Mrs. CPA

It's All Meme's All the Time!!

My pal Donna B.  wants to know 8 random things and I don't want to leave her hangin'.

1.  I can quote a half dozen Gary Larson cartoons.  I even had a t-shirt I got at the Peabody hotel in Memphis.

2.  I have an unhealthy addiction to green olives, marinated artichoke hearts, hummus, guiltless gourmet spicy bean dip, feta cheese, lite three cheese ranch dressing and nachos.  I had three of these for supper on Monday night, can you guess which three went together?

3.  My husband has gradually made me a Ninja Warrior convert. But he will never make me like the other ridiculously dumb shows on G4.  One of them gives away free stuff via a monkey for Pete's sake.

4.  I have 22 pairs of shoes, down due to the summer clothing switchout and purge.  It includes one pair of red shoes, and pairs of heels that haven't seen my feet in 3 years. But I might need them some day.  I went to college with 50 pairs.  I'm doing better.  They are all size 10.

5.  I had a weird dream on Saturday night about Dr. House from TV .  It involved a prison, a swimming pool and escaping prision or catching some bad guys who were trying to break out.  I think it had to do with watching The Departed and Stuart Little in the same day. 

6.  I never could keep a diary as a kid.  I tried, but always ended up abandoning it after a few entries.  I tried so hard to be a tortured, expressive, angsty teen - writing brilliant missives in my little scratch book.  But I'm no good at it.  As Donna probably remembers from my journal entries.  The only time I ever did any real writing was to break up with boyfriends and say the things I couldn't say out loud to people. 

7.  I always bring my pillow with me when I'm not going to be sleeping in my own bed.

8.  I own 7 Barry Manilow CD's, including a boxed set.  I've never watched the video that came with it.  I have been to see him in concert 3 times, once as a child, once at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, and once at the Birmingham Verizon Ampitheatre.

I think that's about as random as I can get.  Stay tuned tomorrow for something equally ridiculous! 

A Very Unfortunate Choice for a Party Indicator...

Exactly what kind of party is this going to lead me to?

We are so high school...

 

You Put Your Stuff in There...

It's fun Monday again.  It's my last week at work and I have about 3,000 things I need to be doing, but I'm not.  So I'm stalling, and this is a perfect way to do keep from packing. 

This week's Fun Monday is hosted by Swampwitch at Anecdotes, Antidotes, and Anodes and the challenge is to "post pictures of your bookshelves or stacks of books. Hopefully, we will be able to read some of the titles. If you want, while you're at it, post pictures of ANY shelves...shelves with toys, dishes, collections, Aunt Gertrude's ashes in an urn, etc. Also, post pictures of your garage, carport, or places where you store 'stuff.'  (No fair cleaning first, but if you must, maybe this will be the motivation to do so.)"

Since I only read books once, I normally send them to goodwill after reading, so I don't have a big stack of books that I keep anymore, we just don't have the room.  The best bookshelf in the house, therefore, belongs to Mr. Cheeks. 

It contains a bunch of Little Golden books, including The Pokey Little Puppy, The Tawny Scrawny Lion, and The Little Red Hen.  There's an awesome Raggedy Ann & Andy pop up book with gorgeous artwork that Nan sent us, and a collection of Dr. Suess and Disney books that my mother in law purchased.  There is a  letter train that I painted myself, a few books that were mine growing up like The Bible Book on the top shelf, and a copy of Pickles the Fire Cat, that TP read as a child and insisted we purchase.  A Birmingham Barron's dog, two birth blocks, a set of ceramic peter rabbit dishes, a Curious George McDonald's toy, the linen towel from Mr. Cheeks' baptism, and an antique bucket and shovel make the shelves groan.   All of these books are a little to big for him now, so were trying to save them for a few years until he can be a little more careful with them and actually sit through one of us reading them. 

Also way more interesting than my bookshelf that contains Classical Mechanics, Pool & Billiards How To, The History of Hell, and three Harry Potter books. 

The next part of the request was to take a picture of our garage or carport, where you shove all your stuff.  We don't have a garage but we do have a storage shed, and man is it messy. 

We've got clothing bins, a bassinet, a Christmas tree stand,  a sleeper sofa (that is really great, but we don't want the dogs to mess it up)(yet), a toy car that TP's office sent us full of goodies when Mr. Cheeks was born, and last summer's swimming pool. That little red box on the left is a Doctor's kit of TP's from when he was a kid, a box of High School mementos, 400 paint cans behind the couch and the remnants of some pool noodles sacrificed to level out the old car seat.

