The Inappropriate Card

Since Kylie is sick with an ear infection and possible strep, she wasn't really in any mood today to pose for a picture with her winning car and trophy. So instead, we have the completely inappropriate card that I gave to husband on Tuesday, just because I thought it was funny:

Since the pictures from my camera phone aren't the best, this is what it says:

Food? - Definitely

Drinks? - Absolutely

Sexy gifts? - No doubt...

Camera? - Of course.

What happens at bachelorette parties stays at bachelorette parties, so have fun!

Pinewood Derby Champs!

Shannon just texted me, which is totally my favorite method of communication (NOT!), to let me know that she took first place in the L.I.T. division of the Pinewood Derby, and Kylie took second place in the Cubbies/Sparkys division. (3-7 year olds) And here all day long I've been telling Kylie that it's just for fun, and if she doesn't win a trophy, it's ok, because it's supposed to be fun! So of course, she wins a trophy. Pictures of the winning children, their cars and their trophies to follow soon, I'm sure.

This is how much I love texting:

Your Mom is a Loser and a Big Scaredy-Cat...Hahaha!

Yesterday I told Shannon about Inappropriate Card Day. She thought it was really funny, and wanted to give an inappropriate card to one of her friends. I just happened to have a card in my backpack that I take to work. I bought it for my sister-in-law's birthday back in November, but I never mailed it. Because I'm lame I roll like that. Anyway, on the front it has a picture of an older lady with a disproportionately large glass of wine. The inside says something like, "As we age, we should only have one or two glasses of wine to celebrate a birthday." I would say that's highly inappropriate for a 7th grader who is not even having a birthday, wouldn't you? She's going to give it to a friend of hers named Jamie, whom I don't know. I just hope Jamie's parents have a sense of humor.

In other news, I suck at life. I always sort of knew this, but yesterday I got confirmation, from of all people, my mother. In her defense, she wasn't trying to be mean. But I kind of wish I hadn't gone over to her house.

I took Shannon and Kylie over to my parent's house yesterday to finish their Pinewood Derby cars. The derby is this coming Wednesday night, at the Awana church thing they go to with my mom. Shannon is what they call an L.I.T., or leader in training. This is one of the last things I would have ever expected Shannon to enjoy, but I think she just likes helping out with the little kids. Anyway, the L.I.T.s get to race derby cars also. My dad cuts the cars out on his bandsaw, or whatever that thing is called. Then the girls paint them, put stickers on them, etc.

While we were there yesterday, my mom pulled out some pictures that my brother had emailed to her and she had printed out. There were a couple of my adorable 2 year-old niece, Makenzie. The rest of them, however, were construction pictures of the ginormous house that my brother and SIL are building in North Carolina. I flipped through those without really looking, because really? I'm very happy for them and all, but enough already with the house. I've been hearing about it for what seems like forever. My brother used to own a condo in Virginia, near Washington D.C., which I guess is a pretty expensive area. So for what they were able to sell their condo for, you can build a ginormous house in the Raleigh/Durham area. Great. So I'm quickly flipping the pictures, but my mother wants to go more slowly, and show Shannon what all the different rooms are. Cue me rolling my eyes and sighing. So my mother says to Shannon:

"Your mother's jealous that her brother can afford a new house", or something like that. Ok, well she's right...but do we need to say that to my daughter? I think it's that old people Lack of a Filter thing working on her again. Just because something comes into your head, does it really need to come out of your mouth? I think not.

This seemed to open the floodgates for the "pick on Shelley" time. Shannon just happened to notice an alarm thing on the wall near the ceiling in my mother's house. It's round, about 8 inches in diameter, brown with a gold circle in the middle. I don't know how she's never seen it before...there's another one in the living room. Anyway, she asked my mom what it was. My mom tells her that it's a heat alarm. Like a smoke detector, except it detects heat instead of smoke. They had them put in when I was a kid. Then my mom goes on to tell Shannon that they put those in because of me. Because I was petrified of fire when I was young. Like about 8 years old or so, maybe 9. Ok, seriously? I remember being scared of fire, and I used to worry myself sick about the house catching on fire. I don't know why. Our heat was electric, not gas...it's not cold enough here for space heaters, we didn't live in an old house with old wiring...really there was no reason for me to be so scared of it, call it a phobia. I still don't really like it. But you really spent all that money to put the heat alarms in because of me? Smoke detectors weren't enough? Was I less scared after the heat alarms went in? I don't even remember.

