Look Ma, No Fingers!!

I do not know WHAT is in the air lately, but I'm loosing all my fingers!!

First it was my right pinky. I was putting away the seran-wrap because the stupid metal thing that's supposed to cut the plastic never did. So what happened? I put it up and it fell down and I caught it and even though it wouldn't cut the thin plastic it sliced my pinky up.

Then while I was bringing Christmas boxes in I got a nasty and bloody cardboard cut on my left pinky - right on the inside of the knuckle and I bled like a stuck pig.

Thirdly I got a mystery cut on my left pointer finger - I'm not sure exactly where I got it (it didn't start to hurt until I did the dishes) but I think I got it while picking up broken glass when Angel dropped one of my stemless water goblets.

And lastly this morning after my bath I opened up a drawer to start getting dressed. The drawer inexplicably flew out of the dresser and I had to catch it and shove it back in before the contents went flying - so I got a nasty splinter in my left ring finger. I pulled it out and it started bleeding but I think there's still a little piece of wood lodged in there. I'm down to six fingers!! I have band-aids on three! What the crap is this all about??

Is it something in the air? Is something supernatural trying to get my attention? Last year around this time I was cleaning my stove off but I had used one of the burners just a few minutes before (I try to catch spills early). Then like a genius I grabbed the burner to remove it and - ow - burned the crap out of four of my fingers. Had to wear band-aids for three days.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS TIME OF YEAR???

That Link Again

Okay I'm new to this blogger so bear with me ... let's try that link again!

What's REALLY in your cleaning products?

2 smart 4 me!

I have three boys who are fairly smart. One who happens to be a straight A student. My youngest potty-trained himself before he was two years-old. They are not geniuses by any means (yet) but I have high hopes for them.

Unfortunately I am not smart at all. My stepdaughter says that people who are ambidextrous are usually not as smart because they use both sides of their brain equally. Well maybe that's true because I am ambidextrous and I am not very bright.

My middle son The Star is what my husband calls "A [poop]house lawyer." I really don't know what this means but he says Star can find the littlest technicality and he uses it to make you feel dumb LOL! He says someday Star can get scumbags out of jail and back on to the street with no problem at all. My husband and my middle son got into an arguement yesterday about the garage. The Mr. said he wanted the cat out of the house because she was annoying him. The Mr. told The Star to put the cat "outside, in the garage, same thing." My son insisted that because the garage has walls, windows, a floor and a roof that it is not "outside" and is therefore still "in the house."

This was an extremely amusing argument to watch, really. My husband, of course, got the last word in simply because he can be louder than everyone else. (The bully law)

Later I was tired and grumpy since I had only slept four hours the night before and then had to stay awake for 22 hours. I got fed up with my daughter and my youngest boy fighting so I told them they had two choices, either sit on the couch quietly and watch the movie or go to bed and go to sleep!!

My youngest boy (4 years-old) came up to me and said, "Mom, I really have three choices. One: I can sit on the couch quietly and watch the movie; Two: I can go to bed and go to sleep; and Three: I can lay on the floor quietly and play with my cars."

I'm not kidding those were his exact words! What kind of 4 year-old talks like that? Well I felt the need to reinforce kind (and quiet!) words so I told him he could play with his cars and he was a perfect angel for the rest of the night! He's the best! His real name supposedly means "God's Gift," and I'd have to say we named him right! He is also (in my opinion) the most handsome of all my kids - but I think that's because he looks just like his dad and his uncle did when they were his age.

If you're interested in what I read from day to day here's a link! An article on companies who are being required to post online what exactly is in their cleaning products....http://bit.ly/5d7nDW

BlAcK FrIdAy

First of all, I can't stand Black Friday. I can't stand the crowds, I can't stand the crazy people, and I can't stand feeling sorry for all the other stressed moms out there. All that EXTRA stress doesn't make our bargains worth it. Besides, I've always been the kind of person who starts buying way ahead of time so I can spend more and really think about what I'm giving people. But my husband (The Mr.) LOVES Black Friday. He craves the stress. I think for him it's more a competition or a race. He also believes he wins every year LOL!

Well this year I got up at 2:30am and managed to drag my hibernating bear of a husband out of bed, we went and had breakfast at a truck stop, then headed over to our next-door-neighbor county. We went to Walmart first. We lucked out on quite a few things even though we had to stand in line for close to an hour.

