PROMPTuesday #49 - Pieces of Me

Yay! It's a PROMPTuesday that doesn't totally intimidate me!

So, this week, let’s look in our purses and billfolds, poppets. Pull something out. Tell a story about that something. Where did it come from? Why do you carry it? What does it mean to you, if anything? (And just so you know, tampons (unsullied) totally count.)

Here we go...

I used to carry a bigger purse, it was just plain and black, and I got it at Target. However, this purse became my "carry all" for everybody else's crap but mine. I would find my kids' socks (that they wanted to take off while we were out a park or something so they could run around barefoot), crayons, stickers, pieces of toys, etc...and if my husband and I were out together, he would always ask me to carry his wallet, cellphone and keys so that he didn't have to put them in his pocket.

BUT...for my 1 year anniversary at my company (last April), they got me a gift card to COACH (yes, COACH!)...and as much money as they put on the card, which is WAY more than I would ever spend on a purse myself...it was still only enough for one of their cutest, teeny purses.

This purse can no longer carry everyone else's crap, and because it's so small, I'm pretty anal about keeping it cleaned out. If I don't, every time I open it, all my receipts/papers/whatever, comes flying out.

So, I have your basic items: Cell Phones(work and personal), a Pen, a flash drive (in my industry, you never know when you might need to save a file), a bunch of change, Lipstick/Lip Gloss, Check Book with credit cards, Business Cards, and yes 1 tampon for just in case.

I also have coupons to Target and coupons for Baby Formula which I'm not going to use because we just took Baby Pants off of formula about a month ago, and I've been meaning to drop them off at my babysitter's house so that someone can get some use out of them before they expire.

The only two things I have in there that might be of interest are:

#1 - My Coach Gift Card with a balance of $54.22

It wasn't quite enough to get the next size up in purse, but still enough to get something...but I just didn't know what. So, here we are, almost a full year later...and I still have not purchased my next Coach item. I don't know how long it's going to sit in my purse...and I'm pretty certain I won't actually go back into the Coach store, because let me tell you, it is an EXPERIENCE where you have 3 or 4 women fawning over you and telling you how awesome your selection is...and I don't want to tell them, "Hey look girls, I only have $54.22 to spend" and then have them frown at me as they see their commission dollars flying away. So, I'll more than likely spend it online...and I did see that they have a pick up in store option...because I don't want to use my money on shipping for heaven's sake! If you have any suggestions on a must-have Coach item (that doesn't cost more than $54.22), throw a comment my way.

#2 - My Notebook of Items at Costco with their Unit Price

Yes, I took a notebook to Costco and wrote down all the different stuff that we buy at the grocery store and noted the size, and price per unit. Why, you ask? Because my husband refuses to shop there. Lord Bless Him, he does all the grocery shopping, but he is ADDICTED to the Fry's grocery store, and refuses to go anywhere else. But, with our family of 6, and the amount of stuff that we go through, I REALLY think we would save money if we shopped at Costco. So, that's why I conducted my experiment to compare price per unit on stuff at Costco versus stuff at Fry's. I haven't confronted him with it yet, for two reasons:
#1 - I was waiting for the Costco to be built at the Paradise Valley mall which is less than a mile from our house, and he wouldn't have the excuse that it's farther than Fry's. (However, I haven't heard anymore about that location opening, so it's a possiblity that the project was put on hold because of the "economy")
#2 - I have a curio cabinet that is full of my Mary Kay products (because I decided at one point I'd be a really good consultant, but when the hell did I think I would have time for this with 4 kids, a husband, and a full-time job?...umm, never) that I want to sell/get rid of so that I will have a place to store our dry goods that we purchase from Costco so that I don't get the excuse that we don't have enough room in our kitchen cabinets (our kitchen doesn't have a pantry...waah).

So, once I get #2 taken care of, I will look more into #1 and see what the hell is taking so long for them to open that Costco. Then, I will book a time for my Mother-in-Law to come watch the kids so that hubby and I can take a field trip to Costco, and I can win him over to the bulk-side.

And that turned into a WAY longer blog than it was probably intended to be. ;)

My Stomach Hurts I Laughed So Hard

On the way to drop my little Monkey off at Tutor Time this morning, we starting playing the "copying" game...which is usually really annoying to me when the kids are playing that together, but it was really fun when it was just Monkey and me this morning.

I actually started it by copying her, even though she didn't really want me to (thus the annoying-ness when the other kids do it)...but then she thought it was funny and couldn't hardly say anything for me to copy because she just kept laughing (while I was copying her laughing).

So, then she said it was my turn and she was going to copy me. So, of course to keep things funny and 4-year-old-ish...I was saying stuff like:

"I smell"...to which Monkey would respond..."I smell!"

"Ha Ha...you smell!"...Monkey "Ha Ha! You smell!"

Then I started making farting noises with my mouth...Monkey is not so good at this, so that was funny in itself.

Then I got the novel idea to move towards a word that she would never be able to repeat, and if you've seen Mary Poppins, you know where I'm going with this.

