Poor Oscar

This morning, after getting dressed, Emily said something about needing to get Oscar and Dolly dressed. A few minutes later, Oscar came out in this lovely ensemble. I knew when I saw it that I had to blog it.

Poor Oscar. He looks so pretty in his dress. And you know that if Oscar was a thinking Grouch (instead of having a head filled with stuffing), he would be totally mortified at the thought of being seen in such a state.

When Emily was putting the dress on him, I could hear her talking to herself about how "pretty" he was going to look. Hee.

Taking to my bed

I had something witty (well, you know, witty for me) planned but something is triggering my allergies and I can barely breathe. I just took 2 Sudafed and a Benadryl and I'm going to bed.

The girls are sleeping and if I am really lucky, I'll get to sleep more than 20 minutes. Woo!

While I'm gone, tell me what you're allergic to.

I keep blaming this round of sniffles on the 40 acres of corn across the street until Mike pointed out last night that the pollen there? LONG gone. It still makes a nice scapegoat, though.

Souvenir

That? Up there? Is my souvenir from my trip to see Katie in Illinois.

Yep. It's a speeding ticket.

I left Katie's house at about 7:45. The time of my citation? 8:12 AM. That would be 27 minutes into my trip home. Not exactly the best way to start out.

I was traveling in the left lane and suddenly I heard something beep in the car. I didn't have a radar detector with me, so I have no idea what beeped, but the beep made me look up. Right into the eyes of the policeman on the median. I hit the brakes and moved over to the middle lane, noting that I had been going 83. As I passed him, I watched my rear-view mirror, praying that he was going to stay put. Nope. His taillights came on and I knew I was busted.

He pulled out and caught up with me, which wasn't hard since I had slowed down to 65 and set the cruise control. He hung out in my blind spot for what felt like an eternity, probably calling in my plate number or something police-y like that.

Eventually, he moved into the lane behind me and turned on his lights. Yep. Busted.

He asked how fast I was going and I said "pretty fast." He said he clocked me at 80. He only wrote me up for 78 in a 65, so I guess it's better than it could have been.

The worst part was calling to tell Mike that I'd gotten the ticket. I knew he was going to be unhappy. I'm paying for it out of my savings money (which is what we call the money that I make with my 13 odd jobs), because I don't think Mike should have to pay for my lead foot.

And now I'm hoping that my insurance company doesn't find out about my souvenir.

Jiggety-jig

Home again, home again.

Thank goodness.

I had SO MUCH fun, but for me, the hallmark of a fabulous vacation is the overwhelming wonderfulness of home.

I didn't really start missing my girls (and Mike, of course) until Saturday. I spent a lot of time trying not to think about it too much.

The view was much less picturesque this time.

Sunday morning, we decided to make a spur-of-the-moment trip to a water park near Katie's house. There are few things in life I love more than a water park and the chance to go to a park without my kids? Awesome. I went down the slides a couple times and then floated around the Lazy River thing (I know it was called something else, but can't remember what) about 83 times. I got off the Lazy River and found Katie et al. What did Ally want to do next?

Go on the Lazy River, of course!

This is the other thing I did.


I believe that little slice of heaven was called The Royal Flush. We kept calling it the Toilet Bowl. That is exactly what it felt like. While I was in the bowl part, I was stuck. I couldn't stop circling the drain, so to speak. I finally wiggled my way toward the center and then went headfirst into the water.

Ally and Rob also did the Royal Flush. I was so impressed with Ally. She's 4 and she went on a ride that most adults are nervous about doing.

Katie got great pictures of Rob and Ally being flushed, but someone walked in front of her just as I was coming out. Bummer.


These last two pictures were taken at the cemetery where Abraham Lincoln is buried. We went to visit Lincoln's tomb and as we were leaving, I saw this tomb and had to stop.

They are all for my dad. He played the accordion when he was a kid and we never let an opportunity to give him crap about it pass us by. Dad, if you want us to commemorate your dedication to the accordion on your tombstone, please let me know.

