Got Milk?

Why is it if I buy a half gallon of milk it seems like we are always running out. But if I buy a gallon I always end up dumping half of it down the drain because it goes bad before we use it.

(If only this were the biggest worry in my life right?)

Me Worry? No, Never!

Last night after my nap on the couch and the hubs woke me up to go to bed, I couldn't get back to sleep. I tossed and turned for what seemed like a long time. I had myself all worked up and in quite the tizzy.

What was bothering me you ask? I was worried about what we would eat for dinner on our lay over at the airport. Yeah, we will be at the airport May 25th. Nothing like putting the cart before the horse hu?

I think it all started with dinner last night. We were having a gourmet meal of grilled cheese sandwiches. Hubs said he wanted 2 and the girl was eating her first one and asked for another. I told her as long as she would eat it, I would make it for her but if not that was the last of the bread and if you only thought she wanted it, I would eat it. The look she gave me was one of great concern. She wanted to know what I was going to eat if she had the last sandwich. I told her that I would find something else but that is just what Moms do, give up things for their kids without thinking twice. (I think she may have decided to become a nun right then and there, she is a bean pole but the thought of giving up food for someone else made her stop and think).

This got me to thinking about the time we went to PoDunk and flew in late and stayed in a hotel before driving to our home town. It was late and there was nothing close to our hotel to eat and was too late to order pizza (we were picking up our rental car the next morning). We were all pretty hungry and all I had in our carry-on was half a bag of beef jerky. I remember letting Hubs and K have it all knowing we would just get up early and have breakfast.

All of this in turn had my mind spinning. If we leave here at 2 its really 4 there, so that makes it 7 when we get there which is only 5 here yadda yadda yadda. So logically at 7 pm there will be plenty of things still open in the airport so we won't wither away to nothing in the 2 hours we are in the land of 10,000 Lakes.

I am off to eat an ice cream sandwich and start building up extra body fat between now and then, just in case ya know.

Don't Mess With My Kid...

I will admit, I am very over protective of my child. The way I see it? She is the only one I have and it is my job.

Now, I do think I know when to step in and when to let her fight her own battles. Today though, what she told me sent me through the roof.

A day last week, Katie told another little girl at school she like her folder. D said thank you and told Katie where she got it. Lo and behold, the next day D is missing the folder. She of course accuses Katie of taking it because she had said she liked it. This morning, the folder mysteriously turned up on Katie's desk. When it turned up, Katie had not been in the classroom yet today.

First of all, Katie knows that if she wants something all she has to do is ask and if it is within reason, chances are she will get it. Second of all, she knows that if she ever did something like this, she would be up a creek without a paddle.

This little girl comes from a rather unstable background, and is very starved for attention. Regardless of this, it upsets me that she is accusing my child of something she says she did not do. I am not saying my child is an angel or 100% perfect but I believe her this time. There are too many things in the story that just don't quite add up. As little girls do they have drawn battle lines and brought several friends into the situation. So not only is D calling names and being hurtful so are some others. My first reaction was I can't wait until I get to school tomorrow so I can talk to D.

I asked Katie at dinner tonight if she wanted me to talk to D. She wanted to know what I was going to say, I told her I wasn't sure yet. She told me she wanted to think about it and she would let me know after she got out of the shower.

My gut says talk to the little girl, my brains says stay out of it and let little girls be little girls.

What would you do?

????

This how they ended a very busy day..Magoo being her ever diligent shadow, I was out front so she felt the need to watch the Hubs.
Hubs climbed up into the attic and look what he found...
So is funnier that we saved these or that she still fits?
I thought we had rid ourselves of all things baby a long time ago. I wonder what else we will find!

Movin On Up

Well its happened. We have outgrown our humble beginnings. We thought it would have happened sooner, and we may have just chosen to ignore the fact that we were splitting at the seams, rather than later. We are beginning to scratch our heads and wonder where we go from here.


First it seems, we must part ways with Casa de Bug. She has been a happy little home over the past 8 years, but for some strange reason we can not afford to have two house payments. I will be very sad to pack up our junk and leave her behind. I am sure that she will make another family just as happy as she made us.

Houses in our neck of the woods, as I hear it to be the same most places, aren't selling very quickly. With that in mind, our plan is to spiff up the place, and put her on the market. We are just concerned that we will find something we love more than her, she will have her feelings hurt and refuse to sell and we will be disappointed. We do have a "Just In Case" plan in place, on the off chance she does sell right away (When we bought the Bug Shack, I sat at the end of our street with our realtor and watched them put the For Sale sign in the yard and made an offer before anyone else had seen the house). I wonder if we jinxed ourselves trying to be the smart ones. We will see...

