five golden rings!

yeah yeah yeah it's the one line i know by heart so far without having to watch the video then watch every shaky amateur rockette video on youtube. PLEASE!!! release the damned radio city Christmas spectacular already!

it's out tuesday...which is ALSO the day the Disneyland A converts back to being an A instead of an asshole piece of candy corn... i know exactly how Obama is feeling, tuesday is going to be crazy for me also :)

i'm listening to auld lang syne from sex and the city. how is it that just hearing a song can make you feel like it's new year's eve and you're hopelessly lost in alphabet city, freezing cold, unloved and lonely? stupid asshole Big...

we tricked or treated....




check out the big brother watching over his little brother - awwww!


my favorite house to visit


this house has the best candy (movie theater size hershey bars:)

bleck friday

i hate days when my computer is slow and dumb. it has this weird delay when i hit a key where it has to think, then react slooowly like a hungover lethargic teenager earning $5.75 an hour. oh and try uploading a picture to costco... oh this is far too hard for it, it flashes some message about fricking java and then an arrow spins in a circle for 5 minutes for absolutely no reason

my skirt is tight. 'if it doesn't fit, you must have quit' the old saying goes. hmm, i kind of did quit and it definitely doesn't fit anymore. must change that (after i finish my blogging, coffee and another scone...)

why do my cats insist on eating plastic bags? and string? but leave bugs to crawl all over me.... i seriously want to write them up for their low standards in customer service.

this was Danny's Halloween cookie party at preschool. that is his best friend on the right with Sam. Danny HAS to mention, everytime he talks about Damian, that "he once spat water at me but i forgabe him!" :)

dear Suze, it's an old costume, not his college fund :D

in barnes and noble - ignore the people making out on the left in front of innocent children... get a freaking room you pervs!

Theresa poses with the Longaberger basket building picture, visiting the Longaberger building is the latest thing on my bucket list. Not only has she been to visit this extraordinary sight but she even owns a basket or two :)

hit me baby ONE more time :)

it's sick and pathetic and lame and shameful but i love Ms Britney Spears.

i am still feeling awful sad over the dogs eating my beloved starfish collection. sure they were dead and all but still - it's just wrong. and you should smell the dogs' breath and farts today... nasty.

i just returned from the most frightening scarefest ever - 'treats in the (damned) streets' in old town orange. oh my gosh, abandoned cars everywhere, cordoned off streets, children in masks running blindly across the street... total chaos. i thought maybe there had been a mini nuclear bomb dropped on the plaza or something really awful. no - just free candy and the people who will go to any lengths to get it.

speaking of which have i ever mentioned how much i hate candy? i know, it's hard to believe, right? :) but when you've eaten cadbury's dairy milk from the day you were born, tootsie rolls just are not going to cut it for you. nosireebub. i do like 3 Musketeers however (a poor but acceptable English rip off of Milky Way) and Almond Joy (take out the big pointless nut and it's an English Bounty)

arrrghhhhhhh. i spent hours (OK, minutes...) photoshopping Sam's class picture together (i posed 5 at a time at the halloween party) and then closed it. don't you love that...

today's "one hundred and twenty hours to go" playlist:
waiting for that day - george michael
making your mind up - bucks fizz (it's my dance routine for the week!!)
tubthumping - chumbawamba
instant kharma - john lennon
jane says - jane's addiction
short skirt long jacket - cake Sarah Palin i LOVE you!!! (for all the wrong reasons:)
lump - presidents of the usa
happy hour - the housemartins

from Sam's halloween party
introducing... Captain Edward John Smith! (the very first victim of the Titanic disaster:)


the group picture, 4 pics frankensteined together in 10 seconds flat... pardon the awful PSing job


the party (Sam was out of costume about 8 seconds after the parade ended)

this is not here

i am desperately seeking a vacation to the Cape. i will accept no substitutes. i just want a white house on a fenced wooded lot for little boys to explore, within walking distance to an empty windswept beach with dilapidated wooden fences and battered wooden steps and pristine white sand dunes. i'm not asking for the world ;)

speaking of the Cape, i bought some starfish there to paint white and hang on the christmas tree. yesterday i painted them and left them outside to dry. this morning i was greeted by this tragic sight...

and two nasty little dogs tucking into their tasty new bones :|

which reminds me my washing machine always looks so despondent when i open it

either it's copying my expression or it hates laundry too. probably both, huh?

today we took Sunny Bunny to the park


that white plastic bookbox holder in his mouth is his new favorite toy (?)

the writer of the hokey pokey obviously never snuggled with Danny because THIS is what it's really all about :)

what kind of bird has feathers this long??? a BIG BIRD!

