Momma Said

This will be going over on the "Momma" page, but I love it so much that I'm putting it here first.

Momma: Yeah, she spent a few years in Antarctica. There's a ton of people there working all living together in this one huge place. There are penguins.

Me: What do they do there?

Momma: Mill around, I guess.

Me: *blink* Not the penguins. The people.

These penguins are milling around.

In case you didn't know what that looks like.

Momma Confessions - Volume 1

It is my belief that at any given time we are doing the best we can. Sometimes (always) I come home from work and I have laundry piled up fucking everywhere, dinner isn't even in my near future, the floor is covered in dog hair and my sink is full of dishes. It's just life. If you are like me, you beat yourself up about it constantly...but sometimes you just say, "Fuck this shit. It's Friday."

There are some things that as momma's we know better than to do, but we do them any way because it will give us just a few minutes of, OH MY GOD COULD YOU CHILDREN JUST SIT STILL FOR ONE....peace and quiet. I will confess one of these things that I do right now.

Sometimes (1-2 nights per week) I will let the toddler fall asleep in my bed so that I can stay up and have an hour of life to myself.

Let me explain. Until he was moved to a toddler bed that little turd would sleep like a champ, and I don't mean just sleep all night. I mean, he would put himself to sleep and stay asleep beginning at 7:30pm. That gave me HOURS of peace y'all. HOURS. Then he was put into a toddler bed because he was able to leap from the crib like a freaking flying squirrel. Dangerous.

We have been battling bedtime ever since. Trying everything and sometimes we, as parents, just need a damn break. The kids need a break too. What has been working lately is the whole "I'm going to stand here and ignore you child, and if you get out of bed I will continue to ignore you but will put you back in the bed...and ignore you."

It's been working, as far as keeping tempers calm. No fits are thrown, no raising of voices - but it still takes at least an hour. AN HOUR OF MY LIFE. By Friday I just can't take it sometimes. He wants to lay in our bed so I let him, he will usually stay there and fall asleep while we get to watch TV and drink wine and just enjoy the quiet and then we move him to his bed.

You may  not agree with us on this one, frankly I don't care. I'm not writing this story in order to collect opinions. I just wanted a space to share a confession. So, do you have a momma confession?

Tell me. 

This is what bedtime looks like in our house.

Tweeting the Night Away

I recently went out to a local dive with my sister-in-law to enjoy some cocktails and people watch. I tweeted everything. Enjoy.

Twitteriffic.

Check it out, it's the tweets with the hashtag: #thisfuckingplace. Follow me on Twitter, since following me in real life would be weird and illegal.

Wine and Whine

As you may know I manage a wine store. Wine shop. Wine shoppe. Whatever you like to say. That wine shoppe also has a blog, which I also write for, while I'm also doing a million other things. If you enjoy this blog, feel free to hop over and read that one also. Myself and the owners write for the blog...but let's face it, I do more of the writing and I'm pretty hilarious and awesome. So. Yep.

UnWINEd Blog

Check it out homies.

Testing...

I'm trying to post from my iPad...currently I am just using Safari to use Blogger. I'm not sure about it yet. Is there an app that makes this easier? Tell me in the comments. Please.

The Ways He Lays

Wow, it's been awhile since y'all have seen the boy huh?

I Have Hilarious Friends...Friend.

I may have mentioned before that my good friend Shannon is a stand up comedian. To me she is hilarious.

Here is a video of her act at the Fairbanks Funny Festival, just so you know it's super hard to be funny in Fairbanks because it's so fucking horrible there. Just kidding! (No, seriously. Terrible.)

FYI, she is crude and fantastic. You will hear many curse words and the word 'fart'.

Happy New Year...Finale. Finally! AMIRIGHT?

I will put this final installment in list form since I'm tired of creating sentences into paragraphs and whatnot. It's Monday. I just don't wanna.

1. No running water.
2. Bathroom: toilet filled with everyone's waste.
3. Bathroom: no door, only curtain that is easily opened by the dogs and toddlers, revealing yourself to the world.
4. Walls: Wood supports with insulation between, covered in plastic.
5. Stairs: NOT TO CODE. No railing, no consistent distance from one to the other.
6. Upstairs: NOT TO CODE. No guard rail to keep precious babies from plunging to the floor below.
7. In general: Nightmare fuel.

Conversation between myself and my brother-in-law (it's his cabin) before leaving the next day (-23 degrees by the way).

Me: "I bet this place is going to be really nice when it's done."
Him: "Thanks, yeah it will be."
Me: "Too bad I won't see it."
Him: "Why not?"
Me: "Because there is no fucking way I am coming back out here."

The end.

                          This                            +                          This

                                                No fucking thanks.

Happy New Year...cont'd.

I stand there looking up at this cabin. On a mountain. Mouth agape. I think that certainly there is a simple way to get up there than just straight up that trail I see...straight up.
I go ahead and start gathering my things, bags, diaper bag, iPad, blanket, baby Coop. Before I can even blink my baby, my sweet precious baby Coop who is just a little two-year-old sweetie is taken from my arms and put in the lap of my brother-in-law on a snowmachine and is whisked up the mountain to the cabin.
All while I stand there mouth hanging open.

All while that child of mine screamed and shit his pants.

I look at my other brother-in-law who stands about 8-foot-tall, sitting on his snowmachine. I quickly realize that I'm not going to fit on that machine, he's obviously been drinking and that incline is about a 90 degree angle up to the house.

"No."
He says, "What?"

