I have decided (in my old age) that Thanksgiving is the superior holiday to Christmas.  Think about it, Thanksgiving is all the things Christmas is - without the presents.  And what are presents really?  Other than a pain in my ass and my pocketbook??

But T day - what isn’t there to like about it??

• awesome food
• family
• relaxation
• dessert
• full bellies
• games
• wine
• naps
• more wine
• and it’s T day for goodness sake

No running around stressed over what gift you are gonna get who and how you will get it, no debt, waiting in lines, juggling time - just togetherness - and rocky road brownies.

I thought about doing the dorky thing and coming up with a list of things I am thankful for - but I would ultimately forget things (see wine twice on above list).  So instead, I’d like to share the one thing that made me the most happy over the past 24 hours.

I am most happy that I spawned a child that wrote me a letter like this:

It is a  beautiful thing.

And so are these

my chicks

Since that is all I use my blog for anymore, now is a good time for it!! The 101 things I should be doing right now can wait.

My “mini van mom” days are over. The van has been sold, and I am now driving a ULEV. I miss my van horribly, but I do feel about 5 years younger when I drive this car, and that’s a PLUS. I just need to get some window tintage (so I LOOK 5 years younger too) and I’ll be kickin’ it. Holler. My chicks seem to dig the new wheels (a Honda Civic, btw) but we will see how they feel when there are no movies to watch on the next road trip.

I am about to move into my mom and dad’s basement, which would make me feel about 10 years younger, except for the fact that my two kids are going with me. So instead, it will pry age me 10 years. It is just temporary till Maya finishes her school year out, but still, gl me!!

I kicked zooks ass in this. I don’t wanna rub it in too much, so that’s all I have to say about that

My chicks and I are starting Jiu Jitsu lessons today. I just wanna grapple with hot dudes, sfobv. Submit hot dude FTW.

Still no job, I even interviewed with a florist. I must seem like I’m not the flowery type, who knew.

Storyboards suck ass.

I did one of nyquil last night, but this morning Ima go all GGW on you and do a dayquil!

wooohoooooo!

Anyhow, the amounts of phlegm contained in my body at the moment are not the point of this post. I shall proceed…

If you’ve been around my spot for awhile you are familiar with my struggles with Math. You would also know that after a year in school I finally broke down and took my Math class this quarter.

Well, in all honesty, it wasn’t pretty at first. My first week of school I came home and did very poorly on all my homework, did bad on the daily quizzes in class, and the outlook was bleak since my first test was the SECOND week of class.

/commercial break/

so I am sitting in bed typing this and my anna is asleep next to me, snoring a bit. She just woke up, did a big stretch and started to whisper to me:

“Mommy, I just had a really good dream.”

“OOOOOH tell me!”

“I was at school, and we had a big pool in the school, so we were all swimming and laughing, and when we got out, there was A BIG PIRATE SHIP… LIKE A REAL ONE… RIGHT INSIDE OUR SCHOOL!”

“Did you get to ride on it?”

“No, but it was so awesome mommy, it even moved like a real pirate ship, and the pool was so big and deep, we pushed it into the pool and the pirates let us keep it!”

/end commercial break/

My math prof offers extra credit work on all tests. She gives us a review sheet to complete, and then we have to go into a math lab and take a practice test. In order for the extra credit points to count, we have to score 85% or higher on the practice test. This was a good deal for me!

I had been working really hard on my Math with a LOT of help from a friend. And when I say a lot, I mean HUGE help HUUUGGGEEE.

For instance, I come home from math class, get ALL of my homework problems wrong, I shoot an email (or a mathmail as it has come to be known), that makes no sense cause I’m retarded, over to this friend, he shoots one back and I completely understand. It’s truly amazing. He has a dizzying intellect.

So, when I went in to take my practice test, I was feeling goooooooooood! I zipped right thru the test, knew how to work out every problem, cilcked submit and went over to the printer to get my score when I see…

YOUR SCORE IS 70%

I actually felt a little tear well up. How do I get a 70% after I’ve worked so hard?!? So, you know what I did? I didn’t sulk, I TOOK THAT BITCH AGAIN!

AND I GOT A 70% AGAIN!! (did you “lol” when u read this? I did)

I couldn’t keep taking the practice exam because it was time to head over for the real test. I wasn’t a happy camper and I could feel the pissiness start to well up inside me. Do you ever get like that? It’s like a pot boiling, and you can feel it start to rise from your gut and move it’s way up to your head and if someone were to speak to you at that very moment, they would for surely die.

