I'm an idiot

I know how much everyone loves my text only posts, but trust me when I say this one is worth it. Believe me, the title really says it all.

It's no secret that I am pretty smart. I'm not going to even pretend modesty because anyone who knows me knows it would be a load of crap. I do, however, believe this intelligence is balanced by a healthy dose of instances of absolute idiocy. I'm sure many of you have heard stories of this, the most recent, outside of today's story, is the one involving hemorrhoid cream being purchased and used instead of hydrocortisone cream. The packaging looked the same, and frankly, it worked just as well, if not better. I still haven't bought hydrocortisone cream, but I have had bugbites since. Yep, I've been using the hemorrhoid cream and you know what? It works, so there.

Anyway, on to today's instance of absolute idiocy. In attempting to balance my lazy parenting when it comes to meals, I've been trying to at least make breakfast every morning. I figure that will somewhat balance out the fact that 90% of the time we have cold cereal for dinner. This morning I opted to make egg muffins because I had all the ingredients. Another attempt of mine is to try and be a bit more healthy so I recently purchased the olive oil pan spray instead of the regular kind. Yeah, olive oil is still fatty, but it's one of those fats that is also good for you. Anyway, if you are familiar with these cans, they have a little red dot that you are supposed to line up the spray thingie with. Yeah, I'm technically inclined. Thingie is close enough. So, because I've not used this one before, it's not lined up. I make my move to turn the spray thingie and instead of just turning it, I pushed it down a little as I turned it. This resulted in spraying myself from the right to the left right across in my eyes. Brilliant, aren't I?

After I rushed to the bathroom and spent 15 minutes rinsing out my eyes and attempting to clean my contacts off, I managed to finish cooking breakfast even though everything was a touch blurry. Good thing that I have backup glasses. Normally I only wear them in the evenings and weekends at home, but now I get to wear them to work. I will give the olive oil one positive though. It doesn't burn. There isn't any stinging or itching or anything like you would normally have happen if you sprayed something in your eyes. My eyes seem to move more easily as well, so maybe it's a good lubricant. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure I've not gotten it all out and that's why things are a touch blurry. It's getting better as the day progresses and I use more eye drops though, so I'm sure it will be fine in the end.

Well, there you have my idiot story of the day. I hope I've provided you with entertainment to start off your day.

FINALLY!!

I know it's not super exciting but I have wanted one of these forever. My mom has one and I have coveted. Yeah I know, commandment #whichever says not to covet, but that specifies a wife so I think I might be okay.

The main reason I have wanted one is because of space. Not the final frontier of, the lack of in my condo and especially my kitchen. I now have somewhere that is not a countertop or fridge drawer to put fresh veggies and fruits. Woo!

Oh yeah, pretend you can't tell how badly my window is in need of washing. I'm lazy, sue me. Or not because if I am this excited about getting a hanging basket for my window, I probably don't have anything worth winning in a lawsuit. Except maybe the extensive smut collection and that you will have to pry from my cold dead hands.

Happy Friday or whatever day it is when you read this.

Family visits are fun...

A few weeks ago my Uncle Lee came for a little visit from the almost Great White North, Port Angeles Washington. We mainly sat around catching up and chatting but we did head on out to Maddox Steakhouse for dinner. Mmmm, turkey steak. Anyway I took this picture, but apparently I'm not that good because you can only see parts of who was there.

It was great to see Lee since it's been almost 5 1/2 years. Here's to hoping I can make it up there for some deep sea fishing next summer!

Summer family addition #1 is here and I'm melting

Despite her efforts to the contrary, my new niece joined us this past Monday July 13th. I am SO jealous of the birthdate. I wanted to have my kid to someday be able to have a Friday the 13th birthday party, but NO, stupid hospital had to be all booked up on the 13th for inducements, so I had to go in on the 12th. I'll forgive her eventually for hanging out so long they had to remind her to come, but I'm expecting to be rewarded for doing so with her first smile or my name as her first word. I'm cool with either.

All joking aside, I'm way excited for my sister and her husband. They are thrilled to finally have her here and I am too. I'm sure everyone knows my thoughts on kids, but dangit, family is different and I'll be sure to hold her before she's six months old. I can hardly wait until this weekend to see her.

