Her name was Lola....she was a showgirl...

It may not have been the smartest move I ever made, but I volunteered to keep a puppy in my house for a few days.

My 15 year old and I are in a charity organization together and our big fund raiser was coming up. I was helping with the live auction and one of our generously donated items was an absolutely adorable puppy. We had to pick the puppy up a few days before the actual event.....and my family is a dog loving family so I figured no harm could come from volunteering to keep the puppy at my house for a few days.

I was wrong.

This wasn't just a puppy....this was one of those puppies who knew how to work a room. She would snuggle up in your lap, she would kiss you and leave that puppy breath smell lingering behind, she would pounce when she ran to you and then nuzzle her nose into your neck and fall fast asleep.

Seriously, look at this face

...........she was crazy cute!

I named her Lola.

I fell in love!

Someone bid $1500 for her......and that little hussy left me without even looking back.

Bitch!

I'm going to quit reading the newspaper

Want to guess what I read the other day?

No......not the Cox/Arquette separation drama.....although you have to admit that was some pretty juicy stuff. Seriously David, do you really think you can tell Howard Stern and all of his listeners that you still love your wife and you really hope to get back together with her in the same breath that you admit that you slept with another woman in the very short time that you have been separated? I mean really dude, maybe just maybe the separation was to see if you two kids could work out your differences and if one of you could GROW THE HELL UP and start acting your age. I know that I am not Courtney, but I am not thinking that telling the world that you have had one "conquest" in the two months you have been living apart from you wife is really the way to show her that you are past the age when your brain still resides in your pants.

It also wasn't the story of the amazing rescue of the Chilean miners and the heartwarming picture of the rescued man being greeted with a big giant hug from his MISTRESS while his wife decided to wait out the rescue at home. Something tells me she wasn't exactly thrilled that the government found a way to beat their Christmas timeline....she thought she had way more time to clean out all of their joint accounts and pack up the house.

No, the story I read was not as pleasant as any of these.

It was that the amazing people who track and predict earthquakes have now stated that "the big one" is probably going to hit California "sooner rather than later"......and it will probably be "even more catastrophic and wide spread" than earlier thought. Well, thank you Debbie Downer for that update. I am always a worst case scenario type of girl...I want to know what the best situation could be and what the worst situation could be in almost every aspect of my life so that I can plan accordingly. I don't want to be the one who runs out of toilet paper when the aliens land on earth and we are all too afraid to leave our houses to go to the grocery store. Nor do I want to be the one who has a hamper full of dirty laundry when someone calls to tell me that I have won an all expense paid trip to Greece but only if I can get to the airport in exactly 20 minutes. But how in the hell do you prepare for an earthquake of such epic proportions that no one can even begin to imagine the toll it will take?? Really, what do I stock up on? Water? Antibacterial? Caulk?

Barry come back!! The post otherwise known as "Curse you iTunes"

I think we have established that I am a HUGE Barry Manilow fan ...........(Go ahead, call me a "fanilow", make your "Barely Man-enough" jokes....get it all out of your system and then get back to my story.) I think we have also established that I hate quickbooks. Now let me tell you how these two things go together. Stupid quickbooks needed more space than my laptop had left and since my daughter needed a laptop anyway we decided to get a new laptop for me and then hand the old one down to her. Good news.....I have way more memory now and I can support the stupid quickbooks program. Bad news....iTunes can only back up your iphone and ipad to one computer. So, when I downloaded itunes to my new laptop and synced my phone and my ipad with it something very tragic happened. I lost ALL of my Barry Manilow music. ALL. OF. IT!!!!! I am not sure if you understand the enormity of what I am saying here people. My sweet husband spent an entire day one Saturday downloading every single Barry Manilow CD I have into my itunes account so that I could have every single song ever sung by Barry right there at my fingertips. Do you even know how many Barry cd's are out there?? Me either, but from my stack of cd's I would have to guess at least 50. And now all of those songs are GONE!!!!!!!! I am tragically sad......and I am blaming it all on our CPA! He better give me one hell of a write off this year!

Hello Kitty hates quickbooks too!

This week I decided to prove to myself that I am a complete and total idiot. . Okay, to be fair, I didn't so much set out to prove that I was brainless.....it just sort of came to me. A few months ago my husband quit the corporate world and opened his own business. Yay for no more travel, yay for no more business dinners, yay for no more huge dry cleaning bills, yay for no more corporate crap......but boo that I am now the person in charge of the financial reports for his business. I am a REALLY organized person. I have a color coded calendar for goodness sake. I can pretty much tell you where anyone in my family will be at any given moment...I can tell you exactly how much is in any one of our accounts at any given moment....I can tell you what day almost every single one of our bills is due and what the normal payment is. The catch is, I do this all on paper.....I prefer to keep my laptop, i-phone and i-pad free for fun stuff like facebook, shopping, blogging or playing. I know that every single person out there who pays their bills on line will tell me that it is waaaayyyyy easier to just type in a few numbers every month rather than have to sit down and write out checks....what can I say?....I'm just old fashioned. Well, the attorney that we went to in order to set up my husband's business said that we needed to go see a CPA. I drug my feet for as long as I could because I knew that no CPA was going to dig my 'Hello Kitty notebook' way of keeping my finances straight.....and sadly I was right. The damn CPA said the word that I was dreading the most.......'QUICKBOOKS'!!!!!! . NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to!!!!!.

I bought the stupid thing and let it sit on my kitchen table for a week......nothing! See, I told you it was worthless.

I went and bought "Quickbooks For Dummies" only to be embarrassed to realize that what I really need is "Quickbooks for people who have apparently had lobotomies and who should not even be allowed to operate a computer".

I have never felt so stupid in my entire life...and I haven't even installed it yet! Can you only imagine how much worse it's going to be when I actually have to try to use it for real??

Can anyone give me a referral for a CPA out there who would be happy with being handed a Hello Kitty notebook?? Please???

Greeeaaat, now I am itchy!!

When I first read the story about the bed bug infestation in New York I have to admit that I kind of laughed. Those silly New Yorkers and their apartment living.....why can't they just give up the glamour of living in the heart of the world and move somewhere boring that doesn't have a ridiculously large rat population and a bed bug problem?

.

.

But now it seems like those crazy New Yorkers were just ahead of the trend again because the bed bug infestation has gone more global than skinny jeans.

.

.

I am reading everyday about the infestation of movie theatres, clothing stores, massive buildings.....all of whom have no beds for the bed bugs to lie in so those little blood suckers have had to find new and creative ways to hide out.

.

.

