Liz From Seattle

So we got really rich overnight and now we have a nanny.

Not really, but I did get to meet a long time reader/sometimes commenter Liz from Seattle. She's down in LA visiting her brother so she asked if she could stop by. Liz does not have a blog, and I've only talked to her through my comments section and on the phone, but she said that she would be bringing me The Club for my car, so I was like "sweet."

When I first met her, we were driving in the parking lot of Staters by David's work, and she almost hit my car with her Jetta. Then she recognized me from the pictures and pointed at me, like how you might go "look, there's Brooke Shields" or "Look! Uma Therman!" "Hey! It's the girl from the blog!"

After recycling some cans at David's shack and getting $4.17, we went to my house and she told me a little more about herself while the kids pummeled her. Liz is currently unemployed, and from what I gather she's some kind of lab rat for the drug companies. They pay her money to give her placebos and draw her blood. She also sells miscellaneous items on EBay. Her boyfriend back in Seattle is going to school for something that she never mentioned, but he writes and sells scripts, and if things work out he may end up turning my novel into a real live movie...or...try to. The story is worth a look, at least.

I gave Liz a tour of the area, including Christmas Tree Lane, the people who maybe probably stole my car's house, where my car was found, Oak Glen, Yucaipa, and she bought us some delicious delicious Bakers drive thru burgers, which are the best. Bakers is very much related to the Inland Empire and you cant get it anywhere else. It is decent food, yes it is.

My kids forced her to read books, and Wade, having forgotten about Melissa, fell in love with her and decided that he wanted to keep her. I told her that the pay was little to none but that the benefits were worth the crappy pay, like entertainment and the first-to-know on the blog material.

Liz told me that she only keeps five or so blogs in her reader and that I am one of them. She's been following me for almost the three years that I've been on, and that she found me by clicking on people's sidebars. She agrees that some of my blogs are tl;dr (too long; didn't read) but that it is worth it to read them to the end.

She loves the blog about the cab driver in Portland and the Bitches of Eastwick. She is indifferent to Dooce, who I wont bother linking to, because why?

She thinks that my house smells great so I gave her a candle that smells like cinnamon toast, and I let her choose from my prize box of finished knitted goods, and she went with some socks that I made for David a long long time ago that he only wore once and never again because he said that they were too thick or hot or something. She also took home a loaf of freshly made Hawaiian bread.

We went shopping at Staters and tried to find the Staring Girl, but she wasn't there. Staring Boy, as a side note, recycled today, and he wouldn't look David in the eye. And even though this fellah usually talks for hours to him, he said nothing but "thanks" this time. Anyway, the guy in front of us was buying vodka, and Liz was confused. "You can buy booze in the stores here?" Apparently, where she comes from, you can buy beer at the store but not hard liquor. There are special stores for that. I've never known such a cockamamie rule, then again I've never lived anywhere but here.

Oh, and Liz thinks that where I live is pretty. Mountains everywhere and...just pretty. But windy. I told her that this was Blowmont and she should have come prepared.

At Staters she bought stuff to make us dinner, which was a delicious lemony soy sauce lamb dish with garlic potatoes. For dessert we had cherry pie. Yeah, she like totally fed us, and it was awesome. Nobody has ever come into my house and cooked for me before.

She thought it was neat to be here, like "where the magic happens." It was like walking around on the set of a show, and meeting me is sort of like meeting a celebrity. She used my toilet and didn't notice the camera that was in there. Liz was very pleased that I did not try to kill or rape her, and of all things she said that I had nice handwriting. HA! I cant even read the shit. Thank god for computers, otherwise I couldn't write, and then I would explode.

It turns out that Liz is a lot like me, and she's like from Seattle, so she like, um, talks like she's from like Gray's Anatomy? And sometimes her sentences end with a weird inflection? Like everything is a question? But I talk like that too because I'm from like California? And like, you know, it's crazy!?!

And we cant forget the obligatory very "myspace face" picture that I always take when I meet an internets. Look, it is VERY HARD to take a picture of yourself, even with the swiveling LCD screen, hell, it makes it harder I think because you're moving the camera and your head to try to get in the frame, well anyway...thanks Liz for the food, and for coming by, and I would really like to know what happened on my porch when you were leaving and my next door neighbors (Mustang Sally and Jamie Heinemann) opened the door. You looked positively confused or frightened. Were they naked?

Please give details in the comments section Liz, the world wants to know. Also feel free to leave a long or short comment on your evaluation of me.

Staring BOY???

I've discovered a few things about my car. Besides all of the cool reading lights and window upper downer buttons, there are a few problems. One is if you pull the key out of the ignition too fast, the car stays on. Not the whole engine, but just enough that the battery light, the "which gear I am in light" (the thing that lights up next to the P or the R or the D on the dash) and the radio stay on. I have to start the car again and make sure to completely kill it before I leave. Also, the horn is very angry. In the Civic, the horn sounded like, "Konichiwa. Please to excuse you as you are blocking the path and therefore keeping me from reaching my destination of travel of 1,000 journeys."

It was a sissy jap horn and it did very little.

But the Alero?

"GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY SHITFACE! LEARN TO FUCKING DRIVE, ASSHOLE!"

The horn is way too aggressive, I had to use it because someone was sitting at a green light for about 20 seconds, and as soon as I did it I was like "SHHHHHH! You're going to get us killed!" and the car is like "Fuck that, this bizzatch in front of us needs to get out the way!"

I'm still trying to figure out if the car is a bitchy red headed woman or an angry black lady.

And the car scared the shit out of us today, it WOULDNT START. Like, the engine wouldn't turn, but all of the lights worked. We were so upset, because we just cant win. We called his dad to come help, only to find out that the car has a security chip in it that we knocked loose. Yeah, the car has a kick ass security measure that will prevent anyone from starting the car...including me. Which sucks. We looked at the chip and it is a little chingered and scratched, and you have to kind of jam it in at a certain angle to get it to work, so we have decided not to mess with it unless we are in a really bad neighborhood. It sucks because it would save us from spending money on an alarm, but I don't want to get stuck somewhere because I cant get the thing to work.

So anyways, David was asked out by one of his customers yesterday. One of his MALE customers. The guy has always said things to him like "I missed you," and lingered after getting his money, and David says that he always seems to be looking at him. Well, yesterday David was in Staters taking a crap, and when he came out the guy was at a check stand, and upon seeing David the guy ran up to him.

"Hey man, I heard you got hit by a car man," I don't know why they all think that.

"No, I just fell off of my bike."

"Aw, so are you alright dude? I missed you."

"Yeah, I'm back to work."

"So, do you want to go out sometime? Maybe get some food, go see a movie?"

"Um..." David said, bewildered.

"If that's not your thing that's cool man. Ill see you later, ok?"

"Uh...ok, bye..."

He tells this story to me later, and I ask if he thought it was really a gay thing. "Well, if it was a GUY thing he'd of said something like 'wanna go hang out,' or say something specific like 'lets go get Chinese food over at the place right there' or something. But...guys don't ask guys they hardly know to go to the movies. That just isn't done. But I cant figure out why he wants me of all people."

"You're cute, David, that's why."

"But girls don't even hit on me." Except for that mom at the park who saw his "I Love Hot Moms" shirt and told him her woes about how she's alllllll alone, and boy she wished that she had a great guy like him to keep her company. Oh and the drunk lady who ordered pizza and made out with him on the porch when he brought it to her.

"Well you ARE half naked on the internet a lot, it could be that he saw the video of you making salsa in your underwear or he remembers the time that you said that you wanted to see 'glorious naked black men on horseback.' Everyone needs a stalker I guess, I have the Staring Girl and you have your Staring Boy."

"Staring Boy? First it was a Staring Girl and now there's a Staring BOY?"

"Some of my blog readers seem to think that Staring Girl stole the car."

"Well the bigger thing at hand here is, what the hell do I do?"

"What do you mean? You tell him that you're flattered but spoken for, stick it in his pooper and give him a reach around, that's all he wants, he'll go away after that."

"I will not tell him that I am flattered."

...

"I will not F him in the A, look, I just want him to kind of go away now, it's not that he asked me out, it's that he asked me out AND he gives me the creeps, he creeped me out before he asked me out even, because he stares."

"Plant a can packed with dirt on him and permaban him from your site."

"I cant permaban people."

"Your brother permabans people all of the time, he's a ban nazi and you know it. You've been with the company longer, you can get away with banning people for trying to cheat you out of money."

"But I cant plant a dirt can on the guy and ban him for it. It's wrong."

"Then just fucking deal with him by saying I'm not interested, I'm not gay, and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression.' And as soon as you are done doing his stuff, get back to reading or go in the back and smash glass or something."

Staring Boy may or may not want to be David's lover, but the way that he quickly defended his offer to go out with him with "if that's not your think it's ok" we tend to think that it was. Most importantly, I told him to be upfront and honest and clarify that it isn't his kind of thing. My reader Liz who is coming to see me tomorrow asked if the dude saw David's wedding ring tattoo, which of course has my name on it, and I said that it wouldn't deter anyone because I have a guys name, and like I said a while back "Jessie and David" sound like a couple of dudes.

Tomorrow I am taking Liz on a tour of the Inland Empire in my hot Oatmealbeal because she handed me over a bucket of money. Buckets of money will get you the grand tour, which includes Redlands but not Mentone, Cabazon but not the inside of the casino, and the whole of Yucaipa Blvd, with stops at El Burrito and fucking See's Candy store. I will also allow her to recycle my cans at David's shack, take flash photography, and stop if she needs to use the bathroom at a gas station.

And we might even make a stop to see the Staring Girl, or possibly even the Staring Boy.

I Was Born To Be A Paperback Writer

Something recently pieced it's self together in my brain. No, it was not the brain cells I lost playing video games connecting to the brain cells that I lost that time that I accidentally got really high from painting a school project with toxic paint. It was a string of memories and coincidences that have convinced me that I am on the right path career wise. Yeah, not the house wife thing, put that aside for a minute, I figured out that I was supposed to do that a long time ago. I am talking now about the writer thing. The thing I do when the kids are asleep and the house is...well the house might not be picked up 100% of the time, but it's my call. I write when I want to. Wash your own spoon.

I've been remembering recently way back into my childhood. I can remember actually narrating what was going on around me in my head in third person. I was small when I did this, still around the age when I peed with the door open because I was afraid of the toilet monster. And I know that I was doing it "for a book" too, because I remember spreading my hands apart to the thickness that I thought that my book would be if I were to write it all on paper. I couldn't really write yet very well, so I had imaginary books, and once I finished "writing" one I would put it in my sister's closet.

Why has it taken me 20 some odd years to recall this?

And it doesn't stop there. I remember my first few weeks in my new foster home after my dad died. I passed the time by writing short stories, and I would read them to my new family at the dinner table. I remember the first one that I wrote when I got there was basically a rip off of Cinderella, but I also remember writing stories about the cats. We had a calico and I remember writing about how she walked past a house where the guy was painting, and some paint splashed on her, and that was how she got her colors. The other cat had blue eyes, and I remember something about her either being in a cave and seeing a blue stone or possibly a glacier and it reflected off of her eyes and somehow permanently made them that color.

But we cant forget about my first "manuscript." It was written in pencil on lined paper and kept in a green folder. I wrote it in 8th grade, and I remember that the main character's name was Kevin and his best friend Sal was shot and killed in a nearby field. I don't remember anything else, other than I wanted to be the next S. E. Hinton, who wrote The Outsiders when she was like 16 or something. Then I used an old journal to write a true crime novel about a boy who had been kidnapped and killed from here in Beaumont, and his ghost came back to tell the narrator, who was his friend, how to find the killer. I even paperclipped a missing poster that I pulled off of a nearby telephone pole with the boy's face and the sketch of the killer and his car description into the pages. I also wrote a three act play about a small ship and it's passengers.

I have no idea where these are, by the way. Trashed probably. Mostly because none of them were very good at all.

In high school, I completely filled three journals with journaling, and four spiral notebooks with poetry. I tossed the journals, but the poetry is still here. And the people I hung out with at lunch, they weren't really friends so much as they were my writer's group. One guy was very Douglas Adams with his obsession with both technology and hamsters. Then there were these two girls named Grace and Jackie, and they would suck on each others scabs and various mouth sores, and call themselves vampires. But they weren't lesbians, they were "dark sisters" according to them. As strange as it sounded, Grace sang opera beautifully and she wrote about demons who took vampires as sex slaves. Her and Jackie would play a game called Lord Of The Concubines with a guy who called himself Dagger, or he played it with them anyway. Not sure what it entailed.

One day, they all left me with their backpacks while they went and did something. I was left there alone, and I was pissed that they all ditched me, so I went through their stuff. I found their journals, which were mostly written with black ink on various bound diary like books and spiral notebooks, and I took them all, leaving their robbed backpacks alone five minutes before the bell rang. That night I read them all, and interestingly enough they were all about the same story, told from different angles and in different writing styles.

I have ALWAYS thought that writing a novel about stealing those journals, reading them, and then essentially tell their story, which by the way, was really fucking entertaining and shocking for a group of high school kids.

For the record, I gave the books back the next day and swore that I wouldn't say anything to anyone about what I had read (which I explained that I only did for their own good, to prove that you cant leave shit like that lying around, and my point was surprisingly well taken) and that is when I figured out that none of them knew about what the other people were writing. In fact, I don't think they knew that they were all carrying around journals depicting the same story.

The problem with writing this story eight years later is that I don't have enough detail, and I'd have to come up with an ending. That is one weakness that I have as a writer, fiction. That's probably why I threw away those manuscripts and such. I knew they were crap, even back then.

And then I started this blog, and I wrote about everything that happened to me day after day, and eventually something incredibly spellbinding happened and I had hundreds of people reading my blog day after day just to find out what was going to happen next. All of this fuss was over a little girl with tiny blond curls and a love for both shoes and Elmo. A year later, I decided to give fiction a try, and use the non fiction that I had written in my blog and turn it into a freely moving story that could be formed by adding, changing, or taking away the facts.

I think I've got the technique down pat. The people who have read the pages of the manuscript for my novel have given very positive feedback. Now it is in the hands of a person who's real life job is to read manuscripts, and I am almost afraid of what she might think of it. Even though I am paying her with a hand knit sweater, I feel like I am one step closer to wherever my writing is supposed to take me. I still don't know where that is exactly, but I have my ideas of how I will get there.

I don't believe that I will write any more informational books like Eat Your Colors. Yes, there is a huge market for it in theory, but overall the book bombed according to my expectations. The people who begged me to write it, the ones who swore that they would be the first in line to buy it, never bought one. Or if they did, they didn't tell me about it. One thing that it didn't bomb on in my opinion was the part where the people who did read it actually found it useful, even if it was overshadowed by Jessica Seinfeld's book, which was released at the same time. Her book for the record is not like mine. My book discusses how to get your kids to eat healthier and try new foods, and hers has a goal of getting your kids to think that they are eating brownies when they are really eating brownies with pureed green beans in them. There is a difference. But publishing that book taught me a hellova lot, and the experience was necessary for the next step.

