less snow at the time of this pic then there was when I woke up 90 minutes prior

9:00am – After dropping Cooper and Nolan off at daycare, stopped at the grocery store to get a Starbucks coffee and to load up on yogurt. Not bread, milk, or toilet paper (though those aisles were looking a little thin already). Just yogurt because my family eats it by the gallon and neglected to tell me that we were completely out, so you can imagine my morning when my six-year old and three-year old addicts couldn’t get their cultured-dairy fix. I’d dare to compare their behavior to that of crack-heads. Oh, and more rechargeable batteries for the Wii remotes (and Cooper’s flashlight). All items were on sale. Go me.

10:25am – even the rain has stopped. The temperature is still hovering above freezing. Streets are merely a little wet, and I saw a salt truck driver sitting on the shoulder eating a breakfast sandwich and playing with his smartphone.

11:40am – get this weather alert:
“Weather Alert: National Weather Service: ‘Dangerous’ travel conditions during rush hour
January 26, 2011 11:27:43 AM
The National Weather Service (NWS) is warning drivers that a winter storm could create “dangerous” driving conditions during the evening rush hour.
The NWS says the heavy snow will reduce visibilities below a quarter mile and snow could accumulate at times at a rate of 2 inches per hour. The Post’s Capital Weather Gang believes the heaviest snow will fall between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. tonight. Accumulations could top 8 inches in northern and western suburbs.”

Also? Forgot that Gavin chose an obnoxious squeaky ball for the dogs while at the store, until he gave it to them just now. The ball was NOT on sale.

1:05pm – nothing is coming out of the sky yet and it’s still only 34 degrees and doesn’t even smell like snow outside anymore. If the school system had simply called for an early dismissal for the Middle and Elementary schools (high schools were already scheduled to get out early due to exams), they would all be either getting home or getting ready to come home now. Instead, I have this six-year old who is eating me out of house and home, and a dog that keeps losing her obnoxious squeaky ball under the china cabinet behind me and is growling at me to retrieve it for her. Trying to gauge if I can talk Gavin into doing both addition AND subtraction flash cards to at least say he did something constructive instead of letting his brain rot in front of the TV. The crazy part is that they keep repeating over and over that we may get upwards of 6-10 inches of snow by tomorrow morning. I suspect the sky is constipated: it wants to snow but it can’t.

Courtesy of Weatherbug.com

1:45pm – I get a birthday present delivered from my sister-in-law:

only redeeming quality is that this dude looks kinda cute

how ya like them apples?

2:15pm – think I hear the cat chewing on his back nails.

2:20pm – think to myself, “man, that cat is really gnawing on his nails!” then realize that I’m hearing sleet. Or frozen rain. Or hail. Or lets just go with “wintry mix”.

3:15pm – snow has finally begun…nice, big, fat flakes. Wonder if we’ll actually get the obnoxious totals they’ve been putting up on the tv graphics. Guess time will tell.

4:15pm – Snow is maybe at an inch. Wonder if the neighbors who share my driveway bought shovels since their only one broke while digging out one of their cars during last winter’s blizzard. I suspect I will be digging out their cars again, and I should probably clear the rest of my evening to take periodic drives in my truck up and down the drive so that they don’t get stuck and block me in. That’s not to say that I suspect we’ll get more snow than any of their sedans can handle, but it took me and a different neighbor to get them out of the drive because they don’t know how to drive in the snow, period. In fact, they only seem capable of getting stuck in the snow. Although, if one of them gets stuck again, I will definitely take pictures because I can sense it will be comedy gold.

5:25pm – Two to three inches on the ground. I picked up kids, plopped them in front of the TV and shoveled. and shoveled. and shoveled some more. Cleared out a path a little wider than my wheelbase and over 40 yards long down my pipestem driveway, bitches! Know how I know it’s about 40 yards? Did ye olde 8-to-5 marching step. Thank you, band camp.
Photos to follow.

6:32pm – our county announces school will be closed tomorrow. First time all school year I’ve agreed with them. I also see an email from Gavin’s elementary school, time stamp of 5:25pm where they’re announcing school is closed TODAY. Feel free to mock.

