Is it breathing? I don't know. Kick it, maybe it'll move.

Dear friends, it is with heavy heart that I report the news of a sad death. My dearest desktop computer, with us for oh these so many years, has given up the ghost.

She came home with me back in oh-three, I think. I only know this from my version of carbon dating. My tax returns from 2003 were found in the carcass during exhumation.

She was a good old girl. She tolerated a lot of abuse. Too many programs installed. Too many photos uploaded. Too many abrupt starts and stops, and who can forget moving her around too damn many times?

Then late last week I put the proverbial straw on the proverbial elderly camel's back.

It was like loading up your ninety-three-year-old grandmother with a heavy backpack (Adobe Illustrator is the heavy backpack in this analogy) and then forcing her to run a sprint. Uphill. In a snowstorm.

She passed out. The mouse died first. Then the keyboard. Now she sits, unplugged and forlorn near the window in my office.

I dragged out our spare desktop. Sickening, isn't it? We're like Hoarders, only with more hoarding. Actually, my hubs and I both bought similar desktops from Costco while we were dating. When we got married and he moved in, we just kept using mine and stashed his upstairs. I hauled it out and have spent the last two days trying to connect the fracking thing to the internet. I've spent a total of three hours on the phone with two separate tech support lovelies from AT&T U-verse. They're stumped. It's not working. It should be working, but it isn't. I guess I'll be calling the Geek Squad soon. Or my neighbors will hear glass crashing as a desktop computer comes hurtling through the front window. Either way.

- H

I have boys

We go to car shows, and play on the rock piles instead.
We hang out with our best friends.

We use weapons to lure bugs into their bug houses. Or crush them, whatever.

We build the bug houses.

Sometimes we think about eating the bugs.

We play on dirt piles.

And we throw dirt.

It's good.


- H

I'm giving today the finger

Today gets the big finger. And not a giant foam finger.

First, I would like to pat the genius folks at the St. Louis airport authority on the back for letting all of the major airlines remove any helpful flights from the schedule, forcing me to fly through O'Hare to simply get to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Good job folks. Hey, I have an idea! Why don't you hire talented sales and public relations people and get your stinking name off the WORST AIRPORTS IN HELL list, huh? Just a thought. I love to get up at 4:30, board a plane at 6:30, change planes in HELL (I am now calling O'Hare HELL if that's ok with you) just to get to Cedar Rapids by lunchtime. Love it. Thanks for that, losers.

I'd also like to give the giant finger to the loser at HELL who told my flight attendant that my connecting gate was B22. We landed at F4. Which is like landing in Chicago and needing to walk to Cedar Rapids, really, if you think about it. So I walked there. In my heely shoes. And when I got there, what did I see on the monitor? Why, it wasn't my flight that was departing there, but another lucky flight. Somewhat confused, I checked the nearest monitor (this also involved walking in heely shoes). They had changed my gate to E3. Which was RIGHT NEXT TO F4. So I walked back to Chicago from Cedar Rapids. In my heely shoes. You, Mr. or Mrs. Change the Gates on Unsuspecting Losers in Heely Shoes at O'Hare HELL, you get the finger today.

You know who else gets the finger? The weird lady who was washing her grapes in the basin of the drinking fountain back at E3. Seriously. I know grapes are totally dangerous what with all their nasty pesticides and chemicals and whatnot. But you know what? I think I just might order a large drink of fountain Napalm before I washed produce in the drinking fountain at HELL. Somehow, I think a few pesticides might actually be good for a person, if the other option is the insides of every mouth that's ever leaned down to take a drink out of that fountain since it was installed because you know they never bleach those things! She deserves the finger, plus every virus she just contracted from her dirty grapes.

Hey, you know why St. Louis' airport has no flights? Because they're all at O'Hare, that's why! What's the deal, Chicago? Greedy much? You like teeming masses, all crisscrossing your ill-marked, endless terminals, fruitlessly hoping to get to their gate on time? Many never do. I believe I may have walked by a few families who took up residence in HELL today. It's sad, really.

Never fear, friends. I will not let my blistery toes or my travel fatigue get me down. I am going to stage an all-out war. I know a certain someone, a talented young woman with a PR background who also makes pretty quilts. I'm going to launch a campaign for the St. Louis airport idiots to hire her out of her house at the rate of many many dollars, for services such as Bringing Better Restaurants [hey, how about a Saint Louis Bread Company you idiots!] to the Airport. And Convincing Southwest to Put More Flights Here. And Hey, American, Up Yours! That last campaign is mine, really, so I won't foist it off on her. I blame American's hostile takeover of TWA for all of my most recent problems except for the belly bloating. I'll keep you posted on my progress. After my blisters heal.



