V.I.P.

What do you think of when you see those initials? What most people think of, I'm sure. Not me, though. For me, those initials stand for Virtual Irish Pub.

Back in the dark ages of the internets, chat rooms were all the thing. Or so I was told. I had no idea. But I'd just recently bought a computer so I thought I'd check it out. I was (and still am) fascinated by all things Irish and somehow stumbled upon the V.I.P. (along with another one - P45). I'd never been in a chat room before, so I had nothing to compare it to - I just thought it was cool. It had a limit of about 30 people at a time, so it wasn't hard to keep up with conversations. At the time, I was infatuated with the show Ballykissangel, so my handle was Niamh (not that I liked her, I just thought it was better than Assumpta, the character I did like.)

One day, I started chatting to this guy whose handle was Aston. He told me he was from the back of beyond in Ontario. He asked where I was from and when I said Boston - I always said Boston, it was all people knew of Massachusetts - he said "Number Four, Bobby Orr!" We chatted a lot when we were both logged on. Eventually we traded email addresses and real names. But there was one thing we lied about; our ages. He told me he was 23 (he was 19). I told him I was 29 (I was 31, soon to be 32).

The emails got more and more frequent and led to phone calls. We'd talk for hours (until I got a $400 phone bill one month) and he finally asked if he could come down for a visit. I said yes and he came down for New Year's Eve, for the big 1999/2000 changeover.

And that was that. He came, he visited, we confessed that we'd lied about our ages. Then he went home, packed up all his stuff and moved here permanently at the beginning of March and he's been here ever since. We got married that June, thus rendering him That Canadian Boy I Married (TCBIM for short). It's been seven and a half years - longer than any relationship I've ever had. And even though he drives me insane some (many) days, we still laugh a lot, we still talk a lot and in spite of the vast difference in our age, I think we're doing ok.






This post is part of Flaunt It Friday. Go check it out; participate in it, even.

Is that better?

I took a bunch of stuff out of my sidebar. Is it loading better now? If so, I may go back to the Tiki Monkey template.

Is It Me?

Except, of course, I don't have that serene smile on my face and the floor would be strewn with toys. Other than that, it's exactly like me.

The End Is Near

Thank fuck. I can't wait until November is over. I don't think I'm going to do this next year. It's been more stress than fun.

The Socket, She Is Dry

Whatever a dry socket is, that's what I've got. It fucking hurts. The dentist packed it with something yesterday, which helped immensely, and I have to go back tomorrow to get it done again. Why can't I just have a normal tooth pulling? Why all these unnecessary complications?

In other news:

Boo has learned how to scale the four-foot high gate we put on her door. The kind that you screw in to the wall. It only has up and down bars, so I don't know how she's accomplishing this, but she did tonight. Tomorrow, I'm buying one of those chain locks for the outside of her door. I don't have any other options at this point.

And my dryer is dying. Because that's what I need right now - one more fucking expense.


I'm so sick of my life right now, I could scream. Just scream. But I'm not going to because it will make my mouth hurt again.

The Daring Book For Girls

Upon first perusal, some might wonder why The Daring Book For Girls is getting such rave reviews. In this age of cell phones, video games and instant messenger, do girls really want to know how to press flowers or make a daisy chain? Isn't that a little old-fashioned?

Yes. Yes it is. And old-fashioned is good. Old-fashioned can be fun. But the old-fashioned ideas in The Daring Book For Girls, by Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz (founders of Mother-Talk) are also interspersed with such common-sense information like how to change a tire. How to negotiate a salary. The Greek and Latin roots of words. All useful information that anyone (girl or boy) should know.


Read the rest of the review here.

Boo Baby!

Today was Boo's third birthday.

Everyone wore party hats.

Even the dog.

There was obviously homemade cake.



And there were presents.

It's good to be three.


Happy birthday, baby girl.

I Have No Time

I''m not reading any blogs these days. I open Bloglines and say "Holy shit, there's no way I can read all those posts," and I shut it down again, totally overwhelmed. I'm not really enjoying NaBlowhatsitwhatsit this go round. I don't think I was reading this many blogs this time last year. So, I apologize. I'm not ignoring you...well, I am, sort of. *sigh* Reading blogs shouldn't be this much pressure. And I know people aren't commenting on my blog as much (although that could be the dire content recently), so it's not just me. Are all of you feeling as panicked as me or am I just a freak? Don't answer that.


