Yes!!!!!!!!!

Lance Bass is gay. Is anyone actually shocked by this announcement? I totally called that one years ago. But, good for him. He says he's happy.

Mikel went on his first sleepover last night. The first one not at my mother's house. He actually stayed with his friend T. T was supposed to stay at our house, but at 9:30pm changed his mind. So K invited Mikel to stay with them. At midnight she called the game and told them to go to sleep. I don't think they actually did though. Mikel is quite the cranky, whiny monster today. He was making himself a sandwich and the dog stole his slice of cheese and he burst into tears. Mikel did, not the dog. I sense an early bedtime tonight.

I've had a pounding headache for about two weeks straight. Of course the fact that I cut back on my caffeine intake probably hasn't helped. Neither does the whining, crying, and nagging. And that's just from my husband. Don't even get me started on the kids. They're both exceptionally tired today. LaKatie had a marathon session with the PS2 and her Finding Nemo game. The girl was obsessed. I shouldn't say was, I should say is. It's sad when they get addicted so young. Next she'll have caluses on her thumbs and only want to eat in front of the tv.

The weather has cooled off, but now it's constantly overcast. It's rained a couple of times, which really helps with the humidity. There's nothing like going outside and have your clothes become instantly stuck to you. I hate the feeling of my legs sweating inside my pants. Not to mention getting a righteous case of swamp ass. For those of you not in "the know", swamp ass is when sweat drips down your back and into your crack. I just cracked myself up.

Blech! Blah, blah, blah

I started taking a fish oil supplement for the omega 3's. I've never noticed any weird aftertaste until today. Now every time I burp, I can taste tuna. Which would be ok if I'd had a tuna sandwich for lunch, but I had a venti Java Chip frappucino. With whipped cream of course.

They had a party for the end of the summer reading program at the library today. Would you believe that I spent three hours trying to get a picture of The Girl With The World's Worst Mullet? Seriously, I was trying to catch her at an angle that would showcase the horridness of the mullet and not show her face. But alas, it was not to be. Sorry guys. Her mom is really odd too. The library arranged for a hearing impaired lady to show the kids how her "hearing" dog helps her and the mom of the mullet went over to her and was speaking in a really quiet voice. Hello!!! She's hearing impaired, that means she don't hear so good. You need to speak up and annunciate. I don't know if I spelled that word right. My apologies, the margaritas are starting to kick in.

They also had clowns there making balloon animals and doing face painting. Apparently, according to the grumpy old lady clown, they were only supposed to be there for an hour and a half. Well of course every single kid there wanted to have something painted on them and wanted their damn balloon animal. Can't say that I blame them, who turns down balloon animals? There were a lot of kids there. A lot. Plus, they were high in the free cake and soda they were serving. So yeah, it was loud and obnoxious and I have a headache THIS BIG. Oy vey. The party started at 11am and they had the lady with the "hearing" dog go first with her demonstration. Then they did a raffle and then they started the face painting and balloon animal making. I guess the grumpy clown thought their time started at 11am and not at 12pm when the party actually got rolling. Everytime a kid sat down in the chair to have their face painted the grumpy clown would ask if the other clown was still there and say that they were going over the time they were booked for. Never once did she ask one of the librarians if she should stop or if they could make an announcement that the face painting was over. She just sat there painting faces and muttering to herself. I though clowns were supposed to be happy. Maybe she was one of those sad clowns that only laughs on the inside.

I was taking to dh earlier this evening and he finished every single sentence with "blah, blah, blah". Every time he said it, I so had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing or saying "yadda, yadda, yadda". He would say it almost every three words. "She called earlier blah blah blah. To find out about the stereo blah blah blah". I don't think he even realized that he was doing it. I though about pointing it out, but he hates it when I'm a smart ass. So he spends a lot of time hating it. Cause I'm always a smart ass. Better a smart ass, than a dumb ass.

What's the definition of a smart ass? One that can sit on an ice cream cone and tell you the flavor.

This must be what hell feels like

Because of the heat I mean. The weather man said it would be cooling down, into the high 90's. It's a welcome change from 100 + degree weather. Hopefully the storms will move out and it won't be so humid either. I'm tired of sweating like a pig at a luau.