So, then I say "Falla Foola Flulla"....Monkey says "Falla Floola Flulla"

And then I go for the gusto...

"Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious!"

....

Silence

....

I turn around and look at Monkey, with an expectant look on my face.

Monkey says "What? I said it...I just whispered it"

OH MY FREAKIN GOSH! I just about peed my pants I was laughing so hard...I was seriously crying. Sometimes that kid really cracks me up! It was a GREAT way to start my day. I wish I would have had it on video.

Sauce

Quick Question...Does eating 6 pieces of pizza from Sauce only equate to 3 pieces of regular pizza? Or am I a total pig?

"Buh" - The word of a million uses

So, my little Baby Pants has been trying REALLY hard to communicate...and at 13 months that can be somewhat difficult. She is learning sign language, and knows about 4 or 5 signs now...but she really wants to talk too.

In the past couple of days, she has decided that when she says "Buh", she's actually talking in a way that I can understand her. Hubby and I have gotten a big kick out of it.

Here's a few things it means to her:

Look mommy, it's a cat! - "Buh!"

What's that thing over there mommy? - "Buh?"

Here mommy, I'm done with my bottle now - "Buh"

Here are the times when it sounds like she might be saying the word:

When she's doing the sign for 'Bath' - "Buh" (pretty close)

When she's pointing at a bird - "Buh" (as I respond, 'Yes sweetie, that's a bird')


So, if you are in need of doing something hilariously funny today, just say "Buh" in place of actual words! hehe ;)

PROMPTuesday #47 - The Triumvirate

I'm going to be participating in this week's PROMPTuesday from my hotel room in Carlsbad, CA. I had client meetings all day, and then worked from 9 - 11pm on data analysis and thought I would collapse into bed, but all of that brain work makes it really hard to just switch to sleepy mode. So I'm going to give my best shot to today's topic:

Use in a story/poem: a skein of red yarn, a comb and a bottle of water.

I'm not sure why she kept red yarn in the basket with her others. I've never seen her actually use red yarn in any of her pieces. She tends towards pastels, light pinks, greens, yellows...I call them her "Easter" colors. She grins at me, and reminds me that Easter is not about pastels and has nothing to do with a bunny. I nod solemnly...but the red still makes me wonder. I tell her to come sit in the wicker chair so that I can comb her hair for her. I don't think 80 year old hands are very good at fixing hair. I'm probably not much better, and she says she can do it herself, but I truly love this time I have with her. I sweep her salt and pepper back with the comb, watching it as it falls to the right in its natural part. She tells me she wants it pinned up today. I'm no good at this, she knows that. But I think she uses it as an excuse to tell me stories of how she used to twirl her hair in pin curls every night when she was a girl. I remember watching her do this as I grew up, making perfect little circles of hair and then fastening them with a bobby pin. I make a feeble attempt to just bring her hair back in a clip, and know that I will never be able to do pin curls. Please Lord, don't let her ask me to do that someday. I would royally mess it up, but we would both laugh about it I'm sure. I tell her that it's time for her pills, and go grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. She hates water, she says it tastes funny. I always chuckle inside...how can water taste funny when it doesn't really have a taste? So I pour the water into a glass of ice, and squeeze some lemon juice into it so that it won't taste funny. She takes her pills and tells me that's what happens when you get old. She is getting old...I don't really want to acknowledge that. Note to self, remember to ask her about the red yarn.

Friday Fill-Ins!

Here we go with this week's Friday Fill-Ins!


1. When I look to the left, I see my Vitamin Water and sunglasses.

2. The "Man Room" is the room that has the best view in my home.

3. Let it work like it's supposed to dammit.

4. Dirty Deeds done dirt cheap!

5. Preventing child abuse is a responsibility that all qualified citizens must share.

6. If you have any free time feel free to come over and do my laundry.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to hanging out with the kids, tomorrow my plans include visiting my grandparents and dropping Cita off to go to her dad's for spring break and Sunday, I want to not think about having to travel on Monday for 3 days!

PROMPTuesday #46 - Humility

So here we are with another round of PROMPTuesday. This week's topic is Humility.

Write a story about when you last were humbled, felt humbled by the presence of something/someone in your life, or lay prostrate at the feet of the universe and said “I don’t know what the hell I am doing. I will now surrender and let you take over.”

I am going to start out by saying that I read everyone else's PROMPTuesday posts first. And I must say that each person's post humbled me (and brought me to tears...at WORK...dammit)

People...Experiences...Life. All so humbling. Whether it's our children, or experiences that are good or bad, they continue to shape us until we finally get to the point where we say "It's not about me, it's about something bigger." I had this phrase I used to say in my late teens/early twenties when something would not go quite how I had planned...I would say "Just another reminder that the world does not revolve around Crystal." ha!

