When we had this house built a little over five years ago, we paid $400 extra to upgrade the appliances. So far as I can tell, we got the same crap, builders grade appliances we would have... in a different color. Grrrr!
My friend two doors down has the same crap dishwasher we have.... she calls it her dish sanitizer. That's about all it's good for, because ya have to wash everything before you put it in to be "washed."
Dadguy and I had agreed that the first thing that goes wrong with that sucker and it's OUT of here! Bless my Birdie's heart! She was dancing and twirling in the kitchen and fell on the open door of the dishwasher and bent it back (she was frightened, but unhurt). The unit still more or less worked as well as it ever had, but now required a large pot to be set under the door to prop it open for loading purposes. A dishtowel also had to be employed on the floor directly in front to sop up the three or so tablespoons worth of water that leaked. Dadguy put up with the situation for all of two days, and four stumbles over the pot before he cried uncle.
Truth? He wasn't even interested in whether it worked from the moment he heard that the door needed to be propped up. It was two days and four trips over that "freaking thing" of a cookpot before he flat insisted that we get a new one. I was the tightfisted hold-out. Dumb? Yeah.... don't know what I was thinking.
After an evening spent researching consumer reports online, I narrowed my options down to one; a Maytag that made my heart go pitter-pat yet did not take us to the "cleaners." The local appliance/furniture store had it for cheaper that the big guys like Home Depot and RC Willey, so all the better!
Now we have an appliance that I can truthfully call a dishwasher. It sits cozily beside my kitchen sink and it works like a dream! Works so good in fact that I have to keep reminding my self that it doesn't actually load it's ownself and to get my butt in there to do some dishes!
Why do I blog about this now? Well, it was snowing when I woke up this morning. I was less than thrilled. Sure, I know I live in Utah, a place that is famous for it's snow... I am aware of that. Just around this time of year I get a little antsy for a break. Not gettin' it.
What I am sayin' is that I was a little blue about the grey skies, and the white crap all over the place while driving home from the grocery store this morning. But then I got to thinking about the homemade chicken soup that I was gonna be making, and the warm home and clean dishes that I had to make it in. I got to thinking about the small little tweaks that make so big a difference in my day to day. A new dishwasher. A child using the toilet with out any reminding or harassing. My baby growing two molars and a front tooth in the past two weeks without any ear infection! Birdie turning five in a few days. I also thought about the constants like Dadguy working his butt off to pay for it all, then coming home to get mobbed by four females clamoring for his attention.
Y'all? I have it good, and I am happy. Grateful: even with a fresh layer of snow on the driveway.
Still in my Jammies. I am attempting to have myself a "sick day." So far, other than still being in my jammies, I don't notice any difference. Except, oh yeah... the head cold.
So much fun stuff going on around Chaosburg. I am hit with all kinds of De Ja Voo. LaLa decided four days ago that doing her bid-ness in the pot was for her. Except for one "wee" accident and one far more notable, and stinky accident... it seems to be a done deal. Pearl has decided that two legged motation is something to aspire to. She could actually be doing it full time, but for the fact that she thinks walking is hilarious! Step, step, step, step HA hahahahahaahaha!
It was a little over two years ago when Birdie was the pantie-girl and LaLa was the new walker-girl. They too, chose one week in which to hit their milestones in tandem; milestones that are life changing. Especially for Mama. There was rejoicing and a small party was held to celebrate.
And the next week I discovered I was pregnant.
Feeling just a titch nervous right now.
Bleah.
There is a letter that I am struggling with the writing of... I have two solid starts that just peter out about two paragraphs in. The problem is my standard difficulty with self censorship. I have to write to my insurance company to appeal their refusal to pay for the Ambulance ride from Town Hospital to Primary Children's Hospital up in Salt Lake City. They claim that they don't have to pay for ambulance service when it is not an emergency.
There is the difference between the letter that I want to write and the letter that I need to write in order to make those schmuckity-ducks pay. The letter that I WANT to write? Dude, I cannot even post that sucker on this blog, at least not if I want to keep my family friendly status. And I do.
I have given myself a deadline of having it written by Thursday and sent by Friday... they only give you 180 days to appeal, and who knows how many letters this will take.
So here is the blogworthy version of the Letter.... let's see if I can get past paragraph two.Attention: Schmuckity-ducks at Lame-O Insurance Company,
I recently received a bill from Real Cool Ambulance Co, saying that y'all are refusing to pay them for the services they rendered to our daughter, Pearl Baby Chaos on December 7th, 2006. I couldn't understand why this would be so, as we have the kind of insurance that makes us pay 100% of all medical costs until we, as a family hit our massive freaking deductible. Once the level of "massive freaking deductible" has been reached then Y'ALL are supposed to kick in and pay 100% of everything after that. We have this kind of insurance in case of emergency. This kind of insurance is only good for emergency's and crisis', and we pay our premiums in hopes that we never actually have to prevail upon a Shylock bunch of schmuckity-ducks like YOU to pay our medical bills.
