You're Beautiful

I guess I will be spending much of this week getting THAT song out of my head.

Last week was spent consoling my 8 year old for she did not win the "High School Musical Lunch takeover" from Radio Disney. 'But Mom, I entered the code word EVERY SINGLE DAY!' It is a shame that a company so dear to her heart can be the teacher of such a life lesson, i.e. even Radio Disney can screw you over.

Well I had some very good answers for the trivia, and as I said, I knew Mrtl would get the brown sugar question. She is all about the baking, that lady. But I shall not say I'd love to try one of her pies, because that would just be...uh...wrong.

Anyway. Amy was correct, the VW Beetle was the most sold car in the 50s and 60s. Too bad one of those same cars drove me to high school every day via my neighbor, as their heating mechanism tends to fail over time, and DAMN it is cold in St. Louis in the winters!!

Elvis' favorite drink was PEPSI, or so the official drink of Graceland so claims. I thought it was going to be something like sasparilla or hootch or something. Needless to say the Elvis category was not one of my best.

Molasses to brown sugar. Yes! in my best Ed McMahon voice.

The Flintstones apparently used CLAMS for money, hence the nickname. Our final guess was turtles, because I honestly could not recall them EVER paying for anything. I thought they just bartered. And they were in the Royal order of the Water Buffalos, so didn't they get free stuff?

I am saddened to say one of my favorite blog haunts, debutant, has decided to close up shop for awhile, hopefully only temporarily. For whatever reasons I can certainly respect her decision, but she was a daily inspiration for me and will be missed. Hopefully I can try to continue using her wisdom and motivation for my own blogging and use her strength as hope for my own life.

***** And in weather news, it's supposed to be in the 60s this week so I doubt you will see me too much! I need to go outside and get some sunrays!!******

Appreciation

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to congratulate me on my 'secret'. It is really strange to me that I am pregnant again, my kids are 8 and 6, it's been awhile! I hemmed and hawed about it for years, LP has been begging me since Rug was a baby to have another one. She took a lot out of me, and, I just couldn't see how we could have one more. But, we are! And I am so glad I can share all the great boring details of my pregnancy with YOU. :)

The first time I was preggers, I was too busy thinking about getting married, and getting settled, and the second time we were moving into a new house, and I got a new job, it was chaotic. This time, I should be able to enjoy it more, and relax. But I think I'm more neurotic than ever! Imagine that!

Last week was exhausting for me. Working until 9 or so at night transcribing, I was beat. Down. Men will never understand the 'fatigue' part of pregnancy. It's not like we're just a little tired and need to rest our wee little heads. It's collapsing, I cannot take another step fatigue. I made the beds and cleaned up the kitchen this morning and that required a 20 minute rest!

So here's my Monday tangent: I wanted to wait until Friday to tell my girls the news, because that is when I go to my first doctor's visit. I am a little leery about telling such news that may have not so good outcomes. Anyway, I was giving LP a real hard time about it, because he wanted to shout it out with a megaphone, and I wanted it kept quiet, and then...Boom goes the Dynamite, I let it slip Thursday night at dinner. The girls were ELATED. They screamed, they clapped, they..did not ask any uncomfortable questions. (YET)

Having had told them, I thought it was appropriate to just go ahead and spread the word. I told 3 of my very good friends, and then later at the soccer games I told the grandparents.

I do NOT like being the center of attention EVER, so I did not tell anyone else.

Today, at Al's soccer game, LP told some of the dads when we arrived, and later on, Rug came over to ask me how I was feeling, and that the baby was probably as big as 'sushi' right now. Well, one of my other Soccer Mom friends was extremely miffed that I had not told her right away about the information. I mean, not ha ha, I'm mad at you. NOT talking to me mad at me. She could not believe I had not told her yet. Well, I was just like, whatever, be mad. I am not about to let someone take away my excitement and make me feel less because they were not the right number on a pecking order. Whatev, I didn't care.

What bothered me was that she went over and told EVERYONE ELSE, "Uh, just so YOU know, and aren't the LAST to know like I was, but Jana is pregnant." Just.Like. That.

Yeah, way out of line, and really, totally weird, right? Who gives a shit about what I do anyway? I'm just a girl, a girl in the world. Give me a break!

Yes. I am done.

