unfortunately, we forgot one very important point about his employer. they don’t give a flying fuck how much you DO work, only how much you DON’T work. they don’t give a flying fuck about you as a person, only about how you can be used to make them look better.

they looked at my husband’s 3 day block of being layed off, and instead of realizing that he worked a ton to make up for it, they just looked at him and saw fresh blood. someone to bully. a person to pick on so their own discretions don’t get noticed.

he’s under investigation for lay offs now.

we’ve obtained a signed doctor’s notice detailing the many drugs i’ve been on, along with the terrible side effects they gave me. we’ve obtained a signed copy of my pharmacy records to prove that i was in fact on several different medications during that time. we’re off the hook- for now.

you know what really pisses me off? the stupid cunt bubble that decided to pick on my husband, actually took my list of medications and GOOGLED them to make sure that they are what we said they were, and that the side effects i experienced were possible. FUCKING BITCH.

WTF?

why did they choose my husband to pick on?

we’ve come out of this as well as we can- the investigation (trial, really) has been postponed for a month. he’s gotta keep his nose clean and his head down and hopefully we’ll get out of this with his job intact. taking time off is a big no-no from now on. that means missed Chess Club meetings, missed field trips, missed doctor’s appointments, missed anything that doesn’t just happen to fall into a time slot in which he is coincidentally at home. being gone for 3 days at a time and home for 1 doesn’t make good odds for him being at home when we need him.

have i ever told you that i hate the Corporate Pencil Pushers who not only have NO idea what their manual laborer’s jobs entail, but also don’t give a flying fuck about the human being behind the company ID card?

i try not to pass judgement on people i haven’t met based on hearsay, but i can’t help but hate those people. those people who only see the things that we don’t do. the people who can’t see past a stained pair of mommy jeans or grease stained overalls.

we’re all human, and humans are the most complex beings on this planet. we have so many layers in our consciousness and in our souls that if you don’t keep your eyes and your minds open, in the end you’ll be nothing more than the ignorant fuck who i just finished cursing.

if all you do is look at a tiny section of a Monet, it looks like nothing more than messy brush strokes of paint. you have to look at the whole thing to realize it for the masterpiece it is.

this morning, i woke up and i felt… well, i felt like i always do when i first wake up- i needed coffee stat.

but AFTER i consumed my coffee, and finally managed to open my mouth without growling first, i actually felt good.

so good, in fact, that i bundled up my children and dog and whisked them off to the park. i brought my camera, water, snacks, and had my daughter wearing a knit yellow sweater that my grandmother made for me when i was little. (my grandmother passed away when i was 12 or so)

we had a wonderful time. my daughter was the belle of the ball with her bouncy pig tails. my son was a typical male picking up the biggest stick he could find, and dragging it behind him the whole way. (we even brought it home) my dog was well behaved as she always is. we paused on the path to take pictures and play fetch with the dog. Abby stole the show from my daughter with her dedicated run-n-fetchings.

after tiring the dog out, i put her leash on a bench and snapped some shots of my kids on the playground. it was pretty crowded, but somehow all my photos were still great, and didn’t have that many strangers in them. the kids played together very well, and i was very proud.

we had a blast in the sunny 70 degree weather.

not all days as a parent are perfect.

no days as a parent are perfect.

you don’t get perfect days with your children- you get perfect moments.

it’s that moment that your child falls asleep on your shoulder while you’re rocking them before bedtime. it’s the tickle fight you have on the couch. it’s the seconds you spend watching your child’s sleeping face, and the moments they spend digging into their first birthday cake.

no, parenting doesn’t bring perfect days, but it does bring perfect moments.

i had one of those this morning, and i hope to hold the memory of it in my heart forever.

i love being a mom.

i figured out how to add a Google widget so that all you Googlers (myself included) can easily add my blog to your blog roll on your dashboard or your Google Reader.

it’s over there, on the top right corner of my blog, right below the sleeping dragon.

i don’t have any followers except myself yet… and that kinda makes me feel pathetic.

i’d be real appreciative if you’d add me, even if you don’t plan on reading me.

