Cheapskate

This was the tag on some dish cloths I bought today: My favorite is: 'Breathe freely is better, easy to dessication, almost unable bacilli.' Like, what a selling point! Anything that can almost unable some bacilli belongs in my kitchen. And the dessication! It's so easy! And when is it not better to breathe freely? With all the dessication and the almost lack of bacilli around here I am sure breathing easy. Thanks dollar store dish towels! It's also good to know that I can use them in clean tables, dishware, crockery, and glass, because I am ALWAYS in those. All the time. And most dish towels? They just cannot accommodate the way these ones do. Thank you Dollar Tree!

Barway Robbery

On Friday K and I went out to party with a few women we used to work out with at the gym, which recently closed. (Which was very sad. It always sucks when a cool local business goes under.) The owners called around and managed to get about ten of us together to have dinner at Via Nove, a fairly swanky restaurant in downtown Ferndale. We've only been in there one other time, this summer, when we decided we would rather spend our measly bar allowance on two drinks and atmosphere rather than the 10 drinks, assorted shots and and basket of fried chips we'd have gotten at Rosie's. And at Rosie's, we're the classy girls, even without going to such extremes as brushing our hair. We had a nice time and even splurged on a salad (which we split, ha ha!) and a couple of drinks apiece, and afterwards some of us went on to explore Ferndilly. We visited the soon to be moved 'Feminine Arts Studio' of Ferndale, which was this awesome lofty building above an underground lounge. It took me a minute to figure out that 'feminine arts' meant 'pole dancing,' which only made me think of Emily, who wants a pole in her living room SO bad. I'm glad pole dancing is becoming popular. It's always a bummer when a market is specific only to strippers, like clear plastic platform shoes or feminine waxing informercials. Why can't the rest of us join in the fun without the social stigma? After that we moved on to Boogie Fever, where at our ripe ages of 27 and 29 I think K and I would have been the oldest people there, if it weren't for the other women we were with. Dodged that bullet! On top of the obnoxious music and the 12 to 1 ratio from man to woman that required a constant blockade of friends around you to help ward off attack, there was a $6 cover and the drinks were MORE than at Via Nove. Robbery! You'd think with all the guys we wouldn't have had to buy anything, but wrong! They were annoying AND cheap. And we'd not only brushed our hair but wore enough lip gloss to slick an ocean. Needless to say, we ended up at Rosie's, where the bouncer kisses us on the cheek when we walk in and the fried chips are always fresh. It was like coming home after being on a long vacation, one spent awkwardly with women well over your own age and tax bracket. Don't get me wrong, these are really nice women, ones that I respect and genuinely like, but sometimes it's nice to sit in a barstool with your buddy who couldn't care less that your shirt only cost you $3 and drink a good beer that doesn't cost $9.

The Young and the Restless

As Eddie is in Kindergarten this year and prying information about his school day out of him requires the jaws of life, we have a verbal agreement that after school he has to tell me at least three things about his day. If I didn't diligently enforce this rule I would miss out on things like 'I only got 4 crackers at snack time. Everyone else got 5,' or 'We played Dodgeball and they told us to aim for the head,' or of course, 'Ms. P was REALLY mean today.' (Which she never is; she's the most awesome teacher ever, the one I prayed he would get all summer long.) Today, however, he finally spilled some of the juicy Lower El gossip I've been waiting for. In Eddie's words: 'H has a girlfriend. Sometimes they even sit together at the tables. But then today he broke up with her. I don't think he told her, but she knew anyway, I don't know how. When she found out she hit him in the face with her paper. But not hard, just soft, like a little slap. It was so funny. Now she's got a new boyfriend but I can't remember his name. It's not N. Or H. It's someone else.' I tried to pry further. Was H upset? Was J upset? Was H going to beat down the new boyfriend in the circle drive after school on Friday? What excitement might ensue???? But he was done. He made it clear that he'd gone well over his three item informative and that was all I was getting until tomorrow. I'm considering upping his requirement from three to four items of interest, just so I can get to the bottom of this drama before H and J are out of memory and their young love is only a tender breeze flowing down the school halls.

Searching

With a couple of entries under my belt, I'm finally showing up on the Google search radar. These are a couple of searches that have led people to this site, for your reading pleasure: how dose alcohol efffect daily living perfume samples strippers jingle bell rock the first dradle song photo meshuga This is so far my favorite part of having a blog. I'm considering doing an entry like this one, only with more stuff about strippers and alcohol, just because I'm already reaching out to that demographic. And it would be fun to write about.

Winter Schtuff

The weather here has been warm the past few days, a Michigan warm at 40 degrees, which is fine by anyone who has ever had to shovel their car out of their driveway at 6 in the morning. The last time we were able to walk around in spring jackets and look at Christmas lights was when we lived in Arizona. It was more fun there, though, because you could laugh at the natives toting hats and mittens in what they considered 'chilly weather.' I think this Christmas is going to be our best yet. We're in our first home, and both of the kids are old enough to really get into the festivities. We're just broke enough that every present we're buying is a huge event, so we appreciate it - but not so broke that the kids are just getting a bunch of dollar store stuff and Clint and I are re-wrapping small appliances for each other. I guess it's a good combination. I'm sure when you have too much dough the holidays are just about who spends the most of it. We have a ton of family to spend time with, and everyone's healthy. And the weather's good. Did I mention that? Eddie had his first school concert the other night. They sang 'Oh My, I Want A Piece of Pie,' a classic tale about a poor soul on a journey that ends most unfortunately without a piece of pie, and a couple of other classic holiday ditties like 'The Dradle Song' and 'Jingle Bell Rock.' He was so excited to put on his button up shirt and his shiny shoes and the little chicken actually SANG a bit, and about halfway through the show he even managed to take his hands out of his pockets and do the hand motions with everyone else. I have to give it to them, these kids really belted the music out. The music teacher, from what Ed said, put the fear of God into them, like if every last person in the back row of the gym couldn't hear 'That's the Jingle Bell Roooooooockkk!!!' it would go on their transcripts and not a one of them would get into a good college. Whatever she did, it worked. We've got a video of it, and as soon as Clint gets it to me I'll post it. And just because no post would be complete without a picture of one of my kids, here's a picture of Eddie chair dancing at a club downtown, compliments of my limited Photoshop experience:

Discipline

All right, I know I said I'd be writing every day, but damn... all that RESPONSIBILITY is killing me! And there's me being pretty lazy, too... But now it's a new month, and almost a new year, so I'm going to start over. I'll write at least every OTHER day. Let's kick off my new found motivation with a picture of Eddie being as obnoxious as humanly possible: I was actually trying to take a picture of Clint. This beauty was the last in a series of me trying to get a good shot of the kids in front of the Christmas tree after we decorated it. They wouldn't cooperate, and then when I settled on one of just Daddy, well, you see what happened. You can click on that image to go to the whole debacle on Flickr. In other exciting news, we brought Rosie to have her hair cut for the very first time. Luckily, we found a gay man working at a Fantastic Sam's and she now has an adorable bob that accentuates her curls rather than the bowl cut I intended for her. Here she is listening to some vicious gossip: Diva! I'll have to take a few more of her to post later, but for now that's pretty much it. It's been a busy few weeks. We had to give up Pumpkin the Wonder Cat (surprise) and we've had a birthday party, and the holiday kickoff, and lots of leaf raking... But I'll catch you tomorrow.