Rock Stars and Red Bull

so my oldest comes home with a letter from the school that says "dear parents: please be advised that it is now our school policy that students will no longer be allowed to bring energy drinks to school, thank you for your assistance....etc." ok, i totally understand the schools opinion on this but here's my biggest concern, what parent in their right mind would send their 10 yr old to school with an energy drink? for the love of pete, i can't even carry on a conversation with anyone without at least one kid hopped up on kid energy bouncing off the walls interrupting me. what 10 yr old needs an energy drink? apparently enough of them to warrant the school sending a note home about it. i can see a few kids with them for various reasons -sneaking them out of the house or taking advantage of a grandparent who doesn't know what they are, etc. but not enough to warrant a ban from school. but apparently i'd be wrong.

as a parent, what part of you thinks sending your kid to school with a Rock Star Energy drink is a good idea? were you all out of crack and coffee that morning? i feel sorry for the teachers. like it's not hard enough to be a teacher with tween-age kids whacked out on hormones and adolescence but now you have to deal with red bull mixed in there too?

Working Mommies - both stay at home, in the office and in between

I have friends that are stay at home moms, friends that work at an office and then there are people like me who work but office from home and no matter where you fall in that category, some one somewhere has given you grief about your choice. i will never understand why some moms sometimes frown on the working moms. Hey, we have to do the same stuff you do only we have to do it typically before 8am or after 5pm along with whatever our jobs require. But by the same token, I really hate it when a working mom looks down on a stay at home mom.

I have heard it said more than one by a working mom to a stay at home mom, "well, it's not like you have to go to work or anything." HELLO! even though i have never been a stay at home mom in the truest since of the word, i will be the first to admit that stay at home mom is darn sure a job! it's one of the most thankless jobs there is. sure you have the glory of being with your children and raising them as you see fit and lets face it, being a parent is a thankless job most of the time anyway.

No one says, THANK YOU MOM for doing the dishes. THANK YOU MOM for the 15 loads of clothes you did today. THANK YOU MOM - for fighting with the crowds at the store and buying us food....i could go on and on but all you mom's know what i'm talking about. Now add in the thankless part for all that any mom does and then add to it that you don't get an actual paycheck and typically - i don't mean to man bash but lets face facts here boys - there is a man in the background complaining because you had the nerve to splurge and spend $20. to buy yourself something nice because you want to say thank you to yourself. When you don't have a paycheck coming in, you have the "spending my money line" from the working man in your household. stay at home mommies work ashard, if not harder, than the working mommies only they have someone giving them grief about "not working."

To this I say you have two options ----

option #1 - devise your pay scale and deliver your weekly itemized billing to said working man and i suggest things like the following:

8 loads of dishes this week@ 5.00 a load = 40.00
30 loads of laundry @5.00 a load = 200.00
7 dinners at @20.00 each = 140.00
3 floor cleanings @25.00 each = 75.00
4 cleanings of bathrooms @25.00 each = 100.00
7 routine picking up the house at @25.00 each = 175.00
one week of day care for one kid = 650.00 (feel free to add more for more children)
one week of daily taxi charges= 100.00
__________________________________

Total: 1480.00
**feel free to add additional charges for other wifely duties you feel should be include and present this to snarky husband/better half and demand your payment up front.

next time he has a comment about you not working, you can present your weekly pay stub and remind him that you do indeed work.

option #2 -

to all those working mommies who have something catty to say to you, i would tell them that you would gladly trade places with them for a week and then let them get back to you on if you really work or not. i bet after a week of working in your shoes, their weekly itemization is gonna be a little bit higher and i can guarantee that their outlook on how hard being a stay at home mom really is will be through the roof!

so to all my stay at home moms, when i hear things like, "well you can take a nap if you wanted to, it's not like you work." or "of course you have time, you don't have a job." i want to personally smack the person who said it and if it's a woman that said it, i really want to snag her by the purse, trap her in a room with her kids for a week on end and then see how she feels about a stay at home mom not working. i have your back ladies......

March Madness

so March Madness has a different meaning at our house. March has been jam packed with birthday parties, spring break, spring carnivals and spring cleaning (0k, more on the hubby's part than mine for the cleaning but I keep kids corralled while he has been planting his garden). This weekend was full of spring carnivals at Monkey's school and Sissy's school.