On the other side: 

My band jacket, an antique armiore with the original key and tags on the shelves for pajamas, undershirts, etc., another pool toy with pecan tree sap on it, and a bunch of junk hidden behind the armiore.   This is AFTER our shed got broken in to last year about this time.  They took TP's bike and some tools, including our pooper scooper but leaving the reel mower.

If you've forgotten, we have to move all this stuff, SOON.  And if you can't tell - we haven't packed a thing. 

Thanks for letting me play along!

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Thanks to Izzy for the awesome new header design.  If you can't see it, refresh your browser and it should show up. 

Rockin' the Pink Pants

I know there are crazy people in this world.  Like crazy, will buy anything because they think it will make them look "cool," only shop at Abercrombie because of the hot models, buy $5,000 purses crazy.  But if I ever find out that someone I know has purchased a pair of pants that cost $70.00 and ALREADY HAVE PAINT SPLATTERS ON THEM, I will have you committed.  I thought paint splatter went out in 1991?  DO NOT BUY THESE PANTS:

That is just insane. Insane.  Polo, you are crazy.

I went to get TP's Father's Day gift on Saturday, he needs clothes more than he needs anything else so I headed out to the outlet mall and picked up a perfectly respectable pair of Tommy Hilfiger pants, a shirt, and a new hat (the one he's wearing now he got in Hawaii when we got married and it is f-u-n-k-y).  Then I thought I would pop over to the Polo outlet and see what they had for my 18 lbs aways from Pre-Mr. Cheeks days butt.  I thought the above pants were a giant joke.  But lo and behold someone seriously wants pants that look like you painted your kitchen, rolled around on a stencil, and then put a natty sweater with them to go out.  I should have brought along my Sharpie, so I could write on the waistband, al la Hollow Squirrel, DO NOT WEAR THESE - YOU WILL LOOK LIKE A DUMBASS.  They would probably start charging more for my Sharpie marks. 

I did find these gems:

Who doesn't need a pair of pink pants?  Obviously men, because these babies were on sale in the men's department.  And they were perfect for me.  Cheap, pink, and long enough.  Awesome.

Other weekend activities:
1) Ocean's 13 - I LOVE these movies (and apparently CAPS LOCK and ((parentheses)))
2) Copious amount of TV watching
3) Laying on the couch
4) Reading
5) Napping
6) and blog reading
7) Grocery shopping for things without eggs. 
8) I rekindled my love affair with Diet Dr. Pepper

We're Goin' to Vegas, Baby!

I know I bitch a lot about TP's pool playing habit, but after approximately 7,964 hours of staying at home while he played pool, being woken up at 2am, and thinking my engagement ring was something from the pool playing store - his team has won The Birmingham City Tournament and WE ARE GOIN' TO VEGAS for the amateur pool playing tournament in August.  I promise if I win 10 million dollars I will not quit my job.

His team had to "practice" (which really mans a lot of beer drinking and cigarette smoking and shooting the shit) on Friday night, and the tournament started on Saturday morning.  Why he can't get out of bed and be at work on time but he can hop right on up and get down to the tournament I'll never know.  Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Cheeks and I were pretty much home alone.  Running wild, playing in the water, running around in our pajamas, and vacuuming.  On Sunday after church, Mr. Cheeks and I came home and took a nap and then went to the pool for a bit.  TP called to say that they were in the finals, and I let him know that Mr. Cheek's eyes were all gunked up.  I thought I would stay up and wait on TP to see how the final match turned out.

A word to those of you who would like to keep your sanity - DO NOT BUY A PAY PER VIEW SHOWING OF THE BLOOD DIAMOND AT 10:00PM AND WATCH IT. Seriously, if you've seen this movie you know what I'm talking about.  It was good, but I can't get the scene out of my head of the evil guerrilla commander shotting the 10 year old up with heroin.   Or them shooting the handicapped man as a "training exercise" to teach kids how to kill people.  It makes me realize how lucky I am that the biggest worry I have is that my kid has pink eye.  Which he does.   And I think I'm getting it too.  Oh, Hollow Squirrel, where did I go wrong??

Mr. Cheeks also had an appointment at the allergist this morning, and we now know he is allergic to egg whites.  Which is fabulous, because eggs aren't in anything, right?  After having to hold him down to get all the skin pricks, we made our way to the regular doctor and waited an hour in the waiting room to even get called back.  We were a little early, but was an hour wait really necessary for a 10 minute appointment?  Plus Mr. Cheeks couldn't get down and run around because I didn't want him to infect the whole waiting room with the pestilence.  By the time we were finished, I called TP nearly in tears.  I had been in the house with little relief for the whole weekend, I had been cooped up in doctor's offices for 4 hours this morning and I had a tired, hungry, kid on my hands, I was hungry and I was going to have to brave CVS for medicine.  The CVS did me in.  So TP stayed a little bit longer at home for lunch and went to CVS for me.   I'm going to find out who had the pink eye at church on Sunday and kick them.  In the shins.  Hard.   

