shit, shit, shit!

i can't believe the hub's birthday is in TWO days and i haven't come up with a single fucking idea as to what to buy for him.

fuckity fuck fuck.

i swear, he's the hardest person to buy for. i'm screwed.

and i can't believe it's already been a whole year since we had his birthday lunch at madre's. that was the first time i took a belly pic - ha! amazing what difference a year makes.


i guess i better take a break from voting and get crackin' on a gift.

a lazy, busy weekend

so it was an uber productive AND uber lazy weekend at the same time. that makes no freaking sense whatsoever, but i promise it'll make sense by the end of this post.

my mom came for a rare visit on saturday morning. actually, this was the 2nd week in a row of rare visits, so perhaps they're not so rare anymore. heh. i just confused myself.

anyway, we had fun sitting and chatting, just catching up and talking about everything from american idol to the bean's poop schedule to updates on family. and yes, i got slightly chastised for a post title from last week. ah, well. [waving at mom, who's fo' sho' reading this] thanks for coming, mom! and thanks again for the hunk of corned beef you brought - i'm hoarding that shit all to myself. the hub doesn't know i have it, and well, he's on a "need to know" basis in that regard.

after she took off to meet up with my gram and some aunts for dim sum (yum), we hopped into the car and went off in search of some lunch. we ended up at capri deli in covina - it's been there for 50 years, but i'd never heard of it. apparently, he'd been told that their pastrami is even better *gasp* than the hat - by some of his buddies at the local cigar shop. heh. so we decided to give it a try.

it's a great little place - sandwiches, pizza, pasta, plus a mini-italian market! they had homemade frozen lasagnas to take home, delicious looking cookies, and slices of homemade cake. not to mention, they had a whole section of old-fashioned bottled sodas:
i went with the pastrami dip, a stewart's orange & cream soda (which ended up tasting like st. joseph's baby aspirin to me, yuck), and a slice of lemon cream cake. and oh, was it delicious. the pastrami was lean and stuffed into the softest, chewiest sesame seed-topped roll, and that lemon cream cake was *choke* moist (this word is ONLY acceptable when describing baked goods) - layered with light lemon cream with crushed lemon candy pressed into the frosting. mmm, i want to go back right now.

once we got in the car, the bean fell asleep. i crack up at how pissed off she looks when she drops off into dreamland.

we went home and relaxed a bit - the hub napped while i did this, and then when dinnertime rolled around he popped up and said "let's go to sushi roku!"

you don't have to ask me twice.

we were seated immediately (and we were slightly amused to hear the hostess telling the couple behind us that it would be a 45-minute wait) right next to a big ass sausage party. and as we watched them flirt with the waitress and order one round of drinks after another, we realized it was a bachelor party. the hub and i exchanged looks and cracked up every few minutes as they got louder, drunker, and and flirtier. it was pretty damn funny. dinner AND a show! whee!

a quick stop at 21 choices (whose name i don't get, because they only have, like, 6 different flavors of yogurt on any given day) for some dessert, and then we headed home to sit in front of the tv on a saturday night, like old folks. and the poor hub ended up going to bed nursing a horrific migraine that came out of nowhere.

and sadly for him, it stayed with him all night and into yesterday morning. we skipped church and i called in an order to pick up at flappy jack's for breakfast. that joint was PACKED when i got there, and i felt some dagger-like stares as i sashayed in, paid for our food, and sauntered out with a big yummy bag within the span of about 5 minutes.

we ended up kicking it at home all day long in our PJs. ha! we NEVER do that. but we sat there playing with the bean, watching endless episodes of "i love lucy," and get this: we powered through our taxes and got them e-filed. yahoo!

now you see what i meant by lazy AND productive. all three of us were in jammies and no one set foot in the shower all day long. good thing i had some trader joe's goods in the house to make for dinner. god forbid we should have to actually get cleaned up and presentable.

