Guitar Hero: Aerosmith came out yesterday. I will be picking up my reserved copy tomorrow. Stonewall and I will spend the evening taking over the music world as the greatest band to ever play. WE ROCK!
Joe Perry, eat your heart out.
Okay, so a news story has sparked my need to blog. CNN reported on the Supreme Court's latest ruling on whether or not child rapists can be executed. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has said that child rapists can not be executed because using the death penalty for any crime other than murder is cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
The USSC made the right decision. A rapist should not be punished using the death penalty. We live with a system that says the punishment should fit the crime. If rapists, even child rapists, can receive the death penalty then our system is equating rape to murder. Rape, especially the rape of a child, is one the most evil crimes a person can commit. However, I do not believe it is the most evil. Murder is the worst crime a person can commit and therefore, should carry the worst punishment.
In the article sex crimes prosecutor, Kat Bartholomew says, "In my opinion, the rape of a child is more heinous and more hideous than a homicide." Tell that to someone who's child has been murdered.
I'm in a funk. That's probably pretty obvious since I haven't posted much in the past couple of weeks. I don't feel like writing my blog and I don't feel much like reading other blogs.
Stonewall leaves in 1 week for a month and a half. Then he's home for 3 weeks and then...yeah, the dreaded deployment.
I'm pretty sure that's causing my blah mood. We're going camping this weekend though, so hopefully that will help pull me out of this case of the doldrums.
From The Phantom Tollbooth
"Well, if you can't laugh or think, what can you do?" asked Milo.
"Anything as long as it's nothing, and everything as long as it isn't anything," explained another. "There's lots to do; we have a very busy schedule-
"At 8 o'clock we get up, and then we spend
"From 8 to 9 daydreaming.
"From 9 to 9:30 we take our early midmorning nap.
"From 9:30 to 10:30 we dawdle and delay.
"From 10:30 to 11:30 we take our late early morning nap.
"From ll:00 to 12:00 we bide our time and then eat lunch.
"From l:00 to 2:00 we linger and loiter.
"From 2:00 to 2:30 we take our early afternoon nap.
"From 2:30 to 3:30 we put off for tomorrow what we could have done today.
"From 3:30 to 4:00 we take our early late afternoon nap.
"From 4:00 to 5:00 we loaf and lounge until dinner.
"From 6:00 to 7:00 we dillydally.
"From 7:00 to 8:00 we take our early evening nap, and then for an hour before we go to bed at 9:00 we waste time.
"As you can see, that leaves almost no time for brooding, lagging, plodding, or procrastinating, and if we stopped to think or laugh, we'd never get nothing done."
"You mean you'd never get anything done," corrected Milo.
"We don't want to get anything done," snapped another angrily; "we want to get nothing done, and we can do that without your help."
"You see," continued another in a more conciliatory tone, "it's really quite strenuous doing nothing all day, so once a week we take a holiday and go nowhere, which was just where we were going when you came along. Would you care to join us?"
"I might as well," thought Milo; "that's where I seem to be going anyway."
Bitter Betty from The Winter of Our Discontent asked if I had thought about nursery themes yet. Well, of course!! I can not wait to start decorating, but my theme will be based on the gender of the baby so I have to wait until the middle of August to start painting (with low/non-VOC paint, of course).
If the little peanut is a boy we'll be decorating in green and monkeys. This is some of the items I've found:
If the peanut is a girl we'll be decorating in pink (duh) and little piggies.
I had my First Trimester Something-Or-Other Testing the other week. (I forget what they were testing for exactly, but everything came back normal, so it doesn't really matter.) I thought I was just having a blood test done, but they also did an ultrasound. The baby had to be in just the right position, so I got to watch my little peanut squirm for 20 minutes. It was really amazing to see!! I can't feel her move yet, but it was so cool to watch. She wanted to just lie there and sleep, but the technician was trying to get her to move. After a few minutes, she really started fussing and then she wouldn't stop moving.
It's kinda weird though. I mean, I know I'm pregnant. All four pregnancy tests and two months of morning sickness have confirmed that. But the first ultrasound was just this little peanut shaped thing with no arms or legs. Now, though...it was like, "OMG! That looks like a baby!" And then to see it move...wow.
Here are the pics.
This is a close up of her head and cute little button nose.
You can see her legs kicking up on the left and her hand is reasting on her forehead. (I think this is a sign of a Drama Queen in the making, but as my and Stonewall's child this is inevitable.)
