It's sort of a hodge podge

Last night while talking to The Teenager I realized my dad's words have sunken in. I kept saying things like "Before you know it you'll be 25" and "Make a plan" and "Where do you see yourself?"

And then I sent her off to make a list of where she wants to be in 5 years and where she wants to be in 10 years. And to put it somewhere she'd see it every day.

Shockingly enough, I haven't even made a list like that. But my dad has told me to... probably a hundred times in my life. So I think The Man and I are going to sit down later today and make one. I'm a little nervous that we won't be able to agree. :)

And after the lecturing was all over I realized that I sort of used to like those lectures. Oddly enough, I think The Teenager kind of likes them, too.

Yesterday The Man went for a second interview with AT&T. His first interview was Tuesday and the manager he met with told him over and over again how he would be an asset to the company and how he was recommending him for the position and all that junk. Yesterday's interview was with the district manager where he was given the lowdown on what the job would entail, asked whether he was willing to do all of those things (he agreed to all conditions), and told again what a great candidate he was.

And then, maybe an hour after he left the second interview, he got an email.

Matching applicants with the right positions requires a unique combination of candidate experience, job requirements and timing. While you have not been selected for this particular position, we appreciate the time and energy you have invested in AT&T.

Want to know what I think of that? I think they're bastards. The Man drove not once, but twice, to meet with managers. He dressed the part, looked great, smiled, and kissed ass. He even wore a tie pin. He was told over and over again how wonderful he was and what a great fit he would make with their company. He agreed to all of their terms and has proven experience that fits the position.

And they choose to send him a screw you email an hour after he walks out? Not even a phone call? Nothing? Just a form email? Bastards.

He has another interview next week with another company so we'll see how that goes. AT&T doesn't know what they're missing.

PS - I used rubbing alcohol to get the ink out of the dryer and it worked relatively well. Only a little back breaking labor. It helped to heat the dryer up a bit before scrubbing. I sort of feel bad because I ripped into the boys about leaving a crayon in their pants (cause that's what I assumed it was). Then I realized that there were none of the boys' pants in that load of clothing and then The Teenager fessed up that she thought maybe she might have accidentally left a very small pen in her pants and she was very very very very sorry.

PPS - I'm not going to talk about the sex talk. It was uncomfortable enough the first time. Yowza.

PPPS - I'll post later about the groceries. :) It was sort of exciting. Speaking of saving money, Restaurant.com is offering an 80% off coupon till the end of the month! Enter the code "SPECIAL" at checkout. I got a certificate to two restaurants I've been wanting to try for a total of $4 and the certificates are good for a year.

PPPPS - (I'll type as many damned Ps as I want thankyouverymuch) Don't forget to vote for me! I'm down to like 18% or something ridiculous! That other blogger chick is whooping my butt and I'm not okay with it. Domestic Spaz FTW!

I got nothin...

Is that a BUTT and a NUTCRACKER in the background? Why yes. Yes, it is.

Not to say nothing has happened to me over the past several days... I just don't really have anything blogworthy.

I mean, I could write about how I woke up Saturday morning, my dad's birthday, intending to make him a birthday cake and instead spending the time scrubbing ink from the inside of my dryer.

Or I could talk about how I clipped coupons and read grocery circulars and saved $130 off of our grocery bill this weekend. (Rock on!)

I could mention how The Man and I had a half hour sex talk with The Teenager which was uncomfortable on all sides.

Or maybe how The Man had a job interview yesterday that he thinks went really well and we're anxiously awaiting the results of.

But none of those things really seem to constitute a good blog post.

Meh. I got nothin...

And guess who got to clean up the mess?

When I was about 17 years old I, like so many other teenagers, decided I needed a job. I wanted the freedom and independence that a job would bring. I wanted to get PAID.

So I got a job in a pet store. A lot of people probably think this is a pretty cushy job for a teenager. Those people would be wrong.

Out of all the jobs I've ever had, working at that pet store was probably the most eye-opening of all.

I worked in the back, behind the scenes you might say. In a room behind the puppy cages, behind the fish tanks, behind the aquariums that housed hamsters and lizards and snakes. My job was to keep cages clean, make sure everyone was fed and bathed, keep the back area clean, and report any animals that seemed to be sick.

I have a few stories from my time at the pet store that are totally blogworthy, but I'll start with

The Story of the Teddy Bear Hamsters

If you have ever seen a teddy bear hamster, then you know how incredibly furry and adorable they appear. They're little brown and white poof balls with tiny little hands which they use to hold on to little pieces of food and nibble daintily at. Much like this:

They like to crawl up on your shoulder and tickle your neck and make great little pets for little kids (kids old enough to know not to squeeze the hamster, y'all, not 2 year olds) and are generally just sweet little fuzzies.

