Welcome home, it's good to be back.

If you've been around me for a little while, or have read any of the past posts regarding Master J's schooling in his previous school, you will like this. This past Monday was his first day at his new school in Sunshineville. Prior to him starting school here, I did the same thing I did in the past when he first started school here in Sunshineville and again when he started at Midwest Loser Elementary, which is that I gave them a "head's up" regarding Master J's personality. I believe Master J is a bright child, with a big personality and that he is an awesome judge of character. I also get that he can be a challenge sometimes.

I gave the "heads up" prior to him going into kindergarten here in Sunshineville. They took me seriously and put into place things that would help him learn in the best way he could. His teacher always referred to him as "Gigantic Master J" because, as she said, his personality was just so large. She adored him. And he behaved.

I gave the "heads up" to the management at Midwest Loser Elementary prior to him starting first grade. They nodded knowingly and proceeded to do the exact opposite of what I said. They hyper focused on which hand he wrote with (he's ambidextrous) to the point that he would cry in frustration because he was always in trouble if he switched hands in the middle of writing. Once they had drilled into him only using one hand, he started getting in trouble because he wouldn't follow directions in P.E. by switching hands when dribbling a basketball. His behavior went downhill. I asked them to test him for the gifted class. They finally relented, but then sent a note home saying he didn't qualify. They didn't send me his test scores. By the end of the year, they were trying to bully Mister C & I into putting our beautiful child in special education because he had such behavior issues at school.

I gave the "heads up" to the idiots at Midwest Loser Elementary prior to him starting second grade. They said thanks so much, but they would rather do what they always did. And if I would just agree to put him into special education or maybe consider some medication, then maybe they would be forced into doing as I asked. I asked if maybe they thought his behavior would improve if he wasn't so bored in class and they acted as though that were as preposterous as if I were suggesting they all set their hair on fire and run naked through the halls during lunch. His behavior went further downhill.

I gave the "heads up" to his new school in Sunshineville and they thanked me for taking the time to put something together for them. And they read it. And they said they were glad because "nobody knows your child as well as you do and we really appreciate when parents can give us ideas about what works with their child." And they started testing my child to see how bright he is. And he's reading at a 7th grade level. He's seven. And they're going to test him to see if he qualifies for the gifted classes, but they're pretty sure he does. And they like him. And he knows it. And so far, he hasn't acted out. I know it's only been four days, but at his old school, he hadn't gone four days in a row without visiting the principal's office in the entire time he was there. For most of this year, he was in there at least once a day and usually multiple times.

It's good to be back in Sunshineville.

Trip Back, Part II

So the movers finally wrapped up around 4:30 and I then put all my frozen food into a box to bring to my friend Brandy that I was supposed to be meeting for dinner. I got over to her place right around the time that she was getting home from work which worked out very well. Now, we were supposed to be meeting our friend Kat for dinner right around that time so I called to tell her that we would be late. Only Kat was having an insulin reaction and couldn't feel her arms. I thought about telling her to suck it up and drive with her knees, but then thought to myself "Hey, now I can shower!" so I played nice and told her it was okay to just take care of herself and call us when she felt better. By the time I got done showering and Brandy got done getting ready, Kat was on the phone wondering when we were going to dinner because now she was hungry. Only none of us knew where we were going to eat and I still had to print out a power of attorney form to have Kat witness and Brandy notarize so Mister C can sign my name next week for the closing. I let the two of them sort it out while I fought with some word processing software over how the heck to get the poa modified and printed out. Finally, Brandy stepped in and did it for me. It really is nice to have friends with brains. Anyway, they had finally decided on a restaurant near Kat's house and Brandy and I headed down to it immediately with plans to call Kat when we were close so she didn't have to wait around for us. Turns out we should have told her we were almost there as we were actually walking out the door because while it took us 15 minutes to get there, it took Kat 30. Go figure. Guess it's sort of like church, the closer you live to it, the later you get there. The restaurant the girls had decided on was an old Italian style steakhouse. Which basically means that whatever you order comes with two side dishes that are really like main dishes. I chose spaghetti & a baked potato as my sides. It also means they bring you lots and lots of bread. The bread of course is just a tool to get the mounds of butter into you. We probably sat there eating and laughing for almost two hours. I'm surprised we didn't get kicked out, and I'm sure the patrons around us had quite a tale to tell later but we sure had a blast.

