Why I’m about to break up with Lootcrate.

Oh how I wanted to love Lootcrate. A box full of figurines and pins and shirts AND MORE!? And all geeky!? YES PLEASE.

But no.

I mean, the figurines have all been great. Even the ones that I don’t necessarily want I’ve been able to give away to people that want them. But for the most part? Love them!

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But oh man, the shirts. I am a lover of geeky tshirts. I have a pretty extensive collection that I’m proud of. I wear them all the time. All day every day. No matter what movie we go see, from any genre of geek lore, I have a tshirt and/or hoodie to proudly wear while we stand in line. So when I started seeing the shirts from Lootcrate I was instantly sold. I made a promise to myself long ago that I’d only allow myself one subscription box at a time so I cancelled my Ipsy bag and subscribed to Lootcrate and chose the Women’s XL shirt option.

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So far? I can wear ONE of the six shirts I’ve gotten because EVERY SINGLE SHIRT is a different size. All labeled XL, one actually is an XL. The rest? I’d say range from extra small to Medium. I’ve searched high and low for an actual shirt size chart on the Lootcrate but haven’t been able to find anything. And I’ve found plenty of people online that complain about this and Lootcrate’s only answer is to send it back for an exchange AT YOUR COST.

No.

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I REALLY REALLY don’t want to have to cancel my subscription but at this point I’m really just wasting my money unless I want to add the cost of sending my shirts back every month or switching to an XXL and hoping they actually show up in a size I can wear.

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Get your shit together, Lootcrate.

Blogmas Day 3: HANS IS HOME!

Hans tore a hole in Cassidy’s window screen FOUR MONTHS ago. We spent a lot of time looking for him and once I thought I saw him run into a yard in the cul-de-sac across from us but it was 5:00AM and I wasn’t comfortable getting all up in the bushes in front of a neighbors front window at that time.

Then last night we didn’t go to a Christmas party and Ben happened to be outside and saw him streak across our driveway! He ran after him which freaking Hans out so Ben sat down and just started calling to him and Hans ran right over! Ben called me and yelled BRING CAT TREATS COME OUTSIDE NOW. Ben wasn’t able to grab him but when I threw a few treats down he walked right up to me and nuzzled into my chest. I carried him home.

When I brought him upstairs Cassidy didn’t believe me but Hans ran over to her and didn’t leave her side for the entire night. He ate and fell asleep almost instantly and has been sleeping most of the day. It’s been SO COLD outside and he’s SO skinny so I imagine the next few days are going to be spent mostly eating and sleeping on her cozy warm bed with is favorite human companion.

He’s pretty smelly so I’m about to go give him a sponge bath because I hate to traumatize him with a full real bath right now. Then I’ll flea treat him. We have him quarantined in Cassidy’s room in case he picked something up out there and I’m going to make an appointment to get him in to see the vet and get checked out.

But he’s HOME! Safe and warm and with a full belly.

BEST. CHRISTMAS. GIFT. EVER.

Hans is home. Skinny, cuts on his face, can't get enough love from Cassidy. ??

Blogmas Day 1. Questions and Answers with Cassidy.

I’ve decided to attempt Blogmas. ATTEMPT. I’ll probably fail but I like to set my standards low so that I’m not disappointed in myself later. The last few months I’ve written around 2 posts a month and I’ve already met that goal so basically I’ve already won December.

My friend Trini posted this questions meme on Facebook the other day and it was fun to read her daughter’s answers. Because I didn’t want to have to type all the answers out I just made Cassidy sit down and make a video with me. Because I’m lazy. And also, you can see our real interactions.

Coloring Book Giveaway: NSFW Edition

Coloring Book Giveaway Prize

I participate in most of The Oatmeal’s Kickstarters because each one is more awesome than the next. Somehow I ended up getting TWO of his coloring books, Penis Fairies and Queef Storms – An Adult Coloring Book by The Oatmeal. I don’t really need TWO penis fairy coloring books which is good news for you! Because you can have one if you win!

And because you can’t color 1000 year boners or queef storms if you don’t have coloring pencils, I picked up a 36 pack of colored pencils and a sharpener to send with it so you can get to coloring right away.

I gave you 12 ways to enter this time plus added 2 that you can do daily if you want. So, get to it! PENIS FARIRIES AWAIT!

GOOD LUCK!

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND YOUR BUTT IS WARM!

At 3:10AM this morning my alarm went off to go pick Cassidy up from work at the local outlet mall. Ben and I dropped her off last night at 7:00PM on the way home from a DELICIOUS Thanksgiving dinner with my mom and brothers and the parking lot was already completely full. PEOPLE ARE CRAZY.

