Happy

First of all, I’m happy that Miss Angie from My So Called Chaos has taken over hosting the Happy list, and it seems she posts her happy list late Monday night, so I don’t have to be the last person to link up on Tuesday! Pop over and say hi!

Christmas season makes me happy. The tree is up, the mantle is decorated, presents are wrapped, cards are ordered. You may remember that Shutterfly gave me 50 free cards in return for me writing a post about them. I ordered my cards yesterday and I am so excited to see how they came out!

Awesome deals make me happy. In addition to the 50 free cards, I also got 100 free prints and free shipping through Shutterfly. I ended up ordering 226 prints, 2 sets of return address labels, and the 50 cards (which are double sided-- we used the back side to advise everyone of our new address), and I only paid $35. This is a better deal than any of the Black Friday Sales. Of course, I’m slightly bummed, because if I had ordered them today, I would have gotten an even better deal. Alas, I should be happy with I’ve got, right?

I also had an opportunity to save another $10, but then I would have to show you the card I made, with our names and everything, and that goes against the whole anonymous thing. But I am happy that the folks at Shutterfly give us so many opportunities to save!

Christmas shopping makes me happy. And I am SO happy that I am almost done already! I only have to buy a gift card and then order a few things through Pampered Chef (I’m looking for a local consultant because I’m too cheap to pay for shipping).

Stuffing makes me happy. So, my stepmother makes the best stuffing ever. She knows I love it, so she always lets me take all the leftovers. The Agent doesn’t like stuffing, so Thanksgiving is the one time of year that I get to indulge. But then my stepmother’s mother put a RAW neck bone in the leftover stuffing. Gross! What the hell???? “Abuelita!” I yelled. “My stuffing!” The stuffing was ruined. But my stepmother got some serious brownie points. She made me a new batch of stuffing that night and brought it to me the next morning when we went Black Friday shopping. Good job, Alice! You made me happy!

New granite makes me happy! The granite guys came today and installed the countertops in the kitchen and laundry room. The backsplash will go up tomorrow. I’m uber excited about how beautiful it is! Pictures coming soon.

Peace, love, and happyness!

Black Friday madness!

Well, hello there! I trust everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving, a productive Black Friday, a successful Small Business Saturday, etc.

I had a really successful Black Friday. I wouldn’t say I got so many fantastic deals, but I have almost all of my Christmas shopping done. Plus I bought three pairs of boots for myself (Happy Birthday to me!) and a right hand ring that I love, even though The Agent has said it’s the ugliest ring he has ever seen. I believe his exact words were, “It looks like you have a silver wreath on your finger.” He doesn’t know:

Black Friday allowed me to also give you updates on a couple of past posts:

Remember this post? I shared with you my invention about being able to check and see if you left your garage door open without having to drive all the ay back home and check. Well, someone took my idea and totally ran with it. They sold the idea to Craftsman and it was for sale at Sears on Black Friday:

(I don't know why this is so pixilated. Apparently Sears doesn't like me taking pics from their website.)

I totally bought one. Hopefully The Agent is installing it the new house as I write this. If I’m ever wondering if I left the garage door open, I can just go online through my phone and check (or I could just use the app if I had an iphone or a Droid… but I don’t). Awesome.

Remember this post? The Agent, bless his heart, bought me a Dyson that was less than wonderful. I received varying forms of advice over this, my favorite being from Karen. She said:

 “Aw, that's a tough situation. It sounds like it means a lot to the Agent for you to keep the gift. In which case, it's probably a good idea to do that. I know it's $300 that could be used for other things, but sometimes it's more important to let someone else know we value them.”

I was totally prepared to keep the Dyson for this exact reason…. Until The Agent saw me using it on my kitchen floor. It’s then that it finally hit him: he bought me a $300 broom. So he told me to take it back and get the one I wanted. I did my research and decided on this one:

It’s heavier than the other ones (don’t care) and it doesn’t have the ball technology that the other Dyson’s have (also don’t care), but it has the highest sucking power out of all the Dysons (care very much). And, since I bought it on Black Friday, it ended up being only $50 more than the slim model The Agent originally bought me.

