The Wall of Weapons

Before you look at the following pictures, you need to go here to refresh your memory of what the black hole of doom looked like before.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

It took me all of Saturday and a good portion of Sunday but I finally got daughter's room clean and tidy.  The clothes are all clean and put away, the forty-eleven tons of sunflower seed shells are ensconced in the vacuum cleaner and the books are all on the bookshelves instead of all over the floor!

Isn't it cute?  I love the black and white with a little bit of red.

Someday she will get a real bed but for now her mattress and boxspring are on the floor to prevent stuffeverythingunderthebed-itis.  Daughter has a very bad case of this disease and having the bed directly on the floor cures it easily and without the outlay of cash on our part.

Are you wondering what the hell the big thing on the wall is?  We affectionately refer to it as daughters Wall of Weapons.  When she was four she started martial arts and by the time she was thirteen she had earned her black belt.  (Husband wanted to make sure she could kill people by the time she was old enough to date.)  For every belt level, she learned a different weapon and since she was going all the way to black belt and would need them then, we purchased all these weapons.

Have you every tried to find a place to store a fucking 7 foot long staff?  Or swords?  Scary looking c-shaped hook thingamabobs?  Not an easy task.  So husband got this big pegboard and we hung them all on the moveable hooks.

Of course now that she's not doing martial arts anymore the pegboard has become a purse, belt and accessories board also but it is first and foremost a Wall of Weapons and any teenage boy within Greater Puget Sound better not forget it.  

If daughter won't use the weapons on him, husband will.

Vacation

Daughter is leaving this afternoon to visit her grandparents for FOUR DAYS!  She has Dad & Stepmonster totally fooled into thinking that she is a very nice young lady who is no trouble at all to have as a houseguest.

Little do they know that the plane ticket we bought her is only one way - Muhahaha!

While she is gone I am going to rent an excavator and gas mask and clean out the black hole of doom.  The Things are begging me not to risk my life before I take them to see Monsters vs. Aliens on Saturday afternoon but I'm starting tonight.  (Mostly because I'm pretty sure it will take me all weekend to get it done.)

I hope she has fun because when she gets back the only thing in her room will be a bed, desk and her schoolwork!

Costumed

With all the ads out for the Watchmen movie, the Things have become re-obsessed with superheroes and costumes.

This is Thing Two's interpretation of the perfect superhero.

At first I thought he was going for the Rorschach look, after all that's the latest face covered superhero, but now that I think about it he looks more like the Invisible Man.  Only shorter.

He demolished his Darth Vader hooded cape to make the face cover and even got into my sewing basket to sew up the back of it.  The goggles are daughters snowboarding goggles, the hat is Thing One's and the coat is the only piece of designer clothing I own.

After I took the picture I made him hang the coat back up in my closet and told him if he ever touched it again I would rip his lips off with the hedge clippers.

The top item on his birthday list is a trench coat.

The Great Grade Race Winter '09 Edition

As I've mentioned before, when I made the decision to go back to school the number one reason was to beat my little brother's Grade Point Average.

Getting an edjumacation is nice and all but not as important as proving that I'm not dumber than Scientist Genius Brother.  He graduated from Seattle University with a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.86.

At the end of fall quarter my cumulative G.P.A. was NOT a 3.86.  I was LOSING the race! 

Here are my winter quarter grades:

Adolescents in School and Society a.k.a. The Mysteries of Teenagers Explained!  4.0

Democratic Capitalism a.k.a. Why the Economy is in the Shithole Now  3.7

Political Institutions and Processes a.k.a. How to Translate the Crap Spewing from Politicians Mouths  3.9

*And remember the two very scary research papers I wrote?  I got an A on both of them!*

My cumulative G.P.A. is now 3.88 - I'M WINNING!!!!

This quarter pissed me off not because I didn't like my classes but because I was an asshole.  In my easiest class, Democratic Capitalism, I got my lowest grade.  The other two classes were much more challenging, especially the political science one and yet I did better in both.  Apparently when I am challenged, I work harder.  In the easier class I tended to slack off just a little bit (not a lot, I have to pay the damn tuition bill after all and I am GOING to get my money's worth) and my grade reflects that.  I did two assignments for the class half-assed and then posted them 12 hours late and that's why I only got a 3.7 in that class.