I included a cute picture. For levity.

- H

I am that mom.

The scene - Target at 5:00 on Sunday evening.

I never go at that time, and will never again. It was busier than I think I've ever seen it. The aisles were so full of people, I had a hard time maneuvering the 'kid cart' that held my two monsters and the three ink cartridges I needed for Monday's workday.

The offspring were fairly good in the beginning. I owe that to the fact that they inexplicably buckled themselves into their seats to be cool, and couldn't move much.

I picked up the ink cartridges and diapers, and headed to the promised toy department so they could look. The deal is this - they look, we don't buy. They can look at stuff they want to add to their birthday list or Christmas list, or whatever. They know this, we do it every time and it goes smoothly.

So this went fine.

In fact, except for a few outbursts here and there, my kids blended in with everyone else's.

Until we got to the checkout.

The lanes were thick with people. We got in behind one guy who had a fair amount of items, so it was a few minutes before she got to my stuff.

A few minutes of sheer hell. Followed by a few more minutes of even darker circles of hell.

My kids LOST. IT. Cooper wanted to look at the movies. Griffin wanted to look at whatever Cooper was looking at and in order to get out of the cart he was strapped into, he started screaming "GODDAMN IT! GODDAMN IT!" at the top of his lungs. I let him out of the cart.

Cooper threw a rather large fit because I wouldn't buy him {fill in the blank, I can't even remember now} and he lay down on the footrest of the cart. I told him to stand up so I could move forward without removing his head from his body, and he ignored me. I bent down and picked him up and he started pitching a gigantic fit, screaming and crying and claiming his foot hurt.

This went on and on and on, in one of those bits of time where you're sure it has come to a standstill and you will never move forward, except then at some point I found myself out at my car. I'd managed not to yell while in the store, that was a plus.

I did at one point whisper into Cooper's ear, "Do you see anyone else crying in this entire store? You are going to be in so much trouble for this when we get home." I didn't look one single person in the eye the entire time we were in the checkout lane. I know we had an audience, I believe a two year old shrieking "GODDAMN IT!" is a guarantee of that. The ride home was unpleasant. For them. Cooper even managed to remain silent in shame until we got home, which is some sort of record.

Clearly, I have lost control. Let's call it - I never had it to begin with.

I came home and spent a bit of time in the yard with Ruby, decompressing. Where have I gone wrong? What can I do to fix it? My kids are spoiled, that much is clear. I started working on the "no toys" campaign earlier in the summer when a lovely trip to the Botanical Garden ended with 14 minutes of screaming because I bought Cooper the wrong toy from the gift shop.

As I folded laundry tonight I contemplated my options. Running away from home is out of the question although it does hold quite a bit of appeal. Nanny 911 is also out, they'd probably edit my parts to make me and my kids look even worse than we already are, and nobody needs that trauma.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I've implemented a "no kids may come with Mommy to any store" rule that I plan to keep up until I no longer remember this incident. Which may be years from now.

- H

Reverse psychology

What a lovely Saturday. My hubs took my kids to a car show far far away, so they won't return until dinnertime. I have had the entire day to myself!

I'm trying to break out of my sewing hiatusfunkcollapse so I went to the fabric store and started in on a pattern/tutorial for Sewing in No Man's Land, one of the freshest awesome sewing blogs around.

As I was finishing up on the tulip pants downstairs, the doorbell rings. I start sprinting up, catch a fifty-pound whirling ball of brown lab puppy as she barrels into me on her way to the party, and opened the door to a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old, because there is no way that kid was older than eighteen, salesman.

He had on a shirt from a local construction company who will go nameless but their initials are Thomas Construction.

"Hello, we're doing some work in your area and I'm wondering if your next home project is going to be inside the house or outside?"

"Uhhm," (I was bent over with Ruby's collar in my hand) "we aren't planning any projects for now and my husband tends to do the work for us..."

"Because I noticed your gutters [as he looked up at them] and you probably are planning on replacing them--"

"Those gutters are copper. That's what copper gutters look like. We aren't replacing them, we have to worry about people trying to steal them. So no, thanks but no."

I shut the door. Hard.

Here are my sales suggestions for the afore-unmentioned company, since I've spent the last fifteen years in sales (I know, I'm shocked too):

1) Don't insult your customer or their gutters.
B) Don't send a kid to my house to sell home repairs if he isn't old enough to drive a car and have a mortgage.

- H