Do you think it's a problem that at least twice a day I wish there was a middle finger emoticon on my phone?
Never for any true anger issue I'm having. It's primarily to use with my sister.
There should be sister emoticons!
We wouldn't need many. We could basically get by with the following emoticons:
Glasses of wine
The word husband crossed out
The word husband with hearts around it
The middle finger
Children with hearts around them
Children crossed out
A scale crossed out
Side note: Dad- don't send me an email about how giving the middle finger to my sister is inappropriate. Also, she uses swear words, you should talk to her about that.
Second side note: Now that I made that a small font my dad won't be able to read it anyway.
For the first time since I moved, my sister and I will see each other next week. Our brother is getting married in North Carolina, and no nuptials are complete without two loudmouthed, sarcastic sisters. I'm sure my future sister in law will be so pleased!
It's been hard being without my sister. She lived literally down the street (not in that asshole way that other people use the word literally, I mean she truly lived down the street) from me for the last several years.
Luckily, since moving we've discovered that we can drink coffee together via Skype. It's not totally the same, but you know what your 1st grade teacher said to you. You get what you get, and you don't get upset.
When we Skype, for some reason we always choose to do it at 10am so we can "watch" The View. So basically we spend an hour talking to each other with the conversation broken up with the occasional following statements:
Seriously, Whoopie? Those shoes and that tent don't go together.
Sheri, you're making money now honey. It's time to put some money into your wigs.
Shut up, Elisabeth. We know you have kids/are Republican/know Sarah Palin.
Jackie is the one who watched my first baby until the baby was nearly 3 years old while I worked, and she's the one who came over in the middle of the night when I went into labor with my second kid. She's brought me Brie and wine more times than I can count. She makes me laugh that deep belly laugh that so few people can.
She also has this horrid picture of me eating a strawberry that she'll likely whip out and post on the internet if I ever do her wrong.
Not to worry though, friends. I have ways of getting a picture of her wearing a red, white and blue dance outfit while doing jazz hands in her youth. It's KILLER.
Sweet mother of pearl! This is not my sisters picture, but I've spent 10 minutes doing the laugh/cry over this beauty and I had to share!
On a sad note, I had those glasses around 4th grade. Thanks, Mom!
Anyway, in just a few days we shall be reunited! And it shall annoy everyone around us, because that's how we roll.
Here we are in 3D glasses. I look so much cooler than her.
Evelyn has discovered that she can make REALLY LOUD NOISE!
She uses this screaming all the time. If she's happy or mad, glad or sad, it's just always a good time to scream.
Everyone in the house agrees with her, it's a darn good time.
Here is more fun with Evie! She almost decides to be happy.....then NO! Screaming is more fun.
By the by, in this video my finger is covering up the microphone (because I'm good at stuff), so you don't actually even get to hear the true volume of her fury.
Man, I can't wait until she can talk. She obviously has a lot to fill us in on.
Temporarily, we are living in an apartment building. My guess is our neighbors will be seriously sad to see Team R leave.
Before I begin, I just have to tell you, I'm trying so hard to care about THE ROYAL WEDDING ( I typed it that way because that's how Extra and Entertainment Tonight keep saying it), but I just can't. And shan't. I remember watching Fergie and her man roll down the aisle. I was a kid and I believe we were at the beach. My grandmother was very into the event.
What I mostly remember is Diana and Fergie being treated like horse poop in real life though. You can put all the class and money you want into an event, but it doesn't make it a marriage. That being said, good luck to them. After all, Kate is Ellen Degeneres's cousin.
Moving on to my royal life:
So, as mentioned here, we went to our cook out on Saturday. And it was FUN. Driving there took a bit because they live out where it is open and farmtastic, and we became lost. We received a call from M (let's just call her that), saying she was pretty sure she just saw us drive by. In giving us the directions back, she basically said "Look for our house, it's across from the horse pasture". G.R. and I got a big kick out of that because those were everywhere- in fact they were the only thing! It was such a pretty area though. Vastly different from the corn fields we are accustomed to in the mid-west.
We pulled in and I scoured the area for George and Laura, and George and Barbara. They were not there so I thought, politically at least, I would be safe.
