The Sassy Uterus

Oh, holy crap....

If you have seen Jeff Dunham's Christmas Special (the guy with the puppets), you'll recognize this post's title from the Christmas carol that Achmed, the dead terrorist puppet, sings.  You have to sing it with the melody of "Oh, holy night." 

It seems appropriate as tonight's title since I am about to embark on a week where I work two days, have the third day off (Christmas Eve) which is good as we'll be welcoming my sister, her husband, and their children (4) into our overstuffed home. Thursday I'm off, Friday I volunteered to work the full day.  Saturday, Phil is still working, and Sunday morn our guests depart.  Busy?  Yes.  Thankfully, my courses are over for this term and the next ones don't start until after the holidays. 

I've had more ADHD moments lately than I care to admit to.  But my best one of all is something that happened yesterday while Phil was at work. 

I was inspired suddenly to surprise him with a Christmas gift.  We had already decided that we wouldn't buy each other anything because it was just too hard this year.  And, we are little sick of the store-bought gift mentality.  I asked him to build my dollhouse for me so Bella Boo and I could decorate it together.  He asked me to...well, we won't go into that.  But all in all, we were both set to be delighted come Christmas. 

But....I really wanted to surprise him.  He's such a great husband and we've been through a lot.  I just love that man to pieces. So...heehee...I was going to buy him a Sharks jersey-a Joe Thornton jersey as he's Phil's favorite player.  It was going to be teal, 'cause that's Phil's preference for their uniforms, and it would be size large because I didn't want it to be too snug.  And, I wanted it delivered before Christmas.  Hey, when I go, I go big.

I quickly went to my trusty Google and searched except that the only ones that came up that would be delivered before Christmas were the 2XL size.  I didn't need it to be that big.  So I included the size in my search criteria and I found one!

I was beside myself with glee.  Except that it was short-lived because it turned out to be the white jersey.  However, they also had the teal one.  Strange, why hadn't that page come up instead of this one?  Oh well, no matter.  I had found it and I went about ordering it.

Oh, you should have seen me.  I was beside myself with glee.  I was a sly little Christmas elf.  Giggling to myself as I pointed and clicked my way through the checkout.  I was thisclose to congratulating myself on my cleverness as I printed the receipt out.  I snatched it out of the printer and started to do a little jig until something odd caught my eye.  It said the jersey was a Jonathan Cheechoo Sharks jersey. 

What?  What?!  WTF?!!!

And I started to hear only one phrase in my head (amazing, it didn't take meds to get my hyperactive mind to chill, just a collosal Christmas gift error), and that was, "Ohhhhh....holy....crappppp."  This was by no means an inexpensive gift.  And I did not know how to go about fixing this mistake.

But...I remembered that Phil did like Jonathan Cheechoo.  But how much?  "Ohhhh....holy crapppp."

I called Phil at work and it went like this:

Phil:  Hi honey!

Me: Hi.  Listen I need to ask you something really important.

Phil: Okay.

Me: How much do you like Jonathan Cheechoo?

Phil:  I think he's pretty cool.

Me:  So would you say that you like him a lot?

Phil: I guess so.

Me:  How much?  I need you to really, really like him.

Phil:  Yeah, I like him a lot.  Why?

Me:  Are you sure?  Are you really sure?

Phil: Yeah, why?  What's going on?

Me: Nothing

Phil: What is going on?!

And then I had to spill my stupid elf guts.  Heehee, you know what I'm thinking?  I'll get him Joe Thornton next year.  Oh, I'm so clever.

He'll probably end up with Jeremy Roenick.  That's okay, he likes him too.

Clueless Season

We just finished our Christmas shopping last night for all five of our kiddos.  I'm pretty proud of us because we kept it reasonable.  This economy and blah, blah, blah.  And I thought we were doing pretty good but apparently, our budget is pretty sparse compared to others.  The husband (Phil) brought this little gem of a story home from work.

