Dear People on the Fringes of my Life

Dear Mail Carrier,

I appreciate your delivering of my mail every day (except Sundays and Holidays and while we are on the subject why do I have to work Presidents Day and MLK day when you do not?). And I also appreciate the fact that it is possible that some folks do not keep the area surrounding their mailbox in good shape. However, my mailbox is unblocked and there is nothing keeping you from pulling right up next to it. So, would it be possible that you not hurl my mail in such a way that it is thrust all the way to the far back of the mailbox? I drive a tiny Chevy Malibu and even though I have very long limbs, it is nearly impossible for me to reach the mail from my vehicle unless I hang halfway out the window and even then one piece of mail inevitably falls out of the stack and onto the ground where the wind picks it up and carries it halfway across the neighborhood. Thanks.

Dear Parent of other teenager in the Neighborhood,

When our kids have a verbal conflict, could you please pick up the phone and call me first to discuss before you call the State Police? I promise you that 99.9% of the time we will resolve the conflict on our own. I really don’t appreciate having a 7 foot tall police officer ringing my doorbell during dinner. Thanks.

Dear 4th grade Teacher,

I got your e-mail with the link to the United States 50 States quiz and I took it myself to see if I am smarter than a 4th grader. It turns out that I am not as I made silly mistakes like mixing up Arizona and New Mexico. I also could not remember where Iowa, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts were (and I could not spell Massachusetts if my life depended on it). I promise you that I will keep studying and so will my 4th grader. We are a family eager to learn. Thanks.


Yours Truly,

Melanie

PS if any of you want to try out your United States States skills, click here.

Kids and work haikus (harder than you think)

Made kids wash dishes
They are whining about it
Have no sympathy

Sitting at my desk
My oatmeal tastes like soap
I’ll eat it anyway

Long drive in today
Feel like I live in my car
Lottery ticket?

I have a meeting
The 17th one this week
Such a waste of time

Hormones aren't a girls best friend

This weekend two events happened to coincide. #1, The weather was dreary beyond belief, all weekend. The sun never made an appearance and it was kind of cold and it rained several times. And #2, I was suffering from PMS. Therefore, in general, I was cranky and irritable and mostly wanted to lay on the couch watching movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the Gene Wilder version, not the lame Tim Burton/Johnny Depp monstrosity and Where the Heart is which is the fabulous story where a young pregnant Natalie Portman lives in the local Wal-Mart until she gives birth, and Somewhere in Time because we are going to be going to the Grand Hotel and I need to watch it every time before we go, and also it is a wonderful chick flick that I can get my husband to watch because it involves time travel.

I only got to watch Willy Wonka. There were a couple reasons for this, one being that it had come to my attention that my husband had never seen Fight Club and Netflix delivered, so I had to acquiesce and watch that.

Some social obligations (baby shower and man-b-que) kept us from just staying in all weekend. Also, 14 almost 15 year old boy stayed home again this weekend (I actually cannot remember the last time he went to his mom’s for the weekend). I can’t bring myself to tell him he has to go, but if there was ever a weekend I should have done that, it was this one. He is not a bad kid, but he is 14 almost 15 and he is COOL. Being COOL manifests itself in a variety of ways, the most common involve making comments that are funny to the 14 almost 15 year old but no one else, having aforementioned comment for everything which sound strangely like back talking and playing drums on everything that is stationary. Combine the teenage coolness with my PMS and you have a recipe for “demonstrate to your 14 almost 15 year old that you wrote the book on sarcasm and that if he wants to spar, you most certainly are going to win.”

By the time we started winding down last night, I was feeling tired and blue and dreading coming to work this morning. I started questioning every decision that I have ever made and feeling like nothing in my life is good. Of course, I can step outside of myself enough to know that this is the hormones talking and that in a day or two (or a minute or two!) I will feel better. But I have to ask why this happens. Does anyone else think that hormonal mood swings and PMS seem to be a design flaw of women?

Snow Day Induced Cabin Fever

I am home with the kids today because they had another snow day. I am irritable.

Why are kids so gross? I swear one or both of them is either leaking some sort of bodily fluid or disgusting smelling vapors or both at the same time.

Really? Blech.

Why, I ask, Why?

