day dinner at her house. Besides me and my crew she also invited her mother and father-in-law and our dad. My sister's in-laws are really awesome people. They are so cute. I guess Friday was their 56th wedding anniversary and my sister called her MIL that night to wish her a Happy Anniversary and she had no idea what she was talking about. They had both forgotten about the day. I told her right then I was never going to let Adam do that. I expect something FABULOUS on EVERY anniversary, especially my 56th. Isn't the 56th Anniversary signified with a huge diamond ring, necklace and matching tennis bracelet? I'll have to check with Hallmark but I'm almost certain that I'm right. Just kidding Adam! Actually I'm not. No, I am. I'm kidding. Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

So we had a great dinner. My sister made lasagna and a salad and both were very good. For desert she had made chocolate creme pies. Yum! After dinner my cousin, her daughter and her daughter came over to visit with the in-laws. See, my sister and my cousin married two guys who are brothers. That means they have the same in-laws that I mentioned above. Our cousin was the first one to get married then 3 years later they had a baby. Two years after that my sister got married and that also meant that our 2nd cousin became my sister's niece. Confused yet? Good! It was fun getting to see my 2nd cousin's baby, Gracie. She's almost one and a half and has finally caught on to the whole walking on her own thing. She's very independent.

After all that we opened gifts. Adam had the kids paint rocks. They did an awesome job.

Both kids made me things at school too:

The purple card is from Emily. She apparently is a fan of my tuna and noodles. Hominy, notsomuch.

From my sister I got an Isabel Bloom statue called, "Memories"

She and the kids picked out this Willowtree figurine:

Also she got a wallet, which I'd love to show you a picture of, however blogger is being a bitch. Eff off blogger.

On Saturday we all went to the farmer's market where a lady had a booth for kids to decorate a pot and plant a Marigold for their moms for Mother's Day.

My dad had roses delivered to me. If you thought I was kidding when I said my dad talks in the third person here is proof:

Here's hoping your Mother's Day was fantabuloso! Mine most definitely was.

Tony Danza strikes again...

2009-05-07T00:41:00.002-05:00

Remember this post where we talked about misheard lyrics? Well, after reading more of Test Pattern, the MSNBC site I mentioned in my previous post, they were also talking about misheard lyrics. I just finished reading the article and was chuckling at everyones comments and their OWN misheard lyrics when someone mentioned the Pussycat Dolls song, "When I Grow Up". Turns out their misheard lyric is also my misheard lyric. Since I first heard the song I've been singing:

When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have boobies.

Guess what? They don't want to have boobies. They want to have groupies. My bad. I guess I just assumed that since they are the whores that are The Pussycat Dolls, they have wanted to have silicone tits their whole lives. Wait till I tell Adam. He's been singing about boobies this whole time too. Now I feel a little bit better about putting that song on my seven year-old's iPod.

Oh, also the article said a lot of people have misheard Beyonce's song, "All The Single Ladies". They are hearing, "All the Pringle haters! All the Pringle haters!" That cracks me up, yo!

You gotta problem with that?

2009-05-06T23:59:00.003-05:00

Yes, I know I said in one of my last posts that I was going to do something new and fabulous and that every Tuesday I was going to hand you a shiny new website to check out and the world was going to rotate in the direction your life is actually going and the planets were going to align for you and maybe you'd even win the lottery. Not a big lottery but enough so you could go on a nice vacation and put a decent deposit down on that dark blue Jeep Liberty you've been eyeing. Then the following Tuesday happened and where was the shiny new website and the mediocre lottery win? Well if they were up your ass you'd know it. OK, that's a bad answer but the next time one of your kids asks where their other shoe is or where is one of the 52 pencils you bought them at the end of last summer for the start of school, that's actually a pretty GREAT answer.

"Mom, where's my Webkin?"
"If it was up your ass you'd know it."

"Do you know where my backpack is?"
"If it was up your ass you'd know it."

"Where's the remote?"
"If it was up your ass you'd know it."

See?

Anyway, I'm back one week and two days late with the next installment of "Check it out Tuesday."

This week's website comes to us courtesy of MSNBC's Test Pattern site. I love this site because the writers are typically saying what I'm thinking. Every Monday, or almost every Monday they do a "Multi-link Monday". I have found so many cool sites from it. This week I want you to check out Foamigami. After that I want you to do some foamigami, take pictures and report back to me. Do it, it's 65% of your grade.

NO!

2009-05-05T23:08:00.004-05:00

NO! Not Lil' Kim and Derek! Ty Murray sucks ass! I hate you voters of DWTS! You totally ruined my Tuesday night.

On a completely different note: do you think Adam would notice if I drank his Gatorade that's been calling me from the refrigerator ALL DAY? I bet it tastes GOOD.

Two down--two to go

2009-04-26T20:57:00.002-05:00

Last July when Estelle Getty died I sent a smart-ass email to my friend Stacey who used to work with me at MCI. Stacey is a huge, huge, huge Golden Girls fan. The subject line read: "One down--three to go." I think the body of the e-mail said something along the lines of, "So Estelle Getty is dead." Just one line, plain and simple. I also CC'd that email to our old supervisor from MCI, JC. She actually works at the company Stacey was, and is still working for. Immediately after I sent the email I got a response from JC saying, "Don't say anything else about Estelle Getty dying. Stacey is really upset. He is crying and I think he's actually going to go home early because he can't function." (Oh, did I forget to mention that Stacey is a man? You know my gays love them some Golden Girls). I felt really bad for about 1.72 minutes. Then I just laughed and started calling everyone I knew to tell them what I did. Pretty sure I'm gonna have to do that again tomorrow.

Try-It-Out Tuesday

2009-04-21T07:45:00.002-05:00

I'm starting a new weekly thing. "Try-It-Out Tuesdays". I'll post a link to a website you should go to and then I'll tell you why. Your job is to do what I say. See? Now you know what it's like to live with me. This is going to be great!

www.truemomconfessions.com

This website is cool because it's moms (mostly anonymous) that confess to things that you know we all do but would never say out loud without the help of about four martinis and a couple shots of Southern Comfort for good measure. It is also divided into different sections for those of you who don't have kids but have jobs, are single, military wives, brides and others. Check it out. Now. Go. No, really.

2009-04-20T18:51:00.002-05:00

Hello Interneters. I bet you all thought I had fallen off the face of the planet, never to be heard from again. Maybe some of you even breathed a sigh of relief because of it. Well eff off because I'm back, bitches. Adam and I have been performing a little experiment this month and it turns out, yes, if you don't pay your phone/Internet bill, they WILL shut both of them off. Make sure you write that down kids. May be handy later. We did this for you, Internet. Oh, same thing with the Dish People. Don't pay=no Dish. Hope you have a lot of interesting stuff stored on your DVR.

So, that being said, what has been going on with little ol' me? Well, not a lot, really. It's April. I hate April. No, I LOATHE April. April makes me cringe every time I see it coming up on the calendar. April is notoriously not a good month for my family. Been that way for many, many years. Let me just give you some examples:

April 27, 1983: My brother drowns 10 days after his 23rd birthday.

April 27, 1995: My mom is taken to the hospital by ambulance due to congestive heart failure. She eventually gets better and is able to return to work a few weeks later.

April 26, 1996: My mom is taken to the hospital by ambulance due to congestive heart failure. A few days later she suffers a mild stroke while in the hospital. They take another couple of days to believe us that she's had a stroke. She recovered from the stroke but not too well from the congestive heart failure. She couldn't work anymore and went on disability.

April 6, 1999: My mother passes away two days after Easter, the last time I had seen her. She had been hospitalized in Peoria for around a week. They were getting her stronger so she could eventually have a heart transplant. They were putting in an internal IV on that morning so that she could go home and still receive her meds. She developed an irregular heartbeat and passed away during the procedure.

This month: My sister has been battling some kind of pinched nerve in her neck and/or arm. During all of her doctor visits with all of that they've found she has high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Boo!

Anyway, I'm just waiting for April to be over so I can move onto May. I always breathe a little sigh of relief when May 1st rolls around. It can't come too soon!

Our Easter went well. My sister ACTUALLY didn't buy a truckload of candy for the kids, so that was awesome. Usually she buys so much we sock most of it away and end up forgetting about it until Halloween rolls around when we sock away most of that candy, thus finding the forgotten Easter candy.

Adam was called back to work last Wednesday. This is early for him as usually doesn't go back until the end of May/first part of June. We were excited at first until we realized it was probably just a fluke. He worked 9.5 hours the first day and only 6 the next with no work on Friday. He's supposed to call the office today but considering all the rain we got on Sunday, I don't think ANYONE will really be working. I think he'll end up working very sporadically until his normal callback time. Whatever can be done to screw up unemployment, right? Irregardless, I look at it as somewhat of a compliment. To me it says a lot, especially with this particular company, that they've called him back so soon. Even if it's for a short amount of time, or for just that one job. Adam is only a laborer and they are typically the last called back, the last needed. Seems like they know he's a dependable, hard-worker and, just guessing, maybe he was called before other guys who are perhaps less dependable and hard-working but who should have been called before him due to tenure or title. Of course that's just my opinion because I think my man kicks ass!

I also spent a couple of hours on his second day back to work redoing our budget. Figuring out what to pay and when with our soon-to-be higher income. I'm planning on paying off our old balance on the electric bill so we can stop paying the extra $85 or so each month and paying off our car early. AT the old house the electric company under-estimated our budget billing and we racked up a hefty balance. Now we're paying that crap off. Once it's done then I'm done with budget billing. Just let me pay what we owe. I love making our home budgets, though. I just have a hard time sticking to them. It's also a lot more fun to make the budget when you actually have some money to work with. All my fun was dashed, however, when Adam walked in the door that day at 2:30 in the afternoon when I shouldn't have seen him until around 6. I knew then my shiny new budget was probably going to end up in the toilet. We'll see what this week brings.

Adam stopped smoking this month. The government's higher taxes on ciggies starting on April 1st served as inspiration. At first he was going to go with the patch. I can get a discount on it at work and that was our plan. Then a girl at work suggested Chantix. She said it's the best way to stop smoking because it fixes the neurons in your brain that make you crave ciggies. You take it twice a day for three months. It's not cheap. Adam's insurance doesn't cover it so it costs $143 each month, but in the end it's so worth it. For the first week the pills are a lower milligram and you can also still smoke during that week. Starting with the second week is when you actually quit. Adam's last ciggie was on April 7th. He's replaced cigarettes with toothpicks. So far he's doing really well and I think it's only going to get easier for him. Like I said, my man kicks ass!

Well, that's my life up to this point. I'm working tonight and tomorrow covering for our full-time gal who has some family in town. I don't really feel like working, but that's typical of me. Update me on what's going on with you? I hope you are surviving this horrible month!

no words, no snarky titles

2009-03-30T22:48:00.002-05:00

On Sunday morning at work we had a Code Pink. Code Pink is the same as Code Blue only the patient is 8 years old or younger. This patient was under a month old. He didn't make it. The ER called me about a half-hour after I called the code and asked for the chaplain on call. When I transferred him to the ER I could hear a woman in the background sobbing very hard. I hung up and my body felt heavy all over. My heart hurt. I couldn't wait to get home. I came home to a house full of kids. My kids, neighbor kids, wonderful kids. Blake greeted me with his usual, "MOMMMMMAAAAAAA!!" and he ran to me at the door and gave me a big hug. Just like he always does. I gave him a big kiss and a hug and kissed and hugged Emily.

Do that for your kids today. There are mommies and daddies who aren't able to tonight.

When my dad speaks people listen...and then they laugh too

2009-03-25T19:28:00.003-05:00

My dad called me a couple weeks ago and said he wanted all of us to go out to eat at a new Chinese Buffet. The only thing he knew about it was that it was on the Iowa side of the river off of 53rd street. For those not familiar with my state, 53rd street runs through the entire width of two towns and is probably 5-10 miles long. I don't know. I'm not a good judge of distance, but it's quite a stretch.

Tonight he decided we're going on Sunday afternoon. I called him back after telling Adam our plans and managed to have the following conversation without so much as a giggle.

"Hey, where is this place at?"
"Somewhere off of 53rd I guess."
"hmm..."
"I think it starts with a 'Q'. It has a Mexican name."
"..."
"I think it's called Quizno's."
"...uuhhh."
"...Or something like that. Something that starts with a 'Q'."
"And it's a Chinese restaurant?"
"Yeah. What did I say? Did I say Mexican? Yeah. It's Chinese."
"O...kaaay...."
"Can't you just find it on the computer?"
(in my head) "Yeah, I'll just type in Chinese buffets that have Mexican names starting with 'Q'."
"I don't know. It's somewhere off 53rd there."
"Ok then."
"Alright. Talk to ya later. Dad loves ya." (That's right. My dad speaks in the 3rd person.)
"Love you too."

I think I know the place he's talking about except it's not new. It's been around for a few years. It's just off of 53rd street right behind the Mexican restaurant "Q'doba." We'll see what happens on Sunday.

When Blake speaks, people listen...and then they laugh.

2009-03-20T09:45:00.002-05:00

Blake's spilled few zingers out of his mouth in the last few weeks. I thought I would share them here.

A couple weeks ago I had just laid down because I was working 3rd shift that night. Emily and Blake were watching TV in Blake's room when I heard Blake say to her, "What the HELL did you do THAT for???" I just laid there and chuckled. Emily didn't have a response.

On Tuesday night this week Adam and I decided to play Rockband after the kids went to bed. A couple songs in I got a perfect score. I was pretty proud of myself and Adam said, "Way to go. I'll have to stick it in your butt later." (Because he thinks all the ladies like to be rewarded with anal sex.) That's when we heard Blake call out from his room, "I HEARD that!" We thought he was sleeping. Ooops!

Just this morning I was talking to Blake about how he was going to go shopping and run some errands with daddy.

"Are we going to the pool?"
"No. Not until summer."
"Are we going to the Kid's Choice Awards?"
"No, and neither is Chris Brown."
"What?"
"Nothing. Oh, and stop watching so much TV."

This is what eight years of higher education will get you

2009-03-17T12:35:00.002-05:00

At work we get all of the medical transcripts from the transcription department and mail them out to the doctors listed on them. I don't read through them unless I see a word that might catch my eye and then I might skim it. Mostly it's because we get so much mail that if I sat there and read them all it would take my entire shift. Plus they're mostly boring. One did catch my eye the other day though. It was regarding an elderly woman, I think in her 80's that was having trouble with her vision. The doctor said about her condition, "...she finds darkness very much causes poor vision." Wow. Really? She can't see in the darkness? Hmph. I guess that's why you're the doctor and I'm just sending you your mail.

Survivor...not just a cheesy hair band

2009-03-16T13:11:00.002-05:00

There is another boy who lives in our building that is about the same age as Emily and the boy I mentioned in my previous post. We'll call him "Princess". Princess is just one of those kids that you want to like but damn, he's just so annoying. He has to be better than everyone, he never shares and he whines and cries a lot for a boy.

When he was about 19 months old his dad died from cancer so it's a reason you want to like him and want to excuse his behavior because he's spent the last 8 years or so of his life being cared for by his mom and sister who is about 6 years older than him. He's been babied a lot and it shows. You want to excuse him, but its really hard.

The boy that I mentioned in my last post used to go over to "Princess'" house after school until his mom picked him up but he just can't stand to be around The Princess anymore, which is why he comes to our house after school. This past weekend after having it rubbed in his face by The Princess for about the 212th time that he didn't have a Nintendo DS, our little boy hero spouted, "I may not have a DS but I survived cancer and your dad didn't."

OUCH.

I wasn't there when it was said, I heard about it from another neighbor who WAS there. I don't know how Princess reacted and I don't know what was said to Boy Hero. I don't know how I would have reacted to either of them but I'm sure my initial reaction would have been to say, "AW SNAP!" and then I probably would have just felt bad for both of them. Boy Hero is not a rude kid, he's very nice but I think he's been taken to the brink by Princess and I'm not sure how building relationships will be changed after that. If Boy Hero's parents know what he said, I'm sure they will punish him for it and make him apologize. As far as The Princess is concerned, I'm sure he probably cried but he'll be back to his snotty behavior by tonight, don't worry.

What? No. Girl. Seriously?

2009-03-15T03:26:00.003-05:00

My adoring husband has a very warped sense of humor which gets him in trouble a lot, usually with me. Weird pain in his knee? "Probably cancer." he'll say. Left eye twitching? "Cancer." Hang nail? That's right. "It's cancer." I HATE it when he says that. I think it bothers me most because my mom was soooo superstitious when I was growing up so you never said those kinds of things. Never. Why? Because then you'll get cancer. Ever hear of Murphy's Law??? Duh!

So last Thursday after an unplanned nap on bother of our parts, Adam and I woke up when Emily got home from school. A short time later a neighbor boy downstairs came to hang out at our house for a few minutes until his mom got home from work. He's about a year older than Emily and is just the nicest kid and his parents are awesome. His dad is a Marine but not the big veiny-necked kind of Marine. He's more of a kinder, gentler Marine. His mom is a very sweet person that would probably feel bad after having to scrape a deadly spider off the bottom of her shoe.

We were sitting at the dining room table when his mom showed up and we had only been talking for a few minutes when she looked at Adam and said, "Why are you so pale? Does he look pale? Are you getting sick?" That's when I said, "Eh. It's cancer." Immediately I wanted to take it back and go stick my head in the oven, but not for any of the reasons mentioned above. The reason I was just about to hurl myself off our deck is because this sweet boy is a cancer survivor. He got some form of leukemia when he was a baby that was serious enough that the Marines never sent his father overseas. In his 11 years as a Marine he has always had a desk job basically so he could be near his son. His mother has probably been through things with her little boy that I cannot imagine and what did I say to her--JOKINGLY???? "Eh. It's cancer." Who has two thumbs and is the biggest jerk in the state of Iowa? *This Girl*

I searched her face immediately afterwards to make sure she wasn't going to freak out. Adam turned and gave me the same look I would have given him if the roles were reversed. We were having some kind of "Freaky Friday" moment and I was Jamie Lee Curtis wondering why I was spewing such garbage out of my mouth. The next few seconds are a blur but I do remember saying something along the lines of, "I can't believe I said that." To which Adam said, "Yeah, me neither. I'M usually the one to say that kind of thing." "I know, and I HATE that!"

I think we were both having this conversation so our sweet neighbor wouldn't grab her kid by the elbow and make a bee-line for the door, crying hysterically. I think she understood that we weren't some kind of inconsiderate freaks and we spent the next 10-15 minutes or so just chilling out and having a great gossip gab about other neighbors. The whole subject was dropped and forgotten about until I flashed back on it tonight at work. It was one of those moments where you think back on what you did and you gasp, smash your palm into your forehead and go, "Jesus! You idiot!" I'm hoping that by telling you, Internet, it will help me atone for what I've done. It will...right? Right? Crap. I'm screwed.

Tooodayyyy is Friiiidayyyyyy...

2009-03-14T03:10:00.002-05:00

Did any of your children sing that song in school? Or maybe you yourself did? Emily sang that song in preschool. It goes through the days of the week and mentions a meal that was had on that day. The only one I remember FOR SURE is "Wednesday soooo-uuuuup!" I think Monday was chicken. Anyway, there's something about Friday that every time the word is mentioned I always seem to find my self singing, "Today is Friiiii-dayyyyyyyy." I'm not really sure why.

Anyway, as is Friday tradition for The Warren's it was "run errands, go out to eat and buy groceries" day. We started the day with breakfast at Maid Rite diner, which is very close to our house. We managed to all eat for under $20, which was awesome. From there we headed across the river to get haircuts for me and Blake. I have a girl that I go to in the mall but we didn't want to pay mall prices for our 4 year-old's haircut so we took him to Great Clips. The girl did a good job and kinda evened up the cut he had. I like Blake's hair to be buzzed and Adam likes it more grown-out so it can be parted. Since Adam's been laid off for the winter I've let him take over Blake's haircuts and do what he wants. He knows that as soon as he goes back to work it will be back to me buzzing Blake's hair off out on the deck as usual so I'm letting him have his way...for now. I think Adam and I came to a pretty good compromise on his hair today at the salon and the little guy looks so handsome.