Here is a link to my sisters post with the initial pictures that are just so dang cute. I know, I'm making you all click extra to see pics, but I'm far too hot and lazy to get pictures posted here. Why am I hot in addition to my normal laziness? Well, once again the swamp cooler gods have taken out their wrath upon me. For whatever reason, the fan portion of the cooler will not actually start fanning. It sounds like something is wedged preventing it's movement. It'll be sometime next week before the handyman can come and fix it. I really hope it's not what I fear. There have been some problems with birds nesting in most inconvenient places in the various buildings in my condo complex and I worry that they've done so in my swamp cooler. The odds are slim, but we all know how I like to worry.

Meanwhile, I have improvised my very own swamp cooler. Never let it be said that I cannot produce moments of brilliance, because I'm pretty sure my jimmy-rigged swamper is beyond everyday genius. Luckily I have crappy sinus cavities. Because of this, I always have a mister running to add humidity to the air, except during the summer when I am running the swamp cooler. Well, I've moved that cool mister into the corner of my living room, just in front of an oscillating fan, creating my own version of a swamp cooler. I wish I'd thought of it yesterday afternoon, but it's been fantastic this afternoon. I think it is actually below 80 in my condo right now. That could be that the sun is starting to go down, but I prefer to attribute my genius pseudo swamp cooler.

I leave you with this. Skip to 0:55 for the punchline.

Sometimes they write themselves

A conversation I just had with the rugrat on the way back to my parents after her cousin Hannah's birthday party:

Me: I don't feel well. I will probably go to bed soon after we get to Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Rugrat: You must be pregnant.
Me: No, I am not pregnant.
RR: Are you sure? Aunt Kami doesn't feel well and she is pregnant.
Me: I know she is, but I am not pregnant.
RR: How do you know? You could be.
Me: Trust me, I know I am not.
RR: Are you really sure? You never know.
Me: I know. Look, you are 5 and I am not explaining how I know until you are older.
RR: When will you tell me? When I am 12?
Me: Sure. I have a book or two I'll let you read.
RR: Oh MAN! You always make me wait so long to tell me ANYTHING.

I dread her teenage years.

Picture is of my niece, Hannah, in her birthday princess crown.

End to an era

The hospital where the rugrat was born is no more. I knew it was coming but I noticed after my doctor's appointment this morning that the specific labor and delivery wing has been torn down. The rubble in the picture is the remains of where I got my little bundle of joy and insanity. I'm surprisingly sentimental about it.

Farewell Cottonwood Hospital.

Testing 1, 2, 3?

This is just a test. I am seeing if I can get my email blogging to work. Bonus picture of my burned wrist.

Not a whole lot a shaking going on

The only truly exciting thing happening right now is that I'm almost done with this semester! Only a couple weeks left and I'm so ready to be done. It's still up in the air when I'm going to go back because I've determined that I'm too old to work full time, go to school, and run after a 5 1/2 year old. I'm worn out and I'm pretty sure no one wants to come to my house until the end of May when I catch up on the last 3 months house cleaning slack.

I also found out that I do not have Diabetes. It's such a relief. I have what's called PCOS and a severe Vitamin D deficiency. I've been prescribed 20 minutes of sunlight a day. No, I'm not joking, and yes, it's HILARIOUS. The PCOS can still lead to Diabetes, but we're trying some new medication and I'm continuing with the diet/exercise plan I've been doing since before Thanksgiving. This alone has made this week the best ever! Even though it took getting an ear/sinus infection to get me back into the doctor. Once she had me, she dragged me through all the tests. I didn't want to do it because I didn't want to know how bad things were. Well, they aren't really bad at all. I will most likely never be able to have more children, but since I'd already decided on that option, I'm totally cool with that.

