IIDSSM

Yesterday I took Clara to get her nails done. We went to a spa we’d never been to before, but it was the same ol’ story. The ladies were trying to talk Clara into the 40 dollar pedicure, PLUS the $2 each flowers on her big toes, PLUS the diamond like crystals for $2 each. Of course, Clara was not paying for the services so she was A-OK with getting the whole shebang. I slowed that roll and told Clara she could choose ONE toe to have a flower painted on but NO CRYSTALS. I mean come on! $2 each!

Anyway, Clara reluctantly made her decision and I left her to wander the spa and look at what other services were offered. Little did I know, I never should have left her side. What seemed like an instant after I began my tour, she appeared beside me with the woman who did her pedicure. She handed me a handwritten bill and the total was $104. $104??? What? Why!? I don’t understand! I kind of screamed as much.

The woman was quick to explain that Clara had opted for a teeth whitening procedure and she assured me that Clara had the cleanest, whitest teeth in town. My first thought was, “they talked my 11-year-old into this and performed it without asking me?!!!” and my second thought was “what about her braces?” Well my question was answered when Clara grinned at me. HER BRACES WERE GONE. She just smiled with almost-straight teeth and I blew up.

“THEY TOOK YOUR BRACES OFF???” I hollered. “No,” she said, “I took them off myself.”

Well, a big fight ensued, I ended up chasing the spa employees all over the place, I looked for my dad so he could help me, found out I was pregnant, and received a text message from Scott with a picture of a topless Denise Richards and a note attached saying “this reminds me of you…”

At least, that’s what happened in my dream.

As for what REALLY happened yesterday and the rest of the weekend, it was mostly home improvement for me. James spent the night with Mimi, and I painted the office. Then Scott and I went to see Inglorious Basterds. Not my cup of tea. Then again, most Tarantino movies are not my cup (cups??) of tea.

Anyway I woke up Saturday (James, Scott and I all slept in our bed and didn’t wake up till 11:30!!) and decided to get going on building the doors for the shelves in the office, and called Dad for help. He ended up staying with me pretty much all day Saturday building doors with me. It really was fun. We were back and forth to Lowe’s, we were back and forth inside and outside the house, sawing, drilling, cutting, measuring for hours and hours. One of the doors is slightly too small because apparently I don’t know the difference between eighths and sixteenths. Good thing 3/16 of an inch is pretty dang small or we’d have quite a problem. Oh well. It still looks pretty dang good IIDSSM (If I Do Say So Myself). Anyway, Dad and Scott and Looney were supposed to have gone hunting that day, but I sorta hijacked Dad all day long and they had to go the next day.

Sunday was more home improvement, painting the doors, spraypainting the doorknobs and hardware, all that fun stuff. I also installed a latch on Clara’s door to keep the dog out but yannow what? It didn’t work. The way the doors open (inward to the room) made it so that you could open them even with the latch closed. So I gotta think of something else. :(

Well this blog entry’s more than a little boring, I guess. I barely saw James all weekend, and I didn’t see Clara at all. Well, except when we were at the spa.

A day late and a dollar short

Yesterday was a good day. I left work at noon, as per yoozh, came home and fed the boy, and then we were off. We first went to the shoe store because there were NO SHOES IN THE HOUSE THAT JAMES COULD WEAR. Sure, we *own* one pair of tennierunners that he can fit into but they were nowhere in sight. Any other shoe in the closet either didn’t fit or didn’t have a mate.

So, anyway, first stop: Famous Footwear. James has been begging for light-up Sketchers for months. We went straight to the Sketchers section and he immediately zeroed in on a black pair with green (GREEN, YAY!) lightning strikes on them. They really are awesome. I mean really. They had better be. I seriously think they cost more than any one pair of shoes I own. But you know how it is. If you buy your kids everything they want, then they will be nice to you. So I do what I gotta do.

