the easy life

the word fuck: it's a thing of beauty really...

2011-12-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

dear lurkers that are righting all the wrongs in the world via my blog...

2011-10-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

fuck you.

here's an idea. tend to your own knittin'..my ex is no longer my dad. running to him to tell on me does nothing but raise his blood pressure, piss him off at something he can't control and make you look like the assclowns you are. mind your own fucking business and if that is simply too boring, find someone else to fuck with. leave me alone. believe me, each morning that i wake up is a thorn in his ass - you aren't doing anything novel and innovative by tattling. it cracks me up that you keep coming back to read, copy and report. actually all you are doing is mortifying him by even bringing me up - and if you haven't figured it out yet, i truly couldn't care any less. i know what he thinks of me and i'm quite happy with who i am. seriously, if you don't like what you see, GO THE FUCK AWAY. no one invited you here, no one cares what you think.

wait, did i mention fuck you?

i'm sure you are all shocked at what a classless bitch he was married to and i'm totally cool with that. at least i'm real. as far as i know, i still live in a country that protects my right to say pretty much whatever the fuck i want on my fucking fuckity-fuck blog. so no...your noble efforts aren't going to get me to "behave". i "behaved" for him for 15 years. so totally over it.

once again, in case you had trouble with it the first two times. fuck you. now run along and find someone who gives a shit. i'm too busy actually living my life. fucking idiots.

cause i'm a pimpin foo'...or maybe jes'a foo'

2011-06-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

Tattered Angels Blog Post :D

No Jesus Christ

2011-06-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

fucking LOVE this song. attaching the words...THINK about it.

Before you hedge those bets you placed against me
Be reticent of fortunes they foretell
Your verbal defecation i can't wash away despite myself
Your vanity, it seems, has served you well

You're so quick to choose the path walked by the righteous
So you can go and nest among the weak
The innocent observers will refuse to find the lie within
Renew the disappointment of the meek

You're no Jesus Christ!

Put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger
I feel so alive here
Put the gun in my mouth that tastes so bitter
I feel so alive here
You're no Jesus Christ!

You keep takin' over
I keep rollin' over
I can't take it anymore

Before you hedge those bets you placed against me
Be reticent of fortunes they foretell
Your verbal defecation i can't wash away despite myself
Your vanity, it seems, has served you well

to shoot or not to shoot...

2011-06-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

school rant #3:

go ahead and add the high school nurse to the list of people that hate me...i'll wait.

CA kids are now required to have a bullshit booster shot or they will not be allowed to enroll in school next year. the martinez kid is stressed about not getting his schedule if i don't race down and pay for a booster shot that he shouldn't need. another bullshit scare tactic. the school's need the money, they'll let my kid in; i just have to sign a waiver. can i really be the only one that calls them on their freakin' dumbass rules? according to the nurse...pretty much, yea.

she told me it was for the safety of my child. we had a whooping cough "epidemic" in CA last year and 7 kids died. i asked her if all of those kids had been immunized or if the parents had opted out and she said, and i quote "uhm, i can't verify that - i can tell you that almost all of them either hadn't started or hadn't finished their series of childhood immunizations".

yea. that's what i thought. you know, you peeps that choose to not immunize your kids - for whatever reason - are largely to blame here. people dying from the freakin whooping cough? in this day and age - seems a bit ridiculous. i immunized my kids...i didn't like it, they didn't like it, i stressed when they ran fevers afterward - but i did it. i followed the rules, like a good trained meenky. now those of you who didn't are threatening the health of MY kids? kinda pisses me off.

i know, i know...immunizations are maybe linked to autism and other things, i get it. it's a personal decision whether or not to immunize. personally, i figured the odds of my child developing something terrible after getting shots were slim enough. plus, i would rather my children and i be the ones that suffered from my decision TO immunize, instead of a school full of kids that get polio because of my decision to NOT. again, personal choice; no judgment.

argh. i live in a freakin' community of cattle. they just go along to get along. "oh, the state said so? ok, they must know what they are doing." uhhhh, yea.

jeebus, marcus and jimbob.

with all due respect, william and kate...

2011-05-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

i am freaking seething right now. therefore, i'm once again all over the map :)

two weeks ago my 5th grader informed me that she watched portions of the royal wedding in class that day. that earned an internal eyeroll on my part, thinking to myself "how the fuck does this even begin to pertain to the education of an 11-yo girl?" but, i managed to keep my disdain inside as i asked her how the teacher tied that into her average school day...not surprisingly, she had no clue..."i dunno, it was just on". this morning, the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavor was televised live from Cape Canaveral shortly after her school day started. this afternoon, when i asked her if they watched it in class, she said to me, "what's a space shuttle?"

whattheeffevs. i'm so over this school district and their Nazi-control-freak-about-ridiculous-things-yet-clueless-about-things-that-might-actually-affect-the-kids-in-a-positive-way ways. these kids can only wear shorts to school from may through september...keeping in mind they are out of school june, july and august of those 5 months and that central valley often reaches into the triple-digit temps well into october. they are told that the shorts are a distraction and they are lucky they are allowed to wear them at all during the school year. these kids also have rules about how long their hair can be - well, the boys have rules; the girls, not so much. their hair cannot be in their eyes, cannot be past their earlobes and cannot touch the collar of their shirt at the back of the neck. i'm told it's a "distraction" if these guidelines aren't kept. once, i went so far as to suggest braden use a hair clip to keep his hair back out of his eyes...the administrator didn't see the humor and denied my request. one time, at band camp, my child was pulled out of class and sent to the office to call me for a change of clothes because he had a factory-ripped (and patched) 1.5" tear in his jeans. evidently, pulling him out of class and sending him to the office wasn't a distraction, but the sewn-up tear was. our kids no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school and if they were to, "God" wouldn't be allowed to participate. everyone in sports gets a ribbon because if there were such things as winners and losers, feelings would get hurt. uhm, yea...i could go on.

re-fucking-diculous.

side note: there are parts of our dress code that i do understand: no pro-sports team jerseys, hats, logos whatever. it's a gang thing, check; ass cheeks are not to be hanging out when they are allowed to wear shorts. it's a horny teenager thing, check; camouflage clothing (unless it's pink) is not allowed. ok, not sure what the reasoning here is, unless they are afraid they'll lose a kid or two during the day to the underbrush outskirts of the enemy's perimeter *eyeroll*, but whatever, i've let it slide. check.

sorry, back to my original rant. at Garfield Elementary in Clovis CA, our 11 year old kids are watching the royal wedding in class, but not the launch of a space shuttle into space. INTO SPACE. that's still a big deal, right? i mean, obviously it was back in the dark ages of *my* 5th grade. the AV nerds lived for shit like that. rolling the equipment into the classroom, anticipation building because we were going to get to watch TV! surely, America's space program still contains a "teachable moment" or two for science, for technology, for history, for SOMETHING, no?

in the news just last week: "The World Economic Forum ranks the USA 48th in math and science education...On America’s latest exams (the National Assessment of Educational Progress), one-third or fewer of eighth-grade students were proficient in math, science, or reading. Our high-school graduation rate continues to hover just shy of 70 percent, according to a 2010 report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, and many of those students who do graduate aren’t prepared for college. ACT, the respected national organization that administers college-admissions tests, recently found that 76 percent of our high-school graduates “were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/06/the-failure-of-american-schools/8497/

48th?!? how is that even fucking possible? how is that acceptable, how did this happen, we ask...well, *i'm* asking anyway. in a phone call to the school tomorrow; in a letter to the school district this week and in a letter to the editor of every CA newspaper i can get ahold of. i'm naming names, mary. i'm fed up with this elitist, uppity and IGNORANT bullshit. ok, quite honestly i've been fed up with it for a long time - but hey, i'm actually going to do something about it beyond my local bitching this time. i let a lot of shit roll, i'm aware of that...and this royal wedding vs space shuttle launch in the classroom bullshit is small stuff in the grand scheme of things...but jeebus, it has something to say to everyone of us. i think it's time we paid attention to what

Cat Stevens - Hard Headed Woman (live)

2011-04-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

should be sleepin'...

2010-12-31T00:59:00.000-08:00

waiting for my friend mr nyquil to kick my ass. sitting here thinking about disappointment and i've come to the conclusion, it blows balls. i despise disappointment; i despise causing it and i despise feeling it...and i've done too much of both.

what's the answer, though - quit depending on people? quit allowing them to depend up on me? who lives like that...bitter, resentful, lonely people is all i can think of.

it's not a huge stretch to expect honesty, to be expected to give honesty. i sat back and dug into my brain's ass 6 years ago and made two lists: one list of the things i absolutely would never live again without, and the other of the things i could never again live with. honesty and dishonesty were at the top of those lists, hands down...no hesitation. second on those lists were loyalty and disloyalty. third was probably something silly like bacon and bad breath; but i digress.

where i'm headed with this is that i am a pleaser and have found that the most effective way to please is to be a (an?) honest, loyal friend who tells it like it is, but in a way that isn't brutally painful. oftentimes easier said than done...my greatest strength? my empathy for others; my strongest weakness? my empathy for others. a double edged muther-fuckin sword, it is.

while i am who i am and have tried to accept that not everyone is like me - can i get a "THANK YOU OH MY GOD" for that - what i have trouble with is reconciling the fact that there are those that give and take and then there are those that just give OR take. i take a lot, actually - i give more, but i do have the take-shit part down, with the trophy in my sights...it's fairly new to me so i expect that my grades will improve with time.

i give - dale and i have a joke about "givers" that we know and unfortunately, it is almost always referring to a slut of sorts...as in "she is SUCH a giver", meaning head, ass, what have you. yea, anyway what was i saying? oh yea - i give. the people that i love have access to anything i am able to give to them, 24/7/364 (ha! actually chuckled at that)... i love it when i have what they need, really i do - it makes me happy. maybe it's the cementing of some of my worth to them. i dunno but probably, as being worthy seems to be something more valuable to me than gold (notice i did not say the b-a-c-o-n word). but that, my friends, is a whole 'nuva therapy session.

moving on - someone mentioned to me the possibility of not expecting anything from others and thus, not being disappointed in them. another person suggested i stop giving to certain people, that perhaps that would trigger something in the takers and make them change their evil ways. neither one is an option for me. i DO expect things from other people in my life. i DO expect honesty and loyalty and a shoulder should i need it, from them. further more, i cannot stop giving for a manipulative reason. don't get me wrong, i could manipulate adolf-effing-hitler under the table...but when it happens, i choose to do it unencumbered. yet another session ;)

so what is the answer? well hell...i guess it's to just keep on keepin' on. i'll keep giving and maybe when all is said and done, i'll march my ass up to the Pearly Gates, drier than a dead dingo's donger, and Saint Jim-Bob will say "dayum gurrrrrrrl, let's have some wine!" and off we'll go talkin' about all the asswipes we passed something off to along the way.

ok...wow. that made almost no sense at all. i surely do love you my nyquilly boy <3

a few days late, but necessary for me...

2010-12-28T00:22:00.000-08:00

i'm never sure whether or not to post this on the anniversary of the death of my daughter...i've decided to do it again this year for me and me alone. it is a sad, painful recollection of the day she died, as told 18 years later. it took a long time for me to put it all down into words and it was amazingly cleansing to do so. she is always in my heart and she guides me daily. still.

just a warning of sorts that it isn't pleasant. it is raw and it is real. it is a day in my life that changed everything i knew to be real and reshaped everything from that point forward. it is actually the story of the day that i realized i had no choice but to live my life - regardless of what obstacles were thrown into my path. we don't get to choose much of our way, but we do get the chance to change how we deal with things in our future.

to those who have never experienced this, may God allow you to continue on through your life without ever knowing it; to those who have experienced it - and i know way too many of you personally - know that you are never alone and that you actually were given an amazing gift. something that you may not be able to hold in your arms today, but something that will give you the single-most amazing moment yet to come.

miss morgan: december 22, 1990

more sweet, than bitter...

2010-12-02T15:05:00.000-08:00

the holidays are here again, the sky above is (still) clear (again)...shall we sing a song of cheer again, holidays are here again...

bittersweet. word for the season...december 22, 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of my daughter morgan's death. whoa. 20 freakin years since my girl died at 10 months of meningitis. which means she would be 21 on february 15, 2011. jeebus, how old AM i? my grams died last month. another huge void in my life. i was raised with her 50 yards away until my mid-teens - she has been a huge part of me for as long as i can remember. the girl and i made a trip up to see her in early october - and i will be forever thankful that we did.

feeling a bit blue and can't quite place my hand upon why. i imagine it's a combination of things...but i generally love this time of year and i need to get my shit in gear, lol. this is also the time of year i start to see a change in my kids. energy level (read: obnoxiousness rating) goes up, boredom prevails and nerves get frayed. my girl has been watching Christmas classics and listening to Christmas songs for weeks already. she's hitting me up to decorate the Christmas tree this weekend. i NEVER have my tree up this early. i know this is what old people say, but it seems like i just took the damn thing down.

i think what is contributing to my funk is the fact that i am starting to realize that love leads to pain ---damn, raise your hand if you saw that coming--- what i mean is i'm getting to a point in my life when i am beginning to realize that life doesn't go on forever. that we WILL have to say goodbye to those we love. the harder and the deeper we love, the harder and deeper the pain will run. it WILL be devastating and there is no dodging it. unless, of course, it is our life that ends first. and so i find myself worrying. morbid, yes; futile, yes; depressing, yes; but pointless, no. i am learning - finally - that i should be living my life one moment at a time. i need to appreciate all of the good that surrounds me. i need to be a better, kinder, more thoughtful person. i should be less judgmental (pffftt, yea, like that is ever gonna happen.) my point is, it's never too late to change the way we affect other people.

seriously, when i look around at the people i truly love and i do mean L-O-V-E with all of my heart, and i try to imagine losing them...well, it's simple, i can't do it. i know, very well, the pain of loss. i know how devastating it is, how paralyzing it is, how it sucks the very breath out of your entire body leaving you frantically searching for a place where you can just crumble and fall, because you are sure you will never see the light of another day. you pray to God to spare you from ever seeing the light of another day - anything, yes even death, is preferable to the pain. how does one survive the knowledge that such loss lies on their life's horizon?

(cue JT) you shower the people you love with love...you show them the way that you feel. you don't dwell on the knowledge of the inevitable goodbye, but you must understand and accept it and then you prepare for it the only way you really can. you love deeper, you hug tighter, you kiss longer, you squeeze harder. you truly allow yourself to experience love. bittersweet, absolutely...but i cannot imagine my life without it. better to have loved and lost...? no question.

group hug time. <3

Matt White - Love

2010-11-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

GRAPHIC: and should that not stop you...

2010-10-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

this video is about abortion. graphic images slam home the point that this is really happening in our society. i have given space at the end so you don't have to actually see any of the video unless you scroll down farther. if you do, be prepared. it is truly horrifying.

first of all, i am not here to debate abortion. we all have our points of view and i respect that. i'm only giving my personal beliefs because...well, it's my blog and i think my view on it (and therefore, the view i will probably share with my kids at some point) pertains to the question i'm going to ask you.

now, surprisingly enough, in spite of my wacked-out conservative views, i have always considered myself "pro-choice". i know the anti-abortion peeps prefer the term "pro-abortion" to describe my point of view, but i refuse to accept that, as i am actually both "pro-choice" and "pro-life". i am also somewhat anti-abortion. fickle, much? funny thing...? my ma - who is a die hard bleeding heart liberal communist, bless her heart - is Way Anti-Abortion. Way. in her mind there is never an excuse, and i'm cool with that. needless to say, i don't exactly bring it up at Thanksgiving dinner.

my personal standing is that, for lots of reasons, i believe a woman should ultimately have control over her body and what it happens to contain. i have held fast to the belief that if a fetus cannot survive on it's own without requiring this woman's bodily resources, it should fall under her personal jurisdiction. this does not mean i believe in abortion as a means of birth-control. this does not mean i would choose to have an abortion myself. what this means is that i believe the woman should be able to make the final decision in whether or not she has an abortion.

i will tell you that i would fight tooth and nail over my personal right to have an abortion if someone told me i absolutely would not be allowed to do it - in spite of the fact that i have never even personally considered, nor considered considering it. does this mean that if i was denied and then granted that right i would go through with it? not even close...i would though, still fight for my right to choose.

in most cases, i personally believe that abortion is a huge mistake - i think it haunts most of those that have decided to do it. not all, of course - but i really don't think that women in general choose to do this for the thrill of taking a human life...and agreed, that is what this is. there are an unlimited number of people longing to adopt babies - healthy or otherwise - and to "throw away" a viable fetus is obviously rubbing salt (albeit, unintentionally) into the open wounds of these people.

where i would waiver personally would be in being told that i was forced to carry a baby that i could never feel, hear, see or touch without knowing that it was the result of evil and of violence. i am fully aware that this was not the baby's choice. i am fully aware that having an abortion would still be an incredibly selfish act on my part. i am just saying this is where i would consider it. i believe that, if anyone, men or women, could transport their minds to a reality where the person they love with all of their being is growing a child that belongs to a) some sick fuck that brutally raped her - or to make it even more personal; b) to their father-in-law; their brother-in-law, their own brother, their own son, their own father, whatever...a child that, with every (innocent, granted) breath and movement reminds them both of the evil that placed it there...then, they might be able to get a glimpse at what i feel at the thought of carrying that baby to term. i'm not saying it's right, i'm simply saying it's how i feel and the one occasion that i might possibly consider having an abortion. i wouldn't know for sure until that became my reality. my point is, we can never know what we would do in someone else's shoes - we shouldn't try and pretend to know what even WE would do given a certain situation...we can have our opinions of course, but judging someone without knowing isn't fair.

i do believe these are little people, i do believe that they do not get fair representation, but i also believe that if someone takes that ultimate right to choose from me, everyone loses. i do believe that women who abort more than one fetus due to carelessness, lack of responsibility and/or simply not-give-a-shit-ability should probably be sterilized - but that's a whole 'nuva can of peas.

if you choose to watch the video, steel yourselves. i don't care what side of this debate you are on - this is horrific.

on that note, i do have a question of you. keeping in mind that i'm not exactly ever asked to write a parenting handbook (i know); i'm considering showing this to my kids. what do you think? the boys are well into their teens and very aware of sex. (ugh.) i think they can handle it. the girl is only 11 and probably too young to be exposed to the realities of this, i realize that. my initial reaction was no fucking way, but the more i thought about it, the more i realized that this IS a reality, this IS a possible decision they face one day. wouldn't showing them and talking about the reality of it be a better condom than the good old strawberry-flavored, tingling, ribbed ultra? i'm all about teaching my children the truth about everything...why hide this from them because it's too real?

ugh.

2010-10-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

the unsettled, undefined feeling of needing a deep breath. deeper. not working. i *hate* this. no explanation really, probably a combination of things. loved ones missed. the monotony of what is the day ahead of me. unresolved frustrations. the fact that i battle with clinical depression depresses me. just no joy today. it happens.

do i welcome it and wallow, hoping it gets bored with me and finally leaves me in peace? do i curl up with a book and hope to eventually sleep it off? do i busy myself with shit i absolutely do not want to do in the hopes of shaking it off? i never know how to deal with it. just pray for it to subside without leaving scars.

i know what i can't do. i can't make any type of consequential decision. i tend to react to the panic by covering it in some form of immediate gratification - which often brings about the aforementioned scarring; emotional fall-out, not physical, i'm a head-case, not a complete freak. not much else to say.

i know what i should do. i should concentrate on the good things in my life - things like the fact that i'm not seriously ill. that my children aren't seriously ill. that the little shit subsides, eventually. that i have a home and the love of some truly wonderful people. why, on these days, isn't that enough to lift my spirits back to where they usually reside?

jeebus, this music isn't helping - fucking Bread - there's a start in shit-canning that crap.

let us recap...shall we?

