In The Headlines
My tiny little hometown has finally made national news.
Yep, the big Texas Mormon compound bust happened just a few miles outside of San Angelo’s city limits.
The beautiful Fort Concho that I grew up around is now a refuge for over four hundred children.  It’s shocking that such a thing could happen to my beautiful home state… but I guess even in Heaven, angels have turned and fallen. (can you tell I love my state?)

I wish like mad that I could be there to help volunteer my free time to the rehabilitation and support of these poor people. I’ll be back in Texas in three weeks, but by then I’m sure the majority of volunteering will have been completed. I know many of my readers live there now. Please, PLEASE donate. I’m quite certain they could use the help of staple items like paper goods or excess clothing. These people have left their world behind them. Please give the extra can of carrots or toilet paper hiding in your cabinets. Prove to these women and children that the outside world is a loving place full of a compassionate people. If it were you, you’d be thankful for anyone’s effort, no matter how small.
If you don’t do what you can to help, you’re not only disappointing yourself, but all those who needed you.
God be with you all.

WHEN I WAS HUNGRY, YOU GAVE ME FOOD;
WHEN I WAS THIRSTY, YOU GAVE ME SOMETHING TO DRINK; WHEN I WAS A STRANGER YOU
TOOK ME IN, WHEN I WAS NAKED YOU GAVE ME CLOTHING; WHEN I WAS SICK YOU TOOK
CARE OF ME, WHEN I WAS IN PRISON YOU VISITED ME. THEN THE RIGHTEOUS WILL REPLY,
LORD, WHEN WAS IT THAT WE SAW YOU HUNGRY AND GAVE YOU FOOD, OR THIRSTY AND GAVE
YOU SOMETHING TO DRINK, A STRANGER AND TOOK YOU IN, OR NAKED AND GAVE YOU
CLOTHING? WHEN DID WE SEE YOU ILL OR IN PRISON, AND CAME TO VISIT YOU? AND THE
KING WILL ANSWER, I TELL YOU THIS: ANYTHING YOU DID FOR THE LEAST OF MY
BROTHERS HERE, YOU DID FOR ME.

The Envelope Please….

Okay, so the voting results for the music competition. I had ELEVEN people voting on email and EIGHT votes by phone. Get xanga my friends. Get xanga. I know you know the website or you wouldn’t be here now.  You don’t have to be afraid of committment.  Now, if I hear you griping after you see the results and you didn’t vote in the first place, you’ll be just like 60% of modern America. I want what I want the way I want it without having to apply any effort to get it. Was that a jab at people who don’t vote in presidential elections? Why yes, yes it was.

 Before we move on to music,  say a prayer for the deployed men and women. Derek was deployed with a K-9 unit  who ended up getting repositioned to another area in Iraq.  Today we learned the K-9 unit’s vehicle was hit by an IED. The man and his dog lived with minor injuries, but the others in the vehicle weren’t so lucky. He’s got a wife and kids at home. Imagine getting that call.

 And yet, so many of your friends and family members bitch about what a horrible job the troops are doing overseas and how much trouble they’re causing. The funny thing is, all I can see is a bunch of brave American men and women who have given their lives for these lazy slobs to sit around and bash them. You know who else gave their life for a bunch of lowlives? Jesus. Yet another example of a phenomenal soul who gave all so others could have the choice to give none.  *sighs* I’m sorry if this sounds horribly jumbled, but it’s late, and I’m mixing irrational anger with a lack of sleep. My five month old will be awake in an hour screaming uncontrollably, I just know it.

Tomorrow, Caity and I are taking swimming lessons. The funny part: the class is for kids 9months to two years old and will be heated to a soothing 82 degrees. Is this for your comfort? Not really. It’s so you can’t feel a temperature difference when someone pees in the pool.

ONTO THE MUSIC!

So after tallying the votes on xanga, plus phone and email votes, I got about 30 different #1 songs and a few that had re-votes in someone’s top ten. So if you don’t see yours here, it’s not that it wasn’t taken into account, it’s just that you’re the only one silly enough to list it in your top ten.

Two songs had the same amount of votes for number one, so I made an executive decision for the number one slot:

NUMBER ONE: WHAT IS LOVE?

1. Come Sail Away

2 Free Byrd

3 Crazy Train

4 Killer Queen ( I was surprised at the number of votes this one had.)

5 More Than a Feeling

6 Layla

7 Living On A Prayer

8 Highway To Hell

9 Walk This Way

10 Bohemian Rhapsody

(Okay, I still can’t believe that Free Byrd beat out Layla, but whatever. I’m just one voice. One highly intelligent all knowing, superior brain-powered voice.)

You Wanna Fight About It?

I must be PMS’ing because everything is pissing me off today.