I feel blue and tired tonight. There is no explainable reason why. I didn't have a bad day, I got enough sleep last night, I don't have to go for jury duty tomorrow (I was supposed to but the case was settled, thank God).

So wtf is wrong with me? I could have gone to bed when I got home at 6:00 tonight.

I blame winter, although, the sun did come out today, so even though it was cold, it was sunny.

In other news, I wish my stepson would cut his hair. Damn the 70's hair that has come back in and damn the skinny jeans. How does he get his foot through the hole?

Okay, I'm off to take a hot bath and go to bed early. If this is one of those nights where I get a burst of energy just when bedtime rolls around and then I can't sleep, I am going to be extremely irritated.

Hmmph.

Christmas, Fruit Cake and All That Stuff

I put the tree up today. I was totally not feeling in the holiday spirit and I really didn't want to put the tree up, but with kids in the house, I feel that would be a terrible thing not to decorate the house. It didn't take me long to get into the spirit once I started unwrapping the ornaments.

Every year I buy each person in the family an ornament that symbolizes something about them. Also each year, we take the kids to Bronners in Frankenmuth and let them each pick out an ornament. These ornaments become property of the recipient and he or she gets to hang them on the tree each year. I figure by the time the kids are out of high school I will have to have a much bigger tree or two trees!

Today I was smiling and remembering the stories attached to each ornament. Where did I buy it, what does it mean, etc....

With all the Christmas memories I started thinking about fruit cake and my grandma (my mom's mom). She used to bake, a lot. And fruit cake was one of her specialties. So if you've ever made fruitcake, you know that the candied fruit that is the main ingredient, is pretty expensive. Well, when my grandma passed away my mom got all of her recipes and when she sorted through them she found 6 or 7 different recipes for my grandma's fruitcake. Each one progressively called for more fruit until the last recipe that was almost all fruit. Apparently as she got more money, she would increase the amount of fruit.

I find that story so charming and I was thinking about it today so I thought I share it with all of you. What Christmas memories are you thinking about while you unwrap your decorations?

The Block

Ugh, I am so boring lately. I have nothing interesting to say, but maybe if I post something it will break the block.

So I'm just checking in with a few random thoughts.

#1 Teenage boys are gross.

#2 Becca got sick, but I don't think it was the swine flu.

#3 What is this weather? What a crap fest.

#4 We are trying a new Asian restaurant. I hope it is good.

#5 I am so glad we got a dog. I love my dog.

#6 My dryer if finally fixed and I can catch up on the laundry.

#7 Becca is watching The Little Mermaid right now and I am remembering how much I love that movie.

#8 I actually cooked this week and it was bang up good. I adapted a Rachael Ray recipe for bolognese and everyone loved it. That made me feel good. I'm a domestic goddess. Sort of.

My Life in Fast Forward

First of all, something smells in my house and I can't figure out what it is and it is pissing me off. It smells like old toilet water or something. In the past I have traced such a smell to Dave's boots after he has been testing standpipes and the stinky stagnant water has splashed on them.

But the boots have passed muster this time.

So, this is how I have spent my Friday night. Washed the kitchen floor (even though I just got the house cleaned last week), wiped the entire kitchen down with Pine Sol, vacuumed the living room carpet, lit 26 candles, moved my Bath and Body Works plug-in to a plug closer to the kitchen (maybe the plug it was in isn't working), and cried.

I have been cursed with an over developed sense of smell (if you have spent 5 minutes with me you already know this). Smells bug me and I am paranoid of my house being stinky. AHHHHH!

Anyway, I finally had to give up. The only other thing I could do is take all the kitchen chairs out of the kitchen and wash the area rug that is under the kitchen table. I am not doing that tonight.

Okay, so now on to what I really wanted to post about.

The 14 year old living in my house. Dave and I have been married for just over 3 years, so that is how long the kids have been living with me and I feel like I have done this motherhood thing in fast forward with no time to get used to anything. It's a whirlwind.

