new items on the shit list...

old people
especially ones who insist on trying to drive and go shopping and stuff that involves keeping up with the speed of life. and is it my imagination or are old people kind of nasty these days? they used to be nice in the old days and smell like parma violets and have candy in their handbags and they were a little eccentric but fascinating and they were always kind, but not anymore! now they are just mean and annoying and try to touch my pretend baby, while i am putting my groceries on the conveyor belt :| do i honestly need to get a big sign for the infant seat that says "it's flu season so please do not touch the baby under any circumstances, even if his bootie has fallen off... that means you too, grandma!"... because i will :|

stater bros
i am officially boycotting stater bros. like, forever!!! today i stopped to get diet coke and noticed their baking sale - buy 10 items and get $5 off. how could i resist?! so i quickly dashed around the store, grabbing golden brown sugar and cream cheese (which incidentally was in a completely different dept to butter just to add to the misery) only to find on my receipt (after i had left of course) that the coupon took off $0.00 instead of $5.00 :| i called the store and apparently one of the 10 baking items wasn't in the promotion, but the nice cashier didn't bother to tell me that. i sent a member of my family back to claim my $5, but it's so totally over between us, stater bros. and i mean it this time. for real!!

hi-back booster seats
whoever invented this device is one sick puppy - hi-back booster seats are the work of the devil sent to torture parents of preschoolers just a little more. firstly they are ugly and have gross scratchy covers. second, when you thread the seat belt through the red thing, it locks everytime a kid pulls on it and won't budge at all, which requires the parent to crawl into the back of the car and unthread it completely in order to unlock it, fasten the seat belt, rethread it through the red thing, then climb back into the front of the car, by which time the child in the seat needs a snack and has dropped a beloved toy. multiple this by 6 times in an average each day and multiply that by 2 :| the day my kids outgrow the last hi-back booster seat we are having a carseat bonfire (and i don't care if you're not supposed to burn plastic!)

'tiger woman' at preschool
this woman insists on always waiting for my space even though i am not leaving :| this morning i refused to rush so she tried to squeeeeze her suburban into the compact space next to my minivan, as i wrangled a 5 year old in a poofy un-carseat-friendly pettiskirt and a past-naptime 3 month old into their carseats. tiger woman, i don't care for you very much :|

back after i finally eat for the first time today with pics xo

it's friday somewhere!

am i the only person in my house with eyes? apparently yes :| why is it... when someone asks "Moooooom... where is my snow covered miniature school house?", and i say "did you check the cubby where you keep all your books and crafts?" and he says "i can't find it!" do i go over there and see it right before my eyes in the cubby with the books and crafts??? why???!

no freaking way. i finally, after days of waiting and searching, have $49.89 of wares in my oriental trading co shopping cart!!! and it's free shipping over $49!! praise Jesus!! we are soooo having a christmas ornament decorating party when the box arrives :)

oh for the love of pete... i go to check out and suddenly all the things i have put in the cart previously, only to break off to fix a snack, pick up a child from school, answer an IM, etc etc, are there waiting to be purchased :| all $201 of them. now i have to painstakingly, one by one, delete all the extra things (waiting for the cart to painstakingly reload after each individual X) to get the total back down to $49.89. there is no empty cart button :| seriously, this is why i curse so much :| and why i NEVER complete an order at oriental trading co

off to drown my sorrows at amazon.com - where the cart is sooo much easier to steer :|

wednesday things

tonight i realized a lifelong dream - to enjoy a chicken dinner at Polly's Pies! and Polly did NOT disappoint... even though the place did have a faint smell of indoor dogs, and leo sayer playing in the background. but it was lovely and familiar and reminded me of my babysitter's house circa 1975 :) they even had my 3rd favorite pie ever (after my homemade apple and rightmoon pumpkin) from England - real life egg custard pie, which is VVVVHTF in the USA :)

bar none THE funniest joke ever:
what did the zero say to the eight?
nice belt!!

a joke i made up all by myself:
what did the one say to the eleven?
i didn't know you had a twin! (it makes sense... right...? or would eleven having a twin make it 1111...? urgh, i overthink everything....)

this is Danny's joke that he made up all by himself:
why was the three scared of the thousand?
because he was so much bigger (it's official, he's going to Harvard:)

off to bed in time to get nicely tucked in before criminal minds commences (squirrel man please LEAVE!!)

grateful saps r us

last night our family spent an hour of "quality time" around the table (after eating a homemade dinner together i might add) writing down what we are grateful for on little leaves made cut stolen home depot paint swatches. i had to add that they were stolen as we were sounding far too much like the people on facebook whose statuses i must hide to avoid vomiting over my laptop :) but technically it wasn't stealing as the paint swatches were free... but i am pretty sure all-you-can-stuff-in-your-pockets 'red pepper', 'crisp autumn leaves' and 'pumpkin patch' color swatches isn't really very cool...

anyway for lack of anything else to blog about today, here is what we are grateful for... some are in there twice as two people had the same thought :)

