Merry Christmas!

Hope your Christmas table is filled with wonderful food, family and fun!

Lots of love from

Last Minute Shopper?

It should come as no surprise that I am not ready for Christmas. Not even close. And with little to no budget for gifts this year, it's been tough to figure out how to make memories this year without spending money. We're people of convenience. And really, we all know that convenience is a big money suck. If you want fast and easy, you pay for it. (Wow...that statement could be translated sooooooo many ways!)

What is my point here? I'm trying to find an interesting and hip way to tell you about some last minute gift ideas that are working for me. Instead of trying to be all clever and stuff, I'll just get to the rub...Cafe Press has these really cute customized ornaments that make really good last minute gifts for friends, relatives, teachers, etc. There! I said it! Now quit wasting time reading about how fun and easy the ornament designer is to use, or how you can choose some really cool designs or even make your own custom design like the ornament pictured here, and get on over to Cafe Press to design YOUR OWN ornament!!

What? Oh, your welcome. Helping people solve their problems is what I do. Okay, some people call it meddling...{{{sigh}}}those people just don't know when to accept the help or advice from someone who knows what's good for them.

But YOU are not that kind of person. You are the kind of person who is actually toggling between this blog post and Cafe Press as we speak, trying to read my awesome and always on the mark advice while designing your ornament at the same time. Because you know I would never, ever steer you wrong. Right? Cool. We're good then. I'm off to design my own ornaments.

**Disclosure: I did not receive financial compensation for this post. I did receive a gift certificate from Cafe Press good for 2 free ornaments in order toexperience the Ornament Designer and facilitate this review.

My Poor Brain, Yes I Think This Song is About Me

This is pretty much how my days go lately...

I Had A Bad Day (As stupid stuff goes)

So you know that saying, "When it rains, it pours?" It's true. As evidenced by the storm that passed through here the other night.


Then there's that other saying: "When there's vomit, there's chaos." Also true. As evidenced by the following events. Which are factual and did indeed take place as stated in this narrative.

You know we are all about stress in my home, right? So mornings are no picnic as I try to get the boys up and moving and out the door for school. Because even if I have EVERY SINGLE THING they need organized and ready to go, there is always - not sometimes - always, a crisis that lays waste to my perfect plan. So this particular morning, which was last week, we were actually rolling along pretty well and everyone seemed to be in a good mood, despite the runny noses and coughs we've been dealing with. In retrospect, the fact that things were kind of flowing smoothly should have been my first clue that impending doom was awaiting me.

I was gathering coats and shoes together and coming down the stairs to help Little Man comb his hair when I heard a muffled, kind of weird sound. When I hit the bottom step I peeked around the corner to the bathroom to see what the deal was and there I found Little Man leaning over the toilet with a hand full of...ummm, breakfast that had just come back up. Great. First thing out of his mouth: "Mom. I made it to the toilet! I didn't get it on the carpet!" How sad is it that I have thrown such a huge fit about them trashing my carpet that he is more worried about a rug than his own health!?

All I could think of was getting in there to help him, so I dropped everything and quickly moved toward the kid to assist with the cleanup. That's when things went horribly wrong. He neglected to tell me that while he missed the carpet, he did indeed manage to cover a good part of the tile right in front of the door and sink with clear, liquid spew, which I of course did not see. So my first step into the bathroom found me doing a perfect "slip on the banana peel" kind of fall, which slammed me flat on my back, at which time my head bounced neatly off of the hard floor, leaving me with a huge knot and an instant headache. When the study in kinetic energy was over, I ended up laying on the floor, with one leg bent behind and underneath me and the other leg lodged under the perfectly sharp edge of the bathroom sink cupboard, which had sliced the top of my foot open as I slid across the icky tile. I know...this sounds ridiculous! One would think that there would be a limit to the amount of ridiculousness a situation could generate, but this day did not find a limit in sight...anywhere.

Little Man, upon realizing what had happened, immediately burst into tears and started apologizing for causing my fall. As I was working my way to a standing position, all I could hear was sobbing and gagging. I look up to see him hurl again...and he's still got his hands cupped, holding the first round of vomit! So I have a crying, vomiting kid with a handful of puke, my head hurts, the top of my foot is bleeding, my knee is really jacked up, and we are standing in a stinky, chunky mess. Are you getting the picture? Cause I really want you to get the FULL concept of what we were experiencing here. Think on it for a moment...put yourself in the middle of the action...Got it? I KNOW!! SERIOUSLY RIDICULOUS AND GROSS AND STUPID, RIGHT!!!??!

Somehow or another, we managed to extricate ourselves from the mess and we actually got cleaned up rather quickly. Which was important, because I had to get to a job interview an hour away from my house and needed to have a perfect day to make it there on time after dropping the kids off at school! The whole time I remember thinking..."I cannot believed I just slipped in vomit! Who does that? How did I get to this point in life? This was NEVER part of my plan! It's like funny and gross at the same time! Why, oh why do things like this always happen on days when we don't need things like this to happen?"