I had a lot of fears as a kid, and I don't know why. My dad was a chronic worrier (still is), and he seems to have passed that on to me. Learned, or genetic? I have no idea. But while he worried about stupid, mundane, perfectionist crap, at least I worry about important things like my family's health, money, and money. And how we're going to send Danni to college. Oh, I guess that would fall under the whole money thing.

So then, for no reason at all, my mom decides to also tell Shannon that they took the palm trees out of the front yard because of me. Because during monsoon season, I was always afraid that they were going to break and fall onto the house. Somehow, I don't see this as unreasonable. Let me tell you about these palm trees. There were two of them in our front yard, about 15 feet in front of the house. These things were about 30 feet tall, and about 2 feet in diameter near the top. So yes, extremely tall and extremely skinny. They looked kind of like this:

During monsoon storms in the summer, where we can get winds up around 60 mph, those things would bend over so far they were practically sideways. So of course, it's totally unreasonable for a 8 to 10 year-old child to be afraid that they might break and fall on the house. Completely crazy and irrational. So when they were building a new mall here, some guys came around with a truck, looking for people who would be willing to let them use their palm trees to put at the new mall. While normally you would have to pay someone to come and take your palm trees out, these guys wanted to pay you $5 each to let them have the trees. So at that point, they got rid of those trees.

Funny story to tell my daughter about me, right? Hahaha. When my kids are afraid of something, I do my best to reassure them that they are safe, if I possibly can. What the hell did my parents do when I was scared, that I was so afraid of everything? I was also afraid of the dark. Again, totally unreasonable when you're a little kid. I always had to have the hallway light on at night. They left me alone overnight in the hospital when I was 6 years old. I don't know if they weren't allowed to stay (which I can't imagine, but this was 1973, so I don't know), or if they just didn't stay. Kylie is around that age, and I can't imagine ever, ever leaving her alone overnight if she were to be in the hospital. Just thinking about that makes me want to cry. I would kick nurse ass, raise hell, and scream my lungs out at people before I would leave my 6 year-old alone alone in a hospital. I wouldn't even leave my teenagers alone overnight in the hospital. I know...bitter much?

Ok, so yesterday I learned that I was/am a neurotic mess and that I suck. It's pretty fashionable these days to blame your parents for that. Can I do that, huh? Can I? Maybe I'm over-reacting a bit. *shrug*

Valentine's Day? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Valentine's Day!

That is, Steve and I have mutually decided not to exchange Valentine's day gifts/cards. We've decided to hold out for Inappropriate Card Day instead, which apparently is February 26th.

I've always thought that Valentine's day was kind of stupid. There was a story on Yahoo! this morning that said that Americans spend some ridiculous amount of money on Valentine's day every year, like $7.8 billion. Ok, maybe not, but really, it was some crazy figure. I mean really...we JUST HAD CHRISTMAS, people!! I know not everyone celebrates Christmas, but we do, and we just had the annual bank account-draining, gift-giving extravaganza barely six weeks ago, as I'm sure a lot of you did too.

Candy at Halloween, then all through the Christmas season, then more candy for Valentine's day, and then in just a few more weeks, here comes Easter! I'm not sure whether these holidays are sponsored by Russell Stover, Hallmark, or your local dentist, but I think they're all making out pretty well.

Even though I am a big pooh-pooher (yes, that's really a word) of Valentine's day, I still helped Danni put together a gift for her boyfriend. She gave him a surfer guy-type bracelet, (think Hollister, except I think it was Anchor Blue. There was a sale.) a bag of chocolate hearts, and a DVD of the movie "John Tucker Must Die." Now before you go thinking that's not romantic, (the movie, I mean), she wanted to give it to him because it was the first movie they ever saw together. Awwwwwww.

