Gymbucks Time

Thank you to Windy for explaining them to me. Now that I get it, I realize they're just like FastCash at Express! Who-hoo!!!

So, Avery and I went on a spring outfit shopping spree today. We had to go to a Gymboree 30 minutes away because our local one is just the gym. I thought for sure Avery would hear the songs and playing and flip out on me, but she just kept saying "Bubbles?" I hope I didn't traumatize her too much by only shopping and not stopping in to visit Gymbo the Clown.

Listen to me, I am speaking mommy-ese. Ugh.

Anyway, here's what we got. If only I could buy this many outfits for myself for the same amount of money.



And, as with any shopping spree, things just wouldn't be complete without accessories.

SoCal Illegal Immigrant walk-outs

So, I got this email from my Dad yesterday. He works in the LA Unified District as a high school chemistry teacher.

"Hi Allsion, I've been thinking all day of the need to send you a message. This thing going on with Hispanic students in the LA area has affected our school a bit- enough that administrators took both high schools to lock-down conditions yesterday. It continued today. Basically that means that students are not allowed out of class in any groups larger than class size. Brunch is cancelled. Lunch is handled as an escort-one-class-at-a-time program. And even at the end of the day, classes are escorted, one-at-a-time to one of two exit gates. The students hate it, and so do we. And of course the real problem knuckleheads aren't in school, anyway. I guess it's an over response to intimidate the borderline thugs that may be here."

Thanks for misspelling the name of your oldest child, Dad.

Anyway, it made me think about something that's been really bothering me regarding this whole issue.

If these students, who mostlikely don't know anything about the bill they're protesting against, are so adamant about becoming citizens and being treated as such, why are they all carrying around Mexican flags? Seriously, what a slap in the face to the legislators who are trying to work for their benefit. If they want to flee Mexico so badly and come to America, why not embrace America? Why protest against our LAWS and proudly display the flag from the country they're so desperately seeking refuge from?

The peach tree in full bloom

This only lasts a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd get a picture of it. This is what I see out my bedroom sliding glass door. Too bad it's raining again. We had a nice three-day break from it. I actually planted some flowers (snapdragons) and transplanted some asparagus ferns. I guess I should have taken a picture of that accomplishment too since it's probably now a swamp of freshly-planted greenery. Damn.

Laundry Basketcase

Avery went nuts over the laundry basket today. She sat inside of it for a half an hour, just throwing her toys out, asking me to put them back in, and throwing them out again. I wanted to take a picture of it all, but once I decided to get up and get the camera, she wanted out of the basket. Figures!

Pathetic Pigtails

-- enough said.


I tried getting a pic from the front. You can see about six hairs poking out on each side. I thought the picture was so cute though that I had to post it anyway, pigtails visible or not. She might not be getting much more hair on her head, but she's getting eyebrows!

Quick updates...

So, the flu chain went: Avery>Jed>GramZ>PapaZ -- yes, they ALL got it. It seemed to be a weaker flu each time, so PapaZ didn't have to miss too much work. Missing work is not an option for a work-aholic accountant during tax season. Both my sister and I escaped fludom somehow.

My friend's granddaughter is doing better. She had to be put back on the respirator last Thursday and it wasn't looking good for several hours. Today, however, she's back off of the respirator and doing better. She's only 8 days old today. I hope she pulls through this and gets a heart transplant soon. What a terrible situation for their family.

Fun with peach blossoms...

Or, more accurately -- please, please, Avery, can we get a good picture of you before you get your clothes all filthy?




Are we done yet?

Move over Starbucks

My friend Andy challenged me to pour the espresso in my latte in the shape of a heart like he can. I've scoffed at him for months and months, but today I actually tried it, and voila! I sooo missed my calling.

Debuting her first springtime outfit!

Yay! It was short-lived though. By 4pm it was chilly outside. I am so ready for some warmth!

Discovering the fruit

on the orange tree.

