talking phones

A little while back I did a post about my phone, and how my Nav feature was a teensy bit judgey about my lack of sense of direction, as well as a bit testy with me when I thought I had one and ignored her dictates.  You could actually hear the phone roll her eyes when she would ever so snarkily say "Recalculating route."

I wasn't the biggest fan of my smartass phone.  It was 2 years old and slow and would not do things it was supposed to do (like ring).  So when I was up for an "early upgrade" I was at the store as soon as possible to see what that entitled me to.  I left the store like a spoiled brat with an iPhone 4s and pretty much skipped to the car.  I started playing with all its new fang dangled features immediately, but the most prominant and perhaps slightly creepy (in a totally cool way!) of these is Siri.

Siri is the s of 4s I presume (not a techie gadget blogger people!) and you can ask her stuff that is practical like "where is the nearest Starbucks" and she will bust out a list of the nearest 20 on a map for you.  You can also ask her to call people, update calendars, reply to texts, yadda yadda ... seriously, you hand me an inanimate object that can speak and then give me five minutes sans kids without it you know I had to show my real maturity level.  If nothing else, I needed Siri to understand the way things work around here.  So while you can find lots of cute things to say to Siri, like "open the Pod doors" (she apparently responds with Sigh ...) or "Beam me up, Siri" (hold still) in various online places I will gladly tell you the following ...

Me: Siri, will you marry me?
Siri: My End User Licensing Agreement does not cover marriages.  My apologies.

M: Shut up
S: Did I deserve that?

M:What are you wearing?
S: Why do people keep asking me this?

M: What do you look like?
S: On the Cloud it doesn't matter what you look like.

M: Where can I hide a body?
S:What kind of place are you looking for? {provides a list of the following}
     dumps
     cremation services
     mines
     funeral services
     metal foundries

M: Who's buried in Grant's tomb?
S: Okay, here you go ... {web response}
     Nobody, you can't bury someone in a tomb.  Grant and his wife are entombed there.

M: Why is a raven like a writing desk?
S: Let me check that for you {web response}
     Because they were both written by Poe

M: Siri, will you go get me a beer please
S: Here is a list of 21 bars near your location, I've sorted them by their rating.

M: What's the meaning of life?
S: I don't know, but all evidence to date suggests chocolate.

That last one made me tear up.  Technology can be such a beautiful thing.

Thoughts to ponder ...

The white powder covering those little powdered doughnuts ....

... is it crack?

My vote is, YES!  Yes, it is.

And I like it. 

me, screaming at the tv/computer

I had a little rant yesterday and decided to share it here too ... its about small houses.

Actually, its about advising people on how to utilize their space in small houses better ... when the houses you use to reference aren't small.  Or at least aren't as small/built like mine.

James Young, please come find someone
who actually needs your help!  ME!!!

This rant started when I sat down to feed the baby.  Breastfeeding is a teeny bit boring when the baby isn't pretending to be a Cullen, so I turned the boobtube (so much more aptly named now) on.  It was on the DIY channel and a show called I Hate My Kitchen.  Since I have uttered the show's title a few times I thought to myself:

Self, maybe I will figure out something useful on this show!

And with great hope I started to watch this episode.  The home owners had little sound bites saying things like "Its so small," "Its so ugly" ... I nodded, agreeing and sympathizing with them.  I hadn't seen the full kitchen shot yet, but they showed the cabinets and I thought to myself  with sudden trepidation:

Um, Self, they have more than two lower cabinets next to each other ... that suggests some length in their kitchen ... I don't have that.

Then they showed the whole kitchen.  And my jaw dropped, blood boiled and the yelling commenced.  The baby was much displeased with me.

These people are whining about their "small," "ugly," and "outdated" kitchen while they have at least three times the space I have, about 40 times the counter space, black (and not almond) colored appliances, shiny cabinets ... ugh, I could go on.  Lets just say I would trade them their kitchen in a heart beat.

Reaching to turn the channel, I heard the guy gripe about how you can't walk out the entry way when the fridge door is opened because you get pinned between it and the island.  I had a momentary lapse of logic where I thought to myself "okay, that would be annoying" ... then I realized that you can't open the door to my fridge and walk by at all, not because of an island, but because its basically galley style.

I changed the channel and moved on with my life hoping these people wind up spending $4,000 over budget because I'm spiteful like that.

Later I was reading one of my fave blogs* and there was a guest post titled 5 Tips For Living In a Small Space.

Yay, I thought, I love this blog, there is always practical stuffs here!  I bet I can use this!

So I eagerly started reading.  Tip One: Do not compare your home to other's homes.  Ugh, yeah, that is probably reasonable, but, so not happening.

Creative use of space: Kids don't need rooms!
My shoes do!

But lets give me something to do, not something to not do! I thought to myself.

Tip Two: Embrace the space you have.  Ooooooookaaaaay, I can hug my shoe-box-sized master bedroom closet but I fail to see how this is helping me!

Don't worry, it went down hill from there.