So this morning, I'm pulling on some sweats and slippers at 6:55am to drive Danni to school. Well, technically, she drives me there, and then I drive home. Anyway, at 7am, I hear this very faint little tap from outside that might have been someone knocking on the door, but also might have been the wind. Then again, a little louder. I looked out the peephole, and could tell there was someone standing off to the right, but with the light at 7am I couldn't tell who it was. I had the latch on and opened the door just a crack, and saw that it was T, Danni's boyfriend. We had no idea he was coming over. He did this to my front door:

Sweet, right? And he gave her some chocolate and a little heart-shaped locket/necklace. She could have ridden to school with them, but no, she still wanted to drive. So we leave for school. When we get there, a lot of the kids getting out of their cars are holding red heart-shaped balloons, carrying flowers, gifts, etc. I saw this one guy that had flowers, candy, and balloons, presumably for his girlfriend. I mean, the campus was just awash in red and pink.

This is all very nice and cute and sweet for those that have boyfriends/girlfriends, but it always reminds me of how badly it makes everyone else feel. Probably because I was one of those girls in high school who didn't have a boyfriend, and I always felt like such a loser on Valentine's day. Maybe this is why I've always hated it, because I learned to hate it when I was a teenager. After being married 16 years, it still doesn't make much sense to me.

I had the following conversation with Kylie yesterday, after her PreK class had their Valentine's party:

"Mommy, I want to get you a present for Valentine's."

"Sweetie, you know what? The best present you could give me is to clean up your toys, not fight with your sisters, and listen when Daddy and I tell you something."

"Hmmmph. That's not a REAL present!"

Oh yes it is, baby...better than all the chocolate in the world.

She was also upset this morning that T didn't give her anything for Valentine's day.

"But Ky, T is Danni's boyfriend, not yours."

"Grant is my boyfriend!"

"True, but you got a Valentine yesterday from him at school. Plus, you got the little pink pail with the Littlest Pet Shop notebook and pens and Hershey kisses in it from Daddy and me."

Also, since Grant is only four, I'm not sure his mom would be up to decorating our front door at 7am for his "girlfriend." Any poor kid that ever dates Kylie is going to have a lot to live up to. She's going to think all guys are as sweet and thoughtful as T is to her big sister. And you know what? They should be.

Wordless Wednesday

Ok, so it's not entirely wordless. But apparently, when you decide that the 5 year-old is old enough to have one of those really big boxes of Crayolas, you know, with the sharpener in the back? The 13 year-old decides to get "creative." What's up with the see-through, salmon-colored mumu that I'm wearing?

100th Post

I've been trying for days to come up with something cute and/or clever for my 100th post. I really doubt I could think of 100 things about myself that wouldn't put everyone, including me, right to sleep. I had a hard enough time just coming up with just six things for that other meme. Let's face it, I am just not the creative type.

So, to celebrate my 100th post, I have made a couple of changes. I finally replaced my holiday background with something kind of funky in a favorite color scheme of mine. I know it took me a long time to take down the Christmas background. I swear I am not one of those people who still has their Christmas lights up on the house. There are a few houses in my neighborhood that still do though! Maybe they will turn them on for Valentine's day.

Also, I have added a user pic that does not have my face completely covered with a hoodie. (Hey, it was cold on that beach!) Yes, that's me, in all my lovely splendor. *cough*

Since we've established that I'm not creative, we're going to go with cute instead. I'm dedicating my 100th post to my kids, and I'm going to post some recent pictures. Creative, right? Well, not so much. But definitely cute. I think they are, anyway. Although I may be a tiny bit biased.



Danni with one of her best friends, K. They both just made the J.V. softball team at school. (They're sophomores) Danni is the starting pitcher (and hopefully not the only pitcher, because she's done that before and it wears on you for a whole season!) K is the starting catcher, and they're both awesome players.



Seems I can rarely get Shannon to let me take her picture, but she sure loves taking her own picture in the mirror. Gotta get those MySpace poses, you know.



I don't think you all have ever met our lovely dog, Bo. As you can probably tell, he loves being choked hugged by Kylie. He's a chihuahua/pug mix, and we've had him for 8 years. We rescued him from a pound when he was about a year old. We used to think he was just a mutt, but one day we were in a pet store with all the different "designer" dogs, and they actually had a chihuahua/pug mix for sale there. They called it a "Chug." The price they were asking for their chug was $1300. I didn't tell them I only paid $10 for my Chug. That day, I went home and told Bo that he wasn't actually a mutt, he was a Chug. He felt so much better about himself when he heard that he had an identity. You know, other than "mutt." We were actually able to discontinue his therapy sessions.



