Why does Dodge make a car model called Ram?

I am working on a project for X. As of today, we are still married. Go us! The project is for FoodieBytes and sadly, I am doing some research with pictures that are making me hungry. All of the time. Anyway, posting will be light this week but I did want to pop out a few things:

Have you seen the site Oddee?? If not, I command thee to click through NOW, but make sure you have an hour or so of your life that you will not even want back. This site is subtitled "A Blog on the Oddities of Our World", if that gives you a glimpse of all the gooey goodness it has to offer. YUM.

I am reading Jhumpa Lahiri's newest release, Unaccustomed Earth. It is so good. These are the days when I do miss being Kid Free because I would love to just laze around some afternoon and finish this in one reading.

And finally - some more Simian Snaps....for truly, I am the lowest brand of Mommybloggin' Whore. I exploit my kids AND do not accept even a nickel for it. (Please note the dripping sarcasm. I think it is ridiculous that YET AGAIN, mommybloggers are being targeted for "pimping their kids")

My Mother Sold My Highchair.

Look at how far her circumstances have been reduced.

More Barrette Pictures. Just in case.

My nefarious plan is in motion.
He shall never be homecoming king.

If Wile Coyote already had money for all that Acme crap, why didn't he just buy his dinner?

First: We do not celebrate National Turn Off Week around here. Who the hell came up with such an idea as turning off one's television for an entire week??? Such tomfoolery would require that I actually pay attention to my kids. Hell's bells, I gestated them each for well over 9 months, gave birth to them, then allowed non-stop suckling at my breast. What more do these kids want from me? Besides, I am a mommyblogger. I am far too preoccupied with pimping my children's eternal souls than to have time for them.

Second: Last week, Dee from Voices in My Mind came over with her kiddos, Zach and Evie. Boy, nothing says "Hey, I cleaned Just!For!You!" like fresh vacuum tracks on your carpet. No? Sadly, the rest of the house was simply trashed. I blamed it on the prep work for the garage sale, but truthfully, the house always looks like a garage sale is in progress. *shrug* Anyway, I was very sad that I did not get to snuggle Dee's squeaky newborn daughter and instead had to look wistfully from afar - with all the running noses in our house, I was afraid to get too close to her. Hopefully, we will get together again and I can squeeze little Evie to my heart's content. Or did that just sound creepy??

Third: My garage sale this past weekend was an astounding success. The Grand Total obtained from all the kind folks suckers willing to relieve me of my precious family heirlooms crap while paying me for the honor? $361...... Several folks were quite suspicious as to why I would be offloading a crib, high chair, rocker, baby bathtub, swing and a variety of other Baby Accoutrements when I was clearly still in possession of a baby. After I explained that Said Baby refuses to sit anywhere in which Said Baby's brother does not, the understanding was clear and they were more than willing to pony up their dimes and nickels.

I thought I would offer up some garage sale tips. I am definitely interested in any that you might have!

1. Designate an area of a closet or basement where items go immediately after you realize you will not want it. I have a corner in our basement with empty boxes set up. I even keep garage sale tags and a pen down there. Throughout the year, as I come across things we do not use, I take them downstairs and price them as they go in the boxes. (Bonus: This is also a great way to trap all the brown recluse spiders lurking in your house. Then, you can sell those, too!)
2. Be careful about going down on your prices first thing after opening your sale. There are "professionals" out there who canvass garage sales for cheap items that they can resell themselves. These folks prey on people who are shy about negotiating. I witnessed firsthand one of my neighbors getting tag-teamed by a pair of what I refer to as Garage Sale Vultures. They were complete assholes to her, swooping in at 8am on Friday and bombarding her with ridiculous offers on her nearly perfect furniture (going from $30 down to $20, for example). The gal got flustered and accepted their offers. Since she had just moved to the neighborhood, I had only just met her and was hesitant to butt in. I now regret not saying something to those assholes because after talking to her for awhile, I was able to see how sweet she was and that she was just shy.
3. When someone tries to negotiate, always counter-offer. For example - someone asks you to go down from $10 to $5 on something. Counter-offer with $7 or $8. Seriously! Do not be shy about dickering! This was the first year that I was finally able to comfortably haggle and I made out like a bandit for a change. I had only ONE person actually walk away from a counter-offer. The item ended up selling later for the price I wanted anyway. I win!
   