7:04pm – lights start flickering so I plug in my cell phone in case I need it. I warn kids about the chance of power outage, which prompts Gavin to ask, “so then no TV?” I explain again how there will be no TV, lights, music, heat, “or anything” if the power goes out. Cooper gets all serious and asks, “no plates, either?” It’s always about food with that boy.

8:35pm – About four or five inches of incredibly wet snow on the ground. Kids are finally in bed and turned off most lights and powered items since the lights are still occasionally dimming and flickering. Contemplating shoveling again since it appears we still have a few hours of snow left in the system. I’m not certain that I want to re-shovel the 40-yard pipestem, but maybe I’ll at least re-shovel the deck and potty-spot for the dogs, and my immediate driveway.

10:05pm – hear a lot of yelling outside and suspect our neighbor is stuck. I’m kind of right. Instead of the inexperienced-with-snow neighbors, it’s the jerks whose dog craps on my lawn & attacks my dogs, and they park on my pipestem like they own it without offering to help clear the snow, even when they saw me shoveling alone.
Ten minutes later he’s still trying to get his pickup truck un-stuck from the snow I piled up in “his” parking spot while shoveling earlier. I admit I am full of all sorts of glee.

And besides a few times where we thought we just might sell the older two because of their whining, the trip went well: the baby slept, Cooper maintained a good hold on his new potty training, and Gavin managed to not kick Cooper off the hide-a-bed they shared all week (Gavin is a wild sleeper).  Even the dogs seemed to enjoy the stay!  However, as much fun as we had with the kids, Justin and I have decided that someday we will come down without them.  That may not be till they’re all out of the house, but we’ll just ignore that little detail.

I grabbed a few pictures with my phone, though please check out Justin’s Flickr page as he has a lot more and they turned out better since he used a real camera.

Uh yeah, can I get a coffee flavored coffee?

I’m still mortified by some of my undocumented behavior during Justin’s last weeks of back-to-back travel. I’m a yeller. I come from a very big and very loud family full of yellers. We yell when we’re happy and excited, and we yell when we’re pissed. Simply put, I come from a loooong line of yellers. My kids are used to it, too, and are rarely surprised when I start shouting about something. Except when I have hit the wall and start bellowing like some kind of drunk fishwife. One of those mornings I yelled so loud that both kids burst into tears and the baby in my belly jumped like he was startled. I was instantly and completely ashamed. I spoke to both kids separately after we had all calmed down and apologized to both of them for losing my temper like that.

The more I thought about my behavior and how my interactions have been with my kids over the past several months, the worse I felt. I was tired of always feeling rushed, always feeling angry, always feeling behind in everything that needed to be done, and always feeling as if I couldn’t take time to do something nice with my kids so that maybe they’d have just one memory of doing something fun with Mommy. They were, understandably, constantly asking about Justin, but it got to the point where their questions and requests to be with him instead of me started to wear on me, too. So I got desperate and started looking for something different for all of us to do as a family before Baby #3 came. I just needed to get all of us away from the house, work, and hit the “reset” button. I checked a few kid-friendly destinations, like Sesame Place and Hersheypark, but neither were open to the public until May. I took suggestions and did online digging from there. I finally settled on doing a long weekend at Massanutten Resort, outside of Harrisonburg, VA…a mere 2 hour drive from our home! They had some great spring specials going and after cornering Justin with a wooden spoon we decided to just go and have some special family time.

Unfortunately my phone is not very waterproof, and I forgot my little Canon Elf, which is not waterproof, either, but well…anywhoo…didn’t get as much pictures as I wanted. But these are the ones I did get when we went to Massanutten Resort about two weeks ago:

Massanutten 2010 pics

(sorry…having some technical difficulties and too annoyed to fight with it right now…check the link or check back in a day or two to see if I got them posted)

I couldn’t believe how beautiful this place was! The waterpark was a LOT of fun, as well as the pool at one of the rec centers (we went there before the waterpark opened), the restaurants has good food, the condo we were at was gorgeous, and the service from all the employees was phenomenal. Justin talked about going back there instead of a trip to Virginia Beach. There is just sooo much to do at Massanutten that is included with your visit, and even more for very reasonable prices. Worth checking out if you’re looking for something that has a little for everyone. We easily could’ve stayed there for a week but I’m glad we got the few days together that we did.

