Odd Sightings From The Weekend...

It was a weird, weird weekend...too much family (each event good, but I just can't take 3 events in 4 days!), too many house projects, and I actually hit a few stores (with my mother - egads, what was I thinking?!) on Black Friday. I must be officially insane...must repeat my mantra...online is best. Online is best. Online is best.

• I'm driving back home from the post office. In front of me is a mazda or other off-brand late model SUV sporting out of state, yet still cornfed, plates. Inside, 3 middle age, corn fed people. A man is driving, the other 2 are woman. As I follow them, the one in the backseat, for a good 15 minutes, rummages thru a bag and every 30 seconds or so holds up what looks like pretty skanky lingerie...bras, undies, nightgowns etc...all see thru, and cheezy looking - sparkles glistening etc. Really? Who buys that much at once? Who feels a need to go thru it in a car with someone who is not a spouse in the car? Or, if shopping with your girlfriends, not with the husband in the car. Something about both being there makes it creepy to me! I followed them until they turned into the local mega-church. Cause that's what I do - rummage thru lingerie on the way to church...I'd at least wait till after. Otherwise, your libido cools down while talking to the pastor, unless you've got a weird fetish...one I really don't want to hear about.
• My child, who won't eat "real" turkey, apparently, but horked down spicy pumpkin pie and really tart homemade cranberry sauce.
• A woman who tried 3...yes, three credit cards at Gymboree before she found one that wasn't over limit. Ummmm...maybe you shouldn't be popping for 35 dollar sweaters and 25 dollar shirts for a munchkin that's going to grow out of them in a relatively short time if you are that overmaxed. Didn't anyone learn anything from the last 4 months?!
• A woman standing outside of a adult themed-store in an outlot shopping area...with a small child, say, about 8, looking and pointing at the santa-themed underwear in the window and holding the child's hand. Really? You take your kid for shopping for Daddy's after-hours present?! I'm all for nookie under the tree, and indulging Ward's fantasies, and I'm all for teaching The Beav about sex...I just don't think this is probably the best way.
• My mother in Baby Gap with me, pitching a fit that "oh my dear God" (yes, she, the religious one can take the name in vain) "who would dress their child in this?! They shouldn't be parents!" (OK, this is normal for her at this point)...holding up long johns in 2 tone blue and the light blue in a print of skulls and crossbones. Looks like it's for the elementary school set. Then, as I almost pick a fight with her just to do it, I see a woman about 7 feet away looking at my mom with open disgust and contempt - holding those long johns in her pile of to-be-purchased. So I don't pick a fight, cause, well, my mom is allowed to her opinion, as much as the lady who decided that she would buy them. Then, 5 minutes later, when she thinks we've moved on, I see the ultimate act of shopping lemming-ness - she sheepishly moves over to the rack and puts them back. Hey lady...if you like them, buy them - why the hell would you care what my 61 year old mother thinks?!
• My step-mother standing in her dining room with a pile of puppy-pads that she has left over...for me to put around H on her precious ivory wool carpet "in case she's a food thrower". The same woman who currently has 2 dogs and 2 cats in the house. The same woman who at one time had 2 dogs and 5 cats in that house. I give her some credit (maybe it's the stuffing she plied me with...), when I said it was ok, she didn't push it.

Anyways. Hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving. I leave you with one cute pic of the Peanut in her Thanksgiving Day dress...

Apparently, My Kid Would've Committed Fraud

So H and I decide to do what any sane (har) people would do on the warmest morning of the last 15 days...we decide to drive 30 minutes (and then 12 minutes more trying to follow the crappy directions to the building) to get mama's child abuse fingerprinting, so I can prove I haven't done any heebie things in my past. Cause the other 3 sets of prints I've done for this new adoption won't prove by themselves that I'm an upstanding citizen. What a fun morning!

It was at this totally weird bus station company. I get there and there are 2 child care worker people waiting. H is clingy, cause it's a new place, and well, it's creepy. And they have a sign on the wall tracking injuries, accidents etc for the company...a whopping 3 days since an accident! Woohooo. Maybe I'll drive my kid when she gets to school age. Anyways, I digress.

So, we get to our turn in about 10 minutes. H wants nothing to do with seperation from my hip, of course. So I clean my hands, then pull a chair over and set her on it, hoping she'll sit. She won't. So I stand her on it and wrap my arm around her chest, holding her to mine, thinking I'll switch sides when I have to switch hands for printing...

The fingerprint lady flips out. Says it's not safe. I said, I have her in my arm. She says no...cause I can't touch H while they fingerprint me, from beginning to end. If I do, they will void my prints.