• all sorts of buffets all over the world (i swear this wasn't me)
• deeply fudgy brownies (ahem... that would be me)
• for all my toys
• Blackjack, Romeo and my buddy Humphrey (Grandma and Grandpa's dog)
• for my Mom and Dad
• home depot - hehe
• for my school, my friends and my teachers
• family vacations
• fishing with the boys (and actually catching something!)
• Uncle Justin
• being good at numbers
• the world wide web (AMEN!)
• kitty cats
• the smell of baby powder
• my house
• walmart
• my pets
• my Grandma and Grandpa
• opportunities to improve
• my beautiful wife (blush)
• Little Britain
• target
• my clever boys
• a wonderful family who all know how to laugh
• giving presents to my Mom
• smily babies
• el pollo loco
• Mrs Kay :-)
• my brother
• my house
• trips to Cape Cod
• a decent car
• my future iphone
• john's place onion rings
• being able to cook fish
• my bow and arrow
• my camera :-)
• cotton candy
• Mom and Dad
• my brother
• for big dreams and hope for the future
• bike rides with Dad and Sam
• for two wonderful dogs and the energy to walk them
• wood floors
• all you can eat vegas buffets (that might be me :-)
• pet rats
• healthy children
• food
• enough money to pay bills
• cadbury's dairy milk
• for a doctor who cares
• a healthy family
• venting on my blog (hehehe!)
• for the stores around us
• T.V.!!

whhhhhhhhy......

... are republican politicians always smarmy no-neck fat-asses who you know aren't very nice to their wives?

and ps Obama hasn't even been in office a year so saying progress a year on is 'slow' is kind of lame and fat-ass :|

le sigh <- yes i'm being fakey and pretentious and poking fun. le sigh is so pity party for one tortured soul woe is me :)

i am trying - TRYING - to find 4 books at amazon.com to buy for the 4 for 3 promotion. i swear they do it to piss me off, they put 3 books that i really want and the one book that would tip the scale 'letters from obedience school' by mark teague is nowhere to be found (except in spanish: which i already bought once by mistake) why amazon?? why??? why can't they do 4 for 3 on lenses? i know i could find 4 lenses i want... in a snap

looking on oriental trading co - i want to make ornaments but the selection is so overwhelming.... le sigh.

off to superwalmart for 'the scales' - heading inland to avoid runaway chickens (hopefully:) back later xoxoxo

stuff

didn't
go to walmart in satan ana as planned - it was just too scary to go through with, even though i really neeeeeed those scales. i bet i'll dodge bullets, swerve around runaway chickens and sit at green lights for hours waiting for people to hobble across the road in slow motion, only to get there and the scales will be out of stock or twice the online price (which i am just incapable of accepting) and then i will kick myself for even trying :

put
Mr Bumps on a diet. he was 6 pounds when we adopted him, now he is a hearty 19 pounds : according to wikipedia the average house cat is 10 pounds and a 'big-boned cat' is around 12. Friday is 9 pounds and looks completely anorexic to me - she never gets any food thanks to Mr Bumps, the bowl hog. so we moved the cat food bowl into Friday's bedroom to fatten her up and Mr Bumps has been furious with us all day. i don't think i can stand it anymore, i must return the bowl before his dirty looks kill me. sigh...

still addicted to (speaking of ginger cats and diets or lack there-of...)
ginger cat cookies from trader joes. they are so ginger-y and perfect with a nice cup of tea

received
an oriental trading co catalog with free shipping coupon code!! now i can shop!!! it's a very good thing :)

finally
found something funny about kathy griffin (apart from the fact that she is Andy Dick in drag) she said the thinner Oprah gets, the bigger her head becomes :) it's totally true!! and a little catty which is always fun :)

4am :|

yes i am up. with an itchy chest area that was so itchy during the night i just had to get up and get dressed and make coffee and fold laundry and make soup for lunch and sit down to research my condition when......... a child peeped his head around the corner to ask if it's up time yet. arrghh!!! no, it's most definitely NOT up time!! i have an itchy chest and am busy researching if it's a key symptom of H1Ni and i should be doing more than dousing my chest area with caladryl :

gap kids now has a stella mccartney collection. despite having a father who is the human equivilent to tofu (he's only awesome standing next to someone awesome - case in point: Heather Mills) i quite like her and so i excitedly waited for the big boys section to pop up. the cool looking (but instantly rejectable by my kids) sergent pepper jacket popped up but only in under 5s sizes despite having a picture in the BIG BOY section : and my baby's turning a big 5 :( and it's $128 so even if they DID have it in big boy styles i wouldn't ever buy it because my boys would never wear it for more than 3 seconds for a picture in a vinyl record store, in return for a chocolate milkshake : i am disappointed and ps these are a dollar at the dollar tree : and encouraging kids to "customize" (ie vandalize) their shoes with felt tip pens will NOT win you any mommy friends :

i used to like the gap a whole LOT!!! so much so that i had a gap card. now that card sits with a $10 credit balance that i can't find anything worth going into the red again for : now i never see anything worth buying and if i do find something remotely wearable it's only available in fushchia or all sold out in everythig but size 0-6 months :

and while i hate to go on and on and on about walmart and how much i adore them... i have to add one more reason to my ever-growing list - they now stock both eastern and california king bed sheets. target don't do that. for bedding for an eastern king bed you have to physically go east to AZ or NV to find it. target sucks!!

oh and another walmart like, i want these scales for rattie pictures - they are in stock at.... santa ana walmart (i always spell santa as satan... i know it's because santa ana is my own personal idea of what hell looks like :) i don't go to santa ana walmart ever, even though it's my closest walmart on paper. but today i must... so wish me luck... i'm goin' in :

my favorite things

so far of this year....

