The Truth about Bert and Ernie

As we were watching Sesame Street this morning Jack and I were discussing Bert and Ernie's relationship. If you think about it, two grown men, living together, in the same room, seems a little odd. But they ARE great friends. I was explaining to Jack that Ernie is rather bitter and he complains a lot. Jack informed me it was because he needed to find a woman. He added, "They both need to find women to marry. But its TV, so you probably won't see them find women. That will make them be nicer."

That explains it!

Little did I know

I used to think that the majority of information in life can me learned in school. It is true that school bombards you with so much info only hoping that a small percentage will actually stick. Of course though, the small tidbits of information that does stick is so completely useless in everyday life. Don’t ask me why I still remember the pethagarian theory. As you become a parent though there is an infinite amount of knowledge that you only then become aware of. I have listed just some of the new data I have been enlightened with lately:

Snails do not get dizzy.
When you are four it is mandatory to sing in the shower. Preferably Pink: So What, I’m Still and Rock Star.
Dad’s like to teach their little boys all the inappropriate things that a mom would never teach them. Example: how to shoot the head off a monster with a sniper rifle.
The repercussions of running out of milk are tragic.
Jokes do not have to make sense in order to be funny.
Anything can be turned into a percussion instrument.
A bug zapper can be entertaining for the entire family. Except for when it starts to smell like something burning.
Kids are not offended when you have to ask them what it is they just drew. Because they are the only ones that can tell.

If you have any other tidbits that I should be aware of, please feel free to add them to this posting by commenting. I'm sure everyone will benefit from all this great knowledge.

The reason why I became a Mom

I have learned to recognize the signs, and sounds, that indicate Jack is off for his daily trip to the restroom. Not that he just goes once a day, but you know what I mean. I wish I could just ignore this daily event, but I have learned my lesson the hard way. He always seems to wait until it is the most in opportune time for his house-wide announcement of "MOM!! Come Wipe My BUUUUUTTTTTT!!" This announcement would usually come nice and loud while I was on the phone with a client or comcast, or really anyone that didn't need to hear that my sons butt was poopy. Luckily, he is a wee bit better about it now. (get it? a wee bit? HA) So yesterday when was on the phone, I saw him head up to the restroom, and as he leaves the door open to share his experiences with everyone, it made it easy to see what he was up to. I sat on the stairs waiting for my queue. Since he is a "big boy" now, he has to wipe his own butt a couple times, then I come in and make sure all is clean. I watch him gather up his toilet paper for the first of two self serve cleanings. I did have to stop him though before he made the biggest mess out of the entire downstairs… He had obtained enough toilet paper to clean an entire Ethiopian family.

Apparently Kym, who I was chatting with on the phone, thought I was over reacting when I told Jack that he had way way way way way way way too much paper. So we counted how many squares it took to get to the center of a toilet paper roll. He had pulled off not 7, not 13, not even 20, but 29 squares. The length of the toilet paper train was well over 8 feet long. And before I had taken them away, there he was just wadding them up into one giant ball of toilet clogging mess.

We agreed that 5 squares would give you ample cleaning material to get any particles that may have been left behind.

Now that Jack is four his creative side is definitely emerging. They say that it is normal for him to even have imaginary friends at this age too. And even if he did, I wouldn’t blame him. You can only play by yourself so many times. We had some easter eggs out last night and we were playing grocery store with them. It’s a fun way for us to learn math. He goes and gets a bunch of his toys, puts them in a bag, and I make up how much each of them cost. It’s a pretty fun game because of course I get sassy with it. I ask him if he has coupons, or I tell him I don’t take credit. Or I will just straight out refuse to serve him since he isn’t wearing shoes. He never even questions me when I tell him that each hotwheel car costs $97000.

So he was making his purchases yesterday and he said this, “I need to buy some eggs for my brother and sister. Their names are Kelly and Couchy. I named him Couchy because he likes to jump on the couch. He’s 22000-18-22-18 years old, but he’s a kid still. Kelly likes to drink soda sometimes." This is the first I've heard of these two siblings of Jack's. Maybe it was one of them that keep leaving their toys all over the house.

