Some days you're the doorknob, some days you're the Giant F'ing Gorilla

Last night, I was the gorilla. And this doorknob pissed. me. off.



Yesterday was crazy. An absolute clusterfuck of activities. Totally exacerbated by the fact that SD was night flying and was therefore unavailable for transporting SugarBabies about town. He's so selfish. Working and all. So, the schedule was this:

3:30 Parent/Teacher conference
4:00-6:00: SP's soccer practice
6:00-7:00: Bug's soccer practice
6:30-??? Bear's Boy Scout meeting

Allegedly.

So, I bust my ass getting back from the conference to get SP to soccer practice on time. And we made it! But? Nobody was there. Because practice actually started at 4:30. No worries. We hung out for a few minutes and some people showed up. I remembered that I hadn't grabbed Bear's Cub Scout uniform, so I ran back home to fetch it and then came back. (Remember this...this is key) We hang out at practice and by 6:00, I needed to go pee. I mean REALLY needed to. And there is no bathroom at the practice field. So, as soon as SP is dismissed from practice, we hightail it to McDonalds, so that I can potty and so that we can get some food.

If you paid any attention to that schedule up there, it required that I be in two places at once. I'm good....but not cloned yet. Bug's practice got ditched. He's four. He'll get over it.

SO. We eat our crappy fast food on our way to the scout meeting - Bear still hasn't changed clothes. We get to the church right at 6:30! Wooo hoooo!! But wait! There's no one here. Not a soul. The doors are locked. the lights are out. CRAP.

Actually, not all that disappointed. I was ready to go home and chill. So, we head to the casa and everyone unloads their crap I go to unlock the deadbolt and discover that someone has locked the doorknob. I don't have a key to the doorknob. SD is flying. Crap.

So, I try hitting the door with my shoulder like the cops on TV do. Guess what. That shit hurts. Also, it doesn't work. So, I try to jimmy the lock with a credit card. That doesn't work either. Last resort? I start whacking the holy hell out of the doorknob with a hammer until it opens. It was actually pretty cathartic. Though, poor SD got home and thought that someone had tried to break into the house.

I'm such a badass.

Halloween Giggle

I'm feeling like the gorilla....you know who you are

Also...I need some help. After blogging for over two years now, my archives in the sidebar are taking up a ridiculous amount of room. Can anyone tell me how to make them into a drop down menu that doesn't take up so much dang space over there. It's getting on my nerves. I'm afraid I may go "gorilla" on someone soon because of it.

One thing that may make a difference: My template is old. Very old. Almost as old as the blog. But I still love it. SO the nifty little fixes that you can do on the NEW blogger templates don't work in "classic" templates. (I'm like an oldies station. And nearly as stale! If I start streaming The Eagles' "Witchy Woman" just do us all a favor put a cap in my ass.)

Be nice. Or I'll breathe on you.

So, first, I'm sorry about going for over a week and then posting a quiz. Lame? Certainly. But I thought it was kinda cool & thought I'd share. Besides, you're just jealous.

I have been sick for...ever it seems like. I went for like ten days with a sore throat, telling myself it was viral because I had these ulcers all down my throat and knew that the doctor would just tell me to take motrin and drink plenty of water. Which I was doing. Although, by last Tuesday, every time I took a drink, I had to shout, "SonofaBITCH!" There may have been other profanities uttered through the day. I have no comment on these rumors. It was at this point that SD insisted that I go visit the flight surgeon. I complied with his request (phrased thusly, "Just go to the damn doctor already!!!) because by that point I had a lymph node on the left side of my throat that was the size of a ping pong ball and corresponding swelling inside my throat. All the same, I really hadn't run much of a fever, so I figured that a trip to the doctor was silly - prudent as it might seem.

The nurse whom I LOVE went ahead and swabbed my throat for a culture, telling me that it looked viral to her, too. Then Doogie the Flight Surgeon came in and made me love him just a little by saying, "Wow! You have lost a LOT of weight! You look great!" (He just got back from a deployment to Iraq.) I resisted the urge to kiss him on the face. Because that would have been inappropriate. Right? (And I DO look pretty damn good. In the past year, I have lost about 25 pounds. I can finally fit back into my pants that have single digit sizes!) (I'm so glad I didn't give those away!) *ahem*


So, Doogie looks at my throat and says, "Wow. That's really swollen and red!" Duh. He said that he didn't think it was strep, but he was going to give me some penicillin just in case and if the test came back negative on Thursday or Friday, I could stop taking it. Which, HELLO? Do you ever pick up a newspaper or watch television? Super-Bugs. Heard of them? No, I told him, I would take the antibiotic home with me and if they called me with a positive result, the I would start taking it. But, of course THAT wouldn't happen since I didn't have strep. He redeemed himself somewhat by prescribing me something called "magic Mouthwash" which has lidocaine in it and made little things like drinking and eating much less painful. Yay Doogie!


So....Thursday afternoon Nurse-whom-I-love calls and asks if I had been taking the penicillin. I tell her no and she says, "Well, you need to start. Your strep test came back positive."

The hell?!

So, now I am taking penicillin four times a day. Allegedly. Because I cannot for the life of me remember to take something four times a day. For crying out loud. Who can remember to do that? If I had thought for a second that I really had strep, I would have gotten the penicillin shot in my butt. Because that works so much faster. But no. I am just now, as of today, feeling better. Today, finally, my throat is not so sore. Though, when I tried to eat the french fries I got with my lunch, it felt like razor blades soaked in lemon juice. Not so bad as water felt a week ago, but enough to elicit a "crapcrapcrapcrapcrap" if not a "sonofabitch."

Maybe tomorrow, we can downgrade to a "Dang" and eventually an "Oof."