So what happened? Are you on the edge of your seat dying to know? Did she fail? Did she cry? Is she going to get naked and post pictures?

I think I will let my most excellent math tutor answer this one in limerick, for your enjoyment.

The first test, she was going to fail it
She decided that she would mathmail it

J worked his magic
To avoid scores so tragic

Which in the end, caused her to nail it

~thehugeguy

Last night was trick or treat here in the sticks, and before I go any further I would like to address a few things:

• NO, I don’t know why we have trick or treat the night before Halloween and NOT ON Halloween.
• I wasn’t allowed to trick or treat when I was a small T (aka teebletobbles), it was considered the “Devil’s Holiday”, so I don’t know much about why we do what we do. Mkay.
• I had always assumed it was to put a bend on all the shenanigans that can occur on Halloween.
• Yes, I’ve come to realize this is in fact weird, but I don’t make the rules.
• GET OVER IT!!

Now that we have made it past that issue…

We had a great time. It was a bit of a hectic day for me and I had to skip my night class to make it there, but everyone survived and candy was had.

Maya was Lara Croft (aka Tomb Raider). She’s quite the gamer, but this was a last minute change to her previous plans. Last year while trick or treating she saw a decoration in someone’s window that inspired her. It was a DEAD ANGEL, as she called it. All year I had been hoping she would forget about it, and every time she mentioned it I would make another suggestion. When I FINALLY got her to hook onto the tomb raider idea I was thrilled (even tho it wouldn’t have been my first choice)PS: Don’t tell, but those aren’t toy guns. I couldn’t find any acceptable toy guns, so I purchased pellet guns (sans pellets, obv).

Anna… what is there to say about my Anna. She had planned on being a pirate (of course, because she really thinks she will be a pirate one day) but decided to be a wolf when we found this kick ass wolf costume at the thrift store one day. But this week when we went to find Maya’s shooters, she saw these ninja swords and fell in love. So, then she was going to be a ninja wolf, till she saw the ski mask… i mean what kids doesn’t like swords and ski masks?!?! Don’t worry, I’ve started a fund for the therapy sessions.

PS: I love this kid, she is so fraking awesome, it’s sick.

And of course MAH BABAY! A DRAGON ATE MAH BAYBAY! Ok, not really, but Harper had her second trick or treat. Last year she was a ‘lil chili pepper, but this year she would walk up to the house, grab the goods and run away. Smart ‘lil cookie she is.

PS: She thinks her auntie T is cool (obv) and is coming over Thursday night to chill.

I’ve been meaning to post for well over a week, and well, here we go…

School:

I can’t believe the end of the quarter is already rearing its ugly head.

Art is kickin’ my arse again. Drawing more than one thing in the same composition is harder than drawing just one, who knew. I was actually so frustrated yesterday, I left class an hour early to prevent my head from exploding.

Printing class is da bomb. I designed a pokerslut tshirt to make for my screen printing project. I should be able to start my strike offs next week. w00t. It’ll look a little something like this:

The front
The back - Ive actually changed this a bit since the screenshot for obv reasons. positioning/redability etc.I was going for the early 90’s rock tour look, obv. There’s a sleeve shot too, but well, you’ll have to wait for the real thing to see that.

Dreamweaver - oh dreamweaver - feed me to the wolves would ya? My hands on midterm made my blood begin to boil, but I got an A on the written part. I need to get started on my final project, which is designing an entire website (OMG) I should get hrbek to do it for me. I decided to make an online portfolio, since that would be killing two birds with one piece of stonage.

Yoga is fabulous, I forgot how much I enjoy doing yoga and how much it helps my back. Although, last week my instructor started giving instructions on a pose and when he got to “once you feel the pull in your leg, start to work your heel to the back of your head….” he received an evil eye from the T. Just sayin.

And last but not least…

Design Survey is a BS class they make us take. I was dreading it. It is one of those 2.5 hour BS classes that make you want to pull your hair out, lots of busy work etc. But my instructor RAWKS. We haven’t had a class last over an hour yet, AND he has taken HALF the work out of the class, including a paper and tests. And, AND none of our work is actually due till the end of the quarter. GG Jack. Only thing is, he jabbers on and on and on and on quite often. I didn’t know dudes had so much to say. Right now he is having us design a logo for a made up automotive company. My company is called KADUB. sfobv.

