Beyonce - Irreplaceable

Beyonce - Irreplaceable

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i know it's super cheesy, but this is my anthem for the year. i don't normally like her, but that beyonce can sure sing a liberated woman's song!

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remember when...

... i used to have fun and witty things to say?

yeah, good times.


this year i am taking care of ME. i quit smoking and i'm eating right and i'm getting rid of the things in my life that are bad for me. you know that almost always involves a man, right? i want to get back to that place when i felt witty and fun and like a good mom and a good person. IT WILL HAPPEN. i will be a grown up this year and take care of business.

either that or i'll watch plenty of tv and sit on my butt. whichever.

"omg, you killed kenny!"

so, you know how i have the cutest, most smartest kids in the world right? awhile ago pete asked me if he could shorten his name (btw - his real world name is 9 letters long and harder to spell). i said, "hey, ok, what would you like to change it to?"

he replied, "i dunno... kenny?"

makes sense to a gemius. it's not for us to understand. he's on a much higher plane we can't begin to comprehend.

no, i'm not calling him kenny.

blogging at work is fun to do

everyone in my department has left for the day, so i blame this random blog on them. seriously though, i am busy, but i came across this and i thought it was great and i wanted to show you's guys what a dork i am and i didn't want to forget so i'm posting it now:

The 2006 runner-up, Stuart Vasepuru from Scotland, played with one of the most famous pieces of dialogue from the Clint Eastwood movie "Dirty Harry".

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' -- and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' -- well do you, punk?"

that is awesome on so many levels! *sigh* i just love grammar.

my undying appreciation will go to the first person to call me on that horrible run-on sentence i started with.

shrek is evil

have you ever noticed that everyone has a hamster/other small rodent escape story? well, here's mine.

we got him (or her, you can never tell what those little fuckers are. and personally, i don't care. we decided it's a he. end of story.) two weekends ago because pete has been extra responsible and i (albeit, mistakenly) told him that he could have a pet when he displayed the proper amount of responsibility. in hindsight, i should have better defined "proper amount". we were in the mall, the mall had a pet store, the puppies forced me inside, we came out with a hamster. his name is shrek.

i. hate. him.

sunday, i was trying to clean out its cage and the fucker bit me. DREW BLOOD! i'm sure i have hanta virus. then last night, it escaped its freshly cleaned cage. i'm sure it's after me. it got a taste for my blood and now it wants more. we luckily (or not) found it tonight after it ran across my boyfriend's foot. i've decided to let it live.

for now.

fyi

so, i was falling asleep last night and i thought of a totally funny post titled "fyi" and it was going to be short and it was going to be about something i despise. or is gross about me. or something like that. anyway, guess what happened?


i forgot what it was.


but i'm sure it would have been awesome!


lucky you guys get this post instead. you're welcome.


oh wait! i've got something gross about me. sometimes i hold my gut in both hands and shake it at my boyfriend and say "you like that?!"

he won't admit it, but i'm sure he does.

no, i didn't take the "red eye" and other intentional puns

ok, so i don't find as much to blog about as i should, but something freakish happened to my eye, and there's no better blog fodder than that.

so, i wake up friday morning and my eye looks like so:

can anyone say "ew?"

and here's me and everyone else around me - "what the fuck is the matter with your (my) eye?!" and if i have to make another joke about "my boss is tough" or "my boyfriend beat me up, but you should see him!", i'll puke. swear to god. and someone will need to hold my hair back because i don't want to get puke in it.

don't fret imaginary friends, the internet tells me there's nothing to worry about. i bet i still do.

the best advice i received was from my 3-year-old. when she asked what happened to my eye i told her that i probably poked it. and she gave me the most poignant piece of advice i've received in my whole life. she said...


"mommy! don't poke your eye!"


those are just good words to live by.

 

quick story...

just a quick little funny story about a faux pas i pulled last week at work.


i was looking over some paperwork with one of the ladies i work with. since we make blood products, sometimes things happen and we can't use the product, such as contamination. records for a contaminated product are marked as "CONT". we were discussing a record that was marked as "CONT" and when i referenced that remark, i pronounced "CONT" as you would the whole word, but without the "-aminated" part.


let it soak in for a minute and you'll realize i just said my least favorite word... out loud... to my coworker... nice.

we are in a fight.

yup, all of you are now on my shit list. don't pretend that you don't know why... you know what you did... if you don't know, i'm not telling you...

ok fine. take a look at my last post. go ahead. i'll wait.










see that word in the last paragraph? yeah, it's not so much "right" as "write". and i was not so much "right" as "completely fucking retarded". why the hell did no one tell me i did that?! for fuck sake! you'd think you were just reading my blog for entertainment and not picking it over for grammatical errors.

by the way, don't you hate it when you buy a bag of salad and forget about it until a month later and it's all gross and slimy in the bottom of your so-called "crisper" drawer?

yeah, me too.

