New Wallet

So I was chatting with my dear sweet Kevin in Danbury this morning and shared with him an all true tragic story. Yesterday afternoon while at the market, my wallet, made of bacon, that I purchased during our summer vacation to NYC, literally fell apart at the seams. Every single thread on the wallet came apart. I was sad.



When I got home I took a look around to see what I could use as a new wallet. The empty Altoids tin had been used previously, but it's a bit uncomfortable to sit on. I couldn't find any binder clips, so that was out of the question. An envelope wouldn't last quite as long as the bacon wallet. I remembered that ADRIAN has THREE wallets. So I went to find one of his. The only one I could find was his "Tow Mater" wallet...and so I made it mine.

December Challenge Day 31

DEAR BESSIE I’m glad this month is OVER!

So I sorta made the challenge, eh? I missed only a day or two? Not bad.

The boys and I had a great day. We started off the morning returning all of our duplicate Christmas gifts. The only frustration was at Best Buy trying to exchange season 4 of Oz for Season 6. They only wanted to credit me the “lowest advertised price” for the set and have me pay the difference DESPITE the fact that both sets were the same price. They said that since I didn’t have the receipt they had to assume that it was bought at the sales price. I said, “With that logic I have to assume that season 6 was on sale the same time season 4 was on sale and purchased therefore I shouldn’t have to pay the difference”. They didn’t see it that way, so I still have two sets of season 4 of hot prison love.

We made our “magic wands” later in the morning. Honestly the boys had more fun throwing confetti around the dining room than they did actually helping me out with the project. I have it all on video and I’ll be posting that in a bit…more on that later.

We took lunch up to Poppa at work and had lunch with him. At this point the boys were beginning their morning melt-down, so I rushed home and the three of us took a nap.

We made pizza for dinner and then the four of us hoped on the #5 to head downtown for “First Night” festivities. It’s Austin’s NYE celebration. I noticed earlier in the week they had built this huge, gorgeous 3-story wooden clock down on Auditorium shores. I heard on the news that it was a “resolution clock” that was basically an effigy to resolutions that was set to be set ablaze at 8 this evening. I was partly disappointed they were going to torch it, cuz it was that nice, but I was also excited for the boys to see it. We ass u med the bus would be a better, safer, option for us to get downtown…and we wouldn’t have to fight for parking. As it turns out, the buses were on “parade route”, therefore they dropped us off at 12^th and Congress and we had to hoof it the 13 blocks to auditorium shores. We made the most of it.

After having family fun down at First Night, I decided I’d rather catch a pedicab to get back to 12^th rather than carry the 35 lb. boys all the way back up there. I don’t know how or why, but Jed and I always manage to find the ONE pedicab driver that can’t support our weight. Seriously, we could have gotten back to the Capital faster on foot, but it was nice not having to carry the kids. AND it didn’t hurt the cabbie was on the cuter side (and I use that term loosely, cuz none of them were all that!). He got us back just in time for us to see our bus drive right past us. So we had to sit and wait 30 minutes for the next one. We ended up not getting home until 1030…WAY past the boys bedtime and, honestly, after mine.

I FINALLY figured out a way to get around with the problem I’ve been having with editing my videos lately. I’m bummed I haven’t been able to post or send our Christmas day video to my folks (or my interwebs stalkers) yet…but I’ve been having problems with my program. I was having the same frustrating problems editing the videos I took today and ended up downloading a different (older) version of the software and it seems to be working now. HOWEVER, as it’s 1137 in the pm, I’m too tired to work on it tonight…so I’ll get it out when I can.

It’s been a real pleasure getting to know some of you better throughout this past year. Looking forward to writing more for you and reading more of you. Hope you and yours have a safe and happy new year.

And with that, the challenge is O-V-E-R!!! YAAAAAY ME!

December Challenge Day 30

I committed one of the 7 deadly dressing sins this morning and have been mostly ashamed all day. I wore basic dungarees with my cowboy boots. I know this may not sound like a big deal to most of you, particularly anyone north of I-40, East of Slidell and West of Albuquerque, but it’s one of my many clothing pet peeves. It’s more offensive to me than “skinny jeans” on men. I can always tell when attorneys from New York or D.C. are visiting the office because they always come into town and stop by Cavenders to pick up a pair of “authentic ostrich skin cowboy boots” (cuz NOTHING says Western like OSTRICH) and they wear them with a standard pair of 501’s. For those not in the know, it is AGREGIOUS to wear cowboy boots with any jean that is NOT specifically boot cut. DO NOT wear, especially, PLEATED jeans (or khaki slacks) with cowboy boots in my presence or I will ridicule you, for real.

This morning I got up UBER early…which means I got the kids up uber early. Which means they had me rushing around at to get them out of the house before they drove me crazy. I KNEW, when reaching into the closet, I had grabbed a standard pair of dungarees, but I didn’t have time to look for MY pants (Jed don’t wear boots, only (F)reddy)…cuz Jed had been doing laundry and when Jed does laundry there’s one of 50 places my pants can end up. So I put on A) a pair of dungarees and B) a pair of LOW RISE dungarees at that (DIS-GUSTING). The top 2/3 of my ass crack was hanging out of the back of my jeans all day and to top it off I looked like I was wearing MC Hammer pants with my cowboy boots. I looked like those visiting attorneys from the north MYSELF today and I deserved every disapproving glance I got.

