I Know Her in the Biblical Sense

My bloggy buddy Yo is having a give-away and being the mature, responsible adult that I am, I am going to share the chance to win with all of you.  (Even though I really want to win myself.  I am a giver.)  So go forth and comment to get in on the action - so to speak.  *snort*

Actually I just wanted a chance to write about sex toys.  Because Yo's giveaway is a gift certificate to edenfantasys (This site is so NSFW that if you click on it at work your computer might just blow up on your desk) and their site has everything you could possibly want for a rockin' good time in the bedroom.  Or dining room.  Or living room.  Or kitchen.  Or bathroom.  But not the stairs, that would hurt.  Ow.

My only complaint about these things is that some of them have the DUMBEST names and others are so complicated they look like a rubix cube on acid rather than a funtimes toy.  (I really really wanted to put pictures up but they are all on the site in some complicated internetz form that I can't use.  Pout.)  So tell me what you think...

Super Twins.  The first thing I thought of was the old cartoon with all the superheroes INCLUDING the Wonder Twins.  Remember them?  Purple outfits, a boy and a girl and they would put their fists together (Terrorist Fist Jab!) and say "Wondertwin Powers ACTIVATE!" and then they'd turn into something.  Water?  Animals?  I can't remember.  But the Super Twins totally reminds me of that.

Now The 3-Way (for only $20.99!  that has to be cheaper than two hookers in a sleazy motel!)  looks like an office thing.  Like a stapler, staple remover and hole punch all in one.  Or some fancy scrapbooking punch.  I can read what they TELL you it is for but doesn't it look way too small?  Would you want to squash those into there?  Really?

This one has a dumb name AND it looks really complicated and bizarre.  The Cock Commander is clear plastic and looks like, um, well, I don't know what it looks like.  But anything called The Cock Commander should TALK.  Duh.  It should have a sexy voice (like those GPS thingys) that commands you to do this, that or the other.  A battery operated domme.

Here's something else that every couple should have for their gynocological gymnastics, a SPINNING SEX SWING!  Great!  It's an X-rated version of the Tea Cup Ride at Disneyland.  I've always wanted to hurl during sex!

So there is your own little preview of some of the fun things you can have in your grown up toybox should you win the gift certificate over at Yo's.  Good luck!  

*wink*

Ironing is Dangerous

Such a dangerous item should not be allowed in homes where children live.  I don't iron to keep my children safe.

It's only 2o seconds long and you will laugh your ass off.

Attention Parents of Teenagers and Pre-teens

Clinical Strength Deodorant is worth every penny that it costs over and above the cost of regular deodorant.  Trust me, you will be glad you bought it.  

You will buy more to have in the house in case it runs out.  You will consider writing a letter to the makers of the Clinical Strength Deodorant thanking them for changing your life.  You will sing it's praises from the tops of mountains.  (Or from your blog, whichever is warmer.)  You will weep at the improvement of the odors emanating from certain bedrooms in your house.  Your plants will stop turning brown and dying when your offspring walk near them.

Go forth and purchase this life-changing substance!

You may send wine and chocolate to thank me for enlightening you.

Monster Margarita Madness

When Stepmonster and I drink margaritas, we DRINK MARGARITAS!  Check these suckers out, the glasses were as big as our heads.

And I'm not gonna tell how many we drank.

It was fun to get together with lots of friends while Stepmonster was here for a far-too-short visit.  Now that she's unemployed we expect longer visits!!!

That's me with my childhood BFF above and Cousin is below getting in on the margarita action.  If there is action anywhere, Cousin gets in on it!  (Double entendre totally intentional!)  She is off to India next week for what I'm sure will be an AMAZING trip so let's all raise an obscenely large drink to her good health and safe return.  Bring me back a cool piece of artwork will ya?  I'll pay you back.  In 12 year olds.

A great time was had by all.  We missed Dadmonster but he had to stay home and *cough cough* work lots of overtime and network among people in his industry.  *cough cough choke*  (Yeah right, we buy THAT story!)  Next time he's gotta come too.