Emergency=scary bad stuff
Well, we hit our deductible and expect y'all to pay for a while. And to your credit, Lame-O Insurance Company is paying for most of it. Just not the two thousand plus for the ambulance because, as your representative on the phone stated... our plan does not pay for ambulance service when used for anything other than an emergency.
The huh?
That ambulance was ordered by our ENT surgeon who was concerned that an emergency tracheotomy would need to be performed on the way to the bigger, cooler hospital. Are y'all good for tracheotomies? Because I'm not, and I would prefer to have the assistance of a trained professional for that kind of maneuver. And there is that word: Emergency, that goes so well with the other word: Tracheotomy. But you couldn't know that from where you sit, so I am telling you now. The doctor is also telling you... see enclosed letter. Also, for your viewing pleasure, the DVD of the Laryngoscopy performed on her just prior to her ambulance ride . What you see in the DVD is a small camera on the end of a rubber tube going down her throat. The big, dark pause in the movie is the doctor having to push hard and wriggle the camera around in order to shove that tiny camera down the tinier amount of space she had left to breath through. Even a schmuckity... I mean, a LAYMAN can see that an unknown SOMETHING was pressing her windpipe shut.
The thing that kills me is that you did not make your decision to refuse payment in a vacuum. You are surely aware that at Primary Children's there was a slew of diagnostics done, as well as surgery and a night spent on the intensive care ward. You payed the crappin' bills, so I HOPE you were aware of this. And yet, this was not an emergency?
Yeah... y'all are pissing me off. Pay. Now.
Thank You
The Mama
Singin' in the BATHTUB! Lah ta ta ta deeeee!
Taking it down a few notches in the House of Chaos.
It's official: I could never have an Amish friend.
It's nothing on the Amish folks. I have no theological quibble with them... I find that I prefer not to God-quibble with anyone, it's bad for my complexion. I'm sure they are decent and fun people in their own right... it's their bread. Grrrr!
A bit of back story:
It appears to be a local Utah custom to make up a batch of this so-called Amish Friendship Bread, take out four portions of the dough to put into four gallon sized Ziploc baggies. You are supposed to keep one of the bags for yourself, then give away the other three with the xeroxed instructions. It's kind of like a real life meme, and the goo in the bag is a "start."
Looking at the recipe it appears to be a sweet bread of some sort. I say appears, because although I have been given four separate starts, by four separate friends over the past year... they have all four been round filed after four pathetic attempt to follow a few simple instructions. I suck at this kind of friendship.
Here's the deal: It takes ten days of mushing the bag around once a day... except the fifth day you are supposed to add some ingredients and then continue with the mushing. The paper saysmush it. Mush. A very apt term for this bubbly concoction that flops in it's increasingly nasty looking Ziploc baggy. On my counter. Did I mention that it smells vaguely like beer and vinegar. Around day three I lose it and chuck that nasty bad boy into the pantry so I don't have to smell it or look at it.
I usually find it a week or so later. It is grey and non-bubbly by this time.
This last time I made it to day six with it taking up valuable real estate on my counter top. Too bad we passed up day five which was the "add stuff in" day. I considered trying to make a go of it anyway... but when I opened that bag to add the stuff? Holy SWEET mayonnaise! I was hit with flashbacks of old beer cans and bad hangovers... count me out, maaaan!
What I need is some nice, forgiving Amish Blogship Bread. I can handle a meme a la tehInternets, they don't stink! Speaking of which J.D., I really will be getting on that meme you tagged me with. The rest of y'all? Especially if you were a giver of a bag o' goo, bread meme thingy? Please take no offense... I just kinda suck at alot of this stuff right now.
I got hit with a meme by the Dread Pirate Rackham that seemed like a painless posting opportunity.
The rules are as follows:
1. Find the nearest book.
2. Name the book & the author.
3. Turn to page 123.
4. Go to the fifth sentence on the page. Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
5. Tag three more folks.
So I looked around and the nearest book that I can see is a book entitled Possibilities by Yours Truly. Yeah, I know, how drippy can ya get! But you should know that this sucker HAS a title and IS numbered, plus the next closest books to me are my scriptures. I am fairly certain y'all don't care to read a few lines out of my Bible OR my Book of Mormon. Not that you are getting off much easier with an excerpt from page 123 which happens to be rough of a poem entitled Scapula.