I mentioned I got a new dining room table from Ikea the other day. I also purchased an “occasional table”. Those damn Swedes are so funny. Here in Texas we call it a buffet. Nonetheless, I put the occasional table together and placed it in my dining “room”. I should explain that my technical dining area of my house is a 4 foot by 8 foot space off my living “room” (which is also tiny, but that’s a whole nother story…just one of the joys of living in a 1940’s era “bungalow”). For the last 10 years I’ve had my previous dining table (which was a wedding present for my grandparents 80 years ago) along the length of my 4 foot wall in my dining space. Every night at dinner we’d pull it out from the wall so the two wall seats could be seated (Jed and Nathan) and then Adrian and I would take the two non-walled spots.

Our new dining room table is actually a slight bit longer than our previous 4 foot table (6 with the leafs). But it occurred to me to position it horizontally against the four foot wall leaving it off the back of the other four foot wall. Thus creating an adequate sitting space on the back side of the table for two chairs and two seats directly across with the backs of the chairs facing the living “room”. This way we don’t have to constantly move the table back and forth betwixt meals. AND, if we ever have more people over, we can just flip it back the way it was to add the leaf to give us more space. So the new configuration, though it has more furniture IN it actually gives us not only the APPEARANCE of more space, but it’s more user friendly as well. I couldn’t be more pleased with the new layout of my space.

I got a HUGE package from my sister’s husband today. He drew my name for the holiday gift exchange. He went BALLS OUT for me. He’s really an awesome bro-in-law. I got a new watch (honestly, my VERY FIRST WATCH that I’ve worn in 19 years!); Oz Seasons 4 and 5; The last Pirates of the Caribbean movie; NEW UNDIES; and an official White House souvenir Christmas Tree Ornament. NOT TO MENTION, the kids got a HUGE (and I mean HUGE) assortment of musical instruments (an accordion; a triangle, a tambourine; and some mariachis and some other things. They went ape shit crazy with the instruments and we’ve been singing since we got home. Seriously, my bro-in-law rocks socks.

I’m off for the next 5 days again. Tomorrow I’m going to spend the day with my kids making party wands filled with confetti and some noise makers too for an early NYE evening with them. I’m so looking forward to spending quality daddy time with them tomorrow. We may even go to Chick-A-Fil for lunch!

December Challenge Day 29

So I’m a failure. I failed the challenge. I hang my head in shame. Perhaps picking a busy holiday month was not the brightest idea I ever had.

We had a very busy weekend. As I mentioned we made a trip to Ikea on Saturday and bought a new table and some chairs. LOVE it. The problem with me and Ikea is that Ikea becomes a drug for me and I can’t get enough of it. So we went back on Sunday…and bought even more furniture and stuff. I’ve officially spent a fortune. AND spent even more hours putting everything together yesterday.

Yia Yia decided to go back home to Galveston early yesterday. Apparently I was an asshole on Saturday and got into a disagreement with Jed (in front of her). And apparently conflict is uncomfortable. In MY family we often get into disagreements, heated at times, with each other in front of each other. The tide rises and then falls, immediately and life moves on. THIS is NOT how it works in Jed’s family. So I’m an asshole and I made it uncomfortable in my house. Apologies.

The weekend wasn’t a total loss. With YY here, Jed and I were able to go out for a date night on Saturday (EVEN AFTER THE ASSHOLERY). We went to the movies and got to see our first non-animated film in a year. We saw “Milk”, and I enjoyed it. I had heard the story of Harvey before and even seen “The Life of Harvey Milk”. But what I didn’t know was what happened to the ancillary players after the fact. (IOW: What ever happened to Dan White?) Glad to know he took care of himself.

Today was a semi-return to normalcy. I over-slept this morning so I was late getting Adrian and Nathan back to “school”. School is technically out until 1/5, but Adrian is enrolled in an Extend-A-Care program for the rest of the holiday week and Nathan is in daycare during the day until both of them start back in real school. I found out when I dropped Nathan off at daycare that they’re closed Wednesday through Friday this week. WHO THE HELL HAS THAT MUCH TIME OFF? I guess me.

One thing I’m a bit bummed out about with Jed’s mom going home is I had bought a 15 pound ham for NYE dinner…and now there’s just the four of us to eat it. I’m thrilled I’ll have enough ham left over for ham and eggs, scalloped potatoes, etc…but the prospect of eating 15 pounds of ham leaves me feeling a bit gassy and unclean.

Sorry this rambled. That’s kind of how I’m feeling today…a bit scrambled.

December Challenge Day 26

I had to laugh at a twitter post from my dear sweet Sean earlier today. He was appalled by a dining room set he found at Goodwill for $800. You see, that's what I spent my day looking at, and the thinga ain't cheap. The one I found that I liked the most was $4000.00. I had a problem spending more on a dining room table than I did on my first car. We ended the day at Ikea, where we settled on a table and chairs and I spent the better part of 3 hours when we got home putting it all together. Do I like it as much as the 4k one at the Amish furniture store? Probably not. But it suits our current needs, and by the time the boys learn how to get more food in their mouths than on the table, I might be willing to go make the investment in something nicer.

Have a great weekend folks.

December Challenge Day 22

For some bizarre reason, between 10 pm last night and 515 this morning my SIM card in my cell phone fried itself, dead. This now makes two days in a week’s time that I’ve not had my cell phone with me during the day. I cannot believe how lost I feel without the damn thing. I am a crack whore and, apparently, my cell phone is my crack. I was in a cold sweat the better part of the day.

If I never see the inside of another Target in my lifetime it’ll be too soon. Yes, I filled up the tank so I could make yet ANOTHER trip to my local Target. I swear one of these days I’m going to win a door prize for being the one millionth customer or something.