2010-10-15T07:15:00.000-07:00

3:06am: i hear Fat-Pat-the-Androgynous-Cat digging at the carpet under my bedroom door. probably, her lard ass has eaten all of the food in the house, sampled a few non-food items and dammit she's not full. i launch a roll of tissue missile-like at the door to scare her, where it lands after a quite-a-bit-less-than-spectacular *whuf* against the wall next to the door. yea, i kinda rock my own world like that. the ever-vigilant Winston goes on full alert and stands guard at the door, refusing get back to his bed.

3:08am: lights out, pillows in place, t-shirt over my face, all is right in my world.

3:08:15am: *scratch scratch* fuck me.

3:19am: i give up trying to sleep - it's hopeless due to images in my brain consisting of various methods in which to kill each one of my animals. by now i'm stressed and pissed...sleep is not a viable option. lights on, kindle out, glasses found - reading commences.

4:22am: *YAWN* sweet sleep is within reach...lights out, pillows in place...blah, blah, blah.

4:31am: fuck it - laying here is stupid, i have things to do...i can always take a nap. lights on...first things first; start coffee. check email. squirrel, even though i promised myself i was only checking my email. read about something political and start to get stressed again...move on to frontierville. sweet, brainless frontierville. algebraic equation of the day: "coffee + sleeping children + frontierville = temporary sanity".

5:03am: i find myself in my closet wondering who the fuck bought all these clothes 2 sizes too small, i have nothing to wear. screw it - i love my jams. hey, while i'm in here...

5:27am: closet purged a bit - starting to wake up. gonna start some laundry. follow me here, this gets tricky: having gathered a massive pile of things that need washing and balanced my coffee cup on top, using my teeth to hold it in place, i open my door and call to Winston to get his lazy ass off the bed...we're heading out. he's rather exasperated with me...he must be - he looks at me with his "are you serious right now? it's still dark outside and i just got comfy...are we going out and staying out this time, because this back and forth shit is for the birds. make up your mind and COMMIT, woman" face. a few more coaxing gestures and he resignedly drags his ass out from under his soft yellow (read: pussy girl) blanket, stands in the middle of the hallway (balanced equidistant between all bedrooms containing sleeping [read: QUIET] children) and does the world's most annoying shake known to man. dog tags on a shaking dog make the most infuriating sound when your temporary sanity is being permanently threatened.

5:28am: something falls from the laundry pile in my hands - of course. i can't tell what it is - i'll grab it with my toes and kick/carry it to the laundry room. still balancing my coffee, mind you. i hit where the carpet meets tile in the entryway and feel what must be a 4 inch long rusty heroin needle (known in some circles as a carpet tack) drive through the heel of my right, probably-panty-or-sock-carrying, foot. mutherfucker, i *HAAAAATE* that. i grab the coffee with a hand to keep from spilling it as i hop on one foot, hoping with very little hope that i don't bleed out right there where my children will find me buried under a heap of dirty laundry (which could take days...jus'sayin - my kids sure as hell steer damn clear of touching any form of dirty laundry).

5:28:52am: and then more clothes fall to the floor. blood pressure spike is definitely in the immediate forecast.

5:29am (time is approximate due to a temporary blackout): the fucking PSYCHO orange cat has ONCE AGAIN pushed over the self-watering container in her attempt to "catch" the bubbles that appear in the jug as she drinks the water. have i ever mentioned how my kitchen floor turns into a freaking sheet of ice with just one drop of water? yea, well...jeebus, mark and christopher, my life is such a fucking joke. the momentary lapse of consciousness comes from my head hitting the floor, as clothes and coffee spew into a roughly 5 foot radius before me.

5:35am (again with the time approximation): i laugh/cry/wimper/snort my way to my feet, gather the laundry - resourcefully using a dirty towel to mop up coffee - and make my way to the laundry room without further incident...which is truly amazing at this point given that it was a whole 3 feet away.

7:01am: the chitlins have stirred without being shaken and i feel better having, once again, shared the ridiculousness of this moment in time in the Easy Life, and then eaten half of a bottle of aleve. for the record - yes, i did consider the half-full bottle of wine sitting on my counter as my pain-reliever of choice, but figured with this kind of start, probably i will have an even stronger need for that in a few hours.

martinez-out, bitches.

oh, that tangled web...

2010-09-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

been a slightly effed up week...my guy has a wildfire close to his home and has been sitting in ready-to-fly mode for a couple of days now. he feels particularly stressed, as he has previously watched a home - and all of his belongings - burn to the ground. it appears that his home is safe, but he is still under evacuation orders...if he leaves to go to work, he will not be allowed back in. so he sits.

one of my close friends from jr high/high school had surgery yesterday - rather emergency, she found out about it a week ago - all is well as of now and she is supposed to be able to go home this afternoon. i worried for her for a few different reasons, mainly though because she was petrified that something bad would happen to her. she has a son that has just started kindergarten two weeks ago...that wasn't going well, and leaving him to stay in the hospital was weighing heavily upon her. as i said, that appeared to have gone as planned and i think i can rest easier as far as she is concerned. whew.

got a phone call from my mom yesterday about my gram's...last summer they discovered she has fluid building in her lungs. she went to the hospital a couple of times to have them drained and discovered a weak valve or some such crap and needed surgery. well, the bird is 89ish and a bit frail nowadays so they decided last summer that they would not operate on her and just monitor her recurring pneumonia as best they could. she's been quite good for about a year, but just went back into the hospital last week. they drained the fluid and released her. two days later, they will filling up again. they have now decided that the hospital trips are too hard on her and have agreed that they will monitor from the home, but not readmit her to the hospital. so...gram's isn't well. i called her today and i'm not sure she knew who i was for a bit. she sounded very weak and pretty out of it. talked to my mom who explained that she has been pretty drugged up this week. problem is my grams is 5 hours away from here...i'm not sure what to do. whether or not i should pull the kids out of school and drive up there to see her or wait for more news from my mom. ugh. my grams has been such a HUGE part of my life for as long as i can remember - it's some sad shit to say the least.

one of my kids has been having problems that i will not go into here...they involve "friends", school and people of a shitty ilk. the kind of people you do not want your children to know - ever. we're dealing with that on a day-to-day basis and i'm trying to not have nightmares involving worst case scenarios. have i mentioned in the last 20 minutes how badly i want my fat, innocent little babies back?

smaller, less significant issues include phone/house alarm/tiVo problems; car needs work done; yard work is - once again - out of control; girl's soccer season has started, and halloween is coming back. cripes why do i have to deal with this STOOPIT "holiday" every. single. year? ugh.

the good news is that i have food in the pantry, my man loves the shit out of my guts - regardless of the ridiculousness that is my life - and everyone is healthy. well, the kids are anyway - that is crucial and for that, i am grateful.

holy shit - did i get through that post without one f-bomb? wow...i am off my game.

Violent J - I'ma Fuck You Up

2010-09-01T17:12:00.000-07:00

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah...

"you should just fucking smile and...BLOOOOOW me!!!"

2010-08-07T08:34:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER: domestic abuse is not funny...BUT (you knew there had to be a but, right?) i'm sorry, that sentence up there cracked my ass up. maybe you should just stick to making movies with your wacked-out, insane self mel...eep.

Mel Gibson Gets a Disturbing Phone Call From the Future -- powered by Cracked.com

why i should probably burn in hell: by shawna martinez

2010-08-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

so one day this girl walks up to a pizza parlor in some small podunk california town, she's starving and therefore, maybe a bit cynical and slightly crabby. she spots a very stoic, very cool, sunglassed 'gene simmons' (sans makeup, of course - full-on KISS makeup at the pizza parlour would just be...well, pretty fucking cool.) sitting at a table with two teenage-ish girls. gene is as cold as ice...he sips a glass from his own personal pitcher of beer looking out the window, saying pretty much nothing to anyone.

the two girls (one i dubbed '80's-madonna' simply because of the frilly mini skirt and the huge floppy bow hanging in her face. ok, ok...the cut up lace gloves might have had something to do with my initial analysis, well, that and the fact that she stood by herself at the plush animal-grabber machine smacking her gum, dancing and softly singing to a silent tune running through her little bow flapped head. she was channeling 80's-madonna dammit!) didn't talk much, just kind of went about their pizza parlour-ish business, stopping by to mumble something to gene and take a bite of pizza before bouncing off again.

gene was a man of few words. i think i may have commented once or maybe 7 times just "how fucking cool" he really was. i'd venture to say his coolness factor was hovering around 9.5 and i was fascinated...well until i had to pee, then he quickly became a (momentary) afterthought. i breezed by madognuts - who, while playing pinball, had her fingers a'snappin, her head a'bobbin and her feet a'groovin - on my way to the bathroom, when i realized it was occupado. dammit. after quickly pondering and discarding thoughts of ducking into the men's bathroom - for various reasons, the top of the list happened to be the state of the staggering, greenish pallor-ed man, hunched over and wiping his face on his shirt collar, that had just exited said men's bathroom - i made my way back to the table where a certain someone (who really really REALLY wishes to remain anonymous) and my daughter were holding judgmental court while the reigning justice of the bench was off doing her personal business.

upon my return this ANONYMOUS person leans over to me and says "dayum, you should see gene's eyes - they are fuuuuuuuuuucked up! i'd wear shades indoors too if my eyes looked like i'd had the shit beaten out of me with a bat right after coming off a 30-day meth run...cripes, poor guy!" of course, i look over to catch a glimpse of a now even cooler mr smooth, but nooooooo...his glasses were back on and he was back to staring out the window sipping on his beer - coolness and light baby. dammit - i miss all the good stuff.

having had about all the fun i could with gene, i moved on to smacking on someone else in the pizza parlour, and the next thing i know i become aware of him talking to his girls about going outside to have a cigarette. keep in mind mr simmons is only 2 tables away from us, so i can hear him pretty clearly. the cigarette statement wasn't quite enough to fully pull my attention from jim-bob's half-sister's inbred brother who is telling the story of accidentally boinking his third cousin's prize 4-H hog, "BUT ONLY ONE TIME AND I WUZ REEL DRUNK AND FELL RIGHT TO SLEEP DURING, SO IT DON'T REALLY COUNT AS SEX RELATIONS, DUZ IT?"...good shit in small towns i tell you what.

next thing i know i find myself being slightly pulled off the bestiality topic by the sound of gene scraping back his chair and mumbling something to himself about not being able to find something. i vaguely recall thinking, kindly of course, "jeebus gene...if you laid off the sauce and took off your damn glasses inside, you might just be able to find your freakin cigarettes, or lighter, or whatever it is you are too drunk to mumble coherently about not being able to find - gah, some people - now who's gonna drive those poor girls home?"

then, finding myself more than mildly interested for whatever reason, i turned to see if i could get an idea of what it was that he was having so much trouble finding and i see him reaching around on the floor. i couldn't see anything interesting...well except a little skinny stick of some sort - surely that couldn't be what he was looking for, right? well...gene seemed to find what he was looking for right then and - tickle my ass with a feather - it WAS the skinny stick he was all ruffled up about. hunh. he then picked it up and worked some little switch and the skinny little stick - VOILA! - turned into a walking cane.

my eyes grew to a size relative to godzilla's gonads, my hands flew to my big fat fucking blasphemous mouth, the lights flickered inside as thunder crashed outside (ok, not really) and all i remember was hearing ANONYMOUS hiss (no really, he hissed) into my ear, "JESUS shawna, i have got to stop letting you drag me Straight...Into...the Bowels...of...Hell.", as i watched a very blind gene simmons *tap*tap*tap* his way outside to smoke his cigarette in the peace and quiet away from stupid, asinine, judgmental people named me.

now, you do realize that people deficient in one sense acquire greater strength in others...namely hearing when your sight is compromised? oy, i so suck as a human being. how have i been allowed to walk the earth this long?

*i'm going to add here that i am aware that this is not a laughing matter - the making fun of disabled people, and being disabled, of course...very not funny. what i do find sadly comical, and therefore blogworthy, is the fact that i can be sooooo stupid. those that really know me, know that i would never EVER do anything to intentionally hurt anyone's feelings - i said i was stupid, not an asshole. that being said, conjure up your own form of bad juju voodoo and cast it upon me if you feel the need. the more compassionate among you may consider sending me some CLUE THE FUCK IN juju, as i can obviously use it.

fast train. non-stop. front row seat.

2010-08-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

can you guys handle a blog post about shawna falling into a rather large pile of shit and attempting to swim out of it but failing miserably?

sewer trap

2010-06-19T14:24:00.000-07:00

i'm sorry - potty mouth is going to apologize. *sigh* sometimes, i just get too angry for real words to help me feel better. the word fuck helps me feel better. juvenile yes, but i can't help it, it just does. i'm trying to temper it and looking back on my last post i obviously was at a loss for "real" words, lol.

anyway, no real point except i could have handled that a bit----wait wait wait.

wait. hold the *bleep* up - why am i apologizing and to whom? it's my blog and i like the word fuck...(and shit and damn and hell). if i stopped using it, someone somewhere would wonder what was wrong. never mind :D...back to your reggerly scheduled reading - nothing to see here.

Reachout Wireless

2010-06-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

what the FUCK? why would i continue to carry and pay for t-mobile? what the FUCKITY-FUCK-FUCK!??

CCR "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" Misheard Lyrics Version

2010-06-08T16:44:00.000-07:00

oh holy hairy sheeps balls...i ADORE this stupid kind of shit :) thank you thomas <3

Fat Boy Slim - Weapon of Choice

2010-06-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

need...

2010-05-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

interesting thing, need. the definition of it goes something like this: that which gives purpose and direction to behavior; a condition that requires relief. (ok, it goes exactly like that. hush.)

according to some dude (who may or may not have shit for brains, but definitely had way too much time on his hands) named abraham maslow, as humans, we all have a set of needs. they are ordered by importance to our survival of mind, body and soul. maslow's five levels of need are presented here copied and pasted as to not interfere with my need to not type all this shit out:

Physiological Needs
These include the most basic needs that are vital to survival, such as the need for water, air, food and sleep. Maslow believed that these needs are the most basic and instinctive needs in the hierarchy because all needs become secondary until these physiological needs are met.

Security Needs
These include needs for safety and security. Security needs are important for survival, but they are not as demanding as the physiological needs. Examples of security needs include a desire for steady employment, health insurance, safe neighborhoods and shelter from the environment.

Social Needs
These include needs for belonging, love and affection. Maslow considered these needs to be less basic than physiological and security needs. Relationships such as friendships, romantic attachments and families help fulfill this need for companionship and acceptance, as does involvement in social, community or religious groups.

Esteem Needs
After the first three needs have been satisfied, esteem needs becomes increasingly important. These include the need for things that reflect on self-esteem, personal worth, social recognition and accomplishment.

Self-actualizing Needs
This is the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Self-actualizing people are self-aware, concerned with personal growth, less concerned with the opinions of others and interested fulfilling their potential.

Only unsatisfied needs are motivators. Once a need is satisfied, the next level emerges as a motivator...ok, enough of the big girl talk - still with me?

the reason i bring this up has a lot to do with the post i made yesterday about feeling like i'm spinning my wheels as far as my kids go. thinking further on it led me to realize that being needed is exhausting. i don't mean just my kids, i mean lots of people in my life need me. ok so it sounds, once again, like i'm stuffed out the ass with myself - but stick with me and see if i can make it clearer.

as an individual and as an adult, my needs are my responsibility, but i may look to others on occasion for backup and/or validation...ultimately though i should mostly have my shit together by now.

i'm not nearly as needy as i used to be. i've grown to understand that no one else is responsible for my happiness. the actions of others can cause me pain and/or grief, but they can also bring joy and/or laughter. bottom line is the length of time i allow their actions to affect me, positively or negatively, is up to me. i still get needy on occasion but i work hard to recognize it and seek out someone that doesn't mind letting me need them for awhile. at times, if none of those people are available to me, i definitely become a pain in the ass for some poor sap. my individual neediness is about a 2 out of 10 (10 being as needy as a lone wingless baby bat the middle of the desert, in the middle of summer, in the middle of the day. you feelin me?) (+2.0)

*pay attention, we're keeping track, lol - when i need someone else, it's a positive number, when they need me, it's a negative number.*

as a mother, my role is to help my kids with all 5 of their need levels. now that mine are older, they no longer need me for the first, they have that down. they do, however still look to me for the other 4 - some kids more than others and some needs more than others. this was my commitment to them when i bore them, it is mandatory. it is, at least to some degree, lifelong and it is my first and most important responsibility. when they are able to handle most of their personal needs on their own, then i become a backup and reinforcer when necessary.

make no mistake, my children can suck the absolute will to live out of me some days with their needs. most of them are of an age where they have the first three levels of need down. level three is still somewhat on-going and levels four and five are constant works in progress. but just because they are capable handling a lot of their needs on their own, doesn't mean they always recognize it. sometimes it's so much easier to revert and defer to the parent. i get this, i still do it on occasion with my mom. my point is, the lazier or the more insecure the child, the greater chance of revert and defer. my children are NOT insecure, but they are still rather unnecessarily needy...their need scales are much higher - probably they are an 8, a 7.5 and a 6.5, for an average around 7.   (-7.3)
my personal need as a mother runs about a 2 out of 10 (perhaps i would be less frustrated as a parent if i were needier and sought more help, but hey.), i don't need a lot, but when i do, i run to my mom - remember that one is lifetime.    (+2.0)
as a partner-lover-friend, my role is to, hopefully only, subsidize these needs in my partner when i can. this is also lifelong and mandatory. hopefully i've selected someone who has most of their needs already met by the time i come along.

here, i finally have my shit together. after 45 years, 2 marriages and countless fuckups, thank you GOD! now, i can only take some of the credit in finally becoming a secure, confident, capable, trustworthy and loyal partner/lover/friend...but i do have to give props to those i have spent time with in the past. they showed me some of the right things to do and some of the wrong things to do - regardless, i paid attention and i learned.  i still deal with PMS on occasion, so i'm a bit needier at times, lol. (+2.0)
the other half of the equation though, is who we choose to spend our lives with as a partner/lover/friend. if you choose someone that treats you like shit, your esteem needs are going to be harder to meet, not to mention your love and potential-finding needs. i happen to have a partner/lover/friend who is very secure in who he is and in his relationship with me. neither of us is seriously lacking in the need department as far as our relationship goes.   (-1.5)
as a family member, my role is to help other family members with a need level now and then. if a member of my family (not my children) comes to me with a need, i do what i can to help, but it is not my sole responsibility to hold that person's hand leading them through life in search of the fulfillment of their needs. i'm simply a temporary guide if and when they need one.

my family member-self pretty much saw the writing on the wall years ago and got the fuck out, lol...i love my family dearly and i love knowing - without a doubt - that they are there for me IF i need them, as they know i am for them...but honestly, we rarely call upon each other - i need my ma a bit more than my dad or brothers as she is still guiding me through my personal mom thing. (+2.0)
i would say my family is somewhat needy only in that they need someone to pull them all together - an organizer, if you will. that was me and i've all but let that go. the older they get, the harder it is and the more resistance i get. i now just kind of sit back and let them come to me and they rarely do. (-2.0)
as a friend, i believe my role is a combination of my partner and family roles. subsidize their needs and help to guide when i can on a temporary basis.

here, i'm not all that needy either...i have different friends i go to for different things, it is a very well-rounded group that i've surrounded myself with. i don't think i lean on any one person more than any other - just different people for different things. (+2.0)
they have varying levels of neediness from 8's down to a 2, so i'll average it. (-5.0)

my point is, i'm not incredibly needy - i'm a pretty consistent 2 out of 10 - towards pretty much everyone i have a relationship with. that's a one-on-one basis...one of me needing one of them.
the need level of the average person i have a relationship with is a 4, but the range is from as high as 8 down to a low of 2... and there's a lot of them, lol.

not too surprising is that the area that i am most needed is as a mom and then as a friend. my partner and family members are pretty consistently low maintenance.

what i discovered after analyzing all of this was that when i stopped and learned about the different kinds of need, i was amazed at how differently i was able to see these people that i have relationships with. if i can pinpoint their individual need levels, maybe i can be a better mom/partner/family member/friend for them. right now i'm just exhausted and overwhelmed by it all, but it will pass and hopefully, i will emerge with a better understanding of what each one of them needs and how i can be of real help to them. some may only need me to step off so they can stand on their own a bit more, some may need more from me than i realized and i will have to address that when the time comes.

need is necessary to some extent, i get that. need is a natural function of the human psyche, i get that. need is not the same thing for every one, i get that. what i don't get is why i'm so fucking tired of being needed...perhaps i would miss it if no one were to need me anymore? i'm not sure, but i don't think i need to be needed. i think being loved and appreciated is enough for me. maybe i'm wrong. maybe time will tell.

i'm sorry, is that the sound of you bleeding out?

