I have news.

You already know that I'm pregnant, so that's not it. 

And no, I'm not having octuplets, there's only room enough for one Nadya Suleman (her interview tonight with Ann Curry should be so interesting!).

No, my non-maternal souls, I am moving!

And you're coming with me.

Okay, settle down. Before you pack your skis and sunglasses (because why wouldn't I move to beautiful Colorado), please join me at my new site, drum roll, please . . .

Whoa, baby, that's enough, stop banging that clunky, plastic toy against the hardwood, you're giving mommy a headache (not hard to do when you're knocked up). I know, baby, I said, "drum roll," but that's enough.

Okay, baby, that's ENOUGH! And this is when I call him by his full name, "FIRST. MIDDLE. LAST."

And because he's still banging, this is when I curse my parents who bought him this stupid toy.

And this is when I smash the toy against the wall and flush the pieces down the toilet. 

Phew, silence, much better. I should never have asked for the drum roll.

Oh, right, please join me at:

www.BlessedTreehouse.com

And click on the link non-maternal for all the non-maternal fun!

P.S. Dear Lord, My deepest apologies for clogging up the landfill with yet another toxic plastic toy. 

Stay Tuned . . .

Exciting news coming soon!

Can you believe this?

Moms don't get sick days. 

I know, I know. Ridiculous? Right. Most employers allow their employees at least 10 days of vacation and sick time. Many employers allow more.

And some jobs even allow their employees the option of calling a substitute to do the job for them. 

But the most exhausting, demanding, and emotionally draining job in the world? Ha! Sick or not, moms have to get the job done.

I don't exactly know what would happen if mom took a sick day without back-up, but I imagine it would result in some form of neglect requiring a Children's Services' intervention.

So because of this, I'm taking a sick day from my blogs. (Any laws pertaining to blog neglect?)

You see, some kid passed a bunch of nasty germs onto my kid which ended up in my nose, and guess what? I'm now flippin' sick. 

Whoever started this chain of germs is gonna pay.

But if I were to follow through with that threat then Children's Services might intervene, so I'm just going to leave it as an idle threat.

In the meantime:

Dear Lord,

What does a girl need to do to get a sick day around here?

Oh, and thank you that I wasn't too horribly sick when I ate an entire strawberry shortcake yesterday because it would not have been half as heavenly had I been without the ability to taste it. My, oh my, it was scrumptious. Thank you, Jesus.

The Couch Escapade, Part Two

Before reading this post, please read Part One.

I know what you are thinking. I marched back into Value City and got all Edward Scissorhands on Dottie's beehive, leaving a foul-fingered masterpiece on top of her lady-lost-her-mind head of hair. 

Oh, how I wish I could tell you that was true.

But remember I told you there was a blessing that came of all this? Well, there is a pretty, soft, buttery, oh-so-cozy ending to this escapade. That I promise.

So after my near-Towanda moment, I vowed to find the couch of my dreams. 

That following weekend, we hit the stores - new and used (Yes, I said used. And before you haters judge, let me make two things clear: 1) We have a young son who travels with crumbs, drool, and boogies; a dog who tracks in dirt, mud, and critters; and a baby-on-the-way who will surely litter our home with spit-up stains and the occasional oops-I-missed-the-diaper; thus we have no need for a showroom piece of furniture, and 2) I aim to make green choices whenever I can - a used piece of furniture satisfies my favorite mantra - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle!).

Not having much luck, I remembered that there was a JC Penny outlet store in a land far, far away. Okay, so the outlet was on the other side of town, but when your side of town contains over a dozen furniture stores and a few consignment shops, a 1/2 tank of gas for JC Penny is hard to justify. But like Veruca Salt wanted her Oompa Loompa NOW, I wanted a couch yesterday!

So here is how the JC Penny outlet works: every piece of furniture has a colored sticker on it. Each color corresponds with a percentage discount starting at 50% going to 90%. We soon found several pretty, soft, buttery couches, all 50%-70% off! We were looking at $2000-$3000 couches selling easily for under $1000! Score.