After dinner, we follow Kat home and she hopped in our car and we (we meaning Kat & I) decided to find a margarita bar, which apparently doesn't exist in that town. Now, Brandy said there was one. She claims to have gone to it. But there is no proof of this. Let's just say that after she called quite of few of the people in her phone, most of whom did not answer (umm, something we should know?) she still couldn't remember where this fantastic (fictional) margarita bar was. When she finally did get a hold of someone, at first he thought he might know what she was talking about, but eventually as she described in great detail everything about this place, he realized he did not in fact know what the heck she was talking about. Finally, we gave up and decided to go to a dive bar and regroup and hope that someone there had heard of Margarita Nirvana (they hadn't).

Ah, but the dive bar was another experience by itself. First of all, it's Tuesday, so it wasn't exactly packed. Secondly, the people that were in it, were socially inept. Not in a fun "how cute!" way either. No, while one member of a certain table was wheeling over to our table repeatedly saying such things as "My friend thinks I'm racist because I won't vote for Obama (he himself was black) and telling me that I laugh "like a black woman" (WTF does that mean?), his friend was running away to the bathroom to hide out of embarrassment. (For the record, none of us were there to pick up men, we really just wanted to find a place where we could talk and laugh raucously without being kicked out.) At one point the entire other table got up to use the restroom and we took that opportunity to bail out. Their margaritas had sucked badly enough that I hadn't drank more than 1/3 of it anyway so I wasn't upset to leave. We moved on to another place that supposedly had good margaritas, only as we're going to the door a man standing outside tells us that the place just locked the doors. He goes on to say that he and his party are moving on to a nearby bar that has great bartenders and we should follow. He seemed pretty normal so we decided that maybe that was a good idea. Yeah, not so much. We got over there and as we're walking in, Brandy & Kat are in front of me and Kat said something to Brandy to which Brandy replied "You think?". I walked in and the first thing I see is a platinum blond "woman" chatting with a guy at the bar. My first impression is that this is actually a guy, but I didn't say anything because what if I'm wrong? What if it's just a woman with a hormone issue and I'm judging? Besides, if it is a guy, I'm fairly sure that "she" could kick my ass so I'm not saying anything. Well, five minutes later Kat is telling us that we need to go and in the parking lot we figure out that she has seen our gentleman "snuggling" with another man. A man he has said was a "client". Oh great. Not only do we slide into a gay bar, we manage to find one that caters to "working" people. So out we go. We finally stopped at Mexican restaurant and hit their bar. We are the only three in there, which is probably a good thing. We stayed there about an hour before dragging Kat back to her home while Brandy & I went back to her place where I was spending the night. We got to bed after midnight and she was kind enough to let me sleep until 7:30 the next morning while she got ready for work. That was probably the best time I've had with friends in a long time. I don't think I've laughed that much in ages. Now we just have to figure out how to get together every few months even though we're 1500 miles apart.

Trip back, part I

Monday evening, I flew back to my old town to meet the movers, finish up some painting, hang out for the carpet cleaner, do a walk through on the house we're planning to rent out, change our address at the post office, turn in our cable cards and hang with my girlfriends. Whew! I got an evening flight because I really wanted to pick up Master J from his first day of school in his new school. My flight landed at 11:35 and by the time we got off the plane and to the rental car desk all they had left was minivans. I think this is how they punish you for making them work until midnight. Oh well, minivan or no vehicle? Yeah, I'm sucking it up and driving a minivan. Again. I hate them, but they do get you where you're going so I guess I can survive. Anyway, I got to our house close to 1:00 and it was FREEZING! Mister C had turned the heat down to 55 degrees to save a few bucks. Nice. I was planning on painting as soon as I got in but paint requires a little more heat to dry properly so that was out. So I started throwing what I thought were just a few last minute items into boxes to finish up the packing before the movers got there in the morning. I ended up staying up until 3:00 am. Which is when I figured out that Mister C had also turned the water off. I went down to the basement to see if I could figure out which knobs to turn but for the life of me I couldn't remember anything. I knew Mister C had told me that two of them needed to be turned on and he had even showed me which two. Evidently though, I was sort of tuning him out at the time because while I can clearly remember him standing there and asking me if I understood, and I clearly remember telling him that I did, I clearly did not. I knew there was no way I was going to call and wake him up so I just went to bed.