gift giving tip

you guys know how i hate to judge or complain, but here i go.

the holiday season is the time of giving, as we all know. and when you don't know someone too well, you tend to give them the catch-all. yes, i'm talking about the Gift Card.

this gift is fine and dandy, especially between not-so-close friends or colleagues. but, to coin a cheech phrase, here's my issue with that.

if you are going to give the GC there is absolutely NO SHAME in writing, somewhere on or around it, the amount the GC is for! i received four GCs this year and not one of them indicated the amount the GC was worth. for pete's sake people! i don't want to look like a greedy bitch and be all "hey, not-so-close friend or colleague, exactly how much am i entitled to spend with this lovely GC?" would it hurt so much to put the freaking amount on the fricking GC? heck no! so, i have to go online and check the balances so i don't get up to the register at the GC store and look like a dumbass when my purchase far exceeds the GC amount. and then the ditsy cashier has to be all "ummm, the total is eleventy seven $$" and i have to be all "here's a GC of unknown amount i would like to apply toward my purchase" and she runs the damned thing and is all "ok, now it's like, totally only eleventy $$. how wud u lick 2 pay 4 that?" (and she says it misspelled like that because she's so dumb) i hate that stupid bitch. with her barcode scanner and nametag. she thinks she's so much better than me, but she's not!

all of this because some well-wisher couldn't right the god damn amount on the frickety fracking GC.

/end judgmental complaint/

picture pages with pete

i decided it was time for another installment of drawing fun with pete.

my parents have a lovely, xeriscape, backyard, complete with indigenous desert plants and even a fountain. of course, it's not as lovely as it was before my kids and i lived there for 7 months, but i digress. one of the indigenous plants to the lower sonoran desert is the yucca plant, which my son has drawn for us below:

and just in case you don't know what a yucca is and this graphic representation isn't sufficient, here is an actual yucca:

there is a hole at the base of the yucca in my parents' backyard, graciously dug by their cairn terrier. christian was not buying this story though, and the picture above is his story of what is actually in that hole.

it is, in fact, a demon rabbit hole. said demon rabbit must be killed with rocks that christian will fill the hole up with. if the rabbit is not killed, it will be flushed out by the rocks and then killed by the crazy monster, as a back up plan.

seriously folks. i have no idea where he gets these ideas from. definitely not me. it must be his dad's warped dna that gives him these ideas.


not. mine.

my family, the boy band

i don't know if i've ever told you this before, but i come from a large-ish all girl family. i have 4 sisters: 2 older, 2 younger. 5 siblings in our family... 5 members of N*sync... coincidence? i think not!

let me break it down for you something, yo.

i present N*sync




yuck, huh? personally, i hate them, but the picture is necessary to illustrate my point. we have justin, JC, chris, lance and joey. my sisters and i take on the roles of the boys in this band (and any other boy band for that matter) as follows:

justin: that'd be veryvaried, one of my older sisters. she's "the cute one" who always stood out and took charge (when we let her).

that, and she has permed, frost-tipped hair. hehehe


JC: that'd be oh-so-talented baby sister/member. she's also along the lines of "the cute one," but tends to be the wind beneath our wings. (if you just went "aw, how precious!", i have to say that is so funny because i am so non-sentimental. it was meant as a joke. gotcha!) she doesn't enjoy the spotlight as much as the lead singer, but is cute and talented in her own right.


chris: that's me. i'm the ok-looking, kind of talented sister/member who cracks a joke to bring attention away from the fact that i'm not as cool as the others.


lance: that's my other younger sister. she's the not-completely-with-it sister/member who everyone just nods their head at and smiles with her. and she's in space.


joey: and to our last sister/member, the oldest. seriously, i had no idea what this guy's name was, so i had to google it. that pretty much explains my oldest sister/member. she's way older than the other sister/members and doesn't really fit in the group, but we keep her around because she signed the contract.

there once was a man from nantucket...

i couldn't come up with any catchy title for this completely random posting, so that's what you get. they can't all be funny.

so, i've totally thought about blogging and i've actually got different ideas for posts rattling around in my head. and i've even meant to write them out for your reading pleasure. it just hasn't come to fruition. (don't you just love that word?!) it's the thought that counts anyway, don't you think? yeah, me too.

oh! did i tell you guys that i was soooooo sick the first two weeks of work? like, sicker than i've ever been ever in my entire life? well. maybe not ever ever, but close to it. yeah. it sucked.

despite that, i'm really loving my job. for instance, today, i found a form that we give to people who are going to donate, listing the medications that you can't be on in order to donate. except for it was an old version, and the newer version had an additional medication listed. you can imagine what that meant. you guessed it. a total recall of blood products collected in the time since the new version had come out. scary, huh? but it turned out ok, because this problem had already been resolved by national headquarters and no recall was required. phew! it was so exciting! the suspense was overwhelming! quite the nail-biting day.



you wish you were me...


shut up. you do too!

