slightly sinful?

so mcdonald's is giving away free mcskillet burritos today and tomorrow to celebrate "leap day." and i seem to be addicted to fast food breakfast these days - it's easier than busting out pans and shit to make eggs and things just for me. anyway, i bypassed the freebie and went for my usual sausage mcmuffin instead. of course, i got the iced coffee and the combo came with a hash brown.

do hash browns even COUNT as french fries? because i ate it, but now i feel like i totally sinned (having given up fries for lent and all). and before i get chastised for the sausage, i don't follow the "no meat on fridays" thing - that's a catholic practice.

[shrug] oh, well. it was yummy. i didn't swear off potatoes altogether anyway - i made potatoes au gratin last night with the bbq pork ribs, and ate lots of those. i still haven't (and won't) crack on the coke sacrifice, so i doubt that i'll get struck down by lightning or something.

i think it's time to cut the bean's nails again. we were playing in bed this morning and she cackled, reached out to touch my face, and scratched the hell outta my nose. ow.

and i need a fucking dog whisperer or something. i swear, i love my molly to death, but lately she has been pissing me off - quite literally. she's paper trained, so she knows where she's supposed to go when she needs to relieve herself. she KNOWS this. it actually cracks me up because she always waits till she's alone before she goes potty - like she needs privacy or something. but since the bean was born, she's been pissing all over the fucking place. luckily, the sunroom she spends the day in has tile vs. carpet, but it's still not okay, dammit! we come home to find a damn lake of pee right by the door. the damn dog pisses a fucking gallon, it seems. and then we have to bust out the paper towels, the clorox clean-up spray, and a brush to scrub the damn floor.

i realize she's most likely jealous (although she doesn't take it out on the bean herself, thank goodness), but we've been making an extra effort to give her love and cuddles and pet her and everything, and she still does it. and last week, i came home to lake pee-pee, found her in a corner, and when i reached out to her, the bitch snapped at me. she actually caught my thumb and managed to get a nibble out of it. i was so pissed off, i thought i was going to explode. ugh. but i can never be mad for too long at this face. seriously, how could i?

here's another picture i always go to whenever i need a good laugh. i think i caught her mid-sneeze.


bwahahahaha! oh man, gets me every time.

i was looking through my iPhoto library last night and totally cracked up at this picture (this is coming home from the hospital):

she's so freaking tiny! look at how her socks don't even fit her - and i just took those out of her closet to give away, because now her little ankles are so chubby that they cut off her circulation. so sad - i love those socks. and my little bean has CANKLES! for comparison, check out how big she is now.

i'm giggling at her little toe sticking out of her PJs. ha!

every time i have to go up a size in diapers, or have to pack away clothes she's grown out of and pull out stuff in the next size up, i get a little melancholy. she's just growing so stinking fast, and while i'm totally excited and proud whenever she learns a new skill or something, i want to burst into tears at how quickly the time is going by. [sigh]

shit. i'm getting all emo and stuff. shake it off, shake it off. maybe it's time to go "talk" to some brides on the knot's p&e board. that always makes me all feisty and stuff.

life is good.

it just is!

i think the gorgeous weather we're having lately is a big part of my cheery demeanor. sorry to those on the east coast, in the midwest, or anyone else who's experiencing shitty climates these days, but southern california is just so beautiful right now! it's been hovering around 80 degrees, clear skies, warm sun. i'm generally not a fan of particularly warm days, but after lots of cold and rain, even i'm happy for change. plus, i can dress the bean in short sleeves and i busted out a tank top this morning! whee! i hope it holds out for the weekend.

i scooped up a new client who's doing some really fun and pretty invitations. they're going for a spanish flair, using red and black as their primary colors, with splashes of yellow here and there. she mailed me a spool of 3-inch-wide black lace that we're incorporating in the design, and it's going to be oh so purty!

in a little while, i'm heading out to the bank to open coogan accounts for the kid and the bean. basically, any child in the entertainment industry has 15% of every check automatically deposited into this blocked trust account, and the money is untouchable until they're 18. just in time for cars and college! although our goal with this thing isn't necessarily to make boatloads of cash, but to have some fun and maybe have a tiny part of the glitz and glamour that is hollywood. yeah, i'm a starstruck mofo. so is the kid. and i think the bean would think it was kind of cool to look back at pictures and things of stuff she was in - that's if we actually get anything booked. with the writer's strike over, we could very well have a call here and there, so i just want to be prepared. their work permits are being processed, too, so as soon as we have those two things in place, we're ready to go!