La Katie is settling into the bedtime routine better than Mikel. Mikel is a nightowl like his dad. He likes to stay up late and sleep in until noon. He wants to lay in bed playing his PS2 games or watching army movies where they shoot down the bad guys. I've forbidden the games and the army movies. I think they're too stimulating and that's part of the problem with getting him to fall asleep. He's not liking the new rules too well, but he'll get over it. Katie goes to bed without wanting to watch tv and no fuss. Thank goodness one of them goes to bed easily.

While cleaning out underneath my bathroom sink the other day I found some cranberry bath gel and a cranberry bath fizzy that I had bought during christmas. Of course La Katie noticed them and asked if she could have them. I had completely forgotten that I had them, so I let her take them. Later that night while she was taking her bath I looked in on her and the bottle of bath gel was now filled with pink water. Katie sat up and said, "look mom, it went bad!" That's a good excuse for using a whole bottle of bath gel in one bath. I had to give her credit for her quick thinking. She obviously gets that from her mother.

I'm trying to plan menus for the next two weeks dinners. I've never really done this before, so I hope it works out well. Hopefully it will help keep the grocery bill down. Dh seems really excited about it. He put in several requests. I'll be flexing my cooking muscles pretty soon. I'll be the Ahnold of cooking. No, that wasn't a typo. Say it with an Austrian accent. Go ahead, give it a try. You know you want to.

They got game

Why is it that when I find a really cool game on the internet the kids always take it over? They both have tv's and game systems in their rooms, not to mention the desktop computer. Any time they hear noise of any kind coming from the laptop they stampeded like a herd of buffalo. Then the begging begins. They just want a turn! A turn that will last an eternity. A turn that will end only when they have to pee so bad that their eyeballs are floating, or when they pass out.

Today I found this really nifty website where you can make dolls. Digital dolls of course. It appeals to the girlie part of me. Pretty clothes and pretty shoes, stuff like that. It's Barbie for grown ups. La Katie came out this morning and saw it and she's been playing ever since. This morning meaning 7:45am and it is now 2:45pm. I want my game back! I don't think it's going to happen.

Mikel finally got his PS2 back after being grounded for a week. He shattered the screen on the in car dvd player in the truck. He was mad because he wanted to go to his friends house and I told him no. So he ruined a $2,000 video system. He spent the rest of the day in his room, got a spanking, and got grounded. No PS2, no going any where, and no friends over to play. Getting back to my original point. Mikel can't really read yet, just small words. So most of the games he has I get called into his room every five minutes so I can read him the instructions. That is driving me insane. In. Sane. Like I'm not crazy enough already.

It's FLOAM!!!!!

Have you ever tried that stuff? If you haven't, don't waste your time. Not only is it expensive at almost $7 a tub, it sucks. I bought some for my kids and even they were disappointed. All it did was make a mess. I'm still finding bits of Floam everywhere. Avoid the floam. Wasn't there already something like floam before? Made by Nickelodeon I think. Where do people get the ideas for this stuff?

Today is free movie day. We saw Hoodwinked. Katie and I saw it for the second time today actually, but it was new for Mikel. I forgot how funny that movie is. Mikel's friend T came over to play after the movie and is going to hang out until it's time for Karate. I think he's finally starting to like me. He let me make him a pb&j sandwich and actually ate it. This is the first time he's eaten at our house, well not counting fast food.

We got some really good news from our credit union this morning. They finally agreed to re-finance our loans and lower the payments. That was a HUGE stress reliever for both dh and me. Now we'll actually get to benefit from his raise instead of just being able to make the payments. Ah relief.

We started a new nighttime routine. Ok, we started a nighttime routine. Yes my children have never had an actual bedtime before now. We're shooting for a 9 o'clock bedtime and we're getting there. They actually go to bed, they just don't go to sleep. I'm sure that eventually they'll catch on and actually go to sleep at the right time. We've only been doing the routine for three days. We still have a month before school starts, I'm hoping that will give us enough time. Eventually I want them in bed by 8 o'clock, but with being light until 8pm, I don't want to push my luck.

