monday things

watched
my cat get very angry at his tail and attack it. it was so hilarious! however this was the video i captured of him... this is like number 7 of 15 completely dull clips :|


went
to Sam's parent teacher conference. it was ten minutes long :| and it started 3 minutes late :| so it was actually 7 minutes long :| maybe it was just intended to be a math puzzle

dined
at the hometown buffet. monday night they have new orleans chicken with brown sticky stuff all over it. it's so delicious! and i feel SO YOUNG and VIVACIOUS in there!

liked
the new helper at the post office so soooo much better than the old helper, who i am hoping was fired for having no personality/soul. she actually smiled and said please and thank you and have a nice day :)


spent
the day playing with knights and dragons, it's a pleasant change from being attacked by a velociraptor


hoped
oh hope of hopes that it would rain. and it did for about 28 seconds at 3:31pm. then it stopped :( fingers crossed for tomorrow

the key to life is balance...

therefore i need a list of simple dislikes too:)

having a cold for 2 entire weeks and one day. i am sure - positive in fact - that all-you-can-eat buffets are being poisoned by al qaida. but does it stop me going to Vegas and Hometown Buffet...? sadly, no :|

funeral processions. i've said it before and i'll say it again, they are soooo annoying and i just don't get it. yes, someone has died, and it's very very very sad, i quite agree. but why on earth is it so important that everyone stays in one long line from the church to the cemetery? it's not like the coffin will be grabbed out of the hearse and quickly dropped into the ground and covered up, if someone gets stuck at a red light on the way....? i understand the family black cars sticking together, but everyone... 32 cars.... driving nose to tail and ignoring THREE CHANGES of traffic lights in downtown Santa Ana at lunchtime? i don't get it. it's like when a group of 10 people jump the line at 'it's a small world' because one of them is disabled :| equality for ALL! even distant cousins of the deceased and family friends of the person in the wheelchair!!

old people who drive shockingly badly. it makes me wonder how on earth they're still alive :|

crafts that say ages 6 and up that i can't do. and glue that doesn't stick. grr!

Miley Cyrus's old bingo caller voice. i thought it was illegal to chainsmoke when you're like 16...?

speaking of the above.... i hate twitter. i logged in for the first time EVER to see if maybe i was missing something life-changingly awesome. apparently i'm not :|

lotion in a tub. i am no germophobe but i can actually SEE crawling bugs with poop on their feet, living inside my tub of jo malone nutmeg and ginger body 'creme'.

sarah silverman

pics from today's almost rainy day... maybe it will rain tomorrow....? fingers crossed!

simple loves

~ dogs with different colored eyes ~

~ skirts that twirl ~

~ scooping food from a takeout container ~

~ cool nights with warm blankets ~

~ parking inside the garage ~

~ watching tv in bed ~

~ condensed milk dessert syrup ~

~ big square pictures ~

~ white seashells ~

~ negative space ~

~ painted brick walls ~

~ my rattie boys sitting here keeping me company :) ~

saturday things that i didn't publish till sunday...

i hate the GPS woman. she never takes us the same way twice - she changes her mind each time we go somewhere. i know i should be grateful that she attempts to bring a glimpse of variety to our days of endless sunshine and no rain (ever)... but last week we came back from the countryside via a really really really blue lake with wispy clouds over it and it was beautiful and i wanted to take a picture but i felt horribly carsick and didn't... well today we came back from the countryside the exact same way, and did she take us past the blue lake with the wispy clouds? of course not, she took us all the way down the awful awful a-w-f-u-l 91 freeway which has no blue lakes at all, just streams of angry white guys in raised pick-ups trucks :( i know i probably take her random acts of meanness far too much to heart, but i just wish she would be more gracious and kindhearted... and that there was an option to avoid the ugly 91 freeway at ALL COSTS :|

i think the applelessness of Oak Glen is a sign. it's some higher authority telling me to move to the East Coast. today i thought up one more con for moving there - surely there are no El Pollo Locos there :( i panicked and checked their website on baited breath, fingers trembling as i waited for the results to return... and gasp, there is one El Pollo Loco in Chelsea, MA!! it's a somewhat long way from the Cape... but it's closer than Santa Ana :)

i just made brownies. with real sticks of danish butter instead of icky oil. they are all gooey in the middle and leave teeth imprints when you bite into them (my heart just skipped a beat) and they are from a box. a dollar box. it's official - i am never following a recipe ever again.

