I Got Tagged...BUGGER

Darn it. I hate these socials posts. I really much prefer to pretend like nobody knows me and cares what I have to say. But here goes...
1. Go to your pictures file.
2. Go to the 4th file.
3. Go to the 4th picture.
4. Post it and tell the story.

This is Calebs bum. October 2006. His first 'real' Halloween. He had only been walking for maybe a week or two and was still faster at escaping on his knees. He couldn't figure out why he had weird clothes on and was even more freaked out by how his siblings looked. At this point he had given up and headed home.

I tag:
Christopher
Todd
Christy
Savannah

The 'Official' Bane of My Existance

Okay...it is absolutely official. I have found the Bane of My Existance (doesn't it seem so much more official in Capital Letters?).

On occasion I will go through previous posts (to really appreciate where I am right now)...and I have picked up on a common thread...Any Guesses? Come on, it really is pretty obvious. Plumbing and Water. DDUUUUUUUHHHHHHH.

Which brings me to todays' post. Yesterday, we decided to be completely super industrious. So we embarked on our adventure in cleaning the garage. Now that we had the shed and a place to put everything, maybe we should actually put it there.

So we get everything moved out and realized EEWWWWWWW GROSS. We moved the carpet that was by the entrance to the house and found like an inch of dirt underneath. At this point, we realized sweeping was NOT enough. All that sweeping would do is move the dust around and as soon as we turned our backs, it would settle.

As we were in such an incredible worker bee type mood, we decided to hook a hose up to the spigot in the garage...we should really thank the original owners of the house for all of the wonderful ideas they had when building the house. As usual, we had to take it one step further...we put Dawn on the garage floor so we could scrub up all of the grease and gross that was EVERYWHERE.

We go to put the hose on, and realize the little turny handle thing is gone. I am fairly certain that is disappeared right after we moved in 10 years ago and Savannah had a ball turning the water on and off. Hence, the disappearing little turny handle thing.

But, that's OK. Why? Because we have tools. Lots and lots of tools. So we find an awesome little teeny, tiny wrench that fits the little deely bobber perfectly. And we turn the hose on. GREAT...until I get drenched because somebody didn't tighten the hose to the spigot. And then we turn it off. And then we tighten it. And then we turn it on and BEGIN. We get out the brooms and methodically scrub and scrub and scrub the garage floor.

A good, solid hour later we are done. And we go to turn the water off. I said, We go to turn the water off. Ahem, excuse me...WE GO TO TURN THE WATER OFF. And it almost does, but not all the way...Naturally. So we figure, let's just replace the spigot, no big deal. I run down to the hardware store to buy a faucet while Felix is turning the water off to the house. We have no idea what size the pipe is, so we buy one of every size. I go home and we slowly unscrew the spigot and take it out of the wall...and take it out of the wall...and take it out of the wall. It was like 9 inches long...hello...what the hud is that thing. So I grab it, run back to the hardware store, find the dude that helped me before, hold up the part and say one very descriptive word, "Help."

Okay, he starts to laugh at me. So what else is new...people laughing at me has truly become an embedded part of my personality. So he says to me, that is a FREEZE PROOF spigot. At this point, I give. I explain I no longer care what anything is and please, may I just have a cap to plug up the line. I buy it and fly home (I'm pretty sure it was on my broomstick).

Once home I decide I am the Martha Stewart of plumbing and without waiting for anyone, I grab my handy plumbers tape and wrap the plug, cut a hole in the wall and put it in. I have no more time and patience. Felix turns the water on, and it is dripping....at about the same rate as the fragile pieces of my ego, delicately hitting the floor.

We turn the water off, take the plug off and put more tape on it. Put it on turn the water on and watch it continue to drip into the recesses of my homes innards...You may be asking, what do we do now? We didn't know either...we just watched it. We were waiting for the epiphany to come. It didn't.

So rather than watch the event that would cause toxic mold to over take my house, we decided to save a whole bunch of time and call a plumber.

I love the Yellow Pages. I love that the Yellow Pages has groupings by whether or not they offer 24 hour service. I begin calling. 1st call-Voicemail. 2nd call-Voicemail. 3rd call-Voicemail. 4th call-Roto Rooter and they can be here in 1 to 2 hours. Great, I knew I would only be able to get in touch with the most expensive plumber in the phone book.