I tried sleeping in this morning. Jason got up at 7:45 and I told him, "Just 15 more minutes." As I roll over I hear the delightful sounds of Jack discovering his easter basket. All I hear are OOOOHHHH!! and WHOA!!! I had to get up.

Who knew Dublin was so ghetto!

Sorry it has been so long since my last entry. Our entire house has been ridiculously sick. Seriously, our house should have been on quarantine. I should have put one of those termite tents on our house. No one in, no one out. It was bad. But luckily after lots of rest and antibiotics, we are finally all feeling much better.

While one of our resting times last week an interesting and somewhat disturbing thing happened. Jack had accidentally taken an impromptu nap, which I thoroughly was taking advantage of. As I lay there on the couch resting, I heard the door bell ring. I knew right away it was the mailman because he annoying rang the bell twice and I heard him drop a couple of boxes just outside my door. I knew the boxes would still be there later, so I left them where they lay and continued to enjoy the quiet and the sight of the inside of my eyelids. About an hour later there came yet another interrupting ring of the doorbell. I drug myself off the couch and take a peek out the peephole to find a pretty ghetto looking man wearing turquoise cotton gloves. There is no way I'm answering the door for some crazy looking dude. So I proceed to be the nosey neighbor and just stare at him through my little peephole. I watch him give up on me answering the door and he rings my neighbor’s bell. I knew she was at work so no one seemed to be home. I figured he’d give up completely and go away, but no. He came back and starting picking up the 2 boxes that were left out front by the mailman. WTF?! He wasn’t just glancing at them, no no, he picked them up and was inspecting them; probably noting that they were both from shoe stores and most likely contained some sort of shoe that he could easily steal. After a few seconds of realizing that he wasn’t just checking them out, he had every intention of stealing them, I forcefully opened the door. I know… in retrospect, I really should not have opened the door. He could have been a very bad man (with gloves on!) that could have done all kinds of bad things. But fortunately for me, I scared him enough to take him off guard and he was quite surprised to see me. He put down the boxes and immediately started apologizing. He introduced himself as a new neighbor that just moved in down the street and that he was coming to introduce himself. Yeah right! He didn’t exactly look like the friendly neighbor type. He even tried to tell me that he was just looking at the boxes to find out what my name was. Sure you were. After he left I called up Jason to tell him what had happened. While I was on the phone with him my neighbor from across the way knocked on my door to tell me she saw the whole incident and was going to call the cops. Jason ended up calling the cops as well, just to let them know about the situation. The dispatch informed him that he’d have to file a report in order for them to give a damn basically. So he did.

I wasn’t sure what the cops would do about it though. I mean really, its not like he actually took anything, but he sure thought about it. I get a call about 20 minutes later from the Dublin Police Department asking me to drive down the street and ID a guy that they have in custody! Wow, that was fast. The Dublin Police truly don’t have a lot to do, so when they hear about some African American person attempting to steal boxes, wow, were they on the case! I drive down the street and there are FOUR police vehicles that are parked on the side of the road, all with their lights on. It seriously looked like a drug bust! They bring this guy out so that I can take a look at him. The only description that the cops had to go off of was that he was a black man. Talk about racial profiling! This poor guy looked nothing like the scary dude that came to my door other than the fact that he happen to also have the same color skin. He was clearly pissed too. They had him standing there in handcuffs while they searched his car. Not sure what they were looking for considering the fact that he didn’t actually steal anything that I saw. But you never know, he could have stolen other boxes I suppose. So I inform the cops that the poor angry man standing there was not the “perp” they were looking for. They told me they would let him go and that they’d be by my house later to ask more questions. Well, they never showed up. Bastards. I’m thinking that attempted box robbery is not a serious enough charge to justify coming out. Oh well. The way I see it, that dude knows exactly where I live. I kind of don’t want him pissed off at me.

I have seen this dude since then so I am pretty sure he really does live in my neighborhood. Although, I don’t plan on calling the cops on him at this point, I do plan on watching him intently to make sure he isn’t doing anything else shady. I don’t want to put me and my family at risk by being a nark, but I do have the police number in my phone just in case. I think I should start a neighborhood watch. We could get some night-vision binoculars and peep on everyone. If you’d like to join just send in $500 along with a picture of yourself wearing a black ski mask.