We have been super busy tonight getting our house in tip-top shape for the “big day” on Thursday. I plan on videotaping the wrapping paper massacre that’s sure to take place after the kids toss their gifts from the jolly fat man aside. Perhaps that’ll even be my blog-o-the-day post on Christmas day. I KNOW you’re dying to hear me scream at my children on film.

In preparation we cleaned up our dog’s bedroom. She has completely torn that shit up. I don’t know what she was looking for in there, but she tore that shit up. FOR REAL, she tore that shit up. Jed did a bang up job cleaning up her room (for his mommy, who is coming to our casa for the Christmas carnage)…but he brought PILES AND PILES of “stuff” into the living room (which I was supposed to be cleaning) to sort through. He basically cleaned his room by messing up mine! Ain’t that love? Don’t answer. It was rhetorical.

The good news about Jed doing a through cleaning of Sam’s room was that he found tons and tons of paper products that I could just recycle. IE: Time Warner bills from 2006. Since we haven’t HAD Time Warner SINCE 2006 I felt it was a safe recycle. It feels GREAT purging that much stuff.

I’ve decided that after the boys have their fun tearing up my freshly cleaned house on Thursday that I’m going to have them each fill up a (large) box of old(er) toys to get rid of before they’re allowed to open any of their new stuff. Call me Scrooge, call me a dick. Call me what you want, but I prefer practical.

I gotta get to sleep. I’m exhausted. The next 2 days are going to be INSANELY crazy for me. Happy Monday, yo. For real.

P.S. Sean, you sure got some real pretty handwriting.

December Challenge Day 21

Folks, I gotta make this quick! I can't believe I almost missed it today. Curses, where has my day gone...

(tick tick tick tick)

I got to sleep in a bit this morning. Jed and I split the weekends so each of us get to sleep in late at least one day a week. And by late, I mean I didn't have to get up at 530 this morning, I got to sleep until 615. The very first thing I did when I woke up this morning was run to Target for my 113th time this week. You know it's bad when the person who checks you out (er, uh, rings you up) A) says, "HI (F)REDDY" when you walk up to the register and B) is the same cashier that rang you up at 1030 the night before. BUT since today WAS Sunday AND the start of a new sales circular week I felt it was necessary to run up there to find anything I may be missing. NOT TO MENTION I still hadn't found the gifties for Cousin Ash's husband, Derwood. WHAT TO YOU BUY AN ACCTUARY? Every place I've been is out of hand stitched leather pocket protectors...so I was a little lost. I FINALLY got a text message from Ash about som Wii games he wanted, so I ran up there to see if I could find them. NO SUCH LUCK. I DID happen to notice, however, that the Dual Screen DVD players that I found on Black Friday for $88 that immediately went up to $164 the hour following Black Friday were back on sale for $83. I went ahead and bought it as a back up gift just in case I couldn't find the Wii games anywhere. The thing is, ASH is the one who wanted the DVD player for the car, NOT Derek.

I went home and loaded up the family and we drove to Columbus to drop Adrian off with grandma. Relax bitches. Columbus, Texas, not Columbus, Crazy. We had a delightful lunch at Schoebles (pronounced "Shy-bulls" for you Yankee folks), seriously, it was FANTASTIC. We couldn't get Adrian and his crap out of the car fast enough before we got back on the road to come back to Austin.

We stopped at the South Austin Wally World, the ONLY place I could find on-line inventory listings that had the Wii Game Donald wants for Christmas. AS A BONUS, the game was on sale in the store for cheaper than it was on the web. Daniel better be DAMN happy with this game for as much as I did to get him something HE wanted!Got home and napped with the bug while Jed visited with our dear sweet Heath-O (Pronounced "Heath-O" for you Yankee folk).

When I woke up I ran some errands in this order:

Furniture in the Raw: We've been looking for a new dining room set. We found one we really liked there in November for about $180 (for the table) and $80/ea. for the chairs. There was a commercial on T.V. last night that the entire store was 50% off...so I went. I, jokingly, said to Jed on the way to Columbus (TEXAS) this morning that I'd be willing to bet my third testicle that the store marked their prices up 85% to give 50% off. AND I WASN'T TOO FAR OFF. The table that we liked A MONTH AGO was marked up to $999 with a 50% off sale price of $499. STILL $210 MORE than it was originally a month ago. OH, and those chairs. Today's price $274/ea. marked 50% off. FUCK YOU furniture in the raw, fuck you very much.

HEB: Jed asked for Chicken Pot Pie for dinner tonight. After I pulled the car out of the ditch I drove into when he said it I said, "OKAY", without giving him a chance to change his mind. Cuz TRUST me when I say my boo ain't a chicken pot pie kind of guy. Perhaps it had something to do with the bitter cold weather this morning???

Target: AGAIN. For real. I've been to Target 3 times today and I think "Ryan" the cashier thinks I'm stalking him. But I had to return the DVD player and buy Jed some fru-fru peppermint flavored mocha frappasumthing.

Crestview IGA: I was outta beer and there was a little girl in there selling fresh hot tamales that I bought...

Dinner was just getting out of the oven when I got home and Heath-O joined us for a family dinner. Out of habit we grabbed the "guest chair" for her place at the table and then we all realized Adrian wasn't there. BOO HOO. So quiet in our house tonight.

I wrapped 513 Christmas presents tonight while we listened to Christmas music and Jed asked me how much a GPS unit costs these days. It was while looking on-line that I realized I hadn't entertained you people yet today...and so here I am.

