Monday, February 20, 2012

I'm Not Worthy

I must be doing something okay, because the accolades are rolling in. My fellow blogger Jo at the Bright Yellow Balloon Shenked me the other day. Thank you Jo?  


The Shenking, which I'll explain in a minute, reminded me that back in November Dani at Facebooking From The Edge bestowed on me the honor of Versatile Blogger. 






I thanked her, but never passed on the honor as was explicitly stated in the rules of said award. How rude. I have some excuses.


1. The end of October through mid January is really busy with birthdays and holidays. I'm lame.


2. I turned 40 in December and my short term ain't what it used to be. True story.


3. Scott, the girl and I all had the stomach flu last week. Was. Not. Pretty.


4. I'm actually not very good at this whole blogger networking thing. I get really excited when someone comments on my blog and I will leave comments on other blogs when the mood strikes, but regular commenting both because it's a nice thing to do in the blogging community and because it might interest someone in checking out my blog is not my strength. Plus, I feel pressure to make my comment funny. I don't always having something funny to say. Shhh. Don't tell Scott. (I realize leaving a comment and passing on an award aren't the same thing, in my mind there's a connection)


5. I have an inferiority complex. Many of the blogs I enjoy and would give an award to (aka recommend) are way famouser bloggers than me and they would probably never know about the award. Not that they would be rude about it. I just don't think my blog is on their radar. I could be wrong. Maybe The Bloggess is a regular lurker here.


So, back to the shenking. It's also a chain letter blogger to blogger recognition thing. It involves answering questions, giving random information about yourself (synonymous with blogging, no?), tagging, and creating questions or something like that. For Jo's clear as mud explanation check here.


Since I'm so late in responding to Dani's award and since Jo says I can play along or not and because I'm a rebel without a clue, I'm going pick some of Jo's things to do and combine The Versatile Blogger awards with the tagging list. Confused? Me too.


Things About Me (If you would like to know 25 more random things about me than you already do check here. It's an old post, but the stuff is still true.)


Jo's questions (I'm answering 3 of the 11. I'm a rebel remember.)


4. If your best friend's spouse ever made a pass at you, would you tell your best friend? Hell to the yeah!


6.  What destination would be your ideal vacation? Caribbean. Caribbean. Caribbean. Although, I'm willing to give the South Pacific or Seychelles a try.


7.  If you could change one thing about yourself (no effort involved), what would it be? Boobs. I need perkier, bigger boobs.


Blogs I Read (If you are on this list feel free to consider yourself Shenked and/or awarded the honor of Versatile Blogger. Also feel free to completely ignore this.)


Facebooking From The Edge 


The Bright Yellow Balloon 


Lola is 40  


A Day in the Life 


Absoulutely Narcissism 


Poppy Haus 


Eating Over the Sink


The Bloggess




peace & love ;-) 









Saturday, February 18, 2012

4 Phone Calls & A Sporting Goods Store



1st Phone Call:


Me: "Tball and lacrosse practices start next week. The boy needs pants, socks, a belt and a cup for tball and the girl needs cleats for lacrosse. I have time to take them this afternoon or it can wait for over the weekend if you want to do it." 


Scott: "If you have time, go ahead and take them." (no doubt with a smug smile on his face)


Arrive at sports store.


Head to the display o' cups.


I have been told by my mom pals to get the underwear with the cup insert for the 6 year old rather than the leg strap one so that much I know. We start looking at choices and a brave young employee approaches and asks if he can help. 


"We are shopping for our first cup!" I announce. "Well not me, him" (pointing to the boy). The worker dude helps me figure which are the underwear kind and which size will likely be best (from the sizing chart of course, no junk measuring required). 


I open the package to check out the whole situation and the boy freaks out. "I don't wear that kind of underwear!" he screams (he wears boxer briefs, not briefs, never briefs!)


Me: "I think you'll like it better than this other strap thing. You have to wear a cup for tball. Don't you want to play tball?"


The boy: "I don't wear that kind of underwear!"


Thank the tball gods, upon further inspection of the cup kiosk there was in fact boxer style cup underwear. Mutual meltdown averted. 


We find the socks and the belt. We find 3 pant choices and spend way too long in the dressing room evaluating the tightness in the waist and bagginess in the ass ratio. 


The boy: "I need a helmet."


Me: "I thought Daddy said they had helmets for you to use."


The boy: "The coaches recommend you have your own helmet."


Me: "Okay. Let's look and I'll call Dad."


2nd Phone Call part 1: 


Scott: Voicemail.


Me: Hang up without message.


The boy tries on helmets and I go from thinking a personal helmet is ridiculous to wondering how gross the shared helmets are to thinking about lice to deciding to buy the boy a helmet in about 20 seconds. The boy finds a helmet he likes. He likes the black one, but he likes the strap on the blue one better because it has a thing that sits under the chin, but the black one doesn't. I unsnap the strap from the blue and put it on the black. Viola.


The boy: "Can you do that?"


Me: "I just did."


2nd Phone Call part 2:


Scott: "You rang?"


Me: "I just called to ask what you thought about getting a tball helmet, but I already told the boy he could get one so it doesn't matter what you say."


Scott: "What if I say no?"


Me: laughing myself silly "Goodbye."


Tball supplies gathered we head to shoes for the girl. I should mention here that the girl is notoriously hard to buy shoes for. 


Endless style and size tries later:


The girl: "These might work with longer socks. Didn't you say they would give me matching socks?"


Me: "Matching socks? Huh?"


The girl: "When you looked at the website you said there were matching socks."


Me: "What? Let me call Dad."


