THE TWINS ARE SEPARATING!

It’s time. We knew this day would come. We naively thought it would be later. But it’s here. At the age of 10. The twins have decided they want separate rooms. **Sigh** We have a four bedroom home and have really enjoyed spreading ourselves out! We have the master bedroom, the twins’ room, the office, and the sewing (HE sews, not me)/eBay/junk room.

Now what?

I’ll tell you what. Now we have to clean up the junk and sell all the eBay crap that I’ve been putting off selling for years so we can consolidate two rooms into one. Ugh!

Oh yeah, wait, this is about them, not me. Okay, refocus here. So the boys are 10 years old and have decided they need their own space. Why do boys need their own space? I mean, if they were girls I would understand. Or if they were boys hitting puberty, I would get it (yuk!). But 10 year old boys? I guess they just need time apart. Separating everything is going to be tough, though. They share everything: clothes, books, toys, you-name-it. (Even down to their undies!) But this is important to them, so we’ll figure it all out.

This is one of those “growing up” events, isn’t it? Damn, I hate those!

Karen

Monday Madness- I Can't Believe She FORGOT!

When Karen and I started our business, The Caregiver Organizer, we agreed that each of us would have certain responsibilities. In the beginning it was very different because I was working from the home part-time and she was in full time sales. Eventually, we made a complete switch. Who knew? I'm now working full time (2 part time jobs equal a full time job, don't you agree?) and she is at home, manning the fort and -ahem- working on The Caregiver Organizer.

When the switch came, things that were my responsibility slowly became hers. One of those things was doing the books. Now, to begin with, it's funny that I would even do the books because, if you know me, you know that math and excel spreadsheets are FAR from my strengths. FAR. Miles. LIGHT YEARS. I was more than relieved when she took over the books.

Karen has strengths and weaknesses as well. She's an amazing editor- one that can see an error before it hits the page. She's a polished businesswoman. She does, however, have lousy short term memory. I can only say this because she will openly admit it to you.

So the other day I get a text asking for our accountant's number. I asked what was wrong. She kindly evades me. I ask again. She dodges the request. Finally I tell her to JUST.TELL.ME.

Karen was fabulous at getting our taxes done early this year In fact, I believe she had everything done by the end of January. Wonderful!

However, she FORGOT TO ACTUALLY SEND THEM IN!!!!!!!!!

She was cleaning up her office and just HAPPENED to find the envelope.

Our next posts may come to you from jail. If they do, we'll let you know how much the bail is and where to send money to get us out.

Yours, thinking I should get used to wearing stripes,

Melissa

Friday Funny-More Than One Way to "Take Care" of Them!

Here in The Lou, we are in the throes of the cicada invasion. Just when you think it's getting better, well, not so much. Suffice to say, we're not the only city that's had enough of them. Lots of funny stuff popping up all over the web. See that family in the picture above? That's my girlfriend Elizabeth. See the child in the middle? That's her 3rd boy, Andrew. Andrew is everything a little boy should be. Pure, 100% boy.

Logging onto facebook the other day, I found this post by my friend:

Lots of chirping coming out of Andrew's room.....found about 15 cicada's in a make shift cage, he told me he has taught them tricks, took one out, slammed it to the ground and yelled "Sit! See Mom, he listens."

Well, that's one way to take care of 'em!

Yours, wishing you a cicada free Friday,

Melissa

THE “BAD WORD” JAR

Some houses have a jar for curse words. We have a similar jar, (mug, actually) but it’s for what I consider to be “bad” words that my kids say. I should have nipped this in the bud a long time ago, but I didn’t, so this here is my goal this summer for my two 10 year old boys:

• Stop talking about their private body parts ALL THE TIME, and
• stop calling each other names.

So the words that they are not allowed to say are:

• penis
• anus
• idiot
• retard (recently added)

Every time they say one of these words, they must put a quarter into the Bad Word Jar. It’s only been a little over a week, and I already have a couple of bucks.

But here’s the really funny part. (Melissa couldn’t stop laughing at this one!) A little while after I told them this list of words, they came up to me and (in complete seriousness) asked me what word they could use instead of anus. Could they use wiener instead? Keeping a straight face, I asked them what they thought an anus was, and they both, simultaneously, pointed to their penises. I lost it! I tried to stay serious, I really did, but I failed miserably! I had tears running down my face! They were very confused, to say the least! But I finally calmed down enough to explain to them the proper meaning of the word and they now have several other words they can use. Thank goodness!