Yeah, cause my 20 month old will commit identity fraud. She's going to slip her little fingers in under mine and give me a free and clear print. How stupid do people get when they follow The Rules?!

So, she stood there for 3-5 minutes screaming her head off, tears rolling, cause the lady made me stand a foot away from her. Wouldn't even let her wrap herself around my leg. Nice, huh?

I'll send them the bills for her therapy when she gets older.

Christmas Lights?!

Seriously...really? Apparently there are hundreds of people in the Western-Suburbs-of-this-great-city-that-I-like-to-use-the-airport-but-rarely-visit that feel that because Target and Walmart have had their light displays up for 4 weeks, it's ok to decorate for Christmas. (I don't say the Department Stores - I'm sure they are decorated - but no one shops at them anymore.)

I'm an obnoxious Christmas elf. My husband will roll his eyes at me as I make him take the Christmas tree out on Friday. I will usually bake myself into a tizzy, and bring home more ornaments for the tree that already takes 2 weeks to decorate. I've thought of adding a room behind the dining room so I can put up another tree. I've already scoped out our new bar/kitchenette in the basement, trying to figure out how I can decorate it. So, don't call me a Grinch (another fav I can't wait to show H).

But, put quite simple folks: You cannot leapfrog holidays. Yes, that goes to you too, Walmart (evil creature that you are)...you cannot go from Labor Day to Christmas. It is an insult to the holidays inbetween. It'll also make me gouge out my ears, cause I like a good round of Feliz Navidad in all it's 60's hokiness...the first 1,237 times. After that, I take the nearest lit reindeer and bludgeon someone with it. You must give Halloween and Thanksgiving their due.

I don't care if a store or any commercial entity puts "Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas" in their sales fliers. And if some Christian gets offended by the first? Lighten up. And if some Muslim get offended by the 2nd? Lighten up. They could all tell you to just "Come, your family won't love you unless you go over the top with gifts". But claimjump Thanksgiving? I will with reckless abandon boycott you!!!

Do you have Christmas parties before Thanksgiving? NO. Then don't put that damn wreath and those icicle lights up on your f***ing house for another 3 days! Hell, the blow-up Turkey (the only blow up I have, but I love the kitchy of it, with his tail bobbing in the wind...for 3 days! Only 3 days folks!) doesn't go out in our front-yard till tomorrow! If it had been 60 here, I would have given it to y'all who were out there yesterday. But it wasn't. It's supposed to be the same, or warmer over the 4 day weekend.

Stop. Back away from the spiral light Christmas Trees and the Snowflake Projector...or The Gingerbread Man gets it.

Sorry, Sorry, Sorry...and, we're on the rollercoaster

Sorry to all 3 of you out there! I know, I should have posted already!

H did great with her surgery - even woke up without a scream. She still wasn't happy when they took her away though - even with the relaxer they gave her - she gave a good fight. When she woke up, we had her in P's arms, thinking she'd wake up fighting. She jerked up a few inches, looked around dazed, rubbed her eyes, fought to sit up, then looked around for a few minutes. She saw her stickers on the table, reached for them, then reached for me. She got bored and wanted to leave.

One interesting thing happened: I was carrying her around, trying to entertain her until we could leave, and she was watching us and other's speak - very intently watching mouths move. She all of a sudden pushed my hair out of the way, and jabbed me in the right ear about 3 times with her index finger, and a quizical look on her face. She knew something had been done, and seemed to be asking for a detailed and concise explanation!

In other breaking news, we've finally been pushed thru pre-cert by our new agency, and we're awaiting the packets to come in the mail, so we can start the HS for our adoption of A from Taiwan. Thankfully, we don't have to redo our FBI prints that were done back in July!

Life's never boring is it?

Now, I want to get to the holidays - I love Thanksgiving till Christmas! And I want to get dug into A's paperwork, so we can get that done and over with (is it sick that I'm a paperwork fiend? I love getting it done and feeling like I've gotten something accomplished...I missed my calling for corporate mid-level management!), and start the wait...Then, we get to set up somewhere during that process, the last post-placement for H with that agency and then kiss them a fond farewell. Also, a few days give or take around Christmas, we hit that make-believe holiday for H - the one where she crosses over that imaginary line and is with us longer than she was in the SWI. Somehow, that will make me feel all warm and fuzzy...

T-minus 7 days till The Feast. All I can say: Step-mom's sausage cornbread stuffing. I can forgive everything that happened with that whole back story just cause she makes that stuff. And Dad's wine-injected turkey. Seriously - how did we eat turkeys before they main-lined a nice spatlese? I only hope that H will eat a turkey that doesn't come out of a bag from the lunchmeat counter!

I'm Counting On Y'all...