Now it's back to homework, nagging the kids to pick up their socks, taking care of a sick husband (I'm sure all you ladies know how much fun THAT is) and starting a new diet and workout routine because DAMN those margaritas and glasses of wine have padded my posterior more than is necessary or desirable.

This I Believe

For my Democratic Capitalism Class we have been given an assignment to write an essay in the same style as the This I Believe project.  (Check out the one titled Be Cool to the Pizza Delivery Dude, it's hysterical!)  

I've been pondering the assignment and how I wanted to approach it for more than a week now.  This morning, after being abruptly woken up at 6am by three alarm clocks going off in sync, it finally came together and I wrote this in about an hour.  (I have now added MAKE SURE THE KIDS ALARM CLOCKS ARE TURNED OFF to my Friday night to-do checklist.  Getting up at 6am on Saturday is Not. Cool.)

Now our teacher for this class is young (younger than me, sob!) and almost done with his own Ph.D.  He is also very cool and encouraged us to be funny and write in our own voice.  Little did he know that telling me that can be dangerous!  The framework for the essay is write about what we believe the American Dream is.  That's it.  Ah, the FREEDOM!  I thought some of you brave enough to read the whole thing might be interested.  (Ok, so only my Mom and Dad will read the whole thing.  BFD.)  This is my rough draft:

I believe that the American Dream is the Pursuit of Happiness.

When you are in pursuit of something – unless you are Wile E. Coyote – there are rules and regulations. I believe that our founding fathers intended the Pursuit of Happiness to be applied in a way that everyone as a whole could benefit, not just some individuals. And I believe for our society to succeed and flourish and to give everyone the same opportunity to pursue happiness, four rules and regulations must be followed.

Rule Number One: You may not run anyone over in your pursuit of happiness. Think of this rule as the same one cops follow when they make the decision to pursue a suspect at a high rate of speed. If their suspect, or your happiness, is located in the middle of a park full of children and old people all of whom are frolicking with unicorns and kittens, you may not pursue your happiness at eighty miles per hour through the middle of the park. People will get hurt and everyone will hate you. The unicorns you have not run over and killed will stab you with their horns and you will be unhappy too.

Instead, you must go around the park to pursue your happiness. Or maybe go through the park but at a slower, more leisurely pace so as not to hurt anyone. Pet the unicorns and kittens, play a game or two of jump rope with the kids and take it slow.

If your happiness awaits you in a high-level job with the company of your dreams, do not get the job by sabotaging your co-workers to make yourself look better to the boss. If your happiness lies in parenthood, do not make a baby before you are able to take care of it both mentally and physically. And if driving a racecar makes you happy, do it on the racetrack and not on highway 522 in the middle of the night.

Rule Number Two: You might not get what you want. If what will make you happy is detrimental to society, let it go and accept that you are not going to get your happiness that way. Move on to the next best thing.

If killing people with a chainsaw, scaring small children or pulling the wings off of flies is what makes you happy, you will have to come up with an alternative. (And please, seek therapy!)

If dealing illicit drugs will make you happy, you are out of luck. You can do it for a while but eventually you will wind up in jail, which will, most likely, make you unhappy. So save us all some time and money and don’t do it. If drugs make you happy lobby for drug legislature reform, write mystery novels whose characters consume copious quantities of drugs or become a pharmacist.

Rule Number Three: Take responsibility for your actions. The fact is we are all going to screw up from time to time while pursing happiness. Until humans achieve Godlike perfection, mistakes are inevitable. If you hurt someone, make it better. That may mean apologizing, paying child support, postponing grad school to raise a baby, paying reparations for damage you have caused or bringing home flowers to your wife every night for the rest of your life so she doesn’t castrate you in your sleep. Whatever you have done, own it. Do not deflect responsibility for your actions onto your teachers, parents, friends or everyone in the world who hates you and is Out. To. Get. You. You made choices and you need to deal with the consequences of those choices, good or bad.

