Nothing else matters ...

The kids and I took the dogs to the dog park this morning. Bailey rolled around in every patch of mud and dirt she could find. She was adorably filthy by the time we left. Needless to say, both dogs got a bath today. Heck, I practically needed a bath by the time we were done bathing them.

In totally random news, malkovich03 had to make an emergency trip out of state and I miss her. I have a book signing I'm going to tomorrow and we would have gone to dinner to catch up on life and various other things (things which mostly involve me inserting the words "cock" and "screaming orgasms" into the conversation while trying to keep my voice down so the patrons at the next table don't hear about sleep orgasms. No fooling. Hey, researching for writing sex scenes is a dirty job and I'm happy to do it!) before the signing but now I'm just going to go, get my book and find a coffee shop to read at until I can read at the bookstore.

Thus far, I've watched all of disc 1 of Firefly with Hailey. Episodes: Serenity parts 1 & 2, The Train Job and Bushwhacked. Hailey still isn't convinced that it's as good as The Walking Dead but I told her she had to give it a chance before making such a sweeping declaration.

And now onto the books...
Book #234 - Shameless (The House of Rohan #4) by Anne Stuart - I really, kinda, pretty much loved this book. Historical shenanigans, FTW!
Book #235 - Solid (Solid #1) by Shelley Workinger - A well-written, nicely fleshed-out young adult novel. It has a mad scientist in it. Well, a mad scientist conducts experiments in the prologue and then the kids he experimented on have to deal with the fallout, so he's not actually in it in it, but... oh, nevermind.
Felicity Heaton's great e-book summer savings - Felicity's offering her newest paranormal vampire romance for $0.99 through July 1st. As an aside, I've read quite a few of her books. And I've liked them all.

Okay. I'm done.
Later.

Hey, townbros! Happy birthday! I hope you took today and used it hard.

My dog totally barfed all over my bed earlier. Fun stuff. I thought I was done with the middle of the bed barfing when Cole grew out of it, but apparently I was wrong wrong wrong. On the other hand, I've been meaning to wash my comforter cover. And now it's clean.

Do you ever go into stores and the clerks are so freaking nice that it's scary? I took Cole to Gamestop after school and the worker guy was giving us way too much info and just being so friendly that I was trying to think of a graceful way to escape. I guess I just can't help it that my awesome red hair drives men wild with nerdish oversharing on favored games and upcoming releases. Although he did ask both Cole and I if we were both gamers. For some reason that made me laugh.

Speaking of things that we were not, Cole had the first part of his sex ed class at school today. He told me about penises. I was dutifully impressed with all his knowledge. They gave the boys a goody bag with deodorant in it. Awww. My baby's growing up.

I also read a book.
Book #81 - Dark Gold (Carpathians #3) by Christine Feehan - I think this was the first book I ever read in this series back in the day. Good thing, too, because if I had started with book #1 I might have never picked up the others. That said, this is a pretty good book. Aidan is a Carpathian living in San Francisco, far from his homeland and family and desperate to find his lifemate. Alexandria is an artist struggling to raise her younger brother after their parents death. When she is targeted by a vampire, Aidan and she come together and make the sheets steam. In all honesty, as much as I find this series entertaining, it sometimes feels very claustrophobic. The two mains (in any book) are always the be all and end all of each other. If you were to compare them to the couples in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter series, I'd have to say that the DH couples fare better because as much as their stories are about finding one another they still exist as individuals. With the Carpathians I don't get that feeling. Still, I enjoy the series for what it is: escapist, sex-fueled vampire stories about men and women who are fated to be together.

By the by, the covers of these books are horrendous. I'll have to put them up at some point so that someone can mock and point with me.

I'm done. *high five*
Later.

Cole just tried to BARGAIN with me to not have to brush his teeth tonight. Umm, dude? No. There is no bargaining here. You brush your teeth. End of story. Seriously. I'm dying here. Bargaining to not have to brush his teeth. What's next? Bargaining to quit bathing. Oh, wait. He does that too. And gets the same answer.

Anyway. I'm trying to get back into yoga. This is a good thing, but I could barely do 20 minutes before I was dying. Dead. Uggh. I had to take a break. But I'm going to stick with it because I already feel pretty good and I've only been doing it for a few days. I've got to build up to the flexibility I had before, though, so I'm in the "oooh, the good type of hurt when you stretch" phase of it all. I'm even considering taking Bailey for a run tomorrow. It kinda depends on the weather for that. It's been raining pretty good all day today and it's supposed to keep it up through tomorrow. *sigh* I'm finally feeling way motivated to get moving and the weather is thwarting me.

By the by, my hair is in two pigtails from my yoga session. I look AWESOME!

I didn't read today. I'm still traumatized from yesterday's bad read. I have a book sitting by my bed but I'm afraid. So very, very afraid that the bad book will taint this one. Even though I know it's a good book (I read it this year already, which means it won't count in my overall book totals ... Kelly's Rules!), I'm afraid. No, I'm just kidding. A little. I'm still stewing over the fact that such a crappy book (a) got published and (b) spawned such a FUN TV show. How did that happen? Oh, good re-writes. I get it now.