The kids had a great time playing and stuffing themselves full of candy and other goodies but somehow we ended up with new pets out of the deal.

my older two both have lousy aim. In fact they're both instructed not to throw things because their aim is so off they often get that old Momizim"stop that before you put someones eye out." So when they asked if they could play the goldfish game at one carnival - you know where you toss a ping pong ball into a goldfish bowl and if you make it in, you win the goldfish- i thought nothing of it knowing that there was no chance either one of them would actually get the ball in the bowl. So you can imagine my surprise when not one but both of my children were winners of goldfish.

now if I remember correctly, when you do this at county fairs and larger carnivals, you actually win the goldfish bowl with the fish. However at the school carnival, you win a goldfish in a ziplock. Sissy has named her fish princess something or another and Brother has named his Sir Andrew Swims-a-lot. I lovingly named them Walmart and Petsmart because that's where we ended up having to go to find the fish homes and food. Thinking that these critters weren't going to live very long, I wasn't inclined to spend the $18.00 for a fish tank or any accessories for the fish. We're already down to one fish this afternoon as Petsmart was found floating upside down this morning. We should have known he wasn't destined to live long when we put him in the bowl out of his ziplock and one fin was missing......so Sissy does routine checks on her fish and announces about once an hour that her fish is still alive......but sadly we have to have a five gun salute to Sir Andrew Swims-a-lot and I'm still trying to figure out if I want to deal with the hassle of replacing him.......

Funny Fridays

it is true that kids do say the darnedest things, my kids are no exception.... below are a list of the ones that I find funny and/or odd....

1. one day this week we were waiting for an accident to clear. a pick up truck had slid underneath the trailer of a semi and it peeled back the cab of the pick up like a tin can. my oldest goes, "i hope that guy ducked!" ---me too, although i'm not so sure ducking would have helped that poor soul.

2. this is from a while back, but still funny. my now middle child was about 5-6 at the time and was in the dressing room with me trying on clothes. I tried on a sweater that I knew would need an undershirt, but i had an undershirt that would work at home, so i tried it on without the undershirt. my sweet little girl says "mommy, your balls are showing." I was laughing so hard i could hardly breath. she was trying to say my BRA was showing. The lady in the next dressing room, to her credit, was trying very hard not to be heard laughing hysterically at that comment.

3. another good one from Sissy that still makes me laugh - we had trouble with her saying things like - wow, that lady's really fat and things like that (now keep in mind she was 3-4 at the time) but we still have to watch her and give her the stink eye in line at stores and stuff to make her keep her mouth shut. one day we were standing in line at target behind a very, very large lady who was driving one of the go-go scooters. I had given Sissy the stink eye and Brother was just looking at me with this total look of fear that his sister was going to say something and we had almost made it through without incident and the lady was getting her bag to leave and just as we're almost in the clear, the lady has to back up for one reason or another. Brother was standing not too far behind her when the lady began to back up. of course you know the scooters have the safety option that beeps when you back up. so when the scooter starting beeping, Sissy yells at the top of her lungs - "brother look out, that big fat lady is backing up, get out of the way."

4. on the way home from vacation one year, after a week of being together in that "god just let me get home" mood of the last hour of the trip, Daddy had completely lost it and told the kids that he had had enough arguing. not a word - "not one more word until we get home out of either of you." to which they typically would be quite for a few min, but then the whispering starts and here we go again. but you know how, as a parent you have what i call the "scary quite?" i realize we've gone "scary quite" in the car and i look in the back seat to see that Sissy has gotten a rat tale comb out of my bag and proceeded to tease her hair. to the point that she has her hair so tight around that comb, it's stuck and i mean really stuck. so there she sits with a comb stuck to the front of her head and i'm laughing so hard i have developed side pains. I couldn't get it out for laughing so hard and Daddy gets mad because i can't stop laughing to help her. She's crying because i'm laughing at her and god help me, i cannot stop laughing. if that's not the kicker to the end of that vacation, i don't know what was. but yet every year, we seem to do it again....and every year that last hour before we get home daddy has the "not another word" moment and that vein in his head twitches......

Thank you Thursday

I've seen this on several other posts and thought this was a good idea....so here are my latest thank yous.....

THANK YOU - idiots at the AT&T store in Conroe. People like you are a reminder of how NOT to provide customer service. I do believe you work on commission, so too bad for you you're horses behinds because I had money to spend and now I won't be spending it with you.

THANK YOU -to my dogs for helping Mommy clean the Cheetos dust from Monkey. Apparently Monkey thinks it's more fun when the dogs lick it off of him rather than Mommy do it with a wipe....although we still had to use the wipes to get the dog drool off of us....

THANK YOU - to the little blue haired lady at Kohl's parking lot today for trying to get into my parking space with me. People like you are the reason I have a job.

THANK YOU - to my boss for letting me have three days off to prevent me from developing a serious stress induced meltdown.

THANK YOU - to my hubby for trying to take me fishing, which leads to the next...