Until they're not.

See, one day a man came in to our store with about 10 baby teddy bear hamsters in a bucket. They were the cutest little balls of fluff you ever did see. He negotiated with my boss and my boss bought the little guys from the weird man for some agreed upon price. And then my boss brought the bucket into the back room and dumped all of the little hamsters into the tank with another 10 or so teddy bear hamsters. And then he went back to whatever it was he was doing.

And I went about my work, which at the time was giving baths to squirmy little puppies.

Giving a bath to a squirmy little puppy isn't exactly the quietest task which is why it took me a while before I heard the screams.

The screams of young children who were witnessing a slaughter that young eyes should never see.

The screams of mothers attempting to pull their horrified children away from the sight.

The screams of teddy bear hamsters.

By the time I put a soggy little puppy back in his cage and made my way to where the screams were originating from it was too late. It was a massacre.

There were teddy bear hamster parts everywhere. There was teddy bear hamster blood smeared across the glass on the tank, there were little pieces of fluff and little beady eyeballs scattered all over the tank.

I imagine the scene went something like this:

Cause evidently teddy bear hamsters are sort of territorial. And they didn't like those new babies being put into their tank. And those babies didn't like being eaten so they fought back. With evil little baby teeth and evil little baby claws and by the time it was all over no hamsters lived to tell the tale.

So I must tell it for them.

Hamsters are gangsta. Remember it.

I surely wasn't paying any attention to that Jersey Shirt, either.

While perusing the blogs I love to read I came across a post by Suburban Turmoil about the fashion statements American Apparel has been making lately and this post caused me to go check out the American Apparel website myself.

Now, I've heard of American Apparel. I don't think I've ever purchased from them, but I knew of their existence.

This was my first visit to their website.

And on my first visit... I encountered boobs.

Boobs.

Not a hint of boobs, not some saucy cleavage shots... BOOBS.

Fully uncovered and uncensored boobies.

(You have to view the slideshow on that item to see them... if you must.)

Y'all... I was speechless. I mean... I'd expect boobs if I was browsing the Playboy website or if I got a raunchy pop up or something. But I was a little taken back when I got them browsing Jersey Tee Shirts. I was so shocked I had to call The Man over to see, too.

He thanked me.

And yanno? It made me look at a lot more of their items to see if I could find more boobies. I don't know why. I couldn't help it. I guess the marketing strategy is working. I'm even posting about them.

I didn't find any more. It can be your own personal challenge if you are so inclined.

PS - Please vote for me today! You can vote every day until July 15th. Star ratings and reviews give me bonus points. :)

Just plain beautiful

Today I was cheating on the Blogosphere with YouTube and I discovered someone amazing.

YouTube is featuring KokoKaina today on their Spotlight Music Tuesday. Normally I don't click through to listen to the featured YouTubers (I typically only go to YouTube to see if my favoritist YouTuber of all has uploaded any videos... I <3 her) but for some reason I thought I'd give it a listen today.

♥ And y'all... I'm in love. ♥

Here's the recap from YouTube:

In 2007, Zee Avi began uploading her music to YouTube from her hometown in Malaysia. A year later, she was flown to L.A. to record her debut CD. Enjoy an exclusive acoustic mini-concert from this songstress, along with special video blog greeting to fans.

So I went ahead and clicked through to see what her music was like when she first started posting... cause I'm like that... and this is what I found:



If you're not in love, too, I just don't know what to think of you.

Ah, relaxing lateness...

So this morning when I woke up the clock said 7:45.

Which my body said was way too early to be awake.

Except I should have been out of bed by 6:15.

And let me just remind y'all that there are four (4) other people in this house that needed to be awake at 6:15 and not one (1) of them woke up before me.

So when I looked at the clock my first reaction was to just go back to sleep and let all the kids play hookie. And then I remembered that I'm a grown up and I have to be responsible and all that. That, and I'll be crazy enough with them all home all weekend. No need to add another day on to that insanity.

So I got them all up, got them all dressed and fed, and we leisurely made our way out the door. Because once you're already late it really doesn't matter if you're a few minutes later. There was a great sense of calm not having to worry about getting them all to school on time. It was sort of nice.

I know. Weird, huh?

We dropped Goober off first, which thrilled him because he's usually last. At Munchkin's school I walked her in to the office and we discovered that this is the first time she's been late all year. Which if you knew our track record last year, you'd know was sort of shocking to me. This day doesn't count.

So Munchkin was 15 minutes late, Bug was almost 1/2 hour late, and The Teenager was a whopping hour and a half late to school.

