So what do you give the kid that has everything??

The only day over the Thanksgiving Holiday I ventured out was Friday morning (and no early crap for me, we didn't go until like, 11am.)

Giz wanted to spend some of her money at Build A Bear, and Firstborn had his eye on a game at Best Buy, and they both wanted to go out for Mexican food at our favorite restaurant (they were so over turkey) - so I interrupted my mission clean out briefly to traverse to the other side of town to the (GASP!!) Mall....

I also had promised to take Gizmo to see Santa, so we decided (after getting a relatively and surprisingly good parking place) to do that first before hitting the designated destinations.

The line wasn't too bad, and we only had to wait about 15-20 minutes for her turn. The Santa at our Mall had a real beard and seemed to take a genuine interest in the kids.

So Giz gets up and gets her picture made (very cute) and then proceeds to have her discussion with Santa. However, this seemed to take quite awhile, and Santa gave her a big hug and an extra cookie.

???

I asked Gizmo what the heck did she have to talk about with Santa for so long? What on Earth did she ASK for???

"A Clock Radio"

That's it?? Just a plain ol' clock radio??

"Yep"

"...and he promised to bring me lots and LOTS of wonderful surprises!!"

SIGH.

I did NOT see THAT coming.

Reverse psychology from a five year old...

Pageant continued!!

Well we ran back to hair and makeup after Beauty, feeling very confident Gizmo had done her personal best...

Well, h/m lady started working on Gizmo's hair, and the fall...well, it just FELL.

The curl just died.

She sent me back to the room to see if she could work with any of our additional hairpieces while she worked on Giz in the meantime for Christmas wear! Well, I got to the room and my key wouldn't work!! and line up was in 30 minutes!! so I called Firstborn on the phone - no answer - do I run to the lobby? Try again. No answer. Try one more time... Success!! So I frantically stammered on the cell for Firstborn to hurry up and bring his key to the room to get me in! Well, now Firstborn has not one fast twitch fiber in his entire mollecular structure. So by the time he got there, we lost another 10 minutes!! So I busted into the room grabbed clothes and hair pieces and ran back up two floors and all the way to the other end of the hotel with all the needed equipment... 15 minutes to go and still no hairdo... I pulled out about 3 hairpieces, first too short, second too curly, third not right... 10 minutes and now I'm panicking and h/m lady is trying to figure out what the heck to do... well, h/m lady's daughter pipes up "what about the puppy ears you used to do on me??" perfect... now we're down to 5 minutes and she's just now getting Gizmo's hairdo in play... ARRRRGGHHHH $800 down the drain over a $150 hair failure.... I just sat down and shut the hell up at that point and set to grinding the enamel off my teeth.... So now it's exactly line up time and we're still in h/m.

She juuuuust finished in time for us to BOLT down to the stage area which happened to be 4 floors and 1/8 of a mile from where we were momentarily located. I was freaking out, but Gizmo thought it was again, all great fun....

We got into lineup just in time behind two girls ahead of her.

WHEW

And she again, did an awesome job - I was incidentally very irritated that the director emphasized NO extra moves for christmas wear modeling, and there were kids doing all kinds of cutesy stuff all over the place. GRRR.

...Next up. Outfit of choice.

****************************************

Speaking of sparkle... for some reason "Mister, yeah I'll help you get the tree up if you make me" voluntarily put up the Christmas tree this past weekend, got the lights on, then proceeded to decorate the INSIDE of our house with all the extra strings of lights we've been collecting over the years. I have christmas lights around the inside of the foyer front door, all around the back doors and windows, I have the light up garland wrapped around the balcony, chili lights around the passthru between the kitchen and the living room, in the ficus tree in the foyer and we have an extra tree on the stair landing complete with lights and christmas tiaras stuck in it for decorations. Oh and there are the fiber optic snowmen and the light up nativity city on the mantle!!! I may have to one up him and get all those stinkin' light up houses out and put up somewhere too.

Never mind there is nary one light on the OUTSIDE of the house.

I can't wait to get the power bill.

If I can find the cord for the digital camera I'll post pics of my husband's inner christmas coming out this year....

*************************************************

On yet another note, we made Gizmo's countdown to Christmas chain over the holidays... I felt a little guilty, here we were making a Christmas chain (one of those construction paper ring deals) all the while I was watching "little nicky" on tv.... I'm not sure why, it just struck me as wrong....

My Favorite Song ever!!!

In trying to find an mp3 of this song I found this little ditty on YouTube!



Now if I can just find a recording...

