Post Christmas bloggage

Christmas was good. The toys were a hit. The kids are all finally well. I'm finally improving from 2 weeks of stopped up infected ear hell. Spaghetti and cheap wine for supper. Life is good.

Happy Christmas Eve!

I am as excited as a little kid about Christmas. I cannot wait until tomorrow. Only now, I don't care what I'm getting. I can't wait to see the kids open their presents.

We've had a bit of family dramah, but I've just taken the "I don't give a fuck" attitude about it, and we're having a good time at home with just us. The in-laws will be here later, but the manwhore will be going after wine, and I have hard cider, beer and rum for eggnog, so it can't possibly be that bad. lol

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

Someone please just shoot me

I have a cold. The umpteenth one this fall. This one involves a head crammed full of snot and two ears that are so full of said snot that I can barely hear. And they hurt. Especially the left one. It hurts enough that I drove home from lunch with the manwhore contemplating sticking a needle in my ear and popping my eardrum. Sure it would be excruciatingly painful for a few minutes, but supposedly a ruptured eardrum only hurts for a few minutes and then the release of pressure from behind it brings such relief that it doesn't hurt much anymore. Of course, it takes months to grow back and in the meantime you can't get water in your ear. But still, it might be worth it, if only it would make the side of my head stop hurting.

When runny noses attack

I try to act like a lady, really I do. Sometimes I fail miserably, though. I think today is one of those times. I have a cold and apparently my cold meds wore off on the way home from Xmas shopping, because my nose started to run. I mean like running down my upper lip type running. So, what is a lady to do? At first I wiped it on the back of my hand, wiped that on my leg and drove one handed until I found the hand sanitizer and cleaned my hand. Then it started up again. In total desperation, I grabbed Ellie's winter hat and blew my nose on it. Gross, I know. I picked the girls up from school, came on home and tossed the hat in the laundry. And as I was getting out of the van, I found a fucking napkin stuck down beside the seat. Of course I couldn't find it before I blew snot all over my kid's hat.


So, obviously I am not much of a lady. So sorry.

You people need to go buy some stock in Lysol

I'm going to hose my house down in the stuff. Yesterday, I started sneezing and the dripping nose crap. I can. not. handle. another. sick. person. Not even me. I can't handle me being whiny and cranky. I can't handle any more whiny cranky kids. Everyone has to get the fuck well.

The biggest positive to the kids all being out of school for 2 solid weeks is that maybe everyone will get well and the germs at school will all die, Die, DIE!!!

Christmas awesomeness

Is that even a word? Awesomeness. I guess so, as my spell checker didn't flag it.

Anyway, the awesomeness that is Straight No Chaser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fe11OlMiz8&feature=related

Pneumonia X 2

So, Sam's cold and fever thing? Pneumonia. He was starting to breath fast yesterday and last night he sounded like he was wheezing. We were on the phone with the oncall doctor at 10:30PM trying to decide if we needed to go to the ER with him. The go now point was 50 respirations per minute and he was at 48.

So, first thing this AM, we got him an appoint and the doctor listened for about 2 secs before saying that he had pneumonia. His pulse ox was running in the low 90s. He got a loverly antibiotic shot with the consistency of cold maple syrup in his leg, so he's been limping around all day.

Ellie, at least, is on the mend and was back at school today.

I will admit to being much more worried and upset about Sam than I was about Ellie, because she never acted that sick. I suppose she has was some people call walking pneumonia. Sam has "I'm sick and feel like shit" pneumonia. So, because she hasn't really felt that bad, I ASSume she's not as sick. But Sam is clearly much sicker and laboring to breath and all that. He slept in the bed with me last night and will again for the next few nights.

So, cast your spells, send good thoughts and prayers and put a fucking hex on the god damned germs, if you please. It's going to be a long fucking winter if the first illness we run through is pneumonia.

At home with two sick kiddos

So, Sam is sick, too. Not pneumonia. Probably just a cold, but he's running a fever so it could be turning into an upper respiratory infection or a sinus infection. He's cranky, El is cranky. They are getting on each others' nerves and getting on mine. And it is unseasonable warm here and it's hot in the house and I'm sweating, but I refuse to turn the A/C on in December.

And I'm going to have to drag two sick kids to the grocery store if we are going to eat tonight. Blech.

Go away germs!

All three of the kids have colds. El has been running fever off and on since the weekend and yesterday complained of an earache. So, off to the doctor to see if it is infected. It is. And she has pneumonia. WTF?!?!?!? How does my child have pneumonia and me not realize it?

She's had a lingering cough from the one after the other colds, so you would think the fever would have tipped me off. Besides, she bouncing around like she doesn't feel that bad. Except that now she's whining like a little buttwipe because she wants to sit in the chair and Em is in it. lol

But, my baby is sick. Poor girl. Go away germs! Away!

The Hair knows and Sex-dar

Yesterday afternoon, I met my parents halfway and handed over my three darling children and my minivan and watched them drive away, to be gone for the next 24 hours, more or less. I giddily drove home in their little suv (which unfortunately smells like an ashtray) and spent the next several hours primping for the manwhore's company Christmas party. Hair was curled, mascara applied, and slinky black dress donned. We were on our way, only to sit in traffic for 45 minutes or more, but we finally arrive. The theme was a nightclub, and there was much loud music, drinking and prime rib. Two out of three can't be complained about. Except there were no knives to cut the prime rib. I got happily sloshed on 4 glasses of cheap merlot (the free drinks) and we went home to a childless house. Of course we were pulling clothes off of each other before we made it through the door. There followed a lovely bit of time together that anyone who has kids can just imagine for themselves. lol

The next morning, we were planning a little encore and getting snuggly in bed when the manwhore's cellphone rang. It was work, with a problem. We can't escape the sex-dar. We get rid of the kids for a while and the fucking help desk turns theirs on.

Now for anyone who doesn't know, sex-dar is this thing that children come equipped with that causes alerts them anytime their parents are about to have sex and prompts them to interrupt somehow. It is strongest at birth and tapers off as they get older. In young infants, mom and dad even looking at each other with lust in their eyes will cause the sex-dar to ping and the baby will wake from the deepest of sleeps and cry. By the time baby is fed, changed, rocked and settled back to sleep, the mood has passed and the parents collapse into bed. As the child ages, the sex-dar weakens and they start sleeping through cuddling, hand holding and eventually quickies that last less than 5 minutes.

By the time the kid is a year old or maybe 18 months old, you might actually get 15 or 20 minutes of sex in. This is how little brothers and sisters are made. This starts the cycle all over again with the new baby. Eventually, though, you stop having younger siblings and the kids start to grow up and mom and dad can have some quality time after all the little dears are asleep. Hugging, kissing and other displays of affection that happen while the kids are awake still ping the sex-dar and cause kids to come running from the other end of the house demanding your immediate attention. This usually ends when the kids hit their teens and are so grossed out by the very thought that their parents might have ever had sex, much less still do it, they run from the house at the least little bit of affection between the parents. Of course, then you are staying up waiting on them to come home from dates and whatnot, so you still aren't getting any.

Apparently people who are on call have another sex-dar scanning them, only it doesn't work all the time. The result is we get interrupted by the cell phone only once every couple of months or so.

So, this morning, we got interrupted by the cell phone, and since we had to hit Toys R Us to finish up Christmas shopping (and I was hungry) we gave up. The manwhore asked if I was going to wash my hair, while eying it with some trepidation. I said yes, because I knew it was sticking up every which way and generally looked like it had been mussed up doing what we had been doing. He laughed and said "The hair knows!" Needless to say, I washed all of the hairspray and squashed curls out of it before leaving the house.

Deck the halls and all that crap

My house is all decorated for the holidays. I have a couple of things left to do, but really, the halls are decked with plenty of holly, and bows and greenery and stuff. As I was finishing up the the arrangement on the dining room table, I wondered why I go to all the trouble. Why not just throw up a tree and some lights outside and be done with it? No one is likely to see it but us. I spent days decorating just for us. When Christmas is over, I'll have to spend days taking it down, and its likely no one will have seen it but us.

Speaking of decorating, it think I'm going overboard on trees. We have 5, count them 5, Christmas trees this year. We have the big one in the living room. A 4 ft one in the den with the kids' ornaments from school and stuff (mil gave us this one. It was left over from her kindy teaching days.) The girls have a 2ft purple princess tree in their room. There is a 2 ft tree that I put in the kitchen, left over from my single, tiny apartment days. And lastly, a 1 ft felt one on the coffee table for Sam to play with. 5 trees. All decorated. Only the felt one doesn't have lights. The manwhore says we have a Christmas tree forest.

My Christmas lights are sucking the joy of the season right out of me.

Fucking things. How is it that you can pack away Christmas lights at the end of the season and they all work just fine, then take them back out the next year and they not work? We have a pre-lit tree, that we bought last year, so it's only been used one season. Got it out and set it up on Mon night and I have three branches that won't light. We can't find a burned out bulb and replaced fuses and nothing has helped. Fucker.
And I have a bunch of pre-lit garlands for the front porch and one of them quit working this year. Same deal, no burned out bulbs or blown fuses, just won't work. At least they are several years old and not new.

As if losing one kid wasn't enough

So, we're at the in-laws for T'day. We got in last night, had supper, the kids were tired and ready to go to bed. So we go get the bath ready and El says she doesn't want a bath. We tell her she has to have one. Get Em in the bath and look around for El. No El. We looked all over this fucking house for her and I was getting that panicky feeling. Finally, I yelled "El, this isn't funny any more!" Because she had to be in the house. Where else could she have gone? Sure enough, she crawled out from under the bed! She had been under there for at least 10 minutes, and not made a peep.

After I got her in the tub, I had father-in-law open a bottle of wine. For my nerves, you know.