All in all, it was a good day! Were you as successful as I was?

Happy Days

My birthday makes me happy. Aside from my little mini break down about turning 38, and my tantrum about not getting exactly what I wanted, I had a nice weekend. My parents came over on Saturday and spoiled me rotten.

Cake pops make me happy. One of my gifts was a cake pop pan. Bug and I are so excited to try it out! I’m not going to have time this week, but I think we’ll be able to find time to make a batch this weekend. I love the idea of having just a little bite of cake, or brownie, or whatever.

Costco makes me happy. I love Costco! I could spend all day there. They have it all-- nice clothes, great toys, cool gadgets, and with all the sample carts, you don’t even have to stop for lunch. I took the kids there on Sunday and we had a great time shopping. I found a nice wool coat to add to my Christmas list, Bug found an art set, and BK found a set of wood puzzles! Now, if I can just get The Agent to find something that he wants…

Pumpkin pie makes me happy. Well, actually, I don’t like pumpkin pie, so that doesn‘t really make me all that happy. But the kindergarteners put on a Thanksgiving program and served homemade pumpkin pie to all the parents who were there. My kid is ultimately cute. And I’m happy that my job is flexible enough that I can take a morning off to her sing about a turkey.

A fire in the fireplace makes me happy. It finally got cold enough for a fire this weekend. Love it! So romantic! ;)

My brilliant child makes me happy. Bug had her first trimester report card. She excels at every subject except PE. Her goal to work on for the next trimester is to learn how to use the monkey bars. She has her mama’s athletic ability.

Thankful days make me happy:

Everyone in the family contributed to this. To be clear, BK is the one who is thankful for balls. Bug wrote it down on his behalf.

Dyson Depression

The Agent did not get me exactly what I wanted for my birthday, but that’s my fault. I asked for either a Dyson for the carpet upstairs, a handheld vac for the staircase, or a steam mop for the wood floors downstairs (this would all be for the new house). It is my fault that I was not more specific; I should have told him exactly what model of Dyson I wanted. He got me this:

It’s a cordless Dyson. It charges at a wall outlet so you don’t have to worry about dragging a cord around. It’s lightweight and it says it works on all surfaces. The long pole thing comes off so you can use it as a handheld, or you can use it as a traditional upright vacuum. The Agent’s thinking was that it’s so lightweight that I could use it on the stairs, as well as use it as the upstairs carpet vacuum.

I know it sounds ungrateful, but this is not what I wanted. It’s a light weight vac, so it doesn’t have the power to pick up all the stuff on the carpets. I’m not the best housekeeper, sometimes I only vacuum every other week, I need a strong vacuum. It is exactly the type of thing I wanted for the stairs, but I just wanted a cheap little handheld vacuum, I didn’t need a $300 Dyson just for the stairs.

I told The Agent that I was thinking of returning it and I know he was disappointed, so I took it out of the box and put it together. I tried it on the carpet, and very little got picked up. It says it works on all floor types, but it really doesn’t have the strength to get two weeks of hair and stuff out of deep shag carpet. But The Agent told me to keep it. His argument was that I had just vacuumed the day before, so there wasn’t anything to pick up. We’re not going to wear shoes upstairs in the new house or allow food, so maybe it won’t be so bad. The roller bar is about half the size of the vacuum we currently have, so I think it will take a lot longer to vacuum with this new one, but I agreed to keep it once The Agent said that I could get the Dyson I wanted once we moved if this one didn’t work out.

The good news is, this light weight thing is awesome on the tile floors. And I love that I don’t have to worry about a cord. So I think I’m going to keep it downstairs and use it on the wood floors instead of a broom. I used it on my kitchen and it took me two minutes, when normally it takes me at least 10 with a broom, and I always find stuff I miss afterwards.

But even this presents a problem. My girlfriend recently got a Roomba from a flea market for a great price. She said it works great, and I asked her to find me one for my birthday. I would much rather have a little round robot cleaning my wood floors while I’m at work than me having to do them when I get home. I will see her next week… if she gets me a Roomba-- that I asked her to get from a flea market-- I will not be able to return it.