2010-05-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

have you ever had one of those days where you go from simply 'pissy' to full blown 'bitch' in about 22.3 seconds? i want to blame my lazy-ass, don't-give-a-shit, it's-all-about-me kids, but i'm not sure that's fair.

what the FUCK am i talking about - of course it's fair. i keep running through my head "you'll miss them when they are gone" or, "you'll wish for a loud messy house again, just to have the kids back home" but i truly believe that will pan out to be the biggest crock of horse shit known to man, once it's all said and done. hopefully i'm wrong, i just really doubt it.

as much as i love my kids - they are a huge pain in the ass. they are lazy, they mess up neat areas for no apparent reason, they break things that they shouldn't even be touching, they make messes simply passing through a room., they destroy things - they have ruined carpet, clothes, walls, blinds, cabinets, fences, plants... all seemingly without a care in the world...they are expensive, they complain when asked to do simple routine things - then they do a shitty job, they have selective hearing, they have selective sight, they have selective brain power. they are expected to do well in school - they are smart people. really smart. until they run across a subject they don't particularly care for - one child might be math or reading, another child might despise physical exercise. then there's the one that hates anything even remotely related to school and actually shows enthusiasm when he gets detention because his girlfriend is hanging out in there too. also probably for not giving a shit about anything related to school. terrific.

here is where most of you say "there's your problem, dumbass" and i don't really care. sock it to me. here goes: my kids eventually get pretty much anything they ask for...they have phones, computers, game consoles up the wazoo, ipods - like i said, pretty much whatever they ask for. and sure, they are supposed to maintain decent grades (some do, some don't), they have chores around the house they should be doing without being asked (uh...never), they have rooms to keep somewhat inhabitable (only when my head spins around and i spew hot asphalt tar from my nose), but my definition of that must be completely ridiculous, because they can never seem to hit that mark for more than 10 or 15 minutes. my point is they rarely apply themselves to doing things the right way. after nagging and bitching at them about it for days, they look at me like i'm insane and irrational when i finally get pissed.

i really don't ask much of them. i acknowledge that most of the reason they are who they are is because of me and who i am. i see my own shortcomings in them daily - i can be very lazy and look for shortcuts. what i battle with is that more than anything, i want my kids to be kids...i want them to be happy and experience a kid's life before becoming bogged down with grown-up shit. but i also want them to someday be adults that people actually want to be around for an extended period of time. why is it so hard for me to find a middle ground, something between being a helpless needy little kid and a slovenly teenager with frakken ADD? i mostly make them come back and pick up after themselves when they leave shit laying around or make a mess of some sort. yes, it is easier for me to throw or put away their crap, but i feel like i need to make a point. i figure if i get on their nerves enough they'll pick up after themselves for no other reason than not having to hear the sound of my devil-woman screech anymore. alas, i tire of it before they seem to.

i have a child that begged and pleaded for a fish tank and finally got one with the understanding that it was their responsibility to maintain. yea, the tank is half full right now, making GOD-awful sucking noises from a lack of water for the filter and contains 2 out of the original 10 fish. what do i do? do i say fuck it, and hope the last 2 fish die quickly? do i take this child by the hand - once AGAIN - and show them how to prepare the water and fill the tank? what do i do?

i have another child that managed to spill hot liquid RED wax in their room. not just on the carpet, not just on the white baseboards, not even just on the stucco walls - the wax is splattered throughout a roughly 9 square foot area, covering books, clothes and furniture, in addition to the other things mentioned. did i mention that the wax is RED? why, you ask, did this child have hot liquid RED wax in their bedroom? good fucking question.

i have yet another child who's office 'workspace' is covered with candy wrappers, water bottles, dishes, cd's, dvd's, mxc's (no clue, just made that shit up)...you name it, it's on the desk in there. have i asked them to clean it up? of course. have i cleaned it up myself on occasion? of course. have i threatened to burn it down if it wasn't kept clean? probably so, now that i think about it. is it still a mess in there as i type? absolutely.

seriously, what in GOD'S name made me think i could actually handle raising children? the baby/young part was easy...i loved it when they were small and defenseless and messy and whiney. THAT was rewarding. this...really, not so much.

i'm overwhelmed and probably pms'ing. i have summer vacation approaching in 2 1/2 weeks and these little bastards are going to put up or...no, no 'or'...i'm starting a list, i'm not even going to check it twice - i know who's been lazy and who's going to have a whip cracked on their ass. i'm not a horrible parent. my kids are good kids, but they are even lazier than i am. i pray that ultimately, Lord willing, they will emerge as kind, albeit not organized or clean, adults...someday. but the next person that tells me to "be sure and enjoy them at this age because it all goes so fast", can pluck my mexican-by-injection switchblade out of their carotid and then kiss my ever-loving frustrated big ass.

very disturbing, but very real.

2010-05-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

i joke about a lot of things. this isn't one of them. most of this video on the link below is VERY graphic and disturbing - it's just a few of the things that can happen when any one of us gets behind the wheel or is in the vicinity of someone behind the wheel. drunk, sober, driver, passenger, pedestrian, it involves everyone. if nothing else, please always be aware of what's going on around you...remember not everyone values your life as much as i and others that love you do.

drive safely...please.

received today from a 10 year old girl...

2010-04-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

What If There Isn't 'Any More'?

One day a woman's husband died, and on that clear, cold morning, in the warmth of their bedroom, the wife was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes there isn't "any more". No more hugs, no more special moments to celebrate together, no more phone calls just to chat, no more "just one minute." Sometimes, what we care about the most gets all used up and goes away, never to return before we can say good-bye, before we can say "I love you."

So while we have it, it's best we love it, care for it, fix it when it's broken and heal it when it's sick. This is true for marriage.....And old cars... And children with bad report cards, and dogs with bad hips, and aging parents and grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it.

Some things we keep -- like a best friend who moved away or a sister-in-law after divorce. There are just some things that make us happy, no matter what.

Life is important, like people we know who are special.. And so, we keep them close! These are the "keepers" in your life. Suppose one morning you never wake up, does all your family know you love them?

I was thinking...I could die today, tomorrow or next week, and I wondered if I had any wounds needing to be healed, friendships that needed rekindling or three words needing to be said.

Let every one of your family know you love them. Even if you think they don't love you back, you would be amazed at what those three little words and a smile can do. And just in case I'm gone tomorrow. i love you.
Live today because tomorrow is not promised.

WHOOOOOP!

2010-04-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

AMAZON.COM - Scrapbook PageMaps 2

so excited to announce fleck's newest release scheduled to be available in october - preorders are now available through amazon (link above). so grateful to her for asking me to once again contribute, it is a pleasure and an honor to be included...YRMF :)

neato...

2010-03-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

Congratulations! Your NeoCounter has reached:

cities.

cool, huh?

universal health care issue - serious shit.

2010-03-17T07:42:00.000-07:00

i truly believe the more people that educate themselves about EVERYTHING, the better off we ALL will be. ignorance is not an excuse peeps...this is some serious trouble we are headed for and once done, we are screwed for decades down the road - it simply cannot be undone overnight. people must see the trouble that is brewing for all of us...

i understand that the current health care system can seriously blow - but this is NOT the answer to that problem. capping what private physicians make will drive them out of the business. great, you say - who will take their places...? who would you rather have operate on your child or your soul mate, not to mention yourselves...do you want a "doctor" who can finally get his license, not because he's any good, but because he gets a kick back from the government just to be one, as the supply has diminished? personally i would much rather have someone who may be in it for the money, but at least dedicated to that and excels as a doctor.

there is nothing wrong with making a profit, it's what drives people to succeed. why do people have so much hatred for people who do well for themselves? we ALL have the same possibilities available to us if we want something bad enough.

yes, the price of prescriptions is ridiculous, no question. but think about this: the more people on government aid, the less money going to the pharmaceutical companies. the cost of R&D is astronomical - it's not like every magic pill that comes out hasn't been rejected a million times before it reaches the shelves in your freakin' walgreens. this must be paid for, period. do we really want them to shut down or cut corners on producing life-saving/enhancing/extending/whatever drugs? you may not care about supplying the people yon't know with inferior crap, but what about your family? do you realize that the fewer people that rely on someone else to pay for their shit, the lower the costs of the shit goes? the prices are so high because YOU are paying for all of those that AREN'T...and those numbers can do nothing but increase following the path we are on. it's such simple economics.

one more thing: why don't more people ask themselves why congress itself refuses to use this plan they are offering up to the rest of us? i guarantee you that if the family obama was required to participate in whatever is passed, this bullshit would come to a SCREECHING halt. can anyone deny this?

there are still a few things that we can do to be heard - 50-something% of americans think this proposal is a bad idea...30-something% think it's a good one.

anyone who feels the way i do about the national health care issue should 1) read this article:

http://www.freedomworks.org/press-releases/freedomworks-launches-no-health-care-reconciliatio

2) take a look around this site - i found it very informational:

http://www.freedomworks.org/

3) consider signing this petition:

http://www.freedomworks.org/landing/noreconciliation/index.php

does this speak for itself or what, LOL?!?

2010-03-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

Hi Shawna *waves furiously* you know you are the greatest. Did you miss me? Inventing 10 or was it 20 new profiles on each of your profiles for you to accept was hard work. A girl needs a break to keep up with you. Male/Female you just keep on accepting girlfriend. I must admit the male profiles are much more fun because you are such a naughty naughty girl. You DO get around! You even chat me up a few times, I like it and thank you so much for the gifties! *wink* Now who shall I infiltrate next, Dale, now there's an idea, what fun I could have with him and the stories we could tell, I do fly to Cali frequently, or Kevin with his three profiles, Bryan with his two or; God the list is so long. Maybe I already have! :-P Isn't the internet so much fun!

received this on my blog this morning - isn't she pretty?
***just a note jessica - i'm really not as stupid as i must look. i know you are out there and i really don't care. bring it babes.

hmmm...i found this email address

2010-03-04T12:15:00.000-08:00

jwandy7@yahoo.com maybe a friendly e-mail would be in order.

my bad. i totally blew that call, i'll make up for it on the next play...

2010-03-02T20:26:00.000-08:00

silly me. i always thought that *IF* i ever managed to actually hook an on-line stalker, (hell, since we're among friends here - well, with exception JESSICA THE STEWARDESS *waving furiously at psycho Jessica*, who i'm sure is reading along with us - i will admit that probably the possibility was more than a tad intriguing) it would be of the male variety. why i thought i could manage to accomplish anything so droll is beyond me. i do nothing like everyone else - my life is obviously in it's own orbit around the OUTSIDE of any known sanity sphere. hey speaking of sanity, or the lack thereof...

i play mafia wars within facebook. it's a stupid, albeit incredibly addicting, game in which success at it depends upon the size and strength of your mafia "family". therefore, you almost always have to "friend" people that you don't know through facebook in order to grow your family size. i have about 800 friends right now and, of them, i really only know about 100 or so. while playing the game you make lots of friends and strike up many conversations with people that you barely know. most people are good judges of when to keep their mouths shut - i've NEVER been one of them.

my BPFF (P stands for psycho, derr) JESSICA THE STEWARDESS contacted me a couple of months ago, having had her vagina-eye on a facebook friend that we had in common. she had noticed a banter of sorts between us on a particular thread and contacted me to find out if he was "available" and/or if she would be "stepping on any toes" in pursuing his attentions. without going into any details, i informed her that no, she would not be stepping on MY toes, but yes, she would quite possibly be stepping on this friend's significant other's' toes. i'm not sure if this embarrassed her, infuriated her or just set off her psycho switch, but in looking back i should have seen the signs.

JESSICA THE STEWARDESS began to lecture me about the dangers of being "involved" with someone that she considered a man-whore (evidently she felt that she was not only an expert in the man-whore judging arena, but also qualified to judge the "banter" that she had observed between us {out there in front of God and everybody} as inappropriate, considering his relationship status). she then proceeded to launch into a story about a boyfriend she had lived with that ended up flipping out on her (see, JESSICA THE STEWARDESS, unlike some people *my* word is worth something) when she confronted him about some on-line relationships she had discovered him engaged in. not sure why she felt the need to share, but whatever - i was touched that she had.

{FYI, JESSICA THE STEWARDESS, i could copy and paste the juicy parts of your email to me, as you taught me to do, but believe it or not i do maintain at least some form of class. hard to believe, i know - bear with me...i'm sure we'll all get back to more familiar, comfortable ground soon enough.}

long story short, JESSICA THE STEWARDESS gained my silly trust by "confiding" to me her story. i'm a sucker like that. i assume people are good and usually i get out of it unscathed. most people i meet ARE good - i figure if i keep repeating that, it will remain true. we emailed back and forth a few times. having read my blog, she seemed genuinely interested in my, shall we call them "interesting" life and friendship choices and points of view. she asked many questions which i answered easily as i obviously don't know how to hide much. she informed me that she had taken psychology classes in college and found me "fascinating". being the attention-whore and pleaser that i am, i fell for her bullshit hook, line and sinker and answered many of her relationship-related questions as honestly as i could, without throwing anyone - other than myself of course - under the bus along the way.

after a few weeks of what i considered to be friendly conversations, she took it upon herself to move beyond my emails and into my personal life - using information she had gathered during my diarrhea of the mouth sessions. based on her "instincts" and "deductions", she decided to pass along quoted parts of my emails - taken out of completely out of context - to a person they involved, under the guise of "helping" them to better understand this "amazing friend" that they had in common. the amazing friend (her words) is me, keep up. something that JESSICA THE STEWARDESS needs to understand is that the simple act of writing down that her intentions are not to cause pain and/or discomfort, doesn't make it so. your intentions were obvious.

i confronted her with my knowledge of her "assistance", told her i didn't appreciate her psycho-analyzing me and/or other people she didn't know anything about and told her to bugger off - i un-friended her from facebook, but didn't think it necessary to block her...again, silly me. i informed the object of her cooder-lust that she had contacted me about him and that i took her to be a bit...shall we say "off". he un-friended her as well and the next few days passed without incident.

JESSICA THE STEWARDESS evidently had some extra time on her hands last weekend and wormed her way onto my wall, probably via some unsuspecting mutual friend, posting some form of smack talk that i missed before she wisely decided to delete it - i would have loved to have something i could report as abuse, but alas she must not be as dumb as she looks. i have since then spent a couple of hours tracking down our mutual "friends" and informing them that i would be un-friending them due to some problems i was having. although i asked no one to delete her from their friend list, all offered to and did so - with the exception of one.

the support i have received here from people i've never met is amazing and touching. don't ever let anyone tell you that the relationships we develop in on-line communities are superficial and unreal. they are some of the truest friendships i've ever had the pleasure of being involved in. JESSICA THE STEWARDESS did manage to shake my faith in honesty and trust, but only momentarily. i do believe that most people are good and kind and generous. i'm lucky to be surrounded by them here and in my "real" life.

you cannot make this shit up...it's just not nice to fuck with people. i, for one, won't take it by just laying down and praying that you find someone else to become obsessed with so you'll go away. as long as it's not one of my friends you set your sights on, we're golden.

there once was this guy...

2010-01-27T10:37:00.000-08:00

that i didn't know. something happened to him and suddenly he was gone. just...gone. i see the reaction of people that did know him and i am touched. so deeply. i hope he had a sense of how treasured he was while he was here. i do doubt it, though...

we all want to believe that we have made a difference in at least ONE other person's life, don't we? i mean yes, mom's know that they have spawned other little human beings - some definitely questionable on exactly what percentage of them are really human, but i digress. so, in the area of reproduction some of us have made a difference, but what i mean is within other people's hearts and souls. people we may have never met, people we may have met but not recognized that we have connected in some way. people we have known but not understood. people that we assume we have made no difference in them whatsoever.

do you ever wonder what people will say/think/believe about you if you were suddenly just...gone? it freaks me out, lol...don't you imagine that your friends would certainly miss something - if only the droning of your voice as you ramble on and on and on about things that no one in their right mind, or otherwise, could possibly find interesting? would they miss something as cool as listening to you describe your dog dragging his ass on the concrete patio as you stand there and try to have a serious conversation with your stripper/bug guy? would they miss listening to you actually cry about stupid things? something as stupid as, oh i don't know...the fact that you went to the freezer jonsing for some strawberry toaster strudels only to find that your little savage bastard hoover-vacuum children have eaten all of them once again, left the empty box in the freezer and you HAVE. JUST. HAD. IT with their little mooching ruinous asses? would they miss hearing you laugh about even stupider things? something like the fact that you actually managed to make yourself look even lower than the white trash that you are by getting busted "stealing" a broken toilet seat from a pile of discarded stuff that sits in the street waiting for the trash man because you think you can use part of it for a nifty redneck planter? what about missing you bitch about really intelligent things? things like OMGGGGG how pissed off you get when you gesture to your significant other to grab a line at costco that is suddenly shorter than the one you are standing in, and the person behind you hears you and darts to the short line before your guy even begins to process that you are asking him to do something? holy SHIT that makes my balls boil...but wait, this isn't about me, lol.

my point is i am sitting here wondering if everyone who has touched my life knows that they have and to what extent? i'm talking about the ones that have touched it in a positive way - believe you me...those other bastards definitely know they have fucked up. you can't let that shit slide. again, digression. sorry. stop and think about it...do you know? (where you're going to, do you like the things that life is showing you, do you know?) do your people know it from you? maybe you should tell them, show them, make sure they do know...but be careful, people tend to get freaked out if you just pop into their life and say "hey, you know i dig you right? no matter what? ok cool, just checking" and dart off again. maybe ease into it a with a little more subtlety. something a little more personal, like, "hey remember that rash you were complaining about that just showed up that one time we got shitfaced and woke up naked on the homeless docks? good times - everything clear up ok? cool, keep on keepin' on and know i dig you baby". see class really does make all the difference.

serially - know that i dig you baby <3

just a taste of the type of person that quite simply makes my world a bright and shiny place...

2010-01-15T14:12:00.000-08:00

in response to a post discussing, in a round-about way, my 9yo daughter and boys...

"Does she say anything about wanting to take a ride on anyone's disco stick? That's when you can start worrying. :)"

jessica, you may have commie tendencies but sweet jeebus you make me snort (but not quite squeal) like a pig.

if you are easily offended - turn from me now. run for the light and cower there for the rest of your days. no really.

2010-01-13T10:20:00.001-08:00

those of you who read my blog no doubt know that i tend to be opinionated and brash about certain things. obnoxious at times, yes. insightful at others if not at the same time, i hope so. whether or not you see things as i do, you get a feel for what i am all about and have realized that pretty much nothing is off limits for me.

sometimes i get tired of writing about the stupidity in my everyday life and cease to find things, although always comical...entertaining, if that makes a bit of sense. given the opportunity, what would you care to see through my eyes - well, anything but the eternal blackness brought upon by my untimely but-way-so-much-more-than-likely-humorous death? keep in mind that i may see something you feel is serious and/or tragic in a completely inappropriate light and then request accordingly. same goes for something you find funny that...well, isnt.

the only ONE rule is that there is no getting offended in the easy life - if we did that we'd spend the rest of our lives simply being pissed off at me, and really, what's the fun in that? give me some ideas and i'll turn out some shawna-ese for all the world to see. yea, ok...humor me here. one more note: always keep in mind that i am an equal-opportunity offender. no stereotype is safe from me...again, i can't be considered a terrible person if i make fun of EVERYone can i?

as always, (concerning my blog ONLY otherwise, i'll puddle up and cry like a little girl), please free to tell me to shut the fuck up if you can't stand the sound of my common sense and/or voice, and then either go away or continue to put yourself through blog hell by reading further. either way, Captain WRONG, i'm happy to entertain your rebuttals...even if they are ridiculously silly.

anyone? himme-bess-shah.

washington irving was one cool dude.

