The Mudflats Blog from Alaska

I discovered this blog while avoiding homework and it is funny AND political - my favorite combination outside of tequila and limes.  Dad will especially appreciate this blog!  The latest post is about a moose who stole a swingset.

One of my favorite quotes is from yesterday's post, "the McCain campaign is getting desperate.  They've tried just about everything to postpone, or lessen the carnage of the looming bloodbath that will be the Vice Presidential debate this Thursday night".  What a fitting description!

I'm thinking Thursday night might be a good night for a party...

I Hate Grocery Shopping

Am I the only one?  I loathe grocery shopping with the heat of a thousands suns.  A dentist appointment would be better.  A bikini wax, hell a BRAZILIAN wax would be better.  And why is it that the thing I hate hate hate the most (even more than ironing) has to be done all the fucking time?  Two or three times a week sometimes, especially if the kids have friends over which they do a LOT.  Every time I turn around we are out of milk, cheese, apples, green beans...  (ok, I lied.  We will never run out of green beans because no one ever eats them.  I will die with the same package of frozen green beans in my freezer that I bought when we were first married).

Today I have taken matters into my own hands.

I sent husband to Costco.  He will come home with everything on the list plus eleventy-million other things that he felt we HAD TO HAVE.  I have to clean out the pantry and the mudroom in preparation to house all the crap he will buy and it still might not all fit.  We will have to take out a second mortgage on the house to pay for everything he will buy.  The house will be full to the rafters with gigantic bags of chips, ten pounds of bananas, eight gallons of milk, fourteen bottles of shampoo, six thousand cans of soda, a gazillion eggs, and seven heads of lettuce.

If I'm lucky I won't have to go grocery shopping for at least a week.

Canbert the Robot

Thing two built a very cool little robot from a tin can and a kit we bought at the new game store in town.  Of course, husband had to get in on the action.  Thing two was very impressed when husband showed him how to fix a not-working joint piece with chewing gum.

All three of my guys with Canbert.  This picture pretty much sums up their personalities perfectly.

Here's the newest addition to the family.  After much discussion (read, yelling and screaming) he was christened Canbert the Robot.

Dog does not like Canbert very much.  He makes noise and walks funny.  But she tolerates him because she is a VERY GOOD dog.

Very Scary

Daughter called me this afternoon from tutoring, more than a little freaked out.  The backstory is that on Tuesdays and Thursdays she goes to a tutoring center for extra help with math.  She takes a different school bus, gets off at the closest stop, and then has to walk about 3/4 of a mile to the tutor.  It is along a main arterial road that is adjacent to her old middle school.  I pick her up after her 2 hours of tutoring is over.

Today she was walking along and a police officer cruised by her three or four times before finally stopping in front of her and motioning her over to his car.  He asked her if she had noticed that a guy on a bicycle had been following her for five or six blocks.  She hadn't, and he told her that this guy was known to the police and not a good person to have following her.  Police officer got her name and cell phone number, told her to take her iPod headphones out of her ears and walk to where she was going without dawdling while he went to "talk" to the guy on the bike.

She was disturbed by the whole episode, and made it quite clear that she didn't ever want to walk to tutoring from the bus stop again.  I am disturbed too.  The what-might-have-been is hard not to think about and I'm also more than a little pissed off by the fact that a high school freshman cannot walk three-quarters of a mile on a well-travelled small town street and feel safe.  I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation, and yet here we are.

I sent an email to the city police station to thank that officer.  Had he not said something to her, we never would have known and this weirdo who was following her (and how weird must he have been acting WHILE he was following her for the cop to pick up on it from a moving vehicle?!?!?) might have noticed the pattern of her walking along there every Tuesday and Thursday and made a move to hurt her.  I don't know that officer but if I ever get to meet him, I might just kiss him.  I shudder to think about what might have happened had he not been so observant and concerned for a young girl's safety.

I'll be changing her tutoring schedule so I can drive her from now on.

Playing Heroscape - aka, Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies

Thing two finally found a game he likes and I can understand.  It takes a minimal amount of set-up, doesn't take weeks to play, and is enough like a normal game so as not to make me want to flay the flesh from my body.

I did drink wine while playing.  So shoot me.

Thing two made sure all of our little men made the appropriate noises when they made their various moves.  Deaths were gruesome and noisy.

The little man in the blue cape was important.  I have no idea why.

Onto a New Chapter

School starts for me today.  After starting at community college in 2004 and inching along a little at a time just taking one class per quarter, I finally realized that I'd never finish unless I went full-time.  It took 5 quarters of full-time classes to get to the 2 year mark and now I'm starting at the University of Washington.

I'm not nervous, just excited.  The school is a satellite that shares the campus with the community college I attended so I know the campus inside and out already, including the library, bookstore, and most importantly, the COFFEE CARTS!  So I have the bonus of not having to navigate in unfamiliar territory.  And I have to admit, it will be nice not sharing a classroom with running start students.  They are sharp as whips and a big asset to every class they are in but it is unnerving to be working on group projects with kids only two or three years older than daughter.  I had one group meeting at my house last year and decided never to do it again when daughter remarked on how "hawt" one of my group members was.

Somehow it feels like this is the beginning of something new and big for me.  I don't know what's coming, but it will be an interesting ride.  Of course I have a plan, but anyone who knows me knows that my idea of a plan is more like a general outline and could change at any moment.  (Especially if I can convince husband that Las Vegas would be a very nice place to live!)  But for now, I am off to class in search of the coveted 4.0.

I can't let scientistgeekbrother beat me in the grade department!

Unleashing my Inner Teenager

You'll have to imagine the eyerolling, barely muffled stomping through the house and air of disdain.  I can't project it properly in this medium.

I am paying for my teenage years.  Paying dearly.