Anyway.


I had to get a tooth pulled on the day before Thanksgiving. Holy fuck. It kills. And I have this taste in my mouth that is just vile. VILE. Like rotting flesh vile, constantly draining down the back of my throat. It's Dis. Gus. Ting. Yesterday, I looked like I'd been beaten - my eye was puffed half shut and my cheek...Well, I could have been this guy's sister:


I can't believe I had to get a tooth pulled. Well, I mean, I can because I've been babying this damned tooth for a year or two now. It had a huge filling in it and I knew a bit of it had fallen out, so I bought the stuff you get at the pharmacy, the stuff you're supposed to use until you can get to a dentist. Only I didn't go to the dentist because we don't have dental insurance and if it was pay the mortgage or fix my tooth, well, we paid the mortgage. I kept packing the tooth with the filling stuff and every so often, more real filling would fall out. About six months ago, the whole thing fell out. So, I packed the entire hole in my tooth; and it was sizable - the tooth was more filling than tooth. But finally it abscessed. And it hurt like hell. I finally was forced to the dentist's two weeks ago and she charged me $98 to take an x-ray and tell me the tooth was not really salvageable. No shit, Sherlock.

My options were to get a root canal and a crown, to get an implant or to get it pulled. A root canal and implant? $3,100. An implant? $2,980. Pulling the tooth? $153. So, no tooth. And I feel old and kind of like a female Cletus. It's really bothering me, really bumming me out.

And it really fucking hurts.

Where are the Kleenex?

I just finished watching Stranger Than Fiction, with Emma Thompson and Wil Farrell. I don't really like Wil Farrell, but I love Emma Thompson and the premise of the movie looked good. If you haven't seen this yet, watch it. It's not crazy, nutty Wil Farrell. It's good. Really, surprisingly good. I didn't expect to like it so much. I also didn't expect to wind up sobbing on the couch at the end, though.

Roast

Well, I managed to make the roast. It wasn't nearly as good as I'd hoped. It wasn't horrible, it just wasn't $70 good. I'd definitely try cooking a roast that way again, just probably not a rib roast. Everything else was excellent, though, and we had a really lovely, low-key Thanksgiving. The kids are asleep upstairs, TCBIM is asleep on the couch and I'm going over to my friend's for adult beverages.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!

I Don't Mind Them When They're Clever, part whatever

Doesn't Suck/Sucks

Doesn't Suck: Spending an hour and a half roaming Barnes & Noble, blissfully child free. With a $25 gift card burning a hole in my wallet.
Sucks: Spending $30 above and beyond said gift card.

Doesn't Suck: Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake
Sucks: That the Chai tea you asked for to have with said cheesecake came as a Venti Chai Latte. With a fuckload of sugar.

Doesn't Suck: Letting the remnants of a roasted chicken simmer for hours to make stock.
Sucks: Spilling 32 ounces of it all over the kitchen floor. And your leg. Hot chicken stock, did I mention the hot bit? At midnight. While your cat decides to take a wet, runny, holy-god-what-crawled-up-your-ass-and- died shit in the corner. Not in his litter box, mind, just in the corner. While simultaneously hawking up a hair ball. And glaring at you like it's all. your. fault.


Just fucking shoot me if I ever laugh at someone else's karmic ass bite again, ok? Because all that chicken stock/cat shit/hairball thing? Happened about fifteen minutes after I posted the karma post.

I'm going to drown my sorrows in a glass of wine and a little Good Eats.

Instant Karma's Gonna Get You

Excuse me, Miss, but I believe your uppance has come.

I was at Target tonight, shopping (alone, which was absolutely heavenly). I always get lost in Target and never go to the register nearest to the door where I entered the place - this particular Target has three entrances and I was at the wrong one. But I was oh, so happy to be there.

Not at first, though. At first, there was only one register open and about 12 people in line. The front end dood got on his little walkie talkie and asked for some warm bodies to be sent to open other registers. One girl showed up almost immediately. People were waiting until she actually got behind her counter before moving over into her lane. Or so I thought.

