Wednesday, April 30, 2008

A not so Harry Potter moment

I think I will give up the Harry Potter title thing soon. It still makes me giggle a little tho...

Right now I am fantasizing about just not going back to work for the rest of the day.

I do that when I am home at lunch sometimes...come up with elaborate lies about why I didn't return, or call.

Today if I were to stay home I would take a nice long nap.

Anybody else have weird fantasies like this?

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Wizard Hat Cupcakes! I need one more day

Oy.

I still feel like I am playing catch-up 'round here, and thus follows a request for one more day before I have to go back to work.

Unfortunately it is not to be.

So on to other stuff.

I can't remember if I mentioned starting up a monthly have the family over for dinner thing. And by family I mean all 800 of us who live in the area, aunts uncles, cousins, hangers on..

So this monthly family dinner thing was my idea. When I was a kid we ate Sunday dinner every week at my grandma's house. There were far fewer of us then, and the meal did not seem like such a production. Maybe it was, and I was just too young to get it.

At any rate, after I made my suggestion we decided it would be fun to drag out all the old recipes my grandma used to make.

I have been taking on the desserts. There are recipes, because at some point my grandmother got a recipe from someone, or attempted to write down her own. Y'see my grandmother does not really cook by a recipe. Which is fine, and a talent I wish I had, however when one is trying to recreate one of these recipes to suit the memories of AN ENTIRE FAMILY, it is a little stressful when the RECIPE IS NOT RIGHT AND BY THE TIME YOU DISCOVER IT.....TOO LATE TO FIX.

Today marked the third dessert that I had difficulty with. I am no master chef, but I certainly do not consider myself to be a slouch in the kitchen either. These recipes are not complicated. But I dearly wish my grandmother could remember how she doctored these damn recipes. She remembers after I have already finished the dessert usually.

The dessert I made today was called a Coke Cake. I have to say that I was more than a little appalled when I read the recipe. TWO cups of sugar, TWO sticks of margarine, TWO cups of minimarshmallows, AND one cup of coke. That is just for the cake. The icing....ONE cup of coke, and ONE POUND OF POWDERED SUGAR...sort of. Here was my issue. I am following the recipe for the icing. Boil remaining coke in bottle, (Here is one of the issues with these recipes. They are 30+ years old. They call for things like using a King Size bottle of Coke. There is no such thing any longer. So I am on the internet trying to figure out how much damn coke would have been left if I had used a King Size bottle. For the record a King Size bottle was 16 oz. Shows how out of whack our portions are now but that is a post for another time.) ANYWAY... boil remaining coke, 3 TB cocoa and one stick of oleo. I do this. I then pour it over the 1 pound of powdered sugar, and mix. This shit is the consistency of water. It is supposed to be a thin icing poured over a hot cake, but not this thin. So I add more sugar, more, more, more, and more. By the time I got it to a reasonable consistency there had to be well over two pounds of powdered sugar in there. BH and I give it a taste test, and surprisingly it isn't too bad, but definitely sugary. I add pecans, pour it over the cake and hope for the best.

Went over well. Seemed to satisfy everyones beloved memory of this dessert.

We are still peeling people off the ceiling though...and trying to rouse the rest from massive sugar comas.

Afterwards my grandma tells me that she is pretty sure she only used half the remaining coke in the bottle and then added the powdered sugar until the consistency was right.

Good to know.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Crazy Cat who's name is not Harry Potter

I need a bionic man/woman camera (better, stronger, faster).

After I get the bionic camera I need to keep it with me posed to shoot all the time, so that I can catch the crazy antics of this kitten we have.

This afternoon she jumped on a table that has a plant on it she likes to try and eat, knock over, have catnip with or something. While on the table she discovered the window, where she could see tree branches blowing in the wind. This cat must attack all moving or perceived to be moving, or maybe has a microscopic chance of moving objects.

She was trying so hard to get those damn trees that she tried to jump on the window sash to get closer. Seeing as there is only about an inch or two for her to stand on she was hanging from the top of the sash by her two front paws.

It was high comedy let me tell you.

If I was cool and talented like The Bloggess, I would take a picture of the window and then do funny drawings to give an actual illustration. But I am not that cool or talented so your imaginations will have to suffice.

From now on I will include Harry Potter in all blog titles

Apparently that is they way to get more readers to my blog. From what I can tell from my site meter, the post I did last December showing the wizard hat cupcakes for #2's party gets at least one or more hits EVERY DAY. I figure if I am more bold about it then I will get bazillions of readers. Disappointed readers, because having not read any of the books nor seen any of the movies I have precious little to say on the topic other than to occasionally rant and rave about #2's fixation. Which thankfully has cooled considerably in recent months. Which is good for my sanity and our relationship.

So here is to more hits on my blog!