One such couch was very much in stock. We found five of that same exact couch, but strangely a couple of them were 50% off, a couple were 60% off, and one was 70% off. Curious, indeed. We couldn't figure out why the one was so much cheaper, so we asked one of the I'd-rather-be-with-my-boyfriend sales gals. She said that the longer the couch sits in the store, the cheaper it is.

Uh, works for me! 

We didn't have to think twice - we asked the darling little sales gal to put a SOLD tag on that bad boy. Before making the not-so-big-purchase-after-all, we made another loop around the outlet. While reveling in our bargain, a young family approached us.

"Excuse me, we saw you folks looking at that couch, and well, we looked at it too, but it appeared used. There's dog hair in the cushions." 

Hmmm. Not sure what to say, "Um, thanks, we'll check it out."

Thinking he might be right, we moseyed our way back to the golden ticket and started the cavity search. 

WHAT IS THIS? Dog Hair?! And crumbs?! Ewww! Thank God for the don't-let-'em-fool-ya angel who brought this travisty to our attention!

I frowned, hubs shrugged, but being the optimist that he is, he said, "well, we can still get this couch for 100 bucks more, no biggie, let's go check the others."

Um, I should mention that the same mother who once embarassed me in the department store because she manipulated her way into a great bargain actually taught me a thing or two. And remember that Don't mess with the pregnant lady mentality? Well, it all kicked it.

TOWANDA!

I wasn't going to just buy the next couch because this one apparently was on it's ninth life. 

So I flagged down the darlin' sales gal and showed her the results of our cavity search. 

Poor girl, her expression couldn't have been more telling. 'Oh shoot' is a nice way of putting it.

Fortunately, she had a walkie talkie. Walkie talkies call managers. Managers mean, "I ain't paid enough to deal with this crap."

Manager appears. For the third time, I pry apart the cushions revealing the leftover sandwich and shaggy beast hairs hidden beneath.

Manager wasn't happy. 

Manager was very unhappy with mystery employee who okayed this fine furnishing onto the floor. She gives us this spiel about "this should never of happened, these things are supposed to be sent back, I'm gonna find out who did this, and it ain't gonna be pretty."

Okay, fine, whatever, but here was my question, what happens when the couch is sent back (to where, JC Penny reject hell?)?

"Oh, they're destroyed," replied Manager.

D-E-S-T-R-O-Y-E-D. What do you mean, like, insinuator-destroyed? 

"Um, yeah, basically, but let me look at the ticket. I need to see that ticket."

She pulls the ticket, glances it over, and starts scribbling. It seemed very official with her big important pen and strong scribbles. 

Then she comes close - real close-talker close. I could smell her sour cream potato chip breath. I could see her chin hairs. And she whispered, "I'll mark it down 90%." 

*%#@*%*!?

Okay, this couch was originally $2000; 90% off made it $200. I don't care whose dog spent a week living the good life on its buttery goodness, that couch was SOLD (again)!

Once again, before the haters judge (and really, I know they're just jealous), the couch was probably returned to the original store then sent to the outlet. Because there were several others of the same make we knew that it wasn't a used couch from a previous season. If anything, it spent a week in some hungry man's living room, then it was returned.

I am SO not above that. Not to mention, we saved this beauty from fire and brimstone! We saved a couch! Not only did we get a holla-back-girl kinda deal, but I satisfied my desire to go green! Oh, ain't that just happy?!

Jesus loves me.

The Couch Escapade, Part One

This post doesn't necessarily belong under the category of non-maternal, but in some ways, it does.

Remember the movie Adventures in Babysitting? Great movie. Anyway, there is a line in that movie that I cannot repeat, but the gist of it is, "Don't mess with the babysitter."

