OMG I Am So Excited

I ordered myself a prezzie today...

It's a CARPET RAKE!!

Back in the day, I never would have thought I would be ordering things from a janitorial supply company... AND be excited about the purchase I made from said company.

My carpets are just BLAH BLECH right now and I don't forsee new carpets in the budget any time soon...

We have the standard ugly creme-colored yuck. Not conducive to PETS, KIDS, or ARTISTS.

Can't wait for the Fedex man to bring me my new toy!!

Merry Christmas

It feels like I haven't blogged in a couple-a months!! But it's only been 11 days... very naughty. Even though the business of Christmastime is understood, I think Polite Blog Etiquette dictates that I should announce a minor hiatus... thus not disturbing my 7 or so faithful blog-readers. Oh, next time, I swear I'll do so.

Here is what you missed, in a nutshell:

It TRIED to snow, but no decent inches were found on the ground in the last couple of weeks - but there is lots to be skiied on in the mountains!


(Weak attempt of snow, dangit!)

Shane is still due for a mid-tour visit in January, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to dash to Santa Fe for a lovely day of skiing with the boys.

Of course I boasted about my stunning sparkly grades to my husband, and here is what he did:



He sent me a card with $5 to spend HOWEVER I WANTED! SWEET!

It really was sweet of him... sigh...

My FIL (FIL= "Father-In-Law") came for a visit and it was FANTASTIC as always! He really is an amazing, wonderful Grandpa to my sons... They adore having him around and they are so sad when he leaves!! Tully got to make another gingerbread house with Grampa John's help:



I seriously am lobbying for him to move to New Mexico... As soon as houses start going on the market in the spring, I'll have to send him some listings to tempt him. The cost of living is SO much better down here. But he is set up pretty well in Seattle... I'll do my best to sway him :)

We got to celebrate Tully's birthday on December 26th, and it was Grampa's birthday on December 27th... he sympathizes with Tully's poorly planned birthdate!

My baby is ELEVEN!!




Tully got Legos, Legos, and more Legos... I even got him some of the new "Indiana Jones" Lego sets that were early-released at Toys R Us. Yes, I am a cool mom.



Stone got lots of stylin' Nintendo duds... they're hard to find, but Hot Topic and Target do come through on occasion.

Here's Stoney playing a little 'old-school' games. His hoodie ROCKS and I'm hoping he'll get tired of it and I can then steal it and wear it.



We went to ITZ for Tully's birthday and I would like to proudly announce that I TROUNCED Stone at Air Hockey. WOOT! Moms still got it!!



He's smiling because my victory dance is quite silly...

Grade Monger - Great Success!

Straight AAAAs, baby!



So now that I've had a week off of school, I am more exhausted than ever! I've been running around, trying to get everything ready for Christmas... I barely get my errands run during the day before I need to DASH home and welcome the boysies home from school...

Here is a list of what I need to get done in the next 2 days:

-VACUUM HOUSE! It's bugging me - I haven't vacuumed in about a week and it irritates my OCD.

-WRAP PRESENTS! I need to do this while the boys are still in school, or else I have to hole up in the garage to do it. Too cold out there! Brrrrrr!

-Go to Stone's IEP meeting at school tomorrow morning at 7:45 a.m. YES HOW NICE I'd love to attend a 7:45 meeting! Argh. Needs to be done because Stone starts Mid-High next year...

-Get some delicious holiday food at Trader Joe's.

-Take Tully to Petsmart because he'd like to buy some gifts for his cats.

-Clean/tidy garage at least a little bit - it really takes a beating from me sometimes... it's my overflow place. I'd like it to be my art studio someday...

My fater-in-law gets here Friday afternoon - very exciting! Tully's birthday is the day after Christmas and FIL's is the day after that... cupcakes for all!!

(Except for Stone - I'm keeping him gluten-free still... he can have a lovely ricecake.)

Lady Elaine Fairchilde

Oh dear GOD -

FINALS ARE OVER!!

I really had to bust my a** this semester...

I'm taking the same size load next semester.

Argh.

Here is what I did all day Sunday:



They're the Four Seasons. And they're HAND PUPPETS!