We ran a few more errands and then picked up Clara from school. Got her home and hung out for a little while, and then James and I headed to the karate school. He’s so flippin cute in his black uniform and gold belt. He was the littlest person in his class and also the lowest belt (I think). But he held his own! He even got up in front of the class a couple times for demonstrations. I definitely laughed outloud during warmup time. Scott had the kids jump high as they could, and when James jumped, he kind of…well I don’t know how to explain it besides say that he shot his feet toward the back and landed completely horizontally on his belly. He’s his momma’s boy!

Speaking of Momma and her clumsiness, I wish someone could have seen the save I made with my cell phone a couple days ago. I was holding my phone and taking a necklace (it was long so I didn’t have to unclasp it – just pull it over my head) off while walking in the entry way. Well, my phone slipped and started to fall to the ground (AGAIN!!!! MY POOR PHONE). So being the graceful swan I am, I twisted around and bent over so my upper body was parallel to the floor. And I CAUGHT that sucker on my back. YesIDid! I stayed that way for a few moments, relishing the job I’d accomplished. And I couldn’t wait to blog about it.

T and P (Thoughts and Prayers)

I have a lot to do today. One thing on my list is to buy a latch for Clara’s French doors. Why? I’ll tell you! The dog is able to shove herself into them with enough force that her fat butt can burst them open. Then she enters Clara’s room and helps herself to anything that might be within her reach. We’ve seen pencils, tissues, stickers, candy, gum, etc. all chewed up because Beck “felt like it.” That’s what she says anyway. Who knows with her? I’ve been talking a lot about finding a solution to keep Clara’s doors shut when Beck barrels into them, but yesterday I had had enough. That dog got into Clara’s room and found a duct-tape-wallet (??????????????????) with a $50 bill, a $20 and five $1 dollar bills. And she tore up the wallet and ripped up all the money! $75 of Clara’s hard earned money that she mostly has because I birthed her and somehow manage to get her to her birthdays year after year. Still, I wasn’t going to make Clara pay for what my dumb dog did, so I was going to pay her back. Fortch, all the pieces were still intact, so I was able to tape all the money back together. But it was definitely enough to light a fire under me and get the ball rolling on fixing her door (do you think I could have squeezed in one more cliché?).

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You should have heard me trying to explain the concept of “infinity” to James yesterday. Here’s how our conversation went:

Setting: in the car waiting for Clara to get out of school

James: Mom? I thought I could count to the highest number, but I can’t. 100 is NOT the highest number.

Me: Nope, it sure isn’t!

James: Well, what IS the highest number?

Me: Welllllll, there is no highest number. You can just keep counting and counting forever. That’s what infinity is.

James: So…the highest number is infinity? OK, I’m going to count to it. 1, 2, 3…

Me: No, you CAN’T count to infinity, it never ends. See, like infinity…and then infinity plus one! Infinity is not a number.

James: Well then is it a letter?

Me: NO! It’s a concept.

James: What’s a concept?

Me: I don’t know. Just count.

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I hope my daughter doesn’t kill me for this, but I have to write about a card she made for her friend. No, scratch that. Let’s keep this anonymous. Let’s just say that someone I know made a birthday card for his or her friend. This person asked me to read the card and give my opinion on whether said person’s friend would like the card or not. Now, I don’t have this memorized verbatim, but it’s going to be very darn close.

Dear Friend,

Happy birthday! We’ve been friends since first grade, and these have been the best years of my life. I know we fight sometimes, but we’re so close, nothing will ever tear us apart. Happy birthday.

Love,
Anon

How flippin’ cute, sweet, and hilarious is that? The “best years of my life”???? “Never tear us apart”??? Priceless!

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I don’t want to alarm anyone but there is something that must be really making the rounds. It’s called, according to James, the Walk Flu. It’s apparently very dangerous, as it renders its victims incapable of walking. People who suffer from Walk Flu are unable to clean their rooms, take their dirty cups to the kitchen sink, or walk at all. They must be carted around by their parents. Caretakers of patients with Walk Flu must be patient. If they find themselves losing patience and trying to force the unwell person to stand, they will find that the Walk Flu causes its sufferers to slump to the floor and become helpless lumps of nothingness. I sure hope for my sake and James’s, that he recovers quickly from Walk Flu. He became overcome with the symptoms yesterday afternoon, and according to his dad, he is still afflicted as of this morning. Please keep us in your thoughts as we battle this terrifying disease.

