Weekend of Long Neverending-ness

Friday

So it started when I got an insane idea.  You see, Friday night is veggie night.  My friend Lissa comes over for dinner and she is a vegetarian, so we have special dinners.  I’m getting tired of Indian inspired meals, baked veggies, and pasta.  I needed something different this week.  So what do I do?  I go pull the sushi book off the shelf that has been sitting there for years.  And yes, I made, or at least attempted to make, sushi.

The rice was a bitch.  Let me just tell you that right up front, making sushi rice is just a not very pleasant experience.  You cook the rice, which is no big deal.  You make the vinegar stuff, which is do-able.  You combine the two, constantly mixing with one hand and fanning with the other to get the rice to room temperature.  Both of you hands fall off.  Aaron came home, Lissa showed up, and together we made some very messy looking vegetarian sushi (cucumber rolls, avocado, asparagus, and tofu) but all of it was tasty!  Ok, so I don’t know how to pick out an avocado (I’ve never been a big fan of the stuff) and I managed to get the hardest one in existence, but aside from that it was very tasty.  The wasabi might have been a bit… um… intense.  But that wasn’t my fault!  It was the only pre-made brand that they had!  After dinner was over we had some dessert, and watched America’s Next Top Covergirl, followed by some time looking at this site.  Full of sugar and drama, we decided to make my birthday cup-cake-cake (for a party the following night).  After looking at Cake Wrecks, we decided to make our own.  I have to say that this was an incredible success.  It was definitely a wreck:

Isn’t it perdy?

Saturday was busy, but wasn’t too bad.  I had a rehearsal that afternoon, followed by a Multicultural meeting.  Our cane routine is looking so awesome and cute and precious and all those other things that make me jump up and down and make little girlie noises.   After that I ran home as fast as my little tires would carry me and got ready to leave.  We went to Aaron’s Aunt Judy’s home and dropped off the small child and went partying.  The party was graciously hosted by our very good friends Matt and Angie, and was a split party.  Another friend was celebrating her birthday as well.  There was booze and cake and Rock Band and… and… the Jello Shots.  To be honest I don’t remember a whole lot after that.  I’d imagine that a good time was had by all.

Sunday was a day of rest.  I was soooooooo tired (and not hung over at all.  Nope, no sir, not me.  Stop laughing!) and blissfully my husband let me sleep until an obscene hour which we will not discuss here.  Then we went to “breakfast” and headed back to Judy’s to pick up the boy.  We then went to the In-Law’s and had dinner and watched a very silly movie.  We picked up Journey to the Center of The Earth with the 3D glasses and all, but it was a bust as they only gave us two pair and they were kind of crap anyway.  But it was a fun movie even if it was boring old 2D.  Then we went home and passed out.  And everyone lived happily ever after.

This is Halloween

So another spooky day has come and gone.  But this was a rather important one.  It was important for me as a parent as well as a person who loves this silly Holiday.

For the first time since we got our own house I decorated the yard.  Oh sure, I had always put up spiderwebs before, but I’d never done anything to this degree.

You see, back when my siblings and I lived with our parents we did a huge (by school kids standards) yard haunt.  We put up tarps in the driveway to create an entrance, and would fill it with scenes of monsters, torture, and mourning over the dead.  The driveway led around to a fence to the back yard where we would have a full haunted graveyard scene.  It was wonderful.  All of our friends from school would come over and help us out.  Mom said that after we moved out kids would still come to her door Halloween night and ask why there was no haunted house.  It always made me very glad to hear that.

Now, the set up at this house is no where near that, yet, but one day I hope to have something that at least resembles the set up we had there. 