Today I had to take my little one shopping for blue jeans, and because jeans now come in low rise, high rise, skinny, boot cut, wide leg, peg leg, jegging, pirate one peg leg etc..... with sizes like slim, , 1/2 and regular, there is no way you can buy a pair of jeans for anyone with out trying them on. Only the entire time I am making her try them on I am thinking, "Is that gnat really a bed bug in disguise?", "Is that just a loose stitch or is that a colony of bed bugs that have flattened themselves and are hiding out pretending to be a loose stitch so that I won't see them and they can attack my poor helpless baby girl?" I even found myself looking at the sales girl and wondering if maybe she was a great big bed bug who had taken over the poor helpless sales girl's body.

.

.

All I know is I am home and I am itchy!!!

The mother ship has landed

There was quite a stir the other day when a "mega-yacht" anchored in San Diego. People said it looked a bit like a 'sci-fi submarine' or an 'alien watercraft'.....which is funny because I didn't even realize that we knew what alien watercraft looked like. Now that I know I feel much safer realizing that if I am ever at the beach and a ship looking like this one comes near me I can cause a total and complete panic among the other beach goers by screaming "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES PEOPLE.....THIS IS NOT A DRILL....THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED!!!!" and all the families who were enjoying their day at the beach will hug me, thank me and treat me as their hero for saving their souls from being sucked from their bodies and replaced with the soul of an alien who wants to live among humans and learn our secrets. You know, like what does McDonalds put in their fryer to make their french fries better than Burger Kings....or why do we humans feel that we have to talk SO much louder on our cell phones than on any other phone in the world.
.............but I digress....

People were all abuzz about the fact that this yacht was owned by a 38 year old Russian billionaire and that it had a freaking 2,583 sq ft master suite with a $40,000 faucet and a $60,000 stair banister and a crew of 35 who were all wearing matching outfits that had been specifically designed in keeping with the modern design of the vessel. But the part that I kept focusing on was the fact that the master suite is wrapped in bullet proof glass and has a fingerprint scanner at the door.

Now Mr. Billionaire dude, I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that you made your billions doing something perfectly legal and for the good of helpless children and animals and that you are just taking precautions against those nasty Somalian pirates......but I have an inkling that there is something sinister in your Russian source of income when you have to surround yourself in bullet proof glass. I'm just saying, it looks bad.

They want a heatwave???

Oh my goodness, Californians crack me up!

So, yesterday I am sitting on the beach with some friends....not a cloud in the sky....a perfect 78 degree August day.....the beach was empty and I do mean empty, like practically 'have it to ourselves' kind of empty.....the waves were beautiful and the sun was shining when the talk turned to the weather.

Everyone started complaining about the fact that it was such a mild summer and that we just didn't seem to have more than one week of really warm weather. I laughed and said that, coming from Texas where you could go 90 days in a row never dipping below 100 degrees, I was going to go on record as saying that I couldn't believe they were complaining about not being hot enough.

One of my dear friends said, "Yes, but this is California and we expect perfect weather!"

You crazy Californians.....THIS IS PERFECT!!!!! Have you people lost your minds???? The rest of the world is running their air conditioners like mad, praying they don't break down and trying to figure out what bank they are going to have to rob to pay the electric bill. They are dumping ice in their pools to cool them off. They are buying those little spray mister thingys so that they can walk to their mailboxes without passing out. They can not risk walking barefoot for fear of literally burning the skin off of their feet.

God, if you read my blog (which I'm guessing is not so much the process of "reading" it as just "knowing" what it says) please, please, please don't listen to all those other Californians who are asking for heat. Ignore them and leave us with the perfect weather that they just don't seem to know is perfect.

Oh and God, if you are listening.....could you also lower the real estate prices around here and maybe talk to that big ugly spider who keeps making the biggest web I've ever seen on my back porch and ask him to stop. Okay? Thanks

I really suck at blogging

It's a good thing that I do this blog for the entertainment of 2 people because if I had hundreds of readers like the good bloggers do, they would all be egging my house by now because of my lack of writing.

What can I say, it's been a busy summer.....and to be fair, I have had viral pneumonia for about 4 weeks and unlike the fabulous housewives of the 50's who would wear their pearls with their housecoats while they were sick and the only real way that you knew they were sick was because of the tissue they were carrying around with them....I tend to look, speak and act more like Linda Blair in "The Exorcist" when I am sick. Yes, I know....my husband is a very lucky man.


I'm better now, thanks for asking, and I am ready to pretend that anyone cares what I have to say again...............except that I don't really have anything to say. So I am just going to leave you with a picture we took when we went to drop our daughter off in Florida.


I'm not sure why this cracks me up so much, but it does.

Alright OC...I'll give you this one!

I have now lived in Orange County for one full year....and I still compare everything to how it was back home, so sue me.

Well, OC.....you rocked this one!

My husband and I decided to take the kids to the OC Fair on what seems to be the only day all summer that everyone has been off of work on the same day. I was really excited to spend the day with my kids, but I have to admit that I wasn't overly optimistic about what the fair was going to be like.

C'mon people, I'm from Texas ......The Texas State Fair is legendary. Schools of kids go down and watch as Big Tex is put together bit by bit and dressed in his finest western wear. News crews sit around and wait for that first sound bite of Big Tex saying, "Howdy Folks, Welcome to the Fair".

The rides are scary insane, the games are ridiculously hard to win, the animals smell like yesterdays garbage.....you know, a typical fair.......with the exception of the corn dogs!!!! Nothing typical about those bad boys.....they are what keep you going back year after year. They are so good that even Oprah almost flipped a gasket when she tried one.

So seriously, I wasn't really expecting much from the OC fair.

Oh. My. Gosh. Orange County, look at you go.....you know how to throw a fair!

It was HUGE! There were way more games, rides, food, and entertainment choices than we were used to. Heck, there was an entire huge craft fair in the midst of the dang thing. I was stunned.

Now, I have to admit that I wasn't brave/stupid enough to try the fair specialties of fried butter or chocolate dipped fried bacon. For some reason, anything being sold at a counter called the "Heart Attack Cafe" seemed like a good thing to avoid......but we did enjoy some Texas BBQ.

Guess what came in the mail?!?!?!

After waiting for way longer than any person should have to wait......after standing in more DMV lines than anyone should have to stand in......after being yelled at, put on fraud alert and pretty much being told by the state of California to get out of their State....they finally sent me my driver's license!!!!!!!

Now, for obvious reasons I am not going to post a picture of the actual license..but since I want you all to share in my joy I am letting you see an artist rendering of what finally came in the mail this week.

As you will notice by the picture, they have my face fairly off center and I was having a really bad hair day.........but I got my license!!!! Woo Hoo!!!!

It's really not funny anymore!

Anyone want to guess where I was this morning??? Come on, guess!

I'll give you a hint.....I have written about this magical place twice before on this blog. ........That's right----I was at the freakin' California DMV trying to get my driver's license. AGAIN!!!!!!