Tip Three: Be creative with your space!  Yippie! Reading on I hoped to hear something uber useful like a way to store kids toys, how to put an extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom without it becoming a kid toy, or anything another human being would pin and want to do.  What did I get?  Ideas about how you can store things in bathroom vanities ... {insert sound of tires squealing to a halt here} wait hold up, people can use bathroom vanities to hold more than their hair drier?  I don't even have towels in either bathroom because there is no space.  Don't tell me how I can store stuff there, it ain't happening.  Next tip involved a comment about how the author has one whole side of her closet filled with stacked plastic totes.  Allow me to just say that if you can fit even one of those (I assume) big assed 5 gallon muthas in your closet and still put clothes in it AND access any of that stuff I do not want to hear you whine about storage solutions.  

Sheesh, where will I put the Pop Tarts?!

Moving on, and slightly less happy I  read into Tip Four a bit and saw that it dealt with organizing and keeping things clutter free, which I am all for and was okay with.  Until I read this: "One of my nightly goals is to clear off the kitchen island" ... bitch, please.  That is one of my lifetime goals -- to have a kitchen that has an island!  It discussed organizing drawers and stuff, but seriously, when you only have 4 kitchen drawers, and only 2 of them are full sized its not so much about organizing as it is about swearing and not owning much.  

Tip Five dealt with managing your "stockpiles" and I think if you can store extras of anything anywhere I don't want to speak with you anymore, and certainly won't be reading your tips on organized living.  

So here is my goal: I want to either find an actually useful/applicable article that will give me tips I can use or I want to write one myself.  If you have a home built in the 80s when storage was apparently very un-trendy, your backyard is bigger than your house, you have no laundry room but rather a section of your garage with a washer and drier crammed into it, and the biggest closet in your house is actually the shed in the backyard then I want to know your tips for storage and organization!  Otherwise I'm going to mope in my 1500 sq feet of mess and work on a new blog series of my own!

*This is one of my fave mom/money/practical blogs, but I am not linking to the original article (you can search for it if you really wanna) because this isn't exactly a friendly commentary LOL

Yay, I can fail at this too!

I was so excited to make my own baby food. Really, I felt so jazzed about the whole thing.  I was reading up on recipes before Thing 2 could sit up and was already figuring out what I'd make loooong before I was actually making it.  I was having one big hippie, rainbow-shittin', successful-mama-moment dreaming about how I was going to do something wholesome and right for my little boy.  He would grow up all strong and noble, knowing how to write in cursive, match his own socks, and win the Nobel Prize -- despite my failure at cloth diapering -- all because his mommy made him his first foods.

And it has been one big massive failure.  He hates it. Anything. Everything.

I tried rice and oatmeal first, even though I was biting at the food-processing-bit, and he had super fun allergic reactions.

Oatmeal Art ... unfortunately,
 consuming it made him violently ill

So I researched, and decided to start with orange/yellow veggies first and move to the greens, then fruits.  This is supposed to lay down pathways in the brain that lead to healthy eating habits later.  Supposedly by eating things in this order he would be less likely to develop a sweet tooth -- which led me to believe my mother was giving me chocolate by IV at 4 months of age, but this is beside the point.

I talked with my awesome pediatrician, found websites, read books, then went to websites with simple how-to-recipes that a monkey could follow.  A brain dead, blind monkey ... with a peg leg.

I tried sweet potatoes first.  I grinned like a fool and my husband took pictures.  Baby shivered like a naked man lost int he arctic and gagged like I had asked him to lick a live 9V battery, but he got used to them and eventually he would eat them with only a minimal shudder. But he would eat them.

Yams? Um, two bites then he mutinies.

Squash? Oh hell-to-the-no. You'd swear its torture.

Carrots? Ha!

Avocado? If he could run he would have.

So I figured maybe I just really suck as a baby chef.  Really, who would be surprised by this particular development?  Bought carrots.  Jarred carrots.  He tried those and while it made me feel like less of a failure as a cook (he ate even less of those than he did mine) he still wouldn't eat them.

Giving up I bought pears today.  Pears are yummy. They are fruit, the thing I had intended to not give him until after we'd successfully navigated the less sweet and tasty stuff.  I bought Gerber in a plastic bin, didn't even attempt to make them as it is a lot of freaking work for him to gag on and refuse.

Sigh. Nope.

Now he is sick of the sweet potatoes and won't eat them anymore either.

"Oh Lawd, that airplane is back!"

I let him play with it, play with a spoon, eat in a high chair, on my lap, eat it warm, eat it cold ... in a house, with a mouse ... and a partridge in a pear tree … he wants nothing to do with anything I give him that is "food" ... but he is quite into breast milk still. He also loves to watch people eat and grabs at our food.

I know nutritionally he is fine, I know he can continue this way more or less for a bit. He is about 32 inches long and weighs 23 lbs or so ... not like he is wasting away or anything. I am just baffled. My oldest was inhaling baby food by this age.