Second? We have to find a new place that we will all be happy in. When we bought Casa de Bug we had very little money and were just ready to get our of our crappy apartment. Not that we settled for what we have now, but we really didn't have high expectations. Now? We want a new house that we can pick and choose the things we really want. Of course we both seem to know what we want, and as you may have guessed we don't both want the same things. We have agreed that we will have to "give and get" a little but we are both very stubborn and that may be easier said than done. Why should he care what kitchen cabinets I pick out if he will be spending much of his time in his 3 car garage.

I do think that we may have found a house that we can all agree on. It has meet almost all of our preset standards. My biggest thing was a decent sized bedroom for the girl. As she pointed out last night at dinner she will be going to college in 7 years, but it will be a much more enjoyable 7 years for all of us if she has some room to grow. Hubs was trying for Daddy of the Year by insisting she also have her own large, preferably a walk in, closet. I was indifferent to a one or two story but wanted the laundry room on which ever floor the bedrooms were on. We saw so many houses where you would have had to carry your clothes down stairs and through the kitchen to the washer and dryer. No thanks. The house we are seriously considering is a 2 story with the master bedroom downstairs, the 5 other bedrooms upstairs, and the laundry downstairs. (What we are going to do with 4 empty bedrooms I don't really know). I wasn't to keen on the idea at first but then Hubs pointed out we would not have to carry our dirty duds up and down the stairs, it would only be the girl doing the climbing with the laundry basket. And because I am always looking for one more reason to say "Because I said so", I caved on that point.

The one thing that the hubs is sticking on is he wants a huge lot. The lots that are available now are decent sized but just not quite what he wants. They will be releasing more lots in the next couple of weeks, but the houses will have a price increase right before they open up the new lots. So, did I whine and get him to give in and quite possibly never hear the end of it, or do we wait for the larger lot and the larger price tag?

I am going to call our realtor next week and make an appointment with him to come over and tell us what he thinks needs to be done before we throw caution to the wind and put the house on the market.

I guess we will see what happens.

A Meeting Of The Minds

Monday started off as a great day. Katie didn't have school and I didn't have to work so we didn't have to get up before the birds (A big shout out to Magoo who felt the need to stand in the backyard and bark for 20 minuets, thanks for letting Mama catch an extra few winks, dumb dog), and could just kind of go at our own pace. We were up and out of the house about 10:30. Our destination? To find some plain old boring denim shorts for the girl that her cute little tooshy wouldn't hang out of.

All was good in the world until I had to nerve to tell her no to something. Right then and there it went to hell in a handbag. We looked at several stores and hit the mall, nothing I suggested was what she wanted. (Had she not been being a boob, she would have loved 95% of it) Fine, but when its 115 out, you might be rethinking the whole shorts situation.

After our lovely pouting episode we ran a few more errands and headed home. It was about 5:00 and she told me she HAD to get on the computer to work on her science project. (Now, she was off Fri, Sat, Sun and now Mon from school). I asked her when it was due. Um, Wednesday. I pretty much lost it right there and screamed and yelled and wanted to know why she waited until the last minute to do things. It was not pretty. She was upset, I was upset, and Hubs was upset that 1) I was yelling at her and 2) she waited until the last minute to do her work. Had this been a regular assignment it would not have been a huge issue but it was a rather large project, worth lots and lots of points. She wanted to know why I always expected her to be perfect (Ouch) and get all the points all of the time. I simply told her because I know that you can do it. We ended up having a pow-wow and working it all out. We came to the conclusion she would not wait until the last minute to do things, and I would try not to get so upset with her. Once again all was good in our little piece of the universe.

Fast foward to yesterday. I reminded her when I dropped her off at school for about the 900th time to make sure she brought home her science folder so we could go over everything one.more.time (you know we have to get all the points all the time). When she got to the shop after school I asked her if she had her folder. That would be a big fat NO! I'll tell you what, she was lucky we were at the shop and that we had customers or she may have been buried in the back lot and never been seen or heard from again. I asked her why. Well, because the teacher was making them hurry and well she didn't have time to get it. When we got in the truck to come home, I told her, in a very calm voice that Hubs would be getting alot of playing time on her Nintendo DS as it was now mine. Of course she burst into tears (told ya she was like me) and tried to argue her point. I wasn't having any bit of it. Then she said I thought we had a deal. I asked her just what the deal was? Well she was going to be more responsible and I was going to try not to yell so much. Well because you need some help remembering to be responsible, the DS is mine until you get your grade on your project and then we will go from there.

