Oh, You Wanted Something Permanent? October 26, 2009

I got some comments with my last post that cereal (two FULL bags of cereal that I BOUGHT!) wasn’t really that big of a deal, it wasn’t permanent after all, it could just be vacuumed up (and by “just” here we mean with at least three separate vacuumings.)

And so, for your viewing pleasure, I give you the Sharpie artwork: (All artwork was produced by the Baby.)

Yes, that’s Sharpie on the carpet too. And on the carpet there.

And that’s just the walls (and carpet) there’s also this: this:

and this: And these: And my personal favorite, the hearth:

I just don’t bother to get mad about the Sharpie anymore.

No, I don’t just have markers lying around the house all the time, 90% of the time I can not figure out where he got the marker that he’s using, but if there’s one in the building he’ll find it (last week he found 2 (TWO!) within the first five minutes of being in church.)

P.S. All walls with Sharpie on them were painted within the last year.

While I Was Upstairs Cleaning the Playroom… October 22, 2009

… the Irish Twins were taking care of the living room:

(The fact that the Infantile Delinquent isn’t pictured does not mean he wasn’t involved (it means he was upstairs changing his underwear.))

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Sometimes people joke with me about having more kids.

I don’t really think it’s funny.

Today Alison Wonderland is: October 12, 2009

Wearing too much eye makeup.  Because she can.

Refusing to let her nutrition grade bring down her GPA.  (Because c’mon it’s freaking nutrition!)

Wearing too much, too dark lipstick.

Trying to get her stupid washing machine to drain.

Wearing her, oft stained, Death Cab For Cutie t-shirt (I got the blood out, no problem but the chocolate ice cream, well, don’t look too closely.)

Wondering if she would have done better on her nutrition quiz if her children had not been screaming in the background.

Wearing classic boot cut jeans even though her skinny tapered jeans would really complete the look (see above mentions of too much eye makeup, too much dark lipstick, Death Cab t-shirt) a lot  better.  (Some might say that she’s not wearing her skinny tapered jeans because she doesn’t own any skinny tapered jeans but I’m sticking with the idea that she’s trying to make a statement.)

Going to be late for school because her babysitter didn’t show up in time.  AGAIN.

Hey, Give Me a Break, I Wasn’t a Boy Scout October 3, 2009

My brother got re-baptized last night.   I’m told it went great.  I don’t know, I wasn’t there.

I did intend to be there but , well, part of it was my fault.  I got the email from my brother and I read far enough to see that there was an address and at that point I stopped reading so I didn’t realize that the address included a street name rather than a number and that the stake center would probably require actual directions (which were offered for the low low price of a return email) rather than the ability to navigate the streets of Lehi (which I learned last night is not easy as the streets which should run north-south don’t).  So I didn’t know where we were going.

And then we left a little late.  Not very late, not even late enough to really be late just past the time I like to have for a cushion.

And the traffic was unbelievable.  I don’t usually have a lot of sympathy for people who don’t take traffic into account.  I mean come on, there’s always traffic right?  But I didn’t really expect it at 6:30 on a Friday night.  (I think I failed to take the fact that it’s conference weekend so all those crazy mormons are getting out of town into account.)

So we left late(ish) and we didn’t know where we were going.  That still wouldn’t have been too big of a deal for most of you.  But Sean and I are not most of you and even with two of us there was not a phone to be found.  Not that a phone would have done us a lot of good considering the fact that neither of us have any more minutes on our prepaid phone plans (yes, I realize that the only people who have prepaid phone plans are 6th graders, shut up).

So we made it to Lehi (finally) about 15 minutes after the baptism was supposed to start and it was just about at that point that the Baby woke up and proceeded to do a surprisingly accurate impression of a Nazgul screaming (You know that scream your baby can do where you think the your skull may actually crack open and your brain, which has been converted to a liquid form by the sound waves, will come pouring out your eye sockets?  That’s the one.)  So we drove around, not lost exactly but unable to find where we were going, with the nazgul screaming for about 25 minutes at which point I was ready to give up (we had surely missed the baptism anyway) but I was not going to drive all the way home with the Baby screaming like that.

So we decided to go to my other brother, Chris’s.  He was surely not home (he was the one performing the baptism afterall) but knowing him as I do, I knew that the house would not be locked and he would be delighted to be of assistance (especially when it required nothing on his part).

So we went to Chris’s house and as expected  the front door was not locked.  Open entering the house I noticed that someone had burnt dinner and that there were mattresses in the entryway (I never did get an explanation for that one, but he does have 8 kids so I guess I can come up with one on my own).  Proceeding into the house the smell of burning increased and I was thinking that whoever burnt dinner had done a really through job of it.  And then I got to the kitchen where I found my self crunching on a lot or debris.  Now, as I mentioned, Chris has 8 kids so debris on the kitchen floor is not unexpected (especially when I , as a guest am unexpected) but this took “I need to sweep the floor” to a whole other level.  And then I realized that it was glass on the floor oh and that there was the remnants of a pan of chocolate chip cookie bars smoking on the stove.

