five things

I got this from Jess and I'm playing along.

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

- I don't like Sex & The City. I wouldn't want to be like them. I find them shallow and I really hate the outfits I've seen SJP wear on the show. I tried watching an episode once because everyone made such a big deal but she was wearing a tutu or something ridiculous like that. I found it hilarious when Stewie said it was a show about three hookers and their mom.

- I wear make-up and jewelry everyday. I don't care if I'm going anywhere or not, I'll at least be wearing earrings that match my outfit. I could never be like one of those people that forever look like they just rolled out of bed.

- My son's name is Alec Julian. Neither Alec nor Julian were my first choices for his name. Compromise, compromise.

- Pretty much all my life I've been told I'm funny. I don't think it really comes across in this blog. It's to the point where I've been told by friends, "Yvett! You're here! Make us laugh". Like I was some sort of jester or something. Or I'm funny on command. I don't know if I really am funny or not but it was an absolute dream of mine to be a member of the SNL cast. My family's favorite "character" of mine right now is "the lady who gets surprised by being on Oprah's Favorite Things show". They have me doing that over and over again. It's pretty good, too.

- I'm pretty narcissistic. Everything comes back to me somehow.

Anyway, I hate the whole tagging thing. I like being tagged but hate tagging because I feel like I'm pressuring people. So play, or don't. Non-bloggy buddies can email me if you'd like.

feeling: stir crazy
listening to: kids fighting. again.

hola again

I didn't plan it, but I was away from my computer for almost two weeks. I didn't even check email, read other blogs . . . nothing. No computer, no internet usage for almost two weeks straight cold turkey. I think if I'd tried to do it, it wouldn't have worked out; it was just a busy time.

- The kids are out of school now and we successfully completed a 3rd grade "Luau" and a Pre-K water fun day. I went to both, helped organize one and I'm still here. I had poor Rodrigo helping me fill hundreds of water balloons the night before one of them. I'll tell you this, I don't want to be that many kids at once for a looooooong time.

- We came this close to buying another car. My Civic is getting old and we were looking to trade it in. When we came to signing the papers for the purchase, we were told that in Arizona there is no law where you have a couple of days to change your mind. That sort of did it. It was a used (excuse me, certified pre-owned) car, so we felt sort of pressured and backed out. Plus, you really can't beat my little Civic's gas mileage.

- We got a Wii Fit last Wednesday. I LOVE it. I was lucky too because we didn't have one reserved. My friend mentioned that she went to Target right when it opened to buy one. She said there was a line of about 20 people. I decided to stop by on the off chance that there were any left. There were two. They were out of the yoga mats and some other ski game, but I got the Fit. We're all hooked! It should tell you how pathetic we are that both Rodrigo and I ended up with sore arms from playing the boxing game. Sad. Oh, and the truth hurts. Seeing it out there every day on the screen is a real incentive to get moving.

- I just read an email asking me if we'd had waffles and balloons for Rodrigo's birthday. We did have balloons but no waffles for dinner. I made him some green enchiladas which is his favorite food. Yes, all from scratch. I bought him a German chocolate cake, also his favorite. We gave him a few gifts and the kids also made him some gifts. Brianna made him this amazing card, art thingy with copper paint or copper or something. It was layers of black and copper and embossed designs. I was quite shocked and impressed that she made it herself. I don't know how she did it, but it's hanging at Rodrigo's work now.


