Happy Halloween!

As Halloween season draws to a close this year, I think I did alright.  I’m feeling better after my little meltdown!

I did get the costume repaired while The Professor was in school so it lit up once again.  That night we had a special dinner:

Ghostly grilled cheese for the Pre Trick or Treat Supper.

Trick or Treating went pretty well, other than it was cut short by the frequent “pee-er” (That would Iron Man).  We pretty much hit our whole street, and then we were done so he could pee.  That was probably just as well-it was getting chilly.  At least I was getting cold, they were wearing long johns under their outfits.

Cat Girl and Iron Man, crime fighting duo.

Acting as their characters. They had a lot of fun with this.

Both kids seemed pretty satisfied.  I got my Mom tax for taking them out, two Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.  I can’t complain about that.

Happy Halloween everyone!  Eat a bunch of candy and be merry.

Moronic Mommy and the Memories She Tries To Make

Last night I bawled my eyes out because I felt like I have failed at creating good memories for my children.  Is that moronic or what?

Let me back up a bit…

We have made decorations but have failed to put them up because Mom couldn’t find the stuff to hang them.  Grandma even bought us a spool of invisible thread this past week and I could not for the life of me figure out where it went.  I found it, as I was scurrying around doing the costume thing.  So as of this morning, the decorations are still laying on the table.

I have gone back and forth and back and forth on how to put the light in The Professor’s Halloween costume.  This saga started about a month ago in Extreme Geekdom, Iron Man Style.  When the pocket idea came up, of course I waited until the last minute to sit down and start sewing.  The idea was simple-just sew a little pocket into the inside of the costume.  I decided to sew a little pillowcase type thing.  The only material I had was left over from my daughter’s cape last year, which was fine.  I spent a good portion of the afternoon hunched over sewing this cute little black pocket:

The pocket

One thing that I forgot to do before I started on this venture was to see if the light would actually shine through the material.  My son came home about the time I discovered that it, in fact, did not. The bad thing about this is that the library Halloween party was tonight, and his parent-teacher conference was at 4:30.  Therefore I had very little time to remedy this.  After I got both kids their snacks I sat down and tried to think quickly.  I came up with cutting out the front part of the pocket so the light could go through.  That works, right?  Not so much.  I finally put the light in a ziploc bag, and pulled the material around it and then sewed the whole dang thing together to the costume.  He thought it was awesome.

Iron Man strikes a pose. I wanted to get the gloves to go with it, but ran out of money.

Then off to his conference.  Then back.  A quick supper.  Then it got REALLY interesting.  There were three parties, one for Pre-K, then for K-2nd Grade, and then the big kids.  So I would have to take one child up and have my husband bring the other up a half hour later.  This would not be a huge deal except that when  I went out to start my car the battery was dead.  The drivers side door appeared shut but it wasn’t quite.  We live not too far from the library, but we were already running late.  So I stuck my head inside, told my husband what happened, that I would take his car, would be back for the Professor around 6:30, and took off with Princess Gimme.

Now here is where I choose my words very carefully, lest I offend anyone.  I love our library, I think they do a great job with their kids story times and have a wonderful selection of books for such a small town.  But this years’ party was, well, short.  VERY short.  Like one game and it was over short.  The costumes were cute.  The kids were cute.  But that’s all it was.  I’m sure there was a reason.  I know we went a few years ago and it was much longer and there were lots of different games.  We’ve missed the last two years due to other stuff going on.  So it was over and done in twenty minutes.  And then they took the older kids, ahead of schedule.  I being the one parent who as usual missed the boat, did not have my older child with me since he was still eating dinner.

Cutest black kitty ever. She’s a manx in this picture-her tail is in her treat bucket.

I jumped in the car with my daughter, drove home, ran into the house to grab my son and no one was there.  Not a soul. Not even the dog.  This means that my husband had to walk on his injured foot to take my son up there.  Meanwhile, my daughter had already removed her shoes and was starting to eat her tootsie pop.  I made her throw them back on, and we sped back to the library.  There sat my husband with the dog.  How we missed each other I’ll never know.