I picked Avery a few oranges today -- normally she carries them around or throws them as an offering to the wildlife. Today, however, she somehow tore one of the oranges apart (they are very ripe) and started to eat it! The mess she made definitely warranted an outfit change, which was fine, because it got to be about 70 degrees today.

Here are the pictures :)

This morning

Jed was feeling okay, so we went outside to pick flowers and be in the sun. Avery carried around her flowers until they got wilted, like she always does. At one point, though, she did turn them over to her Daddy, but only for a moment.

A weekend reprieve...

Sort of, anyway...

Avery ended up giving Jed the flu. Friday was Jed's day off and his day to have Avery while I was at work. We ended up begging his mom to help and she took the day off to watch Avery. This is the second time she's done this in two weeks (my sister was sick a couple of weeks ago).

I avoided Jed like the plague for two days -- slept in the spare bedroom, spent my waking hours either running errands, at his parents' house, or in the living room. He was quarantined to the bedroom, and I kept that door shut tight. I DID NOT and DO NOT want to get the flu.

Avery stayed the night at the in-laws' last night to help keep her well, but unfortunately she gave GramZ the flu now too. Neither my sister nor myself have caught it, and I certainly don't intend to.

Jed did feel a little better today, but not great. We tried spending some time outside together today to help us all feel a little better (it was a gorgeous day) but Jed still isn't 100%. What a wasted weekend on the spending time with family front.

Avery and I did get out a little bit, but we missed Daddy.

Yesterday, we went to the Bicycle Classic in our town. Diehard cyclists throughout the country come here to compete in the races. I'm not a cyclist myself, but I usually like to go check out the action. It's a rush to be standing so close to all those racers when they speed by in a huge group. I got a couple of really crappy pictures, so I stole some from the race website instead of posting my own.

Unfortunately, Avery was dead asleep for most of the race, but these pictures capture what she missed.



Here's how Avery spent the races:


More pictures of the weekend's events to come.

Confession...

Everyone seems to want baby #2 to be a boy, and I have definite 'boy' feelings this time around. I need to confess though -- I want another girl! Am I a terrible person?

Sad for a co-worker

A man that I've become pretty good friends with over the years had his second grandchild born this past Monday. The doctors already knew the baby had some sort of heart defect, and they had a team of surgeons standing by at the birth to whisk the baby away. I think she'd been on the heart transplant list since 30 weeks gestation, but the average wait is over six months at the nearby hospital (fortunuately they're well known in the area of heart transplants and organ transplants in general).

The baby was taken by c-section to avoid any further complications and unnecessary strain on her heart during birth. She was doing really well, breathing on her own, but eating through a feeding tube. Surgery was postponed for some reason, I'm not sure why. I asked him on Wednesday how it all had gone, and he seemed really positive. He remarked how cute she was, and she seemed like a real fighter.

Today he left in a rush and was crying. I didn't physically see him -- this came from other students who had been in his room at the time. He had to get a sub for the remainder of the day and didn't really talk to anyone. I can only imagine what has happened. I am so totally choked up over this. I'm just hoping she is okay and it was a minor setback.

Here's hoping she pulls through whatever has happened. What a heartbreaking ordeal to have to go through.

Sick baby :(

I really can't complain. Although Avery is a bad sleeper, she's a healthy bad sleeper. She's never really been sick, save for the few times she's barfed on me and other times she's had a stuffy nose. This morning I left for work and she was much clingier than normal. I thought it was typical as each week seems to get tougher and tougher for me to go. I even say the word "Auntie" and she starts sobbing.

After lunchtime today, I had an email from my mom telling me to call my sister. She couldn't find the number to my school, and in typical Allison fashion, my cell phone was sitting and charging on the kitchen counter. At home. She called my mom to help, but my mom is in VA this week and couldn't do much.

Apparently Avery had thrown up several times and then had started to dry heave. My sister called the pediatric nurse who told her to give Avery a tablespoon of water every ten minutes. My poor baby.

