The Boring One

I just realized that it's been a week since I last posted...that must be remedied.

I really don't have anything terribly exciting to say but I guess I'll say it anyway.

On Wednesday Craig and I celebrated *scratch that* HAD our 8th wedding anniversary. We're planning a big shindig *scratch that* APPLEBEE'S this weekend. No seriously, we are going out and we're going to be more adventurous than usual...we're still open for suggestions, so far The Cheesecake Factory is winning.

OH, I did book a cruise for next year, yesterday. Happy Anniversary to me, I guess...Craig doesn't know yet...he'll probably be fine with it...

While booking the cruise I came to the conclusion that probably I should work for Royal Caribbean because I seemed to know a heck of a lot more than the guy getting paid to book it.

This morning I woke up and it was 69 degrees in my house and I was like "YES, SWEET FALL!"

This is become beyond boring, I'm coming back later, hopefully with hilarious tid bits...

Late Night ramblings with a little bit of flea

It's after 12:30 am and tomorrow is a work day so when I'm late I'm totally throwing you eleven under the bus. "It's not my fault Marie, eleven people had a feva and the only prescription was more Shan..."

See I would have gotten around to blogging before now but I'm not sure if you're aware but it's "RED CARPET PREMIERE WEEK" (according to abc) and just about a million shows premiered that I love and I feel obligated to keep up with all of them because what if, forbid I'm in some high powered conference and the conversation suddenly turns to 'THE MODERN FAMILY'?! Well not knowing what happened could be detrimental to my job and I really don't want that so I need to be kept abreast...(by the by it was an awesome episode where Mitchell gets stuck in a princess castle and Manny goes on a date)...anyway...

This blog could totally take a turn for "tv commentary". But hey look at Frank Nicotero, his whole job is to watch tv shows and then do mini para-phrases and say funny things about them. HELLO, I COULD SO DO THAT.

Also I blame Daddy Scratches for my late night. (And no that's not my kinky name for Craig). He's a guy with a blog. It's pretty hilarious and once you start you can't stop, you feel the need to keep hitting more, more, more! I would provide a link but I seriously doubt my eleven would be interested. He's a bit more worldly than me and he drops the dreaded F-bomb in every other paragraph which I can simply ignore and skip over while reading in my head however probably some of you would be offended. Let's face it, I was facing mutiny that one time I said 'ASS' not meaning the donkey thing. I heard the off handed grumbles from some of you and the occasional "off with her head" and I wanted to scream back, "HOW CAN YOU BE SURE I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT A DONKEY?!"

Hey Mom, you know those thousand boxes of rolaids we got for free with our coupons? Tonight I have a use for them. I have eaten like a half a roll while sitting here which is so weird because I never have heartburn, ever! (Except when I was pregnant which I am now, NOT). But Craig and Becca have the heartburn all the time and I make fun of them and say things like "oh so I guess you're eighty and stuff" and then it was like God finally got sick of the bantering and went "okay here's how it feels to have your esophagus ON FIRE". And no I will never make fun of you guys again. (Until I'm sure I'm over my episode and then we'll see...)

Side Note: I noticed after I typed that last paragraph that I had put "craig and becca have THE heartburn all the time). I was going to erase it but then I left it in hopes that maybe it will catch on like how people say "I'm headed to THE J&J" or "want to go to THE walmart". People will say "gosh what's wrong with so n so, he don't look so good?" And other people will reply "you know him, he's got THE heartburns." I don't know, maybe this catch phrase is only a pipe dream...

So still no air conditioner, still hot weather but tonight I am wearing pants so that's an improvement. And for all you crazy environmentalists that "conserve" listen to this. Even though my air is clearly not working every couple of days I flip it on and let it run for twelve hours straight hoping that maybe "it'll kick on". How's that for "excessive use of energy". Why am I so proud of something that's going to cost me a fortune with the electric company? Am I really so brazen that I find any excuse to be belligerent? I think I am.

It's one..I'm clearly delirious. Most people would wrap it up but I'm all like "HEY, what else can I tell y'all?! Obviously I'm thinking straight...what family secrets haven't I touched on yet?" I also feel very southern, I've used 'y'all' an awful lot in one post.

So the other night I asked Becca to help me put flea medicine on my cats. The directions are simple enough; hold cat still, separate the hair at the base of the neck, apply topical solution, DO NOT LET CAT LICK THE AREA, the end. Except you're talking about a cat. For those of you who aren't proud cat owners, the whole "hold cat still" part is (beeeeeep).