I painted it black.

Well, the front door looks great! I’ve been wanting to paint it black for a long time, and couldn’t really get Scott on board. Once the varnish/stain at the bottom of the door started peeling from being in direct sunlight all the time, he figured it couldn’t look any worse if I painted it.
So yesterday I did, and it looks fabulous, if you want the honest truth, and I assume you do.

Stacie and I are almost finished with all our personal training sessions. And neither of us has lost any weight to speak of. I mean a little. But not much – not as much as we should have with as hard as we have been working out. HOWEVER. She and I are jogging. I don’t mean spurts of jogging and then walking, I mean, I RAN FOUR MILES AND SHE RAN THREE one day last week. For the week, I was at 9 miles! I haven’t done that in years, and while of course, I do want to lose weight, me being able to do this kind of physical activity means as much to me as being at a healthy weight. Seriously. AS MUCH. Also I figure if I keep it up and get to where I can run more and more, that will help with weight loss as well as motivation for eating better. Maybe. We’ll see.

Oh my James. While I am unable to fill you in on everything funny he’s said lately, I will do my best to highlight some of his greatest moments for the last, um, what, month? Yes I am terrible at blogging. Anyway.

James spent some time with Aunt Cindee a few weeks ago and when he was instructed to put down his puppets and clean up, he balked. “I told you I was going to play puppets six more times, Aunt Cindee!” Aunt Cindee informed him that I was on my way to come get him, and that he wouldn’t actually be playing puppets six more times as planned, and that he needed to clean up now. Not sure where the hostility and/or name calling came from, but James replied, “YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME, DOG.” Quickly, he learned that was not the case.

Recently, we played musical beds, as Scott and I bought a bigger bed for ourselves, gave ours to Clara, gave hers to James, and gave his to Andrew. After moving Clara’s bed to James’s room all by myself (no small feat – it is a captains bed with lots of parts AND scott was out drinking at the bar [good for him]), I realized just how much stuff Clara had crammed under her bed. I literally got a broom and started sweeping the piles of junk to one side. Yes, literally! Exasperated, I hollered at James, “Jamesy! Come help me get some of this crap out of here!” He came in, bent down and picked up a gum wrapper and handed it to me. “Here’s some crap.” I guess I should have seen that coming.

OK, here’s a little mushy-gushy for you. Scott and I were IMing while I was at work and I said to him, "you dont love me," to which he replied "yes i do." So i said "prove it" and he asked "how?" I said "come to my work and kiss me." He immediately he disappeared from my IM list and 5 minutes later he walked in my office and KISSED ME.

Clara’s officially in sixth grade. She’s in, as I may have mentioned before, ALL ADVANCED PLACEMENT classes. All of them. Unreal! I honestly don’t know how it will go, but so far, so good. Week Two is pretty smooth sailing so far.

Clara had her first real babysitting job two weekends ago. She got PAID I am telling you. She sat for Courtney’s boys, one of whom loved her the entire time and decided she was the pits about 10 minutes before Courtney came home because Clara refused him a second oatmeal pie. Courtney came home right in the throes of Lane’s wailing and poor Clara felt TERRIBLE. Courtney assured us that she did the right thing and that Lane was not supposed to have another oatmeal pie. Then she paid Clara big bucks and we all felt better about the sitch. Except Lane, I guess. Poor Lane.

So I have two goals this week. One: I am going to start painting and getting the office together. I am going to have an office! I mean WE. WE are going to have an office. Right now it is floor to ceiling pepto pink and we are doing a darkish gray. It’s going to be the bizzomb. Two: I am going to blog more. I have so many things I want to remember and while I love to make my audience laugh till they pee, I mostly do this so I can look back and remember the good ol’ days, and so that my kids can see that I truly did love them and think they were the bees knees when they were kids. OK, bye!