Valentine's Day The Franco Way

So after being married for over 7 years you get a good idea what to expect on any given holiday, but not this holiday. See's Candy is so genius that they send us a catalog weeks in advance of Valentine's Day. The best part of this awesome catalog is in the very back they have a do-it-yourself sampling of all the wonderful little yummies. So this year I snagged that catalog and found the best working pen I could and set to work. Once Jack realized what I was doing, he too found a writing utensil. I circled each of the candies that I wanted to eat come Valentine’s Day. I even put stars next to a couple of them; the ones that would take me about 10 minutes to eat each one, savoring each tiny morsel. Meanwhile, Jack circled pretty much everything in the entire catalog. He even made a point to show Jason when he got home what we had done. My husband is the best... he took the catalog to work with him the next day, goes online and orders up some of the circled items. Apparently he was pretty proud of himself that day because he didn't exactly keep it a secret that he ordered some chocolates. As he is totally screwing with me by telling me that he didn't order the ones that I wanted, I ask him if he ordered the ones with the stars. He says, "what stars?" It took me a while to figure out that he wasn't just messing with me, he didn't notice the stars. Goober. But in his infinite wisdom he new that I had circled waaaaay too many chocolates to fit in one box... so he orders 2! That's right, he was so smart he ordered 2! Love him! It worked out quite well since both boxes arrived a week before v-day. They came and I just had a feeling that I'd finish both boxes before the actual holiday. I did finish one box, with the small help from Jason, by the time Saturday came around. But there was still about ¾ of the second box remaining. Ah, but the story continues...

Valentines Day was on a Saturday this year. The Thursday before Jason's parents call and invite themselves over for the holiday. Really? They sugar coat the invasion by offering to watch Jack while Jason and I can go out on a date. Hmm, sounds like a great idea right, no.

I wake up with a huge headache Saturday morning and I wait until 30 minutes before his parents arrive to start cleaning up. But, luckily for me they roll up 30 minutes late. Right was they walk in, I am currently on the floor (in my robe, by the way) cleaning spots in the carpet with my hot water and folex. Dad proceeds to walk into the house with squished berries stuck on the bottom of his shoes. I follow him around to 4 different spots and clean as I go. He did take his shoes off later, after he asked me what I was doing. Awesome.

As I said before, once you've been married for 7 years the thought of doing anything big for Valentine's Day seems a bit moot and too expensive. I had my See’s and I made Jason some heart shaped snicker doodles. (they're his favorite AND they were cute) So where to go and what to do? Now we had the option of somewhere to go out while Jack stayed home with mom and dad. But when they showed up they hadn’t eaten lunch so we end up going out to lunch with them to Chili’s. I had a nice big margarita! It went well with my motrins I had taken earlier for my headache. It was very nice of Dad to pay for lunch. Thanks Dad.

We get back to the house, they set up their air mattress and they both decide they need a nap. I play my little game on my laptop while the two of them snore for at least an hour. That afternoon Jason and I decided that we would go and see a movie. We went and saw He’s Just Not that Into You. (cute movie) Of course Jack cried when I told him he’d have to stay home with Nana and Grandpa. He was a bit sick earlier, so that didn’t help. The movie was great. It even had those cute follow-ups to the characters that I like to see at the end of movies. But to my dismay as soon as the credits start running, Jason practically ran out the door. In his defense, I had gotten up first because the theater was totally packed. (a chick flick movie on valentines day, on a Saturday, duh) I tried pulling on him twice so that we could stay and watch the end of the movie, but he kept going. Oh well. I already put it on my blockbuster list.

We stop by the grocery store on our way home to get stuff for dinner. It seems weird now that I write it, but for some reason it didn’t at the time. We were going to make a fancy steak dinner for his parents. Not exactly what I had imaged would happen on any Valentine’s Day. We get back and no one is hungry. They played dominos with Jason while I entertained myself by doing the dishes and making cupcakes. I ended up having cottage cheese for dinner while we heated up some taquitos for the parents.