The alarm went off at six and I actually got right up. I had no coffee pot so I figured the first thing I needed to do was head to FourBucks and get some coffee. As I was getting ready to go, I remembered that it was garbage day and thought I should probably put that on the curb. I went in to the garage and reminded myself that I needed to plug in the garage door openers because Mister C had unplugged them as a theft deterrent. But I didn't remember that he had also used the slide bolts. I plugged in the openers and pushed the first button. The door started to go up, then hit the bolt and just stopped. I pushed the button again, hoping that it would just go down, but no. That would be too easy. It went down. And then right back up to the stuck position. So I tried to race it. You know, push the button so it goes down and run like hell over to try and unbolt it before it goes back up. I would stand in the "launch" position, with one foot in front of the other and my finger on the button, push the button and run. Just as I would get to the damn door, it would be hitting the bolt again. AAAAARRRGGGHHH! I'm sure if anyone had seen me they would have had me committed. Un-showered, slept in cloths, wild hair, running like a madwoman and cursing as I'm going. Oh yeah, I'm quite a sight. I finally gave up and used the other garage door (which I unbolted first)to take the garbage out. I got my coffee and coffee cake and headed back to the house. The movers showed up at 9:30 and the first thing I had one of them do was push the stupid button while I unbolted the door.

The movers asked me if I needed to go anywhere or if I was staying the whole time. I told them I was staying. Honestly, I thought it would take about three or four hours. I mean, Mister C and I have moved our entire house in eight hours with three of us. There was four of them. And the do this for a living. Long story short, it took them 7 1/2 hours to get everything out of the house. I couldn't go get lunch, or snacks, or run errands or anything. The first thing they took was the family room furniture and all the dining chairs. Then they took all the mattresses off and stood them on end. Then I don't know what the hell they did because it seemed to slow way down. And I had nowhere to sit. Or nap. I think there's a possibility they may have hoped I was going to buy them lunch. And normally, I would have. But I couldn't get my car out. My "lunch" consisted of a squished peppermint patty and a chocolate bar that has been in our refrigerator for way too long. Mmmm, candy!

I'll have to finish this up tomorrow since it's now after 11:00 and I am exhausted.

My a$$ hurts!

Because I have no furniture and am forced to sit on the floor. Not for any other reason that you people might come up with - geesh! Mister C & I brought along our queen size blow up mattress which, frankly, is not comfortable for one let alone both of us. And having nothing else to perch on, the cats are both jammed on it as well. Thank goodness the dogs are still at my parent's house or they'd be trying to slide on to it too. We borrowed two patio chairs from my folks but dragging them back and forth depending on whether we want to be in or out is a pain so we tend to leave them wherever until we absolutely need to move them. We did go out yesterday and purchase a new bed and bedding for Master J so he at least had a good night sleep. I almost forgot the following discussion with Master J regarding acquiring aforementioned bed yesterday morning:

J: What size bed am I getting?
M: I'm not sure. I was thinking about a queen but I'm not sure if that would fit.
J: So what size do you have?
M: Well, we have a king size
J: So I guess my old bed is a rook size then?
M: Hahahahaha! Um, no. That would be a twin, but thanks for making me laugh.

We ended up getting him a twin since it would leave more floor space to play. Having said that, he currently has no floor space on which to play since he locked his door this morning at 7:30 and we have no interior keys to open anything up. I'm waiting on Mom to bring me one of her keys so I can open it up and give him a place to sleep tonight. I should just make him sleep on the floor, but I can't be that mean to him.

Wow, Mister C, I didn't know you had it in you!

Hey there! I'm back. It's costing me $9.99 plus the $4.94 for a large cup of coffee, but I'm back on the Internet. Ahhhhh! Let me slide down into my comfort zone of accessiblity before I go on. There we are. So let me explain what's going on in my life of chaos. First of all, there is no Internet at my parent's house for some reason. They had it when I arrived, but it went away and hasn't come back. No matter how much I beg. Anyway, back tracking a bit, if you remember, we had sold our house that wasn't on the market. Yay! How exciting! And we had found and were in the process of purchasing our new house in Sunshineville. Yay, again! But then, our crazy buyers freaked out because their buyer couldn't get financing. Oh no! This is a problem. I got the phone call for this on the Monday after we arrived in Sunshineville. But I have a new house that I'm getting the keys to on Thursday. I have movers scheduled to take my stuff from my old house to Sunshineville. I have a carpet cleaner scheduled. Oh crap! This sucks! I called Mister C to inform him of this. He was not happy. In fact, he would be the polar opposite of happy, whatever that would be. And he was getting on an airplane in like three minutes so he didn't have time to talk this out with me (which in this situation isn't necessarily a bad thing!) What he did have though, was several hours on an airplane with nothing to do but think. And my husband, apparently, is a creative genius. Because by the time he landed in some tiny town in Oregon, he had it all figured out. And all he had to do was get everyone to agreee. He set up a conference call between us, the buyers, the buyer's buyer and the real estate agent. And he laid out a plan that was so simple, so clever, so logical that they had to agree. We would sell our house to the buyers. We would buy their house from them and then lease the house back to their buyer with the option to buy. Absolute genius. And they all agreed. So that my friends is what happens when you tell a bright, stubborn man that he can't do what he wants to do. I'll keep you posted on what happens, but so far, it's looking pretty good.