Apparently, the chocolate chip cookies that had been made for the reception after the baptism, and then left at home, had been left on a burner on the stove that had been left on.  The pyrex pan that had held the cookie bars had exploded at some point before my entrance on the scene and the remaining cookie on the stove was making an attempt at  going up in flames.

So I’m not saying that the Lord made me do it (you know, be late and unprepared) but well, it may not have been the devil either.

The Problem With E-Bay Names and Some Other Stuff September 29, 2009

If, for example (and this is purely hypothetical, of course) you have an e-bay name like Jesuspaidyourprice, and you send me something that involves about a hundred feet of Velcro strapping and the strapping is all jumbled up and stuck to itself and to the few parts of the item that aren’t Velcro, then I might find myself thinking something like “well He may have paid my price but He certainly didn’t pack my item because He would have made sure that it wasn’t a jumbled mess when it got to me (and He probably would have sent it in a timely manner especially after I sent Him a message about how I hadn’t slept in a week because my kid could get out of his crib and this item is supposed to be able to prevent that)”  (It works beautifully by the way.)

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My hair is currently about 8 different colors.  Most are the usual blondish reds, brownish blonds etc… but then there’s the hot pink.  It was intentional and I love it.

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I got an A on my first math test.

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I have a Chemistry test next week.  I’m a little nervous.

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The lady that charged way too much for shipping (and then assured me that it was actually going to cost her that much to ship my item) made $8.50 on the deal and then (probably because she had assured me that it would cost that much and felt guilty) refunded me $3.  Which is nice.  But at the same time I have to think “why even bother?

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Climbing is giving me really nice arms.  I find myself admiring them in the mirror while I brush my teeth and my hair.  (And, you know, when I happen to walk by a mirror and pull up my sleeve and flex.)  I’m no Michelle Obama yet, but I’m getting there.

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Why do small boys insist on accompanying everything they do with farty noises?

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I’m still slogging through Buffy but it feels a lot like slogging so I wonder why I even bother.  (I bother because I want to see “Once More With Feeling” and I don’t feel right skipping ahead.)  But we’re also now watching Angel which I quite enjoy.

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The End.

Step Away From the Mouse September 17, 2009

I won again.

This time it’s a good thing.  The Baby has learned to climb out of his crib and the resultant lack of sleep is doing bad things to all of us (not to mention that that kid has to be watched every second and now I can’t even relax at nights and naptimes) so I bid on, and won, a tent for the crib that should keep him in.  So that’s a positive.

But while I was on eBay’s site I figured I might as well look at belay devices.  You know, not that I’m going to buy one or anything, just to look right?

Will you look at that that some guy is selling two of them and the bidding’s only to $10.50.  $10.50! FOR TWO?!?  That’s a sensational price!  They’re $20 easy on their own.  How can I pass that up?

Apparently I can’t.  I bid on that one too (the auction closes at 11:00 tonight so here’s hoping).

And then maybe I’ll look at ropes.  I didn’t buy any but… well, it’s pretty tempting.  And then there’s the shoes (I have an email in to a girl selling on craig’s list) and carabiners and the quickdraws and SERIOUSLY WILL SOMEONE PLEASE GET ME AWAY FROM THE FREAKING COMPUTER!!!!!

On a related note I did send a note to the harness seller asking if she would could down on the price.  She said that she couldn’t, that it really would cost her about that much and she’d only make $1 or $2 on the deal.  (She also said something about the postmaster at her post office having made her husband open a package once to prove that it was media so that he could send it media mail.  Is that even legal?)  Anyway, the thing about postage is that the receiver always knows what the sender spent.  And in this case, with the $15 that I paid her to send my harness she spent $6.45.  So she really only made $1 or $2 or $8.50 on the shipping (and that’s considerable when you take into account the fact that I only paid $24.99 for the thing).  Whatever.  Maybe it’ll teach me to pay closer attention in the future.

Speaking of, I wonder what the belay devices are going to cost to ship???

And the Winner is…. September 14, 2009

Crap!  It’s me.  I won.  Dangit!

I won something on eBay and I really wish I hadn’t.  I bid on the item, that really had quite a good price, but I made the fatal, well, ok not fatal but certainly costly mistake of not checking the price for shipping first.   Upon checking the shipping cost I realized why the item was still so reasonably priced, why I was the first and ultimately only bidder.  The seller was trying to make their money not from the item itself but from charging at least five times what it will actually cost them to send it.

