Oh it’s a great haze. Got up at 230am Cali time after getting 3 hours of sleep. Flew with hubs and tiny toddler tornadocane. Made it to the hotel and fell down exhausted in gratitude of checking in early.

(Will link later - as in - when I’m not drunk on free booze.)

Have hugged VDog and given her bras.

Have bonded with No Watch Me Christine.

Have contemplated throwing my computer in the garbahzhe because the wireless is shit and I”m having to blog at BlogHer on Scout’s PC intead of my Mac.

Have mutually played the who the fuck are you game with Loralee and then fell into each others’ arms.

Have suppressed urge to throw Mr. Lady down on the ground and make sweet, sweet like to her. And take a photo for Audubon Ron.

Have shown my new hair to Whoorl - which yes, I know, means ya’ll deserve pix. See above comment re: computer issues at BlogHer.

Have been to Guy Kawasaki’s house.

Have had the BEST vodka tonic’s ever made. See drunk and why I can’t link right now.

Have taken photo of the Bloggess giving an interview next to a urinal with Gwen from Kirtsy.

Have talked to Doodaddy and strangely got all chicken about talking to Cry it out Mike.

But wasn’t too chicken to attach mah bewbs to CityMama’s BlogHer badge.

Given big big hugs to Kyla, JCK and Playgroupie.

And certainly not least, got to hear Mrs. Flinger say fuck. More than once.

Wish you were all here, I’m helping show Carl a wonderful time.

Twas the night before BlogHer

and all through my house

there was packing and cursing

thank God no mouse.

*

The flasks were filled in the kitchen with care

In hopes that Mr. Lady would sure want to share.

*

The Kaiser was passed out all sprawled in HIS bed

While visions of shoe shopping danced in my head.

Scout on the computer and I on the floor

Declared that our luggage could hold no more …

(okay! now it’s your turn to add a line, or a stanza. You can be bitter if you want - this is a well rounded poem ripoff!)

Historically I have some wicked bad anxiety over flying. It’s so bad that I’ve convinced myself many times that if I get over my anxiety that the plane will fall out of the sky. (It’s a phobia, it’s supposed to be irrational.)

I was sitting in the airport with my Dad several years ago and commented on my anxiety. He was shocked to hear it because he LOVED to fly, wanted to get on the plane first, sit by a window and enjoy the whole thing.

Which I found a little strange considering he’d been on recovery teams for the airline crash in Guam and EgyptAir.

I took comfort knowing that if I was on a plane that crashed that my dad would be on the recovery team - and God wouldn’t be so horrid as to make my Dad sift for me - so clearly I wasn’t going to die in a crash, and my anxiety was keeping the plane aloft anyway, so I had two things going for me!

And then he went and died. Fucker. Now what I was supposed to do?

Anyway. Back to that airport chat.

AFTER I tell him I’m SCARED of flying, he relays the following experience (told in his words. Add your own drawl as needed.)

“I was on a flight to go to conference to speak about [one of the airline crashes]. I opened my briefcase and started going through notes and pictures. I noticed the guy next to me perk up and looking over my shoulder. He finally said, “Okay, WHAT are you doing looking at plane crash photos on an airplane?”

“We talked for a while, I explained what I did. He asked me what would make my job easier and I told him I wished that when a plane was going down that everyone shove their thumb up their ass.”

(um, zomgwtf Dad?)

“Well, you see, there tends to be fires with air crashes. Fingerprints are great identifiers but easily lost in a fire. A torso is very thick and would protect that thumb/fingerprint and make identification much easier and be able to get the victims back to their loved ones.”

“After the flight, I got my luggage and went to the bathroom where I ran into this guy again, and he told me he’d thought a lot about what I said and if he was ever on a plane that went down, I’d know who he was because of the thumb up his ass.”

So when Scout and Alex and I flew to Chicago a couple weeks back, I asked, “So do we round robin the thumbs up the ass? If so, I totally get Alex’s thumb.”

(I bet AllTop is real proud of this entry!)

Wanna find me live? Head to Sarcastic Mom and help determine the future of my hair.

Originally posted July 7, 2007

So Aunt Flo has come to visit again. Now, typically I can get by the first day without having to really address the issue - I mean I don’t have to stop going commando.

Well apparently this one is different. Apparently this one decided t come on immediately. Which I didn’t know until about 11pm when I got off the bed and saw a spot. This is after I’d gotten strawberry juice on the bed anyway. Hotel cleaning service is gonna love me.