Some of this stuff we already had around the house.  I always try to keep a full bag of spiderwebs around, and the zombie coming out of the ground was from an old costume of Aaron’s.  The gravestones were new, but they were for a great price over at Walgreen’s, probably cheaper that I would have ever been able to make them for, and considerably nicer than the ones my brother and I made all those years ago.  We will (and already have) be checking the sales the day after Halloween to pick up more stuff.  At night it looked great.  We had replaced the standard light bulb in our porch light with a blue one, which cast a very eerie glow.  (My husband just about got killed over that bulb.  I asked him where I should go pick one up the day before Halloween, and he said to go to Party City.  The night before Halloween.  I barely made it through the door before I turned around and left again.  Silly man)  I sat on the porch with the candy in a black robe with the hood pulled down so no one could tell if I was a person or a prop.  Got a couple of kids really good with that one.

I also said that this was an important Halloween for me as a parent.  It was Ashton’s very first time to go Trick or Treating.  Aaron got to take him around and I got to hand out candy.  It apparently didn’t take him long to get the hang of things, and he even said trick or treat a few times (this is a child of few words).  Aside from him trying to go into the houses of strangers, it sounded like a success.  He brought back a fair amount of candy, but then who could resist that face?

Too Cute

Awww.  I said that I would update weekly and you people actually believed me?  That’s just precious!

So there will be proper content later on.  Stuff that is not about my political views.  Actually I’ll probably have a giant picture post regarding Halloween night.  Maybe not.  Who knows.

For now I have a precious little story to share.  (Mommy blog alert!  You have been warned)  My darling little boy has not been taking the best naps lately.  It’s making my life a bit more… exciting than usual.  Today I set him down for his nap, shut the door, and left him in there to figure it out as I usually do.  This is the only method that seems to be any success at all.  As usual just a few short minutes later I could hear him playing and making a mess in there.  I waited until the noise stopped (about 20 minutes?) and went to check on him.

His grandmother on my husband’s side gave him this nifty little push car thingie for his birthday last year.  It’s based on Winnie the Pooh and has lots of buttons and pulleys and horns and such, so it makes plenty of noise.  There is no off switch.  It’s his favorite toy.  He was apparently playing on it when a nap attack finally overtook him.  I opened the door to his room, found that he had emptied his diaper bag and made a general mess of it (he knows that there are sometimes snacks in there) and then fell asleep riding his Pooh car.  He had put his head down on the wheel, and passed out.

I really wish I had thought to grab the camera before I picked him up and put him to bed.  As it is you’ll just have to imagine it.  Sometimes he’s just so cute!  I’m fairly certain this is why we keep him around.

More real content later.  Eventually.

Someone Please Explain This To Me

This is not going to be a post about our candidates.  This is not me telling you who I plan to vote for (because that should already be painfully obvious).  This is not me telling you who is good and who is evil, because quite frankly neither of them are perfect.  And this is not me telling you how offended I was by a certain remark made by a certain candidate during the last debate.  You know, the one that was punctuated with quotation marks and his eyes rolling into the back of his head.  All of this has been discussed at length on everyone else’s blogs.

This is a question that I very much need answered.  I just can’t wrap my head around it.

I understand how someone can be pro-life.  I really do.  It’s not something I agree with.  I think a woman should choose for herself, but I’m not sure that I could ever have made that decision if I had needed to.  Just because I couldn’t do it, doesn’t mean that it is not the right choice for other women out there.  But I understand the “every life is precious” stance.  Neither side of this argument is an easy position, and I applaud anyone who takes a definitive stance on it, regardless of what that stance is.

This is where we come to what I don’t understand.  Most people who are pro-life seem to have contradicting beliefs.  We should ban all abortions, and then turn around and refuse to teach these girls how to protect themselves from this kind of thing happening.  (This is just what I have witnessed with the people I’ve met and read about.  If this does not apply to you then please forgive me for making such a generalization.  Again, this is based solely on my own experience.) People who don’t want abortions to be legal seem to have the following beliefs…