The Couch Escapade is two-fold. It has a "Don't mess with the pregnant lady" mantra, and for any of us who have been pregnant or even menstrual, you know what I mean. When my hormones are whack, I DARE someone to cross me. I know that sounds harsh, but we have all been there (unfortunately for me and anyone who comes in contact with me, I'm going to be there for several more months, at least).

Secondly, the Couch Escapade is the story of a hidden blessing. I'll explain more about that later.

For those of you who follow me on twitter, you know that we have been in the market for a couch.

For those of you who do not follow me on twitter, we have been in the market for a couch.

Well, we bought a couch.

But that's the end of the story.

Let me start from the beginning.

Last week I went to Value City to look at furniture. Value City really isn't a city, it's just a store with well-priced furniture. And technically, all cities are value cities as they are all full of things with value, no? But I digress.

Value City was having a Leather Clearance Extravaganza {rolls eyes}. All that means was that they had some really ugly leather furniture on sale. And by really ugly, I mean fluorescent orange and lime green. It was gross. I don't know how they can call it a sale. They are going to have to pay people to take those couches. I'm not kidding about the colors. Go see for yourself. I guarantee those orange and green couches are still there.

Anyway, I did manage to find one set (everything was being sold in pairs) that I liked. It was brown, leather, and my style. But it was still out of our price range.

And that's when the lady with the bright-red bouffant entered my life. Oh, is she special! I'll call her, "Dottie."

Dottie and her big, red hair, saw that I was interested in the brown leather set. She saw me sitting on the couch, working my hiney into the soft pigskin. She spouted off a bit of information about the couches, "100% italian leather all-around," "blah, blah, blah."

I told her that I liked them, but we really weren't in the market for a set, and it was out of our price range.

That's when she got funny (first red flag - actually - the first red flag should have been the hair). She looked around, realized no one was looking, and then she pulled out her black book. I got nervous. I thought she was going to show me a list of all the men she had been with on that couch. I mean, she was acting really funny.

She showed me the black book. Inside was an ad that was set to hit the papers the next day. It advertised a special that was going on the next day. She was giddy. She said, "that set goes on clearance tomorrow," (I thought, is it not already on clearance? Whatever).

I asked, "what do you mean?"

She said, quoting the ad, "it is $200 cheaper starting tomorrow."

"Really?"

"Yep, but you'll have to get here first thing, that's our only one left."

Hmmmm, I thought to myself. Now that's not a bad price. And we could use both pieces, it just wasn't what we needed, per say.

So I pulled the, well-I-have-to-talk-with-my-husband card.

Though in the back of my head, I'm thinking, "this is a deal! I like extravaganzas!"

Dottie reminds me to be back first thing in the morning, and I tell her I like her hair okay.

Later that day, I see this ad on T.V., and it's for the same couch set, but the deal starts a different day, so I call Dottie.

She tells me that she misread the dates (second red flag) and the ad on T.V. is correct. She asks for my name and number, and she promises to call me to confirm this (she is a very confused lady).

She calls, she verifies, and we arrange to meet on a specified date and time for the exchange. She whispered a lot on the phone, adding to the excitement of the deal. At times, I felt like I was arranging to buy something illegal, that's how secretive she was about the whole thing. I like living on the edge.

Sure enough, I show up to purchase the set, she starts ringing me up, and I notice that the price isn't reduced. I mention something. She acts confused (RED flag!). She says she'll be right back. I watch as the red bouffant enters the manager's office. She returns seconds later. It's not looking good. She seems disappointed. She seems very un-Dottie-ish.

And guess what? She failed to read the fine print in the ad (and I never thought to look at the ad closely myself, she was the one who worked there, after all). As it turns out, only the heinous orange and green couches were on clearance-clearance. The pretty, buttery, brown leather ones were not.

