Has it been THAT long?
2005-02-03, 7:51 p.m.

Well, here I be, tippy-typing away on the NIFTY BRAND NEW COMPUTER. Oh yeah, it�s sweet. Hubby had to spring for the completely unnecessary and completely cool surround sound system with a subwoofer the size of a Mini Cooper. Good thing we have a large bedroom. And why, yes, it is in the master bedroom. Not giving this new toy to the Huns.

Thanks to Funnypoops, I have had The Dresden Dolls running through my head for 3 days straight. I think the only way to purge is to buy a cd and listen to it straight through 3 or 4 times. Ever get a song stuck like that? Mental hiccups. I hate that.

Rain, schmain, won�t go away, the entire week�s been bleak and gray. Consistent clouds usher in accompanying moods for me, and I am snippety, like wrongly-timed PMS. Yesterday I polished off our storehouse of chocolate pudding. I bought the kids those little snack cups. Let�s see, one cup is a serving for my son. I weigh 3 times more than Son. (For the record, Son is very, very skinny. Work with me, people, work with me.) Therefore, an appropriate portion for me would be 3 of those little pudding cups, right? Right?

Besides unpacking, Hubby and I have been busy doing homework. We are taking the D@ve R@msey Financial Pe@ce course through church on Wednesday nights. Each week brings a new task, and the last assignment was to make *cough* a budget *choke*. A real, honest-to-God working budget. Budgeting for me up til now has been simple: How can I be overdrawn? I still have checks left. So, you can see why we signed up for the course. Hubby and I had a nice evening poring over categories and assigning amounts. We agreed on everything, until we reached the �clothing� category. Bear in mind that the closest Hubby gets to shopping, is once a year he swoops into W@l Mart to buy himself a $20 pair of tennis shoes. Therefore, given his vast assumption-of-knowledge base, he assigned just over $200 a month in clothing allowance for our family. DAYUM! I�m going to fly to New York from now on to buy myself some hot housewife haute couture.

We need to order new checks. I found Where The Wild Things Are ones! Woohoo! So now I can pay bills while I make mischief of one kind, or another, and the creditors can show their terrible claws and gnash their terrible teeth and roll their terrible eyes and roar their terrible roars and I will say ENOUGH! The check is in the mail!

I also found Wives With Knives ones by Shag, but Hubby won�t let me order those.

Yesterday I decided to put off showering and dressing until late morning, so I could busy myself with some housecleaning and unpacking. Care to guess how my morning went? Because I was at my greasy best, it sent out signals to the new neighbors to pop over to meet me, insuring I will not be making any close personal friends in these parts.

I am pissy this afternoon also because of school. Son informed me today that he has been permanently banned from art class because of his hyperactive monkeyshines. Granted, he can be an annoying little turkey, but there are definite ways to modify his behavior. Second, if the art teacher wishes to experience misbehavior, she should have had MY art teaching job. I had students who were jailed for selling drugs at school. Yet she cannot handle a 10 year old boy giggling loudly? Not to mention the fact that we have not been notified of any misdeeds. By the time Son told me of all this, the teachers had all left for the day. I sent a nicely restrained email to the art teacher asking to be apprised of the situation. If it�s true that he�s been kicked out, there�s gonna be a brouhaha a brewin�. I�ll make sure he behaves, but he WILL, I repeat, WILL be in art class next week, come hell or high water. If she kicked him out, then hell�s on her way over. And hell ain�t happy.

Daughter is doing well at her budding babysitting career. Her first charge (aDORable 4 year old boy) already has a pet nickname for her. His mother called to let me know she had given our info to another mom on our street, with immense words of praise for my little entrepreneur. Daughter is thrilled at this new warm fuzzy. She�s been feeling down on herself and really needed the ego boost today.

Earlier this week, Daughter was bullied by two little twits at school (pushing, threatening, name-calling, more threatening). Apparently they have picked on other people in the past, and Daughter was their latest target of choice. They picked the wrong pickee. Daughter extracts vengeance loudly. The school cracked down on the two offenders, who have been quite nice to Daughter since, but they cannot be near each other. The two bullies sit daily at Daughter�s lunch table with their other mutual friends, and Daughter has had to be the one to move. She gets to the table later because of the order in which they are dismissed for lunch, so every day the two bullies are there first. Daughter has been eating in the lunch room alone. She was tired of watching these kids push others around, so when they came after her, she struck back, and now she�s the one paying for it.

I know what you�re thinking, and you�re right. She sure has *great* friends. The right choice is often not the easiest one, and she will make new and better friends. REAL ones.

I found my little package of glow-in-the-dark star stickers for our bedroom ceiling. This package is the size of your average file folder and about as thick, but this is no ordinary pack of stickers. No, verily, the package claims, this is COLOSSAL STARRY NIGHT stickers. It is a COLOSSAL SUPER GLOW kit. Not Mega, not Extreme, we have reached another adjective apex. I�ve been waiting for several years for the Super Bowl to become the Extreme Bowl, but now we�ll just skip that and head for the Colossal Bowl (which we won�t be watching anyway, as we have colossally more important things to do).

Which brings me to a minor pet peeve...all the eB@y auctions for crap that has �My ____ Freaked When ______� (insert diet pill, Viagara ripoff, etc.). Somewhere out there, some poor wife/girlfriend/significant other does nothing but freak all day and really ought to be committed by now. Give the poor freaker, and us, a much-needed break.

Climbing back into my cardboard fortress now...

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