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.

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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?