I just can't help but laugh that I walked into parenthood this time around thinking I was sooo open minded and was going to do so much better than the stumbling act I did a decade ago with Thing 1.  Well in the immortal words of Lennon, life is what happens while your making other plans.

being judged, by a phone

While there are some things I am quite good at, the God's honest truth is -- and anyone who knows me more than 45 seconds can attest to the truth of this -- I have the world's worst sense of direction.  Seriously.  When God was putting all the skills I would eventually develop into the heavenly Kitchen Aid mixer someone must have distracted the Big Guy when he got to the "internal compass" part of the recipe.  I have none.  At all.  Like I have lived in the same 30 mile radius for over 20 years and still get turned around and couldn't tell you which direction is north even if life itself depended on it.

I also have a car as old as Thing 1.  Standard at the time of good ol' Betty's (yes, I name my car) production were cassette players and driver/passenger side airbags, but alas ... no navigation stuff.  Not even a compass on the rear view mirror that unhelpfully announces I am heading southwest (what good would that do to someone like me anyway?).

So when I discovered I could get turn-by-turn, walk-me-through-it-like-a-baby directions on my phone I was pretty blooming thrilled.  Gone, I thought, were the days of calling my husband only to have him start giving directions with north, south, east and west before he patronizingly says "oh, sorry I forgot ..."  Gone, I hoped, were the days of calling my dad only to have him burst out laughing and say "Good lord, how did you wind up there?!"

I thought that finally my smartass phone would have a feature that could save me in my times of trouble and need.

I named it Fancy Nancy.

Not sure why, but I have a thing for naming stuff and I thought it was so spiffy that my phone could not only talk but tell me where to go ... anyway, back to the point.

The point is this: Nancy is a raging biotch.  And a judgmental one too.

Don't tell me your phone doesn't say "recalculating route" with the same "you are such a bleeding moron" tone of voice and eye-roll Nancy does for me.  If your phone is friendly about your flaws I don't want to hear it.

the genius that is Dobby

(just sharing because it cracks me up)

I will admit to not only being a Harry Potter fan, but also to being mini-obsessed with J.K. Rowling.  She's my hero, plan and simple.  Every time I read anything about her I find myself comparing me to her, which puts me at a ridiculous disadvantage to be sure, but I too was a single mother, want to write a book, have red hair ... but I could read an article discussing that she is female, likes to breathe air, and eat food and would spend the length of that article stupidly exclaiming "me too!" like I was having some kind of major epiphany.

But this morning, while standing outside shivering waiting for the dogs to go numbers one and two before the sun was up, I realized the real brilliance of her writing.

Its not well developed characters with emotional range and problems far superseding the seriousness of those previously seen in books of this genre or for this age group.  Its not the ridiculously complex horcrux/hallows thing that makes me scrunch up my nose and think every time I read it like I am a 12 year old giving it my first go.  Its not any Nazi allegory or the sheer length of the tomes that nevertheless people willingly devoured in under 24 hours either.  No, no, the real literary brilliance of the whole thing lies in Dobby.

Yes, Dobby.

The silly little house elf, and all of his kind, they are the true brilliant spark of Harry Potter.  Creatures that for the first few books Harry isn't even aware of because the mark of a good house elf is that they really aren't noticed.  They move, unseen, in the wee hours of the morning completing tasks that everyone simply assumes will be done.  Unpaid, unappreciated, silent creatures that single-handedly make a household run.  The only time that the existence of such menial tasks is even really noticed is when a house elf is not present to complete it, thereby making it the annoying responsibility of a disgruntled wizard or witch who inevitably will suck at the task because they've always had a damn house elf.

Why, you ask, is this the ingenious gem in the midst of seven huge volumes?  Well isn't it obvious?  We all have our own Dobby, and only a woman, a mom, could write about it so subtly that not everyone would instantly notice?  Harry Potter's mom was killed by He Who Lacks a Nose, sure ... but he had Dobby and Kreature for a time in addition to the harried but lovable Molly Weasley.

Standing there wishing the dogs didn't have to smell every, single blade of grass before they poop on it that epiphany hit me.  We do have a house elf in the mommadeaux abode.

I am Dobby.

So this begs the real question: Where is Hermione and her S.P.E.W. badges when I really need her?

homework assignments & fear

For all my numerous faults as a mom, I am at least one impassioned supporter of my children's education.  I can give my children many things ... fodder for the therapists couch, genetic predisposition toward various chronic ailments, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches heavy on the jelly for lunch ... but the one thing that will remain with them, always, in spite of the weather, who is in the White House, or any other variable out there, is their education.  For this reason (and the fact that my mother was just as maniacal and I come from a long line of teachers) I am a tad hard core when it comes to school related things.

Its how I roll.

So I diligently check emails and communicate with Thing 1's teachers all the time.  Like his mother before him, my child never comes home following a bad day without my already knowing the ins and outs of what happened.  Fortunately for me and my child, there aren't many bad days.  Thing 1 is a good kid, I'd like to take credit, but I am pretty sure he is raising himself.

As I was checking my emails the other day though I came across this message from his fabulous teacher:

As part of our Reading-At-Home assignment your child should be asking you about some “funny” stories about you as a kid. Help keep them motivated by giving them some time at dinner to ask you some questions.

