Just in case you hadn’t gotten enough of us in the past two weeks…I know I have.

Yesterday evening when I got ready for bed, I found a familiar-looking rash down the center of my chest. I pooh-poohed it off as heat rash since it got pretty hot yesterday (85 and humid). I wiped myself down, dried off well, applied powder, and went to bed in a cotton t-shirt and shorts to make sure my skin cooled down.

This morning it spread more in a t-shape across my chest and throughout the day has crept up my neck and on one side of my lower back. My tummy is still a little off. I recall Justin mentioning that he thought I felt like I had a fever. Hmmmm…my guess is roseola again. But to make sure, I’m going to go to the doctor in the morning so that he can either proclaim me benign and able to rejoin the workforce, or proclaim me a leper and exhile me (by the way, do not, under any circumstance whatsoever, do a Google Image of Shingles or Leprosy…gag).

Also, while finally tackling the dishes, I realized that Justin was either a little lazy before his trip, or is trying to cultivate a new cheese made from leftover infant formula. He moans and complains about doing the dishes, but really…in about 20 or 30 minutes you can have it completely unloaded and reloaded and chugging away. Only 20 or 30 minutes a day, tops. Meanwhile, lets compare that to the ungodly amounts of laundry I do each week…that definitely take more than 20 or 30 minutes a day to do. Plus, I can’t quite put my finger on the last time or day that Justin had to do an emergency load of dishes because someone puked all over, or someone’s pull-up/diaper failed and the entire bed was wet, or because someone had a poopie blow-out, or because the cat yakked, or because he mowed the lawn. Trying to not complain, but my goodness, since I wasn’t well enough to tackle them last night and the kids weren’t cooperative enough until an hour ago, those dishes were awful smelly (uh, the dirty ones, not the clean ones…those smelled just fine).

Finally, in case you haven’t popped over to check on Justin yet, he had kind of a crappy time getting to Alaska, and apparently his clothes had an even harder time. Good thing he carried on his coat!

Apparently about 1.3 inches of rainfall is too much for Comcast because our internet was down most of the day (read: playing catch-up on blog-reading/commenting). Actually, 1.3 inches is pushing it, since that is what the approximate rainfall total is as of 9:30pm…it was probably only at 0.5-0.75 inches at the point the service went down earlier today. Losers. Can you tell I don’t like them? I can’t wait for FiOS to come…obviously Justin and I are nearly foaming at the mouth, waiting for service to be extended to our area. But even for those folks who are too stupid, short-sighted, gluttons for poor internet service and worse customer service, excited to have their rates raised every month, not interested in changing providers should theoretically see a reduction in their rates (or at least a slow-down in the crazy rate hikes). Competition for consumer services is always a good thing.

Since Earth Day is in a few days, folks have been getting all “green” and the cable networks have “green” programming, and there’s ads with a representative from the Left and the Right talking about how they’re coming together for the Earth (my fave is the Al Sharpton/Pat Robertson pairing…goes back to my Religious Studies background, I guess). I recycle…in fact, I force Justin to recycle (although he likes to vex me with tossing stuff in the trash). We’re lucky that our area recycles nearly everything and it gets picked up on trash day. What’s killing me is the conversion from incandescents to fluorescents. I am soooooooo cheap that it is hard to want to pull out a working bulb and replace it with a fluorescent. I went and bought a bunch of the compact fluorescents when they were on sale for the multi-packs, so in the next few days I will be replacing working bulbs (inner monologue: I can do it, I can do it, I can do it). Maybe I’ll just have Justin remove the working bulbs so that all I’m doing is putting a new bulb where we’re missing one. But that’s not my biggest problem…my biggest problem is that we have at least 7 “builders special” lighting fixtures that each contain three decorator bulbs with the tiny candelabra bases (I didn’t build this house so I refuse to take responsibility for those brass atrocities). Each of those bulbs costs $9. Each light fixture will cost $27 to replace the bulbs…times six equates to about $189 (before tax…add like $9.49 more!). Really, people..that’s just crazy! So in light of my resistance to invest an obscene amount into lights I don’t particularly care for, I’m now on the hunt for replacement fixtures that have standard bases. It seems the only light fixtures with chrome/nickel/silver tone that are below $30 are either the ones you find in your grandma’s bathroom, or those fixtures that look like nipples. I just can’t put nipples up on my ceilings. I already have a complex about my magical shrinking breasts…I don’t need large breasts taunting me from above. Does anyone have any reasonably-priced flushmount fixtures with a silver tone from this millenium that will not give me mammary nightmares?