After Blake's haircut we headed to the mall so I could get mine cut. I lucked out a few years ago when I found this girl. I had been going to a more "upscale" salon at the mall and having the same girl cut my hair for a while. Then she went and effed it all up when I had it colored. She effed it up so bad and I hated it so much that I actually wrote to the corporate headquarters and they ended up sending me a check for reimbursement. I didn't go into a salon for almost a year after that. I'm a one-stylist kinda gal and so just going anywhere and having anyone cut my hair will not do. When I moved out on my own I went from having the girl that always cut my mom's hair to having to find my own stylist. I became friends with a girl that was about to graduate from La James as a stylist. She was plucked right from school to a very trendy and very expensive salon based on how awesome she did in school. She was able to cut hair for free because they wanted to build up her clientele. She was fantastic at her job and only once did someone else touch my hair for about 4 years after that. Even then it was a friend of hers (who really butchered my hair, btw) and I went to him because I couldn't find her. (She had to quit the fab job at the hoity-toity salon because they wouldn't work around her pregnancy) As is my luck she stopped by the store I was managing about a week after I got the butcher job to let me know where she was working. She was fixed my hair later that week.

The last time she touched my hair was on my wedding day and she was planning on getting married the next weekend. After that she and her husband moved out of state and I was left to find someone else.

I got a recommendation from a friend who was working at a salon. That girl cut my hair for the next few years and that's when I moved and happened upon the girl at the mall who doesn't know how to color hair. So after a year of no haircuts I couldn't stand it anymore. I sauntered into the first place I strolled by in the mall, "MasterCuts". I got the next available stylist and I explained to her, as I do to all new stylists, that my hair is very fine and stick straight so it has to be texturized A LOT. She said, "that's cool. That's exactly how my hair is." She cut it so perfect I've only gone somewhere else once, and that was a couple months ago.

I was so busy working every shift at work and everything that when I finally had a night off to take Emily for a haircut I decided to have them cut mine too. I didn't go to my regular place, we went somewhere just down the road. Immediately after I said I wanted a cut too a little voice in my head said, "No! Take it back! Tell them you changed your mind!" But I didn't and the girl didn't cut my hair right AT ALL. It wasn't bad but it didn't work for me because of how naughty my hair always is.

Today when I shamefully walked into my MasterCuts I had to own up to what I did. "No problem." My girl said. "It looks like an easy fix." Whew. She cut it and even as I sat there with a wet head I could already tell it was better looking. It felt better. I felt better AND I learned a lesson.

After our haircuts we headed to the dollar store where I had to buy a bunch of black frames for a big picture hanging extravaganza I'm planning next week. Then we headed next door to Wal-Mart for groceries where I forgot 10 things, 7 of them being black 8x10 frames that they didn't have at the dollar store. I'll probably pick those up on my way home from work in the morning.

Other than our normal busy Friday the rest of the weekend is pretty free for me. On Saturday Emily has her last rehearsal before her big performance on Monday morning with the Quad City Ballet. In case I haven't mentioned it she, along with other girls from the museum dance classes, are playing the part of "the river" in Peter and the Wolf, although they look more like a lake to me. Adam's band is playing a show Saturday night as a benefit for MDA. The kids are staying at my sister's so I'm being held responsible for getting myself up and together for work that night. I hate that. I always end up over sleeping or something. I can get myself up and going when I work 1st shift, but there's something about 3rd shift that makes me unable to be responsible for myself. Not sure what that is.

In closing I'd like to give a shout-out to my hubby who found himself in the unusual spot of being the only apartment building husband not in trouble for something he did Thursday night. WTG Adam! Looks like there's a little more room in the dog house tonight for the other husbands. Woot!

Ring of Fire

2009-03-12T18:40:00.005-05:00

Our date night at our local dinner theater last night was wonderful. Our local dinner theater is only one of two in the country that has performing waitstaff. I had my friend Jimmy all the way in Des Moines call the theater a couple hours before we left to set up a surprise for Adam. Adam has only been to Circa 21 once before and it was for an afternoon children's matinee so he has never had the whole experience of the buffet dinner and big musical production. He also had no idea that the waitstaff could come to your table and sing to you for your birthday/anniversary. This is what I had Jim set up for us. I tried doing it all day but Adam was always around so I couldn't get it done. Adam was so surprised. He was the first person they came and sang to because our waitress was afraid, based on something Adam had asked her earlier, that he was going to leave and go outside to smoke. After we were done eating here came our waitress with another waitress in tow. She was carrying a little cake with a candle on it. She said, "Ok, Adam? It's Adam, right?" The look on Adam's face was priceless. It was like he was thinking, "How the HELL do you know my name???" The two of them sang Happy Birthday to him and it was awesome. Classic surprise.

The buffet always goes with the theme of the play. Since Ring of Fire is about Johnny Cash's life, our buffet had a southern cooking feel to it. It included Carved Carne Asada Beef, Whiskey Pork Chops Sante Fe, Chicken with Corn and Black Beans, Cajun Style Catfish, Vegetarian Lasagna, Southwestern Potato Bake, Red Beans and Rice and Folsom County Sweet Mustard Greens. It was all pretty good though I didn't try the Chicken with corn and black beans, the vegetarian lasagna or the mustard greens. Well, I did eat a small bite of Adam's greens because I'd never had them before and they were fine.

The musical was different, I liked the way it was set up. There was something about the way the beginning of the performance was done that reminded me of Rent, my all time favorite musical. It wasn't done in a way you would think. It was basically 6 people that performed Johnny Cash's songs and told the basic gist of his life. No one dressed like him. In fact no one dressed in all black at all. For the 2nd half of the second act everyone wore black but not Johnny Cash style. The entire cast all wore different outfits that were somewhat similar, like in color. For instance one wore a velvet skirt and satin vest-type top and then maybe one of the guys was wearing a white t-shirt, black jeans and a black vest. The show ended with all of them wearing different red and black outfits.

The weird part was they killed him off half-way through the second act. Even weirder was if you look at Circa's website it says that this musical is the only show of it's kind that Johnny Cash personally endorsed before his death. Do you think if he saw it they kinda stopped right at that point and said, "Ok Johnny. Here's where we're going to talk about you dying. You know, once it happens."

The whole show was packed with probably around 30 songs and it was cool to hear some of them performed by women. All of the musicians performed too and didn't just sit there and play music. They had a female violinist who ROCKED the house. She was so good. I don't remember everything about her bio that was in the program but she looked to be in her 20's and has performed all over the world. I believe it said she graduated from Berkley in 2008. She made me wish I paid more attention in orchestra class during my own violin/viola/cello days.

The play also went by rather quickly, I think because it was more of a showcase of Johnny's music as opposed to a story of his life. The last play I went to at Circa, "The Full Monty" didn't get out until 10:45. With this one it was done just before 10:00.

Anyway, if you live in this area and can get tickets to this show before it closes on March 21st, do it. Even if you don't enjoy country music, like me, you will know a lot of the songs and the performance of them.

It's not just a venerial disease...

2009-03-11T16:01:00.001-05:00

Adam and I are going to see Ring Of Fire tonight. I bought him tickets for Valentine's Day. I'll post my review tomorrow. Happy hump day!

A meme for you...

2009-03-10T04:58:00.003-05:00

Because I haven't done one in a very, very long time...steal it for yourself if you like.

1. How old do you look? - Considering I haven't gotten carded for ANYTHING in a very long time I must look old *sigh*.
2. Where do you live? - Iowa Quad Cities
3. Are you waiting for something? - Yes. I'm waiting for 7am so I can go home.
4. What’s one pet peeve of yours that is not common? - You mean I have to list just one? I can't stand people that don't do things my way. Oh, and also the way my sister and husband eat their cereal. So obnoxious.
5. Do you want/have kids? - Like you don't know already, I have a daughter, Emily who is 7 and a son, Blake who is 4.
6. Have you ever thought about converting your religion? - No but the Scientologists have been trying to get their alien hands on Adam for years. Even followed us through two moves. Persistent little buggers.
7. Last shocking news you heard? - I wouldn't call it a bombshell but it's something that made me go, "What? Are you kidding me right now?" It's when I found out that my cousin only lost 2 pounds after eating nothing but water, jello and broth for a week and a half in preparation for lap band surgery. They were expecting her to lose 20-30 pounds.
8. What was the last thing you drank? - Water and before that a Mt. Dew.
9. Who do you most look like in your family? - Probably my mom.
10. If you could have something right now, anything, what would it be? - Angelina Jolie's bod pre-17 babies. Maybe then I could land Brad Pitt too.
11. Where does most of your family live? - My immediate family lives here in the QC but I have family all over the US. Texas, Maine, and California to name a few.
12. Where do you want to go on vacation? - Anywhere lazy and tropical with a beach and fruity drinks with little umbrellas.
13. Have you ever had a panic attack? - Yes.
14. What can’t you wait for? - Didn't we sort of cover this in number 3? I'm rather impatient so I can't wait for a lot of things but guess what? I do.
15. When’s the last time you told someone you loved him or her and meant it? - about 4.5 hours ago when I hung up from Adam and told him I loved him.
16. Have your parents ever smoked pot? - I 100% doubt my mom did. I think my dad was more of an alcoholic than a drug user.
17. Want someone back in your life? - My mom. I would like to have the relationship with my friend Tanya that we used to have.
18. What do you order at the bar? - Beer and shots of So Co.
19. When was the last time you cried really, really hard? - Probably last month just before Aunt Flo came to town. I tend to get a little hysterical.
20. Ever licked someone’s cheek? - Probably.
21. What is your favorite thing to eat with peanut butter? - Jelly and bread
22. Where were you on July 4th, 2008? - First we went downtown for the parade. I came home and slept and then we went to our town's street fest and fireworks. It was a lot of fun.
23. What are your nicknames? - When I was little I had a friend that lived across the street who's alcoholic dad called me "Famous Amos". My friend Tanya sometimes called me "Aim toothpaste". Adam calls me "babe", "pookie bear" or "pook", my best friend Jim calls me "WaWa" and my babies call me "mama".
24. If you could go back in time, how far back would you go? - Ugh. I don't know that I would go back in time. Sometimes I think I'd like to go back to the last time I saw my mom but to have to go through her death again, I don't think I could do it.

XYZ

2009-03-09T23:41:00.007-05:00

So my goal to post everyday this month was foiled by an open out. I will explain what that is momentarily but I'd first like to talk about our night out at karaoke. It went perfectly well, thank you. Since Iowa banned smoking in bars almost a year ago, there are not many crowds in the bars anymore. What this means for The Adamnator and I is that he gets to sing a lot more often. We were there all of 3 minutes when he got up to sing his first song and he sang again about two songs later. He did awesome as always although I was a little nervous that the tiny bar might light up like a roman candle ala 'The Station night club' when he decided to sing "Once Bitten Twice Shy" but due to the lack of pyrotechnics, we were all saved.

I got a little excited when I heard that a chick was going to sing "Ballroom Blitz". This is one of my favorite songs and one I used to sing with my friend Audrey back in the day. We retired it at my wedding reception and I haven't sung it since. That's right, Interneters. I had karaoke at my wedding reception. Adam and I met at karaoke so it has sentimental value, ok? At least that's what we keep telling ourselves in order to make us feel less white-trashy. So, chicky gets up there to sing "Ballroom Blitz" and she sounds like a muppet. Dammit! I was so bummed. Nothing will take away your favorite-song-euphoria like hearing Fozzie the Bear sing it.

Karaoke is always filled with a lot of characters no matter how many people are there. If there's four people there and two of them are us, you can bet there's going to be at least one person to secretly make fun of for the rest of the night. I'm the queen of this. I could walk up in that bar with my hair in dreadlocks, a wedding dress and soccer shoes and think it's ok to make fun of the girl in the Ghostbusters t-shirt. That's just how I roll. I always give them names too like, "tight sleeve girl", "slicker girl", "Buddha belly" and "simon says". You know "simon says". She's the white girl that gets out on the dance floor with all of her black girlfriends and does exactly what they do. So last Friday night we had "Bonnie Tyler". Bonnie looked exactly like Bonnie Tyler ("Total Eclipse of the Heart"??? Gawd, I am so not calling on you for any 80's trivia!) She had a horrible fake tan, bleached blond hair, too much make-up and the voice of James Earl Jones. While she did sing very good, she had Cher Hand. You know Cher Hand. It's the hand that's not holding the microphone that dangles limply just above the waste and has long red nails. Cher Hand.

I didn't even get drunk. In fact I even drank two glasses of water. Yahoo for me. I just don't drink as much since blackberry Brandy made me spew red all over my bedroom carpet. Meddling blackberry Brandy. I hate her.

So the open out. I don't know if I've ever blogged about my previous job before the Adamnator and I moved back to the Quad Cities but I used to work for MCI. I started out working 3rd shift as an e-Customer Service representative, which meant I answered e-mails from customers all night long. I loved it and I excelled at it. I had awesome quality and was looked upon by supervisors to help new employees with their work and check it before it went out. I loved doing it and I loved almost everyone I worked with. After doing that for two years the company took on a new endeavor (this was pre-Bernie Ebbers goes to jail). The company had bought out a smaller company that supplied local services and they were going to create a local service called, "The Neighborhood Built By MCI." We were the first company to combine local and unlimited long distance service for one price. Ten of us were chosen to be the 3rd shift local repair team. Now obviously we weren't going out to houses to perform repairs, but we did take the repair calls, do line tests, dispatch technicians and set up times for techs to come repair service. I learned a lot of repair lingo and a lot more about how phone service works during my time on local repair.

Sunday morning Adam and I woke up and had no Internet service and no dial tone. When you called the home phone it was RNA. Geek talk for Ring No Answer. I called the phone company and guess what? The main number in the phone book was not a working number. Awesome. I called a billing number I had in my cell phone that I used last week. They were closed. Finally found a repair number and after going through automated phone hell I was put through to a lovely representative straight out of Bangalore, India named "Susan". Now I say "Susan" because I know that's not her real name. My time at MCI also gave me a huge education on outsourcing. Outsourcing is the reason I don't still work for MCI today. When MCI decided to outsource "just some" of the e-Customer Service work to India, we started seeing e-mails go out to customers with our names that we did not send. That was because our Indian co-workers were using our names so they didn't have to sign Noorjehan, Parameshwari, or Abjit--their real names. After a lot of complaining we finally got them to end their e-mails with who they really are.

I told "Susan" that our phones and Internet were not working. She asked me all the right questions--did I unplug the phones, did I try a different phone, do I pray to Allah. I knew how to perform the UPT (Unplug Test) so I was right with her on all of that. I was then expecting to be put on hold for a line test. Nope. "Susan" transferred me to the DSL repair team. Oh "Susan"! DSL repair told me that they couldn't fix my DSL until I had a dial tone, which I already knew but someone needs to school "Susan" on that, I think. They started getting into a bunch of questions I had a hard time understanding and I finally just hung up in frustration. I figured I would call back Monday morning and try to get someone maybe in Denver. Sunday night Adam decided it was time to try again so I called back and spoke to "Susan" Bangalore friend, "John". No kidding. He called himself "John". John immediately performed a line test and discovered we had an "open out". When he started to explain to me what that was I told him I already knew but hearing the phrase "open out" immediately brought back a lot of memories. One in particular.

The ten of us that were chosen for that third shift repair team were some of the funnest people in the center. One night a friend that was not on our team, Wes, came into the bay to talk to some of us during a break. After he left I turned to someone on my team and said, "Wes' zipper was down." He laughed and composed an email that went something like this:

Subject: XYZ

The local repair team has performed a test and found that you have an open out on your zipper. We could dispatch a technician but this is a job you may want to do yourself to save the cost.

I saved that email forever. I suppose to someone who wasn't there maybe it's not as funny but when you're forced to be a phone tech geek for a year of your life, that shit's funny, yo.

...which is my problem...how, exactly?

2009-03-06T19:03:00.002-06:00

Over a month ago two doctors associated with our hospital quit their practice and went, who knows where. I don't particularly care except sometimes people call me at work and ask. A letter was sent to each of their patients letting them know the practice was closing and they had been referred to Dr. X. It also listed a number they can call to get a different referral if they don't want to see Dr. X.

Today a man called who had been a patient of one of these doctors and he said that this doctor was supposed to have called in a prescription for him over a month ago and it wasn't done. He said he has an appointment with another doctor he was referred to on Monday but needs this script now, what should he do? I asked what the doctor's name was that he was referred to.

"I don't know."
"Do you know where the doctor's office is?"
"It's across the street from the hospital."

(The area he is referring to is like a doctor's park with seriously about 10 buildings FULL.OF.DOCTOR'S.OFFICES.)

"Without the physician's name, sir, I don't know where to transfer your call to."
"So, what you're saying is, you have no idea who my doctor is and where my appointment is so I'm basically fucked???"
"That's it, exactly." Is what I wanted to say. What came out of my mouth was more. "I'm sorry. This is only the switchboard. I don't have any access to your records or appointments and can't tell you who your doctor is."

This is when he starts yelling the word "fuck" a lot and basically the point in the call where I hung up. Good luck and good day to you, sir.

Happy weekend everyone. Adam and I are heading out to karaoke tonight. I have to go now and pretend like I don't hear Adam having pretend conversations with people in the shower.

I suppose you think this is going to work...

2009-03-05T23:06:00.002-06:00

We got a notice from the office today. Said they were going to bring the building down to just one hot water heater tonight and tomorrow so they can "fix" it. They say their "confident" it will work. Riiiiiiiight... Good thing I'm working 1st shift tomorrow and wont need a hot shower in the morn...oh...wait. Dammit.

You wanna make something of it???

2009-03-04T23:53:00.001-06:00

Yeah...I didn't post anything yesterday. Bite me. I gave up posting on March 3rd for lent. Prove I didn't. Go on. I'll wait.

Timing is everything

2009-03-02T05:19:00.002-06:00

Let me start this post by telling you it's 5:19am and I've been up since 4:34. I woke up Friday night for work with a bit of a sore throat. About 5 minutes into my shift I was miserable. My head had so much pressure I thought it would pop. Luckily my sore throat didn't last but I've been unable to breathe ever since. I popped Dayquil at work Saturday night until I came home, took two Tylenol PM and was completely unconscious 2.73 minutes later. I normally sleep anywhere from 3.5 to 4.5 hours after working 3rd shift but yesterday I slept almost 8 hours.

The Gods of Urinary Control woke me up this morning at 4:34am and and an even more evil God decided more sleep is not in my future. I. Am. Wide. Awake. So, I popped some more Dayquil and I'm running with it.

Another reason I'm awake is because as soon as I finished my bathroom work and returned to bed I noticed that the upstairs neighbors were turning on and off their water. Over and over with the water. Over and over. Every time they turn their water off, the pipes rattle. Then I noticed it was very uniform--this on and off with the water. My Swatch watch is on my nightstand and it ticks very loud. Because I had nothing else to do as I lay there I started timing it. Sure enough the water is on for EXACTLY 20 seconds before it's turned off and it's turned back on EXACTLY 18.5 seconds later. After a half-hour of this I realized no person could do this so methodically. No way. Ain't happenin'. I'm going to call the office later, you know, after they open, and try to explain to them what's happening in a way that hopefully they won't call for the men in white coats that twiddle their thumbs and their toes.

What I'm really hoping with this new discovery is that it will make me a building hero. See, since before Thanksgiving everyone in our building has had problems with their hot water. As in we don't usually have any, or you have to work hard for it. If you would like to take a hot shower in our building you have to let the water run for ten minutes first. No joke. Sometimes if you turn your shower on and then the sink on full-blast-hot, then you can cut your waiting time in half. I like to call the whole process "going 'green' ". This is also the same if you would like to wash your dishes in something other than ice water. Our building has 12 3-bedroom apartments so you can imagine all the water we're saving by having to do this. Sometimes, if you're really, really lucky, once you've waiting the necessary 5-10 minutes for your hot shower, it will turn cold three minutes after you get in. It does it gradually, you know, over a 15 second period. That way you can beg and plead for it to stop. "Please, please don't get cold! Please!" Then the next thing you hear is, "Are you kidding me right now?!?!?" Then the painful screams of someone trying to wash their undercarriage in cold water as quickly as possible. This is followed with a lot of cussing. Now I'm starting to wonder if this on and off again thing has something to do with it. Someone call the CSI guys, quick.