Finally!

We're here! We made it to Sunshineville Sunday afternoon. It's sunny. And blessedly warm. MMMMMMM, warm sunshine! I ended up taking The Antagonizer into my car fairly early in the day since she was driving Mister C insane with her incessant meowing. Around 8:15 in the morning, he suddenly pulled off the highway and into a field. I followed and once we were both there, he jumped out and announced that he thought the cat had to go to the bathroom because she wouldn't stop yowling. Mister C wanted to just put the litter box on the ground and put the cat in it so she could go. I pointed out that that was probably the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of. Put the cat down in an open field, by a major highway, in the middle of nowhere and hope she doesn't just take off in a panic? Ummm, no. So I decided to take the dogs out of my car, put the cat box in the back seat (I have drop clothes to protect the seats) and put the cat in there to see if she'll use it. Well, everything went fine right up to the part where she's supposed to use the box. She doesn't want to. Instead, she goes from window to window meowing at us. Which was pretty funny to us because all we could see was her mouth moving, but no sound coming out. Tee hee! Then I laughingly told Mister C to "check it out, she's going to drive off!" because she was in the driver's seat. Ha ha. But suddenly, the windows started going down. WTF? Oh my! The cat is stepping on the buttons and making the windows go down! I had left the car running with the a/c on so that Harry wouldn't get overheated but now the cat was pushing buttons. I ran around to the driver's side and shooed her back into the back seat where she climbed up into the back window and meowed some more at us. I'm not thinking the cat has to use the bathroom so much as she's just being ornery about riding in the car. So we put everyone back in their proper vehicles and start back on our way. We got to the next gas stop about 20 minutes later and Mister C informed me that he couldn't take her yowling any more so I offered to take her in my car. Now, I was a little worried about this because up to this point, my car had been pretty peaceful. Nobody was yowling or whining or complaining or talking at me. I could just go along, listening to my music and generally zoning out. Either way, Mister C was obviously stressed and I'm sure it was starting to affect Master J's behavior as well so I took The Antagonizer and strapped her kennel into the front street. Where she proceeded to meow loudly as we drove out of the station. I grabbed a tissue and sort of waved it near her kennel and she immediately responded with a "MMMROOWW!" and then dragged it into her kennel. Then she lay down and promptly fell asleep for the rest of the day. She pretty much only stirred when we stopped for gas and even then, she was quiet. Guess we all need some sort of comfort item when we're stressed!

Halfway there.

We left Nebraska this morning on the first leg of our trip to Sunshineville, where we are moving. Mister C had his truck loaded up with a whole bunch of computer stuff, plus both cats & Master J. My trunk was loaded to the top and I also had the two dogs and the guinea pig, Harry. The dogs were in the back seat and Harry was riding shotgun and serving as my co-pilot. Until he ate my atlas. And then dragged the remains of it over himself to use as his hideout. Yeah, as far as co-pilots go, he pretty much sucked. Maybe he'll do better tomorrow.

The dogs did pretty well. This morning while we were loading the cars, they were both pretty panicky, most likely worried they were going to be left. Once in the car, The Intellectual couldn't relax and kept pacing from one window to the the other. I'm sure she was wondering if we were going to the vet or the kennel or some other such place. ADHD Girl, on the other hand, passed out as soon as she was physically in the car. I guess she figured she was going and that was good enough for her. This only became a problem when The Intellectual decided she wanted to see out the window that ADHD Girl was laying by. She walked across the top of ADHD Girl and jammed herself in the tiny space between her and the door. Then, to add insult to injury, she actually sat on ADHD Girl's shoulder and rested her chin on the window sill with her nose pressed up against the glass. She fell asleep like this. ADHD Girl never opened her eyes.

We are currently sitting in a hotel in Raton, NM after driving for 12 hours today. We spent an additional hour driving around trying to figure out how to get to our hotel, which we could see from the highway. We drove down side streets and got back on the highway several times. At one point Mister C called me to tell me that he was going to drive across the grass median on the highway so he could turn around. And then he stopped. On the highway. Directly in front of me. Just, slammed on his brakes and stopped. Both dogs flew forward off the back seat where they had been sleeping and hit the floor. Everything from the front passenger seat flew into Harry's bin. My back twisted royally and I almost hit my face on the steering wheel. Then, Mister C announced that he wasn't going to cross there after all and drove off like nothing had happened. It's probably a really good thing we're in separate cars.