We got married in the month of June and I have to tell you that I was pretty much stunned the first year. They were 11 and 6. And I was not prepared for the whole school thing. Planning lunches, making sure clothes were clean, homework done, dinner planned, who needs art supplies for a project they forgot to tell me about until the night before, etc.... It was so overwhelming I didn't even have time to process how overwhelming it was. And I wasn't very good at it. I missed orientations, conferences, forgot to sign papers and send them back. The kids were lucky I sent in the order forms for their school pictures or washed their underwear before they had to turn them inside out and wear them twice. I was working full time at work and at home and that first year, quite honestly, is a blur. I don't know how I did it.

So fast forward 3 years and while I am much better at juggling and planning with the school stuff, I have made peace (mostly) with the fact that I am not going to be supermom who goes to the PTO meetings and bakes cupcakes for them to take for their class on birthdays, I at least feel like I am somewhat keeping up.

But Sam, now a teenager and freshman, has started going to football games on Friday night and he wants to go into town with his friends to hang out and now just this past Wednesday has informed us that he is going to the homecoming dance tomorrow night with a date. And I find myself with very mixed feelings about this. But not the ones you would think. I'm right back to not knowing how to balance these new developments and feeling a little resentful that I have to.

I feel like I got thrown into this mother thing (which I suppose I did) and it has snowballed. I feel like I'm too young to have a teenager, even though biologically I am not. I feel resentful that these things are somehow my responsibility and that their mother lives an hour away and gets to deal with what she feels like dealing with and nothing more. I feel like I missed out on a big chunk of what should have been a fun part of raising kids, the sweet baby stage etc and I chastise myself for feeling this way because I knew what I was getting into (well I thought I understood what I was getting into, but how can one understand what one does not have any freaking clue about?)

I'm tired tonight. We had another crazy busy week and the kids mother hasn't taken them for the last two weekends so I have had no break and I wonder if human beings were meant to operate at this pace and I wonder if, for all my complaining about how busy I am, that I would complain I was bored if suddenly I wasn't flying at mach speed all the time.

Does any of this rambling even make any sense? I don't feel like I am articulating what I am reallly feeling.

I Still Love My Life

Today was busy. I left the house at 6:30 am to get to work to prep for a meeting that I had at 8:30. The meeting was high intensity for me and when I get nervous I tend to tick. Today my tick was that I was obsessively sucking water out of my 24 ounce sport bottle. You can guess how that meeting ended, right? Me doing a mental pee pee dance and not being able to concentrate on a thing that was being said.

I left work "early" at 3:30 to drive home and grab Dave and the kids (at 4:30) so we could hit the Goodwill sale at Elder Beerman because Dave has lost so much weight that his pants are falling off of him and he had to get some pants. Then we went directly to the open house at Sam's school (this is his first year of high school). The open house consisted of 7 minute "mini classes" at each class. I think this is meant to simulate your child's high school experience but instead reminded me of why I hated high school so very very much. Suddenly I felt like a 14 year old girl again. I'm pretty sure a couple pimples popped out on my face while we were there. Anyway, since the school is so bad at communicating and did not send any details on said "open house", I mistakenly assumed that the open house that was scheduled from 6-8 would be an "open house" and we could wander from class to class and meet Sam's teachers at our leisure and be out of there in an hour or less. But instead we had to follow his schedule. 7 minute classes with 10 minutes in between which meant we would not have actually been out of there until almost 8:00 on the dot. Well, we also had the 9 year old with us who hadn't quite finished her math homework and none of us had eaten dinner. So we skipped his last two classes and decided to try this new restaurant in town that has billed itself as Thai/Chinese. Since there isn't a decent Thai place anywhere near us that I have found, I was excited.

It's not Thai people. It's a Chinese place that threw a couple sort of like Thai dishes on it's menu. I was very disappointed but seeing as how it was already 8:00, we had to make due. I begrudgingly picked something else. Then the food came in waves, each persons dish came separately and mine was about 10-12 minutes behind the first dish. All the while I am looking at my watch cursing the lost evening.

So we came home, I hurried up and put on my pajamas and snuggled into the couch to check my e-mails and update my blog and about 5 minutes after my butt hit the pillow, I caught a whiff of something that made me want to barf. A yet unidentified animal (which one the dog or the cat? There is now way to be sure it could have been either one) had desecrated my couch cushion with either puke or poop, I could not be sure which it was and it was on the back of the cushion THAT I WAS SITTING AGAINST, between the cushion and the back of the couch.