What a super fantastic weekend. Hope y'alls was swell too. Gearing up for an UN-believably busy holiday week. But you know what? I'm blessed with a super fantastic family and a great group of friends (both IRL and IIL)...so it's all worth every second that I don't have to myself.

December Challenge Day 14

So this morning after church* I was starving and we decided to have a family Sunday brunch at our old favorite, Trudy’s. It was a’ight, but honestly…either we’ve been gone too long and the quality has gone downhill, or it was never really fantastic to start with. They had some DELICIOUS carne guisada, but other than that, everything else was just plain ol’ plain ol’.

Next we ran up to Target to pick up a couple of supplies and various knicka knackas we probably didn’t really need. It was either the carne guisada or the fiber tablets that I took before we left the house, but something happened that we ended up cutting our trip short.

Got home and I took a nap with the bug while poppa took Adrian comic book shopping. GOD I LOVE MY SUNDAY AFTERNOON NAPS.

We had a fairly lazy rest of the Sunday afternoon, but this evening we took the boys down to Lady Bird Johnson Lake to see the magnificent trail of lights. Folks, I present to you…photos. DEAL WITH IT.

*Yes, church bitches. Don’t sound so shocked. Get over it.

December Challenge Day 13

I’ve had my tits slung over the stove ALL friggin’ day. Well, except for that hour I had to go hang with the straighties this morning followed by the hour at the grocery market followed by the hour and a half nap with the kids. With the exception of THOSE few precious hours, I’ve been in the kitchen ALL EFFIN’ day. Did we rewind to Thanksgiving? It sure feels like it.

So I wanted to put some drivel out for you, the ones who are expecting me to fail miserably in the challenge. I figure if I get this put out by midnight on the west coast, I’ve complied with the rules of the challenge.

TOP CHEF:

Cuz I’m a…

Anyway, so I spent the day in the kitchen finalizing 2/3 of the treats that I’m making for the holidays for friends, teachers, Jed’s co-workers, etc. The kids helped me out a bunch, and had a lot of fun. We made about 12 pounds of spicy pretzels; chocolate covered pretzels (they didn’t turn out too pretty, but, as Adrian said, “Drizzlin’ chocolate is the shit, pops”; chocolate covered Oreos (again, drizzle baby, drizzle); and 18 pounds of caramel corn. I’ve still got a little bit left to do tomorrow, but…hopefully it won’t take me the entire again. I’ve gone through a minimum of 180 Ziplock baggies; 28 sticks of butter; 8 pounds of brown sugar; 6 pounds of chocolate; and a gallon of corn syrup. I’ve literally used more butter today than I have all of last year.

Cinderfella, Cinderfella, all he hears is Cinderfella:

The boys played hurricane Ike in their room today, minus the water. The room looked like a bomb had gone off. Jed cleaned it three times. On the third time, he decided to start pulling toys out, leaving each boy with 5 toys. There’s a little anger in the house tonight. The boys are angry cuz they only have 5 toys each. Jed’s angry cuz he had to be the Grinch who stole the gifts of Christmas past.

Toilet madness:

I don’t know how often the rest of the planet goes through toilet seats, but I seem to be cursed with the shittest toilet seats in America. I have, no kidding, replaced my toilet seat a minimum of 4 times in the last year. For some reason the rim keeps cracking and breaking. NOW, in case anyone is interested, I did NOT change the toilet seat today while I was doing all my cooking…but it IS on my list of shit to do tomorrow.

Satan Clause:

The shopping is officially done folks! After we had dinner last night, Jed sent me to Toys R Crap for the “Sale of the CENTURY”. He was off all day on Friday and said several times throughout the day they were advertising on the television Toys R Us’s biggest sale of the year. Jed said, “The whole store is 40-75% off”. While he was shopping throughout the day, looking for gifts for the boys, I had given him a $40 each/boy limit on the gifts. Honestly folks, we’re about to get SO MUCH STUFF over the next two weeks from all the family/friends that the thought of where to put it all has already overwhelmed me. That said, I didn’t see the need to go and buy a bunch of stuff of our own, because by the time all the gifts are opened, the boys are going to be so distracted they’re not going to care who got them what. I did buy two special gifts from Santa…

I have to say, sending ME to Toy’s R Us by myself isn’t a good idea, at all. The place is a grown up kid’s wet dream. I found so much stuff that I couldn’t live without. I ended up getting Nate some dinosaurs. The kid is REALLY into dinosaurs lately. I got Adrian a really cool kids keyboard that plugs into a regular computer and it’s got a drawing pad on the side with an electronic pen. It’s supposed to help him learn how to write and read. I have a feeling what it’s REALLY going to do is eat up some of my precious computra time. I had a lot more stuff in my basket, but I ended up putting a lot back cuz I didn’t want to go crazy.

I’m really so tired that’s all I can think of at the moment. This will have to do for day number 13, I’ll try to do better tomorrow.

December Challenge Day 11

MIND PURGE:
I’ve been mostly awake since 242 this morning. I know this, because I got up and walked into the living room to see what time it was. The funny thing is, when I woke up I felt completely refreshed. Like I seriously thought I had OVER-slept and was running late. Noticing it was only 242, I knew I should probably lay back down and try to finish out the night. But I couldn’t fall asleep, of course, UNTIL about 30 minutes before the alarm was scheduled to go off…then I was COMPLETELY knocked out. My mind, during that three hours, was racing on a variety of topics. None really interesting, mind you. BUT since I have this “challenge”, what better place to purge, eh?