Rule Number Four: Help others. You are only one of approximately three hundred and five million people in the United States and six and a half billion people world wide; it’s not all about you so get over yourself. If you have an opportunity to help someone else in his or her pursuit of happiness, take it. Write a recommendation letter, donate money, shovel snow for an elderly neighbor, vote, hire a qualified but inexperienced candidate, lobby for a cause that is near and dear to your heart, volunteer, mentor someone younger than you, let people merge in front of you on the freeway. Everyone needs to help each other in their pursuit of happiness and everyone will benefit from this.

I believe that the American Dream is the pursuit of happiness and if everyone follows these rules, everyone will benefit and our founding fathers American Dream will be realized.

I Am The Best

I'm not usually into these things but hey, when they tell me I am usually the best at everything?  Well...who am I to argue with fate!  It's all about the name.

KATY...

You Are Smart and Curious

You are a seeker of knowledge, and you have learned many things in your life.
You are also a keeper of knowledge - meaning you don't spill secrets or spread gossip.  Snicker snicker snort.  Of COURSE I don't gossip.  ha.  ha.
People sometimes think you're snobby or aloof, but you're just too deep in thought to pay attention to them.  I'm so deep in thought that I often get lost.  Then I have a glass of wine.

You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection.  Except in housekeeping!
You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive.
You have the classic "Type A" personality.  Now it's getting me confused with Scientist Genius Brother.

You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless - and you have a lot of questions about life.
You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You're most comfortable when you're far away from home.  Very true as long as the kids are there.
You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble.  YES!

You are a free spirit, and you resent anyone who tries to fence you in.
You are unpredictable, adventurous, and always a little surprising.
You may miss out by not settling down, but you're too busy having fun to care.  I'm pretty sure that 15 years of marriage, three kids and the same house for over 11 years counts as being settled down.  This must be a metaphor for my mental status.

It's right on except for the traveling to random locations.  I only travel to places that are WARMER than the fucking PACIFIC NORTHWEST right now!  My toez!  They have fallen off from frostbite!

Bribery

This morning I told Thing 2 that if he got all of his grades up to A's by the end of the semester (February 4) I would get him his own cell phone.  He was THRILLED at the opportunity to earn a cell phone which I suspect he wants only so he can text-message his little girl-friend who already has her own cell phone.  

Getting him a cell phone is something I've been pondering for a while now because he has options after school (go to the YMCA on the bus, go to science club, go to math club, go to the library) that Thing 1 does not have at his school.  And if he wants to do something after school and FORGETS to call me, it is a royal pain in the ass to track him down.  Plus it raises my blood pressure and I'd like to save dying from a stroke for when I'm in my nineties, not in my twenties.  Ok, OK.....thirties.  So getting him a cell phone would not be ENTIRELY for his happiness.  It would make my life easier which would make me a nicer person which would make everyone who has to live with me happier.  Sort of like Midol.

The catch is that his grades are all C's and D's.  This is due ENTIRELY to the fact that he is quite possibly the most distracted, forgetful kid on the planet.  His TWIN brother with the EXACT SAME DNA is getting straight A's because he does his homework at precisely the same time every day, remembers everything and has his school stuff anal-retentively organized.

So am I mean for setting him up to fail?  Honestly, if he can get his grades up to all A's in two weeks he will be performing a miracle and I will have to start taking him to church which means I would have to go to church which would fuck up my sleeping in on Sunday's rule and make me crabby.

I'm just hoping he will get all of his missing assignments turned in (we found several wadded up in the bottom of his backpack last night - COMPLETED WORK!!!) and stays more on top of what is going on at school.  But he is all jazzed that he might actually get a cell phone.  Yeah, I think I actually am mean.

Maybe I'll get him the cell phone when he does get all his grades to an A - even if it's after the end of the semester.  If I don't kill him first.

Hello President Obama!

1-20-09, the End of an Error!

Happy happy joy joy!

see Sarah Palin pictures

Sailing in the Sunshine

Holy shit what was that big yellow thing in the sky yesterday?  Ohhhh, the sun.  Right.  I remember that - vaguely.  To celebrate the sunniness of the day, Stepdan, Thing 1, Daughter, Aussie and I all went out in Stepdan & Marvelous Mom's sailboat.  It's a 36' Catalina if that means anything to you.