must go! lots to do! places to go! people to see!

lovin' hatin'

lovin' on
it being Saturday. i couldn't have stood too many more weekdays

hatin' on
the winco website. i want to type in my zip code and find out the nearest location not have to troll through an 18th century L-I-S-T. and i need halloween candy :( yes, today :

lovin' on
coffee. though i must admit.... and it's probably in my head.... but it just doesn't taste as rich from the blue jar as the red jar :(

hatin' on
the fact that i get up extra early to get stuff done, creep silently to the kitchen in the pitch dark (scary!) and make my (slightly less rich) coffee as quietly as i can, and the freaking fracking 2 decibel 'click' of the kettle boiling equals two bedroom doors being flung open :

lovin' on
photo sessions that last ALL DAY LONG! and include yummy lunch, kid playtime and lots and lots of chit chat

hatin' on
mean people who point.... yes it's an obvious understatement but they DO suck and they're really asking for it. and quit pointing or i will point my imaginary gun at you. AND fire it :)

lovin' on
Danny asking why animals don't need to learn their ABCs, and singing in the alphabet song as 'neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh neigh' :)

late edition

went to...
Danny's baseball practice... nowhere on earth do i feel more of an alien (the type of alien with hard consonents) than sitting among the housewives of OC. i don't have a louis luitton purse. i don't drive a land rover. i don't wear yoga pants. nor do i have a tattoo on the small of my back. or a child named "Riggs" or "Jagger". and my child is clearly - very very CLEARLY not taking ADD or ADHD medication;) i guess, sometimes, it's good to feel a little bit different :)

though i did...
have a moment of total panic when i saw a COYOTE fast approaching coach Johnny from the bushes. yes a real life child-eating coyote :| or at least i think that's what i saw... i took some sinus relieving tablets for the pressure cooker that is my head this afternoon, and either they are making me see invisible coyotes or i DID see a real life coyote. but no-one else saw it :| and i was afraid to yell out for fear of looking like a total loon :|

for dinner...
ate the most magnificent frozen food invention ever - the costco el pollo loco bowl thingie. so so good. and filling. and only 280 calories. and did i mention good???!

i think...
oprah heard my desperate plight to be entertained... because her shows this week have actually been about real people, with real problems and it's actually been somewhat watchable again. sure tomorrow she'll have Will Smith on or that awful panel of really boring people all talking over one another, and i will curse myself for speaking too soon :(

spent one entire hour...
trying to spend a $10 coupon in kohl's. the catch: you had to spend over $10 to use it... which sounds perfectly simple but could i find anything for over $10, but somewhat under $100, that i actually WANTED? nope, not a sausage. urgh, i hate being caught up in coupon hell where i end up wasting my time and still not redeeming my coupon, or worse still buying something i didn't even want/need.... argh.

off to bed

thursday

today Danny has show and tell. i just KNOW we will forget Mith-ter T. Wex who has been eagerly awaiting his turn to be oohhed and ahhhed over for weeks, since the program was announced :) in case i haven't mentioned once or twice, Mrs Kay is amazing. depending on the child, they do show and tell just for her, or for the whole class :) i LOVE Mrs Kay. she is just kind and gentle and wholesome and real and honest and not at all for show ever. Danny dreamt about her last night... i think he has his first teacher crush <3


speaking of dreams... last night i dreamt that the abandoned Longs drug store by my house became a 99 cent store. when i woke up, i was SO SAD that it wasn't true. how totally cool would that be... trader joes/walgreens/99 cent store and michaels all in one little shopping mall :) i think that location would be perfect for 99 cent store too, the nearest one is in downtown Santa Ana......

