Life With Frenchie

Actually, it’s more like Planes, Planes, and Planes! 

A few weeks ago, EP & I booked a spur-of-the-moment trip to Las Vegas for the end of April. Since then, we have found a crapload of deals for all the destinations that we have to go to this year — trip to visit family in DC in June, EP has another trip to Las Vegas in June for cousin’s 50th b-day, trip to NY in July for friend’s wedding, trip to Boston area sometime this fall for MOH wedding, trip(s) to GA this May for niece and cousin’s high school graduations - will drive unless get a Spirit $8 deal on this.

So here’s what we just got:

1) 3 one-way tix to DC for June trip @ $54 each
2) 1 one-way tix to Las Vegas from DC for EP @ $99
3) 1 one-way tix back to Tampa from DC for me @ $54
4) 1 one-way tix back to Tampa from DC for MM (she’s staying for all of June until July 4) @ $61
5) 1 round-trip tix from Tampa to NYC in July @ $0 for me using my SkyMiles

We just found out one of his probable groomsmen is getting married this August, in DC, so that just added another trip for at least 2 of us. This means, we have left to purchase:

6) 1 one-way tix to Tampa from Las Vegas for FH
7) 1 round-trip tix from Tampa to NYC for FH
2-3 round-trip tix from Tampa to DC in August
9) 2 round-trip tix from Tampa to Boston this fall
OY!! This is not a good year for us to decide to fly our arses off! Needless to say, I will have lots of trips to blog about!

Oh goodness! I almost forgot! I have my AVON Walk for Breast Cancer the first weekend in October. I’m going to go cry now…

This weekend, at the mall, I went to Auntie Annie’s to get pretzels for MM & me. I always ask for plain - no butter, no salt. When I got there, there were 4 girls working - 1 ringing up purchases, 1 bagging the stuff, and 2 making pretzels. The one bagging said they didn’t have any that didn’t have butter but she asked the one girl standing at the oven what was baking. It turned out they were baking pretzel sticks so she offered me those. I’m not so picky where I can’t just pick off the salt or wipe off the butter if that’s the only kind they have, but given the option, I’ll take the already plain pretzel. But, I had somewhere to be so I couldn’t wait around long. When I asked her how long, she kindly turned around and asked the same girl how much longer they had.

I swear the girl’s (the one by the oven) eyes made a complete revolution in her head! OMG! I could not believe how completely obvious she made it that we were interrupting her standing around to ask her a question about her job!!! I mean, all three of us - the cashier, the bagger, and myself - were looking right at her with no more than 15 feet separating us and she just rolled her eyes! WTF is wrong with people these days? It was a simple question that took, at most, 4 syllables to answer! The worst part was, this was just shortly after they opened. My God! If she was like this at the start of the day, I’d hate to see how she was by the end.

I just hate poor customer service and when they make it obvious that I am imposing upon them by asking them to do their job, it makes me even more upset.

Ugh! I’m still upset over it!

I was so excited about the deals I found at Ross & Marshall Friday that I forgot about the lady who looked like she might have wanted to kill me in Marshall!

While we were checking out at Ross, there were two ladies in there and one had her 3 little kids with her. The kids looked to all be under the age of 4. The scene was like something out of a sitcom because the mom and her friend were trying to wrangle up the kids the whole time while shopping and paying. You constantly heard their conversations interrupted by “Sweetie, don’t do that,” or “I told you to come out from there,” etc.

When we moved on to Marshall, and within a few minutes they were there. As I was finding my Polo shirts, the mom was about 3 rows away, in my direct line of sight. From the sounds of the conversation with her kids, one was crawling under and through the racks of clothing. As I looked up, there was another lady in the same aisle with her, pretty much next to the mom and kids. You could tell from the look on her face that she was not happy! I pray that she doesn’t have grandkids because she seemed more like the witch in Hansel & Gretel than a grandmother type. It got to the point where they needed to exchange places because the two were moving in opposite directions down the row.

At this point, I guess the kids were in the way because all I heard was mom saying “I’m sorry..” and she was very sweet and polite about it. It was not enough for the witch though because she just rolled her eyes and looked like she wanted to stick them all in her oven! I couldn’t help it, but I just started to laugh out loud and couldn’t stop. Well, that didnt’ make the witch any happier! She snapped her head up and shot evil looks in my direction. I gave her a polite smile and tried not to laugh anymore but it was too late. I just kept laughing and chuckling (I’m sure the people in my aisle thought I was off my meds!) and she kept formulating a recipe for my trip to her oven! I finally had to just walk away and continue my search later because I was afraid she was going to pull some Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon move and leap over the racks to get me!

I have never been quite as amused at the “suffering” of others before and apparently, the witch wasn’t as amused as I was. What a great shopping trip! Bargains and entertainment all in one trip!