I've decided to do NaBloPoMo for March. Maybe just to prove I can do it since I blew it back in November, what, three whole days into it? The theme is Giving (Up). Obviously you don't have to stick with the theme, but after all this, I think what I've given up is sleep. Beautiful sleep. Oh, and hot water.

By the way--the on and off with the water thing? Still doing it almost an hour and a half later. Wheird.

Really? You have to do that NOW?

2009-02-28T23:18:00.003-06:00

I spend a lot of time on websites reading information. I like to read all of your blogs but I also like the ridiculous sites like TMZ and eonline. I also visit the ones that I like to think expand my mind and thinking like msnbc and cnn. Tonight I came across an article on MSNBC that made me say, "WHAT?" out loud, even though no one was in the room.

A lady in Kettering Ohio was charged with child endangerment after another motorist saw her not only BREAST-FEEDING her child while she drove, but she was also talking on her cell phone. Police say the concern was that she had a child in her lap while driving, not that she was breast-feeding in public. The 39 year-old woman said she wouldn't let her child, who was under the age of two, go hungry.

Now, I never breast-fed my children. The whole process just creeps me out. I don't like to touch my own boobs, let alone let some baby suck on them, even if they came out of my vag. *shiver* I don't have a problem with other women who do it, or who even do it in public as long as they are discreet about it. I really don't. however I can't imagine it would be easy to talk on a cell phone and breast feed your child in the comforts of your own home, sitting on your couch while watching All My Children, let alone adding the whole steering, braking, turning an automobile to the mix.

And really? The phone call couldn't wait? There was NO WHERE for you to pull over and feed your baby? Were you so far away from your destination that the baby couldn't wait? Exactly how long had it been since you last fed the poor thing?

Police say the woman faces up to 180 days in jail and a $1,800 fine if convicted of the misdemeanor. Good luck with that.

The "F" word.

2009-02-27T19:17:00.001-06:00

As posted by Bad Mommy here is one of the best videos ever. My favorite is at 1:58. Now go fuck yourself.

Brandy...not such a fine girl afterall...

2009-02-19T02:24:00.002-06:00

On Tuesday night Adam and I had our downstairs neighbors over for dinner and then a board game after all the kids were safely tucked away in their beds. We did this last week (or was it the week before?) and it was a blast drinking and playing 'Life'.

Adam mixed up some "Sex on the beeotch" for neighbor wife and I while the hubbies drank some beers. We broke out the 'Life' game and then shots of SoCo. (a shot when you got married, a shot when you had a kid, someone made up the rule that you had to take a shot when you messed something up, which was easy for me to do since I was the banker. Let's see you not make any mistakes when you've graduated from college, gotten married, have three kids and keep track of everyone's paydays and raises!)

Anyway, when the SoCo ran out we replaced it with blackberry brandy. It never fails that when I've been drinking a lot, more shots and more drinks always seem like a really good idea. I started asking for shots when I didn't really need them and after the neighbors left Adam and I did more shots and had one of those "serious drunk talks" that ends with one or both of you crying about your past. Yeah. It was that kind of Tuesday night.

As we headed off to bed sometime after 1am I remembered that the next day was Spring Picture day at Emily's school. I was definitely going to have to get up with her to make sure her hair wasn't too funky looking. Great. I had bought her a shirt to wear for the pictures last weekend but I needed to find her jeans because I wasn't sure if these were going to be full length pictures or not. I crept into Em's room, the same room I had spent about three hours cleaning that day and subsequently dumped out her basket of clean clothes that I had yet to put away. Emily stirred a bit and in a classic "I'm really drunk but I'm going to try to have a serious conversation right now" kind of voice I told Emily that I was looking for jeans and did she know where any were. "no." she said sleepily. "I'm going to write you a note for the morning. You need to look for jeans when you get up in the morning." "kay." "I'll leave the note here, ok?" "kay." I haven't since looked at the note but I'm guessing it was pretty illegible. WTG mom!

Adam and I were in bed for probably not five minutes when it all hit me. All the shots, all the mixed drinks, all the laughing until my stomach hurt. I sat up and said, "I don't feel good."

"Go to the bathroom."
"My body feels like jell-o."
"Go to the bathroom. Please?"

BARF!

I spewed red yucky stuff everywhere next to the bed. Because he was so drunk too Adam must have thought it was a little funny because before I could spew again he was standing in front of me half laughing and saying, "Ooooo! All right!" I yakked again and he got me a trash can. When I was done he covered the red nastiness with two towels, said, "I'll clean that up in the morning." and made me go rinse with mouthwash. I laid back down and about 30 seconds later Adam said, "It's my turn." and he ran off to the bathroom and did his own thing, much more gracefully than I did.

We passed out and I woke up at 4:30am with the worst headache and cottonmouth. I staggered to the kitchen, grabbed a glass of water and downed 3 ibuprofen. I managed to wake up when Emily did at 7:15 and helped her get ready. Adam got up and took her to school instead of having her catch the bus so we would have a little more time to get ready for pictures. Each of us eventually took some sort of nap in the afternoon and I re hydrated all day with ice water. I have a large mug from work that holds 32 oz. and I drank 4 of them before dinner. We were hurting for most of the day.

Throughout the day I would notice things hurting, like my knee. That's when I remembered that after the neighbors left Adam and I had found a plastic hammer and we each proceeded to hop up on the kitchen table to check each other's reflexes. Hard.

Then I noticed my head was hurting in one spot like I had hit it. That's when I remembered when we took the same hammer and knocked each other on the heads. I remembered giving Adam a small welt on his forehead.

Later Blake leaned over on my arm to get a potato chip from me and my upper arm hurt. That's right, more abuse, lol. We were poking each other in the arm hard with a finger then punching the same spot with our fists. If you've never done this, you should do it to someone you love the next time you see them. Do it twice then squeeze their arms where you've been hitting it. It makes it hurt more. Re-reading all of this I'm thinking that maybe someone should take our wet bar away. And the plastic hammer.

Next game night I am going to try to be a much lighter weight drinker!

Yay! A Ter-get Gift Carrrd!

2009-02-15T19:16:00.002-06:00

Exchanged my purple iPod for the blue today. I also picked up 2 three-disc music sets. One is a classic rock one and the other is an 80's #1 hits. Yay baby! Marconi plays the mamba. Listen to the radio. Don't you remember? We built this city on ROCK AND ROLLLLLLL! I'm so glad no one was home for the first couple of hours after I downloaded the new music to my iPod cuz I wuz ROCKIN!

Oh, and by the way, I named my iPod "Pod Almighty". LOL. Well, I'm off to karaoke. No, really. We're going to karaoke tonight.

V-Day

2009-02-15T04:23:00.002-06:00

This Valentine's Day marked the 10 year anniversary of my engagement to Adam. Ten years ago yesterday, at midnight, Adam got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Our story goes like this...

My goddaughter was getting baptized on Valentine's Day here in the Quad Cities. At the time Adam and I lived an hour away. Adam had to work the night before V. Day but had the next day off, which come to think of it seems quite amazing because he cooked at Lonestar Steak House. Seems they would be pretty busy for V. Day, but what do I know. Anywho, Adam didn't have a license at that time so he usually took the bus to work and I picked him up at night. I think I picked him up somewhere around 11:30 or so that night and when we came home I was running around trying to get our stuff together because we were leaving that night to spend the night at my friend's house (mom to my goddaughter).

Adam was somewhat quiet but I didn't pay much mind to it. At midnight his alarm went off next to his bed. I remember saying out loud, "What the heck is that? Why is your alarm going off?" Adam went in the bedroom, turned it off and then sat me down on the side of the couch. He got down on one knee and everything he said is a total blur to me. I know he said something along the lines of, "I'm a total asshole, will you marry me anyway?" I think he thought that would be his ticket out of any trouble he might get into for the next 60 years. Nice try buddy. Anyway, I said yes and the rest, as they say, is history.

The next day, V. Day was a little crazy with the baptism and I had to work a half a day so we had to drive all the way back home for a few hours, then all the way back to the QC to go out with some friends. I didn't tell my family that day that Adam had proposed. I saved it for Monday the 15th. I tried to call my mom in the morning and she didn't answer. Tried again a couple hours later and reached her. I asked her where she was and she sounded tired and she breathed a heavy sigh and talked about taking a friend or neighbor to a ceramic shop because they wanted to start doing ceramics and she kinda droned on and on like it was a real hassle for her to have done that. When she finished I said, "Well. Guess what?" "What?" "Adam asked me to marry him." Oh my gosh! Then she was all giggles and excitement. She started talking a mile a minute and then she asked me where Adam was. "At home." I think she pretty much just hung up on me after that and called Adam. I have no idea what their conversation consisted of but soon after Adam called me and said, "I don't think I've ever heard your momma so excited." This May will mark our 9th wedding anniversary.

Since I had to work this weekend Adam and I didn't get to do anything particularly special for Valentine's day, but I did get to take him out to breakfast this morning sans kiddos. On Friday we went our separate ways and did a little shopping for each other and the kids. I got Adam two tickets for us to see a play about Johnny Cash, one of his idols. We go next month. I also got him some other random stuff, which he thought was his actual presents. T-shirt, body wash, shaving cream, you know, real exciting stuff. I had stuck the tickets in the card and made him open it last. I'm such a sneak!

Adam got me an Isabel Bloom, Victoria's Secret perfume, and some earrings. This afternoon we went shopping at Target and he let me get an iPod. Something I had been wanting for a while. I had a ridiculously hard time picking a colour but settled on purple. I really wanted blue, but they were out of stock. The blue iPod is a little more teal than blue and I thought it was a really cool colour. When I couldn't get blue I had it narrowed down to orange, green, purple or black. I may still go to the other Target in town and see if they have a blue one in stock and exchange it. I also got a $15 Target gift card with my purchase, so that rocks.

How did each of you spend V. Day?

We're having her over for pot roast and shots of SoCo next Friday night.

2009-02-14T18:24:00.005-06:00

Our trip to the nursing home went rather smoothly. The entrance to the facility opened to a common room where there were about 10 or so residents. The kids somewhat shyly started passing out valentines and chocolate hearts. One of the first residents to greet us was a woman we soon found out was named Shirley. Shirley had the voice of James Earl Jones but seemed innocent enough. She came over and knelt down in front of Blake and started talking to him and praised us about how well behaved "the children" were.

"Just wait." I thought. "We've only been here 87 seconds." The kids kept passing out valentines and candy to those in the common room and Shirley followed behind talking the whole time about how much she loves "the children." Emily gave a valentine to a woman who looked to be one of the youngest in the place who was sitting on a couch, holding a baby doll. I imagined her taking it everywhere and freaking out if people touched it but soon enough Shirley was holding it and the woman seemed happy to get rid of it for a while. Maybe it was colicky.

So, after we were done in the common area we decided to mosey on to the patient floors. Shirley, carrying the baby, decided to tag along. When we exited the common area we came into sort of the "hub" of the place. There were more couches and chairs, a large atrium full of birds and three hallways to choose from filled with patient rooms. There were a few residents hanging out in the hub, however most of them were sleeping. One man was wide awake and apparently looking for some company. He kept saying, "HI! Hello. Hi there!" As we passed him Shirley very bluntly told him she wasn't talking to him. "I'm with these children. They are very precious to me." Then she apologized to us for talking that way. "I just need to be with these children right now. I haven't seen them in a while. They used to come all the time." About halfway through the first hall a nurse tried to get Shirley to leave us alone. "I know these people." She said. Adam turned to the nurse and told her it was ok, she was fine and that she was escorting us around the place. Shirley seemed satisfied with that answer and then her praise was all over Adam. "He's wonderful. He's got a big heart. How nice."

"We'll see how big you think his heart is, Shirley when he holds YOU down and tries to lick you face like a dog, turns the channel every 5.7 seconds, forces you to watch Knight Rider or when he takes the last Mt. Dew in the house. He's not so wonderful then."

We popped in and out of rooms all the while Shirley was either commenting on the temperature of the hallway or the patient room, or she was praising the children and talking about all the wonderful times she's spent with them in the past.

"Oh. It's cold in here."

"It's nice and warm out here."

"I remember the last time he came here (referring to Blake) and he came in and we just started running all over and everyone said, 'Oh, there goes Aunt Shirley running again!"

"It's chilly out here. It was warm in that room."

She told one nurse she'd known us for years. "Oh Shirley." She said. "You're always bringing your friends here." I guess we weren't the only long lost friends she's had come visit her.

When we were almost done, Shirley tried to give the baby to Emily. "Oh. She had a lot of them." Adam told her. Good thing too. I don't need no colicky baby in the house.

When we were all done and as we started to walk out the door, some alarms started going off. Shirley said, "Oh, those go off all the time when Shirley's out here." Adam tracked down a nurse assuming we were supposed to enter some code on the keypad next to the door before we opened it.

"No. It's because of her." pointing to Shirley. She wears an alarm so we know if she's trying to go outside." Then she tried getting Shirley to go back inside. "I need to stay with the children. I'm with that little boy. He is so precious to me. My heart just went out to the children."

Happy Valentines day, Shirley.

In the end...they're just a bunch of cards...but with a lot of meaning

2009-02-14T06:30:00.006-06:00

My family has to be the luckiest family on the planet. They are the luckiest because once a month they get to be the victims of my wrath. Once a month they get to see me scream, cry, scream some more and act like a complete moron. One day last week was their lucky day.

In the shortest terms possible I had a massive dose of PMS, I freaked out at Emily because she didn't tell me that her aunt, my sister, who buys her every freaking thing in the world, had gone out and bought her Valentines when I was the one that wanted to take her shopping for them. I was really hurt, I said kinda mean things to Emily, I vented about it on another blog, I felt better about it a few hours later and apologized to Emily the next morning. Oh, and she had also bought Valentines for Blake too, but I had already beat her to the punch on those.

In my venting on the other blog someone suggested we donate the extra box of Valentines to a shelter for a child that maybe couldn't afford them otherwise. Someone else suggested handing them out at a nursing home. I fell in love with the idea and so did Adam. I filled them out Thursday night while I watched our Thursday night shows and yesterday I bought four bags of chocolate hearts to give with them. We have about 50 valentines to pass out to the residents. Adam had called a nursing home near us and they gave us a time that would be good to come up.

Most of you probably don't know that my little construction worker of a husband used to be a CNA at a nursing home before he started working in construction. He knows what they are like and how the residents light up when little kids come to visit and how a lot of them don't get a lot of visitors of their own, if any at all. We explained to the kids what it will be like and why we are doing it. We told them we just want them to understand what it means to give instead of receive, receive receive. I'll update you when it's all said and done.

It's not you, it's me...

2009-02-13T16:47:00.003-06:00

I bought a new keyboard today while I was out shopping. The old one we had had a pretty rough space bar that you really had to hit hard, sometimes with both thumbs to get to work. Even then when it did work it would make an ugly 'CLICK' sound. I hated it. I hated it because I LOVE to type and that keyboard was not a typist's friend. The new keyboard loves me and I love it. It's quiet. The keys are slightly curved to make typing easier and the keyboard very quietly goes 'click.'

The old keyboard got messed up when something random was spilled on it. The new one has a "spill resistant design", whatever that means.

Holy Toledo! I just realized that when you click on this little calculator button, the calculator comes up on the keyboard. Now THAT is magical.

A Look Back at the Grammys By Amy WaWa...

2009-02-10T02:32:00.009-06:00

Today I've decided to give a recap of Sunday night's Grammy awards. I didn't even know the Grammy's were on until I heard Lisa Rinna's voice coming from the living room. Speaking of, I really loved Lisa when she was on DOOL and her lips were smaller than her vag but dang old girl has gotten a bit skanky in her old age. Anyone see her at the SAG awards where we all got a bit more of Lisa Rinna than we needed??? As if the picture didn't look awkward enough in the fact that it looks like she has only one leg, now she needs to show us a bit of her lady bits? Seriously, cover that thing up.

As for the Grammy's they was a'ight. It's been a long time since I've watched any awards shows. Alison Krauss' face creeps me out. It's frozen like Nicole Kidman's from too much plastic surgery and colligen injections. Also, her corset-style dress did nothing for her except emphasize her horrible, horrible posture and it squeezed the upper part of her body out the top in a really weird way. Another thing that was weird about her and her buddy Robert Plant was that every time they were called up to the stage for an award, Bob would do all the talking while Alison stood there "frozen" with a big smile on her face, holding the Grammy. Then, as they walked off the stage she would hand the Grammy over to Bob. When they won Album of the Year Green Day, who presented them with the award, tried to hand the statue over to Alison but she declined it and told them to give it to Bob. Then she actually did say a few words, something to the effect that Robert is a PITA to work with, but she said it much nicer and you kinda had to read between the lines. Quite frankly, after hearing them sing together just before they somehow won album of the year I was even more unimpressed and more suprised they had won the albums they had won so far. Frankly I thought it sucked. There, I said it.

I won't even talk about what M.I.A. wore during her performance:

In case you missed it, there was also a giant polka-dot patch covering her ass. Sadly, this ensemble was almost better than what she showed up in:

As I watched the pre show they showed Jennifer Hudson arriving. There she was standing beside her limo and her "peeps" were fixing her make-up. I remember thinking, "Oh. They've put some kind of paper in front of her dress to protect it from any make-up mishaps. A couple minutes later she stepped over to Ryan Seacrest's booth and that's when I said, "Oooooooo. That was actually part of her dress!"

To me it looks like a giant piece of fly paper flew around in the air and stuck itself to the front of her otherwise beautiful dress.

Coldplay performed and I commented to Adam that it looked like Punky Brewster channelled Sgt. Pepper and designed their costumes and set.

I guess I should mention some highlights of the show, instead of focusing entirely on the negative. With the exception of the Plant/Krauss suck-ass song, I enjoyed all of the performances. Kid Rock did a mix of three of his songs, however the big talk of the night was the fact that Paul McCartney was going to be performing. I was anxious to hear it because Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters was going to be backing him on the drums. After all the hype Sir Paul finally made his way to the stage and simply did "I Saw Her Standing There". That was it. Paul McCartney 1, Kid Rock 3. Somehow it just didn't seem right.

We saw a lot of Justin Timberlake I think mainly because they had to fill time because of the Chris Brown/Rihanna issue and the fact that both were supposed to perform but obviously neither showed. I didn't mind. Gimme J.T. over Brown or Rihanna anyday.

Radiohead did an awesome performance of "15 Step" with the USMC Trojan drum corps. I told Adam I bet it was even better if you were there. I bet a lot of people in the audience got goosebumps, it was that good.

I've read a lot of negative things about Katy Perry's performance and outfit during "I Kissed A Girl." At the start of the performance Katy was lowered onto the stage in a giant banana and she looked a bit like Carmen Miranda, however I didn't REALLY think it was that over-the-top, especially for Katy Perry. I mean...come on...do I need to bring up M.I.A. again???

Performances I could have done without include Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline. Actually he doesn't even sing it. He just "talks" it and lets the audience fill in a lot. Also, Stevie Wonder with The Jonas Brothers. I felt bad for Stevie. The poor guy had no idea the trio of teenage losers he was singing with.

What did you think of the Grammys?

Freaking YAY!

2009-01-30T18:35:00.003-06:00

I talked to my BFF Jim today and he had some wonderful, wonderful news. He finally got a job that he starts on February 9th. Whooohoooo!!! Poor kid hasn't worked since May (thank you economy!) and now he's scored a great job with good benefits. Hopefully sometime this summer we'll be able to get together here at the old homestead and we can sit on my deck drinking and watching all the hot boys down at the pool. It's going to be a fabu summer!

Michael Dorsey (Tootsie): "I don't believe in Hell. I believe in UNEMPLOYMENT, but not Hell."

It's my life...and it's a little crazy...