It's been well over 100 degrees here for the last 19 days and doesn't show any sign of cooling off sooner. Don't you wish you lived in Southern California? Not to mention the storm systems that have been moving through so that every afternoon there are dark clouds and thunder. The kids don't want to play outside because of the heat and they're driving me insane. Stark raving mad. Loony tunes. Coocoo in the head. A few sandwiches short of a picinic. Not playing with a full deck. You get the picture.

Random stuff

We went out for a bit of shopping this afternoon and we stopped to get something to eat at Quizno's. While we were eating a couple came in with their two kids. One of their kids was a baby, still in his carseat. The woman set the carseat on the floor and then her and her husband and older son went to the counter to order. Nobody stayed with the baby. Then I noticed that the baby was only wearing a diaper and a button down shirt that wasn't buttoned. Granted it's pretty hot outside, but there was also a major storm blowing in and it was pretty damn windy. While they were standing at the counter ordering the baby started to move around in his seat, that's when I noticed, he wasn't strapped in. So not only were they carrying around the baby in windy/rainy weather, barely dressed, and not strapped in. Nice.

Then we went to WalMart. Oy. WalMart, on a rainy Saturday afternoon. What were we thinking? I'm going to backtrack a little here. Before we left the house my husband asked if I wanted to go with him. I initially said no because I thought I could at least enjoy some semi-quiet time with only one child to watch. Then LaKatie decided she wanted to go and dh said that she couldn't go if I wasn't going to go. His reason was that he didn't feel comfortable taking both of them out without me there to help watch the kids. What a sissy. Anywho, of course the kids start asking if they can get a toy. Which is one of the reasons I didn't want to go. I knew there would be the ritual begging for toys. I left the decision to dh since the shopping trip was his idea. So that means the kids got the toys they were after. Again, what a sissy.

On the way home dh decided he wanted to stop at Jamba Juice. We parked and got out of the truck and walked up to the store. I noticed two pieces of paper taped to the doors and read only one of them which stated that they were unable to serve wheatgrass shots due to some mechanical problems. Well damn! That was my whole reason for going there. Now what was I going to do! I didn't pay any attention to the other piece of paper because I figured it said the same thing. So we're standing there waiting for someone to take our order and a guy walks out and says that due to the weather and the power going off and on so many times that they're unable to use any of their equipment or registers. Now why, if you can't use any of your equipment or your registers are you still open? Why are the doors unlocked? Why doesn't the notice on the door say "closed due to weather"? That was just annoying.

Take my children, please!

I was having a problem sending emails and pictures with my cell, so I called my service provider. While we discovered the problem and had it fixed, the kids were fighting in the background the whole flippin' time. They were trying to construct a fort in the living room and were having a difference of opinion as to the design of said fort. So after confirming that the problem with my phone was fixed the nice lady asked if there was anything else she could do for me. I hesitated about half a second and asked, "want to take my kids?" She laughed and said no. Big surprised huh? So I told her that no, there was nothing else I needed help with.

I'm still cracking up over the fact that I said that to her.

Lost Tooth

Fwd: FW: Mikel
Originally uploaded by princessr92004.

This is what I got when I told him to give me a big smile. I wanted a picture of him after losing his front tooth. He's lost four teeth on the bottom, but you couldn't really tell. Now that he's lost his first tooth on the top he looks so funny! What a goofball.

Paging Dr. Daniels, Dr. Jack Daniels!!!!

Oh sweet lord have mercy on me. The man is driving me insane. I'm seriously making a concerted effort here not to pull every last one of my hairs out. It started with a conversation about money. Dh did a side job and was paid with a check. He IMed me to say that he needed to cash the check and we needed to have him added on to our new checking account. So I offered to meet him at the bank to accomplish this. He then stated that he wanted that money to be used as a payment on the credit card. I told him that we needed to use that money to pay the car payment and loan payments. He then replied that the money was there when he deposited his last check from his last job. I said that well yes at the time the money was there, but with needing to put gas in the car and him needing some things for work and his inability to say no to the children, the money is now gone.

Breathe. Try to make this sound intelligible.

I would so love to post the actual conversation. That would probably be a little much though, wouldn't it?

Any who, it all boiled down to the fact that he couldn't remember a statement I had made not five minutes before and in writing no less. He just couldn't understand my frustration. He said that I called him a jackass, which I did not. He said I made him feel like an illiterate fool. All because I said that I was frustrated at having to repeat myself, more than once I might add. He also said that he's not some pathetic punching bag. I'm still not sure where that came from. I didn't resort to name calling or being rude,yet he's acting as though I did.