On a much brighter note, my parents, my dad's cousins, LP and I won 2nd place at a trivia night last night! Woo hoo! That useless information I store so delicately in my mind finally had some pay off. Well, okay, we basically broke even, but still! 2nd place! And the categories, totally written for me: Cardinals Baseball, TV cartoons, Movie Clips, Name Brands/Logos, TV sitcom theme songs. Yeah, I completely swept the cartoon category. Too bad there wasn't a "Muppet" category, we'd of won 1st for sure!

So here were a few questions we got right, see if you can answer them:

1. What was the most popular vehicle make/model sold worldwide in the 50s and 60s?

2. What was Elvis' favorite soft drink?

3. What do you add to sugar to get brown sugar?

4. What did the Flintstones use for money?

Good luck!!! (* Okay, I lied, we totally got #4 wrong. WTF? I just remember the washing machine and the typewriter!)

SPF Friday-- HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I had to participate this week because the lovely KRISTINE is having her 29th birthday and she has all invited us for a big blog party. What a blog party! Big blogs, little blogs...(with apologies to "Go Dog Go" one of my favorite kid books)

Anyway, she is wanting some love, and rightly so. She has been the keeper of SPF and is just a great gal, so she deserves some blogger love. Happy Birthday Kristine, hope you can have what you love, and love all you have!!

SPF:

1. What I would 'cyber' give to Kristine for her birthday as a gift.

2. 3 words on a piece of paper that describe Kristine.

3. A stupid face of me. (that's easy!)

Oh and by the way, go to Kristine's and drive yourself crazy with the rock band picture. LP and I have been working on it all morning. Then wish her a glorious birthday.


What I would give Kristine as a gift:



I know she has been wanting to do some mad landscaping, so she could use some Home Depot shopping for some bulbs and plants and what not to decorate her outdoor space.

But do not purchase cabinets there. I think I have made that abundantly clear to you people.




3 words that describe Kristine:


See, my daughter is learning about the -ous suffix this week in school, so I felt I needed to exercise her lesson. And get yet another flippin' gratuitious shot of my cat.











Only on the internet people. Happy Birthday Kristine, I don't act stupid for just anyone.












And finally, since this is the day when I usually have more than 2 people stop by, if you feel inclined, I will share with you a little bitty secret.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT.

Ciao!

Dear Diary:

This post is strictly for my own posterity.

Wednesday: Sandy came over, complained and complained about everything. I feel so badly for her. I want her to be happy.

Thursday: You know what happened on this day. You know.

Friday: LP totally broke a promise. I sulked. We also had dinner with T & J, but not really. It was weird.

Saturday: Rug scored a goal on her new soccer team, she is playing up a year and she did great. I am so proud of her. Went to Pizza Man for lunch. Played DDR, of course.

Sunday: Tried to match all of the white socks in the house with its respective matching sock. I still came out with about 12 socks with a mate. Where do they go.

I made the girls watch "Clash of the Titans" before they went and bastardized it with a remake. Not that anyone would really bother with it. Ah, but the Kraken, he just ROCKS.

It is supposed to snow tonight. It's March already! i want spring!!

The time is NOW people

There is a very detrimental social issue that has been all but ignored in our culture. It is yet another obvious sign of the Apocalypse, as well as the fall of our civilization as we know it today.

Hollywood has gone mad, people.

The movie remakes, are OUT OF CONTROL. Completely.

But where are the boycotts? Why are we accepting these horrible, putrid facades to continue? When will the madness stop?

About 10 years ago, I worked as an after-school tutor. I had a very smart, young girl as one of my students, who just needed some extra time for her work (Her parents were the Super Parents, and had enlisted this poor child in every activity under the sun, and then could not understand why she was getting poor grades. I digress.). One night, we were correcting her homework, and she got 100%, and I said, "Hey hey hey!" and she looked at me quizzically. "you know, Fat Albert." "Uh, no. Who's he?"

At the time I was only 23, and could only accept that her parents did not educate her well enough on what was to me, a very important part of culture, that was 70s and 80s morning cartoons. I did not realize at the time that instead of turning into nostalgic lost icons of the past, they would turn instead, into a far, far worse monster than I could ever conjure up.

Fat Albert is now imprinted on the minds of today's youth as the guy from SNL.

Scooby Doo is now a 'real life' movie, made up of Freddie Prinze Jr. in a bad wig (who should be ashamed of himself, considering his lineage).

Willy Wonka is no longer the sweet singing Gene Wilder, but some whacked out Hunter S. Thompson wannabe of Johnny Depp.

I won't even DISCUSS the Bewitched debacle, don't bring it up.