2009-01-28T22:10:00.004-06:00

I haven't posted in so long and I'm sorry about that. What's been going on with me? Well, mostly just work. I'm still working 1st, 2nd and 3rd shifts, usually during the same week. Blake has been sick with a double ear infection starting last Friday. I would talk to the doctor about his ear infection frequency but when we tried to make an appointment for the poor little guy on Monday they said they took him out of their system because we have a bill that was sent to collections for $387. Said they can't see him until it's paid. Well this was news to me. Seems like an awful high bill for people that have had health insurance since before they had children. Anyway, I would have argued with them (Adam was actually the one on the phone with them trying to make the appointment) but I lacked the desire. Plus I had already taken Blake to the clinic the day before so he was getting treated with anti-biotics and such, the appointment was just a recommended follow-up. Anyway, somewhere near the bottom of my to-do list is number 437. Call the pediatrician's office to get a copy of said $387 bill. Bitches.

Emily's doing great. We have a conference with her teacher next week so I'm anxious to see how she's doing in school. I took her for a hair cut on Monday and while I was telling the girl what I wanted done to her hair the girl noticed a small chunk on hair on top that was only about 3 inches long.

"What happened here?"
"I dunno." Says Emily.
I say, "Well, who knows. She's been trying to do her own beauty maintenance lately. She's already gone at her unibrow with my razor and shaved off the top of an eyebrow. She also shaved a leg. It's possible she tried to cut her own hair too."

The girl looked at me in total shock like she didn't know whether to call child services or just laugh hysterically. Sometimes I feel the same way.

This week Adam sold our Hyundai and bought a mini van. I've had the Hyundai since 1996 when I bought it brand new off the lot. I was not quite 22 years old and it was my first "new" car. I'll miss it but it's time to go bigger. We have another car that is our "main" car used to haul the kids around and such but it's a smallish 4 door car as well. Adam will use the van for work and now he'll have a bigger car to haul the kiddies in, so that will be good.

Yesterday I got back into the gym and walked a half mile and biked for a mile. I wanted to walk a mile also but I think after my 24-hour flu bug and gym hiatus, my body just wasn't that into me.

Otherwise everything on my end is going pretty good. I've been trying to link to the right some other blogs I've been lurking on so if you have the time, try to check them out. You may find something you like as well!

Well, it's off to bed for me to catch about 3 hours of sleep before I go in to work tonight. I'm working 3rd shift tonight and tomorrow night then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I'm working 1st shift, 2nd shift then 3rd shift. Then guess what? I'm off Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. You have no idea how flipping excited I am. Adam and I are going to try to get out to see Don Rickles on Sunday night. I can't wait!

stoked.

2009-01-26T04:09:00.007-06:00

OK, so week 2 of Operation Get The Warren's Under Financial Control is going well. In fact, as an added surprise, Adam got a raise in his unemployment benefits. He's getting an additional $46 every 2 weeks, which is an extra 20 bucks in each of our pockets. I managed to stick to our budget this week and neither Adam nor I have been using our debit cards for spending. We've only used the cash I gave each of us on Friday. I was bad on Saturday when I got groceries I went a little over budget, probably about $15 total because I spent $130 on groceries instead of $125 and I spent about $10 at the dollar store, mostly on hand soap, which we wont get into. I even made the cashier ring up two separate bills at Wal-Mart paying for my own crap separate--make-up remover, hair dye, eyeliner brush and make-up sponges. Emily earned cash which was paid for from the tooth fairy and out of our own pockets. So all and all it's going well. Oh, and I will be putting $10 in our xmas fund again, but first I have to straighten some things out at the bank. Turns out after I made our car payment on Friday, the automated system at the bank went ahead and paid it again, for added measure. If they don't fix that then I could be a little screwed. This has happened to us before though and they've just posted the funds back to our account with no problems. Hopefully that will be the case again.

In other news I am totally captivated by the new president and his wife. I love all the photo montages that the national news sites have been featuring. I told Adam I think I have some sort of crush on Obama. Not in a "I wanna hump the President" kind of way, although if given the chance I'd totally do it just to say I did. Just to be like, "Yeah. I did him. I did the President." I would bet that despite the ruined dress and bad press, Monica Lewinsky is still riding on a bit of a cloud. Anyway, I'm really taken by this picture.

It gives a little sneak peak into the backstage of everything that happened that Tuesday and what must have been a total whirlwind of a day. And do you even sleep after a day like that? I mean, your body must totally crash. And poor Mrs. Obama's feet! Can you imagine the pedicure our girl Michelle must have been screaming for the next day??

In my opinion they just really look like they're mad about each other based on the way they are looking at each other in the different pictures I see. Obviously this could all be smoke and mirrors and perhaps they call each other names you would only call your neighbor who lets his dog crap on your front steps, but to me this looks to be the real thing. Not the fake thing like The Clinton's are trying to pass off like spam or imitation crab. They don't even look at each other. Ever notice that. If they are in each other's company and smiling it is because someone else is making them laugh. I imagine their house to actually be like two houses in one. Bill lives in one side, Hillary in the other and never the two shall meet. Why don't they just divorce? Show us you're really like the American people and do what 50% off all other marriages have already done. End it. Put yourselves out of misery. It's gotta be like holding in a fart for hours for them two every time they're in public. Bill. Hillary. Let it go before you explode.

Done. And done.

2009-01-19T16:44:00.001-06:00

Ok. I did it. I put $10 in our Christmas Club account. By the time we can access the funds on October 1st we should have $10.12 with interest. Yay! Sure hope we don't need that ten bucks! Hehe. No! I WILL put ten bucks in every week. I will. I will. I will.

...well, now this is happening...

2009-01-14T22:31:00.006-06:00

When I made a certain gift to give to my dad for christmas, I couldn't wait to blog about it. Then guess what? I forgot! So let me give you a little background...

The first xmas after I had Emily I put a bunch of pictures of her in one of those multiple opening frames and gave it to my dad for xmas. After I had Blake he wanted one for him too but I just kinda forgot. When my sister and I went xmas shopping the day after T.Giving I found an awesome black wood frame with multiple openings at a killer price at Kohl's so I bought it for dad with the intention of putting Blake pictures in it. Then, the onery little elf that resides in my head found out my plan. He thought it would be funny to put pictures of Adam in the frame. Not just in the frame, but in all 16 openings of the frame. I decided I would take cheesy pictures of Adam, like the kind you would find already in a frame when you buy it. We did it on Christmas Eve and I decided a Christmas theme to them would be fun. The best part of this is that until the last couple years, Adam and my dad have had a sort of Archie Bunker/Meathead type relationship so the thought of dad having 16 pictures of Adam hanging in his house was hilarious to think about. Since I had to work 2nd shift the night of Christmas eve, I took the pictures, which I printed in black and white, with me to work and put them in while I worked. I put the "real" pictures of the kids behind them so when all the fun ended, I could do the big reveal easily.

Let's just say I'm glad our office has one-way glass so no one could see me doing it because I was cracking up the whole time. My sister, BIL and Adam were the only ones who knew I was doing it so I took it with me to our family dinner on Christmas day so everyone could see it and my dad's reaction. We weren't sure how he was going to react. I for sure thought he wasn't going to realize it was all Adam in there at first but then would react like, "Aw, Jesus Christ! Why the hell would you think I'd want a bunch of pictures of THIS guy!" How he actually reacted was even better. He cracked up! Like laughed like I haven't seen him do in a really long time. Here's his reaction:

Here's the finished product as well as what it looked like with the kids pictures in it. From the look on dad's face, you'd think he actually liked the Adam version better:

And here are a few of my favorite pictures I took. Like I said, they have a Christmas theme. You may notice Adam's eyes are a little bloodshot. He'd been up for like 2 days and I woke him up from a much deserved nap to take the pictures. What a trooper!

On a slightly unrelated note, here is a picture of my sister holding a gift she got from our cousin, who is a dental hygentist at a place that does mostly dentures. That's right, it's a denture with the teeth painted red and green. She drilled a hole in it and strung it with floss for hanging on the Christmas tree. My sister got one and so did Adam and I. I got the upper, Adam got the lower denture. I thought it was so awesome, mine is hanging from my rearview mirror. They are actual dentures returned from actual people that have been sterilized. I hope someone sees mine in my car and thinks it was left to me in a will by grandpa.

"Do you have a goal? Ya gotta have a goal."

2009-01-13T20:24:00.005-06:00

It's not too late to put in my order of New Year's resolutions, right? I figure as long as they're still made within the month of January, then there's no late fees. At least that's what the little procrastination devil inside my head is telling me, and frankly I'm akin to believe him. So, here they are, my New Year's resolutions for 2009...break out the horn section...

1. Lose some weight. I think my ultimate goal is about 35 pounds this year. Will that put me in that size 2 couture dress for the 2010 Oscar's next year? No, not even close, but it will prove that I can do it. I also hope that once I get on a roll loosing weight, that the ball will just keep rolling.

2. Workout more. Adam and I were doing super working out while Blake was in preschool but I've missed the last two times so now I'm naughty. Spank me. No really. I've been bad. OK, all kidding aside, I'm working on a workout goal, but I'm not sure what I want it to be yet. I know I want to combine some sort of cardio with some strengthening. Ultimately I think I'd like to walk a mile and bike a half a mile and then lift some weights. If I can do that 2x's a week, building up to 3x's a week, I'll be a happy camper. First though, butt to the gym!

3. OK, every year January rolls around and I say, "OK, this is the year I'm going to put money in our Christmas Club every week and I'm going to save up one month's worth of bills by the time Adam gets laid off in the winter." Then every year Adam gets laid off, Christmas is 4 weeks away and our checking account balance says "3.13." This year though, I WILL do it. I have to make a point to start it now. The sooner I start, the less I have to save back every week. Geez, even $10 a week would be something and it wouldn't be a huge amount of money that would be missed every week. I've missed out on putting money away for the last 2 Fridays, but no more. Starting this week, at least $10 will be put away for next winter.

4. Get better organized. Get rid of clutter. When we first moved in to the apartment, I felt very organized. I felt like the apartment wasn't cluttered and it made me want to do the dishes, put the dirty clothes in the basket instead of on the floor and just generally be neater. I've noticed in the last several weeks as I've gotten busier working full-time instead of part-time, Adam's gotten busier plowing snow, and with the holidays in general, the house is in a general upheaval and I'm messier because of it. Dishes I bring to the living room sit there, I'll take off my clothes next to the bed and not even bother to toss them 3 feet into the clothes basket, mail piles up here and there with no real place to go. I hate it. I want to quit it. I'm going to be realistic about it though. Am I looking for a squeaky clean house? Heck no, I have kids. I think there is a line of messiness though, and we've definitely crossed it.

5. Back onto the money thing, I want to be able to stick to a budget. I make budgets all the time, in fact I love doing it but I can't stick to one to save my life. Just once, even for a week, I'd like to follow a budget. I've got a whole year to do it...just once.

So these are my hopes for 2009. Extra bonus points to the person that can tell me what movie the quote is from that I used in the title of this post.

Just Let Me Live!

2009-01-07T15:36:00.004-06:00

I survived. I survived the funk of 2009. Last Wednesday one of our neighbor's kids was pretty sick with the flu. High fever, vomiting, the works. The next night Adam and Emily were sick. Adam didn't vomit but Emily did. She was better by early Friday afternoon and then in the middle of the night on Friday it was Blake's turn. I was working Friday and Saturday nights but Adam called me at about 3:45am Saturday morning and said it was Blake's turn. By the time I got home Saturday morning at 7:30 Blake was fine and running all over the house. Adam and I doused the house in Lysol and kept our fingers crossed. Late Sunday afternoon I had a bad feeling. My stomach started to hurt a little and I just knew it was going to be my turn. Sure enough, just before 1am it started. By 6am I thought I was going to pass out and die. I really did. I had gotten rid of every ounce of liquid in my body yet the Toilet Gods still demanded more. I was supposed to work 1st shift on Monday, from 8:30 to 5 but I had Adam call my supervisor around 6:15 to let her know I might be dead by then.

Adam was super awesome the whole night I was sick. He cleaned up messes too gruesome to mention and didn't complain even once. He brought me towels and anti-nausea meds. He cut open the little packets of Immodium that required a lot more strength than I could summon. He made me a cup of hot tea at 5am. Around 6:30, when the worst of it was over and all we wanted to do was sleep we gave each other nicknames. Mine was Squirt, his was Superman. They lasted until we passed out about 3.7 minutes later.

A few hours later I woke up and felt somewhat better. While I still had to run to the bathroom to hold down the toilet RIGHT NOW, my stomach wasn't as bad. I was very tired but there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I was going to live. I grabbed Emily's new Fisher Price portable DVD player, my unopened season 4 of The Office and settled in bed for the day. I was only able to watch about an episode and a half between naps. Finally I felt a lot better by that night and was pretty much a human again by yesterday. I even worked out yesterday morning, though I definitely didn't give it 100%. Maybe like 62%. And I only rode the stationary bike for about 45 minutes because the thought of being upright on a treadmill made me woozy.

So anyway, here I am. Alive. Back to work again tonight. wooo.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T12:26:00.002-06:00

Happy New Year everyone! I have to work 3rd shift tonight (boo!) I go in at 11 so I get to spend midnight answering the phones. I'm looking for it to be a crazy night with probably a lot of drunks and car accident victims in the ER and lots of calls to the crisis line from depressed/drunk peeps. Should be interesting. How are you spending your NYE?

Christmas Extravaganza!

2008-12-29T02:17:00.004-06:00

Because I worked 2nd shift on xmas eve, we had to break our normal family tradition of going to my sister's house to open the gifts she had bought. We were going to do it on Saturday, then they decided on Friday night that the roads out their way were too bad. Saturday morning they changed their minds and we headed to the land of presents as originally planned.

My sister buys a ton of presents for people at xmas time. Like a lot. Like lots and lots. Here's a breakdown of what I can remember everyone getting. Remember, these are all basically from my sister, with a few from my dad. Keep in mind though, my sister takes care of all of our dad's finances and of course his xmas shopping so basically a gift from my dad, while PAID FOR by him, it's really from my sister.

Me:

1. A Swatch watch. That's right! Early this year I posted a blog on my myspace about a website that lists all Swatches. I was able to find a picture of the one I got in 7th grade. I also declared in that blog that I would get another Swatch from this website in the not so distant future. I wanted one that screamed, "I am a Swatch watch straight out of the 80's!!!" Well, lucky for me when I did all that planning and booking for my sister and BIL's vacation this summer I happened to show her the Swatch site and how I wanted another Swatch. Lucky again for me that Caesar's Palace has a Swatch store in it. Whooohooo! While my new Swatch isn't TOO funky and doesn't scream 80's, it most certainly screams Swatch and I absolutely love it! I'm totally getting a Swatch guard in the next couple weeks.

2. Two Hallmark ornaments

3. 5 scratch-off lottery tickets (we each got these. She bought 30 tickets total and only 4 were winners. Blake won $5 and a free ticket and my BIL won a free ticket and $1.)

4. A handheld Sudoku game (this was "from the kids")

5. bed sheets

6. Adam and I got a $60 gift cert to Texas Roadhouse

7. $125 from my dad which we immediately handed over to my sister because she bought us a new washing machine the day after xmas when mine died last week. The rest of the washing machine money came out of Adam's snow plowing $$$.

8. Each of us got these Hallmark dancing globes. Mine was the elf one. Unfortunately Adam's reindeer would only tap one foot so he's gotta go back to the store and be exchanged.

9. The Office Season 4

10. Across the Universe DVD which I gave back to my sister because I already bought it for myself

11. A huge humidifier

12. Monopoly electronic banking

Adam got:

1. His own leg lamp from the movie "A Christmas Story". It was the first thing he opened and he said it's the only thing he needed. Even still he keeps saying, "That's the coolest thing ever. If that's all I would have got I would have been happy."

2. 4 pair of jeans

3. Fleece jammie pants "from the kids"

4. a Hallmark ornament

5. an ornament "from Emily"

Blake got:

1. 4 Planet Heroes guys

2. A Red Ryder BB gun (Emily got one too but in pink. They'll shoot their eyes out, I know. That's why they're locked in my BIL's safe.)

3. Preschool activity books

4. Both kids each got one of these DVD players (Blake's is blue) and a case to keep them in

5. 2 Leapster games

6. Each of them got Flik Flak watches which are kid's Swatch watches

7. Clothes, clothes, clothes

8. Jammies, jammies, jammies

9. Batman remote control car

10. Tonka helicopter

11. play-doh

12. in his stocking (yes, he has one there too) there was a coloring book, M&M's, and Hot Wheels

13. A big talking Incredible Hulk

14. Transformers bubble bath

15. A Smart Cycle

Emily got:

1. an iPod shuffle

2. Kung-Fu panda dvd

3. Tinker Bell dvd

4. 2 games for her Nintendo DS

5. Clothes, clothes, clothes

6. play-doh

7. her stocking had a coloring book, M&M's and littlest pet shops

8. Dancing castle barbie

9. a leapster game

10. Tinker Bell bubble bath

11. SpongeBob Monopoly

12. About 3 or 4 Crayola color explosion/light up drawing thingys

13. a bunch of craft stuff ie. pompom balls, craft sticks, glue, tape, pipe cleaners, etc.

So, yeah...not that much really...if you're a family of, oh say, TEN!

Hold me closer, Tony Danza

2008-12-26T20:25:00.001-06:00

Hello Interneters. I thought after a long holiday weekend filled with extended family, listening to your Uncle Willy give a blow-by-blow account of his colonoscopy during dinner while you try to gag down great-grandma’s jell-o salad, it would be nice for a completely holiday-free blog post.

I’ve come across a website where you can find the correct words/phrases to songs and what others have misheard the lyrics to be. I started going through this huge site, which lists songs by artist, when I figured I would just cut right to one of my favorites, Prince, who had an extensive list. Even though there are many, many that I know, I only bothered to look at the songs I knew very well.

Erotic City—This one REALLY made me laugh out loud. The actual lyric is:
“We could f**k until the dawn, Making love ‘til cherry’s gone”

What someone thought Prince said was:
“We could f**k a chili dog, Making love ‘til chili’s gone.”

I guess you probably could hump a chili dog, but somehow I don’t think Prince wants any part of it.

This one holds a dear spot in my heart because it is the same misheard lyric that my husband once confessed to me. The song is “I Would Die 4U” The actual lyric is the title, “I Would Die 4U”. The misheard lyric this person shares with my hubby is, “Apple—dapple—you.” Very cute, very innocent, sort of “Bippity-boppity-boo-ish”. Definitely not Prince-y.

Here’s another that made me chuckle. Remember “Kiss”? Prince defies his manhood by singing in a very soprano voice for pretty much the entire song. The original lyric is, “I just want your extra time and your…KISS.” Misheard lyric? “I just want some extra time with your….KIDS.” Awww, that’s sweet Prince but I’m pretty sure after 7 minutes with my son you’ll bring him back and run away on your purple motorcycle.

Now onto a song which had SEVERAL entries in the site. In fact, there were 80 entries for people simply getting the title of the song wrong. How do you do that? Don’t you pay attention to what the song is actually CALLED??? Anyway, our little song that could is “Little Red Corvette.” I’ll start us off with telling you that a former roommate of mine thought our man Prince was saying, “Get the rent, collect”. Because I’m a big Prince fan, the thought of someone not actually “getting” the song was a little unsettling. To think that Prince is singing about collecting rent like some 105 lb. landlord in purple velvet instead of the sexual song it was made me a little sad. Turns out there’s a bunch of people out there just like my old roomie that seem to think Prince is singing about the rent. Like the lyric above, they too must not have known what the actual title to the song was. Here are some of my faves:

“Pay your rent, Georgette”
“Pay the rent, Collette”
“Pay the rent, collect”
“Pay the rent, Yvette”
“Leave the rent, call back”

This one expands on the rent issue:

“Pay the rent, Collette
You need to find a job that’s gonna last.”

You know, really Collette. Stop jerkin’ around and grow up already. Get a good job and pay your rent on time for christ’s sake.

Here is a list of other good ones:

“Me and the red corvette”
“Me and the revco man”
“Lyrical Corvette”
“Love in a red corvette”
“Living in a jet”
“Living in Quebec”
“Leave and then come back”
“Keep it wet, Collette”
“I’ll make you so wet”
“Lady in red, come back”

And this one is the most ironic:

“Isn’t it correct”

No, actually it isn’t. At all.