THANKS!

i can’t take all the credit for my personal decorating tastes. when i met my husband, he already had a strong sense of his personal style. he had decorated and designed his man-cave in his mother’s basement, and it actually looked great. the most decorating i had ever done at that point was pick out a fuzzy rug to go in front of my dorm room bed.

i suppose if left to my own devices (no kids OR significant other) my house would end up looking like either a Dungeons and Dragons frat house, or a gothic playground. i just know i’d end up decorating with Dragons and Fantasy art. (THIS coffee table is freaking awesome)  i can’t help it- i think a bad sense of style is encoded in my genes. i love my parents dearly, but i grew up in a house full of dream catchers and motorcycles. native american and biker paraphernalia just doesn’t set a good decorative example.

anyways. so i got most of my decorating style from my husband. i find it comfortable and just a little funky. it’s full of vibrant paints and vintage prints. it has strong lines, and a definite sense of what fits and what doesn’t.

when i moved into this house, i knew that the first thing that had to go was the purple kitchen.

i love purple. my blog is purple, my toes are purple, my daughter’s room is purple. my kitchen should NOT be purple.

i’ve always loved a coffee house themed kitchen using rich browns, reds, yellows, bright blues and strong black lines. when looking at one of our prints, green jumped out at me. i’ve never really had a green room… so i wanted to try it this time. green with charcoal black trim. yes! so in two days, i had my kitchen. i love it. absolutely LOVE it. more things will go on the walls and over time i will add all the little things that make up a home, but for now i’m basking in the glory of a successful and satisfying paint job. my husband is desperate to put some sort of texture on it while still using that color. he wants to do a dragging technique on the walls, or something similar. i don’t want to do the work until my muscles have stopped hurting from the first round of painting at least. we’ll see what happens.

amusingly, the print that inspired the paint job will not go in the place i have it hung in the kitchen. actually, it’ll probably be sold at our yard sale next year. my husband informed me the other day that he never really liked that print… so we’ll scour the pages of art.com and find something else. no worries.

honest opinions?

and, if you’re interested, here’s a pic of the old paint job. you can’t quite tell in the picture, but the trim is actually a slightly darker purple than the walls. it’s a lovely purple… but not a lovely kitchen or dining area. it’s not the same angle as the after pic, but check out where the teapot is and you can get a good perspective of the angle each photo is taken from.

and then the next day i realized i was throwing stones in my glass house.

i got desperate. we had an awful day… my daughter got blisters on the sides of her pinky toes from her shoes, and kept picking at the blisters. they ended up bleeding everywhere. she also caught the cough that i had been struggling with for four weeks. she also kept falling. everywhere. she’d trip and hit her elbow and head, stub her toes, smack her hand on a table. she leaned against a picture leaning against a wall and it fell on her. she had a bad day, and bad days like that will make anyone grumpy. her grouchiness made my son sad, so he ended up having a bad day. i tried to cheer him up by playing a few minutes of Mario, but he just ended up even sadder when he didn’t do very well. both my kids were sullen and sad and grouchy by the end of the day.

by the end of the day, i was desperate to do anything to get those kids to cheer up. i let my son play Mario. we know how that turned out. what did i do for my daughter????

well, as i was painting my toenails,  in true daughter-fashion, she tried to copy me. so i painted her piggies purple.

yes, i painted my 2 year olds toe nails purple.

she sat perfectly still while i painted them, and sat perfectly still while i blew on them until i got dizzy so i could get them as dry as i could before i let her loose. she still ended up with a bald spot in the middle of one of her big toes, but that’s okay. she’s two.

it was a sweet moment of mommy-daughter bonding. all during her bath time, i kept catching her straightening out her legs and wiggling her toes.

so sweet.

me and my daughter and our purple piggies.