Felix goes to buy a new Freeze Proof spigot, because now that we have gone through so much trouble we better be getting something long term out of the deal. Whatever...works for me. I get to stay home and wait for Roto Rooter. And what better to do that watch the water drip. FUN FOR ME. It is really like watching water boil (and as a side note, I have done that too).

Felix gets home with lunch and a faucet. We eat and we wait. Finally they show up. I am absolutely no longer in the mood to deal with anything, so I hide up in my room. Felix gets to over see the fun. He only here about 5 minutes when Felix comes up to tell me that the plumber dropped our wrench in the wall. Bummer. We no longer have a complete set of wrenches...that is going to do wonders for my OCD.

5 minutes after that, he is done. Great...nothing like being told your an idiot in less that a quarter of an hour. After he leaves, Felix says the guy said we did it all right except for the plumbers tape. Plumbers tape should not be used on 1/2 inch pipe....and it is iffy on 3/4 inch. And I know that why? Because that is why my pipe was leaking. He said we did it all right, but we had to use this special plumbing goo stuff that would expand and seal the pipe. And it only cost me $160 (we got a screaming deal...he took off 5 bucks for the wrench...lucky me).

So we now have a spigot in the garage with a handle, hidden by the water softener salt tank thing...my world is complete.

Lessons Learned
1. I am STILL NOT A PLUMBER.
2. I think it is still just money.
3. I did save LARGE amounts of stress by calling a plumber early.
4. Before I do another house project, I should really be a plumbers apprentice.
5. At least I am never bored.

YAY ME

I have a cooktop, and it is pretty. I have a cooktop, and it is working. YAY ME.

I finally received the elusive cooktop that has been plaguing my life for the last month. When it arrived I just couldn't wait for Felix to get home to put it in. No really, I couldn't wait. So I made some shims to hold up the unit so I could put the cooktop on and I installed it myself.

And everyone that knows me shouldn't be surprised by this. I have horrible patience issues, and I really do have a tendency to OVER take the initiative of the situation. But I did it, and I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to flip the breaker and turn everything on...and of course, I did it over and over and over (I may have some mild OCD tendencies).

But as I have shared my trials, tribulations and sadness, I had to share my joy. And it is JOY...YAY ME, YAY ME, YAY ME.

Lessons Learned
1. Sometimes it is worth the extra money to buy directly from the manufacturer.
2. As much I hate it, I really missed cooking real dinners.
3. If I set my mind to it, I can really do just about anything...not that I will, but I could, if I wanted to.
4.YAY ME
5. It's just money....

Smokin' on a Saturday Night

I know, just by the title you all think I've gone a little nuts and completely rebelled...NOPE. But it was fun trying to imagine me at a bar puffin' away, wasn't it?

So it more or less took me all week (and a change in prescription meds) to get my mood to improve this week...but IT FINALLY DID. And is every one in my household glad. Although, as a quick side note, they aren't cleaning up any better...but alas, it is what it is.

So after having such a difficult week with everyone trying to put up with me and my bad mood, Felix and I decided that we needed to do something fun. Yay us, we put a fire pit in the backyard.

Last year, when we did the addition on our house, we decided to have a trampoline hole dug so that the kids (especially the younger ones) could get on and off easier. The hole was dug in June, and we couldn't put the trampoline in the hole until October when everything was finished. And of course, when we put the trampoline in the hole the hole was over dug by 3 feet. Of course it was...what was I thinking...why should I have expected that it would have been dug to size. But wait...it gets better. The hole was dug at the wrong angle, and through the course of a VERY wet winter, the hole collapsed and completely covered all of the trampoline legs...GIVE ME A BREAK.

Well in early spring, we managed to get the trampoline out of the hole and beg our neighbor who was finishing up his addition to dump the dirt from his yard into our massively ugly hole. Okay, this story is getting way too long, to make a long story short (a little late, don't ya think?) as we were moving the dirt around, we decided that it would be cool to have a fire pit so we could make REAL LIVE S'MORES WHENEVER WE WANTED TO. And we did. It was a painstaking process and took way longer than it should have, but we have it, we love it and it's done. (Nice way to tell a story huh...by going around the block to get to the house next door).