Speaking of recordings - For those hard rock fans, I highly recommend "The Heroine Diaries" by Nikki Sixx (Sixx:A.M.) I can't wait to read the book!

Saturday Continued

Happy Thanksgiving Y'all!!! I'm stuffed and we got through having my uber-hypercritical parents over for dinner... WHEW! I am so glad that's over.

Now where are those antiacids....????

***************************************************************

So anywho to continue my story just a wee bit!

1:25 So we're in lineup for beauty, and I am quite sure Gizmo could not have looked prettier! Of course I was driving her crazy making sure she was going to get that routine right, because ever since we set foot in the hotel, she appeared to have "site amnesia" and never got through it once in practice correct at the hotel.

I did feel bad about accidentally answering the phone when it rang at 1:28 - her regular modeling/charm school teacher was calling to introduce herself and tell us how much they missed Giz at modeling that day... I had to rush her off the phone and confess we were at a pageant LOL

1:30 The group lineup started on time, and Giz was dead square center in the group lineup. She looked incredible! And she was smiling her lil' butt off and never dropped it, not once. Although when the emcee came up to sing to her and I motioned for her to look at him she shook her head no. I found out later, he maybe needed some tic tacs. It's a little cheesy what he does (aka lil miss ss) but he's really a very sweet guy and the little girls adore him.

I try hard not to stress, but I now embrace it as exercise...

I swore I wouldn't get behind the judges and try to coach her from behind, what's done is done and what she's gonna do is left up to destiny. So I made sure I got over to the side so I could hoot and holler but not distract... (You have no idea how hard it is just to let them go do their thing, noooooooo idea.)

She did not disappoint me. She nailed her routine with the exception of:
1) she did fiddle with her nails for a few seconds in front of the judges
2) she was a wee bit bouncy in her walk

Other than that, she smiled the most gorgeous smile I have ever seen!!! And her modeling overall was very, very, clean - especially since she had practiced so hard and knew it herself.

I had promised her a big toy from the toy vendor at the back of the ballroom. She made me pay for that performance big time LOL.

I had so many people come up and tell me how wonderful she did. Even if she got last place, it wasn't her fault. I was as proud as I have ever been.

Off to the next events.... which didn't go quite so smoothly.......

*******************************************************

I gotta go do some serious digesting now.

:o)

We're back so why am I not in bed fast asleep??

I'm still coming down off the adrenaline-centrifical-if-I-stop-I-may-never-get-back-up path residual from this weekend's events.

Well not so bad this time, but I'm pretty convinced that the way these things are judged, if my kid walked on water, the judges would complain she can't swim.

We had a really good time as far as these things go...

We arrived at a pretty decent time Friday, even though it took longer to get on the road than originally planned - especially after picking up a prescription for my husband, dropping off the dog for boarding, getting gas, breakfast, etc.

We finally got launched around 11:30am for about a three and a half hour drive. Hubby was at the wheel and Firstborn and Gizmo were in pretty complimentary moods, so our start wasn't too stressful. It's funny how just getting on the road to someplace, anyplace, and stopping by the convenience store for a treat is super exciting for the kids (kinda like hotel pools at night, I dunno, but you can't beat it hardly in the list of things kids really want to do...) Fortunately, our drive in was pretty uneventful otherwise.

Well, when we reached the hotel, they said we had to go to a special station before we could check in, since we were with the pageant... (??) And a lady trying very hard to be pleasant handed us a very nasty waiver and a baggy explaining that if there was the suh-lightest damage to the room we would be charged insane amounts of money for the problems ($40 a sheet $100 for other offenses.) Now, I can respect if they had trouble last year...but why would the director go back if the pageant caused that much damage. I hate being guilty by association, but I've never met anyone at a pageant that wrecked a room worse than rock stars, but apparantly this is what occurred before, and we were going to be treated like the criminals we must be LOL. The hotel staff was extremely rude to us - even when I asked directions to a local Chick-fil-A the maintenance lady acted like I had asked her to take poison (did I mention we were in a heavy TOURIST town?) The girl at the front desk couldn't find my overnight package even though she looked straight at it like, five times in a row. These folks had been warned that the "pageant people" were here... it was like walking into a crowded bar and you're the worst gunslinger in the west. I don't know what was worse, the treatment by the hotel staff, or the fact that they had reason to believe we should be treated that badly. I don't know all the facts directly except what I experienced first hand, so I reckon I have to give them the benefit of the doubt.