Word of the day

I was perusing the school web page for Master J's new school in Sunshineville and came across the second grade spelling and vocabulary lists. The following is the conversation that ensued.

Me: Hey, do you guys have vocabulary lists at *Loser Elementary?
MJ: What's a vocabulary list?
Me: You don't even know what a vocabulary list is?
MJ: No. I don't even know what that word means.
Me: Well, it's a list of words that are new to the students and you learn what each word means.
MJ: So I'm going to guess that "vocabulary" would be the first word on my vocabulary list, huh?
Me: That's my boy!


*Name has been changed to protect the not so innocent. And because I don't like lawsuits.

Done

Yesterday was Master J's last day at his current school. Five minutes after I got home from dropping him off, the phone rang. When I saw the school's number, my heart sank and I debated whether to even pick it up. I did, and it was Master J calling to tell me he had forgotten his library book on his bed and asking me if I could bring it in for him. Whew! I assured him I would when I brought in the treats he wanted to share. So I got back in my car and headed over to the local grocer to find some cookies for the 48 (they've added a few) children in the "double den" of chaos that is (was) my son's classroom. It took me several confused minutes to locate the baked goods under the big "Bakery" sign. One of the bakers finally felt sorry enough for me to come out and offer assistance. Five feet from where I was standing, in the middle of an open area, was a large table that was heaped with boxes of cookies. Large, bright signs declared "COOKIES" in bold letters. They really shouldn't hide it like that if they expect people to find it. Anyway, five boxes of cookies later and I headed over to the school to drop of the booty and the library book. When I walk in to the classroom, all the children are sitting on the floor listening to the student teacher read a book. All the children except mine that is. My son was sitting at a table, doing a Sudoku puzzle. My tax dollars, hard at work. He saw me, thanked me for bringing his library book and the cookies and went back to work on his puzzle. His teacher came over to take the cookies and thank me for all my time spent volunteering and wish me luck in our new location. I headed back home to finish some more packing. At the end of the day, Master J got in my car very excited because he'd only been to the safe seat twice and everyone had hugged him before he left. They gave him a really cute card that all the kids had signed and both his teacher and the student teacher wrote really nice notes about how great he was. Several of the girls had even given him their phone numbers and addresses so he could stay in contact with them. Even the boy that had bullied him wanted a hug before he left. I'm so proud of my son for being able to do that without "accidentally" kneeing that boy in the groin or something. He's a better man than I. All in all, a good end to his school career in the land of no opportunity. Here's hoping that 20 years from now, when his name is synonymous with all that is good and right with being a billionaire, some of the people that wanted to put him in special education for talking out of turn will finally see the error of their ways. Here's hoping he has more class than his mother and doesn't even consider using his success as a weapon to shame them with.

I'm on a break. I NEED a break!

I've been packing for days. It seems like years. And yet I look around and I think "Holy Mother of all that is good, have I done ANYTHING?" I'm totally done with exactly two rooms, mostly done with three rooms, sorta done with one room and barely started on the remaining. How is that possible? Today for example, if I account for the two hours of phone calls, I've still spent at least 8 hours packing and I can barely tell the difference. What I am noticing is all the damage I'm uncovering as I'm removing things from each room. How does a house get so beat up in 18 months? Crud. I struggle with the desire to fix the small dents and dings because I know that the next owners will just be painting over my fixes anyway. Besides, we've just about paid them to take the house off our hands and I'd hate to waste any more of my time and effort. Well, I need to fix Master J his dinner before going back to the packing, so I guess my break is over.

Man, I love this kid!

Master J got a balloon at Sunday school yesterday that he proceeded to draw a face on after we got home. He told me early in the day that the balloon person was me because it had long hair and was smiling. Anyway, when I went to to bed last night, I found the balloon already in my bed, with it's little balloony head placed ever so carefully on a pillow. He had even turned off the ceiling fan to prevent an escape. Turns out that since Mister C is out of town (again) Master J didn't want me to sleep alone. How cute is that?



And oh yeah, if I'm going to use God as an example I need to get the story right. A few days ago I was trying to get Master J to clean up his room in preparation for our upcoming move. I must have asked him five times to get going on it and was met with resistance each time. He told me it was "too hard" to do. Finally, in exasperation, I said "If God could create the whole world in seven days, I'm fairly sure you can pick up your Legos in less than one." To which he replied "Moooommm, God created the world in six days, geesh don't you know anything?" Aren't we about 10 years too early for an eye roll?

