Happy Easter, Now Don't Be A Twat.....

When you meet me, there are a couple things that you can count on.....

A. I'm almost never taking you seriously.
B. I can be bribed into anything with the promise of ice cream.
C. I NEVER talk about religion, specifically MY religion.

Easter is one of those holidays that I barely celebrate. I celebrate it in the form of getting my daughter a basketful of novelty toys and a sugar rush shaped like a bunny and wrapped in foil. However, we don't celebrate in the religious sense. The one thing I don't like about the holiday is that, oddly enough, it's the time of year that my religion (or lack thereof) gets questioned and brought to the forefront, more so than Christmas. (Even if I'm there, shoulder to shoulder with them at Wal-Greens, getting edible grass to fill my Easter basket.)

So when I tell someone religious that I believe in God but I don't believe in religion, it requires more explanation and more talk of religion. Ugh.

The best way I can explain my thoughts is to picture God as a giant, beautiful painting. Religion would be like looking at this beautiful painting so closely, that all you can see is the harsh colors, straight lines and hard edges, nothing is very clear and you're blind to what the painting actually is. I personally believe that all religions are just looking at different pieces of the same painting a little too closely.

And if my explanation isn't enough; here it is visually, with the help of Paint.


As you can see, each lifelike stick figure (thank you) represents a religion looking way too closely at things and arguing about what they see - when really all they see is the same damn thing. They just need to back it up a notch. I guess if I did have to pick a religion, you can probably tell from that picture I'm more of a Buddhist than anything else.

So can we stop talking about it now and move on to more important things like WTF MCDONALDS!? Can you believe the citizens in the good ol' U.S. of A. have gone without knowing the sweet delight of a Cadbury McFlurry as Canada (yes Canada, I forgot they were up there too..except for J, who was the one that made me aware of the existence of the Cadbury McFlurry. Show off.) Canada, of all places, lives it up, Cadbury ice cream style, at every local McDonalds??? That has to be some kind of sin or at least a misdemeanor of some sort. I don't know what it is exactly but it's something not good and it needs to be stopped. That I know for sure.

A House By The Beach With A Side Of Hammocks and Flip Flops. Order up!

There's a movie called Fools Rush In with Selma Hayek and Matthew Perry and Selma Hayek's character believes that there are 'signs' out there that help us out everyday - we just have to be open to see it. For example, if you're deciding whether or not to go to Las Vegas or Hawaii, and later you bump into a pineapple rushing off to work, or you walk out of the bathroom and see a flowery lei trailing from your shoe. It's a subtle sign you should go to Hawaii.

I'm believe in signs to a certain extent - and I always thought I'd be able to catch subtle signs for certain things and run with it but I just realized that for me to catch a 'subtle sign' it's going to have to be as subtle as hitting me over the head with a sledgehammer and causing some blunt trauma. (OMg run-on sentence like a mofo right?)

Let me hold your hand and walk you through my story - pick your feet up, the carpet's a little sticky...

I'm sure you guys have all heard about that 'dream job' in Australia that was all over the internet and radio this week. If not, let me tell you about this 'job' - basically an Australian tourist company is looking for a 'island caretaker' to stay in a 3 bedroom house on an island by the Australian barrier reef for 6 months. You have to do really hard work such as snorkel, dive, feed the fish, take pictures, check the mail on occasion and then blog about your experience. For your hard hard work, you will be paid 150,000 for the 6 months that you are there.
Sounds grueling right?

When I first saw it on the internet, I kind of chuckled because just the other day I was telling viking hubs about how I wish someone would just hire me to sit around on the beach. Then later, when I was driving the munchkin to school, I briefly pondered about applying but figured they would probably be looking for someone with some kind of journalist background or at least a degree in English. (I know what you're thinking - you mean, the writer of the world renowned Fan letter Fridays, where in one instance I refer to Hugh Hefner's sperm as fossil dust, doesn't have a degree in English?? Shocking I know. ) So I decided to turn on the radio to drown out the voices in my head and the minute I turned it on I heard....

" the dream job in Australia is looking for all applicants, the only requirement is to have a sense of adventure and the ability to blog about your experiences...."

They were talking about it on morning radio and I thought, hmm, well that answered my question! I got home and I received several emails from friends telling me about the dream job, but again, after looking at my email - I went straight to Facebook to poke people and send them fake drinks so they can get fake drunk.

I know. I'm a brick with the word 'Duh' spray painted on it. Don't tell me things I already know okay? Now stop interrupting and let me wrap this up....

Finally, the sledge hammer sign came when I checked the mail and saw this:


A random free DVD about The Australian Barrier Reef!! Seriously. It was one of those, here's a free sample and check out our other DVDs about Rome, Alaska, the Caribbean, etc. But the free sample dvd was about The Australian Barrier Reef!

Sledgehammer sign swings, hits and my brick head shattered to pieces.