M and R, the couple who invited us over, are among the nicest people on earth. Seriously, get that Nicest People in the World book off your shelf, they'll be in the Texas section.
We pulled up to their beautiful home, land and horses! Nora immediately jumped out of the car and instantly became one with the dirt, earth, dogs, grass, horses and land.
M and R have two of the best kind of daughters- the ones who run and play and get dirty and can do cool things like ride horses that they own. Nora was in heaven. I haven't seen her that happy in a few weeks.
Nora looking solemn and scared about riding a horse.
Their 7 year old has been taking lessons for years. She led Nora and the horse around for a nice little walk. Nora had the best time and I can't be sure, but I think I saw dollar signs of panic in my husband's eyes as Nora took so effortlessly to horse back riding.
Later, the adults were sitting around eating ribs (yes!) and suddenly I hear the sound of some kind of engine. Then I see M and R exchange a glance. Our girls, who are four, five and seven years old, were all riding together on a 4 wheeler. The look M had of concern was not because she was worried, their daughter was used to riding, it was because she probably thought I would be seriously worried about such a thing. M had just met me, yet she knows me so well! So the situation was checked on and the girls were allowed to continue.
We could see them lap the house in the 4 wheeler and M and R said they know exactly how long it takes to get around the house if you are going a nice slow speed, so when the kids were rounding the house too fast, someone would go out and give a warning.
Finally this all came to a head. And by that I mean, suddenly I was driving a 4 wheeler around their house while pretending I was kick ass. First, I rode by myself, then with my daughter holding onto my back like we were on a motorcycle.
Nora was so into it, she was screaming "Faster! Faster!" and pulling on my shirt and kicking my shins like I was a horse. That was unpleasant.
At one point, she could not contain herself and she jerked the steering wheel. We nearly collided with a water tank outside their house. Which really put things into perspective for me. My first ride on the thing I had come half an inch (no lie) from going through their fence. That made my heart race, but suddenly when I almost flew through their water tank it seemed like the fence would have been no big deal.
At one point I looked up from the four wheeler and glanced at their horses. I swear to God, I am not lying, those horses looked at me like, "Who the hell is this moron?". I quickly looked away, knowing they were right. I liked the Evel Knievel thing I had going on in my head, and didn't want to ruin it.
Inevitably, the visit had to end. Nora took it super well and screamed and dissolved into tears. She kept screaming, "I don't want to go back to the apartment!" It was a feel good moment for all.
The day was perfect and I'm so happy we met them. Hanging out on their land as the sun went down on a warm Texas day reaffirmed that this move was a positive thing for us.
I was thinking about that when I looked across their road and saw the horses on that farm being led by what is referred to as the "stud". I like it. M was telling me that you could tell their stud did not like her geldings because he had his ears way back and was running back and forth while looking at them.
I kept looking around for what could be a gelding. If he didn't like geldings I figured they were some farm thing, like scarecrows to keep things out of the pasture. Or garden gnomes.
I looked around and saw no garden gnomes. Knowing it was supposed to be a given, I couldn't help it and asked, "What's a gelding?".
Do you know what it is? Ask me! Ask me!
What's a gelding, Amanda?
It means they ain't got no balls.
That's exactly how R described it to me. M was horrified, but I loved it.
Unfortunately, I had to ask what didn't have balls before I figured out they were referring to their horses not having balls. Shut up. It's possible garden gnomes wouldn't have balls. In fact, they don't.
Show me it's balls.
But seriously, to have someone who was born and raised in Texas say, "It means they ain't got no balls" to you within the first few weeks you move to Texas is pretty special.
I have but one regret from the entire day. One other person was in attendance, a very nice man from Finland, and I forgot to ask him if he loves Conan O'Brien! What an amateur mistake!
I told my husband this on the way home, and he seemed relieved. Turns out he figured I would ask his Finnish co-worker if he loves Conan O'Brien.
Nora, we were invited to visit someone tomorrow for a cook out. They have horses! And you know what else? They have 4 year old and 7 year old girls you can play with.
I want to ride the 7 year old.
What?
I want to ride the 7 year old.
The kid?
I want to ride the 7 year old horse.
Sigh. No, they have horses and 4 and 7 year old daughters.