Snuggle Buddies Anyway, my alarm went off at 3:10AM and after hitting snooze once, I got up to go get her. I fell asleep with my clothes on so that I could just slip into some flip-flops and walk out the door. But this stopped me and I had to take a picture because HOW CUTE ARE THEY!? Kumo is like, “WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING ME?” And Agent Romanoff is like, “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND YOUR BUTT IS WARM!”

So anyway, after the photo I stumbled into the bathroom then grabbed my glasses, put on my flip-flops and started heading downstairs.

I walked out of the bedroom and realized that OMG WHY CAN’T I SEE!? And this is how the brain of a worrier works.

  • OMG I AM GOING BLIND.
  • Don’t be stupid you don’t just suddenly go blind.
  • OMG MAYBE IT’S AN ANEURYSM!
  • Wait, those are instant, right? Don’t be stupid, you aren’t having an aneurysm.
  • OMG! IS MY BLOOD PRESSURE SPIKING?! IS IT A HEART ATTACK!? FUCK! WHAT’S THE HEART ATTACK ACRONYM!?
  • WHAT ABOUT THE STROKE ACRONYM!? OMG AM I HAVING A HEART ATTACK AND A STROKE AT THE SAME TIME?!
  • No, sudden blindness is not one of the symptoms of STOP or FAST. STOP BEING STUPID!
  • Should I wake up Ben?! What will I even say!? TAKE ME TO THE ER! I CAN’T SEE SOMETHING IS WRONG I AM PROBABLY DYING!
  • Wait, I should verify I’m dying first. How do you so that? Should I take my temperature? What is the temperature of a dying person? Pulse? DO I EVEN HAVE A PULSE AT THIS POINT?! OMG AM I EVEN BREATHING!?

Then I took my glasses off and realized I could see! It was a miracle! Except, no, I just fell asleep with my contacts in.

When I woke up later this morning I had to laugh about it and thought it would be funny to look at the NEST video to see how stupid I looked and that’s when I realized all this happened in my brain in about a half a second.

I will never understand why my brain does this. WORSE CASE SCENARIO FIRST, ALL PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATIONS SECOND! I’ve gotten MUCH better at dealing with it in a daily basis. Ben is a great sounding board so if I can’t manage to talk myself off he ledge, he is always there to listen and remind me that I am COMPLETELY overreacting about something. I wish my brain would get a clue and stop this insane process but at the very least I’m able to look back and laugh about it now.

Life in bullets

Oh hi, here’s an update on my life in bullets. Because bullets are fun and I am lazy.

  • I’m 1.5 months into treating my lifelong psoriasis with Enbrel. So far the side effects have been, on a scale from Fucking Miserable to YAY NOTHING, about a Not Fun. Nausea the day after each injection, weird itchy red spots where I inject and CRAZY oily skin. Oh yes, INJECT. I’ll have to write about the time I gave myself the first shot and I had to sit on the floor because I was scared I’d pass out. That was fun!
  • Tonight I ate half a pecan pie for dinner.
  • Agent Romanoff We got a new kitten named Agent Romanoff she is equal parts adorable and asshole. She’s adorable most of the time. She’s an asshole between the hours of 11:00PM and 5:00AM.
  • I bought a Nest Cam so that I can spy on the dogs when we’re not home except it turns out that dogs are actually incredibly boring once you leave and just sleep on the couch all day. And when you use the Nest Cam’s speaker to tell them to get off the couch they look the camera straight on, lick their genitals, roll over, and fall back asleep. They are so boring that I’m seriously considering buying one of the outside cameras so that I can spy on my neighborhood instead.
  • I bought a camera that takes really decent video and have been uploading more to my YouTube channel. I’m considering doing a weekly vlog type thing (I don’t get how people do that DAILY) but we’ll see. It’s more work than I thought it would be and most of it is Cassidy and I making fart jokes and singing gangster rap in my car or her rolling her eyes at my Mom Jokes.
  • I finally started watching Poldark because so many of my friends loved it. I too loved it till the last episode and now I hate Ross. I might have to acquire the last episode to just get it over with before it’s release here in the US because I just want closure and for it to be over. I can’t remember the last time I was so disappointed in a fictional character. GODDAMMIT, ROSS.
  • I really want to write more but there are video games to play and Ben just said there is still pie left.

The End.

Just kidding! I have another giveaway coming soon! That was fun and I’m excited to do one again! Stay tuned!

Now really, The End.

LUSH Little Monster Giveaway

Hello, my name is Anna and I am a LUSH addict.

I had to order some new shampoo last week so I decided to order something extra to do a little giveaway. YAY FREE STUFF! I loved this Little Monster immediately so I got one for one of you.

I tried to add as many ways to enter as I could for free with the Gleam app. Contest goes till October 9th at midnight. Good luck!

