Put Down the Remote

For the second time in three days I have had to force myself to turn off David Tutera and back away from the remote.  I am in love.  Friday, I watched My Fair Wedding Unveiled absolutely enthralled.  Riveted.  It was an extraordinary moment and today I started to have a My Fair Wedding marathon because of course Friday I set the DVR to record every single episode so that I don't ever miss another minute of David Tutera.  I think David Tutera should make an app and it could be called Pocket David Tutera HD and you could use your camera phone to show yourself to David Tutera and then he could exclaim, "Beautiful!  You look absolutely gorgeous!" like you are the only woman in the world he's ever said that to.  And then all the bad in your life would be instantly evaporated by Pocket David Tutera HD's positive and upbeat encouragement.  Sigh.  What if I wrote in to David Tutera to help me for my wedding, but the only problem would be I just don't have a groom.   He could find one for me.  I know he could because he's amazing.

Last week I went to the beach, which is where my mom and dad prefer to bicker about nothing when they are not in Apple Valley.  It was hot, which I don't generally find to be the case at the beach.  In fact, in general, I do not like the beach.  I did my master's degree at UC Santa Barbara and every summer I spent more time in a sweatshirt than beach clothes.  In any case, last week it was hot at the beach and we actually went to the beach so that Max could spend some quality time in the sand.  Only Maximus doesn't actually enjoy sitting in the sand so much.  Possibly this could because he is always wearing too many clothes and my mom is afraid he's going to be dirty.  Actually,  Max doesn't really like the beach at all.  He's scared of the water, the sand, the waves.  He likes the birds, but much prefers to be held if he leaves the beach blanket.  I set him in the sad and said showed him how to fill up everything with sand so that when we got in Grandma's car there was sand everywhere.

One person is happy to be at the beach.

After the beach I made a stop to visit my bestest buddy in all of Strasborg, France, Jack and his family, which was also good times.  It was so decadent because I didn't even get home until 9:00 which is an hour after my bedtime! 

Thursday, Earl and Clark found a unique solution to the ridiculous problem of that they can not sleep on the bed together by putting a pillow in between themselves.  I think they also probably made the rule that nobody could cross the line.  Ever.  I don't know how they did this.

My side.  Your side.

 Friday my mom bought suspenders for Max because she says his butt is too little to keep up his pants.  I think he just might need smaller pants, but of course I'm no kind of toddler clothing expert so my opinion is considered purely ambient noise.  This makes Max look even more like he's wearing "Papa pants."  My dad's dad, my papa, used to wear his pants up to his armpits and that's how Max looks wearing these suspenders.

Actual Papa Pants.
Luckily my dad does not wear his pants like this or we'd never be able to tell them apart.

 Yesterday my dad and Max (in suspenders) came and visited me at work while I was trying to get everything done before 12:30 before the place got realarmed so that I didn't have work at all the rest of the weekend.  Facts were sketchy, but undoubtedly either Grandma was getting on Grandpa's nerves or Grandpa was getting on Grandma's nerves and some space had to be created so as to preserve marital harmony.  Max was once again wearing his suspenders and was looking quite stylish.  We walked over and visited Jessica who was in charge of yesterday's Saturday school and we went all over campus and even saw four cows in the ag department who, unfortunately for everyone, did not "mooo."

Sylin.

All the news we get in the desert. 

That is to say-none.

Empty Newstands

You Need This

A List of all of the ass-kicking and head shooting Jack Reacher has done.  Thank you to Sara for finding and forwarding it.

Click HERE

Help

I fell out of the bed this morning.  Just straight fell out.  And, no, I had not been drinking.  I guess I thought I was more in the center of the bed than I was and I just sort fell out when I rolled over.  I landed on my ass next to the nightstand and I thought, yeah, that's going to hurt later.  It does.  Later, when I was sitting in a meeting trying to figure out why my macbook kept self-assigning an IP address instead of actually connecting to the wee-fee so that I could get some work done while pretending to listen to a guy who said, "Well even a broken clock is right twice a day; so you should still get something out of a boring meeting, " I decided that God's gentle hand had pushed me out of my bed so I would have a reason to take a 1/2 a pain pill allowing me the mental tenacity to endure the six hours I still had left in my meeting.