If you don't recall what has being going on with me and the amazingly well trained DMV employees, let me give you a little recap. First, they changed me into a male on my paperwork and weren't all that thrilled with having to change me back since the state had already paid the enormous amount of money that it took to print and mail that license. Then they sent me a license with all my information and my assigned license number but the picture of a lovely blonde woman who looked like she had probably been smoking a cigarette as they were taking the picture and whom I am fairly certain is not me. I went back to the DMV for the THIRD time and had another picture taken and was told that everything was straightened out and they were sure that everything would go smoothly from now on. Then they apparently decided to put my records on 'fraud hold' which for all intensive purposes meant I would never get a license!!! I waited and waited and waited to see if the third time would be the charm for my CA driver's license but it just never came. I called the 1-800 line, sat on hold listening to music that made me slightly suicidal for 45 minutes and then was told that my license was in the DMV fraud department and I would need to call them to clear things up.

I did.....and it didn't!!!! I did however have the opportunity to get yelled at by a woman in the fraud department who was apparently having a bad day and needed to vent her frustration at someone.....so, that was fun.

Today, since my 30 day waiting period had flown by with no license being delivered to me, I had to go back in and request a new license with a new number so that whatever fraud is being perpetuated under the first number that was assigned to me will not be associated with me.

Let's get real here though, given everything else that has gone wrong, do any of us really believe that I'm not going to end up in jail trying to convince the DMV that they have made a horrible case of mistaken identity????

Please visit me in jail......and bring my old Texas driver's license with you when you come so that they will know which inmate you are there to see!

Please "luxuriate" over this post!

I know that I need to stop watching reality tv---- it is like passing an accident on the highway... you know that you shouldn't look over there because you don't really want to see something that might scar you for life but no matter how hard you try avoid it, you know in the end that you are going to take a good long look.

I do okay with not watching regular network reality tv.....'The Bachelor' holds no interest whatsoever for me....but put a reality show on E! or on Bravo and you can bet that no matter how much I swear that I will not get caught up in it, I'll be setting my DVR before I can even finish saying, "Oh my goodness, they have gone too far now...no one will ever watch THAT show!"

I watch all the housewives shows....there isn't a state out there who's crazy egomaniac women with money don't fascinate me beyond words, but I honestly have surprised even myself with my newest "must see" show......

Please tell me you have watched this show at least once!!!

I go INSANE watching this show because it makes all of us from the south seem like complete and total idiots. These women LIVE for these pageants...they spend thousands of dollars on fake hair, fake teeth, fake tans, tons of makeup and ridiculously poufy dresses all in hope that they can take home a crown and a grand prize of less cash than what it cost them to buy all the crap they had to buy to make their sweet faced little girls look like 20 year old drag queens.

But the part that really bothers me is how dumb some of these woman sound when they talk. This week my new favorite phrase came from a mom who said things like, "she is going to luxuriate across the stage" or showed her daughter how to walk the stage by saying, "let me luxuriate for you right now". Lord help us all!!! How, just HOW do you "luxuriate" for someone????? Those pageant fees would be better spent going towards a college fund for that poor girl to overcome the language that she is being taught.

Now, if you will excuse me...I have to go luxuriate my way over to the high school to pick up my daughter and get her started in the pageant world!

I forgot I had a blog....so sue me!

You know how sometimes life just gets busy and you forget things?? You know, basic things like feeding the dog, doing the laundry, the fact that you have kids.....that kind of stuff??
No???
Yeah, me either.
But I did kind of forget that I had a blog out there waiting for me. I signed on today hoping that a ghost writer had filled in for me during my absence....no such luck!

Not much new going on here, but I have a few quick updates to my ridiculously exciting life to tell you about.

~~~We had another earthquake......which is no longer funny! I'm really not okay with the feeling of the earth moving, just so you know!