Mom, don't call their kids, horses. That's mean.
God help me if I don't find an adult to converse with soon. Preferably one that can sort through my jibberish better than my daughter.
Luckily, we are getting together with some of my husband's co-workers tomorrow for a cook-out. As mentioned, the family has horses, and it's been promised that Nora can ride one of the horses. So my next post may come from the local hospital.
Do you think it's to much if I run up to the wife and scream "DO YOU WANT TO BE MY NEW BEST FRIEND?!"
I feel like it might be, but maybe I'm wrong.
Speaking of local hospitals, my husband played basketball at a church open gym on Wednesday night. He hasn't done such a thing in quite awhile and he's....a little sore now. We aren't sure if he's going to make it yet or not, that's still in question. He has a blister on his toe that may be the cause of death. My brother in law thought maybe I should rub some Vagisil on it. Hee hee!
I can't wait to see what ads pop up now that I used Vagisil in this blog post.
Lastly, I shared this with my Facebook peeps earlier in the week and had to share it here too. I recently changed my Living Social deals to reflect my move to the burbs of Dallas. When I received my first local deal, here it was:
So, here are some of the good times I've had recently.
Yesterday I took the girls to a bounce house and then to a park. On the way to the park I had stopped to get a Frosty from Wendy's for Nora. Because I'm just cool like that.
I also bought a salad for me, and took both to the park to be consumed and also to enjoy fun and frivolity.
I had just settled Evie and begun eating my salad, when Nora sauntered up to me walking goofy and holding her crotch. She had to go to the bathroom, of course. There were no bathrooms, of course. When we left the bounce house I had said, "Do you need to use the bathroom?", to which she replied "NO!", of course.
In front of the other couple at the park she said, "Mom, I don't want to leave! Can we just pee outside behind a tree like you sometimes let me do?".
From the look the couple gave me, I'm thinking no one around here let's their kid pee outside at a park, just so they don't have to leave. Duly noted, we won't do that here.
So we'd been there for ten minutes when I had to load up the car again.
Ever since we became parents, I feel like we somehow morphed into packing mules. We have two children, yet I am laden down with about 4 bags and whatever paraphernalia they refuse to carry after promising "I swear I'll carry it if you let me bring it, Mama!". Yeah, right. So I put Evie's seat in the car and move on to unloading the crap. Then Nora announced she needed help buckling. This makes sense since her hand is grabbing her crotch due to the pee issue. While I'm doing this I hear, "Mom, Evie is eating a napkin."
Sure enough she was happily making out with a yellow Wendy's napkin. I do not know how she got it, it may have been in the back seat if I handed it to Nora with her frosty, she may have somehow grabbed it when I set it down to do something. At any rate, she was eating it.
I left Nora and went and took the napkin away from Evie, noticing that there was a lot missing. She was mad as hell to be separated from her new BFF The Napkin, so she screamed like I'd tried to shove the napkin in her ear. While screaming she started choking. So I put my fingers in her mouth and fish hooked two globs of napkin out. I checked her over for more napkin, decided she was all fixed up and started driving.
Suddenly I hear choking.
I pulled the car over and ran to Evie. She was choking and not making noise. My heart exploded and Nora kept screaming, "I want Dada! Evie is choking!".
That makes sense, she would want the parent that didn't just feed the 7 month old baby a napkin.
I repeated the fish hook and found nothing. I had no idea what to do because I knew I couldn't shove my fingers down her throat or I could make things worse. I also freaked out because she has a cleft palate and no one mentioned if they choke where it goes. That may sound weird, but I didn't know if it was going up into her nose and if it did, how I'd get it.
I took her car seat out of the car, ready to run to the street to get someone to stop so they'd call 911 while I worked on Evie. Suddenly a giant yellow napkin glob flew out of her mouth with one last choke on her behalf.
I'm going to sum it up by saying, that sucked and I can't put into words how helpless I felt. The rest of the day I just kept looking at her and thinking how different that scenario could have ended, and I woke up this morning still thankful and shaken. I also emailed someone on the Children's cleft palate team to talk about choking.
So when we finally got home, everyone was shaken. I took Evie out of her car seat and she was covered in baby crap. In line with the theme here, that also made sense because she'd almost choked to death. I would have shat my pants too. Now Evie, me and my clothes were all covered in it.
At least I still got to walk up 3 flights of stairs (did I mention our temporary apartment is 3 flights up and no elevator? Whee! God has a sense of humor and He's hilarious!) with the diaper bag, crappy pants Evie, and Nora lamenting about how I could let Evie eat napkins.
We stayed home the rest of the day. I'm thinking maybe we'll skip parks this year. And Wendy's.
So, I finally got the old laptop all set up and have found a moment.
And by 'set up', I mean that I brought it up from the car finally and then plugged it in.
And by 'found a moment', I mean I should be dealing with these boxes but I'm starting to think boxes get a bad wrap. Is there a specific reason we can't just keep all of our stuff in them? Seems like a good plan to me. I mean the first thing people do when they are homeless is turn to boxes. Why do we need to wait until it gets to that low point? Why can't we show them respect and make them part of our lives in the good times too?
So, the ride down here was spent texting my 11 year old nephew things that would sound funny when he listened to them on his cell phone via the little robot in his phone. You know, like fart and other mature things.
It was also spent with my husband grappling with the fact that unlike the drive he made with the first car on his own, sans children, we were going to have to stop 2939793804 times with our kids. At our last stop for dinner, I swear I thought he was going to get out of the car and drop to his knees while flailing his fists towards the heavens.
Soon after that stop, blessedly the children both slept. At this point we had completed about 5 hours of a 14 hour trip. We decided to push through as the idea of stopping at a hotel, waking up the girls, dragging crap in and getting settled again seemed like the suckier option. So instead, we drove straight through and arrived at our new temporary apartment at 4am. During that time I slept, then woke up in a white hot fear that my husband was going to drift off while driving, about ten times. Finally around 2am, I decided to stay awake. I'm so glad I did, because we got to see this:
A billboard advertising two dogs paying tribute to the dogs onboard the Titanic via webcam.
It's nice to see in these harsh economic times that dogs can still find work.
and this
Random Paul Bunyan statue outside an antique store on the interstate. Of course, I didn't want to miss out on the big moment when we crossed into Texas! I set my camera phone up and sat in the car at the ready, trying to see through the dark of night to catch the sign welcoming us to our new state. This is a huge moment, I thought, and I'm going to capture it. Years from now, we'll be going through our pictures and say, "Oh, hey! This is from the night we first entered into Texas! How cool!".
So I obviously didn't want to mess this moment up!
So here it is! My attempt to get the sign that welcomed us to the Texas border and our new lives!
Yep, I screwed it up. The picture flashed about half a second after we passed it. Whatever, we can always find the border sign on the Google machine, so get off my back.
So far life in Texas is grand. Spring is beautiful here. I'm trying to push out of my head the fact that it is 80 degrees in April, meaning July and August.....well let's deal with that when we get there.
Amongst the settling in adventures we are having, there is a sadness that settles in often. We love our city, but there is a major void here knowing we can't drive to any of our friends or family. It's a sadness mixed with hope that is reminiscent of leaving for college. Then the next time I felt it, I was graduating from college and starting out new again.
Those things turned out incredibly well for us, so I am going to just push through until this does too.
So, I do have all sorts of niblets to share with you from our Wisconsin to Texas move. I'm working on being able to sit down and focus on that, but wanted to share my awesomeness from yesterday quickly.
My sister in law won her NCAA bracket. I think this means something positive in basketball land, but I can't be sure. Anyhoo, she sent out an email to gloat. Her husband, who doesn't care for losing or anyone else winning ( I am willing to bet at one point he owned one of those shirts that said, "Second place is the first loser!"), emailed back and said this:
son
to Amanda, Dudley, Sue, me
show details10:19 AM (22 hours ago)
Good job rainman – and let that be a lesson to all of you…picking based on the pet you want works
So I decided to be all involved and reply. Unfortunately, I chose to do this on my phone, while one daughter was chatting at me and the baby was whining, so I was rushed and kept looking up. My auto-correct is constantly being a dbag, so when I looked down and it said "iPhone" when I thought I had been typing the name of an animal I was all "OK, Apple. Let's not change everything to say iPhone". I rolled my eyes and changed it to the name of the animal I was referring to.