Now, Stepdan and Marvelous Mom have had a sailboat for about five years.  Yesterday was the first time I ever went out on it due to my unfortunate habit of puking my guts out whenever I look at a picture of the ocean let alone float on top of it.  But I couldn't very well send Stepdan out with two teenage girls and a ninety-year old man in a twelve year old's body without another adult to help him so I HAD to go.  (Thank GOD for dramamine!)

As you can see, it was rough...

That's Mt. Rainier in the background.  Do you SEE how I suffered with my feet propped up on the fence thingy (daughter is snottily informing me that it's called a LIFELINE Mom, duh!)

Thing 1 got a turn at the wheel with daughter watching and telling him he's doing one thousand different things wrong and OMG she could TOTALLY steer better than him, sheesh!

When she wasn't showing off her superior sailing skills learned on her past voyages, daughter was goofing around with Aussie who had an absolute blast.  She had never been on a sailboat before but took to it like a duck to water and hitched, winched, raised & lowered things like she had been sailing all her life.

This last shot isn't particularly fabulous of the kids but it shows the apricot colored sunset that we were lucky enough to enjoy.

We had an absolutely WONDERFUL day and I am actually looking forward to going out again sometime.  In the summer.  When it's not 35 degrees and windy.  It was sunny but it sure as shit wasn't warm!

Fun With Foreign Slang

Having Aussie here this week has been a blast!  We have rellies (relatives - I'm learning!) in Australia who visit every five years or so and Scientist Genius Brother's girlfriend is Australian (I need a shorter name for her!) so we are a little bit aquainted with Aussie slang.  HOWEVER, there is a big huge difference in the amount of slang adults use, versus the amount of slang a fourteen year old girl uses so we are getting schooled in slang.

Here are some of the words that we needed translation for:

schoolies - week long party at the beach after high school graduation

This sounds suspiciously similar to Spring Break except you go once instead of every year.  But it's still a drunken orgy on the beach for a whole week.  With Twister.  Remind me not to send daughter or the things to Australia right after high school graduation.

wagging - skipping school

HAHAHAH!  Oh, sorry.  That is NOT what I thought this was referring to.  Apparently I'm not that far off of 14 years old maturity wise.

I have it on good authority that THIS particular slang is Not. Nice.  So so sorry to everyone.  I promise to check with the Australian slang police before I do any more posts like this one.

dag - underdressed

Aussie explained this one by saying you are wearing daggy clothes if you go to a fancy formal dance wearing track pants, sneakers and a sweatshirt.  I can't wait to tell husband he wears daggy clothes!

L's, P's, Green P's - driving permit levels

I always thought green peas were a vegetable, who knew?

Aver - afternoon

This is one I had to have Aussie spell for me because her accent makes the individual sounds hard to make out and I thought she was saying 'atha'.  Or maybe age is taking it's toll and I'm not hearing so well these days.

Trollies - shopping carts

Let's go to the waterfront and ride the shopping carts!  (Shut UP!  I told you I have a juvenile sense of humor!)

Servo - gas (oh, excuse me, PETROL) station convenience store

I don't get it.

Rubber - eraser

I left this one til last because I have a Funny Story for you.  Aussie went to all of daughters classes two days this week as part of her visit and in science class she asked daughter if she could borrow her rubber.  Hilarity ensued and I'm sure the teacher had trouble keeping order for the rest of the class period.

Aussie is here until Monday morning and we are going to miss her and her slang when she goes home!

TOO BUSY

I've been busier than a one-armed coat hanger this week!

School is kicking my ass but in a good way.  I have three great professors and a shit-load of homework but it's interesting, engaging homework that I am enjoying so I will let them live for now.

Our Australian exchange student is an absolute delight!  She's fit right in with the family (she's a total smartass!) and is getting along like gangbusters with daughter.  I don't think they've stopped talking since Friday night and they are plotting a way for daughter to visit her when she is in Australia over next Christmas.  (That's a WHOLE 'nuther post.)  I'll post some funny pics as soon as I can find my card reader.  I suspect it is in the same black hole as all the single socks we are missing.