I made him take the car and the Princess, and I went in to meet up with my son, who incidentally had already forgotten that his costume lit up.  I walked up to him, and pushed his chest to turn it on.  All of the kids went nuts-they thought it was the coolest thing they had ever seen.  The Professor, meanwhile, did not realize what I had done until about ten minutes after I turned it on (not sure what he thought all of his friends were raving about!)  He happened to look down later, see the arc reactor lit, and had a cow, “HEY IT WORKS!  IT WORKS”

It works! It works!

They played the same game that the preschoolers had played.  And then that was it.  Luckily, The Professor did not know what to expect, so he was very pleased.  We walked home, which took twice as long as it should have because he is distracted by streetlights that turn on and off by themselves.  He had to stop and ask questions each time we encountered one.  When we finally arrived home I gave him very specific instructions on what he needed to do.  He ended up taking the costume off, losing the hanger, and managed to take the light out and pull the pocket almost completely off.

This was when my head exploded due to all the work I had put in, my aching back, the scurrying around, the miscommunication with my husband, and the dead battery.  And oh yes, I got a call this evening to bring paper plates and napkins for The Professor’s school party in there somewhere in between the party and the pocket incident.  I will have money to get them tomorrow, but no way to go get them or get them to the school.  Therefore it will be plain paper plates and napkins instead of fun Halloween ones sent in my son’s backpack.  I feel so very, very bad about that.  There was just sort of an explosion of emotions from all of us.  I went upstairs, closed the door, and just had a nice little cry by myself.

After that well deserved cry I felt better, and talked to my son about his costume.  I have theorized that the pocket coming out was an accident when he took the costume off, because I’m sure he just stripped it off and tossed it.  I’ll never really know, because all I saw was him holding the light two inches from his face, walking into the living room (it wasn’t on, because then he would be blind-that thing is BRIGHT!)  Even though my husband swore up and down that his costume would not be fixed, I think I can fix it pretty easily.   Memories, dammit, we’re gonna make some great memories-because I’m the Mom and I say so.  Tonight is Trick or Treating.  Hopefully that will go much more smoothly.  And dammit, I’m going to have a Coke today.  Because I deserve it.  That will make everything go better.

And the car battery?  Oh it’s terminal, which I think is a pretty funny joke if you ask me.  Get it?

Anxiety and Finicky Appliances Don’t Mix: Why Refrigerator College Isn’t for Me

Yup, I’ll never be as cool as Frank Jr.   He gets go to Refrigerator College.

We can put that career choice right up there along with being a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model and financial advisor.  Not gonna happen.  I will never be an appliance repair person.

Every time I turned on the washer last week, I got an error message.  It would only flash for a few seconds and then disappear.  I was really driving myself nuts.  Why would it do that?  What is wrong with my nearly new washer?  Did Best Buy do something to it to make us regret not buying the extended warranty?  Is it in cahoots with the dormant dishwasher and the humming garbage disposal?  I got out the manual, but of course nowhere did it list the error code I was seeing.  Oh crap!  Oh crap!  Curse you appliance gods!

The error kind of looked like it had a “c” and an “l” in it.  Maybe it’s the filter?  So I tried cleaning the filter. I followed the instructions to the letter.  I opened the little door, I undid the little hose thingie, I had a rubbermaid container ready to catch all of the water out of the little hose.  No water came out of the hose.  However, all kinds of water came out of the filter chamber when I loosened the end.  It went everywhere.  Two towels later I finally got the filter out-it was clean, although it was slightly stinky in there.  I put everything back and turned on the washer.  Same error code.  Next I tried to clean out the gasket-there was quite a bit of hair stuck in there.  I turned it on again-there was still an error code.  Arrrrrrrrrgh!

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try the next recommended step, which was to dial the LG service number on my phone, and let the “washer” talk to the phone.  Does this make anyone else think of when they ask droids in the Star Wars movies to talk to ships?  No that’s just me?  I was looking around for R2-D2 and C-3PO-though I bet this wouldn’t be one of the six million forms of communication that 3PO was supposedly fluent in.

