Last night I made the mashed potatoes and cranberries. Today comes roasting the turkey, sweet potatoes and heating up the mashed potatoes. Oh, and stuffing. And then we take off out of town to a water resort hotel, the whole family. And, by the way things roll, my Monthly Visitor has come to brighten the day.

Goodness.

Still, I am greatful for the day, blessed by family, health, and warmed in spirit. This is the first “vacation” we’ve taken that I haven’t used our credit card for. I purchased it months ago with cash and am taking cash with. I hope that is a preview of our finances to come – increased responsibility with our money, and the ability to live without being indebted to anyone. It is a big goal, but I don’t feel as if it is unreasonable.

The house is filled with delicious smells, sounds, and the excitement of a change, a ruffle in the regular mechanics of day-to-day life. It is pleasing, and I am filled with gratitude.

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Today I bought a Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board. I am completely new to the whole Wii Fit craze. The balance board is taking some time to adjust to. The boys helped me set it up, and then proceeded to try and move in on my game time. Momma says NO. Rarely do I get a new toy, and I wanted to be the one to break that badboy in.

It’s easy to set up and pretty easy to use. Or… it appears to be. I don’t know if there’s something wrong with mine, but it does have one challenge: it runs backwards. So like, when I’m doing the soccer thing, if I want to go at a ball that is on my right, I lean left. Is that normal? ‘Cause it’s making my brain work too hard. I couldn’t even do the table-top thingy with the ball. I felt like I was going to melt my own brain trying to make my body do the opposite of what my brain was instinctively wanting it to do.

But, that’s only day 1. So far I learned that:

• my Wii Fit age is 45 (I thought it would be 65)
• and I’m obese (nothing new). It was kind of cute when the little stick figure suddenly packed on some girth, as the BMI radar hit the roof. The boys were defensive, telling me that I was not obese. How sweet.
• that I do not “outweigh” the board (it wasn’t until I got it home that it dawned on me that the board might not like people over 150 pounds – but guess what fellow fatties?! – the Wii Fit balance board weight limit goes all the way up to 330 (I guess that’s as high as it officially counts)

I’m actually looking forward to Day 2 and being a penguin again, eating more fish. That was probably my favorite so far.

Last year around this time, they were scarce. This year, they are all over, at least in my area. The germaphobic hypochondriac in me has grown semi-dependant on using them and I don’t have children who sit in the cart anymore, which is maybe what they are intended for. I never liked touching the cart handles in the first place, having put my hand in someone’s leftover goo on more than one occasion. Last month I grabbed a cart and as I recoiled my hand to see find the culprit of my discomfort, I saw (and smelled) a sweet, sticky substance covering the handle, the sides, and the back of the seat. Surely it was leftover from a mother trying to satiate an impatient child as she pushed him down the isles.

I was repulsed. As much as I love kids (and I really do enjoy the little buggers), I’ll tell ya, one thing that grouses me out – even more than a dirty diaper – is a sticky-faced little kid. Sticky with candy or sugared treat gives me the feeling of being dressed in all white and having a muddy dog bounding towards me. I can’t explain it. Worse yet, though is a coughing, snotty-nosed toddler. I literally feel like ripping my shirt and running around screaming, “THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING!!!” when there’s a wee one with a snot-crusted nose, coughing and touching things. So, as glad as I was for the sweet candy smell (rather than grabbing a cart laced with snot), it was just the lesser of two evils.

Clearly, I traded that cart in for a new one, as that job was bigger than any disinfecting cart wipe in the world. But for the most part, for everyday shopping, I love me some cart wipes. I don’t just use them because they might kill some germs, I use them because I don’t always have my gloves with me. Yes, I do generally have cart gloves that I use. What of it?

The title says it all.

Tucking into bed, flipping on the television. Land on HSN. Mindless, semi-entertaining, no huge commitment. Bubbly, not likely to bring nightmares. It was that, or reality TV. I don’t often make purchases (the last one was 2 NFL Snuggies), but I like to zone out to it every now and then. Not long ago Jessica Simpson was on HSN (or QVC?), peddling products with her mom. It was great. The vacant expression and semi-incoherent product descriptions. Good TV. Recently I watched as an older male designer talked up the shirts he was selling (they looked like the geriatric fall preview). The models couldn’t even make the frocks look appealing, but the host and designer pitched on them as  if we were sitting side stage on the catwalk – and kept their faces straight as they did it. They’re good. And this is why I simply would not make a good salesperson. Seriously, that blue, pleated shirt that screams “grandma’s house circa 1980″  is a “must-have” addition to any woman’s wardrobe?

Back to the night of my purchase.

I think, subliminally, I had already heard of Carol’s Daugther products, so I was close to being sold anyway. Strap that in with a dose of fatigue and out comes the white flag of surrender. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time (or vice versa if I end up hating this product). My eyes were glued on the screen as the Carol’s Daughter representative talked, the HSN lady talked, they took a call, they showed hair models, and I dialed like a robot, beep-beep-beep, pressing all the right numbers until I was told my order was complete. The receiver went back on my princess phone, I beat myself up a bit mentally for being such easy prey, shrugged, and continued flipping through the channels.

It arrived today. Simple, yet attractive packaging. Smells pretty nice. But I’m quite sure that my big head of curls is going to eat up these tiny little (pricey) bottles in no time. Which doesn’t make me too happy. See, I’m a JUMBO sized conditioner person. I know, I know, I go to the salon and they talk all this junk about “dime-size, quarter-size” and “you don’t need as much because it is such good product” smack, but you know what? Live with me. Do my hair daily and you’ll see, girlfriend. It takes a handful of change to satisfy the conditioner requirement on my hair. Dime? Quarter? Shoot – sorry. Almost 3 decades and some odd years will confirm that I know my hair, and my hair likes more than a quarter. Thankyouverymuch.

