Prepare to die!

I’ve been debating for almost 2 months as to whether I should write about the huge debacle of my grandma’s 80th birthday party. I’ve decided to share small moments from the party.

My mom, and cousin decided to have a surprise party for my grandma to celebrate her being around for 80 years. They rented out a room at  Bucca Di Beppo. There were probably 30-40 people there to celebrate. Once my grandma got there and walked in the room everyone started shouting “happy birthday”. Now you know you’re in for a good time when the first words out of the guest of honor’s mouth are “prepare to die!”. She actually said that to my cousin! Later into the meal she refused to blow out the candles on her cake. The people around her had to blow the candles out. For a present from everyone my mom put together a really nice scrapbook full of everyone’s favorite memories of my grandma throughout the years. On the cover of the book was a picture of my grandma and grandpa from the 60’s looking young and cute. Not 10 minutes after we were home from the party my grandma called my mom and yelled at her saying that she didn’t know who this woman on the front of this book was with my grandpa but it wasn’t her. My mom told her that of course it was her. Who else would it be? My grandma said she didn’t know but it wasn’t her. My mom asked her why she would have picture of my grandpa and some other woman who looked just like my grandma. She didn’t have an answer for that one but she called my mom and dumbass.

Moving on….

The third time Zoe and I went to see High School Musical 3 there was a 50 year old woman sitting next to us (with no kids with her). She was pretty calm for most of the movie but during the last song she apparently couldn’t hold her excitement in any longer. She started playing her water bottle like a trumpet and moving all around like she was on stage playing for someone awesome. It was like she had been hypnotized to act insane when she heard that song. This past week Zoe and I had gotten free tickets to see High School Musical on Ice. Before the show started they had this video message from the director of the movies and then the choreographer came on the screen to teach us some of the dance moves from the last song. After we had learned the dance he told us to stand up and do it all together to the music. Well, just a few rows over from us was a 50 year old woman (with no kids with her) dancing like she was at an audition to be in the movie. She was really going for it like the choreographer was going to see her dancing and say “We need you!” I’m pretty sure this was the same woman that was next to us at the movie. What a strange woman.

A Christmas Memory

I’m trying to get into the holiday spirit so I thought sharing one of my all time favorite Christmas stories might help.

About 10 years ago my mom and I had just moved into a new house. We were excited to have our first Christmas there and we decided to go all out for the holidays. We had never had a real tree but in honor of our first Christmas we decided to head down to Mr. Tree where you can “Chuz & Cut” your own tree. At Mr. Tree they also have pre-cut trees but thought it would be much more fun to cut down our own. So we get this item that is supposed to be some sort of saw but really isn’t sharp enough to cut anything and head out into the field of trees. So there we are laying on the cold snowy ground trying to saw our new tree down. I don’t know how we actually ended up getting the tree cut down but we did.We draged it to the check-out, they wrap it up and we drive home.

When we get home we take it inside and set it up in our new tree stand but we’re having a really hard time getting it to stand up straight.  Our new house had cathedral ceilings so we thought we should get a really tall tree since we had so much room. Now, you know how when you pick out  furniture at a store it’s hard to tell how big it is because it’s in this huge room and when you get it home it looks huge. Well, when we unwrapped this tree we noticed that this tree was about 15 feet wide and about 6 feet tall. It looked kind of silly because it took up so much room width wise and hardly any length wise. But we loved our fat tree and at this point we decide that we can’t put our old stupid looking ornaments on this new “beautiful” tree, we need to go out and buy fancy new ornaments. We went shopping and my mom probably spent about $200 in new glass ornaments.

When we got home we walked into the living room and the tree was laying on the floor. We apparently hadn’t gotten it up straight. So we tried again but it was really hard this time because it wasn’t tied up anymore. We finally got it up again and we started decorating with our new ornaments. Our tree was so pretty when we were done. It really looked like a store display. We were so proud of ourselves.

In the middle of the night we were both awoken by a loud crash and the sound of glass breaking. Of course the tree had fallen over again but this time it had fallen right on top of our coffee table breaking most of our new ornaments.

The next morning we had called some guys from our church to come over and help us get the tree up straight because we obviously needed some sort of intervention. They came over and quickly told us that the reason that it wouldn’t stand up straight was because the trunk was completely crooked. An I mean, really crooked. Half of the trunk went one way and the other half went the other. Our beautiful display tree was now a hot mess complete with broken ornaments and big gray cinder blocks around the tree stand just to get it to stand up. It stayed up for about 3 hours before it crashed back into the coffee table breaking the rest of our new beautiful ornaments.