Okay...so now you know how we have a fire pit...now it's time to tell about SMOKIN'. As I was saying, forever ago, we needed to lighten the mood so we decided it would be a good night for s'mores. We took the kids out to dinner (Because lest we all forget, I STILL DON'T HAVE A COOKTOP...dumb Sears), and we needed something other than the boring dinners I have been cooking in the oven.

So on the way home from dinner we tell the kids, who have naturally been bickering non-stop about the Earth's gravitational force or about the Pythagorean Theorum or something little, like breathing...AND I WAS SICK OF IT. So we decided to sweeten the pot, and tell them if they could make it all the way home (which was like three minutes), then we could do s'mores. And wouldn't you know it, World War 3 broke out in the backseat of my car. Okay fine...this was one of those, "If you can't get along, so help me I will turn this car around" moments. Except we were already going home, and that is what they wanted.

So how could I turn this little fiasco in my favor? No problema...when the house is clean, we can do s'mores. And, WOW, my house got clean fast.

Out the door for s'more we go. On the difficult side, we live in Utah, it is fall, and the ground is drenched. So with much kindling, LOTS of cardboard, and twigs galore, we managed to get the fire started.

Not exactly the raging inferno we made in the toilet (For all those who need to know, please refer to the first post on this blog). Nor was it the type of bonfire that would obliterate a marshmallow into nothingness just by thinking about it...but it was a small, cozy little fire, that would get put out if someone farted. Okey, dokey, now that none of you will ever eat s'mores again without thinking of passing gas...I'll move on.

Because it was so wet, and even though the fire was kind of small, man that puppy put out a lot of smoke. It was kind of like playing musical chairs with smoke signals. No one was ever in the same place more than 2 minutes and at one point or another, you would hear someone go, "AAAGGGGHHHH", and cover their eyes...It was kind of a Dr. Seuss moment. 'I do not like smoke in my eyes, anymore than I like flies. I do not like smoke from a train, I really think it is a pain'. Okay, I'll stop torturing you...I was having a moment, with a big red and white striped hat on my head.

So Savannah of course, had to dramatize the entire process of marshmallows, and put it off as long as possible, just because she couldn't get her 'pet stick' to catch fire. And I'm pretty sure that Caleb only managed to get one s'more before he started burning his marshmallows to a crisp and watching them explode in the fire (microwaves got nothin', nothin' I tell ya, on our fire pit). Noah, was content in his own little world melt, eat, burn...melt, eat, burn. He was working on a 1 to 1 ratio of eating versus destroying. And Baylee, well, Baylee was Baylee and was spending her time chasing people around the backyard...as usual.

We had a wonderful time, just not thinking about any of the stresses in our lives and enjoying each other and our friends that joined us. I can't wait until we do the first S'more party with snow on the ground.

Lessons Learned
1. When my kids tell me that I never let them do anything, I now have pictures that prove I let them play with fire.
2. I really enjoy my children...
3. Size (of fire) doesn't matter when it comes to making s'mores.
4. In the midst of all of the chaos in our world, it is so nice to have a place where you can spend time with those that matter most.
5. I really, really, really like toasted marshmallows...to an unhealthy point.

I Suck...'Nuff Said

I have been in an incredibly horrible and downright rotten mood...all day...and in retrospect...maybe a lot longer. Oh, but I digress.

And as an incredibly quick side note...my 8 year old son, who is apparently a fabulous over-the-shoulder reader, just pointed out that my blog would go over much better if I wrote about how incredibly wonderful my children were...

Back to the subject at hand. I suppose this is my apology blog. I don't know, not really for anything in particular, just me being short (not of stature, of patience...stay with me people). I think it all really started with my last post regarding the evil do-er that refused to fix my cooktop even though they said they would....hmmmm, don't get me started. I think I headed into a dangerous shame spiral. You know, just being mad at the world for conspiring against me. Oh, you know...you have all been there...some of us just admit it.

The last 24-48 hours have been kind of a general bummer, with bits and pieces of good flung in there somewhere.

