Damsel In Tech Distress

A lot has been going on the past week. The stinky part being my computer decided to go on vacation while my resident geek (aka my husband) was on a spring break mission trip with his youth group. I tried everything I knew to try. I pushed on plugs, unplugged, replugged, push buttons, swore under my breath...yea, I'm a technomoron! Thankfully my husband knows more and when he got home he tore that bad boy right open and discovered the problem. My hard drive is fine, whew, which should be my lesson #1: backup your stuff!!!

We did have fun last week. We went to visit my parents, the boys got the royal grandparent spoiling, I got some adult conversation and food that wasn't cooked by me. As a cherry on top I made a big 'ole sale at the beehive which means I get to go supply shopping this weekend! And all was right with the world.

Postcards From Folsom

Mr. Cash Pugface here sending greetings from the big house. It seems I've crossed the line this week by peeing on the bed. Not just a mark but a full-on bladder relief. I have my accidents here and there but this seems to have been the straw. Now I have to spend the night in my cage instead of in the big bed until I learn how to ask to be let out to use the potty. The first night was a little tough but now it's fine and I hear my humans are sleeping a lot better now, I can't imagine how! I'm not even aloud on the bed for a mid-day nap!! I'm going to try really hard to learn how to ring the bell on the door to be let out! If you feel like sending a cake with a hidden file my way that would be greatly appreciated.

Fashion With Pugitude

Friday Mr. Cash and I headed out on our usual date of Starbucks mochas and a trip to Petco for doggie biscuits. On the way back from the biscuits I got sucked into the spring dog clothes section and this time I couldn't resist temptation. So Mr. Cash has two new additions to his wardrobe, a skully tie and a Captain Awesome t-shirt. Isn't he so beautiful?! I'm lovin' his new punkster tie! I find the t-shirt especially funny because Mr. Golden Curls has been saying since we brought Mr. Cash home that his superhero name is Captain Pugface.

When we got home I already had the t on him and let him out of the car without a leash. The one bad thing about the t is there's no hole for the leash to poke through, I'll have to fix that. Anyway, I thought I could trust him to go straight to the front door. Instead he ran directly next door to a construction worker who's building in that lot. Did I feel like a goob or what? "Excuse me, just coming over to retrieve my little Captain Awesome!"

Nothing Like Trucker Talk In The Morning

Lil' Spitfire got these really cool walkie talkies for his 3rd birthday. They're called Kid Tough by Fisher-Price. They are indeed tough and still work even after having both antennas bent into 90° angles . They are simple to use, no complicated bells and whistles. After my yelling "hold to talk, let go to listen!" across the house for an afternoon they've got them down pat. They're absolutely perfect for young children except for one major flaw, they pic up trucker CB banter as though those truckers are sitting right there in your lap. And, call me crazy but trucker talk just isn't something I'm keen on having my 3 and 5 year old listening to. I thought this might be a fluke but nope. You can read similar reviews here.

We picked up this talk once before but this morning Lil' Spitfire comes in while I'm still asleep, "Mamma, listen to this!" handing me a walkie talkie.

"You remember that woman so-and-so?"
"Yea, the one with the dark hair?"
"Yep, that's the one, remember what Bob used to call her?"
"Heh heh, yea..."

And click it off as fast as possible so my little boy doesn't have to learn what Bob the trucker used to call dark haired so-and-so. I don't need to be doing anymore of that kind of education. Just last night I had to explain to my Jr. High Girls Bible study group the definition of orgy because it was in the scripture we were reading, yea, the Bible is pretty hardcore! Anywho, that's about all my feeble heart can take for awhile so I think I'll have to confiscate them. Personally I think it's big fun and plan on listening in on those truckers from time to time.

Smiling All Over

While blog surfing the other day I saw someone had been tagged to post a certain number image from a certain number folder on their computer. Just out of curiosity I wanted to see what picture that would be for me and this is it. It was too perfect to keep to myself and in the spirit of impending spring I thought I'd share. I love this picture, those beautiful curls, the gorgeous smile and the perfect spring flowers. That's my Mr. Golden Curls nearly two years ago!

Vicious Cycles Of The Housekeeping Variety

1. Turn around one day and realize the house looks like a nasty tornado from White Trash Trailer Park USA swept through it, that you can't take a step without being stopped by a pile, and that every surface of the house is covered in stuff.
2. Spend the week obsessively cleaning it because it's been so long you feel like it needs every nook and cranny scrubbed right now!
3. Get so exhausted by the end of the week because all you've done is clean clean clean to the complete neglect of anything creative so you take a day off.
4. Do a pretty good job the next week maintaining the clean and therefore add back all the other responsibilities in life all at once, with a sprinkling of brand new things you've been wanting to add to your life, because you now feel you've got life handled. Feel pretty good for a week or two and swear to never go back.
   
5. Get increasingly frustrated as time goes on because you worked so hard to reach perfect house status but that takes too much work to do daily and you realize logically it's an unreasonable expectation to place on yourself anyway.
6. Enter the next week with hands thrown up in exasperated surrender unable to believe that no one else in your household holds the same unreasonably high standards.
7. Stop keeping house altogether, it's not worth it if it can't be done to perfection.
8. Rinse and repeat.

I'm currently I'm at step 1 and am trying very hard to break the cycle since it tends to appear in other areas of my life and I'm tired. Just clean like a normal person is the mantra running through my head, pace yourself, slow and steady wins the race... So far so good!

Identity Crisis

That was then...

...this is now.

Every once in awhile I go through this little artistic identity crisis. I look at myself and think that I must have split personalities, I wonder where the old me is lurking, I long for it, then I wonder if I even care to resurrect it. Around Christmas time this was all drudged back up when the boys got a ton of art supplies. One thing they got was a giant art tackle box and it reminded me of my supply box in college, only cheerier, and without all the stickered sarcasm.



Then I dug out some jars for the boys to use while painting and as I sat there watching Lil' Spitfire clean his brush in one of the jars I realized just how long that jar had been with me. Since before my beautiful children and my incredible husband. Well, before we were married anyway, not much has been around since before him! It still had my paint sludge in the bottom. It was one of the silly jars I used while making my giant, brooding, moody paintings and my other random mixed media work. Including the thing I did with a bloody abandoned baby discarded in a trashcan lit from the inside with a strobe light. Needless to say having a flashback that included that image and then looking up to see my own baby's tiny hand in the same jar was a little bizarre. Probably not as bizarre as making a bloody baby though, just guessing.


That was then...

...this is now.


Now here I am, a wife, a mamma, a scrapbooker? Seriously, scrapbooking?! But I used to laugh at those people with their silly coordinating sticker obsessions and enough ribbon to hang several convicts! I also swore I'd never be a graphic designer so how's that for never say never? Speaking of graphic design here was another funny past life vs. new life occurrence, Lil' Spitfire got a Fisher-Price digital art studio with a pen tablet for his birthday! Man I fought the Wacom back in the day, I used it like I was holding it with my toes for about a week. Then mmmm, pen tablet love!



I'll have to show off some more of my past life art sometime soon. Hopefully I can dig up some clearer pictures than the first one in this post!