Until then your best chance of hearing from me is my extraordinarily dorked-out Twitter posts. I'm the dorkiest dork there ever was. But at least I'm no longer contagious!

Like I said.....

How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

Congratulations! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. You can smell a grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is revered by the underlings, though some may blaspheme and call you a snob. They're just jealous. Go out there and change the world.
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Sweet Nothings from Sugar Bear

Bear, who, along with is brother has been told several times to settle down and go to sleep:

"Mommy, it's just hard to go to sleep when you are six. Akshully, it's just hard to be six with Bug around."

BOB Books...finally

Oh, I have been horribly, horribly remiss. Several weeks ago, I was scheduled to review the BOB Books. First, I had the wrong date written down. Then my grandfather died. After that, I was simply overwhelmed with....life I suppose. Ironically at the same time, I seemed to be suffering from the blahs. Is it possible to die of ennui? Finally, Marjorie shot me an email earlier this week asking, ever so nicely, (because Marjorie is one of the most diplomatic, lovely people I have ever met on the internets) if I had any plans to ever review the books because this was the last week of the campaign. So I am suitably shamed. And if I had checked my email earlier this week, I would have been shamed much, much sooner. Thus, here is my review.

I am no stranger to BOB books. As a former kindergarten teacher and staunch proponent of phonics, I like to stay familiar with the various phonics programs. SugarPlum seemed to have taught herself to read, so I never ventured to purchase anything like that. But last year, as Bear started learning to read, I got a set of BOB books to help him along (you know, since Mrs Kindergarten seemed to think that he was brain damaged or something). Then when I had the opportunity to have another set for him, I jumped at it!

Simply stated, BOB Books are lovely. They aren't flashy, colorful or exciting. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But these books have spare, simple stories with fun, minimalist drawings. Enough to help a young reader along in his/her reading but not so much as to distract. They have easy to relate to characters with easy names - Mat, Sam, Dot, and Cat. The books help early readers to stay focused on sounding out words and figuring out the "trick" of reading. Using a step-by-step process, they build skill and before you know it, your kid has read a whole book! How cool is that when you are FIVE?! They are great for building confidence in young readers - giving them a taste of reading success and assurance that soon, they will be able to read those exciting, interesting books that they bring home from the library. Bear beams when he reads one of these to me or SD. And he is always quick to grab one to read to Gray or Gram when they visit Candyland. In fact, he likes them SO MUCH that he asked to take them for Show & Tell. I'm going to talk to Mrs Firstgrade about that before we send them. Don't need to piss off another teacher!

As such, BOB books are not something that will hold a child's attention when he is being read to. Case in point, Bug was SOOO excited when I pulled the books out. That lasted about two minutes. He declared them "bowing." (That's "boring" to those of us without a speech impediment. Though not nearly as adorable.) These are not the books that he will pick for you to read at bedtime. They aren't, in my opinion, something to pick to get your three year old interested in reading. But that's okay. Save them for a couple of years when he can start to read to himself. At least that is what I am telling myself about Bug. If he makes parole by then.

Balance? Perhaps I should just work on focus

Balance. Ah, yes. Seems to be coming a little at a time. See? I'm posting!! Okay, well, right now I'm just typing. We'll see if this makes it to an actual post. However, it stands a much better chance than the many many posts as of late which have existed solely in my head. (Lots of space there, you know.)

I was able to play on the computer a bit, take the wrecked van to the shop for an estimate (don't ask...it's painful), go to physical therapy, do a load of laundry - including folding and putting away! - pick up the living room, cook supper, take Bug to soccer practice and even make a valiant attempt at putting the badges on Bear's Tiger Cub uniform. WHEW!

Sadly, I was decidedly unsuccessful at that last task as said badges were not, as I (erroneously) assumed, iron-on. And, as my sewing talents are sadly lacking, Bear went to his Scout meeting with a (gasp!) naked uniform. Oh, the humanity. BUT WAIT! SugarDaddy to the rescue! He is taking the uniform and patches to a tailor near base who will them sew the patches on securely so that Bear can attend future den meetings with his head held high.

geez...can you say tangent?!

I was however remarkably successful in the dinner department, preparing a very quick chicken stir fry that inspired two of the three SugarBabies to ask for seconds and then? THIRDS. So yummy it was. (Pay no attention to Bug. He is protesting most food right now and it is vexing me because my children have always been good eaters. Other parents ask to have my kids over for dinner just to watch them eat. Asparagus? More please! Salmon? Yes! Mushrooms? Peppers? Brussels Sprouts? Mmmmmmmm! (Okay maybe I'm pushing it with the Brussels sprouts, but, they are remarkably good eaters.) I know that this is why Bug is not eating. Because that child must make a liar out of me every chance he gets.)

School still seems to be going okay. Bug has only made one more trip to the office in the past month. For hitting. Brute. He's really not even the slightest bit contrite about it. He feels very justified in his actions most of the time. *sigh* He is going to be a Baptist preacher some day, I just know it. They all start out as little turds and then mellow. Well, mellow may not be the word but....oh, you know what I mean.

Bear has started coming out of his shell some as well. Heh. His teacher still loves him. But he is exploring his boundaries a little more lately, resulting in a conduct cut or two. Nothing office-worthy, though. Today, Mrs. Firstgrade told me that some of his classmates have complained that Bear has been hugging and kissing them. I have witnessed this and talked to him about it. But today we had to have a more direct, in-depth conversation to establish that this isn't acceptable at school. He was crestfallen. Bless his heart, he just gets so overcome with happiness and love for his friends, he wants to kiss them. I told him so save up all those kisses for me.

If you're really nice, I'll save some for you, too. Of course you'll have to come to Candyland to get them, but it will totally be worth it. Bear kisses are some of the sweetest in the world! Not that I'm partial.