I fail at this

So much going on again.  The big news, we're moving AGAIN.

This time we're heading to Florida, Hollywood to be exact. Hubs got an exciting new job, so off we go.  I've never had the desire to move to Hollywood, either the cool on in California, or the actual one we're moving to, but such is life.  At least I won't be shoveling snow.  The happiest part is that we'll be living only about a 45 minute drive from Angel #1, who we haven't lived near for almost 10 years, so that's cool.  And since he's getting married in December, we get to be around for that.

The problem with not posting regularly is that so much stuff happened, but it seemed like so long ago that I don't even feel like writing about it.  So, the microwave version:

We had all the kids together over Christmas in Houston.  That was a lot of fun and the Houston hosts, aka Angels #2&4 had some great activities planned.  We went and toured a castle, because there's one of those in Texas and did a ropes course kind of thing called Treeventures, which consisted of climbing around on ropes, tires and various other things 15 to 45 feet in the air.  The kids and hubs all loved it.  I was a bit of a trooper and crawled around pathetically for about an hour before I gave up and just watched.  Angel #2's boyfriend wasn't feeling it much either, but since #2 was prancing around like a mountain goat he felt he had to keep going to defend his manhood.  Of course, WE was pretty much a pro and impressed everyone.  The biggest surprise was Angel #1's fiance who is a little bit of a princess (in a good way) who was right up there with the rest of them and she said that was her favorite part of the trip.  So I'm glad everyone else had such a great time there though I could have done without it.  All in all, it was a pretty successful family vacation and I''m glad we're still able to get together occasionally and have such a great time.

So much stuff

Hubs was in Hawaii this weekend and, according to him, he, "Hit the motherlode."  When I asked for a translation, I was told that there was a humongo yard sale, an old couple cleaned out their house and things were selling for donations.  So he got a bunch of stuff, then found out that it was a one day sale and everything that didn't go was headed for a dumpster.  So, guess who went dumpster diving with his crazy Hawaiian friend?

These people did a lot of traveling and bought souvenirs, so we've got  sumo wrestler calendars, geisha pictures, tons of post cards and what I"m pretty sure are carved wooden African fertility gods, which just isn't a good idea to keep hanging around the house when you're our age.  Talk about tempting fate.  sheesh!   

He also brought home a ton of vintage dresses from the 70's and 80's, some of which are really kind of funky.  But nothing fits since the lady was a tiny little Japanese woman and I'm a rather busty Scandinavian frau.  So now I've got to find some miniature vintage clothing buff who's interested in a bunch of old dresses.

Also, is anyone interested in an autographed picture of Don Ho?

Mother knows best

The other day at work  we had a guy come in and asked if we had any Vicks.  We asked what kind of Vicks and he said it's just called Vicks.  We grabbed him a jar of vapor rub and he said, This is it! and bought it.  I mentioned to my co-worker that it sounded like he had a cold and called his mom what would help and she told him to get some Vicks.  Later that afternoon another guy came in looking for Neosporin ointment, we showed him where to get it and when he was at the register I asked if he needed band-aids as well.  He assured me he had band-aids.  He burned his finger and called his mom and she told him to put some Neosporin on it.  They may think they're all grown up when they head to college, but they all still call on mom when they need help.  I get regular texts from WE asking for cooking advice.  He's turning into quite a chef. 

My band-aid add-on at the register is part of my mission to convince people they need to buy more stuff.  I don't push unneeded items on them, just suggest additional items to compliment what they're  already buying, a drink to go with their chips, etc.  My favorite is the pencils.  We've got this cup of cheap 25 cent pencils by the register and I'm determined I'm going to sell every single one of them.  Everyone who buys them always only grabs one pencil.  I just look at them intently and ask, is one going to be enough?  What if it breaks during class?  They always, without fail, buy at least one more, one guy even bought 3 more.  Afterwards I announce to my co-workers how many extra pencils I convinced someone to buy.  It's become a point of pride and they all think my customer manipulation skills are hilarious.  Everyone needs those little challenges at their job to help them get up in the morning and go to work.

