One for the FUCKING SHIT Files

A woman that writes one of the cancer blogs I follow has started in-home hospice.

She, and her family, is/are preparing for death.

Sweet merciful crap, stop monkeying around with inventing better and faster boner drugs and find a cure already.

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart Stimulate the Economy

...but retailers just. Won't. LET ME.

We've had these quote unquote bedside tables since getting our bed which we purchased shortly after getting married. The tables aren't tables at all, they're trunks, but they were shown at the side of the bed in question in the Pottery Barn catalog, so like a good little Stepford-bot, I bought them.

While purty, they have been driving us nuts--one of us more than the other--since getting them, as they are short, and while good for storing bed linens, aren't worth much with respect to hiding my nighttime sundries (moisturizer, lip stuff, etc.).

After much store and soul searching, I finally find a worthy replacement:
Ah, what did I ever do before Target?

The answer to that, of course, is unnecessarily spend an assload of money at Pottery Barn.

They matched the bed's wood and general scheme, were the right price, and I had a gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket. I bought a pair.

A few days after buying them, I received an email saying that while one table was en route, the second was seriously delayed. Since we had waited this long for new night stands, what was a few more months?

The first table arrived and while it was pretty, its cheap construction left much to be desired. Still, the drawers would provide lots of good--if not linen--storage and, most importantly, Jody liked it.

Today, the other shoe dropped. Target emailed me to say that the table as not available from "any of their sources" [in China] and that the remainder of my order is cancelled. Of course, I'm entirely put out, having to return the one table we do have and come up with another pair we can live with.

Hopefully that won't take another seven years.

Today's To Done List

• Brought coffee, fixins, and eco-friendly containers to co-op day care. The other moms lurve me!
• Dug out our driveway after returning from co-op to see all the snow the plows had thrown in there. Bitchcakes!
  
• During Violet's going on 3.5h nap (yes, I know how spoiled I am), wrote the first draft of a pitch letter.

Mama isn't gainfully employable and desperately needs to start executing Operation: Pleatherbound.

Oh and PS, it's currently 2F. I bet you're a little less envious of me now, eh?

The Thrifting Gods Giveth...

...and taketh away.

I've been on the hunt for a wool hat and mittens set and was pretty excited to find one at Goodwill yesterday, right on top of the hat pile. It was a block of black with small snowflakes on top of a charcoal grey block, meaning it would match all of my coats (don't deviate much from the black-grey-white pallete).

Too bad I went on post-thrift laundry autopilot and just threw it all in the wash together.

I don't think it would even fit Violet now it's so shrunken, even after soaking it in solutions each of hair conditioner (wool is hair after all), borax, and mild soap. BOO.

Ponce de Leon, Constantly On

Stop the presses--I've discovered a foolproof way to feeling younger, if not looking younger.

Turn off The Real World.

DAMN those seven eight (WTF?) strangers are fetuses.

Facebook Killed the Blogging Star

I realized the other day that lately I've been making mental notes for clever Facebook status updates rather than blog posts, which has resulted in my only giving super condensed updates over @ FB and neglecting this here blog. So, here's the latest from Southern Canada:

Yesterday, Violet and I came home to a cold house. Now, I do tend to lower the thermostat when I know we're going to be gone for more than an hour, but this was even colder than that. After putting Vi down for a nap, I fiddled with the thermostat and furnace long enough to realize that I wasn't going to be able to fix the problem on my own.

Fortunately, the first heating company I called was able to dispatch a repair person (okay, repairMAN) within the hour. Turns out that the fuse had blown on the furnace because the filter was plugged full of dust and lint. Guess I forgot to replace the filter after our epic duct cleaning. Oops.

While that was a moderately expensive lesson in remembering such mundane tasks, it was somewhat offset by the fact that air filters were on sale at the local hardware store...ok, maybe not so much offset, but I'm all set for filters for the remainder of winter, provided it ends somewhere before or around April, but this is Wisconsin, so it could be Memorial Day before the final snow drift has slushed away.

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I had said something on FB a few days ago about being on the cusp of getting fat. Now, I may have exaggerated a bit there, but it is nice to not see my ribcage or feel like my pelvis is jutting out like a rack of moose antlers.

I do need to watch it with the cookies and truffles (damn you Whole Paycheck!) since the Puerto Rico countdown will be starting soon...I know it's not metabolically possible to change fat to muscle, but I am hoping to firm things up before heading to America Adjacent next month.

Sadly, my ass has failed to respond favorably to my junk food diet.

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Finally, I am officially outing myself: I am planning to write a book*.

I know, I know--I might as well join the ranks of the other 75% of people who think they have the next Great American Novel hidden away inside of them somewhere, but I've got a unique angle (young pescatarian mom gets coloRECTAL cancer!), a fairly good outline, and a title (to be revealed later).

Now I just need to put together a proposal (my self-imposed deadline is to have a rough draft by the time we leave for PR) and get my foot into a publisher's door.

This is where you, my fair, loyal (and pretty. Did I mention pretty?) readers, come in. If anyone out there in the InternEther should have a connection to folks in publishing, I would be forever in your debt if you could either point me their way or direct them to the old blog.

On that note, I'm going to go pick up a copy of Book Writing for Dummies.

*Or two, actually.

It's Amazing How Much More Relaxed the 2nd Year Is

Is just fed Violet [apparently] expired cereal but it's organic, so don't the two pretty much cancel each other out?

ETA: I might be so relaxed since Violet slept in until EIGHT THIRTY this morning. And here I thought I couldn't sleep past seven any more! Sometimes I am very, very happy to be proven wrong.