• Abstinence education is the only way to go.  I don’t understand this at all.  Studies have shown that this is absolutely not true.  When I was a kid taking sex ed for the first time they explained everything to us.  We were told the basics of how birth control works.  We were shown condoms, and how they were put on.  We were then told all of the horrors of STD’s and why that condom is so important.  We were also told that there was only way that was guaranteed 100% fool-proof to keep any of this from happening to us, and that is abstinence.  They also explained that sex is a very emotional activity, and that most people our age are not prepared to deal with those intense emotions.  I was a virgin until I was almost 18.  I’d say that it was a success.
• Birth control should not be made easily available. Giving girls access to birth control does not mean that they are going to have sex.  It just doesn’t.  It means that if they decide to have sex, that they are considerably less likely to get pregnant, which is generally a good thing.  It means that they are educated and level headed enough to be prepared to have sex.  I had to be put on birth control for medical reasons unrelated to sex, and thanks to the stupid insurance companies, getting it covered was always a nightmare.

I really don’t understand this view point at all.  We don’t want women to terminate unwanted pregnancies, so it would stand to reason that we don’t want them to get pregnant in the first place.  So why is it that those who are pro-choice are usually the ones who want more thorough sex education and want to make birth control methods easily available?  That seems completely backwards to me!  Abstinence teaching methods will not work if you don’t present a consequence to the actions that you’re trying to prevent.  And even then it’s not too successful.  Please understand that we need to equip our children with the knowledge to protect themselves.  And understand that teaching abstinence will not work unless we get every girl in the U.S. fitted with a chastity belt at the age of 10.

Because I Like To Steal From My Friends

RED
1. Closest red thing to you? A mail opener
2. Last thing to make you angry? My charming adorable wonderful son BIT me yesterday and that made me a bit angry.  I wasn’t in the best mood this morning either.
3. Do you have a temper? Heeeee!  You asked… and you think… and… HA!  (I’ve been known to get peeved somewhat easily.  I am, after all, a Scorpio).
4. Are you a fan of romance? I like my smut to have an aspect of fantasy in it.  Oh you mean in real life?  Sure, some romance would be nice, but it’s not always a priority.

ORANGE
1. Closest orange thing to you? A lighter that I have no idea where it came from.
2. Do you like to burn things? Fire is prrrreeeettyyyy.
3. Dress up for Halloween? Well yeah, who doesn’t?
4. Are you usually a warm-hearted person? I try to be.  Don’t always succeed.
5. Are you usually full of energy? Nope.  I have a toddler and everyone knows that they are energy vampires.  He drains me.

YELLOW
1. Closest yellow thing to you? A piece of construction paper that Ash and I were recently playing with.
2. The happiest time[s] of your life? I have no idea.  I guess I’m supposed to say my wedding day - which was nice - or my honeymoon.  Those were great times.  I can’t say the day Ash was born because I was stoned out of my head most of the time and had no idea what was going on around me (had to do a c-section).  Some of the greatest times are when I’m on stage with the rest of the girls and everything just works.  The show goes perfectly.  Those are some of the best times.
3. Favourite holiday? SPOOKY DAY!  I love Halloween.
4. Are you a coward? I try not to be, but I have my moments.
5. Do you burn or tan? Oh I burn.  Bad.  Sometimes I get lucky and it turns into a tan and doesn’t peel too badly.

GREEN
1. Closest green thing to you? A notebook.
2. Do you care about the environment? I think it’s silly not to.  We only get the one planet, and all that jazz.
3. Are you jealous of anyone right now? If I thought about it hard enough, I’m sure I’d think of at least half a dozen people that I have reason to be jealous of (I wish I could sing like her, dance like her, look like her) which is why I try not to think about it.  There’s no point in focusing on others when I could be using that energy to improve those things in myself.
4. Are you a lucky person? I don’t know.  I look around and see that I do have it pretty good, but I don’t know if luck really has anything to do with it.
5. Do you always want what you can’t have? Of course not.  There is nothing that I can’t have.  There are just those things that I do not have yet.
6. Do you like being outdoors? It can be fun.
7. Are you Irish? I think so.  I know I have Scottish back there somewhere, and I have everything else, so it stands to reason…

