I'm one savvy lady.

So, we've been having some technical issues here at Kimchi HQ. Our lovely printer shot craps a few months ago and after I stopped being mad at it, I decided that my career as a graphic designer requires I be able to print things. Duh. This is not news. I've been shopping around for a printer for a bit, not that it matters because every one I've had works for a while and then breaks and I get mad and buy a new one and the cycle continues. This time, however, I wasn't so keen to run out and throw my money in the gutter willynilly so I've been doing research to get a good deal. This is not something I do with regularity, but something I learned from Jeff. He researches everything we buy to make sure we're getting THE BEST DEAL EVER. Sometimes he even researches things he isn't going to buy JUST IN CASE. I am too impatient and I like to live on the edge. Anyway, I finally found a printer at Sam's that seems to be only a minor piece of crap so I might actually get more than a year or so out of it. I told Jeff about it and he agreed it was a good deal so I was ready to buy. However...

A day later my laptop broke. My screen just went white. One minute it worked and the next minute, nothing. I use my laptop ALL DAY LONG, for work things, blogging, general time wasting and sanity control. Jeff bought it for me as a graduation gift only one year ago, actually 1 year and 6 weeks, which is 6 weeks past the warranty expiration date of course, and he spent a good deal on it knowing I would be using it for my big fancy memory sucking design programs. Anyway, the printer issue got shoved to the side so we could deal with this more expensive and pressing matter. The laptop looks to be a lost cause. The repair dude said it's either a really expensive fix or a really, REALLY expensive fix. Long story short, I may now own the world's most expensive paper weight. We've been shopping for a new one but the prospect of dropping a wad of cash right now on another one makes my stomach twist.

Well, Jeff decided that he would try to make at least one of these situations better and decided to try to fix the printer himself before paying for a new one. He went to the Cannon site and got all these instructions on fixing the roller, which it seemed was the problem. The paper kept getting sucked in all wonky and the error light would flash and it seemed to be really angry at us. He did all these diagnostic things and I heard a lot of beeps and clicks and then I heard him say "you have got to be kidding me." I came in to see what was kidding him because a broken printer is no laughing matter, and he was standing there shaking his head.

me: "Did you fix it?"
Jeff: "Um, yeah I did."
me: "HOORAY!!! Was it the roller?"
Jeff: No, it wasn't. It was this." He held up a pen. More specifically, one of my special designy pens.
me: "huh?"
Jeff: "There was a pen lodged in the paper tray. That's all that was wrong. It works fine now."

Hmm. A pen dropped in it. I've been without a printer FOREFFINGEVER and it was a stupid PEN. So, the printer wasn't broken after all. The problem is that the owner of the printer is a dumbass. I've decided to blame the pen getting in there on the baby. It's clearly his fault. Now, if only they'd opened my laptop and found that a cheerio had lodged itself in my motherboard instead of whatever crap went wrong with it. Anyway, moral of the story, before you buy a new printer, make sure I didn't drop a pen in it.

Meet me behind the building.

He is saying one or more of the following here:

a) "Look, I said I'd have the money by Thursday. I'm good for it, I swear. "

b) "It's not you, it's me. Seriously. I'm going through some stuff right now."

c) "That guy just stole my blackberry. I was just standing here sending an email and he took it."

Cake Alert

So this cake alert is special because the cake was for my two best girls, Liz and LM. They both turned 40, or farty if you're from here, and I wanted to do something large and in charge for their big birthday party, which incidentally, was LOADS of fun. Ch-ch-ch-ch-check it out...



http://www.theatomiccakeco.blogspot.com/

The Saga Continues....

So, what is today, Friday? I don't know because my brain has decided to quit me and start it's own blog telling the world what a bad boss I am. Thursday night brought the end of our sleepless nights, or so I thought. I am dumb. He did fine on Thursday aside from waking at 6am. Whatever. I'm used to it by now. I'm also used to getting up in the middle of the night but that doesn't stop me from complaining about it endlessly, does it? Last night was round 7. Max brought the cry out at 12:30am. I let him go for about 15 minutes but when the "wah wah wah" escalated to "BWAAIWILLNOTSTOPAAAAA," we went in. Correction. Jeff went in. He brought him into our room and we tried to go back to sleep. Tried. TRIED REALLY HARD. Instead of sleeping peacefully LIKE A BABY, Max decided to perform his own mattress-based Cirque de Soleil number complete with acrobatics and random flailing about. It was as irritating as the REAL Cirque de Soleil. At 2:45, I heard a loud THWACK and then "GODDAMMIT" and realized that he had just punched Jeff in the eye. Earlier in the evening, while trying to fix our busted printer, Jeff had managed to give himself a paper cut on that same eye (yes, a paper cut ON HIS EYEBALL) so this made him writhe in pain, at which point he scooped the kid up to take him back to his bedroom. Now, Jeff has been super busy at work and had set his alarm for "sunrise" so I felt bad and went in to relieve him. After we argued back and forth over who would have the crappier rest of the night, he finally went back to our bed and I took over. I laid us both down and immediately Max popped back up and wanted to play. I tried several times to get him to lie back down but he wasn't interested. At this point, I like to call it a turning point, I. WAS. MOTHER. EFFING. DONE. I picked him up, plopped him back in his crib, remembered that my doctor told me that babies don't die from crying, told him goodnight and shut the door. He was now screaming like someone was prying his nails off with a blowtorch. When I got back in to our room, this transpired:

Jeff: Did you put him back in his crib?

