Today is Ashton’s 8th birthday. So, happy birthday to her. We had her over for dinner tonight, I made chicken and we ate cake and she opened a couple gifts. She asked for clothes and a new Barbie for her birthday, so I was out getting her gifts and I had already picked out some clothes, and I was dreading the Barbie isle. I hate walking down the Barbie isle and seeing what new slutty doll is being thrown in little girls faces.

Yes, I said it. Barbie has become a slut.

Okay maybe she’s not sleeping around with Ken’s friends (or is she? ) but seriously, whose idea is it to dress up little dolls in short skirts where their plastic behinds are handing out, along with shirts so short they barely cover their plastic breasts? I saw the Top Model Barbies, with their new jointed torso’s for posing, which really means you can now stick Barbie’s butt out while you pose her in her miniature bikini. Seriously, this doll was posed with her back arched and her butt was sticking out. Another Top Model Barbie was wearing whore red colored thigh highs. I would never give my little girl a doll to play with that was wearing thigh highs. I realize these are “fashion dolls” but seriously, can’t they just keep it to normal fashion. Fashion that is suitable for the little girls that are actually playing with these dolls? Barbie can be hip without dressing like a slut.

And just when I thought I had seen it all…. ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce…

Cabaret Dancer Barbie.

“Cabaret Dancer Barbie® doll is dressed to thrill in a daring black and silvery outfit designed to show off those agile legs! Fishnet hose, spiky heels and a sassy top hat complete the sultry stage look.”

Oh perfect. Just what we need for our little girls. Why don’t they just call it what it is? Stripper Barbie. Don’t even get me started on Bratz dolls. And what is this?!?? Not only does that Barbie have cleavage, she looks like the woman who’s married to the old rich dude but sleeps with the pool boy.

Anyway, I ended up going for this sweet little High School Musical doll. See, she’s cute and stylish and she isn’t dressed like a 2 cent hooker.

I also had to get some blubs for the guest room bathroom lights because my brother will be here Tuesday. Yay!

Mmmmm I cooked a yummy dinner tonight. Steak, baked potatoes, and salad. It was SO good. This was actually my first time cooking a steak. Normally I consider steak cooking a man thing but I wanted to make Preston a really good dinner so I cooked it this time. I used our indoor grill on the stove top and it turned out really, really good. I’m actually really enjoying cooking new things. It’s starting to be fun.

I’m craving some chocolate pudding cake. It sounds so good and would be a perfect desert after the steak. I need to find out how to make that. I’m a chocolate lover. I need some sort of addiction treatment for my chocolate addiction.

Even with the chocolate addiction, I stepped on the scale today and guess what? I’m ONE POUND away from my pre-pregnancy weight! Woo! I tried on all my old jeans today and they all fit, they are just a tad too tight in the bum. One more pound and then I’ll try them on again.

Anyway, I’m going to watch a movie with the hubby!

The worst week of my life might not sound, to some, like it could be the worst week of a persons life, but trust me - it was.

The week before B and I left for Texas, the Drama Lama decided to show up at my parents house. And he brought all his friends. There was some parental drama that I’m not going to dive into detail about, so take my word for it. Drama Lama. Drama Lama’s friends. It was not fun. So because the issues going on at home, it was really hard for me to even want to go to Texas anymore. But on the other hand I also couldn’t wait to get out of there. I didn’t want to leave my brother or my parents at the time, and my parents must have known that I wouldn’t leave when things were the way they were, so they pretended to make everything better and I left with the impression that things were going to be just fine.

Things were not fine. Just as soon as I was in the next state over the Drama Lama and all his friends came out from their hiding spot under the bed, and the shit hit the fan. Again. So, I spent the next week driving from WA to TX on the phone back and forth with each of my parents (when I actually had cell service) and overall, it was just total hell. But, things in that parental department are just fine now, even better than before I’d say, so I guess it wasn’t all that bad.

Probably the thing about this long drive that made it miserable the most was all the time I had to just drive and think. Unless we were near a big city, there were not many cars on the road. It was just endless pavement and it felt like we would never make it. I don’t know about you, but when I have time to sit and think about anything and everything, it’s usually not good. At one point I actually had a mini breakdown. It was pretty funny, thinking about it now. I had just met back up with B after being separated because of his wonderful fast driving skills in a high construction area. While we were separated I didn’t have cell service and my two way radio had run out of batteries, again. So I just decided to pull over and stop driving. I was sick of driving. I threw the two way radio out the window and started to scream. I considered driving over the two way radio, but B got to it first and picked it up. I wanted to smash that stupid thing. It sucked batteries dry in just an hour or so and then made this constant beeping noise. I wanted to kill it.

