Yowch!!

I am #8 in this search. Let me say right here and now that there are no tattooed penises to be found at Insanity. Even Nate is not that crazy.

Circle of life?

I saw this outside while smoking just now. Look closely, you see that beetle in the plastic tray? That tray is sitting under a flowerpot of sand for our cigarette butts, I'm not sure how the beetle managed to get in. It was steadily walking around the tray, circling the flowerpot as if the magic doorway out would appear. I left it there to walk its endless circle, (yes, I'm that heartless toward bugs) and I'm sure it'll continue to circle until it dies. Watching it, I had to grab my camera, I was just certain there was deep meaning somewhere in there.

re-tagged

Monkey tagged me with this meme a few days ago, and I didn't realize it. I actually did this one back when I started blogging, but I figured I'd do it again rather that re-post the same answers.

3 nicknames that you have had: Crys, Cryssy, Crystal Gail
3 things you like about yourself: My eyes, my determination, my intelligence
3 things you don't like about yourself: my anxiety, my neurosis, my teeth
3 things that scare you: failing at parenting, my grandmom dying, meeting new people
3 of your everyday essentials: Coke, chapstick, cigarettes
3 things you are wearing right now: my wedding ring, a headband, my husband's hoodie (it's fucking JUNE, but the AC in the house is always frigid or not cold enough.)
3 of your favorite bands growing up: Dave Matthews Band, Bush, Green Day
2 truths and 1 lie: I have 2 children, I love them to death, I don't want any more.
3 things you can't do without: my family, Coke, my computer
3 things you most certainly can do without: laundry, noise, cat poop
3 places you want to go on vacation: Europe, the Virgin Islands, NYC
3 things you want to do before you die: raise my children, own a home, get my degree

Can't jump either.

This is NOT helping the "White people can't dance" thing. Wow. Dude... learn some moves. You do get bonus points for showing some moobs, though.

**a quick nod to Rockchild for the link

I see you!!

Hey Momsview-ers... I know you've been stopping in, so why not say hi?? Don't be shy!! Come on, your lurking makes me nervous!! Come out, come out wherever you are! *wink*

Dreams

It's good to have dreams, right? I dream of only having one load of laundry to do a day. Being able to leave the house without a $10 million production. Spending a day without anyone announcing the need to vacate their bowels. Not having to wipe anyone's ass for them. No squeals of "Mommy! Laztown's on! Look! Sporticus! LOOK MOMMY!" I dream of manicured nails, styled hair, and makeup. I dream of having my computer safe from grubby paws who mess with settings and mysterious programs.
Then again, the absence of those things that drive me so freaking crazy would mean my kids are grown, and I don't want that to happen too soon. I ponder my children and the love I feel for them on a daily basis. I wonder if my mom still feels the same way about me that I feel about my children, or if that's an emotion that dulls with time. I wonder how much longer my children will want to talk to me, before the sighs and eye rolls begin. I wonder how I'll feel when they're grown, and the sounds of laughter and joy have faded into my memory. I try and remind myself, even when I'm tired and frustrated by the trials of raising toddlers, that this time is short, soon it will be gone forever. So, dreams can wait, I've got laundry to do and butts to wipe.

Hilarious

Tim McGraw has a new single out off "Live Like You Were Dying", and the lyrics are so funny I had to share. Here's "Do You Want Fries With That?"

"Do You Want Fries With That?"

I thought that was your voice
I thought that was my car
Now we ain't ever met before
But I know who you are
You're living in my house
And I'm living in a tent
And don't laugh, this second job of mine
Is paying both our rents
You're out here buying Happy Meals
And I'm eating rice and pintos
You so much as crack a smile at me, man
I'll come through this here window

Well you took my wife
And you took my kids
And you took that life
That I used to live
My pride, the pool, the boat, my tools, my dreams, the dog, the cat
Yeah I think that's just about everything
Oh I almost forgot
Do you want fries with that?

Your ketchup's in the bag
And a check is in the mail
I hope your chicken's raw inside
And I hope your bun is stale
I'm supposed to tell you
"Please come back"
But how bout this instead?
I hope you both choke on a pickle
Man, that would tickle me to death
I don't know what you're waiting on
You're holding up the line
Oh man, you ain't got no change coming back
Are you out of your mind?