The Skinny

Well so far I’ve lost about 34lbs and I’m happy about it. The last time I weighed, the scale actually said i had put 3 lbs back on, but I’m not buying it. It was late in the day and I’ve been training for a 5 mile run on Thanksgiving. The new jeans I bought that are two sizes smaller than before are getting a bit loose already too, so I’ve lost interest in the number. I feel great, which is the best part and I’ve been sticking with it.

Exercise had been getting a bit boring after the whole prop bet thing to make it entertaining, so I decided to really challenge myself to do the Turkey Trot. I don’t know if I will be able to jog 5mi by then, but it’s fun trying!

Hey SCOTT are you still gonna do this with me or what playa?!

So anyhoo, last night I was talking to someone about this pic I saw of myself on my brother’s picasa page that was the catalyst for the decision to lose weight. It made me wanna puke. the convo went a lil something like this:

me: omg u should see the pics i saw of myself that made me realize i had to lose weight. not that i would ever show them to you, but still
person: show me
me: no fraking way
person: come on
me: gfy
person: you could be like the person in the commercial that holds up the big pants
me: still not gonna

Well, here’s the pic, right next to a pic of me in the same shorts that Anna was so kind to take of me this morning.

Might wanna turn your sound down - the first one MOOOOOOO’s

Life

Big changes going down in T-Ville. They aren’t quite bloggable as of yet, but I’ll get to it when I can. Good changes tho.

Zooks was in town this past weekend. It was pretty sweet having her here, cause well, I like zooks.

Pictures were taken, obv, if interested.

Lots of kid stuff, and poker on Saturday night at Ritze’s (smboatdrinks) house, which was a blast. My bro even came with us, and had Zooks cracking up in the car the whole way home, sfobv. To top it off, I’m going to HER house THIS weekend! When it rains it pours… w0000t.

All is well in kidville too. Maya had PT conferences last week and straight As on her report card (standard) and Miss Anna made this kick ass dinosaur out of construction paper at daycare yesterday. Altho, (spell check says altho should be alt ho - lolorz) today she felt the need to make another construction paper creation, and made a Mermaid with a gun. NOICE.

So that’s all the tidbits for now, carry on.

Every now and then life hands us out a test, I usually receive a midterm and final at least once a year. Not to mention about 12-20 pop quizzes.

This past week I took my “mothering” exam, and I failed horribly.

Last week, Anna had her tonsils out. We had to spend the night in the hospital, but she came home early Thursday and seemed to be doing well. The Doctors and Nurses reminded us about 220 times how important it is that she drinks 6-8 glasses of clear liquids a day, Popsicles, water, sprite, apple juice, etc. Not just for hydration of her body, but it actually aides in the healing process of her throat, and if she keeps her mouth/throat wet, it will not hurt as bad.

We did really well with this the first couple of days, but Saturday, Anna started refusing anything going into her mouth. The Doc had told us she couldn’t use a straw either, so we literally had to try and force feed her liquids. Every time we did, she would start screaming about how her tongue, mouth, teeth, neck, throat and cheeks hurt, and how she can’t even open her mouth.

Of course I’d try to encourage her, telling her that after she starts drinking all these things will feel better. I had been to the store and we had 10 different kinds of Popsicles, orange sherbet, pudding, jello, drinks, juices, applesauce and whatever else I could think of to get her to eat. She would take a bite or two and start screaming.

To make a really long weekend short, by Sunday night she was completely exhausted, and I put her to bed at 6:30pm, despite her arguing. She didn’t wake up till 9:30 Monday. But that may have been because of how each night she would wake up 5 or 6 times screaming.

It all culminated yesterday, when at around noon she still hadn’t been pee and seemed to be feeling worse than ever. So, I realized I had failed as a good parent to keep her well, and I called her doctor. They said she was probably dehydrated and I needed to take her to the ER.

UGH.

So, I explained to Anna that if she didn’t start drinking we were going to the hospital.

She wasn’t happy about that, but I swear, when I tried to get her to drink, she wouldn’t open her mouth!! She would stick her tongue in the water and start crying about how bad it hurt!!

So, I broke down and got us all dressed, and headed to the ER in failure.

Anna falls asleep in the car (or pretends to) and then makes me carry her into the ER. We had to wait in line to get signed in and Anna immediately perks up. We get up to the nurse who starts to ask Anna how she’s feeling:

“Does your throat hurt Anna?”