~~~In less than two weeks school is going to be out for the summer and I am going to become nothing more than a taxi driver who works for no tips.....yay summer!

~~~My husband and I went to Palm Springs for the weekend with some friends. We had a great time, but since I was with another couple I had to be on my best behavior....I couldn't let them know what a stalker I really am.
See, Barry Manilow lives in Palm Springs and through nothing illegal, I happen to have his address (don't ask). I wasn't sure that his house was going to be close to where we were staying so I wasn't really planning to go drive by (or scale the wall and sneak up to the door claiming to be a pizza delivery person so that I could try to catch a glimpse of the man who, long ago, was supposed to eye me in one of his concerts and ask me to spend the rest of my life with him and possibly his boyfriend). However, when I put the address in my navigation system it showed that we were only five minutes away from the man who has been a part of my life since the first time I heard Copacabana in elementary school and sat at the edge of my bed waiting to hear who, just WHO died by that single gunshot.....Tony or Ricco??????
So, since it was only five minutes away we (me) decided to drive up to the gate of his house. Do you people get what I am saying?????? I was on the exact road that Barry drives up every day to get to his home!!!! I was at the gate that he goes through to drive his car into his garage!!! I was on holy ground as far as every Fanilow in America is concerned. I would have gotten out of the car, risked being shot at by security guards, jumped on the wall surrounding his house and screamed, "BAAAAAARRRRRRYYYYYYY", but I didn't want my friends to realize that I had lost all sense of reality just by being on that driveway so instead I said, "Cool".
We then drove off and abandoned all hope of Barry seeing me out there yelling his name and thinking to himself, 'I should invite her in for a drink because she doesn't look at all like a crazy woman'.

C'mon time, stop flying by....please!!!!

One of my baby girls is turning 15 today.......and as much as I am ridiculously proud of the young woman she has become, this is still what I expect to see every morning when she gets out of bed.

Please let Ashton Kutcher be behind this!

Please, please, please tell me that we are being punked and that there is no truth to the rumor that these are the mascots of the London Summer Olympics.

Honestly, I don't even know where to start.....the one eyed monsters, the blue crotch, the lobster claws on one and the oven mitts on the other.....are they Olympic mascots or some kind of weird drug induced warped sex statement??

C'mon, it's a joke right???? I really need this to be a joke!

A three pound murderer!!!!!

Okay, so you know how Larry the Lemon tree died even though we could never really figure out why???......and now we have Larry Deux, who is flourishing in the loving environment of our home????

Well.....the other day my husband went outside to do something and said that the back yard smelled bad. I went out there to check it out and he was right, it smelled like poo (literally, like poo). We searched all over the yard and finally decided that one of the neighbors must have fertilized with manure.

Then later my husband went back out to grill dinner and he came stomping in the house looking for our poor, helpless, teeny tiny teacup poodle who would NEVER hurt a fly and would break down in tears if you so much as suggested that he had done something wrong. My husband was all.."BAD BOY, BAD BAD BOY....you are trying to kill Larry" so I immediately went into mommy protective mode and swooped up my poor baby boy and asked what in the world was going on.

I guess that while grilling, my hubby had walked over to check on Larry and noticed that the smell was especially strong right near my beautiful Lemon Tree. He then looked into the pan under the pot and saw this.....and he jumped to the very mean, awful, horrifically wrong conclusion that my poor little baby boy must be peeing in the drain pan and that was why it smelled so bad. He is also convinced that Remi is doing it on purpose to try to kill Larry because of jealousy over my affection for Larry. I'm not really convinced that it looks like pee to me, but my husband was very convinced and VERY irritated.

Next thing I know, he is putting something under Larry to raise him out of 'pee reach' of our poor little innocent dog.

I personally think it might be overkill.......and in all honesty, my theory is that the fertilizer in Larry's soil is probably just draining down into the pan and it has nothing to do with the poor puppy who is being accused, but I can't be sure so I am just going to let Remi speak for himself...

Okay then, that is good enough for me

DMV OMG!!!

As we all know, I finally went to the DMV to get my California driver's license (as a reminder in case you forgot---I made a 100 on my test).

Well, the wait for my license has been nothing if not eventful.

First, I noticed that even though the copy of my license that I approved and signed showed that I was indeed female....somehow by the time it got to the final copy I had apparently undergone a sex change operation and was now a male.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the men in my life.....but under no circumstances do I want to be one of them......I enjoy being neat, putting things away where they belong, asking for directions, freely admitting when I am lost, keeping the toilet seat down like God intended and not having to kill spiders too much to ever covet being a guy.

Soooo, I called the DMV to explain their error to them......thus beginning my journey to understanding why everyone says the California DMV is horribly, horribly bad!!!

They told me that I needed to get back to the DMV within 24 hours so that they could fix the problem before they went into deep financial despair by actually sending me an unnecessary license.

I, being the obedient child that I always have been, went to the DMV the very next morning only to have to wait for 2 freakin' hours for the person to take approximately one second of their time to return me to my fabulous status of a female. (chorus of angels singing inserted here)

So, that's it....the license came and we all lived happily ever after right?

Yeah, not so much. My license came in the mail yesterday.....my name, my address, my birthday, my weight (I hate you for that California), my donor status and my lovely picture.....oh wait.....that isn't my face....that is someone else's face. Someone else's picture is on my driver license. WTF?????

I called the DMV again, and was again told that I needed to get this fixed AS SOON AS PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE......so.....today I was off to the DMV for another long wait and another promised fix to the DMV's mess up.

Anyone want to take any guesses as to how they will screw it up next time???

Geez, if this is how they treat those of us who make a 100 on our written tests can you imagine how they treat the rest of the poor saps??

Surviving the coconut

You know how sometimes you sit down to watch tv and you find yourself really intrigued by something that you didn't think would have intrigued you at all? Well, that is what has happened to me the last several times we sat down to watch 'Survivor'. I am sure that I am a lone freak in this, but every single time I see them cutting up a coconut, cooking it and then standing around eating it while they plot someone's demise I can't help but wonder if it tastes good or if the repulsiveness of eating a cooked coconut is what is making them all so cranky.

After several trips to grocery store where I longingly looked at the coconuts, I finally decided that I had to know the answer to the question of what a grilled coconut tasted like.



So......we bought a coconut.......

......we cut it up into pieces......

.....we stuck it on the grill with our chicken and zucchini.....

...and it was HORRIBLE!!! I mean really, really horrible! The kind of horrible that had my husband spitting it into the yard and my children calling CPS and begging to be taken away from me.

So, just in case you were sitting around watching Survivor and wondering if you should try to grill up some coconut because it looks like the survivors are enjoying theirs, try to remember that they are STARVING and would cook and eat a lizard if it crossed their path.

Hmmmmm, I wonder what a grilled lizard would taste like...........

I will legally drive you crazy!

First off I am going to need everyone to keep this on the down low because I was not supposed to wait this long to do this. I have now lived in California for about 9 months while refusing to give up my Texas driver's license because it was kind of my last bit of hope that I could still call Texas my home. The state of California feels like I should have been willing to make the switcharoo to a California license within five days of moving here....um, yeah....I didn't quite make that cut off.

So, after surviving my first earthquake (barely) and after living here through all the seasons (Fall, Fall, Spring and Oh My Freaking God the weather here is amazing) I decided that it was time to become legal.

I was a bit freaked about the whole thing. I mean let's get real here, I haven't taken a written driving test since my 16th birthday and that was a few years ago...and by a few, I mean that not even the elder George Bush was president yet.