It's nice that the weather is getting warmer and the rugrat and I starting back in to taking short walks after dinner. It's nice for me because it burns off a bit of that extra energy. It's also zoo season so look for more lovely picture slideshows from the rugrat. We're going to try some bigger hikes this summer as well, so you might even get some entertaining slideshows of the mountains. That's if Malia slows doen long enough to let me catch up and to take some pictures. I look forward to the extra sleep that summer brings. Mainly just due to wearing ourselves out. Yeah, it's going to rain for the next few days, but at least it's staying warmer. We're heading on up to the parents (who won't actually be there) for Easter weekend, so look for sewing project posts. I'm hoping to finally get maternity shirts made for my sisters. You know, before they actually give birth. We may even run up some quickie princess costumes for the girls. I wish I'd taken pictures of Hannah trying on all her new princess clothes. Malia outgrew some that Grandma & Grandpa Brey gave her for Christmas a couple years ago, and since Haylee got the same thing, Hannah got rugrat's set. It was so adorable. She had to go through all of the outfits and try them all on. The best is that she poses and walks around with her shoulders back. Because, you know, that's how princesses roll my friends.

Anyway, look for more fun in the coming months!

I'm leaving the club...

For those in the know, I've been a member of the Harlequin Book(s) of the month club for a couple years or so. I am going to have to quit though. When I joined up I got to select the type of books I wanted to receive. Unfortunately I couldn't specify Pirates, Vikings, or the Scots, but it did let me select Historical. Over the last few months it has apparently become optional to send me selections from the ONE group I specified I wanted books from. It started with a contemporary romance thrown in now and again. I didn't mind, because they were actually quite good and I enjoyed them, so I let the slip pass as the other 2 or 3 books were historical.

Then I got a book that was about a deformed girl with no face who never knew her family and the aunt who finally found out about her because the girl had been hidden by some crazy government/corporation thing. It was an almost thriller and I kept reading hoping for some sort of smut-related happening. I hoped in vain. Sorry to spoil the end for you, but the aunt ends up as a hostage and when the dude goes to shoot her, forces the gun to her eye so that her face could be given to her niece. Yeah, it was sappy but it was a fairly entertaining book. However, it was NOT smut. I complained and the historical romance started coming again, in fact I believe the next shipment included "The Pirate Bride", so I was satisfied once again.

Then I got a NASCAR themed novel. Are you kidding me? Not only are you sending Contemporary when I requested Historical, but now it's about car racing? I like pirates and vikings and knights and sword fighting and whatnot. What the crap do I want to read about car racing? I read it though. I figured I should at least give it a try. Well, it wasn't good. I mean, the smut parts were really good, but I could have done with the rest of the story and it dragged the whole thing down overall. This was nearly the last straw. However, I decided to give them another chance because once again, it came with historical smut too.

This however has now changed. Mid last week I received the second set in a row with NO historical smut. This is not acceptable. Additionally not only were they not historical, but they could barely be termed romance. Especially in the largest of the three books. The main character is a widow and she has a little widow's group where they make lists of their wishes. 2 of the characters fall in love and all that jazz, but it's very tame and peripheral to the main story. The main character just wants to go to Paris with someone she loves and it's something she never got to do with her husband before he died. Well, of course she doesn't fall in love, she ends up adopting a little girl and they plan to go to Paris because now she has someone she loves to go with her. Puke. Seriously, they should not be allowed to send this crap out labeled with romance because it's not. They should label it something like "Super sappy make you cry oh and there are dudes, but the women aren't focused on them they are focused on their loving friendships and parenting crap".

I will be cancelling my subscription and apparently I'm just going to have to create my own Smut of the Month by hitting up the Barnes & Noble one payday each month.

Now, for those of you left reading after that, I give you the rugrat portion of the post. We hit up the zoo on Saturday with Aunt Allee and had a great time. We were there for almost 4 hours and were able to see Muke. She's the gorilla that has cancer and isn't expected to live much longer. Malia was very happy to be able to see her, and then very sad when we got to the reptile house and the Anaconda that was her favorite animal in the zoo was gone. It passed away in January. She bounced back after we discovered that the crocodile is nesting, so there will most likely be baby ones fairly soon. Well, I don't know how soon. I'm no crocodile expert so I really couldn't tell you when they will be here.

After the zoo Malia got to go back and hang with Allee and her husband Matt while I went to my cousin Jessica's wedding dinner. It was a lovely dinner and the highlight for me was the little girl sitting at the table next to us who kept saying "ew" everytime Jessica and her husband kissed. I also enjoyed the stories the boys told about Jess. I don't envy her growing up with 5 brothers. I much prefer the 3 girls to 1 boy ratio in my own family. HAHA JC!