Sigh. I feel bad. I should return the Dyson. I feel like The Agent wasted $300. But The Agent told me to keep it…. What should I do?

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

So, I had a birthday. I am 38 now.

I’ve never been one to lie about my age. I’ve never said, “I’m 29    (.… plus 9.)” At the same time, I’ve never felt my age. It was almost like I was bragging: “Oh, you thought I was 25? I’m actually 34.” Stuff like that.

But this year, I’m feeling my age. It’s been a rough year on my self esteem. I’ve gained 23 pounds in the last year. Everything in my closet looks frumpalicious. Lately when I look in the mirror, I see a 38-year-old-who’s-trying-to-look-like-a-29-year-old. I don’t want to look like a 38-year-old-who’s-trying-to-look-like-a-29-year-old. I want to look hot.

So, in the last year, I started coloring my hair, I’ve worked on my fashion sense, I’ve started adding more make up to my face in the mornings. Then, on my birthday, I locked the door, stripped off my clothes, and took a pretty hard assessment of myself.

I saw stretch marks. Flabs. Gravity.

Sigh. I am sure these things were present on my body prior to Saturday, but I didn’t really see them. I see them now.

But God Bless The Agent. He was staring at me all day long. “What are you looking at?” I asked self consciously.

“The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” The Agent answered right away.

He’s a keeper.

Currently...

Stole this from Karen... Enjoy!


Current Book
Crossed by Ally Condie. It’s the second in a series. The first book was called Matched, and it was excellent.

Current Albums
Just bought the Taylor Swift Christmas CD, which promptly caused the player in my car to break. Awesome.

Current Shame-Inducing Guilty Pleasure
Young adult fiction. Vampires and Angels are so last season. Now it’s all about the dystopian societies!

Current Drink
Coffee with peppermint mocha creamer

Current Favorite Blog
If you’re on that list over there on the right, it means I heart you. And if you’re not on there but you think you’re awesome, it’s probably because I don’t know about you. Make yourself known.

Current Songs
Honey Bee by Blake Shelton “You be my sugar baby, I’ll be your sweet iced tea. You be my honeysuckle, I’ll be your honey bee.” It’s cheesy, but it’s catchy.

Current Wish-List
A Dyson
A Shark steam mop
A Roomba
A Cruise
Movers to come and pack for me
A right hand ring

Current Needs
To come up with entertaining blogs entries so my new readers don’t get bored and peace out
To lose the 23 pounds I’ve gained this year.
To lose the last 15 pounds I needed to lose after that

Current Triumph
My job. I think I’m getting it. It’s coming together. I don’t feel need to drink myself into a crying stupor each night anymore.

Current Favorite Film
I thought Limitless with Bradley Cooper was very good. And very nice to look at, I might add!

(I totally wrote ass instead of add at first. Yes, I might have been thinking about Bradley Cooper’s butt. Don’t judge me.) 

Current TV Show
The Walking Dead
Modern Family
The Big Bang Theory

Current Celebrity Crush
This guy:

His name is Norman Reedus and I love him. If you don’t know him, please turn on the tv and watch The Walking Dead on AMC. And say a little prayer that he doesn’t turn into a bad guy, like I fear he might.

Current Indulgence
More of a future indulgence than a current one: I WILL be finding cute boots on Friday. Totally my mission.

Current Outfit
I’ve worn a sweater and skirt two days in a row. My boss was interviewing someone for a job today, and while he was showing him around, my boss saw me and said, “Wow Lovely, you look really professional today.” As opposed to every other day, when I just roll out of bed and drag myself to work.

Current Banes of My Existence
Potty training. I will persevere, you dreaded potty chair!

Current Excitement
My birthday is on Saturday! Happy birthday to me!

Current Mood
I’m a little chilly, is that a mood? Otherwise, I’m excited for GNO tomorrow and then family dinner over the weekend!

Current Picture
The bathroom that The Agent is redesigning for us:

I don't know why we're both in the shower at the same time.

Or why we have clothes on.

The Prom That Wasn't

I have a confession.

I have never been to prom.