We cornered Dudlei first as she had made the fatal error of laying on the back of the couch during "go time" and she was convenient. Bec "held her down" while I wrestled with the packaging and tried for the life of me to "separate the fur". For those who haven't met Dudlei she is not a small cat. She is very large and where large people have fat rolls she has fur rolls and I couldn't find the exposed skin the package had urged me to! She was getting a little fiesty so I finally just squirted it in the area of her head, into a large mass of fur and thought to myself "that was $16.50 well spent. Kudos to you 'hartz inc' THAT'S ONE!"

The application of Mercy's med wasn't bad. She was fairly still and good but she has the neck of a circus owl and can simultaneously lick any part of her body while flying a trapeze so within minutes she was crouched in a corner, foaming at the mouth. (Terrifying the first time it happened until I read the fine print that said this would happen with "accidental ingestion" and goes away within fifteen minutes).

Then there was Jay-Jay. I say this with the utmost love in my heart, "Jay-Jay must be borderline retarded". She is very slow in her actions and you know how most cats have excellent balance? Well she falls off of EVERYTHING. Many of times we've heard a loud crash only to find her behind the tv or dresser covered in spider webs and looking embarrassed. Don't worry Jay-Jay, we love you anyway! She is also deathly afraid of our man-child. She runs and hides basically whenever he's awake.

After searching for awhile Bec finally found her napping under our bed. She was trying to coax her out and she kept encouraging Cooper to go to the kitchen (in other words, far, far away from the cat who's terrified of him and not likely to voluntarily be in an open space in the same room with him). Finally I go into the bedroom to see what's taking so long and I find Bec laying in the floor, staring under the bed, chanting "jayjay, jayjay, jayjay" while dangling come computer cords in her eyesite. She said she was trying to lure her out but everytime she got close Coop when run and jump on the bed and yell "JAYJAY" and she'd retreat farther. I started laughing, just because...I don't know, now it doesn't seem that funny (I know in the morning when I re-read this it won't be funny) but at the time it started hysteria.

So I'm looking for something that maybe I could prode her with and finally I get the idea to just use Coop. (Not to physically prode but to mentally smoke her out). So we send the kid in. Except he goes to the wrong side and before long now she's right in the middle, next up to the crib and there's not way we can reach her. Here's where the brains kick in. I tell Bec I'll just lift (our queen size mattress and box spring) and she should just grab her. I get it lifted (kinda) and Bec is helping and then I think I can do it alone so I'm like "okay go for it" so she lets go and then I'm like "Arggg I'm losing it" and then I look to see that Coop has his head stuck in where the mattresses are going to be landing so I'm holding on with all my might and at that point I realize I have to pee so bad I'm seriously going to go on myself and I'm screaming at Coop to move his precious head and I'm telling Bec "get out, get out, it's too dangerous I'm dropping them, go, save yourself" and we look and Jay-Jay is sitting across the room watching us. We're not sure exactly how long she had been there.

So then we're all laughing and I'm trying to stand cross legged so as not to pee myself and she grabs the Jay and I'm trying to open the tube and she's all like "SERIOUSLY, you couldn't have already HAD THAT DONE" because by now Jay is feeling all paranoid and the schizophrenia starts to kick in and she's all like "let me outta here man, I don't know nothin" and we're all trying to stay calm and I'm trying to find skin and THERE'S NO SKIN because the cat is all fur and she's started to really panic and the laughing continues, so much in Dudlei fashion I more or less throw the medicine on her and how much of it actually applied there's no way of knowing unless of course in a week if you find us eaten alive by the fleas that took advantage of the fact that the medicine was either flung into space or ingested and the "July like temperatures" we're experiencing here in the Sexton household.

And if that happens, know that we did not go down without a fight.

Chopped or Burned to death?

Our air conditioner stopped working AGAIN early last week. At the beginning of the summer (when it was also NOT working) and we had someone come fix it they told us they were doing a short term fix and that it wouldn't last and we would eventually have to replace the coils (sounds expensive) or get a whole new unit. The fact that this was a "short fix" came as no surprise to us as every single summer we've had to pay someone to come out and do something to make our air work. (Every single summer since we built our house seven years ago). Now I don't claim to be an expert on the life expectancy of air conditioner units but this seems excessive...So I told Craig it's already September, surely we can make do until next summer and then we'll look at the buying a whole new thing.