I am going to stick to the novel writing, now that I know that I can do it. I am also going to stick with independently publishing my books. It is the harder route to go, I know, and as a self published author I have to do all of the promotion and grunt work, but going solo is really more my style. This goes against what most people are advising me, but I prefer to stick to my guns, believing all the way that independent publishing is the wave of the future, and if I can somehow break through into the same bracket as the mainstream guys then I feel like I will be giving independent authors a voice. Maybe I wont be the one to do it, but when the underground is discovered, I want to be there.

The way I see it, if you want to be the next Steven King, James Patterson, or god forbid Nora Roberts, then going mainstream is the best route. And if you are like me, and you would rather wait and see your diamond in the rough be discovered and appreciated without being shoved down people's throats at checkout stands next to the People and Star magazines, even if it is 20 years from now, then the independent publishing is the way to go. And my diamond will be uncovered through a word of mouth campaign, the main voice coming from my blog. My campaign will pick up quickly due to the good rapport that I have with my readers, and a few of the local ones might even come see me when I do signings at local coffee shops and bookstores. Ill get it listed at Borders and Barnes and Noble, not just Amazon and Lulu. The papers will not just regurgitate my press release, they might even send someone to my house to interview me.

Ill spread my hands apart and try to guess how thick my 328 page book will be when it is put on paper.

I will prove to I am not just a housewife with a laptop. I am a housewife with a laptop that I have time to write terrific novels on because I have robots to do a good part of my cleaning. And with every book I sell I will be able to buy more and MORE robot slaves, until one day I write a sci-fi novel about a housewife whose robot slaves turn against her in the Great Roomba Rebellion of 2027.

Oh, that would NEVER happen. I hate reading sci-fi, let alone writing it.

Taking My Own Advice

(psst...there's a book review below this post for The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. Check it out.)

It is wet and cold and I don't like it. Well, actually I do, but it is really inconvenient, this rain. I couldn't get my windshield done today because it has to be dry. It's not a big deal, it's just a little chip but they're going to do something to it to make it not spread.

The rain lets me know that my new car has a wax job because the water beads on it. I never waxed my other car, I hardly even washed it.

Dragging kids around when it is raining is a pain in the ass, but I'm glad that David was home today on his day off to help out. It poured all morning, and we each had to have our own rain-blah-blahs (Wade's word for umbrella) while going to Walmart and Staters. We needed to get another key made for the car since it only came with one, so now we actually have two sets of keys. We haven't had two sets of keys since we had two vehicles, back when we had that old van. We had another house key made too, and David knit himself this manly fair isle skull keychain for his set. It doesn't really have pins stuck in it like that, I took this picture when it was still blocking, or "flattening out." I plan to knit a tiny red sock for my keyring, because that would be full of win. We are still arguing about my wanting to cover everything with red Fun Fur, including an Astroturf-esque dash cover.

I am not crazy, and I don't normally like Fun Fur.

I might also go with something classy like suede or something. But it wont be because some MAN tells me that I cant put fuzzy shit all over the inside of my car, I can make my own decisions, damnit!

Plus, who's going to steal a car with crazy red mold looking shit all over it? It would depreciate the value. It's a theft deterrent, see? Also I park near a brand new Charger and a brand new Mustang because the way I figure, if it's joyriders, they wont go for the Oldsmobile, they'll go for the fun ones, right? Also I don't think my car's guts are worth much on the market. Now, the Civic's guts were worth a pretty penny, which is why it is stupid that the Japanese made the car one of the easiest mother fuckers to steal on the road.

I went down to the office today to tell the management that I have a new car, and to disregard the old one, and the lady got mad at me because I didn't tell them about the theft sooner. "Well now we cant do anything!" she says. "If I'd of known sooner, I could have let the property management people know and they would have requested more courtesy patrols."

"Why don't you just tell them now, and, I don't know, always have some kind of courtesy patrol going on? This is the second car in six months that has been stolen from my building alone, and it was the third time that my car, along with others, had been broken into on this property. And why don't we have security gates?"

"Those are very expensive."

"So is a pool, but we got one of those! Then they remodeled it, then it broke, so we fixed it, and it broke, and now it's all in top shape. Id rather have a somewhat safely guarded car than a pool that I never use because too many people have sex in it."

"People have sex in the pool?"

"That is neither here nor there. I've been living here for three years now and I want to know what you plan to do to protect my vehicle! I cant even see my car from where my apartment is," this is because I am on the other side of the building, "and hardly any of the lights work in the car ports. You guys raise the rent every year, the least you could do is buy us a gate or a security guard or something."

"Well even with a gate people will still let their friends in," she says.

"Maybe, but it might keep a few people out. If this place wasn't so open, the guys who took my car might not have been interested in coming here to take car, they'd of gone somewhere else. Not doing anything is not helping, so maybe we should try doing at least SOMETHING, and see if that helps."

She gave the email address to the company to me on a card, and as I walked out, I realized that I should be taking my own advice.

I have liability insurance, the bare minimum to keep it legal. I always thought that alarms were stupid, because if someone really wants a car, some loud noise isn't going to keep them from taking it, and furthermore they annoy people rather than cause them to look to see what the fuss is about. The Club? That's for idiots and jerks, that's what that is for. But now, I'm rethinking my whole perspective on the situation.

More than 1.2 million cars were stolen last year alone, which translates to a theft once every 26.4 seconds. Now, I've been one of the 1.2 million, and I don't want lightning striking twice, unless this was some kind of lottery, then Id want it to strike twice, but it's not. It's car theft, and it is serious fucking business.

Most car thieves are part of extremely organized crime rings and know how to steal any car they want. Locked doors won't stop them and security systems don't scare them off.

The truth is, you can't really stop someone from stealing your car. But you can try, so I'm gunna.

As soon as we have real money coming in again, we are going to go ahead and pay for full coverage on the car. We looked into it, and it's only $110 a month. It's worth the investment, and it's only $50 more than we are paying now. We might as well do it, he can make that $50 in tips in one night, so why not? Also, we are going to buy an alarm. I know, they're dumb, and stupid, and annoying, an ineffective, but I found one at Autozone's website for $40 that comes with two beeper keychain things, and for what it's worth, it might stop some inexperienced asshole just looking for some wheels to take.

I am also going to buy a king cobra from a shady Arab guy on the black market to keep in it when I am not there.

Ok, maybe just a Pit Bull that lives full time in the car, since I cant have a dog here anyway.

I looked into Lojack, because my brother in law has it on his ridiculous car. It's a great system and all, but it wouldn't have helped me in the situation I was in the other day. Think about it, they got the car and had it stripped before I woke up. If I'd of had Lojack, all it would have done is made it faster for the cops to find the carcass on the side of the road, it wouldn't have saved the car one bit. But I did find out that you can install a Lojack program on your laptop, which I might look into, because if anyone ever breaks into my house my computer is the only thing to take. We don't own a TV or any electronics besides this, the cameras, and the robot trash can. Nobody would steal a robot bread maker, and the robot vacuum sleeps in a closet, so it wouldn't be a big grab item. So, Laptop Lojack would be cool, but Car Lojack is like a 50/50 shot, even if they do have a high vehicle recovery rate. What they aren't telling you is how much of that 90% was found already in pieces. Nobody is going to take a laptop and strip it for it's parts, they're going to either use it or pawn it, and that is where the recovery system would come in handy.

Also, one of my readers is coming down from Seattle to give me a Club. Well, that's not the only reason that she is coming down here, but while she is in LA, she is going to drop by here and give me a Club. I hear that you can still drive a car with a Club on it, but you can only make right turns, which would make it nearly impossible to get out of a parking space.

If you have any other tips to keep my car safe, I am open to suggestions. And if you can recommend me a good security system, possibly one that involves six foot flames that shoot from underneath the car, or some kind of force field, that would be great.

Book Review: The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

I was asked to review The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan a few weeks ago, and I agreed, so it was mailed to me and I started reading it as soon as it got here.

The Middle Place is the position that Kelly Corrigan finds herself in as she steps into parenthood and clings on to childhood. Kelly comes from a proud Irish family with a strong and silent mother, and a boisterous, charming, and one of a kind dad. Her husband and two daughters are the new aspect of her life that she loves dearly, while she still longs to be known and recognized as George Corrigan's daughter.

The struggle of being in "the middle place" truly comes when Kelly finds a lump in her breast, and finds out that it is cancerous. While receiving Chemo, another wave of shock comes as her father is diagnosed with bladder cancer. While trying to take care of herself, Kelly finds herself taking care of most of the appointment setting and doctor researching for her father, who believes that God will take good care of him. His "don't worry about it" attitude scares Kelly, who is not yet ready to lose the wonderful man whom she calls Dad.

As Kelly fights for both her and her father, she is still responsible for being a mother and wife, which causes an internal struggle of loyalty to either side, her parents or them.

I found that the book read like a blog, to be honest. Kelly lets you in to her very personal moments of motherhood, and takes you back in her life to introduce you to the Kelly that she was before she had cancer, and before she had kids. She leaves you in a state of what I would call "concerned suspense" for her and her father's well being throughout the book, while bouncing around humorously accurate descriptions of her day to day life.

This was a fascinating story and I recommend it to anyone who is a proud child of their parents.

Kelly has a website at kellycorrigan.com and also keeps up a breast cancer website at circusofcancer.org.

Faster Than A Speeding Ticket!

"Red's not really my color," says David, "but I like it fine."

The thing Blue Books for almost $6,000, and with taxes and all it came out to $3,400. Now, my sister did not buy me a car, she lent me the money to buy a car, and I have to pay her back for it, so she's cool but she's not like, you know, going to cover the tab completely. But for them to drop everything and buy me a car, that was pretty much down right decent.

I love it. And I am totally glad that I didn't end up with a mid-90's Saturn or that fucking Metro, this is better than I had expected for us.

MaGill/Lil/Nancy reminds me of my first car Lola, a 91 Eclipse. But it's a sedan, so it's kind of like if the Eclipse and the Civic had a baby, and the baby was like totally awesome. And I know that it was a mom car because there are cute little bunny stickers on the dome light and rear view mirror. Either that or it was owned by an obsessive scrapbooker who liked cutsie little stickers EVERYWHERE. And whoever buys the car from me will know that I was a knitter because I plan to knit a steering wheel cover and seat covers from red Fun Fur, for the lulz.

So the bad things, the trunk popper doesn't work. There's no lock on the gas thing so someone could totally suck out the gas or pee in it (or have sex with it for that matter.) An engine mount needs to be tweaked, it idles kinda low, there aren't any knobs on the stereo, the windshield has a chip that the place is going to fix for us tomorrow, and the radiator is full of water instead of coolant, so they'll need to fix that too.

You know, I could fix it myself, I have some coolant- oh that's right. It was in the trunk of the Civic. Fucking fuckers.

Overall, I feel pretty confident about it.

The ride is smooth, it handles well, and the only real downside to the car it's self is that it only gets like 22-28 MPG, and the Civic got like 30+. With the pizza job, it's going to be an adjustment, but his pay went up so that should cover the extra gas. It costs a dollar less per month to insure this car than it cost to insure the Civic, so we are getting a check in the mail for the money Progressive owes us. Yeah, a dollar. We'll endorse it to my sister right away.

We read reviews on it, but we don't really know much about the Oldsmobiles. I assume they're ok, they've been around long enough...though I think now they're extinct. The consumer reviews were mostly posted by fucktarded and highly reckless non internets users who said things like "I would never buy this car again. I had to change the brakes on it every six months, and I had to buy new tires for it twice in the 6 years that I owned it." People are so fucking stupid, how seriously off can you be to think that wear and tear like brakes and tires are a manufacturer defect? That's what they wrote too! "This car is full of all kinds of defects, it runs out of gas after like 250 miles, the paint scratched when I drove it past a rose bush, and the mirror cracked when my toddler threw a rock at it. BAD CAR!"

Why are there no license plates though? Is it because the previous owner had specialty plates? And do I get the plates in the mail when I register it, or do I have to petition the local prison to make me some?

We're really new at this so we know nothing about how any of this works really. We figured out how to switch the insurance over, but we haven't figured out how to register it yet. They used to mail me my stuff for the Civic, but now I don't know where to even begin. We think we know. But all of this growed up stuff is really hard.

But WHEEEEEEEEEEE it has a CD player! Now I have to start burning my running iTunes playlist onto CD's...not that it is really that interesting. It's mostly full of Beatles, Dresden Dolls, Tom Petty, Golden Shoulders, The Doors, Queen, and Nouvelle Vague.

The Civic once had a 6-disk CD player, but then it stopped working. And then somebody stole it, and I laughed because it was basically a brick with a John Mayer CD stuck in it. The joke was on them.

If only we hadn't put the air freshener thingy in the Civic to overpower the nauseating stench of anchovy pizza, then maybe instead of being stolen our car would just have a dead guy in it.

Cause of death: Asphyxiation by stinkage.

Either way, I wouldn't have driven around in dead guy car, so MaGill/Lil/Nancy is my destiny. Unless it breaks down. That'd be a bummer.

Stretched Out Mayonnaise

Like I said yesterday, our "stuff" isn't great stuff. The stuff you can touch anyway, the tangible things I mean. We started out together early, inexperienced, and quite suddenly, and much of it is hand me down. But that's ok, we make it work. The dresser drawers don't have tracks, so the drawers just kind of lay in their holes, but for all intents and purposes, they work, and they look great on the outside. We'll probably have them for years to come, or until another family member decides to ditch their old stuff and truck it over to our place.

Sometimes our stuff comes out of the dumpster, and sometimes we buy it cheap because we say "hey, this will work." Be it a series of $10 bookshelves or some patio chairs that look like they might hold up for a few years, and don't look ugly. Sure, they aren't the nicest ones, or the best ones, but they'll do. They're just patio chairs, and you only really sit in them every once in a while anyway.

I do tend to break things though, but not out of carelessness or anything, I think it's just because everything I have is either really old or "in our price range," which is, of course, rather low. One thing that I do NOT go cheap on is food. I grew up on generic stuff, and yes, there is a big taste difference between Cheerio's and Tastee-ooohs. I buy 90% of my produce fresh, and about 80% of my food organic, because that is what is important to us, having GOOD food, not just "alright" food. But then again, other people want nice cars, not just running vehicles.

I tend to buy backups of things before they run out, like mayonnaise or peanut butter, but I wont open them until the sides of the jar have been scraped, and the jars are empty. It's not really a money issue, it's a "use it until it's gone because there's still some in there" issue. I'm not trying to get my $1.99 worth, I just think that if you can squeeze one last sandwich out of the jar, that it's worth it to do so. I use things for all they're worth. But when I do waste money on something, I get upset about it, like, I don't know...paying $76 to get the registration renewed on a car that was stolen before the tags even arrived in the mail? Like that.