man, i love lazy weekends like that. they're too few and far between.

only child syndrome in full effect

okay, so this is what i've been staring at for the last hour (i don't know what's up with the funky color scheme, but i'm tired of trying to fix it):


i've seriously been sitting here pressing F5 to vote and vote and vote and vote for at least an hour straight. my fingers are cramping up, my eyes are totally blurry, and my head is about to explode. but look:

The results are in!
33 % 1. Kaitlyn
29 % 2. Dillon
5 % 3. Patrick
2 % 4. Amelia
1 % 5. Kordell
30 % 6. Kellen

i have major issues. i know this. but dammit, i want her to win. heh.

TGIF

so yesterday was quite a productive day for me. whee!

• finished up week 3 of the couch to 5K program. i struggled with the parts where i had to jog/run for 3 minutes straight, but i got through it. i'm a little afraid of next week, when it bumps up to intervals of 5 minutes. eek.
• managed to buy two tickets for the kid to finally go to wango tango. she's wanted to go every year, but never has. and this year, miley cyrus AND the jo-bros are headlining. it was a no-brainer. we're calling it part of her birthday present. heh. and i had to give myself a reminder about the stupid presale keyword. i was so discombobulated from the pressure of getting through for tickets, i knew i'd need it right in front of me. lame-o, that's me.
  
• finally completed the invitation order i'd been working on, packed up and mailed out. i really hope the bride and groom love these - i poured a lot of hours and effort into them. cross your fingers.
• found cardstock in almost the right color for another client's place cards. almost is good enough - it'll be dark and the difference of maybe one and a half shades won't be noticeable. i hope.
• took the bean to her gymboree class. she was tired and wailed all the way there, but once i got her inside, she realized where she was and was all smiles. i love that she loves it and recognizes it now. not to mention, she falls into the sleep of the dead when it's over. sensory overload at its best.
• voted about a zillion times. you know what i mean. and even better - no more eye blockers (the monkey's right - it's kind of silly now)!
  
• cleared a crapload of shit off the dining table that's been sitting there for ages and ages. the hub was on the verge of just dumping it all into a trash can, so i figured i'd better do something about it before he did.
• brainstormed on birthday gift ideas for the hub. it's next week and it'd registered in my head that it was coming soon, but the procrastinator in me kept putting off actually putting something together. i swear, he's the hardest person on the planet to buy for. i asked him what he wanted, and all i got was the same response from christmas: "peace on earth, babe. peace on earth." shit.
• had dinner with the ILs at north woods inn. yummy - salad with their house dressing, fabulous cheese bread, a hunk of perfectly cooked meat, and baked potato with gravy. all that was missing was bacon to make it perfect.
• i forgot to show off my two new books that i picked up at the kid's school the other night. they always time the book fair to coincide with either back-to-school night or open house, so i end up totally suckered into a nice long list of books for the kid. although that's a little harsh, because i always encourage her to read - whether it's for her english class book report, a magazine, or a book about her beloved jo-bros. and i never turn down a request from her for books for that very reason. anyway, this is a fun book that gives you the best and worst options at all sorts of restaurants:

and this one is a great book of dessert recipes that make my mouth water. chocolate caramel-pecan souffle cake, anyone?


funny, i just realized that these books are absolutely contradictory of each other. heh.

better than nothing

and definitely better than lawn seats (not by much, though), which is all i could get on the first couple of tries that gave me something more than the dreaded "we couldn't find tickets that matched your request." besides, i told the kid i wouldn't do lawn seats at all - they suck and you might as well skip it at that point.