THE KIDS ARE BACK IN SCHOOL TOMORROW! Thank all major and minor deities!
I am done.
Later.

I had a crappy napping day. It seems like every time I started the fall asleep, something conspired to keep me awake. The dogs would bark at something that only they could hear. The kids would come barging into my room. My sister and bro-in-law stopped by to drop off some of their boxes (they need to be moved out of their house by the end of the month but they can't move into their new one until the 1st, therefore they're storing boxes in our crawlspace). My stomach was growling something fierce. It was just a myriad of things.

*sigh*

Randomly, Cole and I are on the last few episodes of Xena season 1 and I was cracking up at the ep that first introduces Callisto. See, Callisto tells everyone that she's Xena and proceeds to wreak havoc across the countryside. I was totally like, "Whoa! Xena totally had her identity stolen. How topical." No fooling. I actually said that. It was really funny when it happened.

You know, I didn't get a whole lot done today. The dogs and I spent a big chunk of time outside cleaning up the deck. I watered our poor plants (can you believe that we've been rain-free for several days now? The puddles have almost completely dried up!)and swept and pruned back some of the dead stuff. The dogs ran back and forth and barked at passing cars. And passing birds. And a leaf. Good times, people. Good times.

Here are my two little girls enjoying the sun ...


Awwwwww!

Okay. I'm done.
Later!

I made soup for dinner tonight because we're supposed to be having this big, bad, motherfucker of a storm hitting us soon and it made me crave soup. It was very good. Both my mom and Heather agreed wholeheartedly. You know, sometimes new recipes just don't cut the mustard but this one was goooooood. Yum.

Although the soup was good, the storm still hasn't quite hit. We had a smattering of rain earlier but it was no 8-20 inches (20 in the mountains! Yikes!) so I'm expecting to wake up tomorrow to torrential downpours. Or just one downpour that is torrential. Or something that's torrential that resembles a downpour. Kinda like Niagara Falls but over the entire state of California.

Or, we could just have rain and I'll be happy.

Mmm. Soup.

I gave both Bailey and Ruby a bath today because they were starting to get a funk about them that was ... unpleasant. Nobody likes to smell stinky dogs. At least I don't. They're wrestling on my bed right now and they sound like Elephant Seals during mating season. I really don't know how such little dogs can make such bizarrely loud noises. It's truly strange.

I got a Sudoku book for Christmas and I've almost finished it. I'm getting pretty good at them and I rarely cheat. Rarely. Sometimes I just hit a wall and need a little help. What? My Cylon circuitry can't process everything, you know.

Okay. The weird noises that the girls are making is distracting me into telling you my deep, dark, cheating secrets. That must be my sign to go.
Later!

I am kid free tonight. Cole decided to spend the night at his dad's. What am I doing with my free time? Re-watching Alice. I like it much more the second time around. It helps knowing how it ends.

Yesterday Bailey jumped up on the bed as I was leaning down and we smacked heads. I have this huge, painful bruise on my forehead. That girl has a hard head. Actually, the bruise isn't visible, but I can feel it. Oh, I can feel it. Ouch.

I'm really tired right now. I refuse to go to bed this early. refuse.
I'm out.

Holy smokes! The dogs are racing around upstairs (where I am, mind you) like speed racers and they're kinda starting to drive me crazy. *blink, blink* Plus, I have so much stuff that I feel like I need to get done immediately, right now, can't wait, yes NOW! that I don't know where to start. Seriously, I'm sitting here surfing around online because I don't want to do anything that's not fun.

As a random aside, the vampire game I play on Facebook is all crazed and I think I might have lost pages and pages of comments that I neeeeed so that I can vote for people and get refills and make friends and blah blah blah and be an awesome vampire. *sigh* My life is just so difficult sometimes.

On the shiny side of things, I managed to get the evite out last night for my party that's this coming weekend. I probably should have sent that out sooner, but I didn't. And I can't apologize for it because the fact that I'm a slacker is moderately well documented at this point. Actually I can apologize for it. Sorry, ladies. Sorry.

I plan on finishing season 1 of Lost today. No, that's not one of the uber important things that needs to get done right now, but it's all part of my plan. Part of my diabolical plan to take over the world. Or whatever.

I'm done now. My typing sucks, my laundry's almost done and my dogs are still driving me crazy. Good times, people. Good times.

I have been having the most amazingly bizarre dreams lately. In one of them, I was kidnapped and taken to the woods and forced to dig holes so that heads could be buried. Weird, right? Yeah. Except there's more. Once I was free I found a way to lead the good guys to the place where the heads had been buried even though I was blindfolded and didn't see exactly where we were going. Seriously, it was creepy and yet amazing at the same time because it was chock full of plot. And it played out so much like a movie in my head that I can still see parts of it. i wish I could remember the one I had last night. It was as weird as that one.