LUSH Halloween Giveaway

Mandatory Disclaimer: I bought this Little Monster myself with my own money. It is not sponsored by anybody or any company.

Chihuly Garden and Glass

PAMF Chihuly I fell in love with Chihuly glass the day I walked into our medical group’s new building in Palo Alto and there was a three story glass sculpture installed in the lobby. I was running late to an appointment and I just stood there staring at it in absolute awe. I can’t express why I find his work so fascinating, before that day I had never even heard of Chihuly, I just knew that I had some kind of weird emotional response to this art hanging in front of me and I never wanted to move from that spot. After I learned who the artist was I read everything I could find about him online and where his work was in the Bay Area and made it a point to seek it out when ever possible. I once lost my family at the Monterey Bay Aquarium because I got so lost in my own head in his exhibit there.

When I decided to tag along with Ben on his work trip to Seattle, knowing I’d be on my own a lot, I did some research to see what all there was to do in the area. First thing I found was Chihuly Garden and Glass and I got irrationally excited. I asked Ben if he wanted me to wait for him to do it on a day he could go to and he wasn’t really interested so I decided right away it would be the FIRST thing I did.

And it was. And it was AMAZING.

I’m not going to get into the ridiculous range of feelings I had while walking through the exhibit but it was pretty powerful for me. Before then I never really understood people that had an emotional connection to art. It just didn’t make any sense to me. But it does now. I sat in one room in a corner and just stared at this HUGE room, full of glass pieces of all shapes and sizes and colors, soft angles and hard angles, long sweeping pieces, balls of different colors and sizes, huge pieces all intertwined and chaotic but somehow in complete harmony and I thought, this is my brain. All the time. A mess of fragile jumbled pieces that somehow all work together to make complete sense. I never wanted to leave that room. Ever.

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I was really happy that I ended up doing it alone so that I could FEEL all this stuff. It was absolutely the highlight of the trip and I can’t wait to go back someday so that I can show it all to Ben. And I REALLY want to do it all again at night. I think the garden would be magical.

SO! Here are some of my favorite photos (you can see the whole album here) and I made a little video too. I really love the idea of having video reminders of awesome times so expect to see more of them in the future!

Chihuly Glass and Garden

Chihuly Glass and Garden

Chihuly Glass and Garden

Chihuly Glass and Garden

Chihuly Glass and Garden

Chihuly Glass and Garden

Chihuly Glass and Garden

Peace of mind with WearSafe

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Wearsafe for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

In just 3 short days Cassidy will walk onto campus and attend her first class as a college Freshman. It is so hard to wrap my mind around that fact that my baby is a college student! I am so proud of her and so excited to see where this new adventure leads her as she makes new friends, learns new skills and life lessons, and is faced with new challenges as she tries new experiences.

I’m not going to lie though, it’s a moment I’ve been equally excited about and dreading. Did we do all we need to do as parents to prepare her for this adult world? Sure she knows how to cook her own food and do her own laundry and she’s just started learning how to pay her own bills. But you still worry as a parent! Are they eating? I know she’ll do that! That kid LOVES food! Does she have clean clothes to wear? Of course! She’s been doing her own laundry for years! Is she paying her bills! I hope so but she has an emergency credit card if anything pops up she can’t handle on her own.

My biggest question as she leaves to live this new independent life is: Is she safe?

wearsafe01But now I don’t have to worry about that because we are equipping her with the new wearable device called WearSafe. It’s a small, inconspicuous device that can alert a set group of people about a possible dangerous situation without drawing any attention at all. With just the push of a button it sends your location and audio without anybody around you even realizing it, while vibrating when your trusted contact views your information to let you know that help is on the way.

So Cassidy can press a button and Ben and I, and whoever else she has in her trusted network, can HEAR what is going on and see exactly where she is. Then, from a group chat we can coordinate to get her whatever help she needs on the way immediately. So before a situation even has the chance to escalate, she’ll know that we are there with her and are sending help. This has brought me so much peace of mind as she enters what will be long nights of study sessions, work and, yes, even those popular college parties.

Here she is with is clipped to her leggings. You wouldn’t even know it’s there if I didn’t point it out. It also comes with an attachment to put it on your car keys.wearsafe02

After setting it up we tested it out and it was so easy to use. After Cassidy hit the button I received an email, which also sent to my Apple Watch, and a text message alerting me that she was in need of assistance. I was immediately able to access her location on a map and start playing an exceptionally clear audio file that recorded everything that we were saying. I was also easily able to chat with her. Here is a screenshot of the really intuitive user interface.

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The very best part? The device is FREE! You pay a $5.00 per month subscription fee but right now you can try it free. If you have kids you are sending off to college, or any kids really, I highly suggest checking it out for your own peace of mind.

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