Mrs. CPA

My Little Cabana Boy

I told you my Nan would buy me a swimming pool...

God, we are such rednecks. (But fun and cool ones!)

This was our Memorial Day project - and cleaning up the house. We had to empty the vacuum canister 3 times, and we only have one rug in the house. Eleanor hair was about to organize a union and demand better treatment if we didn't get it out of there soon.

It was also chocolate cheesecake making time, for a dinner with friends, which Mr. Cheeks slept through:

American Idol: A photo essay

First of all, my husband's favorite joke yesterday was this:

"Did you hear that the man who wrote 'the Hokey Pokey' died today?"

"No"

"They had a really hard time getting him in the casket, They put his left leg in..."

hysterical, really, and I have to live with him everyday.

Also, this was hysterical:

That is the "Hudson voice." Don't all of your animals and people in your household that cannot verbalize have a different voice for you to dub their speaking?

American Idol:

Mom came over and brought us supper.

You are seeing that correctly - that is ham in there. My mother is from the south and you do not eat ham unless you save the bone in the freezer to make green beans. There was also corn and chicken spaghetti. Starch city! Perfect for my giant "I had a kid two months ago" ass. Chicken Spaghetti involves lots of Velveeta. Little chicken, lots of Velveeta. And pimento, because, really, what southern dish is compete without pimento and Velveeta?

And then we watched, and it was funny (probably not the way they intended, but we're cool like that), and I made TP go and get us some beer, which is most definitely NOT on the diet, and we watched that poor Clay Aiken look-a-like about 10 times, 5 of those in slow motion, and laughed most of the Velveeta off our thighs.

Then Mr. Cheeks went to sleep:

We didn't really pay that much attention anymore, we were trying to figure out how to split the cheeks between the three of us for dessert.

But Chicken Little? Do not sing Tom Jones songs. ever. again. And I believe the best way to describe this year's contestants is the Lord of the Rings year: There were about 10 elves singing last night, pointy ears, elfin faces, bad teeth (wait, is that an elf feature? Anyway Elliott). Unfortunately, none of them look like Orlando Bloom's Legolas.
And Prince creeps me out.

And then we tried to watch the Lost finale and I fell asleep because of the chemical reaction of Velveeta and Raspberry flavored Smirnoffs.

An evening full of my viewing pleasure.

Existential Bullshit

All I needed in that last post was a few "paradigms" thrown in and I would have crossed the line.

The school pictures turned out much better than I expected. Seeing as how I am not photogenic at all, Mr. Cheeks seems to have inherited his father's photo face. Why do the double chins look so cute on him and so ridiculous on me?

It seems like I read a lot of blogs where the women are on some type of depression/anxiety drug. Does blogging attract this or does motherhood just cause it and the only way to stay sane is to blog? Don't get me wrong, those drugs are fabulous. Sometimes I wish I could have some, just to join the club.

The American Idol finale is tonight, and I'm not sure how I feel about Taylor Hicks and his Soul Patrol even though I live in Birmingham. I never watch the middle part of the show, so I didn't see it until after it was down to the final 6. I guess he's the lesser of two evils. McPheever is a dumb slogan, much worse than Soul Patrol, and no one in her hometown came out to see her, so why should I bother to vote for her? It doesn't matter anyway, we didn't even vote this time. I guess "I can't bitch about the result if I didn't let my voice be heard by voting." American Idol - giant time waster for the masses...

I will be TIVOing the finale to Lost. This will make it more enjoyable to watch since I can see it without commercials after Idol. I'm ready for some questions to be answered. What happened to the monster, anyway? Once Eko stared it down it got scared and decided to leave everyone alone? WTF is up with that? He's scary and all, but give me a break.

Does anyone else find themselves wanting to TIVO other things? I really want to TIVO the radio - a lot - so does TP. He has an itchy pause button finger at home, and uses it waaaayyy too much. He tried to record JEOPARDY! once, and I had to put the kibosh on that one. The listings are already nerded up with Battlestar Gallactia and Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis.

Anyway, this is much better:

Mr. Cheeks goes to the ballgame

One of everything

I'm sure this makes me a lemming, but I sat on the couch last night and sobbed through about 25% of Oprah's Legend's Ball Special. I hate it when I do that. I tried to read TV Guide or US Weekly, but kept getting sucked back in. "We speak your names" was heart wrenching, and to think that two of those women have already passed on since the actual event makes me wonder how many others should have been honored sooner. Then it was Alias! The finale was not everything I was looking for, but still good. I know it is open for a movie or a spin off and I L O V E that Sloane is trapped under a rock for eternity. Sydney unfortunately does not get points in the "learned my lesson" category. Your mother has just tried to kill you for the umpteenth time and you try to save her again. I heard the speech from Sloane about rescuing everyone, but come on! Let her go. She obviously would not have tried to save you. House and American Idol tonight and then Big Love in two weeks and that's all the TV watching for the summer until the 4400 comes on. I love Big Love. TP said he was watching Twister for lack of anything better on TV, and seeing Bill Paxton was too weird. All he could think about was Bill being married to three women. Can you imagine how stressful it would be to be married to three women and have 8 kids and one on the way? Having to keep up with three households and the night schedule and run a business and keep this huge secret from the whole world? I think I would need more than Viagra to make it through the day. Mr. Cheeks is in full coo and smile mode.