I swear to fuck, losing two kids twice in the same day is not good for the nerves. No one should have to feel that sinking, sick, panicky feeling, and especially not twice in one day.

I think they are getting back at me for my own childhood when brother and I ran away and stayed gone for something like 2 hours.

I was this close || to calling 911

Like holy shit damn and fuck. Sam scared the ever loving bejeebus out of me this morning. I was making mac and cheese for his preschool T'day lunch today and he was playing on the deck. What with global warming and all it was plenty warm and I just had the back door open. At some point he went down to play in the yard, which he does all the time. The yard is fenced and I can see it from the kitchen, if I'm not staring at a pot of mac and cheese.

I got it all made and in the dish and went to get him so we could go get dressed and he wasn't in sight. Looked under the deck. Called him many, many times. Checked inside the play thing. Thought maybe he was in the house and I didn't notice him walk by. I tore through the house yeliing "Sam, Sam where are you!??!" No answer. I went out the front door, thinking maybe he climbed over the fence and was playing in the front yard, calling him all the time and starting to fucking panic. I went around the side of the house, and was going to call 911 if I didn't find him over there, when I found him.

He was squeezing (not even squeezing really) through the gap between our fence and the neighbor's fence and back into our yard. He had clearly been out of our yard, but I don't know if he was just outside the fence and I couldn't see him over it, or if he was out exploring and came back because he heard me calling him.

Then the little shit ran away from me in our yard, laughing at me. I snatched him up and brought him inside and called the manwhore and sat down and cried.

The gap in the fence will be fixed when we get back next week. I didn't even know they knew it was there, and really we shouldn't have waited to see. But, we forgot it was there. Bad parents. It hasn't always been there, but the neighbors tore down their old fence and had a new one put up. For some reason the new one doesn't sit quite as far back, thus resulting in the gap.

I need a fucking drink, I think.

Quite possibly the stupidest women on Earth.

There is this message board for supposedly hippy, earth-mother types called mothering.com. They actually call themselves mothering.comune. Several years ago it was a gathering place for people who cloth diapered, breastfed, preferred slings to strollers, used natural cleaning products and beauty supplies, recycled, and probably had a garden in the back yard. Not insane at all.

Now it has turned into full on freakville with women who are completely against anything that reeks of The MAN. Including medical care. Especially medical care for pregnancy and childbirth. They have an entire forum dedicated to unassisted childbirth (UC) which means having your baby at home alone, with no attendants possibly not even your husband/baby daddy there to help. No midwife to help if something goes wrong. Birth attendants, especially those in hospitals are predators and dangerous. Doctors are just looking to haul you off for unnecessary c-sections.

There are women there who claim they would rather their baby die in childbirth than them have a c-section, because of the slight risk of maternal death during the c-section. Someone forgot to tell them, or they just refuse to hear, that even if the baby dies, it still has to come out, one way or another. A baby that dies in the womb because it is too big to fit through mom's pelvis is not likely to fit even after it dies.

So stupid women, stupider message board, because this board is moderated, and the moderators will delete anything that they deem unsupportive. If you gently encourage someone to seek medical care after 5 days of ruptured membranes, with meconium staining, and your post will get deleted. Encourage a woman leaking fluid and having contractions at 28 weeks to see a doctor? Deleted. Do it often enough and you get banned from the board. There is no voice of reason, only insanity.

If this isn't neglect, I don't know what is. It should be criminal, and this message board that enables these women should be shut down.


I want to add that I understand wanting to have the perfect birth, wanting your baby's entrance into the world to be beautiful, that medical intervention can be scary and traumatizing. My daughters are 5 yrs old and I still have strong feelings about their birth and regrets that it had to be that way. It was the single most terrifying thing I've ever gone through, and I have no doubt that I was suffering from PTS afterwards. But, the reason it was so terrifying, the reason I was so scared was not because of the drs and the medical care I received, it was during those moments when we couldn't get the nurse, couldn't get help and then just knowing that they were being born 10 weeks premature, and I was fucking terrified that my babies might DIE. I wasn't thinking about the birth experience then, I was thinking about my babies, that I loved more than myself even before they left my body, and I didn't want them to die. Just get them out and get them in the NICU where they will be safe.

When Sam was born, and my hopes for a VBAC were going down the drain, I was bleeding, he wasn't moving much, and again, I just wanted him out, where I could see him, and I knew he was safe and ALIVE.

Yes, there are feelings of anger and regret about the surgeries and the way things worked out and the lost hours with all of them, but I knew they were alive and safe and under competent medical care. Even with that, I have one child with some minor brain damage, and the guilt I feel over that far surpasses any feelings I have about the fucking c-section.

So, to all of those women at Mothering.com, I say grow the fucking hell up and think about someone besides your own selfish self for a change.



I just want to add that my child with the little bit of brain damage is learning to read. *Proud mama*

That was the yummiest school lunch I've eaten in 14 years.

Of course, it was the only school lunch I've eaten in the last 14 yrs. The girls school is doing T'day lunches with the kids this week. Their class had theirs today (they break it up into two groups because so many parents come). So, off I went to fork out $3.50 for a tray full of slop. Seriously, I asked the mom in front of me what the yellow stuff was, and she had no idea. The lunch lady told us it was turkey and gravy. lmao And the dressing was runny and sagey. Chewy green beans. Frozen strawberries. Pecan pie that tasted like pumpkin pie. The roll was good, though. lol

I'm glad I only have to do that once a year.

I hate bunk beds.

My girls have bunk beds because they have a rather small bedroom. I've seen smaller. I had a friend in elementary school whose room was so small you could barely walk around the bed. But still, their room isn't exactly large. Two twin beds side by side would leave them with no floor space and no where to put a dresser. I'm not organized enough to deal with socks and undies and stuff in the closet, and I think they need room to play in their room, so bunk beds it is.

The beds were a birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa, and I'm sad to say that I hate them. Not because there is anything wrong with them, but because they are bunk beds. Em sleeps on bottom and hers is the easiest to make up, but you risk busting your head every time you lean over. El is on top and the only way to make her bed to just climb up there and pull and tug the mattress pad and sheets down while sitting on the mattress. Not the easiest feat in the world. And, because her bunk has rails to keep her from falling out, there is no way to actually make the bed, as in have the quilt all smooth and all, because the quilt can't hang over the edge. The only easy part about El's bed is that she hates the top sheet, so I just don't put it on. When I did, it stayed a lumped up.

I cannot wait until we have a house big enough to unstack those damned beds and they are finally easy to make up.

I get to play with a pony!

Yay me! I'm going to get my horse fix multiple times a week for a good long while. The lady that teaches my kids' riding lessons has worked out a deal where she is getting a miniature horse, but the horse is only 2 yrs old and was basically stuck in a pasture and ignored. She needs lots of work. So, I told De that I would come and work with Knee High (the horse) at least 2x a week when the kidlets are all occupied. De is over the moon about it, and is going to work with her horse at the same time and going to teach me Parelli horsemanship (attachment parenting for horses). So, by the time the girls are ready for their own horse, I will know Parelli and hopefully they will know at least the basics.

I'm sold on Parelli because I have never been around horses that are as polite and mannerly and just generally like and trust people as the horses on De's farm, and I've taken riding lessons myself as a teen.

Apparently Knee High thinks she is a dog, though, because she likes to jump up on you. Eek!

The evilness of hiding veggies in your kids' food

I am way too excited about this, quite frankly. This week, my kids have eaten pumpkin and spinach and didn't complain. Of course they didn't know they were eating it, but still.

The pumpkin was pureed and went into mac and cheese. Disgusting, you say? Not at all. I swear to your favorite deity that you could not taste it. This was fresh pumpkin, steamed and pureed, so it was the same bright orange as Kraft Mac and Cheese. Yes, I suck doubly because I not only fed my kids mac and cheese out of a box, with the powdered cheese no less, I put pumpkin in it. They ate it, though.
The suggestion I have seen for that calls for butternut squash, and if you wanted to go with canned (or liked jarred baby food squash) I would say that would work better, because canned pumpkin is dark and not bright powdered cheese orange.

In a slightly less sneaky meal, I made stuffed shells and put chopped, cooked spinach in the cheese stuffing. The snarfed it up. Especially Ellie, and she is usually my pickier eater. And since the manwhore has a hate on for cheese, he got his stuffed with sausage and spinach and he liked it, too.

Sneaky and evil or not, I am delighted to see my children getting a vitamin or two that didn't come in the form of a gummy vite. I wonder what else I can puree?

Houston, we have frost

The low last night was something like 27F. The computer says it is currently only 28F. The average date for a first frost here is Oct 20. So, two weeks later isn't too extreme. But it went from 78F on Mon to barely 48F yesterday and all nice and frosty last night. Brrrr!

I like it though. I like having seasons. It would be boring if it were the same all the time. So, bring on the chilly weather and drag out the sweaters. (No snow yet, though. I'm not ready for snow! lol)

Tornado warnings, what fun!

Last night I was yapping on the phone to my dad and noticed that there was a storm approaching lots of lightening. So, I think I should go and turn the TV on to see what the weather is doing. I turn it on and Holy Hell there was a tornado warning for a storm only about 15 miles away from me, and heading in our direction. So, I run to grab the HAM radio and I can't get it to work, thanks to my dear brother locking the keypad on it.
It was a stressful very minutes, as tornado warnings are (we were never actually under a warning, but the warning box ended very near us and would have been over us if it had been extended). In true sucktastic mothering style, I apparently scared the crap out of the girls. I didn't mean to, and I wasn't really scared myself, just getting ticked off at the radio and trying to shush them so I could hear the TV.
El had a nightmare last night, so apparently I scared her pretty badly. Le sigh.