• our new president
• seeing him in the flesh - the first president i ever saw in real life and a really really good one at that ;)
• the yelp iphone app - we need never eat at a crappity generic restaurant again no matter where we are in the world :)
• listening to 'Stardust' by Nat King Cole, on a moonlit drive to Cape Cod for our anniversary
• our wonderful-crazy-busy nonstop tour of Washington DC and the White House :)
• adopting pet rats (and unexpectedly falling head over heels in love with them...)
• learning how to make reeeeally deeply fudgy brownies at last :)
  
• rediscovering Michael Jackson and seeing how much my kids adore him and his music
• driving to Vegas when it's still dark and stopping to look up at the thousands of stars above death valley
• making new photography-mad friends who are absolutely lovely to spend time with, and having playdates that last all day
• getting a shimmery lavender bicycle with a basket on the front this summer
• Mrs Kay :)
  
• getting disneyland passes and wearing them out
• a weekend away, just me and Sam
  

monday thought bubbles

i love that the mornings after the clocks fall back are so long and cozy and sleep-inny and relaxing :) that extra hour feels like a big cushion of free time to catch up on emails, shower, plan a playdate.... we need an extra hour every single weekend...

i so want to see the MJ movie this week - it's the only thing on my to-do list :)

my favorite lenses right now are my 50mm (xoxo) and the 70-200mm f2.8 (xoxo) which works like a dream without the lens hood and filters... it took me two years to figure that out :) i love sharp subjects and watercolor bokeh

i kept wondering why my camera battery was always flat - the charger outlet is turned off.... duh

i think next wednesday is a real life day off school... could it be???! what on earth will we do with an entire day off together? i love days off school!

Danny's room is all painted in shades of 'apple orchard' and 'peapod green' (a big schoolhouse chalkboard wall ready for murals of giant animals and cityscapes) and so are my feet :| now for the fun part - accessorizing!! (i soooo wish Nate Berkus was my neighbor :) and drawing on that huuuuge chalkboard!!

i really really like Barack Obama. like, reeeeaally like :)

yesterday we bought a teeny Home Depot apron for the rats. the rats are a definite christmas newsletter highlight of 2009

i love buying books at scholastic book club. today's book 'wooden teeth and jelly beans' about presidentials facts and oddities:) Bill Clinton's favorite icecream is mango... that's definitely odd

speaking of odd, the nuns at my school told me that even numbers are female and odd numbers are male and it has been doubted by most everyone i have empathically sworn was true. well... it was just a question on cash cab (my favorite game show:) and apparently it IS true as per pythagoras :)

must go - Danny is curled up in a baby bouncer sucking his thumb :| back later xoxoxox

have i mentioned lately...

how much i hate do not love badly abbreviated words? such as bday instead of birthday. and thx instead of thanks. and i haaaaate do not love 'alot', a whole lot. it's just so wrong and screams of a childhood misspent instead of diligently doing homework. and surely it's quicker to just type 'at' than to look for the @...? my most hated not loved abbrevation = d-land. urgh!!! i don't know why but i absolutely hate do not love it!

i am getting so so down about criminal minds -i absolutely hate do not love the new squirrel-like man in charge :( it WAS my favorite show ever and totally like a grown-up scooby doo (the mystery machine is the jet:) but with serial killers instead of lame old fairground bandits in rubber masks. i even did the following search online: WHY THE HELL DID AGENT GIDEON SEE FIT TO QUIT THE BAU?? (all in capitals to get my point across to the powers that be, if there are any, that i am NOT happy about his departure from the team) the answer: Agent Gideon (they used some other fancy name he goes by, but i only know him as Agent Gideon...) found the crime scenes too graphic and wanted the world to be a happier, cheerier place. seriously? yes seriously!!! what kind of FBI agent quits because it's too scary?? is the world officially falling off it's axis?!

looking on the bright side of life... today i got an extra hour in bed, which i squandered wisely - watching 'flipping out: the reunion' in bed, while shopping online at overstock.com and sipping darned fine coffee (and hot too!) it was pure heaven on earth! and we turned Danny's bedroom into a humungous chalkboard! and i got some new jeans! and it's only a WEEK till 8 november! and umm... i smell like nutmeg and ginger!! and the kitchen is totally zen like and clean! and i found out today why you don't see white dog poop lying around anymore!! it's been a good good day around here ;)

joshua trees are one pro for living in CA... i bet they don't have cool joshua trees in Cape Cod


we love play doh :)


trick or treating at the 'white house', my favorite house in the neighborhood :)