Besides people getting the title “Little Red Corvette” COMPLETELY wrong, they also fuggered up other parts of the song:

Actual lyric:
“Guess I must be dumb
she had a pocket full of horses…”

Misheard Lyric:
“Guess I must be dumb
As a bucket full of horse sh*t…”

Well. You had one part of that right.

Another one…actual lyric:
“Baby you’re much too fast.”

Misheard lyric:
“Phoebe you’re much to fast.”

This one is awesome. Actual lyric:
“Guess I should have known by the way your parked your car sideways that it wouldn’t last”

Misheard lyric:
“Guess I should have known by the way you parked your car sideways at a fotomat”

Based on that, you’re right. You SHOULD have known. GAWD!

The new theme song for “Biggest Loser” should be changed to this misheard ‘P*ssy Control’ lyric:

“Aaaaaaaahhhhh! Portion control! Oh!”

One smarty even effed up the title to ‘Purple Rain’. No. Really. Apparently he doesn’t know the title to the song or the freaking movie! He seems to think Prince is passionately singing the words, “Burn your brains, burn your brains.” Awwww. That’s sweet.

The last song in my Prince non-tribute is “Raspberry Beret”. I’ve saved this one for last because it includes the lyric I used to mis-sing for many years. From the time I was elementary school until who knows when. I’m sorry but it isn’t anything clever or funny. The actual lyric is: “And when it was warm she wouldn’t wear much more.” I used to belt out, “And if it was more, she wouldn’t wear much more.” Makes a lot of sense, right? Right? Shut up.

Here’s a good one for all of us big girls out there. Actual lyric:
“I wouldn’t change a strokecause baby I’m the mostWith a girl as fine as she was then”

Effed up lyric:
“I wouldn't change a stroke 'Cause baby I'm the most With a girl as fine as she was thick”

She must have been F.I.N.E! And T.H.I.C.K.

Because who could think the title of the song could actually be “Raspberry Beret”? It HAS to be, “She wore a brass miracle ring”. Of couse she did. She got it on QVC using easy-pay.

And finally, the way you’re grandma intended the song to be heard:
“She wore a raspberry beret,
The kind you find on a second-hand whore.”

Merry Christmas Interneters!

2008-12-24T10:00:00.003-06:00

It's 10am xmas eve and I wanted to take the time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I have to work 2nd shift today and I just realized an hour ago that I forgot to pick up pictures at Walgreen's that I had developed to put in a big frame I got for my dad. So I gotta do that, pick up some photo paper to print off ones that need to be printed wallet-size AND I need to get some yarn to finish Emily's doll blanket I'm making for her. Hopefully it wont be too busy at work so I can get it done.

Last night Adam took the kids to Burger King to eat and play for a bit while I wrapped presents. While there Emily ended up running full blast into a kid's forehead. She knocked a slightly loose tooth even looser and banged up her gums (or gungs as she calls them) pretty good. Today the loose tooth was noticably blacker, which is always great, so we got it out for her.

This means we're going to have a rotating door of visitors tonight. First our elf leaves to go back to the North Pole. At some point Santa and the Tooth Fairy will come and go as well. Yikes. I hope they don't mind the messy house.

So, I hope Santa brings you everything you want and deserve this year. Until next time, Merry Christmas!

...and now a word from our sponsor

2008-12-17T20:17:00.006-06:00

I get a little bummed sometimes when I don't see an update from some of my favorite blogs for several days. This year those delays have typically come about because a lot of my fellow bloggers have had or are about to have babies. I don't know what's in the water around my blog but if you're looking to get knocked up, come drink at the fountain that is my blog. Today, however, I get to lump myself in "that" category.

Uh...what?

OHMYGODNO! I'm most certainly not preggers! Whew! No way! Should I find myself in THAT situation I would most certainly run away because A) While eight may have been enough for Dick Van Patten, TWO is most certainly enough for me. and B) We cut off Adam's baby making factory 3 months after having Blake, forshadowing the Hell he would already put us through even by the age of 4.

The category I am speaking of is those that negelect their blogs for days at a time. While I would like to make some really great excuse like, "I've had morning sickness 20 hours a day", or "my baby only sleeps 4 hours a day and cries the rest of the time." I obviously don't have those issues. I do, however have a very crazy work schedule right now and it's the holidays and...yeah...I've just been plain old lazy.

So a few things that have happened this week. We had a bit of an ice "storm" on Sunday night. Boo because I had to work that night but I have a kick-ass hubby who scraped off my car and had it toasty warm for me by the time I left and that was awesome. Then we got about 4.5 inches of snow last night. Again Adam cleaned off my car for me this morning so I could get to work. A few minutes late, but I made it.

On Tuesday morning Blake had his preschool Christmas program. He did so good! We were so proud of him. Also it was nice to sit in a church pew for a Christmas program without having to hear about money, which was the case every time we went to one of Emily's programs when she was enrolled in Christian School. No really. Every. Single. Time. If the minister wasn't talking about people paying their tuition on time then they were harping about the fundraisers or buying freaking chairs so they would have more seating for future programs. Ugh. Terrible! And so tacky. Like other family members want to hear about those things. Seriously. Here are a few pictures of Blakey in his program:

Last night Adam went to bed early so he could get up at 2am to help the BIL plow snow. That's what Adam does during the winter. He helps my BIL's snow plowing business. It puts cash in our pockets and gets the stink blowed off of him for a few hours. Works out for everyone. Anyway, after Adam had gone to bed Emily took a shower. Afterwards Blake was in bed and Emily was doing her homework while I watched TV. I looked over at Em and she looked different somehow. That's when I realized her right eyebrow looked a little funny. I asked her to come over to me and I saw that the top of her eyebrow was actually gone. When I asked her what happened she acted like she had no idea. I asked her if she had a sticker on her head or something and pulled it off, taking half of her eyebrow with her and she said no. She went in the bathroom to look at it and still denied knowing anything when she came back out. I looked her right in the eyes and said, "Really Emily. Tell me. What happened? There's no way part of your eyebrow can come up missing and you have no idea what happened. I wont be mad, I promise." She starts crying. The story goes like this:

Emily was in the shower washing her leg. She notices it feels prickly, "You know, like yours does sometimes." (thanks Em.) So she decides she's going to shave it. She goes for my razor when she realizes not only is her leg hairy, but the area between her eyebrows is too. She decides that before she shaves her legs, she's going to take care of her uni-brow. This is when she knocks off the top of her eyebrow. She said she saw all the hair in her hand and freaked out and threw the hair down the drain. She said she thought she shaved off her whole eyebrow but then felt that there was some hair left.

OMG.

So now she's still crying and I'm trying not to laugh. I'm also very impressed with the fact that without a mirror, she's managed at the ripe old age of seven, to lob off the top of her eyebrow, cleanly, without so much as a cut on her face. Also without any real stubble. I said, "Are you crying because you're mad at yourself?" She nods. I said, "Well, you're going to do a lot of things that make you mad at yourself so it's ok." I asked her if she learned anything from this. "Yeah. Don't mess with your razor." I said, "Well. I don't think any of your friends at school are even going to notice so I wouldn't even mention it. But...now I have to take your picture."

Adam didn't notice it today so when I got off work this evening I had to tell him the story. I thought he was going to die laughing. Obviously, after the eyebrow scare, she didn't dare go at one of her legs with the razor. Thank god.

Last weekend we went to Christmas in the Village in Downtown Davenport. It was from 6pm to 9pm with fireworks starting at 9pm. The weather started out decent, for December anyway, and despite Adam treating me like I was coo-coo for cocoa pops, I made the kids bundle up in every winter acessory they had. Turned out this was a great idea because it was pretty freaking windy and cold by the time we left. We had found a spot to sit with chairs outside of a coffee shop to watch the fireworks but Emily started complaining about 5 minutes before they started that she was cold and tired so we headed to the car. Just as we got to the car the fireworks started and they were directly across the street from us. We had an awesome spot, so we thought, until we realized the little things flying at us weren't bits of the tree we were standing under but actual bits of shells from the fireworks. The wind was blowing directly at us and turned us into targets. After about the fourth one and seeing the sparks from the fireworks scurry over our heads we decided to get everyone in the car and get outta there. As we pulled about 50 feet forward to a stop sign the fireworks finale started and we had a toasty warm (and safe) spot to watch them. We had a great time otherwise. We took a horse and carriage ride and got our pictures taken with all kinds of wintry friends. Blake was really freaked out by The Grinch but as he only seemed to weigh about a buck seventy, I told Blake I could take him if needed. Didn't matter. Blake hid with strangers to avoid the greeny meany.

This Friday is Emily's winter program and hopefully she can hang onto both of her eyebrows for the performance. If not, I'll surely have pictures.

...and that's why you found me in the fetal position when you came home from work last week...and the week before that...and everyday in August...

2008-12-11T04:03:00.004-06:00

Now that Adam is laid off I’ll be picking up extra shifts at work, and believe me, there are plenty of extra shifts for anyone who wants them. Our FT 2nd shifter goes on vaca next week. Our FT 3rd shifter is taking the following 2 weeks after that and a FT 1st shifter is taking the 2 weeks after that. My schedule for the next 2 weeks goes a little something like this:

Work 3rd shift on Sunday, off for two days, work 1st shift, 2nd shift, 2 days of 3rd shift, off for one day, 3rd shift, off 1 day, 2nd shift, off for xmas day, 2nd shift then 3rd shift. Whew. This is soooo going to screw up my sleep but we are so broke right now with Adam not working full weeks due to the weather and now waiting for his unemployment to kick in at the end of the month that it’ll be worth it when we’re actually able to pay the rent in January.

Adam paid me a huge compliment Tuesday night. All summer I’ve been telling him how awful Blake can be. He gets into everything, doesn’t listen and talks back. There were days, especially during the time Adam worked out of town and wasn’t home, that I wanted to rip my hair out. All day on Tuesday I let Adam pretty much take care of Blake. I let him get mad when Blake got into the fridge AGAIN, when he made a big mess in his room, when he wouldn’t eat his dinner and would scream out, “NO!” when you ask him to do something. Finally, at the end of the night, when Blake was supposed to be in bed but got up for what seemed like the 15th time, Adam had had enough. Blake got scolded and I got a “I’m so sorry you’ve gone through this all summer. I don’t know how you did it.”

It’s ok. When I look back I wonder how I did it myself. I keep telling myself, “Someday he’ll be in school and I’ll miss these days with him.” Of course it’s easy to feel nostalgic AFTER he’s gone to bed and the day is done. During the day its more like Joan Crawford. You don’t really get that warm fuzzy feeling when you’re screaming out, “NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!” Or maybe you do, in which case you should consider therapy. And Xanax.

Off to a good start...almost

2008-12-09T22:35:00.004-06:00

So Adam did get laid off for the winter at the end of his shift yesterday. When Adam gets laid off we practically reverse rolls for a while. It allows me to work more hours and then he gets to do all the running around with the kids, clean and make dinner.

Since today's Tuesday Adam got to take Blake to preschool. When he got home we stuck with our plan to go to our apartment complex's workout facilities while Blake's at school. We worked out for an hour, did a little shopping and Adam dropped me off at a craft store so I could get some more yarn for the blankets I'm working on for the kids. Unfortunately of the 4 skeins of yarn I bought, 2 were the wrong shade. Boo! Anyway, we picked Blake up and then came home and attempted to put up our xmas tree that my sis and BIL brought from their house. Sadly we couldn't put up the tree because the tree stand wasn't in the box. Double-boo! So, then we both battled the disaster that is our bedroom. I cleaned our bathroom, Emily came home and we went to Wal-Mart to pick up Adam's new glasses.

I made dinner, we ate and around 8:00 the kids put on their jammies and got ready for bed. I don't remember why she said it but Emily mentioned that tomorrow was Wednesday. That's when it struck me that we totally forgot to take Emily to dance class! Whoops! Well, we almost got it right today.

It's like this and like that and like this and a...

2008-12-08T11:28:00.003-06:00

Blake's birthday party was a huge success yesterday. Special shout-out to my hubby who stayed up very late on Saturday night cleaning while I was at work. The house looked wonderful. Now if he could only magically make our living room about 5 feet wider so we could comfortably put the Christmas tree where I want it. *sigh*

Also awesome job to everyone who bought Blake a gift. I think everyone except my sister asked what to get him and to everyone I said, "Anything Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Iron Man. Basically anything ending in 'man.' " Everyone got him the perfect thing that wasn't already something he had. He got big Superman and Batman action figures, some little spiderman, iron man and such, some cash, remote control cars, a hot wheels track. Lots of goodies. Adam took one look at that hot wheels track and said, "Yeah. I can't WAIT to get laid off!"

I started putting some of the xmas decorations up this morning. I'm missing things and I don't know if I want to go out to my sister's house to dig through all my stuff and bring it back here only to take it down in a couple weeks. It just doesn't seem worth it somehow.

I slept on the couch last night because Adam fell asleep on top of the bed, diagonally. With his clothes on. And his shoes. And he would NOT move. In fact I got yelled at by a very groggy Adam for even suggesting it. I thought it was FREEZING in the bedroom anyway so I grabbed my pillow and a blanket and spent a peaceful night on the couch.

If my son doesn't stay out of the kitchen and refrigerator I may be forced to duct tape him to the wall. Don't make me do it. No. Really.

I seriously need to clean our bedroom and our bathroom. I cleaned the main bathroom before the party but would have DIED if anyone would have needed to use ours. In fact I probably would have made one of the neighbors open up their home so as to save myself the embarrassment.

Adam may very well be getting laid off today for the winter. Then we'll be spending the next five months watching movies, playing RockBand and drinking. It's a lot like college all over again, except with clean clothes.

To my Buddy Bear

2008-12-03T14:25:00.006-06:00

Well the snow is flying and that can only mean one thing. Today, December 3rd, my little Buddy Bear turns four years old. I would say it doesn't seem that long ago but actually, it does. We've often said, and by often I mean as recent as last night, "If Blake would have came first, we would have never had an Emily." I used to think my grey hairs started when I got Adam. That was NOTHING compared to my Blake. I love spending time with Blake but I think I would enjoy our time even more if he would just "quit it." Quit getting into the refrigerator. Quit getting into my purse. Quit trying to cut open packages with scissors. Quit using his Leggo table, a Rubbermaid tote, a small folding chair, a dining room chair--whatever to get up on the counter, the table, the dryer, the bathroom counter. Quit getting into the Band-aids. I swear he opened up 3 boxes of them 2 weeks ago, and where most kids just put them on their bodies, Blake put them...who knows where. All I know is I had zero Band-aids left and I couldn't find a single one stuck to anything.

Threats are nothing to him and cuss words are his new thing. Today he told me, "It's my birthday, bitches!" After we got groceries as we pulled up in front of the building he declared, "I'm home, bitches!" (Don't worry, we're working on putting a stop to that, although sometimes, when we're not out in public, it makes us giggle.)

Yes, our Blake has always been a maniac. Right from the day he was born. Sure he looked sweet.

Even when Emily held him for the first time and said, "He's cute isn't he?" Yep. He even had her fooled.

But you can look into his eyes and see it. The craziness.

He does have his moments. The ones where he finally lets you breathe and you can take a step back and say, "Geez, he's not so bad!"

Then he wakes up and you're fighting to keep him from putting those stupid boots on again.

But we sure do love you, buddy.

Even when you would drool and have mystery baby food stuck to your nose.

Even when you puked on us. (Which is exactly what happened RIGHT after this photo, even though he doesn't look like he's about to yakk. Sorry Susie! Thanks for being such a sport!)

We love to hold you and have fun with you. Even now that you don't always want to be held.

Even when you get scared of your first fireworks and throw the blanket over your head for cover.

You will always be my hero.

Despite your obvious drinking problem.

Gobble Gobble Goo and Gobble Gobble Gickel. I Wish Turkey Only Cost A Nickel

2008-11-27T03:49:00.003-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I’m working tonight (Wednesday night) and then have to go home, finish a few devilled eggs I didn’t do yesterday, make a 7 layer salad and then try to catch a few hours of zzzzz’s. We’re eating dinner at my sister’s house at 1:00 and I don’t plan to get there until 12:30-1:00. Those bitches can wait on me. Dinner’s never served on time anyway.

I’ve done the head count a couple times and I think there’s going to be 15 of us. It should be fun. It’s my better side of the family. I’ll try to remember the camera. Getting pictures of people sleeping with their pants undone is always good for blackmail. Most will pay to keep that stuff off the Internet. *evil laugh!*

The only thing I'm not looking forward to, which my dear husband is, is the yearly broadcast of "Alice's Restaurant" played in it's entirety beginning at noon. Whooooo. Blake's gonna have a fit. I can hear it now. "Noooooot thiiiiiiis! I wanna hear the Ting Tings!" Goody.

My lips are turning blue and I haven't felt my toes since 10:15

2008-11-23T00:58:00.002-06:00

Last night I worked and on the way home stopped to get some gas. ($1.76/gallon baby! Yeah!) Once I got home I made Emily put on some shoes (she had slept in her clothes, wtg Adam!) and then I threw her in the car and made my way over the bridge, through Moline, into the heart of East Moline for Emily's FluMist appointment. That took all of five minutes once we got there so we headed back through the heart of East Moline, into Moline, over the bridge and into our warm house.

After that I made Emily add some clothes to her current ensemble. From there we all dug through the corner basket that holds all of our scarves, mittens, ear muffs and any other diddy that keeps random appendages warm, then we piled in the car and headed downtown to the Festival of Trees parade.

I am so, so kicking myself for not bringing the camera, but truth be told, I'm not sure I would have even taken any pictures because it was SO FREAKING COLD! Though we were all dressed warm, none of us had on enough clothes. We could have brought more blankets. I should have brought a couple chairs for the kids to keep them from having to sit their cold butts on the concrete.

I'm not even sure the parade was over when we left. It may have just been a very large gap between the three story Mega Hunter balloon and some local high school band. We never even got to see Santa in his souped up coupe.

When we stood to leave my but was so frozen that I didn't even notice I had to pee until I actually started moving. My feet were so cold that I literally didn't feel anything from about my mid calf down. At one point I was nervous walking for fear I may fall down and be trampled by the thousands of parade-goers (or would that be parade-leavers) behind me.

It very much reminded me of the time I worked as a receptionist at a car dealership. (My first job). One Saturday I spent about two-hours sitting on one of my feet. There was really no reason for it other than I was just comfortable sitting in that position. The problem was when I got up and started walking across the showroom floor to go to lunch. My foot and leg were so asleep that I didn't even notice that I left one shoe (a flat) behind. Someone had to point it out to me.

"Hey Amy. How come you're only wearing one shoe?"

"Oh, because I can't feel my leg past my knee."

"..."

I'm surprised I didn't end up stepping on something ridiculous like a wandering tack or meandering staple. Then I would have formed some new strain of gangrene and end up having to be fitted for a new titanium foot. My luck the new foot would be smaller than my normal shoes and I'd have to forever endear the question, "Hey Amy, How come you're only wearing one shoe?" Then I would flashback to that fateful day in the dealership where a young girl dared to find comfort at her desk on the showroom floor.

So, yeah. It was really cold at the parade.

The Dad Update

2008-11-18T15:49:00.006-06:00

In my last post I talked about how my dad went into the ER on Sunday the 9th. He was then admitted to the Surgical ICU unit, then was moved a day or 2 later to the Medical ICU unit. I think he was there a day before he was again moved to a regular medical floor on Thursday.

Friday morning at 5:45am my phone rang, which is never good. It was my sister. She said dad's nurse had just called her and that dad was missing. Had been missing for the last 15-20 minutes. This does happen every once in a while. I'll hear from security that a pt. has gone missing, they'll ask me to keep my eye out since my office overlooks the lobby. In all of the cases I've know it to happen, 100% have been found within 10-15 minutes. Usually they are outside smoking or in the cafeteria trying to score some food. So, when I got off the phone to call security, I was really expecting to hear that they had already found him. Instead one officer was out driving around town to see if he had walked toward home, the other was walking around trying to find him. He asked for a description because he said the nurses couldn't give him a good one. Uh...what????? He's been there for five days and NO ONE can describe him???