But they're all there.

And the house is silent.

Sweet silence.

PS - Don't forget to vote for me today! Oh... and if you leave me a review I get votes, too!! Please?

PPS - Lisa, I love you, too! :)

100 Day Challenge - Day 16

So yesterday's post wasn't very positive, was it? :)

To be honest, my 100 day challenge hasn't been going perfectly. I've stumbled along the way of optimism and I'm picking myself back up today.

A few reasons why I stopped practicing the Law of Attraction over the past couple of weeks:

1. The Teenager abruptly moved in with us, causing my focus to shift immediately. It's been a bit of a distraction but I think things might be becoming a little more normal... maybe.

How I'm spinning this with optimism? The Teenager has already provided The Man and I with one fantabulous date, which we would have otherwise never had. We went to dinner and a movie and I completely forgot how incredibly important it is to feel like a real person and not just a mom. I almost don't care that Bug didn't get to sleep until 10:30 that night and it was a school night because that date was so worth it. The Teenager is also teaching me acceptance and patience... something I'm sure I'm going to need when my own kids turn into teenagers, right?

2. My arch nemesis, insomnia, has been winning many of our most recent battles. Never fear, though, dear readers, I will win the war.

Last night I took melatonin and got almost 6 full hours of sleep, only interrupted once that I can remember. Though this may sound like a normal person's bad night of sleep, I am thrilled. I'm fairly certain that I can shoot for even more sleep tonight and as soon as my body gets used to sleeping at a normal time I think I'll sleep straight through.

3. Summer is approaching and causing me anxiety. I have no plans for summer camps for the kids because I can't seem to justify spending thousands of dollars a month to entertain them all when both The Man and I are home. Therefore, I must plan some actual activities for them and this is giving me agita.

4. My house is chaotic. It was chaotic before The Teenager moved in but it's even more so now. My office has been her bedroom for over a week and I still haven't gotten my new office (the living room) organized. The Man and I still haven't put about a trillion boxes up in the attic, either. However, since I'm so well rested today and plan to continue this well restedness indefinitely, I'm confident that The Man and I will triumph against chaos.

A little sleep, a little meditation, and a little scheduling and I know it'll all be okay.

And winning this wouldn't suck, either. ;)

The Man is hungry, no time for a title

There are times, I assume in everyone's life, when you just can't seem to get your feet underneath you. It reminds me of a post I wrote back in January when I couldn't get my feet underneath me:

I tripped over an uneven part of the walkway. It was one of those trips where you think you can just take a couple of quick steps and recover, yanno?

Except I couldn't... but once I had already taken a couple of quick steps I was sort of committed to my plan of trying to recover the trip. So I sort of tried to jump for the recover. Except that didn't work and therefore I had to sort of run to recover. Except that didn't work so I sort of ran into the van. Hard. With my face... and neck... and chest... and more. And then I hit the ground. And then I couldn't breathe. And The Man thought maybe I had broken my neck. And then when he realized I was going to live he asked me... "What the hell was that?!!"

And we laughed.

And laughing hurt.

I think it's interesting how something that in January happened in less than one minute of time can be dragging itself out here in May over weeks.

I know if I can't get my feet underneath myself I'll fall... and probably hard. And then when it's all over I'll pick myself up and we'll laugh again. And the laughing might hurt a little bit. But we heal and life goes on.

It's not even that anything momentous has happened... I just somehow got my feet out from underneath me. Just one little trip and all of a sudden I'm heading face first for the pavement.

Oh hey! And don't forget to vote for me!

It's an honor just to have been nominated...

Y'all, I've been nominated for a Nickelodeon Parents' Picks Award!

And that makes me feel all warm and squishy inside. And it makes me feel sorta guilty for being sorta a blogging slacker over the past week.

So I skipped on over to Nick's Parents Connect site to see what this was all about and I had a great time perusing the site! There's loads of information and advice for parents of kids of all ages and forums and other general ways to avoid your real life. Sounds like my kind of place!

But seriously, y'all. I've been nominated... and I want to win. :) Cause that's the kind of girl I am. So please head on over and vote for me. I even put the nifty little vote for me button up there in the top right corner so you can find the place to vote for me easily every single day until July 15th.

I see your HINEY! All bright and SHINY!

The Teenager has some sort of cold. She's all sniffly and "oh, my life sucks" and "the bed is too hot" and all that.

And I'm all "You're going to school."

And then I'm all I wonder if she has swine flu....

And Google said "Relax, Spaz, it's probably not the swine flu because sniffles are not a sign of it."

And I was like "Whew! Thanks, Google!"

And then I giggled because H1N1 looks like "hiney" to me and I'm really a twelve year old trapped in the body of a thirty-two year old.