So, it's jump up, scream, curse, cry a little, strip the cover off of the cushion and throw it in the washer, dig the green machine out of the basement and start cleaning the part of the couch that cannot go in the washing machine, cry some more and thank God that tomorrow is not the day I get the house cleaned.

What more can I say?

Living with a Teenager

The summer Dave and I got married, we splurged on a new computer because he didn't have one and the one I had was a pos. It was a really nice computer, we researched, okay he researched it and we shopped around ultimately finding and buying the computer of our dreams at none other than Wal-Mart. It was a nice little deal we scored. Anyway, this past June we were married three years, and we still have that computer. In fact, I am typing away on it right now. [Sidebar: so afraid am I of getting canned or something that I will not type posts on my work laptop anymore, which was part of the lack of posting this summer.]

But something has happened to it. Something being a certain teenager who I shall refer to as Napoleon. Napoleon is a typical American Teenager who values nothing but that which pleases him at the moment. And usually what pleases him at the moment has something to do with a video game of some sort or YouTube. So at whatever moment the feeling strikes Napoleon, he will just go ahead and download "it". Once in the past, this led to what I like to refer to as "The Great Porn Incident of 2008" which is where our computer crashed and Dave had to go through the process of cleaning off the hard drive during which he came across all sorts of stunning porn in our browsers history which then led to what I like to refer to as "The Great Sex Talk of 2008". I don't think I blogged about this at the time out of respect for Napoleons privacy and because I was mortified. But it's been a couple years and I was ready to come out about it. Plus he is in the kitchen eating me out of house and home right now and I'm feeling snarky about it.

So anyway, why am I talking about this? Well, after Dave got the computer cleaned off from "The Great Porn Incident" and it has been running okay but it gets slower every week. Apparently World of Warcraft is a rather large program. So today I was going through the hard drive with the intent of looking at some old pictures and I wanted to share with you some of what I found.

This photo was saved under the file name "Do the Dew"

And this one was called "DOWG" (Did I mention that Napoleon went to the Dog the Bounty Hunter book signing and met Dog?Then there was this gem

And then of course, the video games that don't go on the computer must have photos of the cover of them so they are still "in" the computer and don't feel left out. See here:

Ya'll I could go on with these for quite a string. I also found 6 pictures from LOL Cats, 12 photos of kids I don't know, 10 pictures of kids I do know, 4 Metallica Album covers, 18 pictures of the dog in various poses (some with kids I don't know), 3 self portraits, 4 pictures of the cat, and this:

Again, you are all so sweet. Thanks for the words of encouragement. It is heartwarming to read your comments.

We could not get in with the specialist until June 19 so until then we are just trying to eat extra healthy and stepping up the activity. Thank God it is starting to get warmer out!

In other news, Sam came home from his mom's this weekend with a drum set. He has been taking drum lessons and asking for a set of his own and apparently his mom found a good deal on Craig's List. Bet the parents of the guy he bought them from were happy to be rid of them. They are loud! And when I say loud, I mean LOUD. I guess usually when I hear drums being played it is in a loud bar or a very big space. In my little house they are LOUD. Lol. It's kind of maddening and kind of cute. Being the much younger after thought kid growing up our house was always really quiet so in some ways I enjoy the chaos. In other ways, I want to crawl into a padded sound proof room and read by myself ;)

Follow up to Yesterday's Post

You guys are much kinder to me than I am to myself. Thank you. Even if I'm not sure I'm so noble, it is nice to hear.

I am getting info in bits and pieces and here is what I got today.

Her cholesterol is very high for a 9 year old, but everything else is good (liver, glucose, etc...) so the specialist apparently is going to help us to figure out what kind of diet and exercise plan would be best for her. So actually, in a weird way, this is a good thing because it is going to force the other people in her life to get on board with this. The doctor suggested that those individuals go with us to the specialist so that they can be involved and held accountable. Dave and I are very committed to making this happen and will not tolerate anymore dissension in the ranks. In his words, "This is a battle we will win."

She is okay. I don't think she really understands what is going on right now. I mean can a 9 year old really grasp the fact that she is in danger of having a heart attack?

