IS IT HORMONES?...

I got yet another call from the school today about The Teenager.

He was in in-school suspension this past Friday for writing the word "dick" on his notebook with a dry erase marker on the school bus. Today, it's detention for not turning in his signed progress report.

We asked him about Friday's incident and why he did it. His answer? "Because so-and-so told me to." What? He can't think for himself? Reminds me of the old saying, "If they told you to jump off a bridge..."

Today, he tells his teacher that his little brother took the progress report off of the table. I know this isn't true. I signed his report for all classes but the one for this class I never even saw. I asked him why he lied to his teacher and I got the deer-in-the-headlights look. I could hear crickets.

I'm at a loss as to what to do with this child. Do these children hit puberty and just become stupid? Does testosterone cause the brain neurons not to fire anymore?

I could seriously use some advice here.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: BAR STYLE...

Yesterday afternoon, Daddeee and I went to the Kansas City Power & Light District to participate in an Presidential Election at The Flying Saucer.

Here's the way it works: you buy a beer in the glass of the candidate you wish to vote for. The glasses are so cute. They each have a caricature of the candidate along with the saying "Get off your (insert picture of a donkey) and vote!"

We each chose to have our beers in glasses with Barack Obama to cast our votes. Daddeee had a German lager and I had a Granny Smith Cider. Mine tasted just like apple juice, but was alcoholic.

Being the geek that I am, I had to have a McCain glass also. I had to have the complete set. Maybe it's the OCD in me, I don't know. So, to keep the votes equal, Daddeee had another beer in an Obama glass to cancel out the McCain vote (the waitress said they couldn't sell a glass without the vote counting). Plus, The Teenager wanted his own Obama glass anyway.

All in all, it was a nice afternoon out with my hubby.

I took a photo of the glasses for you to see. Ignore the feet of my photography assistants in the background.

See who's winning

Which glass would you buy?

BABY NAMES...

No, I'm not in need of a baby name. My baby making days are over unless fate steps in and changes something major.

I bring up baby names because 2 different families that I know of had babies this week. My online friend, Amanda, had a little boy last weekend and my real life friend, Brian, had a boy on Tuesday.

Amanda struggled with what her son's middle name would be until the day he was born and Brian & his wife didn't name their son until days after. This seems strange to me. I had names picked out for both of my children prior to even knowing what sex they would be.

I guess a person could look of this from two different perspectives. Some would probably say that naming a child is such an important thing that it's not something to rush into. Others might think that it's such an important thing that it's on the top of the list. I felt the latter.

For anyone interested, The Teenager's name is Trey Christopher. If he'd have been a girl, his name would have been Mariah Jo.

Now, for Gooey, the story is a bit interesting. His name is Joseph Maxwell (named after my dad). If Gooey had been a girl, his name would have been Jillian Marie. And actually, he was a girl up until I was 8 months along. They told us at our 5 month ultrasound that we were having a girl. Three months later (after my all-pink baby shower), they did another u/s to determine the size of our little girl, only to discover boy parts! What a shock that was. I mourned the loss of that little girl for a short while but I wouldn't trade my Gooey boy for any little girl in the world!

I'm interested in what other people's thought processes were/are about choosing baby names. Did you choose names way back when you were little, playing house with your friends or did the hospital make you finally choose a name to put on the birth certificate?

$700 Billion...

I'm not so sure how I feel about Congress saying yes to the expensive rescue of these big corporations. That's a lot of money. I wonder if these financial institutions deserve to be bailed out. I know there are a lot of "little people" that would be affected by their downfall but it's hard to get past companies where the CEO makes more in a year than I'll ever see in my lifetime.

And I have trust issues. Do I trust that the money will be used as it's intended? They say it will be paid back. Will it actually be paid back (with interest?) and the funds put back to where they were intended to go in the first place? Where is this money coming from anyway?

Let's put this into perspective. According to the Census Bureau, the population of the United States as of today (8:09pm CST) is 305,256,510 people. If you divide up that $700 billion, each person in the US would get $2,293 plus some change.

Each person could buy themselves a new 60 inch LCD television. That would be a huge luxury for most people. Many people could take that money and buy themselves a decent car to get to and from work. Others could pay off a debt that's hanging over their head. In a sense, they could bail themselves out.