Next quarter I will not be such a moron.

So not only am I ahead in the Providing Grandchildren Race and Never Puked on the Dining Room Carpet While Drunk Race, I am ALSO ahead in the Great Grade Race!

Of course Scientist Genius Brother almost has his PhD. and is now talking about doing post-doctorate work so I will be in school until I die if I want to catch up with him.  Brat.

The Roman Clueless Church

It's been a while since I've talked about something controversial or the fact that condoms are a good thing and should be distributed free via helicopters raining them down on the populations of every country in the world so let's see how many people I can piss off today.

Am I the only one who thinks the Pope is a complete fucking lunatic?

In March, he told a gathering of people that "HIV/Aids is a tragedy that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem"  What the FUCK?  Adding insult to injury, he made this astonishing statement of stupidity in AFRICA, a continent with 22 million of its inhabitants infected with the Aids virus - ONE THIRD of all the infections in the whole world!

Apparently the way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids, in Africa as well as the rest of the world, is by marital fidelity and abstinence.  Now I'm not a professional comedian but given the abysmal rate of abstinence among Catholic clergy when it comes to molesting children and the massive cover-up of it by Catholic leadership including the Vatican, I'm thinking that the Pope saying "don't have sex" is pretty damn funny.  His priests who made a VOW OF CHASTITY TO GOD can't even keep their damn dicks in their pants so how the hell does he think that's going to work for everyone else?

Then there is the fact that he lifted the excommunication of a Bishop who doesn't think the Holocaust happened.  This guy also believes in unicorns, fairies and leprechauns.

But the most heinous thing this Pope has done (to my knowledge at least) so far is excommunicating the mother and doctors of a nine year old girl after they aborted the twin fetuses she was carrying as a result of her stepfather's repeatedly raping her.  Ok, so the Pope wasn't the one to excommunicate the doctors and mother, it was Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, but a senior Vatican cleric backed up the decision and the Pope, the head Grand Wizard of the whole shebang said and did NOTHING to indicate he felt the decision was wrong, immoral or fucked up in any way.  Oh, and one more thing, the baby raping slimebag who impregnated his nine year old stepdaughter - not excommunicated.

So a priest who is stupid enough to not "believe in" a documented and verifiable historical event doesn't deserve to be excommunicated but doctors and a little girls mother who perform a medical procedure to SAVE THE GIRL'S LIFE are not worthy of being Catholics?  Have I got that right Pope Darth Sidious?

I do not understand why the Catholic church still has over 1 billion members when the leadership is so hypocritical and - I'll say it - unchristian.  There is hypocrisy and evil in all religious groups but the Pope is the one and only leader of every Catholic in the world and is, supposedly, God on earth.  This means that if you are a member of the Catholic Church, you are supporting his decisions and actions.  You have accepted him as your leader and by default, are agreeing with him.  WHY?  It's not like there aren't any other organized religious groups whose leadership isn't stuck in the middle ages.  

At this point, I don't believe that tradition can be held up as a reasonable reason to stay with the Catholic Church.  Even if every generation of your family has been Catholic back to the very beginning of the organization, do you think that supporting the church - and this Pope in particular - are reasonable?  If every Catholic, hell even if only half of all Catholics, rose up and quit the church because of the decisions its leadership has made then you can bet your holy rosary that changes would be made.  They want people in the pews, tithing money.

But as long as regular Catholics on the street continue to support the church by remaining as members, the leadership has absolutely no reason to change their stance on anything and will continue on their merry way.

I just don't understand.

Spring Has Sprung

The first day of spring is a BIG DEAL in Iran and by extension, for Iranian families all over the world.  Iran is on a lunar calendar and the first day of the year is the first day of spring - TODAY!  Homes are cleaned from top to bottom in preparation of the day (My Mother and sisters in law have been cleaning and scrubbing their houses for for weeks.  I did the dishes and vacuumed this morning.  Yay me!) and schools and businesses are closed for a couple of weeks to give everyone a vacation.  I haven't been to Iran for this holiday yet but from the descriptions from Husband and his family, it sounds a lot like the last couple weeks of December here but without the trampling stampedes of shoppers at the mall.