I am philosophical about this. It isn't fair, but I have been thinking about it and everyone has a burden to bear in her life (I'm sure you would all agree with this as I know most of you and can attest to the burdens you are bearing). Her burden is that she got shafted on the mom front and she can't just eat whatever she wants. I was talking to her about this last night and telling her about all the wonderful blessings she has. She is so smart. School is a breeze for her. She is so outgoing and friendly. Everyone loves her. She has the most beautiful hair I have ever seen. It is thick and gorgeous. And then I told her about the burden I had to bear growing up. I had terrible acne and for many years I let that define who I was. Her brother thinks his ears stick out. Dave won't let me blog about his burdens, but trust me, he has them. And, as I also explained to her, some people, even little people, have to deal with things like cancer and death. And if you compare it to that, eating healthy and exercising is minor.

I feel more optimistic about it today. Thanks for letting me blather on about it. You all are the best.

This is Hard to Talk About

But before I do, I would like to clarify something about Captain Kirk that I said in my previous post. I said that Captain Kirk hasn't been this sexy in a long time speaking about the new Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek series. I did not mean to imply that the William Shatner Captain Kirk wasn't sexy, only that it has been a long time since Captain Kirk has tickled my fancy. This new updated Kirk definitely made me a little tingly.

Okay, now that I have that out of the way I would like to say that it took 5.7 seconds for my life to get back to crazy after we returned from vacation and I would now like another one.

So here is the hard to talk about thing. My stepdaughter has a weight problem-she is 9 years old. This is something that has been a big strain since the kids first came into my life because I grew up with a very health conscious mother and I feel that I have a pretty realistic (if not obsessive) idea of what is required to maintain a healthy lifestyle. She was 5 when Dave and I started dating and it (the weight problem) had already started at that point. Without trashing on her mother too much, lets just say that she stopped mothering when Bec about a year or more before she actually left. Again without trashing on her too much, she left her 4 yr old daughter and 9 year old son with their father and just moved out to do her own thing. During recent conversations with the kids I have learned that the little one has little recollection of her mom and dad being together but has a very clear memory in her head of the night her mommy left. As told to me, "Mommy came in and told us goodnight [the kids were in bed for the night] and that she was leaving." That would be leaving as in moving out.

Okay, so I'm getting a little off topic except to say that it is my personal opinion that this child eats because food is the one thing her mommy always gave her. It is also my personal opinion that her mommy gave her whatever food she wanted because that was the easiest thing to do so that she did not have to deal with her.

So anyway, why am I posting about this? Well, the kids have been living with us now for three years and the weight thing hasn't gotten any better. In fact, I think it has gotten worse. Okay well, I know it has gotten worse. I thought I could lick it myself, but with the kids going to their mom's on the weekends and with some other people who the kids spend time with, we were just managing for it not to get worse. But all of the sudden it seemed to get worse.

She has been going to a family doctor who has not seemed concerned about it so this year I made her an appointment with a new pediatrician (mind you I have no legal rights to this child). The pediatrician noted the severity of the situation and ordered a blood test.

Diagnosis for my 9 year old stepdaughter - high cholesterol. The doc is referring us to a pediatric cardiologist. WTF.

So this next part, I'm just keeping it real so please don't judge me too harshly for what I am about to say.

I'm disgusted. I'm disgusted with her mom and her grandma for not getting on board with us on the eating thing earlier. I'm pissed and resentful that this is somehow my problem to deal with because I had fell in love with a guy with kids. I wish that I didn't care and that I could just say, "oh well, not my kid." But I can't. I worried about what this is going to cost us. I have pretty decent health insurance, but it doesn't cover everything and meds are expensive and lord knows what the specialist is going to run. I'm worried that people are going to think this is my fault when in fact it is a problem that I inherited.

And, I'm terribly worried about the kid. I have no details yet on how serious this is. And I'm sorry that a 9 year old kid has to be cognisant of the fact that she is overweight and is going to have to come to terms with the fact that while all her friends are eating McDonald's french fries and drinking milkshakes, she can't. The whole thing is bullshit.

Smart Shopper Tip

Costco.

Mezzacorona Pinot Grigio

The BIG bottle.

$9.99

You do not need a membership to buy alcohol at Costco. I have never see these big bottles of this wine for less than $15.00 anywhere else and this is the best white wine I have ever had.