BUT i could only get two tickets.

here's the sucky part - the hub and i are going to a wedding that night. the kid's BFF's mom was going to take them - and now this means that the two of them will have to go it alone, with the mom dropping off and picking up.

and of course, ten minutes into the presale, they're sold out. i keep trying just in case folks had tickets on their screen and timed out, but not so much.

shit. but i bet i can find some on ebay or something. of course, this means they won't be together, and they'll be way more expensive than face value.

fuckity fuck shit hell fuck.

t-minus 16 minutes

till those pesky wango tango tickets go on presale. the kid is absolutely counting on me, and i'm feeling the pressure. prices range from $40 to $200, and i'm shooting for 4 of the best available. hang the cost!

shake it off, shake it off.

[jogging in place and taking a long sip of mocha joe]

[stretching arms, bending at the waist, flexing fingers]

whoo! i'm ready. i'm logged in to ticketbastard. i've got the page open and the presale password written in sharpie on a fluorescent pink post-it.

[double-checking credit card info]

i'm ready. bring it on.

silliness with the kid

i swear, i have so much fun with the kid. she's so silly and funny, and i absolutely dread the end of the weeks that she's home. when she isn't around, it's a lot quieter.

the other day, she was cleaning her room while i was putting away laundry in our room (exciting, i know), and she came barreling through the door looking like this:

awesome. we have our very own elphaba. i knew she'd enjoyed "wicked" as much as i had, but i had no idea she liked it this much. ha! it reminded me of when she was in the 2nd grade and dressed up as a witch for halloween. we painted her face green and when i picked her up after school, she'd washed it all off because the sight of her own face in the mirror scared her. i must find a picture to share.

i dropped off mollydog to get her bath yesterday, and we picked her up while running other random errands. she's all nice and fluffy and she smells good again. yay!

we headed out to ontario to hit up the mills again - this time, to stock up on new clothes for the kid. plus, i'd tried on one of the little sun outfits i found for the bean at the carter's store, and realized that for $6, i couldn't pass up the opportunity to scoop up a bunch of them in different colors. plus, there's an abercrombie outlet there, and hollister, and pacific sunwear - some of the kid's favorite stores.

and they didn't disappoint. we managed to find a whole lot of stuff for really cheap, which made my checkbook happy. and the kid is pretty money-conscious, so she's usually careful about what she picks out. we walked through the saks outlet and i drooled over the wide selection of premium jeans again. you'll be proud (or smack me upside the head, i'm not sure which) of me for suppressing the urge to stock up - the joe's jeans and true religions were all 20% off of their already low $99 price. i really wanted to pick up a couple of pairs, but in all honesty, i don't need them and i tried to remember that we weren't there for ME. and aside from a few tops at abercrombie, i did pretty well.

oh, and did i happen to mention that there's a krispy kreme at ontario mills? not in the mall itself, but in one of the outparcels - and it has a drive-thru. yes, folks, i decided i wanted some sweet, glazed goodness - and i wasn't even willing to roll my ass outta the car to get it. i love it.


the kid indulged my need for photographic evidence of these goodies:


man, those things are good. neither of us could even remember the last time we'd had a krispy kreme donut. and we managed to get them home before diving into the box - but not until after we'd devoured our yoshinoya beef bowls. the hub was at a dinner conference, and so we were on our own for dinner. we munched while we watched that train wreck of a show, "moment of truth." i don't know why, but we can't seem to NOT watch it when it's on. pure trash, but it's addictive trash.

and tonight is open house at school. they've decided to throw in some fundraising and have the in-n-out truck coming too, to serve burgers and earn some money towards the new computer lab. whee!

i like food a lot. can you tell?

kaiser, i used to love you

but thou hast forsaken me.

okay, a bit dramatic. but i'm annoyed. they cancelled the bean's coverage and never even bothered to let me know. when she was born, they said she had to have her own plan, because she doesn't need dental coverage, and they couldn't just add her on to our current account. what the hell kind of stupidery is that?

so when we started getting bills, i called member services to see if i could just send one payment for both plans. yes, i'm lazy like that. hell, i don't even write checks - i pay online. heh. anyway, i was assured that it would be no problem, as long as i referenced both account numbers on the payments. cool.