"He's a big guy. Probably around 275 lbs. He's got grey hair. He wears glasses but I'm not sure if he's got them on. He's had knee replacements, a new hip and new shoulders. This is not a guy that gets around quickly."

Then he asked if he had street clothes in his room.

"No. We took those with us on Sunday night."
"Well I should tell you that the nurses found his gown on his bed."
"..."
"So we're potentially dealing with a naked man walking around the hospital."
"I don't know what to say."
"Have you ever had any issues with him like this before?"
"Never ever. He's never even had so much as a senior moment. That's why I'm at such a loss. I really, really have no idea why he's doing this."
"Call me back in 10 minutes. I'm going to check the security cameras."

The next 10 minutes was the longest ever. I was perplexed as to whether I should get dressed and go over there or stay home because surely they would find him in the next few minutes. By now it had been about 45 minutes since he went missing.

I called security back and talked to the guard who had been out driving around. He said, "I heard he doesn't have any clothes. That's not right, is it?"

"Well, he didn't have any street clothes in his room, I can tell you that. I really don't think he would have left the hospital. Plus, if he really doesn't have any clothes on and was outside, someone would have called by now to report it."
"Well, why don't you call the police department and find out."
"...." (that's me, shocked that I'm being asked to call the police myself.) "Is it possible he just got up out of his room, got confused and then came back to the wrong room? Have the nurses on his floor checked all the rooms?"

"I don't know. Why don't you call the floor and ask. I tell you what, why don't you call the police then call the floor to see if they've checked the rooms. I haven't talked to the nurses."

(In this guard's defense, I think he was confused when I first called. I think he thought I was at work and would have had all of these numbers at my disposal. If that would have been the case, I probably would have already made these calls myself. I don't think he realized I was calling from home.)

At that point I decided to go there. My sister was already on her way.

When I was almost to the hospital my phone rang. They had found my dad. An hour and a half later they found him. He was underneath a stairwell. He went down six flights of stairs and found a resting spot under the stairs. They had wheeled him back upstairs and were in the hall outside his room when I got there. Our nursing supervisor said she thought she knew all of the hiding places for patients. Guess she knows better now.

My dad seemed completely back to normal when we got there, although he was pretty shook up and scared as to why he did it. He told me he went looking for French Canada. We're pretty sure it was the new meds they have him on, or the lack thereof, because they had just taken him off a bunch of meds and morphine the day before. We can't seem to convince him of that though. They think it may also have been a severe UTI that caused it. Either way it seems to be an isolated case.

Oh, and he wasn't naked BTW. One of the nurses had remembered changing his gown. He also stole his roommate's coat before he left, so he wasn't totally crazy.

Despite all of that they did end up releasing him that night. He ended up back in the ER the next day (last Saturday) because he felt like he was going to pass out. Turns out his pulse was spiking up to 180 due to a potassium and magnesium deficiency. He was released again last night and is now staying out at my sister's house. Now comes arrangements for home assistance and probably a new apartment. One without stairs.

Life in the ER and a completely different reason it rocks to live in an apartment

2008-11-10T21:33:00.003-06:00

On Sunday I spent a few hours shopping with my sister. When I got home Adam ran next door to the grocery store to pick up a few things to make dinner. Right after he got home our new neighbor came up and invited us to her house for tacos. Rock on. All of our building regulars were there, as well as all of our kids and we ate tacos and hung out and had fun for about an hour and a half. That's when Adam left with our 2 kids to give them baths and put them in bed. He had been gone for a few minutes when he came back downstairs and told me my sis and BIL had been trying to reach us for an hour because my dad had been taken by ambulance to the hospital, my hospital I work at.

I ran out and headed over there, calling my BIL on the way. Apparently my dad had passed out at home. Just before that though, he managed to hit his Lifeline button to have 911 dispatched.

He got there around 7pm and I got there at 8:30. He was awake but in a lot of pain. He had bouts of diarrhea there in the ER so bad that even the nurses were gagging. It may be terrible and gross but you have to give yourself a high-five if you've got it bad enough to gag a nurse, that's my opinion anyway.

So after a couple hours they did some xrays and a CT scan and the ER doc had a strong suspicion it was colitis, or a blockage of the colon. He said the strong odor was what they call "dead bowel". Ack. He was in a lot of pain and there was talk that they were going to have to call in the surgical team. Once the CT results came back and the surgical doc was called, they confirmed their diagnosis but decided to treat him with anti-biotics to avoid surgery. They want his colon to clear itself, which it seems to be doing. At 2:30am they finally secured a room for him in the ICU and we finally left the place at 3:30am.

My BIL had taken my sister's car home with him so I drove my sister back to our apartment and we got there around 4am. I knew the kids would be up around 6 and our neighbor was bringing her 2 sons at 7:30 to hang at our house until the bus comes. I had intentions of just staying up but went to bed a little after 5, getting up at 7:15.

After all the kids were on the bus my awesome neighbor downstairs took Blake for the day so my sister and I could concentrate on our dad. We went out for breakfast and headed back to the hospital.

My dad arrived at the ER without his bottom dentures. He said he had thrown up in a trashcan next to his chair at his house so my sister and I knew we had a nasty task ahead of us. This afternoon we went to dad's apartment to make sure it was all locked up and to try to find his dentures and glasses. I was really dreading going over there, fearing what we would find. I grabbed a handful of rubber gloves from my dad's room in the ICU before we left.

My sister was in front of me unlocking the door. I lagged behind, waiting for the horrible smells to hit my nose once the door was opened. She opened the door and said, "Well, it doesn't smell." Good! We walked in and you would have never known my dad had been through hell that afternoon and early evening. His apartment was practically spotless. Seriously. Imagine yourself sitting at home when suddenly you get stricken with severe stomach pains, you get diarrhea, throw up and just before you pass out you call for help. The next thing you know you're outside on a stretcher with paramedics and firemen all around and you're asking for the trashcan you knew you threw up in before. Now imagine what your house would look and smell like the next day. Grody, right? Not my dad. His house was cleaner than mine.

Fortunately or unfortunately for us the trashcan was no where to be found. After a lot of phone calls we decided it had been chucked somewhere and dad was just going to have to be without half of his teeth for a while. We went back up to the hospital to give him the glasses, which we did find, today's newspaper and to deliver the bad news about his choppers. He was like, "Well, I was due for new ones anyway."

We came back to my house since Emily had just gotten out of school and my sister started going through dad's big bag o' meds. There in the bag was the lost dentures. Hip-hip-hooray! She took them up to him tonight.

So the awesome neighbor who kept Blake today agreed tonight to keep the kids on Wednesday night because I have to work 3rd shift. I can't tell you how great it feels to have people you haven't known for very long step up for you and help you out. Adam is still working out of town and I was starting to feel a bit stressed about what I was going to do. I have a strong feeling a couple other neighbors would have volunteered as well, had they been asked first. Adam and I are indebted to these people forever. I think this is what they meant by, "It takes a village..."

Tomorrow I have to call my manager about my schedule. Since my dad was the only sitter I had to watch the kids when I was scheduled to work on first shift, I'm going to have to take myself off the availability for first shift. At least for a couple weeks until Adam gets laid off for the winter. I don't like to do it this way but I really have no other choice and it's only for a couple of weeks. Then they can schedule me for just about anything, but right now I need to concentrate on my family. Adam and I have already had a discussion about child care next year when he goes back to work. We know that we are going to have to find someone else because we knew, even before this, that my dad was getting too tired to deal with the kids, even for a few hours. We're going to retire him and let him just be "Papa" for a while, coming to visit every few days just for a little while.

As for my dad, they're keeping him tonight too and will likely let him go home sometime tomorrow, if everything continues to look good. I'm pleased as punch about that.

I'll be there and I'll follow you...

2008-11-09T02:48:00.002-06:00

check out the link to the right. Now you can follow my blog and have your beautiful profile pic featured on my site. Who's gonna be the first to do it? Will it be you? Hmmmmm....

Remember, once your mug is featured on my blog, it will give YOUR blog that much more exposure. Can you handle it? I think you can.

Well she didn't get THAT from me...

2008-11-08T03:19:00.005-06:00

On Thursday when Emily came home from school she said the girl she is assigned to sit next to on the bus was giving her a hard time. I asked her what she said to her and she told Emily that her breath stunk and that she doesn't sing well. I guess she made other comments too. I figured this was an older girl but no, one who is also in 2nd grade but in a different class than Emily. I swallowed my instinct to find the girl and push her over and told Emily that she needed to report it to the bus driver. What the girl is doing is essentially bullying, which the school has a zero-tolerance for. So zero-tolerance in fact that a boy who lives in our complex, who annoyed the kids and parents every day this summer at the pool with his over-the-top behavior, got kicked out of Emily's school for bullying. He had to be transferred. He's in maybe 4th grade.

I wasn't looking for this girl to get kicked out of school. I don't however, think Emily needs to tolerate some kid with a nasty mouth. I mean, this is 2nd grade. 2nd grade! I would have never even thought to talk to someone like that in 2nd grade. I could have understood if it would have came from and older kid. I would have suggested to Emily that she still talk to the bus driver, but I would have not been as surprised if the kid was older. And a girl! Who are her parents??? Wait. I know who they are. They are the adults you see out in the store, in the bar, wherever, that make you say, "Geez. I hope they're not someones PARENTS!"

Anyway, Emily really wasn't that upset about it. I asked her if she said anything back to the girl and she said no. I asked her how she felt about what she said and she said it just made her annoyed, mostly. She said she would say something to the bus driver and we left it at that.

I started to think about how I would have reacted to that situation if I were her age. I probably would have been more than annoyed by it. I would have been hurt and angry. I would have told everyone I knew who had any type of authority to try to get the girl in trouble. That's just how I used to roll. In some ways I'm still like that, to a point. Maybe not so much to get people in trouble, but more to find the drama in situations. I don't like to admit it but I like drama. I do. I really do.

So Friday afternoon when Emily came home from school she nonchalantly said that the bus driver was going to move her to a different seat. Like, that was the end of the conversation. As though I would want no more details about what happened. I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What did u say to the driver and what did she say?"

"I asked her if she could move me and she asked who I sat next to and I told her and she said, 'Oh yes. It will be done by Monday.' and she wrote my name down."

"Did you tell her what had been happening?"

"No."

"Did you talk to the driver when that girl was there on the bus???"

"No. She gets off at a stop before mine and I told her after she got off."

Wow. Was all I could think in my head. She totally didn't dramatize the situation AT ALL. She very simply asked to be moved and got the job done. She didn't rub it in the girl's face or even do it in front of the girl. She waited until the girl got off the bus and then talked to the driver. If she didn't already have my face I would think that my REAL child was switched with some other good moralled child at birth. Good thing Blake likes to tattle. I'd hate to be the only drama queen in a house full of do-gooders.

Dorothy Harris: Are you coming along?
Young Forrest Gump: Mama said not to be takin' rides from strangers
Dorothy Harris: This is the bus to school.
Young Forrest Gump: I'm
Forrest, Forrest Gump.
Dorothy Harris: I'm Dorothy Harris.
Young Forrest
Gump: Well, now we ain't strangers anymore.

FSA Update

2008-11-05T23:44:00.003-06:00

Remember my problems with my FSA account? Yes, that's the one. The one from close to FOUR MONTHS AGO!!!! Anyway, it's been resolved. I don't want to get too much into it for fear of being drug into my HR office (again) but it turns out it was the hospital's fault. I really don't understand all of the details, mostly because I didn't listen to the voicemail much after "I've got it all straightened out" but basically the hospital ran the charge through twice due to some computer something or other. Anyway it's done. Now I have two months to spend approximately $550 out of my FSA. Luckily Adam's glasses were recently broken so we get to spend a large chunk on that. After that, well it's a helluva lot of band-aids, Vagisil, Tylenol and various other OTC meds. Whoohoo!

Obama fo yo mama!

2008-11-04T23:34:00.000-06:00

Go Obama! That's all I have to say. WTG!

There's more Balwin brothers than that.

2008-11-03T21:23:00.003-06:00

In case you've been living under a rock for the past 16 months, you should know that tomorrow's election day. No matter what else you've got going on...VOTE!

I love this commercial. Everything Jonah Hill says cracks me up. Also Sarah Silverman is hilarious:

Or, don't vote. This is one of my favorite 'Hollywood wants you to vote' videos. I especially love when Neil Patrick Harris, who in the last year or so announced he was gay says, "I vote because I fell in love, and I want it to matter." Plus, you get to hear Justin Timberlake say, "I can do anything. I was in a boy band."

If those videos don't convince you. Maybe Justine Bateman can.

Pictures!

2008-11-02T17:56:00.004-06:00

Whoa!

I almost went to bed without posting today. Would have screwed up my NaBloPoMo on day 2! Not good. Anyway, here are a couple Halloween pics for your viewing pleasure. I'm heading to bed. Gotta work tonight. Booooo!

A Halloween complete with no pictures

2008-11-01T20:14:00.005-05:00

Well today is the first day of NaBloPoMo and I've got another boring post for ya! It would probably be a much more exciting post had I remembered to take my camera with me to Blake's school party last night. Actually I did have the camera, however I forgot it in my sister's car and didn't really think about it until much later. Bad mommy! I'm definitely going to try to get some of the pics my sister took and then publish an update because some of the kid's costumes were AWESOME and there was one particular old man that just has to been seen by the whole world.

Everything came off without a hitch yesterday. I did some cleaning in the morning, made the kids mummy dogs for lunch as their "super-special-Halloween-lunch" and then we all got ready to go. My sister met us at the house sometime close to 4:00 and we took the kids over to Walgreens to get free Halloween pictures taken of them. I could have picked the pics up today, had I not forgotten until just now. Maybe then my post wouldn't be so picture-free.

From there we headed to our local pet store so I could get the birds some more seed. We've been having an issue with moths which our "bug guy" says is due to the seed. They are attracted to the seed. Ack. Poor Jake and Sam. Emily and I totally cleaned out the bird cage, the bird stand, the container we keep their seed in and dumped out all of their food except for a small amount we put in their bowl. Now we're keeping the food out on the deck, although I've heard it works well to keep it in the fridge too so once it starts getting too cold to head out on the deck, we'll be storing the food in the fridge.

Once I got the seed we made our way over to the church where Blake goes to preschool for their Wild, Wild West festival. I had given the kids a choice of going there or trick-or-treating and this is what they chose. I told my sister it figures that we'd be INSIDE at some festival on Halloween night since it was nice out. The last 3 years it's been freezing and the kids have been out in the cold with their costumes under heavy coats and hats. The church had a free supper of hot dogs, baked beans and chips, which was pretty good. The kids got to play lots of games and won a ton of candy. Adam was even able to join us for the last hour and a half or so. He's still working out of town but got off early enough to make the hour and half ++ drive.

Once it was over we headed home, put the kids to bed, hung with the neighbors for a bit and then Adam and I played a bit of Rock Band. I got to show off my mad drumming skills. I even finally made my way through "Green Grass and High Tides" which has been kicking my ass for the last few days.

Today I started to clean up our bedroom which literally looks like a laundromat exploded in there, however I lost interest after about 3.4 minutes. Adam was nice enough to clean out my car, which was another mess, and then the fam and I headed over to my work so I could do a few days of the on-call schedule. November is my month to do this, but since I only work part-time I have to do several days at once. I had started it when I worked on Wednesday night but our company Intranet was down and once it came back up I had spaced it off, so it was my own fault that I had to come back in on my own time and get caught up. Oh well.

After that we got some lunch, groceries, came home and we all played Rock Band for a bit. Emily loves the song "I Think I'm Paranoid" by Garbage. She'll tell you she thinks the name of the band is silly because their songs are really good. She actually does an awesome job on the song. Blake likes to sing "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash. Basically he screams, "Should I stay or should I go now" over and over the whole time and we end up getting kicked off the stage 2 out of 3 times.

So now I think I'll try to get some more cleaning done in our bedroom. Right now Adam's working on some songs with one of the guitarists for the 2nd band he's in but I'm hoping he'll come in soon and help out.

Happy November everyone!

more randoms...

2008-10-26T00:04:00.007-05:00

I enjoyed the style of my last post so much, I'm going to do it again. Short excerpts on what's going on with me, my fam and the rest of the world.

On Friday Adam and I purchased a PS2 and Rock Band. Let me just say I've been rocking out with my cock out since Friday afternoon. I haven't yet touched the guitar but I plan to eventually so I will be able to play anything should any member of our band suddenly drop out or need to go back into rehab. My specialty so far has been the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums...sorry, was channeling The Ting Tings there for a minute. They should put a Ting Tings song on Rock Band. Blake would flip!

Found an awesome website last night at work. www.x-entertainment.com. This guy has everything 80's. Not for sale, mind you, just as a general discussion. He's complete with pictures too. For instance he's got an entire section dedicated to old school McDonald's tray liners. Go. Look. Feel old.

On Wednesday I worked first shift and the cafeteria served my favorite soup, California Medley. I'm working first shift again on Monday and guess what? California Medley soup is being served. It's like I just won the soup lottery.

Speaking of lotteries, I also won the "you just pissed out your ass lottery" at a local McDonald's bathroom on Friday. Apparently drinking 2 glasses of milk the night before and then eating at Denny's the next day for breakfast automatically enrolls you. I had no idea. TMI? Yeah. I thought so too.

Blake is Iron Man for Halloween. The best part about this is when he puts on his costume he walks around Ozzy-style saying, "I. Am. Iron. Man!" Now if I could just play that on my Rock Band drums.

Adam's been called back to working out of town. Boo!

Playing Rock Band instead of sleeping before you go into work 3rd shift will make you very, very, very....VERY tired about 2 hours before your shift ends. I wouldn't recommend this.

Sometimes when you're at home and bored you pull out the old Microsoft Paint and draw pictures of your hubby that look like this:

Seriously. It looks just like him. See?

Told you. Pay no attention to the bitter look on his face. This was taken New Year's Day this year and he had just put his car into a large snowbank on the side of Interstate 80.

The above cartoon Adam is the first time I've mentioned his band since I started this blog almost a year ago. Let me now give them a proper introduction:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Plagued By Saints

www.myspace.com/plaguedbysaints

I don't like people who call us at the switchboard at work and want to know what time their appointment is with their doctor when they don't even know their doctor's name. Honesty, how do these people function every day?

30-year old women who go to the ER for a pregnancy test need to man-up and find the courage to spend $9 on an EPT at their local drug store. No. Really.

Tonight I went to Emily's school for a parent-teach conference. Turns out I signed up for Thursday night, not Monday night. Maybe I should write these things down.

Last night it flurried. I am NOT ready for winter. Winter can suck it!

Remember THIS post? Turns out I'm not skerrd anymore. I've actually listened to "American Girl" a few times. In my car even. Ta-da! I'm cured.

You should be more like me

2008-10-22T23:01:00.007-05:00

I've been eating some yummy things and watching some great tv so I thought I would share. Actually, I've been eating some decent things and watching some OK tv, and I'm bored and want to share.

Tonight for dinner I made Stouffer's Beef Stroganoff. It's about $7 at Wal-Mart and everything comes in one big bag. It has 3 very simple instructions:

1. Pour contents of bag in large skillet, cover and cook on high for 3 minutes
2. Uncover and stir
3. Re-cover and cook on medium for 9-11 minutes.

Viola! Dinner. Here's how quick and easy this is. I worked until 5 tonight. I got home at 5:35 and I was clearing off the table at 6:30. Now that's awesome. It was pretty good too. The only thing I would remove if given the option was the onions. I love onions, don't get me wrong. In fact when I was little, like say between the ages of 2-6 I would sit on the floor, in front of the onion bin and eat them like apples. My mom, a true cussing genius, would say to me, "Amy! God dammit! Don't eat those like that! You're three! That's not right! Fuck!" Frozen onions put into once prepared food and then reheated into pieces of slime are acky.

This past Sunday on my weekly Sunday grocery shopping adventure I picked up Ben & Jerry's Pumpkin Cheesecake ice cream. It's the bomb! Holy gourds, Batman, this shit is great. I grabbed one for my sister too. No word yet on if she's tried it or likes it. The only thing I don't like about it is the texture. Because it has a swirl of graham crackers the texture is a little gritty. The flavor though, rocks!