After deciding that I didn’t feel comfortable letting my washer talk in robot language right in front of me (who knows what it might say about us), I opened my laptop and found a website that explains all of the error codes.  I felt pretty stupid-it turns out the washer was just telling me that the child lock was on.  As soon as I saw it on there, the code made sense.  Of course!  Duh!

Hey wait a minute, if I COULD find an R2 Unit, would it talk to the garbage disposal and fix it?

But wait, there’s more…

The next morning was the first day of the weather deciding that, oh yeah, it’s FALL!  I anticipated this happening.  I made sure I turned the heat back on before I went to bed last night.  It’s been warm and humid, which has made it feel even warmer.  This morning was the WAKE-UP call!  It was cold enough that the dog climbed in bed with me after my husband left for work.  I have the heat set at 60 at night because my husband is the reverse Princess and the Pea with 8 or so blankets on the bed.  At a little before 7 am, I have the thermostat set to go up to 66 degrees.

The reverse princess and the pea…  It’s sort of like this, but with blankets.

When the alarm went off, I went into the bathroom to hear a HORRIBLE noise coming from somewhere.  I thought it was the humidity control thing in there, but as I fiddled with that I realized that it was coming from the FURNACE.  Nooooooooo!  I went downstairs, turned off the heat, went to get my son out of bed, and then went down to the basement to fight with the furnace.  I finally pulled the door off the front and it wouldn’t even stop running.  It sounded like it had swallowed a train or something.  There was a wheel thingie turning on there, and I had no idea what it was or why it wouldn’t stop.  When it finally stopped running 10 minutes later, it started to get very cold in the house.  I texted my husband that it wasn’t working right and making a horrible noise.  Since he was there at work the day after his horrible accident, he had only gone in to wrap a few things up and could come home (apparently you really shouldn’t report to work after almost having your toe amputated by rogue metal).  Meanwhile I was still coming up with ways we would have to heat our house alternatively since we couldn’t afford a repairman.  What could we burn?  Where could we burn it?  Could we chop down our tree?  Our neighbor has a chainsaw. I bet if we mowed our lawn she’d lend it to us.

He came home, and he got it to work.  He just TURNED IT ON.  That’s all.  There was no noise, it was putting out hot air.  It was like he had a magic touch.  When I asked him how he did it, his first response was that a magician never reveals his secrets.  Then he said that he unwrapped his foot and showed it to the furnace and scared it into working.  Ha ha.  Thanks furnace.  This is the thanks I get for vacuuming you out, changing the furnace filters,  and removing the dead mouse with two wooden dowels as giant makeshift salad tongs?  Make a liar out of me?  I see how you are!

See?  Anxiety and Appliances that don’t behave are not a good mix.  No furnace school for me.  No refrigerator college.  Not even coffee pot repair classes.  The appliances don’t like me.  It’s a conspiracy!

Oh humble large appliances and important things in our home, please please please stop the conspiracy and live together in working harmony!

Ready To Haunt: Let Halloween Week Begin!

At long last Halloween week is officially underway!  I think we’re almost ready.

It’s a full few days for the kids.  Tonight marks the first appearance of their costumes-the public library Halloween Party.  That will be interesting, since there are two different parties-I’m hoping the Halloween hating hubby will help me exchange children in between.  Then Tuesday Trick-or-Treating.  Wednesday The Professor has his class Halloween Party. That’s one more time that he’ll get to wear the costume. We’re hoping to go over to the school for the costume parade.  We’ll see if we can make it over there.

The final verdict on the Iron Man costume was to use vellum over the light so that it wasn’t quite so bright, and to sew a pocket into the costume.  The vellum part is done and I will be furiously trying to get the pocket sewn before The Professor’s parent teacher conference this afternoon!  The cat costume is positively adorable.  We used the accessories that we bought at Target, and she’ll wear a black fleece and black pants along with them.  It has been approved by Antisocial Kitty, who has pressed it for weeks by laying on it every day.  How nice of her.

Apparently laying her costume on top of the tp was the right thing to do, according to the cat.

I hope to have pictures taken and posted tomorrow or Wednesday.  However, things don’t always work out like I want them to.