What We Went For: Taco Seasoning

What We Came Home With:

- Ground Beef
- Lettuce, shredded
- Cheese, shredded
- Tomato
- Sour cream
- Cheese, sticks, for children
- Tortilla chips, two kinds
- bottled water, two cases
- peanut butter
- bread, three loaves
- pretzels, for children
- trail mix, for ... well, I think for everyone
- beer, for Rob
- something fruity and alcoholic, for Katie and I (She's trying to get me drunk! I think she wants to take advantage of me!)
- grapes, green


Do you see something missing from that list? Yeah, us too.

A few minutes after we got home, Rob was sitting on the couch while I shamelessly continued my hogging of the comfy blue recliner (seriously, I think I want a recliner for my birthday. I have no idea where we'd put it. I don't care. WANT.)('course, you'd never be able to pry my ass out of it.) and he said "Something just occurred to me." I thought he was going to expound on the election, or the song on the radio station or ... something.

He said, "I don't remember buying taco seasoning. We went to Wal-Mart to get taco seasoning and I don't remember buying any. Do you?"

Nope.

Rob and Katie did rock, paper, scissors and Katie won, but she and I still went back to Wal-Mart to get taco seasoning.

As we were walking back in to Wal-Mart for the second time in as many hours, Katie pointed out that's the mark of a not-so-good day, when you have to go to Wal-Mart twice in one day.

BUT! While we were driving home, Katie helped me figure out what the 'B' on the Prius' gear shifter meant. So there's that. B, apparently, is for 'engine braking'. I'm not entirely sure why that's a good thing to have, but whatever. Now I know what it's for.

Let's Do The Time Warp Again!

I have arrived safely in Illinois.

This was my view from the Blue Water Bridge, Port Huron MI.

The title above comes from yesterday, as I was driving between Michigan and Illinois. I decided at 10 am, that I would wait until 11 and then stop, get some lunch, some gas and go to the bathroom. I crossed the border into Indiana at 10:50 and stopped at the next McDonalds. I went quickly into the bathroom (a large glass of milk, some water and a juice box will do that to you) and then went to get some lunch.

Except.

There was an awful lot of talk about eggs and sausage going on.

I asked the counter lady what time they started serving lunch and she said 10:30.

Wait a minnit...

The time zone border? Is between Indiana and Michigan. It was only 10 am. Whoops!

I guess this is why they call it the Blue Water Bridge, huh?

I stayed Thursday night to Friday morning at my grandparent's house in Michigan. Grandpa has been having some memory problems recently, so explaining to him where I was going and who I was going to see was ... interesting. He didn't quite grasp the concept that I was going to see someone I had never met before. Heh. Grandma understood a little better. I told her I met Katie through a website I have and we've been emailing back and forth.

Dear Dad, please don't worry. I wasn't endangering
Georgette's life by taking these pictures.
We were in heavy traffic and I was at a complete stop.
And they were just too pretty to pass up.
Love, me

Katie and I are going to go to Springfield this morning to see Sen. Obama and Sen. Biden speak. I'm not sure we'll actually make it to the speech, since we've been told to be patient, not bring anything and get there 3 hours in advance, but we'll give it a shot. And if we decide to skip it, we can go do something else.

That's about it for now. I'll try to post some more stuff later. Maybe. There's some heavy-duty relaxing goin' on 'round here.

It's really real

Several months ago, Katie and I planned to get together. We selected a weekend in August and made cost-comparisons between driving and flying.

That weekend? Starts tomorrow.

And it does not feel like it is even remotely possible that it is here already.

I am leaving here mid-morning, after dropping the girls off at Mike's mom's for the day. I am going to drive to my grandparent's house in MI and spend the evening and night there and then drive the rest of the way to Katie's from central MI. I'll spend the weekend in IL (coincidentally, Senator Obama is announcing his running mate in IL Saturday) and then head home Monday, I'll stop at my MI parent's house Monday night and head home Tuesday.

Mike pointed out yesterday that this is going to be the longest/farthest car trip I've ever done on my own. It's also the longest time I've ever been away from my girls.

This is not my first blogger-friend meet-up, but in many ways, it feels like it. I am nervous and excited and not sure what to expect and I know Katie is feeling the exact same way.

Apparently Katie's husband Rob has been asking Katie what she has planned for us to do and he's somewhat skeptical of our non-plan plan, which currently is: hang out, talk, and maybe go shopping or something.

