Weekends have suddenly become much more productive in our household. Last Saturday, we were all over town, at the mall and various places and things all day, and spent Sunday afternoon at the lake fishing. And oh it was a beautiful day! We were going to go again this weekend, however yardwork has taken precedence over that. Friday evening, we headed to The Home Depot, I believe the original purpose was because GI Joe wanted an electric or gas landscape edger and a grill, and who the hell else knows what other manly beasts he had wanted, I don't recall lol. On our way through the outdoor area, we noticed they had pre-potted herbs and vegetables. I have been wanting to grow my own veggies for just about forever, so the kids and I looked at all they had to offer while GI Joe gathered his manly things. After perusing a good 50 varieties of tomatoes, we settled on our first choice, Better Bush, says they are perfect for container gardening. Decided to also go for some small tomatoes, and got just some good ol' grape tomatoes. Next we picked out a cucumber plant. Were going to also get a yellow squash plant, however the boys aren't big fans of it, though the evil mommy makes them eat it sometimes anyhow. Decided to pick out one of the bell pepper plants.. All of the plants except for the cucumbers were in peatpots, so there was no trash, there was a small amount of plastic around it, but it says it is biodegradable! Yay for lovin on the earth and shit. Picked out some rather large terra cotta pots, and some organic potting soil. Headed home, after stopping by Firehoue Subs for some yummy dinner because we ended up spending a good deal of time at home depot and had to feed the poor kids before midnight, you know, the whole gremlin/mogwai deal. Got up today, left the boys here, took G and went down to the little nursery near our house, just for the hell of it, figured I needed some gloves anyhow. They had all herbs and veggies on sale for half price for earth week, so I ended up with a damn squash plant anyhow :P Came home, had some lunch, slathered me and my pale offspring with some sunscreen, and we headed out back to our personal jungle. The kids and I were on garden duty, GI Joe was moving a shitload of concrete garden pavers from our patio way out to our toolshed. Yeah....they've been sitting there for many months where he pulled them up from the rose garden area......uh can we say black widows?? There were several BIG ones, some with egg sacs attached EWWWW. Definitely tons of fun, particularly with the kids. They were ceremoniously murdered via big ass shovel or jetstream water spray. Good riddance. Got my plants all potted up, have them sitting out at the back edge of the patio. One of the tomato plants we bought already had a tiny little gumball sized tomato growing on it, so I'm pretty hopeful that this will all turn out ok. If so, then I'll work on getting a few more things. I can't wait to walk out my back door and grab a ripe, juicy, warm from the sun tomato. And cucumbers....oh, I remember when I was little, my mammy (that would by grandmother) had a garden, and she had cucumbers and I think tomatoes, I don't know what else she had, but I remember those cucumbers were amazing, we'd go and pick some, bring them in, give them a quick rinse and just bite into them. And my other grandma, they had a small garden when I was even younger, and I would pick green onions, and eat them whole, dirt and all. Still can't figure out why the hell no one said hey, let's wash that off first!! But oh well, I'm alive lol. Ok, so back from memory lane- we finished up outside, with the planting and the spiders and the killing and the spraying off the patio, came in, everyone showered, and guess where we went? If you guessed Wal-Mart, then you'd damn well be wrong, coz I fuckin hate wal-mart and just recently stepped foot in one after not having been in one in over a year. However, if you guessed The Home Depot, you'd be correct. Why, you ask, did we go again after just having gone and spent hundreds of dollars yesterday? Why, to spend hundreds more!! Only logical answer. This time, our journey was to acquire a trailer for my Expedition, so husband can haul off junk, like tree branches and big things and stuff and junk. Go, look, acquire. Hook it up to the truck, with help from our friendly home depot associates, and most of the lights don't work. Starts pouring down rain again. So we pull up to the front of the store where they have the big overhang in the loading area. Friendly home depot associates and husband spend a good hour poking and prodding and hooking and unhooking and shit and yelling instructions to me such as "brakes. lights off. lights back on. brakes again. ok, left blinker. now right blinker. kill the lights again. no seriously quick kill the liahahahaaaaahhhhhgghhhhbzzzzzbzzzzz". Haha, very funny, friendly home depot associate. Other guy says this is the 3rd trailer they have had recently that was all fuckered up. So we can either get a refund, or leave it there and wait til next week for their trailer guy to come to town to look at it and try to fix it. Decide on refund. Unhook shit. Park. Husband goes in to get refund. Kids and I are parked in front of store waiting. And waiting. 15 minutes goes by, and mama is getting more unhappy. Mama gets out, locks car, and runs in, asks hubby "WTF dude, WTF??". Husband tells wife there is a little problem because they can't legally refund us for a trailer according to GA law, but they have a way around it and are working on it, and for mama to calm down and go back to the truck. Apparently he saw the smoke coming out of my nose. Seeing as my kids are out there (ok, J is 8 1/2 so it isn't like I left poor litlle G alone, and it was like 15 feet away, and locked! so shoot me), I go back out. But I start her up, and park the bitch,and drag the kids into the store for the scoop. Eventually got it all settled after much backwards ass loopholing and paperwork. Went to tractor place to look at trailers. Oh, and before we went to home depot, we went by one of the pool stores and got a pool booklet. Coz we want a pool. After over 4 years in this house with this big ass backyard, I guess we finally want to do something with it lol. Tomorrow, husband wants to mow the lawn, it's a little rough (read: you may lose small toddlers in it). And I have nothing left to plant :( Maybe I should go buy one of those cantaloupe plants they had at the nursery :P