2010-01-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love.”

i am the sole master of my domain...

2009-12-15T13:20:00.000-08:00

iwas checking in on someone yesterday, someone who is a somewhat visible person in my life, but hadn't really surfaced much in the last couple of weeks. my intent was not to yell "POPCORN!" in a crowded room thus making this person think that i was whining about being neglected, although i suspected my inquiry might do just that...this person is, let's call it, "stretched pretty thin" in their life and probably feels kinda like a hamster on a wheel. i could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure i'm not.

anyway, the point to my rambling is that i wanted to show this person that i was missing them, cared and therefore, sought to find out if there was anything wrong or anything i could help with. my dilemma was in making sure they didn't misunderstand my intentions and feel pressured to contact me for a quick stroke or two. really i just wanted to let them know i was thinking of them. i made a pretty simple statement to them, but as i reread it i realized that it pretty much summed up something that is relatively new to me. i am learning to group, accept and deal with things as they relate to my control over them.

what i said to this person was, "just making sure everything (read: in your life) that i can control was ok and everything i can't wasn't swallowing you alive. i'm here if you need me." i know, nothing earth-shattering really. a pretty straightforward approach and really no big deal. but it made me stop and think about this particular person's life and my concerns for them regarding it. this person gives just about everything of themselves to other people in their life. i would say it's a fairly content person, but maybe not an incredibly happy person. don't get me wrong, content is nice...but i think happy takes content an imperative step further when dealing with your own...destiny, for lack of a better word.

stick with me while i compare the two: content feels like coming home from work and seeing your family is safe and sound; happy feels like coming home to a safe and sound family that is excited to see you and asks you how your day was, showing genuine care - not trying to just get you out of the way so they can talk about themselves.

content feels like having someone ask your opinion of something and being allowed to give it - not really expecting that it will be considered, but hoping and glad to be asked; happy feels like being asked your opinion and giving it, knowing that your opinion truly matters and will actually carry some weight in the decision-making process.

content feels like thinking you matter in a way that is important to a bigger picture; happy feels like knowing it and seeing the positive changes you have made in the world by just being you.

try and look at contentment as being hungry and having access to a well balanced, well cooked meal - and happiness as being hungry and having access to a well balanced, well cooked meal that you know was prepared with your likes and dislikes in mind.

basically, i think we are content in believing our contributions in life are necessary to someone-something-somewhere; but aren't we truly happy when we know it, when we feel it, when we live it?

we've all heard that other people can't make you happy - only you can make you happy and i totally agree. i realize that all the things i've mentioned that contrast being content with being happy make it seem that you need to depend upon other people for your happiness...but go back a step further, who do you choose to spend your life surrounded by? because our lives are so constantly intertwined with other people, it's nearly impossible to not look to others, in some capacity, for happiness. do you choose people that help you to feel content within yourself? do you choose to surround yourself with people who bring out your capacity for happiness just by being near them, thinking of them or knowing that they are in your life? i really believe that we shouldn't have to toil for happiness itself, i think if we live our lives the best we can, being the best kind of person we can and showing others our appreciation for them, happiness should just happen.

if you have someone in your life that creates happiness for you, enables you to be happy in some way that you wouldn't be without them, someone without whom your life would be a darker place - tell them, show them, make sure they feel it from you. i think we forget that love should be alive; a growing, living, continuing thing, not something you feel, mention and then put into your back pocket until next time.

finally, back to one of my original thoughts - i do realize i'm a bit all over the map here, but it's how my brain seems to function - be sure to tend to your own knitting before instructing someone else on how to do it. make sure that everything that you control is ok. then see to the people you love, make sure they aren't being swallowed up by all of those other things you cannot control. we all have things beyond us...all we can do is accept that fact, learn to identify what they are, do our best to deal with them in ourselves and then cushion and support those we care about that might be in the process of being swallowed up by them.

directed toward this one particular person i mentioned earlier, but meant to everyone that considers your friendship with me something other than ordinary...know that you are a special person, regardless of how those around you sometimes act - towards you or towards whoever else happens to be in their line of fire. know that i appreciate you and understand so much about you because we are alike in so many ways. know that i am here to cushion you and support you when dealing with all the bullshit life tends to throw. (whoa. was that my first curse word?) know that i am your friend and you can count on me. know that i love who you are.

common sense or just shawna-think?

2009-12-09T13:29:00.000-08:00

now that texting while driving in california is illegal, people have to actually take their eyes off the road to text from their lap. before at least their eyes were still looking forward. did they really think we'd stop altogether?

why not mandatory castration for child molesters and repeat sex offenders ? i'd love to hear arguments/reasons against it... .

why would anyone even consider a health care plan that the people who have developed it won't even use?

why is marijuana still illegal? (oh yea, didn't see this coming) am i the only one who believes it's no harsher a drug than alcohol? people are buying and selling it regardless, why not make some monster tax dollars off of it and regulate it like alcohol? imagine how the snack industry would benefit...

why do some people think that raising the minimum wage benefits minimum wage earners? wages go up - cost of doing business goes up, cost of doing business goes up - prices of goods go up. People who are now making more money have to spend more money for the exact same things - not helping, same situation for them, worse situation for everyone else.

why are boys taught to not hit girls, but girls aren't taught to not to hit boys? my children have orders from their ma to let the first punch pass - regardless of of who threw it. after the second one - whoever is doing the hitting is fair game, regardless of sex. i'm thinking if a person has the balls (so to speak) to hit another person, that hitter needs to be prepared for a smack-back. period.

omg i'm so pms'ing right now

2009-12-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

i must be.

for different reasons that i won't go into right now ("jeebus", you say, "you mean there are actually some things she doesn't tell the world?") i have been sitting here with tears rolling down my cheeks for 20 minutes thinking of how fucking blessed i am to have some of the most amazing people in the world care for me. there is such a range of people that i love with absolutely all of my heart. they come from all over, some i have personally hugged 'til they couldn't breathe and some i have only dreamed of hugging that hard. i wish i could find the words to describe how completely full my heart is right now. i canna esplain...i can only let it spill over and flood me with warmth and happiness and love. omg, i just fucking love you guys...

ok, ok crap and jeesbus-rice, aunt flo - show up already, this nancy shit is for chicks.

your thursday morning breakdown

2009-12-03T05:47:00.000-08:00

1. look at the expression on the (assumingly male) kid peeking over shoulders in the back row. i believe the word he is looking for is "ouch".

2. nice pair of bronzed paperweights. and that's as far as i'm going with those.

3.guess which one is saying: "hmmm......i'm pretty sure i know this penis, the name is on the tip of my tongue"

4. and lisa's question (since it is thanks to her i'm looking at penis' at 5am): "OMG, Is that thing REAL?"

FMR.

2009-11-28T05:00:00.000-08:00

is it only in my life that you are awakened at 2:51 am by the periodic, yet incessant buh-BEEP of a smoke alarm, having lent your only ladder to an ex husband only to find that no object in your house is tall enough for you to reach the 10-some-places-12-fucking-foot-high ceilings in your house and even if you DID have your ladder you couldn't tell which of the 18,000 smoke alarms in your house is doing this horrid noise, which of course, follows you into every room in your house because they are ALL CONNECTED to each other, with each showing a solid green light, leading you to believe that the offending alarm in need of a battery change must be in fucking Timbuktu because you've checked every single one of them that you are aware of AND that the incessant bee-BEEP of the smoke alarm is exactly one-one-thousand-eight seconds apart AND that your whole body aches because you are sick and only want to sleep but can't because of the FUCKING SOUND, making you feel that a rusty ice pick to your left eye would be a welcome thing right now?

omg, please make it stuh-hah-hah-hahpppp

*LOSER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT* only because i am nothing, if not honest...c'mon, you knew it was coming.

it's 5:44, have been trying to sleep since 2, right? just did another check of the smoke alarms only to realize that it was not, in fact a smoke alarm buh-BEEPing at me, but the house alarm telling me it needed to be reset. JHC i am an idiot. back to my not-so-warm-after-almost-4-hours bed to drift off to the sweet sweet silence that is now my home.

i am thankful...no, really i am.

2009-11-25T09:42:00.000-08:00

ok, i bitch...alot. which does not mean i am ungrateful for or blind to my many blessings.

just taking a minute out of my rantings to say that. i really do know that i am blessed...i have an amazing and supportive family - immediate, extended, in-lawed, out-lawed...all of them. i have an incredible assortment of friends - close, far away, real, imagined, whatever. i have my health ( i know blahddy blah blah...but it's true). i have had and continue to have love, encouragement, acceptance and support at every turn of my life. i am one of the lucky ones, in so many ways and i want to thank God for the life i have been given...it's had it's trials, it's had it's tribulations (does anybody really even know what a tribulation is?) and it's had it's joys and successes.

really truly i could not ask for more. probably i will, of course, but my point is that i don't have to - i could die today and have lived, loved and experienced more than enough than one silly redneck girl could ever hope for.

peace and relaxation to you and all that you love, enjoy your day of thanks and hey...go packers, raiders, broncos and brett favre (sorry fleck, no can vikqueens do - MUAH)!

an inconvenient truth...

2009-11-20T10:13:00.000-08:00

done a bit of soul searching in the last 24 hours - yea, that's all it takes...my soul must be either pretty tiny or really fucked up. maybe a bit of both. what prompted it isn't really necessary to the result, it's importance lies in bringing it to the surface. stick with me, it's not upbeat, but it's from my heart. maybe if i can get it out, the happy shawna can quit feeling guilty.

i have literally hurt every man that has fallen in love with me, save two actually. one being dale and the other being a psychotic fuck that i probably should have killed to save the rest of the world from him...but i digress. i haven't meant to hurt any one of them, but we know what is said of good intentions. i seem to be full of them, sometimes they work out, other times not so much.

looking back i have only been able to truly apologize to a couple of them and while that feels good, the ones i haven't been able to apologize to haunt me. there is something inside me that is just too big for me...i'm not sure what to call it but i know it's a jumbled mass of emotion: passion, love, empathy, desire, insecurity, a constant need to please and to feel loved - apparently, to simply be loved isn't enough. the recognition of this has helped me to apologize for it, but not to necessarily understand it.

what kind of person actually invites others in, lets them get closer and closer, knowing that it probably won't produce whatever it is they hope for, knowing that they will eventually be hurt for loving you, yet still allows it to happen? a good person doesn't do that...at least not 7 times - oh yea, i counted. as much as i pride myself on taking something learned away from bad experiences, obviously this hasn't taught me shit. there must be more to it...

these are good people, really good people. the only thing they have done wrong is to fall in love with me. yes, i realize this makes me sound like a pompous ass that takes her appeal entirely too seriously, but believe me, that could not be further from the truth. i can only speak of the people who have actually shown me that loving me has hurt them. hell there could be a trail of destruction a mile wide for all i fucking know. again with the arrogant giving myself too much credit thing - please know that i am probably one of the least narcissistic people you will ever meet. this isn't easy for me to put down into words.

with all this in mind, i am determined to show my man all of my love for the rest of my life. he has put his trust, faith and love completely into my hands, but hasn't necessarily been fully informed. i struggle with pointing it all out to him...i don't think it will change his love for me, but i am afraid it will introduce an insecurity to our relationship; the only long-term relationship i've had that hasn't had that issue as a ride-along passenger, by the way. for now, i think i'll keep it just between you and me. ;)

not really sure why i felt the need to share this incredibly unattractive side of me. it's quite rare for me to do that, i generally tend to keep my shortcomings to myself. so we'll see how long this post actually stays up, hahahaaa.

peace out (and thank you al for the title, but most certainly nothing more).

c'mon, do the snake guy with me...

2009-11-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

a little todo about not much.

2009-10-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

been working on a couple of projects for a friend and i'm running out the clock - but that's what i do. better under pressure i suppose. one more week to get them sent out. gogogogogoooo shawna!

hallowanker is ALMOST over, thank you GOD. i despise halloween, don't know why...just one of my least favorite holidays. sorry spange-cake. and NO, i did not buy any candy for the little bastards.

weather has turned absolutely beautiful - low 70's during the day, clear skies, good (ok, relatively speaking) air out there. always lots to be done outside and this is the time of year to get it done. maybe tomorrow.

the Thanksgiving holiday is shaping up - my family members are complete nerdburgers and probably we won't see them until Christmas. dale's family will be here though. yay i get to cook Thanksgiving dinner for a chef. yes, i am petrified.

what do "they" know?

2009-10-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

they came upon a midnight bleary...

2009-10-16T00:48:00.000-07:00

ok...so i'm sitting here looking at that stupid picture of some drunk girl (hee) down there and i'm thinking to myself that i really need to make another entry, if only to bump that silly picture. as i'm looking at it i realize that i never told the story of that night, and it's one of my favorite stories to tell at parties (eyeroll). so here ya go:

i have great neighbors - i am very lucky that way...we have a tight-knit group that not only looks out for each other, but also probably peeps in each others' windows late at night. i say probably only because i haven't completely convinced myself that i'm the only one that does that. we are very close with one set of neighbors and we often spend evenings of wine and song with them; we also have some fairly new neighbors that i still haven't quite figured out yet...she is very sweet and quiet but kicks it up a notch with a bit of wine. he...let's just say, is rather chauvinistic at best. nice enough guy, just haven't really figured him out yet.

i do have other neighbors i like to hang out with, but on this particular night it was the 6 of us with a shitload of kids in tow. my house, Christmastime of last year, fire blazing, holiday music on, a veritable plethora of delicious nosh items, spiced cider and hot chocolate for the kids...got the picture? ok...oops, forgot to add approximately 9 chilled bottles of chardonnay. yea, 9 - hey other people may show up, i may drop a bottle or 5, you just never know and really, can you have too many bottles of white wine on ice? work with me here...

i had, i thought, very appropriately appointed myself lead wine pourer and maker-surer that no one ever had an empty glass.

*raise your hands if you think you know where this story is going..aaaand now moving on.*

everyone is eating and drinking and having a fabulous time. at some point the chauvinist (for reasons still completely unknown to me or anyone else that was sober at that point) manages to slip into the conversation that i was "just a woman with issues". what the fuck does that even mean? and excuse me...new neighbor - you, probably (but maybe not) the most unissued person on the block - me. whatever dude, drink my wine, eat my food, try really hard not to insult me in the next 3 minutes and we'll be golden. sweetly, to take the heat off of me i'm sure, he told the other neighbor that he's pretty sure she has an eating disorder and she really should eat a cheeseburger sometime. (ok, i may have embellished that a bit - those may not have been his exact words, but hey...i'm a woman with issues - it's what i think i thought i heard). yea...a real gem. but in his defense, he was on the money - she really does look like she should introduce something disgustingly unhealthy to her diet, say once a month...the way i see it, a burger would be a good a place to start as any.

at this point we'll have to fast forward as i must have been "dropping" bottles left and right because i had to keep opening more. and of course my glass couldn't be empty - what the hell kind of pourer/maker-surer would i be if it was? now, a non-woman with issues might have just carried around a full glass and not drained it so she could fill her glass everytime she filled someone else's, but hey. there are bit and pieces of the night's entertainment that i can fill in - one neighbor (remaining nameless but she was notably NOT holding a cheeseburger) showed off her cheerleading skills from days gone...shall we say, WAY by. she was very intent on explaining exactly what cheer she was going to do when her husband pipes in with "ok, but try not to fart like last time". this may have been where i "dropped" a few bottles of wine because this was quite possibly the funniest thing i have ever heard in my life.

from here on out i rely upon dale's version of what happened, yea...evidently somebody felt that the wine pourer needed to be poured into bed. i'm told it had something to do with me making the dog almost bite me and falling asleep on the couch - whatever killjoy. so he excuses me - because he is truly sweet like that - and herds me off to bed. he drops my drawers and tucks a giggling me into bed - not sure what was so funny but i get the impression that even though he tried really hard, he was unable to find the humor in it. a short time later, cheeseburger is missing me and climbs in bed with me, she lays there in the dark for a minute telling me how much she truly loves me and wants to give me a hug. she pats around the bed trying to find me and quickly becomes convinced that either i had been abducted by gang of suicidal, yet sex-crazed, dread locked, transvestite goth/emo kids (it could happen, none of us can completely rule it out) or dale hadn't secured me to the bed properly and i had wandered off.

upon rallying dale's help, the two of them went on a shawna-hunt only to find that i had left my bedroom, apparently of my own free will (false alarm, you goth kids settle down now), and walked down the hall to the most vile and disgusting place on the face of the planet, my kids' bathroom. apparently i was looking for something in there that required me to lock the door and sit on the floor next to the toilet. now, i'm fairly certain that in real life i wouldn't sit on the floor next to that toilet for all the free-fresh-off-the-rack krispy kreme glazed doughnuts in the kingdom of Heaven, but evidently it was there that my quest dictated i go, so i really had no choice.

apparently, having refused to cut my "search" short, i was momentarily left alone while dale tended to our guests as they readied themselves for the dangerous drunken walk home. because the entry way of my house has a straight shot line of vision to the nasty place which is the kids' bathroom, i will forever consider it an immense show of mercy on God's part for putting the coveted cloak of invisibility upon my drunken - clad in absolutely nothing but a black (victoria's-secret-seamless-100%cotton-comes-in-a-variety-of-colors-i-just-happen-to-like-black-and-wow-is-it-ever-so-comfortable) thong - ass allowing me to wobble back to the haven that is my bed undetected, sans scarring any children for life or giving the neighbors yet another "issue" to unjustifiably heap upon me - this one being my penchant for doing a pathetically choreographed striptease in front of Christmas guests simply because i'm such an attention-whore.

far as i can tell, it was a great party and everyone had a great time...we did, in fact, manage to drink 9 bottles of wine between the 6 of us. one neighbor came home from work the next day at lunchtime to puke and take a nap, another two neighbors personally thanked me for being such a great hostess (pfffttt - what the hell kinda parties did these people usually attend?), my man took me to get the obligatory weinerschnitzel chili-cheese dog - only the best hang over food known to man, while the fourth, and still nameless, guest nursed her hangover with two carrots sticks and a glass of water with a mona-vie back.

chew on this...

2009-10-13T21:04:00.000-07:00

life sometimes throws you curves, you know...big monstrous bitch balls of curves. curves when you are sure the path you are on should be pretty much a straight shot. i suppose there is wisdom in navigating them, seeing what they have to offer and using that information to enrich someone else's life and/or experiences through your own. the key is in the enrichment...the detriment is in seeing them in a purely selfish light. like, maybe this fucking path is just too long, i'm feeling the need for a shortcut - screw the curve - i'm cutting across. not always so easy to know which curves should be taken and enjoyed and which should be cut out completely.

more pics

2009-10-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

uhm...possibly slightly inebriated. don't really remember.

only the world's sweetest baby...lennie oden o'reilly.

news at 11: amazon woman chokes ass-dog at redding's sundial bridge.

misc pics

2009-10-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

why do i always look like such a bitch? wait don't answer that, lol...

bitty boo totally flipping me off...such a joykill.

ayup...gonna do it.

2009-10-08T07:24:00.001-07:00

pinky swear new pictures are going up today. gonna do it, gonna do it, gonna do it...say it with me.

i love...