I've spent the afternoon getting ready for my trip, packing my suitcase, printing out directions, writing up the girls' medications for Mike, and slowly, the realization that this is really real is dawning on me.

And now the butterflies are starting.

AND if going to see my best-internet-girlfriend isn't exciting enough, my parents are lending me their Prius! How cool is that? I was going to drive Mike's Honda, which gets WAY better gas mileage than my van, but he's been having some issues with it and no AC. When my Dad offered the use of Georgette*, I was ALL OVER IT.

*Yes, Georgette. My parents name their cars (I do, too, sometimes). The Prius is Georgette because she's named after George Jetson. Except, she's a girl, so Georgette. They also have a truck named Bubba. Strangely, none of my current cars have a name. But the GPS in my van? Her name is Kim.

Enough blathering on. I need a favor. My mom is thinking about starting a blog (I KNOW! Cool, huh?) and she wants to come up with a cute, catchy name. Her name is Cheryl. She thinks the blog is going to be mostly about nutrition/dieting/cooking with some kid/grandkid talk thrown in. The ones I have come up with are: Who's your Bama**, NY 'Bama, Cheryl NOT In A Barrel***.

What say you? Help ma mommy come up with the next "it" blog name!

** Emily says "Grandma" as 'Bama. My mom thinks it's hilarious.
*** When my mom was a kid other kids would tease her by calling her Cheryl Barrel.

Not the first time

The peach pit? Not the only time my idiot dog's mouth has gotten him into trouble.

One Sunday, the January after Domino joined our family, we were hanging out at my parent's house. My mom had bought a large bag of fancy birdseed to make into birdseed wreaths for Christmas presents. The rest of the bag was in their garage.

Both dogs were outside for a while and when Domino seemed tired, we let him in. I remember very clearly, sitting next to my mom and resting my hand on Domino's side and remarking that his belly seemed big to me. My mom said it was nothing, probably the way he was laying.

We eventually went home and went to bed. A couple of hours later, Domino was urgently asking to go out. I got up and stumbled out of the bedroom, blearily putting on a sweatshirt and pants for the trek downstairs.

I clipped his leash on and hurried him outside. He got halfway to his potty spot (a tree about 60 yards away from our back door) and had to stop. There was some light coming from one of the security lights and I could see that the poo didn't look normal. Something wasn't right, but I couldn't see clearly enough to know what. We continued on to the potty spot and Domino made several more deposits. When I thought he was done, we headed back towards our apartment building and my nice warm bed (remember, this is JANUARY in NEW YORK. Toasty it wasn't.)(I know I am a terrible apartment-dweller but I TOTALLY didn't pick any of that poo up. Middle of the night poop-scooping? NOT HAPPENING.)

The stairs to our apartment went straight up and then turned at a landing and went up a couple more steps. Domino made it to the landing before needing to stop again to poo. This time I could see, with the hall lights on. The poo? STUDDED with bird seed. In fact, it was MOSTLY birdseed.

And now it was in the hallway, a common area of the apartment building. And it was late at night. I was going to have to clean the poo quietly. Great.

I let Domino into the apartment, grabbed a bag and scooped as much of the hall poo as I could. I was able to get most of it up. I tossed that and decided to go to the bathroom before going back to bed. While I was in the bathroom, I looked out to see Domino squatting again in the living room. Fabulous.

That was exactly what I needed. MORE poop.

I think that's when I freaked out and woke Mike up. I told him the whole sordid tale of the poo and the cold and the hall and now the living room and how I was tired and cold and just wanted to go back to bed. He agreed to clean up this last mess.

What makes this so funny to me, other than the 85 times the dog pooped in one brief period, is you'd think, with as miserable as he was (and he really was miserable) that he would learn his lesson. No. A couple weeks later, he was back in my parent's garage, trying to eat his weight in birdseed.

Stupid dog.

Just Peachy

So Hi.*

*Apparently I say that a lot. Because that is how Emily begins ALL of her conversations on the phone. When there's a dead space in the call? "So, Hi." Yeah.

I think this week is going to be a bunch of posts devoted to the black, hairy one who lives here. Good ole Domino gives me some great blog fodder.