lunch at mcdonalds for him, diet coke/purse emptying for me

what i do while my child recruits other children to be dinosaurs too at the mcdonald's play place....

i take everything out of my purse... sort it into 4 groups based on which corner pocket it belongs to... and put it all back in again

wednesday is the best day (i keep telling myself)

i hate hanna andersson. her boys clothes just SUCK and that is me being kind. potentially perfect aran sweaters massacred with henley buttons? v neck sweaters with polo shirts underneath, just AWFUL! did i mention stripes in all different widths in garish shades... seriously i know i should be grateful she saves me all kinds of money and guilt... maybe she is Suze Orman's swedish alter ego :)

argh. my EIGHT YEAR OLD says the same effing phrase over and over and over and over and over and over again (how come i am the only person in the world that notices and has to go and control/alt/delete him)

ok i am clearly:
a) a puritan
b) totally self conscious
c) british
d) all of the above
but what the hell has getting-your-tits-out-for-the-lads got to do with breast cancer awareness.......?

i really really need to stop sewing and actually count the 10 feet tall stack of mittens i have made this past week. i need 50 and i am pretty sure i have about 180ish already...

next weekend (post election, i am too weak and thready to do anything this weekend) we are entirely child free...... HORRAY!!!!!!!!!!!! we are going to palm springs to explore pioneertown and the salton sea (which i always thought was in Utah but it's right here by the land of the dinosaurs, walmart supercenters and barry manilow's house!!) this calls for a roadtrip playlist, trader joes chocolate croissants for the drive and plentiful stops to take landscape portraits with my sugarbear :)

late tuesday

i am soooooooooo effing fricking tired. Sam wanted to sleep in between us last night. 2 hours later i gave up and slept in the spare room. 2 hours later Sam was up. we watched dinosaur movies. finished dropping him at school and was just ironing, having the time of my life, when the school called to say he was sick and wanted to come home. argh, good times...

i am about to asphyxiate my computer (i hold down the power button till the life runs out of it) if it shows me one more booked-up hotel in palm springs. if i dont find a mid-century jewel with a pair of flaming hosts, a lovely office dog and free wifi, i am going to start throwing breakable things around

i am listening to bucks fizz 'making your mind up'... i can remember the little dance skirt ripping routine like eurovision 1981 was yesterday (just in case you don't... the skirt rip maneuver is at 1:30 mins :)

sure noone here knows Lena Zavaroni, but the former child star of "Ma he's making eyes at me" fame, is DEAD. you turn your back on a country for 5 minutes (... and 12 years) and everyone dies and no-one so much as mentions it the next time you call home.

from today... first time in Panera, we HAD to get a picture :)

late monday news

don't you love it when you have a perfectly acceptable halloween costume for your kid and four days before halloween they lose all interest in Power Rangers and beg to be a velocorapter instead... so i have 4 days to find a size 4/6 velocorapter unscratchy costume....

it wouldn't be such a tall order if my mailman wasn't likely to steal it for HIS own sick little parade on friday night. the mailman also took a shine to Danny's much anticipated Walking with Dinosaurs: Allosaurus DVD... and countless other books and items i have bought over the years that he has kept and then packaged back up as best he could and delivered them with a 'damaged in transit' note when he is bored with them and he can tell i am getting suspicious. and it isn't just THIS mailman... all my mailmen all throughout my lifetime have been total kleptos....

i hang my head in shame and confess i am loving flickr for all the wrong reasons today! it is like a human petri-dish and watching the bacteria grow and multiply is truly fascinating. i will STOP! soon....... :)

Danny's word of the day: penis. he says it so slowly and carefully using his 'nice baby language' as Sam calls it... "peeeee..."(i cringe hoping he is going to say -zza... or -nut... we are in the middle of Sprouts for gawds sake... then shrivel up and die when he emphasizes the) "nuthhhhh!" and everyone spins around. "see Mama!! this apple is shaped like a peeenuth! and look at this pumpkin... it has a BIG peeeeenuth!"

today's 'palm springs perfect evening' playlist........
something stupid - frank and nancy sinatra
catch the wind - donovan
everybody's talkin' - harry nilsson
rain - the beatles
stardust - nat king cole
my way - frank sinatra

today's pics...

dear dr phil, is this normal?

umm... how about him wanting this cat wig? a cat wig... 90% off on saturday, you mark my words Danny....

i read an article online that Target put up these cool Os for Obama and everything online is true, right...? :)


spooky dinosaur pumpkin patch diorama

these two are as cute as speckled pups :)

monday

what the hell kind of word is 'remolosi'??? it's one of those authenticator words that you have to strain to see and type in wrong four times - i seriously hate them especially at Ticketmaster when i can't get the word right to save my life and front row tickets are selling like hotcakes but i get the uncool row R seats... so wrong and i won't buy them.... must be A-F or FORGET IT!

