Don’t worry folks, I’m not dead yet. This cold has been kicking my butt, and I have been in bed every night at 8. I’m actually feeling a lot better today, except I have this weird feeling in my ear. How do I know if I have an ear infection? How do I know if a bug has crawled in my ear and died? What do I do if a bug HAS crawled in my ear and died? I hope to be back to my good old blogging self by tomorrow. And I will post pictures of the bug if one is surgically removed from my ear.
They Spoke…And It Became So. November 13, 2008
I had the day off work Tuesday and I went to Disneyland with Ellie and a couple of people I work with. I felt great. Later on that night we went to lifegroup, and as we were talking a couple of people asked if I was sick, and said that I sounded sick. Well I didn’t, in fact I felt fine. Skip to Wednesday, and I felt like crap. Last night I got 10 hours of sleep, and plan to do pretty much the same tonight. Because of this please forgive me if I don’t blog regularly for the next few days. I’m off to neti pot my brains out. Oh, by the way, I noticed a couple of days ago that the picture of my neti pot looks rather phallic…sorry bout that.
Daily Discussion Between Me And My Husband. November 9, 2008
This was on Family Guy tonight, and it totally reminded me of a conversation that happens quite often between Keith and myself. I know that everyone has words that they say differently, but this drives me nuts. Almost every time he says the words What, Why, Where, Who, etc. he feels the need to emphasize the H. I then call him on it and his response is always the same. He says, “Babe, there is an H in the word. I am only pronouncing it the way it was meant to be pronounced”. After that he usually brings up that instead of “pretzel” I say “prenzel”. To which I respond, “WHATEVER”. The beginning of the video is a little creepy, please don’t think that I bake Keith pies with my hair them. In fact I don’t bake him pies at all, but the interaction between Stewie and Brian is totally relatable for me.
Bathroom Renovation – Part One. November 8, 2008
When it comes to being pro-active about fixing up our fixer Keith and I are pretty bad. There are a few reasons for this; 1) We have no time, 2) We have no skill, and 3) We have no money. In regards to the last reason, as many of you know when you are on a budget there are certain things that are more important than cosmetic fixes to your home…things like food, and electricity. Well, as of late we have been doing well on our budgeting which allowed Keith to make a trip to Home Depot today to get some items we need to improve our shower. The day started out with me at work and Keith at home tending to a sick Ellie-Bean. Side note, when your child has a cold and you think that giving her lots of orange juice instead of other things, because the Vitamin C will kick the cold’s butt is a good idea, be careful. Too much O.J. and their little tushy will practically explode…a few times. That being said, when I got home at 1:15 they were both still in their jammies, and I was jealous. Once I got changed out of my coffee contaminated clothes I took over Keith’s position on the couch, and the sick day movie watching continued. After his trip to Home Depot Keith ripped out our old shower door and installed a shower rod and shower curtain. The rod is one of those ones that curves out which makes it so that you could comfortably fit a family of five in our shower if we ever needed to, and the shower curtain liner has mesh pockets in it so that we can keep Ellie’s toys out of the way. This is a great feature because I have grown accustomed to showering with plastic toys all over the floor and making sure that I don’t move too much so that I don’t accidently trip on one of them and break my head open. There is still a lot that we need to do to get our bathroom looking decent, but at least this was a start. Here are some before and after pics.
Big Time Blogger Coming To Town. November 7, 2008
One of my favorite bloggers, who I don’t personally know by the way, is going to be at the Key Club in L.A. on Monday from 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm for a meet and greet. Her name is Heather Armstrong, she is the author of dooce.com, and I find her absolutely hilarious. She blogs about her child, her husband, her Mormon family, politics, etc. I kinda really want to go and nervously shake her hand while I try not to say anything stupid, but I’m afraid to go by myself, and I don’t really want to drive out to L.A. alone either. My husband who always tells me that I need to get out of the house and take time for myself, and be more social would also really like it if I went. So does anyone want to go to L.A. with me on Monday afternoon? We can even get some dinner. It’s not a proper outing without a good meal.
Another First. November 5, 2008
This week has been quite a landmark one for me. First I voted, and tonight I used a neti pot for the first time. My friend Beth has been talking about her neti pot for about a year now, and how great it is. And last year I saw something on Oprah about how good they were for you. So for about a year now I have been telling Keith that I should get one and try it out, but I kept thinking about how people told me that it’s great but while you are using it you feel like you are drowning. I do not like the idea of drowning, it does not sound pleasurable to me at all. Well today I decided that on my weekly trip to Target I would pick myself up a neti pot. I scoured the cold section looking for one and just when I was about to give up I saw one on the top shelf, that’s a picture of my pot at the top of the post…isn’t she purdy. Well after we put Ellie to bed I immediately went into the bathroom and told Keith what I was going to do. Once I had read the instructions, which I rarely ever do by the way but when it comes to half way drowning myself I thought that it would be a good idea, I yelled “Wanna watch” to Keith, and of course he did. Keith sat on the toilet and watched while the water went in one nostril and out the other, and out my mouth as well which means I was doing it wrong. The whole time he had this grossed out look on his face kind of like a kid watching a horror movie. Not that kids should be watching horror movies, but you get the idea. It turns out that it didn’t make me feel like I was drowning at all, and in fact the process was a little soothing. Next I asked Keith if he wanted to do it and he said he was scared. He read the directions himself, and after a few minutes of me telling him that it wasn’t that bad he gave it a try. He actually did a better job at it than I did. Nothing came out of his mouth at all. My husband could probably make a living dong infomercials for neti pots, or by selling them on a street corner and giving in-home demonstrations. Somehow though I don’t think that would pay the bills.