It's driving me up the freakin' wall. Now he says that he's becoming increasingly concerned with my anger at him. WTF? I don't know how he gets the impression that I'm angry with him. All this week I've greeted him with a kiss and hug when he gets home from work. Dinner has been ready when he gets home. I just don't get it. I really don't. Not only does it frustrate me, but it hurts my feelings. He's the only person I seem to have this problem with.

The last time I saw my therapist he said that I'm smart and very practical and that I have a good head on my shoulders. He said that I'm one of the most practical people he's ever met and that I'm only a small portion of the problems we're having. Dh is taking medication, but obviously it's not working. He really needs to be seeing somebody. Now that he's changed jobs we won't have insurance for 90 days and our current insurance runs out at the end of the month. This could go really, really wrong. I've made a follow up appointment with his doctor and I'm going to go with him. The doctor has tried two different medications and has doubled both and neither of them has worked.

Frankly I'm nervous and scared. In the past this type of thing hasn't gone well and I really don't want this to drag me down. I've been doing so good for a while now that I really hate to see it end. Oy. Sorry to get all dramatic and depressed on you, but it needed to come out.

Thank you. I feel better now.

When all else fails, blame it on the dog

My son asked me to make him scrambled eggs this afternoon. He even carried an egg into my daughter's room where I was cleaning. Since it was about 10 minutes before we had to leave for their karate lesson, I told him no. I went to grab an oh so delicious diet dr. pepper out of the fridge and I see a yellowish puddle on the floor. I asked my son if the dog had peed in the kitchen. He answered yes and it was over by the sink too. Since it's been a while since the dog has done this I thought it was weird that he'd done it once. Much less twice. I looked for a towel to clean the mess up with and it wasn't where I usually hang it. Then I noticed the two PS2 games propped up against the cupboards. When I picked them up I found my kitchen towel stuffed underneath the cupboards. When I picked up the kitchen towel I found a broken egg. In the sink I found another broken egg. So not only did he try to cover it up, he also tried to blame it on the dog. I sense a trend starting.

I just love it when my son feels compelled to tell me to ignore my daughter when she tells me she hates me. It's a good thing he's around. Otherwise, I might get my feelings hurt.

I don't know what caused it, but suddenly my husband has stopped his daily phone calls to ask if we got any mail and what's for dinner. I'm not complaining. I just find it fascinating that it stopped all of the sudden. It was one of my biggest pet peeves. I shall now do the dance of joy.

Washing your sheets is like washing your car. You wash your car and it rains. You wash your sheets and one of the kids wets the bed. At least for me any way.

Bits and pieces

We had a lovely weekend. Very quiet. The kids and I were still tuckered out from our beach excursion. Nothing wears you out like being in the sun all day. Sunday we visited dh's aunt and uncle. We barbequed chicken and carne asada for dinner. After dinner things finally started to cool off and it was actually enjoyable outside. Dh's aunt filled me in on all the latest family goings on. Some major drama involving a family friend that was pretty much family. Although I'll say she's definately not like family now. I wonder what posses people sometimes that causes them to just go off for no good reason and ruin a relationship. Or in this case several.

La Katie has decided that I'm hers and hers alone. She told me the other day that I'm not allowed to kiss her big brother or scratch her daddy's back. I'm only allowed to kiss her and I'm only supposed to love her. Now I'll admit that a little part of me just loves this and is doing the snoopy dance. But the majority of me is less than thrilled. I've always tried to instill the value of the brother/sister relationship. That they should love each other and look out for one another. I don't expect it to be all sunshine and roses. I know they'll be fights and whatnot between siblings. But I want them to know and understand that I love them both equally. My connection with them is special and unique with each of them. With Mikel because he is my first child and only son. With LaKatie because she is my baby and my only girl. I'm close with both of them, but in different ways.