We have made fun decorations using some foam shapes and glitter glue and markers, but really struggled on how to display them.  We finally punched holes in them and hung them in the windows using invisible thread.  Along with our purple lights and cobwebs in one window, and the bat lights in the other, we had a pretty great display!  For Trick or Treating we have a green glow stick for the cauldron on the porch to give off an eerie green glow.  So hey, we may not be giving out treats but our house is going to look really cool!  Again, I’m hoping to get it done and get pictures up sometimes in the next day or two.

I’ve said before how much I love Halloween.  It WAS a big deal when I was a kid.  Not only that, but one of my favorite rides at Disney World was the Haunted Mansion ride.  It was never scary, just really cool.  I always wanted to work at the Haunted Mansion for a summer job. Unfortunately we moved away before I was old enough to do that.  Such a bummer!

My favorite part of the Haunted Mansion, the ballroom.

What do you love about Halloween?  Do you have any great Halloween memories?  I’d love to hear any cool stories!

I Need An Adult!

I’ve decided that the older people in our house can no longer refer to ourselves as “Adults” or “Grown-ups”. Because we’re just not.

Witness the texting conversation between me and my husband this past week:

Me:  Do you want me to take that movie back that you didn’t get to watch?

(It was some foreign film. We also got Hot Rod.  Worth every penny of that 50 cents we spent).

EG:  Keep it.  We’ve already paid the late fee anyway.  Look for the ones we talked about too.  I can’t remember one of the names.

Me:  Ok.  Drillbot Taylor

EG:  I think it was DrillbIT. Love You.

Me:  Ha.  Oops.  Love u2.  Will look for Drillbut Taylor.

EG:  Hehehe… you said butt.  Get Trollbut Tailor.

Me:  I was thinking Drillbat Taylor.  It’s the Halloween Edition.

EG:  How about Vulcan?  Drl’bt T’Lor

Me:  Bwa ha ha!  That’s all I got.

After all that, they didn’t even have the movie.  People didn’t return the copies.  It’s the same with “The Big Lebowski”.  We’ve never seen it, but have been told we have to.  And by the way, all of this texting was all done without me driving.  I actually text in the parking lot.  Go me!

Years ago, my sister in law (who has many children) was talking to my husband and marveled that she had always wondered how people without children entertain themselves, and after listening to the two of us she now knew.  HA HA-we have children now but how we entertain ourselves has not changed much.  We still can entertain each other pretty well.  We just sleep less.

This picture simply supports my hypothesis: We cannot be categorized as adults. By the way, this is my studly yet wounded husband drinking “Skinny Girl” Margarita Mix.

Confessions of a Popaholic: Caffeine Withdrawal Hell

This is me, except I can’t fit into a Diet Sunkist box.

It’s Saturday and I’m running out of caffeine.  These are the days when I wonder why I drink the stuff in the first place?  Oh yeah, because it ROCKS!

We had a little snafu with the bank this week and now are overdrawn until the middle of next week.  Yikes!  We’re not starving or anything, because I’m a darn good grocery shopper, but because of my addiction I am OUT OF MY DIET SUNKIST LEMONADE.  Sniff.  Yes I know, first world problems.  Didn’t I say I was going to give that up?  I tried, I REALLY tried!

My Mom came up the last couple of days, thus postponing my caffeine withdrawal a bit because she like caffeine too.  I drank waaaaaay too much Coke.  My other love is a big cup of Coke with crushed iced in it.  When I was kid, that was what we used to get at the soda fountain on the military base we lived near, and at the little place that had a soda fountain in the tiny town in Maine we lived in.  I can’t remember the name of the store, but it was across the street from the Five and Dime Store.  Remember those????

I guess I need to go to PA-Popaholics Anonymous.  Hi, I’m Sarah and it’s been three days since my last diet Sunkist.  Or maybe that’s what you say when you go to confession?

I found an old bottle of Coke Zero in the back of my fridge and downed that.  I know somewhere there is a two liter of Diet Coke lurking in my house.  Not sure I want to go there, I think I’d rather have coffee.  I like coffee, but the kind I make at home I have to really be in the mood for, and the iced coffee I love so much happens to be something I have to put a little forethought into.  We all know how good I am at that!