BLUE
1. Closest blue thing to you? Yet another notebook.  What?  I’m at my desk.
2. Are you good at calming people down? Probably not, but that doesn’t ever stop me from trying.  I really don’t like for my friends to be upset about anything.
3. Do you like the sea? It’s perdy!  I like to visit the beach for a weekend.  Never spent any real amount of time on the ocean though.
4. What was the last thing that made you cry? Probably a really stupid argument or something.  There were a few weeks there when I was really weepy over everything (on hormone meds trying to fix my body.  Made me interesting to be around for a while).  I cried so much during that time that I can’t remember which was the last one.
5. Are you a logical thinker? Curse you and your logic!  I do have my moments though.
6. Can you sleep easily? Again with the laughing and pointing in your direction.  I have a long history of insomnia in my family.

PURPLE
1. Closest purple thing to you? An ad for dish soap.
2. Like being treated to expensive things? I like shiny things but can rarely wear them.  Most of the jewelry that I wear these days I make myself.  But the occasional expensive dinner or other treat is always welcome.
3. Do you like mysterious things? A little mystery is always fun.  Just nothing too mysterious. I guess I like trying to figure things out.
4. Favourite type of chocolate? Dark.  Really I love all chocolate, but a bar of 75% Cocoa is always a treat.
5. Ever met anyone from myspace? I’ve met everyone from myspace.  I just met them before I added them.
6. Are you creative?Meh.  I have my moments.

PINK
1. Closest pink thing to you? An apointment card from the dentist that has only been kept because it has his number on it.
2. Do you like sweet things? Hell, I am a sweet thing (laughs at self for being that stupid).  I do like sweets, but in moderation.
3. Like play-fighting? Wrestling, sure.  But only if I’m winning.
4. Are you sensitive? I have very sensitive skin.  It gets irritated at the littlest thing.  This is why I don’t wear metal jewelry anymore.
5. Do you like punk music?  It’s fun sometimes.  I like most kinds of music, depending on my mood at the time.

WHITE
1. Closest white thing to you? Paper
2. Would you say you’re innocent? Darling, I didn’t even wear white on my wedding day.  I know better.
3. Always try to keep the peace? Between other people, sure.  When I’m part of the argument, never.
4. How do you imagine your wedding? Um… in a gazebo by a pool with all the girls in green and myself in my ideal wedding dress?  Because that’s how it happened.
5. Do you like to play in the snow? Oh yes.  Ashton’s first experience with snow was so much fun!
6. Are you afraid of going to the doctor or the dentist? I hate the dentist!  HATE!  As for the Doctor, I’m only nervous about going when I’m afraid that I’ll get bad news.  This happens often.

BLACK
1. Closest black thing to you? My computer.  Or at least the keyboard.
2. Ever enjoy hurting people? Heee!  They make pretty noises and turn fun colours… sorry… what were we talking about?  Oh right!  It depends on if they need to be hurt.
3. Are you sophisticated or silly? Why can’t I be both?
4. Would you like to go to space? Never really occured to me.  It might be interesting.
5. Do you have a lot of secrets? I have a few.
6. What is your favourite colour? Black and gray are nice.  Deep shades of red and blue are great as well.
7. Does the colour you wear affect your mood? I’ve never considered it.  Probably not.  Though, my mood might affect the colour that I wear.

I did something silly

Do you all remember a while back that I talked about how nice it would be to have a place to hide out on the Internet, where no one would know who I was and I could post anything I wanted?  Well the idea turned out to be too tempting.  I started a twitter with an anonymous name.  At first it was great!  I could get on there and talk about anything I wanted.  No one would ever be offended.  No one would ever get upset.  No one was supposed to ever know.

This was my therapy.  I would post anything that was troubling me.  Usually these posts were made when my emotions were heightened by some stress or another, and much more dramatic sounding then they ever were in real life.

A few nights ago we celebrated Aaron’s birthday with a few friends.  I got very impressively drunk.  Apparently I got onto the anonymous twitter and started posting some things that were easily recognizable.  I also told someone at the party about it (possibly more than one, but she’s all I remember).  This sort of destroys the aspect of anonymity.

