NOTMYCAT

I've mentioned a time or two that I'm not particularly interested in obtaining an animal that I would need to take care of.

The three (boys) I have are quite enough, thankyouverymuch.

So when one day a few weeks ago, Cooper yelled, "MAMA! THERE'S A CAT ON OUR PORCH!!!"  I totally ignored him.

Cooper, that is.  Well, and the cat, too, really.

But the cat wasn't particularly interested in being ignored.

He stuck around, meowing and living on my front porch and just generally making his presence known.

He was friendly and polite and quite persistent.  He meowed and purred and tried to come in my house every chance he got.  He finally (sort of) got a clue that he ABSOLUTELY was not coming in and took up permanent residence on my front porch.  On my door mat.  Right in the way.

For several days, I took various pictures of this cat in various places around my house.  I used the hashtag #notmycat on Instagram and Twitter, and you'd be amazed at how many other people seemed to be sharing my exact plight.

Cats go where cats wanna go, I guess.

Zachary liked him.  But Cooper ADORED him.  

He talked of nothing else.  He ran to the window a million times a day to check up on the cat, to make sure he was still on our front porch.

He always was, by the way.

Cooper even brushed up on what he referred to as his "cat-speak."

And this went on for days.  And days.

And the cat was still here.

I could feel myself softening to the idea of a cat, THIS cat, just a little, and even started calling him Nomy (short for NOTMYCAT) in my head.  My sister has a cat named Scat, so this may just be some sort of family trait that I might want to keep off the internet.  Oops.  Too late.

Anyway, Nomy was here, and he appeared to be here to stay.  One memorable Saturday the boys played with this cat ALL. DAY. LONG.

And I softened to the idea even more.

And then one day when we got up, he was gone, just as suddenly as he had appeared.  The boys looked for him all over, but Nomy was gone.  Maybe he went back to his real house.  That's what I told the kids, anyway, but the truth is an outdoor cat probably doesn't have much chance out here in the boonies where I live.  

And I remembered why I didn't want a cat in the first place.

But when I pull in the driveway or walk out the front door, I still find myself looking to see if maybe he's back in his spot on the door mat.

So far he hasn't been, but I'm not going to totally discount the idea. 

He is a cat, after all, and cats go where cats wanna go.

On Boston.

The first national tragedy I remember was the Challenger explosion.

I was 12.

The image I saw play over and over on tv that morning is burned into my brain.

I remember thinking about it for days, weeks even.  I may have obsessed over it a little bit, watching all the tv specials and reading all the magazine articles about the astronauts aboard, about o-rings and solid rocket boosters and about a million other things that I couldn't really understand, but felt like it was my duty to KNOW.  But then time passed, and life went on.

When I was 16, Operation Desert Shield became Operation Desert Storm, and for the first time in my generation, our country was officially at war.  I remember wondering "Well, what do we do now?"  I was supposed to go on a date with my boyfriend later that day, my sister and I had planned a weekend shopping trip, but I didn't know if those things were... appropriate now that my country was at war.  Does life go on when unspeakable things are happening so close to home?  I learned pretty quickly, of course it does.  Of course life goes on.

I was an adult, at work when I heard the first news about 9-11.   A bookseller rushed in right before opening time, insisting that we all turn on the tv in the break room so we could watch it unfold.  I was super responsible, and this bookseller was prone to grand exaggeration, so I ignored her pleas.  It wasn't until I opened the store and NO ONE came in, no one for hours, that I finally gave in to the fact that this was a big deal and let the staff catch up on the news.  I remember thinking, "Well, what now?"  Do I let staff members leave?  Keep going on business as usual?  This was a big deal of a thing, and I didn't know how to respond to it.  But I tried to keep it to business as usual, as much as possible anyway, because life goes on.  Of course it does.

When hurricane Katrina hit and the reports started rolling in, I was pregnant with Zachary.  I laid in bed for days, literally unable to move away from watching all the stories unfold about acts of bravery, lives lost, and unspeakable horrors that people so close to my home were experiencing.  I wondered at the insanity of bringing a child into a world where these things were happening.  I watched as the news stories slowly transitioned to what seemed to be PR pieces, and the thought of Harry Connick, Jr. in a rowboat pretending to "rescue" people while his camera crew trailed along filming it still makes me want to search him out and punch him in the photo op.  Then eventually, I dragged myself out of bed and got on with the business of living my life and getting ready to have a kid.  It's just life.  And it goes on.