Let's take this to a larger scale. According to the same website above, there are 6,726,013,183 people in the world. Each person would get a tad bit over $104. That would pay my light bill for a month, groceries for a week for my family, a few new outfits for my boys, or just a wonderful dinner out with my husband (I work hard, I deserve that occasionally).

Daddeee came up with a wonderful idea. Instead of issuing that $700 billion to the Secretary of State, why not divide it up between all citizens of the US and let each individual person decide if they want to donate their $2, 293+ dollars to these companies or keep it to bail their own family out of whatever crisis they're experiencing? I think I'd keep my chunk of change and deal with my own issues. I know that's being selfish but I don't see anyone stepping up to help me anytime I'm in a crisis.

Or even better, with that kind of moolah, why not, literally, buy the world a Coke? That would be a good start towards world peace.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY...

I know this is supposed to be wordless but I wanted to let you know what this series of pictures is. The Teenager and I were sitting on the front porch when we noticed this cloud in the sky in front of us. The cloud remained in the same place in the sky but continued to change in the most amazing ways. It was a spectacular example of nature.

OH GEEZE...

Gooey is a loud boy. He talks constantly and he's nowhere near learning to use his indoor voice.

We didn't make it to Walmart but we did go to Target today to get our trash bags. Target's closer to home and I wasn't up for a long drive to Wally World.

So we're cruising the store and Gooey's being his usual loud self. We get the trash bags we came for and decided to peruse the Halloween costumes and other goodies. Gooey's announcing to everyone within 20 aisles that he's looking for a pirate costume (news to me since he previously told me he wanted to be SpongeBob). We found a pirate costume but it's $24.99. Not going to happen. Mommeee will wait until it's on sale.

So we head on to grab some shampoo because I did remember that I was almost out. So while I'm looking in the shampoo hoping they'll have something new to tame this wild mop of mine, Gooey's going on and on about how he wants to go back and look at the pirate costume again. I told him no but he wouldn't take no for an answer. Finally, at my wit's end, I told him if he didn't stop, I was going to spank his butt.

Smart little whipper-snapper that he is, he comes back with "Mommeee, are you going to pull this cart over and spank my butt at Target?"

UGH! I'm fighting a losing battle.

A NICE DAY OFF...

Gooey and I are home today spending the day together. His babysitter is becoming a Grammy again so she took the day off.

It's nice to have an extra day off now and then. I've managed to get to the light at the end of the laundry tunnel. I have one load in the dryer and one left in the washer. After that, I'm done until next weekend.

We have to make a Walmart trip for trash bags today so I believe I will also get some pictures printed while I'm there. I haven't done that in quite a while. It'll be nice to have updated pictures to show off of the boys.

The bad part of having today off will be going back to work tomorrow. Companies suck because they give you "PTO" to use for such occassions but then they frown upon you when you use one. I know I'll have a ton of work to catch up on when I go back. Tomorrow will suck.

Anyway, Gooey and I have had breakfast, watched cartoons, played outside, and put away laundry. It's only 9:30 and I feel like I've been awake forever. Gooey's playing in his room though, so I'm sure it will take me the rest of the day to clean it up. He's the messiest kid I've ever met.

I forgot to share with you all. We converted Gooey's bed to a toddler bed over the weekend. He's really funny about it. He's all excited about having a "big boy bed" but he hasn't figured out that he can get out of it alone. But don't tell him, we want that to be a secret.

WEEKEND IS OVER...

It's been a busy weekend for us. We went yesterday to the Plaza Art Fair at the Plaza. The artwork went from amazing to creepy. My favorite exhibit was of an artist who creates something along the lines of wax people but his material was something I've never heard of. It took us a while to figure out that the people weren't real.

We ate while we were there too. Most of the Plaza restaurants had booths selling their food along with drinks. Daddeee and I shared a turkey-bacon panini from Plaza III along with a Peach Balini. A Peach Balini is made with champagne, peach schapps, and a few other things the guy wouldn't share with me. It was delicious. The boys had burgers from M & S Grill. Oh and we also taste-tested some of the best sangria ever from Figlio's.