To make matters worse, my husband had taken his test months ago and had passed with flying colors and my 19 year old daughter was going to be taking her test at the same time as me. All I kept thinking was that she was going to have to drive me home after the nice DMV people stripped me of my Texas license and told me that I was a failure who shouldn't be getting anywhere near the steering wheel of a car.

So.....I took a few practice tests, spent the night having nightmares and then woke up and figured that there was really no need to worry about my hair or my outfit since the picture that was going to be taken of me would only be used in future DMV training classes with the word "FAILURE" stamped across it.

And then I took the test and waited and waited and waited until they called my name and showed me this.....

Yeah, that's right people......I got a 100 on my test. Take that you scrawny 16 year old boy who was taking your test with all the confidence of a.....well, of a 16 year old boy! Take that old man who failed the test the first TWO times you took it therefore convincing me that I was certainly going to fail mine too. Take that woman who was taking so damn long to take your test that you had me freaking out that it must be written in some wierd foriegn language. Take that my dear husband and my precious 19 year old, both of whom I schooled on this test.

Please people, don't crowd around asking for my autograph, it's just embarrassing. Do however take solice in knowing that the road is a safer place if I am on it!

Dancing With the (people who desperately wish they were) Stars

I can't say that I enjoy 'Dancing With the Stars' which is kind of funny because I love other dance shows. There is just something about this show that I don't really care for.....I have tried to like it, and occasionally I will watch it and cheer for some old nostalgic actor or singer, but overall I'm not a fan.

That being said, I do watch other tv and therefore I hear all about DWTS on a daily basis. Which brings me to today's rant......Kate Gosselin.

Okay, let's review here--she had a reality tv show with her husband and her 8 kids, she came off as a mean, overbearing, bossy, know it all crab. Her husband became a total and complete freak of nature who thought that it was okay to date other people while still married. To continue his reign of craziness he decided he was 19 again, started dressing like an idiot and began dating girls at his emotional age instead of his real age. All of a sudden, we all felt sorry for K.to.the.Razy Kate and we forgave her and pretty much forgot about what a loon she really was.

Then she goes and puts herself on Dancing With the Stars.

Not a great move Kate because now we remember.....you are bossy, you think you are always right, you don't even try to speak to people nicely, you like to make it seem like you are much more important, busy and popular than you really are, you act like a diva only you really don't have a reason to be one and not that it matters in the rest of your life but...you have no rhythm. I have no problem with the fact that you need to earn a living to support your kids but please, when you have the sympathy of the world on your side, do not put yourself in the position of reminding everyone what a bossy mcboster you really are. Please I am begging you, find a way to soften your image again because I can not stand the thought of this man becoming the good guy in this divorce.

EARTHQUAKE!!!!!!!

Okay, so it happened.....what I have been dreading since the day I moved here. An earthquake! For those of you not familiar with the feeling of an earthquake....THE FREAKING EARTH MOVED!!!!!

It was crazy! We were outside at an Easter picnic and all of a sudden the table started moving. I looked around at the people sitting with me and it didn't seem like any of them were the type that would grab the table and shake it just for the sake of annoying the rest of us, but I just kind of pulled my arms off of the table so that the ridiculous moving would stop.....only it didn't. Which is when I finally realized that it wasn't the table that was moving, it was THE EARTH!!!!

Have I made myself clear here people.....the ground that we walk on, the ground that is supposed to be stable....the ground that when you get off of a boat you kiss it and thank mother nature for making something that is solid and forever there and stable for you.....only it isn't because apparently it can just up and move whenever it feels like it.

So I spent the next few days in kind of an earthquake hangover.....trying to figure out how I really felt about it and wondering why in the world the earth would betray us this way. I got my answer a few days later when my husband and I were in Vegas for the night. There, in the middle of all of the marquees showing half dressed girls and advertising topless shows was a big ol' sign for this............

Nooooooooo, Donny and Marie...you aren't supposed to be in Vegas!!! You are a Branson kind of show. We don't want to see any pelvic thrusts from Donny, we don't want to see Marie in skimpy clothes. Go back to familyville Donny and Marie please before mother nature sees this

and shakes the heck out of us again!

Hey Governor Schwarzenegger, I can save California

I read in the paper this morning that there are more Medical Marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles than there are Starbucks, which got me thinking....

I bet we could cure some of our budget problems with the addition of one simple little tax.
introducing......

The 'Snack Tax'










You are welcome Gov!

absent blogger

Sorry I haven't posted since I went 'cougaring with my bestie'.....I've been a little busy enjoying the view of

this....

and this...

Cougaring with my Bestie

I am SO excited! My best friend is coming to visit and we are finally going to get the chance to catch up on 8 months of missed girl talk.

I have missed her sooooo much and I can not wait to spend some time going to bars, drinking shots, checking out guys, hittin' a few male strip clubs, partying with the likes of Tiger Woods, Jesse James and John Edwards.

...............

I am totally kidding!

Our life is a bit more pleasantly boring than that. We are going to take over her brother-in-law's beach house, stay up late talking, sleep in, drink coffee, watch the waves, spend way too much time in our pajamas, eat too much, drink too much, laugh way more than anyone would ever understand and spend the days playing with her precious little girl.

So if you need me, just listen for the beach house that sounds like it's housing a family of hyenas............and then turn around and walk away because we won't let you in anyway.

Proud to Introduce....

Larry Deux.....












Look, he even has a little lemon starting to grow...


















Please don't tell him that he is in the death pot from Larry the 1st.....I really don't want him to think he is doomed before he even has a chance to let his soil settle.

Scum

Not that there are many guys who read this.....but for the few who do I would like to give you some advice that you never asked for....
ready???
If you are having an affair, you can bet your sorry ass that the woman you are having it with can not wait until the day that she can make sure your wife, your kids, your parents, and your pastor know every disgusting detail, so if you would prefer that they not find out what a scum bucket you are, you should probably try a little harder to keep it in your pants.


Exhibit A:













Rielle Hunter and John (or should I say "Johnny"?) Edwards.

As soon as she was able to lose all the baby fat and look good in a ridiculous pose (especially for someone who is trying to claim she isn't a slut) while wearing a man's white dress shirt (really subtle Rielle), she blessed GQ with a completely pathetic interview. She claims that she isn't a predator, that Johnny's wife was verbally abusive and that he would have been pummeled by his wife if he had told her there were problems in their marriage.

Ummmmm, would this have been before or after his wife was trying to help him hide his secret illegitimate baby from the world, standing by his sorry cheating ass while he was running for President, raising his children and trying to keep them in the dark about what an ass their father was or while she was dealing with fighting CANCER? I guess she ran out of time for the pummeling! Too bad too, because he could have used a good pummeling.

Like, teenagers are sooooo whatever!

This weekend I had the unique opportunity to be surrounded by a bunch of teenagers that I didn't know for 13 straight (and incredibly long) hours.
Here is what I learned....

Teen aged boys have no end to what they can eat.
I watched a boy eat three full size bagels, four donuts, a snickers, two glasses of orange juice and a fruit cup only to ask 30 minutes later if it was okay if he grabbed a bite to eat because he was starving.

Teen aged girls eat healthy when boys are watching. When a boy was near by, the girls were all...."Oh, will you split this grape with me, I couldn't possibly eat this whole thing by myself", but when the boys left the room they scarfed down every chocolate covered thing they could get their hands on.

They think nothing of taking 200 pictures of themselves a day.