School pictures come in today too.

Troll baby blogs about blogging addiction today at Blogher. Not that this blog is anything special or that I'm world renowned or anything, but I find myself trying to remember snippets to blog about. Do I and the world really have so much to say that it needs to be written down for posterity in some form or another on the web? Has it gotten to the point where no experience is lived in the moment because people are busy forming posts in their heads constantly? Has conversation become geared toward being reported as an "overheard" item somewhere? Will it get to the point where all activities, with the exception of the most private ( and even then), are reported for everyone to read? Have we become such exhibitionists that the final frontier is our daily thoughts and experiences laid out for everyone to digest? What about basing decisions/self worth on your comments?

Donna of Union, Trueheart, & Courtesy wrote an article in the VINO this quarter about being discrete in your writing. Blogging is not a stream on consciousness. Your parents, friends, professors, employers, and strangers knowing everything about your life is not always the best way to make a good impression. What we are typing out here could cost someone a job, or worse. We all walk a fine line between enough to entice, and so much that we set ourselves up to be a victim. Chris has had to make all her family pictures private on Flickr because some pervert made favorites of her daughter's pictures. Do we disclose names? I leave my husband anonymous since I haven't asked his permission to tell his story. He doesn't even read this, so he can't defend himself or what I write.

This is a conundrum that all bloggers face. "Do I have enough interesting things to say that people will want to read my thoughts," has to be weighed against, "how much can I disclose without hurting someone?"

I hope that eventually people will think that I have something to add to the conversation.

Oh, Do Dah Day...

So today was the 26th annual Do Dah Day here in town. They have a parade, and lots of jumpy things for the kids, beer and snowcones. I have discovered that there are too many people out there with weenie dogs who like to dress them up. There were tutus, hot dogs, and about 100 of them in hats. There's a point when a tiny dog in a hat is not funny anymore. I think I got to that point today.

Dr. Visit

We went to our 2 month old checkup yesterday. My horse child weighs 13 lbs 1 oz and is 24 inches long. That's the 90% percentile folks. I can only pray that this translates to the same percentile in standardized testing - it does, right? He went back to school and when he got home, he went to sleep. And slept, and slept, and slept. He woke up and ate around 10:30 and didn't get back up until 4am! And then I just put him in the bed with us. I'm glad it was my night for duty. I'm sure I'll get paid back somehow though.

It's baseball night at my office. All the employees and their families will go to the local ballpark for the minor league baseball game - Barons vs. Biscuits. Who the hell names their baseball team the Biscuits? All I can think of is a bunch of doughy looking baseball players, jogging around the bases. There will be beer, hamburgers and hotdogs and potato salad, and everyone will be checking out the rest of your family.

Reasons

Reasons why today is shitty:

2. I stayed up too late because I slept all afternoon, and subsequently didn’t want to get my lazy ass out of the bed this morning. When I was finally drifting off to sleep last night, TP stared all his girly, weak-ass coughing that doesn’t do anything but shake the bed a whole lot and really piss me off. That went on for an hour until I finally hit him on the back at 2am and told him to knock it off and either cough or get out of the bed.

3. After I finally got up and got dressed, I thought I would go and make TP’s lunch to be nice. I found a live roach in our sink, which was not filled up with dirty dishes or anything a roach would find interesting. I sprayed him with Raid – which I love.

4. The butterbean has a snotty nose, which is really cute when he is nuzzling your neck and making the squishy, piglet noise in the middle of the night. Not so cute when it makes him eat slow and then throw up his entire breakfast all over the carseat when you are 1 minute from home and already late for work. We had to turn around and go back for a change of clothes. It was so much spit up that it went through the cracks where the harness was into the base of the seat. I had to put a cloth diaper under his leg so his clothes wouldn’t get messed up on the way back. And now it’s in the washing machine and I just pray I can reassemble the damn thing correctly.

5. The daycare lady couldn’t hear a word I said when I told her that he had gotten sick, she thought I was talking about me. I finally had to almost yell that it was the butterbean, not me. She then got all concerned about having three bottles for the day. Even if he eats an hour early for each feeding, he still has an hour after TP comes and picks him up before he needs to eat again. I’ve got it under control woman.

Reasons today might get better:

1. Grey’s Anatomy finale tonight, Seriously.

2. The episode of House and Alias I have Tivo’d from last week.

3. The mailman had not come at lunchtime and there’s a US Weekly, a TV guide and possibly a present from my MIL.

4. TP is playing pool tonight, so I have the house to myself – just me and the dogs and the baby.

5. I can’t think of a fifth one, but I like symmetry.

My husband's office

Today, the butterbean and I went to visit his dad where he works, since I have Friday afternoons off and everyone there thinks the pictures on his desk are of some internet baby.

I went to pick the butterbean up from school for our excursion.

The babies had all made mother's day gifts and the teachers had wrapped them up with some cute tissue paper and a bow. My tuition dollars at work!

Teacher: "Oh, don't forget your mother's day present!"