Suddenly, this Blonde Chippy who was about 5 people back in line, with a cart stacked full of crap, barrels into the newly not-even-opened-yet register. Well, the woman who was second in line just about went postal. She said "There are other people ahead of you, you know. It's very rude to jump the line like that." But Blonde Chippy wasn't paying any heed. She started unloading her mountain of crap onto the belt and started talking loudly into her cell phone. The rest of us just rolled our eyes and grimaced sympathetically at each other.

And then karma came and bit Blonde Chippy's ass. The girl couldn't open her register. Blonde Chippy had unloaded all of her stuff at this point and she had to stand there and cool her jets while the clerk walked a-l-l-l-l-l-l-l the way to the other side of the store to find a manager to help her.

I had all I could do not to laugh at her. I was at least three people behind Blonde Chippy and I still got out of the store before she did. And I chuckled all the way to my car.

Alton Brown To The Rescue!

I've been sitting here, freaking out over what to make for Thanksgiving dinner. I've never prepared it before and even though it's only going to be for the five of us and my friend C, I was still dithering and chewing my bottom lip and fretting over what to cook. Then, last night, I watched Iron Chef America (I love that show. It's so cheesey. Not as cheesey as the original, but still, high on the cheese scale.) and one of the chefs prepared venison. I thought, "Aha! I could do that!" But alas, the recipes from Iron Chef American are not posted online. At least not online anywhere that I could find. So I started thinking about meals and what constitutes a good holiday meal.

Everyone does turkey. It's been done to death. Besides, I'm allergic to it or something - I get a migraine and I puke whenever I eat it, so since I'm the one fixing the meal, I figure I should at least be able to eat the meat, right? It's only fair. My stove, my meat choice. So nyah.

*ahem*

Anyway. Not doing turkey. What else is there to do? Goose, but I hear that stinks when it's cooking. Duck, which I love but everyone else is sort of meh about. Pork tenderloin, but again...meh. I do those a lot for every day meals. I wanted something special, something that would knock peoples socks off. Then I thought, "Oooh, one of those roasts with the paper hats. And maybe Yorkshire pudding, too. Very Dickensian, very festive. Yes. Ok. That's settled." So I did what I always do - I went to the Food Network website. And I came across a recipe for a Dry Aged Standing Rib Roast with Sage Jus and my mouth watered and I said, "Ooooh, yes, indeed, I'll have that recipe, thank you very much." And it's a recipe from my one of my chef-y crushes, Alton Brown.

He's got that geek-cool thing down to a science. And he's in front of a diner.

Granted, he's no Anthony Bourdain....

But does Anthony Bourdain have a KitchenAid mixer that has hot rod flames on it? Huh? I bet he doesn't.

So, anyway. Now that I have my chef fix for the day...I have my Thanksgiving Day dinner sorted, all thanks to Alton Brown.

Here's the menu:

Butternut squash soup (laced with cream, apples and cider - yum)
Standing Rib Roast
Roasted garlic mashed potatoes
Pan roasted asparagus
Cranberry sauce (home made, not that crap from a can)
Apple streusel
and the obligatory pumpkin pie.

It's My Party....

I had people over last night for my birthday. I spent all day Saturday cleaning and cooking and getting ready. Everyone showed up around 5:30 and it was mostly a fun time. The Shriek Sisters were pretty good until about 7:30, when they started to melt down a bit, but I expected that - it was past their bedtime.

What I didn't expect was for everyone to pack up and leave at 8. Especially since the ones who left are typically real night owls. It was kind of a bummer. I felt like I spent all that time preparing but I didn't have any time to relax and socialize with anyone before they all went home. Just as I was getting to that point, poof! Everyone was gone.

Unfortunately, I then thought it would be a good idea to finish the bottle of wine that had been opened. I spent most of the day today on the couch, placating the kids with cereal bars and Noggin as I winced and held a washcloth over my eyes. Oy.

TCBIM gets home tomorrow night. He owes me big for this.

Go Fish

In the next room, right at this moment, I'm listening as O tries to teach Boo, who is thisclose to being three, how to play Go Fish.