So once we got checked in and our stuff to the room, I had to get Gizmo to her modeling lesson - it went well and halfway through my husband came running in with the christmas wear, which had been fed ex'd the night before and the hotel staff couldn't find it so he went and raised a ruckus to get it... didn't do any good because our coach decided we should go with the backup plan because she didn't care for what we had custom made. SIGH.

Next up, DINNER!! Well,not quite. We had to find a local Springmaid outlet and buy some cheap sheets just in case ANY tanner might get on the hotel sheets. (which really wasn't an issue, I just wish the director had told all of us before the pageant so we'd know to bring our own... and normally we don't have too much of a problem with tanner, but not we had the penalties to worry about, and frankly this hotel seemed to be looking for ANY excuse to charge us!!) After we picked up new sheets, pillowcases and couple of extra towels ($20 not bad...) we all went to Fridays on the main drag, and it was okay, except they didn't tell me before hand that all the liquor drinks advertised had to be made with wine, so when my drink came out a completely different color than the ad the waiter sort of mumbled something about "maybe we should have told you" and that the bar staff did "what they could"... I just sent it back and ordered a beer. I wasn't mad or anything, it was just kind of a dumb move on his part.

Back to the room, take Gizmo to tanning. The lady who did her tan was super sweet and Gizmo did wonderful. I don't know how she made any money on it, she didn't charge us much and gave Giz a small stocking loaded with toys and candy. Golden in my book if you ask me :o)

Next up, registration. Throw gobs of money at curt director (I'm guessing she was pretty tired since it was around 9pm and registration started at 2pm) in hopes that your kid will beat the odds. And NO, no sympathy expected here. I'm too old to use the "I didn't know excuse." We entered pretty much everything except the door overalls, which was just more than I could bring myself to spend after the initial fees. Registration ran pretty smoothly for a national, I will admit though.

I ended up staying up late, because after a wardrobe check with the coach I ended up having to whip stitch the skirt into the dress, and everything else had to be ironed, laid out with necessary accessories and supplies in preparation for the next day. So I didn't get to bed until about 1 a.m. Everyone else was out by 11, 12, and 12:30 respectively.

7:30 a.m.

Upsy Daisy!! Shower. Get dressed. Wake up Hubby and Firstborn. Get them rolling and into the shower etc. Run down for a pre-breakfast pick up. Send Hubby to BK for egg biscuits and juice (Gizmo HAS to have protein in the morning or she crashes bad in the afternoon and it is NOT pretty - she turns into a GREMLIN...)

10:20 Take Gizmo to hair and makeup. H/M lady has bad news. Gizmo's fall is having trouble staying put. Now I rolled that thing a week earlier, it should have been MOLDED into place. Not the hairdo we wanted, but it was pretty still. Giz was perfect for h/m but I think H/M lady wanted to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart.

10:50 back to room for snacks and rest time

11:40 back to H/M lady to have hair done.

12:45 - still not done with hair, it was not going well. Run back to room to get dress and all accessories while H/M lady is struggling to create a winner.
(All things considered, I thought Giz looked pretty awesome (should have for what I PAID LOLOL but granted, you do not always get what you pay for))

1:15 Dressed and ready to go, we go to the ballroom.

...to be continued, and I promise not to make ya'll wait this time.

Update. Maybe things will turn better...

Update!

Well, I emailed the lady who made the dress to let her know it just wouldn't work. I mean, in all fairness to her, maybe she DID do her best and just didn't get the vision LOL. Besides, I'd find out if she was legit, or not in the business to last. Well, to her credit,she did contact me, and told me if I would overnight the dress (cost $67) she would fix it. Demanded to fix it almost... Well, we'll see, because the repaired dress (another $47 to get it yet overnighted again to the Hotel tomorrow.... why cheaper for her I don't know, but I'll go with it but I really think she should have paid that shipping but at this point as much money as I am throwing out the door who am I to argue its so not worth it (and BREEEEEEATHE....)) So in trying to avoid paying $300 for a new casual wear, I basically ended up paying $300 after adding shipping and backup outfits. Anywho, live and learn. I had several leads on casual wears today, but I missed them because...

MY CELL PHONE DIED.

It didn't just die out, it came to a screeching halt in pieces. It apparently cracked at some point when I flipped the lid on it and then the antennae snapped off and was lost. So much for "military grade."

ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!

