ring of fire

I was twenty-five, with two kids before I ever had my very own cell phone.  Shocking right?!  Well it's true.  Up until that point I never really had a need for one.  It was a sturdy little Nokia and I love this phone.  Naturally one of the first things I did was look into downloading ring tones.  Trying match the perfect thirty second sound clip with the right person.  It was time consuming and pain staking.  Well pain staking in that I had a hard time justifying spending money on a clip of a song.  Not the whole song, but just a snippet.  To know me is to know that this sort of thing does not jive with my cheap thrifty mentality.

Now, almost five years later I've given up ring tones of all types.  Especially those horribly obnoxious call back ring tones.  You know, the song of choice that the person you are trying to reach seems to think you would be delighted to hear while you wait for them to just answer their damn phone.  Yes, please, I love listening to Nickleback while you do lord only knows what and make me wait to answer. Awesome.  If you have such a thing on  your phone and wonder why you never hear from me ( and probably a lot of other people too) I hope this shed some light on the matter for you.

I think my enlightenment on the obnoxious nature of ring tones comes mainly from my times as a secretary.  I worked for a while at the local courts where things like cell phones were not permitted in the court room.  If, for whatever reason, a person had no place to safely store their phones I would agree to hold them at my desk.  On the condition that the phones where completely turned off or at least set to silent.  Well a few slipped by.

Nothing is more embarrassing when you are trying to do your job, a very public job, and suddenly you hear something along the lines of  "to the window, to the wall, till the sweat drips down my balls".  Imagine me red faced and fumbling to turn off this offending little piece of technology on my desk while I sputter and try to explain that this phone does not even belong to me, I swear!

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy some good offensive music from time to time.  However, I enjoy it in the comfort of my own home or in my own ears via headphones.  I don't explode it from my car stereo or through my cell phone while I wait in line at the bank or grocery store.  My phone almost always stays on vibrate.  This works for me, until it gets lost (which is often) and have a hard time calling the phone to locate its whereabouts.

So please, can we cool it with the ring tones?  That'd be awesome.  And you would save money, so double score!

keep you forever

me and a smaller Seth.  

Seth will be starting kindergarten in the fall.  My baby, the kindergartner.  I have some pretty mixed feelings about this and I can tell he does too.  Sure we have gone through this once already with his older brother, but by the time Brady started kindergarten he had already been going to school since he was three.  It was a special day none the less in its own way, but honestly I had already shed my tear two years ago.  Seth though, this is new.  He is our last child and our only child that has been home with me full time since the day he was born.  Well I did work for a while, but his grandmother kept him so he's never set foot in a classroom of any type.  Most days he is ready to hop on that big yellow bus with his brother, other days, not so much.  

Seth spends his day pretty leisurely. He is at least used to getting up early so that won’t be new to him, but the structure of school is going to be a big shock!  I think that Seth's idea of school is a place where you go and play and maybe, if you feel like it, learn a few things.  I've tried to tell him, prepare him, that school is a place where you sit in a little chair and you have to listen and raise your hand to talk and all that jazz.  I'm not sure how well all the information is sinking in most of the time.  I know he will learn soon enough, all be it probably the hard way that I meant what I said. 

Other days he is glued to my side.  My shadow.  He tells me that he wants to keep me forever.  This singular phrase explodes my heart every time.  I want to be able to tell him that he can stay with me here at home forever.  I can’t of course.  One day I did though.  I asked him to stay little forever and stop growing so fast.  That I was going to miss him when he started school.  Seth, my little old soul, did not humor my moment of weakness.  Instead he puts his little boy hands, that were probably sticky, on both sides of my face, and with an expression so serious that it should not and could not belong to a four year old boy looked me straight in the eyes and says "But mommy, I have to go to school.  I have to learn!"  I cannot argue with him.  He's right, of course he's right.    I pull him close for a big hug and to also give myself a minute to compose my face.  I want to laugh and cry, but know that neither is a good idea. So I just hug him tighter.  

I hope his future teacher is able to see Seth for the amazing little person he is.  That this person will have patience and understanding when he tells her she’s wrong and goes on to explain why.  That she allows herself, on occasion, to be taken in by those baby blues. Know that he will frustrate you and make you laugh in the blink of an eye. Most importantly though make him want to keep you forever.  

it puts the lotion on its skin

take that wrinkles! 

No, I am not gonna review "Silence of the Lambs"  other than to say it's creepy and gave me nightmares.  So what am I talking about?  Well, lotion.  duh.  

I turned 29 this year.  Ugh, right?!  In doing such I decided that it was past time that I start paying attention to the care of my epidermis.  That's skin for you common folk.  

As a child any exposure to the sun led to me doing my best imitation of a cooked lobster.  My red tinted hair and Irish blood laughed in the face of SPF.  Not only did thick coatings of zinc not prevent sunburn, but it often time only made my skin more angry at me for exposing it to the sun’s harmful rays.  I would burn AND blister.  Awesome.  But summer after summer, there I was, throwing the proverbial finger at the sun and my skin trying to keep up with my sister who tanned like an Indian princess.  My sister got mother's ability to tan effortlessly where I got her tendency to gain weight in the midsection.  Yay me..  

My teenage years weren't much different.  Summers were spent in a lawn chair getting my tan on.  After that first burn of the summer  (man that sounds so bad..)  I would normally darken up pretty nice.  When you're 15 you don't worry about the freckles that lead to skin cancer.  Pass me the baby oil you say. "Do you smell bacon, guys?" you ask.  No, it's just your burning flesh.  