All this to say, this is how I've spent the last few hours. Fortunately, my schedule was such today that I could leave at 2:30, so I came right home. We've had tablespoons of water and cuddle time ever since. She finally has dozed off laying on the floor, and my hip was killing me, so I had to get up.

My poor baby!

Yeah, here comes the Rooster...

At lunch today, surrounded by a variety of roosters in different shapes, sizes, and forms, Avery decided she'd try to do a little "cock-a-doodle-dooing" herself. I captured it on video tonight. It doesn't come out perfect, but she's working on it!

Click on the picture to watch the video...

Visit from friends

Windy and Marylin came to visit us today. Marylin and Avery hung out -- mostly Marylin looked at Avery with a confused facial expression while Avery did strange behaviors and made weird noises. Avery even decided to do her best "cock-a-doodle-doo" impression amidst the rooster theme at lunch. Marylin was a champ and sat on the regular sized chair the entire time and ate off a plate! I think Windy must be taking her to etiquette lessons.

Before Marylin had to leave, Avery gave her a kiss goodbye. Or, she tried to, anyway. We had a great visit and wish that Windy, Marylin, and Mike would hurry up and move to our town already!!!

Here are some pictures to share:

Free!

My friend Susie went to a reading conference for elementary school teachers last week, and apparently won a door prize that came with all kinds of goodies. This chair was wrapped up with all kinds of books and fun stuff on the seat. Susie had no use for the chair or for several of the books, so guess who got to inherit them? Yay!


Of course, Avery loves it to pieces...

This is just scary.

On the left is a picture of my belly at 18 weeks when I was pregnant with Avery, and on the right, a picture of me at 18 weeks with this pregnancy. I think it's safe to say there's a difference. A sizeable difference.


Yeah, it's scary. Here is a picture of the whole progression thus far. I am already a cow. Moo!

C'mon people

Take a moment to put a freaking ID tag on your dog's collar!

For the second time today in just a couple of months, I was the savior of some poor dog with no identification tag whatsoever on its collar. It wasn't a matter of the collar falling off, it was a matter of there being NO tag on the dog.

And, while I'm at it, can't people start to lose their pets during business hours at the freaking Humane Society? I had to call around to neighbors to see if anyone knew anyone that might know someone with a miniature dachshund.

Fortunately, the lady who does the neighborhood watch knew two people on the block with one, neither of which was home to answer their phone. Thank God she was nice enough to take the dog anyway. She could tell from the howling coming from my backyard that my house was not an option. Winston would eat a dog that size. No shit.

So, let me help anyone that needs a new tag for their dog. These are the best tags around. They don't jingle and they don't randomly fall off of dogs' collars. Get one today.

Avery June and Jesus, B/B/F

Don't worry Windy, that B/B/F stands for "Bath Buds Forever."

Avery received a towel from a friend of her GramZ's when she was born. It was wrapped nicely with a pretty pink bow, and the delicate lettering of her name "Avery June" showed through. I thanked the friend and marveled and how the towel had been sewn together. I resolved to promptly cut it into washcloths for the junk towel drawer.

Later, I took a closer look at the handiwork, and noticed what I hadn't seen before. It only says "Avery June" (which is not Avery's middle name, by the way -- it's Jane) on the part that faced out while the towel was still wrapped up. Everywhere else on the towel it says "Jesus." And let there be no mistake, it says "Jesus" all over the place.


My cutting-it-into-pieces plan fell apart right then. There was something sacreligious about cutting apart a towel that bears Jesus's name -- even if my daughter's name is misspelled AND the paint used to paint all those "Jesuses" is scratchier than hell. It would hurt to dry yourself with the parts of the towel that contain the script.

Now, I have no problem with the misspelling of Avery's middle name. I really don't have a problem with the 26 Jesuses painted everywhere else on the towel, either. I mean, it's a towel. A Jesus-y towel. Jed and I have joked over the last year and a half about how Avery liked to bathe with Jesus. In reality, I've never used the towel until tonight, when all the others were dirty and I was desperate for a hooded something. It worked well enough to wrap her, transport her, and then carefully dry her with the parts of the towel that wouldn't gauge out chunks of her flesh.

While doing all of this, I thought about something. When it comes right down to it, it's a towel. I mean, isn't that an odd place to celebrate your beliefs?

After using it tonight, I came up with a plan. I'm going to copy and sew the design, but oeave off the lettering. It's really quite clever. As for the "Avery June/Jesus" towel itself, I think I'm going to have to retire it. For no other reason than you can't dry off with the scratchy puffy paint lettering.

Oh, and, one really positive thing that came from all of this -- I realized that my exposure to puffy paint didn't end with my Kappa Delta Big Sister days. Whew!

Long live puffy paint!

After watching the late afternoon news...

I decided to run to Target for some batteries for Avery's crib mobile thing. She turns it on in the middle of the night sometimes, but the batteries are dead, and she's been throwing a fit over it for the last two days. Every time she wakes up, she says "chee-chees" for "cheap-cheap," which means 'birdies.' The mobile is bird-themed.

Anyway, after having the weatherman tell me there was a 20% chance of rain and looking out into my backyard to see how sunny/overcast it was, I decided to go on the outing because my backyard was sunny.

I opened the garage to leave, only to see this. And still, I didn't grab my umbrella. I took this picture because I thought it looked pretty. I didn't dawn on me that *maybe* it was going to rain, and soon.



So we did our shopping at Target only to leave and see that it was POURING rain outside. Avery and I stood in the exit area of Target waiting for a small reprieve, but didn't get one.

The only upside is now Avery understands what rain is. For the rest of the afternoons, as the skies dumped buckets of water into my backyard, Avery pointed over and over and said "Rain." Maybe now she understands that that's why we can't go outside when it's like this!

Photo Assignment...

Anyone care to play?

I thought it'd be fun to take a picture of something and share. So, how about the front door to your house/apartment/tent/whatever the hell you live in?

Paste the link into your comment and I'll display them (if you want me to!)

Here is my front door, which I despise. It screams "1979!" -- when my house was built -- and it's on the long list of things to replace around here. To the left of the door, on fancy ceramic tiles, is the phrase "Beware of Lion." Some dumbass put that there, not me. We don't have a lion, I assure you. And if it's supposed to be in reference to the previous owners' cat, I don't find it amusing at all.

So anyway, get to photographing, will ya?
Here is our door...



ETA: Leslie's door!
It's a whole lot nicer than mine!!!



ETA: Erin's door!
You people and your nice doors/screens!



ETA: Anna's door!
More ammunition for me to show Jed just how ugly our door really is!



And Anna, we can't do nudie shots right off the bat. We have to work up to that.

Beware the Ides of March!

Exhibit A:
It makes normally clean babies dirty!



Exhibit B:
It makes well-trained (cough!) animals forget their training and go berserk!


Exhibit C:
It makes dirty babies commiserate with formerly well-trained animals and feed them rocks!


Exhibit D:
It inspires said baby and dogs to form a union called the "Dirty Butt Gang."
The baby gives the orders!


Even from behind bars she makes her connections
and the rock-feeding continues!


Beware!

I wonder if...

springtime will bring me lemons this year? Holy Hell!


And apparently it's time again for my peach tree to bloom. I love all the blossoming fruit trees this time of year. The house behind me has a hill full of fruit trees and the entire hillside is covered with flowers in spring. I'll get a picture once the blossoms are in full bloom. It's gorgeous!

Hanging in the playroom

Avery and mama hanging in the playroom. Mama even sings and makes duck noises. Exciting stuff, people!

Video link

Thank you Alex :)

Today we received a package in the mail from Alex and family. It's a sampling of the goodies they're selling at their store for a celebration that is held in the county they live in in VA. I can't wait to test them out! I don't believe I've ever had REAL maple syrup before. Only Aunt Jemima at our house!

The sun is out!

And we're taking advantage. We spent a couple of hours in the sun in the backyard this morning. I tried getting Avery to draw with chalk on the sidewalk, but she was more interesting in digging in the dirt and finding rocks. She kept saying "dock," so I guess we'll add that to her words list.

She thought it would be fun to bury the rocks in the sandbox too. I guess she'll find them later. She also tried to feed me a stick after watching Murphy walk around with a stick in his mouth for an hour. I'm just glad it didn't go into her mouth.

Yay for sunshine!

Crappy Weekend Weather...

means Mommy needs to get creative.

It's actually hailing today, which it rarely does, and while it's fun for me to sit and watch the hail collect, Avery doesn't agree. She wants to do something. Anything.


So, we got a little creative indeed. I broke out the 99-cent watercolor paints and away we went.


Avery was most interested in the water, and wanted to keep picking it up, so we'll work on the actual painting. She did manage to get paint on paper several times, but only because I held her hand. She wanted to stir the blue water over and over and over again. Silly child.


Yay for 99-cent watercolors.

My husband would kill me for this...

because of his irrational fears that the "Oprahtization" of America is happening to women on a daily basis, one woman at a time.

It already happened to me. Apparently it's happened to Avery too now.

Avery saying "Oprah."

And I know what she means, now.

My friend Christy once tried to explain to me how much she HATES noisy toys and how she'd once gone on a murderous bubble popper toy rampage. Apparently, one day, she took the unsuspecting toy outside and beat it again and again onto the ground, smashing it to smithereens.

I thought she was on the edge, being a mom of two very, very active boys who are 2 years apart and truly run her ragged. I imagined her murdering this innocent little children's toy with a psychotic glint in her eye and some sort of "Mua Hua Hua" kind of laugh. I'm pretty sure I'm not exaggerating, and I actually felt a little scared of her for a minute.

She told me this story when I was still pregnant with Avery, when my world was quiet and orderly and there weren't 7-pound dog hair balls collecting under my dining room table. I didn't understand how noise takes on a different meaning in your life when you're a mom to a baby or toddler who doesn't sleep well. Her oldest is about as good a sleeper as Avery. She still has relatively sleepless nights, and her boys are approaching 3 and 5 years old.

I get it now. I mean, I got it before, sort of, but now I really get it.

First it started with the monitor we have. The static it emits is enough to make a person go on a murderous monitor-killing spree. And oh, I will have my spree when I'm done with that thing. I have imagined taking a sledge-hammer to it multiple times. Scenes from Office Space and the copy machine in the open field come to mind.

Now, though, another item has emerged as a potential candidate for my "MUST KILL NOISE MAKER" list. To my dismay, Avery received a popper of sorts for Christmas. Her GramZ bought it for her from Ikea. At first I thought - yay, free toys! Immediately following, I thought, no, more noise! And rightly so. It's every bit as annoying as the popper toy Christy killed in her backyard, God rest its soul.

As my list of toys to kill grows, all I'm left to figure out is how to make toys disappear without Avery and the person who bought the toy noticing. I have yet to figure that one out. Any and all suggestions are welcome. More noise-making toys are not.

Fun with books...

This might take a minute or two to load. Avery and I had a little fun with a book today. I actually broke out the real video recorder and everything.

Fun with books

EDIT: The link I had here originally didn't work. It's fixed now :)

OOOOOH How I love oranges!

Avery loves to play this game where I pick oranges, hand them to her, she throws them off of the deck, and then cries for more. So, I pick more, hand them to her, and the cycle continues. I figure, at the very least, the jackrabbits are feasting on fine locally-grown citrus crop.

Wow. Just wow.

This is shocking. I will be watching closely to see what happens. And, what a genius, Governor Rounds expects court challenges. Ya think?

A shoutout to all my peeps...

...all five of them that are left.



Oh, Peeps. How I love thee. Sweet, wonderful marshmallow covered in sugary goodness. Please Peeps, never go away.

Making a couple of changes...

I am making a couple of changes to my blog in case you visit and something is inaccessible. It'll be back to normal soon!

Priceless...

Anna will probably kill me for this, or else disown me, which she's already done 42 times in our friendship anyway...

Her mom emailed me this picture a while ago to see what I could do with it. I assumed she meant photoshop-wise, so I just added some simple text. Anna's mom is easy to make laugh. I mailed it back to her and I could almost hear the "ha ha ha" on the receiving end of the email.

Anyway, I figured if she could put a picture of me licking her face on her blog, then I can most definitely put a picture of her from when she was two on my blog.

Mua hua hua... and TAKE THAT!



Now I'm going to hide for fear of retaliation.

To the genius who invented pre-cut bagels...

...which I find to be more or less unnecessary -- it's not often that I'm eating bagels where I'm not near a knife to cut my own damned bagel -- could you at least have invented a bagel-cutter that cuts the bagel in equal halves? I can't tell you how often I try to separate a pre-cut bagel and only one side will fit into the toaster, and it's the side that's all of 2cm wide. Seriously now... we can talk nanobots in Popular Science, but we can't come up with a way to cut bagels in half correctly?

My husband...

the shittiest "babysitter" ever.

Now, I know he's not babysitting, it's his child, blah blah blah. I have been sick the last couple of days, and last night I got almost no sleep. He was at work until 3am doing an Active X upgrade to his servers, and I kept waking up for several reasons:

I'll list them from most to least annoying:
1. Winston kept whining to go out to puke - apparently he ate a frond of my asparagus fern and it didn't sit right. Well, DUH, dumbass dog. I went to bed at 9:30, and he woke me up 6 times from then until 1am. Damnit.
2. Jed wasn't home and I couldn't sleep well because I worry too much.
3. Had to pee.
4. Had to blow my nose.
5. Had to drink water because my mouth was dry because I can't breathe through my nose.

So today, after he had to go BACK to work to finish, and I'd been dragging my ass trying to take care of Avery and get some things done -- like wash the 14 sippy cups in the sink that only get washed if I do it -- Jed finally got home at 4pm and I wanted to take a shower.

I got out of the shower to hear Avery whining at my bedroom door -- thank God I had the baby gate up because she could have come in and gotten into God knows what -- so I hurried, got out of the shower, and went to figure out where in the HELL my husband was instead of keeping an eye on Avery.

And found him I did. DEAD asleep on the playroom floor.

What a freaking loser. I tried to take a picture to use as blackmale in the future. I know it's dark. Silly me, I turned off the light and the flash on my camera so as not to disturb the loser.

More about me...

Because I know you were dying to know more.
Swiped from Angie.

9 lasts:
last cigarette: oooh.... 8-9 years ago?
last beverage: root beer
last kiss: yesterday
last movie seen: War of the Worlds
last phone call: Meredith, my sister
last cd played: don't remember, it's been that long
last bubble bath: 2003 -- our bathtub doesn't plug -- must get fixed soon
last time you cried: last week? I am pregnant, it happens.

8 have you evers:
have you ever dated one of your best friends: no
have you ever skinny dipped: yes
have you ever kissed somebody and regretted it: um, hello... of course.
have you ever fallen in love: of course
have you ever lost someone you loved: sure
have you ever been depressed: oh sure
have you ever been drunk and thrown up: oh yes, many a time. The worst, however, was about three years ago when Jill came to visit from NM, and I somehow drank an entire bottle of Vanilla Vodka. Anna loves to remind me of that night.