Today consisted of laundry, laundry, and a little bit more laundry. The Teenager cleaned his room and discovered all the clothing that he kept insisting no longer existed.

So here I sit after about 8 loads of laundry, a trip to the fish store for some algae eaters to help me maintain the tank, a full day of dealing with 2 children that seem to irritate each other and me, and several poopie diapers because Gooey boy has a touch of the stomach flu. It's been such an oh-so-exciting weekend. It's no wonder I'm so exhausted.

But that's the life of The Mommeee.

CORNER CAFE, THE IN-LAWS, AND TORNADO SIRENS...

We had dinner last night at Corner Cafe with the in-laws. There's nothing like cramming 3 months worth of happenings into 2 hours all while trying to chew your food without spitting bits of salad all over someone because they have the knack of asking you a question immediately after you've put a bite into your mouth.

Last night's dinner was extra special because tornadoes were touching down around us and the sirens were blowing. Did we even flinch? Of course not. We're native Missourians and we're used to it. Well, tornadoes weren't literally near us but one did touch down about 30 miles away.

In addition to the twisters, we had rain. I'm not talking "Oh, it's raining out". I'm talking "can't see out the windows, muddy water rushing down the street, some idiot's gonna get stuck in his car because he drove through it" kind of rain. I think Fox 4 said we got close to 5 inches last night.

All in all, it was a good meal. Corner Cafe has awesome home-cooked kind of food. I did pass on the pie which is probably a first.

OWL UPDATE...

I haven't updated lately so I thought I'd throw a quick post in with a little update. As of yesterday, I've lost 35 pounds. It's awesome!

The HR Manager at work stopped me yesterday afternoon and asked me how I was doing it. He's the first person that's noticed that has actually said something. It made my whole day!

Belts, safety pins, and duct tape will not longer help the situation. I'm going to be that woman on Funniest Home Videos who's pants fall down in from of an entire restaurant full of people. Oh well, I'll just have to learn to accept embarassment.

Would you like a full moon with those fries?

GROWING UP...

Bubba reminded me the other day that he's going to be a teenager in less than 2 months. That can't be. He's my little boy. He's as tall as me now too. That's not saying a lot since I'm only 5'3" but he can look me straight in the eye.

He acts like a teenager, too. He's mastered the smart-aleck quips that grate on my nerves. The acne is starting to form on his face, although not because I don't hound him to wash his face constantly. And the phone calls. I don't even bother to answer the phone anymore because I know there's little chance of it being for me.

I dread all the other aspects of having a teenage son. There are issues that I am completely unprepared for. I can handle basic sex education but when it comes to the manly art of burping the worm, doodling your noodle, spanking your monkey, or any other creative euphamism you choose to use, I'm at a loss. This area is totally, udderly reserved for his father. How do single moms do it?

But, getting back to the purpose of my post today, from here forward, Bubba will now be known as The Teenager. There's a sound in my head each time I think of him as The Teenager. It's a doom sort of sound. I can't explain it but I'm sure those of you with teenage kids know exactly the sound I'm referring to.

So keep the Celexa coming and if anyone wants to send me alcohol, email me for my address.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND...

We haven't done anything exciting this weekend for the holiday. Because of the nature of Daddeee's business, he had to work Sunday and today.

We spent Saturday hanging out around the house and then met friends at Pizza Street for a birthday party. It's always such a wonderful time having dinner with friends while the kids play.

Sunday was spent doing the usual Sunday things. I cleaned up the house and did the laundry. I know Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest but the Lord will just have to understand that busy Mommeee's have to do things. We cooked out London broils on the grill with potatoes (I had cauliflower instead), Chinese green beans, salad and sliced tomatoes.

Today, I got up and made breakfast for the kids (which Bubba decided to sleep through) and sat on the front porch and enjoyed a cup of coffee. Several neighbors came by to say hello and chat. I'm headed down soon to pack us a picnic lunch to take to the park. So today will be my day of relaxation.

Here are a few photos I took this morning of a certain gooey little boy that I adore:

I've heard mullets are coming back in style. I just love his curls.

Tapping his foot to a beat only he hears.

What's that noise? One of his favorite questions.