Another highlight of this wonderful trip was when B left his wallet on the top of his car after getting gas. We were heading out of Denver when all of a sudden his wallet flew off the top of his car and got run over by a huge truck. We had to pull over and run out onto the interstate when there were breaks in traffic to try and fine his drivers license, credit cards, and gun permit. We spent a lot of time on the side of the road looking in bushes for that stupid gun permit. It’s a good thing we ended up finding it because not much later we got pulled over for speeding. It was a wide open road, no one in sight except the one cop who happened to pull us over. Who really goes 60 mph on a wide open straight flat road?

We finally made it to Dallas and I was really looking forward to sleeping in our apartment, even if it was sleeping on the floor in an empty apartment. Anything would be better than the ghetto motels we had been staying in all week. We found our apartment complex, which didn’t look too bad (ha… little did we know… ) and waited for the manager to get in so she could get us all set to move in. So we waited and waited and finally got to sit down with this woman. She found the paper work we had mailed in, looked through it and said,

“Oops…. we made a mistake. Your apartment won’t be ready for another week.”

To be continued…
Read part I . . .

I’m sorry to leave you hanging but I am way too tired to type out part II of my series of posts. And I’m still doing a little writing in my head on it. That’s what I do, I write it in my head first. But tomorrow, it will be here. Don’t you worry.

Important things first: make these. Now. Midnight snack. SOOOOO GOOD. We had these for dinner tonight. Yum. I might go eat some leftovers.

I’m so tired and I can’t even sleep in my own bed. Why? Well, I will tell you why. It’s broken. No, there is no crazy story behind the broken bed. What happened was, we had people here (there, at the other house) visiting after the girls were born and someone sat on the edge of the bed and it just broke. But my handy man husband fixed the bed, and it was all good. Until it kept breaking. He fixed it really good, it’s just that this bed really sucks. Actually, it’s pretty nice I don’t know why it keeps breaking but he’s been able to fix it every time until now. A few weeks ago the other side broke too. When Preston sat on the edge of the bed, the wood side part cracked a little but it seemed to be fine. However, last night Preston sat down next to me on the edge of the bed and sure enough, the bed fell off the frame and to the floor. This time it cannot be fixed. It’s completely broken. Remind me not to buy a bed from Ikea (this is the bed) again.

It wouldn’t be so bad except it’s not just the bed that needs to be replaced now. It’s the entire bedroom because we have the entire bedroom set right down to the matching foot stools and pillows. We’ve decided that we can budget in a bed soon, which needs to be very soon since my brother will be here again and needing his room and bed next Tuesday, but we’ll have to get the other pieces a little later. We’re going to get the bed that we actually really want this time. We wanted this one that broke but what we have really wanted was a nice, luxurious four post bed. Things in the money department are looking up very quickly (thank God) so we should hopefully be able to save over the next few weeks for the bed. Hopefully. Until then, it’s the guest bed and then after that, the mattress on the floor. Ghetto style. Woo.

Wow, I went almost 36 hours without writing anything new on my blog. I know, I’m surprised too.

What did I do yesterday? Hmm… Oh yah I surfed the internet looking for good things to make for dinner. Then I went grocery shopping, then I came home and fed the girls dinner. Then they got all fussy and extra tired so I tried to get them to sleep, which took a while, then they finally went to sleep and I started our dinner at 7pm and we didn’t eat until 8:30pm but mmmmmmm it was good. I made Cola Pork Chops. They were super easy and super yummy. Except I added some additional spices in my sauce to make it have a little more flavor.

I’m sick of making the same old “safe” dinners over and over. You know, the dinners that you like and that you know you can make really well? Those dinners. I can bake really well, and I love to bake, but I’ve never liked to cook. I don’t know why. But I decided this week that if I start to cook new things and do it every single night then I will probably end up liking it more. Probably I don’t like it because I don’t do it enough.

Okay that last sentence right there reminds me of something totally random. In these books I’ve been reading by Janet Evanovich, I’ve noticed something…

Instead of writing “I probably don’t like it because I don’t do it enough”
she writes “Probably I don’t like it because I don’t do it enough”.

Which sounded really weird to me at first, but now I find myself talking and writing like that. What is the correct way to talk/write something like that? Probably the way she does it, being that she’s an author and all.

Anyway, back to the cooking thing, I bought myself a cast iron skillet yesterday. Maybe along with cooking some new things I’ll build some new muscles because dang, that thing is heavy. And all this talk of cooking is making me really hungry for some lunch.

I’ll be posting part II of my little love story tonight, so check back!

p.s. I need some ideas for what to get Preston for his birthday next month. Maybe a Swiss Army knife? Or maybe not.