Month: October 2010

Cassidy fell asleep on the couch last night at 8:30PM. This is really odd for her because usually on Saturday nights she’s not even in bed till 11:00PM. She had been complaining about not feeling well all afternoon and then this morning woke up pretty stuffed up and not feeling well.

This afternoon she was sitting on the couch and I noticed her cheeks were pretty pink.

Me: Your cheeks are pretty pink, do you feel warm?
Cassidy: *shrug*
Me: You might have a fever, we should take your temperature.
Ben: You know, the best way to find out if you are sick or not is to rub peanut butter all over your face and let the dogs lick it off.
Me: …
Cassidy: OKAY!
Me: …
Ben: WOOHOO!
Me: …
Kumo: I HEARD PEANUT BUTTER THERE IS GOING TO BE PEANUT BUTTER WHERE IS THE PEANUT BUTTER I LIKE TO EAT PEANUT BUTTER!
Danica: WOOHOO I DON’T KNOW WHY WE ARE SO EXCITED BUT I’M GOING TO BE EXCITED TOO BECAUSE MY BROTHER IS EXCITED AND I LOVE MY BROTHER SO MUCH IN ALL CAPS!
Me: …

According to Dr. Benjamin Hirsch if you laugh when a dog licks peanut butter off of your face, you can’t be sick. It’s all very scientific.

Cassidy is not sick.

So.

If you read blogs or have twitter or facebook or any account anywhere online I’m sure you’ve seen the cast of Glee half naked in GQ today.

I couldn’t quite place my finger on what was wrong when I woke up today but I realized when I opened up Google Reader that it was the wrath of a million angry mommybloggers collectively sighing that was sucking the air out of THE ENTIRE WORLD!

There is OUTRAGE! There is DISGUST! There are groups out there comparing it to PEDOPHILIA!

And I’m sorry but ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!?

Parent’s TV writes:

“It is disturbing that GQ, which is explicitly written for adult men, is sexualizing the actresses who play high school-aged characters on ‘Glee’ in this way. It borders on pedophilia. Sadly, this is just the latest example of the overt sexualization of young girls in entertainment,” said PTC President Tim Winter. (source)

Lea Michele and Dianna Agron are both 24 years old! Posing in GQ magazine! This isn’t Teen Beat, it’s not even 17 magazine, it is GQ.

GQ: Gentlemans’ Quarterly Magazine

Equating 24 year old women to pedophilia is about as lame as this “wholesome” label I’ve seen applied to Glee on blog after blog today.

WHOLESOME!? REALLY!? DO YOU PEOPLE WATCH THIS SHOW!?

In season one, the head cheerleader (and president of the celibacy club) got pregnant by her boyfriend’s best friend but lied to her boyfriend and told him that his sperm had swam from his penis into her vagina when he had pre-ejaculated in the hot tub. You see, that time he wasn’t able to stop “arriving early” by thinking about his mom while getting a hang job as he had in previous “sessions” which were all brilliantly played out via flashbacks and in thought bubbles.

Also, a teacher is trying to talk himself out of kissing another teacher. Oh, and he’s married. And is wife is pregnant. Except she’s not really pregnant, she’s faking and trying to convince the cheerleader to give her the baby of her boyfriend’s best friend so that her husband doesn’t find out.

The two great themes in American TV.

1) Teenagers are oversexed dumbasses.
2) Marriage is a joke.

THIS is the wholesome show that you are SO SURPRISED allowed pictures like these to be taken.

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS!?

All these parents say how much they love the show but now aren’t going to watch anymore because of these pictures. Not the pre-ejaculating teenager! Nope! That was totally okay but these pictures? Not so much!

Here’s an idea: Stop blaming TV shows and magazines for your children’s faults. YOU are the parents. Not the TV shows. Not the magazines. YOU. Communicate with them what is okay and what isn’t. They are much better at understanding and rationalizing this stuff than a lot of you are giving them credit for.

According to most of the tweets, facebook and blog posts I’ve read today, they are also much better at rationalizing it than a lot of PARENTS are.

When I Rule the World: Any contractor that uses white grout on kitchen counters in the construction of new homes will have a punishment inflicted equal to the pain in the ass it is to keep said grout clean.

Something like a nail gun to the testicle.

You can see all my rules here.

