Category Archives: Uncategorized

So I did this tonight. I couldn’t pass up a $3.99 special at the grocery store. 😜 It’s not too bad—it’s been a long time since I had reddish hair—but I think I like the lighter/blonder better.

Not a huge difference but definitely different.

So, Tom and I have been on our new life plan for eight weeks. And in addition to cutting back the amount of food we eat, we’ve also pretty much cut out added sugar. I’ve given up wine, margaritas, wine coolers, and mixed drinks (since I like sugary mixers). Desserts are now a bite or two of something. And we’re good with that, though we always wonder how we’ll do with “old favorites.” So today was one of those experiments.

We got a Costco cake for Owen’s party. And normally I love Costco’s cake. LOVE IT. As in I could make a meal out of it. Or even make myself sick eating it.

But today? Meh. 😐

The frosting was good but the cake a bit less exciting…and two bites was plenty. At dinner, it looked good again so I had another two bites and reconfirmed yep: pretty meh.

My old food (eating) memories said YOU WANT IT. IT’S DELICIOUS…but my new taste buds and brain said THERE ARE THINGS YOU LIKE BETTER. WAIT FOR THOSE. (Like the Ghirardelli box mix brownies from Costco.)

It’s amazing what happens when you stop eating sugar. (That said, I can’t wait until I reach the maintenance level—that’s when I can start introducing wine and margaritas again!)

I think our anemone thinks he’s smaller than he is. He keeps trying to move through a small opening in the rocks.

And then later, he’s back to his normal spot.

Some lady offered me $40 for the $150 police car power wheels we were selling:

Her: How much for the car?
Me: $150
Her: I have $40.
Me, laughing: Yeah, no.
Her: Are you sure?
Me: Positive.

Yes, I literally laughed in her face when she offered $40. I mean REALLY?!

So she kept walking around and finally comes back over and says $100. I say the lowest I can do is $125. She says $100. I say no, $125. I tell her I don’t really even want to sell it, so there’s no way I’m taking less than $125.

She walks around our driveway again then comes back and says $100. I just shake my head no. So she leaves, then about 20 minutes later drives by, rolls her window down, and asks “$100?” I yell across to her “$125.”

SERIOUSLY?

In the meantime, the garage sale ends but by chance someone else has shown interest at my full $150 asking price but she had to leave and talk to her husband.

So about two hours after the garage sale (and an hour after the other lady was there) our doorbell rings. It’s the annoying lady saying she wants the car for $125. (She didn’t even know if we still had it.) I kinda laugh and say “Well, someone else has shown interest at $150 so I need to ask her first.”

I don’t think she believed me but oh well. So I went in to grab my phone to text her and I came back out and her and her husband were in our garage looking at and handling OTHER THINGS (the police car was in there, but they were touching other stuff). WTF? WHO DOES THAT? So I tell her I will let her know as soon as I hear from the other lady. She says fine, I get their number, and she says they will be home around 4. Fine.

I talk to the other lady and she says if I can sell it, go ahead, her hubby wasn’t into it. So I text the annoying lady around 4 and tell them it’s available for $125 and to let us know so we can get it out of the garage. About two hours later we’re just sitting down to eat and the doorbell rings. Tom goes (I should have but oh well) and comes back and says it was “some girl asking if we had sold the car.” Well I have no idea who “some girl” is because I had never seen a girl, so I thought maybe it was one of the other 10 kids on the street who wanted it.

Well, turns out it was the annoying lady’s daughter, but Tom hadn’t known the update, so told her it was sold. This is what happened:

WHAT?!?!?

Good f’ing riddance. I didn’t especially WANT to sell it in the first place, but would have for $150 and possibly for $125, so there is no way in hell I’m now selling it to you for $100 after you’ve been so damn annoying all day. I really wanted to tell her something else, but I refrained because she does live nearby and I’m sure I’ll run into her again. But it’s people like her that make me hate people.

We’ve gotten rid of a few random odds and ends while moving in, but I haven’t done much dedicated purging overall. (Who has the time?!) But, I did manage to do two small areas.

Day 34—While unpacking and organizing the master bathroom and hall closet, I got rid of a bunch of old bath products. Some from probably 2003 or so. Yeah, I hoard bath stuff.

Day 35—I was looking for something in the file cabinet and ended up sifting through and tossing about half a garbage bag (which I’ll actually save to be shredded). The goal is to eventually get rid of the file cabinet entirely so I do have more to sort and scan, but I started!

Owen: Katie, smell this flower.
Katie sniffs.
Owen: No, Katie, stick your nose in the pink and smell.

We were watching The Incredibles.
Owen, while playing: I’m gonna kick your butt.
Me: Whaaat?
Owen, somewhat guiltily: Uh, I was saying it when there was a bad guy on TV.

I came into the room and Owen was chewing something that Tom had obviously given him.
Me: What are you eating?
Owen: Nothing—I’m finished!