I think I learned this from my sister. She's had the same cell phone for about...I think I was in high school, so Ill say eight years. It's got the polyphonic ringtones, remember when those were like the shit? It's a flip phone, but it's the phone that she got when she signed up for Cingular. Is Cingular still a company? Didn't they get bought out by AT&T? I don't know, but anyway, her phone about six months ago started acting up, and she couldn't hardly see the display on the screen. But she continued to use it, because why buy a new one just because you don't know who is calling, right? Well then she puts it through the washer in the pocket of her jeans. Surely that would be the end of broken phone, right? No. She took off the battery, let it dry for a week, and yes, it worked when she turned it on. Except that the whole screen is black now, but that's ok, because you can still hear people on it and they can hear you, and that's all a phone needs to do, right?

Even though my little Civic's time was cut short, I feel like I drove it into the ground anyway. When my sister had it, she would make her daily 50 mile round trip to work. It served me on my paper route a few years ago, and only in the last year did we have to do major work on it. It got a new engine last year, and once David started delivering pizzas is when we had to replace the radiator, and things like that. Who knows how long it would have gone for with that new engine, us replacing a part here and there every few weeks. I suppose in another six months we might have had a whole new car at the rate things were going out on it. But it served it's time, and I got the most use out of it than I have ever had with anything.

Tomorrow I will be the owner (pwner?) of another vehicle that I plan to run into the ground. After much searching, the test driving of a horribly silly Geo Metro, being looked down upon by a guy who couldn't convince me to finance and who treated me like shit because I said that I don't work but my husband does, and a run in with a funny little mechanic, I found her. She's a 2000 Oldsmobile Allero with 100,000 miles, and she's only $2900. The mechanic gives her his "double thumbs up" guarantee, which he explained is his gentleman's handshake with the owner. Apparently, if he double thumbs up a car, and it ends up coming back during the warranty period, the mechanic has to pay out of pocket. But any car that isn't double thumbs up, the mechanic gets paid twice his wage to work on it until it gets a double. I dunno, but it was the first place that didnt try to sell me something, you know? They never tried to make me feel like an idiot for having such a low price range, or try to talk me into financing something more expensive. Matt is picking her up in the morning and bringing her here, and BOY is she roomy in the back. Up front she's like the Civic room wise, but she's got a CD player, automatic thingies, and when you hit the gas the doors lock automatically. THAT IS SAFETY IN ACTION! And...ugh...she's Ticket-Me-Red.

Like this one? It would be a nice color. But no. We got lipstick-found-at-the-base-of-a-penis RED. Not like, "Oh, that's a lovely shade of crimson," no. It's just red. That's what color it is, red.

Hi, I drive a tomato, or possibly a fire extinguisher.

Her name is MaGill, and she calls herself Lil, but everyone knows her as Nancy.

Dude, Where's My Car?

Part of my Blogger profile reads, "I don't have anything you'd want to steal...well, nothing you can touch," which is a reference to the song "Pretty In Pink." I put it there because I don't have a whole lot of stuff that anyone would want, and what I do have isn't anything great. I mean, who really wants my mediocre collection of crap?

Assholes, that's who.

The police called us around 7:00 to tell us that the car had been recovered by the Riverside County Sheriffs. A tow yard had it, but they wouldn't tell us what condition the car was in. Was it drivable? Was it a charred frame?

We were all worried that they would head out to San Bernardino and sell it to a chop shop. There are plenty of reputable Pick-A-Parts and junkyards down there who will gladly take a stolen vehicle off of your hands for cold hard cash before the cops can do shit about it.

I asked David, "Do you think it was joyriders, people who needed money, or people who just needed a car?"

"I think they just needed a car," he said. I put my money on the chop shops. But then they recovered the vehicle, ta-da! And where was it?

Right up the street at the top of Oak Glen Road, about 10 feet from Yucaipa, maybe two or three miles from here.

So is it drivable? Did they maybe get scared and ditch it? Did it run out of gas?

David's dad picked him up to take him to the tow yard. David misunderstood the man on the phone, he thought that they were still open and he could go see it. Actually, they were closed, and for a fee they would send someone out to open the gate. In the high beams of Jerry's truck, the car looked great. The tires were still on it, no body damage that wasn't already there. The guy showed up, and $280 later they went in the gate.

He brought the keys with him, was it possible that maybe he could drive it home?

No. It had been stripped. Badly.

Geech gone to heaven, Mr. Terwilliger. (What's that from?)

They busted the driver's side window, that's how they got in. They took the factory installed stereo and crackly speakers. They took off the panel under the steering wheel to hotwire it. The insides of the doors all stripped, and the seats are all thrashed and torn apart. What they didn't take, they destroyed. Papa John's light still there, but computer thingy, gone. Luckily they're not going to doc his pay, he's just never going to get a bonus EVER EVER EVER again. Like ever and ever.

Under the hood there's a lot going on, or NOT going on I should say. The brand new battery with it's life time warranty is gone. They took the crummy old spark plugs that came with the fucking car in 1996 that were causing the car to have problems anyway, along with the distributor cap that didn't work well either. The air intake thingy, the fuel injection system, and a bunch of hoses and pipes and shit, all gone. It was raining out, so the engine filled up with water as they did their dirty work, making it useless.

You know what burns me? What really makes my eyes prick with tears?

They took Ty's carseat. They TOOK my son's fucking CAR SEAT.

I called all of the pawn shops this morning asking if the palm pilot or the car seat has shown up, and nobody's seen them. Either they haven't cashed in yet, they sold it to a private party, or maybe they stole it for their kid. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if some other kid is using it, but I don't know that for sure. Most likely, they'll cut it open and stuff marijuana and prescription meds inside and use it to take shit in and out of Mexico. The fuckers.

Lucky enough, Wade's seat was still there, so we got it. We found Ty's hat made with the yarn that he picked out special. His artwork wasn't harmed, and it turns out that I didn't forget his perfect attendance free Denny's meal certificate in the car, I brought it inside before it was stolen, so he can still have his special reward.

Except that he wont get one of those next month, since he's now missed two days.

Don't get all emo on me yet, there's a bit of good news in all of this. YOU sent me cash for knits, and it's enough for us to cover rent once his Disability check gets here.

Wait, there's more.

A local junk place bought the carcass for $300, so we were able to pay his dad back for the $280 tow yard fees.

And...

My brother in law calls yesterday, Matt. I had called my sister in the morning while she was at school to let her know, and she called me after school, but the reception was bad so Matt called me back on his phone.

"Hellooh?" he says when I answer.

"Matt, why did you take my car?"

"WHAT? OH MY GOD! You think I took it?"

"Where the fuck is my car Matt?"

"WHUT?"

"Dude, where's my car?"

"Where's your car dude?"

"Dude, where's my car?"

He laughs, and says "That's pretty funny. Let me talk to David."

I don't know why he couldn't just say this to me, but whatever, Matt is weird. He asks David if we could make it to Saturday without a car. He says yeah, and Matt says that he's going to buy us a car. Nothing special, or new, just a car off of a lot with a lot of mileage for not a lot of money. But that's what I had, so I am cool with it. It will have to be something foreign, because you know what Ford stands for, right? Fix It Again, Tony! Or...wait. Huh.

Anyway, David's going to be working so I get to go shopping, but I'm telling you, I am going to avoid the Civics. Great little cars, but easier than pie to steal. I checked out StolenCarReports.com and saw that in my zipcode, there's been a shitload of Hondas going to Car Heaven as of late. Plus I feel like they're cursed now, and Ill always be a little sad when I see one. That's no good because like eight other parents at Ty's school drive the same car in the same color as I had.

I truly feel bad for the poor little bugga. I know it's just a car, and it's not like a person, but the car was my friend. An old dog or something. It didn't have much to give but it'd do it anyway.

"Ah man, I'm on my last lugnut here...What's that? You need a ride to the store? Well alright, hop in ya crazy kid."

And now? Poor Tigger, named after the little plastic Tigger antenna topper that he had on him for several years, was torn apart by rape hungry ass pirates and left for dead on the side of the road.

Bad things happen to good people, and bad things also happen to good, good cars.

In memory of Tigger, the first tank of gas I buy for my new car will be Chevron with Techron, because that was his favorite. And I will have a key burial ceremony in the spot in the yard that my sister buries her cats when they get hit by cars, where the red fern grows. (Actually it's a pine and a lot of weeds, but I liked that book.)

God rest your sweet, mechanical, two wheel drive soul, little Honda.

Gone

Ty drew a picture that he calls "The Car Was Stolen." Even though it kinda looks like an old Model T Ford, you can see that he drew both an X and a circle with a line through it, universal symbol for "No." Like the little "No skateboards" or "No u-turn" signs that he's so fond of.

It's his way of expressing that the car is gone.

The paint was starting to oxidize, the passenger side window didn't roll down, it went ka-chug-a-chug-a-chuggie when it rained and the check engine light would come on, and the back brakes needed to be done.

The officer said that it made the car "good for pursuit."

It was the first brand new car that my sister ever owned, she drove it off the lot after she got her first teaching job. I noticed a strange car in the driveway, and she came in the house and said, "want a ride?"

Losing a 12 year old Civic that has been broken into a total of five six times, that gets rear ended weekly, and cut off in SUVs, is surprisingly like losing your trusty and reliable uncle who would help you out even when he was down on his luck himself. It was a piece of crap but it was a faithful little thing. I feel even worse because I know that my car needed new spark plugs and we couldn't get them fixed since David has been out of work and Disability hasn't been paying like it should. And I don't know if he put that quart of oil in it like he was supposed to. It might still be in the trunk.

If the bad guys are smart, they'll put the Papa John's light on the car and drive around, since cops don't really mess with pizza drivers when they're working. Then again, we told the officer that they would do that, so now they're looking at all of the Papa John's cars really closely.

David's bike was indeed damaged in his crash, and we think that the front wheel actually locked up due to cheap bearings, which caused him to flip, so I've been driving him to work. He could walk, but it's cold and rainy out. Yesterday I was getting annoyed because I had to get up early to get the kids ready just to drive him down the block, drive the kids back, then drive Ty to school, drive home, then pick David up for lunch, then drive him back, then go get Ty, come home, and then get David and come home. David had to walk to work today in sleet, but he almost didn't have a job to walk to anymore, since his work computer was in the car and this is the second computer that has been stolen. They fire people left and right from that company, and David only didn't get fired last time it was stolen because he's an A+ worker. The owner warned him not leave it in the car again or he'd be out of a job. So this morning I guess the owner said to his boss Rick "He obviously doesn't take his job seriously," and Rick reminded him that he JUST got back to work, and he was out of his routine, which is the truth.

"So is his job more important than yours?"

Yeah, he turned it around on him, and almost fired the both of 'em right on the spot. Somehow he got him to change his mind, totally sticking his neck out for him, and the owner gave David the option of resigning or paying for the computer. Paying for it is the smart thing to do, but we don't exactly have $500. His first paycheck wont be for three weeks, and Disability is out. They'll doc his pay, but you know, we kinda need it. And I'm really worried because one of our neighbors got their car stolen a few months ago, and when they found it they were charged the impound fees to get it back. It was like $800.

Nothing like a setback to set you back even further than you were back before the first setback, ammiright?

Before we had money and a crappy car. Then we didn't have money, but we still have a car. Now we don't have money OR a car.

Ty cant walk to school, it's at least 4 miles away, and there is no bus. And I don't have any car seats anymore, so we are literally stuck here. I cant even go to the store, and if someone picked him up for school they wouldn't be able to drive him unless they happened to have a carseat. Not that there's anyone to pick him up. The few people who we know either work, or they don't drive. Either way, Ty cant go to school. And he loves school.

You bastards! You took a car full of carseats, dead fries, and preschool artwork. You took Ty's free Denny's kids meal coupon for perfect attendance in December. You took the hat that I knit him last week that he picked the yarn out special. You stole from kids! WHY did you do that? WHY?

My car, it wasn't great. It's maybe worth $2000, MAYBE. I know it has electrical problems, which is why the air doesn't work, and the heater makes a funny noise if you turn it up too high. You have to baby the windshield wiper stick or else it will go apeshit. But damnit, it was mine. I bought it from my sister with the money that my dad left me. It was paid for, and we prepaid the insurance till April so we wouldn't have to worry about it while we're getting back on our feet. The tags are going to be coming in the mail soon. We thought that just as long as we keep everything good with the car until he can get hired with CHP or whoever, we could make it. We were certain that the car could last another couple thousand miles, it was a great car, but it was NOT a good car to steal.

Tigger was part of our family, it has been for 12 years.

Back when we were doing well financially, we talked about buying a new car. But doing the math, we figured that we could either afford to make the payments or the insurance, but not both, so we couldn't do it. We figured that the car would run for as long as we needed it too, but we didn't think that someone would take it, since it practically screamed "I have a family."

Then again, do the bad guys ever let someone they're going to harm off the hook because they scream "I have a family?" I don't think they care.

I have to suspect that maybe they are the same kids from the other night who missed the turn and smashed into the wall on the corner and bailed. If they didn't catch the fuckers, they probably wanted to do it again, you know, for the lulz.

Officer Nice Man says that most of the time when the check engine light is on, they have no gas, and the car doesn't work well, they'll just park it somewhere.

I thought maybe the carseats were in the dumpster, like they had thrown them out of the car so their buddies could sit back there. Doesn't matter anyway, it's raining. They're probably ruined.

It's not a possession thing. It's not like losing your iPod, or your computer being out of commission for a week or even a few months. The car was our only lifeline, the only thing we really needed besides the necessities. The officer asked if we want to press charges, and I asked him if anyone ever says no. "Religious types do sometimes," he says. That whole forgive and forget.

FUCK forgive and forget. You stole my kid's ride to school. You can suck the crap out of my sweet ass, and I hope the thing catches fire and burns up with you inside.

Scratch that. I want to see Tigger go down in a blaze of glory. I want to see a 50 minute high speed pursuit on the 10, and see it send the fucker straight into the center divider.

I know it sounds violent, but I'd rather the car have one last ride than be picked apart by Mexicans in some chop shop in San Bernardino.

(If you want to help us out, see the post below this one to read about the Knits For Cash Campaign.)

Knits For Cash Campaign

Due to our recent and what seems eternally long string of bad luck, I am starting the Knits For Cash Campaign. This is a very simple campaign. You give me cash, and I give you wonderfully hand knit goods. Look! I'm super talented!

You can see more here.

So here's how it goes. Send some cash via PayPal to davidsdoll101@yahoo.com. Here is the scale:

$20 will get you a hat or a scarf.
$50 will get you a hat AND a scarf.
$100 will get you pretty much anything you want.

I have lots of yarn, in lots of colors, so we can work together to get you something snuggly and warm. I can also knit things for kids and babies.

If you decide to help us, we thank you. Very much. And contact me at TeamTerwilliger At Gmail Dot Com to let me know so I can start right away.

You kids are awesome.

Worst Fucking Case Scenario* updated at 11:30

The car has been stolen. David's $500 computer was inside. David is probably fired from EarthWize, and is definitely no longer working for Papa Johns.