P is 1/2way across the country, and I'm starting to really freak about H's surgery...

The good news? It's at 7am. The bad news? We have to be there at 6.

We had the pre-op physical today...amazingly, she didn't vomit, though she came close. She had a fever last weekend, doc thinks it might be from another ear infection brewing.

The good news? This has confirmed to me that I shouldn't chicken out of putting H under the knife. The bad news? Any fever, and they pull her from surgery, and we have to wait about a month, with the holiday and all. The good/bad news? I picked up ANOTHER perscription for ANOTHER antibiotic this afternoon...(that's 5 rounds of 4 different meds in the last few months)...

I laid in bed till after midnight rolling the whole "what if's" thru my head. She went down like a rock...too bad I didn't.

I'm tired, and stressed, and can't stand the idea of one more earache/teething pain fueled-whine fest tomorrow. I'm sooooo tired. I know P isn't home till dinner time when he's here, but this is so much harder with no break. And work has things that need to be done too...

I'm dreading Friday like you wouldn't believe, and I also can't wait for it to come...at least P will be home tomorrow night...late, but at least he'll be home. I just want it to be over.

Thank you for listening to my own whine-fest. Thank you for your consideration...

Why I Work at (Small) Happy Workland

P left his old job at the used-to-be-technology-leader back at the very tail of June. He started his new job at safety-technology-company in August. It's now November.

We got on Saturday ANOTHER mailer from UTBTL company for HR benefits stuff. Not the "you still might have your now-puny 401k with us" kinda statements stuff, which I would understand. No, we get things about re-enrollment for 2009. We get things about anti-smoking programs. We get things about how to earn more points at the gym.

Har!

Seriously? They've laid off over 30% of their world wide staff. That alone, the money in mailers could probably bail their sorry asses out of the pits. No one has noticed that these people aren't in their employ anymore?

I will never ever work for such a large company. The beaurocratic stupidity is mind-numbing.

I told P, my guess is, we won't stop getting mailers until they spin out their one profitable division to live on it's own, and the rest of the parent dies a long, CEO-benefiting death.

One Last Political Post...

Anything to keep my mind off the little girl with the big fever sleeping upstairs in her crib...

Things I would like to see change in our political world:
1. The electoral college: It's an outmoded concept. Computers folks...we can count all the votes now.

2. Winner-Take-All-States: Obama won by approx. 10% over McCain. Why did he have over a hundred more electoral college votes? Winner takes all states...again, we can count on more than our fingers and toes now with them new-fangled computer-thingys...We can't handle splitting 50 states' votes, if we have to keep the EC?

3a. Reporting. Seriously. I was screaming at the TV using nasty words in front of my daughter. How the hell can you call Kentucky with 8% of the vote in? I mean, yes, we all "knew" that it would go Rep., but from a mathmatical standpoint, it's not a viable call! And how the hell did they call Vermont (Or was it NH?) with literally "0%" of the vote tallied? That means that they had one precinct that voted, didn't roll the percent-o-meter over to 1%, and they called it.

3b. Reporting stunts: The fancy schmantzy rotundas...and oh dear Gawd, the ice map. Seriously? and with 3a above...do y'all remember calling the last two elections too early? I was hoping someone would have to go out there, chisel Indiana out of the ice, repour it, and restain it.

3c. The Heisenberg Principal of Voting: I would, if I could make one change to this process, stop ANY and ALL reporting of election results until all polls in this country are called. We can live for 6 hours without knowing. We could watch reruns of X-Files or something instead. I have a hypothesis: the constant 24 hour thing changes elections:
a. If you know your guy is "really really winning" (with 8% being reported as a final call), you may not take the time to stand out there and wait to vote. You figure "it's in the bag", so why not go get that pizza instead?
b. If your guy is really losing, same thing...what's the point?
c. If you live on the West Coast, and a or b above, why vote? (Apparently for silly props out in CA, but that's another post for another time.)
We know that elections can come down to the wire. There can be a time where Wyoming will decide an election. But by reporting 3 time zones before their polls close, you can alter the behavior of the people who are still waiting to vote. It can also force people to get out and vote, if they see their candidate losing, and want to help change it. But, I think the observation of the election changes the election. I admit, it's probably minor at the national election level, a lot being negated by the electoral college and winner take all, but I think that causes more distortion at the local level. But, minor has changed elections recently. I wish we would stop this practice. Leave it to a big surprise at the end....

I am proud of America though. We got out there, a hell of a lot more of us used our voices. Now we have to keep using our voices to guide the people we are sending to Washington...to keep them honest. And I hope we've inspired the people who didn't speak up on Tuesday to consider it next time.