Have you ever come home from work after a hard days' work and decided you need.. no.. not NEED. You DESERVE to unwind.

So you open up a bottle of champagne you just happen to have in your fridge because of your recent new found love of it. See, you have decided to always keep a bottle in your fridge so that when your supermodel friends come over they have something to drink.

Of course you don't have  supermodel friends and so they obviously never come over and so there you go. A bottle of champagne always available for you to drink after a hard day's work.

Anyways.. so you open up this bottle and start swigging away like the lush that you are and before you know it, the whole bottle is gone. So then you forget about making dinner and instead order pizza and then your loving husband, "HEY you know what would be a GREAT idea? We should go out and have cocktails! And we should stay our really late because you just KNOW how much that makes sense since I have get up early to go to work tomorrow and won't THAT just make for a great work day!"

Of course your loving husband obliges and off you go.

Then you wake up the next morning and of course being the responsible lush that you are you get up anyways, take your shower, go through the motions half drunk/half asleep. Because YES.. you still felt drunk from the night before.

As you go off to work you think to yourself, "'DAMN! That probably WASN'T the best idea I've had this month!"

Has that ever happened to you?

Yeah, me either!

Have you ever been in the middle of an argument when you start to realize that while YOU are right... you COULD probably just back down because you know the argument isn't going anywhere productive and it's not that big of a deal anyways?

Then you start to imagine and hear two little voices in your brain giving you advice.

Sorta like the angel and the devil on each shoulder and the devil (or is it the angel) tells you, "NO! Don't back down now! You do that all the time. You back down way too much and you need to start standing your ground."

Then your other voice says, "But you're not being the bigger person if you don't back down. You have to ask yourself if this is really worth it."

Then the other voice sucker punches that voice to the ground then tells you, "Come on you big WUSS. This one is YOURS. You KNOW you are right and they are ridiculously WRONG and they are being selfish and you give them their way EVERY TIME and  it's just teaching THEM to stay selfish and it solves NOTHING other than they will KNOW you're a big wuss and they can talk you down and get anything they want from you because guess what? YOU'RE A BIG WUSS!!!"

Then the other voice calls the cops on the other voice and they end up on COPS: YOURBRAIN edition and so then you both stop arguing, turn the t.v. on, pop some microwave popcorn, open up a can of Budweiser and sit back, relax and enjoy the show?

Has that ever happened to you?

Yeah, me either!

larger view

My kids had Open House at their school the other day. They were soooo excited to show me all the stuff they had made/written specifically for open house, to showcase what they had learned through the year.

Annequin is a very good storyteller. He always has been. He puts sentences together so effortlessly and right now he's being taught to include dialog in his stories, which is neat.

Big Mickey is also a great story teller and there is this one specific story he wrote which I believe the theme might have been "If I could grant one wish" or something because it went a little something like this:

If I could grant one wish it would to my dad. I would buy my dad a new house. The reason I would buy a new house for my family is because my Nana gets tired of walking up and down the stairs.

It went on a bit more but that one sentence really moved me. See, my husband's grandmother moved in with us recently and she walks up and down the stairs very carefully for obvious reasons. Sometimes, she stops in the middle of them and takes a deep breath, then goes on.

He must have noticed that. Or maybe he heard her say something. Who knows. Kids are very observant. They pay attention to even the most minute things and what's worse, it's when you don't expect them to.

Anyways, I was really proud of him for caring about his Nana in that manner. But also, another thing he said in the story was that while everyone was tired of our house, he was the only one that was not. He loves his house, he says! Especially when family comes over.

Well, you know what, I love that too. I love when my house is full of nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles, and grammas. A full home makes a happy home, right?

Now, if we could only get rid of those pesky stairs!!!

Because I don't already annoy enough of my friends on MySpace...

Because I don't already spend enough time sending  you emails that prompt you to quickly go check out my blog so that you don't miss the latest and greatest happenings of my life....

Because I don't already write enough crap on your Facebook wall....

Because I don't ask you enough times when I see you face to face if you've read the blog about the...

Now I'm expected to ask you if you will please OH pretty please Twitter with me?

SERIOUSLY?????

TWITTER??

AURGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH.

No, no NO!! I'm not doing it. NOT DOING IT. Sorry friends that have sent me Twitter requests or whatever they are called.

I will NOT
CANNOT

Twitter with a mouse.

I will NOT

shall not

Twitter in your house.

I will not

Twitter in a tree

I will not Twitter

till you pee

I cannot

Twitter if you cry

I shant not

Twitter till I die.

sorry. CAN'T

CAN'T

CAN'T

Well, at least not yet. Maybe I'll change my mind later. But for now... technology is not only moving way too fast for me, it's also annoying the hell out of me.

I was browsing through my channels trying to find something to watch when I stumbled accross This American Life.

I was actually really surprised because although I'd heard about This American Life through a myspace buddy James R. Spring, somehow I thought it was radio only?