“No, it feels good! It only hurts sometimes.”

Ya, only sometimes… didn’t ya know.

Now I gotta tell ya, since I couldn’t beat my child in the ER with out the police being called, I just broke down into tears instead.

I couldn’t frakin believe it.

As, we wait to get seen by a Doc, Anna wants to play etc. I’m pissed and won’t let her.

We get into an ER room, and she drinks everything they give her, and eats 3 popsicles.

So, here I am, a sleep deprived, exhausted, blubbering mess. Trying to explain to the 3 Doctors and 5 nurses that all come in separately how she’s been acting. They tell me she is mildly dehydrated and they will give her an IV if I want them to.

WTF?! If I want them to? Who’s the Doctor here? Do I look like I’m in any state to be making decisions? Ya, ask the mom who couldn’t get her kid to drink anything for 3 days, and now can’t quit crying for a medical decision. gg doc.

She explains that it is probably best if they do, because if she goes home and won’t drink again she will get much worse.

So, to be completely honest, I said yes for two reasons:

1. Because I thought she needed it.
2. Because it was gonna hurt, and maybe she’d get it thru her thick head why she needed to be drinking.

I know, it sounds awful, but Anna really thought it was a game. She was giggling, watching cartoons, making jokes and I was in complete meltdown phase.

One good thing did come of the trip, the Doc explained that she is on a much smaller dose of her pain meds than she should be, and that I needed to double it.

So, we came home and she started in on the same BS, I can’t eat, blah blah. I give her a cup with a straw even tho the doc said not to use straws, and she got half a cup down and I put her to bed. I needed bed too.

She seems much MUCH better this morning, and has already ate and drank!

Maybe I can get my grade on a curve.

I’m off to Vegas this afternoon and you can check here for updates on that saga.

But before I go, I had to get this video up. I’ve been running non stop since last Friday and hadn’t gotten a chance to post this. Maya was asked by her principal to speak at a special Teacher’s Dinner. Only the geniuses were asked of coz. Go on withcher bad self Maya…

It is hard having a brilliant child, I’m sure any proud parent knows my pain, as we all have brilliant children (if you smell what I’m cookin’).

Lately we have been trying to get Anna out of one of her horrid habits. A habit she only has cause well, she’s brilliant, and her brilliance frustrates her of coz. She screams. I don’t mean she cries, I mean she SCREAMS. A scream that can be heard outdoors when she is in the house, a scream I can hear when I’m outside doing yard work and she’s playing hide n’ seek two houses down.

Needless to say, I can’t stand it. Not just the screeching, but what if something really did happen? Of course we have learned to tune out the urgency of such a scream, like when she broke her collar bone, I didn’t run straight to her ’cause I just thought it was her normal crapola. (btw, spell check says crapola should be changed to extrapolate)

So anyhoo, we have pulled out all of our parental prowess to stop the madness. One of the things that sets her off is her sister, needless to say. Maya is super bossy and tries to do everything for Anna, which Anna responds to by screaming (ya, I know, but I’m getting to the good part).

Soooooooooo, the other day I asked Anna to get a garbage bag from under the sink for me. Kids like to help Mom, and she hops up quickly to go get the bag, but her bigger and faster sister decides to run in front of her and do it for her. Anna sees her coming and stops in her tracks, puts up “the hand” and says to Maya:

You better stop right there.

Looks are exchanged.

Don’t make me scream.

Laughter ensues.

Maya has finally started back to school after a week of sickness which came after two weeks of snow days… it’s been a rough month. Anna is still sickly, I’m hoping to send her back to school tomorrow. Saturday she was having some potty issues (I won’t go into any more detail). While I was computing she came up to me with an announcement. She spoke very indignantly and said:

MOMMY. Two things. A) when are we going to granny’s and B) my butt still hurts

And then just walked away. Love the newsflashes from a 3 year old.

Speaking of kids and our technology driven society… Anna is currently throwing fits because shes watching a cartoon with (god forbid) COMMERCIALS. I replied with:

At least you don’t have to get up to changed the channels.

pwned.

If this isn’t cute, then I don’t know what is…

This baby has some good genes, I’m tellin’ ya…

She’s 6 months old now! She slept over at Auntie T’s on Saturday night and was a perfect angel. I even started to teach her poker. She has the chip sucking down like a pro.