Then we went to Best Buy. We wanted to buy our oldest daughter (Poinsetta, 12) a notebook or maybe a laptop for Christmas. Unfortunately we couldn't find the one(s) we wanted. So we went back to our home county and did Big Lots, Menards and Kmart. We weren't expecting much from Kmart because of the late hour (it was almost 6am, after all). But we were quite surprised! Kmart employees were going OUT OF THEIR WAY to help us! We got Poinsetta the sewing machine she's been begging us for for the past three years. And we got our little girl a real guitar since she's been wanting to get one. We're all set! Yay! (For the girls anyway - the girls are MUCH easier to buy for than the boys).

Anyway the kids keep coming in here to bother me - since it's the day after Thanksgiving we want to pull out all our Christmas decorations but that means the house has to be cleaned enough for us to move all our furniture around, and I don't want them to see what we got them so I'm signing off here!!

Strange Kids of mine....

Well we have been doing a lot of driving for the past couple of days and a couple of those drives were pretty long.

Have you heard the song "Love Stinks!" ? If you listened to the radio in the 80s you've probably heard it, I first heard it on the movie "The Wedding Singer," and lately my kids have been listening to it on commercials for the swiffer.

Well my youngest (4 years old - for this blog we will call him bossman cuz that's what he is) was humming to himself while we were driving. I couldn't decipher what the tune was because it was a little windy and noisy. But the other kids must have heard him! All of a sudden he shouts, "LOVE STINKS!!! Take it away, kids!!" and then all five of my kids were singing "Love stinks! Yeah, yeah! Love STINKS!! Yeah, yeah!!"

TOO FUNNY!

Then later my son was arguing with me. I have a chest in my closet which I use to put things in I don't want the kids getting into. I have a combination lock to keep nosey kids out of it. My son, the Star (9 years-old) said he thought my stepson (11 years-old) Teddy knew it. I said he did not, NO ONE knows the combination. To which he said, "Then how do you get in to it?"

Well I meant NO ONE BUT ME knows the combo LOL. He caught me. I took an IQ test and the results came back negative LOL!

It kinda sucks to be outsmarted by your own son *tee hee*.

My stepdaughter (Poinsetta, 12 years-old) told me that someone told her that ambidextrous people aren't as smart as other people. Well I have something I can blame it on!! I can write perfectly with both hands so I guess that's why I'm dumb.

P.S. for Thanksgiving Countdown

I would like to thank Fran for sending me her copy of her pumpkin cheesecake. I think it turned out all right even though I didn't hear the timer go off and it may have overcooked SLIGHTLY. Still it smells good. (The thing about baking pies [or custards as I believe this is] is you can't TASTE it until someone ELSE has cut into it!!)

Hopefully there will still be some left by the time I get there Thursday.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) I will go to my youngest daughter's school for her Thanksgiving Breakfast and then I will come home and do my green bean casserole and then my devilled eggs, then I will wait for my kids to get home so we can drive the food to my sister's house. After we get home I get to obsess over what I'll be wearing for the rest of the evening.

Thursday I will have to get up before everyone else to be able to fit in a shower (with curly hair I have to wash it in the mornings which S_U_C_K_S!) then I will make more devilled eggs. Assuming our local gas station/convinience store is open (and it is I remember working on TYDay when I worked there) we will then pick up juice and head over to my brother in-law's house. Then off we go to my sisters.

I'll see you all Friday or Saturday!

Thanksgiving Countdown

Here are my plans going up to the big event (in case you even care):

Sunday: Church then probably cleaning.

Monday: Make the ginger cookies required for the Pumpkin Cheesecake Crust (and maybe eat some)

Tuesday: Make the Pumpkin Cheesecake (I imagine this will take all day WISH ME LUCK!)

Wednesday: Make devilled eggs. Make green bean casserole. When the kids get home from school drive to Lafayette, Indiana and deliver pumpkin cheesecake, devilled eggs and grean bean casserole to my sister just in case we don't make it in time tomorrow. (silly Indiana and their silly altering of real time)

Thursday: Make more devilled eggs for mother-in-law's house (apparently I'm really good at making them). Maybe eat some turkey and chicken and noodles at mother-in-law's house (most of the other stuff they have there isn't any good INCLUDING their version of green bean casserole). Drive BACK to Lafayette to visit with sisters. Most of the food there will be gone but maybe I'll get some of my pumpkin cheesecake!!

Yup I spend four days cooking for Thanksgiving and I only eat around a cup of food. This is because I don't like most of what they have at my mother-in-laws and the food is gone by the time I get to my sisters. My mother-in-law, by the way, is an EXCELLENT cook. She makes the BEST STUFF EVER! But the only thing she makes for Thanksgiving (and Christmas, too) is chicken and noodles. So that's all I eat. I love all my sibling's-in-laws ... but they don't make ANYTHING I like to eat. Nothing. At. All. Well my brother-in-law will be grilling the turkey and I'll eat that. He's good at cooking turkey.