Hang onto yer underpants, here it comes straight (for the most part... punctuation added plus I substituted the words I went with in my final draft of the poem: blades for scalpels, and launch me for launching ) to you from 1997.
My mighty wings are
an exquisite and terrible banner
composed not of feathers
but stainless steel blades.
Descending
one by one,
to excise my sparrows heart
from the fabric of mundane
and drear slowness.
O wings, WINGS
thwart gravity and
laugh, launch me
forward so fast that I cry
only the tears of
the wind whipping by.
I tag
Mama D
Elizasmom
J.D.
Jessica from Kerflop recently posted a piece on what she believes. It was beautiful, and it is more in line with what I want to believe.
I first heard the term “Traditional Build” on the Verymom (now Kerflop) website over a year ago, and have gone on to read the Ladies No.1 Detective Agency books with my jaw dropped. The main protagonist is an African woman named Precious Ramotswe. She is a woman who fills a size 22 dress and feels beautiful. She is treated and spoken of by others as a desirable woman. When another refers to her as "fat" it is with admiration, or a sense of covetousness. To my readers ears, the character's in Alexander McCall Smith's books pronounce the word "fat" the same way that I would say "svelte."
It makes me want to cry. Not many folks around me admire my "Traditional Build." If they did? I still wouldn't know it, because I certainly don't admire my ample traditions.
I come from a family and culture that measures a woman's success, desirability and state of emotional health by the size of her jeans. Jeans that I have never been able to
fit my butt into. They are some teeny-tiny, no-thigh-having jeans, and I hate them.
I am in the process of rejecting those stupid jeans, but they still hang in my closet. I get sick of them and throw them away, but the next morning there they are again, and they mock me. Stupid Jeans.
Anyone got a blowtorch?
*edited to add: I do not blame my messed up thinking and body attitudes (or my messed up body for that matter) on anyone. I am an adult, I am in charge of what/who I am... it is taking time and effort to get to where I want to be, however. I am not indicting anyone in this little post, INCLUDING my stupid ex who used to call me a fat @$%&*% cow as a motivational technique. Wait... I think I did just indict him with that last sentence. Fine, I am indicting no one but him.
...that Nobody preaches to in regards to the bathroom door.
Let me give you a bit of history...
I am the fourth child in a family of six kids, positioned smack in the middle of the two boys of the brood. We were OK financially, but this WAS back in the day before ten trillion bathrooms per household was the norm. You do the math... six kids and one bathroom to share between us. I was not only a door shut-er, I was a religious door lock-er. We are talking about survival here.
Directly upon leaving home, I found myself in a roommate situation: Roommates, roommates boyfriends and various folks from hither and yon. Shut and LOCKED up tight, thank you very much!
How far I had fallen. I excused my sloppy bathroom door technique because I was home alone with three girls... we're all girls. Girls.
But then.... then I found myself failing to shut the door all the way when Dadguy was home. Then even when he was in the next room! Y'all, I'm not talking prudery here... I'm talking about romance... which is hard enough to maintain when there are young kids in the equation. So the real and actual facts here (and I believe that I have scaled new heights in the TMI category) are that I am getting back to my better habits. I have not only consistently shut the door recently.... I have locked the door on three separate occasions in the past week.
Whoop YEAH!
as a side note.... it is 10:30AM and Dadguy is still rolling his lazy butt about in the bed. He claims it is the new pillow that I purchased for him last night. Am I buying that? No.
Sad neglect of a poor widdle bloggy... it's just pathetic I tell you!
No apologies from ME however!... just an update on my pre-new years resolutions.
1. Cut out the Na-na words, even the ones that don't make it out of my mouth, what I refer to as "swearing in my heart."
Better...mostly. Really, I didn't think that I would have as tough a time as I'm having, but the very difficulty of the task only strengthens my resolve. I am in charge here dadgummitall!
2. Shut the bathroom door.
I wavered on this one... it is still highly tempting to keep the door open just for "safety sake." Dadguy reminds me that the reality if the situation is that anything truly horrible happens, it will come to my attention closed door or no. It comes down to a boundary that I need to have.... so, much better here too.
In addition to my Pre-resolves, I have also resolved that this year I will read the scriptures every single day... and that if I miss a day or a week or whatever, I will drag my sorry can back to the resolve and start all over again. Not start the year over... just, you know, I'm gonna do it. I've already flubbed one day but I am UNDETERRED, this is gonna happen.
Update... Pearl is close to walking. Christmas day she started with the standing unassisted and has practiced this stunt every day since. She took one step yesterday and promptly whomped on her face. We are proud, and cheer her on... the older girls are giddy and a little amazed at the progress she is making.
