The problem with working two part time jobs?

Sometimes you might forget that you didn't take New Year's Eve off and you might, y'know, forget to go in.

I was only fifteen minutes late - but still, it was hell getting out of those jammies.

I found my second batch of christmas cards, tucked away in the midst of various christmasy things. What do you think - too late to send them? Make out new ones that say "Happy New Year"?

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We have NO plans for this evening, other than a fundraiser/family skate. Well, we do have plans...games, popcorn and such - just us and the kiddos. I can't wait. I'm almost dreading the skating thing because it'll be hard to duck and weave the 'what are you doing tonight - are you going to the S. party? or the other S. party? or You'll be home? Mind if we stop by?

My husband has a hard time with the graceful declining of invitations and we sometimes end up exactly where we do NOT want to be.

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I have Wii-itis. My arm is aching. Tennis, golf, tennis, tennis, golf, tennis. We're loving it and my girlie? Who sobbed and sobbed on Christmas morning because she hated the Wii? She kicks our asses at bowling each and every time.


Oh and a public service announcement:

The HD thing, I can't find ANYTHING about it online, anywhere. The digital cable thing for 2009 is a definite - but as far as all HD in 2010? Nothing. I'm thinking Joe Q. Cableinstaller was misinformed.

More Meet the Family

The digital picture frame for my mom?

Huge, HUGE hit. Just in case, y'know, maybe you wanted to try it yourselves or something *looking in SP's direction*- total tearjerker, best gift of the night type of gift.


Here's my other grampy. My grandmother's second (third?) husband. Yes, there's a question mark because it's quite possible he was the fourth, one never really knows. Well, one sort of knows (first one: C from Maine, Second: G from the Cape, Third: C from Maine - again, Fourth: V from CT - there could possibly be another in the mix, identity unknown as my gram was in California for awhile and we have some pictures with a mystery man and I'm not totally sure she ever married G from the Cape, I'd have to double check) His reputation as a step-father to my mom is still in question but as a grandfather? He was everything you could want in a grampy - kind and snuggly and he would've spoiled me rotten if my mom would've let him, he used to call me his little plum.

I only remember bits and pieces...tons of phone calls during football games, a handkerchief full of diamonds in his shirt pocket, a different car every few months - always big cars, driven entirely too fast, the stuffed dog he bought me that I treasured for years, how he would go out to buy me vanilla ice cream when my grammy used to open her freezer and offer me the maple walnut that she always had on hand.

Funny, how when you're growing up you can think that EVERY grampy would have a trunk full of watches and jewelry and would let you sit on his lap and pick which teams you thought would be the big winners on Sunday. A bookie and small time fence, apparently. Maybe a little bigger than small time during some parts of his life...

If there's any chance there's a heaven I'm hoping he's there, I cannot wait to hear his stories...

Time sure does fly, doesn't it?


I can't believe it's already been a week since the attack of the kidney stone...


Without getting into too much detail, I will say this: After the initial excruitiating back/kidney pain...it felt like a shard of glass traveling through my system. And a shard of glass? It fucking hurts.


Okay, moving on.


There were many christmasy activities over the past weekend - a family party complete with the return of a favorite cousin (home from Iraq), a pajama party at my mom's where instead of a big dinner we opted for breakfast and pj's at five p.m. - very fun, christmas eve was spent alternating between fits of cleaning and cooking and totally vegging on the couch with the kids and a movie or two and then serving up dinner for eleven.

And then christmas....ah, christmas. Wii totally enjoyed it all. They opened their goods and were playing contently when we asked them, post breakfast, to start cleaning up or at least make some neat PILES of things. The Wii was in a regular cardboard box and I asked the boy to bring it downstairs as it must be full of rubbish.

Of course, it wasn't empty and when he checked inside he said as if he were discussing the weather "oh, it's not rubbish it's a wii." And then he screamed "A Wii!!" and started to bounce around. The girlie in the meantime, bursts into tears and is so sure it can't be for her too because she HATES the Wii (?? huh ??).


Super.


So, we cajole her into making the first Mii and she is hooked. We play a quick game of tennis and then start to bowl and guess what??


Can you guess?


The TV dies. Dead. Kaput. Kablam.


No amount of shaking it or banging it (I know, I know but it worked last time) helped and so wii were wiiless.

Until yesterday when we spent entirely too much money on a TV but seeing as the options are limited to expensive and MORE expensive we did alright.

Side note: All TVs will have to be HD by 2010 and guess how many nonHD tv's they sold? Four. Two in the clearance section and two in the 15-19" section. Not exactly great options. And one of those silly bundled packages from the cable company actually saved us ten dollars a month...

And the dreaded comcast guy came this morning (two hours EARLY) and set us all up so now I'm able to watch Mike Rowe in HiDef. Not to mention the Patriots.

