The transition from diapers to Depends

A few years ago, a good friend mentioned that she knew she was finished having kids. Being the neurotic (thanks Megan and Sarah!), indecisive person I am, I am very intrigued with people who seem to just "know" anything. I am much more prone to changing my mind 500 times, while beating myself up every single time I attempt to firm up any decision. As I pondered her definitiveness, wondering how she came upon this realization, she blurted out, "there is just no way I could handle potty training another kid. I am totally done."

Say what? If I had to come up with a list of reasons not to have any more kids, it would be: child birth, sleepless nights, no sleep, recovery from child birth, interrupted sleep, and the lack of having an additional $600 a month to dispose of. Potty training though, are you kidding me? You could at least come up with something slightly more credible, something like stretch marks.

To reiterate my naivety, I must mention that this whole conversation occurred years before I had Kate. How wise we become in just a few short years. We are in the potty training phase at our house and I concur that it is a totally reasonable reason to halt procreation. In fact, after the past week, I can't think of a reason that would be any more credible. Right now I'd like to go back to that potty-training friend and give her a giant hug of understanding.

A few things I've learned:

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT reward your child with M&M's for going on the potty. Oh no, this will make trips to the bathroom way too enticing. During one nap, Kate conveniently had to "go potty" about five times. I hate M&M's. Even better was the night she sat on the potty for 15 minutes TRYING to go potty. When it was evident she wasn't able to go, we attempted to get her out of the bathroom. World War III ensued, as Kate screeched at the top of her lungs that SHE WAS STILL TRYING.
No amount of trying was going to squeeze pee out of an empty bladder, yet Kate was not leaving that room until she went, which would lead to the ultimate reward – M&M's. After 45 minutes of bribes, coercion, and tantrums, I sold my soul to the devil and gave her the M&M's anyway. You can imagine what that has done to my reputation around this place.

Buy your child's favorite character underwear, ours happens to be Dora. This is only because they don't make Clifford or Curious George underwear, weird kid. Now, repeatedly tell your kid that they better not pee on Dora. It's amazing what that will do. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Yes, we'll be adding more into the therapy fund for this one too.

While I can say we are making a slight amount of progress, we are far from there. I just hope her future husband doesn't mind changing diapers.

A good excuse to spend money

In one of my futile attempts to avoid doing everything else I should be doing today, I've been perusing the internet trying to find some fall sweaters. J.Jill currently has some incredible deals in their SALE section. Hop on over and check it out. I have a promo code for $25 off $100 to share with you – RLS108. I just ordered 5 tops and one skirt and paid a whopping $80, which included tax and shipping. For those of you who aren't J.Jill shoppers, that is usually what one item costs from there.

If J.Jill is a little too … earthy? … granny-ish? … or unappealing to you, I guarantee you'll find something you love in their shoes or jewelry section. If not, take advantage of the great deals and buy your great grandmother something for Christmas. I'll feel even better about my wardrobe then.

An Equal Opportunity Listener Here

I was recently accused of not liking any female artists and must protest the absurdity of that. I will admit that there are many more male artists than female in my musical collection. That is mostly due to the fact that there are more male artist options in the type of music I like. It’s not some conspiracy against all things female. I mean, really, where would that leave me?

This morning, I was driving to work and Beth Orton came on my ipod. I love, love, love Beth Orton. Her music brings back crazy memories of teenage angst and drama, despite which, I still can’t get enough of it. Her newest album is one of my favorite and I want to share a teeny tiny piece of it with you. I apologize for the lame video. She’s the type of person who plays at tiny obscure places, so it is difficult to find a good quality live recording. As an added bonus, it’ll hopefully make my friend Andi (Hi Andi!) happy.



My absolute favorite doesn't even have a video option, but to listen to it, go here and click play on the right. If people's musical tastes are some reflection of their character, I wonder what mine would mean.

I am looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend, and I’ll hopefully get some quality writing done for the good ole’ blob here. Any topics you can think of for me to ponder? I’m always looking for one more thing to keep me up at night.

I need your inspiration. Desperately.