a few months go by, i'm making the payments, all is well. february comes, we take the bean for her 4-month checkup, great. and then it's almost april, and i realize that we haven't received an appointment card for her 6-month visit.

so i call and get immediately transferred to member services. and i'm told that her account's been cancelled for non-payment. what the fuck? AND it'd been cancelled back in january. but when we went in february, no one said a damn word.

well, it turns out that they'd been crediting our account with all the payments i'd been sending in. and stupid me, i'm so oblivious, i didn't even realize that we'd not been getting billed for coverage for the last month or so. duh - we had a credit balance! but what annoyed me was that they never bothered to send us any notices of late payments, or even a notice of impending termination. my little friend monica in member services confirmed this when she looked at the outgoing mail screen on her trusty computer.

but of course, i couldn't get it resolved over the phone. oh, no, i had to fax in a letter to have the account reviewed and reinstated. so fucking stupid. and in the meantime, the bean's livin' on the edge, with no medical insurance coverage. great.

so today, almost a week after i faxed in that letter (with no response whatsoever), i called again and this time, i got shit done. she's covered again and all i have to do is send in a payment that would make a sizable dent in the national deficit.

yay! i'm so calling in with poop issues, questions about giving her water, what kind of cereal to start with. might as well take advantage of health insurance in ways aside from actual medical treatment or hospitalization, since [knocking on wood] the bean is quite healthy.

my family is crazy

a few slightly outlandish tidbits gleaned from my family party on sunday that i forgot to mention:

one of my zillion cousins got into an ugly ass car accident the previous week. i asked him for all the gory details, not realizing how serious it had been, and whoa. i guess he was on the freeway, headed down to the beach with some of his buddies, and the car in front of him slammed on their brakes for no apparent reason. he swerved, lost control, tried to get back on track, and ended up driving right off the side of the road...straight into a tree.

he blacked out, the car caught fire, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in an ambulance with various cuts and scrapes. but he was the lucky one - his friends in the back seat were more seriously injured. i think one of them is still in the hospital - although none of the injuries are life threatening, thank goodness. he said "i'd have called you, but, yeah...my cell phone melted in the fire." sheesh.

a few weeks ago, we received a cute little save-the-date in the mail for another cousin's wedding. now, y'all know i love weddings. and we actually have THREE to attend this year. so of course, when i saw his mother at the party, i wanted to hear details! and i was quite surprised to hear that there WERE no details to discuss. they haven't even picked a venue yet.

um, the wedding is in four months. yeah. wow.

lastly, yet another cousin of mine is pregnant with her second child. and she's due any day now. her dad was telling us that she was trying to talk her doc into inducing labor on saturday. no, it's not medically necessary. and nope, she's not yet overdue. why did she want this so badly?

well, her older daughter's birthday was on saturday. and she thought it would be cool for them to share a birthday.

did you just do a double take, like i did (except that i had to do mine quietly, in my head. and then i filed the whole incident away to take out later and have a proper freak-out)? because that would suck ass for both of those kids. imagine - always having to share your birthday? that's almost worse than having your birthday on a holiday, like christmas. yeah, it's not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but still - bleh.

families. gotta love 'em.

omg, omg, OMG

i need to stop whoring for votes.

seriously.

and why?

well, i just put together a big ass group e-mail with the link and sent it out. and obviously, i've not worked in an office for far too long, because instead of putting the names in the "bcc" field, i cc'd them. oh, but that's nothing compared to the other blunder that's making me cringe so hard i'm almost inside out.

in my contact list, one of my oldest friends is listed right next to one of my ex-bosses from hell.

mm-hmm. you know where this is going.

