Black Friday - because I am always on top of current issues

For those of you that do NOT live in America and have no clue what Black Friday is, here is an explanation. It is the day after Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday in November) when stores go crazy and give you silly prices for sometimes amazing products. Take for example Office Max. Office Max had a printer that I desperately wanted. They were selling it on Friday for $130 LESS than what they normally sell it for. Craziness. But guess who didn't end up with one. Me.

Rewind to Midnight Thursday. When some stores started their Black Friday craziness. Generally the craziness will start at ungodly hours of the morning, like 3am and 4am. People will line up for a few hours before then just to get the stuff that they want. This has never appealed to me because I am far from being a morning person. I still get cranky with Isabel when she wakes me up before 8am. It happens every morning and yet I still get surprised when she doesn't just leave me alone.

Back to the Black Friday story. So I find out some stores are opening at midnight. And I think "I can do this". I may not be a morning person, but I can definitely stay up until midnight. So I pore through all the brochures eventually cutting my store destinations to two. Wal-mart (I know.... I'm cheap) and Old Navy. They both open at midnight, have some rockin' deals on some stuff that I need and I figure I'll be totally fine with staying awake for possibly only an hour.

At 11.50pm I drive through the parking lot of Old Navy. There's a line. And it is cold. I decide to leave Old Navy. I drive just around the block to Wal-mart. At least there's no line outside, so I put on my brave face and walk the half mile from the nearest available parking spot (that will fit my beast of a truck). I arrive in the store just as the Wal-mart workers have taken the black plastic off the product that is being sold for a song. I also arrive in the store just in time to see the mass hordes screeching and pulling and grabbing and throwing. Never before in my life have I seen such rudeness and chaos. There were no shopping carts left so I was left to push my way in to the crowd to grab what I could hold. The people I was contending with had obviously done this for years. I grabbed a few towels for a dollar a piece and my Rubbermaid container set, walked around in a daze for a while just witnessing the utter chaos and then marched my way over to the cash registers. I didn't have to wait long until I was walking out only half noticing that the line for the registers had increased one hundred fold.

I figured if I had survived Wal-mart then maybe Old Navy wouldn't be so bad. I went back. There was no line this time and it seemed like people were being civil to each other inside.

I waltzed in. Grabbed what I knew I had come for and searched for the end of the line. Turns out the end of the line was now snaking its way from the front all the way to the back and then back to the front again. I met a lady in line who was quite fun to talk to. We were given the nice opportunity to chat for two long hours as we shuffled our way forward in the line. Along the way I managed to pick up another $40 worth of clothing. CURSE YOU LONG LINE!!!

I vowed NEVER to do Black Friday again. My printer sat in Office Max waiting all day Friday for me to come and buy it. Unfortunately I spent the whole day trying to recover from my "easy" midnight shopping. Ugh.

Word Verification - On

Hi all.

Just a quick post to let you know that I have decided to turn Word Verification back on. I was just getting too many spam comments and it was very annoying for me. As much as I hate Word Verification, I hate spam more.

I hope this doesn't prevent you from leaving a comment now.

Cold

The time: 4 o'clock this afternoon.

Max & Ruby is playing, too loud to really be in the background, but in the background none the less. I sit on my bed, playing around with the computer having a moment of peace. LQ decides it is time for a potty break in the ensuite.

She has become quite adept at doing the "potty" thing. She wriggles her body as she pushes her pants down, slides her little bottom over the seat and proceeds to tinkle. I don't take much notice of what she is doing until she lets out a giggle.

I look over to where she sits. She is using her arms as leverage as she lowers herself into the toilet and then brings herself up. LQ lowers and then giggles again.

"Mummy! It's COLD!"

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The time: 9 o'clock this morning.

LQ asks for one of her new bandaids. I had promised her a Woody and Buzz Bandaid the previous evening if she would just go to bed. It seemed only fair to give her one. She took it and mumbled something about a sore nose as she walked out the door.

Shortly thereafter she returned.

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The time: 10 o'clock this morning.

LQ was nowhere to be seen for a while. Her ladders were also missing in action. I almost interrupted the intricate play she had designed for herself. I let it go until she called out my name "Mummy! I stuck!"