We finally realised that maybe we should’ve just gotten a pre-cut tree and this tree was never going to stand up for more than a few hours at a time. We decided to get rid of it but of course the nightmare continued. We tried to get it outside but it wouldn’t fit out the door because it was so stinking wide. In order to get it out of the house we had to start sawing off branches. We sawed away for 2 hours before it would fit out the door. In the end it looked like the Charlie Brown tree.

We decided to go to Lowe’s after that and buy a pre-cut tree that had a straight trunk and to just use our old ornaments. It was also the last year we ever had a real tree.

Merry Christmas everyone!

High School Musical 3 > Cougars

I love High School Musical. I love the cheesy, but darn catchy, songs, the fun dancing, the clothes, the predictable story lines, everything. I’ve of course been looking forward to going to see the new movie in the theater. I didn’t want to go see it by myself, so being the awesome mother that I am started to watch clips from the movies on YouTube whenever Zoe was in the room. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist the catchy songs and dancing. I figured she was my best bet at going to see the movie on opening day. I figured anyone that saw us at the movies would never think that it was me that wanted to see it so badly I could scream. They would think it was her. She loved watching the different scenes on the computer. She was even singing the songs around the house. When we saw a commercial for it on TV and she said “Mommy, I have to see that!”, I knew my perfect plan had worked. So yesterday, on opening day, Zoe and I went to see HSM3.

There were 2 groups of people in the movie. Moms that had brought kids and cougars. They showed a preview for a new movie called 17 Again. This movie has Zac Efron in it. Now, I love Zac Efron. He’s probably my favorite part of the HSM movies but these women were crazy. They showed his face and they lost their minds. They started screaming and clapping and giggling. They continued to do this through the whole movie. In the movie that is this great song that the two leads, Zac Efron and Corbin Bleu, are singing in this junk yard. They are all dirty and sweaty and humping the air. Sure it was great but, I thought they were going to pass out.

They were so distracting with their constant purring that I’m pretty sure I need to see the movie again. You know, just to be sure I liked it.

I love fall. We have so much going on in the next few weeks that I’m sure will make for wonderful stories.

In about 2 weeks we have a surprise party for my grandma’s 80th birthday at Bucca di Beppo. I’m sure that will be night full of excitement. Later that week we are having pub night at our church. This also happens to coincide with Rae’s 30th birthday.

Zoe has her last soccer game of the season this Saturday. She made 6 goals last week which brings her season total to 15. I might be biased but I think she’s the best soccer player ever.

We’re getting excited about trick or treating this year. Zoe will be going as Little Red Riding Hood. Her costume is so cute and I will be putting up pictures. (Or Rae will on his blog.) Rae is going to dress as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable. I found him a Cosby sweater at Goodwill last week.I think that it will be quite cool.

This post is really boring. Hopefully I’ll have some more exciting posts soon.

stoves

My grandma bought a new stove. Her old stove worked just fine however, she thought it didn’t work because she tries to cook 8 things at a time at 350 for 30 minutes. When the food isn’t cooked in 30 minutes she freaks out. She doesn’t ever actually look at the recipe to see if it should be cooked at 350 or for how long. I mean, why would you do that? She also doesn’t understand that the more stuff you cram in there the longer it’s going to take to cook.

Anyway, she bought this new stove that looks like it part of the little helpers complete kitchen (see picture at the top of the post). Well, instead of having it delivered they cramed it into their car and called us up to help install it. While Rae and my grandpa were wheeling it inside my grandma was trying to give me her old stove. I asked her why I would want a stove that was exactly the same as mine except that (according to her) it didn’t work? I thought this was a brilliant question that she would have no answer to. Wrong. She told me she thought I would want her old stove because it was clean and she was sure mine wasn’t.

After she realised that I wasn’t going to take her stove she told my grandpa and Rae to put it in the basement because she wanted to use it down there. This doesn’t sound safe to me. It doesn’t matter though because my grandpa didn’t want to put it in the basement. He said it wouldn’t fit. My grandma told him to “may-zhure” it. To which he responded, perhaps my favorite response of all time, “MEASURE YOUR BUTT!!!”.  Ahh, it’s never a dull moment here in Caitlan Ct.

2 posts in one day?!

A few highlights (or lowlights) from the last few weeks and one of my favorite picture ever….

A few weeks ago after church we couldn’t find Zoe. She just kind of disappeared. We checked everywhere we could think of. She was no where to be found. One of our friends started looking around outside and found her on the side of the building. When he asked her what she was doing she said that she was “singing to the moon.” Of course she was. She loves the moon. She loves to sing to the moon even more.