My trip to DQ

The Minion wanted to go to DQ tonight to get a malt since we didn't have any ice cream in the house. I asked Mister C if he wanted to go with her since she didn't know where it was but he declined. So I volunteered. I even drove. See how nice I am? There was a line of cars at the drive-thru so we decided to just go inside. Okay, I need to back up a little bit here. Before we left, we asked the menfolk what they wanted and while Mister C answered with his typical request, his dad hemmed and hawed about what he wanted. He really wanted a banana split, but he was a little worried because sometimes they've made him one and the banana is overly ripe (ewww!) so he thought he would just get a sundae. Okay, back to DQ. So The Minion and I walk into the DQ, staffed by young male teenagers and she walks up to the counter and says (and I am SO not kidding!) "Can I see your bananas? I just want to see how firm they are." And I lost it. Kudos to the young man behind the counter because he didn't say a word, just turned around and got the bananas. She then proceeded to feel each one while saying "I'm just looking for the firmest one". Well I'm sorry, but there is no way I'm letting this go. I was dying. I told her I wasn't taking her out in public any more. I should have mentioned that I was taking her back to "The Home" after our little outing, but I couldn't stop laughing long enough to get it out. When the kid totaled everything up, I handed him money and she looks at me and says "You're paying?" and I told her "At this point, I just want to get out of here before you say anything else." All in all, this was probably the best visit I've ever had with her.

Lining up the shot glasses.

I'm preparing for a visit from my MIL. I struggle with this relationship. For the sake of my husband, I put up with her, although I doubt their relationship is really good for him either. I try to put aside my distrust and be pleasant and non-confrontational in my dealings with Satan's minion, but, alas, it is difficult. To say the least. She does not make it any easier. Without going too far into detail, I will just say that I (we) have been kicked out of her home on multiple occasions and I was always glad to go. She threatened to slap my child for a minor infraction when he was two (one of the few times I would have gladly disemboweled her). She screams long and loud when she doesn't get her way, then accuses those around her of being to blame for her behavior. She actively tries to cultivate dissension among her children, always trying to point out how great her (current) favorite is and how evil the other ones are. She plays the victim and acts as though she is terrified of offending her daughters in law, although she is the one who's attacks should be feared. She is controlling, manipulative, sneaky and downright insane. It is never her fault. It is always ours. Mostly mine I suspect. Unfortunately for her, I refuse to bow down to her insanity. I tend to call it like I see it and not let her bowl me over. The biggest problem is that while I will be pleasant and kind just like I would with pretty much anyone, I will not cultivate a relationship with her because I do not trust her. Mister C has trouble with this because if she and I aren't on the same page, then he feels like he's in the middle. I try really hard not to do that to him because I don't think it's fair to him, not that that stops the Minion from trying. Her children all have their own baggage that they've carried into adulthood. We all do, but whereas mine is a carry on, they all have steamer trunks. There will be hell to pay if she ever stumbles across my blog and realizes I've posted about her. Hahahahahahaha! Whew! Like she would ever recognize her own behavior for the insanity it is. Now, where did I put the sanity juice?

Bad Drivers Suck!

I almost killed someone today. It wouldn't have been my fault, but that sure wouldn't have made me feel any better at the end of the day. I was driving home after having lunch with a friend when it happened. Between lunch and my house, there is a fairly main road that is one lane in each direction. There are several spots where it widens out for a 100 feet or so into a right turn lane just before the stoplights. I was not turning right. I was driving straight, at about 45 mph, with a green light, when a woman in a minivan pulled out without stopping (or looking apparently) from a side street directly in front of me. I slammed on my brakes and locked them up to the point of creating smoke while simultaneously laying on the horn and throwing the appropriate New York Cabby gestures in her direction. I hope she noticed. I'm glad my kid wasn't in the car. I hate idiots. I'm sure she went on her merry way not giving one iota of concern over the idea that she could be dead, or worse yet, could have caused the demise of someone else. I'm sure in her idyllic soccer mom world, whatever that loud honking noise coming from the smoke screen was, it had nothing to do with her. She probably wondered why on earth the driver behind her was flipping her the bird while screaming and gesturing wildly. She probably thought I was singing along to "So What" by Pink. There must be something better planned for me in this life, because it looks like I'm supposed to be around for a little while longer.