After I had kids getting sunburned really became painful.  That's only because your kids will find it fun to come up to you and pull, jump, slap, and smack your angry red surface.  Mommy's face twisted in pain is funny.  Do it again!!  Their constant need for attention doesn't jive with your need to lay in a prone position on the couch slathered in aloe.  

So now at the cusp of 30 I decided I should start taking this seriously. For a while now I've been making sure I put on a base of SPF ( the pictured lotion to be exact) before I put on my make-up (which also contains sun protector).  And for night time use I began using an anti-aging creme.  That's right, a night cream...like your grandmother.  Take that wrinkles!  Oh! And is that chamomile I smell?  That's nice.  

Along with this routine of face lotions and creams I have a team of lotions for the other quadrants of my body.  Not only am I preventing anymore skin damage, but it's probably a pretty effect way to thwart would be attackers.  You can't attack what you can't even get a grip on.  That's my theory at least.    

So kids, don't wait until you are looking crow’s feet in the face (haha, see what I did there) and start laying on that Olay now.  And also, don't watch that a fore mentioned movie unless you like nightmares.

tummy bug

So where have I been lately...dealing with a super fun stomach bug.  Thankfully it was only one sided so to speak.  You know, and not the kinda bug that leaves you wondering which end gets the toilet first..yeah.  And now that I've all grossed you out...

I'll try to get a better blog post up by Thursday.  It won't be about poop..hopefully.

the big day

At the beginning of the month I had mentioned that I was toying with the idea of cutting off a bunch of hair  for a good cause.  Well that day has come.  I have an 11:30 appointment to undergo the shears.  I will update later today the before and afters.

Also on deck for the coming weekend is a trip to Alabama.  J has to work so it'll just be me and the boys and all of J's family!  Luckily for me, everyone gets along.  I'll also be taking my school stuff to keep up with my homework.  Being a grown up sucks is so much fun.

I'll leave you with a conversation that I had with Seth this weekend about hair..

seth: (sticking his head in my face) lick my hair.
me: excuse me, what?
seth:  lick my hair...like  Lion King..(waits) just do it.
me:  no, and move your head.


*update* as promised the before and after pictures!

before

after

a bag full of hair. 

me vs. technology

Office Space.  Why not.  This is how I felt.  

As the title suggest, me and technology  have not be friends this week, at all.  By mid week it was a full on war.  Allow me to explain.

Tuesday night I plugged in my phone to charge, like I do every night, and it gave a little buzz, like it always does, to let me know that everything was connected in their proper places and I went off to dream land.  The next morning I grab my phone and rush to get me and the boys ready to head out the door for school.  Half way to school I realize my phone is barely charged..hmm weird I think.  I get to class, plug in my phone to charge some more, but that little buzz doesn't happen.  That tell tale little buzz that lets me know my phone is happily charging away.  I plug and unplug, blow on connections, turn phone on and off, plug again..no buzz.  Then I see the problem-the charger cord is almost entirely broken in half.  Huh?  How did THAT happen?  Over night at that.  A head scratcher to be sure.  Thankfully my cell phone provider replaced it free of charge since I've barely had the phone two weeks.

Thursday morning I'm using my laptop when it alerts me that the battery is dying.  Odd considering that the charger was already IN.  I investigate and discover that the little needle that connects the charger to the computer is broken.  Again, seemingly overnight another charge has bitten the dust.  Off to Best Buy because I can't function with out my laptop ( I have to have it for school). Unfortunately Best Buy isn't as generous in giving out free chargers.  High-way robbery later I got a charging laptop.

However, my sweet little laptop seems to have contracted a computer STD.  Thankfully I have a friend who does IT and he was able to bring my computer back from the brink of total melt down.  Well maybe the laptop wasn't on the verge of a melt down, but I certainly was!  Joe totally saved the day!

Thankfully I haven't had anymore tech problems since then (knock on wood!).   I'll leave you with how I explained computer viruses to my seven year old..

me:  the computer has sickies, a virus.
brady:  why?
me:  because some people just want to watch the world burn.

yup a "The Dark Knight" quote.  ( that I think originally says "men", but you get the point..and he's seven...don't send hate mail.)

to cut or not to cut, that is the question

snip snip

So I've got some crazy long hair.  Not so long that you might mistake me for being associated with any particular religion, but it's pretty long.  I went an entire year with out cutting my hair, not for any particular reason other than financial.  I figured not cutting my hair was better than a cheap-o cut at the place beside where I get my groceries.  (Not hatin'..just sayin')

So my hair grew and grew and grew some more in a years time.  I love my hair, really I do, but some days I day dream of whacking it all off.  Which sends J into a panic because he really really loves the long locks.  While I love my long hair it certainly has some draw backs.

1.  It's heavy.
2.  As a mom 10 times out of 10 my hair is pulled back in a really cute boring pony tail.
3.  It gives me headaches.
4.  I get hair dryer elbow (that's probably an actual medical malady..but I'm not going to bother to Google and verify)
5.  J gets the dirty job of pulling my hair sheddings from the bath tub drain.  He gave this wad of cast off hair a nick name "Leezur".  ( I lose a lot of hair..it's pretty gross)

and so forth and so on...you get the picture.

I've been toying with the idea lately of chopping the locks for a worthy cause.  I've been working to get my hair back into a more healthy state after a years worth of neglect.  Right now my hair is relatively healthy.  My ends were a hot mess of split ends.  I never felt it was right to donate split end riddled hair to poor little cancer patients  The cancer is bad enough, without the added insult of my nappy hair for a wig.  Now I feel it's coming back around and I keep going back to giving back.

But I worry I'll mourn my long tresses.  Will the do good feelings I get of helping a little girl feel pretty in the face of such horrendous circumstances help me get over my own vanity..probably.  It's only hair after all....