25 and a Half Hour Countdown to Single Parent Summer....

Not that I'm counting down or anything... not all ....

I mentioned before about the Single Parent Summer and here we are again....

The season is well into swing and the first home game is tomorrow, which means the hubby goes back to his fab part time job tomorrow...and just as every year since he's done it, it's in the knick of time, too.   Not that he doesn't LOVE being home with the kids, who doesn't?!  Right?!?!  Right! 

I think that it's important for him to have "him" time, so I embrace the next less than five months.  As long as it makes him happy.

Last season was not happy making due to employee changes WAY THE FUCK beyond his control... cause he's basically a glorified meat puppet...but a glorified meat puppet that gets to watch baseball all evening... So there's that...

I am already getting special requests of things to do from Thing 1...  Fantastical...  We are on a tight budget this year with our Seattle trip postponed to summer due to, well... we want to be there when there is a better chance of the sun being out.  Wouldn't that be nice?  We think so, too!  When you have kids' schedules to work around, the possibilities for time off needs to be grabbed.. HARD! 

I also just came to the realization that my foot hurts and it's not going away and then my tends-to-be-right and amazing Choni told me to change my shoes... well.... I didn't... no esta bueno...  And I realized something else...

I haven't bought new shoes in 7 years... no wait... 7 and a half (don't forget the half!).

When Thing 1 was born it was stunning to me that I gained a shoe size!  I had to shit-can SO many pairs of RAD shoes that I LOVED!!!!!  And my Choni LOVED them, too... It was heart breaking to see all those shoes given away for donation since for some reason I don't tend to wear them out.  All new shoes for my birthday and Christmas later and I still have them all....

I finally did it... I wore my 5 pairs of shoes so far down that my foot hurts.  I mean "foot cancer" kind of worry hurts.  Ma gave me a pair of her old trainers and by old I mean a pair of shoes she bought 5 years ago or so and NEVER EVER WORE...not once... maybe when she tried them on in the store before the purchase...but NEVER EVER EVER wore...  I wore those yesterday and I felt like my feet were being massaged all day.  The pain isn't GONE, but it's not as bad and I was able to go on my walk again today!  Like I need another reason not to get exercise (rain, wind, cold) I haven't walked since my foot started hurting and what started it was a day where we walked ALL day.  Since then, no bueno....  And I even wore a pair of shoes that I thought were the end all be all of my shoes.  My foot hurt SO bad... and it's been off and on, but still a consistent pain...  well, I think we got it now folks.  New shoes!  I bought a pair of Airwalks at PayLess...but I don't think that's what I need.  I need REAL support... frikkin old lady I am now.  I hate this.  But hey, if I have to buy walking shoes for an orthopedic purpose, you bet your ass they're gonna rock!!!  So I'm already putting my feelers out there for something ON SALE mind you.  Good pair of trainers these days run in the high 10's ... not where my price range tends to settle.  Plus I feel by going Clearance rack it requires me to go outside the box and get something more FUN :) 

I have so many ideas of things that the childrens and I can do together while Daddy is working...  I also have to feed them myself sans wrangler... hhhmmm....  that will be trickier than the tricks I've been doing, but I'm sure it won't take much time to get into the swing of things... Thing 1 is back to softball this year and I am excited for that.  I know Daddy is too, especially since she promised she would be more into the practicing at home part.  Last season, not so much...  Of course, it wasn't required in her league, just encouraged.  Now it will be more on the requirement side of the pie I'm sure.  We'll see...  I pretty much just like the Pancake Breakfast and the Opening Day Ceremony... It's so.....ceremonious :)

Nail Polish Challege, 4, 5, 6....

I know I'm so awesome at this, right?!?!

Week 4:

My absolute favorite of all my colors....  It's starting to goop and gunk and sludge.  So I did what my Ma taught me and I added just the eensiest teensiest bit of nail polish remover to fix it...and it did but it still made it light.  I wanted it to be smidge darker, but I don't like to do TOO many top coats of my nail polish.  So this is the result from Week 4.

Week 5:

This is Rimmel Torrid... I have the first bottle that came out, it doesn't look like this...
I also failed to get a picture because we have had a busy week of spring break awesomeness with the kidlets being home and a trip to Universal Studios on a Monday that made us all feel like we are onsome grand adventure to a place a whopping 95 miles away...  Basically, it just wasn't in the cards!  Plus, I couldn't take the picture with the lovely bottle as I have BEEN doing for the plain and simple reason that the bottle committed soboku and jumped off the night table to the abyss behind it.  I couldn't see it to stick my hand down there, so I am NOT sticking my hand down there... 