Sooooo-aaahhhh. After busting a nut (as my guys at work say) getting up and getting the house cleaned, catching up on laundry from the washing machine fiasco, trying to take calls from work on our project, walking our crazy dog (I swear he was a sled dog in a previous life), and getting ready for Gizmos photo shoot... I had to go to the mall and buy a new cell phone. And, not realizing I had voicemail with some leads about a backup plan for a casual wear, I drug poor Giz from one end of the Mall to the other looking for something suitable. Oh and did I mention, the phone ended up costing THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS??? My choices were:

a) renew my contract for another 2 years and get $75 off the phone.
b) cancel current service and go to another provider (and go through allll the sales crap and paperwork etc. when I only had a little bit of time and needed a phone NOW)
c) just pay for the phone outright and keep the strings unattached on my plan

oh, and did I mention on option a) there was a $20 reactivation fee making it only a $55 discount??

I tried every tack I could, I even marched down to Radio Shack to try and buy a refurbished phone, and don't even get me started about that ordeal.

So I just bought the dad-blamed phone. Done.

On another note, Gizmo's modeling school photo shoot went off fabulously... although I still don't think they believe me that most of her ensembles were from Wal Mart. You'd think if I could put together something swell for modeling that I could do a christmas wear at the last minute. 'Cept I lose all creative capability when I'm under extreme duress.

We ended up buying a little OTR Christmas dress and accessories at Dillards and declared the search over. Time's up - what's done is done.

The rest is up to destiny.

I'm going to need new fingernails Monday. I do not have a good feeling about this weekend now, so we're just going to try and salvage what we can of the coming weekend.

....find a happy place....find a happy place....find a happy place...

p.s.s When I went to mail the dress Wednesday, I needed packaging because I didn't consider sending the dress back and at lunchtime was going try to see if I could find an alterationist to work on it. I didn't have box or anything for shipping!! So in between two meetings I ran like a mad mofo into Walgreens kind of wild-eyed looking for shipping tape and trash bags (to protect the dress in case it got left on a porch in the rain etc.)... I'm pretty sure there's some poor clerk around thinking she just had a killer with a body in the trunk run into her store the other day....

p.s.s.s. Did I mention my iron died today too?? Just as I was trying to get Gizmo's dresses ready for her modeling shoot?

CONFIRMED: I am NOT okay

Gizmo's Christmas wear came in today.

Completely unusable.

I now have two point five days to find a great christmas casual wear for her.

I'm going to cry. A lot.

I begged the lady to get it done sooner. I ordered it over a month ago and even sent her the material myself. She basically threw it together.

I need some grace right now.

:o(

I'm FINE Really! I'm o-kay. No issues. Nope not me....

Who the hell am I kidding.

I am officially a nervous wreck.

My house is a mess.

My washing machine blew up...

...and after dragging parts and grease all over my basement and laundry room it was determined that yes indeed, this is an unfixable piece of crap. (don't let 'em fool you those water saver piss poor excuses for robbing you blind are NOT what they are cracked up to be...and did I mention there is a class action lawsuit against the company for making this giant hunk of scrap metal???)

Had to buy a new washing machine. TONIGHT. Thank goodness I married the plumber.

Due to the washing machine being out, I had to buy khaki pants for Firstborn Saturday - BUT!! I could NOT find one stinking pair of 28/31s anywhere in town. He's 5'8" and barely breaking 100lbs. It took about 10 stores and 6 starbucks Fraps to get me through that one... But that's another blog... We had to be at a wedding Saturday Night, then cotillion Sunday and no way to wash clothes because hubby was still damning the torpedos that he could fix that hulking hunk of junk, and of course, everything we needed was dirty.

Roll hair

Pack clothes

Arrange fees, tanning appts, modeling lesson, school excuses, make sure all accessories are intact, plan excursion for hubby and firstborn while we get ready when we arrive...

Did I mention that it is roughly three and a half days before we can leave and not one but TWO of Gizmo's outfits are NOT here!!!!

The big boss wants a fabulous demo of my new project to present to the big BIG boss after Thanksgiving as a hallmark of things that are going right in our department (sadly a lot of projects apparantly aren't.) And it doesn't. quite. work. yet.

And my uber-hyper-critical parents are coming for Thanksgiving dinner.

Stop the world, I want to get off.

Strangely, as much of this is self inflicted, I don't expect sympathy, I just needed to vent.

Live chat now! We help you long time!

AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Okay, so I have a couple of emails that for some reason appear to be ending up blocked to my regular email account (non-yahoo.)

So I sent an email request for help on how to unblock these messages.

I receive an email back admonishing me to contact their "live chat" for resolution because the companythatshallnotbenamed so very wants to help me for great customer satisfaction, blah, blah, and blah.