Since then there have been tragedies on top of tragedies.  Bombings, school shootings, it's all become so... commonplace.  The Newtown school shooting left me reeling for weeks, but I pulled it together and did all the things I was supposed to be doing, because life just keeps going.

In recent years, I've been turning to social media more and more to get my information, and the Boston Marathon bombing yesterday was no exception.  My first inkling that there was something going on came via this tweet from Runner's World Magazine:

And honestly, it didn't really register much at first.  Stuff seems to blow up every day.  There's always an emergency or a tragedy or an... event of sorts that everyone gets all excited about for about a minute, then we never hear about it again.  

But within a few minutes, I could tell this was one of the real ones.  My Twitter stream, then my Facebook page started to fill up with information about what was happening in Boston.  I love that social media has made it so easy to get information, often directly from people who are living it, right in the moment.  I hate all the rampant speculation that accompanies it, though.

As a runner myself who hopes to someday run a marathon, this tragedy hit me hard.  I kept reading about runners who, on what should be the proudest moment of their lives, were instead scared, confused, hurt and bleeding.  At least three people have lost their lives. 

As later reports came in, the words "devastating lower leg injuries" and "amputations" were being thrown about, and for a group of elite runners who have spent years training their bodies to run and endure, this seems a particularly cruel and tragic outcome.

My Twitter feed and Facebook page have slowly transitioned from actual news reports to quotes from Mr. Rogers, Gandhi, Jesus and more about forgiveness, and about seeing the good in people in times of adversity, and about coming together as a country.  The topics #runforboston and #raceshirt are trending on Twitter right now, encouraging the world to go on a run in honor of those injured and to wear a race shirt today to show support.

These things may be helpful to others in dealing with this.  We all deal with things differently.  

But right now, as I sit here typing away, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel.  Anger at the evil people in the world who use violence as a tool - definitely.  Sadness for those who are dead or injured - certainly.  Confusion about why these horrible things keep happening - no doubt. 

But as much as I want to sit and read about what's happening and obsess over it some more, the laundry still needs to be done.  Two little boys still need attention and tickles and love.  Dinner still has to be cooked.  Life keeps going. 

Of course it does.

But I still don't know how I'm supposed to feel about it. 

Vine: My latest social media obsession.

Really it's no secret that I probably ok, ok, DEFINITELY spend too much time online messing with social media.

"But all my friends live there," she whines."

Also, since R and I bit the bullet and got iPhones a few years back - something we both SWORE we didn't want and wouldn't do, by the way - it's POSSIBLE  that MAYBE I spend just a LITTLE too much time with it.

Oh, who the hell am I trying to kid?  My iPhone and I?  We're besties.  We're inseparable.  We're soul mates.  You won't get it away from me until you pry it from my cold, dead hands.  And even then, I'm planning to try to hold on to it so I can take it with me into the afterlife.

Heaven without my iPhone sounds a little too much like the other place, if you know what I mean.

So anyway, I'm now freely admitting to you that I know I have a problem.

"Hi, I'm mj, and I'm addicted to my phone."

"HI MJ!"

You would think that knowing is half the battle, and that I would limit myself, especially when it comes to getting addicted to new, interesting time-suckers.

But no, I'm not strong enough for that.

I first heard about vine on my Instagram feed, where all my bloggy friends were joking that they had crashed this new video app.  Ok, really, most of the people I follow aren't really my friends.  I just kind of stalk them a little bit.  They don't seem to mind, though.  Really.  I've only been blocked by a FEW of them.

Ahem.

I immediately downloaded it.

Because, you know, all the cool kids were doing it.

And I fell in love with it.   BIG SURPRISE!  MJ LOVES TIME-WASTING SOCIAL MEDIA!!!

But for real, it's cool.  It allows you to record video snippets that are a maximum of six seconds each.  You can either record it all at once, or you can start and stop, start and stop, start and stop, as many times as you want for the entire six seconds.

It's SO. MUCH. FUN.

Here's Cooper ready to blast off in his cardboard box rocket ship.

An impromptu storytime led by Zachary.

Some semi-impressive flying side kicks.

And this?  This is proof that my drinking is totally justified.

So yeah.  Now in addition to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, I've got yet another time-waster to enjoy.

And I highly recommend it.

Seriously, go download it.

Oh, and don't forget to follow me :) 

You probably would run screaming after 15 minutes.