See, the item is a rock climbing harness (something that I probably shouldn’t be buying anyway.  I have been climbing quite a bit lately anything to get me out of the house and away from the kids and I intend to continue to do so, it’s a great full body workout and well, really fun, but you can’t climb alone and the gal I go with has a spare harness so I don’t really need my own what I really need are climbing shoes but they’re considerably more expensive.)  and the weight, or lack thereof, of a harness is an important feature, a feature that is easy to ascertain for the most part and even if one can’t find the exact specs for the harness that they were looking at on, say eBay, they could certainly find comparable harness and see that they weighed under a pound and it doesn’t take a postal employee to tell you that it doesn’t cost $15 to mail a small 15 oz item from Washington state to Utah.  Hypothetically speaking of course.

I hate it when people do this!  I think it’s immoral, they list an item for a low low price just counting on some idiot (in this case that would be me) coming along and bidding without reading the fine print.  I understand that it’s a great way to get your stuff sold and to make a little cash but at what expense really?  It’s not theft technically, but it is slight of hand (which I like as well as the next girl when it comes to magic tricks) it’s sneaky and underhanded and … wrong.  (Yes, I get that it’s my responsibility to read all the fine print before I bid, I get my responsibility in all this but … well, if you cna’t see it then there’s no explaining it to you.)

As soon as I realized that the shipping cost was what it was I began hoping that I would be outbid, I thought that the chances of that were pretty good, I only bid 1 cent over the asking price afterall, and people don’t win $90+ climbing harnesses for $25 right?  You already know the answer to that so we’ll move on. (The answer is no they don’t, they win $90+ climbing harnesses for $40.)  Obviously I was not outbid.

Upon winning I did send an email to the seller asking if they’d be willing to come down on the shipping but I’m not holding out a lot of hope and as I told them, if they won’t come down I’ll go ahead and pay in full since I did bid and not paying what I promised to pay is also not exactly right (I might have mentioned this before here or here or… anyway) but either way I am the owner of two new climbing harnesses.

Did I forget to mention that just after I bid on the harness on eBay I found a brand new harness at REI.com for $30 with free shipping and (either thinking that I would surely be outbid or forgetting altogether about the harness I was in the process of buying on eBay (it was 2 in the morning, my thought processes were not exactly linear) or some kind of combination of the two) I bought it?  Whoops.

Hey, anyone want to go climbing with me?  I’ll supply the harness.

Gaaaaa!!!!!! September 7, 2009

I do not understand why, or indeed how, people persist in having bunches of children.  It seems to me that at some point you reach a kind of critical mass.  And after that point it is impossible to even entertain the idea of having any more not to mention the fact that there are too many children around, and at all hours, for a couple to even be able to do what would be necessary to do in order to have some more.  (I may be sharing a little too much here.)  And for us that point seems to be four.

Game over.

PS.  I do not want to hear about how your critical mass is different than my critical mass or about how you never had a kid make a lake out of your kitchen twice in one day or about how toddlers are so cute or about any of that crap.  Just keep it to yourself ok?  In fact, there, I turned off the comments.  Just go about your business, this misery doesn’t want company, I just want to sit in my corner and howl at the moon.  Now go away.  And take my kids with you.

Waxing Rhapsodic September 2, 2009

I have that feeling again.  That fragile, scrubbed clean, wistful feeling you get when you reach the end of another life, the conclusion, or is it just the beginning? of another story.  I’m restless and tired and the edges of my vision seem to have shifted slightly as if the color has suddenly taken on another texture, the air a slightly different and unfamiliar shape.

I get this every time I finish reading another book but at some times it’s more pronounced than others.  Mostly the spectrum is controlled by the depth of the book, the deeper the book the deeper the shift in my reality.  Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos has produced a slight ache somewhere in the vicinity of my creativity.  I long to write.  To write something, anything but preferably something beautiful and moving and pregnant with meaning and possibility where a pause in conversation or the shifting of one’s weight, the most innocuous movement that in real life, at least in my life, would go completely unnoticed is heavy with import and opens vistas of insight.

I wonder when I read books like this if people really see the world this way?  Are there people who really read the body language of the people around them this closely? Never mind baking a chicken “filling (the)… house with it’s gold tinged aroma”?  Am I somehow the only one who doesn’t see these things?

But I do when I read books like this and maybe with practice I can, at least occasionally, when I’m looking at my life rather than at a book.   I really need to work on that.

…With the Time and the Marching On September 1, 2009

It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about.  I actually have several fairly interesting ideas (that I will no doubt either forget or not find nearly as interesting if I don’t just write them already) I just find that I’m completely lacking in the desire to sit down and get them out.  And now I’ve got school and my new schedule and the guilt over spending so much time on school rather than doing things like taking care of the kids or cleaning the house and… I can come up with excuses all day.

What it really comes down to is that I’m not feeling it.  Haven’t been for a while as evidenced by the last month or two’s posts.  And I don’t have much to say about that.

The end.