My sister in law purchased a few cheapie books at the store for Caity to read. The book was Lil’ Critters:This is a series I had when I was a kid too. The book was entitled “Earth Day”, but it’s actually chock-full of global warming propaganda. They actually guilt the kids into this crap too, claiming the polar bears won’t have a place to live if I don’t save the Earth. Now don’t get me wrong, I recycle. I don’t ever throw garbage out my car window onto a highway. I pick up trash in parks that’s usually just a few feet from the trash bin. I believe in planting trees and carpooling when possible. That’s because I’m a decent human being, not because I believe this Al Gore hippie sh*t. I’ve read Nasa’s website, I’ve read scientific journals, I’ve read the statistics on each city’s temperature increase and the reasons for it.  I’ve read with an open mind, and avoided mass panic about the evil American machine.  But now, they attempt to present a theory with sketchy “evidence” as fact to my daughter? This won’t do. I realize we should encourage children to continue making the world a cleaner place, but do we have to do it under a blanket of fear that their own children won’t be able to survive in the blistering conditions we’ll have created for them?

  Then I was listening to talk radio while making dinner and all I heard was clips of Obama and his wife  making past racist statements and then present clips of them trying to mask them with an “Uh, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  I’m sick of Obama playing the “race” card. Either  be a man of character and mean what you say or get the hell out of the race. For God’s sake, stop promising the Dems “change” when you don’t even know what the hell you’re gonna change yet.

I’m gonna go kick something, have a great frickin day.

PS, Voting results for the best songs needs to be in by Thursday evening. A lot of you have contacted me by email or by phone, but if you have a xanga account, you need to post it here too.

PPS, It really WASN’T an April Fools joke. I’m really a TRUE member now! HOOHAH! 

This is exactly what you need:


Visit this link, then leave a comment. Your wildest dreams will come true.


Also, HOORAY! I GOT A TRUE BADGE!!!!!!!!!
If it turns out to be an April Fools day gag, I’ll be crushed.

 Purely for Parents
Ah, the joys of potty training. My nearly-two year old girl, Caitlyn, had already had a mess in her new “big girl panties.” I figured this was the perfect opportunity to sit down and breast feed my 4 month old boy, Aidan. Just minutes later, she shouts “POTTY!” (great) I jump off the couch with poor Aidan latched on for dear life under one arm and Caity under the other arm making a mad haul for the bathroom. I get her on the potty and her training pants down and realize…. she’d already gone. She grins.
I look behind me to see the trail  of potty we’d left  behind us, the banana baby food Aidan’s foot knocked over and all the window shades open for everyone to see our calamity. (even better)

 Dear Lord, why do you  feel the need to test my multi-tasking skills?
 On an hourly basis, I have at least two messes to clean up.  Who pees that much? So buy some stock in Resolve upholstery cleaner because we’ve just increased their sales. My laundry has doubled from all of my cleaning efforts’ rags and her training pants.

She’s so  insistent upon coming to me after her pants are already wet and saying, “Ewwwwwwww….”

Regardless of how many times you ask her if she needs to potty, her answer is always ‘NO!’ Maybe I shouldn’t have started potty training until she’d learned the word ‘yes’.

I wonder if I’m a patient enough woman to handle this?

The Beat Goes On

The contest is ongoing as to the 10 greatest songs ever. I’ve had several email votes come in as well so I’ll add them to the list. I still want your participation on this list. Name a song, vote for a song, make your own list, no matter how you do it, post it in the comments. I’m interested on feedback, so tell your friends and vote with stars above the comment box so more people will get involved. I’ll post the winners and clips of their songs by next week when the votes are all in.
Only four more days for voting. By Friday, the result will be tallied.

Wheel in the Sky – Journey
Don’t Stop Believing – Journey
A day in the life – The Beatles
My love – Paul Mc Cartney
Brick In The Wall – Pink Floyd
Brain Damage – Pink Floyd
Shine on you crazy Diamond – Pink Floyd
Summertime – Janis Joplin
Black horse and a cherry tree – KT Tunstall
Rehab (not the jay z version) – Amy Winehouse
Heart of saturday night – Tom Waits
Fumblin with the blues – Tom Waits
What is and what should never be (Lemon song) – Led Zepplin
Hotel California – Eagles
Free Bird – Skynard
More than a Feeling – Boston
Sweet Child O’ Mine – Guns N Roses
Crazy Train – Ozzy Osborne
Layla – Eric Clapton 
Come Sail Away – Styx
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Killer Queen – Queen
Walk This Way – Aerosmith
Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac
Living On A Prayer – Bon Jovi
Highway to Hell – AC/DC
Cmon, get your friends involved. A debate’s no good if there aren’t any contenders! I look forward to hearing from you all.

The Greatest
I was in a debate this morning with my sister in law and her boyfriend over what our top all time favorite classic rock bands were. This got me thinking: What’s the top ten greatest classic songs of all time? I mean really awesome songs with kick ass guitar rifts that no matter what genre of music you listen to, you still can’t help but say, “DAMN, that’s a great song!”

