How rude of me

Dear Internet,

I'm very sorry for my absence as of late. Well, not super sorry. I'm more sorry that I didn't give you any forewarning, or provide any valid excuse. The truth is, I don't really have an excuse other than that I'm kind of sick of you. No, I'm not sick of you or you or you, you, you, you, you, omg you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, oh man...you, you, you, you, you - we'll always be soul sisters, you - we should meet in the RL, you, you, you, or even YOU.

I can't believe I just typed all those links in. Sad.

Know what's even more sad?

You totally just moused over every one of those links to make sure I included you, DIDN'T YOU?

Well anyway, the point isn't that I'm sick of all you lovelies. The point is that I just can't do everything. Something has to give. I wrote down all the stuff I do on a regular basis and drew a line with a big green crayon. And my blog is under the line. I'm not closing shop for good. I just need a break in order to ... you know, be a mom, grow my businesses, lose some weight, keep my house clean, basic stuff. Except for that I do it all exceptionally well. Compared to Britney Spears.

So? I guess this is it. I'm breaking up with you, Internet. But don't worry, I'll be the type of girlfriend to call you up every once in a while for a NCMO (non-committal make-out), and eventually I'll come crawling back to ask you back for good. Meantime, I'll still come visit you all, too!



p.s. - Visit my sister's blog. She just graduated High School and is p-r-t-y talented!

p.s.b.p. - If I missed you in all the "you, you, you and YOU" jumble above, please don't feel badly about yourself. I'm not sick of you either. The copy/paste was flying pretty quickly there and I'm pretty sure I missed a half dozen or so.

Totally, fer sure

We are really trying to deliver ourselves like a gazelle from the hunter's hand and get completely out of debt - cars and house. And it is like, SO super fun, dude. Yeah, because like just now there was this purse I saw online? And I was like, :OMFG I HAVE to have that purse right now!" And then I was like, "You know what's even awesomer than that perfect purse? Not.Having.Debt." And it was like, soooo FUN to just click on that little "X" in the top right corner instead of clicking that little "add to cart" button like I usually do.

I mean like, SO fun.

So fun in fact, that now I want to go do another thing that is on the exact same level of fun, and that is shave my tongue with my Venus razor. Anyone want to join me?

My curls could take them or leave them.

Here is the product I talked about the other day. Buying it seemed like such a great idea at the time. I have naturally curly hair, which often gets quite a bit of frizz, especially when it's over dried. Enter Curls Like Us, the product that claims to be made of a "special patent pending fabric" that wicks away just the right amount of moisture pre-blowdry, resulting in silky, bouncy, shiny curls and no frizz whatsoever.
Sounds fabulous right? I was sold. And then my Curls Like Us Curl Cloth arrived. I opened the box to find a foot of jersey cotton sewn up into a loop and surged on the end with colorful thread. Hm. Coulda made this for 2 bucks. Well, let's not get too upset until we try it, mkay? So I did. I followed the directions exactly. And I didn't notice one single difference between blotting my curls with a regular towel before blow drying and blotting it with jersey cotton. In fact, I tried it several times, and it takes me approximately 3 times longer with the Curl Cloth as opposed to a regular towel to get my hair to look exactly the same as usual. Oh well, who could even use an extra thirty bucks including shipping, anyway? Not I. Except yeah, I KIND OF COULD.

To be fair (and because I realize I may not represent 100% of the curled community), I searched far and wide for some positive reviews to link here. Here are the two I could find, although I can't tell if they were "sponsored" reviews or not:

Positive review
Positive review

I know this post applies to about 4% of my readers, and I promise to never do a product review again. Ever. Unless I become compelled to do so. But I probably won't.

And, I hope you haven't noticed, but I confess I'm feeling a little disenchanted with the internetz lately. I dunno, I'm just not feelin the love much. Perhaps it's just chronic writer's block or maybe reversed seasonal depression. Like now that the sun's out I've got the blahs? Maybe I'm committing bloggy suicide by admitting all this. Kinda like when Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch, except not really like that at all.

Mother's Day and money.

Carter wanted to make me a homemade Mother's Day gift all by himself. Can you believe that? At only 13 months of age! He gave me a hug and then put his gift all over my shoulder, and down the front and back of my shirt. And then he gave that gift to me several times throughout the day resulting in 3 showers for me and 4 baths for him. Despite it all, it was a great Mother's Day.