i am so sick of people dying on ER (i am light years behind watching reruns waiting to catch up so we can go back to the Doug Ross years:)... last night it was Kerry Weaver's girlfriend who i actually don't like at all so it was kinda OK (Kerry can do soooo much better for herself) but still i go to bed feeling emotionally expended. oh and how come Luka is STILL SINGLE? his only prospect is that 17 year old nurse/mom who picks him up and drops him repeatedly. Luka YOU can do so much better also :)

sigh...i WISH Trader Joes would open at 8am, it is barbaric to have to wait till 9am to buy essentials like hot dog buns and pumpkin bread mix.... i would shop there every morning after dropping Sam at school, for sure. Trader Joe - wake up earlier and you will have ONE more happy customer for your trouble ;)

i hate to talk politics but i wish the democratics animal was an elephant not a dumb donkey... why do we get the one that doesn't look adorable on teeshirts and as little felt picture frames... who picked a DONKEY and what on earth were they thinking...?

last night's pumpkin carving extravaganza:
it's ok it's not a sharp knife :)

Sam hollowing his pumpkin and complaining (mostly complaining)

make them look like THIS Dad!!

the scary pumpkin on the right is to terrify little 'yes on 8'/'mccain/palin' kiddos in the neighborhood :)

sunday bloody sunday

it hasnt been bloody at all but i don't know another song about sundays... manic sunday...? no it's monday... i don't like sundays... nope, monday again. at the catholic school i went to, saying bloody would totally make Sister Barbara's eyes pop out and her jaw drop in fake horror.... the word God was quite acceptable though.

so today after reading countless insanely dull articles about sugar cookie dough i attempted to conquer my nemesis once and for all. i copied the recipe VERFRICKINGBATIM even rolling it and leaving it in the fridge 3 painful hours before cutting out my bats and cats and ghosts. they STILL fell apart.... asshole cookie dough, world war 4 is soooo ON!

yawwwwn.... too tired to add anything but pictures tonight..... a busy weekend at the rice corporation for sure

at the pumpkin patch yesterday.... they could only take home a pumpkin they could carry :)

somewhere behind that cloud of candy floss is Danny, hyperactive and very sticky

our hero rescues Sam from the under the huge pumpkin

at Mandibu this morning with Miss Dana and Ryan....

a sign from God that i must buy the beach house behind her... right?

Ryan and Danny and Oreo cookies for lunch (Ryan is 3 days older than Danny)

Danny and I brave the scary fish restaurant once again

rescued from a greasy placemat and placed against my heart where he belongs <3

saturday afternoon

i hope, i hope, i hope Tina Fey is on SNL tonight... goshdarnit to think we, as a nation, might only have 2 more weeks of Sarah makes me both manically depressed and violently happy all at the same time..... but mostly the latter :)

on my thursday walk a huge fire broke out in our neighborhood - an entire block was on fire and the surrounding streets were closed off... never a dull moment on my walks, i tell ya ;) at first i was concerned our house was on fire until i had a wild fantasy about rebuilding my mid century dream home from the ashes with Nake Berkus' help, of course :)

oh man, last night i had such a hypoglycemic headache, we HAD to stumble into Outback Steakhouse to eat. it's official, the blooming onion is the most wretched appetizer EVER. bar none!! and they serve it with a pot of what appears to be spicy orange (gloss/satin?) paint...

then we went to Susie-Cake's where things went uphill fast. i though Susie's red velvet cupcake was the most magical tasting cupcake on earth... until i tasted Susie's pumpkin cream cheese cupcake. oh... my.... gosh.... heaven in a paper cup (at a ridiculous price) speaking of ridiculous the toy store down the road had a not-even-fancy trike that was $270... i think that was what my first car cost...

yesterday i saw some catty comment online about Michelle Obama's poor grades in school. i don't have too many positive things to say about someone who considers complaining a 'moral flaw' ;) but... what the hell do her grades have to do with the price of fish??? about as much as Cindy McCain's addiction to painkillers me thinks....

random pics:

a candid moment captured at home


overcoming phobias... in the feminine protection aisle, in broad daylight, with MEN around (the tiny speck behind me... some fears take years to completely overcome)


look who we bumped into (i couldn't help but notice George's lovely hands) in walmart's silk flower aisle


as they walked away we found they had set up this heinous display! i could NOT believe my eyes...... but if i had been a fire marshall (off duty or NOT) i would have arrested the both of them for their shenanigans :)