A new installment of "my kid pukes SO much"

So, some of you that have known me online and in real life for awhile, particularly those few unfortunate souls who have had the displeasure of witnessing this phenomenon firsthand, know that my Pork Chop has a sensitive gag reflex (ok, this was posted first to my myspace blog, in which I actually have more than like 2 people read lol so that first part was obviously addressed to them, some of these poor people have heard many tales very similar to the scenario you are about to read about). He will say this himself, to anyone that will listen. In other words, this kid pukes like you wouldn't believe. In the past, it has had the tendency to come and go in spurts, and would happen very often in restaurants....on tables, on the floor in front of strangers tables, from one side of the restaurant all the way to the bathroom - there was a time when we thought we would either be banned from Outback Steakhouse, or made to work there because of the amout of t-shirts they had given us on different ocassions for our poor little puker to wear after he ruined his clothes. Ok, enough reminiscing....on with the story. He has gotten so much better about it, and the frequency has reduced, and it's been a long time since it has happened. Well, he broke his no-puke streak last night. Around midnight, I heard him cough once, and I didn't think anything of it (though in the past, I would have thought "oh shit, here it comes" coz it always started with a cough.....). A few minutes later, he comes out to the living room to inform us that he puked everywhere. And I look more closely at him, and it is everywhere. All over his shirt, face, arms, shorts, legs. I didn't even want to see his room. So GI Joe sent him off to the shower, and we go to survey the damage. I gagged about 2 steps into the room. See, since I was pregnant with G, puke is one thing I just can't deal with anymore. I myself developed quite a sensitive gag reflex when I was pregnant with her, and it was smells that set me off. So, I left the room, and set about finding some means to protect myself from the offending odor. I saw an Old Navy sweatshirt, toddler size, n my dresser, and grabbed it up, folded it just so, and tied that bitch around my face. I have pictures to prove it, but unfortunately my USB cable is in G's room, and she is asleep. He had puked on the wall, all over his comforter and stuffed animals, on the sheets. It was horrible, and it reeked of spoiled milk and chocolate. I recalled a few minutes later that he had hot chocolate before bed. Ew. And before that, we had Mexican food. Double ew. It was awful. It took me 2 loads of laundry to get it all washed. And there were a few stuffed animals that did not make it out of that battle alive. One of which he was very upset about losing, so I searched for it on amazon and already ordered it for the poor kid. Some Ty fish thing. I could go on and on about the horribleness and disgustingness of the whole episode, but hey, I'm sure you've read more than enough :P