Every Sunday night Adam and I wrap up our weekend by watching Little Britain, USA. According to my bestie, Jim, who knows all things having to do with British TV shows, it is basically the same show that's been on in England, just now finally making it's way to the US. This show is raunchy and hilarious, and I love it. Just once at work I want to imitate the skit with the lady who works in a hospital and say, "Compu-ah sez no."

Raising the Bar. This show is on TNT and stars Mark Paul Gosselaar, aka Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell. It's a lawyer show and MPG plays an attorney sporting a Jesus meets Richie Sambora shag hairdo. I think this show started out a little weak but it's getting a lot better. I look forward to watching it each week.

The Cleaner. Two words: Benjamin Bratt. Yum! I can even make my way past the 'stache and goatee he flaunts that really needs a trim. Unfortunately the season finale was last week so you might not be able to check this one out, however it's worth a search on your DVR. I think this one is on A&E just like...

Intervention. I'm sure you've heard of this show. I watch it every week to remind me not to do drugs or drink to excess. These people are all kinds of fuggered up. Love it.

Easy Fries. These are microwaveable fries sold in single serving boxes that sell for about 88 cents each at Wal-Mart. I bought them for the kids last week as part of a quick dinner that included hot dogs. They actually microwave up crispy and are pretty good.

Baked chicken and rice. I'm throwing this one in just to prove that not everything I make comes out of the freezer section premade. I got a recipe for this online and the rice is made with onion soup mix. Once I served it and tasted the rice I almost cried. It tasted EXACTLY like the chicken and rice my grandma used to make. Should you find yourself wanting the recipe, let me know. I'll hook you up.

So, what have you been watching and eating? Anything I need to know about?

Some things and some pictures

2008-10-20T04:27:00.008-05:00

I haven't blogged in a while and I'm planning on participating in my first NaBloPoMo next month so I guess I better get on the ball here. This post isn't going to talk about world hunger or the recent economic crisis, however I do plan on talking about murder, death, alcohol, vandalism, Lysol, trickery and the color red. I know! You can hardly wait!

So in my last post I talked about taking the kids to Disney, Live! Well, the next day my sister came to take the kids for the weekend and I got to get my hairs done! I was so freaking excited you have no idea. I haven't had a haircut since maybe June but no later than July. I was tired of it and wearing it up all the time. I walked into the salon I always go to, headed toward the girl that always cuts my hair and she totally read my mind. I said,

"I want something kinda funky."

"How about red?"

"OK."

"No, like real red."
"OK."

"I mean like red-red."

"Sure!"

With absolutely no prodding on her part she talked me into bright red, red-red, no like really-real red highlights in my hair. It looked awesome. Then she totally chopped it up and I absolutely love the cut. I can blow dry it without even putting product in my hair and it looks awesome. I can also put a bit of wax in it for definition and some spray and I'm good to go. I couldn't love it more. Here are 2 pics that absolutely do it no justice. The color these pics came out don't really do the highlights justice, but you can get the idea.

Excuse the disdainful look on my face. From the lanyard around my neck I must have just gotten off of work. I'm probably tired and cranky.

Last week was fairly uneventful. We found out on the 9th that a long-time friend of my family, who has also been my dentist since I was about 5 years old passed away. His name was Phil. He was only 60 years old. The story was told to me that he was hunting, had a heart attack and fell out of a tree where his deer stand was. Also, apparently he was out there for a while before he was found. I've heard several hours and I've heard a couple days. I do know his wife (who has worked as his office manager for 35 years) was out of town at the time and that everyone became suspicious when he didn't show up at the office for an appointment Thursday morning. That's when he was found. Anyway, my dad had grown up next to his grandparents and that's how he got to know Phil as well as his many brothers and sister. When Phil and his brother Jamie were in dental school, my dad got them jobs in construction. Because of this I got very cheap, if not free dental work for a long time. I remember one time when I was about 21 or so I came in to the office to have Phil fix a cavity. He fixed it, then another one he found. He said, "Amy, I fixed the one cavity, and I also filled another. Consider the second one an Easter present from me to you." I was only billed for the one filling, and was probably only billed $50. It seems like everytime I went in there, if there was an actual charge, it was $50, no matter what. He also asked me during this visit, "Amy, are you seeing anyone?"

"No."

"Well, when you find a boyfriend that you think you want to marry, make sure he has a nice father. You want to have a father-in-law that will spoil you."

It was the most bizarre advice I've ever gotten, yet the sweetest. I can't even tell you how kind and gentle Phil was. Phil made you look forward to going to the dentist. I sure will miss him.

My dad and sister and I decided to go to Phil's visitation. We knew it would be very, very busy so we got there early. The visitation started at 4:00, we got there at 3:45 and didn't leave until 5:00. That's how long the line was. It was easily 4 times as long behind us as it was in front of us so I don't even want to imagine how long some people had to stand in line. Ugh.

One day last week some ambitious girl decided to write on the windows of all of the cars in front of our building with one of those window paint markers. You could tell it was a girl by the writing. Well, everyone got their window written on except Adam. Apparently it was done sometime after he left for work. He was actually bummed. I was pretty pissed. I had to drive to work that morning with "UR Sexy! Rock on!" on my back window. Some other people got I "heart" U" and "Hi" on their windows. None of them seemed so large or blatantly obvious as mine. Mine covered my entire back window. Others were just small-ish in the corner of a back or side window. Awesome. No one fessed up to it, although I have my suspicions of who did it. Idiots.

Also on Tuesday, before I left to get Emily from school to get her ready to go to the visitation, I got to hear an awesome argument coming from our neighboring apartment. What I heard was a one-sided phone conversation that went a little something like this:

"I fucking hate you! I fucking hate everything about you! You are a fucking liar! You can just give me your money for the rent and go live in your car for all I fucking care! I will kill you! You are lucky I haven't killed you yet! I will cut you in your sleep!"

(slight pause)

"I don't care! I'm done! I'm so fucking done! I can't stand you! You were in town! You were in town all day yesterday! I saw you! I had no fucking idea where you were! I hate you mother fucker! I hate you! I'm done! Good-bye!!"

(heavy sobbing, then a couple minutes later...)

"I don't care! You are a dumb fucker! You are a DUMB mother fucker! Why were you looking for this girl? Why did you want to kick that guy's ass? You never told me why you wanted to kick that guy's ass!"

It was soo sweet. The chick who lives there is around my age or slightly older. She has a teenage son and her boyfriend was the one she was yelling at. This past Saturday night she had a bunch of friends over and they were all pretty drunk. Adam and I were on the front steps with the neighbors we normally hang out with that night, drinking and chatting. We also have a newbie in the building who hung with us and she is super cool. Anyway, drunkies upstairs were yelling down to us from their balcony in a manner that drunkies do best and Adam played stupid and asked if the boyfriend was there. One of the party-goers was like, "Uh....no....no, he's uh....he's not here." I love drama.

So, Adam and I hung with our neighbor-friends without the constant badgering of our children. How did I pull this one off? Because I suckered my sister. On Saturday afternoon Emily had a birthday party to go to for one of her classmates. I hung out with Blakey then met my sister at Chick-Fil-A for lunch and then shopping. We left my car at C.F.A and picked Emily up from the park then did a little more shopping. When I was almost done shopping Adam called on his way home from work. He asked if my sister was keeping the kids overnight.

"I don't think so."

"Well you should ask her, then we could go out or hang w/ the neighbors."

"I don't know..."

"Or you could just use the kids to sucker her into it."

"Whatever, Adam."

So fast-forward to my sister dropping me and the kids at my car at C.F.A. She pulls behind my car then gets out to throw some trash away up by the building. I get in the backseat, reach over Blake to take off his seat belt and quietly say to him, "Well Blake. I guess you're not staying at Aunt Lisa's house tonight." He immediately starts crying. I get him out, set him down and my sister says, "What's the matter?" I said, "Oh. Nothing. He thought he was staying at your house tonight." "Awwww! Buddy!" My sister picks him up and he's just sobbing. I know right then that I've got her. She says, "So, is it going to be just you that's staying, maybe Emily can come another day?" My mind scrambles. What? No! My plan wont work with one kid still at home! Anyway, I did a little more fast talk and soon I was driving away kid-free.

Adam was at home and had already eaten dinner so I decided to run through the C.F.A. drive-thru since I was there. I ordered a combo meal which was $5.72. The lady hands me a bag that's pretty heavy and I'm quite certain there's way more in there than a sandwich and fries. I get home and there's actually THREE sandwiches and THREE fries. Super sweet! I gave the other 2 to the neighbors.

After our outside pow-wow w/ the neighbors dispersed we decided to go to karaoke and took one of our neighbors with us. It was fun except for Adam's horrible gas. We were sitting in a booth with hard seats when Adam let a pretty loud one loose. The karaoke DJ, who was a woman, was nearby, heard it, and without missing a beat said, "We need Lysol over here! This guy shit his pants!" It smelled so terrible I had to go outside. Blech!

Nothing exciting going on this week. Just work and life. I got some pumpkins from my sister and bro in law yesterday afternoon so we'll try to get those carved maybe this coming weekend. The pumpkin I picked up for myself is so huge it might take me all weekend to get it scraped out! I'll be sure to post pictures of the whole experience!

Oh, and here's a picture of the mouse pad my sister brought me back from Vegas. It rocks my world.

OK, so it wasn't so bad.

2008-10-12T04:05:00.003-05:00

I lived through Disney Live, and so did the rest of my clan.

Let me start my story by saying that I've really been lacking in the sleep department for the last several days, and not by choice. It's just happenstance and a crazy work schedule that have been denying me dreamy bliss. So, on Thursday night, the night before the show I had to work 3rd shift. This was the 2nd day in a row I had to work and I was running on about 1.5 hours of sleep for the 2 day period. Adam had worked out a deal with our awesome, awesome neighbors who said they would watch Blake for a few hours so I could catch some zzz's. They came and got him around 8am and I slept until about noon. I got up, got Blake and made him some lunch. I hopped on the computer to check email and things got quiet out in the living room. I peeked in on Blake who was sound asleep on the couch. Whoohoo! Another nap for me! I jumped at that opportunity to get back under the covers, even if for an hour or 2. I woke up at 3:30 as Emily was coming in the bedroom, just home from school. She said Blake was awake and watching cartoons quietly. I let Em play on the computer for a bit while I caught "just a few more" zzz's. I woke up at 4:45. OMG! I said, we have to get going! The show started at 6:30 and I had promised the kids McDonald's before the show. I put the kids in their new tshirts my sis and BIL had gotten them from Disneyland a few days before and we headed off. After we ate and were on our way to the show I was bummed and so were the kids when we realized we forgot their Mickey Mouse ears at home. My sister got them each ears from Disneyland and had their names embroidered on the back. Blake's is a Pirate Mickey version. There's a scarf around the "head" and a big gold earring in the ear. Emily's is an old school Minnie Mouse one. The kind when Minnie used to wear that little yellow hat with the daisy coming strait out of it. You know, when Minnie and Mickey used to have white faces and pac-man eyes? Yeah, now you get it. But I guess it's ok that we forgot them because it would have been just one more thing for us to deal with. Also, I forgot the camera. Dang it!

Our seats were great. I didn't buy floor seats because I think its ridiculous to pay that much for something so...childish, I guess. The people who buy seats on the floor for these types of shows:

A) must not have anything better to spend their money on since they are literally paying more than twice what I paid.
B) all seem to have pretty little kids, like 3 and under
C) are stupid because they don't even think or realize that their little 2 year old cannot see over the heads of the 20 people in front of him because the seats are ON THE FLOOR. They aren't staggered and tiered like the lower or even upper bowl seats. You can't see the stage on the floor unless you are in the front row. Seriously, don't parents think of these things???

*Steps down off soapbox*

I set rules on the way to the show. First of all, everyone was going to go potty when we got there. Secondly, we were not going to buy a bunch of souvenir crap especially when they got the real thing brought back from Disneyland and also because they are waaaaaay overpriced at these stupid shows. I said we might buy something small and then maybe something to drink to share.

We pulled into the parking lot of the arena and the lot was fairly empty, which was one of the main reasons I wanted to leave so early. I said, "Hey kids, we're gonna get a great parking spot." I paid the attendant and he said to take the first left into the lot. Sweet! Well we kept driving, and driving and driving down this aisle. The attendant finally pointed me into the second spot from the end. What? I was one of the first ones here and now the losers behind me are going to get to park closer because they get to go into the next aisle. I don't think so. So I sat there until the "attendants who point" headed back up the next aisle to direct more cars. I then backed out of my spot, headed 2 aisles over and parked in the 3rd spot from the front without even being noticed. It was also directly in front of the main sidewalk so we wouldn't have to try to remember what aisle we were in when we came out in the dark. Muahahahaha! Adam would have had a coronary if he were with us and would have never DREAMED of doing such a thing. In his mind you park where they tell you and don't even think of driving an extra 20 seconds to find a closer place to park.

Once we got inside the potty thing didn't go so well. I took Blake in a stall with me while Emily ventured out on her own. I went to the bathroom and then Blake refused to go. I fought and fought with him in that stupid little stall while all the other moms listened and thanked their lucky stars they weren't me this time. By the time I finally got Blake on the potty and got out of the stall Emily had been standing outside our door for some time. "Troubles?" she said, smiling with her hands on her hips. I had to laugh at her. She's like Blake's 2nd mom sometimes and knows what a handful he can be.

We made our way upstairs and checked out the ~~wallet rapists~~ vendors. Everything was freaking expensive, just as I thought, especially when you factor in that you have to buy two of whatever you get. We decided on pennants for each of the kids. They were $6 each so not too terrible. Then we made our way to the food and grabbed a bucket of popcorn and a large lemonade. Had I been thinking and not sleeping just before we left, I would have snuck in some juice boxes and snacks from home.

So, like I said, our seats were great. We were in the lower bowl in the section directly in front of the stage. The show was based on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so we got to see Mickey and his buddies, Little Einsteins, Pooh, Tigger and their pal Darby, and Handy Manny. Blake freaked out when he saw Handy Manny. He started waiving and yelling and saying, "Hi Manny! Hi! Hey! Manny!" It was cute. I had no idea he had such a love for the guy. Blake asked me towards the end of the show, "Where's Pluto?" Emily wanted to know where Daisy Duck was. I really had no answer. Back at the Clubhouse? Sorry. Not sure.

The show lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, which isn't very long but it's the perfect length for kids. We made it out beautifully and without me having to drag a kid out by the arm. Of course we found our car right away, got out of the parking lot with no issues and without a lot of traffic. It was a great way to end a fun night.

M-I-C...
See ya real soon!
K-E-Y...
Why? Because like you.
M-O-U-S-E.

M-I-C. K-E-Y. Don't Make Me Kill A Kiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddd.

2008-10-10T13:38:00.001-05:00

I'm taking both kids to Disney Playhouse Live tonight. By myself. Pray for me. Pictures tomorrow.

A gnarly picture and a Pussycat Doll

2008-10-04T23:53:00.004-05:00

On Wednesday night Emily finally lost her other front tooth. We were sitting at dinner when I noticed the other tooth was almost exactly in the middle and sitting kinda crooked.

"Emily! Your tooth! That things gotta come out!"

(Anyone else finally catch on to my obvious obsession with getting Emily's loose teeth out? Yeah, me too.)

Long story short I got it out. The new one is already starting to come in and she said it was hurting.

These are kinda gnarly looking but I'm sharing them anyway.

Tonight Emily went to a Halloween themed birthday party for one of her classmates. She decided to go as a black cat, which I was excited about because it makes for easy costuming. Black tights and leotard to the party, possibly a black sweatsuit on the night of Halloween since it will probably be cold, as per usual here in Iowa. I'm particularly proud of how her make-up came out, which is my main reason for posting the next two photos. Sorry the first one is kinda dark. I forgot to turn the flash back on from Wednesday night when I was taking pics of her teeth.

MEOWWWWW!

A belated Country Corner review

2008-10-04T22:37:00.009-05:00

On September 21st the fam and I went to Country Corner. It is a farm about 45 minutes from here that goes all out this time of year. On the weekend we went they had a classic car show, a flea market and a corn picking contest for the kids. This is along with the things they have every weekend in the fall such as rides for the kids, a petting zoo, corncob cannon, pumpkin chucking and their fantastic farmer's market.

We didn't tell the kids where we were going, only that we were going, "Somewhere special." First we stopped off at Hungry Hobo (our local sub shop) for some lunch. The kids were in a good mood because of the road trip, even though they didn't even know where they were going.

Once we got there we checked out the flea market, which had some interesting things but nothing that sparked my interest. Then we headed to the ticket booth to get the kids some passes for the festivities. For $10 each they got to check out almost everything once. It was a pretty good deal considering the individual prices.

First they rode on the cow train. This was driven by a guy on a tractor wearing a bright pink curly wig. Emily carefully chose her cow. Of course it's name was Jelly Bean. Once they took off the guy headed down the road where we couldn't see them and I told Adam, "Did we really just put our kids in metal cars driven by THAT guy??"
"Yep."
"Ok then."

After that Emily and Blake entered the corn picking contest. Emily snagged a whopping 11 ears of corn. Blake aka: me, got 6.

From there we headed to the giant bouncy thing and then the kid's corn maze. This place also has one of those ginormous haunted corn mazes for adults. Here's a picture of this year's maze.

It is over one mile of trails. Adam is thinking about working at it this year. I think he'd have a blast. The kid's maze, however, is a lot less intimidating, a whole lot smaller, and there's really just one path around. One entrance that also serves as the exit so you can't really lose a kid in there. Which is good because I'm sure we would have otherwise. There are a few creepys in there though, like this guy:

We were also a little bummed that we had already eaten because much to our surprise they were grilling out some of the most fantastic food. Adam couldn't pass up a pulled pork sandwich, which he shared with me while the kids were bouncing. It was awesome! Stuffed full of pork and just really good. Yum! We were joined for lunch by this stick bug.

To make your time at Country Corners more enjoyable they had a down-home band. I wish I could remember the name of them so I could give them proper credit but they were great and you could tell they all enjoyed playing together.

I didn't get any pictures but the kids also shot corn out of a cannon and then Adam did the pumpkin chuck, which was basically shooting tiny pumpkins with a big sling shot.

While we waited for the announcement of the winners of the corn picking contest we posed for some photos.

Here I'm asking Emily if she thinks she's going to win the contest.

After that Adam just had to get his hands on one of those cows. You know only a cow named Bertha would be willing to let Adam ride on her.

Finally they got around to announcing the contest winners. We headed to the stage where the band was and they said there was a three-way tie for first with Emily being one of them! They listed off the rest of the names and the band made snarky comments about it being all girls. I know that's right! Because of the tie they drew names for the three prizes and Emily ended up in 3rd. She missed out on the cool basket full of goodies and ended up with a painted pumpkin. Here you can see her look of dislike.

After the announcements the band continued to play and Emily and her daddy danced for a bit and soon she was smiling again.

We made our way out through the country store filled with lots of goodies. We took home a gallon of the best tasting apple cider I've ever had. Adam had already drank about 5 glasses of it while we were there. I also picked up some awesome salad dressing. It's burgundy poppy seed. Something I would have never bought if they wouldn't have had samples of it for you to try. I bought a couple pears and grabbed some free apples and we headed home. It was an awesome experience and one I hope we can do again in a couple weeks.

Better

2008-10-01T17:16:00.001-05:00

OK. Pink and brown. I can do that. My page looks more like a chocolate and caramel sundae but it's better than hangover pink.

Gross for a good cause?

2008-10-01T17:08:00.002-05:00

In honor of the start of breast cancer awareness month I have changed my background color to pink. It's been about 5 minutes and already I hate it. Ok. That's it, I'm changing it. Sorry if you had to see it. It looks like someone puked up pepto bismol on my page. Ugh.

Whatever, Crazy Lady!

2008-09-30T13:34:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty sure Blake and I will repeat this conversation in 40 years when I'm riddled with dimentia.

Me: We need to listen for the guys to come. They're coming to fix mama's oven.
Blake: Ok mama. Whatever you say.

Happy Birthday Jimtini!