Because we live here and the kids are American in every way except the half of their blood that gives them unibrows and lets them get a beautiful tan in the summer, we make an effort to "do" as many Iranian holidays as we can so they can get a little bit of the culture and heritage of their father.  The Persian New Year, Noruz, is a fun one involving picking out a fish, dying hard-boiled eggs and trying to get something green to grow in time for the holiday.  These are all for the sofreh-ye haft-sinn (I call it the haftseen because honestly, who can remember all those weird words) which means 'Seven Dishes Setting' and is a sort of tablescape of things that each represent something.  

All seven things start with sinn (the letter S in farsi) and represent different things.  Rebirth is represented by sprouts - usually wheat or lentils - but I thought it was supposed to be grass (hard to believe we've been at this for 15 years huh?) so I grew grass seeds in a flowerpot.  Husband and I had a race, he was trying to germinate them on a plate covered up by a wet paper towel but I thought that was totally idiotic so I planted them in dirt and mine grew - his didn't.  WIN!  

Health and beauty are represented by apples.  No problem.  I bought some at the grocery store. 

Love is represented by senjed which apparently is the dry fruit of the wild olive.  It's unobtainable in regular grocery stores so Husband had to pay a ridiculous amount of money at the Persian specialty food store for approximately 8 of the little fuckers.

Garlic represents medicine.  Another easy one, throw a head of garlic in the grocery cart with the apples.

Sumac represents the color of the sunrise.  Apparently when the sun comes up on the new year, good conquers evil.  I was not burned into a pile of ashes this morning so I am suspicious of the validity of this particular claim.

Vinegar represents age and patience.  (I just realized I don't have any vinegar on my haftseen - FAIL!)  How perfect is that?  Aren't old people "vinegary"?  God knows Grandmother certainly has her vinegar-fueled moments!  I don't know about patience but vinegar is a perfect representation of age.  These Persians are pretty smart.

Plus you put colored eggs (Hey!  The Easter Bunny has a Persian cousin called The Noruz Bunny!) in a dish to represent fertility.  I hard boiled the eggs first because babies?  DO NOT WANT!  Everyone has other things they put on the haftseen and Husband's family has always put a copy of the Koran on theirs.  I did too because 1. we have a very pretty one that was getting all dusty anyway and 2. I will be sending a photo of the kids in front of the haftseen to Husband's family and they are devout and I don't want them to know that their daughter in law is evil.  

The last thing on the haftseen is a goldfish (we cheated this year) which represents life and the end of the astral year associated with the constellation Pisces.

I totally cribbed all this info from THIS BOOK which is a cookbook/cheat-sheet for people interested in Persian cooking and culture.  The recipe for noodle soup on page 66 is the best soup ever!

So we're going to have a nice Persian dinner tonight (if I ever get my ass in the kitchen and start cooking it) and then on Sunday we'll have dinner at Brotherinlaw & Awesomesisterinlaw's house where we will stuff ourselves on her awesome cooking (think Thanksgiving dinner with different food) and give the kids presents and crisp new money for the new year.

Here is a pic of a haftseen from the Payvand website:

And here are some super fancy eggs from another blog that the Noruz Bunny brings (She's totally owning you Easter Bunny!):


And here is our humble little haftseen.  This is the first year in many years that we haven't killed the fish before the actual holiday.  One year Things One and Two "fed" it pennies and cheerios and another year the cat got it.  Last year I didn't even bother getting one.  This year's fish is a betta fish, I'm hoping it will last longer than the goldfish did.  His name is Rambo since he's a fighting fish.  Watch out bitches, my fish will kick your ass!

Happy Noruz everyone!

Happy St. Patricks Day!

I have nothing green to wear!  So seeing as I have to go into school to take my last final exam and will be surrounded by 18-22 year old college students who will no doubt take every opportunity to pinch non-green wearing individuals, I am going to enter the black hole of doom, a.k.a. daughter's bedroom, to steal a green t-shirt from her.

If I'm not out by Friday, send in a search party.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Homework Hell

When I was accepted into the University of Washington as a transfer student from the second best Community College in the nation, the orientation they required all new students to attend made sure we knew that the degree program we were entering would require more reading and writing than we had previously been expected to do.  I am an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction and as a bonus, I read pretty quickly.  Writing has always been something I've enjoyed and it isn't a huge struggle for me to put words to paper.  (You're completely shocked by this, I'm sure.)  So I naively assumed that I would be able to handle the additional reading and writing necessary to complete my degree of choice.

