family fun day

Today was the annual fun day at Owen's preschool. doug is gone and sophie is at a friends house, so it was just the two of us and we had such a fun time. Owen's favorites were the ring toss, painting a triceratops and the cake walk. He walked around the circle about 10 times waiting for his number to be called. (If they call the number you're standing after the music stops you get to go pick a cake.)



So he kept going around and around. Then we'd go do some other game and come back and he'd go round and round again. Some kids would come in and win on their first time, but not us. Owen didn't want to stop. I guess he really, really wanted a cake. On his 11th turn, a little girl came to the circle and wanted to play, so the lady says, "since all the numbers are taken, is there anyone who will sit this turn out so this little girl can have a turn?" No one volunteered, so I said. "Owen let's let this little girl go and we'll get back in after this round." He steps out of the circle and even though we was pretty sad, he stood there and waited. So, the kids go around the circle and when the music stops they call out number 7 which was the number Owen would have been standing on had he stayed in the round. The little girl goes to choose a cake and her mom says,"Wow, you won again? Cool. Pick out another cake." WHAT?? And just when I was about to pounce, the lady let that mom know that Owen gave up his turn for her daughter and that he should probably get the cake since she'd already won once. He was soooooo happy. Of course, he picked out the "big donut". You can't tell with the cover on, but it looks just like a giant donut. Chocolate bundt cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles.



A big donut cake is probably the last thing we need hanging around the house, but I tell ya, i was ready to fight for it.
Anyway, we had fun. it was a great day.

how to remove stitches

It's been six days. My sister, Jami, the nurse practitioner, is going to kill me. A guy at church is a doctor and he foolishly commented..."oh yeah, stitches are easy. I can show you how to pull them out, Doug." Which is the exact wrong thing to say to Doug because he is the ultimate do it yourself guy. Any time we need a piece of furniture; kids beds, desk, bookshelf, etc... doug has a vision of how to build it himself. I just want to go to ikea and buy some quick fix, cheap but cute solution. Not so with doug, I think our bedframe was cut, built and painted in the living room of our Studio city apartment. So, after googling "how to remove stitches" and seriously sterilizing EVERYTHING, Doug pulled out all 7 stitches with teeny needle nose pliers and some toenail clippers while i laid on our bathroom floor.

not for the queasy

Took a little spill on the wet stairs in my flip flops. Fortunately, Batman was there to save the day.

a most interesting encounter

I hesitate to blog this one because I know there are a few grandmas and grandpas who check into it every once in a while. (So if you are Grandma Terrie or Grandma Rolyne, please turn back now) I will continue, though, because too many of you have heard the stories of my nemesis, and this one is too good to ignore. A brief description, for those of you not aquainted with her, might go like this:

Imagine the most white trash person you've every met. Wait, think garbage lady, double her size and crank the profanity up to a 100, and there you have the bane of my existence. We'll call her Sammy from 111. You'll probably think this is all rediculously overdramatic, but we're talking about a girl whose husband was arrested at our apartment complex by 15 cops with guns drawn and a helicopter overhead. He then returned to serve house arrest at our building. A few weeks ago she turned her fithy orfice on her 5 year old and it was so appalling I called child protective services. She has probably 3 different medical malpractice lawsuits going against 3 different doctors right now and lives on disability with her grandmother who pays the rent from her retirement funds. She's a class act.

So yesterday our maintenance guy, Matt (we like Matt, he's one of the good guys) went in to repair something for Sammy's grandma and came out 15 minutes later looking very grossed out. He told me that after he spent 5 minutes fixing a knob in the kitchen the grandma took him down the hall to the back room so he could help her with a window that was stuck. As they walked down the hall they passed a bathroom on the left. He briefly looked in the bathroom saw Sammy sitting on the toilet with her pants down to her ankles WITH THE DOOR OPEN. If that's not disturbing enough she says to him, "I guess it's a good thing I wasn't wiping my a** when you walked by."

ha ha ha, It's a visual that will haunt me for years and Matt will probably need therapy.

just a catch up

I guess we've been pretty busy around here. Or i'm just really uninspired about what to write these days. Do you remember when you started talking to friends on the telephone? Women are notorious for gabbing for hours on end, although I swear Doug could compete with any woman and win. He goes from one call to the next and the next until hours have passed by. Granted they are work calls, but seriously, I'm starting to worry about a brain tumor developing near his cell phone ear...anyway. The past week or so sophie has started getting calls from her friends. The first few were really funny. One friend called to tell her that High School Musical was on. All I could hear was Sophie's side, of course, but it went something like this. "Oh, Hi. It is?? Cool. I'm turning it on right now. Thanks." And then there was a pause and apparently the friend wasn't hanging up and it didn't sound like sophie really know what do say. Then after the pause goes on for a bit longer she says, "um. so....do you want to keep talking or...."

Not sure why that struck me so funny. Today she had a friend call from the playground at school. Because all of the 3rd graders have cell phones these days.

Owen is doing pretty well. Lately he's been walking around without a shirt, even sleeping without a shirt. He wants to wear pajama pants and socks only because he is a boxer. And boxer's do not wear shirts. But they do wear boots that look like socks so for him that works. We also introduced him to the board game Sorry. And he LOVES it. He knows how to set it up, he puts all of the pieces in the right spots, he knows the rules and when and when he can and can't move and he knows that when you draw a 4 you have to move backward four spaces and not forward four spaces. He's lucky, too. He always draws the 1's and 2's, (the only numbers that let you move a pawn out of start) while the rest of us just have to keep on drawing cards over and over until finally a good card comes up.

He took this picture of Sophie with our digital camera. Fortunately, he found the Happy Birthday setting.

Also, a pic of the kiddos. Owen wore that head band for a week straight, then we cut his hair. And don't worry, that bottle is a Root Beer bottle, i swear!

So this is what happened...

I thought about what i should do for a minute and then climbed out of my car and asked nicely, "can you stop going through our garbage please?' And what happened next could only be described as a barrage of profanity so shocking it was absolutely hilarious. "It's on the street, it's not *!@% yours anymore," she said. "You little *!@%. It not your property now, i can do the whatever the *!@% I want. It's on the *!@%-ing street." And so on and so on. I stood there frozen, mainly because her voice was so freaky. She could have been one of the natives on Skull Island with that voice. She was loud and scary and completely mental. Then a voice shoots from our bedroom window which faces the street on the second floor. "My car is on the street, is that yours too?" Doug heard her freaking out on me decided to chime in. They get in to this crazy exchange where they're yelling back and forth and he is totally patronizing her and she's cursing the devil out of him. At which point I jumped back in my car for a quick get away. When I got upstairs, she had gotten in her car and was driving back and forth screaming maniacally and shaking her fist at our window.

We had a big laugh over the psycho garbage lady and my only regret was that I didn't have my camera. I've seen her around the neighborhood since that day, digging and ripping all the trash bags in other dumpsters.

Then a couple of days ago I heard some voices outside the window, I looked out and there she was. Back again, but this time with with an accomplice. So I did what any compassionate, God-fearing woman would do. I grabbed the camera and took pictures from my balcony.

The Garbage Lady

A few months ago i was driving into the garage of our complex and I passed the blue garbage dumpster as it sitting on the street. There was a woman standing inside the dumpster riping bags open looking for bottles and cans, i guess, but she was going through everything, opening every bag and dumping it out. I felt really wierd about it so as the apartment manager i felt it was my job to get her out of there. Her car, by the way was a station wagon and it was stuffed with so many bags of crap to recycle, she could barely fit in the front seat to drive away. Ok, so there is a good ending to this but we have to go to a little bday party so I'll finish tonight. To be continued.....