I have just enough cash that I COULD go buy a twelve pack of Diet Sunkist Lemonade, two McDonald’s iced coffees, four 32 ounce refills of coke at Kum & Go, or a big jug of Lipton diet Citrus Green tea.  I could also get a small Starbucks frappucino, but I’m not stupid enough to do that.  I can only go to the next town though anyway, because I don’t have a lot of gas.  Oh decisions, decisions.  I will probably just stay here and suffer, head pounding.

I’ll let you know how it goes.  I’ve never heard of anyone dying of caffeine withdrawal, but knowing my luck I’d be the first!

I may have to plan ahead for the next few days. This is a concoction that takes a bit of thinking ahead, but is awesome! Cold coffee+coconut milk+agave nectar=pretty darn good.

There’s A Toe In My Kitchen

“It’s just a flesh wound!” I’m sure I’ll hear this quote sooner or later…

All right, there is not actually a toe in my kitchen.  Or around my kitchen.  Or even in  my house.  But there could have been.  Sort of.  There were toes involved.  Got your attention, didn’t it?

Today was my job interview.  My Mom decided to come up and watch the kids so my husband didn’t have to leave work early.  The kids were thrilled, I was ecstatic-we don’t exactly get visitors or family up very often.

As I was getting ready to make lunch, I receive a text from my husband, asking if my mom was indeed coming.  I texted back and said yes.

“I’m headed to the hospital.  Dropped metal on my foot.  Probably stitches.”

Huh?  Oh, he’s pulling my leg.  He has to be joking.  Is he kidding?

I text back, “Seriously?”  I wait for him to text me saying something like it almost happened or it’s a serious exaggeration.

No.  Two minutes later he texts back, “Seriously.”

I SERIOUSLY start freaking out-OMG!  Visions of staggeringly huge medical bills, thinking that this is the straw to break the camel’s back…. then I remember that it happened at work.  Oh, worker’s comp?  Please?  Remember, I have an anxiety disorder and ADD-which means I have really random thoughts when I worry excessively.

The next text I receive:  “I’ll be fine, want pictures?”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!  Ew!”  I’m a bit squeamish.  This is ironic, considering I taught first aid classes as my job.  Ask me sometime what the rules of thumb for needing stitches are.

“They said they can take video if that is better,” was his reply.

“No!  Brat!”

A few minutes later:  “I got pictures, for the kids.”  That’s ok, because I certainly won’t be looking at them.

So later on, I’m getting ready for my interview and realize that I haven’t heard anything for quite awhile.  So I texted him to ask what was going on.  “Do you get to come home early?  Did they have to cut your boot off? Did you get a sucker?”

My phone rings, it’s my husband. “Hi!  Just wanted you to know that I’m on my way home.  They had to amputate my toe because there was too much nerve damage.”

“WHAAAAT?  Which toe?” I shriek into the phone.

“The little one.  On my right foot.”

At this point I am just stunned.  Finally he lets me off the hook.  “NO they didn’t amputate.  But I DID get stitches.”

As it turns out, he was minding his own business and was attacked by a piece of metal that lunged at him and went through his boot, just above the steel toe.  He’s ok and they took very good care of him.  Eight stitches later, they sent him home.  Apparently his pain tolerance is quite amazing.  Who’d have thought that engineering was dangerous business?

The whole time this was going on, my panicked mind flashed to the episode of Friends in which a teenage Monica tries to seduce Chandler.  She accidentally severs one of his toes when she drops a knife and it goes right through his shoe.  Thinking quickly, she brings what she thinks is the toe to the emergency room so they can reattach it.  As it turns out, she didn’t grab the toe, she grabbed a very small piece of  carrot.

Her mother looks almost ill, “Oh my God!  There’s a toe in my kitchen.”

And there it goes…the knife that cuts off Chandler’s toe.

I DID get to go to my interview.  That’s stuff for another day.

Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun: More Halloween Costumes

It could happen.