Anyway, rugrat and I have been discussing getting a cat again for some time. We had to give up the 2 siamese cats we had when we moved because our condo is just too small for two cats. I didn't want to split them up because they were from the same litter and had always been together. Every time we've discussed a cat, I've told her that I wouldn't be getting one until she finished cleaning her room. Well, on Saturday after spending a few hours at Allee's playing with her cats, Malia asked again. I told her that if her room were clean, I'd buy her a cat the next day. I didn't think much of it and we headed home and went to bed after the long day.

I dragged my sorry behind out of bed about 9 Sunday morning. I had been awake since about 7:30, but didn't want to get up so I stayed burrowed into my covers. I got up and while I was trying to get my contacts in Malia kept harassing me to hurry so I could come see her room. I didn't think much of it because she randomly moves stuff around or sticks pictures on the wall to show me. Well, that's not what she did. I don't know what time she got up, but she managed to clean her entire bedroom and put EVERYTHING away. Outside of needing a good vacuum, her room was spotless. She reminded me what I'd promised the day before. So, we got a cat. His name is Butch and he's from the Summit County Friends of Animals. He's 5 and completely black with green-yellow eyes. He's also a ton of fun and likes to cuddle, but not too much cuddling. Anyway, here's a link to the only picture I've managed. The little bugger runs off everytime I break out the camera. Yes, he's really that dark. He doesn't have any white spots or anything, he's pure black.

Now we're back in Adventuring season, I'm hoping to get posting a bit more often. It's hard to post when your adventures consist of cooking spaghetti casserole and reading a smut novel.

I nearly killed a woman in Walmart last week

Now that I've grabbed your attention, I'm going to caveat that with a "nearly killed her with laughter". Ha!

Today's post comes as a result of my linability to have a solely inner monologue and my inability to refrain from answering my daughter honestly when she asks me questions. Apparently this is delightful for those around me. I related this story to a friend at dinner last week and she mentioned that I provide a lot of entertainment. I'm taking that in a positive way, though I'm sure part of the entertainment comes from watching me slowly descend further into insanity. No complaints though because I'm enjoying the descent as well.

On to the story. Some time ago, someone on Twitter (@sarahbellum) mentioned that her deodorant smelled like cookies. This intrigued me and even more so when I found out that the scent of it was called Vanilla Chai and it's made by Secret. I decided that I needed to look into this because I always wear vanilla scented perfumes and this would not clash with that. In fact, a friend of mine thinks it's me every time she smells vanilla when she's out shopping. I also like to think that anytime she's baking and has to use vanilla that she also thinks of me, but that's just because I like to think I'm more important in the day to day stuff of other people's lives than I really am. Occasionally I borrow someone else's perfume when I am going to her house, so I can sneak up on her and she doesn't know it is me. I know, I'm like a 12 year old.

Okay, really onto the story. The rugrat and I were in Walmart last week and since I needed new deodorant, I decided to check it out and see if I might like it. I picked it up and smelled. It did indeed smell like cookies. I determined that it was a little too much for me and place it back on the shelf. Here is where the crazy starts. Malia asked me why I wasn't going to get it and I replied that I didn't think I could handle my armpits smelling like cookies all the time because it was just too much. Unbeknownst to me, there was a lady standing behind me who started laughing so hard she started choking. After a few minutes she had gotten a hold of herself enough to sniff it for herself. She agreed that it did smell like cookies. She offered the advice that vanilla is an aphrodisiac to which I replied that I didn't think I wanted anyone getting the urge to do THAT sort of thing to my armpits because I was pretty sure it was inappropriate. That set her off again. I'm pretty sure that I was the highlight of her evening. She even told me that I was.

So, that is my tale of almost killing someone in Walmart. I wish I could say that this was an isolated incident, but it's not. I just can't seem to refrain from saying out loud the comments that pop into my head. Like the time when Malia was about 3 and a lady asked me when I was due. I looked at Malia and told her "about 3 years ago". That time the lady didn't laugh, but the cashier had a really hard time ringing me up because she was trying not to laugh at the mortified lady behind me. She was still red as a tomato when I was done checking out. I know, it was kind of jerk thing to say, but it was funny in my head so I'm okay with that.

Side Note, as of this writing, Malia has 7 day's in a row of getting greens. She's informed me that she's trying for 20 days in a row. I'm so proud!