As I’ve mentioned, Justin has been working out for a good 4 or 6 weeks. I’m very proud of him…it’s not easy getting up close to 2 hours earlier than normal to go work out, or to turn away favorite foods, and eat those funky protein bars. Despite all that, he’s been doing well and chugging along, and the results have shown on his body and on the scale. What has been driving me crazy is the friggin’ abandoned water bottles (usually in some state of not-quite-empty) ALL over the house. I tend to leave them because I figure he’ll come back to it. But by the end of the day, I’ll often find several all over the house. Since it’s late, I usually dump them in the plant (can’t make myself dump it in the sink), and leave them on the counter above the kitchen trash can (my recycling staging area). By morning, they are gone, and each time I naively think hope he put them in the recycling bin on his way out. Nope! I pop open the kitchen trash and there they are! It makes me crazy to pick them up; it makes me crazy to dump out the undrunk water; it make me crazy to dig them out of the smelly trash (often from under the old coffee grounds) to put them in the recycling! Crazy. REALLY CRAZY! Like I’m-gritting-my-teeth-typing-about-it-now kind of crazy. And know what? His parents recycle…like really really REALLY recycle…like break-down-the-cereal-boxes-and-toss-in-the-toilet-paper-rolls kind of recycling. HARD CORE! His mom has composted eligible food garbage as long as I’ve known her…yet her own flesh-and-blood can’t put his twelve-hundred-bazillion partially-drank water bottles into the well-marked recycle bin. OMG, people, we don’t even have to separate our recyclables…nope…just toss them all in and they’re separated at the center. Maybe I should go all Ed Begley on him for a week or two so that when I go back to normal, he’ll be so relieved that he’ll comply. And before you ask, I did buy him a reusable water bottle, especially since most bottled water lacks fluoride and doesn’t have the same standards imposed on it as drinking water. He refuses to use it. Says it’s easier to grab a bottle out of the fridge; he refills the bottle a few times during the day (so has 1 bottle of bottled water and like 3 bottles of filtered tap water). But I think he refuses to use the reusable bottle just so he can watch my head explode each morning.

Know what else? PMS is a bitch (as I sit panting in the corner like Animal from all my ranting).

Aw…Thanks for the nice compliments about my hair…you gals are all so sweet! And yes, Justin does have his redeeming moments…yesterday morning just happened to be one of them and I was feeling warm and fuzzy enough from the coffee to mention it. Now if he could’ve reminded me (1) before dinner, (2) after dinner, (3) before I ran out to the store at 8:30pm last night, (4) after I arrived home at 9:45pm last night, (5) before or after I made the baby’s bottles, or (6) anytime before 10:30pm that he still needed some white socks, I would totally let him off the hook. But um, getting a reminder at 10:30pm when I’m going to bed for the first time in weeks before 11:30pm was not cool. Especially since he does have the knowledge and physical capacity to start his own load of white socks and t-shirt and could’ve had them nearly done by the time I arrived home from the store. But instead, I got the “um, I still need white socks.” I look at him blankly, thinking, “is he FOR REAL? He’s kidding, right? I’m gonna open the laundry room and see that he did his own socks and is just teasing me.” Nope. So I start a small load of socks and t-shirts for him, then sit up reading until the washer finishes somewhere around 11:15pm, throw the clothes in the dryer, and go to bed at 11:22pm. And I better not hear one joke about that I actually did get to bed before 11:30pm because those 8 minutes do not mean crap in my book.