I Can Has Cheeseburger?

In college, I used to get myself all worked up to skip class.  Like psyche myself up for hours about not going to class.  (I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that I'm a rules follower.) 

I still do the same thing about other stuff I know I shouldn't be doing.  Like the one time I called in sick when I really wasn't or eating something totally junky for dinner, you get the picture. 

This afternoon, when I really wanted to take a nap but instead stayed awake reading this awesomely funny book (The Bachelotte Party, BTW, is hysterical in a raunchy, too many f words, take a trip to the Hustler sex shop, break up an engagement way) I started thinking about Hamburger Heaven.  The most delicious, yummy, bad for you dinner I could image.  Seriously, I'm 19 pounds away from my pre-Mr. Cheeks weight, and all I can think about is a 3,643 calorie bacon cheeseburger, instead of that totally healthy chicken I have in the fridge.  I thought about how swollen up I would be on Saturday morning, the gallons of water I would need to drink, the gym I haven't been to in 2 weeks because I'm so dizzy I might fall off the bike, the Wheat Thins I had for dinner last night, the lunch I had Thursday and the terrible artery clogging bacon I wanted on that cheeseburger.  I wasn't joking about the psyching myself up bit. 

When TP said ,"What's for dinner?" I told him I wanted a giant Bacon Cheeseburger from Hamburger Heaven.  Which worked out well, because he needed to make the monthly pilgrimage to the pet store to buy our 40 pound ration of St. Bernard food, which just so happens, is right across the street from Hamburger Heaven.  I didn't even want onion rings, and I was willing to share a large order of french fries with he and Mr. Cheeks (who can TEAR UP some fries). 

I told him to hurry, or I was going to eat the baby while he was gone.  When he came back, I hurried to the kitchen, stepped over the doggie gate, and grabbed the bag of food.  What I found was a tiny, no lettuce or mustard having bacon cheeseburger, and some cold french fries that he had let spill out of their little french fry boat.  And I'm mad, because it wasn't nearly as good as I had hoped.  And Mr. Cheeks ate half of my half of the fries, and then slobbered in my water, while TP ate his club sandwich in relative peace.  No little hands reaching, no dogs trying to nose their way under his arm, not a tiny cheeseburger on his plate when he really wanted the one that comes in a styrofoam box because it is so ginormus and messy.  I think this makes me petty and small because he DID go and get me some dinner.  But, damn I wanted that cheeseburger I had worried myself about all afternoon. 

I Quit my Job Yesterday

I had to walk in to my boss' office an resign yesterday.  TP and I are moving back to Arkansas.  There are a lot of reasons why, the main one being that we will be closer to our families.  I have a new job lined up - more money, less hours, great benefits.  TP doesn't have one yet, but he's working on it.  He's applied a few places, and we'll see what materializes. 

We never really planned on having kids, we talked about it, but had decided it wasn't really what we wanted to do.  Then we changed our minds, and God blessed us with this wonderful little boy, who couldn't be more perfect.  But tax season loomed near and I finally realized that while I love my job, I don't love the hours that go along with it.  The only time I saw Mr. Cheeks was the 15 minutes between him getting up and me dropping him off at day care.  That's no way to raise a child.  TP was basically a single parent for three months.  Add to that the hospital stay in February and catching the flu, and I felt like I was paddling upstream for what?  A pat on the back and a job well done?  That used to be enough. I want to go on spring break, and to Disney World at Christmas and not worry about being chained to a desk for 16-18 hours a day.  Being in public accounting is a hard row to hoe when you're a parent.  I always felt like I was being disloyal to my boss when I would have to do something with Mr. Cheeks or if he was sick.  Then I felt like I was being a bad parent because I wasn't at home enough.  I couldn't win.  Hopefully my new job will help alleviate some of the guilt and all of the long hours.   There's no more tax season, there's no more staying until 2am, there's no more 100 hour weeks. 

I'm scared of TP not finding a job, and him doing a lot of work to the house and it sitting on the market for 6 months, and of having to find a day care, and a house, and whether or not they will take pets, and of getting used to being in close proximity to my mother in law.  I'm not scared of seeing Mr. Cheeks on his first cotton ride, or taking him to the zoo where I always went, or his first Razorback game, or to see the bond that develops between a little boy and his cousins and grandparents when it's not scrunched into a 2 day visit. 

Doesn't moving involve packing?  Yeah, I haven't' done any of that yet, and we're going to have two households to run for a while.   Do you thing TP will sleep on the floor for a few months?  As a potential home buyer, how would you feel about a house that had a pallet?