I give mad props (did I just write that?) to Matt-o the rock-my-face-off amazing artist... and maybe to Mister Rogers, too... I spent my childhood with that man and his puppets!

How friggin' creepy was Lady Elaine??



No need to wonder why those of us born in the 60s and 70s are so deeply, deeply disturbed...

Mom Is In A TIME OUT.

I had my Pampered Chef party tonight. I took NO PICTURES. I suck. I was so frantic-housewife-cooking-cleaning... I just need to chill and take some motherfucking pictures!



My mom was superfuckingrude to my sister Kippy and that is JUST NOT COOL... Kip is more of a mother-figure to me than my actual mother, so just don't fuck with her, MOTHER! So I am choosing to put my mom in a time-out... She's emailed me three times and called three times in the last day and a half. I haven't opened the emails or listened to the messages.

Merry Christmas.

Don't Keep Any More Secrets From Me.

Why didn't anybody tell me that Secretary was such an excellent film??? I fucking
loved it.

My Peeps

Three clay peeps we made with models in class:



The two on the right are covered in wax. The one on the left will be soon.

What's that above their heads? Why, its Christmas stockings for my pets!



Yessirreee I am a nerd.

I am a Christmas Nerd!!

Here's my tree:



And here are the socks I've been rockin':



And here's ME. I'm wearing fake eyelashes today; can you tell?



I've just been in the mood to wear fake lashes. Number 33s, from Walgreens:



Sleepytime now...

Food As Entertainment?

I've been entertaining myself with food. Impulse food purchases = cheap entertainment.

Here is the first morsel:



They looked yummy - I was assuming that they were just hard candies, and the 'Dr. Pepper' one intruigued me. I was sure the root beer one would taste like those old root beer barrel hard candies (do you know the ones I'm talking about?) and the orange Crush ones should be a decent orange flavor, no?



NO! If you read the package they came in closely, which I obviously did not, under "Soda Poppers", it says (in small letters) "FILLED hard candies."

There is the slightest coating of hard candy over a chewy/jelly-ish center. TEXTURE = BAD. Plus they taste like shit.

Luckily, my faith in impulse buys was restored by these:



OH YUM!

Growing up, my Mom always dropped my sisters and I off at the WAC (Washington Athletic Club) every Saturday, where we would take ballet, karate, raquetball, squash, and swimming lessons. Actually, we would spend most of the time playing hide and seek on the fancy elevators, seeing how steamy we could make the sauna, giggling at the naked ladies in the locker rooms, and scrounging for pennies so we could buy candy at the gift shop. These sesame things cost 3 cents apiece...



I got A POUND of them at Sunflower Market for $3. I ate about thirty of them last night. For dinner. Deeeee-rish!!

Here is a risky purchase, made at the checkout at Albertson's today:



Every part of me screamed "NO! GROSS!" but I bought them anyway. Actually, I bought 2 bags, in case they were good. A buck abag. And I really dislike Burger King food. I'll get a Snack Wrap or some Nuggets or a Cheeseburger at McDonalds, but BK makes me feel dirty.

AND the CHIPS?? THEY WERE GOOD! Well, they're good in the sick way that Oreo Cakesters are good. I would NEVER eat either of them in public...

Extreme Makeover

Schooool today, we got to sculpt a nude female out of clay. Good times...

Our model was curvy and tattooed and FABULOUS. Skinny girls do NOT rock when it comes to sculpture... and I am straight and prefer me some manliness but not when it comes to art... the girlies are much more fun to deal with.

Then I took Stoney to the dentist for a sealant... the boys had their teeth cleaned yesterday, and Stone needed UNO sealant, and I had to dragass him all the way back to get it. The sealant took all of 2 minutes to apply...

Then Stone and I went to Sunflower Market which is like a Whole Foods but closer to our house. We bought the gluten-free goodness... some shortbread cookies, some pasta, some pizza dough, some bread mix, and some bread. Oh, and some frozen mac and cheese... I made the pasta tonight (it was recommended by Deebaby) and HOLY COW it was BETTER than regular pasta! It was really yummy. Thanks Deeeee.....