anywho, i promise to blog more often. i won't promise everyday... or even every week... probably not even every other week... but definitely more often.

and i am even cooler today!

ok, i'm not completely sure that anyone even looks at this anymore since it's been eleventy-seven decades since i last posted. i'm such a loser... but only on the blog-front! on every other front it is divide and conquer! i so completely rule. i'm the coolest person you know right now.

ok, ok, ok, since our last installment of "as valerie turns" - i've moved into my new place, kids have started school and daycare and i got a completely different (by different, i mean entirely better, and by entirely better, i mean pays substantially more) job then the one i moved up here for! yahoo for me! i am now working for the american red cross blood services doing what i do best - looking at other people's work and telling them what they did wrong! my favorite!

oh, and you remember my wunnerful son pete? he's a gemius. yup, gemius. his teacher here thinks he's sooooo smart that she wants to have him tested for the smart kid class.

and the girl is my beautiful, 3 year old cinderelly. she's going to her new daycare and is getting to the point of actually liking it. who knew she'd actually have a hard time without older brother around? go figure.

and did i mention i have my own stuff back? all of my towels and pans and books and cds and everything! it makes me happy to be a woman.

so, that's my excuse for being a lazy-ass blogger. for anyone who still looks over here anyway. and if you are, thanks for checking in on me!

i am so cool right now

yay for me! everyone celebrate because as of today, i am officially employed! this weekend i'm moving out of my parents house and going to live in my own house with my own stuff and sleep in my own bed. YIPEE YAHOO!!!

excuse me because now i have to go do the happy happy joy joy dance.

oh, sidenote before i leave. thanks to those of you reading this who went out on a limb and gave me a reference when you weren't supposed to. if you lose your jobs, you can come live with me in my tiny house because i'll be employed!

my family's rite of passage

yesterday, pete and the girl were introduced to the beloved and often misunderstood, peanut butter and pickle sammich. yes, regular smooth peanut butter and dill pickles. i will say this once and once only!

- don't knock it till you try it! -

they are super nummy tasty goodness and if you have never eaten one, you most definitely should before you leave this earth.

you may be saying "ew! no one in their right minds would eat something so disgusting!" and i would say to you "nay. google it." that's right. 89,000 entries. we can't all be wrong, now can we?

needless to say, pete ate his all gone, loving every bite and the girl... well, first let me say the girl doesn't eat much of anything (as we've seen photographic proof of in this blog). but at least she picked out the pickles and ate them, which is a start. she's not completely lost.

now go and make yourself a tasty snack!



and a reminder to send good thoughts tomorrow at 3:30 MST. yes that's mountain standard time. AZ doesn't subscribe to this hokey "day light savings" business.

send good thoughts...

i have an interview tomorrow! i'm really, really tired of being unemployed, so i am hoping that this job comes through for me. it's with the southern arizona aids foundation which is a great cause to work for, don't you think?

so, i'm begging you please, keep your fingers crossed, say a prayer to whomever you believe in, eat a chip and think of me, but for god's sake, do something! i need all the help i can get!

happy happy and all that

yeah, it's my birthday. the last one i plan on ever having.

in honor of my birthday, (and also my mom, who, if you go to her blog, can't keep a secret) i am divulging my real name to the few of those who read this who don't know it.

it's la-fawn-duh. ha ha! i wish!

nope. it's valerie. i hope you don't feel betrayed and lied to. if you do, i'm sure you'll get over it soon. just let it pass.

and because my sis decided to try to get me back for posting a not-so-flattering picture of her on her birthday, i'll go one better than her and post my own not-so-flattering picture of myself here. because i can't be outdone.

and now you know why my kids are scared of me.

prepare to have your world turned upside down

so, i have this nifty little extension for firefox called StumbleUpon and by clicking a little button on the toolbar it takes me to random sites on the net. it's a pretty cool (by cool, i actually mean addicting) little button.

anywho, i was stumbling the other night and i came across this website where an octopus eats a shark. i know, mind blowing, isn't it?

the kids watched it with me and had to watch a second time just to make sure that they saw what they thought they saw.

awhile after it was over, i found the girl wandering around the room, mumbling to herself, "the octopus, the shark, he eat him. really? really? the octopus eat the shark? really?"

i'm sure many of you will have the same reaction.

my comment on this website is that discovery channel will now have to change "shark week" to "octopus week."

a child's imagination

i am constantly amazed at how my kids' imaginations work. pete is always making up stories or drawing crazy pictures. the girl loves to sing, so she's always humming something to herself, making up words as she goes.


this piece of artwork is one of pete's favorites and i tried to label it as best i could remember.

he's so fricking smart and cute! i know i'm just a gushing mom at this point, but i don't care. you don't like it, read another blog! :P



just kidding, please don't leave me. i like feeling somewhat popular to the few people who actually read this. and if you have anything you'd like to hear from me, just ask and i'll try to meet your requests.