National Novel Writing Month

Apparently, November is National Novel Writing Month.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/

So, I'm am putting the historical romance on the back burner for the month and going to try to write like mad on a contemporary romance set on the Gulf Coast. The goal is 50,000 words by the end of the month. We'll see.

Why, yes, I actually do have a life.

Surprising, I know, but really I don't sit on my ass all day every day. My life is not all writing and romance or romance writing. I get busy, and I get *gasp* tired. I was complaining to my mother about being tired and ready to drop earlier this week and she actually asked me what I could possibly have been doing to get so tired. Um, having a life?

Start the day with a walk, feed yourself and the buddy boy, get clean, dress both of you, fix his lunch, haul him to school, come home and slap some lunch together for yourself to go eat with your other two kids at 10:15am, then spend until 12:30 in their classroom doing their fall party, take them to the park and clean out the van while you are there, go get little boy, come home and throw some laundry in and feed some snacks, run to Tractor Supply, then to riding lessons where you can't sit down because there are 1000lbs animals running around and your 2 yr old is running around, too, come home cook dinner, eat dinner, clean kitchen. Just try it and tell me you wouldn't be ready to drop.

That was Tuesday. I ran all day yesterday, too. Today, I'm house cleaning because for some reason Halloween destroyed my house.

Hell yes I get tired and I have every fucking right to. So, pppphhhhbbbbbtttttt!

Having a wife around could be a really good thing

And I don't mean for the manwhore. I wouldn't mind having an extra wife around here myself, at times. Case in point: There is a woman who post on my mommy board that just had a baby and just so happens to be a lesbian. Her partner spent the last 9 months (not really, but at least 3 or 4) taking hormones and using a breast pump on a daily basis to induce lactation. Baby can now breastfeed from both moms, although at least right now, the bio-mom is making a bunch more milk than the non-bio-mom. Still, her supply will likely catch up if they keep this up.

I'm thinking that has to be like the coolest damned thing evah. It would totally rock to be able to hand the baby to your wife and say "I need a nap, to pee, to eat, to do something besides have this demanding creature suck on me for the next hour." Yeah sure, you could pump and hand the baby to dad, or grandma or someone with a bottle and make a run for it, but lots of women don't get much output when they pump. You could do formula, too, but that shit is expensive and stinks and lots of women just don't want to use it.

So, you could have a wife that is also lactating and share the duties. I would have killed to have had another woman, that I trusted, to help me nurse the girls. They were preemies and had trouble nursing, and with some time to devote one on one to each of them, we could have gotten over the hump. As it was, we ended up supplementing and then fully on formula. Not the end of the world, but it caused me a lot of stress and anguish at the time. Unfortunately none of the women I would ever consider trusting to nurse one of my children, and not be squicked out by nursing one of theirs happened to be lactating when I was, and it won't ever happen. Ce la vie.

I'm bored

I've done laundry, supper is simmering on the stove (chili for a chilly day) and while I could be cleaning something or writing, I don't wanna. I wan to be entertained, but I don't know what with. And the kids are whining and fussing. Wah.

I nominate myself Queen Hover Mother Supreme

There is a little boy in the girls' class that apparently raised a shitpot of money for the school fundraiser (yay for his parents' hard work). His prize is that he gets lunch with the principal at Chili's, a limo ride to get there, and he gets to invite a friend. That friend is my daughter Em. (The manwhore says she has her first date, at 5 yrs old. lol)

Queen Hover Mother Supreme realizes that her precious baby big girl daughter is going to be riding in a car. Must. Have. Carseat. So, I call the school. Um. They've never had to deal with carseats before, because no one has ever said their kid had to ride in one. WTF? Like I'm going to let my 32 lbs 5 yr old ride in a regular seat belt, or no seat belt. (Polishes crown.)

So, I will be schlepping a booster seat to school and fetching it back again tomorrow. Yay me. See my pretty crown?

I feel more like a real writer now

I went to my very first Romance Writers of America, Music City Chapter, meeting today. The women there were all very nice, and it was lots of fun. They had someone to give a little talk on using setting in your writing, and lots of chitchat about this and that in their lives and the romance industry. I will definitely be back next month. Eventually, I'll fork over the mulah to join. You have to join the national group as well as the local group, all of which costs about $100, so not this week. You get three free meetings before you have to pay up.

Someone give me a hole to crawl in.

And make it big enough for me to take my children. Today, amidst the fun of their first field trip and returning library books and practicing their letters, my children had a lockdown drill at school. A threat drill, they said.
What do you do during a threat drill? asked I.
Everybody goes into the bathroom and you leave the light off and stay completely quiet. Mrs. D stands with the door cracked just a little bit so she can see, Em told me.
Why do you do this? I ask.
If there is a stranger in the school that might hurt us, was the horrifying response.

My babies are practicing lockdown drills. I want to weep that our society has reached the point where this is even necessary. I mean, I'm glad they are doing it, I think. But I wish it weren't needed. I wish that no one had ever walked into a school with a gun or a bomb and hurt people and that schools were still thought of as a safe place for children to be. They are safe, I think, still, but we have to face the possibility that at some point, it might not be. And I have to trust their teacher and other adults that I don't know to keep my children safe from gunmen and bombers or other psychos that might take a notion to roam around their school.

Fortunately their school seems fairly safe in terms of people being able to get in, and the classrooms on the kindy wing all have doors to the outside, so they at least have an escape route.
But bloody fucking hell, lockdown drills.

Donuts are not breakfast.

Candy corn is not a snack. Donuts can be breakfast and candy corn can be snack, but they aren't healthy ones. They are not the ones you are going to feed our children. Yes, I'm talking to you, oh manwhore of mine. We pack lunches instead of buying lunches because of the crap they serve in the cafeteria. And you send them to school with a donut and candy corn. WTF? I had two girls complaining that daddy forgot to pack them a snack.

And puh-lease do not give me that line about there not being anything here to send. There is tons of food here, most of it bought with them in mind. Apples and cheese and peanut butter and crackers and cereal bars and yogurt and and and....


And yes, I know that candy and donuts won't hurt them occasionally, but they need something remotely nutritious to start the day and something filling for a snack. Besides, they were hungry! Our skinny little, bottom of the growth chart, kids were hungry at school, all because they had candy corn for a snack.

I bet the teacher was hating on you a bit, too.

A bit of self therapy

So, I'm readying the Intuitive Eating book and one of the things they talk about in giving up the diet mentality is giving up your scale, and I'm just not ready to do that. I think that I don't yet trust that I will actually lose weight this way, so I keep the scale and weigh myself to see if the process actually works.
I remind myself that it is all about little steps. Right now it is enough that I am doing well with my eating, and most of the time choosing stuff that is healthy and stopping when I am full, etc. I actually threw away some cake tonight. It just wasn't that good, so I didn't eat it. That is like a major break through for me.


Also, in other bits of self therapy, I was thinking about why I get so mad when the manwhore has to work late. I mean, I realize that he doesn't like being there until 6 or 7pm anymore than I dislike it. So why the hate on? I've realized that part of it is I just flat out miss him. He has changed his schedule from 7am-4pm to 8am-5pm so he can take the girls to school. So, he's home an hour later in the evenings than he used to be. That is less time that we have together in the evenings, and I miss him.
The other realization that I've had is that I sometimes wonder if he's having an affair (I've actually thought to myself that it's a good thing he's calling from his desk phone and I can see it on the caller id). Sad, huh? But, it has occurred me that I've been with two other men that were cheaters.
My first real boyfriend in high school, James, was dating someone else and I was "the other woman." In retrospect, I wonder what the hell my mother was thinking, because it wasn't a good thing for a 15 yr old girl. Then there was Chad. He was the last guy I dated before I met the manwhore. I thought he was so shy and whatnot that he would never cheat on me, even though we lived in different cities. I was IN LOVE with him, and thought I was going to marry him. He dumped me in an ugly, painful way and I found out later that he had been cheating on me.
So, two guys that I was in love with, both cheaters. And now, even though I have no reason to ever think that the manwhore would ever cheat, I have a fear of him cheating on me. He's shy and a bit nerdy like James and Chad, and they both cheated, so I've transfered that fear to him. Hence, the anger when he has to work late, I think.

The psyche is an odd thing, I do believe.

22 miles

That is how far I have walked and biked this week. 3 walks averaging 3 miles per walk and 2 times on the bike at 7 and 5 miles. And I'm in a groove with my eating and just generally feeling good.

I'm reading a book called Intuitive Eating, and it's all about listening to your body, etc, and giving up the diet mentality. I'm finding that rather hard to do, and hard to trust that when I listen to my body, I will actually lose weight. I haven't given up my scale, yet. I can't quite bring myself to go there. But, I'm doing really well with eating when I'm hungry, eating what appeals to me, and stopping when I am full.

People who have never been overweight sometimes don't understand the difficulty of stopping when you are full, but it can be really hard to do. I am an emotional/waste-not eater, so I eat when stressed and have a problem throwing food away. I also feel guilty about spending "too much money" at the grocery store, even though I am not the only one to eat the groceries. Odd, I know.

So, I'm working on my eating habits and trying to develop normal relationship with food. While this is not a diet, the idea is of course that once you do so, you should return to a normal weight. Yay. Except it is a slow and frustrating process, because I want to be skinny like yesterday.

Patience, my dear self, patience.

I should add

that it did have a nervous breakdown. It got a paper jam and when I cleared it, it started printing in a gigantic font on only half the page. Stupid thing.


Also, my sister in law, who I think reads this, will be happy to know that El quite gleefully told me that after they went swimming, Aunt D put her shorts on over her wet swimsuit and it looked like she peed in her pants. Followed by gales of laughter from both girls. lol

They had a blast, though and are looking forward to visiting again.