I feel bad that I took it away, but I do think it will help her remember her work the next time. (She does have a notebook that she writes her daily homework in and she very well could have slipped another little note in it to remind herself).


4:02 Wednesday afternoon; Katie just got to the shop and I asked her how school was. She said we didn't have science, but I brought my folder home so we could go over my project one more time! Yippee! I don't feel so bad any more and she seems to have learned her lesson.

Who Doesn't Love An Instant Message

Me: I have to pee really bad and Bossman is at the bank. I hope the line isn't too long.

( 10 mins. later)


Her: I hope Bossman got back in time so you didn't pee your pants.


Me: I didn't pee my pants but did manage to spill an entire cup of water on myself so it looks like I did.

I am such a dork sometimes.

What Do You Remember?

I called M yesterday to tell her that I had gotten our plane tickets for this summer. She asked me how old Katie was, I said she just turned 11. Then she said you do know we were only a year older that summer....

That summer. It was 1989. It seems like a long time ago. M and E, were 12, I was much older at 14 (Ha!). We spent our usual week at the lake house. It was there that an uncle asked us if we wanted a beer. The only rule was we had to finish it if we wanted it. I think we each had 3 and he cut us off after that.

That summer. It was also the summer we snuck out of g-ma's house and ran the streets of PoDunk. That was back in the day when pop still came in glass bottles. They worked great for spin the bottle.

It is really weird for me to think this way, that I can think back to when I was her age and remember some of the things I was doing. My best girl from college always says I can't wait to tell her the things we used to do. Um, stop the truck right there sister friend, I am so not ready for her to hear "some" of those things yet, and some day you will have kids and turn about is fair play.

I hope that K has some of these same moments, times she can think back to, and remember the things she did as a kid, when she was just a kid herself.

Anna Nicole's Funeral

Trip Wrap Up Part 2

This is going to much quicker than version 1, promise.

Lots and lots of sitting on the beach and by the pools. Lots and lots of alcohol. (All inclusive is definitely the way to go).

Eat lots and lots of yummy food.

Hang out with friends.

A few nights we shut down the piano bar.

One night we hung out at the disco! (The alcohol helped with this I am sure).

Throw in some shopping, some snorkeling, and some sleeping and that pretty much sums it up.

We did go to Anna Nicole's house one day. We went on a rather disappointing tour and decided to take a taxi back to the resort rather than wait for the bus. The driver told us he would take us by her house for another $20.00. We figured what the heck, why not. It was a zoo there. This was Tuesday afternoon, before anyone knew her funeral would be Friday. When we left of Friday the only way to get to the airport was to drive by the cemetery, again what a zoo. Some of our group who got in late stayed a few extra days and went to the cemetery and took some great pictures. I will add them soon.

The biggest complaint? These. I was eaten alive and my poor legs are covered in itchy red bites. All in all, it was a great time, with great friends. I am not sure it would be my first choice to go to again, but it is one more place to add to our "Been There Done That List". Next years trip? Panama. Now that is one place I am excited to go to.

A Little Look At Me

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Trip Wrap-Up

I know, we have been home almost a week and I am just now getting around to this.


So, this is where we went. Now we didn't get there without a few hangs up....

We were scheduled to leave Phoenix Sunday morning at 6:30 a.m. which meant we got up at 3:00, to leave the house by 4:00. By the time we dropped off the truck and got in line it was about 5:15 a.m. The line at the ticket counter was about 200 people long. There are never long lines at our airport, especially so early in the morning. It should have been our first clue. We drug our suitcases to the end of the long-o-line only to have the guy in front of us say something about our flight being cancelled. Right after that we heard our friends name being paged to pick up a white paging phone. I told Hubs to hang tight I was going to find out what was going on. I worked my way to the front of the line to see our friends next up to the counter. I very nicely pushed my way in to find out what was up. Seems the bad weather in Texas the day before grounded a bunch of flights and there were no planes. I quick called the Hubs and told him to drap our crap to the front of the line NOW! because M was working with the agent to keep 6 of us together. (Hubs told the guy who had told him about the flight being cancelled we were line at the wrong airline and I was calling to let him know).

Our original flight had us going from PHX to DFW to Nassau. The agent was able to get us on a later flight Sunday morning, we would then stay the night in DFW then get to Nassau a day later than we had planned. We did a quick group huddle and after listening to others try and work out flights we went with it. We should have been a group of 24, we turned out to be a group of 6. The rest of our group didn't make it out until Tuesday.

Once we were through security we jumped on our cell phones trying to locate a hotel room once we got to Dallas. We were lucky enough to find ONE room. 6 adults one hotel room. We were off to a great start.