I am not kidding, Sears threw me for a major loop...especially since I am still without a cooktop (it's on backorder and tomorrow there is going to be a phone call about me freaking out because of Thanksgiving...stay posted, I will let you know how that turns out). So while I have been trying to feed my family without a stovetop, and getting sick of the microwave meals and partials meals that can be cooked in the oven...the kitchen alone is enough to push anyone over the edge. And it did.

Okay, I will hurry and sum things up so I can get to the title of this post....

1. We got a shed....it is pretty, it is big and I am tired from moving stuff into it (and I have only made a tiny dent in the piles of crud that have to get moved in there). Unforetunately, my OCD has kicked in and there is one splotch of blue on the white and I have to get that taken care of before I blow my top. It completely freaks me out every time I go out there...I swear it is almost as if there is a giant spotlight with one of those flashing arrows pointing at the spot.

2. I found out that a combination of medication I am on can cause seizures...hmmmm, maybe not so hot for someone who already has a seizure disorder...that is on my to do list too.

3. Someone spilled red punch on the carpet, and hid it with a pillow because they wanted to make sure the stain was set. And it did...hope you're proud.

4. Post apocolyptic Halloween anxiety has hit my house way stinking hard...enough so that all of our heads have spun off, hit the ceiling and now someone has to clean up the bloody mess. Which is probably going to be me. And the chewed up pieces of gum I found couch (IN TWO PLACES)...shall I go on?

5. I have lost 15 pounds, great, right? Yeah until my friends Snickers, Butterfinger and Baby Ruth showed up on Friday...

Okay now to the title. This is actually kind of funny...well it was last night, today it just made me sad.

So we decided that since Halloween had already thrown us for a loop, and we were going out with friends, we were going to put our 'Lifestyle Change' (i.e. stupid diet) on hold and enjoy some good grub. We met our friends at Maglebys and had a wonderful dinner, except for having to keep asking for the yummy rolls because they weren't making enough. But once we got them, devoured them and begged for more, we decided that we would splurge and get dessert. Of course I was going for the chocolate cake with ice cream, DUH. This is a big deal...I haven't had cake in 2 months...I know, a record...2 months. Mind you, there were 4 of us at the table and we each had our own desert. After we were digging in for a little while the server (see how politically correct I am, I don't say waiter and waitress any more) came to check on us...he got about half way through his question, looked at my plate and said have you eaten that much by yourself? That was just you? Wow...you are good. And then there was me....Pause, smile and politely inform said server that we have all been given talents in this life, and eating was apparently mine. Stop camera, let's get the forklift and get the ol' girl out of her chair. We all had a good giggle until he came back and did it again. Okay, I am now officially in a self-esteem crisis (I need to be like my friend who is 9 months pregnant and gets hit on at the gas station...I could do with a little bit of that action). Honestly, atthis point I just wanted to get up and waddle out of the restaurant with the little dignity I had left. And I did...with my bag from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory snuggled up cozily in my purse. I really did get a good laugh, but today I felt kind of bad and think maybe I should give up food....FOREVER....WAAAAAAHHHHHH.

So then at church today (and this is really a good thing because it came from a woman, if a man had said it, he would be castrated), I was talking with my really good friend who somehow makes me feel okay enough about my life that I have a horrible tendency to dump on her. But as I was explaining everything, she realized I was PMS-ing. DUH. I haven't done that in so long I completely don't recognize the signs (and thank you, you know who you are for telling it to me straight). Not that it stopped me from being psycho when I got home from church.

So now that the 2 events that really pushed me over the edge have been published for the entire world to see (and I just turned the cookies I was making into charcoal), I suppose I owe everyone an apology for being ornery, needy, pathetic, weepy and just plain mean to my kids. A super big apology to my kids for not being very nice, but remember, if you don't start cleaning up after yourselves...so help me...and so REALLY help you.

Lessons Learned
1. The server from dinner last night really needs to get married...I mean, why didn't you just ask me how much I weigh for the love of Pete....do you want to know how old I am too? SHEESH.

2. I miss the hormone balance I got from Depo....I hope things level out soon...and so does every one else.

3. I love my friends that tell me to take my head out of my bum and deal with the fact I am PMS-ing.

4. I really need to get over the fact I feel yucky and get back on the treadmill tomorrow, because I know that will make me feel better.

5. With as impatient as I am, I realize my children must have been blessed with way more patience because they have to deal with me....