Month: August 2003

Geez, at lunch today I poked around a few of my regular haunts and everyone is on such a downer!

I won’t do that to you. I mean, 99% of the time, no gloom. This site started in 1996 as a humor site. It updated between once a month and once a week and my entire goal was to bring a smile to the face of anyone silly enough to stop by.

Just because I use automated blogging software doesn’t mean I want to crab and moan about stuff…I still want to make people smile. Maybe I should try harder – there are sites out there who do a grand job of amusing the masses. Then again, if I only post funny/happy/amusing stuff, the page might not get updated every day. Is that okay? I remember when we made the change from being semi-weekly to daily – I polled my regular users (the people who got the newsletter letting them know there was an update) and even my sister said she didn’t want it to be daily. Maybe it’s not as funny now.

Wait…this post is started to make me sad. Better change direction.

Junior: I had a hotdog for lunch today.

Me: Wow! That’s great! Did you like it?

Junior: No

Me: You didn’t like the bread?

Junior: I didn’t like the brown thing inside the bread.

Ummm. Okay. Hot Dogs are a no. [He doesn’t eat anything. He hates foods that most normal kids beg for, including candy, cookies, ice cream, etc. He doesn’t eat bread unless toasted, and that’s rare. Sandwiches make him gag (I think it’s the bread). He eats his toast dry, but we can put butter on the bread for a grilled cheese.]

Okay, normally I wouldn’t post anything here that makes me look outrageously freaky or odd. Because I’m using my website as a way to build a whole world of people who worship me, and would do anything I ask just because I’m me. Either that or try to find a date once in a while. Anyway, I’m going to be honest with you, because as I pulled things from the dryer, I became more incredulous with every passing moment.

I think I should have done laundry earlier, because obviously I’m too tired to handle it. I pulled the following items out of the dryer just now:

1 nickel

4 ones

1 five

1 ten

2 pens (one leaked, one didn’t)

a little ball of tissues

2 tampons

1 pack of gum (held together pretty well, I didn’t end up with gum all over everything)

You can see how close I came to absolutely destroying everything in the load. Actually, I spotted the ink (purple) on Junior’s Wiggles t-shirt, but it looked like some kind of juice so I soaked it in the sink (Oxy-Cleaned it) instead of putting it in the dryer. That’s when I found the gum, when I was transferring things. I looked through everything else and didn’t see any other ink stains, so I just turned the dryer on.

The money appeared after the clothes were dry. I can see finding a few ones, or the five, but nineteen dollars and five cents? I should have noticed that. (Hell, why wasn’t I worried that I was missing almost twenty dollars? I’m not made of money here!) The pens and the tampons had to be in a canvas purse-thingy I was washing to take to Cow Hampshire with me. I had checked the inside pocket and pulled out some lip balm and some small papers. I didn’t notice there was an outside pocket, though. (Which wasn’t unzipped, so the loose purple pen must have been on the inside and I just missed it. The maroon pen in the zipped pocket faired much better, and didn’t leak at all.) Oh, and I’m just going to tell you that once you run tampons through a wash and dry cycle, you’re pretty much never ever getting them out of the applicator. Not that I tried, mind you, but I could tell by looking.

So that’s my “adventures in laundry” for this evening. Next time I make sure I get a good meal and a nap ahead of time.

I’m checking at least three different sources for what the weather will be like this weekend at our mystery vacation location and there is no consensus. One site says sunny and warm, another says there’s a 50% of rain. I mean, geez, I’m not asking you to agree on the temperature or the humidity level, I just want to know that on Sunday, for instance, it won’t rain.

Is that so much to ask? It’s not a long-range forecast at this point, the weekend is only 2 days away. So do I trust Accuweather, The Weather Channel (shown on my.yahoo.com), the weather service Boston.com uses or what?

Oh man, today was “deal with the fact that the school won’t be offering before/after child care when Junior starts Kindergarten in 4 weeks. Fine time to find out, I’d already given notice with his regular caregiver because I’d been led to believe they were offering something. I called them because I was concerned that we hadn’t heard from them, and luckily got to talk to the principal of the school. She was very nice, thank God, because as a parent facing public schools for the first time, I’m already freaked out. To learn that I had to find a place for him to be not only before but AFTER put me over the edge.

Because I got in touch so early, she pre-approved him moving from afternoon to morning session, which was very cool. She also told me about a couple of childcare centers where Leominster busses would actually take him to and from along with all the other kindergarteners there. Mr. Dump got us an appointment with the director for tonight and we all went down there to meet each other. I really like the place, and Junior is totally pissed that he doesn’t get to start tomorrow so I guess he likes it too.

So something that started out horrible is actually going to be very good for me. The place is actually on my way to and from work, instead of being across town the way his is now. I am pretty sure I can get there from work in 30 minutes if there’s nothing funky going on traffic-wise, which means I can pretty much pick him up every day without having to leave work way early!

Can you tell I’m happy? Now I just have to notify the school that the bus will have to pick him up there instead of here so they can make the adjustment, and then they can tell me if it’s morning or afternoon session (all kids from there will go to the same session). Oh, and fill out the 400 forms to enroll him.

Now I can relax for the first time today.

I know you’re thinking “enough already with the Josh Groban” but humor me a moment.

I was listening to his CD in the car, actually replaying my two favorite cuts, “Alla Luce del Sole” and “You’re Still You” and I realized I’m feeling very frustrated at not knowing Italian so I can sing along with the non-English cuts on the CD. I sort of fake it but then I’m afraid I’ll learn it wrong and someone who knows italian will mock me for singing “I have two moon heads and it’s green in the laundry of my father.”

Back a million years ago when I went to France for 3 weeks, I bought a cassette and Magali, the girl hosting me, wrote the lyrics for three of the songs. Now granted I’d been taking french since junior high so it was fairly easy for me to learn the song using the lyrics, and I might have even figured it out on my own eventually, but it just made the tape so much better when I could sing along.

Alla luce del sole, anyone?