I'm humbled just about on a daily basis...my daily drive to work consists of two things...calling my grandparents and talking to God. My grandparents are these wonderful people that God put in my life almost 29 years ago, and I just started to really, I mean REALLY appreciate them in the past year or so. (I just deleted a huge paragraph, because this could go on forever). Anyway, my grandparents raised me because my parents couldn't (really long story). To give them even more credit, they are not blood-related to me in any way. They adopted my mom when she was a baby, and when she was 18, she had me...and my grandparents stepped in and raised me from about 2 yrs old through high school. They were the ones that paid for dance lessons, field trips, braces, medical visits, clothes...all out of their own pockets, with only a little bit of assistance now and then from my dad. And when I became a parent at 17, they became instrumental in helping me with the girls. I resented them for a long time...I thought they kept me from my parents on purpose, but when you're a kid, you're pretty stupid. I'm 29 now, and they are 77 and 75...and I just wish I could be with them all the time. I call every morning and usually after work too...I tell them how much I appreciate them, and how they didn't have to do what they did. They are right this minute watching my 11 year old because she's sick, so that I could go to work. They were at my house last week because my 6 yr old was sick. They do whatever they can to help me...that humbles me...but you know, it just goes to show they've already had that moment where they've realized life is not about them...but something bigger.

The second piece of my drive is my daily talk with God. I've been doing a lot of changing over the past couple of years...becoming closer to Him, finding out that He has a plan for me and taking steps toward that plan. How can you not be humbled by the fact that the Creator of the Universe knows you by name, knows the number of each hair on your head (and not just that you have 4,315 of them...but that the strand that just came out in the brush and fell on the floor was hair #2,324), and created you with a plan in mind? Yeah, we can mess it up, and we can choose not to to accept the plan...we can even choose to turn our backs on Him. But He loves us anyway...just like we love our children, no matter what they do. And I always make it a point to tell my kids when they get in trouble that I may not like what they do, and I may discipline them, but I will always love them. I thank God for his grace and mercy, that even when we mess up, he doesn't just write us off...but waits patiently for us to realize our mistake and come back. That's humbling to me.

Make Up Monkey

This is what we call my 4-year old from time to time, except we insert her real name (which also starts with an "M", so it still has a nice rhythmic ring to it). We call her this because the kid has a HUGE imagination, and likes to pretend that things she imagines are real. Or, when we call her on it, she will say, "No...it was in my DREAM"...to which we all say "Ohhhhh...okay".

Last night at the dinner table she was telling us her dream, and it went a little something like this...

Monkey: So...last night, I had this dream, and me and Mommy were out in the forest and there were giraffes and we rode on their backs.

SAM: You rode a GIRAFFE? Oh yeah, how'd you get on it's back? (this is my 11 yr old smarty-pants who likes to constantly rain on her sisters' parades)

Me: SAM, it's a dream...maybe the giraffe leaned it's neck down to the ground so we could get on.

Monkey: Yeah! That's what it did! So then we were at this cave, and there were bears in it. So we ran outside, but our giraffes were gone. So we were going to ride on zebras, but the zebra we saw was dead. But then we saw two other zebras...except, no, they were cows. So we rode on them really fast!

At this juncture in the story, we thought she was done...so her telling of her dream, prompted each of us to talk about our dreams. After we do this, Monkey starts crying. We ask her what's wrong, and she said she didn't get to finish her dream. So we apologized and told her to finish her dream.

Monkey: But now I forgot it!!

Me: We were riding away from the bears on our cows, remember?

Monkey: Oh yeah! So, the cows brought us to our house and we ran inside and hid in the closet.

Silence....

Me: And then what?

Monkey: That's it.

Me: Did the bears find us?

Monkey: No.

Me: We just stayed in the closet?

Monkey: Yep!

The End

We Are Officially Child-Proofed

So, the time had come to child-proof the house...up until this point our method of child-proofing was yelling "Baby Pants...NO!!!" or "That's a No-No Baby Pants"...the first one was more for things like pulling herself up on the entertainment center which I knew for a fact was going to drop the TV on her head one day, and the second was more for when she pulls all of the oven mitts out of the kitchen drawer.

I hadn't planned on paying professionals to come in and do it, I was more going to assign it as a task to my hubby to complete some day...but I got a recommendation from Phoenix Mommies because another mom was looking for a company that would childproof her home, and Arizona Childproofers was the name that was recommended.

These guys were QUICK. They put cabinet locks on about 20 cabinets/drawers, installed a TV anchor to the aforementioned TV that was going to drop on Baby Pants' head someday, put padding around our fireplace and some more on the corners of our coffee table, installed a toilet lock, and some plastic sliding locks above the accordion doors to our den...in less than an HOUR!! It was about $250 for all the equipment plus labor, but it was well worth it in my opinion for the time/energy it saved our family. And a drop in the bucket when you are protecting your child from being seriously injured. (We've had enough hospital trips in the past year, thank you very much)

So...anywho, that's all I really had going on today.

I chickened out on today's PROMPTuesday, because I just really didn't feel up for the challenge. But if you are, check it out! :)

Have a great day!