September sounds cool. It doesn't sound like summer. It gives the hint of Fall. Of freedom. Of a time where you don't have to worry about literally dying just from stepping out of your house from heat exhaustion.

Or so I thought.

Every day last week by the time we'd get home the temperature in our house would be bareable. Slightly uncomfortable but doable with a few fans going. (Now keep in mind we keep our thermostat set anywhere from 67-69 so anything above that feels hot to us).

What we hadn't considered while we were congratulating ourselves on being so "go with the flow", "frugal" and "accommodating" was that during the hottest part of the day we were at our air conditioned jobs...

That all changed this weekend.

Side Note: There is quit a difference in the temp at 12:00 noon and 9:00 at night.

So Saturday came and we started to sweat. And sweat. And yell. And be miserable. Heat makes normally pleasant people turn into raging miserable lunatics and misery loves company so we tried to drag each other further down with us into our never ending pit sweaty sadness.

Some snippets of conversation from this weekend:

#1
Craig: "I'm just going to drop this stupid math class, it's hard, I hate it."
Me: "Yeah way to go, just quit the first time something gets a little hard, TYPICAL.
Craig: "YOU DON'T KNOW, YOU'RE NOT THE ONE TAKING IT!"
Me: "I know I do plenty of crap I don't want to do, SUCH AS, cooking these *beep* tacos in a thousand degree weather."
Craig: (angrily getting out his books and throwing them onto the coffee table)
Me: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, don't study in here, me and Cooper will have to walk around on eggshells, go the bedroom."
Craig: "HAVE YOU BEEN IN THE BEDROOM?, it's like a furnace in there!"
Me: "Have you been in the kitchen? IT'S LIKE A FURNACE IN HERE!"

#2
Cooper: "Hold me."
Me: "Awwww are you mommy's baby today?"
Cooper: "No, baby Jaxon!"
Me: "Oh you're baby Jaxon, okay, here you go baby Jaxon, let mommy rock you."
Cooper: (most annoying screeching sound ever): "WAAHHHAA-EHEHE-EHWAHAHA"
Me: "OKAY THIS GAME IS OVER NOW."

#3
Craig: (while looking at the exercise bike seat) "UGH, stupid cats!"
Me: (sighing and sweating) "WHAT?"
Craig: "I can feel little prick marks where the stupid cats have clawed the seat."
Me: (flouncing over to the seat) "I don't see anything."
Craig: "It's there! I can feel them! We're getting the cats declawed!" No, fine, better yet I'll just order a new seat every time one of them ruins it!"
Me: (silence as I walk to bed)
Craig: (laying in bed) *sighing* *huffing* *breathing WAY too loud
Me: (sitting up) "Why do you completely fly off the friggin handle over a stupid bike seat THAT ISN'T EVEN RUINED but yet we're going to have to replace our whole vanity cabinet and sink in the bathroom thanks to a leak we've had for six years that YOU'VE never bothered to fix. Why? WHY?!
Craig: "Well I'm sorry I like to keep my things nice!"
Me: (flinging my broken cell phone across the bed) "Well I'm sorry that I don't have any "THINGS" to keep nice. Everything I own is second hand crap that's already half broken so it doesn't matter how nice I keep it. How long would you have a crappy broken phone? HOW LONG?!
Craig: "Probably a couple days..."
Me: "Probably a couple FREAKIN hours because you always have to have the best of everything so don't talk to me about all your STUFF. I'd like to have stuff, in fact I'd like to have an air conditioner that works right about now!"

#4 (Trying to find just the *right* pile of crap to position the fan on so that we can all feel it while lying in bed):

Craig: "How about now?"

Me: "Nope, I can't feel it at all."

Craig: "Now?"

Me: "Scoot it to that pile...now try to prop it with that box."

Craig: "Ugh, it's not working! Now?"

Me: "No, kick that crap out of the way and try *that* pile."

This pretty much sums up Saturday.

Sunday was better. We were expecting the irritation, aggravation and bitterness that came along with being this hot and we prepared ourselves.

Our only mishap on Sunday was last night as we got ready for bed Cooper wanted to watch Scooby Doo. We currently had the crazy, industrial type, scary fan plugged in and there wasn't enough plugs. This fan came from Craig's shop and I don't know where he got it but it's huge, loud and something that would very much cut off your fingers. Also I'm pretty sure it's jury rigged since we have to unplug it to turn it off, there's no switch...(we're all about the safety at our house, just hire us for all your toddler-proofing needs...)