I guess it bothers me that she doesn't want to share me with dh and her brother, because I want her to see me have good relationships with both of them. That's her role model for her future relationships with men. I'm trying to set a good example. I think it's a part of the phase she seems to be going through. She's testing her limits and learning how to express herself. It's difficult to remember that all the time. She's a very bright, emotional girl. I want to be so careful of the values I give her. I want her to be confident and not be afraid of asserting herself, butI don't want her to be a bully either. Ah, such is the life of a parent. You feel like someone has told you to program a vcr and forgot to give you the instructions. You're flying blind and taking daily leaps of faith with something so incredibly close to your heart.

My son is learning to read. Right now he can read most of the smaller words. He likes to play his PS2 games and games on our computer. Obviously he has trouble reading the directions. He'll ask for help and instead of spelling out the words, he spells out the whole entire sentence. Since I have my laptop on the dinning room table and our desktop is in the corner of the dinning room, he usually asks me for help. By the time he finishes spelling the sentence my eyes are rolling around like the wheels on a slot machine and I'm bleeding from the ears. He hasn't quite gotten the concept of the space between words. We'll be working on this a lot during the week.

Holding on

Dh got a ticket for not wearing his seatbelt the same day he found out his dad had a heart attack. The traffic court sent us the little courtesy notice telling us how much the ticket cost and when to pay by. They gave us over a month to pay. It was due today. Yes, I waited until today to pay the stupid ticket. I literally tried all flippin' day to get through to an actual human being. It's like calling the DMV.

Finally, I got through and this is what I listened to for 45 minutes. "All our representatives are busy right now. Please continue to hold and the next available representative will assist you." No crappy on hold muzak. Just static and that horrid, horrid message. For 45 minutes. That right there should be considered punishment enough and you shouldn't have to pay the fine. It has to be a form of torture in some small countries.

The whole 45 minutes both of the kids continually called my name and asked who I was talking to. There were several requests to shut up my phone, my ear piece wouldn't work so I had it on speaker phone. I was just sharing the joy. However, during the 45 minutes I was on hold, I made two bowls of cereal, took La Katie to the bathroom, and caught up on some blawg reading. I'm all about the multi-tasking.

Ouch!

While preparing dinner this evening I dropped a huge hunk of frozen cauliflower on my foot. It hurt. A lot. I wonder if that falls under workman's comp? I doubt it. I dropped it on my already messed up foot, so maybe I could some how work this in my favor. Not only does the bottom of my foot and my ankle hurt, but now the top hurts too. I really need to play it up. You know, limp and moan in pain. Dh might not fall for it, but the kids might be sympathetic. Stop laughing. It could happen.

So far I'm taking my baby steps with FLYlady and loving it. Seriously, if you haven't tried it, you should. If you're having any trouble at all managing home, kids, and everything else, she can help you get it under control. My house is clean, my sink is shining, and there are no huge piles of laundry built up.

Today was craft day at the library. The little girl with the worst mullet I have ever seen was there again. I feel for her, I really do. I sincerely hope that she didn't choose that style for herself. Her mom is a little odd. Not like scary odd, just very quiet and I don't know, there's something not quite right. Back to the mullet. She has bangs straight across her forehead, then the hair on the sides of her head is cut to just above her ears and the rest is long in the back. It looks like a bowl cut gone awry. I've never really been a fan of the mullet. I dig dudes with long hair, as long as it's kept clean. But I never really got the whole "business in the front, party in the back" deal. My mom loves the mullet. She thinks it's a nice hair style for a man. I was switched at birth, I swear.

Hey, did you know?

Mikel has a new friend, a fellow teeball player. They are getting along smashingly and T really keeps Mikel out of my hair. Whether we're at T's house or here at our house, I can actually sit and have an adult conversation, or actually have more than five minutes to myself.

Wednesday we went to free movie day and then over to T's house to play for the entire afternoon. Yesterday afternoon I took Mikel over there to play for two hours. Today we took T with us to go swimming at the waterpark. My sunburn has mostly healed. I'm still a little red in some places, but doesn't hurt any more. It looks really gross because it's peeling massively. It's horrifying really. I've tried multiple applications of aloe vera and scrubbing with a loofah, but I still look like I've got some sort of hideous disease. I debated over wearing a t-shirt to cover it, because I didn't really want to subject the other children to the horror. I don't have a cover up, and obviously I need to get one.