We had yellow stickers on things we wanted the packers to leave alone.
Owen put a yellow sticker on Katie: I think we’re gonna keep you!

Owen: Wanna hear a good joke?
Me and Tom: Yes, of course!
Owen: Why did the chicken poop in the toilet?
Me: Why?
Owen: TO GET TO THE BACK YARD!
Me: INSTANTANEOUS OUTBURST OF LAUGHTER because he was so serious that it was a good joke.
Owen: I told you it was a good joke.

If you’re paying close attention, you will see I skipped Days 26-32. That’s due to us having had a garage sale and donating 90% of the remaining things to a resale shop [that benefits a women’s shelter]…which I equated to about seven days’ worth. 🙂

Over the past few days we’ve been burning old paperwork—we have a shredder but why shred when we have a perfectly good fire pit?!—so between that and random garage junk, I’d say we’re down another bag!

Out playing in the back yard.
C’mon Maggie, follow me!

It was too quiet so I went looking…
Mama! I play Owee’s Legos!

I always tell Katie to eat _fill in the blank_ one at a time. This morning she was feeding me cereal pieces.
Me: Thank you!
Katie: One at a time. One at a time.

I went in to get Katie in the morning.
Me: Good morning Katie.
Katie: Good morning mama. I love you mama.
Me: Awww, I love you too, Katie.
Katie: Mama?
Me: Yes?
Katie: Chicken butt!

I was trying to catnap in the chair.
Katie: Mama? Mama?! Are you sleeping? Mama? MAMA! Are you sleeping? Mama! Wake up! Wake up!

NEW WORDS
Breakfast
Bumble bee
Careful
Despicable Me
Dinner
Dirty
Duck
Hungry
Minion
Pillow
Seat
Stinky
Unicorn

Plus a ton more I just forget to write down.

Yay! We’re down a pool pump, an extra hose, and two boxes of replacement pool filters (I’d say that qualifies as a bag!) and we’re up $60!

Progress has really slowed and it feels like we might not make it to 40…but we’ll keep limping along.

Tom and I worked in the garage today—it’s a hot mess since we’ve just been throwing stuff out there as we prepped the house. I mean, there’s always been lots of stuff out there but it was always nicely organized. Lately, I couldn’t even reach my pantry shelves!

We only had what time Katie slept during naptime, but we tossed at least two bags of garbage, a bunch of boxes went into recycling, and we have a big box for the garage sale. And I can reach my pantry again!

Today I got rid of a laminator and some letter-sized pouches. In other news, Owen’s pre-k teacher loves me. 🙂

No, it wasn’t a bag but it was something, right?

To preface: Before we headed in, I started a dispute with the credit card company just in case but hoping we wouldn’t need it. We also learned a golden rule: “Always get it in writing.” We had the word of our 10-years-of-great-service sales guy who turned his back on us the minute there was an issue (likely due to his negligence…).

That said…it was over before it even started!

We walked in ready to fight tooth and nail—I had all my talking points ready, website print outs ready, and arguments ready. And our guy saw us and came right over, immediately saying (bluntly, I might add, with none of the friendliness we’ve always gotten) “They changed their mind—they’ll take it back. They just wanted to avoid all the hassle…”

My immediate reaction was (of course) YAY but then it was “Yeah right they wanted to avoid the hassle. They knew we were right.” He then went on to say that we were the only people of the 1000 people who have bought this bed that didn’t like it. And we are the ONLY ones that will have their bed returned because from now on it’s a written/confirmed “one exchange only” guarantee—basically saying we screwed it up for everyone… But really, that was what he had tried to tell me their initial policy was…?? So that’s what makes me think he really knew what happened and that’s why they made the decision they did. But we’ll never know because we weren’t going to press too hard…

He was also completely befuddled that there might be a Serta mattress he knew nothing about. When we were telling him what it was (the Hampton Inn bed) he asked where we bought it and looked at us like it was a shady deal or something because it wasn’t anything he knew about. He made sure to tell us his manager had never heard of it, either. AND he reminded us again that they’d NEVER had anyone (of the 1000!) want to return a bed and then go buy one somewhere else. So…? Not my problem. But! By him admitting they didn’t even know what it was…there’s no way they could have ordered it for us like he wanted us to think last night.

So, we’re very happy overall…even though we’re still taking a beating because we have to eat the initial delivery cost, the return delivery cost, the two “free” pillows (MSRP $100, available at Amazon for $89 I think) that we never even wanted, and the mattress protector (that protected the warranty on the bed). Which comes to a grand total of about $600. So we will have paid $600 to use the bed for 45 days. I do hope to recoup some money by selling the pillows…

In other mattress news, the Hampton Inn people called to make sure we ordered what we wanted and we ended up able to cancel the box springs to save about $260! (You can only order the whole set online—there’s no picking and choosing.)