Must be the right thing to do

Move, that is. It seems like things are kind of falling into place nicely. I mean, from getting the contract on our (not for sale) house on Sunday to getting really nice boxes cheap and now to selling stuff on Craigslist, things just seem to be really easy. Mister C has talked about getting new office furniture for some time now. He bought his book cases a decade ago and his desk two years later. It's a big desk. It's three pieces that need to get unbolted and then bolted back together every time we move. Honestly, it's kind of ugly. It's time to move on. So I put out an ad just to test the waters and see if I could get rid of it for a decent price. Evidently I can. Twenty four hours later, it's gone. This morning I put an ad out for the snow blower that we will have no use for in Sunshineville. By noon, it too was gone. We've gotten one estimate for movers that was pretty darn close to what it's going to cost us to move ourselves (we do our own packing). My guess on that is that with the housing "crisis", moving companies are cutting their prices to bring in more business. And lastly, I got a call from the roofer today. In our area, roofers are backed up for months because of the bad summer storms and tornadoes over the summer. If your roof isn't leaking, it's not a priority. Our roof is definitely not leaking, it's just missing a few shakes in one area, but our buyer wanted us to get it fixed. Barring that, we were looking at getting the estimate and then setting aside the money in an escrow account until the roofers could get out here to fix it. When I explained this to the roofer though, he thought that was just the dumbest thing he'd ever heard and told me he'd be out tomorrow to fix it so we didn't have to "go through all of that for that little fix". How cool is that? I know some people are probably thinking "He's not being nice, he just didn't want to lose the business." But considering that we're in a section of town that is getting entire roofs replaced in the $25,000 - 50,000 range. I'm guessing that my $250 repair (his previous quote) is not going to make or break his business. So, to wrap up, I'm starting to really feel like we're doing the right thing with this move and that maybe by just continuing to do the footwork and keeping my fingers out of the results, things will turn out like they're supposed to.

So I put an ad on Craigslist...

This morning I put an ad on Craigslist to get rid of some of my old bras. The bras were gone in about 20 minutes, but the emails keep coming. The original ad is below, with the update below that. Guess I'm glad I made a few people's day a little brighter.



Women only please - (168th & Q)
Reply to: sale-868395648@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-10-06, 10:31AM CDT


Looking to give away some of my "outgrown" bras. Unfortunately the girls changed size when I got pregnant and again when I gained 10 pounds a few years ago. So, I have 10 bras in size 36C and 7 that are size 38C. I would love to give these to someone who could use them. There are different styles and colors and all are clean. You will need to pick them up. Regarding the title of this ad, I have no issue if you're a man that wants to wear women's clothing. I just don't want to picture my bras on some burly biker guy covered in tattoos. So if you are a man that would really like my lacy, sexy bras, please for the love of all that is good, send your sister or your mom to pick these up. Thank you!




UPDATE!

Wow! Thanks to all the women who identified themselves as such. I'm glad I could make a few people laugh today. As for Tom T - dude, I am so NOT modeling them If they still fit enough to model I wouldn't be getting rid of them.

We sold our house

Which is really weird because it's not listed for sale. Back in July, our house was for sale, and we had a contract but the buyer's backed out because their buyers backed out. We fired our agent, which is an entirely different story, and decided to hold off on selling our house until the spring. Not long after the whole deal fell apart we figured out that I was related to the buyer's agent through marriage. About a month ago, I called her up just to touch base with her and let her know that we planned to use her as our agent when we put our house on the market in the spring if she would be interested. At that time she told me that her buyer's had never found another house but still hadn't sold their house yet so they weren't really looking. I told her that we would be finishing our basement in preparation for selling in the spring but that if her buyer's wanted to buy it in it's current condition we would be willing. Of course they wouldn't make an offer because they didn't want to have two houses (who would?), so we sort of forgot about it. Well on Sunday morning as we were headed to church my phone rang and it was the agent. I didn't answer it because I didn't want to get on a phone call on the way into church and honestly I figured she was just checking in anyway. By the time we got out of church, I had two messages on my phone and Mister C had one as well. He called her back while I was making brunch and, wonder of wonders, her clients had accepted an offer on their house and were making one on ours. The agent is on vacation currently but she sent her husband (also and agent, retired) over to bring the offer. We countered it and sent it back out figuring they would turn it down but we weren't really concerned because we were already prepared to hold it until spring anyway. They accepted our counter and are evidently very happy about it. The timing is just about perfect in that we close on our new house in Sunshineville on the 23rd and we close on our current home on the 27th. So if all goes well we will be completely moved and only owning one house by Halloween, which will totally take a whole lot of stress off of us. Also, if everything goes well, this will be the quickest home sale we've ever done. The previous record for having an accepted contract was 24 hours, this one comes in under 3 hours. Guess it goes to show that when I keep my fingers out of, life just seems to work out.