2009-10-07T16:04:00.000-07:00

my friends.

old and new, young and old, buoys and gulls. if you are here and we are old friends - thank you loving me in spite of myself; if you are here as a new friend - thank you for taking the time to get to know me, i hope to get to know the real you; if you are here and i haven't met you yet - don't keep me waiting...catch up and let's get going!

you make me happy and keep me smiling even those times that i just don't feel like it. you fill me with a warmth that makes me feel giddy inside. you make me laugh, sometimes you make me cry - but it's only out of love. i love the conversations, long and short, spoken or written, deep or silly. i love the things whispered in confidence or shouted to the rooftops. i love the unspoken things that pass between us. i love that i can count on you whether i'm happy or bitchy. i love that you know that you are special to me. i love that you trust and love me back.

you see who i really am.
you love me anyway.
you are forever.

sign on and say hey...anytime.

quote of the day:

2009-10-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

"The old fucker played great last night. There. I said it."

~anonymous
(but obviously referring to my boy brett in his first game against the packers as a viqueen.)

trashed and hanged...

2009-09-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

concert was awesome - and i don't just throw that stupid word around lightly. braden loved it, as did everyone else, and we remained the loud family all the way through monday - ears still ringing, i'm pretty sure we all yelled at each other a bit more than normal.

saturday's yard day kicked ass. my kids can work when they are pushed...a bit of whining, yes, but they did a pretty good job getting the yard in shape. one minor "shawna" happened when i was trying to move the green waste bin across the lawn and somehow, inexplicably, tripped on the lid and kinda fell in, yet kinda had it fall on my head. braden had just dumped the mower bag into it and it rained cut grass and thorny rose cuttings all over me. i laid on the ground laughing my ass off, and then the look on braden's face as his brain tried to decipher what it had just seen kept me giggling all day. wow, how lucky are my kids to have me for entertainment, eh?

dinner at the neighbor's sunday was a blast - the weather was PERFECT, the food was DELICIOUS, the wine was ABUNDANT, and the friends were THE BEST! ended up heading to another neighbor's house for a mini concert with drums and vocals provided by karl and the kids. we ended with a fashion show and dance off of sorts - ok, that was all stacy. all of us had so much fun, but damn was i hung monday. which is weird, cause generally, i can put away the wine...but i woke up with a monster headache that refused to leave me all day. my baby waited on his drunken lush girlfriend hand and foot while she recovered. he's so totally my favorite one.

back to the grind boners.

back in black...

2009-09-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

AC/DC in concert tonight - taking all the kids and even THEEX, cause i'm cool like that. bennett = very excited...like hard-to-sleep-last-night excited; braden = nonchalant...never been to a concert before, not sure what to expect, my fingers are crossed that he'll love it; the girl = excited, but she's not sure why...looking forward to having her chest pound and buying a t-shirt; dale = pretty damn excited, cause he's a rockah...; the EX = eh, says he's looking forward to it, but too cool to show his excitement? me = pretty damn excited, but nervous that braden might not enjoy it. i'm not big on rowdy crowds, so not really looking forward to that - but hey, it's AC/DC and we are on the highway to hell.

family yardwork gathering tomorrow morning - not really looking forward to whiney, tired and sweaty kids, but need to get our yard in shape - it looks like crap...you'd never believe mexi's live here, hahahaaa! hey they're my kids, i can say that.

sunday, we are having a bbq next door - good friends, good food, good booze, good weather (should be cooler the next couple of days - THANKYOUGOD!)

monday will just be another relaxing day, nowhere to be, nothing to do...kids are out of school.
life really is swell. really really.

just say no, people...

2009-09-03T11:08:00.000-07:00

to plumber's crack, that is. can you really not feel the breeze? do you look in the mirror in the morning and say to yourself, "that is one fine ass-crack...darn shame to not share it."? we really don't need to see it - even if it is a good one (notice i said "need" instead of "want"...i have this freaky ass fetish, i simply cannot look away when presented with one. train wreck majora. alrighty then, moving on.).

i'm pretty sure my life is now complete having experienced not only 6" of an old-hairy-really-fat-and-doughy butt-crack on mother's day at my local walmart; but also most of a tattooed-on-both-cheeks-with-one-huge-maryj-leaf-including-the-stem-and-seeds-atop-white-as-a-freaking-ghost ass at the thirsty-thursday swap meet.

general consensus is that i can pretty much die a fulfilled woman now, no?

they're baaaaack...

2009-09-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

back in the classroom a-gay-in...THEY'RE BAAAACK! sing it with me.

this is week two and so far, so good...braden seems to have gotten over his annual 2nd-week-of-school jitters where he goes to the office 5 times a day with a stomachache or a headache, begging to come home, insisting he's REALLY dying this time. i'm quite proud, seems he took to heart our discussion on dropping a few of those way tired junior-high antics, now that he's in the the "Big Boy School" :/ seems also that he is going to try and pick up school baseball again (please GOD, let him do well) after taking quite a few years off. keeping my fingers crossed - this kid so totally needs a pastime.

the girl is doing well with 4th grade, as usual. she's not only playing soccer, but decided she wants to do cross-country as well. crap, who's kid is this?!? she loves her teacher and has a ton of friends in her class...not exactly the best news for my little social butt-fly, but she seems focused enough. for now.

bennett is...well, he's bennett. he's taking his PE class at home so he can take a college psyche class in it's place. he has an amazingly difficult schedule this year as a junior and has had, since the first day, hours of homework each night. i told him the other day to let me know if he was feeling overwhelmed with it all and he looks at me like i have 7 ears and a penis and says "what good would THAT do, mom?" the unspoken line that followed was "you know you can't help, you're not good at school.", (a warm and fuzzy nod to his dad's gracious pat on my back a few years ago.).

sigh. my babies are growing up.
thank you God, i still have my doubts i'll get them there in one piece.
have i mentioned that AC/DC is in 2 DAYS?

but officer, i only slammed an 18 pack...

2009-09-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

travelling the twisty, hairpin-turned roads 300 feet above the raging river through kern canyon every other week is generally a fun, exciting experience in driving - especially when i take Adalwolf the BMW. this last weekend, however...not so much.

the main problem in driving this canyon isn't necessarily all of the psychological crap you are bombarded with along the way. things such as narrow, winding roads or the fact that the south side of the road has, in some cases, a shoulder no greater than 6 inches of dirt up against a sheer wall of rock rising hundreds of feet above, while the north side has some serious free fall areas with no guardrails and a river, flanked by plenty of giant boulders, thrashing hundreds of feet below. it's not even the unnerving sight of various crosses erected for those people who haven't made it safely through the canyon in the past; although this has never failed to bother me in the 4 years i've been driving it. the main problem in driving this canyon is simply other drivers.

some people, known affectionately - and sometimes not - as flatlanders, are either unfamiliar with or simply terrified by the road and crawl up it, hugging the center line, occasionally threatening to (albeit, slowly) remove your side view mirror upon passing you. these people generally respond to a flash of bright lights behind them and pull over into one of the many turnouts designed for people that just want to enjoy the scenery (of which there is plenty and it is stunning). some flatlanders - generally older ones that are just stubborn, or those that caravan with 5 other cars and - how do i say this without offending anyone - might not be able to read and/or understand the language of the signs along the road that read "slower vehicles use turnouts" - refuse to pull over and have been known to pull a train of 15 cars all the way up the mountain, warranting road rage and dangerous passing maneuvers, to say the least.

even worse than these people, though, is the guy (or gal) leaving a bar somewhere on a friday night, 15 sheets to the wind and needing to get to the other side of the canyon. i have suspected drunk drivers only a couple of times in my travels along ANY road and only once before in this particular canyon. the guy i came up behind last friday night had to have been so completely plowed that the fact he had been able to recognize his car in the parking lot, start it, put it into drive and make it to the mouth of the canyon, was simply amazing.

when i first came up behind the blue minivan, i had just entered the canyon, heading east and was cursing my luck to have gotten stuck behind a slowby right off the bat. it was just dusk and this guy was driving no more than 15 mph and hugging the right side of the road. weird, but i just figured he was more terrified of going over the cliff to the north than he was of sheering off the right side of his van against the wall of rock to the south. i held back patiently - yea, i know...whoa - and gave him the opportunity to find a turnout and pull over before i got all up in his grill to let me by. while behind him, i had seen him cross the center line a couple of times, but just figured he was cutting a corner here and there - no biggie i do it all the time. he passed by two turnouts with no indication of pulling over so i flashed him with my brights to let him know i wasn't exactly patient by nature and i expected to be able to fully experience the beauty that is driving Adalwolf on a road like this. sometimes if i flash someone they get all pissy and slow down even further - whatever, i really have no time for the passive-agressiveness of others, i'm generally too consumed with my own...this guy, however, took off like a shot. he left me in the dust, which i generally take as a personal slap, but as he took off i noticed that he was swerving back and forth, alternating driving in the dirt and miraculously missing the rock wall on the right with crossing over the center line to the left. i immediately started chanting his license plate number out loud to myself while looking for a cell signal to find that i had absolutely none. i kept redialing 911, thinking i would eventually hit an emergency-calls-only pocket and i sped up a bit, trying to keep this guy in my sights, but also keeping enough distance that i wouldn't slam into him around some blind turn if he decided to stop in the middle of the road.

at this point i had two other cars behind me that i'm sure were putting skin-eating curses on me because i wouldn't pull over to let them go by. hey, maybe they hadn't seen this dirtbag up there and didn't know what they would run into, so good-samaritan shawna took it upon herself to save the world and did something that average shawna would NEVER do and hogged the road. having gone about 8 or 9 miles up the road, still with no cell signal, i came up on this guy doing 15 miles an hour again. this time i fell back because i didn't want to make him take off again. it didn't matter, he punched it again, veered off the shoulder to his right spewing gravel and dirt, as i watched him take these turns with absolutely no indication that he even owned brakes, let alone knew how to use them. a total of about 10 cars had passed me going the opposite direction by this time and i kept thinking "THANKYOUGOD" every time i saw one pass safely...at this point there was really no doubt in my mind that this guy would not make it all the way through the canyon without driving off the edge himself or sending another car in that same direction.

by the time my 911 call went through i had probably traveled 15 of the 20 or so miles that make up the really dangerous stretch of this road...i pulled over when i had the signal and told the operator what i had seen. i gave her my info and the info of the blue van and she said they would broadcast it to the CHP on either end of the canyon and take care of the problem. i started slowly up the road again, drove about a half of a mile and came around a blind curve to see a huge suburban sprawled across both sides of the road, completely crushed along it's entire left side. oh shit. bad yes, but people were getting out and standing in the road and no one was screaming - i'm thinking at this point they probably weren't fully aware that if they had been driving a smaller, lighter car they would have been shot off the the cliff to the north, but my guess is that it came to them before too much time had passed.

i pulled up to them, asked if everyone was ok and if it had been the blue van...they weren't sure if they were hurt, but thought not and said the van had taken off after crossing over the center line and sideswiping them them. i pulled off to the right and called 911 again to report the accident. still talking to the 911 operator, i started up the road again, turned two corners and almost hit the blue van. it had obviously stopped of it's own accord and was just left where it died - half on the road, half off. i stopped behind it and told the operator what i saw and she wanted me to look and see if anyone was still in there...uhhh no, not gonna do it - wouldn't be prudent. i told her that the tires were blown, the windows were shattered, the entire left side was crushed in and the right was up against the mountain. i told her that i couldn't see anyone in it, but also didn't see how he could have gotten out, and then informed her that i was a complete wiener and was definitely not getting out to check for sure. she very politely thanked me anyway and let me go about my shaken, needing a shot of crown way. thankfully i was only about 20 miles from my destination and that shot of crown would be more than likely waiting for me when i got there.

i found out the next day that the driver had fled his vehicle after it crashed and that they called in helicopters to try to find him, but that it was too dark and they'd had no luck. i still don't know anything else about whether they found him yet or not - what i do know is that i had dodged a bullet myself and i was extremely thankful for that.

priority #1...

2009-08-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

do not kill the children. taking a bit of a break during the summer---not that my life has mellowed and become un-ridiculous or anything though. kids are back in school in 3 weeks and my brain may just start to regenerate. and then again, it may not HAHAHAHAAAA!

serially, we've been keeping busy with camping, some visiting of relatives, dirt riding, yard work...mostly fun stuff. heading to san marcos for the weekend and that's probably about our last summer hurrah. may have another trip to visit my grams soon - she's doing poorly and seems to have decided that life is just incredibly too tiring. shit, i'm really gonna miss that bird when she's gone. sigh.

and so...with promises of tales to come involving wal-mart greeters; cracked bones and cracked quads; being mad-mugged by the world's oldest woman; ant armies and friendly firearm battles in my home...i bid you a short adieu.

oh yea - AC/DC...29 days and counting --- \m/ (>.<) \m/ ---!!!

sigh

2009-04-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

just waiting for my writing mojo to hit me - well, either that or a vehicle of some sort.

you are just lucky he's tired right now.

2009-03-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

winston is such a dick.

don't get me wrong...i love him with all the heart, but he's got an attitude the size of texas.

ok, so he's a little dude with a little dude complex. he despises the cats, but only shows it when they turn their backs. he growls at the birds when they squawk, but at a safe distance of 5 feet. he mad mugs buddy from 'his' side of the glass door, but curls his tail and cowers in fear when he's outside with him. he's a dick - plain and simple.

he and big bit (also known as fat-pat-the-androgynous-cat) have a love/hate thing going on...she loves to fuck with him and he hates the fact that she wastes oxygen by breathing it. she is always close by wherever he is...he watches her from the corner of his eye, constantly wary. when she gets up to move, he gets all bad-ass and lunges at her; stopping short, of course, of actually reaching her. she, being the smartass 'ho that she is, will often turn at the last possible second and lunge back...resulting in a shocked yelp from him, a i-will-fuck-you-up hiss from her and then the chase begins. usually her after him, but sometimes he 'nads up and gets her running. this is all cute and silly unless it happens to be 3am and they are laying on the bed with me.

he gets all shitty when something like a cat or a bird or another dog happens to even glance at his food dish. he races to it and stands there with his face buried in the bowl until the threat passes. keep in mind that the food that is in the bowl wasn't even mildly interesting to him 3 seconds ago, but now it's suddenly manna from Heaven. the food dish happens to sit next to the water dish, which everyone shares...God forbid a cat want a drink when there is food in winston's dish. after the threat is removed, he again wanders away from the bowl and returns to his couldn't-give-a-shit-about-that-crap-you-tell-me-is-food attitude, while sitting "pretty" for a bite of my fruity pebbles.

the birds really freak him out. cause they're LOUD. disturbing kind of loud, bleeding from the ears loud, especially when someone has flown the coop (and is running in circles on the floor trying to figure out how they went from their nice cozy home base to another planet in 2 seconds - good GAWD don't run past his food bowl, you idiot!) and they are tattling on them. sometimes larry bursts into his 'mockingbird' rendition of somewhere over the rainbow and the crowd goes wild...but i digress. winston will sometimes growl at them, but he generally keeps his distance. until i wheel their cage outside. as they are moving AWAY from him and out the door, he starts giving them the what-for about how lucky they are they he allows them to live...dancing around, barking at them and telling them to just get the fuck out.

then there's the car. winston LOVES to ride in the car. he's a little intense - leaping back and forth from window to window making sure he doesn't miss anything. will sometimes bark fiercely at particularly loud vehicle - of course he waits until it is almost PAST us before he starts talking shit. he growls at other dogs as we pass, letting them know that he IS a badass motherfucker and it's a good thing they are out there and not in here. cause...you know. "i could fuck you up. probably i wouldn't do it, cause that's not really how i roll...but i could if i wanted to. so just consider yourself lucky is all i'm sayin'." he also navigates quite divinely. he will perch by one of my shoulders (still vigilant of course, constantly looking around making sure he's detected all signs of danger and quashed them) to make sure i'm going in the right direction. he sometimes leans left or right, depending on where i should turn. he's only gotten us lost a few times and those were NOT his fault. he couldn't do two things at once, i guess and probably was off tending to some particularly nasty danger when i stupidly made a wrong turn.

but more annoying than being in the car with winston is getting to the car at all. he knows the signs; he hears the keys jingle, he sees the purse go over the shoulder, he knows which hat is for driving...he's verrrrrry observant. now, he does know to sit and wait to be invited to go and it's tough on him. one day he will probably have a heart attack from just that strain alone. he is pretty good about staying when i tell him to and when i give him the let's go, he unfailingly peels out, taking a full 5 seconds to even find traction as he races out the door. i generally open the back car door for him and he usually makes it in on the first jump...he has been known to ram into an unexpected backpack or kid that happens to be in the way, and when this happens he hits so hard he actually seems to hover midair before falling onto the concrete. he scrambles to get upright, shakes it off and does it again.

when i DON'T want him to go and i'm already outside, having given the stay order, and a kid comes out to get in the car, he takes full advantage of what he must consider to be the 'simple' ones, by barrelling past them and leaping into the car. sometimes i let this pass, but rarely because it just pisses me off. getting him out of the car at this point is a real bitch. he will get as far away from me as possible (uhh...it's a suburban, i've lost kids in there), and i generally have to climb in and drag the little fucker out.

this morning (wow...took me awhile to get here, LOL!) the girl and i head out to go to school, winston gets to go and is, in fact, already in the car when my neighbor comes out and suggests he take brynn because he's taking his daughter and might as well, right? cool...save me a trip i can get started on my chores. well, winston doesn't buy it...he's sure i am once again reneging and just trying to get him out of the car so i can leave without him. so over to the other side of the car he goes, telling me "you go to hell, you promised me a ride and i. am. NOT. getting out!" my hands are full of shit like coffee, keys, purse, paper whatever, and i can't drag him out, so i just slammed the car door, and went into the house. i waited a couple of minutes, put my keys and my purse away and went back out...i see him standing in my seat, paws on the wheel, ready to drive if he has to, gawd dammit and as soon as he sees me he scrambles to the far left back of the car. OH-EM-GEE he's a fart. i ended up leaving him in the car for about 30 minutes, after which he happily agreed to get out in exchange for a big dog biscuit...

it's a really big biscuit which he can't eat - it's too big and i gave it to him just to fuck with him. before you go all whiney and call PETA on me, know this: he is perfectly happy guarding it with his life against any and all domestic and/or global terrorist attacks that may occur, even though he can't enjoy it himself. so see? i gave him a PURPOSE. my work here is done.

waiting it out...?

2009-03-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

feeling blah, no energy.

feeling unmotivated - even things that normally motivate me.

second-guessing things i know to be right.

optimistic girl feeling incredibly pessimistic.

tired of parenting, not really liking my offspring.

don't like things that i know i do like.

so much more annoyed than usual.

much shorter fuse than usual.

harder to pick my battles - little things getting under my skin.

lack of desire to be social.

physically tired...just want to nap.

just not me.

i need a little pick me up.

2009-03-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

whew. much better.

as you were.

word for the day: necessary

2009-03-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

i've been stewing about this cleaning of the bedroom thing for two days now and have come to the conclusion that there really is nothing i can do to *make* him clean his room. he's too big to drag around by the hand and force him to pick things up. my choices are to clean it up on my own - this might actually prompt him to take a full can of garbage and pepper his room with it...he's that stubborn; let him live in his filth - which, granted, isn't horrible...i *can* see the floor, there isn't food growing in there and he's right about the fact that a clean room isn't "necessary" to a productive life; or i can attempt to show him the error of his newly acquired, let's call them "logically free-thinking" ways.

let's take the first option...if i clean his room it causes two problems: one, *I* have to clean his room - ew. two, honestly i would only be doing it to piss him off - he despises his room when it's clean...he says it's depressing. safe to say this isn't the best option. next...

second option: what message does letting him blatantly defy me send to the other two sweet wonderful accommodating children that do clean their rooms when i ask? is it just a matter of time before they put their humongous feet down and refuse to clean their rooms in an act of sibling solidarity? this option does not sit well with me as the MOTY that needs to keep her children respecting her authority in order to not go completely insane, resulting in the packing of my shit and leaving them all with their dad.

option three: he says i'm being spiteful, he says i'm ignoring the respect he has and does show me and painting him unfairly as a derisive little punk. i will admit, the term passive-agressive *has* entered my mind the last two days as i contemplate all of the things i do for him that are truly "unnecessary", but i think i'm gonna run with this option...

i think it will show him that he can't have it both ways - that if one path is chosen, another is foresaken. sacrifices must be made, repercussions will follow the liberating act of overriding authority with "logic"...he needs to be ready to embrace everything that his decision entails and that it's NOT spiteful, it's NOT passive-agressive, it's NOT disregarding his goodness...

it's NOT personal, it's life.
right? RIGHT?!?
f me if shit and two isn't eight.

it started out as a simple request...

