ET phone home?

The husband and I took the kiddos for a walk today at Caldwell Park.  The weather was beautiful, the scenery.... meh.  There was a lot of trash and homeless people.  It made me sad because I spent a lot of time in that park growing up and now I don't think I would feel safe going there by myself.  But that is a post for another day.

The point of this post is to let you guys know that I saw a payphone today!  An actual working payphone, not just the housing of one with the phone missing and half a phone book hanging in it.  I know it was working because there was a guy using it.

That might not seem very exciting.  And I will admit, it probably shouldn't be that exciting.  But it is definitely weird.  Right? I mean, this is the age of free Obama phones (Thanks Obama! I mean that, seriously, can we have him back now? But I digress....) so what possible reason would anyone have to use a payphone anymore? 

I can think of a few.

MURDERERS!

The guy obviously killed someone and was phoning in the anonymous tip.

KIDNAPPERS!

He was most likely calling to demand his ransom.

CHEATERS!

Can't call his side chick from his cell or his wife will find out.

I can't really think of any scenario that I would need to use a payphone in that doesn't require being murder-y or involve child abduction. Can you?  I mean, unless......

Maybe he was escaping the Matrix!!! 

I feel like I potentially witnessed something big today, you guys!  So in case anyone needs this info, the call was made at roughly 11:30 this morning at the payphone in the Diestelhorst bridge parking lot. He was mid 30-ish, about 5'10", sandy colored hair and dressed like a definite serial cheater/murderer/childnapper who was possibly escaping the matrix.

Muy Caliente

I have a 4 year old for sale. Great price... free to be exact.  But be warned, once you take her there are no refunds or exchanges.  All sales are final.

I'm just kidding (sort of).  But for real the girl makes me want to day drink, all day, er day. I was sorta prepared for the terrible twos, and then I realized that the threes are MUCH worse. But I was not prepared for a 4 year old tyrant to run around my house, demanding food, ignoring the rules and being a general butt-head.  That's right, I said it, my daughter is a butt-head.  I LOVE her, more than I love anything on this earth, apart from her daddy and her brother, but I don't really like her at the moment.  She talks back, she flat ignores me, she runs a hundred miles an hour around the house all day.  She whines constantly.  I don't know how it's possible that she has so much in life to whine and complain about. She is free, white and beautiful. She has two parents who love her and feed her and dress her in cute clothes and buy her all the things and yet..... she is stuck with a perpetual "I smell shit" face on.

Michael Phelps definitely has more reasons in life to be making that face than my 4 year old

She is having a hard time obeying the rules at her daycare. The last 3 days that I picked her up she was in time out when I got there.  A while back when I arrived to get her the teacher pulled me aside and said that Phoebe got in an argument with one of her friends and that she spit at her.  SHE SPIT ON SOMEONE.  I feel like once you have reached spitting status in a fight, you are, like, one step away from being on an episode of Maury. 

Uuuugh, its like the ghost of Christmas future

The good news is that I think we have some time to reign her in before she turns to a life of daytime tv and terrible grammar.  

The most frustrating part of her current attitude is that it is definitely not something that we tolerate or let her get away with.  We sort of pride ourselves on being hard-ass parents so that our kids don't turn into serial killers.  Not hard-ass in the sense that we beat them or anything (I swear!) but more along the lines of not allowing bad manners, nipping bad behavior in the butt and having consequences when you make bad choices.  No exceptions.

So where did we go wrong?  I tried to put her in a time out the other day and she laughed at me. She laughed and I almost threw my shoe at her.  And then Oliver laughed because she laughed, and while everyone was laughing at mommy for trying to be an adult and actually be in charge, I decided it was time for a glass of wine. And then I put myself in a time out.

It's a good thing she is so cute. Can I just blame the rest on her red hair?  She's just so spicy

Is it just something about her age? Testing her limits more so than before? Hopefully it is a phase and she will grow out of it.  *sigh* I really hope so.  This momma is tired. 

Now, if you will excuse me, she finally fell asleep and so I am going to go get my adult beverage and watch something other than Paw Patrol. 

*Tap tap* Is this thing on?

Well helllllllo! It's been a minute.  1,451,519 minutes to be more precise.

I was talking with some co-workers today about how much I love to write, and how unfortunately it has been a REALLY long time since I have made the time to do it.  Lots has happened in the 3(ish) years since my last post..... I had another baby. Yes, that's right, Ms "I am NEVER having kids and I am going to shout it from the tallest building" had not one, but TWO children.  What can I say, I was clearly not committed to my life of child-free careless abandon.

 I also got married.  My husband is awesome. Keep your hands off!

I still work full time.  That's not anything new. What is new is that now any free time that I can manage to find is instantly taken up by two tiny humans and an awesome husband, which means there is exactly zero free minutes to spend exercising my writing muscles. I am rusty, so forgive this post. I am squeezing this in between bath times and bed time stories and at some point I have to wash the day off this greasy face of mine.  Then to bed. Zzzzzzzzz

It's Thursday. Throw back Thursday as the youngins call it.  They like to find old pictures from back in the day (do people still say that? "back in the day") and then post them and reminisce about the good ol days. I was thinking about that just this past weekend. I met up with my mom and my sister and a friend.  My sister and I were talking about how we used to go out on the weekends and get way too wild and crazy and somehow not manage to end up dead in a gutter (Whew!).  I was going through some of the saved pictures on my computer and came across this gem from back in those days.  We were babies!

This was 2006! 

Meeeeemoriiies, light the corners of my miiiiiind.  But seriously, the point I was going to make was that I used to be wild and crazy and now I go to bed at 9:30 and am super grumpy if I don't get 8 hours of sleep at night.  I get tipsy off 2 glasses of wine and a wild crazy night involves sweat pants and staying up past my bed time to work on a new blog post (*wink*) 

I used to blog about my insane adventures in online dating and living alone and wanting to do things like hike Half Dome (ugh, someday I will get there)... and now I plan exciting weekend adventures of camping with my little family and struggle to come up with new things to make for dinner.  I am old now. Old and definitely not very exciting.  Instead of Hot Mess Express, I am considering renaming my blog to "Mom Train" 

Mom Train can still be exciting, right? I can blog about my fit of near rage when husband washed an ink pen in a load of my laundry and ruined all my stuff and nothing of his. Or that time that my kids spent an entire 4 hour car ride to the coast puking their guts up in the back seat. Or when my dog decided that the only reasonable way to express his love for me was to leave a dried up bird carcass on the living room floor for me to step on (yep, twue love).  

Tell me, friends.... shall I forge on and continue to write my daily adventures? If you are still willing to read it, I will definitely tell you all about the bird carcass.

Cheers to writing something, anything!