Thinking…

Even though I haven’t washed the kitchen floors in a couple of months, does that mean I need to wash all those kitchen utensils KP keeps taking out of all the drawers on a multi-daily basis?

Please tell me now, because I’m most defiantly not.

Can you judge a person by their music?

Besides being CEO of the Household, I now have a second job and that title is, Rip Monkey. I spend much of my free time, you know that whole hour and five minutes I get during the day, when all the kids are sleeping or taking their quiet time. Yeah, well…that has turned into my new work time. Along with forgoing my am workout, you know, taking it for the team and all. Do I sound bitter? No, it must be the red wine talking.

ANYWAY, it is sooooooo interesting to see people’s music collections. I am pretty sure we could calculate some way to make money off of figuring out who buys what music and that would translate into, they would purchase this or that or the other thing and someone would pay us handsomely for that right? O.K., I don’t know, but it sounded great in my head a few minutes ago when sweat was dripping down the back of my leg in the shark tank. I digress.

Where am I, oh yeah, music and people. Well, I came across a CD that I could not pass up writing about.

Artist: Mike Boner
Album: My Ass Is Your Drum
One of the songs: Mary How Does Your Garden Groan?

The only other person on the face of the planet that would actually buy this CD would be my brother. You see, he just named his cabin, Camp Morning Wood.

Need I say more?

And the gift was…

Yeah, I know you’re dying to know.

Ed gave Cindy a beautiful planted garden of perennials, toped off with cypress mulch.

Please hand me the tissue, I’m weeping

Cindy

Happy 35th Birthday!

Cindy is my friend who doesn’t read my blog. I don’t take that personally. It’s ok that she doesn’t think I have anything funny or interesting to contribute to the internet. No seriously, I love my friend Cindy. So, on her birthday, since she doesn’t read my blog, I’m going to tell you a little about her.

Cindy is a city girl who grew up on a farm with four sisters (one of the four being her twin). You would never know she grew up on the farm by the looks of her. She is a pretty stylish chick, with good taste in all things from fashion to food to home décor. The only time that I am reminded of her farm experience is when she starts talking about things like the mating frogs in our pond down the street, “yeah, they’re croaking so loud because that’s their mating call”. Like dah, didn’t you know that?

The really interesting thing, or I guess the most envious thing, is that Cindy has an “Ed”. Ed is her husband. Ed is one of those guys that does EVERYTHING, and everything for his wife. He too is very stylish; is a metro-sexual for sure, a gourmet cook, no I am not kidding or exaggerating and he even cooks most nights. He loves to eat at the best restaurants, smoke great cigars, drink great wine-port-martini’s-etc. He also refinishes bathrooms, kitchens, tiles floors and since he is an Art Director (during the day) he has the vision and “sense” to make it all come together. Along with all that, he cleans. YES, he cleans! The running line amongst all the girls and even the gay men is, “Everybody needs an Ed.”

So, it will be interesting to see what Eddy has in store for the love of his life on her 35th birthday. I can’t wait to find out.

My special place

We have a chair in our living room that I always thought would be mine. You know that special place that I would make my own. Well, in the last two years that we have owned this chair I haven’t really sat in it…until last night.

Last night, I opened up my book, cozied in and started to read. And today, I couldn’t get that feeling of wanting to just sit in that chair and read my book out of my mind.

So finally, here I am. Kids in bed, rain falling, glass of wine. I must say goodbye because my chair is waiting for me to put my feet up, turn the light on and read.

Ciao

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it…even in an email

I was so excited looking through all the cool t-shirts at www.threadless.com, trying to figure out which one to buy for me and which one to buy for Adam. I think I wasted a good half a day meandering through pages of t-shirts.

Once I finally came to a decision and ordered them, I couldn’t wait to put it on. The shirts were delivered in a timely fashion and then immediately washed and worn. Do you typically wash something before you wear it? I do.

But, once I put mine on I noticed it was pulling to one side. Like the neck line was being stretched way out to the left and then the flying elephant on the front of the shirt would pull across my body. I thought maybe it was my lopsided breasts, but that didn’t make sense since it was pulling on the side where my “little one” lives. Now, it is annoying and actually uncomfortable to wear because I am constantly pulling the shirt over to the right when I wear it. T-shirts should not be this labor intensive.

