198 Pettiness Becomes Me!

Some really stupid, petty, random rants. If you are easily bored then you might not want to read any further.

It was a gorgeous day today. The sun was shining and it was a balmy 72, so I had the windows thrown wide to refresh the house. Our cat, Bartleby, was taking advantage of the windows and the fresh air. He was perched on the windowsill and the light was hitting him just right (and my house gets horrible light so this is rare). His eyes looked amazing and for a moment I thought I might almost like him ... then I grabbed my camera and he bolted! I thought wrong! Useless Animal! I will remember that when he tries to cuddle up to me now that the kids are in bed.

Another petty annoyance, my cell phone! One, I can never decide whether it is better to have it on vibrate or ring. Yes, that is right ... for some reason I have the only phone that does not offer a combo. And two, it does not have a key lock feature, so I have to yank it away from Connor if he manages to snag it. I would hate for him to call 999 (the distress signal) again! And then I have to hear him scream like I stole his chocolate. I hate making him scream, so then I hate my phone even more! So, if those two things are important to you, then stay away from the Samsung Sync.

Also, discovered this week why the ink for the Kodak ESP series printers is so cheap ... because it sucks! Well, the printer sucks. I just wanted to print a few basic pages, mainly black and white. Half of the page looked like it was not printed at all, and then all of the sudden it was clear as a bell. I cleaned printer heads, re-aligned the heads, printed a test page ... and then it printed one page correctly. The next page, retarded again!I was already pretty disappointed in the way it printed photos. Hell, it is a KODAK printer ... you would think pictures would be the best thing it prints, but they were FLAT! I printed a few to take home to my Mom last month and they turned out horribly. But, I thought, Katie likes to print crap out from her little kiddie sites, and I don't need expensive ink to print out ten thousand pictures of Barbie or Polly Pocket. WRONG! She tried to print a page that was a color-by-number type thing, and you could not even read the numbers in the spaces! I even printed it on "best" and it was illegible. Not really saving me money if you don't work at all! So, Kodak ESP 5, you are an EPIC FAIL!! And the double fun ... I bought it at Circuit City. Yay me!

Katie is driving me nuts with pickiness. She has started complaining about wrinkles in her socks. Not just complaining, CRYING! I know, diabetics have problems with circulation and it can make their extremities more sensitive. But technically, they have shown that until children hit puberty there is really not much to worry about circulation wise.

Katie is also driving me nuts with bitchiness! Yes, I said bitchiness. She is all sweetness and light as long as she is getting just what she wants, but the very instant you try to rein her in or tell her no ... it is ON! She has gotten in the habit of saying "I don't have to" about everything. If she has done something one way one time, then she acts like that is how it is and there is no way to deviate. Or, to be more precise, if she LIKES the way something was done once then she expects it to be done the same way each time. And, the most annoying is when she snarls at you when you are trying to help. I try to correct her when she is reading her homework and it is as if I slapped her. But, if she wants me to help her and I don't immediately read her mind to know that she wants help, then I get snarled at again. There is no winning with that girl!! She is the reason they are referring to her age group as Generation Diva!

And Connor ... well, there is not much to complain about with him. He does tend to smack people in the face, so that isn't very nice. And he screams like a girl if he thinks he is going to get in trouble. He will spill something (read - pour it deliberately on the floor) and when you tell him no and try to clean it up he screams as though he has been scalded. Oh, and I can't forget how he will throw to the ground anything you try to take from him. If it is something breakable then I have to sneak up on him. Okay, so they are a few things to complain about after all.

My DVR is KILLING me! We never had this problem with TiVo, but lately it has been chopping the final 15 minutes off of shows because it runs out of room. And not just any shows. It happened on the season finales of a couple shows. It chopped off the very end of Battlestar Galactica, and I do mean the end! It was the Series Finale. We don't even have it set to record all the cartoons and Disney that we had the TiVo recording! I can't imagine how fried it would have been if we had. I can't wait to go back to satellite!

Bought some new flowers for the yard, but then we had a freeze warning so they are in my window. Katie picked them out, and she is on a pink color kick right now.

Can't wait to get them out in the yard! maybe the birdbath will be less gruesome with some pretty flowers around it. Right now, it is just a mute testimonial to the life and death of a mouse.

But then there are moments when it feels like everything is right in my world ... and they look something like this ... This is a bud on one of my grandfather's peonies that I transplanted out from Atlanta. It is a first! I am hoping it will actually bloom this year.Lack of real flowers has never stopped Katie from bringing me some "flowers." Six years old is still the age when weeds are as beautiful as roses. It has just been in the past week that I have noticed Connor walking around with one of Katie's old babies. He is quite the manly baby doll though. It is just too sweet to see him play with the "baby"!

Well, at least I have gotten that off my chest. Sometimes we have to let the pettiness out before it starts to fester and explode. Crisis averted!!