Cat hair

Our refridgerator is on it's way out. It is 8 years old and has served us well, but I'm ready for a younger, hipper icebox. About two days ago, my Diet Coke just did not seem right. The ideal temperature for a Coca Cola product is 38 degrees. I know this for a fact because I went to the World of Coke. While Dave2 was bludgeoning most of the staff with his free Coke in a bottle because they did not have Coke with Lime, I was educating myself on the proper temperature at which to enjoy a Coke product. I digress. My Diet Coke has been noticeably warmer than 38 degrees. I shrugged it off - perhaps it wasn't in the fridge long enough to get proper. Then, the milk went bad. It didn't get gross, but I'm a compulsive milk smeller and the proper temperature for my milk is less than 38 degrees. I will only drink ICE COLD milk and I'm constantly checking it for freshness. I REFUSE to buy milk unless it is the very last item in the cart and that we are going straight home and it is the first item out of the car and into the icebox. Whew. Our milk was not right. HAPPY DANCE, I'm thinking I'm getting a new fridge - FINALLY!

Kevin totally burst my bubble. He made me call a repairman to check it out first. Why buy a new one if this one just needs an adjustment.....but, but, but. Sigh.

I decided to clean the fridge top to bottom, before having someone look at it. I'm weird like that. I could never have a housekeeper as I would clean before they came over. I cleaned the inside, outside and vacuumed the little vent that runs along the bottom of the front. The cat likes to sleep RIGHT IN FRONT of the fridge next to the warm air that comes from that vent. The vent therefore, needs to be vacuumed off pretty often as it gets cat hair on it. Ok repairman, I'm ready.

The guy looks it all over, feels around, asks some questions. He then lays down in front of the fridge (like my cat, except with buttcrack) and pops the vent cover off. HOLY SHIT! I never actually looked behind the vent. The entire bottom portion of my refridgerator was gray. That is, CAT HAIR GRAY. It was embarassingly cat hair gray. Every inch of every coil was completely covered in cat hair. OH HOW GROSS. "Uhhhhm, Ma'am, I think I found your problem....."

See, when refridgerator coils get suffocated by cat hair they cause over heating which causes your fridge to lose it's cool, so to speak. So, diagnosis is to please vacuum out all the cat hair and that will be $80 thankyouverymuch.

My Diet Coke is now at 38 degrees and I'm happy, but I'd be happier if no one had ever seen the horror of what was under my fridge - and if I had a brand new stainless steel Sub Zero. But the main focus now is to get a body guard for the cat. Kevin no longer refers to her as "Ashley" - he walks around screaming "Get your ass out of here 79.95!!".

Coinage

We are leaving for Chicago soon! YEA!! I decided to bring the kids along due to an incredible airfare deal that I found on Delta. The girls are thrilled, but since they didn't have much notice that we were going on a trip they were unable to 'save up' some spending cash. The woes of going to American Girl with no money..... SO being my smart and wonderful self I told my girls that they could collect change around the house and use it for their spending money on the trip. I am now wishing I could eat those words. My lovely girls have managed to scrounge up quite a little kitty. We spent last night rolling nickles, dimes and quarters that they have found in closets, jars, bags, purses, drawers, cushions, desks, etc. We then took the pennies (too numerous to count) to the Coinstar machine. Apparently, not counting the pennies was a good choice......

It took about 10 minutes to count all the pennies and the machine kept choking up we had so many. I took this photo about half way through the bucket. We actually ended up having over 6,500 pennies. Of course, Coinstart kept 8.9 per dollar, so we sacrificed a few dollars, but in the end we would have been counting pennies for about a year if not.

So $60 from pennies alone and then the total of all the silver coins was $216 and change!! I think I'm going to need to take out a loan from my kids! I suppose that next time I'll think before I speak. Of course, not as if $276 will take you far at American Girl....

Misbehavior

I took my kids to the free movies today. During the summer all the movie theaters pick a day or two a week and show a free family film at 10am. Today was The Bee Movie for us. I would really prefer to just pay for tickets and go at any other time because of the mass crowds that this freebie deal draws, but the kids think it is a blast and it gets us out of the house. So we went.