I woke up the next day and saw the things I posted.  I remembered telling someone that it existed.  I instantly pulled it down.  It is now deleted and impossible to access.  No, I will never go into detail about what was posted there.  No, I will never tell anyone the specific name.  All I can say is I’m sorry.  I don’t know why I felt the need for that kind of secrecy.  I had never really used a private diary and I guess this was my substitute.  It’s about as public as you can get, but no one needed to know who it was.

Dear Ms. Palin

I wanted to take this time to express my concerns with you.  While you have many ideas that I do not agree with, I didn’t really have a problem with you.  You seem to have done good things in Alaska, and good for you.  I hear you want to bring some of those practices with you to the White House.  That’s great.  It would be really neat if you could handle some businesses around the country the way you have supposedly handled them up north.  Of course I believe that you have some ideas that your running mate would never let you run with, but that’s just how it works.  I only really have issues with your views on women’s rights and sexual education.  This is where we severely part ways, but even still, you didn’t bother me (too much).   Of course, I had already decided long before you came onto the scene that I would be voting Democratic, and I do hope that my team wins (naturally, you always want your team to win.  As a hokey fan I’m sure you can relate to that concept).  Even with all of the flack you’ve gotten, and the way you’ve presented yourself thus far, I hadn’t felt the need to say anything until now.

Your behavior at the debate was appalling.  I’m sorry, but there is no other way to put it.  Biden, while not perfect by any means, at least remained respectful and professional to both you and the moderator.  He didn’t always answer the questions as precisely as some might like, but he did remain on topic.  And he was always polite enough to refer to you as Governor Palin.  You came in and called him Joe right off the bat. You failed to answer several of the questions, instead insisting on talking about whatever you wanted.  You kept coming back to the subject of energy because that’s what you wanted to talk about, in spite of the fact that the topic had long since been dropped and you had already well spent your allotted time discussing it.

One of the worst issues I had with your performance at the debate was that you spoke to Biden directly instead of the moderator.  I was always under the impression that this was a faux pas.  You made statements such as “I’m going to have to correct you there, Joe,” (paraphrasing) which was just tacky.  You seemed as if you were almost challenging Biden.  While I understand that this is, in theory, the point of a debate, you are not meant to take it so literally.  You meant to seem (I’m guessing here) relaxed and accessible.  Instead you came across as disrespectful and unprofessional.  I would like to think that you would know better than that.

I’m a Texas girl.  I’m not overly prideful about this, but proud enough to be insulted when someone comes to my state, to my city no less, and calls Texas the little sister state of Alaska.  Are you kidding?  This is one of the most prideful states in the U.S.!  It’s the only state allowed to fly it’s flag along side the U.S. flag instead of below it.  To come in and essentially pat us on the head like a child is just ridiculous.

Please, understand that while you think you’re a maverick, you still have to play the game and at least attempt to remain respectful to those around you.

(Sorry to get so political on this page.  I just couldn’t keep it to myself anymore.  Not that anyone really reads this silly thing.)

What Updates?

Okay ladies and gents, I know I’m not very good at this updating business, and I warned you that I would probably not keep this up.  I feel guilty about this and do apologize.  I do have stuff to write about, just not the drive to do it.  So I have a plan (sort of).  I am going to try to blog at least once a week.  I know what you’re thinking, that it’s unlikely that I will manage to blog more than twice a month, and you’re probably right, but I’m still going to try.

Topics you can look forward to in the future…

Individual who’s who blogs.  I will set aside an entire blog for each of the important people in my life.  This way when I talk about the stupid ideas that they put into my head, you’ll know who to blame.

A blog about my hygiene. I know this doesn’t sound interesting, but I have some odd habits that I would like to share with you.  Brace yourselves.

An essay about my concept of love and affection. There are many different kinds of love, and I’ve experienced so many of them.  Just a review of how my idea of love has changed since I was a child.  You know… sappy shit.

Of course, I will also blog as things happen in my life.  So stay tuned, hold onto your seats, and all those other silly sayings.