My printer is going to have a nervous breakdown

I'm printing off a copy of my book so I can attack it with a pen. A red one if I have one.

221 pages to be printed. I don't think the poor printed has ever done more than 2 or 3 pages at a time before. I think I hear it cursing me.

7 years of wedded bliss

Yesterday was our 7th wedding anniversary. In some ways, it seems like just yesterday. In others, it seems like we've been together forever and I can't even remember what my life was like before the manwhore and the kids and all of this.

We celebrated on Sat, and had lunch and saw a movie. Nothing special, just a few hours with just the two of us.

Buddy Boy stayed with his grandma, and the girls were all the way in Athens, GA with their aunt, the manwhore's sister.

They stayed with her for 3 nights, and I think they wore each other completely out. We met halfway to pick them up yesterday, and all three looked exhausted. The girls told me they wanted to ride with us this time instead of Aunt D.

But, they had fun, and Aunt D wants to have them down again sometime. I think she wants to continue brainwashing them to be UGA fans. Apparently, a highlight of the visit was taking the girls to the multitude of bulldog statues around town and taking pictures with Uga.

Today, the girls are back to school, and I have to email their teacher, because I totally forgot they had a little bit of homework. Whoops. Bad mom.

See what happens when you try and be healthy?

We went to the park today, and I decided we should walk. It is 1.5 miles down there, so 3 miles round trip. I put 2 in the wagon and one on a tricycle and figured they could switch up. I expected whining, and I got plenty of it.

What I didn't count on was forgetting to bring any blasted diapers or wipes. Which pretty much guaranteed that the Buddy Boy would crap in his diaper. He did. So much so that he had a blow out. Yum. Smell of rank poop for the 1.5 mile trip home.

I can't wait for this kid to potty train.

A sad little confession

My dad makes better cornbread than me. There I said it. Dad's is moist and yummy in all its just-rightness. Mine is always too dry and crumbly and lacking in flavor.

What a sad thing for a daughter to admit, that her dad can cook something better than she can. Unless of course Anthony Bourdin or Emeril Lagasse is your father.



PS. That is not my cornbread pic. I got it from some Wikipedia page.

Don't you just hate it

I was wiped out yesterday. Wiped. Out. Told the manwhore we were eating out because I wasn't cooking. I fully intended to order some booze with my meal, and I was so tired I forgot. Who the hell forgets booze?

So, I thought I would just fall into bed and be out like a light. I did fall into bed. And then I laid there. And laid there. And. Laid. There. Then I finally dozed off, and the buddy boy started crying. Manwhore was dead to the world, so off I went to settle the buddy back down. Crawled back to bed to lay there for a long time again before finally drifting off.

Then buddy boy climbed in bed with us about 5:30am and never went back to sleep. I managed to doze until about 6:30, and then I was up.

I skipped my walk today, and I'm just all around tired on whiny. I am going to sit on my chair-shaped ass today. Yay me!

I'm tired of being hot!

Its too hot. It is 95F here. That is too hot. I am ready for cool weather. That is all.

Dammit, I'm tired of being hot

I think that is my theme lately. I'm ready for fall, for the cooler weather, since it is technically fall now.

Saturday was the manwhore's company picnic. This year it was at the zoo, so we got in the zoo for free and got tokens for the carousel. It was so hot that I told the manwhore that we would see the elephants and giraffes and then stay in the historic farm, because it is all in the shade (These two areas are next to each other. It is like a half mile walk to get to the next nearest animal.The Nashville Zoo is lovely, for animals. It is big and spread out and too much walking for little kids.) It worked out well because they were having a Harvest Days festival in the historic farm. There were lots of crafty things for the kids to do. Candlemaking, churning butter, an old style washboard, painting "quilt squares" and all sorts of stuff. It was fun and a bit educational, too.

I got to talking to one of the women doing needlecrafts and apparently I know enough about them that she thought I was working the festival, too. You would think the lack of costume would have clued her in. In a way, it is a sad commentary, because I really don't know that much about needlecrafts. I am only an expert at crochet. Despite the revival of interest in knitting, I think too many other skills are falling by the wayside. Tatting is one that very few people seem to do these days. And the lady I was talking to was making a bed rug (pre-quilting era bed covering) and that is another fading art.

I am glad there are groups of people with enough interest in these things to be involved in reenactment or even just in preserving history arts and sciences.

Ramblings about a wanna be writer

My house is trashed, and I haven't even written that much this week. Not in a OMG somebody call CPS trashed sense. Just in a piles of laundry to do, haven't washed sheets in way too long, toys in the floor, need to run the vacuum sense. And, I haven't tidied my room if forever.

Oddly enough, having kids in school sometimes results in more running around. Trips to the grocery store and Target are so much easier without them underfoot. And so is writing. So, do I run errands, clean my house or try to write? I have not yet achieved balance in these three areas.


Also, I ran across something in an MSN romance writing tips group that gave a breakdown of the publishers that handle romance and the average first advance, subsequent advance, etc. There are a good handful that pretty much give you squat, e-publishers mostly. The Harlequin lines run in the $5000 range. Avon and a couple of other publishers run more like $13,000 for a first advance. *swoons* I want to be published by Avon!* There was even one that had first advances averaging something like $50,000 but it had a sample size of only about 5 or 6 authors, so who knows who and what they were.





*I realize that this info came from the internets and could totally be the workings of some freak, but a girl can dream, can't she?

If you can't marry a man with money,

marry one with Mr. Fix-it skills. Otherwise, you will find yourself having to do all the little things like fixing leaky faucets and replacing shower heads and stripping wallpaper and all that fun stuff.

I love my manwhore, truly, madly, deeply I do, but I do wish he had a smidgen of handyman skills. Just a few. Or, I wish that he could cook.

Thank you so much for telling me the shower was broken.

What a considerate manwhore I have. He broke the showerhead, and instead of telling me that he broke it and just shoved it back up there, he just shoved it back up there. I got a face full of water and a showerhead flying at my face this morning when I went to adjust the thing.

And what does the manwhore say when I call him to tell him about it? Oh just stick it back up there. No, no I will not. I will go and buy a new one and most likely install said new one, too.

The force of gravity exerted by a freshly mopped floor.

There is something about mopping a floor. Running a mop over a floor seems to enact a subtle change in the force of gravity. It can't be measured and it can't be felt my mere humans. In fact, witnesses claim that it even seems to fluctuate.
But, there is no denying that the force of gravity exerted by a freshly mopped floor is not the same as it was before it was mopped. You could go without mopping for days and days, leaving spots and splatters, or wiping them up with a sponge and would be unable to observe this phenomenon.

But, as soon as you pull out the mop and clean from one side of the floor to the other, scrubbing all the dirt off, the gravity field changes. Children sitting at the table with food and drinks will suddenly find themselves dropping utensils full of food. Messy bites of food will leap off of forks before they make it to mouths and splatter on the floor. Cups full of sticky lemonade or chocolate milk will be pulled from little hands to land with a splash to spreads sticky liquids all under the table. Even sippy cups with a lid are not immune. Just this morning I watched as the lid was pulled from a sippy cup upturned in mid-drink, and orange juice spilled down the front of my child, down the stool, on the table, but mostly all over the floor. All because I had mopped the floor after supper last night.


Mopping the floor pulls the ice cream right out of an ice cream sandwich and straight to the floor. Sometimes it takes some of the cookie part, too. I have seen with my own eyes that the pull of gravity from a clean floor will cause popsicles to break in half, leaving a sticky puddle of melted goo to be cleaned up.

Strangely, this phenomenon can be stopped, or at least greatly reduced by allowing the floor to become sufficiently dirty. If I make a mess cooking supper and leave a few splatters on the floor to be cleaned up after supper, like magic, no one will spill their drink at dinner. No child will drop his or her fork full of spaghetti. No sippy cups will lose their tops. Ice cream will not drip from its sandwich and popsicles will not break before being consumed.

It doesn't take much. Just a few little splatters, maybe even a dropped bit of tomato or onion. A drift of lettuce that escaped from a salad. That's enough to break the spell on the floor and the force of gravity will return to normal. Even sweeping or wiping up the mess with a cloth doesn't restore the spell. All will be well.

That is, until the mop is pulled out once more, and pushed across the floor, cleaning the dirt from all the corners and leaving the floor shiny clean in its wake. Only then will the force of gravity once more begin to fluctuate and once again forks and cups will fall, popsicles will snap in two until enough dirt has accumulated on the floor to break the spell yet again.

This I truly believe.

A great day in the Piece household!

So, Ellie has vesicouretareal reflux, or urinary reflux. Her pee flows back up towards her kidney on one side when she pees. She had her yearly test to see if it is improving today. There were much tears on her part, since the test involves a cath and radioactive stuff in the bladder, etc. I would probably cry, too. Hell, it makes me want to cry when she had to have these tests. But, today will probably be the last one, because the urologist told us he sees no sign of reflux in her films from today! Yay!
I was blinking back tears in the office. No more tests, no more daily antibiotics, and hopefully just one more trip to Children's Hospital to see him in 6 months. I am over the moon, and so glad that my child no longer has a "condition."

Also, we were able to walk right into the Dept of Vital Records and get the kids' birth certificates in less than 10 mins. 3 months waiting on them in the mail and calling the office to be told they aren't in the system, blah blah blah, and today the lady said it must have gotten lost in the mail. Why she couldn't have told me that over the phone, I have no clue, but now we have them, the school has copies and all it good with that.

And, on Sunday last, we dropped by J and L's house to see if they had any money for it. It was an awkward visit, (on the manwhore's and my part, they seemed oblivious) but we walked away with $150. Not much, but it is better than nothing. And, it restored some good feelings on my part.