Apparently, if it was posted on Facebook it is gospel....as in, "No, I am positive that she did it, I saw Tiffani's comment on Amber's post about it"

The word "like" is required to be said at least 10,000 times a day by every teenager or they will have their teenager card taken away from them......like, for real.

I have to say, it was kind of a fun experience....one I hope that I get a chance to repeat in about, oh..I don't know....maybe 20 years.

Fuzzy Donut Math

Today I had to go preorder 6 dozen donuts for the concession stand that I am in charge of at my daughter's high school dance competition this weekend. I am not trying to play on any type of stereotype here, but this particular donut shop happens to be owned and operated by two Asian women.

(Let me just pause here for a second to say that if you ever go to a donut shop that isn't owned by an Asian woman you should leave it immediately and find the closest one that is because the rest of the world knows what you don't and that is that there is some kind of secret donut making school somewhere over on the other side of the Pacific Ocean that teaches these amazing women how to make the lightest, fluffiest and most sugar-coma inducing donuts in the world!)

I wasn't sure what time the donut shop closed on weekdays, and I am not what you would call a morning person, so for me to come skidding in to the parking lot at the crack of 9am was quite impressive. Thank goodness they were still open and the morning rush of people who actually get up and showered before Regis and Kelly is over were all gone. I explained to the woman at the counter that I needed to order 6 dozen donuts that I would need to pick up on Saturday morning at 5:30 am. If her blank stare was any indication, I think what she heard me say was "blah blah blah blah donuts blah blah blah". Hmmmmm, this was going to be harder than I had hoped.

Thankfully another woman came from behind the curtain and seemed to have a little more of a grasp of the English language as she smiled at me. I explained again...6 dozen donuts, 5:30 am Saturday pick up. She got out a receipt form and started writing, so I felt like we were going to make it this time. I asked her about how much it would be and she said, "I make you a good deal, how about $50?". I have no idea if that is a good deal or not, I'm not the donut buyer in my family. I am the one who stays in bed as my hubby and my tiniest early riser get up and head out, with her still in her pjs, to get donuts for the family on those random Sundays when making a big family breakfast just seems more than we are capable of.

I smile my approval at $50 while wondering if my husband is going to be proud of the deal I got or if he is going to laugh at me and tell me that he would have been able to get it for $20.

Now here is where it all got a little confusing for me......the woman who clearly didn't seem to know what I was saying earlier heard the $50 comment and rung up $44 on the register and just kind of stared at me.

I guess I'm getting a discount! Woo Hoo, won't my husband be proud. I happily handed her my debit card.

She holds my card, pushes a button on the cash register and all of a sudden that $44 becomes $60. WHAT??? Granted, it's not like $60 is going to break the donut bank.....but I am just trying to figure out how this math is working. I know that I pretty much mailed in my college math courses (unless of course you are my college aged daughters reading this, in which case I worked diligently and tirelessly to make great grades) but I still can't figure out what is going on with the price of these donuts.

The nicer of the two women comes over, looks at the total that my card is being charged and starts yelling at the other woman. Mind you, it sound like yelling to me because it's loud, there is lots of hand movements and it sounds angry....but the woman who is being yelled at doesn't seem to react like she is being yelled at so for all I know she is just being told that they are out of flour.

The smiling woman proceeds to grab a box and start shoving it full of donuts. She hands me a box full of donuts that can barely close and says, "my thank you".

(Fine,
there may
have been
donuts
that were
eaten before
this picture
was taken..
don't judge!)


I'm basically still trying to figure out if I got a good deal or not. Honestly though, the high I am getting from all this chocolate icing is making it a little hard for me to care....maybe that was that nice Asian lady's plan. If so, watch out....they could take over the planet with that plan.

I suspected as much!

There's an App for that....even though there shouldn't be

I love my iPhone...I love the apps I have on my iPhone. Truth be told, I am probably a little obsessed with my iPhone. Oh sure it's a phone, but much more importantly it is my source for the white pages, the yellow pages, Open Table, my husband's flight information, a Californian earthquake update, The LA Times, Twitter, TMZ, E online, People magazine, multiple weather sources, a sushi guide, The Bible, all 373 of my Barry Manilow songs, a map to every single Disney Park that I may ever go to along with the times of every single parade and what is on the menu at every single restaurant in the park. I could go on and on....I love, love, love my iPhone.

However, while searching through the apps last night I found out that there is an entire population of people who love their iPhones in a totally different way. I swear I am not making any of this up....these are all true, honest to goodness apps that you yourself could (but shouldn't) download to your phone.

Sex Position Game

Nude It

Adult Sex Life

Hooters Calendar

Seduce a Suicide Girl (don't even want to know what that one means)

Playboy

69 Positions

Naughty Facts

Sex IQ

and for the ladies in the house.....

Playgirl

and....drum roll please................

vibrate massager!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The level to which that grosses me out can not even be described!

Please, I beg of you, love your iPhone.....but don't LOOOOOOVE your iPhone

Shouldn't you have offered me dinner and a movie first?

I should have been prepared for this. I mean, I was warned by a really sweet friend who moved to California from another state that this was going to happen....but I was still shocked. And I don't just mean the shock like, "Oh, wow, that is kind of a surprise.", but the kind of shock that leaves you breathless and speechless.

Let me start by saying that I love my dog and under no circumstance do I want him to be in any pain or discomfort of any type. Which is why I am pretty diligent about taking him in for his yearly checkups and am pretty good about following whatever orders a vet may give me. He has bad teeth so we tend to have to take him in about every two years to be put under anaesthesia and have his teeth really deep cleaned.

Wellllllllllll, I just had my first experience with an Orange County California veterinarian and just let me say that I am still in a state of complete and utter disbelief.

Vet bill for teeth cleaning (including pre surgery lab and using "people grade" anaesthesia) in Texas--------$250

Vet bill for teeth cleaning (including lab work but no guarantee on the anaesthesia) in California-------$1242. Did you hear me correctly???? One Thousand, Two Hundred and Forty Two Dollars!!!!!! Let me say this again...$1242

You have GOT to be kidding me!!!!!!

I tried to explain that I thought they had misunderstood, I wasn't looking to actually purchase a new dog--just to have the teeth cleaned on the one I already have.

I'd love to say "vet bill....$1242; sweet dog breath....priceless", but for the love of God I could buy a plane ticket, fly back to Texas, pay the $100 fee to take my dog with me on the plane and go back to my vet in Texas who would charge me a very reasonable $250 for the procedure and still come in under the $1242 estimate.

I get it....you Californians love your climate. When I complain about the cost of living, you make a grand gesture of pointing to the sky and say, "Yes, but you are paying for this!" But come on people.....

Wow, this IS fun!

All year long my first grader has been bringing home a list of spelling words every Monday that we were supposed to practice all week in preparation for the big spelling test on Friday. We would go over the words every day after school as soon as we struggled through the rest of that night's homework (the sight words, the reading assignment, the reading comprehension page, the math page and the math fact flash cards). Now I don't mean to complain, but this homework takes a while and obviously this teacher doesn't care that I never get to see Ellen or Dr Phil anymore.

Then about a month ago I pulled out the weekly spelling word list only to see a note that looked something like this attached to it. Mind you, I am paraphrasing....

Because some of you lame parents are not doing your job and going over your spelling words with your kids, we are now going to hold you to an even higher standard of ridiculousness. Get ready to have absolutely no free time because this new method of practicing your spelling words is sure to cause frustration, fights, tears and total mental breakdowns. The word list will be sent home every Monday with your creative spelling project being due back a mere 17 hours later, hardly enough time for the glue to dry. :-) We would like you to be creative and use a different method every Monday so that as teachers we can judge which of you are the better parents. Grab a drink and let's get started with this new FUN spelling adventure.