Other places I've been

The local E.R.

The couch.

Some people get slippers for Christmas, some people get iPods.

I got a kidney stone and a vicodin prescription.

Yesterday, as I was leaving work I went from slight nausea to full blown excruciating pain in about fifteen minutes flat. Not a fun ride home. Apparently I was gripping the steering wheel a leeetle tightly because when I got out of the car my hands were tingling and going numb.

And then, a six hour stint in the ER complete with a Xrays and CT scans. Dudes, I have not EVER been in pain like this. I'm not a good vicodin taker...painkillers leave me queasy. The alternative though is sharp stabbing pain in my kidneys and a horrible ache in my lower back, so queasy it is.

I spent most of today sleeping, broken up with a bit of reading here and there. Mostly, figuring out how best to take the painkillers so my stomach doesn't flip every time I move my head too fast.

Naturally, being the weekend before christmas we've got family parties to attend and I'm supposed to be hostessing on Christmas Eve. Now we're just playing it all by ear...not committing to anything really. We can't. And you know what? I'm sort of liking it.

I did miss out on doing a few things, though. Returning the movie rentals, mailing the second batch of christmas cards, forgetting to pick up cinnamon hearts for the girlie's class...nothing too huge but my apologies to those of you who will be getting their cards after the big day and to my girl's class who had one less candy for their gingerbread houses today.

Well, I'm off to the couch. Or maybe the bed. Hmmm, the chair looks comfy.

Decisions, decisions.

Where I've been

The boy - who, it must be noted, tied his own skates. Cue the singing angels.

The girlie. Loving her step, step, lean on the stick and glide style.

I didn't think it'd be safe but somehow there's seven inches of ice in the cove and four to five where they're skating. It's kind of bumpy but my husband was the only one complaining. He was busy mapping out his week, trying to figure the weather forecast out - if there'll be enough cold weather to flood an area and have it freeze so that it's smooth during christmas vacation.

So he can hold practice for the team out there.

Sounds like he has too much time on his hands? Well, guess what....he totally does.

He got laid off this week. Sort of. It was the whole, maybe we'll shut the job sites down. Maybe we'll still need you next week, maybe maybe maybe.

And so, because he's not good with the leisure time, he was all pissed because he needed to call the dreaded unemployment office at 7:30 a.m. and not, and I repeat NOT at 7:36 a.m.

Apparently there is a glut of unemployed slackers waiting until 7:36 to call but if you are motiviated and make the call earlier - less hold time.

Why was he pissed? Because I assumed he would take the son to the bus stop (he was dressed, shoes and all) and could make his phone call six minutes late. God forbid he spends forty minutes of his day on the phone when that is the ONLY FREAKING THING he has to do in the six hours the kids are at school. Oh, and plus while he was trying to call I got a little snarky and may have said something like this while he was dialing:

If you're a control freak with too much time on your hands, press one.

If you think calling six minutes late will dent your free six hours, press two.

Can I still pretend I don't know why he got mad?

And so he calls. And the office doesn't open until 8:30 a.m.

*jenny marks her invisible tally board*

score one for me.

Rest assured, we squabble, we forgive and forget. We don't dwell. Well, most of the time anyway. Plus, last night, when we ran out of pretzels during our chocolate covered pretzel making frenzy...he went out to get us more. See? Nice guy. Really, he is.

Wednesday

I didn't want to post about it before it happened...I didn't want to jinx us.

The root canal fiasco of 2007 is done. Over. Finis.

We finally found the perfect endodonist. Perfect, in that he scheduled a two hour appointment so that he could administer the Novocaine well timed shot by well timed shot. All the while the son was so relaxed on his valium/nitrous cocktail - but never once was he even a little bit 'out of it'.

No palatte Novocaine shots. No, at this point, unnecessary root canal on the other front tooth.

Things are good.

Good but hectic.



I found a pie plate in my purse after I got into work today.



Empty. But still...wtf?



And I found the perfect little gift for my plant loving boss.

Which, I would totally thank bb for the link but it's from a store that doesn't ship to the U.S. and why is she teasing us like this? Nevermind that I am totally and completely ignoring the fact that they're sold out of this item.

And Em, blogless Em...with her Brookstone slide to digital machiney mention. You are killing me. THAT is what I want for Christmas.

I bought my parents a digital photo frame for Christmas. Usually, before I buy anything electronical I google the heck out of it, reading reviews and such.

This time, I got up at three thirty in the morning, stood in line at Kohl's and Target and came away with this frame. Kind of a waste, but funds being what they are this year, not entirely bad either.

Anyway, my bright idea was to load a bunch of kid photos into an SD card (a SD card?) and have at it. But the loading? To the card? Not as easy as I thought. At least for the first hour.