I’ve been sick the last few days. I was taking a nap this afternoon and woke up and looked at the clock. It was 2:30. I was glad because I still had 45 minutes before I had to pick Zoe up from school. Well, apparently I fell back to sleep because the next time I looked at the clock it was 3:45. Zoe of course was scared and though we forgot her and weren’t coming to get her ever. Luckily an older girl she knew was staying after school for some reason and stayed with Zoe and helped her feel better.

Tonight I went to Kroger for a few things. When it was time to pay I ran my debit card and the cashier told me that it said it was declined because there were too many pin number attempts. I told the guy that was fine. I would just go to the ATM inside the store and take some cash out and I’d be right back. Well, I try that and it spits a receipt out at me telling me that there were too many pin number attempts. Then the kicker. It kept my card. I had to call Rae to come to Kroger to bring me his card so we could pay for our food. He in turn got to wake up Zoe and drag her to Kroger to bring me his card. We aren’t sure who had more fun tonight- me being embarrassed, getting my card taken by a machine and then having to stand in the front of Kroger looking like a moron waiting on him.  Or him getting to wake up Zoe, dress her, drag her to Kroger and carry her in asleep. I think I win.

I was cleaning out the old cereal in our pantry tonight and noticed that an old box of Golden Grahams said it had a free Bee Movie spoon inside. I was excited because I really like that movie plus, it was free inside a cereal box. Well, It is the crappiest, cheapest piece of crap I have ever seen. I didn’t expect the spoon to be the best spoon ever but it wasn’t even functional. What a let down.

I bought 2- 5 lb canisters of tropical punch kool-aid on amazon a few months ago. I have used it all up now and they don’t have them in stock anymore. I am constantly checking their site to see if they are in stock yet because I don’t want to have to buy the little regular containers. I suppose I’m going to have to break down and do it.

Don’t you love that picture of the guys at prom. It gets better everytime I look at it. Enjoy.

What happened to the VMA’s?

I had the unfortunate opportunity to watch the Video Music Awards last night on MTV. The VMA’s used to be my favorite awards show. I loved watching the awesome performances. I loved rooting for my favorite videos. I loved voting for the viewers choice award. I loved seeing the seemingly random pairings of celebrities, like Martha Stuart and Busta Rhymes. I loved knowing that were going to be surprises and speculating when those surprises might happen.

Last night had none of those things. Every performance was worse than last. I don’t think I had actually seen more than a handful of the videos actually up for awards. There is no viewers choice award anymore to vote for. The people present with the exact person you think they are going to present with. And there was no not one surprise. We all knew Brittany was going to open the show but not preform. We knew that Kanye was going to close it. It was even completely obvious who was going to win. It was so incredibly obvious that MTV made a deal with Brittany’s people that if she came back to the awards this year so they could have ratings they would give her every award she was up for and not show her hideous moments from last year.Russel Brand was really poor. He wasn’t the worst, *cough* Christian Slater *cough*, but he was pretty bad. He couldn’t shut up about the Jonas Brothers and their purity rings or Bush. (For the record I’m not fond of either, but come on.)

The worst performer of them all had to have been Lil Wayne. I cannot stand Lil Wayne. He grosses me out with his tattoo’s, hair, clothes, pimp attitude and teeth. Usually one of those things alone won’t disgust me, however, all together they make me want to puke. I’m pretty sure that one of his many tattoo’s on his hands says “Skeet”. If you don’t know what skeet is you probably don’t want to. I’m not sure why anyone would want to tattoo that on themselves. Anyway, about half way through his performance I realized that I hadn’t understood one word he’d said so far so I decided to pay more attention to figure out what he was yelling about and why everyone there seemed so excited to hear it. Well, I still didn’t understand. However, I did notice that he was bleeped at least 10 times and that he must think his crotch is something spectacular. I only say the later because he couldn’t keep his hands off of it. He would take his hand off and almost as if there was a strong magnet attached to his crotch, his hand would snap back to the previous position.

Well, the performances used to be good. People used to put thought behind them. They wanted to have the best performance of the night. They actually tried and cared what the public thought. So please enjoy my top 5 performances from VMA’s past.

5-Mc Hammer- U Can’t Touch this. This was my jam. I actually think think was everyone’s jam in 1989 & 1990. I love everything about this performance from the 100 people on stage, to the costumes, to the white people in the audience loving every moment of this song.

4-Brittany Spears- I’m A Slave 4 U. Ah, back when Brittany was publicly sane. I loved this song. My roommate at the time, Deidre and I used to jump on the table in our dorm room and do this dance. I remember watching this with Deidre and us swearing that her top was going to fall down. I still don’t know how it didn’t.

3-Madonna- Vogue. I remember watching this live and thinking how great this was. 18 years later it is still great. Everytime she snaps the fans open I want to squeal.