Well you took my wife
And you took my kids
And you took that life
That I used to live
My pride, the pool, the boat, my tools, my dreams, the dog, the cat
Yeah I think that's all there is
Do you want fries with that?

Well you took my wife
And you took my kids
And you took that life
That I used to live
My pride, the pool, the boat, my tools, my dreams, the dog, the cat
Yeah I think that about covers it
Do you want fries with that?

Jim posted a picture of his 80s hair, so I said I'd post a picture of myself in the 80s. Ok, so I'm being a smartass here, but I know Jim will still love me. Er... maybe not, but this is payback for making me wait for the moobs.

Here's me practicing for the teen years.

Here's a bonus pic, because I'm so amused by this one. It's totally me to be sulking at my own birthday party... I'm such a drama queen!



I'm going to sit an stare at my natural hair color now, because I had forgotten what it looked like!

Joke?? UPDATED

Is the whole Geekbird crisis at Simply Complicated a joke? Mimi, are you in on this? It appears Geekbird, a troll at SC, hacked Mimi's site, deleted a bunch of her posts, and has taken her blog hostage. Wow.

**update: Mimi's back, go tell her we're glad to see her.

Insomniac Theater

I don't really have much to say today. The insomnia bug bit me last week, and it reached a point Friday where I thought I was going to die. Luckily, I have a wonderful husband who let me sleep all Saturday morning. He got up with the kids, and quietly gave them each a 2 dollar bill (we had a couple on our dresser), then took them to the bakery. He let them pick out their own donuts and milk, and then pick out donuts and milk for mommy. They got to pay the lady at the counter, and keep their change. I almost wish I had been there to witness all the cuteness, but my morning of sleep was so wonderful! Anyway, the result of my weekend is I really have no blog fodder. I'll try and update later.

More on neighborhood terror

6 and 7 year olds certainly do not have the right to roam freely, and I don't handle disrespect from children very well. If my kids ever spoke to an adult (or even child) the way those 2 boys talked to me, my husband, and another neighbor (in seperate incidents) they would promptly get their mouths smacked. People, for the love of god, TEACH YOUR CHILDREN RESPECT AND MANNERS! It shouldn't be hard, after all, my mom told me "Kids willl learn what they see. If you use your manners, they will too." Oh, I guess I just figured out the "problem".

**Thanks mom, for teaching me basic manners. I appreciate it.

Leaving marks

Here's the hilarious part of Nate's sunburn.





You see, that handprint is really there to stay. My best guess is he put his hand like that after slathering sunscreen on the kids, as evidenced by the creases in the fingers. Either way, it's turning tan, and is too priceless not to share.