When will it stop people? Dukes of Hazard? Starsky and Hutch? My GOD we must put our collective feet down!!

One of the best parts of being a parent is being able to share with your children the things that made you happy as a child as well. It's my duty and RIGHT as a parent to corrupt them with the same crazy lessons I learned from the movies I saw as a kid. They should know about Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Witch Mountain and the Apple Dumplings gangs. Not some poor imitations!!

I refused to allow my girls to go see the 'new' Pink Panther movie. The only reason I will allow them to see 'the Shaggy Dog' is because Tim Allen can do it justice, and they won't watch the first one because they are adverse to anything in black and white (which is such a shame, but thank goodness "Bye Bye Birdie" was in color!!). But what options do we have instead?? "She's the Man"...oh wait, that's a remake of Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night'...."Aquamarine"....wait, that's basically a rip off of "Splash"....sigh.

I guess we'll just play with our Easy bake Oven this weekend and make Play-Doh pizza.

P.S. This post was inspired by THIS INFORMATION. Is nothing sacred????

Dick Van Patten he ain't

Today I have been completely obsessed with the Duggar family. Last night, I watched their story on the Discovery Channel, which apparently was their highest rated show ever. The parents, devout Southern Baptists, have 16 (sixteen. Sixteen. SIXTEEN.) children, and built themselves a 7,000 square foot home to live in. Jim Bob and Michelle homeschool their children, sew their own clothes, teach them violin, and have their own church services on Sunday.

LP and I watched it last night, switching between that, the Anatomy of Sex, and a show on polygamy. Needless to say, we had our share of 'relationships' as it were.

This morning, as I was packing lunches, making breakfasts, making beds, doing hair, and emptying the dishwasher, I dropped some cereal on the floor, and he said, "Come on honey, let's have 14 more."

Ummmmm........no.

On Hiatus

I realize I have not blogged in over a week, and it is not due to some catastrophic illness or project due at the end of the week; granted, I've been pretty busy but not enough to excuse my blogging slack-ness.

It just seems every few months or so I have to STEP BACK from blogging, otherwise it completely takes over my day. If I get started on my blog, and then continually check it and follow links, etc. well, as you probably know I end up looking at the clock and realize 2 hours has gone by.

I've just got to re-focus is all.

And the weather has been super nice! Rug and I went out several times andI used my regular Minolta camera to take pictures! And I took them to the store and got them developed! They turned out great, but I don't have a scanner so you won't see them. And that's okay.

A friend of mine came over last week. She is very cool, but has only been using email for around 2 months, so that tells you how techno-savvy she is. Anyway, she asked about blogging, and I told her I had one, and she wanted to see it. See it?!?! Uh....no.

The only person I have told about my blog whom I see on a daily basis is my husband. The rest of my readers who 'know' me in real life live far away from me. This way, if I say something stupid, I don't feel like someone is going to call me on it (except for Jimmy, but he never writes anyway so no worries there).

But to have someone from my circle of friends reading my blog, hmm, I don't know about that one. We shall see what transpires.

So, that is it. Just taking a blogging break, I've done it before, I'm sure I'll do it again.

And one last note: I got a kickass new dancepad for my DDR!!! IT's so cool!!!

Okay, later.

SPF

Welcome to the March 3 2006 edition of SPF, brought to us always by Kristine who has since moved but I have yet to figure out how to get her blogroll link fixed, so we'll get to that later.


*My Favorite pair of Jeans.

Well, right now they'd be any pair that will fit me at this point. I used to be a hardcore Old Navy jeans fan, but then they started falling apart on me, so I became a bornagain Levi-Strauss-ithan.








*My birthmarks/Moles/Freckles
I do not have any birthmarks, but I have had these two freckles under my eyes since I was about five years old. My daughter used to trace them with her fingers when I carried her around. This is also a gratuitous shot of my diamond earrings. And yes I am once again wearing a grey sweatshirt, why do you ask?
















*My photo albums/scrapbooks
Here are where a few of my albums are, right next to me at all times at my computer desk. The rest of them are in the basement, which is a pretty bad place for them really, you know, what with flooding and fires and the wrath of the basement Gods and all. Please, do notice the David Beckham book there. And I do have a lot a lot of pics still on my hard drive, anxiously awaiting to be printed.










*Extra picture for fun

You really truly didn't believe that I would be dumb enough to set my purse on fire right? Well let me tell you, if this picture doesn't prove to you my blonde-worthiness, what does?