Anyway. We have snow here. Up in the hills, but we get very very very little snow in Morgan Hill so this is a major event. It's pretty. Cold and pretty. We also have rain. Lots of wet on the ground and cold in the air. It definitely feels like Christmas is on the way.

Speaking of which, a have a good chunk of my Christmas shopping done. I went out with both Amber and Heather yesterday (at different times, mind you) and got a lot done. Now I just have to wrap and pick up those last few elusive presents.

Well, I was going to put a picture of my two sweet puppies up, but I don't like any of the pictures I have. Besides which, it just took me 20 minutes to transfer the damn pictures from my camera to my computer. My comp decided it didn't want to read my memory card and just ignored me when I spoke to it sternly. Very sad.

I think I'm going to go do some stuffs. Fun stuffs. Or not.
later.

My mom made a full on Thanksgiving dinner today. We had our actual Thanksgiving with family in Gilroy and it was great but my mom has a deep seated need to make her own turkey. So my sisters, Hailey, grandma, and Amb's mother- and brother-in-law joined us for dinner with the works. It was so good. I totally made the gravy. It was deeply amazing. You would have wept. Seriously.

In a nutshell, I'm exhausted now. I stayed up way too late last night and got up far too early. I was "helping" my mom get stuff ready this morning. I guess I was just getting in the way because I was given garbage duty a couple of times. Underfoot much? Anyway. I didn't really nap and we all know that I need my nap. Plus, I was on Bailey desensitization duty since she goes crazy with the barking whenever Amber's mother-in-law comes over. It's weird. She does that very rarely, but she just barks and barks and barks when she's here. So I had to do the meet and greet between her and Bailey. Again. Let Bailey feel safe and do some sniffing. Then everything's fine and dandy. With turkey.

In other news, tomorrow's the last day of November and, hence, the last day of NaNoWriMo and I think I clocked in at roughly 1000 words. That would make me 49,000 short. Oops. I do this every year. Part of it is that November is one of the worst months for me to completely clear my calendar. I have the kids out of school nearly more than they're in it. I have family stuff. I used to have work. Thank goodness that's not a concern this year. So, yeah. I didn't write 50,000 words. Maybe I can do it in December. Maybe.

However, I did manage to finally send out emails for the Holiday Gathering. I think we have our date set. Now I just need to send out the evites and decide what we're eating so I can hand out food assignments. We're kinda doing a potluck this year. Kinda. Okay. Fine. It's exactly like a potluck. Whatever! I think having a theme for the movies we're going to watch would be fun but I haven't come up with any great themes yet. Nothing tops the year we watched the entire Lord of the Rings extended cut trilogy. That was a ridiculous amount of movie watching. 12 hours or something insane like that. 12 hours. Yikes.

There you have it. The kids are back to a couple of weeks of a normal school schedule before being out for two weeks. The dogs are more or less on a schedule. Well, Bailey is. Ruby just pees when ever she feels the urge. Usually in the middle of my floor. Woe. Sometimes she goes into the bathroom and pees in there. Sadly, it's not on the toilet, just on the floor. Or maybe I don't mean "sadly". I guess if she did use the toilet it would be weird.

I have no idea what I'm talking about anymore.
I'm done.
Later.

My Thursday TV viewing is KILLING me. I just have too much going on. Too much. And and and ... there was no preview for a new Vampire Diaries. I realize they're going to be marathoning all the eps one week but when do we get neeeewwwwww ones??? When? Tell me. I must know. Because I kinda think I love that show just a little bit and it might have everything to do with how Ian Somerhalder isn't Boone and he has very pretty eyes. It might also be because I'm a little bit in love with Elena's hair. There might also be some "Ohmigod, did you see that tattoo on Stefan's bulging bicep???" I'm just saying.

In news that isn't about bulging biceps - and it's so sad that I have to write that - I taught Bailey how to sit on command today. Now I just hope she remembers it tomorrow. *blink blink* Bailey. Sit. Sit. Bailey. Sit. I think I said that about a million times. Maybe a million and two. But she was doing it pretty consistently at the end. We'll see.

The kids are on minimum day this week for conferences and they're getting home way too early. 12:30, people. Twelve freaking thirty. I can't even get a nap in because it's just too early. This is terrible. I keep telling myself that it's just one more day. One more day. One more day. In the few pitiful hours I have to myself in the morning I've been working on my NaNoWriMo novel. Not that it's a novel at this point. It's more of a collection of pages that might eventually tie together. If the gods and planets align. And if the kids were in school longer. Dang it. But I'm working on it. That's the important thing you should be taking away from this rambling diatribe. I'm working on it.

I'm off to watch Supernatural and then bed. In that order. Mostly because if I go to bed first I'll be watching SPN tomorrow and I want to watch it tonight. Take that!
I'm out.