So I asked the boys a few months ago if they’d like a little brother or a little sister, and I got these responses:
Gavin — I want a little sister since I already have a little brother.
Cooper (in his squeaky, Elmo voice) — I no wanna sista. I wanna ‘former! (translation: I don’t want a sister. I want a transformer)

Apparently, though, when other people have asked Gavin what he’d like to have, he’s told them he’d like another brother. Although one time he said he wanted a fish. Cooper, however, has been pretty consistent with his wish for a Transformer, despite getting one for Christmas.

Last night, Justin was putting Gavin to bed and was reminding him of our appointment this morning, and he again asked Gavin if he’d like a little brother or a little sister, and Gavin answered, “well, lets just find out tomorrow.” Justin was surprised at this sudden burst of diplomacy, so he prodded him again, and again Gavin answered, “I think we should just find out tomorrow.”

So here we are. It’s tomorrow. Either I’ll be going nuts in the girls section of the store on the way home from the appointment, or I’ll be trying to figure out what clothes survived Cooper and can be used again for Baby #3.

Don’t know about the rest of you, but this whole Health Care debacle…nearly 2,000 pages of non-transparent crap that essentially says the government would like to tax each and every one of us an additional 8-12% for the privilege of letting the government manage our health care for us…has gotten me really riled up. I actually like my health care. I like it a lot. Now, last year I didn’t…so I changed insurance companies and have been ecstatic about their level of professionalism and coverage ever since. When Gavin decided to crack his head open this summer? The ER visit only cost us $75. All preventative care is covered 100%. Other care is well-covered, too. I had the option of taking another high-deductible PPO, but opted for this plan instead, even though it costs more in premiums. But that’s because in my mind, health care and health care coverage is one of my top priorities (besides when I can score my next cheese danish). I know some folks out there, most of them a good 10 years younger, who do not make health care coverage a high priority, so they get the low-premium, high-deductible plan. Or they are short on money and take the gamble against getting sick or injured and take no plan. Personally, I think that’s crazy, but that’s their own decision to make. Who am I to judge how they manage their lives?

Unfortunately the government doesn’t seem to think that any of us are qualified to make our own decisions about our health care or that of our families. So I’m going to go to Washington and join the likes of Mark Levin, local Conservative radio host Chris Plante, some members of Congress, and a bunch of Smart Girls and Tea Partiers to tell the rest of Congress to get their crap together and back some real reform. Not a take-over. Not irrational mandates. Not something that will run each of us, and the country, into the poorhouse.

Interested? Come join me at 12 noon at the East West Capitol steps. Or wander between the two like me, since I have a poor sense of direction anytime I’m downtown. I blame it on all the buildings interfering with my natural global positioning systems.

However a week after this incident, I got called to pick up a puking Gavin from his grade school. Since Justin was out of town, I was left racing home from work on a Friday afternoon (read: world’s worst traffic), and my poor puking kiddo was left to puke for over an hour until I could finally retrieve him. After an exciting afternoon and night of racing to help him as he got sick repeatedly, he seemed to have recovered on Saturday and it seemed to have been something that just didn’t sit well in his stomach because none of the rest of us got sick.

Shortly after finding out about the H1N1 cases at daycare, I went down to the basement to suit-up and clean the litter boxes. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw what I thought was a big ol’ pile of cat yack, but once I got closer, I realized that it was a dead mouse. My brain said “yuck!” and “yay!” at the same time because I didn’t want to touch the corpse–I don’t do dead things larger than an occasional half-mangled moth or cricket (also courtesy of the cats). But I was pleased that before even knowing we had a small rodent invader, that the cats had dealt with it by simply catching it and killing it. I few nudges with the litter box shovel convinced me that they had not tried eating it (unlike the cats I had growing up). I hollered for Justin to dispose of the body, and finished the chore I had originally set out to do.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I had tripped over each of the cats several times while they camped-out in front of the stove. I wondered if they had lost a scrap of paper, or the tab from the milk gallons under there, so I pulled-out my handy-dandy Maglite and peered underneath. All I saw was several golf balls, a few Hot Wheels, and more cat-hair tumbleweeds than I could count. I made a mental note (that I promptly forgot) to re-friend my crevice tool and suck out some of those tumbleweeds over the weekend.