It wasn’t even a question my freshman and sophomore years. I wasn’t dating anyone, none of my friends were going, it was the furthest thing on my mind.

I thought I had a chance of going my Junior year. I was kind of messing around with a guy who I had a few classes with, nothing serious. He ended up asking his ex-girlfriend. I wasn’t seeing anyone else, so I had no other options. The sad part was, I wrote the poem that was printed on the favors, so everyone was looking for me at prom to congratulate me on the poem.

I had a date to prom my senior year. My dress was red and fitted and moderately slutty. This was 1992, so I had my shoes colored to match the dress, as was the cool thing to do back then (note- it is no longer cool to do this. Go buy a pair of silver or gold strappy sandals). I picked up my boyfriend’s boutonniere, made the appointment to get my hair done, I was good to go.

Until.

My boyfriend was in college, and was also in the National Guard. Three days before prom, he was sent to Los Angeles to help restore peace during the Rodney King riots.

All my friends talked about the wonderful time they had had when we were back in school on Monday.

I had spent the weekend with my grandmother.

I am super cool.

You decide: Hopeless or Full of Hope?

The last time I was at my dentist’s office, his front desk receptionist told me this story.

Many years ago, she had a husband who died at the young age of 26, leaving her with four young children. Her husband had a genetic heart defect, and all four children had inherited the same defect. The cardiologist had told the widowed mother that none of her children would live to see 30.

Now, the point of her story was a happy one, as the youngest child had just turned 30, thus proving the doctor wrong on all four counts. But I couldn’t get past what I felt was huge flaw in the story.

If I knew that The Agent had some disease that would likely end with death at an early age, I'm sure that I still would have married him. I think I definitely still would have tried to get pregnant. The adoption probably wouldn’t have been an option, since we had to pass a health screening before getting qualified. So, it would have been me and The Agent and Bug, and I would have been happy with that, for whatever time we had together.

But FOUR children? With someone you knew wouldn’t get to see them grow up? I don’t think I could have done that.

Of the four children, two of them don’t have any memories of their father at all, and the other two only have broken fragments, tarnished by the illness that eventually killed him. They never got to know their father, and their early memories of their mother are of a woman filled with grief and worry for the future. I think that’s really sad.

And I think it’s a little selfish.

It’s one thing to live life to the fullest because you never know what’s going to happen. I’m all for that. But to have not one, not two, but four children, and to KNOW you likely won't live to see them grow up… I don’t know. That’s like being 80 years old and deciding to have a baby.

I know, it’s none of my business. Just like it’s none of my business that the Duggars are pregnant with their 20th child, or the 94-year-old from India who just fathered a child.  To each their own, it doesn’t affect me at all, blah blah blah. And one could make the argument that anyone who lives in fear of what might happen someday misses out on a lot. I agree with that, too. I’m just writing out my thoughts.

What do you think? Good for that couple for having four children while they had the time together? Or shame on them for adding four children to an already hopeless situation?

If you're happy and you know it...

Left over Halloween candy makes me happy. Bug gets one piece a day. BK doesn’t even get that. We throw it all out on November 15th. So there’s a lot of extra candy for The Agent and I to eat. Some people think this means I deprive the children. I say it makes me awesome-- I’m saving them years of dentist bills and Weight Watchers Meetings.

Online shopping makes me happy. I have been shopping up a storm, scouring leaked Black Friday ads, trying to plan my attack. I do the majority of my shopping on Black Friday, so it’s a big day for me. Shopping and getting good deals make me happy!

I am so SO happy that the house is coming along. The Agent finished laying the tile in the bathroom floors, and now he’s laying tile in the shower. When that’s done, he’ll start installing the hardwood downstairs, and get the contractor to install the granite. The end is in sight! So excited!

I’m happy that it finally got cold enough to turn on the heater this week! I have gained 23 pounds in the last year-- which does NOT make me happy-- and I’m happy I can start wearing sweaters to cover up the muffin top!

I feel like my Happy list is lacking this week.... It's not that I'm not happy, I just need sleep! Good night!