O: Do you have a six?
Boo: Ummmmm....no? Yes. What's dis? (Holds up a card.)
O: You're not supposed to show me your cards!
Boo: Ummmm....ok. Here. (Shows O all her cards.)
O: NO! Boo, don't show me your cards. Now do you have a six?
Boo: Yes. (Hands her a king.)
O: *big sigh* That's a king, Boo. Lemme see your cards. See this one? This is a six. (Takes card from Boo's hand.)
Boo: (indignant) HEY! You took my card!!
O: That's how you play, Boo.
Boo: *sigh* Fine.
O: Do you have a jack?
Boo: No. Yes. Here. (Gives O a king)
O: That's a king, Boo. Let me see your cards.
Boo: Here. (Picks up pile of cards she'd hidden under her knee.)
O: Boo! You're cheating! (Takes jack.)
Boo: I don't wanna play any more, I gonna go colour. (Stomps off in a huff.)
O: Hey, Bug, wanna play cards?
The Bug: Uppies.
O: Take a card, Bug.
The Bug: Uppies. Numnums. (Swats cards out of O's hand and tries to eat one.)
O: No, Bug, you can't eat the cards.
The Bug: Numnums! Uppies!
O: Bug, you got boggers on the cards!
The Bug: Numnum.

Harriet Homemaker I'm Not

I was washing the never-ending mound of dishes earlier and Boo dumped not one but two bottles of nail polish on the floor. The hardwood floor. The hardwood floor that I don't own and thus, don't want to wreck to badly. I got most of it up with paper towels but some dried to the floor. Anyone know how to get this up without also removing the floor varnish?

Not having a dishwasher is killing me.

The people who lived here before us had cats. Those cats had to have been infested with fleas because all of a sudden, my dog and cat are covered in them. I bought some of the flea stuff you can get at Petco but it doesn't seem to be helping. I know I could take them to a groomer and get them dipped and bomb the house while they're gone, but I don't have the money for that.

The flea stuff really disagreed with my cat - he's losing hair at an alarming rate. He's also taken to sitting on top of the fridge or the kitchen cabinets. It's bizarre.

Also? I think the house is haunted. My vacuum cleaner just turned itself on for no apparent reason. No one was near it. The girls are in their high chairs (contained, where they can't wreck anything). The cat was on top of the fridge and the dog was in the living room. Very weird.

World Diabetes Day

Today is World Diabetes Day.

It's also my birthday.

So, for my birthday, here's what I want:
If you don't know anything about diabetes, find out about it. Really find out about it. Don't just ask your great aunt Nelly who lost a leg to diabetes. Check out the American Diabetes Association or dLife for information on type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Check out the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation or Children With Diabetes to find out the vast, VAST difference between the two diseases. Because, seriously, people, there's a big, big difference and people with type 1 get a little peeved at being told they can cure their diabetes by going on Atkins or by losing weight or that they must have brought it on themselves with a poor diet. And people with type 2 are sick of the guilt and blame and shame thrown out there by the media and general public.

Every 10 seconds, someone dies from diabetes. Every. Ten. Seconds.

This is a serious disease, with serious complications. It requires meticulous attention just to maintain a relatively normal life. It is expensive - one test strip costs one dollar. My daughter tests 10 - 12 times a day. That's $70 - $84 a week, just for strips. Add in insulin and pump supplies and you are talking about $600 per month for supplies. Thankfully, we have health insurance that covers much of those costs, but what about the millions of people in the US who have no insurance? What about those in other countries who lack even basic supplies like meters and syringes to administer insulin?

Learn about the disease. Learn the symptoms, learn the differences between the two, educate yourself so that if this disease ever enters your life, you'll know what to do.


That's all I want for my birthday.

I Don't Mind Them When They're Clever, part 6, I think

I'm so fucking tired. I am still hauling stuff from the old house to the new place and it's wearing me out. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to do all this while having the Shriek Sisters underfoot? No wonder I'm losing weight....

Even though I have a hate/hate relationship with my Mac, their commercials crack me up. The guy who plays PC (John Hodgman) is very funny and, in real life, is an avid Mac user. He also appears on The Daily Show, and has written for McSweeney's and contributes to the New York Times Magazine. And he lives on the Upper West Side. AND he collaborated on the TMBG CD/DVD Venue. So, basically, he has the life I want. *sigh*





Tomorrow I shall plea for help with my dinnah pahty on Saturday. I'm also going to need help (and copious amounts of wine) to fix my First Ever Thanksgiving dinner. That, oh, by the way, a professional chef will be attending. Fabulous.