THE CONTINUING SAGA OF MY TOOTHLESS ASSHOLE:
I’m so glad hot Dr. Michael from Stuttgart took the time to post a comment on my blog yesterday. He rarely does, so when he shows up it’s an extra special treat. It may have been the subject matter, given Michael is a dentist, and one that I wouldn’t mind drilling around in my mouth! But he sort of touched on something very important in follow up to yesterday’s shag-nasty story.

I went to the Dental Barn and my uber-Metrosexual dentist listened to my tale of woe. He then said, “I can do an impression for you for a new crown today, or you can continue looking for your crown for the next two days and if you find it you can bring it in and I’ll put it back on”. Now, folks, I didn’t drop the thing on the floor in my living room and just couldn’t see it. What he had in mind was totally what Jed suggested. He wanted me to filter through my pooh and look for my tooth. He said, “I know it sounds disgusting, but we do it all the time. We’ll just wash it off, pop it in our sterilizer and it’ll be cleaner than it’s been for the last 8 years you’ve had it in there”. And he actually put my mind at ease. What sealed the deal was when he said, “It’ll be the difference between $518 for a new crown, or a $20 co-pay to have the original cemented back in”.

$498 is a lot of money. It didn’t take much convincing for me to decide what I was going to do. I told his dental hygienist that I would schedule an appointment for Friday morning and that I would look for the tooth between now and then. On Friday I will either bring in a corn-covered tooth, or I’ll have a new one made. I called in sick to work (NOT GAY), stopped by my local Walgreen’s for a bottle of Mag Citrate and went home to shit myself crazy for the rest of the day looking for my tooth.

NOW, I realize I’m opening myself up to a life-time of “Your breath smells like shit” jokes. SO, I have decided that I’m NOT going to reveal, ever, whether or not I found the tooth and whether or not I’ve got a new one. If any of you meet me in person, you’ll just have to wonder yourselves for the rest of your life! So this is officially the end of my traveling tooth saga.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME FOR THE HOLIGAYS:
Jed and I are 100% on the same page about where we spend Christmas day. Our boys WILL wake up in their own beds on Christmas day for the next dozen or so years so they can see what Satan brings them. This is our decision. It doesn’t matter what we have to do to be sure we’ll make that happen. The last couple of years we have gone to Galveston the day before Christmas eve, done the family Christmas eve spectacular on Christmas eve and then we load up the car and immediately head home at warp speed. Yeah, driving at midnight for 4 hours on Christmas eve sucks, but it’s completely worth it to see the boy’s faces on Christmas morning. THIS year, I’m not sure what’s going on. For the first time in a decade, our schedules don’t match up. Jed is off on the 24th and 25th, and I am off on the 25th and 26th. I guess the good news is we’re both off on Christmas day. But we may need to split up on Christmas eve, which totally sucks. The LAST time we split up on Christmas eve didn’t end well and I got stuck in OKC for a week! I’m having a mini-freak out about what this Christmas will look like.

ADDITIONALLY, my mind was racing about things I still have left to do “gift-wise” to finish preparing for the holidays. I still haven’t bought the boys anything. It’s hard to buy stuff before I actually need it. Living in a very small house, we have limited hiding space, and it never fails that Adrian will find it and bring it to me and ask if he can open it now. So I’ve been putting it off on one hand, but on the other hand I still don’t know what I want to get them. I also still have to get some more stuff for Cousin Ashley’s husband…whom I don’t really know that well insofar as what kind of stuff he likes…but I “drew” his name for the family gift exchange and am obligated to do so. AND ON TOP OF ALL THAT I still have to make all my candies and snacks and other stuff for all of the teachers, aides, bus drivers, etc. that are involved in the boy’s lives. I’ve got to do that this weekend…and while I love cooking, I stress out about whether or not I’ve forgotten anyone.

My dearest Walt has sent me 4 gigs of Christmas music that I’ve been playing on a non-stop loop since the beginning of December…so that’s been helping me get in the mood for Christmas and getting all this stuff done.

ABA:
I’m not talking about the Swedish pop SUPERSTARS…I’m talking about the end of this very long semester. The semester wasn’t longer than usual, it was mostly long because of the HUGE number of complete idiots in the classes I’ve had. I’ve discovered that I actually ENJOY math. Who knew? I distinctly recall, from high school, saying daily that this stuff was pointless and I’d never use it. And I was right. I’ve NEVER used it. And so when I had to take all these math classes for my degree program I had a little mini-freak-out. It turns out that I’m purdy good at this math thing. It’s like working a puzzle in a way. I killed the curve in the math class I took this semester. I was kicking myself last night because I showed up to take my final. And as professor hottie was handing out the exam he asked the idiot next to me if she had taken the last test yet. She said, “No, I’m going to take the zero and substitute it for my final”. I was confused. I said, “Huh? We don’t have to take the final”? And I was informed that the lowest test grade is dropped and that if we were fine with our previous grades we didn’t need to take the test. I’ve gotten a consistent 98, 98, 98, 94 on the four tests we’ve taken. So I technically didn’t need to take the test. BUT since I was there already AND I find it disrespectful to not show up when the professors give up their time, I decided to stay and take the test. And I’m glad I did. I really enjoyed taking that test…and that class, in general.

My history class sucks balls. I hate history. History sucks. You know why history sucks? Because everyone from history is dead, and being dead sucks. What I beat myself up about is I didn’t even have to take this fucking class. It wasn’t a requirement for my degree program. I was SUPPOSED to take a GOVERNMENT class, and I accidentally signed up for history. I didn’t realize it until a week before the final drop date, and by that point I had committed and decided to finish it. DESPITE the fact that it’s going to completely fuck up my 4.0 GPA. Because I’m going to be DAMN lucky if I get a B in the class. The final is tonight, so this is another thing that kept my mind racing.

