and then there were four…

There’s been a lot going on.

Babies have been born (not mine).

Birthdays were had (okay, mine).

Feelings and backs have been hurt (mostly mine).

Sickness has come and gone, and come back again. (mine, but another person’s too).

Swimming lessons have been booked. (my babies).

Enrollment in preschool for the fall has happened. (my oldest, curly haired baby).

I have wanted to write about all of it, but I haven’t. I offer no excuses, I just haven’t been at that place where I want to talk about it all yet. Maybe one day. For now, I’ll focus on the happy stuff.

• I’m an AUNT! My little sister had a healthy baby girl the day before my birthday, March 25th. She’s a tiny little thing (she was three weeks early, but she’s FINE), weighing in at 5 lbs. 15.8 oz and 18.5 inches long. She’s a beauty and I can’t wait to hold her!

• Bill took me out to a wonderful birthday dinner, solo (*GASP* Bill’s brother and girlfriend stayed with the girls) at this Japanese restaurant where you grill your own meat–we also made S’mores for dessert. It was awesome. He bought me a chocolate cake with strawberries on top and my babies sung happy birthday to me. He also bought me a new cherry-red laptop with a wireless mouse to match. It is awesome…I love the keyboard (something I didn’t really care for on my last laptop).

• We booked the girls’ swimming lessons for this summer. We decided on having back-to-back lessons, instead of simultaneous ones, as they would be learning in the same pool, and I can just imagine them distracting each other while they swam laps with their instructors.

• We took a tour today of the preschool Olivia will be starting in August. She’ll go three hours a day, for three days a week. The school looked awesome. There are three different play areas, a “sand area” with a playhouse, sand, swings, slides, an area where they have lots of different types of preschool toys (stoves, dinosaurs, boats, bikes, etc.), and another sand area the director said they will be turning into a garden for the children to grow things. There are no more than 16 children per classroom, with two teachers in each class. The classrooms have different activity stations for the children to participate. They seem to be really big on interactive play, which was exactly what we were looking for. I mean, the child does workbooks at home! Preschool is for her to make friends and learn how to take directions from a person other than a parent. It just seems perfect and when Olivia walked in and saw the play area she literally gasped with excitement. That pretty much sealed it for me.

I know the bad stuff will happen, and it doesn’t make it right, but all the good stuff outweighs the bad. I just have to keep it in perspective.

It is supposed to rain this weekend. I had to cancel my planned yard sale, so it damned well better rain.

We went to the library to stock up on books for the girls, since we anticipate not being able to go outside for the next couple of days. Olivia said she thought she needed more than five books this time, so we chose ten. After a trip to the grocery store we are hunkered down, the girls are in bed and Bill and I are catching up on our DVR queue.

I also realized I hadn’t listed any FLINKS in awhile.

So. Whether it is raining in your neck of the woods this weekend or not, enjoy this list of FLINKS.

Etiquette Hell I may or may not have listed this before, but the site has been updated and upgraded. Much easier to read and navigate. A lot of hilarious stories, also a great way to brush up on your own etiquette. Plus she posts cute stories every “Feel Good Friday”.

Friends of Irony Real irony. Not the series of unfortunate events that Ms. Morrisette sings about.

Lamebook Real facebook status fails. Some NSFW stuff, language, etc. Totally worth it.

Regretsy “Where DIY meets WTF” Some NSFW things are posted, but the writer does try to warn you. Making fun of the crap people try to sell on Etsy. It’s marvelous. (Sorry, it’s the girls’ favorite new word, we’ve been saying it a lot around here).

Enjoy.

I offer you a FLINK.

Oddly Specific: The strangely particular website peculiarly exacting signs.

Funny signs make me giggle.

That is all :o)

Tonight during their bath, Sophia picked up the plastic dinosaur that they both love to fight over and put him on his side inside of the soap dish. She looked over at me and *whispered* “Shhhh…dino-soar SEEPING.”

I almost keeled over from the cuteness.

Just now I heard over the baby monitor “Come on Sophia, wake up we can talk together and have SO MUCH FUN.”

I hated to go in there and shoo Olivia away from the edge of Sophia’s crib, but I really don’t need two awake children right now.

Even if it was so darn sweet I couldn’t stand it.

Advice to you all: Don’t take Benadryl (or the generic counterpart) for allergies during the day if you have anything to do other than falling into a deep coma. Never before has naptime seemed so short.

But I would bet anything if I took another two pills right now they would have the opposite effect and I would never sleep again. Risky gamble I’m not willing to take.

Flink for your troubles: Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody

And because I am having my first period in over 3 1/2 years (Hey, at least I’m not pregnant, right?), I am giving you a bunch of funny links. I know, I know, TMI, but after labor, giving birth, having every single hospital volunteer (mostly nuns) see your boobs and having random weird people squeezing said breasts to help “stimulate the milk flow” you no longer have much shame. Plus, you ARE reading a blog involving motherhood, that in itself is warning enough, right?