Yes I’m alive

I know, I know, I’ve been neglecting you all.  I warned you that this would happen.

I don’t really have anything exciting to share with you lately.  The only thing going on in my life is attempting to make Ashton understand what the potty is for.  I can’t begin to tell you how exciting that is.  Yesterday I put him down for a nap and when I checked on him he had pulled both his pants and his pull ups off.  Thankfully nothing was wet.  I’ve discovered that pull ups are considerably more expensive than regular diapers.  It may be time to convert to cloth trainers.  That should make my life interesting.

I belong to a group called the Drunken Damsels.  We are a naughty wench act that roams around North Texas and sings at small Ren Faires.  If you are in or around the area of DFW and looking for an interesting act for your next event, give us a buzz over at The Drunken Damsels.  Now that I’ve gotten the plug out of the way, I can get back to the point.  We are working on recording some stuff.  The cd will be called “Just a Taste” and will have six tracks on it.  It’s a garage band recording, so nothing fancy, but we certainly are having fun with it.  Word of advice: if you plan on recording, don’t share three or four bottles of wine before doing so.  It doesn’t work out well and you end up with some interesting blackmail material.  Moving on.

I’m a belly dancer.  No really, I swear!  I’ve been dancing for over 6 years now.  I know this isn’t really that interesting to most of you, but I’m quite excited.  The studio I belong to has recently started a Multicultural Dance Team.  The purpose of this team is to learn the traditions of different Middle Eastern cultures and dances.  So we get to do the research, and create the choreographies, and then teach it to the rest of the team.  Then we can go to schools, libraries, and museums to give demonstrations.  I’m really looking forward to it!  We will have a featured segment in the upcoming Christmas Hafla in Grapevine TX.

Speaking of belly dancing, I will be performing this weekend, and I’m barely ready.  Like, half the routine is me faking it, but I don’t care.  It’s really the musicians that are being featured here, as it is an entirely new piece.  I can’t wait for everyone to see it (or, I guess in this instance, hear it).

So that’s been my life.  Singing, dancing, and toddler potties.  I guess I don’t need it to be any more exciting.

Customers

So I’ve recently discovered this site http://notalwaysright.com/

It makes me giggle. Lots. And it reminds me of an interesting customer I once had.

As a senior in high school I worked at a local video store. It was owned by one of my neighbors and was very small. We had cigarettes behind the register, and a section for more… adult material in a back room. We also had a considerable number of regular customers.

One evening I was working all by my little lonesome, when a strange woman walked in. There had been people in and out all day, but few of them had come straight to the counter as this one did. She leaned forward so that she could speak to me very softly. “I need a pack of cigarettes,” she said. I started to ask her what kind when she cut me off, “but you can’t tell anyone I got them here.”

Now I had heard a number of odd requests working in this store, but that was a new one. I attempted to assure her that I didn’t think it would be a problem, but she seemed very concerned. “You don’t understand! People will come in here and ask if I bought them. They may even offer you money. But you can’t tell them! Please! I really need you to keep this a secret for me.”

“Ok, I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

“Even if they pay you?”

“Even if they offer me money, I promise.”

Having finally convinced her that I would not betray her trust, I pulled down the brand of her choice and began to ring her up. At this time a gentleman walked out of the back section. He had gone in maybe a minute before this whole exchange started, and presumably had made his choice of, erm, viewing material. The lady saw him and freaked. “Who is that!”

She had confused me so badly during this conversation that I had honesly forgotten that there was anyone else in the store, let alone who it was. I told her that I wasn’t sure who the man was and she threw the packet of smokes down on the counter. “DAMMIT! They have spies everywhere! I can’t buy these here.” And she stormed out.

The gentleman walked up to the counter with his movie tickets (we had all of the tapes in the back storage area) and I instantly started laughing. The man was one of our regulars. He was also completely and totally deaf. He looked at me confused so I wrote down a brief description of what had just happened. He read it, gave me a look of confusion, and made the universal sign for crazy. I couldn’t have agreed more.