About an hour later, I hear Cooper up whining and talking to himself. I pull the covers over my head and will him back to sleep. No dice. He keeps talking and moaning and whining. Finally around 1:30am, after he’s had a good hour of entertaining me, he gets annoyed and decides he’s hungry. I get up, feed him, rock him for a while (he seemed really restless and I was not willing to bring him back to my bed), and got back to bed around 2:20am. I was not a happy camper this morning. Which is why I’m still whining instead of giving you some snarky letters to my fellow DC-area drivers. Okay. I’ll shut up now and not get into the conspiracy theory I have about Cooper changing alliances and now partnering with Justin in his attempt to keep me ridiculously sleep deprived. Just please excuse me if you hear any yawning or overt B-n-M (bitching-n’-moaning…not to be confused with BM, which is a nice way of say “poop”).

Dear Cancer Cultivator in the Silver Prius:

We have a lot of you little “green” cars around here. And I love it. I love that all of you have gone out and bought your hybrids for the sake of the Earth and your gas budgets. Virginia loves it so much that they give you cool “Clean Fuel” license plates and allow you the privilege of driving in the HOV lane by yourself! What I don’t love is that while I’m behind you in my little car, you are chain-smokin’ like a man on death row! I actually saw you light your new cigarette with the old one! (please, I’m crabby, no remarks about how close I was driving at 60+mph) The traffic wasn’t even all that bad…I’d hate to see what you do when there’s an accident and they close down 3 lanes. I am of the belief that all the smoke you had billowing out of your car windows completely negated your hybrid vehicle and that you should be banished to the regular travel lanes where the 30mph speed more warrants your anxiety-ridden chain-smoking.

Sincerely,

A Concerned (about my lungs) Driver

Dear Clueless Lady in the Red Jimmy:

Please, please, please, for the love of all that is sacred and holy (and whole), get your brake-lights fixed. You have to be aware from all the chronic brake-screeching behind you that you lack any sort of warning lights letting drivers behind you know that you are slowing down. I’m sure the gentleman in the Nissan between us would agree since he very nearly climbed into your back-seat. At first, I thought that maybe this was a new issue and you might possibly be on your way to get your brake lights repaired this very instance until I noticed that besides having expired license plates, your state inspection tag appears to be a bit over-due as well, meaning that more than likely you been having a great ol’ time watching in your rear-view mirror as the drivers behind you bug their eyes out in panic at your quick stops, like at that light where it just turned yellow as you approached the intersection. Any TRUE Virginia driver will tell you that you can run 6 or 7 cars through the intersection AFTER it’s turned red. Stopping is just a suggestion, not a requirement. And in your case, you (and the rest of us driving behind you) would be better off if you did run a few stale yellow (or even red) lights once in a while.

Kindest Regards,

A Concerned (about my front bumper) Driver

Dear Very Important Parent at my Sons’ Daycare:

I appreciate that you are in a hurry to get to your job and that the rest of us are simply schmucks. I understand that your need to park improperly supercedes any of the rest of us who need to park to drop off our children, because you are a VIP. I totally get it that I was out of line by getting out of my vehicle and trying to retrieve my baby from his carseat in the backseat while you were in the building and not-yet-in-your-car. So in light of your VIPness, I hope you appreciate the scratch down the side of your car from when you opted to walk out of the building, smile at me, hop in your car, start it up, and put it in reverse while I was still retrieving my child from my car. That scratch was a special gift from my car door to you. I guess I should also thank you for allowing me to quickly slam my back door and hop around behind my car before you popped off your passenger-side mirror and/or slammed my own door on my baby and me. That was incredibly decent of you and I hope you saw the gracious words of thanks coming from my lips.

Warmest Thoughts,

A Glad (to be alive? to have my car paid-off? to not have my baby caught in the car door like a white t-shirt? ) Driver

Hope everyone has a blessed Good Friday and a Lovely Easter!

look what he’s done over at his place.  Don’t worry, it’s totally “G” rated.