The cop is on his way here.

I have no car seats and I cant take Ty to school.

David was only back at work for 2 days. He feels like he is a "bad magnet."

The good news is that it didnt have hardly any gas in it and it has problems, so I dont think it will make it past Redlands. Our fear is that it will make it to San Bernardino, because then it will be sold for scrap for sure.

It's a long shot, but if you live in the Inland Empire and you see a light bluish Civic with peeling paint on it's hood, a crazy glue sniffing fairy lady in the back window, and a cracked right tail light with the license plate # of 3pjs804, please call the cops, and then call me. 951 345 2762.

I realize that Ive just dropped a whole lot of docs on myself but we are officially screwed and I need help.

Also now might be the time to hit up my PayPal (davidsdoll101@yahoo.com) if you didnt do it in December, which you didnt, because only one person did. Thanks very much.

*11:30: He's not getting fired. They asked him to either resign or pay the $500. We're taking door #2 because it's the only way that we will even HAVE $500 coming to us.

Fuck-ME.

They Fucking Tore Me Apart!

I saw that Just A Girl submitted her blog for review to the good people at Ask And Ye Shall Receive, who claims the blogspot address of iwillfuckingtearyouapart. They pwned her, and she was grateful. I decided that she was one with teh lulz, and being one with teh lulz myself, I couldn't help but submit my blog for review as well. After all, if you take yourself too seriously, you will end in fail.

So here's what Calamity had to say about my blog. My comments will not be italicized.

Along with huge, bright banners with busty cartoon chicks masquerading as everyday women they don't even closely resemble (hey, I'm forced to have an avatar -- sue me) and using the words "escapades," "adventures," or "exploits" in your blog title, one of my internet pet peeves is using a screen name or blog title reinforcing the overwhelming love you have for your partner. We get it. You're in love. So am I. But find an identity outside of that all-consuming hard on. Wedding-obsessed nesters are the usual culprits, but today's blogger puts it all out there, too. She's David's Doll.

My internet handle and blog title sounds a little submissive/lovey, but I haven't had a complaint on it in the almost three years that I've been blogging, so I'm not so worried about it.

In terms of design, it looks all wonky on my Mac with Firefox. I have to spread the page very wide in order to accommodate the sidebar, meanwhile the banner only goes across the center portion.

We have a team of professionals working on it...I think anyway. I should probably find some. Anyone who wants to help should contact me right away.

The huge honking pictures take up way too much room and should be sized down quite a bit (that scary doll face is enormous and will definitely give me nightmares, thanks). Unless you're doing a photoblog, there's no reason to have images that large.

That's where you're wrong, Calamity! My honking pictures are part of my blog because I am fishing for complements, and I get them. If you want better fish, you've got to use good bait. And good to me = big. I do size them down considerably, but I leave them just big enough, which is super big. Also, it is sort of a photo blog, but with words, because photo blogs get kinda boring.

And there's a hellova lot of info in the sidebar. I suggest rolling a good portion of that up, and maybe move the particulars about what you've read and all to a separate page.

I just added the What I've Read like last week, and I haven't been on my computer since then, but I ended up removing it today because it was a bitch. I scaled it all the way down to "what I'm reading."

The links are not colored or underlined, so color me stupid but I didn't catch on to the linkage action for a good bit. Here I was thinking, "She's talking about these bloggers, why doesn't she link to them?" before I rolled over and they lit up. (Side note: "I rolled over and they lit up" -- how many times have I said that before.)

Yeah, I don't know why it does that. I think because I use Windows Live Writer to write my blogs, and something happens to the links when I copy/paste.

Also, find a way to make the post titles clickable; I had to go down to the timestamp to get to individual posts. At the bottom of your pages, I'd like some sort of link to go to older entries. When I click on the archives, please don't take me to a new page. Ugh!

Use the tabs, friend. Use the tabs.

Consider making your banner clickable, too, so that when people click on it they get taken back to the index page. And the MySpace-ish hugs and post-it messages in the sidebar bring the level of your blog down a couple of notches toward amateurish.

The hug meter is because I don't touch humans other than my husband or my children, and it's the only way for other people to "hug" me. And the post it note is for my trolls to use since I moderate comments, but they only used it once to call me ugly or something. I removed it.

The good design stuff: the banner is fine, the color isn't offensive, I like the muted palette.

Well good.

Now to the content. She only reads when she's taking a crap, which means I have to vehemently disapprove. Unless she craps like six times a day, then we're all good.

I do in fact crap six times a day, and I can finish a novel in about a week or two, depending on what I've eaten.

There's knitting going on, which I know has swept the nation and all, but I so don't get it. She's an independently published writer, for which I've got to give her kudos. It takes incredible determination and oomph to publish, and I really admire that.

That's what I'm looking for. Recognition for my hard self promotion from strangers with blogs that promise to fucking tear me apart.

But please? For the love of all that's holy, use your damn apostrophe. It's your friend. And an online dictionary is more than a friend, it's a college roommate who used to hold your hair while you puked ("bizarre" is something strange; "bazaar" is a place where you shop). And read more -- reading makes good writers.

That's where the knitting comes in. I am going to pay a professional editor to fix my mistakes in my manuscript for my novel by knitting her a sweater. I'm not so much concerned with my blog being all perfect all of the time, but you should have read it back before I used spell check or proof read anything. And I do read, a lot, I have a shit load of blogs that I read every day along with the books and manuscripts of other writers. Guess Ill have to post some book reviews to prove it.

There's some good stuff here ("She was looking at me...with her eyes."). The challenges of young parenthood and dealing with an injured spouse are humanizing. I find that I want the best for these people because they're doing the best they can and loving each other along the way. But then I'm incredibly put off by the random ads that crop up. I know things are tight, so maybe the ads help? I don't know but they bug the shit out of me. I'm ok with the donation buttons, but the ads? No.

See that's where a lot of people argue. Donation buttons usually scream "e-begging" or "internet panhandler," and to be honest they don't get a whole lot of results. The Pay Per Post guarantees you the money if you follow the directions and all. And yeah, I only tend to do them when we are poor. Look on the bright side, the money that I made from December's ads fixed my laptop. Otherwise, you guys would have had to wait until February or March for me to come back, and I seriously could have been molested at the library in that time because you KNOW that I wouldn't have settled for weekend blogging.

More good stuff? She's a mommy but there isn't a lot of mommy blogging going on.

I strive for this. Mommyblogging bugs the shit out of me when it's overkill. About as much as I do on my blog is about as much as I can handle on YOUR blog. Some is ok, because you know, I relate and everything, but the strictly "this is about my son Jacob and how much I love my son Jacob and Jacob calls his blanket a bankie" blogs don't last long in my subscription feeds.

She's consistent and writes often. There's a decent range of topics, so it's not all about David or the accident or her kids or knitting or organic food.

No, it's not, because I can make a story about anything that happens. But that stuff IS mentioned because it is important to the plot.

She's got a wry sense of humor and a fair bit of self-deprecation, which I enjoy.

That dictionary that she recommended to me says that "wry" means "cleverly and often ironically or grimly humorous." That's awesome.

There's no pretension and she's incredibly down-to-earth, which means she says "poop" and "fart" a lot, which I can get on board with. Above all, she's an individual and and has a unique voice. In several pages of reading, though, I haven't come across the first sexy post, which is disappointing for a horndog like me.

When my inlaws first started reading my blog, and we got in that fight, I posted a stealth porno entry to get them to go away. Then when I had visitors to my blog other than them, I deleted the entry. Also I keep the sex talk to a dull roar because I used to mention it back in the day, until my father in law says to David "so she likes it from behind, a heh heh heh," and I cringed at how creepy he is, so I decided to tone it down.

The writing isn't particularly my cuppa. It's more domestic than I'm used to (I don't cook, clean, craft, or parent). But I can see the potential, and I can see how she's developed a circle of like-minded blogging buddies. So, my advice is to keep it up. Keep writing, read more, edit down, refine. Make some improvements on your design so that it's more reader-friendly. And change your blog title if not your screen name, because there's more to you than that.

Well, in the three years that I've been going at this, my writing has significantly grown, so I can only hope for it to get better as I age. I will take the advice on the layout though, because I myself am not really happy with it, but I'm not skilled enough to fix it. The writing however is definitely something that I am going to stick to because it's what I'm the best at. Here are a few topics that you might see over the coming week now that I am back.

• Ty's autism/speech meeting in detail (which is fascinating, I assure you)
• Homeless people BBQing live ducks in the park
• Staring Girl fired? Or just in stealth mode?
• Stash busting
• A few book reviews
• Possibly a post about Weights And Measures and how they effect my father in law's potential lawsuit against the gas station

Though I'm a bit disappointed that they went a little soft on me, since I was prepared to be fucking ripped apart, I think the review was great overall. That's my review of the review.

Now, if I can get your attention for just a moment longer and ask for you to vote for me, since I have been nominated for the Really Fucking Stupid Blog Awards (lots of fucking today, huh?) for "Blogger most likely to be killed in a tragic blogging accident." Because you know it's true. How many times have I killed my computer? How many times have I given you my phone number (yes Liz, anyone can call me, not just my neighborinos) and how many people have I met from the internet just for the sake of blog material? What if I approach Staring Girl like you guys said I should, and she stabs me in the face? What then? Well I'd get this award then wouldn't I? Go here to vote. Leave a comment on the entry saying that you are voting for David's Doll. (OMG, my horrible internet handle! Yes, there is more to me than just being David's whatever, but it seems like it's the only constant in my life, since everything else changes all the time.)

Back On Track

I'm knitting David's sweater, and he comes in from delivering pizzas.

"Oh my god, EXCITEMENT!," he says. "I was coming home, and I saw this car, and it was smashed into a brick wall! You know the wall, next to our apartment complex's driveway, the one that's next to Side Street?"

"Yeah...I heard a screech and a crash earlier, I thought it was coming from the direction of the intersection."

"No! It was this car! And I arrived on the scene, like the cops weren't there yet, right? Well there's like steam coming out from under the hood, and so I pull over to see if someone is inside and they need help, but then this dude, I think he was a cop by the way he was holding his Mag-Light, he was on his cell phone reading the license plate off in the universal cop code, you know, Boy, Charles, that sort of thing, he was running toward the wreck, and he thanked me for stopping. He said that I could go, there was nobody inside, I guess it was just a bunch of kids and they bailed when the car hit the wall, that's what he said anyway."

"Wow," I say.

"Yeah, so anyways, there are owls out in those trees and they're doing mating calls. Want to go listen?"

I put my needles down on the coffee table, the one that came from the dumpster.

"Sure, Ill go listen to the owls with you."

All giddy, he takes my hand and walks me down stairs, and instructs me to just stand there and listen. We hear an emotional/horny hoo hoo hoo HOO HOO HOO, followed by a few seconds of silence, and then a deep and romantic huuuu huuuu huuuu.

"That excited high pitch one is the male, and he's saying 'Ive built a nest for you, your children will be safe here,' and she's saying 'sweet.' Isn't that cool?"

"Yeah, that's really cool. Know what kind they are?"

"Great horned I think, but I cant be sure until I can get onto that website and listen to the sound bytes, then Ill know for sure. So anyway, there's this guy at work, and he's been sick lately. My buddy Matt, he says 'It's parvo dude!' all joking like, and I go 'naw dude, it's probably leukemia,' and he says 'if he had leukemia he'd be covered in bruises,' and I'm like 'but how do you know if he's covered in bruises, he's black!' and he says 'the bruises would be white then,' and we all had a good laugh. Anyway, it turns out that they ran some tests and the dude really does have leukemia. I'm like...woah, you know?"

"That's tough."

"I know, because I was kidding, but then it turns out that it's true. So how's your evening been?"

I show him his sweater, which I have both the back and the front finished, and part of a sleeve. The pattern is messed up for the sleeves so he had to sit down and start working out the math to figure out how to do the pattern right, and I busied myself with dishes while he worked ever so diligently.

"Gunna have your computer back soon?" he asks.

"Part should be here Tuesday I think."

"Good. We might have to Google this, it's really hard. But I really love this sweater that you're making me, I really do, and I cant wait till it's done. You're doing such a great job on it! You're like a pro knitter now!"

"I'm glad you like it," I say.

"I gotta go take a shit. Is there any porn that I can read in there or something? I kinda want to look at porn."

Things are, for lack of a better description, back on track at the Beaumont Terwilliger's home.

Im Doing This For You

Im on my sister's desktop in her back bedroom right now, and I have a little time today, so Im going to give you a non-micro post, but it still wont be my best work because I cant type very fast on this wonky keyboard.

At the library or on my mother in law's computer, I feel like my blogging has to be quick like an international collect call or like the news ticker on CNN because A. I am not visiting my mother in law just to use her computer and B. Mexican girls at the library crowd my computer and talk in Spanish to each other about how I need to hurry the fuck up so they can check their Myspaces. Also strange men say things like "Oh a feisty red head, take your top off, lovely!" But we spend all of Sunday at my sister's and so it's ok to spend a half hour back here to tie up loose ends and blog and what not.

I suppose I should start by telling you what Ive been doing to keep myself busy this week. As you know, we dont have a television, and with no computer Ive been basically filling my spare time with reading and knitting. Usually I only read when Im on the shitter, and I only knit after Ive caught up on all of my blogs, and I do it while I watch vlogs, but now I somehow have a whole back to David's sweater finished and I am working on the front. I am knitting the Cheesy Puffs sweater from Knitty, which looks like this...

only not in that color. As much as the color intrigues me, the yarn that it calls for is $22 a skein and I would need 9 skeins of it, and that's about $200 for a sweater...yeah. Instead he got second hand store wool for $5, but it is in the exact dreamy shade as his eyes. Impressive and breathtaking pictures coming soon.

Reading wise, I finished the autism book like I said, because David read it to me, I finished reading this cleaning book that Ive been working on (I know, how housewife of me, right?) and also a quirky little knitting humor book that Mrs. The Experience sent me. I laughed. It talked about yarn stashes the size of entire apartment buildings (not that Id know about that or anything) and funny things that only knitters would find funny. And now I am working on that book that was sent to me for review, it's called "The Middle Place" by Kelly Corrigan, and it's about a young mother who gets breast cancer. Im really enjoying it right now, and Im really psyched that someone randomly found me via my blog and said "Hey! She should review my book!" My blog has gotten me places I tells ya. And it's all because of YOU, and that is why I am taking the time to go to the library and hijack family member's computers to bring the news to YOU. Particularly for the people who say "Oh god, I dont know what I would do if you stopped blogging!"

I dont plan to ever stop, for the record, but little technical hiccups happen like this every so often, as you know. Im just waiting on my good friends at the United States Postal Service to get my fucking part to me as fast as possible so I dont end up with any of you on my doorstep bitching about not having anything to read. Actually, if you would like to come by and sit for a spell this week (and possibly share your lap top for a few?) you can call me. Ill be pretty lonely since David is going back to work Tuesday. You know my number, and if you dont, it's 951 345 2762. Yes, I totally drop docs on myself and invite Internets to come hang out with me. Mostly because most of you guys live in Florida according to my stats, but the few of you who live here in the Inland Empire, give me a ring. I might pay you to be my friend in food. Might. You like floutas?