Here are examples of the fun new ways we would like you to practice your spelling words with your kids:
___glue and glitter
___write with cereal letters
___cut out letters from magazines and glue to paper
___use play dough or clay
___write in shaving cream
___trace in flour or sugar on your kitchen counter
___cut letters into jello or cookies using alphabet cookie cutters
___use the paperwork from the doctor who declares you clinically insane because you are having to try to come up with stupid--oh excuse me--FUN ways to practice the damn spelling words because apparently just writing them in pencil on a piece of paper is just way too main stream

I've done all the easy ones I can think of. We have done rainbow writing, glue and glitter, writing in flour.....I'm thinking this week we will write them in spray paint on the teacher's garage door. That's creative, right?

If it's covered in pink is it still a sport?

A few months back, one of the moms in my little one's class pulled me aside and said that we should sign up for softball because her husband was going to be coaching a team. My first thought was that softball probably had way too many moving parts for a 6 year old, but then I remembered that we were still new here and needed to keep working at making friends--so we signed up to play 6 and under softball.

We got the pink glove, the pink helmet, the pink bat, the pink softball and the pink bag to carry all the other pink stuff in. We loaded the pink water jug with water and headed over to the park to try to see if our little cutie was going to embarrass us or make us proud when that first day of practice rolled around.

Look how she is keeping her eye on that ball...............

.......and look at that swing!

Oh Yeah, we are going to rock this softball thing. I think I may go ahead and start spending our college savings because this girl is going to school on a softball scholarship.

I do love my Country, really I do!

I hate to admit this, but I have very mixed emotions about the Olympics starting this Friday.

I like the Olympics.....but my husband LOVES them and has taken to calling me some very unflattering and decisively un-American names because he doesn't think that I give 'The Games' the church like reverence that they deserve.

I mean, c'mon, the first year that we watched "curling" together I had to hold in my laughter. Wasn't this 'sport' just cruise ship shuffleboard on ice?? Within seconds my very irritated husband was telling me about "pushing out of the hack" and "delivering stones" and something about a "hog line". WTF????? Seriously, it's shuffleboard! We make fun of people who play that!!

Trust me, I know that these people are incredible athletes who work for YEARS to get to the Olympics and who are capable of a level of athleticism that I would never, ever be able to achieve, but when I see the names of their events here is what goes through my mind....

The Luge........tight clothed people leaning.

The Skeleton....same thing, ickier name.

Bobsled.....a ride that is surely accompanied by hot chocolate.

Speed Skating....guys going really fast with skates that look like they could kill a man.

Short Track Speed Skating....same thing, shorter distance.

Cross Country Skiing....oh my gosh, it's Olympic speed walking.

.

Okay, so I guess I understand why my husband calls me all those nasty unpatriotic names that he hauls out every Olympic year. I will just brace myself for them and count the minutes until we have a final US Olympic team medal count and life in my house can get back to normal.

.....unless he happens to read this blog, in which case he will just divorce me.

My car would like to know who the dummy is now?

About a month ago I got in my car and saw this--











Now, because I didn't exactly have the kind of Dad who felt it was important for me to know how to fix a car but rather that I know who to call if it broke down, I had to pull out my manual to see what this light meant. I mean seriously, an exclamation point with parenthesis around it could mean anything from "Your car is on fire" to "QUICK, take the next exit..there is a sale at Nordstrom". So after searching through the 100,000 page manual, I finally found this mystery symbol in chapter 82, section W, subparagraph n4. It was simply my car's way of nicely telling me that my tire pressure was low. I was positive that my husband was going to share in the joy that my car was nice enough to give me this gentle little nudge that it might be time to check the tire pressure.

I was wrong.

He assured me that my car was just being a 'chick' and that my tire pressure was fine and that the "dummy light" (apparently a guy term for these lights) was just coming on because my car was being way too sensitive to the temperature change.

About 2 weeks went by and my "dummy light" was still on. At this point, I am getting a little irritated that my husband is doubting the concern that my car has for me by showing me this light and all I really want to know is.. if everything is fine with my tire pressure then why is the light still on?

So last week I am looking at my back tire and I swear it looks low to me. Maybe I am just being paranoid, but really...it looks a little low. I told my husband that maybe my car was right and maybe we should heed it's warning and check the tire pressure. He responded by walking around the car, looking at all four tires, kicking one of them and declaring everything just fine.

We all know where this is going right?

Fast forward to 6:50am when I am running out the door to take my daughter to dance practice which starts in a mere 10 minutes....and I am already behind schedule because I have to get back home and get ready to go volunteer in my younger daughter's class and I have not gotten my youngest dressed nor fed yet so we really just need everything to go according to plan so that I can get everyone to school and get to where I need to be because goodness gracious there are 1st graders depending on me to learn their math facts!!!!!! (Well, that and I have a lunch date later with a friend). And lo and behold, what waits for me in my garage??















Yeah, that's right...flat as a pancake.

The funny thing is......my husband swears that this had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the fact that my tire pressure warning light was on. Isn't that just the most amazing coincidence?

I wouldn't exactly call mine a "green" thumb

When we first moved here, a friend of mine who will remain nameless (but seriously Jay you know it's you, right?) told me that the great thing about living in California is that you could plant absolutely anything in the ground and it would grow beautifully. I tried to explain to him that even my silk plants die, but he assured me that now that I was living here everything would be different and everything I touched would be a stunning shade of green.

So, full of excitement over the fact that I was finally going to get to nurture a plant to life, I planted my first lemon tree. I was SO excited!! I even named it 'Larry'! Larry and I had some great times.....we talked on a daily basis, I shared my deepest secrets with Larry and Larry shared his deepest secrets with me.....it was beautiful. We had coffee together in the mornings, we read books together, we laughed as we talked about how good looking Brad and Angelina are... we bonded. Then one day I noticed that Larry was looking a little under the weather. Larry and I prayed together that day. The next day I noticed that Larry's leaves were starting to fall off....I cried a little. Over the course of the next few weeks I stood by helplessly as Larry gave in and lost his battle. I held his little stick dry branches and told him it was okay, he could let go...go into the light...I'd be okay. But I wasn't really okay, I was tremendously sad. How in the world did I kill Larry in a State where just by virtue of the weather and the sunshine no one ever kills a plant without a hired hit man getting involved?? I mourned Larry......I even left his pot sitting empty as a shrine to him.

RIP Larry the Lemon Tree

I am so sorry that I sucked at keeping you alive.

You deserved better!

Then today I had a moment of thinking that maybe I wasn't so bad after all. I went to take the trash out and saw that the orange tree in our yard was finally ready to be picked. Granted, there were only a few oranges on it, but they looked great! Granted (again), I didn't actually plant the orange tree....it was here when we moved in, but still it could have committed suicide when it saw what I did to poor Larry, but it didn't. It could have been jealous that I never took the time to come up with a name for it and decided that it would show me by just letting it's oranges turn brown and then throwing them at me as I walked by, but it didn't. God bless that little orange tree...it actually gave me a few beautiful oranges! It restored my faith. It made me think that maybe I would forgive my friend for setting me up for failure.

Oh sure, there were only like 5 oranges, but they were MY oranges from a tree in MY yard that I didn't kill just by being in a 5 mile radius of it! I was SO excited......until I looked next door and saw this......

5 months? That's nothing in the trash world!