I'm fully aware that this could be a coincidence and that thousands of other people probably got this same DVD on the same day, I know this. But still....even for a brick head like me, that's too many signs in one day to ignore. I checked to see if you can take your family and you can, but there's a max on how many people you can take (there's only three of us - so we're good) and the cost for the additional tickets are not covered. So that's it. I'm applying. It can't hurt to try right?

And just between you and me, I've been having secret nightly discussions with God (I bring the coffee, he brings the donuts - and I don't have to tell you they're heavenly. Ba dum dum. - sorry, couldn't help myself.) ever since we decided that we have to (HAVE TO) move to Missouri - I've been, on the sly, begging G-dawg for some kind of miracle to happen to where we wouldn't have to move there right away. I know it's counterproductive of me since I'm also trying to be at peace with the fact that I'm going to be living in Missouri, but again, this is all wishful thinking. I can't stop my wishful thinking. Wishful thinking is what I do - when I jog by houses on the beach, I imagine living in each and every one of those houses and all the fabulous dinners I would host, when I see a plane fly overhead, I imagine it's going to Italy and I'm on it, and when I see Angelina Jolie I imagine I'm Brad Pi...well you get the picture.

It just happens automatically and I don't really know which order God's actually writing down on his pad. (I'm sure most orders He just looks me and shakes his head.) I'm posting my audition video up for you all to see and vote on next week. (The company is choosing 10 candidates to interview and 1 wild card that the people - you guys - pick.)

And hey! Remember, He took our order for that trip to NY to see Madonna' right??!

Maybe He took my order again. :)

Today's Weather Forecast: RAIN

This weekend we had a nice family outing in San Diego. The hubby had to go pick up his boat from the maintenance people and we figured since we were already down there, we would partake in the deliciousness of Gus' Gyro sandwiches and pizza and take a walk by the harbor. It was a laughter filled happy happy joy joy type of a day. Our family outing started with us leaving the house at around 8:30 am and ended at around 3:30 pm, when we got home ...
..
..
.. and found that it was RAINING in our kitchen.

For a minute, I thought the dog took the biggest piss ever recorded in dog history. The dog, who knew our sorry asses would look to him for blame, was huddled in the farthest corner of the living room, not wanting to be involved in the second coming of Noah's Ark that was happening in our kitchen.
The hubster went to our upstairs bathroom and found a toilet waterfall.

The culprit?

The floaty thingy inside the toilet got stuck when someone (I) had flushed it that morning before we left. As a result, eau de toilet water (CLEAN water, thank god) floweth everywhere and had been flowing since that morning.

Fabulous.

Meanwhile, I was downstairs trying to get the girl to get out of the kitchen.

"OOoh! Momma! Look! It's raining momma! Wow!"

Wow indeed.
At least she was trying to make it a positive experience.

The girl was eventually lured away with a episode of Charlie and Lola and a bag of gummies worms. She was easy.
Cleaning up the kitchen however, was not.
We cleaned up Lake Mead with the some towels and a sponge mop and called the water damage fellows to "assess" the damage.
By assess, we meant LOOK at the damage and tell us what's up. But apparently, water damage is a "emergency" deal lest your house turns all moldy and the other houses around the area shun it for its disgusting appearance. Oh and the fact that mold can be detrimental to your health, can cause asthma like symptoms, vomiting, blah blah blah...
They began demolishing our ceiling and ripping out the carpet upstairs. I was forced to finally clean the cluttered closet downstairs because water had gotten in there too. I found a thriving community of dust bunnies, old pictures, videotapes and random bits of baby clothing, all living together in harmonious disarray. It also served as a reminder that, while I keep my pack rat tendencies in check, clearly I still needed help. Why was I saving a videotape of "Elvis & Me"...???? (recorded off of the TELEVISION..when I was in Jr. high thankyouverymuch.) Especially when I had bought the DVD off of ebay 5 years ago? (Bad actor playing Elvis but good movie, even better book! But that's another post for another time).

So here I am, sitting under a ceiling with plastic over it, resting my feet on my carpet that has plastic over it as well with my daughter asleep in her little baby cot in our room, since her room has been skinned. I'm been hearing the hum and buzz of fans and humidifiers since this weekend.

I'm going to crack soon.

My homeowner's insurance adjuster is coming out today to check out the wreck that is our house. On a positive note, they could pay for everything and our house could end up looking better than ever! I mean, we did need some new carpet upstairs and we hated our popcorn ceiling and had been meaning to get that done as well.

So really, this is just God giving me exactly what I wanted right? Even though getting the floaty thing in the toilet to get stuck while we were out was a very creative way of delivering me my goods, I figured he was probably just bored this weekend. Wife was probably out of town for business, nothing on t.v., didn't feel like looking up random stuff on the internet and what not.

Yeah. That's probably what happened.

So...
how was YOUR weekend??