Oh, and David got a letter back from CHP saying that his application has been accepted. This means nothing more than "you filled it out right and we got it." It tells him the testing dates, which are in March, and remind him to back out now if he has any felonies, drug charges, or anything like that. Essentially, everyone gets this letter, but it's a "are you sure" sort of thing. They havent even ran his background yet, he could be OJ Simpson for all they know...right now. Theyll figure out that he is not OJ in a few months. Theyll know he's David and that he's the best.

Before I go my friends, I am now going to acknowledge the award that Leann gave me.

She says I won it because ".you are so honest and straight forward and real. You say what most of us are thinking, but afraid to say. Thanks for that!"

And Im supposed to pass it on to 10 people, so besides Leann at I Should Have Bred Iguanas for giving me the award, I bestow this to...

Stacey for editing my books, and sending me cashola when I was poor and David first got broken.

Connie for being helpful.

Both bitches of Eastwick for their helpfulness by spreading the word back when David first got broken as well. (Im counting them as two because Im hungry and my food is here.)

Miss because she always pity's awards to me, and has been the only person to award me for my blog besides this one and the one that I got for "Bares All" back on MSN Spaces. Also because she bought my TV and my book.

Sara, Mrs. The Experience because she sends me yarn, paid for her own yarn for the sweater that she wants me to knit her because she knows that we're still poor at the moment, and plans to send me more yarn and brownies or something. AND she's going to professionally edit my manuscript in exchange for a sweater. How freaking awesome is that?

Solomon Broad because she has the neatest blog concept that Ive seen in a while, where she lists things that she's thankful for every day, and she has put ME on that list!

Peggy because she met me in a Starbucks and talked about phyto-estrogens and what not.

Im also giving the award to David because he gets up with the kids every morning because he knows that I cant see well and sometimes I babble about spark plugs and house paint to the kids at 6:00 in the morning.

I dont know how many that was and Im not going to count. I want to eat my Avogobble now. And then I will update my blog template in order to include my shiny new award and also to update my book lists.

Hope to see you soon.

Fondly,

JT

Not Back Yet

Still dont have my power cord yet, but Im on my MIL's laptop giving you an update because I was afraid of being molested at the library. This means that yes, she is fine, she just ate rotten bologna and got the icky sickies from the bad meat. She now plans to clean out her fridge daily.

David says this isnt the first time he's seen her do that.

Ok, so another quick rundown of stuff, and I will post again from my sister's house on Sunday, or maybe before then if my part comes in.

• Dianne not dead.
• I recieved a rather large amount of cuddly wool yarn in a delicious grey color from Mrs. The Experience, as I am knitting her a sweater in exchange for her professionally editing my manuscript. So yes Sara, I got your yarn, and once I have my computer back I can get the pattern from Knitty and work on it.
• Ive been knitting with all of my extra time that I have from not having the computer, and I have completed two 15 foot long scarves (Stacey you can take your pick, pictures coming soon) a hat, and in a strange twist I happened upon enough skeins of wool in the consignment store for $5 that I can knit David a manly heather blue sweater.
• We bought 8 pairs of pants, a sweater, and two shirts for Wade for $20 from the same store.
• We finished the Curious Insident of the Dog In The Night-Time last night. I loved it. Review coming soon.
• Speaking of reviews, Ive been contacted by an author of a very chick-lit type book to do a review. This is a mainstream author, not an independant one like me, so this is an awesome opportunity. I feel so special.
• Most importantly, I went to a meeting with Ty's school's psychologist, speech therapist, and speech intern, and Ty is NOT autistic, does NOT have Aspbergers, but he does have a lisp, weak little girl arms that hinder his writing (so we need to do muscle training) and he is very bright and could start Kindergarten tomorrow if he wanted to.

Oh, and David's been cleared to go back to work. He starts Tuesday. And hey, he's jogging a full mile the whole way in 8 minutes 20 seconds. David for the win. Hopefully Ill be back soon.

Microblogging Sucks

Topic 1.  My mother in law is not well, she is in the hospital with some kind of horrible infection, I dont know much about it.  

Topic 2.  My father in law is suing a gas station because "those jokers are ripping him off."

Topic 3.  David is reading a book out loud to me called "The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time," which is a murder mystery written by a 15 year old autistic boy.  Awesome story.  

Topic 4.  David is my best friend.

Topic 5.  People in the public library are creepy and I dont much like blogging from here.  Im hoping to get my power cord working soon.  I may skip a day or two of public library time, so you might not see a blog every day this week.  Sorry, I dont much enjoy people.  

Topic 6.  We made hot wings in the pressure cooker (hat tip to Connie)

Topic final.  I am knitting the scarf to end all scarfs.  It is 16 inches wide and it will probably be like 12 feet long.  This is for my technical advisor, Stacey.  Im using what they call "Speed Sticks," which are size 50 knitting needles, and they are approx. the size of broom handles.  It's awesome.  

Audios.  

Cover Blown

Current location:  Beaumont Library

Another day of microblogging, but I think the part was shipped...I think.  Here's my mini flog for the day.  

Last night I realized that David has picked up on my manurisms in the six weeks that he's been crippled and jobless.  My neighbors, whenever they come home, they have some kind of altercation on our front porch, either fighting, drunkenness or mad groping.  I usually run to the door as soon as I hear them coming up the steps and look through the peep hole, because it's lulzy to watch.  

So anyway, we hear it, and before I can get up, David rushes toward it and looks.  He's standing there quietly for a moment or two, and then he belches the LOUDEST and LONGEST burp the world has ever hear, right into the door.  "Oh shit!" he says.  Quizically they look at the door and go inside without breaking their stare from the door.  

No more watching the neighbors.  

Post Script:  My v is fine.  Old football (shaped baby) injury.  It's good now.  

Post Post Script:  "Jessie and David" sounds like a gay couple.

Post Post Post Script:  I won some kind of award, but there are people looking at me right now and I cant link to it or do anything until I am back on my computer at home, or on some trusting family member's computer, but look in my sidebar for "I Should Have Bred Iguanas" and I guess it's there.  

Love yuns.  

Microblogging Week

Two problems. One with a solution.

Problem 1. Ive busted another power cord somehow, and Im waiting on a replacement. In the mean time, I have 43% charge left to last me until it comes sometime later this week, should it arrive and all. Therefore I shall flog my blog micro style this week and post short yet quirky little posts for you just to make it look like I still live here, like leaving the lights on when you're not home so that robbers dont come in.

Problem 2. I broke the bone that holds together my vagina walking up the stairs. I dont know why that is. And before you tell me that I need to get more use out of it, it was probably the use that we got out of it last night that caused it to snap. Yeah, I said it. And ow, because it hurts and they probably dont make casts for something like this.

I will update as much as I can throughout the week until the working cord arrives.

Love yuns.

Crappy Donuts

My whole life, I was brought up on junk food and lots of sweets. As an adult, I quit the junk food (mostly) but I still loved my sweets. But recently? Not so much.

I didn't over eat during the holidays, I didn't even come close. We made fudge, and I mean the good stuff made with marshmallow cream, and I basically licked the crap out of the wooden spoon and the rest of it went to waste. And it was peanut butter fudge too! Two weeks ago I threw away a decent amount of fudge, enough to put out on a platter at a party, simply because I didn't want it anymore, and I needed to use the container that it was in.

This is very out of character for me.

Granted, I still take my tea with sugar, and a mug of hot chocolate is right next to me at the computer while I work on my manuscript, but honestly...sugar isn't all that appealing anymore. Even fruit. I have to eat it in jelly form on some bread or else I just don't want it.

My batches of cookies used to last a day or two here, and since the kids are only allowed one cookie a day, most of those were being eaten by David and I. And ice cream, I found some lactose free ice cream and I used to buy it for my smoothies, but then I got sick of those and stopped buying it. Somehow I ended up with some in my freezer, and it's being taken care of you know, but for some reason, I'm like scooping it into little mugs or tea cups instead of bowls. I really want to chalk it up to the fact that I cant have milk anymore, and that you cant dunk cookies in soymilk because it doesn't soak in, but I don't think that's it.

Sugar has just lost it's appeal to me, I guess.

I still like it and all, just not nearly as much as I used to. Which is great, I guess, but I'm not really understanding why. Maybe it's because I grew up, or maybe it's because I am now eating healthier than I ever have in my life. Or maybe it's because of things like I saw today.

And I'm sorry, before I tell you about this, I will apologize for not having pictures of it.

We were at the store, because we go to the store almost daily now just to kill time, plus it's free still. We went to the bakery to get the kid's free cookies, and when we were walking by the donut case, something caught my eye.

It was a rather large piece of crap. As in turd. As in doo doo.

On closer inspection, there was a whole pile of the things.

Again, I'm sorry that I didn't take pictures, but I didn't have my camera on me at the time.

You know what the maple bar donuts look like, right? The long ones. Sometimes they have chocolate on them. Well these were like that, except for the fact that they weren't the deliciously flaky white donut color, these were chocolate. That was the first problem. The other thing was that they were not bar shaped, they were kinda curved in all sorts of ways, with pointy ends, like...a long snaky turd.

For the record, they weren't the Krispie Kreams, they were the ones from the bakery. I'm guessing they had someone new that day or something who didn't know how to work the machines, because damn...that shit seriously looked like shit.

It was like someone said "I'm going to farP into your donut case," huuuuh fnhkjfbsdkjfbkjhasdfbv farP *plop*.

This was probably the most wretched donut sighting ever. And then I saw one with nuts on it and I lost it. I've sworn off donuts for good. Chocolate ones anyway, I mean I enjoy a good donut every now and then, but I will never be able to look at a chocolate donut without thinking about the trauma that is the freshly laid pastry that I saw that day in the donut case at Stater's.

So help me god, I almost wish that someone HAD taken a farP into the donut case. Sunday donuts once a month were the only sugar that I still enjoyed.

Damn you, random donut case farP, damn you.

The Mormons

David ran over a screw last night and it popped the tire, so we had to go to Walmart to get it patched this morning. It's always a joy to deal with the automotive workers there. Any time you bring them a tire and say that you need a patch, they'll tell you that they cant patch it and that you need a whole new tire. Then they try to sell you fuel injection inspection and cleaning, which is great and all, but all we wanted was the patch. Just the patch. After enough insisting that all we needed was the damn patch, they caved and, you know, did their job.

And while they work on the car, you have to wander aimlessly through the store, and ours is a Supercenter so you have plenty to look at, but when you're not there to buy anything, it gets boring really fast. Back a long time ago, I would fill up carts and leave them in random spots around the store while waiting for oil changes. That was all fun and games until I ran into a guy I knew from school and he had a look at my cart full of XXXL lingerie, 12 boxes of super absorbent tampons, laxatives, condoms, and carrots. That wasn't very much fun after that little incident. Trying to explain your way out of laxatives and carrots pretty much just takes you in circles. Especially when you're by your self.

Where did I leave that cart? In the children's book section where it belonged, of course.

We finally got our car back and came back home to do some stuff around the house. It was really nice today, almost 70 degrees, so we had the slider open to let in fresh air. I swept the front porch, he swept the balcony, and then I heard some voices downstairs.

"No, your church is PURE EVIL, I've read books about it. Get the hell away from my door before I call the cops," says Mrs. Lipo-McBoob-Nosejob.

A young male voice says, "Sorry to have disturbed you," and then we heard her door slam shut.

David was still out on the balcony sweeping, so I asked him what was going on. "J-dubs?" I ask.

"Mormons" he whispers as I hear them coming up the steps.

Great.

I've been asking David to make me a sign for the door saying "No Solicitors and No Religious Folks, kthxbai" but he says that people will get the wrong impression. I tell him that it gives the exact impression that we want, because the people who come to your door selling miscellaneous gods don't think that they are solicitors. Hell, even the solicitors don't think they're solicitors anymore, but the ones peddling their godly hoo haah need to be clearly identified, and I thought that "religious folks" was a nice friendly way of saying GTFO.

They knock on my door, and I'm right in the middle of messing with the bread machine, so I answer the door and see STARING GIRL! Just kidding. No, seriously I saw two pimply faced college aged boys, and before they could speak I said "Hi, we aren't interested."

"Oh, you're not? Ok...sorry," the chubby one said sadly.

"Have a great day," the other one said, sounding so beaten down.

I told them to have a good day, and for whatever reason I also said "good luck." I think I felt bad because of McBoob-Nosejob screaming at them.

David said that they padded off down the sidewalk with their heads down.

But honestly, what did they expect? I mean, I'm not religious or anything so I don't know, but how many people do you know who say "I converted when the Mormons came to my door. I liked their bikes and snazzy ties."

I had a friend who would invite them in for snacks. I suppose I could have unloaded those didn't-turn-out-so-great chocolate chip cookies on them, but I heard that they're like stray cats, and if you feed them they'll keep coming back. I like cats and all, but Mormons...not so much.

It's amazing, even with the huge amount of bike lanes in Beaumont, I don't see too many Mormons. In the three years that we've been here I've only seen them maybe once before this, and also that really scary J-Dub who wouldn't stop knocking on the door, even though it was pretty damn obvious that I was pretending not to be home.

Have I gone soft? I don't think so, I think it's just that McBoob set a rather unpleasant tone for them to come visit me, and out of pity I felt a little bad. Like when you see the checkout girl get reamed by some old guy over something trivial like a coupon or something? I think it was like that.

Ah well, they were just doing their job. Wait, do they get paid for that in man money or god points?

Be Supportive, Or Don't, It Doesn't Matter

(I have updated the disclaimer for this blog, and I encourage all of you to read it, namely my relatives and people who I know in the real world. It is posted below this entry, go to it and make sure that we have an understanding, ok? Thanks.)

He mailed off his application today.

We read all of the material, which gave him the exact fitness goals that he needs to reach, as well as information on the training he will receive in academy. CHP training is six months long. Should everything go exactly as planned, he could be leaving in July according to the stuff we looked at.

"As long as you're not going to Iraq, I am 100% behind you."

He would be going to Sacramento. We live near Mexico. Yeah, it's a bit of a ways upward from home.

David has wanted to go into law enforcement since he was 12, and he has gotten all kinds of reactions to it.

"Don't be a cop, be a corrections officer"

"Don't be a cop, go to school"

"Don't be a cop, cops aren't cool"

"Don't be a cop, cops are aliens/nazis/robots"

"Don't be a cop, you'll commit suicide"

"You cant be a cop because you're not physically fit enough."

Now the last one, that's true. The rest are questionable, some absurd, but for the most part there will always be people who wont support you when you go into work like this. It's what he's been wanting to do since before I knew him, and he's going for it.

Ok, so even if you said one of these things or you agree with them, let's all just say it together. "More power to him." There, doesn't that feel nice?