Turns out they are also on t.v. and not just that... it must be a series because they followed up the show with "Next week, on This American Life..."

Anyways.. I don't know if it was  a rerun or not but they featured this young guy named Haider. Haider is.. you guessed it... Iraqi.

They show footage of Haider two weeks before the war broke out. Apparently the cameras followed him around as he performed his job as an employee of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense.

Everyone seems happy and normal and I felt so sad to think that two weeks later their lives would be so turned around and upside down and it would knock them off their world as they knew it.

Anyways, after the war broke out his family was separated. They lost their home, their business .. EVERYTHING.

Forward a few years... he now lives in New York where This American Life set him up with a booth and a sign that says, "ASK AN IRAQI"

People stop and talk to him and ask him questions and then he in turn asked THEM questions.... mainly "What freedom?"

You see, people seemed to justify our presence in Iraq because we are fighting for our freedom.

Really? Because I thought we were fighting for THEIR freedom? Actually, I don't exactly know WHY we're there anymore. I thought I knew. And I thought I agreed with the reasons before but I just don't know anymore.

This lady said we were there, to protect OUR interests here to which he replied by questioning whether she thought that was kind of selfish. I mean, think about how many innocent civilians are dying in Iraq, so that SHE can be safe.

She replied very honestly. She said that YES in fact that may be selfish but she'd rather have someone else be miserable with a war in their back yard as long as it wasn't hers. She didn't exactly word it like that, but I'm pretty sure I'm close.

Another guy questions whether those "civilians" aren't that innocent since when he was stationed in Iraq he worked at some prison where a TEN YEAR OLD was imprisioned for stabbing a Marine in the chest. (Or something like that)

One comment that stuck out to me was when he was asked if Iraq was better off with the U.S.A there to protect them and Saddam's regime he counters with the following:

 "It's like if I say to you, 'Gary, I'll give you a brand new 2007 car, but first I'll cut your leg off,' " Hamza said. "You would probably not want the car."

He also at one point says something to the effect of that he knows when Americans ask that question, they want him to say YES so that they feel better about our troops being there, BUT he can't do that because NO he in fact does NOT think they are better off.

And even though he claims  two of his relatives have been killed by Saddam's regime, he'd still rather go back to THAT than where Iraq is now.

Another thing that stuck out to me was when he was asked if he was scared to go out in public with his "Ask An Iraqi" sign and he replied that he hadn't really given it much thought. You see, in Iraq, if you say something that someone else doesn't agree with, the worst that can happen is that person will chop off your head.

That doesn't happen in America. Then he laughs and says that, well, at least he HOPES it doesn't.

He's obviously never been to Fresno. Or McFarland.

read a brief article by clicking HERE

If you vote for Hillary, she'll lower gas prices at least for the summer if not longer. OR NOT???? Stuff like this makes me NOT believe in politicians. Why promise something you know you  can't do?

Obama said the proposal to suspend the 18.4 cents-a-gallon gasoline tax and the 24.4-cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day would provide little in actual savings to motorists. He said oil companies would quickly raise prices to make up the difference.

"It's a stunt. It's what Washington does," Obama said in Evansville, Ind.

Obama's stance was backed up by 230 economists who released a letter Monday opposing the gas tax holiday. The signers included four Nobel Prize winners and economic advisers to presidents of both parties.

Late Monday, Clinton acknowledged the difficulty of getting such a gax-tax suspension enacted in the next few weeks. "Realistically, it's tough," Clinton told reporters on her campaign plane

READ THE REST BY CLICKING HERE!!!!

If we believe so much in a Democratic country then why don't we run our households democratically?

That was the question posed last night as we were drunkenly talking about politics, religion and the meaning of life.

See, while most people shy away from having these type of conversations with friends and family because they lead to arguments, we thrive on them.

Those are our favorite type of conversations, with 80's and 90's trivia being a close second.

"Who can honestly tell me that their household is ran democratically?" said Hooty.

"The loudest voice wins when it comes to everyday decisions," I agreed.

Mr. Twinkie quickly glanced at me and wondered who was the loudest voice in our house.

 I giggled.

I learned something new last night about The Virgin Mary and the Immaculate Conception.

The immaculate conception isn't the fact that Jesus was conceived to Mary, while she was in fact, a virgin. That's just a plain ol' case of "Virgin Conception."

The IMMACULATE CONCEPTION is the fact that the moment Mary was conceived by her earth parents Joachim and Anne she was preserved immaculately by God.

In other words... she remained PERFECT. Without sin. Till the day she died.

In fact, because she was perfect, she did NOT need a Savior.

I always thought the immaculate conception was the birth of Jesus to a virgin.

Interesting.

Anyways... I just thought I'd share what I learned last night.

While consuming lots and lots of beer.

Beer and virgin talk always seem to go hand in hand with us. Is there something utterly sinful about that?