"No. I am not riding on the back of that, up the mountain, with you."
He says that's fine, I just need to walk up there.

Blink.
"Walk where? Straight up there?"

"Yes. Straight up that way." He points straight up the fucking mountain.
I notice that there a little windy trail halfway up and I asked if I go on that or do I really, seriously in fact just go straight up. He says that, yes, I need to go straight up. I gather all of my things. Duffel bag (a beautiful felted wool bag that Joe received for Christmas, lovely), diaper bag, blanket, and my iPad.
It's at this point that I would like to remind and point out to you that I just parked my car on a lake. ON THE ICE OF A LAKE MY CAR IS PARKED. Okay, that is all.

I start walking up this mountain (I can't stress this fact enough.) and realize about ten strides up that I am going to die right here on the face of this killing machine. I was near tears and sitting in the snow when I hear the snowmachine start up at the bottom. I know right then that I either make it up or I'm about to be run over. I stand up. Then fall down and proceed to crawl and lunge using all of my limbs and I make it. Only to be greeted by my sister-in-law who says, "You made it!". I grunted a few choice words and flung myself into the house.

I just speed crawled up a mountain in -22 degree weather. My lungs are full of ice and blood and my heart is in my brain. I wasn't able to breathe until yesterday.

I collapse into a camping chair (I'm inside, btw.) and after I'm able to form words that are semi-coherent I mutter, "Man, what a bitch climbing straight up that god forsaken mountain."
"Yeah..that's a...wait, you climbed STRAIGHT up?" replies everyone...except for huge brother in law. "Why didn't you take the switch-back?" asks everyone...except for brother in law that plainly told me not to do that exact thing, so I didn't because I'm a rule follower, especially when my life is on the line and I could've plunged into icy waters below for all I fucking know.

I was air born. I landed on the back of said brother-in-law and attacked with my tiny, inefficient fists.

There's more. I can't talk about it right now, all this reminiscing is making me tired and a little bit psychotic.

Stay tuned!

Almost....there....

Happy New Year...it's nearly February.

I know that I've covered this before but I absolutely cannot wake up on time any day of the week. I could go to bed at 7pm and set my alarm clock for 7am giving me twelve hours of sweet delicious sleep and still hit snooze until the next day at 10am. 

And still be tired.

Meh. Whatevs.

Since it's been so long since my last post, mainly because I've been busy sleeping like a big ol' bear. I have tons of stories for you! Are you ready? Ready to be BLOWN AWAY? I'll give you a few minutes to prepare....

Alright, ready or not. Here is the story of my New Year's Eve.

Historically I have bad New Year's Eve experiences. (I struggled with that sentence just now, "New Year's Eve's?" "New Year Eve's?" "New's Year's Eve's?" "Year of the New's and Eve"?) They just never turn out well for me, it's cold here in January, I don't care about fireworks, I don't care that it's a new year, I am sad that Christmas is over, etc. This year my dear husband was off at work so I had to take the kids on the New Year excitement. Since Madison received a snowmachine for Christmas she was headed off with my sister-in-law and her husband to their lake house so she could enjoy the snowmachine. They left a day early because I had to work on New Year's Eve. Around 7:00pm I had all of our stuff packed up and Coop and I headed out to the Valley. Yuck.

The further North I drove the colder it got. By the time I arrived near the lake it was -22. That's BELOW ZERO for anyone not familiar with how temperature works. See, you put this fancy minus sign in front of the number and that means it's colder than it ever should be in a world.

I had never been to this lake house so I had to call and get them to kind of walk me through the back roads. I was told that I would turn right at the South Lake sign. I did that and ended up God knows where. I was then asked (by a man, I might add) "Did you turn at the sign or after the sign?" Um, I turned at the sign because that's what you fucking said to do. "Oh, no. You need to turn AFTER the sign. Bernadette did that last night too." Oh, really so this has happened before? Maybe you should re-think your direction giving, huh?

Then I'm told, "You're going to get on the lake...blah blah blah." I don't know what else was said because all I could think was, "on the lake?". Surely he just means "adjacent to" the lake because no one drives ON a lake, that's just dumb. It's only then that I see a drop down and I see life jacket signs, and "NO WAKE ZONE" SIGNS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE!?!? (I would also like to note that this is the time when my until now silent child has decided to start screaming bloody hell, of which he should because WE ARE DRIVING ON A SHEET OF ICE THAT IS ON TOP OF A LAKE OF WATER, by the way.)

I'm then told (by a man) that I will continue to drive and the "road" will curve to the right but I need to stay to the left....okay. I then hang up with him because it's hard for me to completely misplace my shit while talking on the phone. I spent the next 10 minutes screaming that I'm not an ice road trucker and am not trained in this and wondering if I've missed that whole road curving to the right thing because what I miss it and go the wrong way and plunge into the icy waters below!?!? 

This is my life.

I call my sister-in-law because someone with ovaries is better with directions. She tells me to ignore what the man said and to just stay on the wide road and it will bring me right to the cabin. SEE? HOW FUCKING HARD WAS THAT??? THANK YOU FEMALES EVERYWHERE FOR KNOWING WHEN TO USE JUST THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF WORDS AND IN THE CORRECT ORDER.

I find the cabin and notice that it is way up in the air. Like. Not at ground level.

Stay tuned for the remainder of this story and how we reached the cabin and I almost died. I'm going to go crawl into a corner and maintain the fetal position because this story is my Vietnam.

So, should I just park here then?