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Randomocity

I can't seem to come up with a post that involves just one idea, so I have decided to post some random crap that is in my head.

Because this is more fun than cleaning my house.

1. Travel is really expensive. The airline we booked for our summer trip went belly up a few weeks ago. We have gone from flying to Ohio, renting a van for the Ohio-Tennessee portion, and flying back home, to us driving our car, BH's parents driving their car the entire 5,000,000 mile trip. Why? Because to go by the original plan on those other solvent money sucking airlines will cost us $10,000,00. There is no hyperbole here.

2. Have I mentioned that I don't enjoy long-ass drives in the car?

3. Because I hate them.

4. Really. But I am sucking it up to save millions of dollars.

5. One of my suggestions when it became apparent that renting a van to avoid taking two cars was going to be ridiculously expensive? By our own SUV. Because that wouldn't be all that expensive, and I get nutty like that.

6. The next day after my wild suggestion I spent $40 to fill up my Hyundai Elantra (small 4-door, fairly fuel efficient) and declared that I will NEVER own a SUV. (The next time we need to cart both kids and their friends around in our two cars I will change my mind and declare that we must go buy a larger vehicle as soon as we drop off the kids at their destination.) I tend to go back and forth on the issue.

7. Buying a cell phone outside of my "new every two" deal with Verizon is fucking expensive.

8. I am STILL upset about my stupid move that killed my phone.

9. I have a really hard time deciding on ringtones for my phone. Apparently this is a big deal to me. I need songs. I need the songs to be pertinent to me and mine. I need the songs not to be annoying me every time my phone rings. Do my ringtones annoy others? Does it matter? Do other people have this issue? Am I shallow and stupid for being so concerned? Most likely....yes. I guess we all need something to be shallow and stupid about.

10. My house really needs to be cleaned. I really want my cleaning people back. I miss them. More now than ever. We are way behind. It is dirty dirty and making me crazy crazy and avoidant AVOIDANT.

11. I am not so secretly sorry I started this have my entire huge family over for Sunday dinner once a month thing. It turns in to a lot of work for me and mine, and truthfully people...I got a streak of lazy that runs the length of the US.

12. Will my family notice if I don't clean my house before they come over Sunday?

13. The online version of my local newspaper now has a space for comments on each story. The people who comment seem to be well......dumb, and angry. It annoys me to read those comments, yet I continue to do so.....

14. I think this is enough for now.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Business Time

This song is for all of you people out there who have been in a relationship for an extended period of time.

Monday, April 21, 2008

File Under Things to remember

It is important to empty pants pockets prior to putting them in the washing machine.

If you forget to check you just might do something totally moronic....

like washing your cell phone.

They don't work so well after.

So....

don't call me tomorrow until after the Verizon store opens.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Feverish Accusations

Gentle Readers,

I thought it would be prudent of me to check in with you as I have failed miserably in the area of blog posting for the past couple of weeks.

The past two weeks have been long and fraught with fatigue, illness, frustration, impatience, ruminating, and various other unpleasant activities.

I promised that I would not spend too much time complaining and I will do my very best to honor that promise.

BH has been sick for almost two weeks now. I am talking the running a fever for about 10 days, staying home in bed, wife calling during the day to make sure he is still alive kind of sick. He made it to work two days this week, and two days the previous week. He seems to be on the mend now, but as you can probably imagine he gets tired out pretty quickly. A few nights ago he woke up itching terribly, no rash just itching. Apparently he and Mucinex do not get along. In his sleepy and somewhat feverish state he dreamed that I had put itching powder on his side of the bed, and according to him, he very nearly woke me up to let me know what he thought of my actions. I am not sure what this dream could be saying, and truthfully I am not sure that I want to. Probably subconscious anger at me for not being home all last weekend at the height of his illness to take care of him in my usual manner. Or maybe he is just a little weird. Yeah...I think I will vote for weird.

We got moved in to the new building at work. Since I don't believe that it is a good idea to complain about work on the internet, I will leave it at that. My office is still not completely unpacked due to a lack of shelves and that is making me more than a little crazy. Hopefully by the end of this week that issue will be resolved. Between massive dissarray in my office at work, and the massive dissarray at my home I have been holding on to my sanity by a teeny tiny nearly invisible thread. I do not play well when everything feels disorganized and I do not have the time to remedy the situation. It is a pity there were no hidden video cameras in my office on Monday. I think it might have been amusing to watch me make about 50 laps around my office, picking things up and putting them back down, bumping in to furniture and boxes without actually doing anything. I am certain I looked like some kind of derranged video game character. It is what I felt like at any rate.

I apparently have not completely pissed off any higher powers, because my children have been VERY patient and well behaved the past couple of weeks despite the disrupted nature of our household, and by disrupted you know that I mean having to deal with a mother who had all the patience and impusle control of an hyperactive hypoglycemic off her ritalin and guzzling a chocolate bar. I should probably buy them a pony or something.