Now it’s at this time that I realize all my pads etc are in some storage bin in some part of town. I remember being in my bathroom before we moved, looking at my stash going, eh, might as well pack that, I’m sure that period I got a few weeks ago was just a fluke, what are the chances that me being irregular AND breast feeding are going to yield a period before we get moved in?

Apparently just enough to fuck with me at 11pm when there’s no way I’m waking up Tiny Baby Kaiser to go to the store.

So I remedy the situation with a breast pad in the pants and feel quite smart.

Until I wake up the next morning, sit up to pump and promptly make a spot on the bed the size of… well it’s large.

At this point it occurs to me that the better choice for absorbency in an emergency might have been all the DIAPERS rather than a pad the size of a nipple that’s not really made for this sort of thing.

Yeah.

So to just make today even better…. I haul ass out of here to go to the store to get actual pads. Now I recently read a post on another blog that made me not want to buy Always. I also didn’t feel like I needed a woman diaper, so I opted against Kotex. I’m not quite up to trying tampons after Alex - the geography has changed enough that I don’t want to play that game quite yet. So Carefree. Yeah. My mom used to use Carefree, this seemed like a good choice. I didn’t want a femme diaper so I got “medium coverage” This seemed like a great choice.

Um yeah. It’s a fucking pantiliner. I have 96 “medium coverage” pads that are pantiliners. Don’t let the packaging fool you. It’s a liner. It doesn’t say this anywhere on the box. But it’s a liner.

Oh yeah. This day is just *awesome*.

Click the link to see more participants!

A reinactment of our flight last week. After the airport sucked balls, it all got so much funnier.

First there was the Matron of Honor on the day after the wedding who did a lot of this in the bathroom….

And a lot of this on the plane….

Then there was the bachelor party returning home after the groom did too much this….

Our landing was pretty much like this….

(photo grabbed from here)

As soon as the plane stopped shuddering the groom stumbled out of the bathroom….

And the entire back of the plane laughed at him like he was dressed like this….

The End

(clickin’ the logo may take you to more haikus)

used to be this day

was fun times of beer and brats,

good friends and fireworks

…

now it’s noise keeping

my baby awake and makes

keeps his sleep away

…

guess I’ll go yell at

some damn kids to stay the hell

offa my damn lawn

Umm, hi… **nervously popping in…**

This would be my first attempt at guest blogging, so please be kind. I feel like I’m hosting a party at someone else’s house, so please, keep the food and beverages in the kitchen.

My name is RC and I am a work-outside-the-home mom. (Gosh that sounded kind-of like a confession…)

My home, where I will allow all the adults to eat and drink in the living room, is my blog at Hill Smith Family Update. It is totally a mommy blog, with some small bits of me thrown into it (that sounds a bit disgusting, doesn’t it…). And I totally refuse to apologize that it is another mommy blog.

I brag about, and share pictures and videos of my toddler, Little Dude.

And if you want to get a laugh, check out his laughter here (I tried to bring the video over, but it didn’t work - so sorry!).

I try not to complain about the Hubby, too much, even when I’m questioning how I can possibly be married to him. I praise the cuteness that is my cat, who I refer to as Supercat, in the blogging world.

Honestly, it is pretty tame. In other words, my family and in-laws know the blog exists and they read it. Not to mention my coworkers…

However, if you catch me in one of my non-family moods, I’m usually going off about crappy customer service or getting excited over one of my electronic gadgets.

I’m a bit of a tech-geek, but I’ll be honest and tell you that I’ve killed off my laptop computer, my PDA, and my work cell phone since January. And dare I mention the need for a new camera - mine was awful, the virus that attacked the Hubby’s computer, or the fact that our house was recently the victim of a nearby lightning strike. I’ve blown my five-year electronic gadget budget in the period of five months.

Occasionally I’ll share fun facts about my life, write corny poems, hang my worries and depression out for the world to see, do a little photo journalism on the floods in my area, or mention how I’m also a firefighter (second career).

This last part of my life leads me to a recent post I wrote. And let’s just pretend it is a hypothetical situation, okay? Thanks!

p.s. Feel free to come over and visit at any time! I’m usually a family-friendly visit, if you have kids coming with you.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Let’s pretend you live the midwest. For this scenario, you live in a trailer park near a river.