People are Rude

BK has very striking features. His hair is very thin, and so blond that it’s almost white. His eyes are a beautiful bright blue. He’s a very beautiful child, if slightly children of the corn-ish. The rest of us have dark thick hair. My eyes are green, Bug’s and The Agent’s are brown. BK clearly does not look like the rest of us.

Still, I would not question his paternity if I was stranger and I saw the four of us together. We all have fair skin. BK picks up on so many of The Agent mannerisms that he's starting to look a lot like his Daddy. I would just think, “Dang, that kid is cute,” and move on.

But people are rude.

We often have complete strangers approach us in the grocery store, saying things like, “Where’d he get the blond hair from?” We don’t know these people and we will never see them again, so we often say things like “The milkman is blond,” or The Agent will say to me, “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that…” and we laugh and ignore the stranger. We like messing with people.

We had a class meeting at the school a couple weeks ago, and this was the first time Bug’s teacher really had a chance to observe BK for any length of time. She brought up BK’s looks four different times:

“How did BK get the blond hair? Is there blond hair further back in you family tree?”
“Did Bug have blond hair when she was a baby?”
“And his eyes are so blue! How did that happen?”
“Did you or your husband ever have blond hair?”

After trying to change the subject the first three times, The Agent finally said that his own hair was lighter when he was a child (which is the truth). It’s not a secret that BK is adopted, but it’s really nobody’s business, and I don’t believe in singling him out, especially in a room full of other parents who we don't know. He’s not our adoptive son, he’s just our son.

But the adoption aside, I think it was so rude to even ask. What if I had had a scandalous affair and BK was the result?  Was she hoping that The Agent would say, “Well, it turns out that Lovely was a dirty whore and got knocked up when she was messing around with our neighbor’s gardener.” Whatever the reason, it wasn’t any of her business, and she should have gotten a clue the first three times she mentioned it.

The Agent was  more upset than I was. “From now on, I’m going to say my last girlfriend was blond, and now I’m not sure who the real mother is.” Great. I’m one of three people who gets The Agent. Everyone else will wonder what he's talking about.

Looking back, I wonder if maybe I didn’t handle the situation as well as I could have. What would you have done?

The Lovely Light

(I just read this again, and it makes no sense. I should not be allowed to write late at night.) 

The Agent is gifted. He has ideas in his head that I can’t possibly imagine. We could be millionaires with all the inventions he has had.

Except The Agent has a fatal flaw. He’s the biggest procrastinator ever.

You know those Crystal Lite on the go packages that pretty much the entire universe uses on a daily basis? The Agent thought of that a good five years before you ever saw them on a grocery store shelf.

As The Agent is fond of telling me. Every time I open a bottle of water.

“You know, that was my idea,” he says as I add strawberry lemonade to my water.

“Yes, Honey, I know. You’ve told me.”

“But you don’t believe me. I thought of that YEARS before they started selling them in stores.”

“Yes, Dear…. But you didn’t do anything about it.”

When The Agent has an idea, I am under strict orders not to tell anyone about it. It’s unfortunate, because some of his ideas are a little, ummm…. Silly. And I would love to tell you about them, but with my luck, the one I tell you about really WILL be a million dollar idea, and then one of my seven readers is suddenly reading my blog from a yacht sailing the Caribbean.

The Agent would not be happy.

The other day, I told The Agent about an idea for an invention that could really sell. I often will be halfway to work and wonder whether or not I shut the garage door. I can’t turn around to check with out being late for work. I’m always sure that I shut the door…. But I don’t specifically remember actually shutting it.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has felt this sensation.

I might be the only one who feels it every morning.

Anyway, I think it would be brilliant if there was some kind of light sensor that would fit on my key chain. It would light up whenever the garage door was open. So if I was halfway to work and suddenly wondered if I left the garage door open, I could just look down at my key chain, see that the light was not on (meaning that it was shut), and I could continue on my way. And if it was lit up, I could hurry home and shut the door before the punk kids come and break into the house and eat my Cheerios.

Brilliant, right? I thought so.

I told The Agent about this, and he didn’t love it! He doesn’t know a good idea when he hears one.

When you make your first million, please send me a free sensor. And name it after me. The Lovely Light Sounds nice.