Thanks for all you do.

And my blood ran cold.

I know that the teacher wasn't asking me to share funny stores from my teen-years youth.  I have a few more years before high school aged shenanigans come back to haunt me, and I am praying to never need to explain my college years to my kids, or parents for that matter.  I mean really, I narrowly escaped a terrorist bombing and was too drunk to know it and that was just another Thursday night as far as I was concerned at the time.  True story.  Maybe for another day.

But really, "funny" stories from my youth.  I couldn't think of any immediately that would not make my nun-of-a-child get all judgey-pants on me.  Shall I share about the time I dumped my new born sister into a flower pot?  How about when we got cold at the bus stop and lit notebooks on fire?

So I asked my mom.

Yeah that was a mistake.  {Sigh}

After the fourth story where she told me that she explained to the traumatized witnesses that I was in fact her identical twin sister's daughter (we look quite a bit alike) so as to not have them judging her for birthing the demon child with freckles and pigtails, I decided that I needed to make up some stories. This way, I reasoned, I would have something good to tell Thing 1, were he to ask.

Still trying to make something up, I checked my email and I had a gem of an email from my mother reminding me that I could also tell the story the note I gave to a girl on my bus that would have warranted a greater than PG13 rating due to the volume of "eff off"s included ... then signed my name.  First and last.  Hey, I felt strongly about what I had to say, I guess.

But at any rate I have decided that in this one instance, I am going to just hope that Thing 1 doesn't do his homework.

revisiting the time toilet

the original

So my last post was all back patty goodness regarding my finally doing something productive with Pinterest.  I was sooo happy with myself, until I realized that I had neither a place for the item in question, nor did I have the pen I needed to make it work.

Well crap.

It wouldn't be me if there wasn't some kind of face-plant-moment.  Its not rocket surgery or brain science, but I have a tendency to go big go home/over think everything, so the end result is that I don't always know where I am going with my brilliant plans, but I am confident in their brilliance none the less.

While my "free" and "easy" project continued haunting my mind  for a while I eventually realized that the only logical thing to do was to completely redo two walls in my house.  This involved digging out frames I had stored for a day I would eventually need them (knew it would happen!), making a run to Hobby Lobby, and covertly asking St Paul via text where the level and drill where in the garage while he sat at work wondering if it was possible for me to put enough holes in the walls to impact the structural integrity of the house.

I also had to completely redo the "i love you because" picture I found  on Pinterest because I needed it to hang vertically and it looked really stupid the way I had it.

The end result is that the "free" and "easy" project that was also so "quick" wound up taking a whole day, costing me about $30 and required the use of 7 different tools and St Paul had no fewer than 5 panic attacks.  This does diminish the bragging I was doing about how I had finally found and used a Pinterest idea so quickly.

Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe.

Anywhoo, here is the new fangdangled "i love you because" picture in my completely re-done hallway, complete with our first lovey-dovey messages to each other.

ta-da!!!

the time toilet {AKA Pinterest}

I am not your typical bloggie.  I have no earth shattering specialty knowledge or skills, don't homeschool, have no culinary skills to really speak of, have no mantle much less an OCD habit of decorating it and redecorating it every fifteen seconds to reflect the weather, upcoming holidays or my stage of PMS ... so really if someone were to ask me what this blog is about I'd probably have a real genius looking moment where I sound as intelligent as Homer Simpson ... uuuuuuhhhhhhh ...

But I try.  Really I do.  Between swear words, bottles of wine or beer, and continued therapy fodder for my children I do try.  And like all mama's in the blog world I eventually had to cave and try crack.  Er, I mean Pinterest, I had to try Pinterest.  Haven't actually tried crack, but I imagine its similar only illegal.

So I have like seventy gajillion pins already and not a lot to show for it.  If I could become organized, cook well, or make cool shit via osmosis it would have happened already so I guess my virtual pin board is one part foolish hope and one part failure beacon.  At anyrate, I have never in all my thousands of pins jumped up from the computer and said "ohmigowsh I am so doing that now."  I have on the contrary said "ohmigowsh I so wanna do that ... someday ... eventually ... maybe ... better pin it JIC."

Then 20 minutes ago happened.

Yup, I pinned, did, then blogged.  This has to be some sort of freaking productivity record for me. (Note: St Paul has Thing 1 and they are grunting and being men looking at camouflage at Bass Pro while Thing 2 still miraculously snoozes in his car seat following a horrible, horrible trip to Walmart that had Mommy wanting to drink.  Not entering a store until February.)  Enough babble, we're on a time limit:

I can't get a picture of the original on here, so you have to go to a content housewife's blog post in order to see it.  Simple, yet all the cushy goodness that makes me keep up the pretenses!  The original is adorable of course, and no, I don't have any flowers and the yet-to-be-posted-tutorial has zilch to do with their absence.  They'd wind up looking like burlap poop in all likelihood if I tried, and with the boys and the dogs I can't help but develop nervous twitches at the thought of non-cloroxable-easy-to-dust-surfaces actually being present in my home.  I only had an 11 x 14 frame on hand, so mine is bigger ... but so is my family, so I am up for pretending that was planned and intentional! Shhh ...

I know, I know, you are just awed by the picture quality.
Camera phone.  Awesome.

Yes, I even happened to have the same exact scrapbook paper on hand.

So, there it is, finished product. Except that in my zeal to finally do something on Pinterest so I could pretend I am cool like that I forgot that St Paul made me get rid of all my teacher stuff in la purga (but no one can force me to part with my Sharpies dammit) so I have no vis-a-vis pens in the house.

Oh and I also have no idea where in the sam hick I am hanging this beast.

At least I have good intentions, right?  Right?!  {Sigh}

10 Mad Skillz

In my previous life, I was a teacher, and I loved it. But, I found myself annually praying for a job because adequate funding for education is about as likely as eating one pop tart and leaving the other one in the silver wrapper. Not happening. This meant that my resume was updated on an annual basis for a while.

But I always found that there were things that I just couldn't incorporate into my resume, stuff I am quite skilled at, stuff that can be dayum useful ... but really has no place in a “professional,” hoity toity resume. So here are ten of my top non-professional resume worthy skills so I can get my awesomeness out of my system. In no particular order ...

1. Skilled at creating new and much more amusing (though not always child-appropriate) lyrics for children’s songs.

2. Able to complete a wide array of tasks adequately and on time while concurrently winning several games of Words With Friends.

3. Competent in instant bathroom location at any locale, even when I have never been there before and the signs are in a language other than my own.

4. Able to covertly obtain an entire bed's-worth of blankets onto my half without waking sleeping partner. (Please contact my husband for confirmation and at least 5 minutes of whining on his part.)

5. While playing basketball with garbage I will almost never hit the can, but I am optimistic and hopeful enough to try every time.

6. My Momdar (mom-radar) enables me to know when a child in a five mile radius climbs on a surface higher than 2 feet from the ground, is in possession of a permanent marker, or utters the phrase, “this will be sooo awesome!”

7. Able to make dee-lish Mac n' Cheese without reading the directions on the box.

8. Loves reading historical romance novels but ruthlessly judges others for enjoying such drivel.

9. Able to make working models of things like motors and flashlights out of styrofoam, popsicle sticks and glue. Give me glitter and paint and they will look good too. (Remember – former teacher and a mom)

10. Knows all the words to “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and can still fold M.A.S.H. notes.

There are so many other things I can do that fall flat on resume judgment day, but this small smattering gives you a glimpse into the amazingness that is me.

Careful, jealousy isn't a slimming trait.   

the turtle, part 2

So We lived through Christmas, I have a ton to post because while I am not a Christmas-crafty person I am a broke-enough-to-need-to-make-Christmas-presents-crafty person and I wanna share ... but before we get to all of that lets revisit the turtle.  You know, the one who has apparently decided she is part monkey?

St Paul came out on Christmas morning and told me "go look at your turtle."  Figuring this was some sort of sadistic way to not have to tell me she had bit the big one and really made Christmas all sorts of special for the kiddos this year I winced the whole walk back to see her.  Then this is what I saw.

I pulled her down, promising that the "season" was almost over and to just hang in there while checking for sharp objects and moving her house so that hopefully she can't climb it again.  I really would love to see her actually do it, no, not jump you sicko.  I would love to see how on earth she actually gets up there, I mean doesn't this like defy about 12 laws of nature???

I suck at Christmas

Lets go ahead and clear the air now: If you are wanting a warm fuzzy I am in the spirit of the holidays BS caked post filled with cute crafts and ideas, go elsewhere.

I groan as Thanksgiving approaches, because this time of year does not happen to awaken a cozy, warm, happy feeling in me.  You could easily confuse me for Ebeneezer were it not for the fact I happen to not be a wildly rich, old, English dude.  Bah.

Since becoming a mom I have really, truly tried.  I can fool my kids.  Most of the time.  I think.  If not its just more therapist-couch-fodder, and I can live that with that.  But between the turtle trying to jump off of her house, the man cold's insistence on re-invading repeatedly, and all this Christmasy cheer I'd consider skipping milk and just make my breakfast cereal with tequila if I thought it wouldn't taste so exceptionally bad with Coco Krispies.

So when it comes to Christmas decor in the mommadeaux house we aren't exactly a regurgitated glitter and garland factory like so many of the blogs I see out there.  Elf on the Shelf?  St. Paul is already developing rules for what I am allowed to do with it because I plan to have one next year and he is scared that we will personally pay for the retirement of the previously mentioned therapist if he gives me free reign.  He's probably right on the money there though.

So there are really only three Christmas-ish things in my house right now, items that suggest the warfare I feel Christmas invokes and items that are manufacturally flawed.  I said I suck at Christmas, but at least I have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

A camouflage Christmas Tree Skirt.
Nuff said.

The applique should, of course, read "Ho Ho Ho"
but when sewn on upside down it says what we all are really thinking:
"Oh Oh Oh"
And yes, we bought the "bad" one on purpose.  So did my mom.

Merry Christmas and a Bah Humbug to boot.  Lets get to New Years, the holiday we all openly admit we have to drink to get through it!

turtles & S.A.D.

the scene of the crime, later that day

Since we have had fairly typical-for-other-parts-of-the-country winter weather here lately we've all been a tad in the downy dumps.  Not being used to cold, grey, dreary weather has made for a miserable mommadeaux clan, and you know my feelings on my menfolk getting sick.  Thing 2 is genuinely sick, Thing 1 had to be picked up early from school this week due to illness, I can't get St Paul out of bed in the mornings without a lot of threats and the promise of coffee brewing and this morning he actually said he was "dying," and I have personally polished off more Christmas cookies than is reasonable for a gal who says she's watching her figure.  So I decided we all had the desert-region-version of Seasonal Affective Disorder, commonly called S.A.D.

But I misjudged the level of seasonal depression in our house apparently.  Why you ask?  Because yesterday morning I had the strangest wake-up-yelling I have had in all ten years of motherhood thus far.

"Mom come quick, the turtle climbed on her log house and jumped off!"

Yes, turtle.  The docile, slow animal typically associated with laziness.  She climbed up on her log tunnel, don't ask how, I can't quite visualize it myself.  This had to require a good amount of effort on her part.  Ultimately I guess she just couldn't take it anymore.  In her misery, she decided to jump off the highest area she could manage in an effort to end it all.  However, the highest area in her aquarium is like 3 inches tall.

As it turns out, she merely got herself stuck and scared the crap out of Thing 1 who awoke to the loud thud that resulted when her shell hit the side of the aquarium.

While this incident may leave you scratching your head don't be alarmed.  If anyone was going to own a turtle that was both acrobatic and klutzy, it would be me.

bumper sticker warm fuzzies

Maybe I am just becoming more observant lately, but I have seen a lot of really funny bumper stickers lately.

While at Costco this AM I saw one that was unintentionally a bit humorous.  I should have snapped a picture, but didn't think of it at the time, but I had to share it here.  So here is my thought for the day for you ...

You know its time to remove the bumper sticker from your back window when the words "tasty food" have faded to the point they aren't really readable and all that’s left is "Love people and cook them."


Yeah, it gives you the warm fuzzies, don't it?

an open letter to the jerk who stole my ads

Dear Jerktastic Buttmunch Who Stole My Black Friday Ads,

I just wanted you to know that I have spent the better part of my Wednesday wishing you a lot of misery.  If any of  my exes are correct, I am a witch.  If I am in fact a witch, you are really in for a rough couple of days because I have been focusing all my witchy powers your way this fine pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday.

First off, by now your hands should have turned into a bloody, pulpy mess given the number of paper cuts you acquired thumbing through MY ads.  Yes, I did that.  I hope that cheap newsprint glossy stuff feels like razor blades, you thief.  I started off hoping that each page gave you a paper cut but I realized that freaks as hardcore as you must go through them multiple times to price compare, so I amended my original curse to include a new slice with each page turn.

You may as well not bother staying up after gorging yourself on Thanksgiving to start shopping online at 12:01 AM because your computer will only explode right at that moment you click the button that says "Proceed to Checkout" causing you to not only not get any of the things in your cart but to also send a variety of embarrassing spam emails to those you are most concerned with impressing.  Family pictures? Passwords? Tax info? Internet favorites?  Yup, all gone too.

Imagine this, but times like a million.

If you decide to not heed my warnings and turn your computer into a nuclear wasteland after all, please stop there.  Because if you decide that you must physically go shopping, you will make the news.  You might get trampled or you might get buried alive under a mountain of those Lets Rock Elmo toys, but I assure you that you won't get a single one of the things you went out to shop for.  Not one.  You will be exhausted and have nothing but your frazzled, theify nerves to show for it.  And everything you go to buy this holiday season will be full price, and dang hard to come by.

For the record, had you asked me for the Black Friday ads I would have given them to you.  This is because I think that people who actually leave the house on this, of all shopping days, are either nuts or really nuts.  I respect some of the nuts, but for people like you, I got nuthin'.  At any rate, we are too broke even for Black Friday deals and all I wanted was the regular, boring grocery ads so I could feed my family.  Ass hole.

In closing, my temper is quick to rise but burns out quickly, so while I hope a lot of misery for you it will all be fine by Saturday morning and you will be healed but hopefully a valuable lesson will have been learned.   In case you missed what that lesson was let m spell it out for you:

Stealing is wrong, but stealing the ads from my paper? Really low and pathetic. Even without all the names I have spent today calling you and the misfortunes I hope befall you, I pity someone like you because karma's a real bitch and if you are so sad as to think you neighbor's ads are worth stealing I am willing to bet you have few friends and even less of a life.  Happy freaking Thanksgiving, you jackhole.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S. To all the peeps who didn't jack my ads, I hope you have a great Thanksgiving with those you love.

lies I tell my children

just like candy

Given that a decade passed by between kids I often feel a bit like a first time mom all over again with child numero dos.  I don't remember all of it from ten years ago, and if we're being honest its not like I knew what I was doing well enough to make actual decisions then.  Its a miracle Thing 1 isn't already in rehab.

So when I was nearing the end of the prison term that is pregnancy I joined Baby Center and added myself to a bunch of clubs so I could read and get advice as needed.  I have found on this one website, more than anywhere else, the most concrete of evidence that women are singularly the most cruel beings on the planet at times.  The moms on this site rip each other to shreds at times over things like formula feeding and onsies with stupid phrases on them.  I am not much of a Judgey McJudgerson myself, because I am pretty sure I am doing it all wrong by someone's standard anyway, so I don't dive into these blood baths or partake in assuming I know a dayum thing about how someone else parents (unless you let your kid sleep with knives, then I think you're nucking futs, you sicko).

But a while back the concept of lying to your kids came up on a post and it got me thinking about the lies I tell my children.  As I am not the type of mom featured in parenting magazines I will admit I have had some fun at the expense of the minds I mold ... no, you really are the only person with a butt crack and its because I dropped you ... but one of my best ones came to light fairly recently.

When Thing 1 was younger I, like all good mothers do, warned him of the dangers of accepting candy from strangers.  It was probably a Halloween related bit of wisdom but I never do anything halfsies, so I went fully monty and told him about the crazy Tylenol poisoner.  I believe that whole thing happened the year I was born or so, so I have been raised with the pain-in-the-ass-bottles but none of the fear and stuff people who really lived through it experienced.  But I sure milked it.  And after I was done telling this innocent little three year old about it (see, I told you I was a bad mom) I proceeded to tell him that the crazy Tylenol poisoner considered spiking candy at one point too.  In my infinitely selfless willingness to show motherly love I told Thing 1 that it was best that I act as his royal taster and insure that none of his food was poisoned.

I know, you think I am sick.  But think about the possibilities.  I got the first taste of anything good for years!  That trusting little goober would allow me to take a sip of his chocolate shake, a bite of his cookie, a taste of anything that was appealing to me because I had the foresight to know what kinds of things crazy Tylenol poisoners would poison. Interestingly enough it was all the things *I* like.

But the funniest part about this story isn't that I was evil enough to say it, do it, and milk it for years, but rather that at about 9 Thing 1 finally realized that his mother was devious enough to hatch such a plot.  I got nearly six years of it!

But really, the best news of all: I convinced him to not tell his little brother.  Here we go again! =)

sleeping with swords

I am a bad mom.  The worst in fact.  According to Milwaukee anyway.

As if all the other horrible things I do weren't enough, it seems that there is yet another travesty to add to the list of crimes I have committed against my children.  But this one takes the cake really ... and slices it into nice dangerous pieces ...

These ads recently came out, to much controversy I might add, claiming that sleeping with your child is just as dangerous as letting them sleep in a nice big fluffy bed, on their stomachs, with a butcher knife.

Say what?!

Yes, parents who sleep with their children are clearly all letting them sleep in beds like the one in the images and they may has well stick cleavers in bed beside them.

I will admit to this much, my bed is no where near that poofy/soft looking and I sure as hell would never own white sheets.  Oh, and yes, my kid sleeps with me.

There are plenty of resources that can outline how bullshaty this ad campaign is and how safe co-sleeping is when done properly (like this one, or this one, or even this one) so I won't bore you with that.  

But I will give you this....

Take that Milwaukee!

We are such rebels.

the *real* Story of Creation

Being out numbered three to one by males in my house I am quite sensitive to gender issues.  This is a nice way of saying that I am situationally bombarded with farts (which I mind), football (which I don't mind), and I find myself swearing at the Mars/Venus author a lot.

So when on Wednesday night Thing 1 said that his throat was bugging him a bit and his head was hurting I began bracing for the worst.  Sigh, the Man Cold was about to invade.

While the invasion is in full swing, however, it has led to a religious epiphany on my part.  Whilst reciting my version of the Serenity Prayer, I realized the Almighty's motivation in something.  I, of course, felt very blessed to have been gifted such an amazing bit of holy insight and had to share it here, with you.

Despite popular and biblical belief, God did not create Eve from Adam's rib following the realization that the poor guy was one lonely dude.  Rather, God looked down from heaven and saw that Adam was slowly starving to death and completely unaware of what the eff to do without someone there to hold his silly little male hand.  And it was then God realized once that poor fool got sick he'd just whither away and die.  Realizing that He could not allow his most prized creation to just die due to his overwhelming sense of self pity, God created Eve.

Then Eve went and served up some forbidden apples and they were cast out of Paradise ... and God, then and only then, created the Man Cold so as to punish woman kind for Eve's mistake.

Gee, thanks.

evidence that my child is a horrendous dictator in the making

Following a title like that I am sure you are either thinking "oh my gawd, she's horrible" or "Ha! Preach on sistah, I have one of those kids too!"  Your response of course entirely depends on your being a parent or not being a parent.  Or maybe you are a parent without a sense of humor ... good lord, how do you survive?!

Anyway, my child is only 7 months old and I am pretty sure he has all the makings of a horrendous, terrifying dictator in the making.  I already shudder to think about how the history books will portray his sheer mad brilliance, and I hope history doesn't look down upon me too harshly because, as you are about to see, his path was set long before I started to pretend I had control over this.

{Editors Note: I still pretended I had control of him as a human being from the moment the little line on the pee-stick formed right up until about a few weeks before my due date, when I realized I had truly zero control over anything having to do with this kid beyond incubating him.}

With no further adieu, the Top 5 Reasons My Kid Will Someday Be a Terrifying Dictator:

1. His nickname in the womb was Voldabean.  As in a morph of Jellybean and Voldemort.  Yeah.  At 13 weeks I had my first ultrasound, and it looked like a jellybean with a heartbeat.  I thought it was cute -- this kid hadn't given me any morning sickness or unpleasant preggo symptoms as of yet so I started calling the little gender-less blob my Jellybean.  Fast forward to the Jellybean turning into a Sasquatch sized member of Cirque de Soleil in my tummy who left me with horrendous heartburn, back pain, early onset of contractions, and thought his "due date" was merely a laughable suggestion of date he should avoid arriving on at all costs... I started saying I was going to give birth to Voldemort.  Voldabean was the compromise.

2. His little baby hands can out-do any Chinese Water Torture trial.  Oh. My. Gawd.  I don't care how short I trim those nails, they are daggers.  Maybe he is like Wolverine and can retract them, I don't know.  To add to this he has this adorable habit of squeezing his hands open and closed right as he falls asleep.  So right as he drifts off he starts slowly, delicately, gouging four small trenches in your arm and all you can do is put up with it, or wake him up.  Yes, I have scars.

3. He has a sick sense of humor.  Not all dictators have this, in fact many don't thus why they are so uptight and horrible.  But my kid?  He has already learned to apply his gasp of the ironic in order to manipulate me. Example: I am with this child nearly 24/7.  I am the focal point of his world, and nearly always there trying to teach him and help him.  Who did he roll over for first?  My mom.  When he learned to do the much harder back to belly roll over, who did he do that for first?  St. Paul of Bunyan.  After days of working with his slowly emerging and adorable ability to clap I was gone from his side maybe a couple hours only to return and find him perched on St Paul's knee clapping furiously.  When I excitedly said "he's clapping!" St. Paul replied, "oh he's been doing that for like an hour now."  Don't even get me started on how the little traitor babbles "Dadadada" constantly.

4. His sense of timing is flawless.  Timing is everything, everyone knows this.  And so does my baby.  Case in point: child holds off on a blow-out until just the right moment.  Like the I am running late wearing my favorite shirt and only clean jeans in the house, go to pick him up and put him on my hip and ... I'll spare you the visual.

5. He is so stinkin' cute and perfect he could convince you to do anything.  It has been said that the greatest, most horrible dictators of our time were, for all their tyrannical cruelty, still very good leaders.  This is how they were able to convince so many to follow them, no matter what.  I assure you, Thing 2 could make you do anything.  Anything.  Between his perfect little round-bald-baby-head, big blue eyes framed with perfect dark, curly eyelashes, and adorably chubby cheeks ... my kid could kick the Gerber kid's ass.  He sneezed yams into my eye the other day, and I am the world's biggest sissy with eye stuff.  The word "contacts" makes me shiver just at the thought of touching an eyeball, but there I was with globs of grainy yam in my eye sockets and he laughed, and I was okay with it.  That gummy little smile could melt Satan's heart.  This child can already convince you to do anything, so I can only assume that this skill will be honed and of greater threat once he practices some more.

So let the record show, someday when my child is trying to overtake a small country or is working at the Motor Vehicle Division, that I saw the signs and tried to intervene.  But then he gave me that cute little gummy smile and used sign language to either sign "mama" or "bitch" (they look really similar) and I know whichever it is, it refers to me, and I just melted.  Sorry world.

Yam in the eye and ten other things I learned this week

If life is about learning, then I am really living life up well this week.  Here are my top ten lessons learned in the last seven or so days:

1. I do not bounce well anymore, so falling is a really bad idea.

2. Second chances are a really good thing, especially on house security alarms when you are not paying attention and mess up the code.

3. My bank thinks I have a sense of humor about bill paying.  I don't.  Neither do the companies that expect payment.

4. Despite looking thoroughly non edible, and despite how many times the baby has tried, my dog proved that pacifiers are, in fact, edible.

5.  Pacifiers may be edible, but they are not, as it turns out, digestible.

6.  If I act like a big enough of an idiot and clap a lot, the baby will eat yams and will end his hunger strike.

7. Pureed yams that are sneezed into your eye make things a bit blurry for an hour or so.

8.  The laminate floors we bought at Ikea are really durable and can even withstand urine.

9.  Calling my phone as many nasty names and combinations of names as I can think of does not make it work better.  I'll keep trying.

10.  Christmas music in early November makes me nauseous and I apparently have developed a nervous twitch in anticipation of the holiday season.