Like a delicate flower...

Every so often here at work we have run-in's with some rather unkind characters. In order to make ourselves feel better about the nasty folk we have to interact with, we do things like this :


This woman in particular can not stand any one of us in research. I have compiled a list of her evil qualities in an easy to read picture format so that the average person can be made aware if someone they know and can't stand begins to exhibit these same unflattering qualities, including (but not limited to) the evil bone chilling glare, the affection for any man in uniform, and the thought that she is a hot mama and her patients will be over the moon to have her as the person in charge of their life.

And one cannot forget the frizz inducing hair bleach.

Please. Don't let yourself become a victim of Carmen Hostility Syndrome.

Happy 8th Birthday to my crazy little mutt.

My dog Lucy and I have been together for nearly 8 years now. That is longer than taking every crappy relationship (which is every single one up until the meeting of Mr. Hot Pilot) and rolling them into one steaming pile of relationship dog poo.

From the beginning, Lucy has adopted a role of being my unwavering life defender, protecting me against the likes of just about every other human being that walks on this earth. She has perfected the art of rigid tooth baring and deep internal growl that would scare any evil Mormon or Jehovah's Witness into submission.

Those kids walking by the house on their way home from school? They are secretly wielding machetes and other weapons of wrath that could potentially harm her mommy.

That nice lady from down the street who waves at everyone? According to my little dog, you can't trust anyone who is that friggin happy all the time.

Lucy's junkyard dog instincts don't only convey to those outside the home. While my dad thinks Lucy is the coolest dog that has ever walked the face of the planet, and tries as hard as possible to snuggle and cuddle and offer treats that any dog would roll over in submission for - Lucy just doesn't give a crap.

While sitting in his lap, she will growl at the slightest pat on the head from him. As he is showering her with words of adoration and apple slices, she will bare her teeth, all the while snuggled right up tight to him. Some may say my dog has borderline personality disorder. The only people she will show affection and sweetness to other than her treasured mommy are her granny, Mr. Hot Pilot and Munchkin. Try to come into my room with her either guarding the door or sitting on the bed however? Don't. Even. Go. There. Just avert your eyes and run to the safety of another room.

I love my little weirdo dog with all my being. I realize that her feelings of protection for me may just border on completely insane and slightly neurotic, but she is my dog. She has been through everything with me from divorce, to cross country moving, to living with two evil roommates to moving back in with granny and grandpa and adjusting to life with two other half-wit dogs with nothing more than walks and balls on the brain. I find Lucy to be eternally patient with all of the changes in her life.

So Lucy likes to show her dominance with a friendly ankle bite here and there? So what. She and I are a package deal. And I am lucky to have found a man who understands that.

Here's to you Lucy, aka - Looty Pie Jones, Poopy-head, Floofy, Loot Loot, Looty Lou.

Happy Birthday you crazy little loon.

She's craf-tay!

This past week I have decided to try and save some money by creating my own christmas ornaments. I ended up spending nearly $200 on supplies. I really don't believe that Dave Ramsey would be proud of my attempt at saving money as I pretty much failed miserably. Despite my money saving efforts, I have saddled myself with several daunting projects. I'd like to consider myself somewhat crafty, but I often get either distracted or disinterested very quickly.

I have taken to painting wooden ornaments, painting wooden christmasy decorations, gluing paper strips to styrofoam balls and I even decided to fold oragami birds. I am finding the oragami to make my brain feel somewhat like mashed jello and am hoping maybe it is a good brain exercise which will keep me from the grips of alzheimers for maybe one extra year.

Little did I realize what a literal pain in the neck ornament painting would truly be. I woke up the next day with such a massive stiff neck I thought for sure I had meningitis. Until I realized it was nothing more than terrible posture which I'm sure my grandmother would chastise me for.

For tonight I am taking time off of my crafty ways and have come up with a new project I hope you will all enjoy : Really bad christmas lights. Christmas decor wrecks if you will. I will be scouring my local area each day at dusk for the most heinous acts of electrical expression in order to make each one of you feel just a little bit better about your decorating tastes.

Tonight I took the lazy way and found a picture online (as I learned the hard way that I should be taking these pictures at dusk and not under the blackened night sky whilst wearing my robber uniform of black clothes and panty hose over the face).