Also, I'm pretty sure at least one of our smoke detectors doesn't work since it constantly beeps (like every two minutes), a small annoyance we've just learned to live with and ignore and NO we don't know what's causing it and even though the consensus is that it's the batteries it's not supposed to have batteries it's supposed to be wired straight to the electricity so WHO KNOWS.

Okay so we have the crazy, scary fan (which Craig finally rigged up sitting in a chair tied to the back of the chair with an old shoelace so it doesn't come crashing down).

(HOWDY AND WELCOME TO WHITE TRASH MANNOR, YUNS COME SIT DOWN AND STAY AWHILE. THAT STENCH? YEAH WE DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS EITHER...)

So the fans on (and there's no way I'm turning it off) so we're improvising with Scooby. I find an extension cord and plug the tv into that so that we can have both scooby and the fan (except that there's no way we could ever hear scooby because THIS FAN is so incredibly loud, it's much like what you'd hear at the airport...when a thousand planes are taking off at once...and sucking large birds into their engines...and crash landing...THAT'S WHAT THIS FAN IS LIKE. (Okay and I'm wearing my gauchos from old navy or as Craig calls them my Samurai pants because they have these really long stips of cloth that tie on the side and okay so they do a little look like a Samurai). As I reach down to position the extension cord onto (A PILE OF CRAP) the horrific fan grabs my Samurai ties and TWWWWWTWWWWWWWTWWWWWTWWWWWWTTTWWWWWWWWMMMAAAAAMM
"AAAGGGGHHHHH MY PANTS, THE FAN!!!!" I manage. Craig walks in to find me desperately jerking my pants out of the mighty blades that wanted me and my pants dead. We both survived, barely.

Surprisingly we all made it through the night. I thought for sure even if we weren't chopped into little pieces our house would burn down, what with all the extension cords laying on piles of clothes and fans that *aren't really* made for nighttime use and the fact that our smoke detectors DON'T WORK.

Seriously, we suck.

I'm THAT old

I have concluded from the verbal comments from my last blog that people LOVE IT when other people fall. I am no exception. This one time in high school we were playing volleyball and this girl slips going for the ball, lands flat on her back, eventually gets taken away on a stretcher and we learn the poor girl actually broke her coccyx or something and I swear to you I could NOT stop laughing while she layed there. Human nature is mean.

This weekend is our tenth year high school reunion...I KNOW, HOW OLD AM I, RIGHT?!?!??! I didn't sign up for the dinner because I figured why pay $65.00 to make lame conversation with people whom I didn't ever know what to say to, even while we were in school, instead I'll just stalk them for free on facebook...I did sign up for the ice cream social part but now I'm thinking about skipping that too. (Sorry Brigette!) I'm truthfully just not in a very nostalgic mood. Plus I'm lazy. And I could show up to the social in pajamas but it would probably be frowned upon. And probably people with fancy iphones would take pictures of me and then when I got home it would be on facebook. (And I'd have to respond with a pic of me shooting a bird and saying "well yippie ki yea mother puppies" and that just would never do).

My Mother Puppy Fall

Craig (and probably God) would prefer it if I didn't cuss on my blog (or in person) so I'm going to go the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. route and REPLACE a word I would really, REALLY like to be saying with the word 'puppy'.

We (me and marie) have a box that we take to the courthouse every day. It contains folders, court papers, tickets, mail, etc plus a whole bunch of puppy crap that never gets taken out (such as a thousand paperclips, miscellaneous slips of paper and about three hundred dollars worth of pennies). We take our box and go to the various offices and do our rounds, dropping off and picking up.

-Side Note: the steps in the courthouse are open (as in there is open space between each step).

Well today I'm attempting to go up the stairs to the DA's office and I freakin trip on the step and my puppy arm goes through the mother puppy step so my left arm is just dangling in space while my shoulder slams hard and stops at the rock steps and I'm pretty sure I looked like one of the puppy racoons that gets their arm stuck in a trap and wriggles and wriggles and can't break loose and the box (oh that mother PUPPY box), gets flung up in the air, what with all the thrashing about and all of the five thousand contents come flying out and land anywhere from on top of me to thirty feet away (some of which went through the steps scattering across the back part of the courthouse. I just lay there, defeated. Randy Pruitt comes to my rescue all the time going "are you okay, are you okay?" And I just lay there with my arm warped like a retarded racoon.