This weekend we have tickets to a financial seminar by Dave Ramsey. We took his Financial Peace course several years ago and have had nothing but peaceful feelings when it comes to money ever since. No, but really, we like his advice and use a quite a few of his budgeting methods. I've always thought it a little peculiar, though, that some people make an extremely comfortable living teaching others how to make a comfortable living... or at least hold onto the living they're currently making. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sour on it one bit. It's a valuable service and learning to manage your own money is an important thing. But I couldn't help the sarcasm after reading a reminder email that just arrived about the seminar this weekend (which starts at 1:00pm). They say doors will open at 11:00am. Why so early? Probably so we can spend all our emergency fund on Dave Ramsey T-shirts and CDs and stuff - which, doesn't that kind of defeat the entire point anyway? Along with the option for VIP tickets you can get for $150 extra, which include "Lunch with Dave" and free refreshments during the seminar. Wouldn't DAVE, by his very nature, recommend we go with the cheapest tickets available? I'm secretly hoping he'll scold those in the VIP rows for spending way too much on his tickets when they could have gone the discount route and put the rest in a high-interest savings account. But then, he WANTED them to buy the expensive tickets, no? What a quandary.

And speaking of quandaries, based on all your comments on this post, I've decided to talk about the product I purchased that would have been a little overpriced even if it worked magically. But then it didn't work at all. And not because of manufacturer's defect, either. Just because it's plain dumb. But just to be fair, I'm going to spend some time looking for positive reviews on the product as well. If I find good reviews, maybe that means I just have really bad taste and am apparently not with it. At ALL. And if only bad reviews exist, well, then, more fuel to the fire, baby.

Lovies!

Scattered

I've been swamped the last week! With what, I can't really quantify, but life just feels really busy right now and the laundry, my unplucked eyebrows and this blog are starting to show for it. I'm still feeling really scattered but I do have some very important things to say:

1. It seems nowadays that more women have hormonal problems than not. And by "hormonal problems" I don't mean being neurotically touchy & pugnacious (well, not necessarily, although I know these two are often related), but really having some sort of imbalance that causes health grief. I came to this realization today after hearing these words come out of my mouth during a conversation with a friend:

"What?! You have a period every single month? And it only lasts 5 days? pfff! (freak.)"

2. I hereby confess to reading and enjoying the Twilight series, in spite of the fact that Bella is a BLINKING IDIOT and Edward is a CONTROL FREAKED STALKER and that the series sends a clear message to all 17 year old girls who are in love (and clearly, if your knees buckle when you make out with your boyfriend, you are, in FACT, in love): Don't think twice about leaving your entire life behind and changing every single little thing about yourself in order to be with "the bad boy". It makes perfect sense, of course, because of your deep, undying love for him. (Even though he's permanently incapable of doing the same for you.)

Yes, in spite of all that, I enjoy myself some Stephenie Meyer. And today her first stab at sci-fi came out. My mother will be so proud that I'm giving the genre a try.

3. Scruples question for all of you: Say you recently bought a so-claimed "patent pending" product for $30 from a brand new, woman-owned company. The product seems so innovative and fun, providing a solution to a problem you've had (and you know many others have, too) your entire life. And then the product arrives and immediately upon opening it, you think, "Oh. That's it? I could have made this for 2 dollars using very common materials." But before getting too upset about it, you decide to try the product out, thinking there must be some hidden secret locked inside its fibers. And it does nothing. Absolutely nothing. Do you blog about it to warn others? I mean, where is your loyalty: with your friends and blog readers, or with this fellow woman entrepreneur who is trying to launch a new business?

"Kicking Off Year Seven" ... a camera phone tale

At grandma's house: bye, baby. [sniff]


Dinner: (Everytime I pass this place on the freeway, I have to do a double take on their sign because I almost always see "La Vagina" when I look at it.)

Me: lemon cookie + whole milk. Steve: one of these darlings + 2%.

Can't believe we got out of there this time without a new gadget, for I am the "gadget slut" of the universe.

Really surprised at how good this was, and how SMOKIN that RD Jr. is.

Day 2: Woke up, took this picture, rolled over and closed my eyes again. Until TEN THIRTY! Livin' on the edge!



Lunch.


Steve's brother on the phone to say Happy Anniversary ask how to train on leather working in World of Warcraft.

Sunglasses: "Any pair you want" Only a few can know what this means for me. Sunglasses to me are like shoes and purses for most shopaholic women. (Unfortunately, so are shoes and purses.)

Hilarious. And horrible. But hilarious.


Reunion in super hot sunglasses.