We redecorated our kids room on Saturday.  We started preliminary measures and I thought, "Why do my nails now, Friday night, when we are doing so much work tomorrow, Saturday... I should wait!"... And in waiting, I had my hands in moisture hell all day (forgot gloves like an ass) and after my shower I was supposed to sit down and do my manicure at 10pm... we did ALOT on Saturday.
After my shower my nails were so brittle and peely that I went to grab something and my thumb nail caught and boom... nails all had to be taken down...down...waaaaay down... and after I used the nail polish remover I came across a total DUH moment.

I used the nail polish remover to extend my goopy gunky junky nail polishes...  Both the Big Night Out and Torrid... Unfortunately, I failed to remember the critical rule in doing so... You MUST use a base coat before putting on the "Extended" nail polish ... or THIS happens...

Week 6:

The Clean(ish) Look...

Short funky nails on my now sausage looking fingers... Part of the reason why I try to keep length to my nails is to prevent the "sausage fingers" look...  Stained they are.  Not polished.  So now, I will be feeding them Vitamin E oil, buffing and polishing and for Next week's challenge, there will be color.  It probably also helps that because I am firm believer in waste not want not, I still have Prenatal Vitamins that I am taking... I almost never remember to take them on the weekends and I bought this bottle right before I had Marysu (at which time I ALWAYS remembered to take them)... so this bottle has lasted quite a long time as a result.  But when it's gone I'm going to find a good vitamin mix to take to help my nails cause they need a little extra OOMPF once in a while :)

Thing 1 just got softball signed up and ready to go... so the busy bee life will be in full swing and my Single Parent Summer starts all over again :)  This year a little different from last because the wee one is a Toddler in full swing!  I feel a lot of non-house cleaning nights coming on and more keep the children entertained and fed nights...  Awesome!

Nail Polish Challenge Week 3 or The One Where It's Friday But I Pretend It's Monday...

Something happened on the way to the Forum....

I have always like the different colored nail polishes...ALWAYS...and almost as soon as I woke up the next morning after applying my newest layer...Uhm...  I didn't like it... 

I don't know what it's stemming from... Of course given my age and that I am an old married wife with kids I'm sitting here thinking "Oh no this is that moment they always warn you about about when you dont remember when it happened but you've lost your identity because you don't like the same things because you're old and you're not young and you're not 12 and you're not 25 and oh my god OH MY GOD!"

But then... I realize... No... I just don't like green nails cause it looks like fungus...and then I think of mushrooms, and then I think of toadstool and then I think of Princess Peach and I want to play Mario Bros.

So what do you think?  Fungus amongus?  Or perfectly fine??  I have no idea, all I know is I can't wait to get it off my nails!  And I'm thinking, maybe I put it into a pile of give away/re-gift xmas ideas or something cause DAMN... I am so over this...  Can't wait to see what I pick next!

Knockin On Heaven's Door....

Sitting on my couch last night watching the latest episode of Being Human, where Sally, Nick and Stevie who were once ghosts are zombies basically now and Nick went after his girlfriend, she killed him for trying to eat her and she killed him GOOD.  Nick turns back into a ghost after Zoie kills him and Sally and Zoie watch him walk into his "door"...

Sally tells Stevie he is a zombie now, Josh kills Stevie so he won't eat anyone else (after he ate his parents and the mailman) and Stevie shows up as a ghost and walks into his door... here's the problem: it's the same door Nick went through and in the Being Human-verse, every ghost gets their own door.  So this makes Sally and Josh wax intellectual about what this must mean if ghost Nick and Stevie went through the same door, what if Sally decided she didn't want to be a zombie and killed herself, then she would be a ghost and get offered this crazy door... what would happen? What's on the other side?

And this is what happens as a result of watching that episode:

Harley: So why are they freaking out?

Me: 'Cause that guy got the same door as the other guy and that's wrong.  That means that there's something bad probably going on...

Harley:  So, what's on the other side of the door?

Me: Heaven...I guess... well... that person's version of heaven..but you realize that this is a show right?  That everything is made up right?

Harley: well...duh.  But, so if it's their heaven, what do you think is on the otherside?

Me: Well, I guess it's different for everybody... Like, your idea of Heaven is probably all marshmallows and books and unicorns doing backflips over rainbows...