3rd Phone Call:


Me: "When you went to to the lacrosse meeting did they say anything about socks?"


Scott: "White pants, black socks and black belt."


Me: "That's tball. I'm talking lacrosse. What's the sock situation for lacrosse?"


Scott: "I think they said something about socks..."


Me: "I'm calling a lacrosse mom."


Turns out they do not give you socks and you can wear whatever the hell kind of socks you want. The girl wants long socks in teal and also purple so she can wear one color of each. 


Me: "Fine. Get both packs. Open one. Try the shoes on again."


We have now been in the sports store for an interminable amount of time. While on the phone with my friend about the socks the boy gets in trouble for running in circles and messing with his sister and forces me to sternly under my breath say "You sit down right here and don't move till I say so!" giving my friend a good laugh.


The shoes don't work even with the long socks. 


Me: "We are done here. We'll get the socks and the boy's tball stuff and go to another store for cleats."


4th Phone Call:


Me: "We got everything except the girl's cleats. I thought maybe you could meet us at sports store B if you're kinda close on your way home?"


Scott: "I'm already home."


And so it goes.


peace & love ;-)


p.s. I could not face sports store B. One of us (I nominate Scott) has to make a second attempt before Tuesday.


p.p.s. The boy wanted to try on all his new tball gear for Scott when we got home and proceeded to wear his cup underwear for over 3 hours to "get used to it". There was even more adjusting going on than usual which actually gives some insight to the whole baseball constant crotch touching mystery.


p.p.p.s I know technically there were 5 phone calls, but the title refers to the 4 Scott phone calls. I just didn't like the title of 4 Scott Phone Calls & A Sporting Goods Store as much.

Friday, February 17, 2012

As Smart-ish As a 5th Grader

A bit of background information:


I was an excellent math student through junior year of high school which happens to be the last time I was a math student. I did take statistics in college, but that doesn't really count. I did not to take calculus my senior year of high school as I did not enjoy the calculus teacher that I had suffered through geometry with and I had fulfilled the math requirement for college, so I opted out. I was not required to take any real math in college so I did not.


Scott took various calculus classes in college. Yay him! This gives him the impression that he's better in math than me. You be the judge.


Last night:


Our 5th grader was doing double digit long division and she asked Mr. Math for help. 


Scott to me: "Do you remember the secret to double digit long division?"


Me: "I don't know any secret. It's like single digit, but with 2 digits."


Scott: "It's been a long time since I've done long division. It's like this right?" He then leans over and shows me the paper where he's started a problem like this:




Me: "Why are you starting on the far right?"


Scott: "That's where you start."


Me: "That's not where I'd start. I'd do it like this.":


I started at the furtherest left that the 6 was divisible into like you are supposed to.

Scott then tries to complete the problem his way and realizes he's.... wait for it....WRONG.

Me: "How sad is it that I'm feeling totally superior right now?"

Scott: "I'm glad you get to feel like that for once."

While all this was going on the girl, our 5th grader, is saying things like:

"Give me back my paper."

"This isn't helping me."

We ignored her of course because what mattered was which one of us was right.

About 5 minutes later Scott bested me on a chemistry question so my superiority in the realm of 5th grade homework was short lived. 

It was lovely while it lasted.

peace & love ;-)

Friday, February 10, 2012

Analyze This

Last night I had a pretty bizarre, convoluted dream. The oddest part being that I got a tattoo on my cheek that said "Mere Christmas" not "Merry", but "Mere".


I remember telling the tattooer (artist would be a giant stretch here) who spoke broken English that I wanted "Merry Christmas" across my cheek and when she asked if I was sure, I said, "Yes! I fucking love Christmas!". I was under the impression that I merely like Christmas, but according to my subconscious, I love it. Weird.


So I ended up with a misspelled slasher style lettering of Merry Christmas on my cheek and I wasn't even upset about it. If I tilted my head just so, my long hair kinda covered it and I decided if I ended up hating it I could get it removed later. "Mere Christmas" was poorly written ON MY FACE and I was all "meh" about it. Weird. 


But, here's the weirdest part. I went on to interact with various friends and family throughout the dream and NO ONE even mentioned it. Nobody said, "What the hell is that?" or "Were you drunk/high?" or most appropriately, "Would you like a little break from the world for a couple days and a counselor to speak with?"


Seriously! What is wrong with you people?!?




Peace & Love ;-)

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Guess What I Found

I just spent the last 10 minutes opening, inspecting, shaking, inspecting and closing all my spices looking for... Yep. You guessed it... Moths! 


Bastards.


After 3 months with no signs of moths, dead or alive, I found a dead moth in a container of garlic powder. The carcass has probably been there for months as I prefer fresh garlic and can't remember the last time I used the powder, but it still pissed me off. It was a large Costco container of old hardened powder that I was happy to throw away anyway, but dammit! dammit! dammit! 


I then found a smaller, newer bottle of garlic powder and when I unscrewed the cap I found a dead larvae and it's abandoned pupae nestled among the raised, swirly, screw cap receiving line thingies. That's when I got REALLY PISSED! Here's why: 


I inspected that fucking pantry and everything in it no less than 5,000 times during the moth wars. It is infuriating that I missed even 1 moth much less 3 (there was another dead larvae situation under the cap of some other spice).


Just goes to show that those assholes are insidious and vigilance is prudent.


Also, I was sure I had dead moths that had started decomposing in my garlic salt because I saw several "wings" in there when I was shaking it all around. Then I looked at the label and it said it was Garlic Salt with Parsley Flakes. So that explains that. Probably.


Peace & Love ;-)