That's it for now, I have a lot to catch up on . . . . .

feeling: HOT
listening to: the kids fighting

waffles and balloons

Alec: did you and Dada live in the same house when you were kids?
me: no. Dada lived with at Grandma Lupe's house and I lived in Mamen's house (that's what the kids call my mom)
Alec: and where was I?
me: uh. . . you weren't born yet
Alec: so where was I
me: you were up in the sky somewhere (remembering what my grandma would tell me)
Alec: and then you found me?
me: yes
Alec: was I three when you found me?
me: no, you weren't any age yet
Alec: was I one?
me: nope, you were zero
Alec: zero?
me: yes
Alec: and where did you find me
me: you were born then I saw you
Alec: and where was I before?
me: you were in my tummy
Alec: YOU ATE ME?
me: (laughing) uh . . .
Alec: and where did you find Dada? Was he in your tummy too?
me: no, not Dada. Just you and Brianna
Alec: and Badger?
me: not Badger, don't you remember when we went to get him?
Alec: oh yeah! Badger was born in a basket
me: (laughing)
Alec: and where did you find Dada?
me: I found him at a place we worked at
Alec: was he alone?
me: yup
Alec: and was he sad?
me: yup (thinking "yeah, right")
Alec: and then you took him home and then you got married to him?
me: something like that
Alec: it's very nice of you and Dada when you get married
me: thanks
Alec: I like Dada.
me: me too
Alec: and Brianna
me: me too
Alec: and Badger
me: eh, I'm kidding I like him too
Alec: and I love you
me: I love you too
Alec: can I have waffles now?
me: sure (I was making them the whole time)
Alec: I think we should make waffles for Dada for his birthday
me: he's already at work
Alec: no, for dinner. Dada likes waffles on his birthday
me: he does, does he?
Alec: yeah, waffles and balloons -sighs- those are his favorite!


Happy Birthday, Rodrigo! I wish I could save every single conversation for you when you're not here. We love you. I love you.

feeling: sneaky, making plans for this evening
listening to: the theme song for "Franklin"

matchmaker yvett

I know a lady named Cinnamon. Rodrigo knows a man whose last name is Sprinkles. If they weren't each already married, it would become my life's mission to get them to marry each other. Wouldn't that be awesome? I've never met anyone with one of those names i.e. Ivana Tinkle or something like that. Have you?

feeling: tired of all this wind
listening to: Flobots (Handlebars) <-- I don't care for this song, but it sure is catchy

tv watcher yvett

I always hear talk about Ni@ls@n ratings for TV shows but I never knew who the people doing the ratings were. This season, we're a Ni@ls@n family. It's supposed to be thousands of households, so I guess some of you have done this already. Who has? Raise your hand.
If you haven't, it's pretty easy. We are to keep a journal of whatever we watch for a week. Everything. When we got the package, I read over them. The rating period won't start until later this week, but I'm sort of making a mental list of what I watch. I realized I watch a LOT of television. I know I'm usually running around and busy, but evenings are mine. Evenings are spent at home and it almost always includes some t.v. viewing. Here's what I watch . . .

- Dancing With the Stars: shut up. I like it.
- House: I love his character, love the show
- American Idol: Yes, I still watch it. Brianna is into the show now too
- Hell's Kitchen: I don't know if I'd eat there, but I love watching
- Law & Order SVU: this is my favorite of the Law & Orders
- Top Chef: I think I've seen each episode at least three times.
- The Office: no explanation needed
- 30 Rock: hilarious
- The Soup: I've only ever seen The Hills and some other shows on funny clips here
- Countdown: we watch this every single night

That's a lot of television. I also have to track whatever is on other t.v.'s in the house. That's pretty easy. Brianna's set is seldom on anything other than Disney Channel. Alec's is usually on Noggin. Not noted on there are all the news channels Rodrigo and I have been glued to. The whole political season has been the best reality show ever. I'm at the point where I'm talking back to strategists on the screen. I won't even get started on how I talk to the president on screen . . . .

feeling: I can't wait for this school year to be over already
listening to: Weezer (Pork & Beans) <-- I think that's the name of the song

Badger by numbers

- 9: Number of pictures that I have of Badger with green or blue eyes when the flash hits his eyes. It seems that the red eye reducer doesn't work on these.


-1: Number of beds Badger has.

-0: Number of beds he actually uses to sleep on. He prefers to sleep under our bed.

- ?: Number of inches his snout has grown. I wish I would've measured because he's no longer the little short snouted puppy seen here:


- 1: Number of complexes he has. My puppy definitely has a Napoleon complex. He'll go upstairs to bark at passing cars & motorcycles. I'm convinced he likes to feel tall to do so.