She gave me a look of, "don't you still want it?" I gave her a look of, "I'm going to hit you." I did not hit her. I did not key the furniture on my way out, although I considered it. I did not park in the back of the parking lot, waiting for her to leave the store, only to ruffle her feathers after her shift. Jesus intervened. Jesus made me turn around and walk away. Jesus told me to keep walking, if they were desperate, they would chase me. They did not chase me. I kept walking. I cursed. Jesus understood. I cursed again. Jesus said, "that's enough." I got in my car and had a mini temper tantrum. I repeated, over and over, as if Dottie was sitting next to me, "Don't mess with the pregnant lady. Don't mess with the pregnant lady."

I guess you could say that was my prayer. I think all the pregnant angels listened to me.

Because the story gets a lot better. I mean, it gets good. Like pregnant-lady-eating-fried-pickles-and-Rocky-Road-ice-cream-good.

But you'll have to wait for the delicious ending.

Rest assured, I'm sitting on a brand new, pretty, buttery, brown leather couch right now as I type. But you will have to wait until next week to find out how.

{wink}

To be continued . . .

I promise to continue my usual non-maternal ways, but I'm currently belly-up plopped in the middle of torn-open packages and cookie crumbs.
I surely will rise out of this peppermint stupor, but it will take time (and maybe just one more nibble on this black forest cookie).
Santa was good to me - too good - and now I must return to reality {oh, the horror!}.
More to come next week.

Get out your kleenex (and if you're like me, it's probably tucked in your sleeve).

'Tis the season for over-liquoring the eggnog, singing nonsensical carols, making out underneath the mistletoe, sitting on old guys' laps in the middle of the mall, re-gifting bubble bath and perfume, and surviving the snottiest nose in the animal kingdom - my son's. 

It seems that when any normal person catches a cold the worst of it is evidenced by a rudolph-colored sniffer, half-flaked away because it's been kleenexed raw. But when my son catches a cold, it appears as if Mount Vesuvius erupted all over his face. 

It starts with his nose. His baby schnoz is filled with  flourescent-colored boogies partially hanging out of his putrid-yellow encrusted nostrils. From there, two long streams of thick snot run from his nose onto his lip at just the right spot for a good lick-up (and lick-up he does - Eww!). Occasionally he rubs his nose causing the yellow, green and brown medley to be smeared across his upper lip and cheeks and chin. From afar he looks like he should be starring in a gruesome horror flick - Watch out for Baby Loogie and A Nightmare on Plegm Street.

And because the runny, snotty mess usually lasts an entire week (if we're lucky), his tiny button nose (now hidden beneath a week's worth of crusty phlegm) begins to collect dust, dirt, and other substances usually only found inside a vacuum bag. No joke - just yesterday I yanked a couple of dog hairs that were embedded in the snot scab attached to my son's snout. 

And because our little germ magnet can't figure out how to make his coughing and hacking effective, nothing ever actually comes up. Rather he lives in a permanent state of raspy breathing making him sound like a mini Darth Vader.

And this all comes just months after all the pediatricians and specialists and researchers and media got together and banned the crap out of cold medicine of any sort for children big and small. So my dear little snot bucket is left to drown in his own goo. Poor kid. He's startin' to make the dog on National Lampoons Christmas Vacation seem healthy (coincidentally, I think that dog's name is Snots).

Dear God who so generously gave us each a sniffer for breathing and sniffing and picking,

Please give my son his health back (thus giving me my sanity back). He didn't do anything to deserve this. If anything, it was might fault. I probably didn't wash my hands enough or sanitize his toys enough or keep him living in a bubble long enough. My precious little baby simply wants to breath again without having to draw oxygen from the coral reef barrier surrounding his air passage.

And as you work on clearing up his itsy bitsy honker (How do you do it? A snot-sucking vacuum? A boogie-blowing power washer? I'd love to know your secret as my son's snotty nose is one for the record books), I'll finish another load of laundry full of clothes, both mine and his, that have fallen victim to my son's snot rockets when no kleenex was in reach (hence why I now always keep one tucked in my sleeve).