So, with the charges we had to eat for the first bed and the deals (the sale) plus the credit of the box springs, we’ll end up having spent about $2000 total, which is fine with us.

All total I spent about SIX hours in the office tossing, shredding, and scanning…and you can’t tell I did a damn thing and it actually looks worse. GAH! But I got rid of at least [the equivalent of] two more reams of paper, a bunch of CDs/DVDs and empty cases, and I have a pile for the garage sale!

We talked to our contractor tonight. Turns out they DID put up tons of plastic—covered all the cupboards, closed off rooms, AND had a suction fan going to pull dust outside…it was just SUPER dusty. He hadn’t been expecting the jackhammering and had to even get a bigger jackhammer. The thinset was the actual problem—he said it was REALLY thick. It took them a full day and a half just to get the floor up–and then he had to get a diamond sander to smooth it all out…and THEN he had to self-level the entire kitchen/laundry room. Lordy. Can you imagine if we had attempted the flooring install ourselves?!

Additionally, one of his guys noticed a problem with some flashing on the roof…so they fixed that.

And he fixed our toilet that Tom had planned to fix afterwards—but it was more of a major fix than we thought.

And he’ll fix the few problem boards when we move out.

So I’m happy now. I’m still annoyed at all the cleaning we had to do (LOL)…but we really got our money’s worth and he’s a good guy.

Today’s “bag” was an assortment of odds and ends…we’re clearing out the entire first floor to get ready to have laminate put in, so we’re emptying out closets and cupboards…which means kitchen gadgets, more shoes, winter stuff, decorations, etc.

The best part will be actually getting rid of this stuff (to Goodwill or whatnot) when we get home—since right now it’s all still in the garage. 🙂

On our way home from school, we were trying to plan ahead for show and tell this Friday for the letter P.
Me: How about pizza?
Owen: No, we can’t bring food.
Me: Popcorn?
Owen: We don’t have popcorn!
Me: Yes we do. Pineapple?
Owen: MOOOOM! No food!
Me: But all I can think of is food—pickles, pears, pecans, pretzels, prunes, peanut butter, pie, pumpkin! Hey! You do have pretend food that starts with P. Pickles, pears—anything else?
Owen: [Thinks a minute.] Plums!
Me: Yes!
Owen: And there’s a peanut on the tree!
Me: Yes there is! How about a panda?
Owen: We don’t have that!
Me: Playset?
Owen: No! That’s too humongous!
Me: Papa?
Owen: No he’s not here.

Owen came out of the bathroom with water drops all over his shirt.
Me: What happened?
Owen: I was thirsty.

Whenever Katie grunts, Owen says “Are you pooping little girl?” And of course she says Yes! because she answers yes to just about everything. And Owen finds it HILARIOUS. It is cute…until he does it seven times in a row at the dinner table.

Looking for one of his Lego minifigs:
Owen: Medusa? Are you in here? Hello?

Owen: Mom can I tell you something?
Me: Of course.
Owen: That. Was. Awesome. Do you know what was awesome?
Me: No. What was awesome?
Owen: Finding all the chocolates!

Our conversation one morning.
Me: Owen, did you poop this morning?
Owen: I DID!
Me: Did you flush? [Thinking he usually doesn’t which in this case is good because then I can see it—an unfortunate necessity.]
Owen: No! I didn’t, because you were sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you up!

Some good ones from the past week or so…

Owen is picking up toys.
Me: Thank you buddy.
Owen: No—thank YOU!

Owen: What are we doing today? On the porch? We’re getting a new one!

Looking at my old Frogger game.
Owen: What’s that button for?
Me: That’s like the button on Xbox that makes you move and walk.
Owen: What’s that button for?
Me: It starts the game over.
Owen: No, it’s the jumping button.
Me: No, it’s the reset button to restart the game.
Owen: Ahhh, no.

Me: Owen, can you go let Maggie out?
Owen: Of course!

Owen’s first words to me this morning:
Owen: Oh no! Grem and Acer are after me! After my nose!
Me: Your nose?
Owen: Yes! I know who can help! Finn McMissle and Holly! I need supplies!
Me: What kind of supplies?
Owen: A bandaid for the wheel!
Me: ???

Me: Owen, can you make the sounds Katie makes?
He tries.
Me: I wonder how she makes those sounds?
Owen, very matter-of-factly: Practice.

Owen and I were playing Legos on the floor.
Owen, touching my unshaven leg: Mom! Your leg is…prickly.
Me: Yes, it is. It’s hair, like on your legs.
Owen: No! It’s sharp! It’s spikes!
Me: I wouldn’t say it’s sharp. Prickly was correct.
Owen: No. It’s spikes.

Owen: Mama, can I watch my show?
Me: No, no TV right now.
Owen: But I’m a good boy! He looks up at me angelically and actually bats his eyelashes at me! See? I’m a good boy!
Me: Yes you are a good boy but no TV right now.
Owen: I’m not happy.