Merica' Season!

Yesterday was the kick off to my favorite season of the year.  Merica' Season! It's the tri-fecta of holidays starting with Memorial Day, peaking at 4th of July and ending the season with Labor Day.  What's not to like? Red, White and Blue themes, BBQs, floating in the pool, fresh fruits and veggies, fireworks, and lazy summer days. 

I'm pretty excited to be back in Michigan for these holidays.  Mostly because of my parents pool.  I just love that thing.  I'm usually the first person in, and last person to leave.  Yesterday, I was pretty pumped that Charlotte is also a water baby.  Every time we tried to get her out of the pool she'd scream, "no, no, noooooooo!!" I loved it.  She spent a good 30 minutes with a plastic cup on the steps pouring water in and out. 

This year my favorite part of the warm weather season... Salty Dogs.  I first had this cocktail in San Francisco at Delerosa.  It's fabulous and super easy to drink.  Pretty easy to get carried away with.  Here is the recipe:
2 oz Vodka
1 1/2 oz St Germain (Elderflower Liqour)
3 oz of Grapefruit juice
Salt

Rim the glass by placing the lid of the cup in grapefruit juice (I like to use fresh squeezed) then roll in salt.  Fill the glass with ice and the ingredients, stir and enjoy.

A Shit Storm

Everyday lately, has had some kind of ridiculous plot twist.  Right when I think things are going to go back to boring, something happens.  Here is the run down:

First off, my previous blog was deleted completely.  Gone.  After numerous calls to customer support, with very conflicting answers, it's apparent that it has been swallowed up by cyber space.  Lesson learned, backup blog posts.

Next up, we are smack dab in the middle of the worst construction zone ever.  To be fair, the main road outside of our house needed the work.  The winter vortex created some craters, and for the sake of all tires out there, it needed to be fixed.  But man, Ann Arbor, get you're shit together.  Why two northbound lanes and no southbound lane? Then on top of it, a twenty minute detour to go southbound.  Which is never just 20 minutes because a billion people are taking it all the time.   It makes me, and every person whose been stuck on Scio Church Rd for 45 minutes at 3:30, irrationally angry.  This situation was supposed to be over at the end of August, but of course that isn't happening.  Nope, it's going to extend into football season.  This is going to force me to buy a bike cart, so I can ride back and forth from Whole Foods to deliver water, food and alcohol to my neighbors.

On top of this, we got the appraisal done on the house, and it's significantly lower than the asking price.  An appeal has been filied, but it would be miraculous if they found 20k + in value. On the bright side, this might be our chance to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records; Worst Investment Ever.  Hopefully the sellers lower the price, if not, we're going to have to walk away.  Forcing us to start this whole process over again. Crap.

A few weeks ago, we had a tornado warning. We live on the second floor of our condo complex, so there is no basement to hide out in.  Instead, we found shelter in the bathroom.  Nothing like being in a 5 square foot area with a 20 month old, a toilet, two dogs and a plunger.  This clearly didn't last long, so we took refuge in the hallway.

My life summed up in one photo: Penny humping Annie and Charlotte watching Frozen.

Moving right along, Charlotte is going through another weird developmental phase.  Normally, she gives me a good 2 to 3 hour nap everyday.  That's not happening this week.  Instead of my normal mental patient, I've got a violent, mischievous, mental patient.  She's been spending a lot of time in time out.  I'm not totally convinced she gets that time out is a punishment.  At one point, I watched her stick her hand in the dog water dish, stop mid pool party, and then proceeded to put herself in time out.  This same day, she SLAPPED me because I wouldn't let her put flour all over the family room.  The slap got a very large, dramatic reaction, which caused 45 minutes of crying.  Lame.

The silver lining is the whole month hasn't been constant shit rain, there have been some sunny spots too.  Charlotte's finally started to talk.  I got to watch her realize that fish live in water, and see her mind blown.  We had our 6 year anniversary, Mother's Day, and went to a beautiful wedding of a dear friend.

I keep trying to keep in mind that things could obviously be worse.  None of these problems are bad problems to have.  They are just problems that make you think about drinking at 6 am, while you're blowing bubbles at your kid in the kitchen.  If you maybe copy pasted my past blog posts, please send them my way.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day peeps.  I've just completed my second Mother's Day.  I can't remember the first one, but I was informed earlier today that Andy was on call for it.  This year was different.  Andy was home, Charlotte got me a card, (her penmanship is very advanced, and has a striking reassembles to Andy's) I had a lovely breakfast, we watched Frozen, there was napping and homemade bread and soup.  It was perfect.  The very best gift I received, Andy cleaned my car.  Inside and out.  You wouldn't believe the amount of cheddar bunnies.  I mean I could feed the homeless with some left over.