THANK YOU - to the "damn" boat for yet again crapping out on us. but thankfully it appears this time it may be an easy fix - both mechanically and pocket book wise.

THANK YOU - to my dad for teaching Brother how to clip a chicken's wings. I don't blame Brother for being scared, I can't say I would have volunteered to be the 'chicken holder' either!

Decisions, Decisions

Every day of our lives we're faced with umpteen decisions to make ---some are no brainers, like do I really have to go to work today? yes, you really do unless you want to be sitting in the dark eating Ramon noodles. Some are not so easy ----yesterday was an example of the not so easy ones.

So after a birthday party, I took Sissy to meet her mom because she's staying with her mom for spring break. Monkey, who had not had a nap in the last two days, was being pretty good and I thought we had a good shot of a nap in our future. so after I dropped Sissy off, even though I had to go to the restroom, I thought I would be able to make it home without stopping. Of course traffic being what it was, making it home without stopping was not going to happen for us. So I pull into a gas station, unbuckle Monkey from his car seat just praying that the restroom was working. Fortunately, it was a very nice restroom with only two other older ladies in there who were talking at the sink.

After telling me what a cute baby boy I had, I proceed into the handicapped stall because there is more room and allows Monkey to roam for a few minutes to allow mommy to take care of business. Usually our biggest problem in bathroom stalls involves trying to play in the trash can or peaking our head under the stall into the other stalls to say hi. Thankfully there was no one in the stall next to us so Monkey could peak away and not bother anyone. One downside to the handicap stall is that typically there is more room from the toilet to the door. Monkey's down there playing peek a boo under the door and that's fine, he's not in the trash can so it's all good. Until he starts trying to crawl underneath the door. After telling him sternly twice to come back, he looks back at me - on all fours halfway out from under the door already - gives me a sweet little melt your heart smile, and proceeds to crawl out from under the door. I'm yelling at him to come back here and I see feet running down the bathroom. I don't know if those two ladies are still at the sink or not but what I do know is that there was no door into the bathroom. just a cut out and a hallway you turned into, so he's on his way out into the store.

So in a split second you have to decide....do i hurry up and get my clothes on and hope that no one kidnaps my 16 month old who's made a break for it or do i run out of this restroom like a mad woman with my pants around my ankles and grab my child??? Decisions, Decisions.....at that point you have to go with what is best for your child, not what is best for your dignity and i go running out of that bathroom trying to pull my clothes back on, screaming for Monkey to come here and hoping that no one has my child and that if anyone is out there, they don't hurt themselves laughing at the crazy woman running out of the restroom half dressed chasing a toddler......

thankfully, I was able to catch Monkey just as he was rounding the corner and I was able to at least get my pants most of the way up before running out into the store for all the world to see and that one of the ladies who had been in the restroom when we came in was just outside the ladies room door stopping Monkey for me. So to the very nice lady at the Chevron station yesterday, thank you for helping me and not laughing too hard at me.

What??? Really??? No, I don't think so....

ok, so the tip of the day from Weight Watchers was when you feel a snack attack coming on, endulge that craving, but do so sensably. If you're craving something sweet, eat a piece of fruit. If you're craving something salty, try a handful of roasted nuts. Ok - I get that in THEORY you should reach for the fruit or the nuts, but in reality how many of us have said "oh my god, if I don't get a kiwi right now I'm going to hurt someone?" PLEASE?!?!



There is a reason that all the aisles at the check out stands have candy and junk rather than fresh produce. No one wants the fruit for goodness sakes. Ever seen fruit at a check out stand - I know some stores do put it there - but take a good look at that fruit. It's by far seen way, way better days and looks like something that warrants a call to the health department. Why? because it's been there for a week because no one has a fruit snack attack!



I have never in all my life said, man, I'm starving, wish I had a banana and some almonds, that would tide me over! Whatever. Have your kids ever begged you to please, please buy a bag of roasted cashews at the check out line? Have they ever once pleaded with you to please let them have a bowl of grapes for snack? Have they ever just gotten so excited and told you how great a mom you are because you put cauliflower on their plate for dinner? NO!! If you have ever had any of your children request such things, then either your child is in so much trouble they think being extra good will make you forget whatever it is they did or they were entertaining themselves to see the shocked look on mom's face when they said such a thing.



Again, in THEORY, yes, we should request fruit rather than chocolate but lets face it, fruit is not going to make your day better when a good piece of chocolate certainly will. I'm not saying we don't eat fruit or veggies for a snack, but it's a forced choice, not a first choice. If you can look me in the eye and honestly say that if you could have any snack in the world you would tell me a plum over a piece of chocolate, then all I can say is - Kudos to you because you are an example to us all! and you're also full of crap as far as I'm concerned! ha!