I'll Shoot Your Eye Out

I've never fired a gun in my life until today. It's not that I don't like guns, or that I'm afraid of them; I just have never had a real use for them. Mr. A has been trying to drag me out shooting for years. Today I finally said, "Okaaaaaaay..."

I actually had a lot of fun! Yeah, I'm surprised. What was even more surprising is that I didn't do too bad:

This was my first target.  I actually hit the box that the target was fastened to with an entire clip (oh, no, I hit the target once, nevermind) before I figured out how to aim with the sight.  If that were a burglar, he'd be in pretty bad shape right now.

This was my second target.  Only one of my shots hit the box this time.  I am not so bad for a first-timer.

"Knowing is half the battle." - G.I. Joe

Motivation

This video was a huge eye-opener for me. As a manager of a small group of professionals, I'm always looking for ways to keep the team motivated and keep everyone engaged in their work. The information I gathered here helps me approach this work from a different perspective.

Awesomeness!



"Knowing is half the battle." - G.I. Joe

Sad Cat Video

Proof that cats are not always heartless, aloof creatures.




"Knowing is half the battle." - G.I. Joe

Let's Get Physical

So, now that I'm no longer about to die, I've decided to get serious again about my workout.  In the past this has not been a hugely successful endeavor because, inevitably, all of the following happens:

• The kids scream the whole time I'm out of the room.  I can hear them no matter how high the volume is on my iPod.
• Mr. A warns me that he has a raid (WoW) in 30 minutes so I'd better hurry up.
• Mr. A talks non-stop about how asshole-y the kids are pretty much every time I bring up my workout.
• I get sick.
• The kids get sick.
• Mr. A gets sick/throws his back out.
• I get home late from work too late to eat dinner and work out, so I have to choose.  I usually choose food.

There's a quote by Einstein that always runs through my mind right before I start working out again:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So, in order to make sure that my same failures do not rear their ugly heads, this time I will:

• Eat late lunches, so I don't have to worry so much about dinner.
• Tell Mr. A that his alternative to watching the kids until I'm damn-well done working out is to pay a gym.  Then I will also pay additional for said gym to watch my bratty kids.  Those gyms are more expensive than my kid's preschool.  I think he'll get the point.
• The illnesses....well there's not much else I can do about that.  We're just going to have to keep hand washing and monitoring of the kids' germ sharing (i.e.: no cup sharing and no toy biting)

Wish me luck!

"Knowing is half the battle." - G.I. Joe

Idle Hands

Today I'm resting from a week of slowly dying.  I usually sit around for a good span of time on my days off, but I have a problem with sitting in one place for too long.  I get twitchy.  Today I'm not giving myself any excuses though.  I've been pushing myself too hard all week and now this is the result whether I like it or not.  So this is how my day has gone (any gaps of time between events are filled with mindless internet surfing or napping):

6:40 - Wake up and make coffee.  I'm about to enjoy a cup when my son wakes up.  Mr. A creaks downstairs with him and then yells, "TAKE HIM!"  Apparently he has worn a misshapen groove in his side of the bed and it's causing him to sleep in the shape of a letter K.

7:00 - Listen to Mr. A bitch about our mattress.  I stop him every 3 sentences to tell him that he needs to just buy a new one and quit his bitching.  Seriously.

 7:30 - I no longer want my cup of coffee because I could swear I hear bugs in it.  I pour it out and make myself a new cup.

8:45 - Now the bugs are in the air vent.  Or it might be pigeons.  I think they followed me home from work.

9:20 - I thought about doing laundry, but didn't.  I did change my clothes though, but just because my son spilled Cup O' Joe #2 on me and then smeared his face across my chest until I had a rainbow of boogers across my boobs.  I bet Suri Cruise doesn't do that.

9:30 - Watch Spongebob Squarepants and complain about an episode where, at one point, Spongebob and Patrick freak out because they don't have any water.

10:00 - Banish the kids to their bedroom to play.

10:10 - Go upstairs to check on the kids just to find the mattress to my girl's bed laying on the other side of the room.  All of her clothes, books and toys are spread all over the floor.  I just take the kids and go back downstairs.  I feel a small amount of guilt when I do this, because now Mr. A will have to clean this whole mess when he takes the girl up to bed tonight.  Whatever, I'm resting.