Alas, Apple was not trying to screw me, instead I must have moved the cursor on my phone.
If I was one of those smart people who checked her work before sending, this never would have happened. But I'm not, so all of my in-laws and the DR my sister in law works with received this message from me:
See if you can catch where I wrongly changed it from iPhone to a dogs name
Amanda
to Amanda, Jason, Dudley, Sue
show details10:53 AM (21 hours ago)
Hmmm....maybe I can play if we are picking based on cute animals. Wait, is there a wiener dog team? The Weiners?
Hey, did you know that if you are going to bring your cat as checked baggage on a United flight from Milwaukee to Texas, by Texas law you have to have all vaccinations up to date 30 days prior to your flight? If you did, you sure as hell should have told us, because we have tickets to fly on Sunday and one little kitty who is not invited.
Seriously, Texas is considered to have some of the most permissive gun laws in the nation- but they have strict rules about my 12 year old indoor cat entering their state?
So, guess who is going on a road trip? We are! Guess how much this sucks? Hugely!
I think Gladys (our cat) should have to drive at least one stretch of the trip for this snafu. If Toonces could handle it, so can Gladys:
Picture two car seats in the back.
This is not the first time that Gladys has caused a ruckus in our lives. Many years ago, in my pre-married life, I lived with my friend Shannon and my husband lived with her boyfriend. How cute of us, huh? It was sort of like commune living. And then we were all in each other's weddings! Fa la la la la!
One night the four of us went to a Billy Joel/Elton John concert and came home exhausted and needing to go to bed as we all worked the next day. I walked into my bedroom and immediately something felt a bit off. Couldn't put my figure on it, and then looking around I SAW IT. My curtains were being sucked in and out of the open window. My window, which I had left open, was now missing a screen.
Gladys often loved to lounge in my window. Sometimes in the midst of lounging she would get up out of her slumber and place her little front legs up onto the screen and streeeeetch her body out. So, when I looked at the missing screen I knew right away what caused it. Sure enough, Gladys was no where to be seen.
Guess who got to come back over? The boys! They were so happy, seeing as how we were all exhausted to begin with and all. Then we all headed out into the cold, dark night and called out to Gladys. Guess what happened next...it started to rain. Not just a light mist, but the kind that slaps against you and stings. Then it started coming down so hard that ditches and gutters were flooding, and for a grand finale the rest of the night was filled with lightening and thunder.
We had to give up searching. I laid in bed awake all night, feeling so awful that my kitty was out in the flooding grass somewhere, terrified by the cold and lightening.
The next day I was so upset, but had to go to work. You can't really call in because your cat fell out of a window. Well, unless you are Paula Abdul, and then I'm guessing no one bats an eye.
Anyway, at the time my husband was still in college (cradle robber much?) and he did the nicest thing in the world. He took a picture of Gladys and knocked on every door in the neighborhood.
It's important that you know, he doesn't even really like cats. Between this act of going door to door and the time he taught my seriously computer illiterate mom how to use a computer, and then laminated about 25 different step by step instruction cards he had hand written telling her how to handle specific situations, I seriously can just never divorce him.
So, after knocking on numerous doors to no avail, he finally hit gold. A woman said she had in fact seen the cat, it showed up at her door step the previous afternoon meowing hysterically. She said she looked at the cat's tummy and figured out she was pregnant, so she called the humane society and asked them to come get the lost cat as it was obviously giving birth.
PS- My cat was not pregnant. She was just tummy-licious thank you very much.
My husband then drove to the humane society and reclaimed Gladys! Success!
The great thing was, that whole night that I stayed up crying that my cat was out in the cold thunderstorm, she had not been out there for even a second. Nope, she fell out of the window while I was at work. Which means before we even left for the concert, she had already been found and given to the humane society so she could give birth in a safe place. So she was all "I'm all warm and dry in this kennel, living large!" when the four of us were out searching for hours.
And now this situation...a 15 hour road trip to get this cat to our new home.
Isn't having a cat supposed to be charming and calming?
So, I think you can agree, the very least this stress invoking cat could do for me would be to drive the damn car halfway to Texas.