2009-03-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

mom: "braden, did you clean up your room like i asked?"

braden: "oh, sorry i forgot, i'll do it after dinner."

bennett: "well, i actually didn't clean up mine either."

mom: "what do you mean you didn't clean it...why not?"

bennett: "well, i thought about it and decided not to do it because it's really not necessary - why should you care if my room is clean?"

did i mention i found my first gray hair last week? i swear by all that is Holy, this last year with these kids has been tougher than the previous 15. this particular child has an incredibly rude awakening in his very near future.

Lord almighty...

2009-02-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

my baby boy is 16 today. isn't he so handsome?

wah.

yeehaw - craproom pics!

2009-02-13T13:55:00.000-08:00

cleaned up my room a bit - it's still not done, but believe me it's such an ongoing project it'll never be completely done, LOL! it was a rainy day today too, so my pics suh-huck, you'll get the idea anyway. keep in mind that i have more shit than most and almost all of my storage comes from other people's junk. i haven't painted anything yet, so nothing matches but really, what the hell? i share this room (for now - i'm slowly taking it over) with the kids and our computers, TV and game consoles.

this is the best pic i can get showing most of everything - i'm sitting on the air hockey table. main table is to the right, temporary table on the left and all my CS and PP is behind me. ignore my bitchy cat and the homemade porno on the table.

here's a pic of my paper. CS below and PP above - this is nowhere near all of it...believe me, if i had taken a pic of all the PP monica (www.scrapfreak.com) makes me buy you'd be amazed and dazzled at her marketing skills. the green and blue buckets are housed in one of those shelving put-together-yourself things from target, ho-ann's etc. these have ribbon scraps in one and gaffers tape in the other. my ribbon storage is twofold. i have the unwrapped, loose stuff hanging next to my paint rack there and the spooled ribbon is in the drawer above the buckets (second pic).

here is a pic of the loose ribbon and the paint rack and a close up of the paint. i picked this rack up for a buck somewhere. i know, tons of help. i don't have a lot of wall space, so i just mounted a rack to the cabbies and i store the ribbon on rings by color. sorta.

moving left over my main table is just a buncha crap i use all the time, some stamps, adhesives inks.

this is a simply lovely spice rack combined with an old library card drawer to hold my tapes, more paints and all of the freakin stickles mons makes me buy. this sits right next to the paint rack on the other side of the beautifully flowing ribbon.

in the cupboard above i store most of my ink pads and refills, also adhesive refills and laminator refills and other crap.

this space here is right under that spice rack. how lucky am i that the guy that did my cabinets didn't come back and finish these drawers so i had the PERFECT spot for this thing i found at a swap meet? it fits perfectly and houses odds and ends that i use, just not on a regger basis.

this is where i keep more crap i use often - yes, another spice rack - the drawer-y thing houses most of my tools.
oh so handy.

this is a pic of my drawer tower thingies - i pretty much build them as high as i can. this is where the majority of my shit is. you can kinda see the rack/drawer thing that i keep all my stamps in just on the left of the main table. the lamp and other stuff is on top of it. this area is where all of my chipboard and flowers are. the chipboard is in my ghetto clip-it-up, the basket to the left and in the green and blue buckets under it. close up of my flowers kept in jars and stored in an old CD case that i stripped out, stained and put on it's side.

to the left still coming around the other side is my extra workspace. again loaded with crap i use all the time within easy reach.

on top i have more storage room and i keep my hardware (heh heh heh) sorted by color in a more modern spice rack and i use assorted cigar boxes and others for odds and ends.

i still have a closet that needs organizing and there is a TON more PP that needs to be sorted out - but it's coming along. most everything is labeled with my trusty dymo and it will all only stay this nice until i scrap again.

ta-DAH!

a mom walks into a bathroom one day...

2009-02-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

and sees that something has literally vomited little foamie bean bag beanies all over the place. they are smashed on the mirror, they are all over the counter top, they are covering the bottom of the bathtub, they are in the toilet, on the toilet, around the toilet, there are some stuck to the ceiling. they are everywhere.

my ex-husband's (ok, a girl can dream) middle child explains this bizarreness in this way:

"i was bored and so i stabbed a stuffed animal"

what. the. fuck. over.

at what point

2009-02-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

does my responsibility to my kids as far as carting their little asses around town at their slightest whim become something i'm allowed to say no to without feeling guilty and/or having to explain myself?

first off - i'm pretty fucking accommodating to all of my kids. their school's are maybe a 1/2 mile away, yet i drive them every morning and pick them up pretty much every afternoon. to be perfectly honest, mostly it's from the fact that i stay at home and consider it to be part of my job.

bennett has been visiting with friends after school and on weekends, going to their houses or having them come over here. since most of them live too far to walk, i generally drive him or pick him up - sometimes both and sometimes neither one. sometimes it's not a big deal, sometimes it's a real pain in the ass (think friday - or OK, tuesday - night when all i really want to do is have a bottle of wine and chill). sometimes i bitch about it but mostly i don't, i want my kids to have social lives and would rather drive them myself than not know who the hell they are with.

anyway - i've been trying to explain to them all that even if it appears that i have nothing better to do than cater to them, sometimes it's not going to happen - whether i have a legitimate reason or not. sometimes i just don't feel like it and sometimes i feel like they just expect it and that annoys me, even though that is mostly my fault.

bennett asks me last night to go visit a friend today after school and i say ok, but he has to scoop dog poop in the morning before he goes to school. he makes some stupid face and complains about what a crappy way it is to start the day (hahahaa, my sense of humor is deep within in him even if he hates to admit it) and nevermind, he would rather just come home after school. so this is where i blow it. i tell him that, ok...i'll drive him over there if he wants to come home first, scoop, and then go. stupid, way-too-accommodating move on my part, i realize, but it's what i did. so, this morning he gets up and scoops the poop before school. whoa. what? ok, cool. i thank him for compromising and saving me a trip and tell him i'll pick him up from her house around 6 tonight. he calls me after school today and asks me if i'll take him to her house because she got a ride home with some guy he hates and her house is too far for him to walk to. i tell him no that he can just come home because i don't feel like driving him there and then going back to get him a couple of hours later...pure lazyness, i can admit this. besides, if she invited him over, she should have told him that they would be riding with the Dick - she knows they don't like each other, but that's besides the point.

so he whines a bit but starts walking home. he calls me 5 minutes later as it has just occured to him that i was willing to take him over there when he still had his chores to do and he wants an explanation. well.

do i get pissed because i've contradicted myself without a real reason? do i get pissed because i'm being lazy and he's making me feel guilty? or am i just pissed because the little 15 year old fucker is challenging me and making me explain myself? probably it's all 3. we get into a verbal tussel and it just makes me madder. why the hell do i have to spend 20 minutes arguing about why i won't drive his ass to his friends house when i said i would the day before? maybe i don't have a good reason, ok? maybe the circumstances changed and now i'm annoyed that he still wants me to chauffeur him around. my question is do i really need to have a "good reason"? i generally try to explain myself to them because i don't want to be the parent that says "because i said so", but shit...after 20 minutes of his cross-examination that was about all i could say. well, that or "shut the puck up and leave me alone".

i get so frustrated with how little my kids appreciate how fortunate they are. like i said, i know that their expectations are set mostly by me and my examples - the solution to that can only start with me. my problem is in knowing how to explain to them that sometimes i really don't mind and other times it really puts me out and the difference isn't always predictable. i just want them to accept it when i say no and move on.

omg - i'm so missing my little sweet, fat, controllable children these days.

yo yo yo...

2009-01-21T10:14:00.000-08:00

i live. barely...but i live!

cheese n rice, i haven't posted since early november - that election must have really taken it out of me, hahahaaaaaaaa!

rather than spend the time and energy catching everyone up, i'll just say that health-wise all is good for the most part; man-wise, all is yummy as ever, although there aren't any sales bites on his house or his business; divorce-wise, nothing new for cripe's sake (oh yea...working on year fucking FOUR!); mood-wise, i'm on a new prescription and it's ok - not the changes i looked forward to just yet, but i think i'm at least on the right path. still phasing out the others as i add this one; kid-wise...well - 2 outta 3 isn't too horrible even if i am the world's title holder for the MOTY award, right?

brader is consumed with testosterone these days, which is scary, amusing and cornfusing to say the least...and they say we chicks are screwed up. he's jumped to about 6'2" and weighs about 170. he's humonginormous. did i mention he's just 13? he'll say something rude, i'll give him the look and he'll come hug me and say, "i love you mom." i cannot imagine how tough it is to have that shit coursing through your veins in mass quantities like it must be doing. he's become extremely loud, competitive and rather irrational when he gets upset (which is pretty much always these days, it doesn't take much)...not to mention he likes to throw his weight around. punk.

the grill is in a very sweet, yet emotional stage these days (i know...when has she not been emotional?) she's funny as hell and makes me laugh everyday. it's interesting watching her become older and a bit more sophisticated. she calls me poop and tells me i'm the best poop in the whole world. hey, at least it's said with love.

jonsie. my sweet boy bennett. ugh. he has become interested in a couple of girls lately. there was the first one one that kept blowing him off after they would make plans to hang out together. he learned she has a new boyfriend a few weeks ago and seems to be fine with that - they still hang out on occasion. the second one is a friend of the first one and he has now been hanging out with her a lot. she comes over and he helps her with her homework. they've gone to her house a few times as well. she seems sweet, if not a bit of a ding-dong. i just found out last weekend that my child has tried smoking weed with her and her friends. omg. no wonder this chick seems spaced out. fuck me running.

now those of you that don't know me THAT well probably don't know my opinion of pot - hell, those that DO might not either, LOL. although my kids don't know this, i don't have even a little bit of a problem with it for adults. i was raised around it (hey, my parents were druggie scooter trash), and i've seen alcohol do a hell of a lot more damage. if i had to pick a drug for my adult kids to partake in (and, ironically, i do consider alcohol a drug), it would be marijuana. now, the part i do have a problem with is that he's 15. he's always made such good choices. this one is just plain stupid...not as stupid as cocaine (or bacardi 151 like his mom might have tried at about this age), but still stupid. i guess that, among my kids, he's just not the one i expected of.

he confided to his dad - crap that took some balls - and he knows that i was told, but the two of us haven't talked about it yet. i've been trying to wrap my head around my feelings about it before i approach him. first off i felt like i was kicked in the gut, then i was glad that it was weed and not sex that he had tried, and now i feel an extreme sense of deep disappointment. i look at him and something has changed for me. the biggest part of me wants to smack the shit out of him and the smallest part of me wants to just accept it and move on like it never happened. i'm pissed off at the little punk. who the hell does he think he is? he's a frigging child that can't remember to scoop dog shit every other day. and he thinks he's big enough to make a decision about this?

(deep breath) ok. so it's really not that big of a deal (ha, how many of you are saying to yourselves, "shit, THERE'S the problem dumbass")...it really could be worse and i guess my job now is to do something to keep it from getting worse. i'm concerned that he'll like it, change his group of friends and start dicking around in school. i really could give a rip if he is an adult, has his shit together and decides to get high once in awhile. really wouldn't bother me in the least - that's just me. this is just such a stupid time to experiment with this crap.

have i said ugh yet?

california smells.

2008-11-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

it doesn't matter how the majority of the people in this state vote...we can object to something numerous times and the loud mouth passive-agressive bullies refuse to accept it. they will not stop until they get the answer that they want. what the fuck is the point of a democracy and of voting for something (more than once) if it's just going to be appealed (more than once) by people that don't agree with the outcome?

california's proposition 8 wasn't an easy decision for me to make, as it hits close to home. i really don't care what other people do as long as it doesn't negatively affect my kids (without my permission, of course). the outcome of this proposal really isn't my point...my point is that the people of california have voted the same way on gay marriage TWICE now and TWICE now people are appealing the majority's decision. the other thing is that there are only 2 states that do allow gay marriage - i wonder if all the other 55 states (heh heh heh, go me - get it? 57 states, HA!) had this same problem when they passed their proposals. probably not. california smells.

side note: california has enacted a domestic partnership law that grants gay couples most of the same legal benefits as a married couple - so the passage of this proposal does not remove these.

unbelievable news of the day: california has gay couples who chose to not get "married" during the three months that they could have done so...and now that the state has passed the proposal that restricts marriage to one man and one woman, they are suing for injury because they now can't get "married". what the hell?

***for the fleckster: we have had lawsuits arise from people refusing to acknowledge gay marriage here. we've had grade-school kids taken on a field trip to witness a gay marriage without parental consent, we've had a church lose it's tax-exempt status because the pastor refused to perform a gay marriage there, we've had stories with gay characters read to kids at school without parental warning or consent.

there are more incidents, but these have only been legal for a couple of months - the problem isn't the marriage (we have domestic partnerships) as much as the fact that people are being forced to accept it as a marriage even if their religious beliefs go against it - which most do. if they don't accept it, they are breaking the law.

i too believe in live and let live and most people abide by that most of the time - but there are those that don't and those are the ones that have gotten this particular ball rolling. by stating the definition of "marriage" as one man and one woman, it eliminates these problems.

dale dates a retard.

2008-11-04T18:08:00.000-08:00

swingin' in to costco yesterday and see that their gas is at about $2.40 a gallon, suh-WEET! i'm thinking oh yea AND i have a 10-cent per gallon discount on account, so i pull in and get in line. waiting, waiting, waiting - about 20 minutes later (after i've quietly bitched out everybody in front of me for not knowing how to just gas' n go - let's MOVE it people!) i'm up to the pump and it asks me for my costco card - comin right up - pop it in and it tells me again to insert my costco card. well shit - i just DID, but ok...try it again. nope tells me to swipe my costco card. third time it locks me out and tells me to call the attendant. completely aware of the line formed behind me and the mad mugging being thrown my way, i hand my card to dale and ask for help. he starts to insert the card, looks at it and says "uhm...they don't take Von's Club Cards at costco, derrrrr."

that was bad right? i can own it, trying to insert my Von's grocery store club card three times at costco and not noticing was pretty dumb. it was very obviously brought to my attention that i was not at Von's right? so, the costco attendant comes over and clears the pump (dale did not tell him what i had done, although i could see him struggling very hard) and i insert my costco club card and credit card to get the gas going. standing there while the tank is filling, i look down at the price per gallon and think huh, it didn't give me the 10-cent discount. i seriously thought about asking the costco attendant to come back over and give him the what-for about it, but decided i'd just get the discount next time. so, i finish filling my tank with costco gas, smile and wave to all the pissed off people behind me in line and go park in the costco parking lot. d and i are just starting to enter the store when, still puzzled as to why i didn't get my discount, i say to him, "OH! duh...my gas discount must have expired on oct 31...that's why i didn't get it. bummer." i'm such a maroon. it still hadn't occurred to me that costco doesn't give per gallon discounts r-tard. you can't earn these. they don't exist. they do however, give them out at Von's along with that club card i was trying to jam into the pump a minute ago. jeebus, can you imagine if i'd actually thrown down with the costco attendant about wanting MY DAMN DISCOUNT?!?

i think i cannot even begin to fathom just how much this man must love me.

just say no to crack.

2008-10-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

picture this:

it's a lovely 90 degree day last weekend and dale and i had been out yard-sale-ing. we had borrowed my neighbor's pickup so that we could use it and the suburban to haul home a bunch of furniture we picked up. the suburban had all the windows rolled up and was stuffed to the gills with cushions and a whole mess of other carp - i couldn't open the doors without dumping crap and i couldn't have added a kid if even i had a wild hair and wanted to.

the sub is parked across the street from my house and we have just finished unloading the pickup. while d goes to return it to the neighbor, i cross the street and shove my way into my car, wrestling couch cushions just to make enough room for my big ass to sit down. i had to SLAM the door shut quickly so everything (including me) didn't spill out onto the street. i am barely wedged into the car and i hear the door click shut when it hit me--- it's hot in here and my door handle is broken and i have to roll down my winder to open it from the outside---shit. oh well let me turn the key and roll down the window...interesting, i seem to have left the keys in the garage---loud shit. i can't roll down the window and i can't breathe. did i mention the cushions? and the 90 degree day? oy. i turn and start to pound on the window trying to get d's attention as he's walking away from me towards the pickup...of course, he can't hear me---double latte shit.

still picturing it? stay with me.

after sitting there for a couple of seconds debating on whether or not i really wanted dale to come back and find me a prisoner of my own stupidity, plus quickly running out of oxygen while being held captive by my car and 2 tons of cushiony material, it occurred to me that i had to rescue myself, dammit. *LIGHTBULB* i popped the rear window with a switch on the dash (seriously, that had only been fixed in the last month), fought my way to the oxygen at the top of the car and began a laborious army-crawl across the top of the cushions, scraping my back along the headliner of the car while big booty mountain switches on the occasional reading light - heading frantically for freedom. by the time i got to the back hatch window i was all sweaty, my hair was absolutely everywhere and my sans-a-belts had scooched down my hips far enough to show butt-crack. had anyone been standing there when i burst out (thank GOD no one was), they may have been reminded of the ace ventura scene where he fought his way out of a rhino decoy's ass.

sweet sweet freedom. treasure it. fight for it. love it.

today's the day

2008-10-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

...i go back on my meds. sigh.

i know i'm being an irrational bitch when the man that means most to me in the world irritates me when he takes freaking forever to suit up, get on his bike and leave me for the week. it wasn't that i wanted him to go, cause i miss him terribly when he does and i hate it that we don't get our everyday's together. it's just...well, crap it's 6am, i'm standing in the driveway in my jammers and slips, it's freezing out, my hair is horribly plastered to the sides of my head, my intestinal tract is threatening to rebel against the coffee i've given it, my garage smells nasty as tomorrow is garbage day, and he is taking for-e-v-e-r to suit up; going back in the house 'cause he forgot something, coming back out looking for something else, gotta hook up his i-pod, wants to show me his cool new gloves with a (pretty cool, gotta admit) wiper blade on one finger, kisses me and gets me all pokey and scratchy with his facial hair. SHIT just leave already!

and it hits me - there is absolutely no question that i'm losing it. this is the sweetest kindest man i've ever known...he's patient and supportive, he would do ANYthing in the world for me, i love him with all of my heart, plus he's got incredible sack-skills and here i am ready to yell at him because he won't leave quick enough. i hate to even put it in print - if he ever saw it, he would be devastated. like, unfixably devastated.

and it isn't just this morning - it's been every day for the last two or three weeks. i'm an on edge raging bitch. EVERYthing annoys me; every morning dropping off kids, i seriously have to rein in the urge to ram into people and then drag them by the hair from their cars and ask them how in God's name they could be so incredibly stupid and self-centered; oh, and speaking of kids, i just want them to up and move away i'm so sick and tired of the bullshit that comes with them; i look in the mirror and just want to hurl when i see myself in it - everything about me repulses me, my hair, my weight, my pulse...i could go on and on, but it's really not necessary. i need my medication. my sweet sweet medication. sigh.

she's killin me.