Saturday, Mike and Emily shared a peach on the deck after lunch. Domino, as usual, was hanging around, hoping someone would drop something to eat.

Mike finished the peach, and pitched the pit out into the yard, somewhere over Domino's head.

Doofus picked it off the ground and ate it. Whole.

Mike and I laughed about it for a couple of seconds, how that must have hurt his throat as it was going down. And then we started thinking about the poor dog trying to pass it out the other end. And then I started thinking about all the stuff in between the throat and the butt. Like intestines. That can be punctured by a rough peach pit.

That's when I grabbed the phone and called the vet.

The receptionist asked what kind of dog I had and then laughed when I said he is a Lab/Pit mix. Eating random strange stuff? Totally a Lab thing to do.

She talked with the doctor and said he wasn't terribly concerned, but that we should try to make D throw up to get the pit out of there. Apparently, peach pits? Slightly toxic to dogs. Good to know. Would have been better to know BEFORE the damn dog ate the pit, but you know, whatever.

The doctor recommended we give D some peroxide to help speed up the throwing-up process. Of course, I didn't have any peroxide in the house.

I made a quick trip to the grocery store 2 miles from our house and $0.69 later, I was the proud owner of some H2O2.

I grabbed one of the medicine valves that I use to give liquid medicines to the girls and stuck it in the bottle. That way, I could use one of the syringes to stuff the peroxide down Domino's throat and bypass the whole "Will he drink this? Did he get enough?" debate.

I was told to give him 2-4 Tablespoons of peroxide. My syringe holds 2 teaspoons.

Simple enough to do the conversion. There are 3 teaspoons in 1 Tablespoon, so Domino needed 6-12 teaspoons.

Mike gave D a big hug and I started prying his mouth open and shooting the peroxide in as far as I could get it. The poor dog was NOT happy. He was shaking his head and foaming at the mouth (I suppose here would be a good place to say that you SHOULDN'T give your dog (or anyone else) peroxide unless SPECIFICALLY instructed to do so by a doctor. Don't try this at home, folks!). I was surprised that he was being as cooperative as he was, so I decided to go for the full dose and gave him 12 syringes-full.

Except... as I finished with the 12th dose, I realized that when I was doing the math on how much D needed, I forgot to divide by the 2 teaspoons held by my syringe. So instead of 2-4 Tablespoons, Domino got 8 Tablespoons of peroxide. Um, oops?

Even while we were dosing Domino, we could hear his tummy gurgling. Once Mike let him go, he stood in the yard looking a little confused and as though he REALLY didn't feel good. He started trying to relieve the pressure in his belly by going potty. That didn't work. He tried again, emptying the other tank. Still no dice.

Finally he started retching. Mike, who was on puke-watch while I put the girls down for their nap, let out a cheer. A few minutes later, there were several white, foamy patches on the grass where Domino had off-loaded all that peroxide. One of them contained the peach pit. Mike even fished it out and tossed it over the fence so that Nimrod couldn't eat it again. Because he totally would have.

And that? That is why I am PEACHY today.

Bargains!

I've posted here several times about my undying love of the bargain.

I get all excited when I find a good coupon for something I need to buy anyway. I frequently shop on ebay for coupons that I could use, like the Silk coupons I talked about here, that may not be available in my paper. Or, ones that were in my paper, but not in sufficient quantity to keep me happy.

Yes, my name is Erin and I am a coupon-holic.

One of my other favorite bargain places is the grocery store Aldi. I buy all our cow milk there, for $2.55 a gallon. That's more than 30 cents cheaper than at Wegmans! 30 cents! I buy at least 4 gallons a week, that's almost $5 a month in savings.

A bargain spot I wasn't aware of is called Couponers.com. I belong to a coupon forum, but haven't been there in a while, mostly because it took me ages to sort through the 80billion posts every day. I am very intrigued by the Couponers.com process that gives me coupons I need from the stores I visit. We'll see how it works, since I live in the boonies and many of the popular stores don't come 'round here.

This post is a blogblast for the ParentBloggers network and Couponers.com.

Very Good Things

Today is a good day.

I had some ladies over from MOMS Club this morning for a New Member Tea. We had iced tea and chocolate chip cookie bars. We spent nearly 3 hours chatting and the kids ran around my backyard playing. It doesn't get much better than that, to me.