My English Comp II class was ANOTHER freebie class that I ACCIDENTALLY signed up for this semester. I REALLY must learn to read the fine print, eh? I thought it was a logical assumption that if you were required to take ENGLISH COMP I, that English Comp II was going to be a requirement. OTHERWISE, why the fuck would you put the “I”??? So I’m beating myself up for wasting an entire semester with two classes I didn’t even need. Fortunately for me I skated through my English Comp II class. And I really, really enjoyed it. I had a mini-anxiety attack at the beginning of the semester because the Comp II class was different than the Comp I class in regards to in Comp I you were allowed to pick your own subject matter for your essays. In Comp II, we had to do literary analysis of short fiction. I think everyone is aware that I don’t “pleasure read”? I hate reading almost as much as I hate dentists (EXCEPT FOR YOU MICHAEL!). The thought of having to read 19 stories in 9 weeks filled me with dread. It ended up not being so bad, but…fine print (F)reddy, read…fine…print. As I said, SKATED by, got an A. Done with it.

While on the subject of my grades and school in general, I suppose now would be a good time to announce the results of the latest blog poll. In regards to how many classes I should take this next semester: 4 of you think I should cut back to 1 class and take 19 years to finish this damn thing; 6 of you think I should go back to the 2 that I took last semester; only 2 of you thought I did okay with the 3 classes I took this semester while maintaining my on-line life; and 2 of you thought I was too old to be in school and should finish this up quicker and take 4 classes. While I didn’t take any of the votes into serious consideration, I decided to (AND ALREADY DID) enroll in 4 classes this next semester.

WHERE ARE MY…:
The last thing that was rushing through my pea-sized brain during the early morning hours was the amount of stuff I want to get done around the house during the next 4 weeks before this next semester starts. I have NO idea how or if I’ll be able to get it done, but my list is growing. I’ll just check it off a little at a time and won’t sweat the rest.

December Challenge Day 6

We were on our way out to dinner last night when we picked up Adrian at school. Not only did he have the shittiest day ever in class (teacher wants ANOTHER parent/teacher conference to discuss his behavior issues), but he also apparently died at the bowling alley in Extend-A-Care for acting like an asshole and the entire group of kids on the field-trip were forced to end their “fun time” early and go back to the school. The three adults were in tears when we got to the school to pick him up because they say he hit the ground face first with such force that they thought he may have fractured a vertebrae or something. I was so angry about his behavior in school that we cancelled our dinner plans and went home instead. I felt like a dick for punishing him after he had a “nearly life-ending experience”, but I sent him to bed…at 6pm…without any dinner…and a stern lecture. Our fun family night out, therefore, ended up being a sack of burgers from What-a-Burger and watching Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer with Nathan while Adrian cried himself to sleep.

This morning Adrian and I were in much better frames of mind. We had a discussion about his shitty behavior through the week, as well as whether or not he was actually hurt from his near death experience. He said that it didn’t even really hurt when he fell. Oh well.

We went to our regularly scheduled Campfire meetings. It had been our first in a few weeks with all the Thanksgiving/Oklahoma travel. (It’s only once a week, IT’S ONLY ONCE A WEEK)

Afterwards I sent Jed to the theater with Nathan to see Bolt again while I kept Adrian home with me. Perhaps I’m punishing him too much? But I don’t know what else to do to get through to him other than putting a remote control shock collar on him and giving the remote to his teacher for Christmas. I’m not really sure what the deal is. I know how he is when I drop him off at school…my sweet little loveable Adrian. But something happens to him between 730 am and 1030 am and his body, mind, and mouth are taken over by Satan.

So after campfire Adrian and I went and did our weekly grocery shopping AND we bought all the supplies to make our Christmas gifts for various teachers/teacher aides/co-workers, etc. I bought TEN bags of pretzels y’all. For real. I loves pretzels. BUT, these ain’t for me, sadly. I’m doing my oft requested asshole burning spicy pretzels (I keep telling folks to eat them first before sticking them up their assholes, but they just don’t learn) and I’m going to make some white/brown chocolate drizzled pretzels as well. A “naughty/nice” pretzel blend, if you will. I also bought stuff to make some slap your momma good caramel corn and cashew brittle and candy cane brittle.

Then we ran to gay-Wal-Mart (Target) to buy some more stuff. We got a last second birthday invitation to one of Adrian’s classmates yesterday (thanks for that advanced warning) at Chuck-e-fucking-Cheese’s of all places. Two of Jed’s knocked up co-workers will be soaking their panties soon, so I got a couple of baby gifts. I got a ton of other shit too that added up to 140 bones, but I can’t honestly remember what it all was. I DO know at one point the cashier was feverishly looking for something and I noticed the screen said “scan gift card now” and she then handed me a $5 giftcard. I asked what it was for, assuming I had been her 100th blow job for the day or something. She said it was because they had merchandise throughout the store that if you bought certain quantities of such you automatically got a giftcard. Apparently the 4 Glade candles I bought netted me a $5 gift card.

So here’s my thought about the current state of financial affairs.