One more and, the manwhore left his first "sample" to see if he's shooting blanks yet. Hot and heavy baby batter free loving might be in my near future.

Pissants and Fattybelle

The ants are back. The ants go in, the ants go out, the ants go marching round about.
Now, I don't mind them so much. Mostly they are just a hassle. But, I have two delicate daughters that freak the fuck out over bugs, so we have to get out the bug spray and soak the floors and all.
This time, they were after a half of a peanut butter bagel that Em must have dropped on the floor on Sat.
We've been gone since Sat. You can imagine the swarm of ants we discovered this morning in the kitchen floor.
So, the kitchen as been de-anted, at least temporarily. Who knows how long they will stay gone.

Several months ago, my parents' neighbors had a house/trailer fire. They are still living in a hotel and the burned out shell of a trailer is still sitting there. Supposedly they are waiting on the insurance people.

When they left, they went off and left their cat. Somehow she figured out that mother and dad have food and would feed her. She showed up at the door asking to be fed. So, mother and dad have a new cat.

We think she is a sweet little thing, and all she does is eat, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, sleep, have a snack, sleep, snack, nap, eat. You get the idea. She doesn't even get up to go potty. She does that when she gets put out at night. And she loves to be petted. Very sweet.

My young cousin is friends with the cat's teenager former owner, and told mother and dad the cat's name is Tinkerbell. Well, as you can imagine, all that eating and sleeping and sleeping and eating has had an effect on the cat, and I said, "She isn't a Tinkerbelle, she's a Fattybelle!" So, that's what I've been calling her, and she actually responds to Fattybelle. lol

Now, cousin K and her friend have said that Fattybelle is mean and they hate her and she scratches and stuff. When mother told me this I went WTF? "Fattybelle? That cat right there laying on the floor in a food coma?"

Because let me tell you, this cat would have to wake up long enough to be mean, and it's just not happening. When she does actually wake up, she will come up to you and ask to be petted, if she's not eating.

So, I'm thinking that maybe they weren't feeding poor Fattybelle enough and she was mean because she was hungry. I'd be mean too if I didn't get fed on a regular basis. Come to think of it, I'm a bit of a Fattybelle, myself.

My husband is clearly not a man.

In all the consignment sale madness, we took one of the cribs to try and sell it (the other one is at my parents' house). The sale people make you put it together, which is a good idea. They can make sure all the parts and pieces are there.

So, the manwhore loads the crib up in the truck, along with some other stuff, then says to me, "Where are my tools?" Now, no self respecting man has to ask where his tools are. He should know these things at all times. But, my manwhore doesn't know where his tools are since he tends to leave them laying around when he gets done with them. So, I have to look at them laying on the dresser or whatnot until I'm sick of looking at them, and I put them up myself.

So, the tools are in the toolbox or the tool drawer and the manwhore doesn't know where they are, and I have to go and find his tools for him. Clearly, he is not a man.

Consignment sale madness

I have a love/hate relationship with consignment sales. I mean, on the one hand, who doesn't mind getting rid of old and outgrown kid clothes and toys and getting some money for them in return? On the other hand, it's a buttload of work to sort and tag stuff. And then you have to haul it to the sale and stand there while some chick goes through it all and decides if it's good enough to put in the sale. I mean, I totally understand that they have to have standards, and they did find a few stains that I had missed. But they sent back a toy because it was missing part of a sticker. I mean WTF? If they want it to look new, maybe they should buy something new.

I still have stuff to sort, too. I ran out of hangers and have some baby clothes to get gone, too. Plus, if I want to put forth the effort, I can try and de-stain the stuff they rejected.

I get to go pick up everything that didn't sell in a week. Then, I will resort and retag anything that needs it and put it in another sale a week later. There is usually one more sale in November for Xmas crap, too. yay.

But, I do usually make money, sometimes over $100 at them.

Luciano Pavoratti

Died today at the age of 71 of pancreatic cancer. I was fortunate enough to see him in concert one time, in 2000. A fabulous tenor and a great loss to the musical world. Peace to him and to his family.

His last performance in 2006 at the Olympics in Turin:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZaufjDVYivc

The sound of silence

My house is strangely quiet today. The tv is off, no one is asking me for a snack. The only sound I hear is the typing of the my fingers on the keyboard. It's amazing. It's a bit disconcerting.

Today is Buddy Boy's first day of Mother's Day Out (MDO) or preschool or what ever they call it for 2 yr olds. He was totally fine. We walked right in, and he started to go downstairs where the girls went last year, and I told him "No, your class is this way," and away we went. He totally ignored the one kid that was screaming bloody murder (in what was quite clearly a tantrum, since he wasn't actually crying, just screaming) and the little girl that was sympathy crying. He had a truck, and he was set.

They have the oddest tables for the little ones. It is a big, dark brown table with seats built into it for little kids, like a group high chair. Very odd. I wish I had thought to take a picture of it. I'll have to do that at some point.

But, at the same time, a genius idea for kids that little, because that way they can make them all sit when they need to, like at lunch time.

My silence will be short lived today, though, because the manwhore called and asked me to come have lunch with him. I don't know if we will know how to act without the kids underfoot.

150 pgs, 15 chapters and 44,000 words

That's how far along I am in my trashy romance novel, and I just wrote one entire chapter that was nothing but sex. SEX Actually, it is the first time my characters have had sex. Up until now, they've been making out occasionally, but no sessytime.

Also, the manwhore has found that he is liking being married to a romance writer. I write big, long, hot sex scene, get my self all hot and bothered in the process and drag him off to bed to make him all hot and bothered.

Here is the URL for my draft on gather.com. I don't know if it will take you to it, or not, though.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977100385
It might not be available for the masses yet, since it seems the forum is moderated.

On a totally unrelated note, we went to the Meet the Teacher night at Tues/Thurs School for Sam. When I signed him up last spring, I was having lots of doubts about sending him to Mother's Day Out/preschool. He is only 2, after all. But, since El and Em have started school, he has been lonely and bored. He misses them immensely and wears his little backpack all day long. So, I think that it will be a good thing for him to go.

Fortunately the money issues are starting to even out a bit, so we can afford to send him.

The money issues have caused me to download some budgeting software, though, because I dislike being caught without a safety net. What if that $1000 had had to go to some major repair, instead of my sil's bounced check?

So, a budgeting we will go. I don't intend for us to end up in debt every time we have some unexpected expenses.

I've taken my writing to the masses

The online masses, anyway. I've joined an online critique group. If any of you would like to and read my trashy romance novel, at least th first chapter, you can.

Go to http://romancewriting.gather.com/ You will have to join gather.com and then join the group, it's free to do so.

Please, be gentle with me. I'm a crit group virgin.

Holy hell.

Maybe I should say Holy Terror! That's what the Buddy Boy is being this AM. He just came up and slapped me. WTF? Time out for you!

Bless his heart, though, he's having a rough morning. He wanted to go to school, too, and had a meltdown when he couldn't go. Then I decided to do yoga and not walk today, so he was mad about that.

I'm glad we signed him up for preschool. (Preschool. Haha! It's Mother's Day out when you are 2.)
If he hates it, we won't make him go, but I think he will enjoy it, and it will make it easier on him when the girls are gone if he gets to "go to school" twice a week, too.

Water + electronics = not a good thing

I was a yapping on the phone to my mommy today and not paying much attention to the Buddy Boy. Whilst I paid not attention, he dumped my cup of water out on the keyboard. When I picked it up, water poured out of it. Pbbtt, sizzle, phhtt.
The manwhore went to WalHell and bought me a spiffy new one. (On a credit card, which I hate, but it will be paid for post haste.)
This one curves in the middle, which is taking a bit to get used to. But, I am back in the typing business after a very long day of not being able to type. lol

I don't think I've ever been this glad to see a check in the mail.

Vanderbilt has this annoying habit of over billing us for stuff, and we occasionally get checks in the mail from them. We got one yesterday.

Normally, I don't open the manwhore's mail. I leave that privilege to him, since one of life's little pleasures is getting mail with your name on the envelope. Besides, when I saw this one was from Vandy, I assumed at first it was a bill for something. God knows what, since they have a habit of sending us bills months, and at least once, more than a year, after the visit to their hallowed halls.

But, I spied the little words payable to next to the manwhore's name (this was one of those envelopes with a window in it), and I was so excited at the thought it might be a check, I opened it. It was a check for $76.30. I seriously almost cried. I don't think I've been that happy over $76 since I was a broke grad student, and probably not even then because I didn't have children to feed.

So now, thanks to Vanderbilt, we have about $250 to get us through until the next paycheck. Such a little thing, to cause such joy.


Now, before all of my friends and family get the impression that we are on the verge of starvation, we aren't. The bills are paid, and we have groceries and we have gas in the cars. It's just really, really tight. We can even still afford for the girls to keep riding, but can't afford for me to, right now. If it were bad enough, we could cancel Netflix and my cell phone and the riding lessons, and what not, but we don't even have to do that, so far.

So, in my absolute fury at my brother and his cunt of a wife, I remind myself that we are fortunate indeed that the manwhore has a job that pays well enough that we can be shorted $1000 and still make it work. For many, many people, that amount of money would be a catastrophe. It isn't a walk in the park for us, but we won't starve and the lights won't be cut off. Hell, we can still watch as many movies as we want through Netflix.

We are fortunate, indeed.

I'm still pissed at them about the money, though.

I'm ruining the neighbor's notions about me.

So I was told by one of my neighbors this morning. I had already been for a walk and then was out pulling weeds from the flower beds. She told me to go inside and eat some bon bons. lol

In my defense (like I need one), this was the first walk I've taken in months, and I haven't exactly been earning a green thumb with the flower beds. The weeds like me, though.