I don't know if my sister's in-laws cook anything good because all the food is gone by the time I can drag my husband away from his family to go over and see mine. He doesn't like spending time with my family because he feels they don't like him. Big deal sometimes I don't like him either! LOL J/K. My family has accepted him he just needs to get over it! He's like another kid sometimes!

Anyway to me Thanksgiving isn't about the food it's about spending time with the fam and even though I think TY day should be strictly a "my family" day and Xmas should be with his family he feels we need to spend time with both on the same day. That's a whole lot of driving but I think we'll manage.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!! Be thankful!

Holiday Cooking

My sisters and I decided we would each try a new recipe this year. My youngest sister has the easiest recipes and my other sister (still younger but only by a couple years) opted out this year - I forget why but we really loved her yam/bannana thing she made and she's making it again (yay!).

Me and my lazy self thought of the brilliant idea to attempt a Pumpkin Cheesecake. This is something my stepmother used to make and it was the best of all worlds: New York Style Cheesecake and Pumpkin Pie and Graham Cracker crust! You taste a piece of heaven if you taste a pumpkin cheesecake. I would eat the leftovers all by myself every year (nope - can't even IMAGINE how I got this fat LOL)

Well I wanted to make it from scratch (another genius idea of mine I guess) so I looked up the recipe for it. I found it on joyofbaking.com. But as I read the directions, it called for ginger cookies. Well, I made a kind of ginger cookie but it wasn't really a ginger cookie ... so I looked up the recipe for that. It called for something called cinnamon-sugar. I had never heard of such a thing! So I looked up a recipe for THAT. Although it turns out I did know the recipe but I've always heard it refferred to as "sand." Which I make by the batch and keep in a handy little container on my spice rack TYVM.

Soooooo I don't have to make the sand. I DO have to spend a day making cookies, however, that will just get crumbled up to make the crust. WHY would I do this, you ask, when I could just go over to Walmart and buy one of those premade graham cracker crusts? Well lemme tell ya! These past few months have been such a humongous failure for me that I want to do SOMETHING right! I SAID I'd make it FROM SCRATCH so THAT is what I am GOING to do!!

Guess I need more stress in my life LOL!

I will admit that ever since I've been sick I haven't worn any make-up. (Don't see the point when I'm just going to rub it off either with my hands or my handkercheif/napkins/towels which I use to blow my nose - TMI?) Well my youngest daughter (6) decided since my mothering instincts are slightly below par due to my illness that she had to take over as woman of the house. I was not aware at the time but apparently that meant she had free access to all my make-up. I also didn't know that she didn't shut my face powder and then tossed my make-up box (it's a kaboodles I've had since I was around 14 or so!) back into my closet.

So this morning I went to put on my make-up because even though I'm sick I'm expected to be in public for a school thing tonight and when I opened up my kaboodles and a large tan cloud of dust expolded out at me!! Here's a pic:

If you can't tell how bad everything is covered up with my face powder here: I drew a line in the mirror for ya:



Blah! I started yelling and she came in and 'fessed up right away. She even helped me clean it up. My face powder is now in my wash-closet trash can. SIGH. I do have replacement (compact) face powder but dangit that was my FAVORITE!! LOL

I threatened to install security cameras in my house. There is food missing from my fridge and someone(s) stealing my pop. I have to keep it in my room. The threat is working so far - nothing has been missing for a couple days.

My husband was the first person to notice it. He started hollering and told me I had to deal with it (typical). I said , "Deal with what?" and he responded with "JUST LOOK AT YOUR SON!" So I looked.

If you can't tell there, my son has no bangs. He has no bang hair at all. Someone had cut his bangs off and made him look like an old man with a receding hairline!! I screeched "WHO DID THIS TO YOUR HAIR?!??"

He looked up at me as innocently as he could muster and he implicated his sister. His sister, 6 years old, once did the exact same thing to her hair and I spent a year trying to grow it out. Then a few months ago she fell asleep with gum in her hair and I couldn't fight it so I cut her hair from the middle of her back to a shoulder-length bob. I called her in to ask her WHY she cut her brother's hair. She came in like this:

Well I guess he was telling the truth! She had done the exact same thing to HER hair. How did she explain this? She insisted her little brother told her to do it. I don't believe here LOL. As for her brother, he is a boy and has gorgeous eyes so even though it is autumn and the temps are dropping quickly I will simply shave his head bald or buz it really close and maybe do the same to his brothers (*evil laugh*) so they all match. But what about the girl? I certainly can't shave HER head bald!

Sooooooooo I guess I'll just spend ANOTHER year growing it out. I tell ya these kids sometimes drive me CRAZY!!!!!!!