Enjoy tonights little christmas treasure and I will be bringing some of Marylands finest tomorrow.



(photo via Ugly Christmas Lights)

The forerunner of yellow light history

Remember back a bit when I mentioned the story of little Ana Christina who decided it would be lots of fun to draw my Munchkin peeing on the ground? Well, little miss psycho pants has struck again.

My days are never at a loss for hilarious awesomeness whenever I am down here with my Munchkin and Mr. Hot Pilot. Fart jokes, skunk smell, and other sorts of bathroom humor abound. Monday when Mr. Hot Pilot and I went to get our Munchkin from school, he produced yet another stapled together book with hand-drawn pictures done by all of his classmates. This time instead of a picture of Munckin peeing on the ground, there was a picture of Munchkin looking rather cheerful holding the leash to our cat Twinkle, standing right near the house. But this was no ordinary house you see. Miss Psycho Pants decided to draw a bomb on the house.

Believe me when I say that I laughed, but it was a nervous "holy crap, this kid is nuts!" laugh. Apparently neither Munchkin nor the teacher caught this little terrorist gesture or I believe this girl would be headed down red light lane with no hope of another green light for years to come.

The only piece of advice I could offer my dear, sweet, skunk smell loving Munchkin is this. (You see his daddy, my Hot Pilot was married to Munchkin's mother for some time - Munchkins not-exactly-sane, often delusional, verbally abusive, needs to be locked in a mental institution for a very long time very mentally unstable mother.)

"If you ever find yourself attracted to this girl down the line and want to marry her? Don't."

Listen all y'all, its a sabotage!

As I have mentioned in the past, I am part of a long distance relationship. Mr. Hot Pilot is a military officer who lives far, far away in (what seems like) a third world country complete with border jumpers, questionable water and absolutely no Target store within a 150 mile radius. Because of this long distance, I frequently (as in every other week) fly the friendly skies to spend time with him and Munchkin. I am lucky enough to work a job where I only have to work 3 days per week, and then have the remaning four days to do with as I please - lounge in bed until all hours of the afternoon, workout (HA!), work from home for my old job, shuttle drugs back and forth across the mexican border and spend time with my boys. On the weeks that I shuttle drugs back and forth go to visit my boys, I try to maximize my time with them by flying out of BWI as early as humanly possible on Monday and flying back in as late as possible on Thursday in order to drag my butt back into work on Friday morning.

In addition to my maximization of time, I must also note that I am a master procrastinator. Because of my earning a higher education in procrastination, I tend to leave my packing to the night before or the morning of my flight.

On my most recent trip to the little border town Mr. Hot Pilot affectionately calls home, I woke up before the butt crack of dawn could even be seen, and began getting myself ready. Now I don't live in an old house by any measure, but sometimes even in the most well maintained houses, you run into plumbing issues.

My plumbing issue was with my toilet.

I'm sure you would love to hear a story about how I clogged the toilet and caused serious carnage, however this is not the case. Instead I just gave the toilet a slight sideways glance complete with an early morning yawn and the darn thing overflowed.

Spontaneously.

Being that it was too freaking early in the morning for me to drag out a mop and clean the mess, I decided to do the next best thing and throw my used towel onto the toilet water that had collected on the bathroom floor and call it a day. I then shoved the towel behind the toilet to collect any straggling water and left for my flight.

I had a fab four days in Texas with my guys complete with high-larious moments with Munchkin and lots of smooching with Mr. Hot Pilot. I then returned home late Thursday and crashed in bed.

The next morning I awoke to get ready for my weekend at work and noticed my fresh and clean towel that is normally hanging on my bedpost was missing. I walked into the bathroom to see if I had left it there prior to my trip and found a similar towel hanging neatly on the towel rack. "Ok" I thought, "someone must've hung my towel up for me, sweet!" When I got out of the shower, I took that towel off of the rack and began drying off my face and body. And then it hit me like a homeless redneck hits their crack pipe.

The Funk.