The girls are off to school, since no one else is puking, and even though I've not been well with a mild case of the stomach yuck and a cold, I want to get off my blubbery ass, so off I went. I realized that I've rather missed exercise. I like the high afterwards.

But good fuck, it was already yucky hot at 7:30 am. I was dripping. And I wasn't even pushing myself hard since I know I'm still a bit sick.

Also, I was dismayed at how fast some of the people were driving through our neighborhood. There are lots of middle schoolers that walk, since the school is less than a mile away, plus exercise walkers. One fuckwad in a BMW severed around another walker and passed so close to me and the Buddy Boy that I could have touched the car. Then he gunned it. So, if your middle school age daughter goes home and tells you about the crazy lady yelling at the car, I offer my apologies. Under the circumstances, I don't think "Hey asshole, slow down!" was too uncalled for.

The germs are coming, the germs are coming!

Run for the hills!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

So, El is home from her second day of kindergarten with a stomach virus. Fever Sat, puked once yesterday, thought she was better and got her ready for school this morning, and she puked again. She at least tried to make it to the bathroom, though, instead of puking on the kitchen table. Bless her heart.
And, now it seems the other end has it, too.

And the manwhore and I are both feeling a little bit queasy. Blech. Toast and bananas for all, today. I rather stupidly started the day off with a cup of coffee. I know realize that coffee and queasy stomach are not a good combination, and I have a cup of lemon ginger tea in front of me.

Plus, I'm getting stuffy, so apparently what the manwhore thought was an allergy attack was really a cold.

I think I'm going to flood the house with Lysol.

The couch again?

The manwhore has a cold/allergy attack or something causing him to hork and sniff copious amounts of mucus. Yummy. And, of course, since he snores, being all stopped up with 10lbs of snot in his head, he is snoring even more and even louder.

Last night, I gave up and slept on the couch. I'm betting I will again tonight.

Why is it that the victim of the snoring is the one to sleep on the couch and not the perpetrator of the snoring?

And they're off.

Off to kindergarten. Today is El's and Em's first day of kindergarten. The fact that they are doing kindergarten readiness (2 planned years of kindy, basically) has not really made this any easier. They will still be gone from 7:15 or so, when the manwhore takes them, until 2:45 when I pick them up. Well, not today, today is a half day. But still, my babies are growing up.

I was having terrible doubts last night about putting them in KR instead of regular kindy. You know, we're basically planning to hold them back, what if they regret it at some point, etc. But, this morning, when I saw that they are the smallest ones in this class of children with late summer/early fall birthdays, I felt better. Hopefully they won't be so small that they are targets for teasing and such. If they had gone to reg kindy, there would have been kids in their class that were almost a whole year older, like the little girl next door. She is Dec to Aug older, and outweighs them by 15 or more lbs and is a whole head taller. So, being little in a class of other mostly littles isn't such a bad thing.

As for me, I've shed a few tears. I was doing ok until Sam started walking around calling them. "EEEEyyyeeee! EEEEEmmmmmmmaaaaa! Where are you? Come home now!"
I burst into tears at that.

Musings

So, the birthday party was lovely, and we weren't inundated with toys. One giant Barbie horse and carriage was the worst. They love it, though.

We started the day with our first riding lesson, and I was so proud of Emma for deciding to ride. She was worried that the horse was a bit big, and she is, but it's all that's available right now. Belle, the horse, is a total sweetie, though. And frankly, she is more interested in taking a nap than in walking around in circles. The only way the girls could fall off this horse is if the horse falls over asleep.

I hate the aftermath of parties, though. We still haven't managed to get the kitchen completely pulled back together.

Oh! But my lovely sister in law (the manwhore's sister, not my brother's bitch of a wife) told me she thought the cakes were store bought. High praise indeed for my mad cake decorating skills!

Speaking of my slack jawed excuse for a brother and sil, they didn't show, and thus we still haven't seen any money out of them. Assholes.

As for me, I am ready for fall. 104* temps day after day is too much. I want cool mornings with gently warm afternoons. I want the smell of woodsmoke and the crunch of leaves underfoot. I want October's bright blue skies. I'm sick of summer!

5 yrs ago this night

I was being prepped for an emergency c-section, and more terrified than I had ever been in my life. I was 30 weeks pg, and after 6 weeks of bedrest, PTL and PROM, I was in labor and contracting every minute.

El was born at 12:41 am, Aug 8, weighing 2 lbs, 8 oz.
Em was born at 12:44 am, weighing 2 lbs, 14 oz.


Tomorrow, they will be 5, and they are 36 and 34 lbs, and beautiful and smart and normal! (Em has had to deal with PT, but she's overcome so much this year.)


So,the pics are Ellie, Emma, Emma's feet when she was about a week old, and the day we brought them home.

Happy 5th birthday to my precious girls!

Fun at the Fair!

The manwhore's company sponsors the county fair in the next county over (it's where the company headquarters is located) and employees get in for free on Sat. So, we went to the fair.

Only, the manwhore forgot that the ride passes were only good until 5pm, and we got there about 4:15 or so. By the time we wondered around a bit, it was almost 5pm, and the kids only got to ride 2 rides. But, there was plenty of other fun stuff to do, like finger painting in the science tent, and painting in the art tent, and playing farm in the Children's farm. We fed camels and goats and sheep and a horse in the petting zoo, petted bunnies and goats in the 4H shed. (Bunnies are really cute and most of them were for sale for $20 or less. I was very tempted to come home with a bunny, but want a dog, so no bunny.)

Then we went inside to the gloriously air conditioned main hall, and spent $30 on arm bands for the kids to play on the inflatables for as long as they wanted. We finally drug them out at 10pm. They were all asleep long before we got home, and we were able to shift the girls to bed without waking them up. The buddy boy had to have a diaper and a dry shirt, so he got woken up briefly, but conked back out. The little turd was awake at 6:30 or so this morning, too. *Yawn!*

But, we had a blast, so it was all good.

And, I have to brag on my Em. This child, who a year ago couldn't run, was climbing a climbing wall, going through a tire obstacle course and climbing the ladders for the slides on the inflatables just as well as El. If I can figure out how to download pictures from my phone, I'll post some.

I can't believe they will be 5 in 3 days. Time flies, and I wish it didn't. I wish I could have back some of that time to enjoy it again. Hell, I wish I remembered more of their first few months. We were so tired that it's all a blur. I wish I could live it again and have sense enough to ask for help, because we needed it and weren't getting it. But, we can't. Time moves forward, and life goes on. And on Friday, they have their testing for kindergarten, and in a week, they start kindergarten.

We're doing Kindy readiness, which is not really pre-K, but more like an extra year of Kindy, which makes me feel a little more emotionally prepared, but they will still be gone from 7:45-2:45, M-F, for the entire school year. My babies are really and truly gone, and I have two beautiful big girls now.

Life's little pleasures.

One of those is eavesdropping. How fun is it to get to listen to some stranger make an ass out of themselves in public? (Even more fun is when people are talking about something juicy, but tonight was ass making time.)

The scene: Red Robin, which is a restaurant that makes yummy hamburgers. You must eat there, if you eat meat. Quick, like a bunny, go eat at Red Robin!

The players: Me, listening. A group of grumpy old men, who look like retired military, bitching and complaining.

So, we order our food and are doing our thing. These guys are sitting at the table behind me and the order their burgers. The waiter is asking them how they want them cooked, and Grumpy Old Man 1 says "Medium rare."
Waiter: "I'm sorry, sir, the rarest we can do is just medium."
GOM1: "Well, I guess it will have to be medium, then."
Waiter leaves.
GOM1, to his friends: "Can you believe that? They won't cook my burger medium rare. What kind of place is this anyway? That sign says gourmet hamburgers! I don't want a bunch of dried up meat (me either, but I suspect that Bill will get old one day. Whoops, wrong kind of meat.) What is the world coming to, the government is telling me how to eat my hamburger. Next they're going to tell me I have to drink my beer at 40 degrees and not at 42 degrees. No way am I leaving this guy a tip. Damned right I won't tip him for it!"

And on and on with various rants about people trying to run his life because he can't have his damned burger cooked half raw.

I was mentally laughing at him until he started saying that he wasn't going to leave the waiter a tip. Then I got mad (the former waiter in me was offended). I mean, it isn't the poor waiter's fault that the company has a policy of not serving up a helping of food poisoning to its customers. I'm sure they prefer not to be sued.

Fortunately, the ordered an appetizer, and the manager brought it out. GOM1 asked him why he couldn't have his med raw burger, and the managed nicely explained about company policy, but said he would personally make sure his burger was as close to med raw as he could make it.

GOM1 was mollified. Food was served. He ate it. When the waiter asked how things were and if they needed anything, Gom1 replied that everything was just fine and everything was good and he didn't need a thing. Big ol' pussy man.

The trouble with people who garden

I have come to realize that gardening is just another form of pissing contest.

People who garden get off on bragging about how much bigger their garden is than so-and-so's, or they have the perfect variety of produce, because so-and-so is growing Silver King corn or bigboy tomatoes and who likes those? And look at how many tomatoes I have, cause I know how to grow tomatoes, yes I do. Or, the gardener grows something he doesn't like to eat because it was requested and makes a big deal out of how magnanimous he is for this act of altruism.


Furthermore, people who garden have problems with their understanding of amounts. You cannot tell a gardener to send you just a few of something, because no one will eat it but you. Oh no, the gardener will hear "Send me..." and that's it. His brain tunes out after that. Or, more likely, he was sprinting towards the garden, bushel basket in hand by that point. The only thing left to do is to prepare yourself to be covered up in fresh produce, and if you don't compost, you might as well start, because unless you want to get into canning and freezing, half of it is likely to rot before you eat it. I don't care how many mozzarella, tomato and basil salads you think you can eat, you will be sick of them before you are out of tomatoes.

