Thoughtless Thursday: just to let y’all know I’m still here

 

How’s it going?

This is how my day started:

A Zhu Zhu pet and a DIY haircut.  (New parenting tip: If your ornery 2-year-old needs a diaper change and if your 2-year-old is also holding a Zhu Zhu pet, at all costs wrench the Zhu Zhu pet away from said 2-year-old’s hands before picking him up.)

And for my next act of the day, I locked myself and the kids out of the house.

It’s 9:25AM now.  The day is rife with possibilities.

All this over a Bieber comment?

QUICKIE (remember those?): Vincenzo: Can I have some frozen strawberries from the refreezerator? [laughs at self] I almost said refridgerator.
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Vincenzo was at the park yesterday and started playing with a couple kids who were 7 and 9.  The 9-year-old asked, in that one tone of voice, “Who here likes Justin Bieber?”  Vincenzo piped up, “I do.”*  “You do?!"  “Yeah,” Vincenzo replied, still not getting that the “right” answer was “Ewwww!  I hate Justin Bieber!” 

It made me want to cancel kindergarten. 

V is so excited to ride a bus to school and to feel like a Big Kid, but he doesn’t realize that bus is going to drop him off in a world of Bieber haters and G.I. Joe lovers, who are the same kids that might make fun of my son for still calling the number after two “fwee.”  Vincenzo still forgets his underwear half the time and forgets to wipe all the time and I don’t think I’ve brushed his hair once in his entire life, and I’m throwing into a pack of wolves that probably isn’t going to look kindly upon Bieberheads with skid marks.

It makes me thinking back to my first day of first grade, when I saw what looked like a 6-year-old Ms. America playing tag with what looked like a 6-year-old Mary Lou Rhetton, and I spent the entire rest of my grade school experience wondering why I (who looked like Piglet in a mousy toupee) never got to play tag with them.

Maybe it won’t be that bad. I am a worst-case scenario person, after all. V has never had a problem making friends and he really loves school. He already has a pair of skinny jeans and a pair of cheeseburger Vans for the school year.

Yes, Vincenzo will be fine. 

It’s me I’m worried about.

Gah!  I’ve got to stop blogging on these overcast days!  In funnier depressing news, isn’t this the worst “happy summer sign” you’ve ever seen?

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Meh.

*For the record, Vincenzo doesn’t really know who Justin Bieber is except that he also has a shaggy bowl haircut, so we sometimes call Vincenzo “Bieberhead.”

Why can’t white just be white?

I have such first world problems.*

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Lemon-marinated chicken
Potato salad
Edamame

*Thank you, K, for the phrase—I use it all the time.

On notice: summer

Don’t have much to post these days.  Summer started at a full-on sprint with a weekend at Whidbey, my trip to Vegas, and a week with the in-laws.   But, as all those events involved family and I try not to blog about family because I would like to be invited to Christmas, summer has been hard on my blog.  (My therapist had a blast with me last week though.)

I was looking forward to this past weekend when we had almost no plans, but then the weather got me down.  It’s still in the low 60s here with skies that can most likely be described as “colorless” and even though I could probably get by with a warm sweatshirt over my newly purchased summer tops, I gave summer the finger and wore my winter coat all weekend.

There is something I love right now though: the smell of the produce department in the grocery stores.  You walk in and it’s that woody, ripe smell of the melon rinds mixed with the sharp, sweet jabs from all the different berries.  It is all the fruit I have missed for the past nine months, and it is the smell of summer. 

I might not be able to dress for summer yet but at least I can still smell summer.

Fingers crossed that my kids say something funny this week or my husband does something aggravating or I pee all over myself in public so I’ll have blogable material for you.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Hearty beef stew (because that’s what you eat in June in the northwest)
Corn on the cob
Summer fruit
Strawberry Jell-o cupcakes

Thoughtless Thursday

 

MrsMouthy’s Status: Cranky

1.  Okay, so let’s say your best friend, who happens to live in London, sends you a bouquet of exotic flowers on a random day to tell you she’s thinking of you.  Do you:
a) Call her up to thank you; follow up call with a thank-you card
b) Take a picture of the roses and send them to 250 of your “closest” friends with a note saying, “Roses from my BFF in London.  I miss you [as in her] sooooooo much darling!”

Good ol’ Facebook.

I just want to know, how does one respond to such updates?  Take the BFF/flower situation, for example.  Do you…
a) Comment: “Ohhhh, you’re so lucky.  You have the best friends in the world and mine are kind of sucky compared to yours.”
b)  Tell her if you were still in high school you would totally vote for her for Homecoming Queen, then remind her that YOU’RE NOT IN HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE.
c)  Go to your own wall, post a picture of a goat and write, “My BFF in Ethiopia just named this after me!  I miss you, Mb!uti.

Do I just need to block more people?  Is that my problem?  How do you all stomach Facebook?

And totally sorry if I offended anyone with this post—the reason I never block anybody is because I genuinely like everyone I’m friends with on FB, regardless of what they post.  It’s not you I don’t like; it’s Facebook.  (Which is why I only log in if there’s a really good reason, like to find out Kevin spent Monday at work celebrating Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen’s birthday, complete with a cake that had their pictures on it.)

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
Lots and lots of beef.  Beef EVERYTHING.  Beef stew, roast beef, beef Bourginon, beef salad, beef cake covered in beef frosting with tiny beef sprinkles…

Early Father’s Day

In May I wrote about how Kevin completely forgot about Mother’s Day this year.  I’m not one to hold grudges, but I am one to exact revenges, and so I got to thinking about the best way to pay him back this Father’s Day (which we celebrated a week early).  The WWJD choice would have been to forget Father’s Day in return because, as the bible says, “an eye for an eye.”  But the sweeter punishment, I thought, would be to go really overboard for his present this year.  He gets a shirt every year for Father’s Day, but not this year.  Nope.  Even a deep-v t-shirt could not invoke the kind of guilt I planned on invoking.