My kingdom is going to totally rock.

Ben’s dad came to visit this weekend and like every single guest that we have at the house, Kumo instantly thinks that we’ve brought home this new person to be his BEST FRIEND FOREVER AND EVER! It happened with my dad, and then with Julie and Chris and then every single time my little brother comes to spend a few days with us.

He really seems to prefer men and I almost feel bad because when we have one that visits Kumo will follow them around and give them THE FACE. The face that makes you believe that there must be a Santa Clause and that double rainbows REALLY ARE THAT COOL and will make you stop doing whatever you are doing to throw the ball.

It’s this face:

Then, just like every time we have visitors, when his dad left this afternoon Kumo stood at the door wondering when his new BEST FRIEND FOREVER was going to come back. How about now? What about now? Now?

Maybe if I just go lay on my pet beds and look sad enough he’ll come back. Maybe if I play really cute with one of my pet toys they’ll feel sorry for me and get me a new friend.

Danica is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. After the initial 10 seconds of excitement from a new person being in the house she picks one of the pet carriers and hibernates for the rest of the visit because unless they are carrying bacon in their pockets she’s really not very interested.

She maintains Indifferent Face:

And thus concludes the gratuitous shots of our adorable puppy faces.

I do Friday 5 on Sunday. Because that’s the way I roll.

1. Do you still have your senior yearbook? Where is it?
I do! It was the only year I went to public school after getting kicked out of private Catholic school my junior year. I have ALL my yearbooks except the one from that junior year. I paid for it but never went back to pick it up and I really wish I had.

2. What souvenir did you bring back from your last trip?
Our last trip was to Bakersfield and I didn’t buy anything. The last “real” trip I took was to Pennsylvania late last year and I brought back a fridge magnet from the Duquesne Incline. Our fridge is covered in magnets from places we’ve been. From local places like the Aquarium to far away places like Maui and the San Diego Zoo.

3. What visible signs are there of your most recent injury?
My most recent injury was an infection in my colon. Any “signs” would have been flushed away…

4. What’s the neatest wedding favor you’ve ever seen?
I’m actually fan of the bubbles. Most wedding favors are silly and just end up getting tossed. Sorry, but it’s true.

5. What do you do with playbills and movie-ticket stubs?
I used to keep them in a box but recently I’ve been purging stuff like that from my life. It’s just too much STUFF to hold on to.

When I was growing up I spent every summer in Pennsylvania with family. I loved it. When I look back on my life some of my most happy times were those summers spent running in the woods and hanging out with my cousins. The most awesome thing was that we didn’t just stay there. From Pennsylvania we’d go to Florida, Ohio, Maine and my most favorite trip every year was to spend two week at the beach in North Carolina.

East Coast beaches are SO fabulous. The sand is smoother than on the West Coast, the water is ABSOLUTELY warmer, and best of all: SNOW CRABS! I could spend hours and hours chasing snow crabs. They aren’t as awesome as pregnant cows, but they are right there at the top of the list!

One year instead of North Carolina we stayed in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. We didn’t have a site like http://www.myrtlebeachseasideresorts.com/ to help us in planning but we stull had a great time. In North Carolina, the place we stayed at was pretty remote and out of the way so there wasn’t much to do but go to the beach and that was not the case at all in Myrtle Beach. My uncle got to enjoy golf packages Myrtle Beach, while my aunts enjoyed the shopping and the kids enjoyed the movies and kids activities at all the local places there.

Now that I’m thinking about it, my grandma would make these extensive photo albums of all our trips every year and I’ve been meaning to get them scanned and uploaded to flickr. There is an awesome picture of me on the beach with a broken arm. I’m almost neck deep in water except my cast that I’m trying my darnedest to keep out of the water. NOTHING was going to keep 4th grade me from getting into the ocean! 😉

If you are looking into a vacation in Myrtle Beach, check out http://www.myrtlebeachseasideresorts.com/ for sure. It’s one of those placed that will leave a Forever Memory!

In my last post I mentioned that one of the services we have kept active as a “need” is internet service. I know that for some people it may be more of a “want” than a “need” but it’s such a tool these days that I honestly don’t know what we’d do without it. Online banking, paying bills online, Cassidy using it to look up stuff for school, shoot last week I had to read about the best way to remove a wall anchor from dry wall because I’d managed to get TWO of them stuck. Because I am talented.