Besides, I have better things to do with my time than spend 4 hrs shelling butter peas, merely to end up with only about 1.5 qts of the damned things. Yes, they are good. Yes, they taste better than lima beans (almost anything tastes better than lima beans) but if I wanted to shell peas, I would have my own damned garden. (Yes, I could have tossed them in the compost pile, but I have a thing about wasting food, so I shelled peas and watched all of my netflix dvds.)

On the plus side, I told the family gardener that my side of the family would be glad of some fresh produce, so when you see them on the girls birthday, be sure and load them up. insert evil laugh

It's 5 o'clock somewhere, right? RIGHT?!

Dear lord, it has been a day. Yesterday was a bit of a day, too, but holy shit, today.

Yesterday I took dds to the dentist for the first time (yeah, I know they should have gone long ago. Sue me.) I would have bet money that Ellie would freak and Emma would do fine. I would have lost. Emma clamped her mouth shut and wouldn't let them do x-rays or much cleaning, because hte x-ray didn't look like the one in the Dora book and she had already brushed her teeth and they were clean. lmao
Ellie let them get x-rays and let the hygenist clean them really, really good and let her scrape a bunch of tartar off her bottom teeth, and that took about 10 minutes. I was totally amazed.

Today, they had their 5 yr well checks and it was total chaos. Never again will I take Sam with us when we go. (I swore I wouldn't ever take him again after I took all three of them when he was just a few months old and at one point I was holding two crying girls and the dr was holding a crying baby. Apparently, I lost my mind, again.)
So, they balk about reading the eye chart. Emma balked about peeing in the cup. She balked about putting on the gown. Sam was literally trying to climb the walls because the room was decorated with sports balls and he wanted them.

So, we get all the stuff we need to done and even get them to pee in the cups (Em had to go so bad she couldn't really argue). Then, they had to get shots. 4 of them, each. They cried and cried, but settled down when the nurse brought them a lollipop.
Sam had a meltdown then, because he didn't get a lollipop.

THEN, we had to go downstairs to the lab to get a blood draw. We walked in the lab and Sam started crying. Obviously, he remembered having to get his own finger stuck a month or so ago. We go back to the room with the phlebotomist and I swear to fuck it sounded like a torture chamber with all three of them crying, loudly, the whole time.

Good hell.

But, on the plus side, dds are firmly on the growth charts now. Emma is in about the 13th % for weight and 11% for height. Ellie is about 25% for weight and 20% for height.

Wait, that isn't making sense because Ellie weighs more, but Emma is taller. Oh well, they are both healthy and that is all that matters. lol



Also, the manwhore is a study in what not to do after having a vasectomy. Playing basketball, not that bad of an idea, right? Not until he misses the ball and it hits him square in the nuts.

I'm sad to report that I missed it because I was out taking a walk. He was back to the advil and ice packs last night, though.

This, that and the other.

First off, it seems I have forgotten to mention that the manwhore survived having his nuts violated on Friday. The snip snip went well, although he reports that it hurt quite a bit, despite the anesthetic. But, he was off the loratab by Sat morning and just taking advil, and I don't think he's taken anything today. He went to the bookstore and Target with me yesterday and was fine and dandy. My mother in law has made herself the most wonderful person ever, in my eyes, by taking Em and El with her for the weekend. They just got back a bit ago.

Speaking of the bookstore, I went and bought my copy of Harry Potter, which I'm sure I will end up passing on to my nephew. I'm done with it (and the house is a sty, despite the missing kids because I've done nothing but read for two days), and I must say, I laughed a little, but I cried a lot. Tears of sadness and tears of joy, but lots of tears. Whoever leaked the info about three deaths in the book had obviously not read the book at all, and that's all I'm going to say about that.

Oh, yes! I almost forgot. Apparently the gods love me this week. Lenscrafters called yesterday to tell me my glasses were in, a mere 4 days after I ordered them, instead of the 7-10 days they told me. Yay! And on the way to pick them up, what was left of the hinge on the old pair snapped, so they lasted just long enough (I have prescription sunglasses, too, so I wasn't blinded before getting the new ones).

So, it's been a good weekend. Yay!

The next few days we will be running, as the girls have dentist appointments and well visits with their doctor over the next 2 days.

A rose by any other name

would smell so sweet, yes?

Ok, my few and faithful readers. I need you assistance. As some of you might be aware, I am working on my writing career and attempting to write a trashy romance novel. At almost 100 pgs into, I think I'm not doing too bad, although I foresee some major revisions in some cheesy assed scenes involving bad poetry and temper tantrums on the part of my heroine.

At any rate, I apparently suck at coming up with titles. I used to be good at it, at least in terms of research papers and shit, but I can't come up with a decent working title for this book.

So, help a bitch out, will you?

The time: Elizabethan England.
The plot: The only daughter of a wealthy merchant is given in an arranged marriage, against her will, to a Lord who she thinks needs the cash. He doesn't, but he owes her father a favor, and he is longing for a loving family life and sees that she has that with her parents (at least until she gets pissed at them for making her marry him).
She is slightly more than mildly obsessed with Shakespeare's and other's plays, especially those about trwue wuv, and wants to marry for love, not money or status and lies to the hero to try to get out of marrying him.

There will likely be an antagonist who wants to marry her himself, because his is a gambler and has lost all of his father's money and is about to be run out of town on a rail, or tossed in the Thames with a rock tied to his feet for failing to pay his creditors. He stalks the heroine, even after she is married to the hero, in a mad attempt to get her and her money.

So, eventually the hero and heroine will live HEA (happily ever after) of course, and during all of that there will be SEX! lots and lots of sex!
But I need a title. I'm tired of calling it trashy novel. The only thing I've come up with is A Marriage by Any Other Name, and I don't really love that. It's too long for one thing.

So, toss some ideas my way. KTXBye.

What will J.K. Rowling do now?

Think about it, really. What will she do now? Rowling as accomplished a once in a lifetime feet in creating the Harry Potter phenomenon. 7 books that are runaway bestsellers, movie rights to all of them. Companion books, toys out the wazoo. Shitpots of money for her. At an estimated worth of 1 billion dollars, she the richest woman in Britain now.

But, she's a writer, and writing is an itch that begs to be scratched. The more you ignore it, the more it itches. She has to be totally sick of Harry Potter and the Hogwarts world by now, though. After all, she's been at this since 1990, I think. I believe that is when she first had the idea for Harry Potter, anyway.

So, what now? What will she write next? Because I just can't believe that she will be content to sit back and do nothing but spend her shitpots of money. Yes, writers write to make money, and she has accomplished that. But writers have stories buzzing around in their heads, too. Stories that want out. And I fear that unless she writes under a pseudonym that never again will any word she puts to paper be good enough for the masses of fans of HP across the world.

But there is no doubt she is a talented writer, one capable of creating a fabulous new world, and I for one, hope that she continues to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be) and continues to write. Children's books, adult books, mysteries, trashy romance novels. I don't care. Talented writers are always a pleasure to read (except Stephen King, at least for me).

So, JK Rowling, please don't put down your pen!

INFP

That's my score on a Jung personality test.

Introvert Intuitive Feeling Perceptive That's me.


Take it for yourself and see what you are.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

$464.20

That is the price of my new pair of glasses. Ouch. And that was after the nice lady pulled a 25% discount out of her ass for me. They were like $615 or something before the discount. I stopped listening after she said 6....
I knew they were going to be high, because I had to go and pick out a pair of Versace frames. Silly of me, I know. But I really like them, and they have sparkles on the side. Very silly, I know. But, the frames were only $244 of the price. That means the lenses themselves were almost $400. Ack! Me and my damned half blind, astigmatic eyes. And let's not forget the glaucoma. Fuck it for making me unable to wear contacts anymore, which at about $120 for a pair of them (that lasted for years) were much cheaper than the damned glasses.
We can still file them on our insurance, too, so hopefully we'll get part of that back.

Did I mention they were $464.20? Don't forget the $.20.

I need new glasses

I hate buying new glasses. Completely hate it. Well, actually, I hate wearing glasses in general and miss my contacts like crazy. Fuck you, glaucoma.
That said, I have come to realize that glasses can add a bit of character to my otherwise delicate features. But, still, I hate having to buy new ones.
I am forced into because Em smacked me across the face last night (it was a total accident, btw) and it broke part of the hinge on my glasses. No can fixy, so new glasses for you!
The last two pair I've had both came from EyeMasters and they have both broken in the same way, so I'm going to Lenscrafters this time. Besides, they have this nifty 30 day guarantee where you can change them out until you love them. Or get your money back. Lenscrafters it is.

But, I still hate getting new glasses. I've been perusing their website today and I hate 99% of the styles they have. The trends are leaning towards colored frames, big chunky plastic frames ala 1980 and huge, wide arms. Bleck. I just want something simple, but not manish looking. Elegant, I suppose. Also, not costing $400 would be great, since I will be spending about $300 on just the lenses. If I paid $700 for a pair of glasses, I would be afraid to wear them. :lol

So, why do I hate getting new glasses? Well, I feel like they are part of my face and getting new ones means I am changing part of my face and I get all traumatized by it. I feel weird for about a week and feel like people are looking at me oddly because my face has suddenly changed. Of course, most people don't even notice. Hell, the last time I got new glasses, my own mother didn't notice until I pointed them out to her.

More exciting updates as I pick out some fabulous new glasses.