This was no ordinary neatly hung towel. The funk eminating from the towel told me as much. This was the towel I had used just four days earlier to mop up TOILET WATER. I had been drying my face with TOILET WATER. And I don't care what state of clean the toilet that that water originated from is...all toilet water to me means one thing.

Poop water.

And I knew the culprit to my poopy facial. My dear old dad.

I quickly jumped back into the shower for a scalding, soapy, de-contamination and then ran like a fool downstairs to confront the evildoer. I discussed the present situation with my mother who found it to be all sorts of insanely funny.

She then passed the word on to my dad who told me that he just thought that I must like to RANDOMLY LEAVE CLEAN TOWELS ON THE FLOOR and hung it up for me. (Turns out my mom had taken my previously fresh towel and thrown it into the wash while I was away.) I was sure I had been set up.

When I pressed for a bended knee promise to pay wads of cash for pain and suffering an apology, this is what I got:

Dad : "Sorry, but if its any consolation, I read somewhere that people are paying big bucks for bird poop facials".

Awesome Christmas Cause

With the holidays just around the corner I am always reminded about those who are less fortunate that we are. Because of this, I decided the other day to put together a little Christmas Box for "Operation Christmas Child" by Samaritan's Purse. It is a fun activity for anyone with children (or heck, even those without!) who may want to help in finding things to pack into a shoebox to send to a girl or boy in need.

I actually found alot of great items at my local Target, some items that I might just go back for later to use as little stocking stuffers for Munchkin for later in the christmas season. I decided to fill a box for a boy between the ages of 4 and 7and found a great deal of cool stuff for about $20 bucks.

1 - Find an old shoebox and wrap the lid and box separately in festive paper.




2 - Let the paper fold in its own way, and it will be alot easier to wrap.




3 - Here is your rockin' snazzy finished product :



4 - Now fill it! (This is by far the fun part!)





I filled mine with crayons, Star Wars markers, Star Wars socks, a stuffed dragon, a kaleidascope, a mini chutes and ladders game, a kids toothbrush/toothpaste combo and a Hot Wheels car. Nothing cost over a dollar, and most are pretty cool if you ask me.

5 - Label box with labels you can get off of the Operation Christmas Child website.




Now go to "Operation Christmas Child" website for instructions on where to drop off your finished boxes. You might also want to gather a group of friends or family to put together several boxes for kids.


If anyone else decides to do this project, I would love to hear from you and maybe see some pictures or hear about what sort of items you sent in your christmas package. Have fun putting your boxes together!

How to raise an honest Munchkin

As adults and parents, we often find we use the little things in life to try and teach our children (or step-munchkins) how to be upstanding and productive citizens. In other words, we don't want to be responsible for raising the next Ted Bundy, OJ Simpson or some other sort of bottom feeder of society. (Of course if you ARE looking to raise a con artist of some sort, then by all means check out this book)

I like to try and teach Munchkin to have a sense of respect for other people and their belongings, no matter how small or mundane they may seem. To some, that old beat up item may actually be something that brings great joy.

Please imagine my not so gleeful surprise when I came into work today and found my once cool and unassuming "mini-kitty" which once looked like this:


Now looks like this:




As you can see, my once awesome desk prop is now 600 times it's original size. Sigh.

So I did what any person would do, and emailed the office. Here is what I had to say:
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Subj : Curiosity killed my cat?

Hello,

I see that the curiosity of someone over my “grow a pet cat” was too much for them to bear and I found my poor innocent cat drowning in a pool of water on the middle desk of the CCR portion of the office. I have to say that I’m not too happy about this. I like having little things around my desk to add to the fun and by all means if you wanted to grow your own pet, I would have gladly referred you to where you could purchase your own. Granted it might not have seemed like much to the cat-drowner, however the whole thing, package included, added to it's kitsch and I would greatly appreciate either a replacement or an apology.

Thank you to those who enjoyed looking at my little “pet” but respected that it belonged to someone and was here for the enjoyment of all.

P.S – For those who were kind enough to keep their curiosity to themselves, the cat indeed did grow to be 600% of its original size.

(You can find such an item/replacement here.)
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So the moral of our story here is teach your kids right in the beginning, and they will grow up to respect the belongings of others and refrain from the drowning of poor, innocent, fake cats.