Big Brother is Watching

I have to share something that has been both fascinating and disturbing to me over the past few weeks. For those of you that aren’t familiar with site meter, it is a nifty little tool that gives you a lot of information about people who visit your blog. Most intriguing to me is HOW they got to my blog, which in a general sense, site meter provides. So, let’s say you searched some key words in Google and ended up at my blog. Site meter would tell me that you came from Google and show me what words you used that made you “find” me.

On a side note, I must say that there are an excessive number of people who try to find out what movie the phrase “Winner winner chicken dinner” came from. Then, they come to my blog, where I ask them to tell me. I am sure that wasn’t what they were looking for, was it? One could assume maybe I’ve frustrated them even more, which I oddly find some humor in. To show you that I am not that horrible of a person, I’ll spill the beans. It was the movie 21 people. I heart Kevin Spacey.

Alright, now you are going to have to pay attention here, this one is a little more complicated. There are an inordinate, I repeat inordinate, number of people who Google either “how to be witty” or “witty things to say”. I find that curiously disturbing and have to tell you why. To start, when I Google “witty things to say”, there are 481,000 options that come up. Since I get about 20 people a day that find my blog through this particular search, one could only imagine how many additional people are searching for the same thing and ending up at the other 480,999 sites. That is a lot of people who have nothing better to do than search for witty things to say.

Additionally, I have to think that they are overwhelmingly disappointed when they end up at my blog during this search. I’m afraid I am not much help. I’d sort of like to play Mr. Obvious here though and point out that THEY were the ones who clicked on a link that clearly was labeled I Used to be Witty. To make matters worse, I am not sure that I ever really have been witty. It seemed a lot better to claim that I was and lost it than titling my blog: I Have Never Been Remotely Interesting at Any Point in My Existence. So, these poor Google-searches are really screwed when they end up here.

Now, the most important point I must make, is asking what these people do when they find a witty thing to say, or learn to be witty, via the internet of course. It is sort of like the person who professes to be cool and has totally discredited that with their own statement of coolness. Do these people keep a “witty mental note” and hope that the appropriate situation arises where they can “insert witty comment here”?

I find it irritating that I can’t stop obsessing over these people on some freak witty quest. Like the annoying person I am, I will share these frustrations here so you can obsess over them as well. Do you have any comments on this subject?

The maid is so fired

I've already informed all of you that we no longer have someone who cleans our house. What magnifies that tragedy is that I rarely have time to do it either. You do the math there. My cleaning routine is less: I think I'll Spend Saturday Scrubbing the Baseboards Cleaning and more: Holy Shit Company is Coming Cleaning. There are a couple of areas that get missed in Holy Shit Company is Coming Cleaning and our bedroom is often one of them. When you have a limited time to clean, you clean the areas that matter. Our bedroom is rarely one of them. Yes, I know that goes against all things zen and feng shui. Maybe that is my problem, a reasonable excuse for all of those character flaws.

Since our bedroom has become a squalor pit and attracts all things without a home, we avoid it unless we are sleeping. Kate is rarely in our room unless she comes in our bed on a weekend morning as I continue to sleep and she looks at me in silent wonder. Uh huh. My blog, my story.

One weekend this summer, we stayed the night at Craig's mom house. We set Kate's pack-and-play up in their guestroom, next to the bed. The bed is a large king bed that was made with a very thin, delicate coverlet. It was wrinkle free and perfect, like Grandma's beds are supposed to be. When we went in to take Kate for bedtime, she was overly obsessed with the bed. She kept asking if we were going to be sleeping it in, which I assured her that we would be. For a number of minutes the questions continued and then she kept saying, "and you aren't going to cover up your feet?" Over and over and over again I reassured her that we would indeed cover our feet up.

Kate just doesn't come up with random nonsense and it aggravated me for the rest of the night. I could not figure out why on earth she would be so obsessed with us not covering up our feet. A number of times through the evening, I would make that comment and ask Craig if he could think of what she meant. After about time 498, he looked at me, like if you ask me that one more time woman, you aren't going to be sleeping in that bed at all.

That night as we got into bed, Craig looked at me and said, "I just realized why Kate was so confused .... I don't think she has ever seen a made bed before."

Note: Kate not seeing our bed made and our bed never being made are two totally different things. Just sayin'.

We giggled, for hours, like two high school girls. In retrospect, I am not sure what element of this story is the most disturbing. Now that I just told the internet this, I am going to fall over and die, but it's just too funny to keep to myself.