Is it my turn yet?

I want to have a baby.

Just putting it out there. Hellooo Universe - it's my turn again.

I looked after a 12 month old and a 2.5 year old today while their mother went to school. I was able to get some good baby cuddles in during the 5 hours they were at my house. It seems that I am surrounded by babies here. Perhaps that is because I am. Sometimes it hurts my heart. But mostly I try not to think about it.

As I discussed my feelings today, I realised that the next step is to see a doctor. But I can't bring myself to take that step. It is an enormous step to take. A step that will take me down a path that I am not sure I am emotionally ready for. So I sit and wait in having-a-baby limbo land. Waiting for my miracle. Waiting for another perfect one of these:

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*comments off*

Speaking of Losing Weight

Did you notice my wonderful segue from one post to the next? Good.

I started a diet on Halloween. I thought it was a perfect time to diet, considering the candy, the Thanksgiving and then Christmas all being lumped into two perfect months. There's nothing like taking on a challenge and then making that challenge 50,000 times harder by having to refuse good food all the time.

No matter. It turns out I'm really good at refusing food. In fact - just let me toot my own horn for a while - I am FANTASTIC at refusing food. I guess all I needed was someone to tell me *exactly* what I should be eating... and I'm all good. I've lost 8 pounds in one and a half weeks. I feel good. I'm looking forward to the weight loss slow down.

Just as an aside - I really don't get excited about food in general. If it's there, I will eat it (hence the weight gain), but I don't care if it's not there either. Which why I am finding this diet to be a little easier than I expected.

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I entered this picture into a little competition over at Diapers and Divinity. Something to do with joy in motherhood... and it came third! (p.s. I am sorry mum if you don't like how you look in this photo - I L.O.V.E it though). It is a photo of my mum and sister just after going through the temple. Can you believe that my mum is wearing what she wore when she got married?!

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I read various blogs. It seems like it is a "thing" for mothers of young children to record the wonderful and often funny things their children say. I always think that that's a pretty awesome idea... and hope to one day copy it. For the moment anything that ANYONE says kind of just dribbles out the back of my head as soon as I hear it. So trying to remember things that LQ says during the day is kind of like trying to hold in your pee while jumping on a trampoline after just having a baby (NOT going to happen).

Having said that, there IS one thing that LQ says quite often that I find mildly amusing. If I ever do something that she asks me to do, she looks at me quite earnestly and says "Thank you for obeying, mummy". I think the obedience lesson has sunk in.

40-Ten

Dal gets new uniforms with his new office. Given the amount of uniform allowance that he has, he decided he would get me to take measurements to ensure the correct clothing was ordered.

Dal grabbed the tape measure, a pen and some paper this evening and we set to work measuring his hips, his neck, his arm length and chest. LQ sat on the bed and watched. I would measure, say the inches and Dal would write.

LQ insisted I measure her little body once I was done with Dal. Chest, waist and hips all measuring the same, making sure to lift up her shirt so I could get a proper measurement of her chest. Dal pretended to be interested as I called out her numbers. Then it was Mummy's turn to be measured. Although she could only get her arms around my neck, she tried to measure my "boobies" first.

"40-Ten!" She announced to Daddy.

Because the chest measurement had proved to be a little awkward, she went for my neck next.

"40-Ten!" Daddy took note that my neck was as wide as my chest. I assure you that I am NOT living a secret life as "Busty Bear", The Pro Wrestler. Nor am I winning any body building contests... I have a nice neck to chest ratio, thank you.

Dal's turn next. His boobies measured a nice round "40-ten!". Either he's got the nicest set of man-boobies around, or I need some implants. At this point I figured Daddy had the measuring under control, so I went off to do something mundane like crawling in to the clothes dryer to see how big it truly is.

I came back to hear that LQ's toes were indeed measuring at a staggering "40-ten!"

This may have been one of those moments that, had I been a "good" mother, I could have taught LQ the meaning of numbers and what two numbers together really looked like. Instead I had a good laugh - and then vowed to lose some weight from my neck.