I'm sick :( I woke up with a sore throat, and then the stuffy/runny nose and coughing started, and then the hot, sweaty, achy ickiness has set in. I'm lying on the couch, kicked back with hubby's laptop, while my lil punkin' watches "Dora Splorer", and my big punkin' reads his Highlights magazine. I really, really need to fold some laundry, and wash some more, and vacuum....but I really, really don't want to. Maybe I'll pile the laundry in here on the couch later and fold it :P But maybe not. I wonder if the kids would notice if I went and crawled into bed :P

Ok, so, I took my laptop in yesterday for service. It's been all screwed up for several weeks now. First, it was doing some crazy shit, I don't even remember exactly, but it wouldn't let me access certain files and programs and administrative shit, so that resulted in me wiping the whole damn thing clean and reloading everything. Some point during that, it started giving me power cord issues AGAIN. It would flash in and out of battery powere back and forth between battery and AC power, indicating to me that once again, the pin inside the motherboard where the AC adapter plugged into the back of the computer was loose AGAIN. This would be the 3rd time now I have had issues with that. First time, Gateway sent me a new power cord, thinking that something was wrong with the power cord. Well, luckily, that actually fixed it for a few months. Then it started again, and again they sent a new power cord. But it didn't fix the problem that time. So they had me send it it, expecting to have to replace the motherboard because of a loose pin. Which is what they did....thank goodness it was still under factor warranty. Again, problem solved.....again, for only a few months. So now, the factory warranty is out on it, but super smart me bought the 3 year extended warranty from Best Buy, so I took it in to my friendly neighborhood Geek Squad. They expect to have it for 7-14 days. I miss it dearly already, even though for the past few weeks I've not been able to use it very much, and hubby has had school work to do on his laptop (only about 6 more weeks and he is DONE, getting his degree!), and well, honestly, I hate our desktop. I hate clickety clackety desktop keyboards, and I hate just sitting in there in front of the computer with nothing else going on. When I'm on my laptop, I'm interwebbing, watching TV, playing with the kids and dog, cooking, flipping through a magazine.....any number of things that I need or want to also do at the time. But oh well. And now, my mind is ablank. So thus concludes this entry. :)

I've been sick for like 2 weeks. It sucks. On the upside, G has been potty trained now for the past 2 weeks. I took her back to the doc about the constipation, and was instructed to continue with the miralax and we'll eventually find a happy medium. For some odd reason unbeknownst to me, the very next day G decided she needed to "pee pee toilet now", and then later it was "poo poo toilet now", and then we took off the pull-up and got on some big girl "pantsies", and the rest is history. She wears panties at home all day, a pull-up (with panties over them, as per her demand) when we leave the house, and a diaper (again, with panties over them) to bed. Most mornings, she wakes up dry. Some mornings, she'll wake up extra early and cry and yell for me, coz she has to pee (a little sidenote here....the child will not get out of bed and leave her room on her own. She will cry and scream and fuss and yell for me until I come in her room to get her, not necessarily to pick her up, but just to come in and tell her to get up and come out. It's strange, and she has been this way ever since she went into a big girl bed.). So I'll get her, and she'll go pee, and go right back to bed. It's awesome. And in the 2 weeks since she started going on the potty again, she has had only 2 accidents, both of which were during big meltdown crying spells, and even then it's only been pee accidents. And her going poop has not been a battle since she started going on the potty. She was in the habit of fighting it and screaming and having a tantrum (hence the reason I took her back to the doc about it), but as soon as she was ready for the potty again, all that resolved. Good grief, I've been talking about pee and poop for like 5 minutes (you know you're a mom when.... lol).....
In other news, our 9th anniversary was a little over a week ago. We stayed home with the kids and I cooked us a nice dinner- chicken scallopine, roasted asparagus with prosciutto, and mushroom couscous (all 3 of which are weight watchers recipes, and freaking amazing....I'm actually making the same meal tomorrow night), with some bruschetta and wine while I cooked, and later that evening we had some garlic stuffed olives, and garlic toasts topped with herbed goat cheese and olive tapenade. GI Joe's birthday was a few days before our anniversary, and I had ordered him some deep dish pizzas from Lou Malnati's in Chicago. We ordered him a pair of Louis Vuitton casual/dress brown leather "sneakers" a few days after our anniversary, and about a week before our anniversary, he ordered me the Louis Vuitton limited edition mini lin croisette speedy 30 (in blue) and matching sneakers from the Cruise 2008 collection that I've been begging for....well the bag, the shoes were his idea. And yes, we did get our tax refund back already, how did you ever guess?? With said income tax refund, we also paid off a ridiculously high credit card (almost $6000), and that now gives us an extra $185 or so per month. Which will allow us to pay other cards off quickly. We also opened up a savings account, that accrues interest, so we are pretty happy with ourselves this time around.
And on that note, I'm going to go cough up my other lung.

