House of Estrogen

Refrigerator Public Service Announcement

This is an important public service announcement to you, my faithful blog readers:

DO NOT LAY A REFRIGERATOR ON ITS SIDE OR BACK TO MOVE IT. Just don't.

If you MUST move a refrigerator horizontally for some reason, do lots of googling first to find out which side you can safely lay it on according to which direction the pipes flow and find out how many hours you have to leave it sitting upright unplugged for the oil to flow back down into the compressor from the cooling lines. Neglecting to do the appropriate pre-move googling may result in your refrigerator compressor being completely destroyed, and the appliance repair person telling you "you killed it. There is nothing you can do."  He will tell you this in a tone that makes you realize that heartless appliance repair people give out this news countless times on Mondays after refrigerators have been moved lying down over the weekends. I bet they show up to work Monday mornings and place wagers on how many broken refrigerator calls they get that day.

So, now you know. If you ever need to move your refrigerator for some reason, like, say... getting your hardwood floors refinished, you now have the classified information about how simple it is to destroy the most expensive appliance in your home. I don't understand why refrigerators don't have a warning label on them warning the unsuspecting public about this vulnerability, but I guess it is one way to sell more refrigerators.

On a completely unrelated note, we just bought a new fridge. Isn't it pretty and shiny? We just wanted one. That's all. Really.

Show Me the Money!

When other things in my life seem to be going to hell in a handbasket lately, at least my finances are improving. Over the weekend, I did some housecleaning and managed to find $102 in cash and a $70 Crate and Barrel gift certificate from 1998.  Do you think Crate and Barrel can even accept a low tech paper gift certificate any more? I'm pretty certain I will fluster the cashier when I attempt to use it.  Then, today, I logged on to our state treasury department website to search for unclaimed money.  I had two listed - one for "less than $50" and one for "more than $50", so I have now claimed those and should have a check in the mail soon.  I must have good financial karma right now to offset the crappy everything else karma. Maybe I need to go buy a lottery ticket and ask for a raise!

Weekend Odds, Ends, and Observations

1. Yesterday, I was behind a car with not one, but two Piggly Wiggly bumper stickers on the bumper. Who puts a grocery store sticker on their car? Why does a grocery store even have bumper stickers? Why would a grocery store have more than one design for bumper stickers? Who would buy one? Who would buy two? Does Harris-Teeter, Albertson's, Lowe's, or Publix have bumper stickers? These are the questions that now haunt me.
   
2. This evening, we had dinner at a cafeteria. Addison was telling us how great her zucchini muffin was. She said, "I pointed to the muffin, and then the lady told me it was zucchini. I thought "ick", but I had already pointed to it, so I thought, 'well, I'll just roll with it.'"  Love that... just rolling with the zucchini.
3. I am not a fan of sleep-overs. I relearn this at least once a month.
4. I ordered our Christmas cards, and I was sent a proof. My pictures looked fine. My text looked fine. The card itself has stripes though, and it was randomly missing one stripe in the middle of the card. How does this happen? Aren't the stripes part of the card template? I contacted customer service, and they agreed the stripe was mysteriously missing from the proof. They are now sending me a new proof. I'm so puzzled though. How does a background stripe go missing?
5. Elise tried out for and made "team show" for jump rope. This is exciting news for her, but we now have jump rope a minimum of four days per week instead of three. I wonder if I just leave her at the jump rope gym with a sleeping bag and some food if her school bus could start picking her up and dropping her off there instead.
6. We ran into some neighbors at the mall this afternoon. They said, "We saw all kinds of craziness at your house this morning! One of your children was outside in her underwear, two of them in their pajamas. The car alarm was going off, and they were all running around, slamming the car doors. It was quite comical."  Nice. This is how we impress the neighbors. J.C. walked up a minute later, and I said, "Did you know our child was running around outside in her underwear this morning?"  He said, "Yeah, I got in my car to leave for a bike ride, and I saw her in underwear and a bikini top in 40 degree weather. I thought, 'well... nothing I can do about that,' so I just drove off."  Clearly, we have completely given up on sane parenting.

Adventures in Hair Cuts

J.C. and I both decided to try new hair stylists this week. At first I thought JC was taking a bit of a risk in his choice of stylist. After all, kindergarten is no cosmetology school, and she is still developing her scissor skills. In hindsight though, I realize his choice was brilliant. If he ended up with a bad haircut, he could blame it on the six year old and easily go pay for a new trim.

Plus, it looked like they were having a lot of fun.