For lunch, I made myself a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich. Nirvana, sandwiched between two pieces of wheat bread. I was going to take a picture of it, but I ate it too quickly.

While I was eating, I noticed that the Top Guide ratings were out for ChaCha. Top Guide means that you had more than 200 queries in the past week and more than 95% accuracy. Top Guide has become more crucial because my rate of pay per query is based on whether or not I make Top Guide. As a Top Guide, I am paid $0.20 per query. If I am not a Top Guide, I get $0.10.

I was one of the Top Guides for the past week! YAY!!

AND because I hadn't yet ended my probation when they announced the new pay structure, I am getting a RAISE! WOO! I had been getting $0.15.

And now, my girls are both sleeping (well, Lucy just cried, but I'm hopeful she'll go back to sleep) and I'm sitting on my couch answering ChaCha queries.

Life? It is good.

How could I forget?!

I almost forgot to tell you about the BEST part of Saturday.

Please notice that the sarcasm light? Is ON.

So*, Emily and Lucy came down with a cold mid-last week. They were both snot faces and cranky and generally a real treat to be around. Emily started coughing with her version of the cold, so I started giving her more of the Flovent inhaler.

Friday night, she was up twice in the night to throw up from all the coughing. My parents were sleeping on the couch during all this, so you can imagine the fabulous rest we got that night. Saturday morning Emily just could not stop coughing. She was miserable. At 8, I called the pediatrician and asked what I could give her by neb and listed the small pharmacy of drugs I have on hand as well as what she'd already received.

The nurse called right back and suggested an Albuterol neb and mentioned that if the cough didn't settle down, the doctor wanted to see her.

I set the neb up and sweet-talked MI Grandma into sitting with her while she got it, as Em was NOT enthused. MI Grandma is a nurse and if she can talk a cranky cancer patient down, she surely can convince a 3-year-old to take a 5-minute neb.

At 9 am (T minus 2 hours until the party started), Emily was still coughing. And gagging. And then she'd cough some more. This girl was coughing every 30 seconds or so. My stomach and throat hurt just listening to her. I called the pediatrician back and asked to talk with the nurse. She went to talk to the doctor and called me back to tell me to bring her in for a 9:30 appointment.

AAH!

While I was pretty sure that would be the outcome, I wasn't exactly ready to be told I would have to leave the house less than 2 hours before 17 more people came to my house.

I pretty much tossed Lucy at my mom and bailed. And bless all of my parent's hearts (and Mike), they pitched in and got the party set up. It was perfect.

Emily arrived at the doctor's office and she was the most pitiful thing in the waiting room in her party dress. The doctor looked at her, saying he expected the problem was allergies. We were both surprised when he found not one, but TWO infected ears.

Happy Birthday, Emily! You get 2 ear infections and a prescription! Yay!

Em and I dashed to Target where I totally used the birthday-party-in-less-than-an-hour thing to get the pharmacist to fill it as fast as he could.

We got home at 10:45, just in time for me to calm myself and finish setting up before everyone arrived. Whew!

Em is feeling much better now, thank goodness.

Birthday!

Today is Emily's 3rd birthday. She was SO EXCITED. She really knew it was her birthday and that made it so much fun.

We had Emily's party on Saturday. It was a small, intimate affair for 23 of our closest friends and relatives. (Yeah, I know: 23 isn't small. That's what happens when you have 3 sets of parents, 2 married siblings, a niece, a nephew, and a couple of friends with their kids.)

Me, Emily and nephew Tommy, because he would. not. sit. down.

When I asked Emily what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday she said, "Blue." So a blue cake she got. But I really need to take a rudimentary cake decorating class. I am stinking up the name of cake decorating with my feeble attempts at slopping frosting on the cake.

Emily, Elliott and Tommy check out Em's new Wiggles cup.

Emily had a total ball opening the small mountain of presents and kept wanting to stop opening to play with her loot. Sorry, doesn't work that way, sweetie.

Lucy explores Emily's Dora tricycle.

Lucy discovered the wonders of walking on her own this weekend. She stood up Friday morning and walked away. And that was that. She played by herself in the yard for hours during the party. What a cutie.