11:05 - Take cold medicine.  I don't think I have a cold, but it reduces the symptoms that I have.  The only kind I can stand is the Alka Seltzer Plus Cold (cherry flavor) (not a paid plug), so I'm trying to get this down when I can feel my throat not opening or closing properly.  I think I broke my throat.

11:15 - Put my son down for his nap.  He actually went for it.  It was a pleasant surprise since he usually fakes like he's going to sleep until he gets to the bottom of his bottle, when he jumps up like a jack-in-the-box on crack yelling, "Fooled you, MuthaFucka!!!"  Then he proceeds to try and kill himself for the next 1/2 an hour or so by attempting to dive head-first off of things.  Things like the kitchen table and his playpen.

11:20 - I decide that nap thing the boy is doing looks like fun, so I do the same.  It was just as awesome as it looked.

1:45 - Woken up by a crash.  My daughter decided to smash her special keyboard into the floor.  Apparently she broke off the space bar.  This is unfortunate since most of the games she likes to play use the space as one of the action keys.  Tough luck kiddo.  While all this was going on, I pretended to still be asleep because I didn't want to get up yet.

1:48 - Fell back asleep. 

3:00 - Woke up for good when my kids dumped over their toy box and then my son climbed on top and let out a battle cry.  When I looked over, he was doing a victory dance.  It occurred to me that if a responsible adult didn't make their presence known soon, it might get all Lord Of The Flies up in here.

3:10 - Watched my grandma's 3 lb. Yorkie struggle to make it through the toys to get to the patio door.  I'd feel bad, but I really don't like that dog.  I mean, at 3 lbs., does it really get to call itself a dog?

4:20 - Think about doing some laundry.  Don't.

4:30 - Watch Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.  Really watch it.  Get mad when I realize I can no longer enjoy it because I have to pick it apart with logic.  Like:

• Flint's Spray-On Shoes would have probably led to his feet being amputated because they can no longer grow or be cleaned properly.
• A "laceless alternative foot covering" is already invented.  It's called "every other type of shoe that's not a sneaker."  Just buy yourself some flip flops Flint.
• There's no way his Monkey Thought Translator would not have made him a bazillionairre.
• RatBirds is a redundancy.
• The only member of the news media covering the most spectacular weather phenomenon ever in the history of mankind is an intern from the The Weather Channel (well, the generic cartoon equivalent anyway).
• Which leads me to wonder why she was there to begin with.  What interest does The Weather Channel have in a theme park opening on a small, obscure island?
• None of the food ever rots.
• When the mayor gets bigger he also somehow grows taller.  If it were only that easy.
• During the scene where we first discover the mayor is getting huge, he has a giant hot dog tucked under his arm.  This is well before the Giant Hotdog Panic scene.
• There is no way humanly possible for Flint to make that huge Jell-o castle in one night.
• I'm pretty sure the Jell-o piano shouldn't be making any noise.
• People are still eating the ice cream even though Steve is clearly throwing around some poo in it.  Frickin' ew.
• I would not eat in a restaurant where food fell on my head.

I missed the rest of the movie because, unfortunately, my little girl decided to freak out and start throwing things at me.  This caused me to punish her by taking away her "stickers" (temporary tattoos).  That caused her to scream, "NO MAMA.  I WANT MY STICKERS BACK RIGHT NOW!!" for half a damn hour.  I totally ignored her while I was catching up on this post.

Now I have a serious headache and Mr. A and I are trying not to look at each other because we'll laugh at her.  It's actually pretty sad how attached she got to those things in such a short amount of time (they lasted 5 damn days!!), but on the other hand, she's just so overly-dramatic that you can't help it. 

She's just standing there sobbing and telling her dad, "Mama took my fire!  My fire gone!" with the exact same emotion as someone would say, "Someone took my baby!  My baby is gone!"

I know I'm mean for laughing, but laughter is the best medicine and I need all the help I can get right now.

"Knowing is half the battle." - G.I. Joe