*sigh*

Then I remembered the trouble I had with the iPod last Christmas and I tried the supersecret USB port on the back of the computer and whammo. Instant success that only required a restart of this dinosaur.

But by last night my grand plan had changed. Why not scan a few (or maybe a hundred) photos and load those onto the card too? So without further ado...meet my family.

My grampy

Grammy

Their wedding photo. You'd never guess he was a lumberjack with a second grade education would you?

My mom and my aunt, her little sister. With my grandmother's pets - a mean ass chihuahua and a monkey. A monkey that she dressed in Ken (or some other male doll) clothes. As a kid I had all these hand me down ken clothes with holes in the butt. For the monkey's tail.

Me. With my momma.

I have to say, I only quickly went through my mom's albums when she wasn't at home and grabbed what I thought would be good. Now I want to go back and grab them all. There are tons of photos of my gram especially. I haven't gone through my kids baby albums yet (which I'm going to start off scanning just what I want for the frame) or the ones of my dad but this is like an addiction. A worthwhile addiction.

Like chocolate. And Peggle.

Good Morning

My morning so far:

Breakfast for three (five if you include the pets)

Get one boy off to school. He's easy peasy in the morning - hardly a complaint and does alot of it without my nagging reminding. O

Feel slightly guilty because he's feeling kind of crummy but he's got my cell phone number so we'll see how it goes.

Get the girlie's clothes together

(why doesn't someone ANYONE put the laundry away?) rhetorical question. no one is here to listen to me whine.

Look in the eaves for gifts that are going back to the store (wrong size)
Look in the cellar for gifts that are going back to the store (the boy's too young for The Golden Compass)
Repeat both steps, as the Barbie I bought on a whim is so not needed and where the hell is it?

Give up hope of finding Barbie and move on to making sure the girlie is brushing her hair.

Remember where Barbie is. Move half the cellar to access the Barbie.

Curse.

Bring all returnables out to the car. It's teeth chattering cold out there, why am I barefoot???

Return to cellar, where woodstove is cranking out the BTUs by the gazillion. Oh, yeah this is why.

Listen to one last run through of Cat in the Hat book report. Nice work, girlie.

Run upstairs, get a stray receipt, check a blog or two.

Is she brushing her teeth?

Will she want to buy the mystery lunch? (only a mystery because I lost the lunch menu)

Post.

8:43 a.m.

Y'know what I hate? Those ridiculous political commercials where, say, Mitt Romney is blabbing all these wonderful things about how he can improve America and how, basically - he's awesome and then he says "I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this message."

I mean, no shit. You were the one talking during the entire commercial, fool. Is your opponent going to spend their precious dollars to make you look good? Um, no.

Idiots.

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I got an eighty dollar AMEX gift card for switching the office phones to Verizon. Actually, it came to the business but my name was printed on it so the boss gave it to me. And this time? No groceries.

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I'm totally tired of the kids wanting to buy each other gifts with my money. I told them they could spend some of their own (as if!) or make things. So now, obviously, there is making going on. The boy is going to build a Webkinz bed and is repainting his old treasure chest and the girl has made a pencil cup, so far. There is much whispering and hiding of key things. Am loving it.

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Remember how he found the whole Christmas List, with the Wii? Well, we must've convinced him that what he saw was actually MY wish list - for things that they've mentioned or things that've crossed my mind this past year. Because now that I've already bought the Wii? He asked for XBox 360. Freaking perfect. Although, I could probably sell it on Ebay and earn more than enough to buy the XBox...

I'm so not doing that.

I guess I like to think of myself as a motivated slacker. And no, it is not an oxymoron. I tend to rush around, get everything done so that the thing I have to look forward too?

Slacking off.

Precisely the reason 99% of the presents have been purchased, the tree is up and decorated, the cards are in their envelopes awaiting labels and all 250 pictures I ordered from Shutterfly were put neatly into their photo albums within an hour or two of delivery.

I anxiously await the evenings where there are no commitments and my biggest decisions cover topics like

The Patriot's blanket or Snowflake blanket?

Cloud pajama pants or Plaid?

Knitting or Gameboy?

Reading or a movie?

Vanilla Chai or Hot Chocolate?

Basically my game plan is to do as much as I can early on so that the majority of my evenings are spent making those big decisions.

In other news:
What do I get my boss for Christmas? I can't afford to spend too much but I hateHATE baking so cookies are out. He has a wicked green thumb and likes tractors and farmish stuff. Please, suggest away....

I know how most of you feel about Rachel Ray and I have just jumped on the bandwagon. Gawd, those Dunkin' Donuts commercials make me want to pull her flat ironed hair. But, her Italian Sub Stoup? Yumm-o.

Heh.

Really though, it is good. And it's my lunch today. Although, I'm sure none of you care.