Oh foolish foolish me.

This quarter has knocked me on my ass.  I've read one textbook, one collection of historical American documents with explanatory essays by a noted historian, two non-fiction books about adolescents in American high schools and four 2 inch binders full of scholarly journal articles, essays and other various works of writing.  I've written so many words I can't begin count them and today I finished the second of two final research papers for this quarter.

The first paper was for my ED456 class, Adolescents in School and Society.  It's title is Adolescents with ADHD: Strategies for Schools to Improve Performance and Increase High School Graduation Rates.  It is ten pages long and has eleven peer-reviewed journal articles and books (all of which I had to read in addition to the regular class readings mentioned above) in it's bibliography.

The second paper was for my BIS338 class, Political Institutions and Processes.  It's title is Present Day Iran and the United States in the 1930's: Policy Making in Response to Economic Crisis.  It is fourteen pages long and has fifteen peer-reviewed journal articles and books (all of which I had to read in addition to the regular class readings mentioned above) in it's bibliography.

I'm exhausted.

I still have a final exam on Tuesday afternoon for my BIS330 class, Democratic Capitalism, but after the two final research papers, that exam is going to feel like a walk in the park.  When I am teaching I am going to remember that final research papers are much more work and require a much deeper understanding of the material than final exams and I will only assign final research papers to classes I hate and want to punish.

Husband and the offspring are highly relieved that I have (after Tuesdays exam) almost two weeks off to catch up and there is a LOT of catching up to do.  Husband has been doing almost 100% of the cooking and he (with a bit of help from the things and hardly any help from our exceptionally lazy daughter) has also been taking care of the lions share of the cleaning.  But my office looks like a bomb went off, I haven't turned in the tax forms to the accountant, the garden is desperate for some spring cleaning and every closet and drawer in the house needs to be emptied of junk and reorganized.  I also need to spend time with Grandmother who has slowed down a lot lately and misses our regular outings and games of cards in the afternoons.

My goal for next quarter is to figure out a more balanced way of getting my schoolwork done and still keeping up with my other responsibilities.  I know something has to give while I am in school but this quarter EVERYTHING else has given and it's making me very cranky.

We will have to wait until The Great Grade Race Winter 09 Edition to see whether or not all my hard work in school and slacking off in everything else has paid off.  Grades come out next week...

A Double Pregnancy Household of Hell

So have y'all seen the story about the Iron Chef Cat Cora and her wife Jennifer - both of whom are pregnant with their third and fourth children?

Now let me preface my totally unsolicited opinion by saying that I totally support the rights of gays to get married, have babies, adopt babies, foster babies and all of the other batshit crazy things that we straights have the right to do.  If they want to ruin their carefree, single, childless lives with spouses and short, demanding despots, who am I to stop them?  Proposition 8 in California is a hateful, bigoted piece of legislation and I hope it goes down in flames in either the California State Supreme Court or THE Supreme Court if the judges in California have their heads too far up their asses to see that it infringes on civil rights and is unconstitutional.

That said, can you IMAGINE living in a house with two pregnant women?

I was a raving, psycho bitch when I was pregnant.  Both times.  My entire body - not just my belly - swelled up like a hippopotamus, every joint in my body ached, I puked all day long and if I wasn't puking I wanted to.  My back hurt, my sciatic nerve cheerfully sent shooting pains down my legs in the middle of the night and my children were so active in utero that I was bruised internally from stem to stern. 

Let me just say that if you are the type of woman who cheerily tells pregnant women "You're pregnant?  What a blessing!  I never felt more wonderful, glowing and feminine than I did when I was pregnant.  I wish I could be pregnant all the time!" then DON'T TELL ME.  The last Gidget-impersonator who said that to me is permanently scarred from the encounter and I don't want to break another nail.

All of my lovely pregnancy induced discomfort, pain and hell made me a VERY crabby bitch.  I snarled at everyone, burst into tears at least three times a day and firmly felt that if I couldn't sleep then by GOD husband wasn't going to sleep because it's his fucking fault I feel like shit anyway so get the hell out of bed and go buy me some ice cream and I don't care that it's three o'clock in the morning!  Husband should have gotten a medal for putting up with me through two pregnancies.  Three beautiful, healthy children just wasn't enough of a reward for what I put him through.