A couple weeks ago I told you Kevin guessed his Father’s Day present from three clues: it cost over $1,000; my dad helped pick me up; and he had 90 days to return it.  Kevin knows my dad’s favorite place to shop is Costco, so he figured the gift came from there.  He knows Costco has a 90-day return policy on electronics.  He knows TVs cost over $1,000.

Mama don’t like it when her best plans get foiled.  So when we celebrated Father’s Day yesterday, I led Kevin on a scavenger hunt to find his “TV.”  He played along, pretending for the kids’ sake that he had no idea what his present could be.  And he really didn’t, as he realized when he reached the last clue–in the cat dish.  He pulled out a deep-V t-shirt and a card that read:

We took advantage of the 90-day return policy because we value the element of surprise.  SURPRISE!!  Better luck next year.”

He looked had.  Man, that’s a good look for him.

Shortly after the scavenger hunt, I asked Kevin to take out the recycling and lo and behold, there in the garage was his new, expensive, 55” flat screen TV.

I think we both know what Charlie Sheen meant now when he said he was winning.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
MIL’s doing the cookin’!

Old Vegas

Sorry for my slow posting week—I was in Vegas, and as the saying goes, what happens in Vegas…shows up on my blog a few days later. 

Now, before you get too excited for me and tell me you hope I partied hard and came home wondering where all my panties went, I should let you know that I went to Vegas with My Mom.  I actually came kind of close to sharing a bed with My Mom but even Vegas wagged her finger at that.  Thank you, Vegas.*

My sister (The Boxer) lives in Vegas so my mom and one of my other sisters (The Lemming Leader**) went down to visit.  I helped My Mom feel comfortable hanging out with us whippersnappers in Vegas by making lots of comments about how cool it is to go to Vegas with My Mom. She made herself comfortable by bringing along a magazine that I originally took for MADD magazine but on closer look saw it was AARP magazine:

The nice thing about AARP is it helps keep the aging population in touch with the younger generations.  How else would my mom have learned about this trend, for example?

Last month was stirrup pants, so this doesn’t seem all that crazy to me.

Other than teasing my mom, we spent a lot of time working out, laying at the pool, eating, and getting pampered.  We could have been at a spa in a remote location for all our tired, sore, relaxed, well-rubbed, salt-scrubbed bodies knew.  Vegas actually kind of got in the way of our trip a bit.

My sister in Vegas was a party, as always.  She took the role of hostess, tour guide, entertainer, and chauffer.  The Boxer is the kind of person who puts everybody else up on a pedestal so you walk away feeling like you’re a good person.  I love that.

As for the kids, Kevin stayed home from work to watch both of them.  He mentioned before we left that he was going to break all the rules so I’m pretty sure he fed the kids nothing but bread with zero whole grains and that he installed DVD players into all the cars, and he probably taught them both how to smoke cigarettes.

But I’m going to have to say it was definitely worth it.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
I forgot how to cook on vacation

*And thank you, Mom, for letting us use you as an excuse to go to bed early and for not getting offended by my incredibly offensive sense of humor
**Inside joke.  Two people will think it’s kind of funny.

Bedroom talk

My SIL came over Monday so I could get some errands done.  It’s been killing me that I haven’t bought paper for Rocco’s birthday party that will happen in about two months, for example.

I spent a good part of my “time off” in a high-end furniture store called Masins, shopping for bedroom furniture.  (If you recall, I’m redoing the master bedroom because alllllllllll my friends are buying new houses and Tightwad Kevin won’t let me buy another house.) 

As soon as I got off the elevator at Masins, the secretary picked up the phone and said, “Gail*, please come upstairs for a Number Eight.”

At least that’s what I think she said.  Just so’s you know, here’s what a Number Eight looks like:

But Masins has thought of everything, so much that they even keep one down-to-earth, disheveled looking staff member around among all the other highly groomed *cough*gay*cough* guys and Maybelline girls.  Kevin tells me that being a Number Eight is actually pretty good, but I think the scale is different there.  Gail, for example, was probably a Number Ten or Eleven by their own standards.

Still, even she took one look at me and gently steered me away from the “Guy Chaddock” section (near the storefront windows) saying, “We have a lower budget line upstairs I think you might like.”  Seriously.  But I swear, she said it in the kindest way, like when I used to be a teacher and I’d sneak a bag of homemade cookies to the student who couldn’t afford a lunch, saying I was too full to eat them.

Gail asked what kind of furniture I was looking for and I said mainly a bed; I’d probably get the other furniture from Ethan Allen.  She looked at me as if I had farted.  I think Ethan Allen is to Masins as Ikea is to…Ethan Allen? 

Then Gail was interested in seeing a picture of the bedroom I’m redecorating, so I pulled up my phone and she peered over my shoulder as I went to my blog and scrolled through the various post titles until I found the one titled “When you’re sliding into first and you feel something burst…” because that post includes, in fact, the most recent picture of our bedroom.

Anyway.  I actually didn’t love anything at the store, though I liked some of it.  I’m trying to figure out now how I can have a Pretty Woman moment where I come back into the store and say, “Remember me from yesterday?  Big mistake.  Big.  HUGE.” and show them all the stuff I bought at a store that treated me like royalty. 

I just don’t know how I can bring a bed, an armoire, a chest of drawers, a nightstand, a lamp, an Oriental rug, and some wall art in with me to drive the point home.

WHAT’S COOKIN’ 2NITE:
French toast
Hashbrowns
Bacon
Eggs

*Name changed.  I really did like “Gail” and don’t want to incriminate anyone.