His boss's boss was talking to them informally after a meeting and they were discussing the economy and how it is affecting their Christmas shopping this year.  Said manager says, "Yeah, I only spent $800 dollars on my kids this year for Christmas."  Say what?  I might be from planet Pluto but I didn't spend $800 total this year for everyone on my shipping list.  Phil said, "What?!"  And the boss says, "Yeah, they are a couple of spoiled kids."  Huh!  Well, you didn't hear me say it....

$800 on two kids.  I'm no mathematician but I think that is roughly $400 per child.  And then he says to Phil, "Well, you probably spent about that much on your kids."  To which Phil said, "My wife kept it under $400 total for all of our kids' gifts." 

And...had we spent that much you would divide it by five, not by two.  That man has his work cut out for him in the future.

We really brought home the principle to our children that Christmas is not going to be when they get the big ticket item, especially this year after we've been taking it in the rear from Big Oil U.S.A. all year long making it nearly impossible to develop any sort of savings account.  3 out of five of our kids have birthdays in January and February and they know that, that is the time for the big item they want.  But it ain't happening when I'm buying multiple gifts for each of my kids. 

Don't get me wrong, I was a smart shopper and got some of the expensive things they wanted at a good price.  But still.  Wealthy, clueless people make me laugh at their expense.  After all, they can afford it.

Moving on...I was surprised to see Bush alert enough to dodge that flying shoe.  Did you see that?  Of course you saw it, it was all over the news.  He saw that shoe come up in that guy's hand and he was already starting to lean to the left to avoid it.  Pretty good reflex reaction.  It's almost like he's had practice. 

Speaking of reflexes, Mr. Babiest Boy has been trying to try out his new teeth whilst breastfeeding.  He thinks it's great fun.  Little does he know that mom's been down this road three times before and can detach a baby's hyperlocked jaw with lightening speed.  Of course, I'm screaming at the same time, but notice how I keep a cool head despite the pain.  I could be a breastfeeding EMT.  He isn't trying it now as much as he did in the beginning.  I told him that biting is no way to treat the boobie bottle.  Seriously, you shouldn't bite the boob that feeds you.

That's all for now.  Babiest boy is having a fit and he needs an intervention.

 

Piper and the Tree

As far as Sunday evenings are concerned, tonight has been fairly peaceful and even joyful.  Phil assembled the Christmas tree.  Yes, we went fake this year due to last year's massive tree dry out days before Christmas arrived.  Apparently, my inattentiveness to anything that doesn't whine is the cause behind this fiasco.  I didn't remember to water the tree.  More accurately, I didn't remember to *nag* someone over the age of 10 to water the tree. 

So when my sister, her husband and their four beautiful offspring came to visit over the holidays and sleep in the living room with our crispy tree, they were constantly getting harpooned by the pine needles which were as sharp as tacks if not as strong.  "Merry Christmas, lemme pull that pine needle out of your back, hope you slept well."  Errr.

The tree situation took a turn towards dysfunctional when Piper (our cat, Piper Martin if you like to address pets like the vet offices do) found, much to his catty delight, that he could...wait for it...drink out of the tree stand.  Holy shit...who'd been keeping this from him all these Christmases prior?!  And he definitely enjoyed the pine flavor, almost a minty undertone that the water had. 

I think he grew dependant.  'Tis alright Piper, we all have vices.  Some days, the ones that were especially trying (say he had a mix-up with Boogie, our dachshund, or he got in a fight with his neighbor/brother cat Zac) he would be hitting that treewater like every other hour. 

I guess I shouldn't have written it off to kitty cotton mouth (he hangs out with Phil alot) and recognized it for what it was...kitty emotional distress, but I was pregnant (like always) and tired (like always) and really didn't give a shit (like always). 

As a consequence, Piper developed a real bad habit that he struggles with daily.  When he's aching for a fix, toilet water just doesn't cut it.

Remembering this story makes me feel really bad that we put up the fake tree.  He's gonna be so pissed when he sees we tricked him.  That'll be a picture for the family scrapbook.