In continuing with celebrating Halloween I’m sharing some of my kids’ costumes.  I’ve been pretty lucky with my son because he usually  wants to be something we already have the stuff for right here in the house-like when he wanted to be a football player.  We just HAPPENED to have a football dress up set.  Yeah!  He was Jeff Gordon for several years, and that was just fine with us.  And his first real costume was also reused for his sister-a red M&M costume that I picked up a consignment shop for $4.  That’s $2 per year-I’ll take it!

My daughter was a pumpkin her first Halloween.  A friend I worked with happened to have a costume that her daughter had worn at the same age.  She very happily lent it to me.  It was adorable.  The next year she was the M&M.  After that it started to get complicated with her.  Two years ago she wanted to be a fairy princess like Abby on Sesame Street, only once we went anywhere she didn’t really want to wear the wings.  Last year I just told her what she was going to be-a sparkly witch.  I actually helped MAKE THIS ONE. I SEWED.  Yes, Little ADD ME!  It turned out quite cute.

I have seen a lot of very, very cute costumes on some of the sites I visit daily.  Like a lego costume-as much as my kids love legos I hope that one of them decides to be one for Halloween someday. I found the instructions on how to make the lego costume on the Country Living website.  I could do that!

Here is the lego costume that I think would be adorable. The source of this picture is in the link.

As I kept looking online, I noticed that there were a lot of variations in the lego toys and costumes,  Here we have a costume that is show on Instructables.com on how to make it.  I kept flipping through and eventually found some lego superhero costumes that were really great too!

Cute lego guy from the Instructables website.

Princess Difficult is going to be a black cat this year, but she has informed me that she is going to be a “Pink football player” next year.  That could be a bit complicated.  Or maybe not.  By then, her brother will have outgrown the helmet.  We have pink spray paint.  She has a pink jersey.  This could just work!  Now that she has mentioned this, The Professor has begun planning his costumes for the next few years.   Every year a superhero, just a different one.  Next year he wants to be Batman.  He is even trying to figure out how we can hit the reduced price costumes after Halloween to see if we can snag some of those costumes.  That boy!  I think I can probably take him up on that, after all, I suppose if we were able to find something cheap and maybe just a little big for next year he could use it as dress up.

I tried to put pictures in order of the kids in their costumes.  I’m having some issues with this, so I apologize.  They are here, just not in order.  But I assure you that cuteness abounds in this slideshow…

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Pardon My French Ann Coulter, But You Suck!

This is a soapbox. I’m about to stand on it.

I’m not very funny today, this has been brewing in my head.  I’m paying a pretend visit to Ann Coulter, in my head of course.  This is what I’d like to say.

Hi Ann!  How are you?  Can I have a few minutes of your time?  What?  You don’t want to talk to a little person like me?  Well too bad, I’m going to talk anyway.  What’s this thing I’m carrying?  Don’t you know what a soapbox looks like?  All these years in politics and you’ve never seen an actual soapbox? I’m going to put it down right here and stand on it.  Don’t knock me off.

Now that I’ve had a few hours or so to collect my thoughts before I did this, I have stuff to say.  I don’t usually stick my nose in politics, because I don’t like to rock the boat.  I vote.  I do what I’m supposed to as an American citizen.  And I stay quiet for the most part.  But what you said, or rather “tweeted” the other day quite frankly royally pissed me off.  I have a lot of names I could call you, but then that would just bring me down to your level, and that’s not nice.

What has happened to the people of our nation?  When did we stop respecting each other?  When did we lose our manners?  When I was a kid you respected people who were in authority, whether you liked them or not!  Adults may have disagreed, but they disagreed respectfully.  No wonder our nation is in trouble.  It has nothing to do with who our president is, or what party is in office, or who controls everything.  It’s all about attitude and respecting each other.

You think that just because you were born blonde, tall, and beautiful that you can push people around when they don’t see things your way (though you may only be 4’5″ for all I know.) You think that because you had all the right breaks in life that it’s ok to bully people.  I’m just a Mom of two who doesn’t have a job, who didn’t make all the right decisions, whose trying to make things better, but I’m a bigger person than you. I’m part of that middle class that is disappearing, who sacrificed while her husband went to school to make a better life for his family after working for factories that were closing their doors.  I’m part of those families who lives paycheck to paycheck, because all of our extra money goes into our gas tank so my husband can drive two hours a day to pay our bills.  I’m one of those people saddled with massive student loan debt between myself and my husband, because I thought that going to school to get my degree was the right thing to do.

