8-year old forced to eat organic macaroni & cheese

We just bought a 15 pack of Annie's shells and cheese at Costco. Yes. I am THAT kind of mom. I just cannot stand to give him a chemical lunch. Sorry, Kraft, but that stuff is just nasty. Adding milk and butter does not make it more like real cheese. It is my general rule to outlaw foods whose ingredients I cannot identify nor pronounce. And unfortunately, the stuff you and I probably grew-up on has been outlawed from the Tipton house since last year.

Apparently, the Onion knows me. Check this out.

thanks, Craigslist

In making room for Luke to come and live with us, my office had to move. My corner desk hogged a lot of the room that is now Luke's bedroom and we felt pretty strongly that he needed to have a space all to himself.

So, thanks to some pretty good sales on craigslist, we were able to convert my office. We moved my office into our bedroom and now I can actually say that I have a sanctuary for a room (yes, even with a home office in there). I love our bedroom. It cost us very little and saved us so much room. Of course, hitting the PB clearance for desperately needed new bedding, helped the transformation. I found that we spend a lot of time in our room, now.

SJP in MY MALL!

So, like, the coolest thing to happen to Stoneridge Mall in... well, ever... happened this past week. SJP was at Macy's and I missed it! My friend sent me this camera phone photo when it was too late for me to rush over there to catch a glimpse. I am not a star-struck weirdo; I have loved SATC forever and I have been an SJP fan since Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

As Justin said, "Wow, that would be like me meeting Mark Hamel, but for you!" See? He got it.

shout outs make me smile... SQUEE!

One of my nearest and dearest gave me a shout-out on her oh-so-clever blog, 8junebugs.com. It makes me happy she likes my work, although I think our 14 year friendship might be clouding her judgment. She loves to
blog/write/edit/give her opinion on anything; so it seemed like a gift that would keep on giving.

so totally disappointed

You may remember that I have been training since the end of February to walk in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer marathon. It was this weekend... And I couldn't walk! A few days before the walk I realized that my feet weren't just hurting from all the training walks, but that something was terribly wrong when I found it difficult to put my weight on my left foot. I went to a podiatrist who was the bearer of bad news - planter faciitis and tendonitis. Even though I was cast as the lame gimpy teammate, I was determined to at least get all of my donations in and support my wonderful team. I joined them on Friday and returned home on Saturday - feeling a pretty upset about the whole thing, but realizng that wincing with each step is not a good thing.

Mitiz's Mammories did the full 39 miles! I am so proud of them. Together, we raised almost $20,000 - which is amazing.

Mitzi's Mammories (from left) are: Donna, Roger, Me, Emily, Melissa, Kim, Karen, Becci & Paul.

a comeback that makes me wince

My first love was Joey McIntyre of NKOTB. I made Tommy go through a sea of chicks (which landed him a date, by the way) to get me tickets to their concert. I'll have you know I was one hot 6th grader sporting an LA Gear white denim skirt, the matching half jacket and a side pony. Oh I rocked the 80s, baby. I had older sisters to help me with the trends.


I finally got around to checking out Summertime on YouTube. There's a part of me that wished I left it at the small segment I saw on Best Week Ever, now. My childhood feels a little shattered. There's something about seeing Donnie, Joey, Jordan, Jon and Danny get overtly sexual that just doesn't work for me. They all looked a tad lecherous, as we know they are fathers, married, 35 and older skanking it up with 18-20ish women in the video. Seeing Joey stroke the arm of bikini-clad squirmer and singing about feeling her "soaking wet" body made my nose crinkle all on its own. It just doesn't work. It's not sexy, at all. Just weird.

And what is with Donnie over-describing clothing? "Flip-flops, half shirts, short shorts, miniskirt, strapless sundress..." Besides lame songwriting, what is that all about? It sounds like he's a few potatoes short of clothing stew. In general, I am not a Wahlberg family fan - ever since Marky Mark glared at me the day before my wedding because I dared to look at him I just can't seem to like either of them. They look a lot alike and this grudge runs deep. So there.

I WILL say that Joey is still the cutest. That means all you Joey-lovers from '88, like me, have great taste. They are still hiding Danny in the videos... Poor guy! Check out the video, if you're tough enough... (Oh oh oh oh oh OH!)