Last week I saw a bunch of really cool posts linking to A Week in My Life by Adventuroo and I thought about doing it.

For about a minute.

Then, based on the fact that I didn't want to scare either of my readers off, I decided against it.

Truth be told, I'm not sure I want you guys to know what I do all day.  Um... Pinterest, anyone?  Also, since it has a tendency to be a little crazy around here pretty much every flippin' second of evert flippin' day from time to time, I wasn't sure I wanted to broadcast it.  But it kept calling to me.

Do me! Do me!


Oh my god, that was not meant to be as dirty as it sounds.  Really.

Finally I decided that I wouldn't try to do a whole day, just a short little span.

I do this all day long.  Surely you can handle 15 minutes, right?

So here's my Wednesday, from 3:30 pm - 3:45 pm.  Approximately, anyway.

3:30 pm:   Zj is just getting off the bus, and cj (in his stroller) and I are standing at the bus stop to meet him.

3:31 pm:  Still walking home from the bus stop.  Cj is yelling "More sucker me! Peassssee???" and zj is talking a mile a minute.  "And today we had YOGURT BOX for lunch! But I didn't like it.  So I ate some bread that was shaped like a fish.  It's ok, my friend gave it to me.  And guess what, Mama?  Today was HEALTH day!  And we learned about germs and..."

3:32 pm: We arrive home, I get the boys inside, everybody sheds shoes, jackets, backpacks, etc. and zj asks for a snack.  Cj: "NACK! NACK!"

3:33 pm: I procure some chips and salsa, and give it to the boys in the living room.

3:34 pm: The boys seem intent on eating their snack, so I wander off into the library (which is also known as Mama's Naughty Room, because it's where Mama goes when she needs a time out) to screw around on the internet, which I announce to the boys as "Mama is going to the library to do some VERY IMPORTANT WORK."

3:35 pm: Zj yells "Mama!  Cj is DRINKING the SALSA!"  Cj: "MOE SAUCE!  MOE SAUCE!"

3:36 pm: I determined that cj was indeed drinking the salsa.

3:37 pm: Clean up the salsa.  

3:38 pm: Clean up more salsa, which is inexplicably on the underneath side of the ceiling fan.

3:39 pm: I lose sight of zj for a second, then hear him yell from the bathroom "MAMA! Come look at how big this poop is!"

3:40 pm:  I go check on zj.  It is indeed a very large poop.  Lucky for you, I did NOT photograph it, even though zj was heartbroken that I would not.

3:41 pm: Spray some air freshener, then check to see what cj had gotten into. 

3:42 pm: Determine that cj had pulled all the toys off the shelves in his room.  Whew.  I got lucky there.  That, sadly, was the best case scenario.

3:43 pm: Pick up some of the toys, pausing long enough to yell "Zj, stop torturing your brother!" and "Cj, stop licking your brother!  You are not a puppy!"

3:44 pm: I determine that it's nearly 4 o'clock, which is damn close to 5 o'clock, and begin my own cry:

"MOE SAUCE!  MOE SAUCE!"

I’m sharing my awesome with Momma Made It Look Easy and you can too.

Totally not my fault Kahlua Almond Fudge Ripple Ice Cream.

Ok, let me start by saying this.

This recipe is totally not my fault.

It is also not my fault that I have made and consumed five batches of ice cream in five days.

It's all Angie's fault.

Click the link.

You'll see.

She taunted me with her ridiculously good Banana Ice Cream recipe, then teased me even more by tweeting me the link to her Oreo Party Ice Cream.

 Really, it's just not fair.

So I ordered the ice cream maker - $40 from Amazon in RED, no less, and I have been making a batch a day since it arrived.

I'm pretty sure that's not part of my diet plan.

Whatever.  It's good.

Also, since I'm apparently a functioning alcoholic I enjoy the taste of liquor a bit, I've made a couple batches of tipsy ice cream, where tipsy equals that shit will get you falling down drunk.

So far, this has been my favorite.

If you don't have an ice cream maker, go buy one now.

Tell 'em The Jammie Girl sent ya.

WHAT YOU NEED:

2-3 tablespoons of instant coffee powder, depending on how strong a coffee taste you like
1/3 cup Kahlua
1/4 cup whole milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 1/4 cups heavy cream cream or half & half, depending on how large you would like your ass to grow
1/4 cup - maybe slightly less, sliced almonds that have been toasted in a non-stick skillet over low heat for about a minutes, then cooled
3 tablespoons chocolate fudge ice cream topping - I used Smuckers Chocolate Fudge, because with a name like Smuckers... Actually it was all my grocery store had.  So I bought it.