Why I should live in seclusion

I grew up with very few neighbors that weren't blood relatives. My great-grandparents gave chunks of adjacent land to my mom, uncle, and their cousins so everyone lives within walking distance of each other. The other neighbors are families that have lived there as long as our family, generations of friends, and mutual respect for the most part. This spoiled me, because I've discovered in my adult life that most people don't know how to be good neighbors. Military housing is an interesting beast, every military housing area is it's own soap opera. You know who is cheating, you know who drinks too much, you know pretty much exactly how much everyone makes, so you can tell when someone is racking up debt. There aren't too many secrets, just lots of gossip. Anyway, pretty much everyone on my street is ignorant, with the exception of one woman I've become friends with. I know, you're thinking "Damn, that's harsh, aren't you being a little critical?" Well no, I'll explain. My next door neighbor with whom I share a driveway is first up. Our houses aren't attached, but our carport is, and our doors face each other. Within hours of moving in, her boys started ringing our doorbell. "Can the kids come out? Can we come in? Do you have pets? Can we see them? Why can't we do this? How about now?" and so it goes. These boys are too old to play with my kids, they are 6 and 7. Their dad is in Iraq, and mom sits inside with her infant son, while the older boys run free all day. Minor irritation, right? It gets better. They ride their bikes in the very small space between our cars, inevitably hitting out van with handlebars and the such. Their toys creep from their property to our, often found littering our lawn, our porch, our driveway. They climb all over stuff, not to mention the time Mom came to ask Nate to fetch the middle boy from the top of a neighbor's tree. These are total pain in the ass kids, no matter how hard I try to like them. Then there is Mom. Besides completely ignoring the boys and their obnoxious behaviors, she expects everyone else to do everything for her, including watch, care for, and feed her children. Current aggrivation? Her grass. You have to have your lawn neatly cut and clean, or pay a ticket from housing. Her lawn looks abandoned, weeds knee high, it's just a mess. **Sigh** It looks so lovely.
My neighbors on the other side have teenage boys (among other kids, I can't keep track) who think my yard is a soccer field, my house the goal post, my property their playground. They have a fenced yard, not to mention the million playgrounds nearby, and the basketball court in their front drive. Across the street? One neighbor has 3 vehicles, 2 of which are old and junky. You can't park on their side of the street, but can easily fit 2, if not 3 cars in the driveway. Nope, both junky cars are parked outside my house. Thanks. The other neighbor seems like a nice family, but all hell breaks loose when mom and dad are at work, and the teen daughter entertains 3 teen boys, partying on the front porch.
Almost every family on our block seems to think teaching children respect for other's property is pointless, and have given their children the go ahead to act like wild chimpanzees. Things like criminal mischief, trespassing, and rudeness are commonplace to them. It's going to be a long summer, and I don't expect to attend too many block parties.

Sunrise?!

Hi, I'm Crystal, and I'm not a morning person. As a matter of fact, I' would sleep until noon EVERY day if pesky matters such as life didn't get in the way.I've been this way since I was a baby, my own mother will swear to it. So, imagine my surprise when I woke up an hour ago, and was wide awake. Especially since I was chatting with Cori last night, and forgot about the little difference we call TIME ZONES, looked at the clock and it's 1:47am. Just over 4 hours sleep, and I cannot go back to bed. This is not me! I can sleep 12 hours and keep on going! Something tells me that come dinnertime I'm going to be sucking. Oh, well... I need a Coke.

**Editor's note: The last time I saw 6am I hadn't been to bed yet. Seriously.

I'm just saying

I'm a Philadelphia 76ers fan, but we all know they weren't playing in the finals, so I'm very happy for the Spurs. I was definitely rooting for them over Detroit, I'm not a Pistons fan by any stretch. Anyway, the MVP award. Tim Duncan is a good player, but the award should have gone to Robert Horry. Really, Horry deserved it. That is all.

Black for funerals, and exams

**This post is all crap, most of which you don't care to read or think about. I actually sat here for e few minutes trying to decide whether or not to hit publish, but fuck it, might as well. Then again, we're all so captivated by certain bloggers and their bowel movements, this can't be worse than that. Proceed at your own risk**

Prepare your nicest black clothes, I think I'm dying. Really, I'm certain my time has come, exhibited by the nightly 3am wake-up. Every night, after I go to sleep, suddenly awake, and toss around in bed like a fish on land for a couple hours. Fine, I could deal with that. Then, after feeling like Grade A Shit yesterday, I went to bed, woke up, and puked up everything I'd eaten in the last 3 days. Isn't that fun?? Yay for puking!! Maybe it's sympathy puking for her, or maybe I'm really just gonna die. As if that wasn't exciting enough, I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon. (Boys: Close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears, LALALALALA) Not the fun doctor to make the puking stop, no... this is my yearly exam with the "woman doctor". Yay for spectulums!! Anyway, there are currently ads running on the radio for prostate cancer awareness, telling men to get checked. Nate freaks out at this concept. "I don't want to let the doctor stick his finger up my butt!!" My answer to this is "I will spend the majority of my life letting a doctor go exploring in my cooch every year. You'll take the finger up the butt and like it, dammit. It's only after age 45 or so, where I've been going to the gyno since I was SIXTEEN, and will for a few more decades. Shut up." I'm such a nice, loving wife, huh? (Cue evil, cackling laugh)

OCD, OCD, OCD!