Home sweet home

We are home, at last. We left here 11 days ago, on the 4th of July. We are all pooped and so glad to be back. Its the driving that gets me. It didn't help that I was crammed in the back beside Em with very little leg room. I didn't get out of the van from Foley until we got to Mother's, so my legs were cramped.
I could have happily stayed another week at the beach, though. A week just isn't quite long enough because there is just too much to do and you want to be on the beach but you also want to shop or sightsee and you just can't do it all. One day maybe we can afford 2 weeks.

The last day of vacation

I should be making pancakes for 13 people, but not yet. Ellie just got up, so the kids won't be ready to eat for a bit. So, I will tell you about our vacation. The amazing thing about it is that we are having so much fun. Amazing? Why amazing, you ask? After all, aren't we at the beach? Yes, indeed we are. But prepare yourself to laugh and be horrified.
We started the week on Sunday with Bill taking Sam and Emma to run to the store. Only, he forgot that the driveway wasn't straight and he dropped the driver's side wheels of my van off the concrete and got stuck. Really, really stuck. Like tire buried in the sand stuck. We took lots and lots of pictures. Heh heh. Fortunately, the neighbor had a shovel and there was a random piece of board laying around and between me, Bill, my dad, my brother, my 17 yr old nephew and 2 neighbors, we dug out the front tire and got the board under it enough for Bill to pull forward and get on the concrete. There was much angst on my part about my pretty new van, but it came through unscathed. And, the manwhore has convinced me that he must be the milkman's kid, because he stayed calm and laughed about it through the whole thing. His dad would have had a stroke.
Later that afternoon, we get to the beach and I'm thinking it was just perfect, even though the waves were a bit rough (ie, there were waves, since this is the Gulf Coast and usually has waves about the size of those you'd find on a large lake). It wasn't too hot, the breeze was nice and the water was warm. And apparently full of jelly fish. 2 of my nephews, Bill and I all got stung.
And, I apparently don't know how to apply sunscreen because I missed half of my body and I got sunburned.

Tuesday, oldest nephew was swimming again and got stung again.

Wed, mother asked us what we thought all the little bugs were. Um, don't know, but I'll call the real estate people because I'm not trying to wash comforters. They send the exterminator and the cleaning crew. The exterminator informs us that they are lice. WTF?!?!?! Ew! Yuck! Horrors! Google informs me that they are probably body lice not head lice which means they should be easier to get rid of (hot water and soap should do the trick) but they can carry diseases. Barf.

Later that night, the manwhore and I are out on a date, sans children, when we hear the shopkeeper of the shop we were in talking on the phone saying "Tornado warning." Fuckitall. So, I call mother and sure enough, the county we're in is under a tornado warning and it was heading straight for us. We dithered for a bit and walked down to the theater to buy Harry Potter tickets for the next day. I stood watching the palm trees blowing in the increasing winds, took a look at the 150ft ferris wheel we were standing under and decided it was time to go. Just as we ran for the car, the bottom fell out of it and I looked like I had stepped into a shower. We got back to the house all right and discovered that out here, 30 miles from where we were, it hadn't even rained.

Thursday, we went to the zoo and saw Harry Potter, and got to watch my brother and sil have a white trash fight in front of the movie theater. HP was good, though. Later that night, I picked 3 lice out of Sam's hair. Barf.

So, today is Friday. I wonder what will befall us today, or even tomorrow on the way home. But, in between all of the crisises (how do you spell that? Firefox is stumped lol) we are having a blast. The water is calm now, the jellies are gone, the pool is fun. We've shopped and eaten good food and drunk a bunch of booze. Loads of good times for all.

Is it bedtime yet?

I'm pooped. Totally worn out and want to go to bed. But it is only 8:30 and the kids are still up. We're leaving at 6am, heading for the beach, tomorrow morning. And, for whatever insane reasons (sex) the manwhore and I have been up until about 1am everynight for the last 3 nights. So, the idea of having to crawl out at 5:30 in the am is not a fun one.

On a side note, I think a cat has adopted my parents. Their neighbors had a house fire a few weeks ago and they seem to have just left their cat. She's an outside cat and they left some food out, but she has eaten it all up and no one has been to check on her. So, she came and basically knocked on my parents' door and asked to be fed. She ate non-stop for about 30 mins and then slept for hours. She pretty much hasn't moved from in front of the food bowl all day. She's a sweetie and I named her Patches. lol

Breast reduction surgery

I have wanted a breast reduction for almost as long as I can remember. The new blog I added to my sidebar is a chronicle of someone on my mommy board who has had a reduction. I am watching with fascination.

I do not understand why anyone would want to have breasts this big. They've sagged since I was about 15. When I was in high school, I never had a properly fitting bra because they just didn't sell them that big in stores. They still don't, but at least now I have the internet. They get in the way. I have actually burned a breast trying to reach something and bumping a hot skillet. My back hurts ALL. THE. TIME. If I sleep on my back, I wake up with my chest wall hurting from the weight. Women who get implants larger than a D cup are insane, IMO.

So, since we are sure we are done having kidlets, I am done with the boobs. When we get back from vacation, I will make an appoint to see my gyn and see if she will give me a referral to a surgeon. I do think it is going to be about 6 months before I can have it done because I think they say 6+ months out from weaning, and that has only been about 2 months for me. And, I would like to lose about 30 more lbs before having it done. I'd hate to have it done and then lose the weight and end up with them saggy again.


Do you know the huge irony of a breast reduction, though? You get implants. ROFL They use the implants to hoist the breast back up where it belongs. How funny is that? You want smaller boobs and have to get implants to get them.

Save room for purple!

This was said to me by my eldest by 3 minutes daughter today. I am painting their room. No longer will it be pale yellow with the baby-ish Twinkle Twinkle Little Star border. It is becoming cotton candy pink and dark lavender. I thought the pink was going to be pale, but it went on much brighter than I was expecting. But, they love it and it is their room. So, pink and purple walls, and I am going to hand do a border between the colors of flowers and butterflies. They will be wallpaper cutouts, but I am going to hand paint leaves and steams, too.

But, I am not happy with the speed of my progress. The purple paint is taking two coats and I should be done by now, but I'm not because it's taking two fucking coats of paint. I will be doing good to get the wall behind their bed done and the trim so we can push the bed back so they have somewhere to sleep.

I'm having to take breaks to give my aching back a break and to let paint dry. But, back to the trenches I go.

Snip snip

So, the manwhore has an appointment to get snipped. It will be 3 weeks from tomorrow, and I admit to having mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I am ecstatic about it. No more keeping up with cycles or remembering bc. Yay! On the other hand I want to run after him screaming "Noooooo!! Don't do it!"
I know that he is done, he doesn't want any more kids, ever. He is 41, nine years older than my tender 32, and he's done. Besides, I think he has felt a huge amount of guilt over me spending 6 weeks in the hospital, having 2 c-sections, being huge and uncomfortable and then in lots of pain. He told me before Sam was even 6 hours old that this was it, he wasn't going to do this to me again.

And, I know that not having any more children is the right decision for us. We have plenty of time and money for the 3 we have. Another baby would mean we would probably need a bigger house sooner rather than later, and there would be less money for dance, soccer, horses, etc.

Yet, I still can't help but feel sad that I will never again know that thrill/terror that comes from seeing a + on a pregnancy test. I will never again grow a baby in my body, a miraculous event, and one I treasured both times. Never again will I snuggle a baby up to my breast and nurse it. Never again will I experience the magic of watching a child of mine learn to walk and talk and tell knock knock jokes.

But, I know that another baby would most likely mean another c-section, and I just can't do it again. After the last one, the morphine pump wasn't cutting it, and when the nurse had to massage my uterus, I was screaming. I sobbed when they moved me from the stretcher to my bed (this was what had Bill saying never again). In retrospect, I'm wondering why it took them so long to bring me different drugs. WTF?

I turn into a spineless bag of mush after having a baby, and I cry over every fucking thing. I don't want to put my kids or my self or my husband through that again.

Besides, we finally have our bed back (mostly) and our sex life is better than ever, and I feel like I am finding ME again after being nothing but a mommy for the last (almost) 5 years. And I'm finding myself looking forward to school starting in August, because the three kids I have are getting on my nerves.

But dammit, I still want another baby. Even though I don't. Fuckitall.

Too many toys!

My children have too many toys. WAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY too many. And, I've sold/ thrown away/ packed away a bunch of stuff. They just get more faster than I can get rid of the old stuff. Part of the problem is that my in-laws have to give presents to the non-birthday child. WTF? Since I know that they have already bought the boychild a present for his sisters' birthday, I will wait until after then, but then I am going to ask them (read: tell them) not to do it anymore. I don't care that Great Aunt Moppy did it for Bill and Dede. My kids have more toys than they can play with in a week thanks to birthday's that look like Xmas and Xmases that look like a fucking toy store.

And, when they have too many toys, they can't/won't help put them away after they drag them all out because they are tired from all the playing. So, tonight, I have a dress up box full of pretty dresses in time out in my closet because they wouldn't help pick them up.

The den is scattered with puzzles and animals and a pirate ship, too, that I will get to put up because apparently I am the only one bothered by a messy house. And we're going to be away from home for 10 days, starting July 3rd, and I would really like to just keep things tidy until then and not have to clean like mad next week so we don't come home to a messy house. Le sigh.

I almost forgot

Happy Solstice to all!

Man titty and condom ads

I am totally just taking these from one of the blogs I read, the Smart Bitches over there in the list. But they are so fucking funny I want to share them with the world.

Condom ads:

http://yuxt.com/kisa/Best_condom_ads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWUqfM9VaB8

Too bad they don't show these on US television. lol

Man titty:

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2007/06/19/unemployment-check-move-over-hulk-hogan-theres-a-new-peck-flexor-in-town/

Let me flap my man titty at you!

Go, watch and laugh, grasshopper. Ohm!