Finally I manage to get up and Randy and another good citizen help me gather all of the belongings and I go to DA's office (via the puppy elevator this time) and as I'm coming back down to leave Randy goes "Have a good day and be careful" and I'm all like if only you knew, that was the mother puppy understatement of the year.

To my fans:

I love you, I do! I haven't forgotten you, my life keeps getting bogged down with ridiculous things like my job. I will blog soon. You have my word. It will be awesome, it will be miraculous, it will be worth waiting for...(either that or it'll be more of the same boring crapola that keeps you eleven fans coming back).

LOVE YA!
~THE SHAN

Even if we did the wrong thing, it's too late now...

It's, I don't know, 1:00 in the morning maybe? 2:00? Time is a concept that has been completely lost on me today. I'm now at the stage where I'm so wired and exhausted I'll probably never get to sleep.

We went to my wonderful mother in law's house tonight for her birthday and so we were traveling home extremely late and I was soooooo tired on the way home, absolutely having to try and keep myself awake (which was pretty crucial seeing as how I was the one driving).

Anyway we came upon a wrecked truck on the way into town and as we slowly passed Becca goes "oh my gosh, that looked like Dustin's truck". So we find a place and turn around and sure enough it is our friend Dustin. So I precariously park on the side of the road and Craig jumps out to see if he's okay.

A few minutes later we see the officer pull in and Craig gets back in the car and says Dustin's walking around talking to someone on the phone and he has three friends there with him and the police just got there so we go ahead and leave.

The whole way home and even now I feel soooooo bad because I feel like maybe we should have stayed. If it was Craig that got in a wreck and someone we knew happened upon it I would want them to stay until I got there. And we WOULD HAVE STAYED had he not already had friends on the scene or looked like he was badly hurt but as it was it seemed pretty under control and we would have probably just been in the way BUT STILL!

So Satterfields know this, we love you guys and would do anything for you and next time no matter what, we're staying, even if it's just a fender bender...in the middle of the day...and obviously no one is hurt...and you even specifically tell us to LEAVE...we're staying anyway because sometimes I just feel the need to prove to people how much I love them...and sometimes I fail...

A Story of Poo, As Told by a Friend

Okay and this is not a "friend" like a made up person that I invented to tell this story because I didn't want people to think it was me. You know I own up to things I do, especially if it involves poo.

So this friend went out to eat the other night with a few others and while eating started to choke! Unfortunetly when she started to choke she started to cough violently and UNFORTUNTELY when she coughed a little poo came out.


So she runs to the bathroom (still coughing) (and apparently pooing).


I'm not positive of the exact order of the next chain of events but I'll do my best to paint the picture for you...


She finally extracts whatever is in her airway so she can breath again. She sits down on the toilet to take her underware off and because she's choked so much and coughed so much she gags so she jumps up to throw up in the toilet and YEP, you guessed it a little more poo comes out and lands on her shoes.


So now she's in a HECK of a pickle as she's pretty much covered in poo and about naked and she could really use some wet paper towels. She calls loudly (or to hear her tell it she YELLS) for her other friend to come assist. She contemplates running to the door (with no pants on), opening it yelling her friend's name and then running back to the stall. At this point I'm thinking if you're going to leave the stall sans pants anyway just get your own wet paper towels BUT you know how hard it is to think while covered in poo...

Anyway eventually her friend does come to check on her and she cleans up and manages to finish dinner but the best part of the story is while she's telling me this I'm laughing hysterically and uncontrollably and she's all like "yeah wait until you're my age, you won't be laughing because sometimes when you laugh that hard a little poo comes out!"

Oh the things I have to look forward to!

Side note: thanks so much to my friend who gave me permission to blog this, as it was too funny not to share with the world! Don't worry, your identity is safe with me ;)

Gee Thanks, MOM.

One of mom's friends (hey Mrs. Palacios!) told my mom that whenever she wanted to laugh she looked up my blog and she asked was I really that hilarious in person. My mom answers with "no, not really". Then she tells me this story! I'm like, "wow, thanks mom!" And she's like "well I meant sometimes your *normal*" Wait what?! It just gets worse and worse! Talk about family support...