Now let's look back on that physical fitness thing. When you look at David today, you have to realize that he weighed 270 at age 15, and at 20 he weighs between 200 and 210 (he gained a little when he broke his collar bone and wasn't able to be very physically active.) That's a pretty dramatic turnaround, but the question is, what are his abilities?

Before he goes to Sacramento, should he be hired, he needs to be able to run three miles in 27 minutes, or nine minute miles essentially. Among other things, he needs to be able to squish a fresh tennis ball (because they're going to make him do something similar up there,) and do I forgot how many of each pushups, pullups, and situps.

Because of his clavicle still healing, he wasn't able to start working out until two days ago, and even right now he can basically just run. He's still in no condition to be messing with the pushups or anything like that, but he can start that when his bone is fully healed. His running goal, regardless of what the CHP requires, is to do five miles in under 45 minutes. I set up a spiral notebook for him to keep records, so he can see his improvements visually, and in the two days that he's ran, he's already showing improvement.

The first day, he did a mile in 11 minutes and 50 seconds.

This morning, he did a mile in 8 minutes 50 seconds.

Do you see what he did there?

Now, as his unlicensed dietician and personal trainer, I have come up with a cockamamie plan to get him into ship shape by the end of spring. I'm designing his actual workouts based on the suggested ones from the handouts, and basing his diet on the same things that I wrote my book on: fresh vegetables, using the power of vitamins found in different foods, and moderation. No dietary supplements, no energy drinks, none of that. Just downright good for you food.

And let's take it one step further. He has agreed, at my suggestion, to rely upon home remedies/natural cures should he have some kind of ailment as a result of his exercise plan. That isn't to say that he's not allowed to turn to Western medicine and pop some ibuprofen for a sprain should it happen and plan A fails, it's just that plan A will always be something natural first. We've actually been practicing this for a while, with the exception of his broken bone, in which he absolutely had to turn to medications, but I'm talking about how we now cure colds with teas, and sleep off headaches. Little stuff. An apple a day can totally keep the doctor away if you use it right.

For example, he's been having some shortness of breath while running, probably from being out of shape since he's been off of his bike for almost six weeks now, so I looked into it and found that he should use peppermint oil on his chest, or on a hankie that he can breathe into, to help his breathing. In this case, plan A seems to be working so far, but it's still too early to tell.

At any rate, he's doing it, he's answering his calling, and I for one am going to support him.

Please shout slogans at him in the comments section to keep him motivated.

(And someone, please PLEASE go Full Metal Jacket on his ass.)

Disclaimer- updated September 2009

This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my husband, his employers, any of my relatives, or their employers.

In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time. I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot and manifestation of the various thoughts running around my brain, and as such any thoughts and opinions expressed within out-of-date posts may not be the same, nor even similar, to those I may hold today.

If you have a real life relationship with me, remember that communication is very important. View weblogs as online journals, no less scared than a diary hidden between the mattresses. Let me know if you read my site, especially if I did not direct you to it personally. You are welcome to stay and read, but like visitors in your home, it's nice to know that they're coming or that they've been there while you were out. This is a very personal website in which I use to document my life and I take it very seriously, therefore the subject matter will be a very close look into my daily life, some parts of it may be those that you may wish not to know. Be forewarned that I do not censor myself or my content based on "who may be reading it."

I know certain family members have "discovered" my blog and think that I do not know they are reading it. I prefer to act like I am oblivious to that so it doesn't interfere with my ability to write here openly and honestly. Just want them to know that I am aware...and really don't give a shit.

If I write about you and you don't appreciate it, approach me DIRECTLY about it. Do not go to someone else and ask them to speak to me, or anonymously leave argumentative comments, contact me directly to discuss the situation, either by phone or by email (TeamTerwilliger At Gmail Dot Com.) You are entitled to your privacy and I understand this. There are many compromises that we can reach, from using vague nicknames to protect your anonymity, or not mentioning you at all. Regardless, I will never mention your last name or place of business, or post any pictures that I do not have permission to use. If you are upset because I have written something negative about you, be reasonable, and understand that this is my outlet, and that it's no worse than the normal gossip that you partake in at the water cooler, church, or family gatherings behind someone's back. If you still don't like what is being written, stop visiting this website. What you don't know wont hurt you.

I am very interactive with my readers who are interactive with me. I answer comments, and respond to every email received. Criticisms and reproaches are fine if you have a problem with something, but try to remain constructive and don't be an asshole. If you are an asshole, you may be exploited and used for blog fodder.

Don't be a psycho stalker. If I am cold or unreceptive to your advances, keep in mind that you are a stranger, and I might want to keep it that way.

The internet weblogs have no real code of conduct as of yet, and therefore I use language and subject matter that may offend some readers. I make no apologies for this.

I encourage links and trackbacks to my writing and photography, but I am awfully attached to my work and though the internet is pretty much an open play field, copyright is protected by law and in effect the minute something is created. Please get permission before you snatch up my stuff and use it for your own purposes.

And last, do not assume that you know everything there is to know about me simply because you read my blog every day and you've skimmed my archives. I am as honest as I can be, and I share what many deem as too much, but chances are that you still don't really know me.

Spray Powder Shampoo

Here's an interesting product that's new to the market and most certainly useful to busy new moms, or anyone who has ever found themselves in the situation where they just don't have time to wash their hair for a while. It's called Salon Grafix Spray Powder Shampoo. It's a neat little product that you can wash your hair with, but without the use of water because it is a "dry shampoo."

Anyone who's been a new parent knows what I mean when I say that it's not always easy to grab a shower once your little one becomes mobile. Being so busy, it's easy find yourself going a while without a shower, giving you the tired and grumpy look when you go to the store for diapers. With this product, you may still be tired and grumpy, but your hair will look great!

Or what if water to your block is shut off due to some major pipe problems? And how about when you're camping and there isn't any running water nearby? I think these would be excellent reasons to keep a bottle of this dry shampoo on hand. It brushes off easily, leaving hair revitalized with no residue left behind.

You deserve clean, shiny hair even if you don't have time for it!

Oh My God! Like Um, Help!

Why don't we like think these things out first?

We made a big pot of organic strawberry preserves yesterday, and they came out rather well. I like to put them on brownie bread (recipe in the side bar in the News section) for breakfast, and he puts them on waffles. Well, Connie posted a recipe for onion bread, and I had a recipe in my canning book for red pepper marmalade, and I thought they would go together nicely. And since I've been able to pull off the most delicious spiced peaches, blueberry jam, and strawberry preserves, why NOT red pepper marmalade?

Yeah...so when didn't we add two and two together and realize that a giant pot of hot peppers, onions, and vinegar was going to stink up the house and burn our eyes clean out of their sockets?

Clean out. For serious.

We were working together on getting everything measured, but I stepped out to go to the bathroom. When I came out, David was on the couch crying "oh my god, it burns!" and I immediately felt the sting to my eyes. We tried opening the sliding glass door, but we were like "Shit it's like 38 degrees outside" and shut it back up. We turned on the exhaust fan above the stove, and it helped I guess, but it still sucked. EVERYTHING smelled like vinegar and onions.

And the worst part? It's one of those recipes that you cook for 30 minutes and let sit in the pot overnight, then cook again in the morning, so crazy pepper jelly stank was about to become a permanent smell in our home.

In the morning, he cooked it back up, even though the house still smelled like vinegar, and Ty kept saying "I don't like the stink anymore! I don't like the stink anymore!"

Crazy pepper jelly turned out pretty good, but we wont make it again because not only was the process of cooking it like throwing acid in your eyes, but also because the recipe lied and after all of that effort we only got one fucking 12 ounce jar of it. It was supposed to make four 12 ounce jars. LIARS! Fucking liars. Lying hippies from 1968 writing books about jelly making. Last time I ever trust a damn hippie, that's for sure.

We ended up getting rid of the smell by boiling a pot of lemon and orange slices, cinnamon, ground cloves, and vanilla extract.

So then he has to run an errand in Banning while Ty is at school, and I mention how clear it is so he suggests that I get the camera so we can go take pictures of the snow covered mountain tops.

"I know just the place," he says. "There's a great vantage point from Highland Springs Road, Ill drive you there and you can get out and take pictures."

Ok, so where he took me is the part of Highland Springs where there are McMansions on one side, and a big empty cow field on the other. The same empty cow field that caused the big dust storm in Beaumont, destroying the adjacent McMansions. (By the way, some of those people are still displaced from their homes, which the one person that I know who lives there said that their house suffered $85k in damages. Also FIMA wont come help at all, so this is all coming out of people's pockets.)

Anyway, my point is that this is the border of Banning and Beaumont and right in between the two mountains, so it's one of the wind's favorite places to blow, making photographing an event of great difficulty. I was going to break out the tripod, but it would have blown over, and holding onto it would have been just as effective as holding onto the camera it's self, so I just fought the wind and put it on a fast shutter.

But who decided to run my pictures? Fucking birds. Billions of fucking birds. And not cool birds like hawks or golden eagles, the things that I wouldn't mind taking pictures of, but pigeons! Squab! Rats with wings! There was a gigantic flock of them just hanging out in this field, eating cow poop or whatever, and boy did they like to get right in the way of my shots! Even when I didn't think there were any birds in the shot, there were fucking birds in the shot. It's like they knew. They're all against me I tells ya.

I mean, I guess they didn't really ruin my photos, they came out pretty clear because I was on the right mode and using a fast shutter, plus birds make for a more interesting photo than just a bunch of mountains. Pigeons: they give your pictures more pizzazz.

And if nothing else, flocks of birds make some interesting shapes. The soft sound of their feathers hitting the air cant be captured, but standing there watching them was almost as exciting as a fireworks show, not knowing what direction they would go next.

Then we tried to leave. Starting up the car must have startled them, because they headed our way. Why go toward the sound of danger, I don't know, they're pigeons, I don't think they're that smart.

Let me tell you this. One time I hit a swarm of bees on the freeway, and it was horrifying. A hundred little smashed up bug guts spots showing up on your windshield directly following what sounds like rapid fire bee bee gun when you're going 65 miles per hour on the 10 isn't pleasant. But hitting a flock of birds, I cannot explain to you how disturbing, terrifying, and funny that was.

I took this picture just after we got back on the road, and David screamed "Oh my god! Like um, HELP!"

Post script: the birds were ok, but sadly David did not make it. RIP.

"No, Because My Kids Will Be Supervised"

Forest Gump was wrong. Life is not a box of chocolates.

Boxes of chocolate these days have little maps on them. They tell you that the chocolates with the swirls on top are the orange cream ones, and that the rose shaped ones are amaretto. The lumpy ones are obviously nuts, you'd have to be an idiot not to know that. Not only do they tell you what is what, but they tell you where it's located in the box even.

Life does not have a map. That's what makes it a surprise.

If you want chocolate butter cream chocolates then buy a box of those. You will probably know right away if some joker slipped a white chocolate hazelnut into your box of chocolates, and you have the right to be upset about it. Where as with life, you cant do a damn thing about the white chocolate hazelnut in the box of chocolate butter creams, you just have to deal with it.

No, life is more like a random ball of yarn sent by a blogger friend from Canada. You'll think that it's one color, but the more you knit it, you'll realize that it's changing colors, making a spectacular show of fiber goodness.

Because that relates to everybody, right?

Ty picked this yarn out of my stash and said, "Make me a hat." He's cool like that now, he asks for stuff...though I have to draw the line at the knitted pants that he's requested. Nobody should wear knitted pants, for sure. He picked it because it was red, like you see at the brim of the hat, because that's what was on the outside. As I was knitting it, I noticed the red getting lighter and a streak of gray running through, until it finally all turned that gray color. It was definitely a surprise. I finished it off by attaching those cute little helicopter pom poms, and he loved it. And the surprise color change made for an interesting hat!

Life is like a ball of yarn mailed to you by a stranger from Canada, it might seem kinda plain at first, but then it might end up making an interesting hat.

One day I go to the store and there's a Staring Girl, the next day I have a whole line of people in hysterical laughter with my observations.

It was a half day today, which sucks when your grocery store is also the gathering place for unsupervised school children due to it's location being near about 500 schools. Usually on half days, there is a line wrapping around the Starbucks, about 100 extra people in the store, and forget about getting Chinese food.

We went to the store today to get ingredients to make both strawberry jam and hot pepper marmalade, because we are churning out a shit load of bread and we need something to put on it. One of the first things I observed when entering the store was a group of teenage girls walking four wide across the aisles, blocking people from getting through. Then they would give you dirty looks when you didn't move for them and they had to break their little wall of friendship.

There was the boy with the skate board and his emo friend dropping things into people's carts while they weren't looking.

There was the group of incredibly skinny chickadees eating their Cold Stone ice cream while wandering aimlessly through the bread aisle.

And then checkout was atrocious. 50 of the fuckers, at least, were standing in line buying Hot Cheetoes and energy drinks. We get in line behind an old woman, at a stand with a checker girl that we know. A fat blonde girl comes through the front door of the store and exclaims loudly to her group of giggling girlfriends, "Hey, let's go GROCERY SHOPPING GUYS!"

As we get up to the stand, we see the checker nervously wiping her brow, looking rather irritated.

"Half days, eh?" David says to her sympathetically.

"I just don't get why they come here," she says. A group of pimply emo brats with things sewn to their hoodies and obscene band names written on their back packs with White Out is standing behind her at the next check stand.

"Yeah, I know," I say. "It's like they say 'Oh em gee you guys, let's go grocery shopping like mommy and daddy so we can look like growed ups.' Who seriously gets out of school early and heads to the grocery store?" At this point my checker is laughing and the bagging girl cracks a smile. "Starbucks I understand, but then again most of these losers cant get dates anyway, so they HAVE to hang out in the grocery store." Now everyone is laughing in the 10 foot vicinity, except for the pimply emo brats, who turn around and look intimidated. They turn back and give their checker, their laughing checker, the money, and they take their stuff and leave quickly. Everyone laughs at them as they leave.

I wasn't particularly picking on them, they just happened to be there while I was doing my thing. I didn't think it was that funny to be honest, I was just telling the truth.

The checker wipes tears from the corners of her eyes and says, "But you know, one day your kids will be hanging out here after school too."

"No they wont," I say. "My kids will be SUPERVISED!"

I hear a few people say "Thank-YOU" from behind me, and there's some clapping I think.

As I was leaving, there was a group of girls who had seen the whole charade, and they stood there looking at me, whispering to each other, looking sort of pissed, like "oh no she di-nt."

And I swear to god, I look at them and go "That's right, you just got pwned." I said it, with the P and everything, and they just looked at me with their mouths open.

I still don't think it was that funny, other than that last part, I mean that was clearly Jessie for the win right there.

Make A New Years Resolution For Your Kids

Many of you have set personal diet and overall wellness goals for yourselves for the new year, but what about your kids? Make it a goal to not only lose pounds yourself, but to feed your children more wholesome and good for them foods. You'll surely be helping them from ever having to make diet resolutions as adults, because you will have put them on the right track to healthy eating from the start.