Once again, little kicking legs on the left and her hand is now on her face, so she looks like she has Bob Hope's nose.
Its been very hot and humid the past few days. So when it rained the other day I took the pups outside and we got wet. It felt so wonderful and refreshing. It also got me thinking about some of my favorite songs about rain.
When we bought our house we weren't really concerned that it had no air conditioning. We figured we would just use window units.
WHAT THE HELL WERE WE THINKING?!?!?!
We had a yard sale this weekend. Every year we (my mom, sister, grandma, and I) clean out our houses and hope someone will buy our "junk" to make all the work worth it. We're saving the money to go to Hawaii. A big super awesome family vacation!
Actually, we do really well. We bring in $1500-$2000 every year. We're all shopaholics and even though the stuff we're trying to sell is now junk to us, it is nice stuff. Surprisingly, our best seller is clothes. My grandma loves to shop for clothes and she can afford to buy nice clothes: Ralph Lauren, Talbots, Claiborne, etc, and my sister is a freak for Guess. We price all clothes below $10, so not only do our customers make out well, but so do we.
This is our fourth year and we've developed a following. We have customers who come back year after year, just for the clothes. We're also told by a lot of people who are frequent yard salers that our's is one of the most organized and nicest yard sales they've ever been to.
Some yard salers are so funny and clueless though. We make sure to post prices on everything. Each table is a certain price, "$1 Table," "$3 Table," etc, and we put signs on the tables as to what the prices are. If something isn't on a table, we put a big price sign on it. We make a list of clothes prices and post it on the racks. Sometimes, I feel like I'm in that Dollar Store commercial though.
Yard Saler: How much is this?
Us: There's a sign on the table. Everything on that table is $3.
Yard Saler: So is this $3?
Us: Trying not to look at them like they're a complete idiot. That's what the sign says.
Then there's the yard salers who don't like the prices. We also have signs that read, "Don't like the price? Make an offer!" "All prices negotiable!" It is a yard sale after all. So it really bugs me when yard salers ask you the price, then look at you like you're a fool for expecting them to pay $2 for $75 item and instead of coming back with a counteroffer say, "That's just too much for a yard sale." And walk away. WTF?! Like I'm going to start my prices at $0.10? We have an agenda too. We are not having a yard sale because we like getting up at 5:00 in the morning, stand in the sun all day, deal with people like you, and only make a total of $20. We're definitely not against lowering the price if you haggle with us, but we're not going to start at the bottom.
My personal favorites are the yard salers who want to buy stuff not for sale. We use a ladder to block part of the driveway (we started this after someone decided to park ON some of our wares the first year) and we also post signs on it. This year someone wanted to buy it. We also have a roll of paper that we use for things we lay out on the ground. We've had someone offer to buy that. We use duct tape to hang out signs. This year some dude wanted to buy the half used roll of duct tape. My mom told him its sold at Lowes at a very reasonable price.
There are people who want to give us checks. Sure, because you roll your eyes at our super high prices of $2 and so we're going to accept a check from you. People who come to the yard sale, want to buy something, but then tell us they have no money on them so can we please hold the item until they can come back later. Who goes to a yard sale with no money? Try again. (We got burned on that one time, so never again. The guy said he would be back, we marked the items as sold (big items too), all day long people kept asking about the items, and then the guy never showed. The next morning we put the items back up for sale, the guy came back with a sob story, told us he, once again, had to go get money and pulled the sale signs off the items. We were already po'd at the situation, but his audacity in thinking we were going to continue to hold the items for him really set us off. We told him those items were still for sale until we had money in our hands, so put the sign back. That pissed him off, but whatever. Wouldn't you know it, 15 minutes later he showed up with the money even though he told us earlier his bank didn't open for another hour. Hmmm...)
The sob stories annoy me more than anything. I understand that you only have so much money and you believe that at a yard sale I should be willing to sell you everything you want for a total of $2, but I am not welfare and I do not want to hear you life "Woe is me" story. If you're that strapped for cash, then why the hell are you trying to buy an ashtray, a fuzzy shoe pouch, a dog collar, a tiny jar with a penny magically put in it and a box of assorted wedding cards?
I also think these situations are funny:
Yard Saler: Holding an item marked $10 Will you take $5 for this?
Us: $7
Yard Saler: Contemplating Ehh...I can get this somewhere else for $3.
Well then what are you doing at our yard sale? