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

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.

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.

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! =)

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.

attacked by the bird in Dumbo

Oh look at that Corolla speeding along down there ...

You know in the opening scenes of the movie Dumbo where the patient Mrs. Jumbo finally and with much relief hears the stork calling out her name and is given her baby elephant with the massive yet adorable ears?  Okay I saw him.  Not the elephant, the bird.  It was huge, it was grey and was not wearing that smart little hat but it was a stork or a crane or something like it.  It was huge, it had a long neck with a floppy skin-pouchy looking area under its beak and it was apparently not at all afraid of my Corolla speeding down the street.  Scared the crud right out of me and between the startle factor and the fact that I have a nasty and otherwise unexplained phobia of birds, it aided in the unleashing of an impressive litany of swear words.

Problem with this story?  Both kids were in the back seat.

Now Thing 2 wouldn't have noticed anything given he is seven months old and mommy's forgivable time is still at hand.  The ten year old Thing 1 ... um, yeah. He's part nun and has been sniffing out swear words from a rather young age.  One of my friends just hands him a five dollar bill whenever she sees us so that she is "pre-paid" and doesn't have to worry about it for a while.

But rather than tell me that I didn't make good choices with my words like he once would have, he laughed.  He said that my word choice was funny.  I honestly don't remember how I combined words, but it is my art, so I am sure it was well done of me.

But it got me thinking about how I have some bad-mom tendencies of "do as I say not as I do."  Anyone who says they don't do this is either lying or not actually raising their kids, and I accept that I am not a fully conventional-mother-of-the-year-award-winning-Martha-freaking-Stewart-esk mom with as much grace as I can muster.  I read blogs.  I see the homeschooling moms who change their mantle decor every 15 seconds so that it can reflect the current season while sewing clothes for their children and making lots of cakes.  Not her, and won't be.  But I am open minded and think of me as a student of life.

So that big nasty bird that swooped over the street whilst I sped toward it and made me slam on the breaks and craft word chains that could have made a sailor blush made me also realize that I have not paid any attention to my list.  So I will be adding to it, and I will hopefully be marking some stuffs off of it soon.  And I am sure I will have plenty of sad, yet amusing, stories to share because failure is a part of learning.  And lord knows, when it comes to domestic skills I am bound to do both.

socks ... in the dishwasher

People say stupid stuff.  Some people, however, are overachievers.

I slept like a baby.

Who in the hell says something that dumb, unless of course its following an all-night-drink-til-you-wet-yourself-bender because that's what my baby does.  I actually put laundry in the dishwasher yesterday.  I blame lack of sleep.  I woke up with my left eye swollen and oozing green toothpaste, but I am not sick.  I think my left eye, rebel that it is, was just pissed it didn't get to stay closed that long.  The right eye was more understanding and merely was bloodshot and felt like it was holding a sandbox.

Apparently at about 6.5 to 7 months of age babies go through a separation anxiety phase.  Haven't looked that up on any milestone charts because I am living it and hardly need some PhD's confirmation that hell exists.  Thing 2 is learning that we are not one person, that I can actually be separate from him.  I think this is further evidence my child is a freaking genius because he can grasp abstract concepts because I don't think we have actually been physically apart since his birth, twenty-nine weeks ago.  At any rate, he sleeps for about an hour then freaks out and needs held.  He also should be about 6 feet long by the end of the week because he wants  to eat about every 20 seconds.  

But back to my point, "sleeping like a baby" is a phrase either first uttered by one sarcastic SOB or someone who has never even seen an effing baby.  Go ahead, embroider that shat on a pillow, I know you want to.

Now on to my day where I try not to appear narcoleptic.

me n' Gumby

Lets go ahead and have a disclaimer right from the get go here.  Ready? Set. Go!

If you are one of those people who get freaked out at the thought of breast feeding in general (WTF are you doing reading my blog anyway) or don't like to depart from the happy, comfy, granola crunchy BS version of breast feeding where it never hurts or is awkward at all, read no further.  If you are, like, my dad, or someone who doesn't want to read something that is specifically about my boobs, you should also stop here.

That should cover us.  Its a little TMI, but I don't know of any honest breast feeding sources that don't crap hearts and rainbows and focus on anything other than the bondy happiness breast feeding is to vent my spleen here.  As stated in my last post or two about breast feeding I think it is all those happy unicorn things, but it is more.  So much more.

I have given up any hope or false belief I own my boobs.  He took them.  The ones I have now are not mine for all intents and purposes, nor are they the ones I had before.  I fear that in giving my child all the valuable wonderful (crapping hearts and rainbows) goodness that breast milk undeniably gives him I have also forfeited any hope of having human boobs again.

I have Gumby boobs.  At least Thing 2 thinks so.  He seems to think he can simultaneously eat and do some kind of Linda-Blair-head-turning sort of thing.

At least they aren't green.

Oh, and the baby is learning that my shirt is some sort of barrier between him and that which he loves most dearly.  Not me, just his food source.

So we can definitely add "my boobs" to the list of things my kids stole from me.  File it right after "my dignity" and just before "my peace of mind."

Woody, bringing SexyBack

There are times where perfectly acceptable things are happening, but once taken out of context that perfectly innocent and okay thing suddenly seems deplorably sick and wrong. Usually, I am all over sick and wrong, I think sick and wrong stuff is hilarious 99.999% of the time, and I am quite often the one perpetrating sick and wrong.

But my sister, Cindy Lou Who, is an even greater master at sick and wrong than I am. I have to give credit where it is due, the child is a genius.

She will laugh her pasty pale tail off at a perfect stranger who faceplants in a store. This usually leaves you desparately explainging yourself to the very offended and possibly injured person, and for the record there is never an explanation that makes that scenario okay if you are the one who fell. Nothing in this world is more funny than body functions. Unleash a belch, or weld your gas and she'll laugh in admiration like nothing in the world could be funnier. Unless you happen to fall flat on your ass while doing it. If you could swing a minor injury while breaking wind and maybe sneezing you've got yourself a new best friend.

In reality, CLW has Angelman Syndrome, and a wicked sick sense of humor. She also has no concept of right and wrong and has way better things to do with her time than worry about stupid crap like social constraints and acceptability. She's just too rock star for that. She's usually too busy eating pop tarts or playing with one of her 14 Woodys.

Wait, what? Yes, you read it right. Now who is sick and wrong?

Okay, still me, I lead you there, quite on purpose. It illustrates part of my point actually.

CLW loooooves Woody from Toy Story. Loves him, downright obsessed with him. Its adorable, I assure you, but when you have seen Toy Story -- any of them -- as many times as any member of my family has you either go a little insane or you try to find some humor in the situation. Or both.

So the Woody jokes, we've done them all, said them all. Or so I thought.

While taking CLW to school today I had the radio playing because it usually knocks Thing 2 out. CLW has a giant stuffed Woody (seriously drag your mind out of that gutter) with her and is making him dance to whatever is on the radio.

We pull up to a stop light, and she is in such a good mood, and really its quite contagious. So a new song comes on the radio, SexyBack. I haven't heard this one in a while, love love love it. So I am tapping the rhythm in my I have no natural sense of rhythm way on the steering wheel while she makes Woody jump up and down to the music. She hands him to me, wanting me to do something silly that will make her laugh. And I am a good sister, so I oblige. I do the most natural and reasonable thing possible: I make him dance. Not just the bouncy dance she was doing, I am moving his arms, singing along and making him really work it. I think I had him doing the Madonna Vogue arms at one point, and there was some definite jazz hands, as much as a two foot tall stuffed cowboy can pull off.

Now lets roll play for a moment. Picture that you are some cool guy on a motorcycle at a stop light. You are waiting for the light to change, maybe feeling impatient wanting to get where your going ... who knows, maybe you're late ... when you notice something out of the corner of your eye. The woman in the car next to you is holding a two foot tall stuffed Woody from Toy Story. And she is making it dance. I mean really making it dance. Making it dance and sing. To SexyBack.

I'm bringing sexy back. Them other !#$%ers don't know how to act ...

Yeah, of course it was at that part. No, I did not say "them other exclamation point, pound sign, dollar sign, percent don't know how to act."

Back to being me in my car, with my laughing sister, who for all intents and purposes appears to be maybe 15 or so. In reality she is in her 20s, but between the two of us we clearly do not look like either of us should have a stuffed doll. Making it sing and dance is a whole new level of strange. Add to that the song ... yeah I am sure this guy thought we were massively weird.

At least, given the stunned and slightly disgusted look on his face I am guessing so.

And somewhere around a water cooler today ...

No seriously, it was sick! And when it got to the "you can whip me if I misbehave" part she made the doll wiggle its hips ...

You know it's an exciting day when ...

Some days are just mediocre at best.

But then there are days when smurf's explode, you get hit on even though you are a walking billboard for Sooo Not Available or Tons of Baggage, or you get to take part in alien breastfeeding (more on that to come, I promise).

Here are examples of somethings you might say, or hear, that could alert you to the fact you are having a special day ... and you might just be with me.

"Whoa, mom you just peeled out in front of a cop!" -- I'd like it noted I said that, my mom was doing the driving.

"Oh, bring it biotch!" -- I said it in the Parent Pick Up Lane for my child's elementary school. More on that to come too. She couldn't actually hear me say it though ... her window was rolled up.

"Don't spank your Woody like that." or "I scored a Woody!" -- both were in reference to the doll from Toy Story, but really, do you think that matters when you actually say something like that out loud?!

"Ohmyfrikkengawd!" -- said by me after my teething 5 month old chewed on a frozen teething ring then wanted to nurse. Further proof how rough breast feeding is!

"Moss is such a misunderstood plant" -- Said by my oldest. I was too confused by the sentiment to ask why. He is much more Zen than his mom.

"Just use the breast milk freezy pouches." -- we were trying to pack an ice chest of beer.

"Oh I need therapy" (followed by vomiting sounds) -- said by my oldest when he was told the "girl" he just said was "cute" was probably as old as his mom.

And I am going to have to revisit this topic, because my brain just left the building and the baby needs feeding. More to come later.