All I can remember is that I kept thinking my drink was going to get spilled or knocked over, so I kept pushing it and pushing it...inadvertantly pushing my purse directly into a candle. There were 3 of us sitting there, and not a one of us smelled the burning...a guy from ACROSS THE ROOM smelled it and came over, it was only then that we realized my purse was on fire. And, to add insult to injury, I thought it was a Target purse (which was tragic enough) but when I got it home, it said "Nine West" in side. OH well!!!

What happen on Nyquil cannot be explained

I have documented on numerous occasions my inability to tolerate anything with caffeine in it. I am also a person who does not do medication well. Advil is probably about the only medicine I can take without becoming the frigging Trix rabbit totally feening for some colored flavored cereal. But with the sickness I have had the last few days, the all-over chills and sweat chills were about to drive me insane. I had to take something, otherwise melt into a giant glob of influenza nastiness. The damn Vicks vapor inhaler just was not cutting it, even though I had become acutely addicted.

LP insisted I buy some Nyquil for himself, as he is normally a pretty good sleeper but I guess he felt he needed to hibernate sleep so he took some Monday night and slept hard. I, on the other hand, stayed on the couch and watched "Play Misty for Me" in the wee hours of the morning. (**ooh have you seen this movie? I loved how Clint Eastwood just has these faces, you know?**) Only to wake up miserable and downright crabby yesterday. And I quote my oldest daughter, "Mommy, you are way super crabby."

So last night, I figured, what do I have to lose, I feel like crap already, what's more jitters going to hurt? I took just a teaspoon of Nyquil right before bed and put on my kerchief and cap for a long winter's sleep...when from out on the lawn arose such a clatter...no wait, wrong story.

The sleeping!!!!! It was marvelous. I woke up this morning at 6:22 a.m., rested and feeling much better, albeit with a slight 'hangover' type headache that has not gone away completely yet, but enough where I can tolerate that and not have to think about all the clogged up-ness of my sinuses.

Mostly though, the dreams were totally and indubitably the best part of taking Nyquil. Now, I don't know if you are a regular Nyquil user that the dreams become so vivid, but since I have not taken a sip of Nyquil since 1991, the dreams might have been a tad bit more hallucinogetic.

Dream sequence #1:

Terrorists had struck, but this time they did it by lighting a giant Sparkler in downtown NYC and were bastardizing the Star Spangled Banner using messed up words. Sort of like what Roseanne did, I guess. I was feeling bad because I thought the colors were pretty.

Dream sequence #2:

I was an FBI agent, but I was also Geena Davis in a blue-green pantsuit (*Note: Some people believe we dream in b/w and then our brain adds color when we wake up...do you honestly think I would choose blue-green?) I was working undercover as a cop and when one of my fellow agents was wounded, who looked just like HDL, my cop superiors came to my house while I was having pork roast with my family to interrogate my about the incident. But I was Geena Davis and they trusted and respected me, so they said they were only there to cover all the bases. I was feeling guilty for leading a double life, and not telling my cop buddies the truth. There was also a train cop scene, but it'd be hard to describe.

Dream sequence #3:

Terrorists strike, again, yet this time they targeted my hometown, and they had a plan that they were going to first eradicate all Action Movie Heroes (I am so not kidding, the Nyquil I swear) and of course Arnold was first, Bruce Willis was next, and for some reason Angelina Jolie was 3rd on the list. After a big explosion, I was reunited with my husband who was BARRY MANILOW of all people, who was wearing an ascot, and when we embraced, he said, "This experience had showed me that I don't want to be married anymore." and I was all like, "Okay, Barry, whatever you want, just hold me for now."

Dream sequence #4:

LP was a foreign ambassador, and we were visiting Gaddafi (it was like the Celebrity Dream Night or something!) and through a mixup had us staying at a Best Western, even though we went to all these formal balls, and were all dressed up, eating the continental breakfast in eveningwear. He was very friendly though, and generous. There was a water park in the back, and we went and I almost lost Rug. LP went to complain to the owners that the water park was substandard.

Final dream:

I was getting ready to renew my vows with LP and I had my dress on and was looking so fancy but my hair would not stay in the bobby pins and it was driving me crazy, but I was so happy that I was not pregnant, like I was the first time we got married!!!

So, in conclusion, I got a great night of sleeping, some wild dreamin', and definitely confirming Hoss's statement that blogging is best when you are NOT feeling normal. I can only imagine what TWO teaspoons of that green concoction would have done to me!