Thirty-two? Really?

And then I put hand soap, Ricola, and Purell on my grocery list.

UPDATE!
This morning The Teenager still felt terrible but insisted that she was well enough to go to school. School thought differently. They called and I picked her up and took her to the Take Care Clinic where it was confirmed that she does NOT have swine flu. Just the regular one. *sigh*

But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking... don't they?

There will be no real blog today... because I have too much to do and no brains left to think of anything good to say.

I leave you with this:

see more pwn and owned pictures

Now we can all feel better about ourselves. :)

The New Normal

It's 12:35 AM and I'm gearing myself up for a new day in my newly reorganized life. It will be Day 7 of my 100 Day Challenge and boy have things changed since it started!

I absolutely got the office cleaned because the office immediately had to become The Teenager's bedroom. Unfortunately my living room immediately became a disaster. :)

This weekend has been a whirlwind of reorganization and strangeness. I think we are getting closer to a new normal (as Oprah would say) though and it'll all be fine.

We'll leave the house tomorrow morning at quarter to 7 and drop The Teenager of at high school first. Then we'll drop Bug off at his elementary school, then Munchkin at hers and then finally I'll drop Goober at preschool. Sudo will probably come along for the ride, slobbering on us all and going from the front to the back of the van twelve times.

I'll get home a little before 8 and I'll attempt to get some of the stuff that used to be in my office put away somewhere. I'll spend a lot of time on the phone trying to get all the affairs with The Teenager sorted out, probably and maybe I'll even read a blog or two. I'll get some work done and before I know it the time will have gone and it'll be time to pick everyone up. I'll grab Munchkin from her bus stop first and then we'll drive over to Bug's and wait for a few minutes. Bug's bus will show up and we'll all drive to The Teenager's high school and pick her up.

At home The Man will go over everyone's homework and I'll try to get some more work done. Then I'll run to pick Goober up from preschool and I'll start dinner.

I'll grab every available kid who walks by to do a favor for me like get all the stuff off the table that has accumulated there during the day, set the table, make drinks, etc.

We'll eat, we'll clean up, they'll all go to bed.

And we'll start it all over again.

This mommy blog just got a whole lot more complicated

Things are changing around the Spaz household. My niece (we're going to refer to her as "The Teenager from now on) and her parents are having what I guess you might call irreconcilable differences. This isn't a new thing, it's been going on for quite some time. It has gotten so bad that my sister has decided she just can't take it anymore.

So The Teenager has come to stay with us. When I picked her up last night my sister, B1, made it clear to me that she would not be coming back to live with her. It had gotten that bad.

Today we spent a lot of the day moving my office into the living room so The Teenager will have a room to sleep in. We haven't ironed all the details out but it seems that The Man and I will have to instantly learn to parent a teenager.

Bug, Munchkin, and Goober are excited about this change and are having a great time playing with The Teenager. I think I need some wine.

Blog posts should not be written when delirious

Okay y'all. I seriously need a cure for my insomnia. I'm tired.

Seriously.

And don't tell me to not take naps in the afternoon because when you don't sleep all night and you realize you might be able to catch just a little bit of sleep in between 11 AM and 2 PM you do it. You do it because if you don't do it you may just bite someone's head off or fall asleep standing up in the kitchen over a hot stove. Or drive the car into a canal. I sleep when I can make myself sleep.

I laid down to go to sleep around 12:00 AM. I wasn't really tired so I read a bit... until maybe 1:00. Then I tried to go to sleep but sleep would not come so I got up and made The Man a sandwich. I laid back down. I thought maybe I just couldn't sleep because I had so much going on in my head that I should make a list of the things I needed to do so I could get them out of my head.

So I made a list.

And then I laid back down.

I almost fell asleep at one point and then the dog whined and I was awake again.

Around 2:30 The Man decided he was tired and came to bed. I thought for sure I'd be able to sleep then.

Nothing.

I tossed and turned until quarter to 4 when I finally decided to just get the heck up. Getting 2 hours of sleep wouldn't be good for me anyhow.

I read Bossy's Family Tree from beginning to end and every other blog in my blog reader and now it's nearly 6 AM and I'll be getting the kids up for school in 1/2 hour and driving all over creation.

I am tired, blogosphere. I want to sleep. This has been going on for months, my friends... and I need it to stop. In the beginning I was taking melatonin... which worked... but only if I took it making sure I had a full 8 hours to sleep or else I wouldn't wake up in the morning. Now I'm a little afraid my body has stopped producing its own melatonin altogether and I'll forever be cursed with no sleep.

I'm tired... and being tired is not conducive to positive thinking!