Anyway, to atone, here are your links.

Bad Parking: pretty much self-explanatory. Photos of horrible parking jobs.

Signs of Life: Funny signs are everywhere. I like funny signs. I take pictures of them. Maybe I should submit to this website. Includes some possible NSFW signs with profanity (but, since you’re reading my site perhaps that is a moot point).

That’s Punny: Because I had some weird obsession with using puns in almost every single headline when I was A&E editor of my college newspaper (It’s embarrassingly obvious), I give you this collection of puns from all over. I do have a soft spot in my heart for puns. They make me giggle.

English FAIL Blog: I have a very real fear of my own blog being lambasted as English FAIL, but I take solace in the fact that my mistakes are not on t-shirts, street signs, or the like.

Enjoy! I’m off to curl up in my bed with a heating pad, chocolate and crappy TV.

I’m a fucking walking cliche.

I just love the First Family. I don’t care what your politics are, there is no denying that family is GORGEOUS. And good with each other, too. But, since there are tons of other blogs that can go on and on (much better I might add) about how awesome the First Family is I won’t do that today.

I will, however, send you your FLINK for the day: Obama Weather. It tells you the weather by using (a cartoon) Obama in different modes of dress (cold? He’s wearing a jacket, hot? Shorts, shades and a SLURM T-shirt). You can change the cartoon to either Obama, House MD, Angelina Jolie or Bender the Robot. It’s also in Celsius, but you can change it to Fahrenheit. This site COULD be slightly NSFW. As I was playing around with the site I noticed that both Angelina and House became nekkid when I hit an error page. Peepees and hoohoos were EVERYWHERE. Granted, they were cartoon peepees and hoohoos, but they were still there. I haven’t played around with it enough (nor is it hot enough) for me to know if when it DOES get hot enough if the cartoons strip naked, but it is a possibility. I also don’t know if they put the POTUS in a similar state of dress, but I would say probably not. Either way, it is a fun site to play around with.

This is my current Obama.

So November is National Blog Posting Month or NaBloPoMo. You are supposed to blog every day for the month of November. I’ve tried doing it for the past two years. Success was had last year and the year before that I fell asleep one night before posting–but I kept at it anyway.

So obviously it is November 2nd and I did not post yesterday, which means I am not off to a good start, but new day, new start, right?

I’m going to take the easy way out today and offer you up a FLINK instead of actually writing something of substance.

Besides, the only thing I can think of right now is how Olivia told Bill she was going to make him a butt sandwich with extra butts yesterday.

In honor of being a mom, I’m directing you to this site: Postcards from Yo Momma.

I have my Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism (emphasis in print Journalism) and a minor in English (emphasis in Creative Writing). To say I am anal about grammar would be an understatement.

However, even with all of the years I’ve spent editing, writing, and learning, I KNOW that if I were to drag out my old grammar and/or style books, I would be guilty of many crimes against grammar. I’m not perfect, but at least I know this. So it is a little ridiculous for me to become so enraged when I see incorrect grammar that (to me, anyway) is obvious.

I overuse commas. I love ellipses. I use made-up words. I like to use caps to emphasize things. I use both run-on and fragment sentences. I really like dashes and probably use them inappropriately. I’m especially fond of prepositional phrases, as much as I try to phase them out. (HA!) I use parenthesis a lot and I am so guilty of changing point-of-view mid-stream it isn’t even funny.

I edit my posts, re-reading each entry to make sure things are spelled correctly, trying to make it as grammatically inoffensive as possible. If something sounds weird to me, I attempt to find out the rules so I may make it right. I welcome constructive criticism, and appreciate being told when things are incorrect, lest I be a grammar offender.

I just hope my grammatical errors aren’t causing people to cringe and run away screaming the way the people showcased in the following sites did for me. I hope you truly appreciate how much pain and embarrassment I suffered in the name of today’s FLINK. I’m extremely empathetic and I have a hard time watching or seeing things when people make fools of themselves unknowingly. So, without further ado, I give you:

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotes

Apostrophe Abuse

and

The Perplexikon

Both Bill and I are huge Alton Brown fans, and subscribe to many of his culinary philosophies. The main philosophy being that the only unitasker you should have in your kitchen is a fire extinguisher. It’s something we live by. We have a small-ish kitchen and getting the most for our money is a high priority of ours (as I’ve mentioned time and time again).

Bill (and now, I) are fans of this website, Unclutterer, which is: “a blog about getting and staying organized”. It offers amazing information and tips and does it in an un-boring way. However, your Flink lies in their weekly feature, that never fails to have me shaking my head in disappointment in the human race.

Unitasker Wednesday offers a new weekly unitasker that is offered for sale somewhere on the interwebs (usually). You can buy this stuff, but it will only do one thing–one ridiculous thing. They even offer a disclaimer before each Unitasker item:

“All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!”

So for the love of all that is holy, please don’t come back to me and tell me you’ve bought a Garbage Bowl, or a Chompr…I may have to go all Dwight Schrute on you.