Here's a cliff's notes of the transcript:

THEM : Online chat - a representative will be with you in approximately two minutes
Me : oKAY
THEM : Eden has joined the chat
THEM : hello how may I help you?
ME : I have two email addresses that appear to be blocked, how can I have them unblocked?
THEM : oH, it appears you have been routed to the Sales group, do you mind if I reroute you to technical support?
ME : Uh, no (knock yerself out unless you think you can fix this...)
THEM : Cyrus has joined the chat
THEM : how may I assist you today?
ME : I have two email addresses I am expecting mail from that appear to be blocked, how can I have them unblocked?
THEM : All spam is blocked
ME : No, these are not spam addresses, last week I was receiving mail just fine from them and now I cannot
THEM : are you using webmail?
ME : YES
THEM : Is your mailbox full?
ME : no
THEM : check please
ME : 31 %
THEM : okay, please go to your filtering options
ME : okay
THEM : add these to your allowed list
ME : okay, will do , but what if this does not work? what can I do
THEM : do you have antivirus installed
ME : sure, but what does that have to do with blocking emails?
THEM: maam, it has everything to do with email
ME : how?
THEM : maam, if you need help with antivirus, please contact norton directly?
ME : ?? why? I'm not having trouble with antivirus, just blocked emails
THEM : really, you should contact norton
ME : for what?
THEM : how are we supposed to know, you are the one with antivirus problems
ME : WHAT??
THEM : thank you for contacting companythatshallnotbenamednow ... is there anything else we can help you with??
ME : uh, one more question.
THEM : yes?
ME : are you in the US or India?
THEM : I'm sorry maam that information is confidential
ME : (....BANGS SELF REPEATEDLY IN HEAD WITH BLUNT OBJECT)

$%!### ^&@@ss@@@

I'm okay. really.

p.s. I'm probably going to get beat up for this one, but geez, I was just asking the last question out of curiosity!!!

10.5 days to go, but who's counting??

Thanks to Rennratt I picked up this lil' ditty

Your Karaoke Theme Song is "Livin' On a Prayer"

You believe the best things in life are mostly forgotten, and you're definitely more than a little nostalgic . You're likely to still like the same foods, fashions, and music as you did when you were a teenager. You have a knack for knowing what elements of pop culture people have missed, without them even realizing it. It's great to remember the past, but don't forget that not everyone is as stuck in it as you are. You might also sing: "Pour Some Sugar on Me," "Rapper's Delight," and "Cherry Pie" Stay away from people who sing: "Toxic"

What's Your Karaoke Theme Song?

PAGEANT UPDATE

The dress came today!! (WHEW)

But I DID have to go get it from our Green Acres post office early this a.m. If you think I'm leaving a dress that costs as much or more than an expensive sofa there one minute longer than I have to yer flippin' crazeee!!

I was in there at 7:55 am begging for the box hollering through the mail slot at the poor woman trying to load the po boxes. Even went to the back door and stood on my tippy toes trying to get her attention asap!!! Snap to it lady, we've got business to take care of LOL....

Oh what have I been reduced to??

BTW It's GORGEOUS!!!

Now all we need to do is roll one more hair piece, get the Christmas wear and the Casual wear in the mail, pack and make it to next week without anyone contracting the siberian flu.

:o)

12.5 days and counting down

Pet peeve of the week.

Why is it people have time to send me all kinds of crazy junk emails with cute little puppy pics, wishes of doom if I don't forward to 500 people immediately, and just plain old stupid jokes...I don't mind if the joke is funny, isn't over 200k, and is sent to me personally to enjoy, but when it comes via a 150 person address book send, it doesn't make me feel particularly special.

Yet this is what I get back when I call on the phone to say hello...

Title of email: "Returning your call"

Hey, I jsut wanted to let you know until I get through
parent report card conferences and my dreaded
birthday, I will not be in the mood to chat, I will
call sometime after the 12th.

I'm beginning to think it's not worth trying to have any friends at all.

**********************************************

I must be crazy.

It took me 4 hours to roll hairpieces today.

The christmas wear won't be shipped until Thursday.

I haven't heard from the dressmaker in 4 days since I sent my last payment.

The new picture came in (bright spot.)

And the only pageant we could work in for practice next weekend has been cancelled.

I don't think this is a good sign.

Never mind we made our first dress payment in JUNE.

I guess we're going to go and lose again.

Really we should quit, this is so not worth it. I think.

But on the other hand, Firstborn and Hubby are joining us this time.

Should be interesting.