We all go to bed and Jason and I get situated upstairs. We had our laptops, snacks, water, we were ready for the long haul when I started hearing an alarm. I went downstairs to investigate, only to once reaching the bottom stair, the alarm would stop. TWICE! WTF! Mom and Dad are both sound asleep and are oblivious to any noise whatsoever. I say screw-it to the alarm and chock it up to something that doesn’t belong to me, therefore, not my problem. I just have to figure out how to sleep through it, because it kept going off every 2 minutes. So I go upstairs to get back to some alone time with Jason and I hear something else that is disturbing. Jack was coughing. I go in to check on him and he gets “sick” in his bed. Awesome. Jason was there to help get the bucket and took his comforter downstairs. We even got his air mattress and set it up for him in our room. It was a nice thought, but of course he ended up sleeping with us the entire night. I had a wonderful night’s sleep filled with knees, elbows, alarms, and occasionally an arm across my face. It was the best valentines ever!

Oh but wait, there is a follow-up to this story too…

It wasn’t until Tuesday that I went and found my last box of See’s candy. The one filled with all the “star” chocolates… I picked it up and noticed that it was a lot lighter then I remember. The memory flashed in my head of mom walking out of the kitchen nibbling on something chocolate. I can even somehow remember crumbs falling on the floor as she walked. It’s amazing the details that you can remember when you are under stress. All I could think of was how I so hoped it was Jason that had attacked my box. But if you know my husband, you’d know it wasn’t him. I opened the lid to find FOUR pieces left!! I asked Jason, just to make sure, but he confirmed my suspicions. He felt bad that his parents had eaten the one and only gift that I had received (or wanted for that matter) so he offered to order me a new box… but then I felt guilty. If it wasn’t for the fact that his parents constantly talk about how healthy they eat at home, I might not mind…

It wasn’t until I wrote all this out that I realized how odd my holiday was. It was a lot of little things that once compounded makes for a bizarre day. I hope my day somehow helps make your day just that much more special.

Etsy

So after a lot of procrastination, whining, complaining, excuses, and mostly laziness, I finally posted some beads on Etsy. I’m not sure if they will sell or not, but hell, it only costs 20 cents for each post. I think my beads are worth a million dollars each, obviously! I’m just not sure I can find that right person that loves them as much as I do and has a couple million laying around. If you know of such a person, Give Them My Number! Although if you were smart you would probably keep them to yourself and have them as your sugar daddy/momma. I know I would.

So check out my etsy page and let me know if you want me to make you something pretty. :)

Dream It Beads on Etsy

My Son - Definitely a BOY!

I'm not sure what he ate but something was seriously giving Jack some baaaaad gas yesterday. I know what you're thinking... why on earth do I want to know about some kids farts. You know why? Because its funny! Now keep reading!

We were at Target yesterday picking up a few things before we drove up to Fairfield to meet my dad for his birthday dinner. I'm in the card aisle when I smell something foal coming from Jack's direction. Of course I'm not the only one in the aisle. There are 2 other innocent bystanders that are reading cards happily before the wall of stink hit them. I found a card within 3 seconds and made a quick retreat in the opposite direction from the two poor victims. I mentally apologized for my son’s butt as we ran.

We arrived at the restaurant a little early so Jack and I sat in the car for a few minutes while I was chatting with my friend Melissa. (read her blog, its hilarious). As we were sitting there though there became a stench from the backseat that seemed to leach over to the front seat. It was so bad that I had to quickly end my conversation and vacate the car immediately! There was no sound to warn me of what was to come, only the giggles that followed. We stood there in the parking lot, with the doors open, trying to get that awful smell out of my car! I could only imagine coming back from dinner to sit down in a fart marinated car!

So we go inside and we are sitting on one of the benches waiting for my dad to show up. I think I smell something rotten that smells similar to what had burned my nostrils earlier. I asked Jack, "Did you toot again?" He replied with, "No, but I did when we were outside!" He acted a bit proud of this for some reason. I told him that if he feels the need to fart like that again, that he should tell me and we will go outside again. Only a boy would be proud of the fact that they made their mom gag!