post snow epiphanies

I learned so much so far in this blizzard. See as follows so you can learn from my errors and be prepared next time, which apparently may be sooner than we all hoped – and by sooner I mean anytime 2016 this side of summer.

  1. Ration your snacks. I ate all my snacks Friday night and had to suffer the rest of the weekend on sub par ordinary snacks, it was awful.
  2. Buy extra crafts for your children (or yourself). I bought a bag of crafts Thursday and as I was being given the snowmagedon rundown my thieving childrens found my bag and blew through the stash. Little shits.
  3. In addition to toilet paper make sure you have laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent! I mean seriously??? I get stuck in my house for a long weekend and instead of being productive and washing stuff I ran out of BOTH types of detergents. This is like my personal ADD and compulsive cleaning hell.
  4. Don’t lift huge pieces of frozen salt over your head because in the middle of the night when you scratch your scalp you will flip your shit when you feel the crumbles that fell into your hair and think you have bugs or lice or crabs or some other disgusting something in your head. I was mostly asleep so the first thing I thought was “sand” from the beach today… Wait – WHAT!!!!?????? The salt blocks were SO frozen I had to use a sledge hammer to crack them then lifted them over my head to heave them to the ground, yes I’m like Thor, so very strong.
  5. Get water proof gloves. Dammit.
  6. Rent lots of movies with sexy men. Because. (actually does anybody rent movies anymore? oh well.)
  7. Make sure you buy cough drops. As much as I screamed at my children this weekend by Sunday my throat was very sore. I really needed some. Wine sufficed, but lets be real here what isn’t it good for. Except for carpet, wine is never good for the carpet.
  8. ok, I realllly wanted this to be a ten items list but I’m out of additional tips for now.
  9. STAY WARM!
  10. Just seeing ten on here makes me happy even if this is just bogus words to fill space. Don’t Judge!

 

storm prep

We get snow out here where we live, a lot. It’s no big deal, we are used to it. Plus C plows so I am used to riding the storm out solo. Yes it’s lame and boring but now that I have kids (and cable) I have entertainment.

This year though we haven’t had any snow. No white winter, not even real cold until this week. Now we are supposed to have a blowout. Like mother nature has been constipated all winter and instead of her regular small to medium snowstorms she drank a cup of my “smooth-move tea”, which by the way is anything but smooth, and we are all in for a massive system evacuation.

C went full throttle too on the precautionary measures, he got a generator, a kerosine heater AND left me a machine to attempt plowing our driveway. It almost begs the question – ummmmm, what about all the previous years??? He must realize that if something happens to me, he will have two children to take care of so he’s terrified. It makes sense.

Sooooo C gave me the run down on all the man-chores I would be required to perform. I call them man chores because most ladies men do these chores, because their outdoorsey and dangerous and most women tend to the kids and are usually barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, cooking their men dinner like a real woman should. Hahahah thats’s a total joke we all know I don’t cook. Anyway, it was pretty a very disturbing evening for me and my nerves.

C gave thorough and specific directions which my brain translated as follows;

  • do not touch the hot end of the power cord after you plug it into the running generator – or you will get electrocuted and YOU WILL DIE.
  • do not forget to open the garage after you start the generator – or everyone WILL DIE.
  • do not forget to turn on the generator if the power goes out – or everyone will freeze AND DIE. And the pipes in the house will burst, but you will be DEAD either way, whichever happens first.
  • when the power goes out first turn off all the breakers in the house before tuning on the generator – or it will catch on fire, blow up, explode, I can’t remember what happens but it would be very very bad, IMMINENT DEATH.
  • when the power comes back on first turn off the generator then turn the breakers back on or it will… see above, IMMINENT DEATH.
  • directions for the kerosine heater and the skid loader were very much the same.

The good news is we are in Day 1 of snowmagedon 2016 and we have had no casualties. Spirits are up and we are hanging on to hope. (hope of C coming home and doing all this BS work so I don’t have to) I will keep you all posted.

 

 

O's favorite things

I’m big into lists right now. I don’t know why. I actually take that back, I have always been big into lists. My entire life is like a giant, never-ending to-do or grocery list. But maybe because the school season is approaching I have started thinking in an even more structured and nonsensical way about everything in my life.

So to go with the theme of lists here are five of O’s favorite things in life right now;

  1. making messes. It doesn’t matter where, it’s just her thing. Dumping toy boxes, spilling drinks, getting anything and everything everywhere. All messes in my house were created by her. (or the dog. Unless O is shredding dirty diapers and eating sh*t out of the trash can and just blaming the dog but I doubt it.)
  2. scotch tape. Scotch tape is like the newest obsession in my house. She scotch tapes everything. She tries to make books and scotch tape them together, I keep trying to introduce staples as a much more efficient book making mechanism but she won’t stand for it. She even scotch tapes her barbies to stuff, like the kitchen cabinet knobs. It’s like these poor barbies are trapped in giant scotch tape spider web fiasco’s all over my house. It’s both weird and creepy – however may be appropriate to keep around as Halloween Decor.
    1. as a side note W is into that blue painter tape. C uses it to tape down drawings and plans to the drawing table and W likes to rip off 1 million smallish pieces and stick them all over her face and body.
  3. stickers. F stickers. I hate you stickers. I have like a sticker infestation in my house right now. There are stickers stuck to the hardwood floors, toilets, toys, my desk, the kitchen table, the windows… when W was a baby I saw this weird blue thing in her mouth and C and I had to hold her down and dig a blue circular sticker with a flower on it out of her mouth – it was stuck to the roof of her mouth! I kept that one for the baby book obviously. All others stickers get destroyed onsite. 
  4. signs. We have pictorial signs all over the place right now. There is a picture of a girl “scotch taped” (go figure) to the bathroom door because that’s the girls bathroom, sorry daddy you must go outside and do your business. There is a picture of W and another picture of O taped to either side of the family room, because that’s their respective sides of the room for playing. I also found about 8 random signs taped to the wall space above the couch in my office varying in images from flowers to unicorns.
  5. clothes. So she is super obsessed with clothes right now. I know, adorable right? No. It’s effing annoying. She is constantly changing, like “oh, I sneezed and got germs on this shirt – I must change 563 times and throw every article of clothing I own all over the room and for good measure I will also throw some over the upstairs railing down onto the couch in the family room. AND in case that doesn’t drive Mommy to hide in the pantry and drink copious amounts of wine I will THEN proceed to hide the most important articles of clothing, the staples mommy always picks for me to wear in hidden locations, like under the bed or at the bottom of the toy box….”

Listen to me complaining. Like I don’t think everything O does is the most absolutely adorable and hilarious thing ever ever ever. Keep doing your thing O, and I’ll just keep cleaning up after you, it’s my job – plus it gives me great material. (And interesting talking points when my neighbors come over. I doubt anybody else in the neighborhood has Barbies taped to their kitchen cabinets.)

handy

Merry Christmas to meeeeeeeeeeeee.

Santa brought me an automatic wine opener this year and it’s oh-so-handy.

I like how it cuts the wrapper off. I didn’t so much struggle with the cork as I did that stupid seal.

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/brookstone-reg-automatic-wine-opener/1018522721?Keyword=wine+opener

C figured it out quick because he’s just like that. My wine bottle spun around in circles until I figured out I had to hold it in one hand and the opener in the other hand. So technically the picture below of me holding it with one hand is false. Def a two hand job, but I needed to snap a picture and I only have two hands so something had to give.

IMG_0253 IMG_0256 IMG_0257

and presto. It’s more fun that a manual wine opener. and lights up too. fancy! 

IMG_0258