Well, that messed me up something fierce

My bedside clock thought it was daylight savings last night and really screwed me up this morning.  My clock has this feature that makes it automatically change for daylight savings, but it didn't work last weekend.  I didn't think too much about it since it's an old clock I got for $2 at a thrift store and figured it just didn't work anymore, so I changed the clock myself and went on my merry way.  Until this morning.  I woke up at (what I thought was) 5:30 am this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep.  I also couldn't figure out why my neighborhood was so active so early in the morning.  I laid around in bed for awhile hoping to fall back to sleep. I must have dozed back off, then was woke up by hubs calling me (he's out of town) at (again, what I thought was) 6:50am.  I answered but was wondering, what the heck, dude?  Why would you call me so stinking early?  After talking to him, I got out of bed, ate breakfast, drank some coffee then opened my computer and wondered how it was 9 o'clock already and somehow time really flew and I"d better get in the shower.  That's when I went back into the bedroom and realized that my clock said it was only 8am.  I changed it to the right time and did some investigating.  The date was set wrong on the clock.  Since the date isn't displayed anywhere on the clock, there's no way I could have known that.  I went to change the date and when I put it to November 8, it automatically knew it was Friday.  How did it know that?  It doesn't have a year setting function that I could see.  There's some weird sorcery going on here, folks.

Fall Back

I hate daylight savings, it gets me all out of wack.  But, on the plus side, we didn't go to church an hour early.  We never have.  The only time we forget about daylight savings is in the spring.  Twice we realized it when it was too late to get there on time.  One unforgettable time we didn't realize we were late until we actually walked in while they were singing the last hymn.  We got picked on a bit about that one, lemme tell ya.

After church we went to all you can eat Chinese buffet.  They sat us at a table, and we went and got our food.  After sitting down a few minutes, I kept getting wafts of smelly air whenever someone walked past.  Then I realized the guy sitting behind me smelled really gross.  Not b.o., but just like dirty, unwashed, hadn't taken a bath in months, homeless person kind of smelly.  I've got nothing against homeless people, there was a time in my life that my best friend was homeless (I am NOT making that up, his name was Chris and we had a blast together), but there's no reason to be a smelly homeless person.  Plus, I don't think this guy was homeless, just gross.  We quietly asked to be moved to a different table and our waitress totally knew why and apologized, though it wasn't like it was her fault, she wasn't even the one who put us at that table.  I noticed that the rest of the time they were there they didn't seat anyone else in the surrounding tables.  Do people honestly become so used to it that they don't know they smell really bad, or do they know and just don't care?  He was there with a woman, I don't know if she smelled too, my sense of self-preservation prevented me from sniffing in her general area.

That didn't work out as planned

The World Series ended very sadly.  That's all I'm saying about that.

Yesterday was Halloween, trick or treating was postponed in our town because of a ridiculous amount of snow.  Yes, snow.  Quite a bit of it.  In October.  Is this a foreshadowing of the winter to come?  This has got me really reconsidering my life choices. 

Not all my life choices are poorly thought out, however.  Yesterday I made a very wise purchase.  Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you, Kenny and Margaret:

You can't see it in the picture, but their heads are on springs and they bob around!  They're an awesome addition to my other living room decor.  I have Johan, the turquoise giraffe, Judy, the flower girl zombie doll who's riding on the back of Angus, the metal rooster and, of course, the rainbow unicorn head mounted on the wall.  I realized today that the unicorn doesn't have a name.  Then I realized that it's Heidi.  I don't name these objects, they name themselves, people.  Missing from the menagerie is Ben, the margarita drinking flamingo.  He's still down in Houston at the girl's house.  I think they've claimed him as their own and he won't be coming back home to me.  Spread your wings and fly little guy, see the world!  I left him in good hands.

Yesterday, after I got them home, I noticed that somewhere between me picking her up from the shelf in the thrift store and getting her home, Margaret lost her left eye.  I think it happened when her head bounced off while I was in the check-out line.  I'm debating whether or not I should find a replacement, or just let it be.  It kind of gives her that rogue, devil-may-care alley cat look that you just can't fake, it's gotta come naturally. 

Take it back, baby!!

Okay, it's time to confess.  I'm a baseball junkie.  I love me some Astros and they're doing awesome right now.  They're ahead 3-2 in the World Series and hopefully tomorrow night they get all trophied up. 

Ok, now that I've got that off my chest we can go on to other things. 

This morning my darling 3rd child was horribly traumatized by my husband.  It started with a simple text:  Dad, how much do I owe you?  The response?  "You owe me your life.  You're lucky I was horny that day and your mom's so hot."  To which, the horrified child replied:  Ew ew ew  I MEANT how much money do I owe you for the plane tickets to Houston and to make sure I never have to hear you say that ever again?

He's probably broken for life now.

At work today we were making up little candy bags as gifts/bribes for instructors to lure the into the bookstore and tell us what books they're requiring for the winter & spring terms so we can order them before the students start filing in looking for them.  We needed 37 bags and were supposed to put about a dozen pieces of candy in each bag.  Once we realized that we had WAY more candy than we were going to need, we got a little more selective in filling the bags, strategically keeping back the good candy for ourselves and placing the icky candy, like the Nerds and the dark chocolate, into the goody bags.  We're obviously not idiots.

⚾  GO 'STROS!!!! ⚾