 I want your participation on this list. Name a song, vote for a song, make your own list, no matter how you do it, post it in the comments. I’m interested on feedback, so tell your friends. I’ll post the winners and clips of their songs by next week when the votes are all in. I favor these: (in no particular order)
Hotel California – Eagles
Free Bird – Skynard
More than a Feeling – Boston
Sweet Child O’ Mine – Guns N Roses
Crazy Train – Ozzy Osborne
Layla – Eric Clapton (Although I LOVE the acoustic version of this song.)
Come Sail Away – Styx (this song is so bad ass I can’t help but smile when I hear it)
Bohemian Rhapsody or Killer Queen – Queen
Walk This Way – Aerosmith
Brick In The Wall – Pink Floyd
Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac
Don’t Stop Believing – Journey
Living On A Prayer -  Bon Jovi
*Edit* I got in trouble for not listing this one via some email voters:

Highway to Hell – AC/DC
Anything from Metallica that you guys wanna suggest? I’m afraid I don’t like a whole lot of Hendrix songs, although he’ll definitely be considered for the contest.

PS, I know some of you readers don’t have xanga accounts, but you know my email so send it that way.

Good, Bad and Ugly:

Good News: Derek’s deployment will possibly end earlier than originally planned and he could be back in the states by June. Therefore, I’m headed to Texas early. I’ll be there the last weekend in April for my mom’s birthday. (she’s going to be really old. My San Angelo friends should remind her of this.) I <3 mom.

Bad: I took the kids to their doctor’s appointment today… Except I was half an hour late. I’d called yesterday to reconfirm the time was at 10:30. When I showed up today, the receptionist smiled the biggest fake smile she could muster and managed to drip with false sweetness as she said,
“If you’d been on time, we wouldn’t have to reschedule.” I sat there with a baby on each hip, soaked from the rain I’d just walked though to get to the clinic and stared with my jaw open.

“I called yesterday. The lady on the phone specifically said 10:30. My sister in law made the appointment a few days before that. She also heard 10:30. I showed up for my appointment….. at 10:30.”

“Well ma’am, the lady who answered phones yesterday  isn’t here today. I’m sure if she was, she’d say, ‘I told you at ten!’ and not ten thirty.” (wearing a big smile that conveyed how stupid she thought I was.)

That’s when I punched her.

Okay, not really, but it makes for a better ending. Instead, I called after her as she walked away, “Well, I would have been here at ten, but the lady said TEN THIRTY.” The other patrons in the waiting room smirked. That receptionist was a real bitch.

The Ugly: Yeah, it’s mushy, but it helps me get through this deployment with minimal whining to family members.

Letters From An Occupant

Dearest Love:
 How is it that I’m thinking of you even throughout my daily activities? When I’m completely focused on other ideas, you’re still lurking in the shadows of my mind.
 You drive me insane when we argue, but even in the heat of the fight… You’re still sitting there in my mind, I’m still loving you. Why are you so stubborn?  You drive me insane when you don’t understand that I’m not fighting against you, I’m just trying to see your point of view.  I wish this deployment wasn’t such a source of tension between us….. Even if you were here, I know things wouldn’t be perfect. We’d still be fighting. But at least we’d be together.

Another Letter from an Occupant
(to explain a little behind this segment: These are letters from my heart to my distant love. I don’t send them to him because it  isn’t necessary to show him how badly I hurt at times,  but the outlet is needed. Like it or not, it’s my mushy side that I don’t often share with others, and from time to time, you can glimpse one of the truest loves this world has ever created between two people.  Grin and bear it.)

Dear Love,
I celebrated Easter with your family. What a bittersweet treat. Together, they almost make a complete version of you. Your brother shares your stupid sense of humor and your dad has your serious intelligence. Your mom has your sweet, attentive side and your sisters hold the nurturing secrets you try to hide.  Together, I almost have you. When I hug each of them, I feel as though I can almost steal away that tiny piece of you they contain. I see you twinkling in their eyes and it aches deep in my chest. I want so desperately to have you next to me again, yet I can only accomplish it bit by bit. I love being around them, their warmth reminds me of your laughter and the reason I fell so deeply in love with you.  The echoing in my  heart isn’t quite so bad when we’re all together. I simply have to hold on a little longer.
The insomnia still plagues me, but whats a few less hours of sleep when it gives me a few more hours to lie awake and think of you?

Happy Easter
Any opportunity to  post pictures of the two most beautiful kids in the world. (I know you’re obligated to  think your own kids are great, but just between you and me, we know the truth.)

Two Year Old Moments:
  Today in church, we were all walking up to the front.  Apparently, Caity thought the man in front of us was going too slow. She shoved him hard in the back and shouted “GO!” I was mortified, but the man turned around and smiled in my red face.
 

There’s more pictures as well as videos on the photobucket site.

We’ve been thinking about changing our San Angelo trip to  the first of May-ish. Derek’s recently received orders to come home early, putting him back in the states as early as the first week of June.  There’s always the possibility  that those orders could change.  If he  *does* come home early  we’ll have to start house hunting again.  Finding a house for only three months = moving. Moving = SUCK!

Meanwhile, I’ve been having dreams about  remodeling. I’m in desperate need to get to my mom’s house so I can  start tearing down wall paper and putting up fresh paint.  Once I get there, I’ll post pictures of the current green and gold metallic wallpaper. If you don’t fall on your butt laughing and the retro-hilarity, you’ll probably hurl. In what lifetime did a designer decide this was an attractive color palate?
 *sighs*
 Love to all!

Yet another gratuitous picture opportunity: