Happy Halloween!

Great night. Good food, better company. Two of the cutest bees you've ever seen. Coupla beers. Trick or treaters. Some of them with manners, most of them without. Carved out pumpkins. Tea light candles. Too much candy. What a way to start a weekend...

Re-Think Pink

Why is it that every time I turn around, another everyday household product is being re-wrapped with a pink label in support of the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation? Although I have no specific numbers to back the claim I'm about to make, I'd venture to say that the 'portion of the proceeds' from the sale of said items is marginal. If consumers really wanted to make a difference in the search for a cure, then they, and every woman who's ever found a lump in her breast, would be better off if people supported the cause the good old fashioned way....by writing a check. Novel idea, I know, but think about it. Say you spend 50 bucks a week on groceries and lets pretend for a moment that EVERY item you bought was a carefully pink labeled product. Lets also suppose that 10% of the SALE price of each item (not even profit, but full sale price) was donated. I believe that would give us the following math:

$50 x 52 weeks = $2,600 x .10 = $260

I'm on a roll here, so let's suppose an average family of 4 makes at least $60,000. If my math is correct, that means that your yearly donation through grocery purchases would be .43% of your gross income. Not even half of one percent. Do yourself a favor and cut out the middle man. Don't allow yourself to be emotionally hijacked into buying one product over another because of that cheap pink label or any other manipulative marketing tricks.

If you are wondering - yes, I have donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation directly. More than once.

Election Predictions

Tonight over our spagetti dinner, Brendan and I explained to our 4 year old Keira that next Tuesday the people of our country would decide who the next President would be. I asked her who she thought would win - John McCain or Barack Obama. She said John McCain. Being an equal opportunity mom I wrote the names John McCain and Barack Obama on a two different pieces of paper and held them up in front of our 16 month old Kristen and asked the same question. She picked Obama. Stay tuned....

The Lady with the Hammer

A few weeks ago my neighbors put decided to put a political sign up in their yard. I am not opposed to such acts of freedom of speech. Afterall, it's their property and their view, so let 'em go ahead, put up the sign. I would be lying, however, if I said I was perfectly happy with their choice of placement. We have no obvious barrier between the end of their yard and the begining of ours, just a blendy broad area of rocks. So where do they decide to put the sign? Towards the end of their yard near the begining of ours, right smack in the middle of ambiguity. I suppose that if I happened to agree with the message of the sign it would not matter, but unfortunately, I believe that the ballot measure my neighbor's sign supports is unecessary. Believe me, I could get into a whole nother blog about the measure alone, but not now. In regards to dealing with the sign my options are as follows:

1. Get over it

2. Ask them to move it

3. Knock it down while they are sleeping and then put up a sign with my own opposing viewpoint.

Anyone who knows me knows that I sooooooo wanted to do (3). I seriously considered it for a moment, but soon after decided that (1) would probably be the best idea. So I got over it. A few days later it was really windy and the sign kept blowing over, and then eventually disappeared. I was smiling on the inside. Well this morning around 6:45 I went outside to throw a stinky diaper directly in the big trash. As I ducked under my slowly rising garage door I discovered the neighbor lady out there with hammer and stake, pounding away, putting her sign back.

How foolish of me to believe we could have gotten through election week without seeing that sign again.

Wind of Change

Today we found a scorpion in the kids tub just before we were about to fill it for their bath. He was a tiny one who must have come up from the drain. Now I'm all freaked out that we're going to find more of them!

Boo & Boooooooo!

I intedned to post this blog last night, but when it came down to it, at the end of the night I was too exhausted. Yesterday was a good day.

BOO

We took the kids to Boo at the Zoo. It was crowded, but not overwhelmingly so. The kids had a good time. Kristen kept calling the animals, "Dog" and Keira spent much of the day reminding us that she wanted to go on the merry-go-round. We had to park in an overflow lot and take a shuttle to the zoo. The experience reminded me, once again, of the harsh contrast between the lives of kids and the live of adults. As we unloaded the car I was less than thrilled about the shuttle. My thoughts - "Oh man, what a pain in the ass. Now we've gotta collapse the double wide stroller and lug all the bags on the bus. I hate waiting for these things too. I hope it doesn't take too long. Ugggghhhh!" Keira's words (in a very excited tone - "Oooooh a bus! I never rode a bus before!" As we climbed on and wrode the 3.2 minute ride to the zoo Keira stared out the window the whole time with a giant smile on her face and glow in her eyes. I couldn't help but feel jealous.


BOOOOOOOO!

Later in the evening Brendan and I had some grown up time as we tailgated for little while and then went to the ASU v. Oregon game. The tailgating was fun but the game not so much. ASU sucked. They seem to be on a downward spiral. Erickson needs to sack up and pull Carpenter. Their chances at a decent bowl game are just about over, and it's not like Carpenter is going to be impressing and NFL orgs. Carpenter's 5 minutes are up. Give the next guy a chance to touch the ball a few times this season, so we can renew hope for next year.

It's Warm Here

So two of my friends having been blogging here for a little while and I have been inspired to do the same. I like it here. I feel like this is a less formal blogging place that will allow me to post more frequently without feeling like I have to read and re-read every line a million times to make sure it came out exactly the way I wanted it to. I look foward to enjoying the freedom this warm place has brought me.

Here are a few things you should know before you read any further:

1. I am a terrible speller. In elementary school when we used to have the classroom spelling competition to see which kid would represent our class in the school spelling bee, I would always make it to the final rounds. The thought of getting up in front of the whole school to spell words was so terrifying however, that purposely mis-spelled words to get myself out. Ever since then, my spelling ability has been retarded.

2. I am painfully aware of the fact that I will occasionally (hopefully not too often) mis-use words like 'their' & 'there' or 'your' & 'you're.' For me this is a use it or lose it kind of thing. When I was in school and actively writing papers I would never make these kinds of mistakes, however, now my ability to avoid such simple errors is inferior.

3. I am in love with the dictionary and the thesaurus. I wish I had a better memory so I could retain the kind of vocabulary I often dream of.

4. I like to use dots (....) and dashes (-), in places that are probably inappropriate. Punctuation is for pansies. Not really, I only said that to seem cool.