2-N*SYNC-TIPY, Bye Bye Bye, It’s Gonna Be Me.- Nsync sure knows how to put on a show. The TV screens were brilliant, the dancing was brilliant, the singing was brilliant. I hate that Nsync does not exist anymore. I’m still holding out for a reunion.

1-Bon Jovi-Wanted Dead or Alive. This obviously has to be at number 1. It was so great that MTV decided to do a whole show around the “unplugged” concept. Not to mention I was so in love with Jon Bon Jovi at the time. I had life size poster of him in my room and my goal in life was to go see them in concert.

Rock Band anyone?

I haven’t written in a while. A lot has been going on but none of it is really interesting.

Zoe started Kindergarten last week. She was so scared. When it was time for us to leave her the first day she was trying so hard not to cry. It was extremely pathetic. A part of me wanted to smuggle her out of the room and back home where she wouldn’t be so sad and scared. Of course when I picked her up she was all smiles and loved it and couldn’t wait to go back.

A few weeks ago we bought an XBOX 360 and some games. We got Rock Band and have both been slightly addicted ever since. We’ve been having Rock Band night at our house Tuesday nights and having a great time with our friends. (Of course, we would love to have more friends stop by and play anytime).

One last thought for the night….

The other night I went to Kroger to pick up a few things and on my home I pass Goodyear Tire. Check out the great sign. We all better hurry in.

How clean are your light bulbs?

I think that I’m the worst housekeeper on the planet. I’m supposed to be cleaning because Rae’s dad and step mom are coming this weekend. They are coming up from Atlanta for Zoe’s baptism tomorrow. After that, they are taking Zoe back to Atlanta with them for a week. This is our second kid free week this year. It’s so weird not having a little person always around.

When my grandma has company she starts cleaning at least a week before (usually more like 2 or 3). They wash everything you can think of. Normal things like the counters and tables and stuff. They also do insane things like polish the china in cabinets that you can’t even see just in case someone opens up the cabinets. My favorite thing they do is wash the light bulbs. Did you catch that? They actually unscrew the light bulbs and then clean them with a rag and Bab-o (which is a commit like product). Usually while they are cleaning the bulbs they manage to break about half of them which leads them to complain about how much light bulbs cost and how they just spent $30.00 replacing them. Of course you’re saying that if they didn’t clean them they probably wouldn’t break but if they didn’t clean them someone might see a dirty light bulb. Don’t you always check out people’s light bulbs to see if they are clean?

We went to the Jazz & Rib Fest last night. There were so many people. Zoe was so excited to go because she loves ribs and she loves jazz. When I told her about it she told me that it sounded like her kind of place. We had a fun time.

I guess i have procrastinated enough for now. I sure hope my in-laws don’t look at my light bulbs.

Apiphobia

I love to watch worthless TV. One of my favorite worthless TV shows to watch is Maury. If you don’t watch Maury he has about 4 themes that most shows are about. On holidays he has 2 themes to choose from- “I was a geek and now I’m chic” or “Which of these <fill in your Holiday> honeys is really a man?”. The other themes are teenage sluts that want a baby, adult sluts who don’t know who their babies daddy is, adult sluts who don’t know who their babies daddy is who feed their kids a pornographic amount of food until they almost explode and adults who are married to sluts who want their spouse to take a lie detector test to prove they are sluts.

Every once in a while Maury has on people with phobias. Usually the people on these shows are scared of things that are so bizarre you can’t help but laugh and point. Like the man who is scared of peaches, the woman scared of cotton balls or the women afraid of birds and mustard. I realised today that I act this way over bees (this includes hornets, wasps, yellow jackets..basically anything with wings, that buzzes and is coming to sting me).

I know why I am so scared of bees. When I was in second grade I was in music class. I was sitting there singing when I felt a little bit of a sting on my neck. It went away pretty quick so I didn’t think anything about it. But after a minute or so my neck started to hurt more and more. I’m not sure why at this point I didn’t say anything to my teacher. Maybe I was scared or maybe I thought it would go away. At the end of class we got in our line to walk back to our class. I was the last person in line that day and on my out I pulled my hair away from my neck and said to my teacher “My neck really hurts. Is there something wrong with it?”. I looked at my teacher and she had this look of horror that has since been burned into my memory. She told me not to move in a panicked yet calm voice.It turns out I had a giant mob of bees on my neck taking turns stinging me. Just thinking about it makes my neck hurt and my head itch.

This evening on TV there was a show on called “Hornets from Hell”. Doesn’t that sound like a fun show to watch? Rae of course turned it there. I was almost in tears after watching literally 5 seconds of this.

So what things are you guys really scared of?