Harley: (laughs) yeah, probably... So what do you think your door would like?

Me: well, Uhm... I don't know.  I guess....  I would have an orange door and on the otherside would hopefully my dad/your grandpa... maybe some of my animals... maybe Grandma Mary...

Harley:  Oh... Ok.  What color is grandma and grandpas door at their house?  Cuz I want my door to look that their door and I want grandpa to be on the otherside...




...and there you have it folks...  straight from the mouths of babes...

Nail Polish Challenge Week 2...

Friday night I got me my fabulous five minute manicure...  It felt soooo good...  Cause I use that nummy Vitamin E Oil on my nail beds and they LOVE it.  I was thinking about clipping them because they were getting pretty long.  It was almost starting to get to where I would have to maybe think about cutting them to help my typing.  But I didn't...  Then Sunday we were taking the kids out of the car on the way home from Ma's... and I couldn't get Thing 2 out of her seat!  I was also fighting the time change so I didn't want to work the five point harness TOO hard since I wanted her to stay sleeping...  So I was freaking out a bit.  I had to use an implement to free her and that was when I realized if I couldn't do a quick-clip that night, I had to do one on my lunch yesterday.  And that's exactly what I did :)

Here are the results:



Dude, I should be a freakin Hand Model...  Not sure if you can still get that Cotton Candy Pop Sally Hansen, but it's really good stuff and I'm almost out of it ... hence the whole idea of this "Challenge"...

Good thing I did my manicure yesterday...today was dedicated to reading and eating and walking... My daily lunch routine stays pretty simple unless there's "something going on" then it slightly derails.  I usually like to get in 30 minutes of a walk outside then it's back to my desk for sandwich with tortilla chips and reading a book in between bites...  25-30 minutes of reading between bites doesn't get me far in my 900 page book, but that's ok :)  I never run out of books to read and I'm thinking of re-reading all my Stephen King books anyway.  Almost all of them are worth a second GO and my Mister isn't a reader, but he's a question asker...so I need to be a better quesiton answerer :) Now I'm going back to work and listening to my Pandora radio... LOVE Pandora!

I'm Just Over Here In My Corner, Sticking To What Works...

I'm in the mood to clarify something...

Not that I'm NOT all for trying new things.  I LOVE to try new things.  I'm actually pretty adventurous... It's just that sometimes you gotta stick to what works...  Like for instance, since I AM a Mom person, I will use diapers for example.  I used diapers from Wal-Mart... Parent's Choice to be exact.  They weren't around when Thing 1 was born so we used Huggies because they didn't give her a rash and for some reason everyone bought ALL the Pampers...LUVS=RASH... White Cloud=RASH... What used to be the Target brand=RASH.  Now Target has UP and UP, but same problem, size always seems swiped. 

That being said, when I had exhausted the plethora of diapers I received from friends and relatives (not for about 6months...eeeeeeee!!!) I was bound and determined to just stick to what worked, but I wanted to atleast TRY the Paren'ts Choice and TRY the UP and UP...so I bought their little mini trial packs (I know right? Trial size diaper packs=genius) and found NO rash... YAY!!! So now, we get the cheapies cause they work and why change?  Even when we have a few extra bucks or if one of our mom's buys diapers for their houses... Wal-mart or Target brand...  boom.done.

So THAT being said...  I DO like to stick to what works, but when someone raves about something that sounds like something I would like try, especially where products are concerned, who ISN'T looking for something that works GREAT????  WHO!!!!

Right now I use Suave on my hair.  I know, I know...  cheap shit... but I must say; I have used them ALL.  I have USED THEM ALL!!!  My hair is fantastic, but you feed it something it doesn't like and it goes on a hungerstrike and says "FUCK YOU!!!"  and it does.. I know you don't think that hair can't swear...come over to MY house some time...

I guess I was feeling a little silly that I seemed to be spending so much time and attention on my hair that I thought, "Oh come one, you need to use something better..."  so I changed from Loreal to Pantene to Garnier and I found I had problem with each one.  And even all those shampoos, I STILL have to use Head and Shoulders between Shampoos because I flakes. Deal with it...  Garnier was too dry, I tried them all...I ended up with either really crispy hair or really greasy hair...  Moving on, I found the problem with Pantene that everyone else I know that used it found...  it COATS your hair with this FILM... GROSS!!!  No bueno... the Loreal... well I know this sounds like crap but my hair requires a little more shampoo and conditioner than the average bear... it SUCKS up moisturizers... **SLURP** gone...  when something says dime size, I go half dollar.

