Manual Not Included

Luxury, with a twistPosted by Kara on February 8th, 2010

We have a new addition to the family. Her name is Jillian.

Though, I’m not totally sold on the name because I keep picturing Jillian Michaels from Biggest Loser, and Jillian doesn’t exactly scream luxury. I’m pretty sure she just screams. But if I were in charge of names, our new girl would still be a Jane Doe and have to be identified by her grill. I’ve yet to name the new addition we got in August whose newness is rapidly wearing off. 

Jim traded in the beast (as I not-so-lovingly called her; Jim called her Justine), and we got a new-to-us Lincoln Aviator. Now, I know people get new cars all the time, but the prospect of getting a luxury vehicle sparked some deep conversations between Jim and myself. Jim has always been a Jeep man, identifying each Jeep he sees on the road and telling me the make, model, year, etc. He loves himself a Jeep! Something about the rugged durability speaks to him. And then I gave him a beefed up exhaust for Valentine’s Day two years ago, and I thought he was going drive from the muffler shop to the J/P to marry Justine. He called, and they told him he wouldn’t be allowed to marry her because polygamy is against the law in the state of Texas.

Upon visiting Jillian at the dealership, I asked Jim if he could see himself in a Lincoln. I mean, refined people drive Lincolns. Not us. Jim said that he’s planning on making a personality shift to become more refined as his single, engine-revving bachelor days are over. He’s a family man now and needs to be driving a family man vehicle (though, he’s told me that if I ever suggest a minivan he’s out!)

Valentine’s Day is coming up, so I sat Jim down on the couch, grabbed his hands, and told him I want to buy Jillian an exhaust to celebrate the day. I could tell he wanted to scream, “YES!” but something was holding him back.

Kara: “I want you to have an exhaust for Jillian.”
Jim: “Oh, baby, I don’t know. You don’t think it will detract from the luxuriousness of her?”
Kara: “Nah. It’ll make her more Jim-like. It’ll be luxury with a twist!”

If you see a forest green Lincoln driving down the road and think to yourself, “Wow, those people must be refined”, wait for it. Wait for the moment Jim revves his engine causing his Magnaflow exhaust to reverberate just to cause the pigeons pecking at the ground to scatter. And you’ll know amidst the fluttering of countless pigeon wings, that’s a Lincoln with a twist!  

Sunday Picture Showcase: Snuggie!Posted by Kara on February 7th, 2010

It’s nice to be needed…I think.Posted by Kara on February 5th, 2010

Jim-Jim and I have an unspoken agreement. If he needs assistance climbing a flight of stairs or getting over a curb, he sticks his hand up and I grab his hand to help out. If I think he’s treading into dangerous territory, I stick my hand down and he grabs on. No words. Just the magnetism that exists between a mother and her son that allows us to read each other’s minds.

Jim-Jim was playing on his sit n’ spin, and by playing I mean standing on it shaking his hips because he doesn’t play with something unless he’s doing it dangerously, and (surprise, surprise) he fell. I was sitting on the couch 6 feet away when I heard the thud of bone and flesh hitting concrete muffled by carpet. Jim-Jim whimpered and looked at me, expectantly sticking his hand in the air prompting me to help him up. From six feet away.

I stuck my arm down beside me and shrugged, letting him know mommy’s too lazy to get up. Plus, no blood, no foul. Get yourself up. Seeing he wasn’t going to get the help he wanted, he stood up, walked to me, and crumpled to the floor within arms reach. And then stuck his hand in the air. Walked to me to purposefully fall so I’d have to help him up. I’m almost embarrased to say I grabbed his hand and helped him up. After all, it is an unspoken agreement.

This goes in the ‘Are you serious?!’ categoryPosted by Kara on February 4th, 2010

I flew to Anaheim and back this week, a 3 hour flight from Dallas. I’m not a very good traveler because I didn’t prepare by bringing something to occupy my mind. To tell you the truth, I was planning on racking up as many hours sleeping as physically possible, so I didn’t think a book or laptop would be necessary. I had my exit row window seat, my travel pillow, and I was getting there 3 hours early so I would have ample time for a nap. American Airlines had different plans. They decided I needed to wait in the terminal for 4 hours, that I would be better suited in a regular row middle seat at the back of a crowded plane, and I should arrive in California 2o minutes before my meeting  was scheduled to begin. Thank you, American Airlines.

In fact, this post was likely going to be about the airline industry and would contain words like ‘cattle’ and ‘herding’ and ‘customer always right’. After all, I am a blogger who has no entertainment and is being forced to sit in an airport terminal for 4 hours NOT taking a nap – the only thing left for my mind to do was etch an airline bashing blog into the wall of the terminal as I stared at it for hours! But American redeemed themselves on my return flight. I arrived at my terminal 3 hours before my flight was scheduled to take off, and they found me a seat on a flight leaving 20 minutes after I arrived at the airport. Not only that, I had an entire row to myself, and the row in front of me was completely empty. Oh, sweet, sweet personal space! But, alas, still no entertainment. I found the Sky Mall magazine and perused the products, slowly examining each item so my task of getting through the magazine took as long as possible. Lurking in the middle of the magazine were these pair of shoes.

Do you see what I see? Shoes with sperm on them! I jerked my head up and searched to make eye contact with someone, anyone. I wanted to share my discovery, see if they saw what I saw. A shoe with a wiggly DNA transporter on it! But no one was around. The only time I’ve ever been on a plane and actually wanted someone to share the same space with me and the only option was the young mother sitting in the row behind me entertaining her 5 year old daughter. Using my better judgment, I opted not to spark a conversation about procreation between the young mother and her child and decided instead to share it with you, internet. It’s a shoe with sperm on it! And it’s an actual brand! I attempted giving them the benefit of the doubt by assuming that maybe it was a foreign company, but I’m pretty sure sperm looks the same universally. And I checked the website. They’re from the US. And they thought sperm would make a good logo. Are you serious?!

12 inches thickPosted by Kara on February 3rd, 2010

Jim does a fantastic job getting Jim-Jim to and from school each day. He drops the boy off and picks him up every day. Unless I throw him a bone and offer to pick the boy up from school after I get off work which is an hour later than Jim. That way Jim has a whole hour to himself to play video games and eat jerky or whatever he does without a shadow mimicking his every move. It happens maybe once a week.

Not one single time have I gone to pick up the boy that I haven’t had to sign an incident report form. Not one. single. time. In fact, I went last week and as soon as I was in view of his classroom door, the explanation began. Only this time, it started, “I think I got all the blood off his shirt.”

No matter the explanation, I always sign the incident report and decline to take a copy. I’m starting to think I may need to keep copies for my records. Records that will undoubtedly be thicker than the S volume of the Encyclopedia but may one day keep us out of jail if people start getting suspicious. We’re one cigarette burn away from 50 years to life.

1/23/2010- Bite mark from daycare (again).

1/24/2010- Busted lip from the slide at the park.

1/25/2010- Fell on the wooden planks at the park and skidded on his upper lip. I picked him up and saw a wet stain 6 inches long where he had slid on the wood. I didn’t want to turn him around to assess the damage!

1/26/2010- Busted lip from falling at daycare. Blood everywhere! Still not convinced we shouldn’t have taken him to get stitches.

1/27/2010- God only knows!!!