Fourth: I cannot resist offering up Very Favorite Kind of Blog Fodder - Simian Snappage

Look what I found amongst the dust bunnies.

See? I have not forgotten my oldest.

Zach and Arun

Exhausted from all the mayhem.

My Son Likes Barrettes and I Have the Photographic Evidence.

My favorite part was when he built a "train" out of megablocks. As he pushed the "train" around, he proclaimed, "I look PRETTY!" Indeed, my son. INDEED.

Anjali and the Black Elephant

She LOVES the Black Elephant. This means that her father might be willing to finally support the Fixing Up of the Black Elephant which will translate to Big Bucks. Anjali, as the resident Daddy's Little Girl, has a much better shot of convincing him than I do.

She wants to crawl. Badly.

Some details still need to be worked out, obviously.

Why is the the fear of long words called "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia"? Is that not just cruel??

It's Not Snot. It's not.
I have mentioned previously that the downside of having your children 20 months apart is the overlap of teething. In that vein, it seems that Arun may be working on his last two molars - as evidenced by his repeated requests for me to provide the healing powers of a mother's kiss by kissing his teeth. Anjali is working on her two upper front teeth.

Folks, my cup runneth over with mucus and I am now that proverbial mommy with shmears of snot decorating her clothes. It looks as if I have been herding snails over here.

The Lady of the Hour
The Great Bossy Meetup was most excellent. It was so fun to see old Real Life friends, Blog Friends and to make a few new friends as well. Dorothy, ChaCha, Jenny, Average Jane, Dawn, Criquette, and of course, Bossy! were all in attendance. A good time was had by all, I believe.

After Saturday's Mini-Meetup, I am definitely feeling a psyched about BlogHer 08 - I am ready to mix n' mingle. During the past BlogHers that I attended, I tended to get overwhelmed with all the folks. In my defense, I was HUGE and pregnant while lumbering around BlogHer 05. During BlogHer 06, I was a little flustered worrying about Arun. I am hoping this time around to get out of my shell a bit and meet more folks. Although, I suspect that I will be worried about Anjali. If she so much as quivers a lip, I will not be able to leave her in the childcare thingie. Sigh.

Rockin' Robin
Are you tweetin' on Twitter? I have been having my way with it lately and am quite enjoying it. It is like having your own teeny space to do smallish blog-like snippets for those days when you do not have the time to cobble together a full coherent post. I can be found here, if you decide to begin tweetin' yourself.

GoodReads
Lately, I have been a wee bit obsessed with my GoodReads account. I add books, then think of even more that I can add. The site is WAY too easy and makes it all that more tempting to keep clicking away, adding books that one has read. One evening, I spent two hours clicking away. Two hours that I could have actually spent reading, so no - that particular piece of irony is not lost upon me.

Who's your John Steinbeck?

Innernets! I get to meet Her Royal Bossiness this weekend as she cruises through Kansas City on her Bossy's Excellent Road Trip national event. I cannot wait to meet her and get bossed around and hear her speak in bolds and italics while she flings around commands and edicts - for she is The Bossy One, no? Personally, I am hoping she demands that I eat my weight in chips and salsa washed down with a margarita.

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I would like to thank Heza Hekele for her honesty in yesterday's comments on my post about co-sleeping. Her comment disagreed wholeheartedly (and heatedly!) with my post, but she wrote her points in a respectful manner. I do not mind comments that disagree with me! There is way too much groupthink in the blogosphere and folks are way too scared of being branded a troll. As long as folks refrain from calling me some sort of negative adjective, I welcome thoughtful comments even when they differ from my beliefs.

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There are some things that I just do not "get". John Steinbeck, for example. I have read 4 or 5 of his books (the most recent being Cannery Row. BLEH). Every time I read a Steinbeck, I want to apply somewhere to get a literary refund of those hours of my life back because I feel cheated.