After that I made a Tour de High Desert in search of the answer to why my tire light was on.  My tire light came on a few weeks ago, but then it went off so I promptly forgot about it, but today I had the time to be concerned and do something about it.  Turns out I need new tires.  I don't know jack shit about tires and I didn't want to pay any extra for my monster truck tires than I had to, so after the second estimate,  I called Gene whom I knew would have some real life practical advice based on knowledge of actual car parts and car service.   Gene used to teach diesel engine repair.  He's hardcore and his shit is always in good repair.  I said, "Gene, what's a reasonable amount for me to pay for tires." And he answered, "Well you can pay as much as you want."  And while that wasn't real helpful, Gene did let slip that his "boy" worked at Firestone and I should go over there because that was an honest upstanding tire establishment who wouldn't look at my ringless feminine ring finger and try to take me for all I was worth, plus they had put tires on his truck and Bill's truck just a couple of weeks ago and I knew if it was good enough for Bill and Gene it was good enough for me.  So I drove myself clear across three cities to the Firestone shop where I asked for Doug and then I said, "Yeah, I just talked to your dad.  He's my peeps.  He said hook a sister up."  Doug promptly looked at my tires and said, "Yeah, they're pretty bad." And I thought well if Gene's honest son thinks they're bad I better get me some new tires pronto.  They'll be put on Saturday.

Books

True Dat

Yesterday me, my dad and Max went to the library.  It was great fun.  There were people screaming at each other in the lobby and they even had a nice selection of board books.  Max was pretty excited to see all of the books and ran around in a perfectly appropriate 16 month year old in the library for the first time manner and did not take apart any shelves or scream bloody murder at any time.  We choose some books to check out.  Max chose books by taking them off the shelves and handing them to me and then I did a cursory inspection to see if I thought it might be interesting to me.  My mom said we shouldn't check him out any regular books yet because he would probably tear out the pages.  Max did not get his own library card because I wasn't sure if I'd have to sign something that said I was his parent/guardian which would be a lie and then I would be prosecuted for falsely attaining a library card for a 16 month year old and my life would all be downhill from there.  Since the high desert is now located in Florida and has daily thunder showers, it had stormed while we were in the library and we were lucky we were in my dad's big truck or we may not have made it through the rivers of mud cascading down the roads.

Max tries to help me with the damn car seat.

After that Max and my dad helped me figure out how to do the car seat I bought.  If it had been up to me, I would have just thrown the thing in the pool or just told Max he was never going to leave the house again unless it was in a stroller because those directions didn't make any damn sense at all.  Lucky for me and Max, my dad figured it out while he was getting a bath.  Today we are going to complete part two of the car seat assembly by putting Max in it for fitting purposes and then we are going to put it in my car.

Under Siege

The Saratoga Animal Shelter is currently under siege by a gigantic lizard which has taken up a position in my room.  He is about six inches long.  It is unknown how he got into the house, past the Saratoga Alert Team and then into my room.  We are currently awaiting the arrival of my dad who upon hearing my urgent "Dad, there is a gigantic lizard in my room!" phone call, said he would take care of it when he gets here.  I don't know how I will sleep until it is gone.

Gigantic Menacing Lizard

Saratoga Animal Shelter Alert Team

The Week in Review

Sometimes I'm glad I don't have children; like when I went to Walmart this morning or like now because I'm pretty sure I should not feed them Martini Blanc and cake for dinner.  Don't judge me.  The Martini Blanc is my apéro, the cake is the entrée and the icing I'm going to make is going to be my desert with the cake I haven't yet eaten.  I'm making a gigantic cupcake for the Big Guy's birthday tomorrow.  I was supposed to watch Max tonight and I had purchased a super cute clay kit to put Max's hands in so that I could give it to the Big Guy for his birthday, but I didn't get to watch Max tonight, so I'm not sure when me and Maximus are going to be able to complete that portion of the birthday extravaganza.  And no, I would not have fed Max Martini Blanc and cake for dinner.  He would have had milk and yogurt with his cake.

Friday Gretchen hurt my eyes with the most obnoxious shoes ever.  These shoes bully my obnoxious shoes into not even showing their faces.  The drawing of the enraged person behind Gretchen is a student's artistic representation of the time I lost my freaking marbles because someone touched the Smartboard.  It may or may not have been one of my better moments.

Saturday Sara, Jessica and I made a trip to Rancho Cucamonga because Sara and I were out of wine.  We also went to Sephora and Trader Joes.  But mostly we needed to put an end to the wine emergency.

Today Sara, Gene, Bill and I walked from the trailhead to the airport for breakfast.  We had quite the good time and Sara hit her 400 miles this year.  Yeah Sara!! We took her picture in front Bell Mountain- she and Bill and Gene went to the top on New Year's Day.  I'm trying to convince Gene to post a picture of Sara to his Facebook and then change his status to "It's complicated" but I'm pretty sure mostly Gene just thinks I'm silly.

Gene, Sara, Bill