Emily was hugging on Lucy in the tub tonight and I couldn't resist getting some pictures. I like this one, but they kind of look like mismatched conjoined twins.

Most. Annoyed.

It is 2:18 and I just got the kids into bed for their afternoon nap.

(PS: Hi! Sorry for the nearly week-long absence! I, um, have been ... busy. And stuff.)

This morning we were invited to Mike's parent's house for brunch after church.

Our church service starts at 10 am and runs about an hour and a half or hour and 45 minutes. Mike was pulling into the driveway after church at almost exactly 12pm. (I stayed home so that Lucy could get the morning nap we all want her to have.) We piled everyone in the car and rushed over to Mike's parent's house.

And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

For lunch to be ready.

Mike's mom kept talking about how impromptu this brunch was. She knew about it yesterday afternoon when she left Emily's birthday party. Exactly how much time does she need to have to thaw hamburgers and hot dogs?!

After much prodding she finally got the guys to start cooking. The food was brought in after 1pm. Which is the time my kids are usually going down for nap.

At one point, Mike's mom asked if Lucy was feeling all right. No, not really. She's hungry and tired and has had a busy weekend. And you put her on the porch and left her there unattended, so she did a header off it into the mulch. It's only a 6 inch drop, but still.

The frustrating thing is that this is what happens every time we go there after church. Brunch/lunch isn't served until 1, we don't finish eating until after 2 and I am rushing to get out of there and put the kids to bed because they're tired and cranky. And Mike never wants to leave and I wind up looking like an anti-social hag. I hate it.

It drives me crazy that Mike's parents don't get that my kids nap. Every day. Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel. I don't like it when they miss a nap and I don't like it when they go down late. Both mess up the rest of the day and sometimes even the next day. Most. Annoying.

My current solution is that Mike is welcome to go to his parent's for brunch, but we girls will be going home for nap.

It's 7:15. Do you know where your kids are?

I do.

Mine are in bed.

Yep. Both of them.

Lucy has been giving us fits recently with her sleeping. If she doesn't get a morning nap, she is a complete crank in the evening hours and is DONE by 6:30.

Fine, we thought. We'll just ensure that she gets a nap in the morning and all will be good, right?

It was. For about a week.

Yesterday and today she didn't nap in the afternoon. She played in her crib all during afternoon nap time, talking to herself and periodically crying.

When I got her up this afternoon, she promptly started crying.

Great.

It pretty much went downhill from there.

Add to that the fact that Emily's birthday party is this weekend and I have 18 million things to do to prepare for it and what feels like ZERO time to do it in.

As I was cleaning up from dinner, I told Mike to toss Lucy in the tub and get her in her jammies so that when she finally lost it for good, I could just put her to bed. Emily asked to come inside and I told her that if she came in she was going in the tub and then to bed or she could stay outside and play some more.

She chose inside.

Fine by me.

It is now 7:50 and Lucy is quiet and has been for several minutes. Yay.

I think tomorrow we're going to try skipping the morning nap and see how the afternoon/evening goes.

Augh. Kids. They can be so darn frustrating sometimes.

1-2-ChaChaCha

I passed the simulation test and am officially a ChaCha guide.

I. LOVE. IT.

I've answered 100 queries (at 0.15* per query, I have made ... $15). The questions are incredibly wide ranging, from sports to algebra questions to weather and beyond.

*I am being paid the apprentice rate right now. When I have been a guide for 30 days and have answered 1000 queries with 95% accuracy, then I will receive the princely sum of 0.20 per query.

The call (text?) volume has increased dramatically since I've been working. They hit 10,000,000 texts yesterday and are on track to cross the 15,000,000 this weekend. I have been ChaCha-ing while I write this and it is taking me forever because I keep getting interrupted with texts. Not that I mind...

I also have started working for a local construction company, setting up appointments. This is another easy job that I am really enjoying.

Suddenly I am feeling very hopeful that some of my employment/money woes are coming to an end.

We'll see....

PS: If anyone (in the US) is interested in being a ChaCha guide, email me at erinlooneybin[at]yahoo[dot]com (or click the Email Me link up there) and I will tell you how to do it. They make it sound like the tests are really hard. They're not that bad if you read the documentation they give you first.