- 8: Number of friends Badger made at puppy kindergarten.

- 1: Number of times I was knocked down by one of those friends . . . a 90+ pound Great Dane puppy.

- 2: Number of times I've punished the kids by sticking them in crates. Yes, I'm kidding. When we were doggy crate shopping, the kids were getting in the crates. Of course I had to take pictures. What can I say? My poor children have absolutely no toys and have to entertain themselves any way they can. :P



- 1: Number of tags with his name misspelled. "Badser" wears his dog tags all the time.

- About one million: Number of times Badger tried to take off his cone he had to wear after the neutering.


Random puppy cuteness . . . . .














Seriously, couldn't you just squeeze him. Awww, I love my third baby.

little girl update

I wrote about the "homeless kids" yesterday, so now I'll update you on that little girl whose mom wanted me to watch her. No, they don't have the same mom. The homeless kids' mom actually doesn't work. The other mom claimed she worked too much and that's why she needed me to watch her kids. Except for one time at the grocery store, I never saw that mom again. I see the little girl all the time, but never the mom. That one time I saw her in the grocery store, Rodrigo was with me. He'd never seen her before and I told him who she was. He was shocked and said she looked like a druggie. I don't really think she does, but that would certainly explain a lot.
She never came back to ask anything about me taking care of her daughter again. I had even printed out pages of various ads for sitters for her. She never again took care of her daughter at the bus stop either. The rest of the kids at the bus stop are a little but older. They're about Brianna's age or they're with an older sibling. Even then, the parents are watching like me or walking around, you know just anything we can do to watch the kids without actually crowding their total cool style. All except for the little girl. Even the homeless kids' dad sort of watches them.
It sometimes upsets me that she doesn't watch over her own kid. I feel like she takes it for granted that the rest of us are doing it. The day the kids went back after the holidays, the bus was very late. It turned out that there was a mix-up in the scheduling and one wasn't on it's way over here. I know because I called the school. The rest of the moms were out there too; all except for one. We were all wondering if we would have to drive the kids ourselves and I swear I was just soooo worried about this little girl. I mean I could drop off Brianna with no problem, but what about the little girl? If the bus didn't come one day, where would she go? School is too far for her to talk to. One of us could easily take her but that would mean that she'd be in a strangers car without her mother ever knowing. How scary is that? What if one of us were to drive her and then get into an accident. I totally feel that the mom would be one to sue over something like that.
Another thing I've noticed is that the poor little girl wears the same thing. I first noticed it in the fall because I liked the pants she was wearing. They were khaki with pink and blue flowers. I saw them and thought I'd like some for Brianna. The next day, same pants. Day after that, same pants. So I made it a point to notice if they were the same ones day after day. Maybe she bought her a whole bunch of the same pair of pants. Hopefully. Anyway, she wore the same ones once for about two weeks then wore jeans for a day, then back to the khakis. This spring she's been wearing jeans. Since I'm nosy, I was wondering if she'd wear the same ones again. She does. These have a distinct fading pattern in the back of the legs. She wears those same pants every day with a pink wind breaker. I haven't seen the tops. I was talking to Rodrigo about this today. I told him how I'd be embarrassed if my kids were wearing the same thing day in and day out. I wouldn't if it was all we could afford or if it was a costume that they come home and love to put on (Brianna had a crown she'd wear all the time and Alec had a Batman mask then a Spiderman mask). But if I were driving a super luxury car and my kid was wearing the same clothes to school all the time, again, I'd rethink my priorities. Geesh, especially for a little girl who have just so many adorable outfit choices. I don't remember going to the store without buying something cute for Brianna.
The saddest thing about this whole thing is that I know that this girl is screaming out for attention. Literally. At the bus stop, once more and more kids started moving into the neighborhood and waiting at that same stop, she began to just start screaming. The first time I thought someone was hurt. She just stands there and screams LOUDLY. Then she started pushing the other kids. She started pulling them and jumping on them. One time she jumped on an older boy and knocked him over. He fell on top of her and she just missed hitting her head on the curb. These are the times that make me furious that her mom isn't there. Other moms or I are the ones that have to go tell her to settle down. Why not her mom? Then she started standing in the middle of the street. It got to the point to where she'd wait for a car to get near then jump out in the middle of the street. The drivers had to break suddenly several times. She did that to me one evening. It was nearly dark and she jumped out. I had to break suddenly making the kids jolt and I was shocked to see who it was. What was she doing outside at that time? It made me furious because I might have not seen her and I'd be the one living with guilt while her mom is responsibility-free.
I've seen her playing outside with the homeless kids. I still don't know who is taking care of her afterschool. All I know is it's not me. It breaks my heart to see this girl. It seems like she's raising herself. I wonder how her parents are going to feel if she grows up rebelious? Are they going to want to set rules for her as a teenager when they didn't take care of her as a kid? I'm really sort of hoping they'll move, but for now the little girl situation is the same. Sad.