I, on the other hand, made the mistake of choosing a stylist through Groupon (lesson learned). I sat through my entire hair cut sending JC texts like, "worried abt this hair cut", "I've NEVER in 43 yrs had someone cut my hair dry!", and "My hair is so jacked up. I'm going to be here all day." You know when you are sitting in the salon wishing that your six year old was the one cutting your hair that you are in trouble. I came out of there with an angled bob on one side, a straight bob on the other, and a big lopsided chunk cut out of the back. The "blonde highlights" I requested took a couple days to show up, and they are not even remotely blonde. Two days later, I found myself paying for a second haircut to correct the first one. First cut (top) and second cut (bottom) shots are below.

After paying for one groupon haircut, one full priced haircut, and a 50% tip to the stylist who came to my rescue, it isn't the money or the weird orange-bronze highlights that get to me. I can deal with all that. There is a much bigger problem at hand. This whole hair debacle made me miss the premiere of 24: Live Another Day. That inept hair stylist threw me off my game so much that I missed my night of Jack Bauer. Now THAT, my friends, is the true tragedy here.

What Does the Mouse Say?

I can see it all clearly... the mouse standing on his hind legs in our kitchen, paws in the air with his middle fingers pointed to the sky, squeaking, "Suckahs!!!  We came. We saw. We feasted on your buffet. We left our calling cards."

They are screwing with us, and they are winning.

This is war.

Three Thoughts for the Day

1. In the past week, my five year old has cut her own hair and put blue streaks in her hair. We have a future hairstylist, perhaps?

2. Remember the girl in the movie Sleepless in Seattle who spoke in acronyms? That's my nine year old right now. "SYL, Mom! BTW, I'm going to JH. I'll BRB."  It makes for challenging communication at times.

3. Candy corn Oreos are in da' house!  Every Target near me had sold out, but a friend at work snagged three bags for me at a Target near her. Score!

Anybody Want to Play Freud?

This was my dream last night... anybody want to take a stab at psychoanalyzing it?

It was 6 a.m., and my manager came into my room to wake me up. She said, "You need to go cut the grass."  I said, "It is 6 a.m.! It is too early to cut the grass."  She looked at me like she didn't understand me at all. I turned to J.C. and said, "6:00 is too early to cut the grass, right?"  He said, "Yeah. Definitely."  My manager still looked completely puzzled as to why I was saying this. I then said, "Oh... I know why you don't get it. You're a happy morning person, so you've never been woken up by a neighbor mowing their grass. You don't realize how rude that is!"  This seemed to make sense to her, so she just told me to cut the grass as soon as I could.  I got up and looked out the window. I had a huge sloping yard with tiered gardens, fountains, vegetable gardens, etc.  There was an amphitheater off behind the yard, and people were filing into the amphitheater for some sort of  meeting. I had no idea what they were doing, but I surmised that it might be a homeowners association meeting.  I started to get dressed but worried about people being able to see me through the windows. I asked J.C. to close the blinds for me, but he only closed two of the three. When I asked him to close the third, he said, "Oh they won't see you through that one."  I was looking for something to wear through racks of clothing in the bedroom. I couldn't find what I wanted to wear, so I climbed up into a little attic-like loft above our bedroom. There was a rack full of baby life vests. I said, "Whoever lived here before us must have really been into baby water safety."  I finished getting dressed and looked out the window again. Someone on a riding mower was cutting the grass. I was thrilled to get out of that job. Then, for some reason, I didn't have a car to get to work, so I decided to walk.  The house was probably 10 miles from work. I decided as a short-cut, I would cut through a house. The house was unlocked, so I walked right in. It turned out they were having a 31 party, so I just pretended to be a party guest. Then it just so happened that the house belonged to somebody I knew in high school. She said, "Oh Ann! You should have rsvp'd so that I would know you were coming."  I said, "Well, you didn't invite me. I was just cutting through your house on my way to work."  She brought me into the living room where there were a bunch of other people from high school. I asked one of them to drive me to work.

That's about when I woke up. My first thought was, "Oh no! When we moved, I never told the kids who cut our grass that we moved. I'll have to tell the new owners to pay them!"  Then I looked around and realized that I had not, in fact, moved. It was all just a dream... a very strange dream at that.

Anybody care to make heads or tails out of it?   Feel free to leave a comment with your analysis.

Want to Trade Lives?

Because mine has lice, a UTI, and no upstairs air conditioning right now. Awesome.

I've Been Tagged

My friend Jodi tagged me to do this post. Her original post appeared smack dab in the middle of Girl Scout cookie season, so she made the stipulation that I could complete this once I was done with cookies. I'm finally catching up on life, so it is time to catch up on this tag!