7 states you've been to:
1. California
2. Oregon
3. Washington
4. Nevada
5. Arizona
6. Texas
7. Indiana

6 things you've done today:
1. showered
2. went to work
3. graded papers
4. cleaned up the living room
5. washed a load of laundry
6. cleaned up the living room, again

5 favorite things in no order:
1. sushi
2. alcohol
3. ice cream
4. photoshop
5. Avery Jane

4 people you can tell [almost] anything to:
1. Jed
2. my mom
3. my sister
4. Anna

3 wishes:
1. that I will get to see Avery grow up
2. that I will have another healthy baby, and NEVER do it again
3. that I will grow old with my husband

2 things you want to do before you die:
1. watch my children create families of their own
2. go to Greece and Rome

1 thing you regret:
1. not getting a second degree in something technological. It's more me than I ever knew

For Jessica...

I did a little research into whether or not Barq's Rootbeer has caffeine or not. It does. Didn't we once have a debate on whether it did or not? The weird thing is, Diet Barq's Rootbeer doesn't. Who knows!

I found this handy caffeine chart so that you know where to go for your fix in the future. The crazy thing is, Diet Coke is one of the highest on this list, and that's the one I like the most! Maybe that's why I start Jonesing (no pun intended, Jessica) for a Diet Coke everyday at lunch time. Good thing I've cut down to one a week.

Turf War

So, every year, we have a turf war at the school I work at. Fortunately, it doesn't involve students. It's actually stranger than that...

There is a flock of bright green parrot-like birds that surface every spring in my city, and always make their home in the trees at my school. Their presence is very well known -- it's hard to mistake their screeches and coloring.

The problem is, there is already a pretty large flock of crows that hangs out at my school. It's obvious that they don't want the parrots on their turf, and every day, there is a caw/screech war that is waged from either side of the parking lot. The crows are on one side in the oak trees; the parrots are on the other in the palm trees. You have to wonder what kind of birdlike slurs they're yelling back and forth at each other. Probably things like "Your mama eats generic bird seed." I bet that's a real insult.

I so wish I could get a picture of this. It's pretty fascinating that they come over and over again. What I can never figure out is -- where the hell do they go for the rest of the year?

The death of fractions...

At the grocery store today, I ordered up 1/3 a pound of 7% ground beef. I'm making burritos tonight, and only Jed likes ground beef in his. So it's a small amount, but it's just the right amount for this meal.

The guy wrapped up the meat and handed it to me. I thought it was weird that it was so big, so I looked at the label. I hadn't been paying attention as he was weighing it, otherwise I would have caught it earlier. The amount listed on the label was .79lbs. I thought -- that's weird, I know I asked for a 1/3 of a pound.

I handed the package back to him and explained that he'd given me too much. He said, "No, I gave you a 1/3 of a pound." I showed him that it clearly said .79 pounds, which is much closer to 3/4lb. He and I actually argued about who was right... trust me, I was a little dumbfounded, not to mention pretty flustered.

His manager overheard the conversation and came to talk to me. He agreed that .79lbs was definitely not 1/3 of a pound and explained it to the boy helping me. Then the boy had the audacity to say "Next time, maybe you could ask for .33lbs if that's what you want."

HUH?

The manager sent him away and apologized profusely. Before walking away, I encouraged the manager to test his future employees on basic fractions. I hadn't realized that 1/3 was so obscure. Ugh.

In honor of Mardi Gras...

(or Mercredi Gras, since I'm a day late)

Here is Avery in her gen-u-ine Mardi Gras beads from the French Quarter in New Orleans, compliments of Grammy Kathy. She actually gave them to me several years ago, but Avery has inherited them (as she has inherited everything that was once mine, including most of my house). The teeth? No, they don't have anything to do with Mardi Gras, but don't they make the picture that much more interesting?

This is also Avery's attempt at copying her cyber-sort-of-look-alike-friend, Emma. Emma has beads to match all of her outfits. And she has a lot of outfits.

The unanswered question that I have here is, what did Grammy Kathy do to get those beads? Let's just hope they were complimentary.