I've realized over the past almost 20 months of being "Charlotte's Mommy" and not Victoria (Hey, I'm a person too), that children's music is the worst music on the planet.  With that being said, I'd also like to use this post as an open letter to the director of torture at Gitmo.  This music is repetitive, has terrible lyrics and the worst ones get into you head for DAYS.  When it finally gets out of you head, you hear it again and the process starts all over.  And, if I'm hungry on top of that... Hell, what do you want to know? I'll tell you anything, just to never hear dancing with teddy ever again.  Sometimes I'll have dancing with teddy in my head, than Charlotte starts crying or has a tantrum, and I think, the song will disappear, it doesn't, so it's time for a drink, but it's 7:30 am, and we get to go to music class. ::F!::  Gitmo, screw water boarding.  Starve inmates, put on dancing with teddy alternating with bells horses and baby screaming.  People will break in less than a half hour. 

At least, Sesame Street will put cleaver lyrics to popular songs, Icona Pop, I love it.  Sesame Street writers, you are a gift to parents and children.  Please never stop. Ever.

On top of crappy music, I've now realized that my life revolves around poop.  In the mornings, Penny licks me until I take her out to poop.  She gets on that pretty fast, but then we have to wait for Annie to poop.  Then after that I have to make sure Charlotte poops.  On top of that I get to clean up all three of their poops.  Then, we have special moments when the dogs roll in poop.  I read one time, that they do this to smell better to attract a mate.  Guess what ladies, you don't have any junk, stop rolling in shit.  It happened on Thursday, 45 mins before a friend's arrival.  Both dogs got a bath, and Penny's midwest poof got cut off in the tub because I couldn't get the poop out.  What the hell is happening in my life? In sex ed class, show a picture of a poopy diaper, hemorrhoids, and herpes, no one will have unprotected sex after that.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty happy Charlotte can call me her Mama, and it's super cute when she run towards me and gives me a big bear hug.  That is why we do the stuff we do, but I just wish there was less poop.

Let's Buy a House

Andy and I are knee deep in the home-ownership process.  Which is not easy what-so-ever.  I always felt like owning our own home was an impossible dream.  Especially after living in the Bay Area, where a mill could buy you a nice shack in East Palo Alto.  (M.A.S.H. coming true!) I've been stalking homes for months now, but there is nothing like a real estate agent to throw some things at you that you've never found of zilliow.

I've watched SO many episodes of Kitchen Cousins, Cousins On Call, Property Brothers, etc. to know that; 1. open concept houses are a MUST in this day and age, and 2. you can always rip down a wall and add a back splash.  But, it's just so hard for me to visualize.  Sure, I know you can change a wall color, but knocking walls out and moving cabinets, I've got nothing.  How the hell am I supposed to pick a house? And THEN do something to the kitchen, bathroom, etc.  I don't know.  Call Cousins on Call? I'd need some kind of super cool/sad story.  I've got nothing.  Adorable family of three wanting their first home? Classic.  Everyone is doing that now a days. Ellen won't even give me a second look.

Living in California, has also made me a complete skeptic about how much space we actually need.  Space = junk.  But, what's better for re-sale?  What if I only want three bedrooms? I don't know. Aren't most families 2.5 kids and a dog? I have 1.5 kids (.5 for personality) and 2 dogs.  Sure, we'd love to expand the Powie clan, and I should definitely have a bedroom for said spawn, but what will happen to it in the mean time? Storage room for Charlotte's Mardi Gras beads and Little People? Most likely.

These days, life just seems so unpredictable, I have no clue what will be important to me in say, a year.  I know at this point, I need laundry facilities in the house, a dishwasher, at least two bedrooms, and a way to play Frozen.  That's all I got.  Will things be different in a year, absolutely.

The problem is, the market is on an up-swing.  A big up-swing.  We've dropped everything to look at a house that will go in a day with 11 offers.  We've looked at houses that back up to a garbage hill covered in grass, with multiple offers.  We looked at a house that had been on the market for a week, the only question going through our heads, what's wrong? No A.C. that's what's wrong.  This was not a problem for my husband, but he's never been pregnant in the summer.

A few weeks ago, I was at a bachelorette party and got an email from our realtor for a house, in our price range, in an area we liked, that looked well kept and had the things we were looking for.  Andy and Charlotte get on that.  He loved it, we put offer in.  Offer is denied.  Then a miracle happens, the original buyer gets cold feet.  The houses is ours pending inspection.  Yup, a house I've never stepped foot into.  Eeep!

Yesterday, I finally got to see the house.  It's the perfect little starter home.  The previous owners were on top of it in terms of maintenance.  It's a corner lot, and a 4 bedroom! We are going to need to hit up Ikea, big time.  It could use a little work, but overall, it's move in ready.  We even have a green bathtub.  Giddy-up.

So if you're awesome at tearing out cabinets and putting in wood floors, hit me up.  Or if you find $10,000 on the floor, along with a giant slab or granite.  Maybe you'd like me to work for you.  I'm good at crafts and cookies.  I also tell jokes.