the homeless kids

Last week I was running around like crazy. I had a laundry basket under one arm, I was carrying something in my other hand and I walked by an open window making a mental list of things I needed to do that day. I glanced out the window and one of my neighbors was outside on a lawnchair reading a newspaper. I did a double-take wondering, "how does she do that?". She has three kids (whom I've dubbed "the homeless kids"). I wonder how someone with three kids doesn't have a mountain of laundry or end of year school projects to work on or lunch to cook or dishes to wash or floors to clean, etc. etc. You get the point. I put the clothes in the washing machine, walked back and noticed that she was no longer reading the newspaper. . . she was sun bathing! In the middle of the morning. On a freaking Thursday. WTF? I want to do that too. Am I just managing my time poorly?
So let me tell you about the kids. There's two boys one looks like he's older than Brianna, one younger and a little girl that looks like she's about Alec's age. I call them the homeless kids because when they first moved in, I swear I thought those kids had no home. They are outside all day. I first noticed them at the bus stop. Brianna is way too cool to have me walk her to the bus stop now. It's just behind my house, though, so I watch her from my window. This little girl was always the first one out there by herself (I've been asked for an update on her, so watch out for that) then when the homeless kids moved in, they were out there really, really early too, playing football. I noticed them because they were outside playing sooooooo early in the morning. This is before 7:00 am. They'd play football on the sidewalk and street where the bus stops. Of course they wouldn't catch the ball each time, so they'd go onto my back neighbor's yard. The ball would sometimes hit the walls of that house. One day I saw the homeless kids' dad walk out to leave for work when the kids were playing in that yard. I thought "Ooh, they're going to get it now from dad". He waved at them as he drove off and said nothing. Nothing. I'd be really upset if I saw my kids playing on someone else's yard, hitting their walls especially at a time when they're possibly still asleep. I'd say something immediately.
So this has gone on. On weekends when I open the blinds the kids are already out there playing. On afternoons when Brianna gets home from school, we talk about her day, she'll have a snack and do her homework. Those kids are outside. They're dropped off by the same bus only they don't go inside their home. If they do, it's just to dump their backpacks. I wonder when they eat or do homework. Plus their mom is at home. She doesn't work. I can understand kids playing outside all day maybe in the summer, but all the time? This Sunday we were leaving to the store and the homeless kids were out riding their bikes while wearing pajamas and no shoes. I play around and say that the mom sets an alarm early in the morning just to kick them out. They roam around the neighborhood. I walked out once to bring in a garbage can and was startled by them. They were playing like they were shooting each other and one was hiding in my front yard.
I wonder if that mom worries at all about where her kids are. It must be nice to just kick them out and have the house to herself all the time. Maybe that's why she's so carefree sunbathing. I'm always worried about where my kids are, what they're doing, how their day was, if they're hungry, checking homework, making sure they're clean, etc. I must be doing something wrong.