One of the things that I have had to get used to since we moved here is the crazy way trash is picked up. Where we lived in Texas, you could have as many trash cans and recycling bins as you wanted and the lovely sanitation department would swing by your house like clockwork twice a week to take it all away. Big items??? No problem....just set them next to your trash cans and they would magically disappear. The old vacuum that wouldn't suck anymore??? The box that the new sucking vacuum came in??? No problem, just stick 'em out there and they were gone by 5pm.

Welllllllllll, things don't quite work like that here. We are assigned three trash cans, one for trash, one for recyclables and one for yard stuff (leaves, tree branches and stuff like that), and if your trash doesn't fit in those cans, well then it just isn't going to be leaving your house. On top of that, we only have ONE trash day a week. Yes, even the week of Christmas when you have all that wrapping paper, all those boxes and all those turkey bones that you just can not stand to smell for one. more. freakin'. second.

I am trying to learn to be a cooperative Californian, but what in the world do people do when they move here and they have a house full of boxes, packing paper and bubble wrap??

Well, here is what we did. We piled the boxes in our back yard and every week we would put as many as could fit in the recycling can and then we would roll it out to the curb on Wednesday like all of the other compliant residents of this fine state.

........and, this went on for precisely 5 months!

I am happy and so proud to announce that as of this Wednesday we are officially done with our pile of boxes!!!!! After 5 ridiculous months of having to try to fold a wardrobe box into an origami swan, we have finally succeeded in getting rid of all of them.

Please, try not to be jealous of my life!

Housewives?? I think not.

Clearly because I live in the OC now I am having even more fun watching 'The Real Housewives of the OC" than I was before. I always loved the show, but now I am kind of obsessed with it and I love seeing the places that they go and recognizing some of the restaurants or nail salons and whatnot..........but OMG these woman are CrAzY!!!

Who in their right mind would let their day to day life be filmed and then honestly believe that we are all wishing our lives where like theirs???? I may love watching the show, but mostly because watching someone else's train wreck of a life makes my boring life feel really, Reeaaaaaally good.

Please tell me that you caught it last week when Alexis went to the races with Gretchen. That entire scene at the table had me thanking my lucky stars for the man I am married to. If Alexis' husband said one more time how "OUR rule" is that we only judge by "OUR experiences" I was going to reach through the screen and slap his cocky, know it all, not very attractive self. If he is really all that (and he clearly thinks he is) why did he have to lie to his wife about Gretchen's friend coming on to him just so he could watch his wife have a lunatic moment?? Run Alexis, RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN. Yes, he may be rich and he may love to buy you trinkets NOW, but any woman who feels that she has to edit herself around her husband, tell her husband how right he is when he is being a know it all, or who feels that she has to look perfect around her husband is only asking for trouble. Shouldn't your hubby be the one who ALWAYS has YOUR back, who thinks you look perfect in the morning when you haven't brushed your teeth or hair, or when you have baby throw up all over your pajamas.....and it's 3:00 in the afternoon???

Keep these shows coming BRAVO TV......I love 'em! And just so you "Housewives" know, I don't envy you, I don't want your life nor do I want to be you.....but I do find you crazy fun to watch!

Rain, Rain GO AWAY!!!

After a very long and very eventful trip back home I am now unpacked and all caught up on laundry and hugging my kids. Now I just need this ridiculous rain to stop. We are living in California, we are not supposed to have DAYS of rain, thunderstorms or tornadoes. Tornadoes were on my list of things that I was okay leaving behind in Texas.....no way are they allowed to follow me out here.

On the positive side, our weatherman is getting a lot of airtime and I can't help but be cheered up every single time I see his name on my TV screen....Dallas Raines! What a great name for a meteorologist! Seriously, that is like a handyman being named Rusty Nail or a dentist named Dr Payne. Gotta love irony!

But it worked for the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup people

Here is how I see this conversation going......

Boss, "We have to find something new, something that makes us stand out from the rest. Something that puts us on the map."

Employee, "Well, what do we have in Hawaii that people would flock to buy?"

Boss, "The tourists seem to really like Macadamia Nuts when they are here. They especially seem to like them when they are smothered in chocolate."

Employee, "Okay, so we should smother them in something even more unique than that."

Boss, "Yes, but we need locals to like them too. What is something unique that locals like that we can push on the rest of the world too?"

Employee, "Locals really love Spam"

Boss, "Brilliant!!!!"

Aloha Suckas!!!

Okay, so that was rude....sorry!! Aloha, and Mahalo for being my friend and reading my blog while I am enjoying the peace and quiet and serenity and amazing weather and beautiful smells and lovely trade winds and.....well, I guess I should stop, I wouldn't want to rub it in.

Our trip to the islands was not without drama. Our plane left the gate only to have to be turned around and returned to it because of a woman in the back of the plane who got very sick all over several seats and herself. They had to remove her and her bio hazardous mess from the plane before we could get back out on the runway.

Then, because it wasn't interesting enough yet. A woman sitting next to us was letting her massive intoxication show, much to the irritation of the man in the seat in front of her. The man sitting beside her however was quite happy with the situation because she was being very flirty with him and I am pretty sure he was thinking there was a chance he was going to get a little up in the air action. He was not at all happy when the man in front of him complained to the flight attendant about the obnoxious drunk lady. After some discussion with the airline people, it was decided that she would be allowed to fly IF she could keep to herself and IF she would not drink at all on the plane (darn those two glasses of cheap champagne she had already downed before we left the gate). After that the plane ride just lost some of it's fun factor.

So....after all the drama, we finally got out of sunny California and on our way to sunny Hawaii.

My very sweet husband walked off of the plane and walked straight over to a lei stand to buy me a lei. Remember all those shows you saw as a kid where people would arrive in Hawaii and Hula dancers would put a lei around their neck? Well, it doesn't happen that way.....unless you have a sweet husband who rushes over and buys one for you so that you get the full effect of smelling the amazing plumeria as you walk through the airport.

And no, of course the lei isn't shaped like a heart, but laying it on the desk like that made for a cuter picture...until I couldn't figure out how to turn it sideways so that you could see it without having to turn your head sideways. Sorry for the crick in your neck!

We were exhausted by the time we got to the hotel.....but to wake up to this......

well, it made all the vomit, the drunk fest and fear of seeing a public sex act worth it.

Aloha!

My love/hate relationship with my move to California

Okay, so here is the deal.....I really, really, really, REALLY didn't want to move to California. It's not that things were perfect in Texas, but that is where my family and friends are....it's where my kids all went to kindergarten, it's where my 14 year old was born, where I brought my daughter home from China, where my two oldest graduated from high school, where I graduated from high school, where I was married. It was full of memories....good and bad, but all important memories. I was content there....I was good.

So of course we would move!

I really didn't want to move at all, but to have to move to California was almost comical. My mental list of comparisons went something like this....

The house size in my price range in the Texas town we lived in

The house size in my price range in California

That is such a bummer!

Then I started thinking.....hmmmmm,

the scenery in Texas

vs. the scenery in California

Okay....so that's one for California

Then you have the weather which is comical to even bring up since we all know how much nicer the weather is in California. However, you do have the freakish weather phenomenons that can't be overlooked........


The Texas Tornado vs The California Earthquake

Neither are really the way I am hoping to meet my maker.

I will admit that I don't hate it here as much as I thought I would. I don't love it....but I am learning to appreciate it's good points.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get on with selling everything I own so that I can fit in my new version of "home sweet home".