The last time I messed with my "formula" I paid with it for two days between hair washings and I WON"T DO THAT AGAIN!  Returning back to what works I am now just sticking with :

I use the color care keratin Suave... It smells awesome and my hair LOVES this shit...  When I'm done in the shower, I use a leave in conditioner... I HAVE to... and I have used everything in the aisles of the Target and WalMart.  I even went to Walgreens to get something a woman at work uses (she has completely different hair than me and what was I thinking cause that never works out well in my direction)...I paid for that...I really did...That's when I decided to go BACK to this here:  

Suave Keratin leave-in... I swear by it.  I put that on my hair at the ends...it LOVES me for it...  and now that my hair is short again, I am able to blow dry it in just under 30 minutes! Yay!  It's short, it's not suddenly UNTHICK... work with me here...  After I blow dry it, it gets a little dried out feeling and I usually take baby oil, dimesize, (ba-dum-ch) and spread it in my palms, then I work it into the ends...

Usually all of this happens before I go to bed and when I wake up, I have fabulous hair... or Fabu-hair if you will. 

I was at the Target on my lunch looking around and I was looking for a finishing oil spray that smelled good, didn't cost a small GD fortune and something I could really get into...  I ALMOST got the Suave moraccan oil, but they were out... Instead, I turned around and staring me RIGHT in the face was THIS:

There are SO MANY things I LOVE about this product!  It smells like summer, and according my other half, it smells like a delicious cake my Mom makes and it makes him hungry... haha...  But it's great!  It's a spray so I don't have to get my hands oily and the application is more precise.  I can target my "trouble" areas which are the ends of course. 

Funny thing, to look at me you probably wouldn't believe I take this kind of care of myself.  And I really don't care what other people think I look like, or my hands look like or my hair look like... But I want my hair soft cause I'm not the only one that has to touch it... and I'm not the only one that feels my skin... and I like that Thing 1 looks at my face and notices that there aren't any fine lines or wrinkles... of course when Thing 2 hits the same age, that will more than likely be inevitable!!!  I will take a healthy dose of pride in the fact that I have been called the "youngest" in a group of people I know...but I'm not...hehehe...

There you have it...the hair products I use and will continue to use until they end up on the clearance shelf... and why?? Because... I stick with what works...until the bastards discontinue whatever "it" is...then the cycle starts all over again.  Hey, I have THAT to look forward to...

Nail Polish Challenge...

I have set forth a challenge unto myself... and I thought I would share it if anyone cares...

I have a tool box that my Uncle made in woodshop and my mom swiped it for her nail stuff long ago...and it has made it's way into my hands and I still have it :)  I am proud of that fact so give me a reflective moment.....  and here's a look at my collection:

There you have it, all of my glorious colors!

This one's from my latest "Friday Night Manicure".  I have got it down a science at this point in the game.  I am able to do my nails in record time.  I have had enough practice after 7 years with Thing 1...Now that we have Thing 2, I'm a PRO!!  I let it go for a while and realized, "Hey, I actually LIKE doing this!"  So I picked it back up again... and now my nails and nail beds are happy for it!  That right there ^ is "Always Ascher"...  the bummer is that I am not about to go out and buy a bunch of NEW colors because the WHOLE reason for this challenge is so that I use up what I have.  I have a LOT already so why not right??  RIGHT! 

BUT

I WILL tell you ...

This color right here VVV

Is called "You Don't Know Jacques..."  By O.P.I. 

Mind you, that's an older picture and the nails didn't look like jungle vines...they won't for much longer though... getting less simple to do some tasks.  That's when they get trimmed!!

Personally I am surprised that I am able to do this and keep it up and I get compliments on my nails, nail beds, and hands all the time.  All I did was make sure I have this:

Great for the cuticles! 

You can get this at WalMart nice n cheap and they're essential for nail health:

I LOVE my Buffing Block and I even have one at work, too!  Sometimes you just don't know what to do with those pesky lunch hours and I always like to do something constructive!

And of course no manicure is complete without the proper tools!

I keep a manicure set in my purse backpack all the time because... you never know :)  I am hoping to remember to do this every week after I do a new color.  As I mentioned, the idea is not to ADD...the idea is not to WASTE and to get RID OF!