While I am confessing my Cultural Sins here, I might as well admit that I do not "get" the Beatles or Elvis, either. Oh sure, their songs are okay, but I do not understand the rabid fanship. And television? Count me lost on Lost, clubfooted on Dancing with the Stars, not hungry for the Biggest Loser and totally tone deaf for American Idol. I don't "get" those, either.

Might as well go long: I do not regularly read Dooce. While I have a tremendous respect for Heather Armstrong and was very! impressed! with what I saw and heard about her at BlogHer 05 and 06, I just had a hard time following her story and gave up, even though I do enjoy her writing style. I have seen her daily style thingie, which I do like, but could not figure out how to just get that feed only instead of everything else including the dog snaps (which I do not "get", either. I guess I am more of a cat person).

So, who's your John Steinbeck? Can we still be friends?

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I had an eye appointment this week and boy, is my optometrist a cutie. Not that I get to bask in any of that glory because I am a -9.0 in my left eye and -9.5 in my right. I spend most of the appointment without any sort of corrective lens helping my crippled peepers. *sob* I did ask him about my blue eyed girl being the fruit of my brown-eyed South Indian's loins. Dr. C said there must be some blue-eyed person in X's family. Perhaps, there is an Englishman in the woodpile after all.

My Left Retina

That bright white spot is my optic nerve. It's bigger than your average optic nerve because I am so flippin' BLIND. The nerve!

Is she your baby?

The other day when X took Anjali to the Indian store with him, he was asked the very question that made for such a great post title today. That was almost as good as that one time when a gal in Target asked me "Did you make them?" while gesturing towards the hard-earned fruit of my womb. Almost. Anyway, it is not as if X has asked for cheek swabs.

At least not yet.

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Innernets, I have swayed to the Dark Side of Parenting and have spent the last of our iTunes gift certs on some Laurie Berkner, Jack's Big Music Show, and Nuttin' But Stringz downloads. X did not believe me when I said it was for the children. The nerve! Certainly, I did not learn the lyrics to the Monster Boogie and the Googleheads for my own entertainment. That would be disturbing.

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In my last post, Alimomof3 (formerly known as Alimomof2) asked the following questions about co-sleeping:

I'm curious about your experiences with co-sleeping. We did not with our first, although he slept in our room for a long time. We kinda did with our second because I would nurse in bed and we would fall asleep. Our third is now one month old and he has been in our bed from the beginning. I am a little worried about suffocation issues, but I am taking all the nec. precautions. Anyway, as the babies get older and more movey-aroundy, how does it work for you? Do you put the kids to bed in your bed at night? Do you go to bed at the same time as them or sneak in later? Do they both sleep with you? Do they nap there? I am wondering what the future holds for us! But it is true - our newest little guy sleeps big chunks at night. When I try to put him in his bassinet he grunts and groans and moves around, but next to me he is quiet and peaceful.

My Answer:
First - congratulations on your new little one!! This explains where you have been, eh?

Generally, I put Arun to sleep in the spare bedroom and X puts Anjali to sleep in our bed. Although, sometimes we switch. Sometimes, we leave them there until we go to bed. Other times, we go to bed with them. X tends to sleep with Arun and I sleep with Anjali. However, sometimes we switch if one of them is sick. However, if X is out of town, Arun and Anjali both sleep with me. Um, yeah - we are all about routines here. In short, if the kids are not sick or teething, they will sleep in the bed alone quite well.

Arun is all Movey-Aroundy, but he does not roll out of our spare bed which is your typical "mattress with box springs" setup. Our master bed is a Scandinavian platform-style bed which is very low to the ground and less than 19 inches. Recently, Anjali has rolled out of bed maybe twice, but that was once when we were playing around (not sleeping) and another time when I got up to go to the bathroom and did not put a pillow beside her. Yes, you read that correctly - pillows. When Anjali was a newborn, I was very careful about the pillow thingie, but now that she can easily navigate her way around, I do put a small square pillow on either side of her to keep her from rolling off. With Arun, once he started crawling around, he figured out quickly that crawling off of the bed was not fun. When he would wake up, he would start crying or calling for us and would wait for us to come get him. I am predicting that Anju will do the same - basically, when a kid starts crawling, they seem to get that "awareness" that they should not be crawling off of beds. Natural selection, perhaps?