So Cat Cora is pregnant, her wife is pregnant and they have a 22 month old and a 5 year old.  I don't know shit about Iron Chef but I assume it is a television show and I hope for Cat and her wife's sake that she makes a boatload of money at it because they are going to need to hire two slaves - one for each of them.  Otherwise who will go get them ice cream in the middle of the night?  Who will rub their feet?  Who will take care of their older kids because if they touch me or call MOMMY! one more time I will scream?

And then the babies will come!  Who will get them ice packs for their sore rears?  Who will get up and change the baby before bringing it to them in bed so they can rest and recover from pushing a watermelon out of their lady bits?  Who will bring them the box of tissues when they are sobbing their eyes out because THE KLEENEX *sob* COMMERCIAL IS *sob* JUST SO *sob* SWEET!  Who will call their Mom because one of them just wants her Mommy because holy fuck what was I thinking that I could have babies?

I wish Cat and Jennifer all the luck and money in the world, they are going to need it!  I think a top shelf liquor party would be the most appropriate for a baby shower.

Thirty-Five

On Saturday, March 7th, I turned thirty-five years old.

*Excuse me while I breathe into this paper bag for a moment.*

Um, hellloooo...how the hell did THAT happen?  You know, how did I become a GROWN-UP?  Wasn't it just yesterday that I was rockin' the grunge look with my flannel shirts and torn up jeans?  Or getting a tattoo for my twenty-third birthday?  You'd have done it too if you were driving a minivan and changing three kids diapers at twenty-three!  I had to do something to act my age!

But now acting my age is not wearing mini-skirts.  Keeping my hair color in the 'naturally occurs in nature' range.  Having the bag-boy at the grocery store call me 'ma'am'.  I AM NOT A FUCKING MA'AM!  Wait a minute, I am a ma'am.  I'm old enough to be a ma'am.  I hardly ever get carded when I order a drink.  I'm getting GRAY HAIR, crow's feet and crooked toes!

So let this be a notice to the world - I am no longer having any birthdays.  This is the last one.  EVER.  I refuse to ever grow any older than thirty-five.

After all, my mother is only thirty-nine...

And Cousinbff isn't going to get any older either.  She's gonna have to stop at thirty-three.

And we will all live happily ever after...

The end.

Decorating Porn Giveaway

By now you all know that I am a porn addict.  I try try try to decorate our house and my family keeps RUINING it for me.  The other day while browsing porn (instead of doing homework, don't tell my parents!), I went to Janet & Joy's Mogg Blogg.  Janet & Joy are the ladies behind Moggit, the flashy blinky thing on my sidebar.  They are hysterical and help keep the whole decorating craze in perspective for those of us who actually LIVE in our homes rather than just decorate and photograph them.

So it must be my lucky month because the Mogg-girls are having a giveaway contest!  They're giving away a beautiful copy of a Domino Magazine book of decorating (more porn, yay!) to the winner.  At first they were asking for "your own personal decorating disasters" but since they had very little response, now it's just 'comment to win a cool book bitches!' (I'm paraphrasing). 

But I HAVE a personal decorating disaster!  It's daughter's room that I got about halfway done decorating last summer while she was off sailing the seven seas like Sinbad the Sailor.  (I totally would have gotten it completely done if it hadn't taken me THREE FUCKING DAYS just to CLEAN it!)  And I really, really wanted to share it with Janet & Joy because they understand me and my addiction.

So this is what I sent to the Mogg-girls:

Now, this needs some explanation. This is my fourteen year old daughter's bedroom. Last summer while she was off for a week sailing in the San Juan Islands with my Mom & Stepdan (rough life that kid has) I surprised her by cleaning out her room (it took three days just for that phase of the project) and then decorating it. The valance over the window is the COOLEST fabric. It looks like a floral pattern but up close it has skulls and bones on it:



Very hip for a thirteen at the time year old girl. I also made a pillow case out of that fabric with a zebra trim and then another pillowcase with the zebra fabric for the pillowcase and the skull fabric for the trim.