Ahh...I hear BH playing Rock Band now. Haven't heard that in over two weeks. Must mean he is truly on the mend. It also means that I will likely have to help him down the stairs when he is done and lead him to bed so he can take his second nap of the morning. He would have to choose the drums...maybe I can go convince him to switch to the guitar..less engergy expending required. He is so bored. Would it be inhospitable of me to suggest that if he is up to playing Rock Band drums, then maybe he could help out with a few cleaning chores.......

Speaking of chores I have been idle for over an hour now and should get back to work. I still have a very LARGE bakset that holds about three loads of last week's laundry and one load of this week's too. I should at least vacuum the floors before we have guests over for a meetng this afternoon.

Maybe I will be caught up on household duties by the end of next month.

Can someone explain the math here? How is it that two days of missed household chores takes 10 days to catch up on? Or maybe more for that matter. Anyone?

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Stay Tuned

I will do a longer post later this week and I promise it will not be filled with massive whining about the crappy, poopy, stinky, mess that has been the last week. I don't anticipte the mess being cleaned up soon either.

In more exciting news....AMBRE is the Rock of Love!!! Bye Bye to massively annoying crybaby Daisy.

Yes friends THAT was the bright spot in this very long week.

Now I must try to go to sleep and stop ruminating about the days ahead.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Creeping closer to that corner

Knowing that I have a tough week going on I decided Sunday that I was going to be proactive and do things to help promote personal well being during a stressful time.

My Plan:

Eat Healthy Meals
Drink Plenty of Water
Take my vitamins every day
Go to sleep at 10:30 every night
Try to get in some exercise every day

Stats so far:
Eat Healthy Meals: 0 for 2
Drink Plenty of Water: 0 for 2
Take my vitamins every day: 1 for 2
Go to sleep at 10:30 every night: 0 for 2
Try to get in some exercise every day: 0 for 2

Yeah I am rockin' the plan!

Now for news that is sending me closer to that corner to rock and talk to myself:

Sunday my leg starts to itch. As I scratch I notice reddish swellings appearing where I am scratching. There appear to be three bug bites of some kind there. Which was odd seeing as how I have not spent significant amounts of time engaged in activities that could lead to bug bites. Later in the shower I notice several other similar spots on my leg, hip, and stomach. Curiouser and curiouser. I have not taken any medications, nor tried any new foods or anything like that. So I put some benadryl cream on them and figure they will go away. Yesterday they were still there. A little itchy, but no new ones. Today, about 10 new spots pop up on my back. I decide it is time to seek medical advice. To shorten this up. I am having some kind of allergic reaction to...something. May be an insect bite. We don't know! So I am given Prednisone and some samples of an antihistamine that won't make me drowsy. The doc then tells me about the big side effects of Predinsone being irritability and insomnia. Hmmmm.......these are two things that I DO NOT NEED THIS WEEK. So for now the prednisone sits on the counter untouched and we will just see what this antihistamine does for me.

Also...
It would appear that BH is coming down with something that involves a fever. Worse for him than for me obviously, but just one more thing to add to the list.

Is it next week yet?

News on the cute front:

#2 has had her magnifying glass, notebooks, and pencils out this evening trying to solve the great mystery about my red itchy bumps. She has scoured the house with her magnifying glass, made notes, and come to the following conclusion:
The red itchy bumps are caused by a bug. This bug is only biting me because I smell so sweet and good all the time, and it likes things that smell good and sweet.

This is why I keep her.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Do you think they are getting overtime?

Glad I am not a foster care case manager in Texas right now.

That is some freaky stuff.

A thought that has percolated for a while

For those who don't know I live in a town that is home to a certain "religious" group that enjoys carrying signs around that have hate messages about homosexuals as well as a few other things.

Last week a march was held here in protest of the above mentioned individuals.

Now please be VERY CLEAR that I in no way appreciate, agree with, condone, and any other similar word you can think of the message shared by the so called "religious" group. I have seen their signs at least once a week for more years than I care to count.

However......

I was in no way really excited about nor did I plan to go out and participate in the march last week.

The reason being is that I believe the only way to shut this group down is to ignore them.

I mean IGNORE THEM COMPLETELY. As in pretend they do not exist, pretend you do not see them, make them invisible.

I know that people say this all the time. I have also read it or heard it said somewhere that ignoring them doesn't work. To this I say, we do not know that ignoring them does not work because they have never TRULY been ignored. Some one somewhere gives them attention constantly, which they openly admit to thriving on regardless of the type of attention it is.