Me: Yes I did. This is 100% ridiculous. He was just fine sleeping with us so there isn't anything wrong other than he is a master manipulator and we are stupid.

Jeff: Did you take the remote out of his bed? I threw it in there a minute ago.

Me: Oh shit! runs back in to get remote out of bed, screaming continues, comes back to bed

Jeff: Did you grab your pillows? I took them with me.

Me: GODDAMMIT! runs back in again to get pillows, more screaming, goes back to bed

Jeff: Do you think he'll go to sleep?

Me: I don't know but I sure am. There isn't anything wrong or else he would have continued to cry in here. He's crafty.

And then, silence. Seriously. Not a sound came over the monitor. I smiled and then terror came over me. What if he has chewed off part of his blanket and choked? What if I accidentally dropped a peanut in there even though we don't have any and he ate it and is allergic and has gone all anaphylactic? What if he climbed out and broke his brains? WHY IS IT SO QUIET?? All these things were floating around in my head, including some scenarios involving the light fixture dropping on him, getting his head caught in the slats and various kinds of impalement, but next thing I knew it was light out, Jeff was gone, it was 7:45am and he was still sleeping. I'm not going to admit that I took a teeny bit of pleasure in waking him up because that is MEAN but whatever. Turnabout is fair play, kid, and just wait until you're 15 and want to sleep until noon. Just wait.

Tonight I'm drinking sangria with a Tylenol PM chaser. You're on, Jeff.

So, for the last two nights, Max has decided that sleeping is only an option and he has chosen to pass. Now, we are all familiar with his sleeping issues, which he brought with him from Korea along with some pajamas and a container of rice sludge. However, for the last several months, he has been doing well and would sleep through the night with little to no issues. Granted, he would wake up the minute the sun came up but that is another battle for another day and at least he was sleeping, which meant I was sleeping which meant things were happy in this house. In fact, things got so good the last week or so that he was sleeping 12 HOURS STRAIGHT and not waking up until after 7am. Clearly my going in the backyard and doing a Broadway-style song and dance number in celebration of this threw a wrench in the universe because for the last two nights, he has woken up and wouldn't go back to sleep without either being in our bed with us or me being in bed with him in his room. No, I don't get in his crib. We have a twin bed in there although the crib was looking pretty good at 4am. Now, sleeping with Max is a little like capturing a wild animal, perhaps a hyena, keeping it in a cage for a little while, poking it with a stick to make it extra mad and then putting it in your bed and releasing it. There is a lot of kicking, punching, poking and slapping, not to mention what Max is doing. ZING! I keed, I keed. He is the one doing those things.
Anyway, the night before last he woke up at 10pm, yes 10pm which was a whole 2 hours after we put him down, so we put him in our bed, which lasted until about 2am, at which time I decided to spare Jeff any further head injury and I took him into his room. He spent the rest of our time in there wiggling around like a minnow. He would also randomly bang his head and/or arm into the wall. It was tons of fun as you can imagine but I did manage to get a couple hours in. However, he psyched me out last night by sleeping until 2:30am, which was just long enough to lull me into a false sense of security. I let him cry for a bit but it was clear he was pretty pissed off so I relented and went in. Of course the minute we got into his bed he shut right up and I spent the next 3.5 hours trying to remember what it was like to not be tired. SUCKER. At one point he flopped right on top of me, grabbed my nose and went "BEEP" and then passed back out for about 5 minutes. He finally sat up wide awake and said "bobble" so I said screw this and went in and made him a bottle. I know he's too old for one but DON'T JUDGE ME.
Now, I have a few theories as to why this is happening. One is that he might be teething so tonight he's getting a nice dose of ibuprofen before bed. Two, he ate dinner late last night and maybe he had heartburn or something that woke him up, just like daddy. Tonight he's getting the early bird special with his Golden Girl reruns. We seriously watch that every day. My third theory is that he is trying to make me so tired that I will give up top secret information to him because clearly he is working for someone nefarious. Who this is I don't know but whoever you are, well played, sir, well played. I'm ready to sing like a canary.

iPics

So, Jeff and I are so wild that we do things at night like lie in bed and look at pictures on my iPhone. Yeah, I said it. DON'T JUDGE ME. We are extreme. Here are some gems that I may or may not have posted at some point in the past.


I don't know why the car seat was in the dining room and not the car, nor do I know why he was in it.

This was from last night at the park. He goes up to the little sprayers and puts his face in it until it shoots up.

The shadow knows. Knows how to take a picture.

I like this because it's color coordinated. It would be perfect if that train wasn't in it. Stupid train.

I adore this picture because he looks like one of those freaky dog pictures.

Weekend Roundup

So, we were quite the outdoorsy family over weekend. Saturday morning, we took a bike ride on the Katy Trail. It was Max's first time and he made it about 4 miles before he decided it sucked so we had to turn around and head back. I wasn't too upset since my ass was totally numb at that point and realizing I had to bike another 4 miles back to the car didn't really make me jump for joy. Anyway, we made it back and it wasn't as bad as I had complained about it being so I'm sure we'll do it again. It was unseasonable chilly when we went out so it was a hoodies and shorts kinda day. Here's Max pre-ride:

I think he's checking the tire pressure or something. He is handy to have around. I tried to take more pictures during the ride but Jeff forgot my helmet and I couldn't steer and use the camera without careening off the side and I wanted my brains to stay IN my head so that's all you get.

On Sunday morning, we took Maxi-poo to the park. We usually go to the little one by our house but it's kinda boring so we've been venturing out to fancier parks with more fountains and less cigarette butts on the ground. Only the best for my child. This time it was Tilles Park in Ladue, which for those of you not from here, is a VERY ritzy suburb of St. Louis. I had taken him there once before during the week with our pals Connie and Louie, but Sunday morning was a whole different beast. As Jeff so eloquently put it, "I can smell the douchebaggery." It was full of fancy parents in cute clothes clutching their Starbucks cups. There was a lot of cologne and perfume involved, which probably wasn't the best idea since there were bees everywhere but that's not my problem. I didn't even brush my hair let alone made sure I smelled good. Maybe that's why no one talked to us. Scratch that, one lady did talk to us and she had crazy hair and tattoos so she didn't fit in either. We freaks stick together. Anyway, Max really loved the swings, especially the giant seats. Here he is mid-swing:

He was cracking himself up. We had a great time and I think we're going back next weekend. Here is the two of them as we were leaving. Jeff is the best dad ever.

Cake Alert: Special Edition

So, I mentioned I was entering a cake contest and while initially I had big, grand ideas of entering a bajillion cakes, I forgot I have a life, so I ended up entering one. One is better than none, no?Anyway, I'm posting the link here for you to go check it out. I don't know if you can vote for it (I should know that but whatever) but if you can please do.

http://www.threadcakes.com/entries/view/278#0

I also have the pics on my own site, www.theatomiccakeco.blogspot.com

Goodbye, my sweet baby.

So, for those of you who have been coming here for a bit, you may know our dog Cleo (or Birdy, as she was known at home) has been quite sick. She was diagnosed with a heart condition last summer and we were told she only had months to live. Well, as she has been prone to do for the last 16 years, she surprised us by hanging in there for more than a year. For the majority of the last year, she has been content and happy, but recently things have taken a turn and we had to make the difficult decision to have her put to sleep. I hate that term, "put to sleep," but what is a better term? Put down? Euthanized? I don't know. Quite frankly, I am of the notion that we should be able to freely decide this for our own selves but that's another post for another day. Anyway, she was the first dog I've ever had that was my own, not a family dog, and she has been an extraordinary one at that. I got her on a whim when I was 20. I was living with my sister and brother in law and they decided to get themselves a husky. I tagged along to the breeder and when we got there, all I heard was barking. My sister was already waiting for me by a cage looking very impatient. She pointed to one of the cages which seemed to contain the world's most hyper cocker spaniel. This thing was like a pogo stick on crack after 11 cups of coffee. Huddled in the rear of the cage was the little white puff ball who was getting stomped by the jumping bean. I looked at my sister, who gave me a nod and then told the lady to open the cage. I took out the puff ball and it was love. The lady told us she was the runt of her litter and no one wanted her because she was small and quiet. She had been there for over 9 months stuck in that cage while the rest of her litter had all gone to their new homes. I held her and knew they would have to pry her our of my cold, dead hands. I had about $8 on me so my sister was so kind as to lend me the fee to take her home and that was that. She has been by my side ever since.



