His Holy Grail and My Heaven

I have been significantly less cranky over the past few days, which has been a blessing I'm sure. I'm still feeling down right exhausted as if I haven't slept in days (even though I'm usually in bed around 9:30-10ish). Today especially... James has been religiously checking the H&R Block app ever since he filed his taxes a couple weeks ago. 5 to 10 times a day religiously, I might add.

Last night he decided to check it around 11pm (mind you, I've been long in bed at this point...sleeping). In his overwhelming moment of pure bliss he wakes me up to tell me the glorious news that the tax return has finally arrived. It simply couldn't wait until I wasn't comatose!

It's been a nonstop topic for the past 6 months that as soon as he has it, we will become the proud owners of a 60 inch 3D TV. I appreciate sturdy high quality electronics as much as the next girl, but I think talking about this particular near future acquirement actually gets his engine going full speed ahead if you catch my drift. I simply cannot share in the same level of enthusiasm as he has (there is nothing wrong with the one we already have), which seems to put a little damper on his spirits. It will not, however, damper his purchasing power Saturday when he finally gets his hands on his version of the Holy Grail.

The girls and I have a birthday party that we're going to Saturday afternoon and will be gone most of the day. This will allow him the perfect opportunity to literally make over the entire living room to accommodate this new high tech monstrosity to his heart's content without any of us ladies getting in the way of his "man time" with his best buddy.

On the upside, it means that we can also plan our long awaited day trip to my little personal piece of heaven IKEA! We are long overdue for a dresser that can actually accommodate both of our clothes so we can abandon the little plastic dresser we added when he moved in.

I can't wait!!

I'm Venting... You've Been Warned

I must admit I'm ever so grateful this weekend is over and I'm back at work where I can get a break! I confess though, that I was a complete raging bitch crab for most of this week and it all came to a head this weekend.

Since about mid November our weekends have been filled with family obligations and I'm not exactly sure where that leaves time for our little family of five. Every weekend has been dedicated to either my family or his family, but not our family. It was building up for a while and this weekend I basically snapped.

I had plans with my sister on Saturday to take Lena dress shopping for the Daddy Daughter Dance next Friday (not that her father has been to a single one, but it's still a big event). This is year number 4, Uncle Steve is her most handsome date, and every year we make a day of going to the mall, trying on dresses, going out to lunch, picking out shoes, etc. You know, all the fun things that come with being a girl. However, Friday night it gets sprung on me that we have a dinner event that we're supposed to attend with James' parents... In Elburn... A good 2 1/2 drive away from home for us. This was pretty much the final straw for me.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore his parents. They're two of the nicest people in the world you could ever hope to meet. But this game of rotating weekends has left me exhausted and feeling extremely overwhelmed at this point. I just wanted to enjoy dress shopping with my daughter. I told him that I didn't really want to go, however, turns out we were already paid for so there was simply no backing out.

We did manage to find a dress and the perfect shoes, but I still felt like I didn't get to fully enjoy the day because we had to rush and be home by 3 in order to get on the road up north. Ugh!

All and all though we did have fun at the dinner despite the fact that we didn't get home until about 11:30 which is WAY past my bedtime.

Sunday morning comes and I haven't even finished my first cup of coffee when my mother sends me a text letting me know her and dad are coming down for coffee. Oh boy! Here we go! About 10 minutes later they show up and at this point the kids are awake and starving as per usual. Sunday breakfast is kind of a big deal in our house. I love to make a big breakfast. My mom on the other hand tries to send Paige (she's James' oldest who's 18) back down to her house to fetch a bunch of microwavable breakfast sandwiches. I'm sorry, but yuck!

All three girls are looking at me pleadingly not to skip making the waffles I'd promised, so of course I had to tell my mom NO. That never goes over well. I did end up making the waffles, but of course my mom felt it was necessary to give the girls a major guilt trip about "making me cook when I didn't have to." News flash mama, I like it! But that doesn't seem to matter much I suppose.

As I'm finishing up feeding everyone (parents included) James announces that him and my dad are going to go up to Gander Mountain (he'd won a $50 gift card in the raffle the night before) which left me with all three kids and all the cleaning because I knew they would be heading straight over to their house for the Super Bowl later. They ended up returning a couple hours beforehand and he did initially plan to just go spend the day down the street. Wrong!! By the time they'd returned I was in full swing cleaning mode and had started literally pulling the house apart because I felt far too claustrophobic and it was going to be fixed now not later.

He ended up helping me gut our room, but after that I was on my own. I did however make the kids his responsibility for the evening so I could turn the stereo up to eardrum splitting level with all the Nickelback and Buckcherry I can't listen to with the kids around. I continued to clean until I wore myself out, picked up Lena (Paige and Anne had already been taken home to their mom at that point) and ended my night with Finding Nemo (incidently a truck coming down our street tore down the cable line Friday night so DVD was are only option all weekend) and a MASSIVE apology for my behavior when he finally come home.

Oops... Better luck this week I hope.

The Logic of Men

In our household we made the decision about a month ago to invest in a Sam's Club membership. We noticed that with two adults, three kids, and the consistent rotation of my family coming in and out as they please (they only live three blocks away and have a house key) that our grocery supply simply wasn't sufficient to sustain the never ending parade of stomachs we take care of.

Part of this brilliant plan was for us to pack lunches. Now, I have been doing this for years anyway, but it's a new concept for James. Before entering into a state of cohabitation with me he was always pretty carefree with his lunch choices. Either a) he'd just skip eating or b) he'd grab something along the lines of McDonald's, Taco Bell, Wendy's, etc. Since he's in the service industry he spends most of his time on the road, so a hot meal while traveling means that he better hit the drive thru. However, in the interest of cutting back on expenses he didn't mind the idea of "brown bagging it."

This is the lunch box he picked out and has been using. Evidently, when you're surrounded by a group of, shall we say robust men (he's tiny in comparison), your container holds some sort of magical phallic powers that determine just how manly you really are. This is most certainly news to me, because I was under the impression that if it held the amount of food you typically needed, well hell, it's the perfect size. Silly me!

I guess he's been getting grief from the guys for a while now, which I was unaware of until last night. When I arrived home from work I was greeted by the sight of this monstrosity.

I could not believe the size of the damn thing! As my eyes started bugging out of my head in disbelief he informs me "Now, that's a man's lunch box!" To which my response was "No, that's a beach tote that would fit a picnic for our family of five!" This is when he finally confessed all of the teasing he's received over his less than adequately sized previous one.

I know this is an argument I'm not going to win. I'm not even going to try. I will say however, that he packed THE SAME AMOUNT OF FOOD that he used to pack and there was essentially a cavern left on top when he was done. And, incidentally, it does NOT fit in our fridge very well. It took up the ENTIRE bottom shelf. So I suppose this means that we're going to have to forgo having enough food to fill it in order to accommodate the bag alone.

The logic of men is brilliant right?