While I was enjoying the water and playing with La Katie a lady walks up to me and pretty much yells, "Do you have sunblock on? I can see three different colors on your back. I can see where it burned and peeled, and then burned again!" No, freak I'm striving to burn the holy heck out of my back until it scars. Sunblock? What's that? I probably shouldn't be sitting out in the SUN should I? I know I don't look my age, but I know I look old enough to know better than to let myself get barbequed like a chicken twice. The first time was an accident, an oversight. I didn't do it on purpose and trust me, I made damn sure that I had about half a bottle of SPF 48 sunblock on my back and shoulders. Yes, I know that my back looks awful, and I'm sorry for causing the visual trama.

It was quite a full week. The summer is going to be exhausting what with trying to keep the kids busy and my house clean. Only 7 more weeks to go!

The boys went riding yesterday while La Katie and I went on a search for a Hello Kitty nightgown. She had outgrown the last one she had and just had to have a new one. We went to five different stores, not one of them had any sort of Hello Kitty pajamas or a nightgown. I think we got the first one at Mervyn's and of course there isn't one in the town we live in. I'll have to check on line. By the end of our excursion we were exhausted and overheated, so we stopped at Cold Stone on our way home for some refreshment. Yummy, yummy cheesecake ice cream with strawberries mixed in.

Thank goodness that's over with!

Why is it that the holidays are so much work? Meals and decorations, places to go, and people to party with. Are we making things harder on ourselves in the name of fun and celebration? I'm still recovering from yesterday. We spent the entire day at the park. We must have been there for almost 10 hours. With three children and one infant. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, that's for sure.

There were a couple of playgrounds for the kids, as well as games and a bounce house. They had music going and some different types of demonstrations. It certainly wasn't boring. We mostly just hung out and munched all day and people watched. We went with our new friends from teeball. We really had a lot of fun. It was nice to spend time with another couple. We hadn't gotten around to discussing ages. I figured they were somewhere around dh's and mine's age. Dh is 37 and I'm 29. It turns out that S is 38 and K is 39. After everyone else had told their age, K looked at me and asked me how old I was. I just smiled and ducked my head when I told her. I new I would get some teasing for being the youngest one there. I'm used to it.

Today was free movie day. We saw Doogal. It was a pretty cute movie. I had no idea that Kevin Smith did one of the voices, so that added some extra interest on my part. After we followed K back to her house so the kids could play. It really wore Mikel out. When we got home he went straight to bed. He's never done that before! I might take him over there every day.

I started following FlyLady. So far it's working great. My house is clean and I'm very happy with the way things are working. It's pretty easy to follow the routines and do the daily tasks. Maybe eventually I'll be able to get back to excercising every day.

Grin and bare it

My back that is. I just baked some chicken for dinner just by standing with my back to it. I didn't notice it at first because of the pain from my back, but my chest and knees are sunburned too. My chest is just slightly pink, but my knees hurt almost as much as my back. Aloe vera, lots and lots of aloe vera. I've taken to laying on my bed on my stomach with my shirt pulled up and the fan blowing on me. Luckily the kids think it's really neat to rub the aloe vera on my back. There's no way that I could reach it myself.

I actually got to go grocery shopping by myself today. Woohoo!! Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last!!!! I took my time and cruised through Costco and bought lots of delicious fruit. A whole flat of strawberries and some pineapple. Then I went on to WinCo and got a huge watermelon. I was going to save that for the 4th, but after setting it on the counter in the kitchen it rolled off the counter and split open. So I settled for cutting it in half and we'll save half for the 4th. It was so nice to shop without being harassed for toys, candy, and other stuff. I could actually think. Of course it's still hotter than the seventh ring of hell here and I almost completely dehydrated myself. I've never guzzled water like that before. I must have drank a whole liter in the car after leaving WinCo.

Tuesday we'll be going to a BBQ with our new teeball friends. The men are going to the park where the fireworks show will be early to stake out a spot and unload the barbeques. There will be live music and games for the kiddies, so hopefully we will have a nice 4th. We're new to this whole having friends as a couple thing. But we get along very well with them and all the kids play well together. Hopefully this will be the start of something new.

Dh got himself a new job. It's only half the distance away from our house than his old job is. Plus it's a substantial increase in pay and better benefits. He's really excited and pleased to be moving on.

Have a great weekend everyone. Happy 4th of July!!