2008-09-29T10:41:00.006-05:00

Yesterday was my BFF Jim's birthday. I can't remember if he decided a few weeks ago to start working backwards after this birthday or just keep celebrating 29 each year. Either way, happy 29th birthday Jim. Only I, yo mama and your dad (hey Jim's Dad! Grrrrrrrowwwwllll!!!) need to know your true age today.

Jim and I were supposed to get together this coming weekend to go to the Miss Gay Iowa pageant in Cedar Rapids, however a financial deficit has cancelled the trip. I'm pretty sad and I know Jim is too because we had a FUCKING BLAST last year in Des Moines. We adopted several new phrases, like you do when you have a drunk weekend with one of your friends. The kind of phrases only the two of you understand. Some of our phrases were

"Sweet Lincoln's Mullet!"

"See you at church on Sunday!"

"How's your sister?"

"Shut up! She doesn't know any better!"

"You can't say 'Mary'."

"He was so gay, he opened his mouth and Tim Gunn fell out."

"He's gayer than a sequened clutch purse full of rainbows."

I miss Jim a ton since I haven't seen him since our NYE bash. Here are pictures from that event and yes, that was all of our alcohol for just the two of us. No wonder we're fashioning hats and braziers out of my kick-ass napkins!

I'm certain Jim and I will eventually see each other again, although it feels like never. I miss you Jimmy! Come party at my wet bar soon! Wow. That was dirty. I sincerely apologize.

oh-no-you-di-int!

2008-09-28T03:25:00.003-05:00

There's a blog I check out every now and again. I don't have it on my blog roll because it's not updated frequently, or if it is I don't have any sort of sense of urgency to check it out. Anyway, this woman has a 3 or 4 month old baby and she's a SAHM. (That's Stay-At-Home-Mom for those of you keeping score). So on one of her recent posts she talks about how she isn't a SAHM so she can sit and eat and watch TV all day and then she goes into this huge laundry list of things she did before 9am. She did 2 loads of laundry, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher, made some cookies, bath time for baby and cleaned 2 bathrooms.

I question you.

Was your baby in a coma this entire time? Just before this she talks about how her baby gets up between 5 and 6am. I'm not saying it's not possible for her to do all of this before 9am but I just think it would be hard with a new baby. I remember Emily as a baby and she was a GREAT baby. I could get about anything done because she never made a fuss but all of those things? I'm thinking it would take until at least noon. Then baby goes down for a nap and you watch Springer and eat potato chips. Come on lady! You're not fooling anyone!

Don't try to act like you're super-SAHM. We know the drill. Some of us have had babies too. There's no trophy at the end, trust me. You're not going to win some kind of blue ribbon for best wife and mommy. In fact, at the end of the day all you're really going to get is ignored by your husband when he gets home from work while he watches TV and disrespects your clean toilet by dribbling on the seat. You might get a short, "mm" as he eats your cookies and swipes all of the crumbs off of his shirt onto your freshly vacuumed floor and couch. Then, exhausted from juggling 20 things at once today and just wanting to pass out in bed you'll get a smack on the ass and that familiar poke through the jammies on your back. NOW he wants to pay attention to you.

Yeah. You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to get one by me, Missy! Trust me. I got an A+ in this subject.

Hellrrrr...tap, tap, tap is this thing on?

2008-09-27T03:51:00.004-05:00

I try not to check my blog's sitemeter too often. I think it would be pretty easy to get obsessed with it and I really just don't want to go there. I did check it tonight, however and have found that I doubled my monthly visits from June to September. Wow! I was pretty impressed with myself. Now I want to know who's out there. Who are you, lurkers? Why do you come here? Is my blog one that you check frequently or maybe one you just check out every once in a while. I'm really curious. I've been outing myself to some of my favorite blogs over the past year and I think it would be interesting to find out who all of you silent peekers are. If you're feeling brave, please send me a comment. If you would prefer for me to read it, but not publish it, I can do that too. I try to respond to all of my comments so don't feel like you will only be ignored!

It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again

2008-09-26T01:24:00.006-05:00

I don't think I've ever written about my fear of a certain song. It's a song that's freaked me out since high school. If it came on the radio when my bestie Tanya and I would be driving around we would both scream and then fight each other to change the station. Yes, she was freaked out by it too for the same reason as me. The song? "American Girl" by Tom Petty. I know, right? Not what you were expecting. Here's why it freaks me out. Remember "Silence of the Lambs"? Remember when the girl was in her car rockin' out to this song when she pulls up to her apartment and then gets knocked out and thrown down that hole by freaky guy? Yeah. Freaks you out too now, doesn't it? Even still when this song comes on I change the channel. It's kind of a bummer because it's a great tune. Tonight those feelings changed.

I don't usually watch "Ugly Betty". The only time I see it is the last couple minutes of it before Grey's comes on. Tonight Betty rocked out in her apartment when her cute neighbor started playing this song on his guitar. She was so cute dancing around that I actually watched it and let the song keep playing. IN FACT I even rewound it (dontcha love DVR?) and showed it to Adam when he came in the living room so he could see cute Ugly Betty dancing. NOW, I'm thinking about downloading it from iTunes. If I do I'm not sure I'll ever play it in my car but maybe this irrational fear is finally starting to subside. I wonder if Tanya still changes the channel when it comes on. I bet she does. I wonder if she watches Ugly Betty....hmm...

The boys in our family are crazy

2008-09-24T08:44:00.002-05:00

Adam
Adam's been putting in bookoo hours at work lately. He worked close to 60 last week and had in 25.5 by the time he came home on Tuesday night. That means we've been having to eat dinner without him. When he comes home he pretty much eats then goes to bed. Last night I stayed up late watching TV and goofing on the computer. As I got in bed Adam started talking in his sleep again. He said, "Oh yeeeaaahh." It was in a tone like someone just reminded him of an old friend's name. As I laid there giggling the "Oh yeeeaaahh" turned into more of an, "ooooooh yyyyyyeaahhhhhhh." Something a little dirtier. Then he did it again. It made me wonder, just what is this long lost friend doing?

Blake
Blake has decided to skip his daily 1.5 hour 2:00 nap for the last 2 days. Then, he falls asleep somewhere between 6:00 and 6:30. When this happened on Monday my sister had come over that evening and we both tried to wake him up for dinner but he just wasn't having it. I told my sister, "I hope he doesn't wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 3 o'clock in the morning."

"What time did he go to bed?"
"Around 6:30-ish?"
"Well...that's, what? Nine hours of sleep? Yeah."
"Aw, lord."

Well my alarm went off at 7:30 the next morning and he was already up but that's not unusual.

Yesterday the same thing. No nap but this time we also had to go to the family museum for Emily's dance class so he got an hour of good playing in from 5-6 o'clock. Just a couple minutes after we got home Blake said, "Mama, what did you do with my blanket? I've been looking for it for 20 minutes." (We had been home for about 6). So we went in his room, he found a blanket and he curled up on the bed. In a sleepy voice he said, "Have Emily wake me up when it's supper time." Then he passed out. Well, again, no one could wake him up for dinner. At about 10:30 I was walking from our bedroom to the kitchen and I saw Blake stirring around. I went in his room and it was kinda cold in there so I had him get under all of his covers, instead of just the blanket. I told him good-night. As I walked back by he said, "Mama, tell me when dinner's ready, ok?" Awwww! Poor little dude had no idea it was like 4 hours after dinnertime. I got him up and made him something to eat. He was up until around 11 then it was back to bed. Adam called this morning and said when he got up at 5:30 Blake was up, in the kitchen with every light on in the house.

The funny things Blake says
Last weekend Adam and I hung out outside with some of our downstairs neighbors. One couple has 1 boy and another has 2 kids, both close to Blake and Emily's ages. All of the kids were playing in the apartment of the one kid and we were right outside so we could see them in there. Blake came out a little while later and when I asked him why he wasn't playing with the kids he said, "Because the dog is mean to me." My neighbor said, "Blake, we don't have a dog." I asked him, "What's the dog's name?" "Smokey." We all laughed at him. Blake had gone to the wrong apartment. He went to the house where the 2 kids live. Unfortunately the only one that was home was the dog, lol.

The other day I was on the phone with my sister when Blake came in the bedroom naked. I told him to put his clothes on. "Jus weeve me awone, ok mama?" was his response. He says it so often it doesn't even make me mad anymore. I told him again to put his clothes on and he said he had to go potty. He went to the bathroom and came back and when I again told him to get dressed he said, "I'm just going to lay here until I air out." I thought my sister was going to have a coronary on the other end of the phone, she was laughing so hard. Apparently that's been a popular story at her work this week.

Let's bowl, let's bowl, let's...rock and roll!

2008-09-20T23:39:00.007-05:00

Emily's birthday bowling party went off without a hitch. We all had a really good time. I ended up having 5 girls RSVP that they were coming. Then 3 didn't show up but 2 did that I wasn't expecting (actually, they both DID call but for some reason I didn't get one of the voicemails and another one called the morning of the party).

I made bowling shirts for all of the kids. I got the idea from a magazine and they had links for the graphics on their website that you could print on transfer paper. At first I wanted to do this but wasn't going to because of the expense. Transfer paper is expensive. Then my sister told me she had about 50 sheets of it. So, 2 days before the party I found nice Hanes t-shirts at the dollar store. I was planning on 11 kids and they had 10 bright orange ones and 4 blue ones, all kids sizes. Well I couldn't pass that up. I did all of the girls shirts in orange and the boys in blue. I put a big picture on the back of a bowling ball striking pins and then a small pin with their name underneath it on the left chest on the front. Because I thought I might have some girls come that didn't RSVP, I made extra shirts without names. I was glad I did since I had a couple girls I wasn't expecting. Here you can see them all in their shirts. I've blurred out the kid's faces that aren't mine b/c I'm not into putting up pictures of other people's kids out on the Internet.

Poor Blake dropped his bowling ball on his bare foot about 2 frames into his game and he wasn't so much into bowling after that, as you can imagine. I got him to bowl a few more frames, but that was it.

One of the funny things that happened at the party was when I was cutting the cake. One of Emily's friends came up to me and said, "Mrs. Warren?" Well I just ignored her because that's not my name! That's my MIL's name! Then she finally tapped me on the arm and said, "Mrs. Warren?" Oh! Right! That IS me! My bad! What a reality check that was. That'll make you feel old real quick.

Anyway, we all had a good time and I think it was a better decision than going to Chuck E. Cheese or anything like that.

I Can't Talk To You Right Now...

2008-09-14T04:02:00.004-05:00

I may have mentioned in a previous post that my sister and BIL are going on a long overdue vacation at the end of this month. They were married for 20 years this past May and the only vacation they've taken was on their honeymoon...20 YEARS AGO! Even then they went to Wisconsin Dells only to find it mostly closed, not yet open for the season.

So in a couple weeks they're doing it up right. They're flying from here to Las Vegas for four days. Then from there they're going to Anaheim to Disneyland for two days, coming home on the 3rd day. I helped them book the vacation and was more nervous than my sister when I was about to push that final "CONFIRM" button. I don't know how many times I repeated the phrase, "OK, is this right? Is this how you want it, the flights and everything?" She was just ready to hand over the credit card and get it done. Call me crazy, I just like to be a little more cautious before spending over $2200, even when it's not my own.

So today my sister was over and she decided she wanted to see Donny and Marie while she's in Vegas. They're performing together for a few months at The Flamingo and I think my sister saw it as a great opportunity to see her childhood idols live. Just like when she was 18 and my mom would take her and a friend on a weekend trip to Anytown, IL to see them perform while I got to stay at my grandma's house, where I hated it because it was scary, and all they would bring me back was maybe some lousy Lady and the Tramp record and a chance to sneak a peek at some blurry poloroids of Donny Osmond hopping on his tour bus and maybe that's Marie in the background but I can't really tell because there's a fat woman in front of the picture-taker who's wearing a turquoise t-shirt she has carefully cut into shreds and then put about six beads on each strand so as to make a wearable art piece out of her homemade Donny and Marie shirt! But I'm not bitter. (But really! Mom never took me and one of my friends to go see, oh, I don't know, Guns N' Roses at some out of town show where we'd get to stay overnight in a hotel and then go swimming and shopping the next day...BREATHE AMY!)

Sorry. I'm better now. So, Donny and Marie. My sister's a big fan. She's almost 12 years older than me so she's in that Osmond generation. We looked online and found there were tickets available. We knew when we originally booked the trip that we also got tickets for them to go on one of the Hoover Dam tours, per my BIL's request. Before we booked the tickets to D&M we wanted to make sure it wasn't going to conflict w/ the Dam tour. I looked up the itinerary on Expedia and didn't see the Dam tour on there. I call Expedia customer service and pretend to be my sister (with her permission of course!)

Them: Expedia, my name is (insert random foreign name here) how can I help you?
Me: Yes, I'm looking at my itinerary and and I don't see my reservations for a Hoover Dam tour.
Them: OK, let me look at your trip, what is the itinerary number?
Me: (number)
Them: This is the trip to Las Vegas?
Me: Yes.
Them: Are you referring to your Disneyland park hopper passes?
Me: "..." Uh, noooooo. I'm referring to the tour we're going on at the Hoover Dam while we're in Laaaaasssss Vegasssssss. (I said that part kinda slow because apparently she didn't understand.)
Them: I don't see any Hoover Dam activities on your itinerary.
Me: Well I booked them and paid for them so it should be on there. I just need to know what day we're doing it.
Them: Let me look here. It's $90 for two people.
Me: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Them: So I can go ahead and charge that to your credit card.
Me: Great except for I've already paid for it.
Them: It's not on your itinerary.
Me: I can't talk to you anymore. You're really frustrating. I'll have to call you back once I look at my papers and maybe then I'll get someone else to talk to.
Them: Um, ok.

Before this my sister had called my BIL to see if he wanted to go to the D&M show with her. She was going to go either way. Meanwhile I'm in the background heckling like a ghetto queen. "She want to know if you gowen to da show! Duz she buy one ticket or two? Eee-thah way she gowen!" So he's going then. We reserve the tickets and while we're doing that we realize we never did book that Hoover Dam tour in the first place. We had no recollection of picking a day, which tour time they wanted, nothing. It never happened. Oops! Sorry crazy foreign Expedia Customer Service Representative! My bad!

Seven Years Ago

2008-09-12T07:00:00.006-05:00

Seven years ago today you came into our lives. You were the first grandchild on my side of the family and it was a given that you were going to be spoiled to death! In fact, you already were! Before you were born you had a closet full of clothes and brand new furniture. Your dad and I were over the moon for you even while you were still in my tummy.

On September 10th, 2001 we went to the doctor for an appointment. I can remember the weather that day was absolutely perfect. The temperature was not even a little hot or cold. The sky was a bright blue and there were puffy clouds in the sky. I was in a great mood. After getting weighed and having my blood pressure checked the nurses suspected I had pre-eclampsia. They made me lay down because my blood pressure was so high. The doctor came in, took one look at my chart and said, "It looks like we're going to have to get this babe out."

Your dad and I were pretty nervous. We were told to immediately go over to the hospital for tests because they may need to admit me right then. Well everything had come back fine so they let me leave, told me to eat a big meal because I might not get to eat again for a while and then come back after 5pm. (They weren't kidding. That was Monday and I didn't get to eat again until Friday!) On the way home I literally had to tell your dad a couple times that this was it, it was go time. It just wasn't sinking in. We went home, I washed some clothes, packed a bag, called family and we headed to a buffet, lol. Neither one of us could really eat. I remember sitting there almost crying because I was scared and excited. There's nothing like knowing your life is about to change forever. As we were both sitting there not talking we realized the song we danced to at our wedding had just come on. It makes me almost tear up thinking about it.

Well we got to the hospital, I got hooked up on every machine they have and a cot was brought in for your daddy. You developed quite a reputation at the hospital, even before you were born. You did NOT want to stay on the monitor so they could track your heartbeat. At one point a very kind and patient nurse was in my room sometime after 2am just rubbing the monitor all over my belly trying to find your heartbeat and keep it. She would find it, hook everything up and you would move. She must have done that over and over for almost an hour. Your dad slept peacefully the whole night. Even snored. I on the other hand watched every stupid thing on TV. The 1st shift nurse came in the next morning and said, "Oh. I've heard about THIS baby." She wasn't having your games. She went up there and stuck a little thing just under the skin on the top of your head and they monitored you that way, lol.

Around 6:30am the doctor came in, started me on pitocin and broke my water. A couple hours later I was on the phone with your Aunt Lisa, who was at work, getting ready to open the bank. Daddy and I were watching The Today Show. I was only half paying attention to the TV because I was on the phone but it was then that the first tower was it. When I was still on the phone the 2nd tower was hit. We hung up and it was all your daddy and I could watch on TV. I'm pretty sure the entire nation felt the same. At that point I didn't want you to be born on that day. As my contractions got stronger I secretly wanted you to just wait. Don't be born today. It's a terrible day to bring a baby into the world. Please wait. Sometime around 7pm we couldn't watch any more. We turned the TV off and put on a CD of instrumental music I had brought. It was a huge contrast going from something so violent to something so peaceful.

I wont get into the long dreary details of everything that followed but needless to say, you waited. You waited until 4:58am on September 12, 2001. I wasn't awake when you came into this world. Through crazy circumstances that don't matter I was put to sleep while Dr. Patrick took you from my belly. Your daddy got to be the luckiest man in the world at that point. He got to hold you first, feed you first and change your first diaper. He also got the stress that followed when mommy didn't wake up. I know he was scared but everything came out fine. I finally got to see you that afternoon. Do you know why I got to see you finally almost 9 hours after you were born? Because your daddy ~~yelled and screamed~~ fought in a rational way for it. Your daddy talked to every nurse he could find until he convinced one in charge that you should be brought to the ICU to be with me and it was just the three of us for the next three years.

You were the best baby. You never cried unless you wanted something. You slept through the night from the first moment you were born. We never knew if you were teething until a tooth showed up. You definitely had us spoiled once Blake showed up!

Your first word was "mama". You said it on Easter Sunday, 2002. We watched you crawl, take your first steps and destroy a Teletubbies cake on your first birthday. We worried every time you got sick and cheered at every school program and dance recital. We put band-aids on scrapes and scratches and held ice to that giant goose egg you got on your head in preschool. We cleaned up puke when we realized the hard way that you were allergic to eggs. Your face was so swollen I seriously thought daddy was giving a bath to an asian baby and not you.

We've gotten mad at your sometimes, like the time you poured water into the big can of formula we bought for Blake with our last $20. We've also celebrated the little triumphs like getting yourself dressed and finally mastering 'cat's cradle' earlier this week.

You are one of the biggest joys in our lives and I can't imagine my life without you being in it for the last seven years. You make us laugh everytime you laugh. Just seeing you smile makes me smile. I can't wait to watch you grow into a young woman, (just don't be too quick about it, ok?)

MOPS think they're better than me...

2008-09-09T12:53:00.002-05:00

This morning I woke up late. Like really late. Emily has to catch the bus at 8:11 and school for her starts at 8:30. Also today was a preschool day for Blake and he has to be there at 9. It takes about 20 minutes to get there. I had set my alarm for 7:30. I got up at 7 because I had to pee, then made the fatal mistake of "just laying here for a few minutes". I woke up again at 8:30. Oops!

Luckily when I woke up everyone was dressed but me so I dropped Em off at school and headed to preschool with Blake. We only ended up being about 5 or so minutes late. As Blake and I were walking in the door to the church there was a member of MOPS letting the other MOPS in the door. The church keeps all the doors locked for security due to the preschool so you either have to have someone let you in or ring the buzzer for the office and tell them who you are. As I passed the MOP I said, "Yeah, we're a little late. Mom overslept this morning." The MOP said, "Huh. I WISH that could happen to me." As though she would never allow herself to oversleep. Like I'm the lesser parent. Yeah, well at least I don't call myself a cleaning apparatus!

A Conversation With My Son...

2008-09-09T12:47:00.004-05:00

Me: (While driving) Blake! Stop pushing your feet against my seat.
(He stops for a second, then does it again)
Me: Blake! Do you want me to tell your dad you were pushing your feet on the seat again?
Blake: No you wont.
Me: Wanna bet?
Blake: Stop saying I'm gonna get a bet because I'm not!

Oh, and here are the pictures from the first day of preschool: