ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS...

Myth: saying "uncle" will make it stop. I've been saying "uncle" for the better part of the week and I haven't noticed any major changes. In fact, things got worse before they got better, then worse again.

A little over a week ago, my horoscope advised me to not make any financial decisions on that particular day...I just couldn't listen. Immediately after reading it, I thought about the fact that I was about to deliberately disobey the Universe by sitting down with a package of Senior photo proofs and a calculator to begin the daunting game of 'How many people want a picture of my son, the Senior?' Here's a cheat-sheet for anyone about to play that same game:

                                                            Senior
                                                            ^      ^
                                          Grandparents      Grandparents
                                             one photo           one photo
                                                   ^                       ^
                               Can show to everyone      Can show to everyone
                                                           
                                                              Parents
                                                                   ^
                               One large photo of each proof to display all over the walls

                                                               Senior
                                                                   ^
                                                None-doesn't even like pictures
                                                                   ^
                                                You really only need three photos
           
                                                Grand Total: Your life savings

There, now save yourself the trouble of all the counting and thinking. And whatever you do, do not think with the tip of the pen in your mouth and end up like me. In my case the photos are also costing the price of one porcelain crown. Yes, chewing on the tip of a pen broke the tip of my tooth. Or should I say the other side of my tooth?

Technically, if we go back about four years- two days before my wedding I had a dentist appointment that I kept. Everyone wants to have pretty, white teeth on their wedding day. The day before my wedding I spent a wonderful day with all the girls in my bridal party and my mother, getting our nails done together. It was so relaxing. When we were finished I rode with one of my Barrelassin' friends and picked up the rest of the flowers for the wedding. Everything was perfect, until that moment where I bit into my very first french-fry out of the box and accidentally bit my new thumbnail that I wasn't accustomed to having, and chipped a small piece of my tooth and spit it into my hand. I almost couldn't not laugh at the irony that I had just been to the dentist the day before and now here I was with a broken tooth. It was the weekend and there was nothing I could do about it but laugh...oh wait, then it hit me, while getting our nails done, I had forgotten to pick up one last tux that had to be re-altered and now the place was closed and wouldn't be open the next day. Now I cried. I couldn't stop crying, but then the business remembered and re-opened their store and called me to come and get it, blah, blah, blah.

 Anyway, I had a chip on my tooth, which is very different from having a chip on your shoulder. You can fix the chip on your shoulder yourself for free. Since I hate having dental work done, I left the small chip on my tooth and have been living happily ever after until this week, which takes me all the way back to the beginning of this story where I started in the first place.

Now I have a chip on each side of that same tooth and my teenage children are calling me "Shark-tooth." I am not offended. We laugh and laugh, but it still looks ridiculous. I've been running around crazy this week cooking Thanksgiving dinner, going to doctor's appointments, scheduling my daughter's Tonsillectomy, along with a few other highs and lows, and then I woke up this  morning- which was a miracle in and of itself given the week I've been having and began to work on a computer project that nearly brought me to tears. Oh, who am I kidding, it actually did bring me to tears.

I decided I would be a strong woman (I was watching Bethenny Frankel's talk show, so I was very determined) and headed to the kitchen to refresh my drink and grab a snack. Did I mention that I walked into a flooded kitchen? Well I did. The washer was leaking again. My husband just fixed it recently and it has been working great, until today when it went for a swim.


While using the shop-vac to suck up the lake, I had plenty of time to think about the fact that I now needed a tooth, Senior pictures, a washing machine, a yearbook and to make the final payments on all of the other necessary paper products required to graduate...all three weeks before Christmas and I've only crossed off one gift on the list.

Now I have a chip on my shoulder.

Bah Humbug!

Enjoy, Barrelassers :)



                                                                 
                                                               

                                                                 

                                                       
                                                   
                       
                                                         
                                                 
                                                                         
                                                           

BLACK AND BLUE FRIDAY

Did you attend a Black Friday sales event and live to tell about it? Did you get all the cookware you needed? And if so, how many people did you have dropkick for it? I have to wonder on a day like today, a.k.a. the morning after- how many waffle irons were ripped from the hands of perfect strangers in an effort for someone to be named the Waffle King at home. Did someone you know want a waffle iron so badly that you actually planned it all out, and were you one-hundred percent devoted to kicking the ass of an elderly woman to make sure she didn't steal it right out from under you?

I didn't attempt Black Friday this year; not because I don't love a good shoving match, because I do, but because we actually had a second Thanksgiving dinner to eat and that family time was more important to me that the flat screen TV deals being advertised.

Two years ago on Thanksgiving, my family was driving back from Georgia to Tennessee after filling our bellies with all the turkey you could wish for, when my husband and I decided we wouldn't have enough time to get back home and get back out to the sales. We then chose to stop off in a random town with a Walmart and kick it into high gear. The kids were not fools, but they tried to play along for a brief moment when I told them that I had agreed to make the purchases for my Barrelassin' best friend so that her kids wouldn't know what they were getting for Christmas. I told them that in exchange she had agreed to go make my purchases as well. This was probably one of my dumber plots or schemes while Christmas shopping, but it was literally the only scenario I could come up with.

They thought I was real funny until about three hours into the whole plan and two of them were sleeping in the car in a Walmart parking lot and the youngest of the three was standing in line with a ticket waiting for her own Christmas Wii to be available for purchase- while I sat on a box containing a microwave or something, I'm not sure what it was; we weren't buying it, just using it as a seat.

Meanwhile I had to keep checking in on my husband who was making fast friends with all the other shoppers he was waiting with for flat screen TV's. Our biggest dilemma was how to get the Wii, two TV's and still make it over to the stacks of discounted bath towels before they were gone.  I can go ahead and tell you that by the time my daughter and I maneuvered our way through the stampede of people, those bath towels were a thing of the past. We settled for some sort of electric, scented candles that someone told us were normally double the price and a picture frame. Total score!

In the end, I'm thankful for all of the family time I've been blessed with over the past two days and I didn't even have to beat anyone's ass or fight for any of it. I would say that's a win,win.

Now I may have a black and blue December trying to get my hands on whatever Christmas presents I can between now and Christmas- but by hell I had two days of turkey and family to be thankful for.

Enjoy, Barrelassers :)

NO PAIN- NO GAIN :(

You know those days when you find bruises randomly scattered about your body and you have no idea where they came from? Yesterday was one of those days for me. I noticed two, what looked to be strategically placed bruises on the front of my right thigh. One right above the other. Had I been beaten? No. That doesn't seem very logical. Had I been drinking and just couldn't recall what had happened to my leg? Now that seems logical! But I hadn't been drinking so I simply couldn't blame it on the alcohol.
     
                                           

Horseback riding, Whitewater rafting, mountain climbing, Salsa dancing, Tumbling, or Football? Nope! Mosh Pit? Hell no! I haven't learned any new physically challenging skills and yet I have the bruises to show for it. I know my husband would say that it's because I'm "Lucy" like he always says, but I don't think it would be too much to just consider the fact, for one moment in time, that maybe, just maybe, I'm thorough. I do not know what I've done. I do not know why I have these unsightly bruises on my leg, but I think it's more important to see the whole underlying picture here.

I may not have a single clue that leads me to the little answers, but it's perfectly clear to me, that whatever the hell I've done, once wasn't good enough. I did it, and apparently backed up and did it again just to be sure I got it right.

Enjoy, Barrelassers :)

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE! READY, SET, GROCERY SHOP!

Do you know that feeling when you're shopping for groceries and you're really not keeping an accurate count, you're just getting what you need while trying not to break the bank? Well, unless you're rich, of course you do. Here's the thing, there are certain things that absolutely have to be name brand products in my house. Not because we're poor snobs, and not because we care what anyone else thinks; believe me, we don't. But there are a few items that we can definitely tell the difference in the taste. Hell, there's actually some off brand products that we prefer the taste over the name brand.

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, a lot of the items offer the lower price with the store's loyalty card and who can argue with that? Especially when you can earn fuel bucks for gas visits! So the problem is, well, the problem is that me and my barrelassin' husband are nuts. We go barrelassin' through the grocery store, trying to get what we need and get out without taking out a second mortgage on our home or having a stroke. Both would make us very bitter people.

So we go through all of this, always pretending our budget is a lower number than it is, so that we don't have to add heart attack to the previous list when we are given a final total by the cashier, and then knowing the whole time that we have invented a fake number so we can go over anyway. I told you, we're nuts and I haven't even told you the craziest part of our shopping trip.

We reach the check out lane, we start placing the items on the revolving black belt- always in perfect order, by categories, like all the cold together, the meat, the cheeses, the cupped containers of cold items, the boxes, the cans, the jars, the paper products and household products, all so that it will be bagged together the appropriate way. Okay, he probably doesn't put as much effort into that as I do, maybe it's just me, but it's not difficult to do, so it's not like I'm spending a lot of time on this procedure.

Anyway, here's where we unite; we become a team, one-hundred percent, no questions asked. As we start piling out groceries up there, an unsuspecting cashier asks if we have a Value Card and here's where we sock it to them. "Ummm, yes, I will just have to dig it out. One of us pretends to search for it as the other one completes the loading of the groceries. We don't rotate or anything, it just works itself out depending on who is standing where or the situation. Clearly the cashier isn't going to wait until our stupid butts find out card, so he/she continues ringing us up, and wouldn't ya just know it, right about the time they swipe the last item, we find our discount loyalty card. Why? Other than because we're stupid? Because it's more fun. We like it so much better when we see the discount taken off at the end of the sale. My husband always does thing where he grabs his heart like the total is going to kill him, and then he hands over the card. Only in our minds do we hear an actual drum roll as we see the card swiped, in slow motion of course, just for the effect, and then the real total after all discounts is revealed and we can smile and laugh and be jolly. This is how we get our adrenaline rush. This is our version of jumping out of a plane I guess.

I had a cashier tell me one time, not because of anything I was doing, just in conversation,  that the computer works faster or something if the card is read first. We don't care, it will just have to cost everyone involved a few extra seconds so we won't have to go sky-diving.

Enjoy, Barrelassers :)

PAUL YOUNG- EVERY TIME YOU GO AWAY- YOU SHOULD APPARENTLY TAKE A PIECE OF ME WITH YOU!

http://www.youtube.com/v/YTWt_pKiMl4?autohide=1&version=3&attribution_tag=BDRgfKV34YTmygO2b0xkvg&showinfo=1&autohide=1&feature=share&autoplay=1
Please don't get me wrong...I'm just saying- I remember full on getting up for school early, like about two hours early, because MTV said that they were going to debut the new Paul Young song 'I'm gonna tear your playhouse down' at the crack of freaking dawn!!

My first issue is with the timing. Apparently the fifth, possibly sixth grade was not their target demographics! I'm nearly forty now with more life experience and can only assume it was the unemployed, or dropouts that they were aiming for. Who else would be watching MTV at 6 a.m.? Who else besides me? I was approximately twelve years old, maybe thirteen, but I made a special point to get my ass out of bed before daylight to watch the very much anticipated 'I'm gonna tear your playhouse down' live performance by Paul Young video bull crap, whatever the hell! I know it's not a song that's been stuck in my head for all these years, but sometimes it's good to find one of those songs. This is not one of them. I like Paul Young, but this is not the song that I should've lost sleep over- especially since my mommy would've driven me five minutes before the bell rang.  But it is the song. They talked about it all week. So I got up early, I waited in front of the TV and watched the premiere video...and I loved it. I don't even know how. I never talk bad about songs that made my life...but what the hell was going on here? I think it was all marketing!

I got up early for the video- I rode the bus- I loved it...now I watch it and cannot find the reason why for the life of me. I like Paul young, but this is bullshit and it cost me an extra hour of my life. I obviously thought that every time Paul Young went away- he should take a piece of me ....with him.

Maybe it's just me- but I think I got played!!

Enjoy, Barrelassers :)

ARE WE PLANNING OUR OWN SURPRISE PARTY? SURPRISE PARTY OR PARTY FOUL?

(1997-our 23rd birthday party)

The party planning is underway and in full swing! Me and the girls have been planning our fortieth birthday for months, and we're getting closer to the big day. The countdown is on. We have booked the location, had a great cake designed,and sent invitations; Facebook invitations that is. Which is how I got here today.

What are the rules for social media invitations? What are the pros and cons? Well if you really wanna know, I'm your girl.

Pro: It can save time and money.
Con: It can save time and money. In most cases, "you get what you pay for" is a very true statement. Whether you're paying with your time or with your money.

Pro: It allows you to reach people you may not otherwise be able to reach. It can still be time consuming when you're really into it, but it's definitely a great way to find and reach people you would like to invite.

Con: A lot of people do not even read event invites from other people on Facebook. Even worse- a lot more people automatically assume it's some sort of game invitation and delete it without ever even opening it.

Pro: When answered truthfully, it's a great way to keep track of attendance all in one place, at the touch of a button.

Con: People aren't always truthful. I''m finding out that people don't always answer honestly. For example, when I receive an invitation on Facebook, I try to answer as soon as I know something. If I know for sure I'm, planning on attending, I will confirm. If I am unable to determine that I can definitely show up- I will  respond by using the 'maybe' option. If I know that I definitely will not be available, I will decline the invitation and reply with a simple answer such as, 'I would love to be there, but blah, blah, blah (insert reason for knowing why I absolutely can't make it.) And if I simply don't want to go- I usually don't go into much detail, but try to at least thank the person who sent it for thinking of me.

My own son told me that he always answers 'maybe' even if he knows he's not going, just to make people feel better. Another Facebook friend told me in private that not only is he NOT coming to our party, but he answered 'yes' to show his support. So how do we accurately plan a party for a certain number of people, and how do we distinguish the real guests from the sympathy guests? Your guess is as good as mine. But we're planning for the best, hoping for the greatest, and we may be actually planning our very own surprise party due to the fact that we don't know who is actually attending. I like surprises anyway- as long as I'm dressed for it!
                                               

Enjoy, Barrelassers :)

Eddie Van Halen talks to girlfriend (6 PACK)

http://www.youtube.com/v/6gawIHlB350?version=3&autohide=1&autohide=1&showinfo=1&feature=share&autoplay=1&attribution_tag=oP-RT4bxUcrSkpD-CZXH3w