It may seem overwhelming, but it is incredibly simple! In my book, Eat Your Colors, learn just how simple it is to get your children to not only eat better, but enjoy it too!

Some of the great features of Eat Your Colors include:

• Several easy and quick to prepare recipes, most of which do not require any sort of cooking
• A two week meal planner including three healthy meals and three sensible snacks per day
• Alternatives for the lactose intolerant
• An emphasis on organically grown food

Eat Your Colors has recently been recognized by the Yucaipa News Mirror from Yucaipa, California.

Do your children a favor and start the year off right with them by teaching them healthy eating habits. They'll thank you some day.

Staring Girl Part II

It was shopping day, so we went to Stater's around 10 in the morning. I absolutely love grocery shopping, I know that many people hate it, but it's one of my favorite jobs.

You might remember that my past few visits to Staters have been made more interesting by my new arch nemesis Staring Girl. If you haven't, follow that link and catch up. Essentially, she's my bully. Also, I was asked about the Suzanne Sommer's hatred, and that is explained here.

Anyway, so I was doing my shopping, which is always interesting with David. A bakery girl who neither of us know told me today that she loves it when I take my kids up to get their free cookie (they have a "cookie credit card" that the bakery gave them) because I'm always so nice. I wouldn't think that people would have me pegged as nice, but it's good to know that I don't smell like hate or anything.

The smell of hate could make people stare, you know what I mean?

We bought organic ketchup, some wild cherry bark tea, and delicious home made bread and jam ingredients, among other things. The kids were good, the store wasn't too crowded, and blueberries were on sale. I had forgotten all together about the Staring Girl and her Staring Problem.

It was when we went to check out that I was reminded.

I put everything up on the check stand, and the bubbly checker girl was kind as she scanned my items. And then I saw her...I saw Staring Girl. She came over from six, SIX registers to the left to come bag my groceries.

"Is plastic alright?"

"Plastic is fine," I answered, and I stepped behind David. I'm not proud of it, but I had to use him as a human shield. One of my commenter's told me not to let this girl eye fuck me, so I put David in the line of rape.

Sorry David's mom.

See, I also thought that maybe she thought that I was staring at her, so I ignored the situation by standing behind him. It worked, because he said that she didn't stare at him, it's me that she wants.

We got out safely, and I put the groceries in the trunk while he went to talk to the new Can Man. Everything was great, because I had finally defeated Staring Girl. He comes back and gets in the car, and we drive down the parking lot aisle toward the store only to see her coming out to mess with the carts parked under the overhang.

It just so happened that there was a pillar, a big fat one made of bricks, and it was directly blocking her view as she walked one way and we drove the other. But once we passed the pillar, David said that she was staring right at us. He laughed, hard. Staring Girl has not been defeated, and she still wants to eye fuck me.

"Maybe," David suggests, "she has a scary ex boyfriend, which she looks like she has a lot of, and he had the same car as us, so she always looks when we drive by to see if it's him."

But that doesn't account for the eye fucking in the store.

I wont let you win, Staring Girl, I wont let you.

Complete Turnaround

My side hurts. I probably have some kind of blockage, because my side hurts. It troubled me last night, and I was unable to sleep well. Today I woke up bitter and a bit angry.

I wanted to go to Starbucks to work on cleaning up my manuscript, because I cant do it here. For one, the kids are obnoxious, and when my side hurts I have no patience for them, especially when I have spell check to run and fine toothed combs to run through 75,000 words. The thing was that Ty went back to school today, so I either had to do it in the morning before noon, which I didn't want to do because I was in a bad mood, or preferably in the three hours that he is at school. That is what I would have preferred, but we had things to do, errands.

David had to go to the credit union that we no longer have an account with, and haven't in about two years, to get proof that he doesn't have an account with them. Why? Because we're trying to get on Medi-Cal so that his hospital bills are paid for and not put on his credit while he's trying to get into the academy, and the Medi-Cal people think that he has an account there, and they needed proof that he didn't.

Also? They needed proof that we don't have Blue Cross. We don't have fucking Blue Cross. If we did, we would not be trying to get Medi-Cal. They are convinced that we have it, even though we don't, and they're calling us liars because it's in their computer. So it's on us to prove them wrong.

Anyway, he had phone calls to make, and we were both out of minutes, so we had to use his parent's phone. But on the way over, Wade fell asleep in the car, and I didn't want to wake him up to take him inside because I'm trying to get him back on his nap schedule, so I sat in the car while he went in.

I sat out there for almost an hour and neither of his parents came out to say hello. His dad was outside twice but he didn't approach the vehicle.

Don't think I didn't notice that. I was sulking. A person notices EVERYTHING when they're sulking.

All I wanted was to be on my own for a while, with some tea, and my laptop so I can get some work done. It's not that I'm sick of David being here, no, in fact I miss him when he's working at the Pizza Place. It's just that I really want to get my manuscript in working order so I can take care of everything else that needs to be done before it's published, and David is, as I've said many times, distracting as hell.

When David talks, I give him my undivided attention. I look him in the eye while he speaks, and I actually listen. I respect the hell out of him, and whatever he has to say is worth hearing. But when I'm trying to work, and I don't mean scrub the sink or wipe the table, I mean write, it's distracting. Especially because right now he's really up on this...oh god, ok, get a load of this one...he says that there's gold in them thar hills, and that he and his pizza driver buddy, who by the way is the one with the $750,000 coin collection that he's sitting on for god knows why, are going to go up into Idyllwild and find it with the metal detector that his friend saved up $600 in tips for. So every night, Ill try to knock off a piece of editing, or read articles about promotion and everything else, and he'll pipe up to tell me something that his friend told him, like about an abandoned mine near Lake Hemet or something.

I care, I really, really do, because as he put it, "I put up with your shenanigans, why wont you put up with mine?" so I am really making an effort to lean in and listen. But come on, gold? Look, I know that Californie is the golden state and all, but pizza boys going out with their metal detector to find buried treasure, I mean...well, I guess it might make for good blogging.

Anyway, I was promised Starbucks time, again, not because I enjoy Starbucks, but the library closes too early and the homeless people scare me, and also to genuinely look cool while working on my manuscript. Because you're not a writer unless people see you writing, it's teh rulez. But then his other friend Dana calls, and I say "hey, have him come over so you're not bored," because the other day while I was gone with Peggy, he got bored. Only they want to use my computer for god knows what. Just for a minute they say, so I wait patiently while they dick around with burning CDs or something.

I finally made it out of the house at around 7:00, not nearly enough time for me to really work with, but something is better than nothing. I get my $3 drink, and I sit down at a small table. There were college girls in there, teenagers too, but mostly older people reading books and what not. Trying to look cool is all. Anyway, I finally get into the editing swing and all, and I'm finally feeling a productive after being down all day, and this guy comes up to my table.

"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"

My laptop is rather small, so I tell him no, and to sit if he'd like, because I wanted to make up for my previous 12 hours of bitterness by being nice to a stranger. Until I realized that this man was not a stranger.

Do you know who Kevin Sorbo is? Because I do. He was the guy who played Hercules. I was a big Hercules and Xena fanboy back in the day, and I could recognize this emm effer anywhere. It was Kevin Sorbo...I'm pretty sure. His hair was shorter, like ear length, but it was him, and he was gigantic, sitting in an itty bitty Starbucks chair. At my itty bitty Starbucks table.

I was like, woah.

But I didn't want to say anything. I've met celebrities before, most of them douche bags or douche bitches. He gave off the same vibe as a celebrity, so I really think it was him. I couldn't take pictures, because, well, that's rude. I recently read a Wiki How article on "how to approach celebrities," and it said to be nice to them, don't draw attention, and if you have to speak to them just be polite, quick, ask for what you want (autograph, hand job, what have you) and to thank them and let them go.

I wish I could tell you that out of my hatred of celebrities who go to normal people places and expect to not be recognized,

See also: Suzanne Sommers

that I totally exposed him for who he was, spilled my tea on him, and left in laughter.

But come on. I was not about to mess with the Herc. So I let him have his drink and play with his iPhone in peace. Also I'm not sure if it was really him. There is a plethora of people who look like people in Beaumont, like Kevin Smith who works at the Shell station on Cherry Valley Blvd and Beaumont Ave, or Chuck Norris who stands behind the gun counter at the Walmart.

I've always wanted to ask the Kevin Smith guy if he knows the Chuck Norris guy. My luck he'd say, "Oh yeah, that's my dad."

Well, Kevin Sorbo, if you're reading this, you smell a little bit like caramel corn. It's pleasing.

And I am in a much better mood.

The Boob Is Coming

We woke up this morning to Ty's voice in the bathroom.

"Good job Wade, you went pee pee on the potty! Good job! You're a big boy!"

Apparently Ty had got up for his morning pee, and Wade went with him, so he helped him out of his diaper, up onto the pot, and encouraged him to, you know, go #1. I have to admit that Ty has now taken more initiative to get Wade potty trained than I have. I know a lot of people say that you have to start the process when they turn two, but Wade really hasn't shown much interest in it. The way I see it is I'm not on any sort of major time schedule, and there's no need to rush the process since he isn't going to a daycare or babysitter who might require that the kid be potty trained. Since it's pretty much all on me, I'm letting him decide when he's ready. That's what we did with Ty, we basically waited on his cue and then jumped on the opportunity to start working on it, but nothing like the militaristic potty training that I've read about and seen on the television.

What works for us, and I say this because I don't want anyone telling me that I'm wrong or that you aren't supposed to do it that way, is we avoid bribes and schedules with the potty thing. The M&M every time they do it or they have a good try is a great method, I'm sure, but we just...don't do it that way. The only thing we did was let Ty pick out his own underwear when he decided that he was done with diapers, that was it really.

It just seems that the mommy blogs and the parenting magazines are putting a lot of pressure on toddlers to put they bidness in the throne of porcelain and I never really followed that hype. Not that I don't want the bidness to eventually be in the throne, it's just that I don't make it top priority, you know, because parenting styles vary. We strictly formula fed from day one for about 30 different reasons, and we let our kids decide when they're ready to duke on the pot.

But what if the older kid decides that the younger one is ready?

I've always heard it said that the younger ones do things faster because of the older sibling influence. I just didn't expect this with my bulldozer. If anything, the smart one took three years to buckle down and pinch a loaf into the shitter, so how long was the 4AM-Daddy-pile-drive one going to take?

Not long, as far as we can tell, because Ty's encouragement has been very effective, because he asked to both pee and poop on the potty today after that.

Wade is two and almost a half, so his words are still coming to him, but he's understandable. I sat on the floor in front of him while he peed, or "beed," and then he told me that he needed to boob.

"Boob is coming," he says.

Ty is all into "teaching" his brother, he says "I need to teach him to poop," so he's putting his head behind Wade to look up into his butt to see the poop coming. He informed me that there was no poop coming, so we called it a good try after several minutes, and tried to take him down. But Wade insisted that "boob is coming," so we waited and waited and waited. Nothing ever came of it, but I'm still hopeful for the next try.

David and I have a pact that a year to the day that Wade is out of Diapers, we begin trying for baby #3. That puts us at potentially two years from now until it's hatched.

Excuse me, I think I feel a boob coming on.

Soooo 2008, Or Possibly 2013 Even...

I did something very cool, trendy, with the times, and Californian today that I just had to get on my laptop and write about it in my blog.

This is 2008, you should know what a blog is by now. Especially if you are reading this.

It was raining today, so I drove to the Starbucks in my neighborhood. Yeah, I said it. I have a Starbucks within .5 miles of my house. That's where I met Peggy, owner of another local blog called Around Yucaipa. We met through the magic of the interwebs, and planned our meeting completely through email.

I ordered a tall (which in their language means small I guess) chai tea latte with vanilla and soy. Chai tea? Soy? Yeah, I said it. Chai tea with soy. And vanilla!

It's not that I particularly like Starbucks, I actually like this wonderful drive thru java place called Cafe Agape, but Starbucks is a better meeting place, besides it's mediocre products. If we had gone to Agape, what were we supposed to to? Sit in the Civic? That's why we chose Starbucks, there's atmosphere to be had.

What were we there to talk about? Blogs. Yeah, I said it. We met up to talk about the fact that we are the only bloggers in the area, with the exception of that middle school teacher who posts quotes and the pregnant girl who writes three sentences about morning sickness. Basically her and I are the only ones who actually blog around here, but our blogs differ greatly. Mine is more of a journal, and hers is more of an informative thing on goings on in Yucaipa.

We discussed blog promotion, which is why I got all gung ho and added all of the Feedburner, Google Reader, and My Yahoo buttons to my sidebar. I also submitted my site to like billions of directories, because more exposure means more book sales...potentially. More readers to sell books to, is more like it. And that's another thing we talked about, book publishing.

Two key demographic women in Southern California discussing blogs and book publishing in a Starbucks.

Some of the other topics that came up:

• Web 2.0
• How easy it is for people to find you on the internet
• The irrelevance of Myspace
• Real estate
• Why I hate Suzanne Sommers
• Hybrid vehicles
• Retirement communities
• Yucaipa before it got it's McMansions, back when it still had orange groves
• Small business owners who watch the blogs for what people are saying about their experience
• Diets

Yeah, I said it. Diets and web 2.0. Talking about that stuff in a Starbucks. Two local women talking about their blogs and their eating habits in a Starbucks in the rain. Yeah, I said that too.

Big corporations, you should be reading this. We bloggers are not only pwning (that's "owning" with a p in front of it) your markets by blogging about your products and services, but now we're finding each other and meeting in Starbuckses (Starbucki?) and discussing how to not only get our opinions out there, but how to make them beneficial to ourselves by promoting things like self published books and our opinion on the little drive thru java hut's coffee and tea as compared to the stuff that Starbucks offers. The bloggers are grouping, and they will destroy chain restaurants and big name publishing companies.

Or maybe we're people who met through a common interest by utilizing the technology that's out there to form new contacts and friends.

Either way, it's trendy, and like so "now," you know what I mean?

I feel like I need a new Bluetooth phone and an iPod or something. I'm way too cool for school now.

Or just really really nerdy.

The History

I couldn't keep it like that forever, you know. The Beatles banner was just a place holder that I used until I made something better. It's just that I didn't want Christmas graphics laying around after the holiday. Seriously, after December 25th, the magic is over. I needed something more personal, like with our pictures, because I like to see blogs where I can almost tell what they'll be about just from looking at the banner. It seems more personal that way.

So this is my new layout, how do you like it? I'm 75% sure that I like it. I don't think Ill ever love one as much as I loved "Flowers From The Parking Lot" but that is over and done with now, plus it was really more of a fall thing. This one looks like a nice transition from winter into spring, and that's what I like about my layouts, they have staying power. All of this HTML shit is just too much to mess with.

No, I haven't upgraded my template. It's still the classic Blogger one. I'm afraid of change.

So the name of this theme? The History. And with the new theme came changes to the sidebar. Follow me over to your right and Ill show you.

As you can see, I've clearly labeled it the "navigation" center. Does that or does that not seem like I'm full of win?