Me: "Thanks, I'm sure he agonized over it all day."

Teacher: "He worked for a long time."

Me: "Well then, it must be poop."

Upon inspection it's a piece of paper with one of those sayings at the bottom about "fingerprints on mirrors and walls" and his fat, chubby, blue handprints at the top. I remember doing the exact same poem and handprints as a child and my parents having them framed somewhere in the house.

Off to the office! TP tried to give me directions last night and finally I just told him that if I got lost I would call. It took me less time to get there than it did for him to try and give me the crazy-ass directions.

We were told to arrive at 2pm, which we did, I didn't want to be late since he sent out a MEETING NOTICE to everyone on the floor. Of course when we got there, he was in a "meeting." I think this means he was in the bathroom.

One of the secretaries came and got us and we were ogled and ooohhh'ed and aaahhh'ed over appropiately. And by us, I mean the baby. He went through the entire range of emotions, happy cooing to "give me some food now, woman!" One of the coworkers said that he looked like my husband, which is the general consensus. It doesn't really bother me. One of the men said he was sure I got tired of hearing that. I replied with:

"There are worse people he could look like I guess, he could look like my boss."

What an idiot. These people don't even know me and here I am making thinly veiled innuendoes about having an affair with my boss. What kind of moron does that? I thought it was funny though, and I may start using it more often as a response to, "he looks just like your husband." Just another reason why everyone really likes TP, and I'm just someone who has to come along too.

After our exciting visit, we came home and took a monstrous nap. The sleeping at school went much better today, over two and a half hours! Maybe he'll do even better next week.

It's the actual church picnic tomorrow and I've made my tortellini salad again. Hopefully we'll make it on the right date, park and time.

The Butterbean Extraordinare

Who knew that some $2 elmo glasses could do so much?

"So how's work going?" people ask. It's not too bad other than the fact that the butterbean and I are used to sleeping in until 9 o'clock at home. I miss those mornings in the big bed with that little furnace next to me, making those sweet smack-y, smooshy noises after the morning bottle, Jax under the covers, and Pete's head on my leg. Now I have to pack him up and send him off to school. Get his bag ready, get myself ready, make sure the house isn't going to catch fire while we are gone...

A List!

Stupid/Terrible Things I have done since I have become a mother:

1. I thought that the church picnic was last Saturday - despite both calendars, the postcard AND the newsletter saying otherwise. I made my tortellini salad on Friday night, went and bought lawn chairs that morning, and looked in 2 drugstores, K-mart and publix for a Neet sheet for the butterbean (which no one seemed to have). We packed ourselves up and went to the park, only to find *gasp* there were no other church members there. We walked around the whole park sidewalk system and the damn picnic is this week. I ate a LOT of tortellini salad on Saturday and Sunday, since the diet was starting on Monday.

2. I nearly ran over two guys yesterday on my way home, although they were stupid for being in the street anyway. The "walk" light was the flashing red hand, which means DO NOT START CROSSING. Anyway, I was pulled forward to turn right (somewhat into the crosswalk - ok, ok, all the way in the crosswalk) and when it was clear I started to go. Well, these two men were not at the corner when I pulled up, they saw me looking to the left only and I had my signal on and the sign was saying "do not start crossing," but they did anyway. And I nearly took off their legs and/or feet. After a loud yelp, I rolled down the window to see if they were ok, and one guy said it had happened to him before in Huntsville. If it's happened before don't you think you would learn your lesson and not walk on the flashing red hand?? But whatever. It did make me look veeeerrrry carefully behind me when backing out at the grocery store.

3. The butterbean and I were are the office they week before April the 15th. I was trying to help out a little, since I had gone and gotten knocked up and all. He normally slept through the whole thing and this day was no exception. He was in this car seat with a blanket over him, snoozing away. Apparently, tax work is boring to him, and I think the sound of the 10-key lulled him to sleep, since he recognized the sound from in-uerto (I also try to say dammit a lot so he feels like he's back in there). Anyway, I remember thinking to myself, "don't forget to buckle him in there before you leave." Hah! When I got home, which is only a 7 minute drive on surface streets, he was sort of slumped over from the braking and pulling in to the parking spot. I'm glad I didn't get pulled over, or God forbid, we had a wreck. It will probably never happen again, and I probably won't tell TP either. It will just give him something else to check.

I'm sure there are more things that I have forgotten due to how stupid they were, but these four top the list. And what makes it even worse is that I'm not really sleep deprived. Butterbean only gets up once a night.

I was Lost but now am Found...

So, the baby is here. His name is Hudson.

TP has gotten himself a big time job making lots of money - still has not finished his dissertation.

JD is working for some crazy democrat in AR.

Mom works for a chiropractor.

Sis is trying to find work.

I went back to work today from Maternity leave. It was hard to get back in the swing of things when all I really wanted to do was sleep until 9.

Hudson is asleep on my chest after consuming in record time 6 oz of formula. Maybe he'll get a bee in his 7 week old bonnet and sleep through the night. Seriously, he hasn't done it yet.

He is an excellent baby. Very easy going, likes strangers, doesn't mind the dogs, and can flip people off with the best of them...