Two nights later, however, as I sat up working well into the wee hours, I heard the distinct noise of a solo cup bumping something. I snapped my head around, thinking a cat was getting on the counter and instead, saw a mouse on the counter next to the stove! Thank goodness my conference call was on mute because the high-pitched shrieks came forth as I ran to wake up Justin so that he could deal with the invader I just saw. He was not very happy but I told him, “well, I HAVE to work, and really, since I’m pregnant, I can’t deal with a diseased mouse,” which convinced him to at least toss a cat on the counter, who then looked confused that they were being placed where they usually are beaten for being there. Then he started removing items from that counter quickly (ala pulling the tablecloth) in the event our little friend or his friends were still hanging out on the counter. He took my Maglite to go hunting for more evidence of our new little visitors, and reported back shortly about his findings. Since it was after midnight on a Thursday night, and I still had a few hours of work left ahead of me, we decided that we’d put out a few snap-traps and would perform an all-out house scrub on Saturday.

Friday morning we woke to a corpse in a trap. Saturday we scrubbed the kitchen like crazy-people, all suited up in pseudo haz-mat gear and armed with rolls of paper towels and bottles of Clorox Clean-Up Spray. Afterwards, I tackled where they decided to leave poop in the basement…right next to the litter boxes (which wasn’t there two days prior when I had last cleaned the boxes).

After about a week of setting traps in the kitchen and garage, and monitoring the cats’ progress in the basement, we ended up with 8 or 9 total dead bodies. And we figured out that when they started digging up our next-door neighbor’s yard to trace a water leak on their property, that was when we got our little visitors. It’s now been a good two weeks since the last corpse was found, and we seemed to have either killed them all, or the survivors packed-up and ran.

On a barely related note, Melisa-with-one-S over at Suburban Scrawl totally ghosted me last week!

Now this means I actually have to interact with other folks, which I’ve totally been sucking at since shortly after returning from BlogHer. So here are the rules, which I swear I will follow because I really really really like Melisa:

(1) Go “ghost” three other bloggers — doesn’t matter if it’s your best bloggy buddy, or a new one, or maybe somewhere you’ve never commented (not that that applies to me since I have an involuntary urge to comment on anything I read or see on TV).

(2) Stop by their blogs and leave a comment on their latest post saying:

“You’ve Just Been Ghosted — Come Over and Grab A Puking Pumpkin!”

(3) Copy and paste the puking pumpkin somewhere on your blog (either in a post or on your sidebar, perhaps) so that everyone can see that you have been “ghosted” and will NOT “ghost” you again. This will also let you know who you can “ghost.”

Alright fine folks out there…have a wonderful and safe Halloween!!!

So, I’ve been off the radar a bit, as we’ve had a lot going on around…most of which happens on a constant basis, but it’s the fun, tiny details which make it that much harder at times, right? As usual, Justin’s been out of town…that so-call four-week project has progressed into 5+who-knows-how-many-more-weeks. Let’s just chalk that mess up to our less-than-efficient government. Gavin got the stomach flu (or maybe food poisoning?) last Friday, I’ve been feeling a bit “off” myself, and I’ve been busier than ever at work. In fact, a few nights ago, I got the pleasure of not just doing some work from about 8:30pm until about 10:30 or 11pm like I often do a few times per week, but got to work from 8:30pm until 3am. THAT? Was a very long day, indeed. So I thought I would make it up to you by having a good reason to point and laugh at me.

I’m normally a person that is easily startled. Justin has scared me so many times unintentionally that I swore I was going to put a cat collar on him so that I can hear him coming. I also get spooked easily because I have a ridiculously overactive imagination and I watch WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY too much cop dramas on TV. This is not usually a big problem because I normally make Justin investigate any weird noises I hear, or to go outside at night. But since he’s been gone, I’ve had to be the one to go outside at night to turn off the hose or go investigate strange noises. Thankfully the dogs, especially my dumb-dumb Ginger, are more than happy to accompany me outside…along with my trusty 2-foot, 5-pound Maglite (sucker takes four D batteries!).

Since we’re getting into that Halloween time of year, I thought some of you might be interested in what forces me to swallow my fear and face the unknown in order to protect the kids and my house.

And because I like lists.