2008-10-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

my neighbor/friend (she hates it when i just call her my neighbor, heh heh heh), that is. she has me walking every freaking day and i'm exhausted. the main problem is that she's an itty-bitty and walks fast, i'm a big betty and i just kinda lumber along trying to keep up.

long story in getting here, but she has a new pup that seems to be perfectly suited to her (finally and thank you GOD!), plus she's an avid cesar fan...which translates into exercise for your dog first and foremost! (in all fairness, she does now has me tiVo'ing the dog whisperer and there is an all-day marathon on today, whoop!). we are walking about an average of 3 miles every day and i have to battle the winstonian-burger everytime we pass another dog (this is where my cesar training is coming in handy -slow going, but making progress.) and he's a puller so i have to pretty much practice holding him back for 3 miles. bottom line, i'm a puss and i get tired, LOL! so the good news is that i'm exercising and the bad news is that i'm not losing any weight. ugh.

the funny thing is i bitch at her every morning heading out and i thank her every morning coming back in. she's a good girl. plus she gives me weekends off. that's cool.

an opinion on an opinion.

2008-10-23T11:32:00.000-07:00

this morning i got this response to my step right in... post and thought i'd list a thought or three on what she had to say...

{KK said...: i hear this analogy, and while i understand where you're coming from, it's not a new argument. republicans have been saying this about democrats for ever. it has some truth, but it's oversimplified. (A)

i have a harder time swallowing the fact that the unregulated bankers are living high off the hog, then expect the government to bail them out. AIG is the best example. and mortgage companies have misrepresented themselves to so many people it's sickening. they just wanted to write new business. this subprime mess (CRA nonwithstanding) is an example of greed gone amok. (B)

i've voted republican for 20 years, but this time I'm voting for Obama for the same reason as Colin Powell. Palin is not qualified for the executive office. Nice person, probably share a lot of the same values, but she's not qualified. as a republican woman i'm aghast that the party would insult me this way. (C), (C1); October 23, 2008 11:17 AM}

(A) while it may not be a new argument to the world, it is to me as i've never been so drawn into politics before - i'm learning more everyday; and of course it's oversimplified, i assumed that was too obvious to have to point that out. so now let me clarify - i was oversimplifying, but my analogy does acurately encompass the main points of truth.

(B) amen sistah, couldn't agree more about the subprime loan bullshit - complete greed run amok. (always keep in mind though, who exactly it was doing the manipulation, through cooercion, to the lending institutions, forcing them to make loans that should never have been made in the first place. another example of trying to even out and equalize those perky Americans that can't seem to do for themselves and need their government to do it for them.)

(C) i'm almost - key word - almost rendered speechless by this. maybe i have misunderstood what you are saying but, if i hear your argument correctly (although i don't believe for one second that this is colin powell's real reason for supporting obama - that's another post altogether), then i am completely baffled by your logic. according to your words, your reason behind electing the President of the United States is not to pick the person best qualified to lead our country (and we must assume, based on your statement regarding mrs palin, that you think his running mate joe biden IS qualified, although the rest of the country must not agree with you, as his personal bid for the presidency was very sharply shut down), but to simply bar his opponent(who i'm going to assume you don't have a problem with, since you didn't mention it)'s running mate because you feel that she isn't qualified for the second-in-command position? taking it one step further...you would rather vote in someone who's own running mate guarantees a "world crisis" in response to the election of barack obama because he is known to be viewed by the world's shit-stirrers as weak and inexperienced? i'm sorry, and with all due respect, i really do appreciate your input, but i just don't get your reasoning.

oh and (C1) i need clarification on why you feel your party has insulted you by placing my girl-crush sarah palin on the ballot. she's hot. maybe that's the reason?

***

2008-10-22T22:26:00.001-07:00

i inadvertently omitted a paragraph to step right in... and didn't feel like reposting the whole damn thing, LOL!

(it is marked in the post below with {italics}.) laytah boners.

step right in...

2008-10-22T14:32:00.000-07:00

let's pretend that you are a teacher and you have an academically wide range of students in your classroom. some kids pay attention and/or study hard and get really good grades; some kids are slackers and get the really crappy grades; and then there are generally those kids that try fairly hard but just can't manage to get better than average grades.

you are having your year-end final on next friday - the kids have had plenty of notice and are fully aware that the grade that they get on this particular test is the grade they will take home on their report card. pretty big deal right? this will sort out those kids that have learned and those that haven't. this may also give you a pretty accurate idea of how good of a teacher you really are...

ok...fast forward to next friday after school. you are grading your tests and really aren't seeing anything that surprises you. for the most part, those you expected to get A's have done so and those who you expected to do poorly have also done so. there are as well those kids that manage to slide in under the radar - your solid C kids. you are pretty proud of your A students, they worked hard and they got what they deserved. you are disappointed in your students that have failed, you had really hoped that some of them would really have applied themselves and gotten a better grade, but you aren't really surprised.

now fast forward to passing back the graded tests on monday morning. every test shows a C-grade and you are closely watching the kids' expressions as they discover this for themselves. check out those kids that knew they tanked the test, some of them even slept through it and turned it in completely blank. they are looking rather pleasantly surprised, no? they kinda look around, shrug their shoulders and start looking forward to how they will spend their summer now that they won't be grounded for the first month of it. next, look at those kids that generally do average - they aren't really affected one way or the other - they expected a C, they always get a C, moving on. now look at the faces of your A students, the ones that knew they aced that test, the ones that studied hard and got every answer right...they are expressing an interesting combination of things. you see shock and disbelief. you see disappointment. you see confusion and you see anger. you notice that they start looking around at the other test papers. they are wondering, "how the hell did newman over there manage to pull the exact same grade as me out of his ass when he rarely even shows up for class?"

***{you pull one or two of the more distraught ones aside and gently explain to them that while yes, they did actually earn an A, it is always important to remember that everyone has the right to feel good about themselves - we don't want them to be disappointed in themselves for failing the class; no one is a "failure" in this classroom - we are all "winners"...everything is done for the greater good. you patiently explain to them that in order to remedy this, you felt it was your teacher-iotic duty to give half of their hard-earned A away to someone who hadn't earned it so that everyone could come away with the same, positive school experience.}

welcome to obama-nation...where, regardless of your input, regardless of your output, regardless of whether or not you even show up, everyone gets the same results.

think about it and gimme your thoughts. please, even if you don't agree with what i've said - i want to hear your point of view.

damn straight i'm a bette...

2008-10-15T20:09:00.001-07:00

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are a Bette!

You are a Bette -- "I must be strong"

Bettes are direct, self-reliant, self-confident, and protective.

How to Get Along with Me

* Stand up for yourself... and me.

* Be confident, strong, and direct.

* Don't gossip about me or betray my trust.

* Be vulnerable and share your feelings. See and acknowledge my tender, vulnerable side.

* Give me space to be alone.

* Acknowledge the contributions I make, but don't flatter me.

* I often speak in an assertive way. Don't automatically assume it's a personal attack.

* When I scream, curse, and stomp around, try to remember that's just the way I am.

What I Like About Being a Bette

* being independent and self-reliant

* being able to take charge and meet challenges head on

* being courageous, straightforward, and honest

* getting all the enjoyment I can out of life

* supporting, empowering, and protecting those close to me

* upholding just causes

What's Hard About Being a Bette

* overwhelming people with my bluntness; scaring them away when I don't intend to

* being restless and impatient with others' incompetence

* sticking my neck out for people and receiving no appreciation for it

* never forgetting injuries or injustices

* putting too much pressure on myself

* getting high blood pressure when people don't obey the rules or when things don't go right

Bettes as Children Often

* are independent; have an inner strength and a fighting spirit

* are sometimes loners

* seize control so they won't be controlled

* figure out others' weaknesses

* attack verbally or physically when provoked

* take charge in the family because they perceive themselves as the strongest, or grow up in difficult or abusive surroundings

Bettes as Parents

* are often loyal, caring, involved, and devoted

* are sometimes overprotective

* can be demanding, controlling, and rigid

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

now THIS...

2008-10-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

is the radical righty speaking, LOL! i was listening to a sound bite from obama today talking to a small business owner about his campaign's proposal to change the tax rates, which would result in this man paying higher taxes. obama gently explained to the man that he shouldn't look at a tax increase as "punishment" for doing well, he should see it as an opportunity to help the person coming up behind him to have the same chance at success. he called it "spreading the wealth" - otherwise known as "redistribution of wealth".

now riddle me this...as i understand it, the top 20% of American taxpayers are responsible for 66% of our country's entire tax burden (of that, the top 1% of taxpayers pay 25% of the tax burden - to put it into simple terms that means that in a group of 100 people, 1 person pays the taxes for themselves plus 24 other people in that group); which explains how the lowest-incomed 40% of American taxpayers manage to pay less than 6% of our country's entire tax burden (and of that, the lowest 20% pays less than 1% of the tax burden - put into simpler terms this means that in that same group of 100 people, 20 of them combined pay less than 1 person's share of taxes).

[keep in mind that these are the percentages from people that actually pay income tax - this doesn't include those that don't make enough to file (who may VERY WELL be receiving a subsidy check at the end of the year regardless of this fact, because obama wants everyone to have a chance at success - go ahead, chew on that for a bit).]

ok...so, obama wants to "spread the wealth"? is this not already happening? how can this be anything but redistribution?

tell me something else...if being better at my job (through education, motivation, personal pride, whatever) earns me a larger paycheck, but causes me to pay higher taxes (not to mention that part my money is actually going to be given to people who did not pay any taxes at all - and yes, this is part of the obama tax proposal), why in mary jane's name would i want to keep doing better and better at my job - what incentive is there for me to succeed? on the other hand...if the less i do (because i'm under-educated or unmotivated for whatever reason) earns me less money, but i get to keep it all AND i get a subsidy check from my government every year, i would not be real motivated to try to make more money, would i?

and don't go all, "but i do my best and excel at my job so that i can feel good about myself, it's really not about the money at all..." bullshitty on me. we go to work for money, bottom line. yes, we sometimes achieve things that we are actually proud of regardless of what we get paid and we often do things for other people without expecting a "return on our investment" - but i bet no one can name 5 people that they personally know that works just for the fun of it.

i guess my question is how will obama's "redistribution of wealth" (aka socialist) dream make this a happier, more productive, more efficiently run country? i already know the answer..it can't, but feel free to try and change my mind. i'm open minded...really really.

we are not all financially equal. God has given us all free will and we will not all make the same choices, we will not all take the same paths. this is a reality. we can all find someone to blame for our shortcomings - this is the easy part. the hard part is to rise above the hands we have been dealt and to make the best of our lives regardless of our pasts. some of us go to school, do well and are considered successful; some of us bust our asses and never really get anywhere financially; some of us do nothing all of our lives and win the lottery after plunking down a one dollar bill; some of us choose to steal what others have earned because we feel it is "owed" to us and of those, some prosper while others go to jail. we are not all financially equal. we should not all be treated as financially equal. we live in a democracy, we live in America by CHOICE. this is not where you live if you think that capitalism isn't "fair", this is where you reap what you sow, this is where you are allowed to not feel guilty for succeeding where others have failed. this is the country that gives me the freedom to make my own decisions , stupid or otherwise and this is the country that should not ever punish someone for being more successful than someone else. life isn't fair and America is not the country to look to to make it so.

nutjob or not...?

2008-10-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

long story, hacked up and spit out to make it short, but nonsensical - i'm weaning myself off of my anti-deeps and have been for a good part of the summer. i was really afraid to with the holidays coming up, the economy the way it is, a divorce that i may or may not be actually going through sometime soon, moving d up here, the possibility of having to sell my house and turning around and buying a smaller, older one - all that crap weighs heavily on my decision to stop taking my happy pills and become good ole shawna again.

why did i decide to quit taking them?
quite by accident (nah, let's call it a spade - my stupidity) i forgot to take a supply of one of them with me while away from home for 10 days over the summer. i tried to get an out of town refill, but that was just a joke for another day. bottom line, i didn't get any and didn't want to go all the way home and get them.

why didn't i start them up again when i got home?
uhm...i hate taking them anyway and it was easy to fall out of the routine. lame enough of an answer? really, i hadn't noticed a difference after a couple of weeks and so when i got home i started taking only half the dose and just phased those out all together. the second one i take i started "forgetting" to take around the same time.

did i tell my doctor i was stopping them?
no. i'm actually still picking up my prescriptions, just in case. i figure what the hell? i'm surely a nut case for life and will find myself in need of them again someday, and i may not have insurance then. (haven't mentioned that my scripts cost me $5 each per month. they retail for over $100 per month EACH.

have i noticed a difference since i've been off of them for around two months now?
really, the only thing i have noticed recently is that i feel amazingly BITCHY. i'm noticing a shorter fuse and way less tolerance for stupid shit. but it's legit stupid shit that makes me angry - not like whether or not i'm out of lime for my corona, but things like kids not doing what they are asked to after 3 times; things like not being able to find shit that no one should be touching but me - things that are NOT where i specifically leave them; things like having to push the freaking chairs back into the table for the 17th time today (ok, so some are a little insignificant - but frustrating all the same); things like trying to unscramble the tv system after some numbnut starts pushing buttons on the (AMAZINGLY) complicated remote after i've told them to leave it alone and let me do it.

is this the fault of going off the meds though?
i don't know - they seem to me to be justifiable annoyances. i'd hate to go back on them only because they help me cope with the everyday crap of being a parent. i went on them to stop being sad and miserable with everything around me and that worked. i'm not feeling sad or depressed or hopeless, just annoyed.

will i go back on them?
don't think so, anytime soon anyway. i'm pretty in tune with how i'm feeling, so i'ma hold out and see if the really bad parts start to come back. as for the annoying stuff - i think i really just need to deal, right? it's life, life is annoying at times. the meds did mellow me to some extent, but mainly that was just in the beginning; they never managed to stop me from being a road-rager, lol. i don't want to be a head-case, but the purpose of anti-depressants isn't to make you feel perfect - it's to help alleviate the extremes. i'm not really feeling any extremes, so i think it's all good.

now if i find that the delicious sex-drive thing is changing or if i find out that the reason i'm such a heifer these days is because i'm not taking them...i probably will change my mind.

just a little tid-bit of information

2008-10-09T16:51:00.001-07:00

did you know that 5 million of the troubled/defaulted mortgage loans - you know, the ones that are currently being paid for by you and me and everyone else who actually fulfills their promises and pays their bills month after month - did you know that 5 million of these belong to illegal immigrants?

do you remember the humongous stacks of financial records you had to provide, the outrageous number of times you had to sign your full freakin' name promising that you were who you said you were, remember the promise to hand over your first born child's soul should you default on the home loan that you were about to receive? well, interestingly these people did not have to provide much of that at all. no social security numbers, no proof of employment, no guarantee of any steady income whatsoever. these 5 million people were handed the keys to a house that they could more than likely never pay for in order for them to realize our American Dream. did i mention they were not Americans? as in not paying taxes and as in very likely sending their hard-earned American dollars "home" to another country instead of paying back the loans they received? any guesses on how many of these people will get to keep their homes regardless, AND have their principals reduced to make them more affordable? shit shit shit for making my payments on time. wow.

ok seriously, i'm asking...is this even a partisan issue here? i mean, does this opinion make me an insensitive bitch? a radical righty? or just someone who is feeling a bit taken advantage of for being a responsible American citizen?

she's just always been there.

2008-10-02T06:16:00.001-07:00

my grams had a stroke a few weeks ago and is in a rehab place for the "elderly"...not a good story. apparently she's had a few of them and just didn't know it. hasn't really been impaired in any way except maybe mentally a bit, but she's my grams - who would really know? seems they are giving her some anti-psychotic drugs that she doesn't need that are, in fact making her psychotic and mean. i'm sorry - this really shouldn't be funny, but the thought of my little hunched over gram hanging onto a bathroom safety bar for dear life, granny panties down around her ankles, kicking at her attendants' shins to keep them from bothering her while she trying to have her "BM" (her very pc and sensitive way of saying shit) cracks me up. she's always been a feisty old bird, but i guess she's become a real gem these days.

i don't have the whole story (of course...no one in my family can GATHER a whole story, let alone actually relay it to someone else.) but my understanding is that "they" (the professionals) believe that she is showing early signs of alzheimer's and dementia (again, this is my gram...she's truly been weird, feisty and quirky for as long as i can remember) and are treating her as such. the drugs they are giving her are making her a bit hard to control so they then sedate her with more crap. what the hell, seriously? i'm getting the idea that this isn't all that uncommon.

the problem (well aside from all the bruised shins and my poor gram's sanity) is that she got a wild hair and decided to up and move to humboldt county a couple of years ago and is three hours from the closest of her family. 3 hours - what a ding-dong. my mom can be a tad unstable at best, has put in so much time taking care of my grams and cannot afford to pay attention (which is rather important when driving the roads to humboldt county); my aunt works herself to the bone just to afford living in an un-electrified cabin on a hillside somewhere in the depths of the oregon coast about 5 hours from my gram; my uncle lives in the sacramento area (about 6 hours away from her) and has the money but not the time, plus he's in denial about my grams health and just can't seem to deal, although he is the one who is best equipped in all other areas. her grandkids are scattered around the state and have their own dysfunctional lives to attend to. this leaves my little gram all alone and probably scared spitless that she will die alone among all these mean people that JUST WON'T LET HER SLEEP.

ugh. have i gotten to the dysfunctional parts yet?

i can't imagine my life without her...she has always lived close, she has always been a major part of my upbringing, she has always been the one that "got" me...even when i was pretty "ungettable". we were raised in a home 50 yards from her and my gramps - she's just always been there. she's funny, she's quirky, she's insatiably curious about sex; she's sharp as a tack and as smart as a whip; she's warm and sweet and bakes yummy things (well except that period just after they found out my gramps was diabetic and then she resdesigned EVERY tasty thing she's ever made into a nasty "diatetic" abomination - it passed along with my gramps, God rest his soul); she prolongs the ending of a visit by beginning a batch of strawberry jam "just for you" JUST as you are loading the car to leave; she has the balls to giggle and excuse herself when she cropdusts you (at nose level, of course because she doesn't want you to have to get up from the ever-so-comfie futon she's just sure is the best thing since sliced bread - even though EVERYONE jumps to their feet when she starts to walk anywhere because they know what is coming) and your silly kids that can't stifle a snort (but almost die trying as they really don't want to inhale "that"), as she shuffles to the kitchen insisting that you have some "fresh homemade" five-week old fig newtons that she traded some fudge for at the old-folks' home bake-sale "just yesterday" - uhhhh, yea...i don't care how much milk you drink, those never go down well - especially after that gas thing.

my point is that she is my grams, i love her dearly and it pains me to know that she is surrounded by people who don't "get" her.

good times, bad times...

2008-09-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

courtesy of www.yearbookyourself.com. what a freakin' HOOT!

and a couple of my kids that are killin me!

i LOVE her

2008-09-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

sarah palin is amazing. regardless of your political views, no one can deny that this woman has got her collective shit together.

i have so much more to say about this whole campaign and will do so soon - which in itself is bizarre as i've never been so involved in politics - but the one thing i will say right now is how amazed i am at the people that are "nauseated" by palin's "family parading", especially that of her youngest child who happens to be a special needs baby.

would they prefer that she hid her down's baby? should she have aborted the child? should she shuttle off to aunt martha, the little tramp that got herself preggers at 17? would they prefer that she downplay the realities of her personal life (one that is finally honest and quite a bit like all of ours in some way or another)? should she have refused the nomination because her family isn't "perfect"? i don't get it.

for so long we've all heard all about giving women their props for having the strengths and abilities to "have it all"...meaning having and growing a family while nurturing and furthering a career. for 20 years i've heard this push for women to do just that...you know the cheesy tv spot of the late 70's - early 80's: "i can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never, ever let you forget you're my man, cause i'm a WOMAN...W-O-M-A-N!"

now that there is one who could possibly make it to the white house as someone other than the The Spouse, these same people DESPISE her. huh? she is seriously stirring something akin to hatred in some people and i'm at a loss as to why.

why don't the same rules apply to everyone? why do you not hear people attacking other politicians for "parading" their families through the political spotlight? is it because their families are "normal"? someone enlighten me please!

no really...enlighten me.

i'll take it with salt, no butter please.