The desk under the window is two nightstands that my husband had his painters paint (they missed the space between the drawers - MEN!) with a board across the top, also painted black so daughter could have a nice large desk to spread out her artwork on. I bought her new bedding, a zebra throw blanket and beanbag chair, re-did all her artwork to go with the theme of black and white zebra print with some red thrown in for color. We took the bed off the frame (so she can't shove all her crap under the bed) and pushed it up against the wall with lots of fun pillows so it's like a daybed/couch.

Husband made the two bookcases and someday he will paint them black too. You know, actually finish the job?

We put the fun disco ball and colored light on the desk and the long black strip above the desk is a black light so it looks very funky with the overhead light off and the disco and black lights on.

In the very bottom of the pic you can see a tiny bit of one of those scary origami lamps from Ikea that she begged for and I agreed to buy on the condition that she put the fucker together herself because there was no way in hell I was going to do it.  It is supposed to be hung up over her bed but she took it down a week ago to change the lightbulb and it hasn't grown wings and flown back into place so it is still on the floor.

I still need to organize and accessorize the bookcases and she wants to put zebra wrapping paper on the ceiling.  (No way in hell are we wallpapering but I can tape some paper to the ceiling with the best of them).  Then I want to have husbands painters paint the big dresser black and find some cool knobs for it.  And after that I am hoping for tiny leprechauns to bring me buckets of gold.

So my question is, how do I keep the little slob out of her bedroom so it will stay clean and organized for longer than THIRTY FREAKING SECONDS??? Ladies, as you can see, I am in dire need of your decorating assistance. Please help me before daughter's crap takes over the entire house and we all drown in the paraphernalia of a fourteen year old girl.

Being Thrifty

Husband is thrifty.  He is so cheap that some very dear friends of ours gave him Generic Rubbers for Cheap Fuckers.  My Dad calls him "Thrift" and tells people that his son-in-law can squeeze blood out of a stone.  

(Of course he follows that up with "it's a good thing too or Katy would have shopped him into the poorhouse long ago" but that is neither here nor there.)

After 15+ years of marriage, some of husband's habits have started to rub off on me.  As I'm sure you all know, the economy is in the shithouse and it's looking like it might be awhile before things look up.  Husband owns his own general contracting business and while he still has work - he doesn't build new, just remodeling, tenant improvements and maintenance - things are definitely slower these days.  That combined with the eleventy-gazillion dollars we're giving to the University every quarter for my tuition and books has squeezed the family budget pretty thin.  So I have been looking for ways to economize.

Now I'm not terribly vain but I do love my hair.  I don't have thick, flowing locks of perfect hair but it's long and a halfway decent color (going a little gray now) and I tend to fuss over it quite a bit.  I have been going to a salon that Husband sent me to because he does their maintenance and improvements and he said all the ladies there look gorgeous so they must do good hair.  To get it cut and highlighted, after tax and tip was costing me $250 bucks a pop.  I only got it done four times a year but that is still ONE THOUSAND FUCKING DOLLARS A YEAR FOR MY HAIR!!!  That is just obscene.  So the last time I had it colored a little darker so I could quit with the highlights and decided I would let it grow out so it is all one length and then getting it trimmed would be much cheaper.

This morning I was thinking that how freaking hard could it be to comb my wet hair straight down my back and cut 2 inches off it in a straight line?  Husband got his degree in engineering (my father has since forgiven me for marrying an engineer) so SURELY he could cut hair in a straight line and save me the thirty bucks it would cost to go to even a cheap hair place for a trim.  So when I got out of the shower I handed him a comb and the scissors, told him how much to cut off and stood still while he cut it.

He did a damn fine job if I do say so myself...

That 'deer in the headlights' look I have on my face is me just about to scream from frustration.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a picture of your own hair in the mirror?  It took about 50 shots to get a halfway decent one!

It looks like my hair is crooked but that's just because my head is tilted.  It's perfectly even and exactly what I wanted.  For free.

Now I can go shopping.  After all, I just saved us a whole boatload of money!

It's Almost My Birthday

And I want one of these...

more animals


more animals


more animals


more animals

So cute!  So tiny!  So prickly!

And it would be funny to watch my dumb dog try to make friends with a prickly little hedgehog.  She was afraid of the chickens, I wonder if she'd run away from these guys?