• When Gavin says “Mommy, I just heard someone say /insert very strange fear-building noise/ to Ginger outside”. Now, I did ask Gavin what he meant…did he mean that someone walking on the sidewalk past our yard made a funny noise at the dogs while they were out there? No? Did he see someone in our yard? Yes? Maybe? You’re not sure? Did he see anyone at all? No. But he was sure he heard this noise. So I grab the Maglite (even though it was still light out), and start walking towards the back door, puffing out my chest and trying to look taller than my actual 5’1″. Just as I’m about to yank open the door and jump out all ninja-like, he says, “oh Mommy, it was just that big bee out there making that noise!” I look at him confused and disarmed, “what?” Gavin responds, “Mommy, it was our big bee that was making that funny noise at Ginger.” I’m still a little confused. “Wait, you mean the bee?” And he sighs tiredly like I’m some daft creature, “yes, Mommy–it was the bee.” I look towards my potted herbs just outside the back door and sure enough “our” big bumble bee was out there buzzing its fool head off.
• When I pull up to the house after being at work all day and see the big garage door wide open. If a lawnmower is missing, then I’m usually okay because friends of ours borrow it…but they don’t usually during the week. And they usually close the door behind them when we’re not home. So this means either (a) when Justin left for the week, the sun was in that “sweet spot” and shined right into the garage sensor, thus causing it to bounce right back up as if there was something underneath it; or (b) some crazed killer is in our house, ransacking the place, making off with our adorable dogs, my laptop, and they probably have also peed on the carpet and furniture because what else would crazed killers do? In this case, I pull in the garage and lock the kids in the car, telling them I need to check the house and will be back out to get them in a minute. Then, since my Maglite has probably been swiped by the killers, I go in there with my car key sticking out of my clenched fist like a Wolverine claw. As I walk in, I find that all five animals are accounted-for, as well as my Maglite, and I don’t smell any pee that isn’t related to the litterboxes in the basement. I do a quick run-through, ripping open closet doors and stomping around to sound as big as possible. This seems to work as I’ve yet to encounter any crazed killers stupid enough to mess with me when I do this.
• When I pull into the garage and even though the big door is closed, the door into the house is open. This seems to freak me out even more than the big door being open–I think partly because I’m so stunned to not find both dogs and all three cats in the garage as the big door opens. This also entails me to “clear” the house as detailed above.
• When not only I hear a strange noise late at night, but when I see all five animals’ head whip around toward that same strange noise. At that point, I pull the blankets over my head and command the dogs to “get it!” because, as we all know, Boston Terriers are awesome and viscous watchdogs. At least compared to the cats.
• When I see our back gate open. None of our utility meters are located in the back yard, so it really skeeves me out to know that someone was in our backyard. This causes me to suit-up with the Maglite again, and go make sure some wicked creature of the night hasn’t taken up roost under our deck, waiting to pop out and break into the house to kill me and the kids in our sleep.
• And finally, when this happens unexpectedly:
  

Ahem.

So, since I was bad about mentioning this the other week, I will get down to the nitty-gritty. I have started a Fantasy Hockey league which will rock your socks off. And will be free. And soothe the competitive beast within (such as it is). The big catcher? As of this post, I still need to fill the remaining five teams by about 8pm ET tonight because our live draft is tonight at 9:30pm ET. If we’re missing teams, then our draft will be dumped.

So please please PLEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEE join my league.

(originally posted at Draft Day Suit, 9/28/09)

Don’t Forget Tonight!
The most important night of your entire life…or something close, at least.

Still need a few more people to sign up for the DDS Fantasy Hockey league. If we don’t have all teams claimed by about 8pm ET, they will dump our draft, and you don’t want that kind of blood on your hands, do you?

By the way, it’s free. While I love winning money, I hate losing money more and my chances of winning are incredibly slim. Hence, free. And why you really only get to win bragging rights during the off-season and a nice facsimile of the real Stanley Cup.

If you’re not already a fantasy sports user on ESPN, just register. It’s free and it’s easy.

Unfortunately, if we’re still short a few teams later today, I will have to open this up to the actual public, and I can’t be sure that we will still have cool people joining the league if that happens.

So there, enough guilt for ya?

Draft Day Suit Fantasy Hockey
Link: http://games.espn.go.com/fhl/tools/join?leagueId=21087
Password: crosbyisatool (as a Caps fan, I’m legally obligated to hassle the Pens)
Type: Live Draft
Date: Mon., Sep. 28, 2009
Time: 9:30 PM ET