The idiot dog stepped on something sharp and cut the pad on her paw on Monday so she has two stitches in her foot and a bandage slightly smaller than a refrigerator on it.  She also has to wear the Cone Of Shame for two weeks so she is depressed and angsty.  Her pouting is almost as irritating as daughters!

Thing 1 got his braces on yesterday.  I didn't time this at all well seeing as how his first band concert of the year is tonight and he plays the trumpet.  Hopefully all the metal in his mouth won't screw up his playing or shred the inside of his mouth.  He might have to fake playing - trumpet lip-syncing so to speak - until he gets used to it.

The girls and I saw Marley & Me last night and I bawled like a baby.  It made me feel like a total moron since I've read the damn book and I KNEW what would happen.  Good movie but don't wear mascara if you go see it.

Gotta go, I have a policy memo to Obama to write for my poli-sci class.....

Six Six Six

Stepmonster has tagged me (I'm IT!) to show off a picture.  Here are the rules:

1. Go to your pictures. 
2. Go to your 6th file.
3. Go to your 6th picture.
4. Blog about it.
5. Tag 6 friends to do the same.

So here is the sixth picture from my sixth file.  (It's actually the fifth picture because the sixth file only has five pictures in it.  So shoot me for breaking the rules.  At least I'm tagging 6 more people unlike SOME rebellious rule-breaking bloggers!)

So I took this picture with my iPhone, please excuse the poor quality.  It is in a movie theatre in Portland, Oregon where I took daughter and one of her friends for the weekend.  We drove down to go to Powell's Bookstore, my favorite place in the universe!  

After gorging ourselves on books, we went to a movie but were ridiculously early for it due to a communications error.  (For a smart kid, Daughter sure can be an idiot sometimes.)  So to pass the time, daughter and friend were goofing around and ended up upside down on a bench thingy and I snapped this pic.  Shortly after we were informed by the "security guard" that this was a display area and Not. To. Be. Messed. With.  He tried hard to be authoritative but the pimples and general appearance of being a 16 year old high school nerd spoiled the effect.

Now to be a pill and complete the cycle of 666 (insert eerie music here) I am tagging six friends.

1. Suburban Correspondent (We might get fridge clean out pics!)

2. Ree the Hotfessional

3. Frogdancer

4. Jason

5. Mom #1

6. Laurel (I'm hoping for a wedding pic!)

Hybrid Powers Activate!

This may just be my ticket to a new car!  I don't really need a new car, mine is perfectly good, but it's five years old and I'm tired of it.  My poor poor husband.  Who would have thought to power their powerless house with their car?  Obviously this guy did but I sure as hell wouldn't.  I found this story on Kicking Tires, one of my secondary drugs I turn to when I'm all out of heroin.

Now I have to go ask husband what an inverter is while showing 

him this story and cool pictures of hybrid cars.  Maybe I'll make a subliminal recording to play while he sleeps!

This isn't a hybrid but isn't it COOL?  (Photo courtesy of Autosavant, more fuel for my habit.) The Chevy Tahoe Hybrid is RIDICULOUS but it's the only hybrid out there that seats enough for our family of six plus the one or two extra kids that I always seem to be carting around with us.  Hopefully there is a hybrid minivan or decent diesel SUV coming soon.

My poor husband doesn't have a prayer...

I'm In Love

The lucky recipient of my affection is a blog that uses the word "Fuck" more than I do.

It's like lolcats with swearing.  Awesome.

Being a Teacher

This quarter I am taking my first Education class in my (seemingly) never-ending quest to become a high school teacher.  This class is titled "Adolescents in Schools and Society" so if nothing else it should help me to live through my children's teenage years without killing them.  

I really like the Professor so far, she has been teaching for upwards of 30 years and has been a high school psychologist for the past 15 years so she Knows. Her. Shit.  Plus she's engaging, funny and warm - all very good qualities for a college professor!  Yesterday we watched about 50 minutes of the documentary film, American Teen and then talked about the issues the kids in the movie were facing.  (Great movie, put it on your Netflix list!)