So we’ll see. I’m going to use these products tomorrow, my “Best of the Best” set: Shampoo, Smoothie, Hair Milk & Hair Butter. I’ll let’cha know, good or bad, what I think.

As the colder weather sets in, please consider donating a hat or two to this project:  Warm for Winter (information in a post from earlier this year):

Does anyone else have gnats in the house? I don’t know what the deal is but suddenly we have an abundance of them and I don’t know what to do to get rid of them. At first I thought it was a fruitfly issue (found a way overripe orange in the fruit bowl), but after I threw that out, they remained. Is it seasonal?

I can’t drink a glass of wine without covering it up. Maybe I’ll use that as a trap.

I found this discussion in a quick google search, but am looking for something (hopefully) without using chemicals.

Any suggestions?

It’s _____day night and you’ve hardly had a minute to spare, jetting from one place to another…

What’s for dinner?

Easy Roast Beef Subs

Busy night, thank goodness for pre-planning a meal. What could have turned into a$20 plus drive-thru meal, was instead a 15-minute prep and eat meal. And it was good, just as good as if we were to eat out. It is satisfying to save a little bit of money. I realize that there are definitely times where our family needs to stop somewhere, shove some food in the kiddo’s mouths so they can eat and get some shut-eye, but I would much rather those days be lessened, and not feel like they are forced. I really prefer it to be enjoyable to eat out, rather than necessity.

Today I overheard a couple of boys, about 11 years old, trying to peer-pressure another set of boys to disregard some rules that were posted. As the pressuring boys performed a stunt, directly ignoring the rules, they heckled the other pair, telling them to join in.

One of the rule-minding pair said, what I would coin as my favorite phrase of the day:

“I’m not a pansy if I’m listening to my parents.”

The pressuring boys continued in their mischief, still calling out, taunting and teasing. I took pleasure out of the fact that they rule-minders did not bend, but continued eating ice cream, continuing to establish that he was holding his ground.

I hate to clean the bathroom. I don’t mean that in a cute, prissy, girlie way. I mean that in the most sincere, shudder-as-I-do-it way. Trying not to breath as I scrub down the toilet. Wearing gloves and washing my hands, changing my gloves more than once.

I’m a freak.

I love a clean bathroom. I could tell you all the businesses in Madison that have bathrooms you want to rest your bottom in, and all the places that you should hovercraft OR avoid, for fear of losing your cheeks. It might be considered an obsession or phobia. I don’t really care, honestly. It’s me and I can’t seem to change it. I’ve (literally) lived in fear of the possibility of peeing my pants after entering a bathroom, finding the facilities not up to par. Wetness on the seat, crud around the base, dampness in front of the toilet… I’m having a hard time typing it because the visuals come to mind. Not to mention the sink – if it looks like my hands will get dirtier by using the sink – oh no. No thank you.

My obsession knows no boundaries — public or private bathrooms, must be clean.

Yes, give me a cool, shiny bathroom (warmth and humidity exacerbates any unsightly, uncleanliness in a bathroom, in my opinion) with sparkling throne, clean scent, wash basin and towels… ah. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Perfectly clean and sanitized is a bonus, but absence of P & P (figure it out), clean smell, clean throne and floor, sink… I can do it. I had a friend who would scour her bathroom before I came over, concerned it would not be “good enough” for me. I didn’t know I was that transparent.

At home, for the longest time, Frank would clean the bathroom, bless his heart. I was either pregnant or nursing, or cleaning other things. But, honestly he didn’t do a job up to par with what I like. Some days I wouldn’t want to use my own bathroom. Yeah. It was like that. So I started doing it myself again. I’ll tell you, do it often, and it isn’t so bad, but let it go and pay the price. We ended up getting yellowish scum under the rim of the toilet and around the prongs on the seat, which gave me heebie jeebies. I think it smelled, too. “Frank, do you smell that? The toilet? No? I can smell it. It’s disgusting.”

I clean the bathroom about once every other day, wiping down the base, giving the inside a good once-over, and Swiffer-ing the floor. Even though I’d clean the bathroom, though, there was this nagging sense (and scent), saying something wasn’t right.

It was the stuck on yellow scum on the inside of the toilet, I was sure of it. Five man boys using a toilet over an extended period of time, and you’ve got ring-around-the-toilet. No matter how hard I scrubbed, how much I cursed, or how many drop-in toilet bombs I lit off, it remained. Until this – taking a pumice stone to the toilet.

One day while cleaning the bathroom, close to blacking out from the realization of it all, it dawned on my brain to try a pumice stone. I had either heard, read or seen it referenced somewhere as THE best way to clean toilet scum, filed it in the messy cabinets of my brain, and without knowing it, sent a page to retrieve it that day. Good boy.

Pumice stone, pumice stone? Where can I find a pumice stone? Like a headless chicken I circled and clucked, asking my brain page to help me out once again… All I had was the old stone I’d used on my feet a few times, but it would do. I gloved up, grabbed some baking soda (figured a paste of soda would help?) and got to scrubbing. By golly. The sight of flaky, crusted peediddle, and the stench of it’s wonder being released into the air was enough to let me know it was working. I scrubbed and scrubbed that stone down to a little nub, cleanliness as motivation. I likened it to a diaper explosion where you KNOW you have to clean it, vile as it is, but once you’re done you’ll be very pleased.

And I was. It was as if I had received a brand new toilet. The smell is gone, the unsightly piss ring is gone, and now when I clean my toilet you see sparkling porcelain and smell clean air.