Then home. My sister called (the good one) - she's a little shook up because her best friend had a heart attack in front of her yesterday. They were just sitting at her friends house, with the kidlets around, and Denise suddenly started to say her chest hurt and her heart was numb... she had just had surgery for a hysterectomy-slash-tummy tuck about 3 weeks ago.

Denise went to the hospital, and holy shizzle it was a realio trulio heart attackio. Denise is only a couple of years older than ME. Fuckity. I'm sure the MI was because of some plaque that got shook loose during surgery... so scary.

Another thing that I slack on during the semester without a husband to HELP is the boys' hair - Stone likes his long, but Tully's hair was shaggy and I like short hair - blame it on 12 years of Catholic school - I'm not Catholic but I'm married to a good Catholic boy. Off-the-collar hair was always where it's at for ME!

Here's the extreme makeover - Tully before:




And then I get out my scissors and clippers and VOILA!




I think he's got SUCH a good profile! He takes after his poppa...

Mothers

My alarm went off at 7:00 this morning.

My phone rang at 6:59 this morning.

My adrenaline is instantly set off. Early morning/late night phone calls are never good, are they?

I croak a groggy "Hello?"

"WHY haven't you called me BACK?" bitches my MOTHER.

UGH. She "lost" one of her babillion nasty chihuahua/poodles and had left a message on my machine Friday night... PANIC... she was emailing me pictures of 'Roxy' so I could make Lost Dog posters for her and email them back. I ignored the call.

Saturday morning, she "found" the dog. In it's kennel. Where it was supposed to be.

Back to the phone call this morning. I answered my mom with "Mom, I've been really busy -"

"Well, I'm busy too. You have time to talk to your sister but not ME? I know you've been talking to your sister. Are you mad at me or something??"

Her tone of voice is super-snarky. I say "Mom, I have finals this week and next - I have papers to write and I've been studying all weekend and I'm taking care of the boys and the house -"

"I need Shane's address to send him some cookies. Get me his address. Actually, you can email it to me right now."

Sigh. She drives me nuts.

Oh, here is the gingerbreadness from last night:






I'm still chiseling frosting off the counter, but they had so much fun...

Studying Like a Beeyotch

I still want to post daily, so I will throw out a quickie...

Finished my Philosophy paper... it's written in a play format, a dialogue with my teacher. I wrote it in one draft. I think it's pretty good... we'll see, I guess.

I'm doing a math cram session with Dianne right now; I set up Tully and her daughter Alyx up in the kitchen, making gingerbread houses out of graham crackers. They're marvelous-ly messy and delicious.

One massive week of classes left... then finals... I'm on the home stretch.

An Experiment

So the gluten thing - I decided to let Stone have some bread at the birthday party last night. And not just any bread, but the evil, fat, white 99-cent-type grocery store paper-bag loaf type 'o bread... full of glutenous white flour, and from what I hear, leftover paper-pulp is used as filler... GROSS!

Stone was in a good, mellow, happy mood when we went to the party... he was chill and sweet, and then he ate the bread... and it all went DOWNHILL from there.

By the time we left, he was doom and gloom, his life sucked, he hated himself, and he was just all worked UP.

Hmmm... I'm not a doctor or scientist, but holy cow!! I think we might have something here. The month of December is going to be gluten-free in our house... I'll tell y'all how it goes. Stone is actually kinda stoked to go hit Trader Joe's and Whole Foods with me to get some gluten-free shizzle (namely, bread - I know that TJ's sells gluten-free bread, and hey, the kid loves bread.)

I am currently on page 3 of a 10+ page essay for Philosophy class - if I can rock this paper, I can skip the final!! I have 69 points in the class right now, and the essay is worth 25 points - thus I could have 94 points going into the final, and there are no A- or A+ at my school - just 90 to 100 equals A. Period. The final is 20 points, but I don't really need them if I get the 25...

So I'm blogging instead of writing my essay. Whatever. I needed a break.

Here is how my hair looks right now:


Gross, huh? MAJOR re-growth (ROOTS) and NO I haven't brushed it today - just straight up into the lovely Sumo-style ponytail... This definitavely proves my student status.

It will be remedied as soon as finals are over...