WHAT YOU DO:
Mix the coffee powder, Kahlua, vanilla extract and whole milk in a small bowl.  Whisk it until all the coffee is dissolved.

Here is where it gets crazy complicated.

Make sure you're paying attention.

Put the coffee mixture, the sweetened condensed milk, and the cream or half and half in your ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's directions.  Mine is crazy hard to navigate.  I have to push the "On" button.

Wait until the last 5 minutes of the cycle to add the almonds, then wait till the bitter end to add the fudge sauce.  You don't want to give the sauce time to blend in, just make lovely ribbons of fudge all through your ice cream.

Eat it all with a big spoon straight out of the ice cream maker.

Plan to up tomorrow's running workout from 3 miles to 8 miles.

It's totally worth it.

The one where purchasing an iPhone is a money saving venture. Sorta.

I love my iPhone.  I may have mentioned it occasionally.  I'm not entirely sure how I managed to survive the first 36.57 years of my life without one.  

It tells me which direction to go when I'm lost.

It tells me how many calories to eat.

It tells me what groceries I need to buy. 

It tells me the weather.

It allows me to set my DVR to record, even if I'm sitting miles away at a restaurant and I suddenly remember that I haven't set up to record the season premiere of American Idol.

It allows me to stay connected to Facebook and Twitter, 24/7.

It can even make phone calls!  

I sleep with it.  I take it to the bathroom with me.  I never, ever, ever put it down.

My iPhone and I, we're besties.

But in the spirit of saving a few dollars here and there, I also use my Phone for some serious couponing. I mentioned before that Kroger, my grocery store of choice, has an app that lets you load coupons directly from your iPhone onto your Kroger card.  You can do this in the store, even.  Last week when I was doing the grocery shopping, I loaded $5.75 in coupons from my phone to my card as I was shopping.  Every little bit helps pay for my data plan, ya know...

There are also several other apps that I use regularly to help me save a few bucks.  Here are some of my favorites:

RedLaser - this app uses your iPhone camera as a barcode scanner, then goes out searching for better deals on what you just scanned.  Lemme give you a for instance.  When I was Christmas shopping, I used it to scan a particular toy that I was looking at for zj.  The app searched both online and in nearby retail stores and told me to get myself in my car, drive myself up the street to Target, and save $10 on it.  Pretty nifty.

The Dealmap - this app uses some sort of magical GPS mojo to know what you are near, and it searches for coupons at restaurants and retailers near you.  Today I found a 20% off coupon for your entire purchase at Michael's, and a buy one get one free deal at Subway.

GeoQpons - this is another magical app that knows where you are and finds coupons for you to use.  Some currently features deals are a coupon for 25% off at The Children's Place and $7 of an oil change at Jiffy Lube.  Really, there is never any reason to pay full price for anything.  Except maybe your iPhone.  You'll probably have to pay full price for that...  Anyway, moving on...

Cellfire - you can use this app in conjunction with your loyalty savings card at approximately 30 grocery chains.  You can register your loyalty card to the app, and download coupons directly onto your card from the app.  I see a future that does not contain paper coupons at all.  Yes, I'm psychic.  It's just one of my many talents.

foursquare - Ok, this one isn't exactly a coupon app.  It's more of a social networking meets GPS kind of thing.  Think Facebook places, where you can check into different venues, but WAY cooler.  I mention it because I have probably used this one more than any other for money saving purposes.  When we were Christmas shopping, RJ and I went to an outlet mall, and about 1/3 of the stores offered some sort of discount just for checking in there.  We saved 10-25% off at most of the stores we shopped in by opening foursquare, checking in, then showing the cashier the coupon code on the screen of our phone.  Also, some places offer special deals to the Mayor of their location.  The Mayor is the person who has checked into that venue the most.  For example, Rally's offers a free milkshake to the Mayor every day, and Pizza Hut offers a free large order to the Mayor with each pizza purchase.  I say if you're going to go there anyway, at least get all you can out of it...

Whew!  It's been fun, but I'm tired.  I have exhausted my bag of money saving tricks, so now you can go back to reading some of the great money-saving blogs out there, and I can go back to posting pictures of my cute kids and writing blog posts about getting drunk.

Twitter - it's not just for stalking celebrities, you know.

Less than a year ago, I wrote a post about how I was not smart enough to use Twitter.