When I was a travel agent, she came to work with me every day and we had clients who would stop in just to visit her. Screw us, WHERE IS THE DOG? She would lie behind me in my chair and sleep most of the day. Most people's first reaction was "Is that a REAL DOG?" Calm doesn't even begin to describe her. Many times we joked that we would poke her to make sure she was still with us! She has always surprised us with her resilience to come back from the brink on more than one occasion. For instance, about 12 years ago, she sniffed up a juniper berry in the yard and soon a plant began to grow in her head. I am not kidding. This thing stunk like rotten garbage covered in more rotten garbage. After numerous vet trips where she was diagnosed with everything from allergies to a brain tumor, my sister and I ended up at the veterinary school at the University of Missouri-Columbia where they removed about a 3 inch section of plant from her nasal cavity. No one could believe it, especially the vets who kept exclaiming "A PLANT IN HER HEAD!" and I think she's in some medical book now. In fact, she was so loved in her short stay there that they would put her on a cart and wheel her around when they did their rounds because they felt too sorry to stick her in a cage. Several years later, she started to experience major pain in her back and neck and could no longer hold her head up. We never thought she would be okay again and the vet said major back surgery was the only option, but we ended up taking her to an acupuncturist and within a couple months, she was good as new. It was amazing and I wouldn't believe it if I wasn't there paying the bill. She also got out of the yard once when I lived with my sister. I didn't know until I heard the doorbell ring and there were about 8 neighborhood kids standing there holding her in their arms. She was all sprawled out and each kid had a bit of her to hold. They apologized to me because apparently she had been out for a while but they were having too much fun playing with her to bring her home right away. They said she just laid in the grass while they took turns petting her.
Everyone who saw her loved her, including my grandma. She wasn't really a dog person but for some reason, they had a special bond and when we would go visit her on the weekends, Meemaw would always have a piece of chicken waiting for her. She was the only dog I knew that would respond to the words "chicken finger." Even our friends who don't have dogs have spent the last year keeping tabs on her progress and visiting her when she was ill. As all dog owners know, the day you have to let them go always comes too quickly, but I am so thankful that I had all these years and all these memories with her that my sorrow is mixed with smiles. I will miss her so very much, as will Jeff who became attached to her immediately. Five months after we began dating, he gave me a Mother's Day card from her, complete with footprints. That's love, people.



With that, all I can say is good bye Bird. I'll miss you every day. Tell Meemaw I said hi.

In Defense of the Rottweiler

So, I know rotties have a bad rap, much like The Fonz, but I'm here to show you the softer side. My sister's dog is named Beta and she's 110 lbs of pure struggle. Her arch enemy is the squirrel and she gets her feelings hurt if you don't pet her. Now, I wouldn't pull a steak out of her mouth or anything, but I can tell you 100% that my shitzu Zoey is WAY bitchier than this dog will ever be. Last weekend Max decided he had too much love to keep inside and had to spread it all over her so I took some pics. Beta barely moved and he was ALL over her like a cheap suit.

Cake Alert!

This weekend brought polar opposites in cake. See for yourself.
www.theatomiccakeco.blogspot.com

I hear an echo in here. Oh wait, that's me...me...me...

Pisces, July 10

We all know the scenario. Someone asks you to do something... or you open a package and follow the instructions. It can't be done. It isn't working. Presumably, you have failed to understand something. So you keep trying, not wanting to appear foolish. In desperation, you ask for help. And you are told, 'Oh yes, sorry, we forgot to give you this - or tell you that'. The chaos surrounding you this weekend is not your fault. To do something constructive about it, you may well need to ask what seems like a silly question.

See, it's not my fault. EVER.

So, did you see that tumbleweed blow though here a minute ago? Yeah, it's because there isn't shit going on and this place is as exciting as the middle of Kansas (no offense to the fine people of Kansas. I live in Missouri so who the hell do I think I am.) You see, I have this condition called a toddler and for some strange reason, he won't just sit quietly and let me blog all the live long day. What a jerk. On top of that, I also have this other thing called a job and this THIRD thing called my dreamy side cake business that takes up the remaining 13 minutes of free time I have left in a day. Seriously. I find myself scheduling my bathroom visits at this point. SWEET JESUS WHEN WILL IT STOP? That said, I'm going to try to be a good blogger and post at least a couple times a week. Maybe. I can't guarantee it will be anything you would want to spend your time reading but you have free will and the internet's a big place so do what you need to do.

Honestly I don't know what I'm worrying about since I have about 3 readers left and two of those are related to me (HI MOM) and one of those two IS me and I'm used to disappointment. Anyway, blogging about how I don't have time to blog anymore has really put me behind so try to enjoy your weekend. I know I will because nothing says fun like a pile of laundry.

iPics

Here is another installment of iPics, the feature where I post pictures taken with my iPhone. Are these different than pictures taken with a camera, you ask? No, they aren't. Enjoy.


Exploring the wilds of the Michael's floral aisle.

He's EDGY!

Woah......steady.....

What's your problem? I'm just standing here by this door, livin' my life.

No one was ever so happy to be in a bucket.

Look how that duck is trying to get in the picture! Geez. This isn't about YOU, duck.