Always prepared!

So the doorbell rings at 8:45 this morning. I open the door and it's a boy scout and (what I presume to be) his father, selling popcorn. I have an easy out that I have used the last week or so for people coming to my door. As much as I would LOVE a big ole box of butter light popcorn, I'm moving and I won't be here to receive the product. See how smart I am? Valid reason, nobody's feelings get hurt and I don't have to buy something I don't really want anyway. Ahhh, but then Dad pipes up that they just happen to have the kind I would buy, if I weren't moving, in the car and they can bring it to me right now. Damn the Boy scouts and their stupid motto!

TGIF - or, my day wrapped up.

So it was a pretty good day for Master J today at school. He only went to the safe seat 3 times for the whole day and never had to go to the principals office. I was supposed to volunteer yesterday, but since we had "Duct Guy" in the basement all morning, I couldn't get out of the house. I did go in today though, and got to do some cutting and gluing. It was just like kindergarten. Right down to getting rubber cement all over my fingers and having paper stick to me. Thank goodness the kids were at lunch while I was struggling with the basics in their room. It's no wonder my kid is like he is, I guarantee he didn't get it from strangers. Anyway, so after I was done volunteering I hit the grocery store to try and get something in the house other than 0'Douls and condiments. There have been complaints recently about the lack of consumables. What, doesn't every kid go to school with two baby carrots, wheat crackers and a ham sandwich (minus the bread)? Why, when I was a kid, after we walked 20 feet to the bus stop...we had pretty good lunches actually. Guess maybe I need to step it up a bit. While I was at the grocery store I picked up a few items for Master J in case he had a really good day. I got him a small bag of M&Ms and a one of those cheap flashlights. It worked out pretty well since he did have a pretty good day, so good planning on my part I suppose. After he ate the M&Ms, he went to work on his homework on the 15 minute plan. It took him three 15 minute chunks to finish, but no complaints and he really did a pretty good job with it. Elsewhere in my day, I managed to finish the trim work in the stairwell. Our handyman lent me one of those funkadelic ladders that can bend all over the place and sit levelly on uneven surfaces. Best. Invention. Ever. It took me about 15 minutes to get what I needed done. I still had Mister C stand below me and hold the ladder while I was on it, just in case, but honestly I'm pretty sure he didn't need to be there. Hell, he was holding some sort of conference call the whole time anyway so he had one hand on the ladder and the other on his phone held up to his ear. I'm fairly sure that had there been some sort of accident, he would have "shushed" me on my way down. After all of that, I did manage to pack several boxes of kitchen things. We got a ton of boxes yesterday from a super nice couple that I found on Craigslist. It was a great deal and the boxes were just about perfect, they were even already broken down. And they gave us three boxes full of very neatly folded packing paper. My plans for the weekend include packing up as much as possible while Mister C is still in town. That and putting a second coat of paint in the foyer to cover over where the previous owner's pink is still trying to escape through my more sedate beige.

The Idiot almost wins

I've been in and out all morning, sanding and patching a window sill in the back in preparation for painting. For most of the time, The Idiot & The Antagonizer have been sitting together on the back of Mister C's recliner (which he hates, but that's another story). That they were sitting together at all was pretty surprising since The Antagonizer has been just brutal to The Idiot the last few days. Between jumping him every chance she gets and getting ADHD Girl stirred into chasing him, she hasn't let him have a moment's peace. Anyway, I got finished and came in to get some coffee and got distracted talking with Mister C. About 30 minutes later I went to get a refill on my coffee and while passing the window in the kitchen I look out and see The Antagonizer walking around in the grass looking a little concerned. I immediately look to the back of the recliner to see if The Idiot is also out wandering around the yard. But he is exactly where he was before, only now he's facing the back door. And he's watching The Antagonizer in the backyard. And he looks absolutely PLEASED! If a cat could grin, he would be grinning. He must have felt me looking his direction because he turned to me and his grin got a just little faded before he turned back towards the door. Locking his eyes on The Antagonizer I swear I could hear him telepathically saying "Just go! Keep going! Just GO!" I went out and called her and miraculously she came right to me like a dog (not my dog mind you, just A dog) and came back in the house. I looked back to the Idiot to see his reaction, but he was already walking towards the basement looking mighty miffed. Now my only question is how did she get outside in the first place? I guess it's possible I left the door open the last time I came in but I'm usually pretty good about closing it. And of the two of them, The Idiot is better at opening doors. Hmmmm.