Oh, what a difference six months in a house with no job and two boys under the age of four makes.

So, I started out by following some of my favorite bloggers and famous people and I'm not the least bit bitter about the fact that Nathan Fillion never ressponds to my numerous tweets.  Even though I know he must see my 300 tweets every day.  Every. Single. Day. He WILL notice me eventually.  HE WILL.

I'm certainly not a Twitter expert, ya know, like our President - Really? Our President tweets?  I'll bet our founding fathers never could have predicted THAT - but I'm learning every day.

And in the spirit of making my gadget addiction screen time productive, I've found some great peeps to follow who help me save money. 

Although sometimes they help me spend money, like the other day when I had absolutely no plans to purchase any clothes for myself any time in the next three years and then I saw a tweet from Family Friendly Frugality that included a link to a coupon from Old Navy.  The coupon was good for an extra 25% off clearance items, plus free shipping on orders over $50.  So...  I ordered 13 things.  All for me.  But, the great news, the total for my order was just a little over $65.  Now that's a good deal.

Family Friendly Frugality is by far my favorite money-saving twitterer? tweeter? to follow, and often links to things like free fries or $5 off your total purchase at Family Dollar.   Go forth and follow her.  Do it now.  You will thank me.  No really, go ahead and thank me.

You're welcome.

Some of my other favorites, in no particular order, are:

Freebies4Mom focuses on stuff that is, well, free.  Who doesn't love free samples coming in the mail in their cute little individual sized bottles?  Also, she often links to great posts like this one about how to handle it if your coupons are rejected.  Good stuff.

DealSeekingMom is another great all-around gal to follow.  She features everything from printable coupons to online deals to free samples.

MoneySavingMom managed to save enough money to pay cash for her family's house.  I'd follow her just on principle alone.  Also, for the coupons she posts.

Also, don't forget to follow your favorite restaurants, retailers and brands.  Many post "Twitter only" deals and coupons regularly.  For instance, I follow my local credit union, and a few months ago, they ran a Twitter contest for money saving tips.  I sent one in, and won a $100 Visa gift card.  I also follow nookBN in order to find out about the free e-book title that is available for download every Friday.  

See?

Twitter is totally NOT a waste of hours of your life.  It's a necessity.

My upcoming fifth and final post in this series will explain all the reasons why buying an iPhone is a money-saving venture.  Trust me on this.   I've been brainwashed by the Apple corporation.  I know what I'm talking about here.  

Superhero Tuesday - The Basket of Doom.

The Basket of Doom - where all broken superheroes go to die.  Or maybe someday get glued back together, if Mama can get off Twitter long enough to find the superglue.

I'm not smart enough to Twit. Tweet. Twitter. Whatever.

True story.

I got onto the whole social networking scene a little bit late.

I signed up for a Facebook account a couple of years when one of my cool friends - yes I have a cool friend, thank you very much - sort of shamed me into it.

I used it exactly twice, then promptly forgot that I even had an account for about a year, until one day, my much younger, much cooler, much hipper nephew sent me a friend request.

It came to my email address, which I guess I had registered way back when, or I would have never seen it. So I accepted the request - it would have been rude not to - and for the next six months, I had exactly two friends, and I was happy.

Then my friend Natalie found me, and somehow through it all, I found out that Facebook had... games.  You know, word games.  For nerds like me.  It was heaven.

I acquired a few more friends along the way, totally by accident.  Natalie gave me a hard time on a regular basis, posting things on my wall like "I heard a crazy rumor that some people use Facebook for social networking."  Whatever.  I had the new high score in Word Twist.

I finally got the hang of it, though.  It was fun, in a sort of stalkerish way to "catch up" with people from high school and college, former employees and coworkers, and a strange smattering or distant relations.

I'm a pretty smart girl, so I thought I might give Twitter a try, too.

Bad call.

I absolutely cannot do it.

It's too hard.

It's not the site, or the technology, or anything like that.  It's just that I can't ever remember to run to the computer every time I eat a banana, watch a tv show, take a nap, or get caught at a stoplight so that I can tweet my current situation.  'Cause that seems to be what it is all about -  a minute by minute account of everyone's life.

And I keep forgetting to update.

And since I have a crazy obsessive disorder that makes me do everything exactly perfectly every time, or not at all, I have given up.

And even though nine year olds the world over have mastered it, I am not smart enough to Tweet.

And I'm not even going to try any more.