mcdonald's has yummy iced coffee. haha - you KNEW i had to throw some kind of food up in here. anyway, the kid and i stumbled upon it while getting breakfast last weekend, and it's pretty delish. it's almost good enough to make me stop driving out to burger king for my beloved mocha joes. almost. [taking a sip of mocha joe picked up after dropping the kid off at school]

and today is the first day all week that i don't have anything to do that'll take me too far away from home! whee! i want to get some laundry done, relax, maybe play on the knot/nest a bit. and i'm going to make some ribs for dinner. i'm going to season them, put them under the broiler for about 15 minutes, and toss 'em in the crock pot with a shitload of bbq sauce. add some corn, salad, and au gratin potatoes, and we'll have quite a lovely dinner!

my honey ryan seacrest is doing a "kiis my baby" contest. a cash prize is at stake here, so of course, i submitted a photo of the bean. can't hurt to try, right? anyway, voting opens up on march 18th, so i'll post a link and if y'all feel so inclined... ;) i hate begging for votes, so i'll leave it at that. plus, the bean will be unmasked fo' real. ha!

and here's a couple of fun pictures i took yesterday. ah, i love my girls so much.

tidbits

• i'm excited because i'm going to join a group of my buddies to cheer on our friends from the oc, who've been training for the l.a. marathon. they've raised a ton of cash for the leukemia & lymphoma society, and i just think they're awesome.
• this is pissing me off. i can't seem to get any higher than 14.5 seconds.
• i'm taking the kid and the bean today to register with a talent agency that specializes in background (extra) work for kids. the kid is damn near out of her head with the possibility of getting to work on a disney channel show - specifically, the new "j.o.n.a.s." show. yup, it stars the jonas brothers as "junior operatives networking as spies." i don't make this shit up, people.
• the bean's already been signed with a local management company who specializes in placing babies in commercials, movies, television shows, and print ads. our manager is so sweet and is extremely knowledgeable about the industry, as her three kids grew up in it. whee!
• this means that there's a possibility that the bean may be unmasked soon. it seems silly to keep blocking those eyes (as fun as it is to color coordinate the mask) when there's a chance that she'll be out in the public eye somehow anyway. heh.
• my mom went to london for a mini-vacation. i thought it was funny that i had absolutely no idea whatsoever that she was out of the country. oh, well.
• speaking of vacation, we paid our deposit for our accommodations in nyc over spring break. yahoo! it looks like a nice little apartment, and my cousin r says it's in an ideal location - right near times square. it's a 1-bedroom on the second floor of a building with a doorman and an elevator. i love how the owner describes it on the website as "not in a shady area." awesome.
• snoop's "sensual seduction" - which is a horrid song to begin with, is apparently cleaned up for radio play. why do i say this? because on my satellite radio, it's "sensual eruption" - taking this song to a whole 'nother level. the hub, the kid, the bean and i were coming home from church on sunday when it came on and after listening to it, i felt like i needed to flip a bitch and go right back for some cleansing.
• the kid was working on some definition flash cards for history the other day. they're just simple 3" x 5" index cards, with the definition written on the back and the word and a descriptive picture pasted to the front. she always has me help her find the pictures on the internet, and one of the words was "figurehead". the definition was "a person who is elected into a position of leadership, but has no actual authority." and here's the picture we used:

bacon is good.

of course, this is not news, nor is it a secret. in fact, tater and i often send each other links to interesting/outrageous/ridiculous/delicious bacon-related items. and so this post is dedicated to my dear friend tater!

here's a few of the fun ones she's found:

bacon vodka.


bacon weave. obviously, these folks have a lot of time on their hands.



bacon-wrapped tofu.


and, more bacon fun:

a bacon scarf! my friend ssinca actually posted a similar scarf on the O.C. nest board a few weeks ago, although hers admittedly was somewhat nicer-looking. well, as nice-looking as a bacon scarf could possibly be.


bacon vs. tofu. who wins?
bacon MINTS. i love the description, taken from perpetualkid.com: "each one of these mints tastes like a delicious slice of crispy bacon with just a hint of mint flavor to give it that extra punch! It may sound weird but once you taste it, you'll see that mint and bacon is a match made in China. Each 2" x 2" tin contains one hundred mints." yummy, yes?



bacon band-aids. and because it can't always be about bacon (wait, did i really say that?), there's a box that has egg band-aids to go with it. oh, and confession: i HAVE a box of these. shocked, aren'tcha?



bacon wallet. imagine the looks you'd get when you whip this thing out, say, at a fancy dinner with clients or something. "heeeeeeeyyyyy, isn't it cool?" mm-hmm. awesome.