Seriously.

It was a rough afternoon at our house.

And that's all I have to say about that.

More Quotes from Becca

We told her she cannot have heelys (shoes with wheels) and she has been obsessed about it ever since. Today she got an American Girl catalogue in the mail and discovered they have heelys for the American Girl doll and they are $18.95. She has a $20 bill that my mom gave her for Valentine's Day and wants me to order the heelys and tells me, "If I can't have heelys, then at least my American Girl can."

When we bought our house it was a spec house so it had some furniture in it. I asked the agent about buying these green chairs that were here and he just gave them to us. So the other day Dave was looking at property values for our area and we were lamenting the fact that houses comparable to ours are now selling for $50,000 less than we paid (we have lived here 2 1/2 years). Becca hears this and says, "But we got those green chairs with it."

I assure you, the chairs are not worth 50k.

The Reluctant Career Woman

So it turns out that I had the flu. That might be why I was feeling so tired or maybe because I was so tired is why I got the flu. Anyway, this was the worst flu I have had in years. I was actually running a fever and I'm sure I haven't had a fever since I was 12. This flu included the twin joys of the shivering chills and burning up hot flashes, as well as a crippling headache and the seal cough. Oh the joys of having kiddies in the house. I know they brought this home to me.

I had scheduled Friday off as a vacation day, but ended up spending it on the couch. Becca, was feeling back to normal and of course she couldn't understand why I didn't want to play with and entertain her. (The kids are on winter break and didn't have school Friday)

Thankfully, Annie (the original version with Carol Burnett) was one of the free movies being offered On Demand and she had never seen it. I put that on and she was happy and I could lay in misery without interruption for a couple hours. Then her "real" mother came to get her for the weekend and Dave came home from work feeling just as crappy and we spent the rest of the weekend in misery together.

But what I really want to talk about is work and why I think that my getting this flu is just a symptom of my exasperation and exhaustion associated with my "job". I put that in quotes because I think that my employer thinks it should instead be called my "life".

What started all this crap was a conversation I had with my boss about two weeks ago that has been nagging at me and I have been obsessing about ever since. Basically, what happened was that we had a meeting with one of my subordinates that took a lot longer than planned. By that I mean it was scheduled for two hours and it lasted about 8. So around 4:30 we are sitting in the conference room and he (my boss) and he (my subordinate) are dicking around checking their e-mails and some other shit and I am getting ancy because we have not even gotten to the meat of what we are supposed to be talking about.

And so I kind of snapped and said, "Look what are we doing here? Let's go over this stuff because I can't stay here all night."

And my boss said, "Why? Why can't you stay here all night? I stay here all night."

And that is where I break down and cease being able to verbalize this shit. I think it would take me a month of posts to unload everything from my brain into print.

In a nutshell, I work with all men. They all have wives who stay home or only work outside the home part time. They are in that office every second of every day. In fact, sometimes it seems like a competition. They like to talk about it like they are sharing war stories.

“Hey, I was here until midnight last night.”

“Yeah? Well I was in here on Saturday for 12 hours.”

And on and on and on it goes. If I am leaving at 5, they call me part-timer. I hate it. It makes me really mad.

I feel inadequate. I have never felt that way at a job before. But most of the time I brush it off. I use sarcasm which has always been my friend. When they make comments about me leaving “early” I ask them what they are planning to make for dinner. That usually shuts them up or solicits some sort of mumbled answer about how they cook on the weekends (yeah right).

But of late, I have noticed myself spending more time at work and less time at home. Even if I’m doing personal stuff at work, I’m there so they can see that I’m there. I leave my house at 6:50 every morning and usually am not home until 6:00 or later that evening. I feel compelled to check my e-mail at night. It's been bothering me for a while and the conversation with my boss is what pushed me over the edge. So they really think that I'm not working enough, huh?

I feel control slipping away. I feel trapped. The money is good, I don’t have to clip coupons to grocery shop (which is a good thing because I wouldn’t have time to anyway). [Side note: If I work the hours those guys are working then the money really isn’t all that good. Then I’m making .72 cents an hours] The economy sucks; everyone knows there are no jobs out there so I should be thankful that I have this one, right? I mean why am I being such a whiner, shouldn't’t I buck up and do what has to be done? I am good at my job. I feel like the fight is in my mind. It isn’t that I don’t want to work at all, I just want to have time to have a life.