I'm such a slacker

So, hubby came home last weekend. He was supposed to have another 4 weeks of that training course, however, he failed the unnoficial PT test, and in order to stay in the class you had to pass it. He had failed the initial one at the beginning of the course, and all the people that failed were to take it again on that Friday. Well, he actually improved on everything on the second test, lost 2 inches on his waist measurement (in 4 days time, mind you), added about 5-7 sit ups and push ups, and his run time had started to improve. However, here is the shitty part- they had them running on the side of a road (when there was an actual running track right by there), in the dark. Well, dear clumsy soul that he is, poor hubby tripped in a hole and twisted his ankle, had to walk for a minute to loosen his ankle up, and then kept on trucking and started running again to finish. Did they take that into consideration when his run time worsened and therefore made him fail the test? Nope. So he was told to pack 'em up and move 'em out. When he got back to work this past week, he had talked to his supervisor and he told hubby to type up a detailed log of the events that took place at the course and email it to him, because it was BS that he got kicked out this way, particularly considering hubby got the highest score on a written test they had in the course, and pretty much failed out on a technicality. And it isn't even an official PT test, which he has only failed like once his entire career. So yeah. He told me yesterday that his supervisor sent the email to the Chief, and the Chief thought the course was BS, so he sent it up to the ACC headquarters, in hopes of preventing this happening to someone else. Not that it's really a big deal, it isn't even a required course. So I don't know, it's all stupid anyhow. He was asking me earlier today what I thought about the whole re-enlisting again thing. He'll be up to re-enlist in May, and said he'll have about 9 months or so to decide if he wants to re-enlist or not. When this enlistment is up next May, he'll have 10 years in, so that's halfway to retirement. That's why he is torn on re-enlisting, he can retire at 38 and get retirement pay, and start a whole new career. But a lot of times, he is sick of the crap, sick of being away from home. And honestly, I am too, I've been tired of it. I have told him I'll support him in whatever he decides, and that is up to him- it's his career, his job, he has to live with the decision every day. And I mean that, I've stood by him the past 9 years in this, and I'll continue to stand by him. I've not always liked it, and I won't always like it, but if it is what he wants, then so be it. I just want him home. I'm tired of feeling like our life is on hold, waiting for him to leave again, waiting for him to return when he's gone. But what can you do?
Anyways....I've been on a mission to de-clutter again. Last weekend, I took everything out of the bottom of our bedroom closet, made 2 piles of get rid of junk (one to try to sell or go to Goodwill, the other trash) and then re-organized everything that was left. There is so much more room in there now! I also got rid of a lot of stuff in G's closet, it's far from perfect, but a lot better now, and there is some extra room for storage now. Yesterday, I cleaned our bedroom. It had been neglected for far too long. I cleared out the bottom of our bathroom closet to make room for the laundry basket, so that took care of the clothes all over the floor. Cleaned off the top of the chest of drawers and arranged things neatly. Top of the dresser still needs to be finished, but I'll take care of that shortly. Cleaned off GI Joe's nightstand of all the junk. Disassembled the dog's crate (which was next to my side of the bed and served as my nightstand....ghettoooooo...lol) and put it in the closet. Brought in an end table from the garage and put it on my side of the bed. I even made the bed....and did so again this morning when we got up. I generally don't make the bed. I don't see the damn point in it, you're just gonna be climbing back in it at night and messing it all up again. But, I wanted to create a sense of order and neatness, and it wouldn't have been the same with an unkempt bed. I'm happy with the bedroom again, it's a nice space, and it isn't an overwhelming mess when you walk in now. I think today I'm going to move G's living room toybox into her room. She's going to bring whatever she wants to play with in here anyhow, might as well just put it all into her room.
On the food front, we'll be having Creole Catfish Sandwiches (weight watchers recipe, haven't tried yet), and potato salad tonight. Tomorrow, homemade yummy wonderful beef stew and cornbread. It's one of those many things that I just randomly throw together and tastes amazing. My mother hates that I can do that, she has to have a recipe in order to make anything edible. Tuesday night, we'll be having pork chops and roasted veggies (yellow squash, baby carrots, onion, baby portabello mushrooms, tomatoes, and lots of garlic). Wednesday will be turkey burgers and broccoli casserole. Most nights will also have salad included, we almost always have salad with dinner. That's as far as I've gotten on the menu so far. I had made it for 2 weeks in advance, so now I have to pick up where I left off :P
Ok, enough of my rambling, I've got things to do that I don't particularly want to do, but hey, such is the life of a simple little ol' housewife :P