A perfect weekend to kick off our seventh year of happy, squishy, cheesy, sunshiny love together.

Still feeling a little guilty about this one, though. Back on the diet starting tomorrow!

Waiting for the sun

After a few days of waiting, these lovelies now get to go outside and play. And I get to reclaim my kitchen table. Here's to a hearty season of herbs and vegetables. And for the sake of these blurry pictures, here's to yesterday's tripod purchase, too.



Today I'm participating in the "How I Met My Honey" carnival at Ramblings by Reba. My entry is here. Go check out a few of the stories if you're in the mood for some pure and unadulterated sap and cheese. :)

Please send help immediately.

I totally got sucked in.

I added the Turbo Jam to my cart? And then clicked check out?

And then it kept offering me all these other Really! Amazing! Offers! And I just kept clicking ……

YES! Upgrade me to the MAXIMUM RESULTS Package!

YES! Upgrade me EVEN MORE to the Elite Package!

YES! I want 3 additional Turbo Cardio Party workouts PLUS, send me 2 free gifts!

YES! I want the turbo sculpting gloves and FREE upgrade to express delivery!

YES!

So in approximately 3 to 5 business days you can find me in my basement with this exact look on my face:

Macro

I've been playing with my new lens extension tubes I talked about here, and I think I'm in love. This first shot, I swear to you, is straight out of the camera. I planned to Photoshop it, but all my normal tricks didn't do a thing for it. Which is fine, because I'm pretty proud of myself for this shot as-is. I have no idea what type of flower it is, but it's growing like a weed in my mom's front yard. How's that for low-maintenance gardening?



And the flower below grows on a tree right outside my office. Don't let it's sweet little face fool you, though. This flower smells like CRAP. I enhanced the red just an itsy bit in this one.

And this is from the same stinky tree. This one was a mess. I had to completely re-color it. I'm happy with it now, though. It feels springy.
So all you non-n00b photographers out there: critique away! (That means you, Dani.)
The End.

p.s. - are photography posts boring? Should I keep them to my other blog?

Transcript

...of a voicemail I received today. I so wish I could tell you who it was from, but some of her friends and co-workers could read this blog (I am famous, you know) and I've been sworn to secrecy.

First a little back story, for ultimate appreciation's sake: I'm doing a diet called Medifast, which is similar to Jenny Craig and the like, where some of your meals come in the mail (protein shakes, bars, soups etc.) and the rest of your meals are lean meat and green veggies. With no added dressing, butter, salt or other condiment might I add, which is very difficult to stick to, and some days the only way I get through is by licking grilled cheese sandwich remains off my son's face while he and anyone watching just think I'm pretending to gobble him or shower him in kisses. But I digress. So Medifast comes with this cute little measuring cup which you can see pictured in the post where I dumped my purse. (It's in the top right of the photo.) We use this cup to measure the water for our protein shakes and oatmeal and stuff, so this cup follows me everywhere because without it, I'll end up with runny oatmeal or a watered down shake because I can't for the life of me measure a cup of water by sight. Another digression. The point of this paragraph was to tell you that my anonymous friend and I have taken quite fondly to referring to the act of being on the Medifast diet as "MF-ing" and to each other as "MF-ers", in reference to the diet only, of course. Oh, and that we drink about 100 ounces of water per day, which means we go to the bathroom about 34 times per day, and if you are one of those who personally feels 100 ounces of water per day is just!too!much! to be healthy, please kindly keep those personal feelings to yourself, as I have already heard two unsolicited pontifications on the matter today and am no longer in the mood to smile and nod at you.

Well. Now that you're more than equipped with all you need to understand this voicemail, please brace yourselves. You just can't make stuff like this up, people. I didn't even hear the last 20 seconds of her message the first time I listened because her final twist had me screaming at the top of my lungs in shock and horror. And secret delight. And now here it is, word for very word:

I really hope you didn't press ignore when you saw my call because I have something really gross that I have to confess. And I don't know WHY. But maybe I'll just leave the whole thing on your machine and you'll have to deal with it.

So in my office... there is NO bathroom in the building because we're in a TRAILER. Because the main building is overgrown. We're moving into a new building in September. So if you want to pee you have to go alllll the way across to the other building, and I'm sure you can imagine how that sucks when you're MFing because you have to pee a LOT.

So I had to pee SO BAD. And I knew I was not going to make it over to the potty. I knew I was--I WOULD PEE MY PANTS, MCKENNA. But I'm embarassed to say that, because I know it's childlike. And I know this voicemail is TOO long, so I peed in my Medifast cup--I'M NOT GOING TO USE IT AGAIN--I had to PEE--Yes.

I peed in my office. I shut the door and peed in my Medifast cup. There you have it. kbye.

p.s. If you're reading this and think you know who's message I transcripted (transcripted is not a word, apparently), think again. I have more than one, yea, more than two friends doing Medifast with me.

Transcript

...of a voicemail I received today. I so wish I could tell you who it was from, but some of her friends and co-workers could read this blog (I am famous, you know) and I've been sworn to secrecy.

Now, brace yourselves, people. You just can't make stuff like this up. I didn't even hear the last 20 seconds of her message the first time I listened because her final twist had me screaming at the top of my lungs in shock and horror. And secret delight. And now here it is, word for very word:

"oh hell. i really hope youd idn't press ignore when yousaw my call b/c that would be so like me andi ;d feel bad
so i have something really gross that i hae to confess... and i don't know why... but maybe i'll just lvea it on your machine and you'll have to deal with it.

so i n my office in h there is NO bathroom in the building because we're in a trailer. Because the main building is overgorwn. we're getting a new b in sept. so if you want to pee you have to go all the way across to the main builgind and i'm sure you can imagine how that sucks when you're doing medifast because

The sad, lazy truth about my bathroom.

It remains clean for the most part. It's just that some days, after getting all my "get ready for the day" junk out to use, I just can't bring myself to put each item back in its appropriate drawer. So I stack my comb, blowdryer, root boost, glossing cream, de-frizzer, flat iron, and moisturizer into the open top drawer.

Well after a few days of doing that the problem is now this: the top drawer is so full that I can't close it in order to be able to open the middle drawer in order to put all that extra stuff away in order to be able to close the top drawer and have a neat bathroom.


Tomorrow will be the 4th day my bathroom has looked like this. Because who on earth has time to move all that junk to the counter so that I can open the middle drawer to put everything in its proper place? Not I, said the McKenna.

First

Mixed emotions today, mostly overwhelming joy and gratefulness.
Thinking about Carter's birth mom. I wish I could wave some sort of magic wand and make her life as perfect for her as she's made ours for us.

The other day I was Googling myself (I do this weekly) and got a little carried away with the search results. Anyway, one thing led to another and I found myself at a message board about people who are addicted to eating candles. Yeah, no really. Here are some snippets that will give you the jist:

AT:

what are candles made of?. can anyone tell me about the impact of eating candles?..i like to melt them and eat them .. i light aa candle and tilt it so that melted wax falls on a bowl..it also has some black carbon particles on it. and then i eat it warm.

Natalie Goobernau:

Candle wax tastes like gum. If you roll your candle in melted butter before consumption it's even tastier.

Erin:

My kids think I am crazy. I LOVE to eat candles. It started when I was young and liked to eat crayons. Not just any crayons, not just any candles. I love non-scented emergency candles. The texture, the taste satisfies me like nothing else . Does anyone know if this is dangerous?

There were several other entries along these same lines, and I just couldn't help but be a big fat jerk:

Me (aka "baMama"):

I am starting a company called "The Candle Diet" would you guys be interested in helping me with product testing?

I can't wait to see the responses.
Here's the page, if you'd like to join their support group, weirdo.

Naked and Famous (name that tune!)

I.M. message I sent to a longtime friend of mine today (we both recently picked up photography):

"Rememeber that one time in high school we were so poor we couldn't even afford ONE SINGLE SHIRT so we both contributed to half of the purchase and then spent the next 3 years fighting over whose turn it was to wear said shirt to school? Although tempting, let's not ever do that with our camera equipment."

Last night I bought a set of lens extension tubes for my camera. I took a 3 hour beginner's photography class and they offered 15% off to all the participants for the evening, so I just couldn’t pass it up, especially since I had been drooling over a $600 macro lens for MONTHS now, wishing I could afford it, and then the teacher told me OH DON’T GET THAT WHEN YOU CAN GET A LENS EXTENSION TUBE because they provide the same effect for much less.

So I believed him.

And I bought them.

And I took pictures with them around my house until 11:45 last night.

And they are awesome.

And I am pleased.

And I can’t wait for warm weather because I really need to go on a nature walk with my new lens extension tubes!

Plus they make my camera look REALLY FREAKING AWESOME and HUGE.

Which makes me look awesome.

Which makes people think I’m famous.

And they want to give me money.

Amen.