The Thirteenth Tale

I reviewed this book for MotherTalk.

I love books. I mean, I really love books. I just moved recently and I had forty boxes of books. And that was after giving away 5 or 6 grocery bags full. It's pretty safe to say I am a book junky. I'm also picky. I don't like books that broadcast the plot on page three. I don't like books that have stilted dialog or ridiculoulsy complicated plots. I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to books and I'm unapologetic about it.

When I opened my copy of The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, I had no preconcieved notions about the plot. I hadn't read a review, I didn't know anyone who was reading it and had never even heard of it. It didn't take more than five pages before I was immersed. I fell into this book and didn't want to come out. This passage was what got me:

"As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead."

The rest of the review can be found over here. But really, just go buy the book. It's fantastic. I don't often recommend books before I've finished them, but I'd told half a dozen people about this book before I was half way thru it.

You Can Sleep When You're Dead

Things are taking their sweet time about improving around these parts. It's getting really, ridiculously annoying. Scratch that. I think we've gone beyond annoying now and have stepped straight into driving me bat-shit crazy.

I went over to my friends' house last night - the ones with the gorgeous garden. They're great. They don't do that whole men in one room, women in the other that seems so prevalent (and annoying as hell) with many people I know. Plus, they're wicked smaht. We all hung out and played a few rounds of Balderdash. I was wiped and was home by 11:30. Good thing, too, because Boo woke up at 3 a.m., screaming her head off. TCBIM wasn't home - he'd gone out to play video games (getting his geek on) and planned to stay the night there. I brought Boo into bed with me and she would not go back to sleep. She kept playing with my hair and rustling around and talking to me. She finally started to drift off around 5:30 when, of course, The Bug woke up, wanting to be fed. We all fell asleep for a little while, but they were both up again around 7. TCBIM had come home at some point during all this and I made him take the girls downstairs so I could snooze in relative peace.

Needless to say, Boo was a total bear today. She had meltdown after meltdown. Every bump and knock was met with Sarah Bernhardt-esque dramatics. She wouldn't take a nap for love or money. Neither would The Bug. I finally, finally got The Bug to bed tonight and decided to let Boo stay up until she was good and tired. We sat and watched Blue's Clues (that girl loves her some Blue. And I like me some Steve.) and snuggled under a fleece. When I put her down, she only got out of bed once, compared to the 87 times the night before.

This whole move really seems to have kicked Boo's butt. She never climbed out of her crib before we moved. She'd go to bed without a fuss nearly every night. Now it's a constant struggle and every request is met with a most emphatic "No!" It's wearing me out. I don't like feeling this way about my kids, but right now, I am not enjoying them much at all. There are moments of fun, but they are far outnumbered by these hideous, mind-numbing stretches where one or both of them are shrieking their heads off over absolutely nothing at all. If I were my neighbours, I'd hate us.

I get so impatient when they're like this. I try so hard not to snap, to stay relatively calm, but at some point, I almost always lose it. I yell a lot and I hate that. It's such an easy habit to get into and I have to work so hard not to do it. My mother was a yeller. I remember her always being snappy and loud and so impatient with us and I really don't want to be like that. I just wish I could figure out how to get more patience because I don't want to fuck up my kids and make them think they're a burden, the way I always felt as a kid. I wish I didn't feel like I was doomed to repeat the same stupid shit my mother did with me. I hate this....

Well, There Goes NaBlo

Fucking ComCast, man. For some reason, our internet was restricted because we moved. I don't understand. I don't really care. But I'm pissed off that it blew my chances at NaBloPoMo.


Fuckers.

Chuffed. And Whipped.

I don't usually post links to it over here because, well, I'm a space shot and I forget, but I also write a blog for the dLife website. Today I got some great feedback from my editor that really made my day. She said I have a really high reader return rate, which means people are reading and then coming back to read more of my stuff. I don't know why I get so embarrassed about hearing stuff like that, but I am a bit. It's really nice, though.