Then there’s sites like Billy’s Savings Club which is full of money saving ideas on everything from Wedding Expenses to professional movers in your area. I don’t know about you but I think that MOST families out there these days can use every money saving idea they can come up with.

They even have a page dedicated to free online offers on products so I’ve now got free samples of Crest toothpaste and some Garnier dandruff shampoo on the way! Cheap is good but FREE IS BETTER!

When we went from REALLY RICH (we never actually were but looking back now IT FELT THAT WAY) to a one income family we had to start deciding what expenses we needed to cut down on. Weigh out our wants verses needs. Subscriptions to World of Warcraft went right away while things like internet service stayed. As we became a little more stressed for money we started to trim down even more like downgrading our Netflix movie to 1 at a time instead of 3. The one thing that I haven’t even CONSIDERED letting go of though, is my web hosting.

I have managed hosting for all of our sites for almost six years now. My site, Cassidy’s, Ben’s and even at one time our very popular BMW forum. It’s just one of those things that I could never let go of. I even considered starting to do some colocation and offering up web hosting at one time but I just didn’t have time time to get ANOTHER site started to list out services and set up a ticketing system. Plus, web hosting is SO CHEAP these days and the prices are so competitive there was really no way that I could have competed with some of the better sites out there.

ALTHOUGH! I do actually still kick the idea around every now and then. But my brain works that way. I have a BIG IDEA till something shiny catches my eye and then I’m on to the next and one day I’ll be sitting down to do something or spacing out and I’m like OH YEAH! THAT BIG IDEA THAT I WAS GOING TO…

Ohhhh, look at the glitter!

Really though, it’s an excellent way to bring in some money, especially for those stay at home mom types. As long as you can get in with a reliable host after you have a few clients set up you basically get to sit back and just collect monthly fees without much hassle.

A few weeks ago my good friend Julie posted to facebook a list of her priorities. Kids first, then her relationship, then work, then working out (health), then friends. I liked her list but mine looks a little different:

#1 – Ben and Cassidy
#2 – Eating chocolate.
#3 – Work
#4 – Eating bacon.
#5 – Friends.
#6 – Getting rid of love handles caused my #2 and #5.

And here is where I’m going with this…

We are struggling financially. Ben is still out of work (although keep your fingers crossed for the prospect I mentioned before), we have pretty much exhausted all the cushion we had, unemployment is running out and we really just can’t afford to live on my income alone because it really just covers our mortgage and nothing else.

*shakes fist at California housing prices and rereads Britt’s email about why we should all move to Texas*

I haven’t really written about it here for a few reasons. Mainly because I hate sounding like a whiner. There are people out there that are a LOT worse off than we are and I feel kind of like a jerk when I talk about how broke we are as I sit on my comfy couch with my laptop and a full belly while there is a family out there somewhere sleeping in a car tonight because they don’t have a house to go home to.

Also, we are VERY LUCKY to have people that can help us out when we need it. Like parents that will wire money to us to help us get through.

It’s just… it’s hard. And it’s not somewhere we want to be which is why I’m about to say what I’m about to say and PLEASE DON’T HATE ME:

I’m going to start doing some paid blogging on aflux.

THERE I SAID IT.

This is something that I’ve avoided here for the last six years. I never wanted aflux to be about The Money. I had other blogs were I did it but this was always My Space, free from the stigma and filled with only words I wanted to write.

But there is also a reality I’ve been looking past for a long time and that’s the money making potential of this blog. I’ve gotten quite a few offers to run text link side bar ads, do reviews and paid blogs and I’ve always turned them down. I really can’t do that anymore. My family needs the money and my family makes up the top part of that list and all of you, my dear, lovely, awesome, fantastic internet friends that I love SO MUCH, are just under the bacon. And the posts will, you know, pay for the bacon.

I’m working on getting it set up so that if you use a feed reader (and if you aren’t WHY THE HELL NOT!?) you will never have to see the paid posts. I’ll block them from getting sent via RSS and all you will ever see is the normal awesome posts all about me. Well, as normal as anything can be when it’s all about me.

When we have steady income again everything will go back to the way it was before but for now, I hope all of you understand why I have to do what is best for me and my family.

*heart* you all lots and lots.