Who doesn’t love a deal?!?! Today, after scooping up EP from the house, we went to lunch and then to run some errands. Part of those errands was to find some pants for EP. We stopped by Ross and I ended up finding a pair of Lee Relaxed Fit jeans for $7. Score! After not finding anything that really tickled his fancy, EP and I headed on over to Marshalls. I found another pair of the exact same jeans I had just gotten at Ross, only for $10. This was not quite as exciting as the first find, but still very good. So far, $80 in jeans for $17. While EP was trying on some pants, I wandered over to the tops. I had to surgically remove myself from that area after discovering a whole slew of Ralp Lauren tops for under $20!!!! In all, I came out of Ross & Marshalls with two pairs of jeans and five Ralph Lauren tops, including a sweater, for just over $100! And to think, I was excited last week when Winn Dixie had their Raisin Bran Crunch (and yes, the commercials are accurate - you can’t hear poop while chewing that cereal!) BOGO and I came home with four boxes! :shrug:

I think I found a new addiction boys & girls….when’s the next payday?

My friend Colleen is the one who got me started blogging. She is this really cool, sassy, and HI-larious chick! I always find myself chuckling or shaking my head when I read her blog. In certain aspects, she’s so much like me in some ways, it’s scary. I guess that’s why I get so amused by her. But there was no way I was expecting what I read today on her blog! Actually, I had seen a hint of it in an earlier post of hers that left me scratching my head and getting a little scared, but I totally forgot about it and was just floored when I read this entry:

Alternate Title For Post: Why Colleen will always wash new clothes from now on.

Let me preface this by saying if you are:

Easily offended
Easily grossed out
Have a rotten sense of humor
Stop reading NOW and go elsewhere.

The rest of you still with me? Good…you’re going to enjoy this story! It all started a month ago, before my trip to Amsterdam. I decided to head to the after Christmas sale at the Old Navy in my town and get new pants for the trip. I found two pairs (same style, different colors) on sale and after trying on one pair, bought them and took them home.

I am not a “wash clothes before I wear them” type of person. Well, I am now, but I didn’t used to be that way. In fact, I’ve made fun of my husband on more than one occasion because he would wash brand new clothes that had obviously never even been tried on! I saw it a waste of time, especially when you could see the crease marks in a brand new shirt, or the pants still had the tages and size sticker attached.

So I head home from Old Navy with my new pairs of pants - the green pair I tried on in the store, and the brown pair in the same size that I didn’t try on. A few days later, I put the pants on so that I could head out. I had the pants on all of 10 minutes before deciding I should hit the toilet before leaving the house…just like I tell my kids, you always potty before you go out. As I sit down on the can, pants down around my knees, I noticed something odd in the crotch area of the inside of the pants……

From there, the story just gets funnier (grosser?? scarier??), but nonetheless, I was absolutely speechless! I can’t even imagine what the heck I’d do if that had happened to me! EP would probably still be laughing at me days later and I’d have developed something akin to a nervous twitch because I’d give an involuntary shudder everytime I thought about!! :shudder:

No wonder Old Navy has such great bargains!

Apparently, Target’s ad execs are old farts who don’t really think things through when creating new campaigns or designing billboards. Either that, or they’re just as sick and twisted as most of us who look at this and think of just one thing! C’mon, don’t tell me you don’t see it!! This person certainly did:

Yup. we’re ready for it. Ready for everyone to tell us we’re reading way, way too much into this Target billboard that places a certain area of a woman’s body highly targeted by men right in the middle of its signature target logo. But you can’t tell us not a single soul at Target or its agency looked at this and didn’t see a certain interpretation that could be construed as objectifying to women. There’s just no way.
Would it have been that hard to place the image of the woman so her upper body was in the middle of the target rather than her…um…crotch? Seriously. Perhaps the initial concept had her playfully face down in a pile of snow emblazoned with her ass in the middle of the Target logo but someone at Target said, “We don’t do doggy style at our organization. Flip her over please.”

I love it when I find a great deal, even when grocery shopping. This evening, we were at Sweetbay and I had a coupon for tampons. Imagine my surprise when Tampax was on sale for $1.56 and I had a coupon for $0.50 off!!! They were being discontinued or something so this wasn’t going to happen again. It was such a good deal, I didn’t just buy 1 box - I bought 5! LOL By the time I found what I wanted, EP had moved on to find his bacon (it was on sale 2 for $4.00, that meant he was buying about 10!!!) so I had to walk around carrying 5 boxes of tampons and a bag of pads looking for the buggy. As I turn the corner, there’s this couple who were probably in their teens with one of their dads. They just looked at me like I had 2 heads and I could barely see over my stack! But hey, I got a great deal!!

Seriously, I can feel that invisible someone standing over me with a drill to my skull! They are trying to drill down, through my skull, and out my nasal passage. That’s exactly how it feels! I am pretty sure I know the cause of the headache - stress!

I have been going crazy trying to get Mommy’s Christmas present. I wasn’t sure what to get her, but once I figured out what the perfect gift would be, I had to find one in my budget and get it to her. Unfortunately, the finding didn’t happen until this morning around 7:30 AM. She was kind enough to say she didn’t need to have her gift in her possession by Christmas Day, but I still had to face the UPS store this afternoon. It wasn’t as bad as I thought though, so the last long distance present has been sent and as an added bonus, I found the perfect card for someone!