Just for fun, let’s pretend that this area of the midwest has been hit by a lot of rain. So much rain, in fact, that the river is way above flood stage, and that little trailer park you live in is now, for the most part, surrounded by water - including the road in and out of the trailer park, which has more than a foot of water covering it.

Because of the flood, you’ve been advised that you might want to evacuate your home, but as you’ve seen many floods and figure it won’t be that bad, you decide to stay - you just park your car on dry land, and hike through the water to get to it whenever you want to go out, or you keep your car near you and figure you shouldn’t have an issue driving through the water to get out.

Now picture this area being threatened by tornadoes, and no way for the residents of this trailer park to safely get to shelter. On top of the tornadoes, more rain is pouring down, too, causing the flood to increase, bringing with it currents from the swollen river.

Enter the local fire department. Picture them bringing out two of their heavy-duty trucks to get through the water to the residents, stuck in an almost island-like trailer park. Men and women who would like to be home, and possibly in their own basements, but at least with their families, especially with Little Dude their toddler, perhaps, are here to help those residents stuck with no way out or no rides. They are willing to take them to local government buildings for shelter.

Rescue etiquette: Please go with the nice firefighters. They aren’t out to evacuate anyone for no reason, and yes, they know this is your home. These firefighters just want everyone to be safe and sound, and are risking their own lives to help you. Thank you.

Edited to add: And please hurry a bit… The nice firefighters don’t like to be sitting ducks for possible tornadoes entering the area. Little Dude Their families might miss one of them.

Last edit, I promise: In the end, the hypothetical firefighters all made it home okay, and that trailer court is still heavily surrounded by water. Several of the hypothetical residents have chosen to wait it out in there little island.

This was originally published on Thursday, June 12, 2008, at Hill Smith Family Update. Thanks for allowing me to visit…

**carefully slinking back to my blog**

(And to RC - thank you! - loves ya - Dawn)

1. Southwest airlines. Used to love ‘em now they are crackerfied.

2. Inconsistent verification. Took birth certificate with us to Houston - no one wanted to see it. So we didn’t bring it this time. Got lectured that we need to have it. Too bad, it’s 70 miles away from us.

3. TSA. Apparently I can be stripped of all metal and the concern is my kid’s faux crocs. Must pull off the foam shoes and send them through scanner as well.

4. Fellow passengers. Like the two teens across from me. kid in an orange and white hat - positioned sideways, white tshirt wih gold and silver writing on it, camo shorts, flip flops, apparently intellect of mouth breather and hasn’t received the memo that only Eminem can get away with that outfit. Moving on to his travel companion in a bright yellow cleave showing, undetermined shorts/skirt (hiding under shirt/dress), blinging faux rhinestone heart jewelry and bracelet and rings. Huge earrings, and a hot pink and black hat proclaiming “faith” (it is Sunday after all.)

5. Mother behind me stating to her kids, “I almost pissed my pants.” Nice.

6. 50 pound weight limit on luggage. If two people travelling together can fit everything in one suitcase for 54 and a half pounds, why charge them? We could have packed two bags at 50 pounds and had more weight and more stuff for them to keep track of, but nooooo. So I now have random shoes and toiletries in my carry on to get us under the weight limit.

The one thing I love. Wireless and the ability to bitch and blog and talk to VDog.

(clickin’ the logo may take you to more haikus)

Remember these BEWBS?

That brought me this cool tshirt

It’s off to VDog!

Originally posted June 25, 2007. 

Here we go. We spent three days travelling to the land of vices. Two days looking for a house. Tonight we bid on an awesome house too expensive but we’ll figure it out. Tomorrow Scout starts at the office so we are now beginning the new normal. Alex still wakes up if not held/kept close while he sleeps. We keep trying to help this change, we just haven’t been able to yet - and the last week of course has a pantload of reasons why.

Anyway. Last night we went to Culvers and my custard came with a straw and Scout’s came with a spoon. Now this is some seriously thick stuff. I said “If I can suck this custard through a straw then you are a seriously lucky man”.

So tonight Scout seemed stressed and I asked him if was okay. He asked me to define okay. I said “Is there something I should be doing besides this (putting food away in the freezer) to help you?”

As soon as I asked… I just knew….

“Well how’s your peanut butter custard through a straw coming along?”

to which I responded with how pervy it would be to do that while trading off on who was in charge of holding the baby.