The Rules

1. Post these rules
2. You must post 11 random things about yourself
3. Answer the questions set for you in the post you were tagged in
4. Create 11 new questions for your tagees to answer
5. Tag them on Twitter, Facebook or your blog

11 Random Facts About Me

1. Three of my first cousins have twins. My dad is a twin.
2. I was on a figure skating precision team in middle school.
3. Angie Harmon (of "Law and Order" fame) and John Hinkley Jr. (of attempting to assassinate President Reagan fame) both attended my high school. I think I was a senior when Angie Harmon won Seventeen magazine's cover girl contest as a sophomore.
4. I have only been snow skiing once, and it was warm enough that we wore shorts.
5. I am allergic to cats, dogs, horses, and rats.
6. I skated in a charity ice show in high school that featured Scott Hamilton. He is even shorter than he looks on TV.
7. I love genealogy.
8. When my dad first taught me to drive, he took me out to a cemetery to practice driving, and I hit a car there.
9. I wore sneakers with my wedding dress.
10. I played roller hockey as an adult (pre-kids) on a team named Sasquatch.
11. I love denim. I wear denim jeans, capris, or shorts pretty much every day.

11 Questions I was Asked to Answer

1. What is your favourite way to waste time without getting caught!!? I’m not totally sure I understand this question, but I waste time playing Bejeweled Blitz on my iPod and watching trash TV (Kardashians, Housewives, etc.)
2. What was the first really *big* concert you went to? Rick Springfield
3. Biggest regret in life? I'm not sure if "regret" is the right word, but I would have liked to have had a son... not much I can do about that though. The baby train has passed.
4. And the inverse... proudest moment? Becoming a mama
5. If you could ask President Obama one question - what would it be? I really have no clue… I’ll keep thinking. What would you ask?
6. Sweets or Salt? Sweets, for sure.
7. First or oldest childhood friend... are you still in contact with him or her? Mel, best friend since about 4th grade – and yes. We hope to do a family vacation together this fall.
8. What do people love best about you? I don’t know. Anyone want to tell me?
9. What is the coolest or most profound thing that has happened to you in the last 4 months? These questions are too hard! I suppose the best thing that has happened in the past four months was finding out that Elise has reflux and seeing her symptoms improve with treatment.
10. What do you need more of right now? Organizational skills and time
11. What's a hobby you've always wanted to try? In theory, I would love to be able to sew, but I don’t actually want to take the time, energy, and space in my house to learn how.    

11 Questions for You to Answer

1. What is your favorite movie?
2. If you could go back and give your 16 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
3. Why do you blog?
4. What did you want to be when you grew up? Are you doing that?
5. M&M's - plain or peanut?
6. What was your first car?
7. What is your favorite Halloween costume you've ever worn?
8. What are your favorite blogs to read?
9. If you were to have a boy and a girl tomorrow, what would you name them?
10. What was your favorite class in college?
11. What celebrity do you think it would be fun to be friends with?

Now, I'm tagging:

Queenie at The Planet Pink

Claire at Brighten The Corner

Jen at ::Meditatio::

Su at Beach Front Sea Side

Kerry at KerryAndGabe.com

Audrey at AudreyPodrey

Thanks, Jodi! That was fun.   

My Modeling Career

My friend Claire over at Brighten the Corner was checking out the Title 9 catalog recently and decided to answer all the questions they ask their models. It sounded like fun, and this is probably as close as I will ever come to a career in modeling... might as well pursue it!

Your Theme Song: Stronger by Kanye West

Most Disturbing Food: peanut butter and molasses mixed together

Secret Superpower: detecting changes in barometric pressure with my ankles

Secret Weakness: cute children's clothing

The first thing you do in the morning: open my eyes to see Addie staring at me, poking me in the face.

You drive: a GMC Acadia

You want to drive: a fully loaded Cadillac Escalade

What you wear on your sleeve: dislike, annoyance, and frustration.

I am: Pocahontas' 10th great grandchild

Friends call me: just Ann

Next up: time to myself and my family with fewer obligations

Your tombstone: She raised 3 fabulous, strong, independent women

Traveled to: England, Mexico, Canada, half of the 50 states

Want to travel: any place tropical, Dubai, Machu Picchu, Water Island

Earthly knowledge: no matter how bad things seem, they could be worse

Heavenly knowledge: Memories fade, both the good and the bad

Work: software development

Technique: procrastination and chaos

Favorite find: Kindle

Essential tool: email

Gets to: work at an amazing company

Racks up: dirty laundry

Heroic moment: surviving emergency chest surgery and a pulmonary embolism.