So wish me luck on achieving my goals this summer. I have a feeling I’ll be adding more words to the list as they get more creative with their vocabulary! And I’ll probably be explaining more of these words to them, too!

Karen

Monday Mania

The Hub, feeling my pain over my Swiffer Wet Jet (see previous Saturday Sassafrass), decided that apparently he would attempt to have better results. Like those pictures, right? (It took everything I had not to say "I told you so".) Guess what... now I can do it double fasted. Heck, with a coupon for a free Swiffer, who wouldn't want to redeem it, even though it doesn't work? And of course, that WILL build brand loyalty, won't it? Sense the sarcasm there? Because that's definitely the sarcasm font I'm using. ;)

And in other news, it's Week #2 at Camp Bishop. Yee-ha! Thankfully there is always an end in sight. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wishing summer away by any stretch of the imagination. I LOVE summer. LOVE IT. Fresh fruit (yay for watermelon and pineapple!), the pool, vacation, popsicles, swinging in the hammock, those are all high on my list. I even enjoy summer baseball. And road trips. Love those road trips.

The end of which I speak, however, is summer camp. THANK GOODNESS FOR SUMMER CAMP. While I love my children fiercely, having two rambunxious (sp?) kids and trying to get anything accomplished seldom goes hand in hand. Next week, Z1 starts day camp for three weeks. Those will probably be the easiest three weeks of my summer. I'm looking forward to him being tired at the end of the day. :)

Okay, time for another cup of coffee. Yes, I realize it's 1:24 in the afternoon, but I still have hours of Camp Bishop to go. :)

AND! It's my wedding anniversary today. Happy 13th Anniversary to The Hub and I.

Yours, going to brew some French Press,

Melissa

Saturday Sassafrass.

And here's a glimpse into my week....

*****

I came over to Karen's house for a poolside business meeting on Wednesday. She had not had internet or TV for 5 days. I got to listen to the phone call she had with customer service. (Yes! Poolside entertainment!)

********

The sitter came over on Thursday. It happened to be my mother, keeping the kids for me for a few hours. She was emptying the dishwasher for me, which I DO appreciate, but I said,"Mom, please don't do that. It's Z2's chore and she needs to take care of it."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know," she replied.

"That's okay," I said. "However, you DO know better than to call Z1 a jack@$* when he beats you in Stratego. Please don't do that either."

Babysitting by the Mamaw.... Free

Busting your own mother for HER mouth......PRICELESS

********

Dear Swiffer,

I contacted you because the Swiffer Wet Jet I purchased (along with the extra cleaning pads and fluid, nay to the tune of $40) does not work on my floor. It leaves streaks and lines of dirt. IT just doesn't work for my floors. Your response, instead of refunding my money, was to send me a coupon for a free new Swiffer of my choice and extra cleaning pads. So now I can have TWO mopping devices to streak my floors? Help me understand how that works....

Sincerely Yours,

Melissa

NO TV OR INTERNET FOR 4 DAYS…THANKS AT&T!

Yep, my family went without TV and internet for 4 days, thanks to AT&T. Normally, I love their service. The customer service is great on the phone, the techs are great when they come out. But this time, well, they blew it. BIG time! And not just once. No, they blew it over and over again.

So without going into too much boring detail, I’ll just tell you that somehow they (“they” meaning the people NOT in St. Louis, where I am) decided I was part of a system outage, which I most definitely was not. One guy even told me that all of Missouri was out! So they kept canceling my service calls. Without telling me. Or calling me.

So after each missed service call, I’d call them, they’d tell me there is an outage, I’d tell them there isn’t, they’d call the dispatcher and tell them that information and reschedule the call, and the whole cycle would begin again. And again. 4 times, in fact. Until I finally got fed up enough and smart enough to demand that whether there is an outage or not I wanted a tech out there NOW and let me talk to a manager NOW. That worked!

Now I will say, that the guy that came out here was awesome and finally found the problem (thanks, dude!) and wouldn’t leave until he was sure all of our computers and TVs were working properly.

So our family is back to normal. The boys and I laid in bed this morning and watched Young Frankenstein. LOVE that movie! And even though most of the jokes went over their heads, they loved their first Mel Brooks movie, too!

All I have left to do is to call AT&T back and demand some compensation. I’ll have to get Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder out of my head and muster up some of that anger again!

Karen