Tonight, I have my jewelry party…finally. EP has been awesome in getting the house put back together over the past two days. He finished the painting and cleaned up a whole bunch. I helped some with the furniture moving and putting books back on the bookshelf and weeding out the trash last night, but there was still work to be done today in the kitchen, so EP came through bigtime by volunteering to clean up the kitchen for me today so I didn’t have to do it last night. All that’s left is stopping by the store to get a veggie tray and then making to the house on time! Wish me luck!!

On a sadder note, EPs grandfather passed away today. He has been sick for a while and this was expected, but it is still sad. I only got the chance to meet him twice but he was such a wonderful person, even if he was not the same person that EP grew up knowing. I feel so badly for his family during this time and I wish there were more I could do, but I just don’t know what to do. We’re not going over there right away. EP has decided that we will wait until the funeral to make the trip, so we will be heading to the other coast in the next few days to be with his family.

I can’t believe there are only 11 days left until Christmas! I haven’t even opened the Christmas cards, much less signed and mailed them! Also, for some crazy reason, I’m hosting a jewelry party at my house next week, so EP and I are going to be painting like mad folk over the weekend to get that done in time. Hmm…what else can I add to this crazy schedule? Oh yeah, let’s count them off:

1. Christmas parade with Girl Scout troop
2. Birthday party for MM to attend (which means shopping for card and gift)
3. Neighbor’s Christmas party to attend
4. EP’s comedian friend is in town performing this weekend, so dinner and show with him
5. Girl Scout Cookie meeting (YAY! Almost cookie time!!!)
6. Jewelry party
7. Painting
8. Finish Christmas shopping (must get away from EP to buy the last of his gifts)
9. Send Christmas cards
10. Finish client project (not very Christmas-y but, alas, it must be done *le sigh*)

I’m sure there’s tons of things I haven’t covered, but I still feel swamped.

But, it is Christmas time and I LOVE this time of year! We got the tree up this week and it’s gorgeous. We normally go to Home Depot for their trees because their prices are great! Imagine our surprise when we couldn’t find any HD trees this year! We first went to the relatively new HD by the house. There wasn’t even a tent up. We gave them the benefit of the doubt that the store was still new so they weren’t doing it this year. We then drove to the other HD we normally shop at. They had a tent - an empty tent! I talked to my friend who works there and she said that corporate office orders the trees and only ordered 1 shipment for the store! WTF?!?! We ended up going to one of those random lots where the trees are crazy expensive. Our tree was about $20 more than normal. But, I must say, it’s GORGEOUS! I LOVE our tree!

Christmas presents that I’ve ordered have also started arriving. Of course, I’m going to put off wrapping until the last minute. I mean, hey, my life wouldn’t be complete if I actually did things in advance!

So, to close this randomness, I have to figure out how to answer the whole “Is Santa real?” question for MM. Last night was her school’s Winter Wonderland. As a part of the festivities, they had Santa & Mrs. Clause there for pictures. I reminded MM that she had yet to give me her letter to Santa and she started to tell me that some of her friends told her Santa’s not real. I asked her what she thought and she said that she believes Santa is dead and it’s his brothers and sons that do the work for him! Part of me laughs at that, the other part of me wants to say “He’s not real! It’s me & EP that are buying the presents!” I distracted her long enough with my questions that she forgot that I had yet to answer her question about whether Santa existed, but I’m not sure how long I can stall! Any suggestions?

A few weeks back, MM and I went to a Girls’ Night Out BINGO sponsored by our Girl Scout Neighborhood. MM really raked it in winning lots of stuff, including a mother-daughter hair style appointment. We went two weekends ago to the salon and both just got our hair trimmed. I should have known the place was trouble when they weren’t really ready to handle “ethnic” hair. Unlike my experience in Connecticut, the stylist did not try to say they don’t blow dry “curly” hair. She was simply upset that the girl who made the appointments did not find out anything about our hair type, length, etc. and only booked us for 30 minutes each to get our hair washed, trimmed, and blown out. The appointments started at noon and we had to be in Tampa by 4. Plenty of time, right? WRONG! We were in there for 3 hours!! Still, the lady did a good job on my hair (the trainee who booked the appointments had to blow out MM’s hair which is what took the other 2+ hours) so I scheduled an appointment for this evening to get the color done on my hair in time for our office Christmas party tomorrow.

Well, you know me. I am very bad about remembering things that aren’t written down, so I called today to find out exactly what time my appointment was for this evening. That’s when the girl on the phone said “Oh, we don’t have an appointment down for you.” Now, this was not a case of me thinking I had called to make an appointment somewhere and I actually forgot. No! I was standing there with the stylist looking at times. So what happened? Apparently, the stylist wrote it down for next week! UGH! That does me no good! The girl on the phone started to say something, but I wasn’t too concerned. I just told her “Well, that’s no good because I need it tonight. Just cancel my appointment. Thank you. Bye.” *click* I imagine the girl was sitting there with a “What a bee-otch” look on her face. Not my problem.

Luckily, the nice lady at the mall who regularly saves MM’s hair from being burnt off by my own doing has time for me tonight. So, what color will my hair be in about 7 hours?? Hmmmm…