So, because I really liked the shirt, I decided to email them at threadless to see if they could help me out. My email is as follows:

Dear Threadless,
I recently ordered a woman’s, medium, Southbound Pachyderm T and it is lopsided. I have only washed it once and it is constantly pulling to the left. I love the shirt but have to tell you it doesn’t look so great pulling across my torso. I see that you are now sold out of them and wondering what I should do. Thoughts?
Thanks, Mary

Here is there response:

Well, I wish you wouldn’t have washed it because now I can’t accept it back. Our policy is 30 days, no wash – even if it was defective. There’s really no more I can do at this point. The return must be in original condition. I’m sorry.

Maybe I am being too sensitive, or maybe I am reading it all wrong, but it seems to me that they are not really sorry. And I really don’t like the tone they used. It makes me not want to purchase t-shirts from them anymore, even if they are cool. It makes me want to tell you not to purchase t-shirts from them, even if they are really cool. I wonder if they would change their tone a little bit if they knew that 10 people have just been told on the internet that they have poor customer service and that those 10 people might tell 10 more people and that those 10 might tell 10 more.

Really, I’m not trying to get away with anything. But to sell me a defective t-shirt and then be snot about it, shame on you

Sum, sum, summertime

You know its summer when Adam gets the shears out and gives CT his annual buzz cut.

Did I beat the hairdresser?

YES. Well, sort of…she never showed. But I am still gonna take that as beating her. You can’t win if you don’t even show up.

And, how was the rest of “the ride”? It was really great and I would do it all over again in a heart beat.

The official results came in on Sunday and my stats are as follows:
Overall participants: 189th out of 340
Women: 60th out of 147
Age Group: 7th

I have already set my sites on next year’s event, The Turtleman. Why not? I’m not getting any younger.

P.S. And a big shout out to Mrs. Bickerson, because with out all of your amazing bike equipment and generosity to let me use it, I would never have been so stellar on the bike leg of the race. THANK YOU-THANK YOU-THANK YOU!

Transition #1 (swim to bike)

“Hi” to my kids.

Almost to the finish line.

And, last but not least, a very special thanks to my family who has been cheering for me since February when I got this cockamamie idea in my head. I love you!

To the daddy of my kids

I love you so much and thank you for being the best daddy in the world. They don’t yet know just how lucky they are.

Happy Father’s Day!

Just another beautiful day poolside

I love the summer. As a stay at home mom, one of the luxuries I afford my little ones is time at the pool. Every summer since CT was little, we would purchase a pool pass and every nice day we would pack-up ourselves and our lunches and spend the morning frolicking in the pool.

Today, with the sun shining and a high of 80 degrees, was going to be no different. Everyone packed-up, got their suits and sun screen on, grabbed what they wanted to play with and we headed off to the pool.

Once everyone and everything spilled out of the van, we put KP in the stroller, walked into the recreation center, admitted ourselves with our pool passes, took potty breaks, walked through the bathroom and then out past the concession stand and finally to the pool. All the while CT was asking for his goggles. We will get them once we get situated, I kept saying.

The towels got put on the sun chairs, the swim diaper got pulled on, the sandals came off and then I started looking for the goggles. I suddenly remembered that CT had them in the car and they were not in the bag at all, like I had thought. I tried to gently break the news to CT that the goggles were still in the car. He simply said, well let’s go get them, and my response to that was, no.

The thought of packing everyone up to simply go back to the car to get goggles is not easy, nor is it worth it, or so I thought.

So, I stood my ground with my decision. And, the shit hit the fan; trembling lip turning into a flood of tears, screaming at the top of his voice, kicking me-the stroller-the water, hitting the sun chair-the ground-his leg, and then yelling some more. It was a full-blown tantrum. I remained calm and tried to tell him that this one time he would be ok without his goggles and then equally as calmly told him, that if he didn’t stop this behavior right now we would leave. As the crowd of women and children looked on at the car accident that was taking place right before their eyes, I pulled the plug on the pool.

I manhandled my 50 pound, very strong, very lanky son into the seat of the stroller and buckled the WAY TOO SMALL buckles around him, just to gain some control. All the while he continued to flail, kick and scream, flail, kick and scream, and then flailed, kicked and screamed some more.

Then I had the opportunity to gather up little soaking wet PJ, who kept running away from me deeper and deeper into the water, wanting so badly to stay and play. Please keep in mind, I am doing this all one handed, because the littlest one is hanging onto me for dear life wondering what the *&$# is going on.

This is just not the way I wanted my pre-race day to go.

Now, on the other hand, I could take this white hot rage and unleash it tomorrow! Yeah, now that’s a good idea.