WWBD? which, of course, means "what would bacon do?" yeah.



gummy bacon. i don't know which is worse, the bacon mints or gummy bacon. seriously, it could taste marvelous and yet there's no way in hell i'd try it.



however, i HAVE tried these: bacon-flavored jelly bellies. yup. they come in the harry potter-themed box along with other such lovely flavors as booger, dirt, vomit, and ear wax. i was at the jelly belly factory in northern california two years ago and decided, hey, why not? and believe it or not, it really wasn't as disgusting as it sounds. i almost liked them. almost.

lastly, bacon salt. because as the company's logo says, everything should taste like bacon!

in my quest for all things bacon, i also found sites/blogs dedicated to my favorite nitrite-filled pork product, like baconunwrapped.com and iheartbacon.com. sheesh. and i thought i was bad.

wow, i've never used the word "bacon" so much in the span of oh, the ten minutes i've spent compiling this post. hmmm. all that's missing is gravy. maybe i'll start looking for fun gravy products and websites for a future post. heh. maybe not - i'm a little scared of what i might find.

hey, i'm hungry - guess what i'm gonna go make?

it's the 24-pound baby

you asked for him.

i aim to please.

so, here he is:


i hope it's okay with his mama that i'm showing him off on her behalf. isn't he adorable? he looks like a little bear cub in that outfit.

winnie and her rock star band(s)

the bean, the kid, and i spent a fun and fabulous afternoon with some of the SFAMily. the monkey has a great picture-filled recap here. our beloved winnie is leaving us for the wrong coast, but for the right reasons - her hub is there! so we planned a farewell shindig for her, which was graciously hosted by nanette and her wonderful ILs.

somehow, i managed to have a 2:00 start time stuck in my nugget, which i of course didn't realize was wrong until i pulled up the evite to get the address. mm-hmm, by the time i was plugging the info into the navigation system, it was already starting. nice. and we still had to stop at the store to pick up some soda that i'd volunteered to bring! d-oh.

when we first started talking about details for this get-together, i jokingly said that i was going to make a recipe i'd found called "winnie's white chocolate drops." i bookmarked it and forgot about it until saturday, when it was time to make the treats i promised to bring. so i printed it out, realized i already had all the ingredients on hand, and got to work.

they were so easy - just melt together some peanut butter and white chocolate chips, mix in some rice krispies cereal, peanuts, and mini marshmallows, and drop tablespoonfuls onto a baking sheet. stick them in the fridge till they're set, and then melt some chocolate chips in a ziploc baggie, cut the corner, and drizzle. i ended up going to bed before the last step, but managed to get it done about 20 minutes before leaving for the party.

and because i'm a total dork, i decided it would be fun to make my drizzles into "w"s - for winnie, of course!

when we got to the house, i was not-so-secretly pleased to note that we were not the last to arrive. i really HATE being late! ugh.

nanette picked up cuban food from versailles for all of us - i went with the combo of chicken and pork. i'd never tried this place before, and i instantly understood the raves from the other girls with my first bite. oh, so delicious. i wish i had more of it right now. the monkey mentioned that the pork was even better than the chicken i was "mmmmmm"ing over, and she was totally right. and the kid LOVED the rice. oh, how i wish there was a versailles near us.

and along with my "winnie" treats, nanette made a batch of red velvet cake balls - and i almost wish she hadn't, because we helped ourselves to the leftovers (packed carefully in a baggie) and now i literally have to sit on my hands to keep from eating them all. they're just so dang scrumptious.

after the eating was over, and we'd all managed to get in a nice amount of chit-chatting, it was game time. nanette busted out an impressive stack of xbox games that included karaoke revolution, guitar hero, rock band, and dance dance revolution. this was actually how i managed to bribe the kid into going to this shindig - she LOVES rock band. and as we watched her in action, she proved that she's pretty damn good at it.

nanette went first, at the guest of honor's request, and we all joined her in karaoke-ing "baby got back." and then the monkey jumped up to deliver quite an impressive rendition of "humpty dance" - she didn't even need to look at the screen for most of the song!


the bean got lots and lots of attention, too.

r had quite the magic touch!

i love my girls.

the monkey was quite proud of her perfect score. ha!


our rock bands, in all the different configurations (i love how the kid managed to score a part in almost all of them):

check out these band members, totally focused on their parts:

this made us sad.

amber finished off the gaming with a quick DDR demo.


lastly, here's a group photo - what's a GTG without a group photo?

and as i said to winnie, i refuse to look at this as "goodbye" - we have e-mail and the knot to help us keep in touch! this does not, however, mean that i won't miss her. winnie makes me laugh like no other.

good luck, winnie + hub, travel safe, and KIT!

U R
2 good
2 be
4gotten!

have a bitchen move! whee!