It was lovely to get that email at the tail end of what's fixing to be a horrible day. Boo has not only figured out how to climb out of her crib, she knows how to climb over the gate. I'm going to have to plane down her door (it's an old house - the door won't shut all the way) and put a lock on it. I don't know how else to keep her from roaming the house when she should be sleeping. And she wakes up The Bug when she does this because she climbs into Bug's crib and usually strips the poor kid naked and then tosses all the kid's blankets on the floor. The Bug stands there, naked and cold and wailing to beat the band. 's great.

Today I separated them. I put The Bug back into our bedroom (fanfuckingtastic) and left Boo in her room alone. She trashed it. All of her clothes are out of the dresser. She ripped down the mini-blind. She pulled the mattress off the toddler bed (that she refuses to sleep in) and put it on the floor. She stripped off her clothes and her diaper. She finally collapsed in exhaustion, I'm guessing, on the mattress on the floor, stark naked, with a towel covering her, and slept for about 45 minutes.

The Bug slept well in our room for her nap today, but I am not happy that I have to separate them again. I was really looking forward to having my room back. The last few nights I've been able to read without the light waking her up. I like that. It's relaxing. I don't want to go back to sneaking around my room like a thief.

Tomorrow I'm hanging up all the pictures that were in Boo's room. I have a rug I can put in there, too. I'm hoping those two things will make it a little more homey for her and get her to actually sleep in there rather than trashing it.

I think I need to clarify about The Bug's "Shut up" issue - she's only 15 months old. I can't really reason with her. I do tell her to say "Shhh" instead, which she does. After she says "Shut up!"


So. Yeah. I'm fucking whipped, man. I have a fever, a horrible croupy cough and I generally feel like ass. Parenting the Shriek Sisters is challenging at the best of times, but you throw all this extra shit in and I'm hanging on by my fingernails right about now.

Whiskey. It's yer only man.

Shut up! N0, YOU shut up!

So, um, somewhere (whistles nonchalantly) The Bug has learned the phrase "Shut up." She says it all the time. All. The. Time. She says it when I'm talking, she says it when her sister is screaming, she says it when she's screaming. Which is kind of funny in an oh crap kind of way. I don't know how to break this habit. She's been saying it for weeks now. When I say "No, you don't say that, you say 'Shhh,'" she says "Shut up." Sometimes she hits me and says "Shut up," which is lovely.

Anyone have any suggestions? Or should I just enroll her in The Little Dictator program at pre-school?

I Don't Mind Them When They're Clever, part 5

Boo and The Bug are sick as dogs and they've passed it along to me. I have the chills and I ache from head to toe.

But in good news, I've dropped two sizes in my jeans. This is due to running up and down the stairs 87 times a day trying to get the girls to go to sleep. And unpacking. Holy god, do I have a lot of shit.

I May Never Eat Out Again

I'm taking a break from the commercials for a moment to bring you this little gem.

I love Gordon Ramsay. Any man who swears like that and can cook the way he does is ok in my book. His show, Kitchen Nightmares, has been a favourite of mine on BBCAmerica for a couple of years. He seems to have sold his soul to the devil known as Rupert Murdoch and the show has been brought to America. Of course it's bigger and brasher and faster and holy sweet suffering fuck, is it dirtier.

My skin has been crawling for an hour after watching this.

Sweet dreams.

I Don't Mind Them When They're Clever (part 4)

Holy sweet suffering fuck, people. I am TIRED. My legs, they hurt. I no longer need to join a gym because I'm going up and down stairs roughly 60 times a day, either putting things away or trying to convince Boo and The Bug that sharing a room is, actually, a very good idea. They aren't buying it. And Boo wants nothing, NOTHING, to do with the toddler bed. So poor Bug is sleeping in the play pen right now and the women's shelter I was going to donate the crib to may be out of luck for now.

I need a massage. Badly.

I Don't Mind Them When They're Clever part 3

I Don't Mind Them When They're Clever (part 2)

I Don't Mind Them When They're Clever (pt 1)

(Nov. 1)

OK, listen, people. I signed up for this NaBloPoMo whatever it is before I realized that I was going to have to pack my house and move it on November 3rd. With two toddlers underfoot all the time. Yeah. Pushed for time? Moi?

So here's the deal. I'm posting The Shit That Amuses Me for the next week or two. Think of it this way: You won't have to listen to me whine about packing. Or moving. Or unpacking. Or how my husband has to go out of town for 5 days a week after we move in. You'll thank me later.