The movie begins at 10 am, but they open the doors much earlier and allow people to come in. If you don't get there by about 9:20 you can pretty much be assured that you will be sitting in the front of the theater. The biggest part of the crowding is the daycare centers that bring bus loads of kids to these movies. It is pathetic, they load 40 kids between the ages of about 5-11 and they only bring 2 or 3 adults. The kids are typically unsupervised and many of them are just plain misbehaving. Of course, we sat behind a group of such boys today. The one little boy right in front of me was literally upside down in his seat - all I could see were feet. They were loud and jumping around, tossing popcorn and just plain annoying. I do expect at a free kid movie that the theater will not be completely quiet and that kids are kids, but these kids were out of hand and no one even noticed. I watched and then finally alerted one of the adult daycare workers that they should notice what was going on.

I felt a little bad after I told on the kids, not because they didn't deserve to be reprimanded, but because apparently I unleashed a monster on them. I could not believe how this worked treated these kids!! It was an older male chaperone and he grabbed little mr. upside down and jerked him around to sit upright. He then proceeded to tell these little guys that "this is exactly why I did not want to bring you boys here, you are trouble and you should have stayed at the center!!" and in my opinion he was yelling at these kids. I honestly believe that this man's behavior was worse than these kids. He was clearly irritated with the whole chaos of this event and was yelling at kids left and right. He was not a positive person in the least and he continually reminded many of the kids how bad they really were. It was amazing that someone who clearly has had no early childhood training is allowed to take charge of a daycare group. This man had not the patience or the knowledge on how to handle this crowd. It makes me extremely thankful that I have had the priviledge of being with both of my children from birth and have never had to put them in daycare. This just makes my heart ache to know that people emotionally mistreat children. I know that it must be very hard to find good childcare and just when you think things are going well you have no idea what your kids are being subjected to! It is scary!

I plan to call this center tomorrow and speak with someone about what I witnessed and hopefully this man can remember that these are kids and the way he dealt with it did much more harm than good! People never cease to amaze me.

Still the one

Our anniversary has come and gone, but we had a great time! Like I said before, I bid on a Buckhead hotel at Priceline and got accepted at $89. We stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead - it was nice! It was beautiful and comfortable and normally would have been uber expensive. We got an awesome deal and that just made the anniversary that much happier. Not to mention that it is directly across the street from one of our all time favorite restaurants - MAGGIANO's. This place is the best for Italian and we were able to enjoy cocktails at the hotel and just walk across the street to dinner. We decided to sleep in, which usually means about 8am for us. Neither of us opened an eye until 9:55 a.m. - that is like an all time record. We totally missed breakfast at the hotel, but oh well. It was fun. I'm sure that won't happen again in quite a while.

It is hard to believe that we have been together for 15 years. Sometimes is seems like a lifetime and sometimes it seems like we were just married. Time is flying by and I'm lucky to have someone so wonderful to pass it with. I can't imagine finding a more perfect mate and I wish that everyone had such a blessing. So many of our friends are hurting, divorcing or separated and it seems that we are left alone in this happiness. Where does it all go so wrong that it ends? It is so hard to relate and sympathize with the couples we know so well that are splitting up and want us to take sides. When we all started out we never thought that it would happen to any of us and yet it is happening all around us. People can be so cruel and hurtful to one another, someone that you have promised your life to, created life with and shared so much together - it is hard to understand why some choose to throw it all away. Our marriage is good, but it can be hard. We have made a choice that no matter what, we will put it first, we will work on it and we will always fight to keep it safe. We've made it 15 years and I'm looking forward to at least 60 more! I love you, Kevin!

Accepted

Thursday is our anniversary - 15 years!! Wow, I can't believe it. Last year we decided we were going to Greece to celebrate 15. For some reason, numbers that end in 5 seem to be significant anniversaries. Well, guess what. We aren't going. I'm not upset about it either, the timing would not have been right for what we have going on right now anyway. It is so hard to plan such a big trip so far in advance. I've said before that I'm a planner YES, but a stickler, NO. I'm a little weird in that I like to have flexibility. This makes it very hard to plan a vacation so far out. At any rate, we are saving about a bazillion dollars by not taking this trip. Who would have guessed last summer that we would be in THIS economic pit! It looked grim then, but I tend to try to see the sunnier side. How much farther down can we go? We are still celebrating though.