Kylie was getting ready to go to a birthday party here, addressing a card to her friend Amy.



I just like these kinds of pictures, so I can remember the cuteness when she's driving me insane.


So, as you all know from my previous post, it's not really warm here this time of year. So yesterday, we were all bundled up inside the house, shivering in front of the fireplace, wishing we could leave the house. Oh wait. Not so much. We were actually doing this:



Daddy is such a talented golfer, he can putt and hold two scorecards and a pencil at the same time.



Kylie gets a little help from Shannon here...



And a little help from Danni here.



This one, she did herself. She actually made a couple of decent putts!



Stopping for a break at the ninth hole.



The kids also got to race the go-karts. You have to be at least 4'10" to drive your own car. I remember not too long ago (maybe a year) that Shannon wasn't tall enough. I think she's grown at least 4 inches since then.

You're supposed to be 16 to drive a passenger, so we only fudged by two months. Kylie was giving Steve and me the "party on!" hand signs as they went around the turn. You just know that Danni was loving being able to cut loose behind the wheel after two months of listening to me harp on her instruct her while she's driving the real car.

Dang, I really wish it was warm enough for us to get out and do something fun. Well, maybe by March...

Wasn't That a Great Superbowl? Now Go Home.

Wow, one of the biggest upsets ever in a Superbowl, and a pretty exciting finish, wasn't it? Did you have fun? Did you spend lots of money? Great...now leave. Please. Also, it would be really extra nice if you took your snowbirds elderly relatives bad drivers winter visitors home with you. You all that were here for the Phoenix Open FBR Open, you're leaving too, right? Today? We thank you for your generous donations to our city's economy, we really do. Now don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

I read an article this morning on Yahoo! by a Dan Wetzel from Yahoo! Sports. He felt the need to list all the winners and losers from Superbowl XLII. Giants - winners, Patriots - losers, Eli Manning - winner, Bill Belichick - loser, etc. However, he also included Phoenix as a host city as a loser. Here's what he said:

"LOSER: Phoenix as a host city
It's far too spread out and the downtown lacks life, which means you wouldn't even know the Super Bowl was really happening. The stadium is nice, but it is one of the strangest architectural works you'll see, plopped down in the middle of a suburb that still is a lot of desert. The NFL's decision to stage its fan "NFL Experience" out in a parking lot there didn't help. Oh, and it's not even warm there this time of year."

First: "It's far too spread out and the downtown lacks life, which means you wouldn't even know the Super Bowl was really happening."

It's true that there were many different things going on at the same time, and the metro area is very spread out. But really, you didn't know the Superbowl was happening? I live 35 miles away from the stadium (thankfully), and I surely couldn't miss what was going on. This sounds to me like poor Dan Wetzel didn't get invited to any of the cool hip celebrity parties in downtown Scottsdale, or around the campus of Arizona State in Tempe. Sour grapes, anyone? When he says "the downtown lacks life", if he means downtown Glendale where the stadium actually is, then yeah. But that's not where the action was for most of the week. I guess no one showed him where the hotspots were. Maybe no one wanted to.

Second: "The stadium is nice, but it is one of the strangest architectural works you'll see, plopped down in the middle of a suburb that still is a lot of desert."

Hell yes, the stadium is weird looking. I have no idea what the architects were smoking when they designed it, but it looks a lot like a big silver UFO sitting in the middle of the desert.

So the stadium is strange-looking, but I'm not sure how that makes a bad host city for the game.

Third: "The NFL's decision to stage its fan "NFL Experience" out in a parking lot there didn't help. "

Again, I'm not sure what the city of Phoenix as the host city has to do with this. It was the NFL's decision where to put the NFL Experience, and frankly, right outside of the stadium kind of makes sense to me. Where'd you want them to put it...Flagstaff?

Fourth, and this one is my absolute favorite: "Oh, and it's not even warm there this time of year."