2008-08-27T12:28:00.001-07:00

my 8-1/2 year old grill is in a lovely, please-pay-attention-to-me-at-least- 18-hours-a-day-or-else-i-will-loudly-interject-some-random-word-into-the-conversation -that-you-are-having-with-someone-else stage.

one particular word happens to be the family code for it now because while visiting my gram (who is old and really cannot tolerate sharp loud noises) a couple of months ago, my girl was evidently not getting enough attention and just belted out, as loud as she could...

"POPCORN! I WANT POPCORN!!!"

she interrupted approximately 3 different conversations that were going on around her, without her. by the look my sweet old gram gave brynn, i could tell she totally wanted to say "what the fuck, over?"

at any given time, the attention-getter could be a loud noise, a random word, an action, a statement, an article of clothing - anything that effectively stops all surrounding activities and draws all attention instantaneously to you. doing this in our house this now causes everyone within earshot to stop what they are doing, scream "POPCORN!!!" at you and then go back to whatever they were doing before being so rudely drawn off-task. this simultaneously gives you the attention that you so pathetically crave - obviously to the point that you don't even care if peeps get pissed off at you in your attempt to get it - and tells you to bugger off all in a neat little one-word package.

brynn (the one who does this the most) generally refers to some sort of food that she wants; braden has revealed his "popcorn" as a huge (and oh, do i mean huge - kid's running 6'2", a buck-sixty) full-on flop to the floor at your feet accompanied by a loud grunt; and bennett happens to be currently perching one of those personalized, stitched pirate's hats from disneyland on the top of his head, one that apparently used to belong to some swarthy, tiny-headed, badass named Captain Carl.

oy. you can't make this shit up.

hmmm...a tag from duh-neen

2008-08-26T12:14:00.000-07:00

my sweet d (denine) thinks i don't blog nearly enough - so she does what she can to help me along, LOL!

i've been tagged and here are the rules:

(1) The winner can put the "I :heart: your blog" logo on their blog. Isn't it cute! :)

(2) Link the person you received your award from.

(3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.

(4) Put links of those on yours.

(5) Leave a message on the blogs of the girls or boys you’ve nominated.

Here are the 7 I am tagging:

leaf - i swear she's my SOH's separated-at-birth twin

la(licious) - i live vicariously through her love life

jessica - chick seriously makes me laff

monica - love me some freaks

april - chick rocks the cammie

tamara - soopah source for scrapbooking sketches

cathy - girl rocks the acrylic as well as everything else - now help me convince her to do a "personal" blog as well...

oh no you DI'int!

2008-08-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

summer is winding up...sigh.

i know it's so cliche to say it, but dammit, it seems like it just started. we're down to two and a half weeks left. kids go back on the 25th. i'm pretty sure my mom was always ready for school to start up again in the fall, how come i'm not? i love the lack of a schedule around here - yes, i am lazy, but still it's nice to be able to go when and where we want to without having to stick to a real timeline.

since early june, dickhead has been talking about taking off a couple of weeks to spend with the kids while they were on vacation, and hmmm...here it is early august and the best he has done is manage to plan on taking off the last week of their vacation to do what...? doesn't really have anything planned, as usual. he's such a clueless dillhole. i gently (really, i swear) asked him to please try and come up with something (as they get so bored sitting around his shithole apartment watching tv, listening to him talk and watching him text on his phone) and not wait until the last minute when he's all stressed out, which gets transferred to them, reaching for something to do. he then very eloquently fired back with this gem:

"you know what, shawna...if you would get off your fat ass and get a job instead of sitting around on it watching movies all day just managing to get fatter, then maybe i could afford to take them somewhere and do something fun."

*gulp* omg, did he really say that out loud? ayup, and then threw the ass part in a few more times as in "thank God i'm not the one who has to look at your fat ass every day anymore" *WAAAAAAH!* i remember being shocked when he told me i had "let myself go" a few years ago - but, omg, he topped himself this time. he is such a prick.

i can admit that i have gained some weight in the years since he moved out - about 10-12 lbs probably, nothing monstrous...and yes, most of it probably has gone to my ass - but it's not because i sit around and watch movies. in fact, i get lots more exercise with him gone than when he was here (in plenty more ways than one - heh heh). so let's see...what could the difference be?

1) i'm happy
2) i don't have a fraction of the stress in my life that i used to
3) i'm happy
4) i have a man than is much more concerned with the size of my heart than the size of my ass
5) did i mention that i'm happy?

i'm trying to remember what i said to him after that...but i don't think i said anything - i think i was concentrating on not bursting into tears. what i could have said was: "well, i can always lose weight, but what are you gonna do about your stupid bald head?" or perhaps (courtesy of my leaf) i could have told him: "well, you have a little dick and i'm so glad that i don't have to look at IT anymore!" what about "i may have a fat ass, but at least i don't have some nasty scabby growth shit on my mouth like SOME people in this room" (lord knows what it is - he has hives of some sort)...

anyway, my point is that even though i hate him and he's mean and evil, i could never stoop as low as he does. never. couldn't do it, wouldn't be able to live with myself if i did. so there...he can just kiss my bender. oh, and give me a divorce..that would be nice too.

pics from the coast...

2008-08-05T12:04:00.001-07:00

home again.

2008-07-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

whew...i'm pooped.

spent a whirlwind 3 1/2 days in humboldt county - very little sleep, a few tears and loads of laughs...whenever i get there, i always remember why i miss it so much.

rolled in early sunday morning (like 1:30 and couldn't get to sleep until about 3), spent a good part of sunday with my friend renee and her family; had dinner sunday evening with them and my friends karen and jill and their families; spent monday morning with my grams and then headed to headcase de mcbirdie for a jaunt to the beach with my leaf and her little bastards, then back to her house for dinner; spent a good part of tuesday morning with leaf again ( i had wandered off and left two of my skids with her...*sigh*, she made me come back to get them.) and then dined on a monster lunch feast at kfc with all of our kids; headed to the beach again with her family and my friend karen's; wrapped up tuesday with dinner at karen's and then hit my grams again on our way out of town wednesday morning. got home at about 10 last night, hit the showers and then the sack...and was up again at 5 this motning to send my man off to work.

i have pics still to unload - hopefully will get to those as soon as i pry my eyes open and get some laundry started. back later taters.

only because i love her...

2008-07-19T13:58:00.001-07:00

Ten years ago:
egads fleck. 10 years ago i was a hot 23 year old with a firm butt and legs - oh wait, that was 20 years ago...ok, nevermind. 10 years ago i was begging for another baby. 10 years ago i lived in humboldt county. 10 years ago i think i still had big hair. 10 years ago i was working for a movie theatre corporation. 10 years ago i never dreamed i'd be as happy as i am 10 years later.

Five things on today's to-do list:
1.) take a nap
b.) call my skids
3.) take a shower
4.) have a couple of beers
5.) nibble on my man

A snack I enjoy:
see #5 above...heh heh heh

Things I would do if I were a millionaire:
buy my folks new homes
adopt a baby
buy a new car
buy a ranch and raise something cute and smelly

Places I have lived:
california
california
california
california

Peeps I am tagging:
leaf
la

here we go again...

2008-07-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

i was asked by ms b and her dad about the possibility of adopting another pup and the one sentence i did utter was: "maybe i'll think consider it, if it was house-trained and if it was a girl pup." the one thing i didn't say was: "no."

after a lucy-mourning period of approximately 4 days, d-dad and the girl brought home winston. sigh. winston is a male dog, approximately one year old and very much NOT house-broken.

so goes the story of my life. now i realize he isn't the most handsome boy - he has a serious underbite, he has a really meaty butt and a slightly little head (i'm thinking weiner/terrier/chihuahua mix maybe)...but he's quiet and very eager to please and seems pretty smart. he also just happens to be a remarkable camper...the shot would have been a good one if i'd cut off the camp-coffee after say, 7 cups. heh heh heh.

but, but, but...

2008-06-27T07:03:00.001-07:00

friday morning and things are settling...

company left yesterday afternoon, after a grand week of laughs, love and relaxation.

my dot seems to be doing better every day. i think she feels bad about healing, as she mentions how she misses lucy constantly, but just in a passing kind of way. like it hits her that her pup is gone and oops she had been having fun, so she'll take a moment to kind of sigh and say, "mom, i really miss looby" and then jump into the pool and go back to being the sweet carefree girl that is my daughter.

she has begun "just looking" at puppies on-line. God, kill me now. no, really. just kill me...i SO much don't want to go through another year of raising a puppy, but how do i tell her no? anyone?

because normal is anything but...

2008-06-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

in the easy life, one's dog doesn't always die a quiet, peaceful death after living a nice long life consisting of beloved car rides, chasing mourning doves and snoring on the couch without a care in the world. no...because nothing is "normal" in this particular life that leads me from one day to the next. here, my dog dies at barely one year old, sprawled out on the garage floor, strewn garbage around her, with her head stuffed as far as she could get it into an empty beef jerky bag.

i so completely shit you not.

i'll fill you in on the story, as sad as it is, rather quickly as the easy life waits for no one and i have out of town guests due to arrive in approximately 6 hours. i have a million things on my mental to-do list...the least of which is picking up approximately 5 cat food-laced horks that are scattered about my house in neat little mushy shit-looking piles. on the carpet, of course - easy life cats never urp on the tile.

got home from isabella yesterday around noon-thirty after picking up the kids from their dad's house. go to back my car into the garage, as i have a ton of shit to unload, and see two of the three dogs run out into the driveway in a happy slobbering greeting. hmmm...big surprise, lucy seems to be busy in the garage eating something. lucy is ALWAYS busy eating something. she lives her life to eat. she is the top scrounge in a world of really scroungy things. i jokingly ask the kids, myself - whomever, "is she freakin' dead or what - pup better move, cause mama's backing up!" nope, pup doesn't move. pup is most definitely otherwise engaged. oh look at that, pup seems to have her head stuffed into a plastic bag. what the fuck, over?

it seems that lucy has forsaken her very life for what may or may not have been a sliver of beef jerky left in the bag. she is in a sort of crouched down position, legs sprawled in all four directions and she just looks like she just fell asleep while munching away on a delectable, forbidden treat that she, and she alone, managed to discover while rummaging through a bag of garbage that i was in too much of a hurry to toss into the main can last friday on my way out of town. my assumption, after going over and over it in my head, is that she was so intent on cleaning out the bag that she was unaware of the carbon dioxide building up in her little scavenger lungs. maybe thinking "hmmm...this was truly delicious, but i'm feeling a bit like a little nap right now. so sleepy. oh yea...right here, right n---zzzzzzzzz...". pup is now and forever running through the fields of doggie heaven, where pups get to eat whatever and however much they want to. i sure hope she is fucking happy and oblivious right now to the mess in the back seat of my car that is my daughter.

there is nothing i can do to help my child. she sobs. and sobs. she wraps herself around me as tight as she can and gasps out things like "i just never thought she'd die so soon." and "mom, do you think God will let her eat beef jerky in Heaven?" i vaguely hear bennett saying to me in a guilt-ridden tone, "uhm, mom...i think that was my jerky bag." omg. this isn't really happening, is it?

because the way i deal with death seems to be running from it, i simply close the garage door, gather up my child and take her into the house where we rock back and forth and cry. disneyland dad has been summoned, because if nothing else, he is awesome in a pinch that involves a stiff and his near-hysterical daughter. he arrives in tears feeling that if he had only gone back to pick lucy up the night before...they had taken her to the dog-park sunday afternoon and brought her back to the house so they could go for a swim and not have to leave her in his apartment by herself. the plan was to return before dinner and take her back with them. but, starving and exhausted from swimming, they decide that they would just leave her at the house to play with the other two dogs overnight as ms b would be back home by noon the next day. it's all good.

to wrap up this really really sad story, after discovering her beloved pet had died, the girl insisted on keeping a sleepover date with her friend alysha because, in her words, "i think i really need to be distracted, mama...i'm pretty sure this is the worst day of my life" omgomgomg. my heart has just shattered into a million pieces for this child. upon my return from delivering her to her friend's house, i discover that THEEX, with the help of brader, has already buried lucy out by the pool with her baby, her bone and her ball (braden had to convince him that burying the jerky bag with her was NOT "the right thing to do"), thank you God that this man is the father of my children. he has built a crude marker to put by the grave and we go out to erect it and say our goodbyes to the stupid little dog that gave her life for what i hope was an actual bit of beef jerky. to think that she went through all of that for just a bit of juice is just too sad.

in the heat of the night...

2008-05-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

found this way cool old Royal typewriter at the thrift store the other day, brought it home and set it up on the way cool desk that i found at the same thrift store a few months ago. the desk sits across from my bed, next to a window in my room...

so, i'm sleeping peacefully at around 3am that night when my cat decides to begin working on her memoirs - using my new way cool antique typewriter, of course. tap-tap. tap-click-click. tap-tap-click-tap. click. tap-click-tap. tap-tap.

WTF...are you serious right now? she is tapping on the typewriter keys - how is she doing that? is she walking over them, pushing them with her nose? i yell at her to stop and throw a pillow at her. i hear her bell tinkling, as i assume she jumps to the ground. cheese an rice...GOOD NIGHT!

tap-tap. click. tap.

OMG, what a snot! i yell at her and chuck another pillow in the direction of the desk as i roll over, finding myself face-to ass with the cat. hunhh - if she's right next to me, then...???

OMG! my new typewriter is HAUNTED!!!

uhhh...yea, that actually went through my head just before i reached for the light to discover that i had left the window open and what i was hearing wasn't, in fact, my brilliantly gifted cat, or my way cool HAUNTED Royal typewriter, but the wind tapping the blind against the sill.

well duh. of course i knew that all along.

baby, baby don't get hooked on me...

2008-05-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

where has the time gone anyway? ok, so it's been awhile since i blogged and instead of wasting space giving a buncha bs reasons why, i'll just move forward with a quick little story that i call: "some of my friends are shitheads..."

background check: i have cockatiels that lay eggs every once in awhile - well, one of them does for certain (she's hot for me - what can i say?), not sure about the other one - i'm assuming that they are both females, as i've never actually seen them have bird-sex and the eggs have always been sterile. anyway, she lays them and then stresses out over them for weeks, so for shits and giggles, i usually put a nesting box in there when someone starts to lay and whoever's laid it goes a bit bonkers for the next couple of weeks continuing to lay eggs, rolling them around with her beak to get them in the perfect spot and then sitting on them and puffing up whenever anyone comes near her nest. eventually i take out the nesting box, fry up the eggs and feed them to the dogs, then all in our little bird-world is right again.

really wanting to raise baby cockatiels, i borrowed Al, a cantankerous male cockatiel, for a couple of weeks in the hopes that his presence would get my girls going and we could have some babies. Al was just spitting mean. had to wear leather gloves to rescue him whenever he jumped his dumb ass off of the cage because he bites - asswipe. anyway, the girls didn't seem to care much about Al one way or another...towards the end of his stay, one of them started sticking her hoo-ha into the air and most definitely begging for some lovin'. unfortunately we had at least one or ten of many possible roadblocks: maybe there are gay cockatiels out there and i found at least one; maybe the girls just weren't sexy enough for Al; maybe Al was a typical male-creature and couldn't read the oh-so-obvious "give me babies, please" signs and thought she was just bitching at him; maybe she was just bitching at him and that rendered him a limp noodle as he just couldn't be expected to actually perform under those stressful conditions; or maybe...just maybe my girls didn't care for Al's big i'm-a-bad-ass attitude. as i said, could have been many things. regardless, i reluctantly took Al back to his real home in isabella and resigned myself to no baby birds.

upon returning from the weekend, i found an egg very ungracefully plopped at the bottom of the birdcage. GASP! could it be? could Al have been the stud i had hoped for? i need to get busy and get her nesting box ready! yay, i may have babies after all! whoo-hoo!

long story short, i had trouble creating my usual nesting box, as i have given them a new cage recently...so off to petsmart to get a "real" nesting box. still excited! bring it home, stress everybody out setting it up and then sit back to watch what happens. mama bird gets in the box and i can hear her pushing around the egg - back and forth, back and forth it rolls until she gets it where she wants it and sits on it, all puffy and protective. waiting, waiting - should have more eggs soon - tap, tap, tap. nothing. week goes by. shit, should have more eggs. mama is sitting plenty, but not laying more eggs. hmmm, egg does look a bit bigger than usual, maybe that's all she could do this time...maybe she put all her eggs in one basket, heh heh heh. well, guess there's just the one this time. that's cool, better than none - now let's wait to see if it's fertile.

every couple of days i check the egg with a flashlight in the pantry. should soon be able to see activity in there...you know veins and such. getting kinda impatient. nothing. tap, tap, tap. hmmm...been about 10 days - should definitely be seeing something by now. sigh. guess i just wasn't destined to have a baby Al after all. brynn still wants to bring in her friends to look at the cute little (kinda big) egg, no problem - hurry cause i'm gonna toss it. kiki from next door comes in all oohing and awwing over the egg and says, "huh, it looks a lot like that mourning dove egg my mom found laying out in the street and put in here a couple of weeks ago when you were gone - weird huh? i guess they all look the same..."

bitch.

wtf...?

2008-05-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

am i the only one that sees the irony in the fact that disney-dad just attended the wedding of a co-worker that was still (seemingly) happily married to her first husband at the time he and i decided to divorce?

yep...scratching my noggin over that one.

weavewerks.com

2008-04-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

ok...the site is up, but serially lacking, HAHAHAAAA!

gimme a bit of time to get everything in there - i got lotsa crap!

~s
www.weavewerks.com - there's a link over to the right somewhere ----------->

restless nights and busy days

2008-04-03T14:03:00.000-07:00

CRAP! i have been sleeping like shit lately. i get these lovely night sweats that can be controlled with my clothing and bedding choices, but figuring out what the formula is, taking the weather into account, is a real bitch. i wake up freezing me arse off and then have a hard time getting back to sleep afterwards. ok enough whining about that.

moving on...

had a ton o' company for about 7 days last week and i think i'm still recuperating, LOL! my house hasn't fully recovered either. but whatever. i had a blast and got to do some quality visiting with my homegrill leaf and a couple of other humboldt honeys along with all of their kids. loads of beer and margis, good food, late nights and side-splitting laughter. my gut still aches and i'm a laugher, just imagine.

my sub took it's second dump since the first of the year. crap-cicles on a stick, this bill was $2200 and i STILL don't have permission to unload it. Disney says he cannot afford another car payment on top of his dumbass BMW payment of almost $700/month. what a douche. i'm driving around in my gas-guzzler (spending well over $100/week in gas), 132K mile suburban that costs easily $3000/year in repairs and maintenance, while he cruises in his, completely impractical, manliness-compensating $60,000 luxury car. this is an ongoing argument with us. the sub is paid off with very little resale value left. he says drive it until it dies (hopefully this doesn't occur in the #3 lane of I-5 at a speed of 80 mph hauling not only my kids, but loads of others as well.). i say unload it now, while it is running well (because it will NOT last) and still holds some trade-in value. but, being that i'm "not good at school", it's understandable that my view is completely stupid and rather womanish, and therefore begs to be discarded without any thought. chode.

what else you ask? let's see - trying to build a fucking website that i have absolutely no clue about. godaddy's custie service rocks...i've made mistake after mistake and they just plod me along telling me what to do rather than where to go, LOL! i see the light at the end of the tunnel after being down for a couple of weeks now. hopefully i can get my traffic back. ah well, it's all good.

been working on a project for fleck using one of her RoundMaps. it must be perfect so it's got me a bit jumpy - but i'm liking how it's shaping up. i have to keep walking out and then back in again for fresh perspectives. one thing i can always count on fleck for (PFFTT! aside from the constant flow of her bullshit) is never-failing inspiration with her sketches as well as her artwork. she now has her new book, PageMaps for Scrapbooking, out there. something like 60,000 copies sold out after a couple of weeks, i might add. i know a few peeps still waiting for the bookstores to get more in stock (SORRY LEAF!). fleck, you go, grillfriend! check out her awesomeness at www.pagemaps.com.

gotta run, brats need me. sigh. i keep telling them that food is way overrated, but they just aren't feeling me.