I've checked our favorite Embassy Suites - this is our anniversary tradition and it has never cost more than $120 for a room. Well, we aren't in Kansas anymore and the area is booming. We now have a new Amphitheater and we are blessed with RUSH in concert this week. I love them, appreciate their talents and have given them a lot of my money in the past. But this week they are really F-ing up my anniversary!! My usual hotel room is now inflated to $229!!! This is not even in Atlanta, we are in a northern burb!! Downtown, I see it. Here, uhmmm, NO! This new addition to our area is going to drive up prices at all area hotels anytime there is a concert and that just SUCKS!!

I hopped onto Priceline for the first time and I made a bid on a hotel in the Atlanta area. After trying countless ways to get a room for under $150 I was ready to give up. I bid a ridiculous $89 for a 4 star hotel in Buckhead. Ha, it will never happen. The average price I was seeing on the hotel sites was ranging from $250 to $400 for this particular night. OUCH! Much to my surprise, my bid was ACCEPTED! We now have some pretty fancy anniversary plans. We are staying at a $389/night hotel for $89. Go figure. Now, we don't get the free booze or breakfast like at the Embassy Suites, but hey, I've got some extra coinage now, we can hit the bar! I'm really stoked about it. Aside from not getting to choose your own brand and who knows what bedsize we will get, the Priceline deal has seemingly worked very well for us. I suppose that some of my husbands CHEAPNESS is wearing off on me. Even if I had endless supplies of cash, I can't see paying $389 to sleep. The shocking part is that the $389 price is for a standard room, the prices only go UP from there for this hotel. CRAZY!!

I want to use Priceline for our trip to Chicago, but since I'm taking the kids along I feel like I need more control over what we get. I'll be ripped a new one by the Embassy Suites in downtown Chicago so this is a breath of fresh air for now. If you have a Hilton coupon, please think of me!!!

TRON

If you know Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory you know about his funky t-shirts. He is the geek of all geeks and while the show is incredibly stupid it is easy entertainment - for all us nerds. There's no merit to any acting or plots, it is just funny.

My husband mentioned how cool the TRON t-shirt was on one episode and since I aim to please, I found him one.

This was NO easy task! I actually had to order the thing from overseas and I paid out the nose, but I certainly got a great thank you for it.

Geeks UNITE!

Ouch

Just went to Target to pick up new PJ's for one kid to take to AWAY CAMP!!! Only 6 days left until we ship her off to camp. My ears need a rest and I'm sure her eyes could stand a break from rolling up into her head as she thinks I am "SO LAME"! I got the little one a Popcorn Combo, which is by far the BEST DEAL ON EARTH. For one dollar you get a paperbag stuffed with buttery popcorn and a good sized drink with free refills. Heck, you can even fill that little cup with ICEE if you wish. This little deal is like kiddie crack and let me tell you that these kids will go into convulsions and start foaming at the mouth if you mention TARGET. It's a Pavlov's dog reaction, they must get their fix. Anyhoo, today the popcorn was so salty it was inedible. Well, inedible by my child because sometimes she is much smarter than me. I continued to eat it because it is addictive. I could actually feel myself shriveling up as the salt soaked up every ounce of liquid in my being while my kid blissfully points out all the Wii games we need. Indeed.

And speaking of Wii, we are the proud owners of Wii Fit, thanks to hubby's birthday. I spent the better part of Sunday staring at his butt while he attempted to not fall off of the thing.

It is actually a great thing they have done with Wii Fit. My dad came over and he really liked it, he is UBER fit and an exercise maniac. He LOVED that it will calculate your BMI and track your weight gain and loss. I believe we have found the perfect Father's Day gift for him. My kids even liked it, it is like Brain Age for your body. You are supposed to check in daily and do a workout and it will track everything for you. It will tell you what "age" your body fitness resembles. Let's just say that according to the Wii I should currently be a resident at Shady Pines Retirement Village. And even though it says "OUCH" when I stand on it, I like the little prick.