Before watching the movie we talked about teaching in general, she shared some stories and talked about what we would be covering over the quarter.  One thing she is emphasizing is having us think about what our own teenage experience was and making sure we don't project it onto the kids we will (hopefully) be teaching in the future.  She said it was something she has seen teachers and administrators do time and time again so she wants to help us avoid falling into that trap.

Now I was a teenager more than a few years ago and because my own kids are teens (or close to it) I thought that rather than projecting my own teen experiences onto my students, I might have trouble projecting my kids experiences - they are, after all, much more fresh in my mind.  But as we watched the movie, my biggest problem was with the PARENTS.  All four kids they were following had parents that made me want to bitch-slap them at one point or another.  One girl was doing shots of tequila with her friends in her BEDROOM with no sign of parents anywhere, another boy's father was discouraging him going to college if he didn't get a basketball scholarship and on and on.  I realized that when I start teaching, I will need to be very aware that my own parenting is not something that I can project onto other people and be careful not to judge other parents for doing things differently than I would.

All parents judge other parents for doing things differently than they would do themselves, I think it's human nature, but when you are a teacher this can be problematic and get in the way of helping your students.  Or can it?  My Professor said it is something she has grappled with in her years of teaching and if you are aware of it, it doesn't become an issue.  But how can I teach kids when I think their parents are complete and total morons who are making things worse, not better?  

I hope there is a class in Dealing With the Parents in the Master's of Education program I'm applying for.

Revelry Recap

When we were deciding on a date for our wedding, I wanted to get married in December so we could decorate with Christmas decorations and colors (my favorite!) and husband's only stipulation was that we picked a date that was already a holiday so he wouldn't have to remember another random date.  (I don't know what he meant by ANOTHER random date because he has never once remembered my birthday or the kids birthday's correctly and he was THERE for the kids births!)

So we decided on New Year's Eve because who gets married on Christmas?  Santa would be all kinds of pissed off if we rained on his parade!

Fifteen years ago we got married.  We had been dating for almost exactly 6 months, I had moved in with him two weeks after our first date, I was nineteen while he was thirty-one and he was Iranian.  (If you mention the movie Not Without My Daughter I will cut you.)  It's amazing that my poor parents didn't drop dead from heart failure.  (What can I say, my life was on fast forward back then.  We got pregnant on our honeymoon too.)  But it all worked out beautifully and I love him more now than the day we got married.  I know him better now too!

Our fifteen year anniversary made this New Year's Eve special so we threw a party so our friends and family could help us drink to the occasion.  I learned some valuable lessons from this party and thought I would share them with all of you.

It is possible to have a successful bonfire in the back yard even with 12 inches of wet, slushy snow on the ground and very cold drizzly rainy weather.  Fireworks are also successful in such conditions ~ who knew?

Scientist Genius Brother is going to look exactly like Albert Einstein when his hair goes gray.  Especially if I mess it up for him.

Never ever play poker with this guy. (below)  ESPECIALLY when he is the only completely sober person at the table.  His name is Lucky and he will kick your ass from here to Mars.  But it's ok because he put up with all of us.  He was a complete stranger when he walked in the door and left as part of the family.  (But I still want a chance to beat him at poker in the future.) 

When Scientist Genius brother answers your query "Would you like another drink?" with "A shot of vodka, a beer and a glass of wine" it's probably not a good idea to bring him all three of his requests.  It's amusing at the time, but in the long run, not a good idea.

And last but not least, Nature's Miracle does not get the smell of vomit out of rugs.  They must be steam cleaned several times to achieve such a lofty goal.  (I have the best blackmail video footage ever!  My 35th birthday in March better be a REALLY good one!)

I hope you all enjoyed New Year's Eve as much as we did and did not feel as crappy on New Year's Day as certain individuals did!

Happy 2009!

Revelry Recap, Photos Only

What Happened?

2009?  Ooops, I missed the big intro.  I've been busy cleaning carpets - it was THAT GOOD of a party for some (and you know who you are!).

Happy New Year, I'm going back to bed!