Let the fun times begin. We got to Dallas, claimed our bags and worked our way out to the curb to wait for the shuttle from the hotel. Now, I told them we had 6 adults. Ready for this? They picked us ALL up in one Explorer. The driver was not happy, nor was I. I explained several times I told them we had 6 people. The driver not so nicely told me we had more bags than 6 people should have. Now, who is he to tell us how many bags we could have. The airlines allow 2 per person so he should have assumed that we would have at least that. We had 13 bewteen the six of us. In we all piled, then the drive proceeded to pile different suitcases on our laps, between our legs, under our feet and anyplace else he could find to stick them. Good thing is was only about a 10 minute ride.

So when we get to the hotel guess what? Exactly. Our room wasn't ready. We were surrounded by an industrial area. We noticed a hotel bar at the end of a hall. The desk clerk told us it wasn't open yet, but they could take us to a neighboring hotel that had a restaurant and sports bar in it that were open. We checked our bags and piled back into the Explorer. After about 4 hours and $400.00 later we were ready to head back to our hotel.

Upon arrival at our home away from home for the evening, that really wasn't quite the same as being in the Bahama's, we were told that their bar was CLOSED on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. I think they are a bit backasswards in good ol' DFW. To make it better we were also in a dry county. I had no idea they even HAD dry counties anymore. Now what were we going to do? The boys went off to befriend the shuttle driver ,slip him a few greenbacks, and have him take them to the next county to pick up some boos. Guess what? Yeah, in Texas you can only buy beer on Sundays. We are much more mixed drink and shots types of people, but in a pinch I guess the beer would have to do. While they were out they picked up a delicious dinner of bean dip and pork rinds.

Gosh, we aren't even there yet and I am tired of typing about it. If you are so inclined, click on the flickr badge to see some of our pictures.

I'll be back later with more, which I promise is more fun than bean dip and beer.

Easy Come, Easier Go..

I just finished buying airline tickets for our next adventures. I had 3 windows open and one very nice man on the phone from the airline. See, the 3 of us will all leave together to go to a family reunion in May. Then the hubs and I will return home 2 days later and leave behind our offspring. I will then return 3 weeks later for a wedding and retreve said child of ours. But, when I return I will fly into another state, well for some reason I was unable to book her "multi-destination" flight online. I was afraid to book ours without being able to book hers, because I do not want her flying alone.

It took me several hours researching flights and several phone calls back home to work it all out to make sure the girl's extended stay would not be a burden to those she would be with, and then match up flight numbers, buy 4 plane tickets, via 3 different airports, for 3 people.

It is a good thing that nice man Unlce Sam just gave me back my money so I could buy the above mentioned tickets. Too bad he wasn't about 2 weeks earlier. Last time I looked, tickets could be had all day long for right around $200.00. Last night they were $269.00. This morning $310. and going up every time I opened a new window. The part that gets me the most is that the tickets for the hubs and I to go for 2 days cost more money than the ticket for her to be gone 3 1/2 weeks, jumping from airport to airport.

Dirty Dog

Dear Future Family Member,

You should be thankful that your fiance chose to call me rather than anyone else in our family this morning when you had her in tears, ready to call off the wedding.

Lucky for you though, I took it all in, told her I would support her what ever decision she made, even though I really did want to tell her to kick your sorry ass to the curb, and let her sob to me on the phone.

I assured her, that if she did keep you around , I would not hold it against you, (not in public anyway) and continue to welcome you into our family.

You are treading on thin, thin ice Buster. I was not sure you are good enough for her in the first place, but now this? We have a kick-ass family who would all kick your ass in a heartbeat, if we find out that you are what you said you are not.

XOXO,
Not your biggest fan right now


(I would so love to "out" this jerk and tell everyone what he did, but sometimes you just have to hold back and wait for things to unfold in their own time and way. Believe you me though, if it turns out to be true I will shout his story from every roof top bewteen here and Timbucktoo).

Oh No

Oh No
Originally uploaded by Marlee Magoo.

Because today hasn't been shiity enough. I am so glad and thankful the neighbor was home and saw my girls out walking the 'hood.

No, they don't wear their collars, but they do have the microchips if someone took them in to get scanned.

My heart sank when I saw the note. I don't think I took a breath again until I was in the house and saw both of them with my own two eyes. Who says dogs are "just" dogs. They are our other kids. Our other kids who are grounded for trying to run away from home.

Speaking of dogs, I will be back later with the rest of my shitty day, and the scoop on the dirtiest one of all.