Naps? Oh sister, I am not sure I can help here. My kids hate naps. I have never figured out if it was the co-sleeping or not, but even when Arun went through a brief 6 month period of sleeping through the night in his crib, he still fought naps. We are now in a blissful period where we can get the kids to sleep in the beds for their naps, but I am shaking with terror that I may have just jinxed myself by typing those very words, brazen hussy that I am.

Suffocation? Try not to stress over that one. Seriously - just lay off on the drugs, quit doing body shots with your husband right before bedtime and try not to get obese in the next few months. You will be fine. My husband is from a land of co-sleepers and has never, ever heard of a kid suffocating or getting rolled on.

Sex? You did not ask about this one, but this is the question that everyone wonders about, but is afraid to ask. I am not going to offer up details, but will say that we had no problems getting pregnant with Anjali even though we were co-sleeping with Arun. After all, it is called co-SLEEPING. Ahem. Besides, there is something to be said for spicing things up by sneaking around your own house so that Mama can get her sugar. Is all I'm sayin'.

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And now, it is time to exploit my children in the name of Blog Fodder.

9 Months

Leaning, Not Standing

Not Your Grandma's Shampoo 'n Set

Sitting Pretty

She was very proud that she could sit next to her brother there (who had just vacated his spot seconds prior)

She's Got Wide, Staring Eyes

Thankfully, no strong urge to fly

The Feeling is Mutual

This photo makes my heart go all squishy. Damn kids.

All done?

I am seriously behind on emails. In fact, I have owed Jenny an email for months. Recently, she commented that she has trains! for! sale! Suddenly, I have free time to email her because I am a Train Whore. So, there you have it, Innernets. If you need an immediate response from me, offer to sell me something. It worked for Jenny!

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Ah, it is my very favorite time of the year! Our subdivision's garage sale is looming. The past two garage sales in which I participated happened to be while I was pregnant. My energy was just not into it, but I did manage to drag my woebegotten junk out to my driveway and wearily collect nickels and dimes anyhow.

This year is different. So very, very different. I am not pregnant and have finally emerged from the postpartum fog that has been haunting me. I am totally jazzed about collecting all those nickels and dimes this year. To boot, I am getting rid of most of our baby gear.

Yes, you read that correctly - baby gear. Crib, high chair, bouncy seats, swing, jumperoo, baby bathtubs. Gone, baby, GONE. We are done having babies, so there is no need to keep that stuff now. I think I am supposed to be weepy that it is going, but I am having difficulty shedding tears because I cannot wait to get all that crap outta of my house.

Anjali has slept no more than twenty winks in the crib - we are firmly in the co-sleeping camp and as long as everyone is sleeping, she can sleep with me until she heads to kindergarten for all I care. One thing I have not complained about here is sleep deprivation, now have I? Furthermore, she refuses to sit in anything that Arun is not sitting in. She wants to be with him and screams if you try to put her in the high chair now.

However, X and I were chuckling at what the neighbors will think with all the baby gear in our driveway in a few weeks. After all, we obviously have a baby, because we hang out in our front yard all the time with her.

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Tons of Flickrage to be had - this is just a sampling of about 30 photos recently uploaded. All photos are set to private, but invite me as a Flickr friend if you want to see the rest. I am assuming that if you are reading my blog, you are probably not a pervert.

Right?

I'm a Jayhawk.

Practicing His Paparazzi Wave or His Perp Walk. Your choice.

Damn Straight, They Had Better Be WASHABLE.

Easter

The View from my Chair. Lucky me! No?