It’s people like you that make others think it’s ok to act like a big bully.  It’s people like you that make people like me, who appear just a little bit different, feel like we have no place in this world.  That rather than let someone make the right decisions, talk them into other things and then laugh as they fail.  It’s people like you that don’t give others a fair chance.  It’s people like you that make my son feel like being bullied every day is normal, and that it’s ok to act like those kids.

I worked for three years in special education.  That beautiful little girl I worked with was a ray of sunshine, who lit up rooms when she walked in, whose laugh and smile and sunny outlook are contagious.  She is who you were mocking when you made that remark.  I hope that she never has to know that word that you used.  You messed with the wrong group of people.  Parents of special needs kids are some of the strongest people you will ever know.  I hope you rue the day you made that remark.

I hope you’re happy.  I’m sure you are, because I’m sure you got the attention you wanted by once again opening your mouth and making other people angry and hurt.  You don’t know how happy that would make me to know that there is one little twinge of remorse in that ugly black thing that you call a heart.  My hope for you is that you learn to start respecting other people.  By the way, respect is when you value other people’s point of views, when you show regard for someone and their feelings, when you accept people for who they are.  I looked it up, even though I already know what it means, because I check my sources.

Ann Coulter, you suck.  I’m done, that’s all I’ve got.

I never actually said it because I’m better than that.

What I’ve Learned From Blogging: The Good, the Bad, and the REALLY Scary

Blogging has provided me with an outlet for my ideas. See look, I have one right here.

Today was my best day yet.  I smashed my previous record of having over one hundred views in a day, at last count I was up to 173 views!  That may not seem like much to those of you that get that many every day, that is huge for me.  As I close in on having 3,000 views and almost 50 followers, I can say that this whole blogging thing has been on the whole a very positive experience.  I sent my first post to the AimingLow website this week, hoping that maybe they’ll publish it.  I’m also trying to get going in the writing world.  It is definitely a process, though.  It took me a while to get here, and I still have a very long way to go.

Some things I have learned along the way thus far:

• One of the scariest things about having your own blog is the stuff that people use to find your blog.  *shudder*  Search terms used to find my blog include the following- glue sniffing crack, why my husband takes 25 minutes to poop, is white chocolate made out of bat poop, barbie in compromising positions, girl poops out a mouse, moms that screw pets for fun and get caught and share.  That’s weird, man.

• Never, ever use the word “penis” in a blog title.

• No one cares about your PMS.  Even if it IS extreme.

• Comment if you’re thinking something.  I never used to comment on anything I read before I started doing this.  Now I say what I’m thinking.  I can’t say it’s gained me a million followers, but it’s nice to see people read what I say on other people’s blogs.  And like it.

• If I were a spammer, I would hire someone who at least knows how to write with proper grammar.  Or make it sound like it’s a real person.  Or something.  Don’t worry, I’m not hiring myself out to do this, though I could really use the money.

• You find the bestest people on WordPress.  I don’t care if it’s not a real word, I’m gonna use it anyway.

• Kids, husbands, pets, and my own stupidity are endless sources of blog ideas.  It’s pretty rare that I do have a day without something to write about.  Which is good, because I don’t want my brain to be full.  Or empty.  Or half full or half empty, depending on how you look at that…

• I never lack for entertainment having found the blogging community.  Even when I’m not writing, I’m reading other blogs.  Tell me I need to get a life, I don’t care!

Not so much something I have learned but more of a thought in my brain:  As I continue to go on with my blog, my biggest fear is running out of space on here.  I started out not using a lot of pictures, but now I use at least 2 for every post.  Pictures use up a lot of memory.  Maybe I need to take up a collection to upgrade to PRO?  It could be like the Save the Children fund, only it would be “Save the Sadder But Wiser Girl”.  Perhaps by the time that happens I’ll be gainfully employed.  I applied at Casey’s General Store this week, it could happen.

What have YOU learned from having your own blog?  Any wisdom you’d like to share?