Rather than giving me 5 fucking dollars back for spending $10 on candles, WHY NOT JUST LOWER THE PRICE OF YOUR FUCKING CANDELS BY $1.25? Instead of giving me back $5000 for buying your $32,000 car, WHY NOT JUST PRICE YOUR MERCHANDISE APPROPRTIATELY TO BEGIN WITH? Why bother with 25, 50, or even 75% off sales? Merchants, hear this. WE realize you’re not LOSING money by selling items at 75% off. YOU WOULDN’T BE SELLING IT AT 75% OFF IF IT WERE GOING TO NET YOU A LOSS. Merchants, if you would mark your shit at a reasonable cost to begin with you wouldn’t be having problems getting people through your doors now. Last week I bought two things at Target. I bought a game called “Break the Ice” for Adrian to give to Jed for his birthday. I paid $4 for the game. Today I bought the same game for the party we’re going to tomorrow. I paid $5 for it today. AT BOTH prices Target is still making a profit. AT TWO DOLLARS, Target would probably still make a profit. It infuriates me, ESPECIALLY since I KNOW how much I paid for the fucking game last week the way stores fuck with their prices. MOST INFURIATING…last week I bought a dual screen DVD player for the car (at Target). I paid $88. Jed’s cousin mentioned she wanted one for Christmas. Since I drew her husband’s name for the family gift exchange this year I thought I would get him one. Today, same Target, SAME DVD PLAYER, $164. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Ford, GM, Chrysler, and any of you other greedy business owners out there (Target dude) can go fuck yourselves. Sorry you’re failing, but quit taking advantage of your customer base. Perhaps that’s why you’re failing. Consumers are tired of your shit.

I think I’ve spread enough cheer here. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

December Challenge Day 4

NEW POLL!!!
Not for you folks reading this on MySpace, but since I’ve been cross-posting over on Blogspot, this applies to y’all. The rest of you can skip ahead.



Regarding Teddy. 4 of you would like to see me shot. This hurts. . 5 of you think he’s hot enough to nut on. YAAAY us!!! 8 of you are into horse-sex. That’s disgusting. You know you can die from that shit, right??? And 3 of you need to get off the interwebs and watch some news every once in a while.

I’ve posted a new poll (again, over at blogspot) for you to participate in. You only have 5-days, so snap-snap.

B, as in…



This saddens me a little bit.

Tuesday evening I ran by the school to drop off my “A-paper” and to see if my B-paper had been accepted. Class starts at 705. When I walked in the door I was SHOCKED, I tell you, SHOCKED, to see the professor sitting at the desk in the front of the room with ONE other person sitting in the class. And the other boy in the room wasn’t even from MY class, he was from a DIFFERENT class making up time. There were, at the beginning of the semester, 27 people in my class. As I was digging through the pile of manila folders looking for mine I said, “Did all the others just stop coming”? And he said they had. He said the majority of the class was fine with the C’s they had gotten and didn’t care to pursue a B or even an A. I found my folder and was happy to see “B paper accepted 12/02/08” written on the outside. What this means is NOW the minimum I’ll get for the class is a B. IF my A paper is accepted, then I’ll end up with the A. But what this also means is that kids today are fine with being “average”. WHY? WHY WOULD YOU STOP AT A C WHEN YOU HAVE FOUR WEEKS OF CLASS LEFT? Is it laziness? Or do they just not care? A “C” for me is unacceptable.

ANCIENT history:
I have a history test tonight. Have I mentioned how much I hate history? I wonder how miserably I’ll fail it tonight. With any luck I’ll get a C…and I’ll be happy with that! (Pot/Kettle)

Amazon.com ROCKS SOCKS:
I’m done with ALL of my Christmas shopping. I did it all in about 20 minutes on Amazon.com and was able to get free shipping AND “the best prices”. Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the packages to arrive so I can wraps my pressies…and study for my test.

Mmmmmmm, gurl, you twisted:
I’m ALMOST ashamed to say this out loud. One of my stalkers posted a tweet the other day about the Twisted Sister Christmas album. I thought he was joking. He said it was “actually good”. I KNEW he was joking. BUT then I found it in my GuyTunes store…and I clicked on the sample links. AND I’LL BE GO TO HELL it WAS good. So I bought the Twisted Sister Christmas Album and it’s my new favorite album of 2008. Merry Christmas yo, for reals.

Oh what a great holiday weekend…so far. You’re most especially welcome for the break from my blog postings since Wednesday. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not sure what came over me that particular day. I know it wasn’t Jed.

I spent my Wednesday having fun with the kid, who was out of school that day. We ran a bunch of errands during the morning (shopping for poppa’s birthday pressie, which I can tell you, cuz my kitten don’t read my ramblings, was a “Don’t Break The Ice” game that Adrian “just knows poppa is gonna love it”.) I got him a few other things too…a pair of invisible underpants, and a bottle of lube, but I’m sure “Don’t Break The Ice” will be his favorite. For lunch we met Leslie and Jed up at Chipotle for a little burrito action. Side note for you Yankees, there’s no such thing as a “burrito” in Mexico OR Texico. “Burrito” translates into “little ass”, if you will. And not the kind that you make love to, the kind you beat with a riding crop to get him moving with your cart of vegetables you just picked up from the market. So if you think reciting the menu from Taco Bell makes you bilingual, all you’re doing when you order a “burrito” is calling the employee a little ass.

After lunch Adrian and I started working on preparations for the side dishes for Thanksgiving dinner. It was fun for him for about 3 minutes before he washed his hands and went to watch something on the idiot box and left me alone in the kitchen to cook and clean…much like his poppa does now that I mention it. The folks were on their way down from OKC and got caught up in multiple traffic jams. The usual 6 hour trip ended up taking them a little over 10 hours. Needless to say, they weren’t NEARLY as happy to see us when they finally arrived as Nathan was. The squealing of “DAAAAADDDEEEEEE” when he got out of the car made me want to send him to the grandparents EVERY week just to hear him scream my name when he returned. I don’t think the folks even turned the car off. Just dropped the kid off and headed to their hotel.