Admittedly this is a hard group to ignore, particularly if you are resident of this fair city. Their signs are bold in color and in statement. There are a lot of them. They are amazingly faithful to their cause. They are fanatical, and I think more than one of them are likely mentally ill. They will yell hateful and disgusting things at you merely because you walk past them on your way in to a venue they have decided is worthy of picketing.These are things that are difficult to ignore because for many of us the above mentioned behaviors fan such a huge roaring fire of anger and outrage that it feels absolutely impossible not to respond in some way, because surely SURELY this time, this report, this comment will put an end to the hate.

Unfortunately your response to them fans their huge hate-filled fire too, and keeps it burning long after your comments and or actions have faded in to the wind.

I know that my hopes for total lack of response are futile at best. Maybe I am wrong and they would continue on anyway. But if at least.. AT LEAST if the local and national media ignored them a few less people would be exposed to their ugly words and not see their sad misguided messages.

For me...I will just continue my own IGNORE! campaign, and pray that someday I no longer have to.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride

I am not much of one for fantasy or sci-fi, but right now I would gladly offer up (enter something really appealing here) to have a magic remote control that would allow me skip over the next week.

I have been dreading next week for quite some time now. Unfortunately the closer I get to the week's arrival it seems I have more and more reason to increase my dread.

I first was dreading the week because it is what is known to theater folk as production week for BH. As most of you know he is the drama guy at a local high school and the spring play opens next week. I refer to this week as Single Parent Week. During Single Parent Week BH leaves the house before 7 AM and does not return until after 10 PM. That in and of itself is never much fun for the girls and I. We really like having BH/Daddy around, and we are all a little bummed out when he isn't.

A couple of months ago, my dread of this week increased when I realized my 4 day Theraplay Class is this week. That means a two plus hour commute each day, and the training is fairly intense from what I hear. The four days are from Thursday-Sunday. Which means essentially no weekend for me. That always makes for a happy Missy.

Two weeks ago my dread went off the charts when I found out that date for moving in to the brand new building at work was moved from today to next Friday. That means I have to have my office totally packed, labeled, and ready for the movers before I leave work on Wednesday. I also have to make sure all of my paperwork and phone calls are caught up as well. As I am only working in the office three days next week, I did not feel that I could switch around my clients anymore to have packing time and thus will not be able to begin packing until 5:00 Wednesday evening. It is important that a play therapist have toys available for clients, and of course the bulk of what needs to be packed is toys. Moving is stressful no matter what kind or how beneficial. I had really wanted to move all of my toys myself, but given the circumstances I just can't do that without causing myself more stress, so I am letting go and hoping for the best. This is not easy for a person with my...control challenges to do. It all feels very rushed now, and I am concerned about important things getting lost in this rather large move.

I think that is it. Hopefully nothing else will rear it's ugly head. If so you can find me in the nearest corner rocking back and forth and mumbling to myself.

If anyone has a line on magic future jumping remotes, drop me a line.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The Bird

Today my children had dental check-ups. At the end of these appointments the dentist always makes a balloon for each child out of a latex glove and ties it off with dental floss.

As BH was driving the girls home from my parents house this evening they were playing with thier latex glove balloons. He hears one of the girls say, "Let's make it stick up it's middle finger!" and then they worked together oh so nicely to make this happen. If only we always had such cooperation and togetherness!

Now we are perplexed about where they have learned about this gesture, because I make damn sure the kids are no where in sight when I flip the bird to their dad. I have that much control over my impulses at least.

They tell us that apparently on a recent trip with their Poppie to Walgreens, someone apparently disagreed with Poppie's driving, honked their horn and gave him the finger.

Nice.

So they had a discussion about what it meant and how it is just as bad to do that as it is to say a bad word, because it is like sign language for a bad word. He then asked what they thought they should do about the choice they made.

#2 wanted to hunt down the man who flipped Poppie the bird and tell him about how it is wrong to do that.

#1 wanted to pop the balloon.

BH decided they just needed to tell me about what happened.

So they did when I got home. I reiterated what had already been said, and added that it was a sign for a really bad word.

AND thus began the questions.

"Is it worse than the SH word? " asks #2.

"Where did you hear about the SH word?" I exclaim in a remarkably calm tone of voice.

"You know...the Shut Up word." answers #2

"Oh....well....ummm...yes it is worse than the SH word." I stammer.

"Is it worse than the A word?" from #1

"Yes it is worse than the A word." says I fighting back the giggles.

"How about the CR or maybe it is KR word?" again from #2.

"?"

PAUSE

"Oh you mean crap?" I state.

"OOOOOOOOHHHHHhhhhhhh! You said a bad woooooorrrrddddd Mommy!" Chorus #1 and #2.

"It is time for bed now children." I declare.

Good to see that they are still fairly innocent.

Oh yeah, apparently when they got home they popped the balloon AND cut off it's middle finger too, just for good measure.