Wine Please

Dude. I don’t know what happened, but somehow I got the highest point total this week (whoo-hoo! *does cabbage-patch, the sprinkler, and raises the roof*), but uh, Kim’s undefeated OK Clumberjacks are still beating the pants off of all of us. And Janet’s Bear Necessities are also running around undefeated. And due to Drew Brees, Larry Johnson, and Tennessee’s Defense, I have moved up to 5th place. Love them guys. Hope they stay healthy for me this weekend since I will be up against the Clumberjacks. No pressure…no pressure…find my happy place….

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By the way, have you noticed the new look? It’s to celebrate my first year! And at this “birthday” YOU can get a present…a $25 VISA giftcard!!! Read here for details on how to win!

Also, one of the players in the Plurk Junkies FFB League, Burgh Baby’s Mom, is running the last few hours? minutes? (depends on how quick I can get this thing published) of her fundraiser for the PA 9/11 Memorial. Read about her efforts, then read here to see what you can win. What are you waiting for? go GO GO!

Yep. One year since I started. Can you believe it? I originally started blogging just to have an outlet for some of my thoughts and in the process I met a lot of new people from all over and made several friends. You guys got me through going back to work after having Cooper, all the adjustments needed to wrangle two kids, breastfeeding challenges, colic, Justin working on his PMP certification, and all of you tolerated me through a really rough summer. For that, I thank you.

Since all of your love and support and laughs in the past year have meant so much to me, I am doing a giveaway: until midnight (er, 11:59pm ET) Monday, October 6th, leave a comment on this post telling me which post was your favorite (archives are to your right…wait, no, I moved them to the left side). I will then throw all of those comments into the random generator and the winner will get a $25 Visa Giftcard!!! And yes, you may enter more than once–each of your comments will be a separate entry. I will announce the winner on October 7th.

Oh, and you might have noticed that I’ve made a few changes. It’s not 100% of what I wanted…bit of a fixer-upper, but once I figure out how to change some style stuff I think I’ll have what I’m looking for. I’m completely open to suggestions or issues you’ve come across. Thanks again for such a fun year!

While I’ve been up-to-my-ears in playing single mom this week, and playing around with tubes for Cooper’s ears last week, I realized I have gotten pretty behind on a few things. Please excuse the mess and don’t mind me picking things up while we chat, eh?

First off, we ALL need to vote. I don’t care who you vote for, I just want you to vote (okay, I do care who you’re voting for, but in the very grand scheme of things, I don’t). One of my worst nightmares (besides being constipated), is that a bunch of uninformed people are going to vote for someone just because “he looks honest”, or “she drives the same car I do”, or “I like to vacation in Delaware and that guy is from there”, or “she seems nice”, or “he reminds me of my uncle/father/brother/grandpa”. I want informed voters. I want people to really know what they want in this country and get their happy butts to the polls and make their voice count. So I’ve added several links under my Political Info Blogroll to different sites that allow you to read-up on political candidate’s views so that you can figure out who you’re going to vote for. And not just the presidential election…look at those senators and representatives!!! Check out your local elections, too, because those are more likely to impact you on a daily basis (and will impact you sooner), and then get your happy butts to the polls on November 4th.

If you haven’t registered to vote yet, and you’re are a citizen and will be 18 years old on or before November 4th, get registered and vote. I don’t want to hear you whining that your guy/gal didn’t make it in the White House/Capitol Building/State House/State Senate when you didn’t even make the effort to register and get your happy butt to the polls on Election Day.

Can’t get your happy butt to the polls on Election Day because you’ll be out of town, will be away at school, or you can’t get your employer to adjust your schedule to allow you to get there a little late (or leave a little early)? Click on the link to request an absentee ballot, and then send in that bad boy to make your voice count!

And while I don’t like to get too political here, mostly because I get really pissed when people start personally attacking me for my beliefs (even though I am respectful of theirs), I just can’t stay quiet about this crap. Representative Hastings needs to be pulled out of office. Race-baiting cannot, and should not, be tolerated from anyone, especially an elected official. What’s worse is that the media has all but ignored this because it came from the side of the aisle that they seem most interested in supporting, whereas if a similar remark had been made from the Conservatives, the media would be all over it, screaming across our TV sets and radios. And had it come from that side I would be just as offended and outraged because I would not want others to associate my political beliefs with those of a bigoted buffoon. So Florida, take note…might be time to show this guy the door…let him know that his racial remarks don’t reflect your interests. Plus, he’s already pretty familiar with the impeachment process.

Soooo…well…onto other things, shall we?

I did some other updating to my blogroll and included my friend Kari’s new Etsy store, KC Creations Bowtique. She doesn’t have a lot of stuff in there yet, but she’s slowly taking the pictures and adding more in (I can attest to the fact that she does have a crapload of bows and barrettes at home, so plenty of inventory, just not enough time to stock the catalog with pics yet). By the way, she even makes slip-free barrettes for babies.

I also added in people that I have been reading, just so when you can’t find me you know where to look. Folks that I added, make sure I’ve got stuff correct, eh? Like the name of your site and URL. Just let me know if I goofed somewhere, mmkay?

Finally, I have received a few bloggy awards that I have been incredibly negligent in acknowledging *hangs head in shame*. But better late than never, right???
The very lovely, sweet, and wonderful Flea bestowed this beautiful award on me for sharing the love with Justin for these past 10 years.