The about section has been cleaned up quite a bit, and is now called "The Life." I've also directed not just "friends and family" to read the disclaimer, but all who may be potentially butt hurt. Nobody has been butt hurt in a while, except one person, but we're fine now I think.

Then if you scroll down you'll find The People, and YOU are the people I'm referring to. Though Blogland has been pretty fucking dry lately, and I've only added two names to the list since October. Check the bottom of the list for "Around Yucaipa" which keeps up on artsy fartsy crap in Yucaipa (and I will be meeting the blogger herself for coffee Saturday afternoon) and "Things I'm Grateful For" which is a blog full of lists of things that the blogger is grateful for. Pretty self explanatory.

Ah, and then we have The Literature. This is where I post information about my book(s). (This replaces the ad zone, as I have removed all of the sidebar ads. Though you still may see a sponsored post every now and then, the half naked Paris Hilton is gone, along with whatever Amazon was trying to sell you.) You can view the cover, read a description, and any press coverage the books have had. There is also a Buy It button for Eat Your Colors. And under that you'll see that I now have the cover art and a description for my new book, The Fight for Golden Dawn, along with it's release date. If you haven't figured out what "actual thing that happened" that I fictionalized, you should be able to guess from that. If you still don't know, it means that you're new here, and welcome.

Then down below that we have The Love, where I have my crap that you guys give me, my hug meter, and my awards. Also I've removed the fridge and replaced it with a Post It Note. Does that work for you? Random toys will pop up here, along with all of my awards. Speaking of which, I won a Perfect Post award from Miss for the post that I did on my anniversary called "Happy." Interestingly enough, when I wrote it, I didn't think it was my best, because I just couldn't find the right words. Love is funny like that I guess.

The Addiction refers to the knitting, and it really hasn't changed, except that if you haven't looked at it in a while you'll notice that the progress meters are gone and a Flickr badge has replaced them, because it only shows stuff from my knitting set. So you actually get to see the projects, rather than just try to guess what they are by the title.

There is The News box, but it doesn't have anything relevant in it at the moment. That's where Ill put stuff that isn't worthy of a whole entry, or even partial one. Like "Hey I updated my layout" and leaving it at that. If it never gets used then Ill dump it.

And finally, The History its self, my archives. ALL of my archives. Yes, I've reopened my MSN Space, which I closed right about the time that I added my disclaimer. You can go back now and find all of my spelling errors if you would like.

Other than that, my day was partially spent at the store buying a deliciously chocolate and marshmallow cereal (because I need calcium BAD and the only way that Ill do the soymilk is with cereal, and the only way I do cereal is for dessert,) and baking a loaf of butter honey wheat bread. My plans for the evening are to knit, fold laundry, make Amish paprika chicken with organic broccoli, and read.

And if you come back tomorrow, Ill have brownies and pictures of the lady I'm meeting from the interwebs.

Maintenance Stinks

Last Friday, David ran a load of dishes in the dishwasher, or attempted to anyway. A few minutes into the cycle we smelled burning plastic. We inspected the situation and found nothing, so we assumed that all was well.

At the end of the cycle, there was still water on the bottom and the dishes weren't very clean at all, and after several tries at forcing it through its drain sequence, we learned that there was no drain sequence, and that it was busted. The timer, I think David called it, must have been the burning plastic smell.

These things always happen over a weekend, so we weren't able to call in for repairs until Monday, and in the mean time, we did dishes by hand. I HATE doing dishes by hand. This is why we have robots, damnit! We took turns, but I ended up doing most of the turns. He crippled out of it a few times to go play Lincoln Logs with the boys, which is useful as well.

Anyway, we called Monday for help, but they didn't get around to it till today. The maintenance guys here don't really like us, and we don't particularly like them, but every once in a while our paths cross in situations like these. It seemed that when we first got here, all of our problems were seen to that day or the next, but one time I called the cops on a party in the next building that was too loud, and there ended up being a lot of underage drinking going on. It just so happened that one of the maintenance fellahs, Other David, was there, and he almost got fired because I'm not cool and I don't just let things like loud parties in the middle of the night when I have a newborn and a toddler trying to sleep go. After that, the service changed a bit. It took three weeks to get weather stripping on our front door (health code violation,) a year and a half to fix a cracked bath tub, two loads of spoiled food before our fridge was replaced, and we ALL remember the great air conditioning scandal of ot' seven. So for them to come by for a small issue several days later, meh, I guess I cant complain.

Anyway, Other David and Jose came trotting up our staircase today, so we let them in. As they're talking amongst themselves about the issue, fiddling with the machine and all, I notice a rather pungent odor. Water had been sitting in the dishwasher for almost a week, and it wasn't clean water, so I just kept knitting, figuring it would go away when it drained. The only problem was that it seriously smelled like shit, and I was just a wee bit concerned about shit water being in my dishwasher. The guys weren't saying anything about shit water, and David was in the kitchen playing Moon Sand at the table with the boys, so I'm sure if he thought something was afoot he would mention it.

They figure out that David was right, the timer had melted, and they take off to their maintenance shack to get a replacement. As soon as they shut the door, just as I was about to ask David to light some scented candles, he yells "OH MY GOD THAT DUDE SMELLS LIKE SHIT!"

"I was just about to say something! I thought it was the water."

"Water has NEVER smelled that bad! It was him...that Jose guy."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, it was him. I smelled it when he walked by me both times, and when I went over to talk to them about what the problem was, I smelled his wind. You know, like coming off of him. He's gone rancid or something, I mean that dude smells like fucking shit!"

I tell him to light some candles and he tells me that he doesn't think candles will do it. He lights them anyway, and made a comment about how he was a little worried about open flames, but something had to be done.

The guys come back up, and as soon as he walked in I smelled it. David was right. You know how sometimes when a person smells bad, you have to be within their personal space, or close to it to smell it? Not this fucker, his scent bubble was the size of Manhattan...or, my apartment anyway. But it's a pretty big apartment. We even had to light the candle in the bedroom because the smell had gotten in there too!

Hours later, we STILL smelled the remnants of his stank. We put some bread in the bread robot and the wonderful baking smells overpowered whatever was wrong with that man. I don't know if it was medical or what, but shit me sideways that guy smelled bad.

Now I wonder if it was just a ploy to keep us from calling maintenance ever again, like he purposely crapped his pants or rolled in manure before visiting so we'll stop calling.

Oh Boy! Knitting Stuff! You Guys LOVE This!

I officially finished writing the final chapter of my book tonight at 8:33. Forty three chapters, 328 pages, and 75,210 words. It doesn't end how you think it ends, even if you think you know, you don't know. Remember, this book is fiction, so I can fuck with it at will. And I did. I think it's turned out to be quite good.

But look at what else I've done! The first finished object of the new year, selfishly made for myself, BUT I needed a wool hat, so whatev. I call it Shores Of California, and the yarn was donated by Mrs. The Experience, who is now writing under the name Madame Pomegranate at the Word Emporium and Synonym Saloon...what the fuck is that shit anyway?

She also donated to me the infamous "hair with video tape stuck in it" yarn that David so delicately named, which is being knit into a fabulous Hair With Video Tape Stuck In It Scarf. This is being knit for Stacey, my technical advisor. I call her that because she advises me about technical things. She had a soft spot for this strangely "so ugly it's pretty" yarn so I've begun a super long horseshoe print stitch scarf for her with it. It's actually working up quite nicely, and I fear that I will be sad when Hair With Video Tape Stuck In it Scarf is in Oregon without me. It's so charming in it's purplish brownish burnt umber glittery fuzziness.

David has a knitting project as well. With the new doll house furniture comes the need for things like table runners...or not need, but, you know...table runners make things look nice. Out of boredom we went to Walmart to price them, and we found some beautifully intricate hand knit lace ones for $3.96. This scared us. Lace knitting is very involved, and something like that would take a person hours on end to complete. The fact that it was less than $4 means that some poor child or possibly elderly slave in Asia got paid something like three cents an hour with no bathroom breaks and mandatory hourly whippings to make it, and we couldn't have that on our conscious by buying it.

Or maybe it was machine made and they totally lied about it being hand knit, but either way, I would rather the house hold cripple do it for me for no pay instead of little pay, and under slightly more humane working conditions. Id sleep at night better knowing that my table runners are cruelty free.

This is the one that he's working on, it's called the apple leaf tidy. Sorry, it's not a table runner, it's a table tidy. The one he's making is with the same yarn that I made his Cigar Gloves with, you know, the ones that I busted my ass on. I just happened to have lots of leftover yarn from those gloves, since I wanted to buy too much instead of too little. You know, measure twice, cut once. Or do you cut twice and measure once? I aint never been no good at no book learnin. You do the math. I just find stuff in the trash and use it to eat off of, that's pretty much it.

David called his boss today and said that he'd like to come back to work on the 22nd, so it looks as if he only has a few short weeks to work on my table tidy thing. It's been fun having him around, he really does make a great companion. When we run out of things to say he hops up on my lap and purrs and I scratch him behind the ears.

Translation: he bitches about muscle pain on the opposite side from overcompensating and I give him a good slathering with the Icy Hot, and he says "GAAAAAD! GAAAAAAD that's icy...OH GAD that's icy. OOH! OOH! IT'S HAAAT! IT"S BURNING MY FLESH! IT'S HAAAA-oh, relief. Sweet wonderful relief."

THEN he hops in my lap and purrs himself to sleep.

I'm going to miss him when he goes back to work.

One Man's Trash

You know why they say that eating black eyed peas on new years is good luck, right? It's because all of that fiber is going to make you SHIT. That way, you'll start off the new year with a nice clean colon, and your resolution to lose weight will already feel easier, because you'll weigh less. But that's not what I wanted to tell you.

Anyway, I planned to finish my manuscript (the writing part, not the editing and perfecting) by the 1st, but I didn't quite make it. But I DID design the cover because the program that my sister got me for my birthday, the one that was taped to the sodas, was my beloved Corel Paint Shop Pro. I'm not really a Paint Shop pro, but I know how to work it to get it to do the things that I need. I also changed the title, because the other one seemed a little romance novelish, or happier, when the book is actually pretty dark and bothersome throughout. The sky picture is mine, of course, and the chubby cherub you see there is the daughter of my very good friend Connie back when she was a tot. You can read more about Krystal, who is two days older than David, here. The font is sort of an issue for me, I didn't want anything fancy or elegant, so I went with a very serious and straight forward one. I don't know, I think it looks alright really, but then again you could replace those words with "Jesus Loves The Little Children" and it would be something you could hang in a church. Then again, the child is believed to be some kind of messiah by her insane father, so the book has it's religious theme. Anyway, if you think you can do better, take a crack at it. Be my guest. You're welcome to whatever is in my Flickr.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you either.

What I wanted to tell you is that we got a new dining table. Like the other three dining tables we've had, it has a great story. You might remember that our first one was purchased for like $70 at the thrift store that donates money to The Cancer Society, and that it was very small so it ended up being replaced by a table that looks like it was straight up stolen from Taco Bell that an ex co-worker of mine found in the middle of the desert while hitting golf balls into sand dunes. That one had gum under it and it was really ugly, so we got one off of Freecycle, only for it to turn out that the lady lied about what condition it was in, because it was missing screws, the chairs were all in very bad shape, and it wasn't even assembled. It got to the point where we couldn't have anyone over to eat because we were afraid that they might sit in the chair and it would break and they would sue us. Also we only had three chairs because one of them disintegrated a while back. It was the weirdest fucking thing.

So today we ran out to the store to get black eyed peas and a smoked ham hock for our new years soup, and we get back and I see a table with four chairs just sitting behind the dumpster area. Just sitting there! Now, I know what you're thinking, "white trash dumpster digger," but I will have you know that they were not IN the dumpster, just by it, and it is an unspoken rule that anything left NEAR the dumpster but not in it is still perfectly good for someone else to use. It's fair game, people! Up for grabs! There was a really nice black leather sofa set back there before Christmas, perfect condition, and someone came and took them.

Look, if you don't want me taking stuff from the garbage, then stop throwing such nice stuff away, for crapping out loud! I'm in poverty and I need a table, so cram it with walnuts, ugly! (And can I have that neat book case when you're done with it? Just leave it behind the dumpster, Ill find it...)

Well I tell David to go check them out while I brought up the bags. He comes back and says that the table is small, but the chairs all have their screws, and the set is in good enough condition. The only real damage was a few chairs have little puppy bite marks, which is interesting because you're not supposed to have dogs here, but whatever. He says it's like some cheap basswood set that you buy at Walmart for under $150, and that it's light weight enough for him to go get it. He brought down our old things and came back with the new ones, and I cleaned them with lemon furniture polish. Sure enough, they're perfect for what we need. It's a bit smaller so we have more room to walk in the kitchen now, and I can make the chairs look nicer with some cushions or something. The table is a little scratched but Ill knit some place mats or something or keep a tablecloth on it, and it will be fine.

That's it right there, with a nice freshly baked loaf of white bread that David made on it. Thank you again for the gift Dianne, I use it every day. And the bread machine is nice too.

But WAIT! There's MORE!

He gets back from taking the stuff up and says that there's a coffee table TOO! He said it was a little big and he wasn't sure how we would fit it in our living room, but someone had it in their living room here so I said to go inspect it further to see if it was damaged. So he gets down there, and a lady is already taking it! This is a bum-fight waiting to happen, so he decides to make his interest in the table known politely.

"Aw, you got it! I was going to come down and get it."

"Did you get the table and chairs?"

"Yeah...well here, let me help you carry it to your place."

"Well do you have kids?" she asks.

He says, "Yeah I do."

"Well then here, you take it. I don't really need it I was just going to see if it was better than the one I had."

So then she goes on to say that the stuff was her neighbor's, and that the lady is moving so she's dumping her crap. Turns out the lady had a cat and a dog, AND she moved in here after we did. This upsets me, I had to give away my Tank, my purebred teacup Chihuahua when we moved here.

Tank was also free, he was running loose on the side of the road near a McMansion community, so we got him before a gopher snake did, poor little muchacho.

Anyway, so the lady lets us have the table, and it turned out to work nicely in here after the scooching over of a couch. It's got a shelf beneath it, so I can put my little tub of "knits in progress" and also my feet on it, and the top is going to finally give us a place to put our drinks down. No more putting them on end tables and bookshelves like animals. And it's a nice wide one so we can play games if we so choose. Oh! I can put out coffee table books now and look intelligent! And no more putting my computer on the couch when I'm working on it there and I need to get up. I can put it on the coffee table, like some jerk face at Starbucks or something.

The undersides of the feet smelled a little bit like piss, or not piss, but you know, dog who makes tinkle in the house a lot because the owner cant take it out side in case someone sees and they tell management. To get urine or pet smells out of wood, wipe it down with a solution of one part vanilla extract to two parts water. It worked perfectly.

"Happy anniversary baby, what do you think of your gifts?" he says to me.

"They're awesome. One man's trash really is someone else's crap to drag home. I love it."