FUCK. i hope the hub doesn't find out. he will KICK MY ASS.

edit: said ex-boss is an arrogant fucker. he probably won't even open it anyway. hell, i'm praying it lands in his spam folder. send me spam vibes, please.

sadness.

i feel as if i'm missing a limb.

too much easter fun

ah, easter. a holiday about the resurrection of christ, marshmallow bunnies, cadbury creme eggs, and plastic eggs. ain't it great?

my kids are either too young or too old for easter egg hunts, although for some reason the kid was absolutely clamoring for the chance to look for eggs. she was probably picturing cash-filled eggs, like the kind my family used to hide when most of my cousins were still at the right age. i did go to target and pick up a bunch of fun stuff to make an easter goody bag for her - things like lip gloss, new mascara, reese's peanut butter eggs, a couple of magazines with her favorite boys in it (who else remembers tiger beat and bop magazines? i crack up whenever i see these now), and some cocoa-flavored peeps. i threw it all into a lime green gift bag with some shredded tissue paper and she was thrilled. yay!

i got the bean all dressed up in her colorful easter dress, and then we piled in the car and headed off to church. we got there just as the service was starting, but being easter, we got the very last 4 seats in the place. sheesh. we couldn't see a damn thing, but it was better than not getting a seat at all. and the bean was in quite a joyful mood - she giggled and squealed through the whole thing. cute, funny, but rather loud - you've heard how loud she can get. so i took her outside to squeal some more. we were glad she wasn't crying, but she was still loud as hell and although people were giggling and waving at her, i didn't want to piss anyone off.

afterwards, we let the kid pick our breakfast venue, and of all places, she chose ihop. hahahahaha! i love ihop, though. and luckily, there was one right down the street, so off we went.

the bean fell asleep the moment we started the car.

apparently, ihop was partnered with the new dr. seuss movie, horton hears a who. and what does this mean? well, a fun menu, of course! the kid had seen a commercial for it, so she already knew what she wanted. and because they were so outlandish-looking, i risked the hub's wrath and snapped pictures of everything. ha! check it out:

this is "beezlenut splash" - otherwise known as sprite with cubes of jello at the bottom. gross.


these are who-cakes. a stack of pancakes in varying sizes, topped with boysenberry and blueberry glazes, rainbow chips, and a bubble gum lollipop. and that lollipop was TINY. the picture made it look blow-pop size, but it was just a little teeny-tiny dum dum. and yeah - grosser than that beezlenut splash shit.

coke at last! whee!


the hub's strawberry-banana pancakes. after 45 days of no sweets, he was only able to eat half of these. but the bean got to try the sauce, of course.


my boring (but delish) german pancakes - lemony, buttery, crepe-y goodness.

i took a few more pictures as we waited for our check.

man, i love these legs.

after breakfast, we headed home, dropped off the hub, and headed over to a gathering for my aunt's birthday. it'd been quite a while since we'd seen everyone (like, uh, christmas) and it was fun to see them all and show off the bean.

we laughed at the size difference between her and my cousin's daughter (born a week before the bean). chubby vs. skinny. who wins? ;)


here she is with one of my other cousins (i have a zillion freaking cousins, y'all).

all too soon, it was time to leave and head back home to scoop up the hub and the desserts we had for easter dinner with his family. i'd made some of bakerella's fabulous oreo truffles, and had enough time to re-dip them in white chocolate. i'd already dipped them in pink-tinted candy the day before, but they weren't covered to my standards. and a tip, for those of you who may decide to try this: don't use two colors. the pink started to melt a little as i dipped them into the white candy, and while it wasn't ugly, it was a little off. ha! but they tasted fabulous.



we also brought french apple pie and cream cheese brownies. i didn't make these, but they were yummy anyway.

the kid and i had a little fun with the camera.

and our very un-easter-y dinner: kebabs! teriyaki chicken, shrimp, veggies. dee-lish-us.

the bean played with grandma - this kid loves to be upside-down. don't know why, but it sure makes her smile.

and she entertained us at the table. peek:


a-boo! the hair is comical.

whew! it was quite a long day. i think i saw more family this weekend than i have in the last six months. heh.