I would like to pass it along to all of you mommies on my blogroll for doing such a great job at loving your kids, but I would especially like to share this with Karen, LagLiv, Valerie, and Jen for sharing the ear tube love with me. These ladies gave me all sorts of extra insider info and advice and cheered me on during Coop’s ear tube saga.
I also received an award from Colleen at Mommy Always Wins, but it comes with rules and a loooong list to fill out and such. So I’m going to save it for a day or two, but I at least wanted to acknowledge it while I was still thinking about it. Thanks Colleen! (I totally feel like I just thanked myself)

In no particular order…

• Justin has been gone again all this week for training. He’s been sleeping in a hotel room by himself in a king-size bed. He gets to sleep without being woken up by an early-bird four-year old, snoring dogs, noisy neighbors, or nocturnally-crazed cats. He wakes up, works out in the hotel fitness room, has breakfast, goes to training for a few hours, goes to lunch at a restaurant, goes back to class for a few more hours, goes to a nice extended dinner each night with his classmates/co-workers where none of them are cooking or doing dishes, they have adult conversations and rarely need their food cut-up. He then goes back to the hotel, spends a couple hours doing what he wants, then goes to bed at a decent time (i.e. before 11pm). My days have been the complete opposite, with the added fun of a 2-3 hour daily commute, work all day then for an additional 2-3 hours at home a few nights, and I’m coming down with a cold. Guess who had the gall to tell me he was “so tired”? I’ll give you a hint: he’s taller than me and lives in my house slightly more than he’s gone.
• Gavin is pretty sensitive to change and always has been. Justin being out of town is no exception. Usually the first day or two Gavin will act up and spend an extra special amount of time in Time Out. After that little adjustment period he begins behaving better and becomes his usual sweet and helpful self, especially with Cooper. However, the entire week he will pepper me with such loving phrases as “I don’t want you, I want Daddy!” or “I don’t like you. You’re not my friend. I want Daddy,” or when I pick him up from school, “where’s Daddy? Why isn’t my Daddy here?” I’m considering selling him to the Gypsies in exchange for some jewelry or exotic spices.
• Anytime Justin is gone, or even on nights that he gets home late, Maggie will flip on “watch-dog” mode and become hyper vigilant about protecting me, the kids, the house, and the world from our cats. You know, the cats that have been around here longer than her.
• However, once she passes out at night, you know, when the actual boogey men are out, she’s worthless and doesn’t hear anything. Thankfully silly Ginger takes over and barks at shadows. Or the wind. Usually at 4am.
• I pulled a jar of applesauce out of the pantry and apparently it had been the victim of another jar’s demise while still at the store because it had some dried applesauce over one side of the jar. I put it under running water and start wiping the dampened applesauce off the jar and got cut on both thumbs by a small piece of glass. Both thumbs then proceeded to bleed profusely because I somehow hit a dang artery in each of them. But I didn’t know that I was bleeding that bad because it didn’t start until I saw blood on the coffee filters I was picking up off the floor a minute or two later (courtesy of Cooper). Thought he was bleeding until I realized (1) I never heard him cry, and (2) I saw the blood running down both my hands. Let me tell you, typing while both thumbs are bandaged is more difficult that you might think!
• Work has been interfering with my sleeping, blogging, blog-reading, plurking, and wine drinking (due to the several nights of additional work). But I stick with it because it pays for the stitches and blood transfusions I seem to need for my thumbs.
• Wanna hear about Cooper’s ears? You know you do! They’re actually doing great. He has been so incredibly happy all week, checking out all the sounds that he seemed to have been missing the past two-plus months. He has been repeating more and more of what I say and is responding better to what I say to him (i.e. “close the door”, “turn off the light”, “time for bubble-bath”), and has been singing in the car because he loves to say “la la la” with his tongue sticking far out of his mouth. It’s hilarious. Even better is that he has been laughing. Like throwing his head back and letting out these huge guffaws! And he loves doing it and tries to get Gavin to laugh with him (and Gavin is usually more than happy to laugh along with him, since he used to goad Cooper into laughing). The two of them just sitting there laughing in each other’s faces, watching Gavin let Cooper tackle him and squish him, and the picture below is what got me through this stressful week. Well, that and knowing Justin will be back Friday and will take over the kid-duty on Saturday morning, locking all lifeforms out of our room, letting me sleep until 9am in peace…whether he knows it or not.

Plurk Junkies, it’s time to quit fartin’ around and start going after Kim and her ridiculously high-scoring OK Clumberjacks. While Janet’s Bear Necessities are tied with the Clumberjacks for number of wins, the Clumberjacks have a whopping 117 point lead! Technically, Holly’s Heffalumps and Woozles are only down 25 points from the Clumberjacks, but her Week-1 loss to the Clumberjacks is holding her in third place. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this weekend since Janet and Holly are playing against each other, and, uh, no pressure on Burgh’s Bruisers, but you’re up against Kim this weekend—a rumble in the ‘Burgh, such as it is.

As for my Big Whiners? Considering Sarah stole my Bears Defense from me during the draft, her Goon Squad is only beating me by 2 points—a rumble in NoVA.
(And I’m glad that New England has a bye for Week-4 because my Tight End got more points than Randy Moss. *grumbles and shakes fist northward*)

Everyone else is doing great and I hope you’re having a good time.