Thursday morning I woke up at 6 and didn’t leave the kitchen until about 9 that evening. That’s not entirely true…I was allowed out for 20 minutes to eat with everyone before getting back in there and finishing up deserts and loading the dishwasher. It was so nice having the folks on my turf again. Our very good folks, the Fenders, joined us as well. It was good food and great conversation. After lunch dad took a nap with Nathan while Adrian entertained himself and the rest of us played a rousing game of Phase 10. Some interesting conversation came up during the game:

Leslie: Babs, do you know what tattoos your son has?

Babs: Well I know he has a _____ on his arm and a ____ on his _____.

Leslie: Yeah, but what and where’s his third one?

Babs: Uhhhh, I didn’t know he had a third one, but it doesn’t surprise me.

Leslie: Well Jed tried to draw it one night while we were all eating out together and I know what he drew was the tattoo, but it looked like a sea dragon or something and they were both laughing so hard we couldn’t get it out of either one of them what it was.

Babs: A sea dragon, huh?

Leslie: Yeah. Just so you know Babs, when your son dies, I’m most definitely going to be pantsing him at the funeral. I just don’t want you to be alarmed when I’m pulling his pants off him. I’m not a pervert or anything, but I have to know what that tattoo is before he’s put in the ground.

And then, my most favorite conversation.

Babs: (F)reddy, can you show me how to create a MySpace page? I think I want to start a blog.

(F)reddy: (Spewing his beer across the table) WHAT? WHAT ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT FOR:

Babs: Because I find them entertaining. In fact, I’ve recently found yours and I’ve been quite entertained by your stories. In fact, you know which one of your blogs was my favorite?

Folks. I nearly died. FOR REALS.

Babs: The one where you took pictures of my house and made fun of me on your blog was my favorite!

OH MY GOD.

It took us all a good 20 minutes to stop laughing.

After the Fender’s left mom and I spent a couple of hours on the internet trying to find things she wanted to buy for all the grandkids for Christmas. Having found most of the stuff on Amazon, she was delighted how easy the whole thing was…but then we noticed that Wal-Shart had one of the Madden NFL games on sale for Black Friday morning at about ½ of what it was on line. She asked if I’d take her up there in the morning. I told her I wouldn’t do the “door-buster” thing, but that I’d run her up there so she could get them. So…

Friday morning I woke up at 430, ran to pick her up at the hotel and ran her to do her shopping. Things were not nearly as hectic here as they were in other areas of the country. We got in, got her stuff, and got out. We celebrated with “breakfast” back at the hotel afterwards. I ran home to grab a shower and the family and then met back up with the folks to drive to New Braunfels to hook up with Jed’s family (aunt, uncle, cousins, cousin’s spouses, cousin’s kid, grandmother, and red-headed step-child). From there ALL SIXTEEN OF US caravanned from New Braunfels to Fredericksburg, Texas to do some Hill-Country shopping and eat some German food. We had a lovely time co-mingling the families and choking down some beer and schnitzel. I’m so glad pappy drove on the way home, cuz (F)reddy was a little more than sleepy. When we walked in the house I collapsed in my La-Z-Boy just as my mommy says, “Hey, why don’t you put your tree up”? Huh? What? NOW?

Folks, my house is tiny. It’s 1100 square feet if you’ve got the windows open. Jed and I are big boys. We have two very active toddlers, and two very needy dogs. Add 2 parents who are a little more than twice our sizes, and it’s a very crowded house. So of course I…

Went to the garage and dug out all of our Christmas stuff. Granny wanted to see the boys’ faces as we put up the tree. Moreover, she wanted to take pictures of them “helping me” put the tree up. And, I’ll have to admit, as exhausted as I was, the boys really did have a great time setting up the tree and pulling off the ornaments as I put them on.

Saturday morning we got up early again and met the folks at Waterloo Icehouse of breakie. I had my standard Chicken Fried Steak and eggs with hashbrowns, toast, and copious amounts of coffee. After breakfast was over, we did our kiss n’ cry in the parking lot and said farewell to the folks. Jed and I ran the boys to the theater to see Madagascar 2. It wasn’t as good as the first one, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. After the movie we ran home and I got to take a much needed nap with the boys. After the nap, Jed CHALLENGED me to take Nathan to get his haircut. Never one to back down from a challenge, I accepted.

You should know, Nathan HATES getting his haircut. He considers any hairdressers to be his arch-nemesis. I once saw him (when he was two) snatch the scissors out of a woman’s hand and stab her in the eye with it. Another time, I watched in horror as he grabbed the clippers out of a guy’s hand and shave his balls with them. The hairdresser’s, not Nathan’s (cuz Nate’s only 3 and don’t got no hair on his balls yet.) To say he doesn’t like getting his haircut is an understatement. You would think Nathan is Superman and haircuts are his kryptonite. OR, you could simply believe that Nathan is Sampson. We just don’t take him that often because it is THAT horrible of an experience. The woman today certainly did a fantastic job AND deserved EVERY CENT of her 120% tip. I REALLY hope her hair grows back quickly, and I’m VERY sorry for handing him the lighter AND the hairspray at the same time.



Tonight I made some Turkey Tetrazini for dinner with some of the left over turkey. It was delicious. But now I’m tired. I’m sure not half as tired as you are reading this, but tired nonetheless. I have one more day tomorrow to “relax”…but it’ll be spent studying for my last week of school. That’s good for you, cuz it gives you a week to read all this crap.