Really. It's not even warm here this time of year. Well, our average high for the month of February is 70 degrees. I don't know of many places where 70 degrees is not considered warm. We happened to have a small stretch of gloriously cool weather during this particular week. Every day leading up to the Superbowl was sunny with highs in the low to mid 60s. I wonder if people from the northeast, like say NY and Boston, would consider that warm? On the day of the Superbowl, it was windy and overcast, probably about 57 degrees. I thought it was beautiful. Apparently it's not the Chamber of Commerce day you were expecting?

Dan, I hate to break this to you, but this is not Hawaii or the Caribbean, where it's 80 degrees every day of the year. Where did you think you were going? Oh, and I know there have been several Superbowls in San Diego. Know what the weather was in San Diego yesterday? 57 degrees with rain.

It's not even warm here this time of year. I can't stop laughing at that. You know what Dan? You're right. Here's the reality of Arizona: It's cold and rainy during the "winter." All the time. That's why we got 2.64 inches of rain all of last year. If, as you claim, it's not even warm this time of year, then why do all these old, retired people flock here in droves from the Great White North to live here from November to April? Certainly it can't be the $300 greens fees.

Oh, and more reality...it's so hot in the summer that the sun will melt your skin right off, like Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith. Also, it's just desert here...we ride horses and tumbleweeds blow across I-17. There's absolutely nothing to do here. So when you go home, tell everyone you know that it's horribly cold here in the winter *giggle*, and blistering hot in the summer. Also, tell them that the people here are rude and obnoxious, there's nothing to do, and that they would never, ever, ever want to move here. Oh, and if you could convince all the people that have moved here in the last 10 years to go back to where they came from? That would be awesome too.

Here are a few statistics for you:

Arizona last hosted the Superbowl in 1996, when the Cardinals were still playing at Sun Devil Stadium, which is a lovely college facility, if a bit old and outdated.

Since 1996, there's been a slight change in the population. I did a bit of Googling, and here's what I found:

In 1998, the Phoenix metro area held 2,931,004 people. By 2006, the last year I could find stats for, the population of the metro area had risen to 4,039,182. Don't worry, I'll do the math for you. That means that in 8 years, 1,108,178 people have moved here. Over 1.1 million people. In 8 years. Why? Damned if I know. But if a day on national television of 57 degrees and skies threatening rain make even one less person want to move here, it was totally worth it.

It's not even warm here this time of year. Well, except for the fact that next weekend, it's supposed to be near 80 degrees. You should come back then. Well, on second thought...please don't come back. Ever.

Intruder Alert...Intruder Alert...

Remember that video game from the 80s? I can't recall the name of it, but I remember that phrase that it spewed all the time. That's how I felt when I found out that husband had read my blog.

I didn't think he even knew the web address, and he didn't...but amazingly, he had the wherewithall to Google "I miss my sanity", and boom, there it was. He was at work, and he wanted the picture of the three girls from our Christmas card for his desktop. I had told him...oh, a long time ago, that I would send him the picture directly from the camera, that way it would be a large enough file to look good on the desktop. Unfortunately, I forgot all about it, so he embarked on a trip into Google-land in search of my blog. Of course, taking the picture from my blog makes it very small and not good for a desktop, so that prompted me to finally send him the larger file.

However, he ended up leaving a comment on this post, which freaked me out a little bit. My first instinct was, "Hey, get out of here, this blog is MINE MINE MINE!" I don't want to feel like I have to censor myself. I don't think there's anything on here anymore that would offend him, but I somehow feel as though my space has been invaded.

This is silly, right? When I first found out that Danielle had a MySpace account, she was 13. I kind of over-reacted, but in my defense, the age limit was supposed to be 16 at the time. We set some very strict rules, and one of them was that I made my own account, and she had to list me as a friend, and set her profile as private to anyone who was not a friend.

When she first found out that I had read her MySpace page, she was furious, as only a 13 year-old can be furious with a nosy mother. She ranted about how I had invaded her privacy. I pointed out to her that the internet was a public domain, and that nothing on here is private. In fact, it's about as public as it gets.

I suppose the same holds true for me. It's not like I have ever tried to hide the fact that I have a blog, or the name of it. I have read him things that I've written from time to time. I just didn't think he'd ever be interested enough to find it himself, and in reality he probably only wanted the picture. But now I feel like I have to be more cautious, which sort of sucks.

How many of you have a significant other who reads your blog? And how many of you keep it totally private, just for yourself? Just curious.