I'm thinking we need to buy stock in Bounty and Windex, because I'm having some trouble cleaning the bathrooms. Our house has tiled walls in both baths (full upstairs, half down) The only way I have found to clean them to even a marginally acceptable level is Windex. I say "marginally acceptable" because anyone who has ever lived in military housing knows it's impossible to get anything really clean. There are layers upon layers of painted dirt, and the painting was apparently done by drunken monkeys, demonstrated by the splatters on EVERY floor, moulding, door, and window. Anyway, I digress. What's your secret to keeping tile clean? The all-purpose cleaner I used left a gritty residue, so I went to the glass cleaner, which works ok. I need more bleach pens for the grout, so I'll have to remember to never do the tiles and grout on the same day, lest Nate come home to find me passed out from fumes. I hear the cheap alternative to using daily shower spray is plain ol' rubbing alcohol, since that is the main ingredient in the pricey Tilex-type spray. I may have to give that a shot, because I refuse to spend an arm and a leg on cleaners. *sigh* My other dillema is the hardwood floors, which have a waxy build up that is probably older than I am. Hardwood cleaner just sits on top, and smears around, rather than cleaning. I hate dirty floors, so this is distressing to me. My dream is to build our own home, so the only dirt in it is our dirt, I can deal with our dirt. Of course, being able to decorate as I choose will be nice too. Nate's owned his own home before, but I haven't, and I swear the first thing I'll do is paint a room some insane color, just because I can. Until then, I'll have to occupy myself with my quest against the yuck in here. Wish me luck, and share your cleaning tips!

More boobs!!

Ok, no more boob pictures, but we'll talk about them. First, my "secret" for you ladies who (like me) have sacrificed your boobs to pregnancy/breastfeeding. Victoria's Secret Very Sexy Push-up. After buying this bra post-nursing, I have never looked back, this is the BEST BRA EVER!!! (See? Lots of caps and exclamation points needed, it really is that good!) Completely and totally worth $40, and considering I'm a complete cheapskate, that's something.
Secondly, after taking a good look at the sunburn pics I posted, I've decided I need to buy more of these tanks, they make "the girls" look nice. I'll actually have to lift my personal boycott* on JCPenneys for that, since I got them on sale there. However, the pics were not a ploy to show off my boobs, they just happened to have the misfortune of getting the worst burn. (Well, on me at least, poor Nate is a LOBSTER)
In "Not boobs" news, scroll down to the next post about Autisim Awareness, and go donate for the raffle. Please, and thank you!!

*The boycott came from a sudden change in my credit card terms, and when I called to discuss it, the rep was not only extremely rude, but lied flat out, and I told her to close my account. I later received an apology from another rep, but I had already made it up in my mind not to shop there, since apparently the money I spent with them didn't even entitle me to some common courtesy.

Raffle for Autism Awareness

Rachel over at Bitchalicious is holding a raffle for Autism Awareness. Winner gets a re-design by Web-Divas (or an amazon.com giftcard). This is an important cause, and certainly worth a dollar or 2. Go there please, if you haven't already, and Paypal your donation.

Besides Boobs... Monday happenings

Nate came home for lunch with a blackened fingernail. Yum. He dropped something on his hand, apparently. Anyway, about halfway through lunch he mentions he thinks it's broken. Fun!! Of course, telling the man to take a Motrin and go to the doctor is like talking to a wall.
Typical conversation in the Insanity household
"I have a headache."
"Did you take some Motrin?"
"No."
"You get no pity from me until you take some Motrin. Sorry"

Anyway, he went back to work, and decided to see the medic. They splinted his finger and sent him to the ER, he may need to see an orthopedic surgeon. Fun!! Mind you, during his previous enlistment, he tore off the tip of his ring finger while in the field (not completely off, just most of the way), and had to have it re-attached. His poor fingers are going to go on strike. Keep your (healthy) fingers crossed for him, hopefully this will just be a fracture.

**Update**
The radiologist doesn't think it's broken, but he'll have to follow up with the Ortho tomorrow. They did puncture the nail to drain off the blood, Nate says he's feeling 10 times better now.