which reminds me, don't tell the police but today i stole a wax mustache from Superior Market in downtown Santa Ana. in my defense it was a complete accident, i found it in my cart as i was loading up my groceries and actually considered re-entering the hell that is a downtown Santa Ana supermarket to pay for it. then i thought better of it and drove away at high speed so as not to arouse suspicion :)

one thing that is worrying me... i can't stop wondering why there are 5 tropical fish stores on the main street where i live. this isn't counting one Petsmart and one Petco. can there really be such a huge market for tropical fish...? i am no detective, but i think they might sell more than tropical fish... like those 'bridal parlors' in Pasadena ;) but what?? and do i go to the police with my suspicions? especially when they could recognize me as the above perpetrator...?

why is it that 3 weeks before halloween, Target is completely out of halloween teeshirts...? they drive me crazy! i had to handmake Sam's halloween teeshirts this morning :| which reminds me, i'd better stock up on cold weather clothes too while it's still warm, because when it IS finally cold (65 degrees) they will have nothing but beach wear. yes Target sucks...

it's completely random... but everytime i see the word twister i think it says twin sister. i wonder if i have a learning disability....

off to baseball practice with Danny and his other hero, Coach Johnny (how quickly we were replaced.... :)

wednesday....

things that i don't so much like:

1. grinding my teeth... ouch
2. having to go to tustin ranch costco today. may be the cause of #1....?
3. commercials that are trying to be apple commercials (may also be the cause of #1)
4. feeling sickly and pale
5. seeing $10 tickets to a hollywood bowl concert and still not really wanting to go :(
6. Blackjack pooping TWICE on our walk - only one poop allowed, thank you :|
7. Agent Gideon leaving Criminal Minds - it's just not fair
   

things that i do so much like:

1. the weather being a perfect 70 degrees today
   
2. walking to school on walk to school day
3. with the dogs and every kid wanting to pet them
   
4. then walking another 4.5 miles to the corn field/strawberry field
5. living by a corn field/strawberry field
   
6. also living walking distance from trader joes/michaels/albertsons/walgreens/sprouts/cvs/rubys/library/post office
   
7. making shrinky dink christmas ornaments
8. perfectly sweet homemade apple cider made by my boys
   
9. personal emails
10. aleve
    
11. trader joes 'next to godliness' products
    
12. Mrs Kay, the most perfectly wholesome pre-K teacher ever who has the kids dancing to chicken fat each morning
13. my canon XT... still, after all these years :)

before school

after school

kids and shelter dogs

make for the sweetest moments... and yes, shelter dog is a breed of dog, but it gives more insight about the owner's pedigree than the dog's :)

tuesday musings

why oh why oh why when we live in the land of the drive-thru dairy/starbucks/bank/cleaners/school drop-off... do people still not understand what drive thru actually means, it does NOT mean drive, STOP, talk for 5 minutes, kiss, need to retrieve something from the trunk, get back in, realize the trunk didn't close properly, do a lame sorry handwave thing (because that gives me the last 5 minutes back...) get back in, take a sip of coffe and then DRIVE THRU. it's a drive t-h-r-u, meaning the car stays in D for drive-thru. and technically, it's drive THROUGH. argh. help me i am in hell :|

and can i find scraps of black felt with which to make a seasonally festive pumpkin face teeshirt? no. if i didn't want black felt it would be spilling out of every drawer....

my master plan is coming together!!! v-e-r-y slowly... but it's all coming together!! George Michael's 'erratic/erotic' behavior has at last caused the demise of his longtime relationship with Kenny (who i always thought George was far too cute for anyway...) and Nate Berkus' longtime spouse was sadly washed away in the tsunami of 2004. sure i bet he has dated plenty but i know he and George would be THE most adorably perfect couple :) now all that's left is for them to meet, get married, the old man next door to die (left side not right) and for the happy couple to suddenly decide they want to live in suburbia and buy the house, adopt two african babies with little ringlets, that i can be the expert mommy next door to, and take pictures of, of course! we will all live happily ever after, and i will finally have the gay friends i dream of, with little babies to boot, living right next door :) it could happen :|

the dogs are driving me nuts - when i go to let one in the other one runs out and then won't come back in. so finally when i get that one in, the other one runs out.... seriously, i am losing my mind.

off to make a book of all our pets for Danny's show&tell.... here' s a sneak peak, it's a very original idea that thought up all by myself :)