Here's where I was the bad mom. Little Man said he felt fine. He said he had eaten too fast and that he had a lot of crap in his throat from his cold and that's why he got sick and lost his breakfast. He said the phlegm was gagging him. He didn't have a fever, he didn't have the runs, he didn't have a headache or a stomach ache or anything other than a runny nose. HE SAID he was okay and didn't feel bad at all. HE SAID IT! I didn't ask him, people, he offered the information and I didn't have time to think of an alternative, so I took him at his word and I took both of the boys to school. I know. Major "Mom Fail". Irresponsible. But don't judge me. 'Cause I got paid back for trusting the word of an 8 year old.

Not 15 minutes after I dropped the boys off, the school nurse called. Little Man had thrown up again. In class. All over his clothes. Nice. I should not have tempted fate. And I should not have trusted my little boy who was obviously more worried about my interview than his health. But I did. And I learned a valuable lesson.

I learned that the day was not done messing with me yet. I had to backtrack and go get Little Man, which now put me behind schedule, and then I had to hook up with Dad down the road so we could make the switch and get the sick kid home and me back on the road to my interview. The moment, and I mean THE VERY MOMENT, I stepped out of the car to get Little Man to his dad's truck, it started raining. And me with no umbrella. On the way to an interview. At this point Big Man has an epiphany and realizes he could have gotten out of the truck and come to me so I didn't have to get wet and wreck my hair. Ya think? Except I didn't have ten minutes to sit and wait for him to wonder why I wasn't getting out of the car before he remembered that he used to be chivalrous and do nice things like that for me. I'M GOING TO BE LATE FOR MY INTERVIEW!

Thank gosh the freeway gods were with me and somehow I managed to get to my interview 5 minutes early. Which I spent walking half a mile from my parking space to the office entrance, in the rain, with no umbrella. Upon arrival, I had to have my purse searched and go through a metal detector, cause the job is a high security job. Now I ask you...how could those people have crashed a White House Party, but I couldn't manage to get through security at a Census facility because I forgot to leave my cell phone in the car? Barney Fife and his security buddies actually made me take it all the way back to my car! In the rain. With no umbrella. They wouldn't let me leave it with them! Needless to say I was starting to wonder if this job was worth all of this suffering! Could the day get any worse? Ummm...yes.

But first let me say something positive. The good news is that they did have a position open for me! I know, YAY, right!? Even though it wasn't the position I applied for nor was it the shift I was needing, I took the offer because the pay is really good for the work I will be doing and my family reallly, really needs this income to stay afloat.

Okay, back to the bad day - so they offered me the position and now I had to go to another office down the street to get fingerprinted and fill out the application for the background check. So I walked back out into the rain, drove down the street a few blocks, parked and walked another 1/4 mile, in the rain, with no umbrella, to the fingerprint place, where they also make me go through a metal detector and search my purse before they (can you guess?)...take my picture. Twice. One for your badge, which you will wear to work everyday, and one for your background check. No time to go to the bathroom to fix myself up or anything, but plenty of time to sit and wait AFTER the pictures are done to fill out the paperwork! Seriously...are you guys trying to be jerks? You couldn't wait like 5 minutes for me to shake my head and fluff up a bit? Just as well, I guess. I may have slipped and fell on the moisture falling from my head to the bathroom floor.

The rest of the day is kind of a blur. Driving home in pouring rain, another sick kid when we got home from school, a pan full of oil from frying tostada shells being dumped on the kitchen floor by a blind husband who was trying to help clean up but somehow managed to NOT see the oil in the pan...I finally gave up and limped my way to bed at 7:30.

As I laid there rehearsing the events of the day, I had to laugh...when the interviewer asked me how my day was going, I actually told her..."My kid is sick, I slipped in his vomit this morning and fell, jacked up my knee and gave myself a concussion. Plus it's really raining hard and I forgot my umbrella, which is why the paperwork I just handed you is so wet. I'm pretty much a wreck today. But other than that, I guess things are good. How 'bout yourself?" I don't know what made me blurt it out. It just happened. I felt like my son must have felt earlier in the morning...standing there with all of this emotional spew in my hands trying to keep it off of the carpet, and her desk! I couldn't tell what she was thinking when she looked up at me...she just had this kind of sad, amused, weirded out look on her face.

So as bad days go...this was the worst I've had in awhile. Not like cancer bad, that's beyond bad and it's tragic and horrible. I'm just talking stupid stuff bad. Maybe my "Ridiculously Bad Day" will end up getting me that job. Which would really be ironic. Cause then it would turn into the best day I've had in a while. I'll let you know in 2 weeks when my background check comes back. Hopefully I didn't irritate Barney Fife the Census Guard so badly that he alters my records. (Kidding. The Federal Government would NEVER do anything like that. Ever.)