A Pair of Jokers

Shattered

I did not work for Arthur Anderson - I was of the Coopers & Lybrand, then the Ernst and Young persuasion. However, a friend of mine worked for AA and gave me a set of wine glasses with their logo. One of which recently broke in this odd way that left the name mostly intact.

Piano Key

This is the very cool key that locks our piano. I am not sure why someone would need to LOCK up their piano, but this key is so beautiful.

The University of Kansas Jayhawks just won the 2008 NCAA Tournament and frankly, I am speechless.

I sobbed.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. I sobbed to my sister and to my college friend who now lives in Vegas......... I am over the fucking moon over here after having waited 20 years for this.

20 years.

We won.

We won. We fucking WON the NCAA Tournament....


However............................My Ivy League Husband did not and does not understand. Bah.

Sometimes. Just sometimes...........

Who needs a priest when you could have a blog instead?

Lord give me strength if Thomas also has a friend named Kelli.

Confession time, Innernets......
It began quite simply. Like many, many little boys throughout the history of little boys, our own little boy loves him a train or two. So last summer, I got Arun a simple 35 piece train. Which he loved. Then, I bought some spare track for me in the dollar section at Target. Then, Mojavi went Goodwill Hunting and found a train table for Arun me. The train table was only $25 and was like new. A veritable steal, Innernets. Then, for Arun's birthday I bought a Melissa and Doug train set for me. Then, for Christmas I bought a mountain tunnel thingie for me . All done now, no?

No. Lordy, no.

Shortly before Easter, I came across a cute little Take Along Thomas Easter Train set and thought "Wow! Arun I would love this and Arun I can take it with us places because it is so tiny." I will buy it for his Easter basket.

Folks, it quickly unraveled from there. What I did not realize was that little train set is actually part of a much BIGGER set. Which led to my downfall.

Before I knew it, I was buying the roundhouse travel thingie, the zoo cars, the George car, an additional track expansion pack and then, the waterfall thingie. I think I have my compulsion in check now, but still - I would be a lying liar lying lyingly if I did not admit that I lust mightily for the Rescue Center and Carnival Adventure sets. .... sigh

The only saving grace is that Arun is not privy to any of this and does not even realize that Target is involved in all this Thomas Madness I have inflicted in his life. I purchase these things only when I am alone, so at least he is not begging for a new train every time we pay our tributes to the Altar of the Red Bullseye of Consumption.

If you mated a bulldog and a shitzu, would it be called a "bullshit"?

The other day Anju had woken from her nap and was crying. As X and I started for the stairs to get her, Arun said "No, I do it! I do it! Arun's turn!" As he went up the stairs he was emphatic, "Anju, I coming! I coming! It's okay, Anju! It's okay!" By the time we made it up the stairs, he was in bed with her, hugging her and patting her head. She was laughing and babbling away at him. Now, if I could only teach him how to change her diaper and style her hair, I would be home free.
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One of my favorite, new blogs these days is Ain't No Free Lunch.It is written by GA who happens to be the Beloved of Rita, the brains behind Surrender, Dorothy. It is like reading about their lives in stereo. It is not quite like peeking through a keyhole (darn it!), but it is still good fun reading about situations from a He Said, She Said perspective. I wish I could get X to blog. The CPA in me would kill for having that kind of documentation factor in my marriage. I mean, not that I would print off backups to use in the event of a heated discussion or court case. Never.

So, GA has a great, great post on the "economic stimulus" check coming in the mail soon. Sure, I will take the money, but I think the whole thing is silly - just a way to politicians to make their voters happy in an election year.

Anyway......recently, the big hullabaloo going on in Travolta Chateau has been the Great Wii Debacle of 2008. GA bought a Wii on eBay. Rita was not happy. They worked it out and decided to keep the Wii, after all. I have been walking on coals this past week - trying to convince my own beloved that we truly need to help GA out and take that Wii off of his hands, quietly egging GA on in the background that he should keep it all while being careful of my status as Rita's Friend. Besides, I don't want to ruin my status as Welcome Visitor because HELLO! I want to be invited to Game Night. I mean, I may be greedy and sneaky, but I am not stoopid.