My First Time Wasn’t So Bad After All. November 5, 2008
To start off, yes I know that the picture is backwards, but I took it with photo booth and couldn’t figure out how to flip it. I even called Keith who has done it for me before and he couldn’t remember how he did it last time. I’m sure that I will probably get a few comments telling me how to correct this problem in the future, and I totally welcome them. That being said, last night for the first time in my entire life I finally voted in an election. I have posted before about what a horrible citizen I am for having never voted in any election in the last 11 years that I have been able to, and some of you left very nice comments about how I really am not that bad of a person, and that I should make this the year I get out and vote. A few months ago Keith registered us both to vote. Thank goodness, because if he hadn’t I don’t know if I ever would have done it. It’s not that I want to be a bad American, I’m just lazy. So yesterday was the big day. We decided that once Keith got home from work we would go and grab dinner and then go stand in line. As I was dropping off The Bean at daycare in the morning, I drove by about four polling places which all had pretty long lines. As I was driving into work, I realized that the fire station right down the street from my store was a polling place. Do you know what that means? Here’s a little easy math for you:
Polling place + Starbucks 3 blocks away giving away free coffee if you voted + Poll workers telling people that Starbucks is giving away free coffee to voters = One crazy busy store
Side note, Keith just called to tell me how to fix the photo booth image, but I told him that I had already written it into my blog, and it would probably take me less time to write that I now know how to fix it, than to actually fix it.
Yesterday was supposed to be an office day for me so that I could finish writing my schedule, but instead I ended up spending the first half of my day giving out free coffee. For those of you who think that Starbucks had to be losing money by doing this, you are very wrong. My store had more in sales yesterday than it does on a normal Tuesday by the time it was 3:00 pm. After work I went to pick up Ellie-Bean, and we raced home where Keith was already waiting, changed my clothes/her diaper. We decided that because we didn’t know how long the line might be that we would go vote first and then go to dinner. I told Keith that I already have a plan incase for some reason someone asks why I don’t know how to vote. I would just tell them that I am from Canada and I recently became a citizen and this was my first election. I thought that by saying that the response would be a little better that if I told them that I just never felt like doing it before. Luckily, since I have brought Keith away from the polls for the last five years, he too needed some instruction which the nice man at the polling place was happy to give us. The whole thing was kind of anticlimactic since we didn’t have to wait in any lines and we were all done in about five minutes, but I was still very proud of us for doing it. Ellie even got to see the whole thing because Keith held her while he voted. Later in the car she told me what he voted on everything. After that we went to Super Mex, where I was so hungry I thought I might kiss the server when he brought out our food. After we got home and put Ellie to bed, I put myself to bed. It was only 8:30, but I was tired. I had wanted to stay up and watch the results, but I was too tired. I did however turn on the TV for a minute to see that Obama had won, to which I thought, I just voted an hour and a half ago, and the polls only closed in California a half hour ago. Does California’s vote really matter? Can someone explain this to me? I mean, the guy that I voted for won (I know a lot of my friends are not happy about that, and I’m sure that I will get some crap for my decision), but does that box that I put my ballot in magically calculate votes as they are entered? Maybe it does and I just don’t know it. Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered who I voted for last night because the decision had already been made, I sure hope not.
Shameless Starbucks Plug. November 3, 2008
Hey all. After you get done casting your vote tomorrow, come on by the king of coffee Starbucks, and get yourself a free tall (that’s 12oz.) coffee. If you are real sweet you might be able to talk the barista into giving you an iced coffee, if it’s hot, or a cup of tea, if you don’t like coffee for free instead. No proof of voting is necessary, so don’t worry if you throw away your “I Voted” sticker. All you have to do is tell them that you voted and that’s it. And hey, if you hit the right Starbucks, you might even see me. I also had to post this little commercial which ran during SNL and I was lucky enough to see. I think it’s adorable.
Most Adorable Baristas In Town. November 2, 2008
Ellie-Bean and her friend Jackson both dressed up as Starbucks baristas for Halloween. Probably because of the fact that they are both the same height, and have the same color hair, we got asked at over half of the houses that we went to if they were twins. This was Ellie’s first time trick-or-treating house to house and by the second house she had gotten the hang of it. She didn’t want to open her bag and let people put the candy in it though, she preferred to either take it from them directly, or just stick her greedy little hand in the bowl and grab the candy herself. At the beginning of the night I thought that she was going to have a hard time since her daddy decided to wear a kilt that night, but it turned out that she didn’t really care.