What do you say when your 8 year old son asks you "So, mom, what was life like back in the '80's??" ? I'll tell you what I did, I laughed my ass off, and then told him that life really wasn't much different than it is now. And he said "yeah, only the cars were uglier". The kid has a point. Oh, and on the subject of funny kids, a few weeks ago, G pooped....she was right next to me and said "poo poo", so I asked her if she pooped. She said "yes. guts in it". So I said, "ok, you pooped, and there are guts in it?", and she said "yeah. guts in it". Quite confused (and amused), I asked "so you pooped your guts out?" and she said "yes, guts out. in poo poo". My kids are awesome.

GI Joe is in Texas. For 5 weeks. Yay. Need I remind anyone that he hasn't even been home for 4 months yet from being overseas for 6 months?? He'll be gone for his birthday, and for our anniversary, but he should be home around Valentine's Day. My mom had surgery on Friday morning. She had left here Monday to head home, and had been in pain most of the week (and prior to coming down), something was wrong with her neck/shoulders. Turns out, she had a ruptured disk in her neck. So they cut her throat open and went in from the front to fix it. Sounds fun. She's doing great though, she got to go home that night, and said that she actually felt better as soon as she woke up after the surgery, and can already tell a difference. I got a new cell phone. I lost my old one, but it was only a tracfone. I canceled with cingular/at&t a few months ago coz they pissed me off, and just went with a tracfone. But that didn't work out too well, I used way more minutes than I had expected. And now since I lost mine, I figure I might as well get a new phone with a new provider instead of wasting the money on another tracfone, and a year prepaid card, and a double minutes card, and blah blah. I went to T-Mobile, and got a handy dandy little motorola motokrzr K1. It has a music player, so I can upload songs from my computer to the phone, and listen to them through the phone itself (or headphones, or bluetooth). I love it already.
I really really want to blog more, and get to know the...well, like only 2 of you that have been reading me thus far :P And branch out and find more folks to read and stuff. I've just been a slacker the past couple of weeks, plain and simple. Holidays normally do that to me. Hell, my tree is still up, ornaments and all :)