Is it different for my colleagues because they are men? Don’t they want to see their kids or spouses? Do they feel as trapped as I do, but deal with it differently because of their gender or is it that they don’t want to go home?

I told Dave yesterday that I feel like a slave. I want to have a baby, but I don’t think my body is going to allow me to get pregnant when I am this stressed out. It does not seem conducive to conception or a healthy pregnancy, does it?

Kidspeak

Becca said two hilarious things tonight.

#1 There is a Mexican restaurant by our house that is called "Los Tres Amigos." When I came home from work today she said, "I want to go eat dinner at the Three Tres Amigos!"

#2 She was telling about some movie that is coming out that features two characters called Romeo and Juliette. Dave asked her if she knows where Romeo and Juliette come from and she says, "Yes, Shakespeare." So I'm impressed thinking that I'm rubbing off on her and she add, "But I don't know who wrote it."

Subject: Hannah Montana

I hate Hannah Montana and if I have to listen to her CD one more time, it is not going to be pretty.

And that's all I have to say about that.

5 Reasons Sam Should Get an IPOD Touch

According to him:

1. Because his is 5 years old (it is, in fact, 2 years old. I know this for a fact because it was mine first and Dave gave it to me around the time of our wedding)

2. It’s too small (It is 4gig)

3. It’s old

4. It won’t fit all his songs

5. It’s old and he wants an IPOD Touch

I think he forgot to mention that his best friend across the street just got an IPOD Touch and so he has to keep up with the Jones's

So here's the drama that was going on at our house last night.

First of all let me start out by saying that Sam is 13 and based on what I have seen since about the time he turned 12, I fear for what it is going to be like in our house when Becca turns 12. Right now she is still pretty sweet and thinks that Dave and I and most other adults are the best thing ever. All you have to do is call her sweetie and give her a hug and she's all smiles. Give her something with glitter on it and she'd do just about anything for you. I'm afraid all that baby sweetness is going to go away when the hormones start surging. I've already seen a few glimpses of it in her.

But I'm getting off track. What I really wanted to talk about what the self-centeredness of a 13 year old.

Dave and Sam each have an IPod Nano. Dave uses his pretty much exclusively when he is running on the treadmill. Sam uses his for things like surviving his excruciatingly painful and long 15-20 minutes bus ride, surviving any sort of car ride with his father and wicked evil step-mother, and in general surviving life. Both IPod's are over 2 years old and if you've ever had an IPod, you know that the batteries don't last forever and in general become crap after a couple years and cannot be replaced.

So Monday night Dave ran on the treadmill and killed his battery so he placed his IPod on the charger and called it good.

I should also mention that IPod's come with a charger that plugs in the USB port on the computer, but if you want to be able to plug it into the wall to charge, you have to purchase an adapter that costs about $30. So we only have one wall adaptor.

Last night Dave came home from work and got all ready to run on the treadmill and when he goes to get his IPod off the charger he finds it is already off the charger and still dead. You see where this is going, right? Sam. The little punk took Dave's IPod off the charger and put his own on it. His answer? A shoulder shrug and "Well mine was dead too." I asked him when exactly he took Dave's IPod off the charger and it turns out he went in there pretty much right after Dave. Then he went back the next morning after his IPod was nice and charged up and took without any thought of putting Dave's back on the charger. Thus the still dead battery at 6:30 p.m. last night. And his answer to that, "Well, we only have one charger."

Mind you, we gave him that IPod. Then he proceeds to tell us how he wants to buy an IPod touch with his Christmas money but he is about $100 short. I suggested he think up some extra chores around our house to help me out and I will pay him and he can earn the rest of the money that way. He doesn't like that idea. He says he can't think of anything he can do around the house. I offered to make him a list of all the tasks I perform each week, in addition to my 50-60 hour work week. He declined. Then, his little sister asks him if she can have his old IPod when he buys the touch and he tell her "NO!"

Who is this increasingly hairy person living in my house?

Tomorrow I will share with you the list he came up with with 5 reasons why he should be able to get an IPod touch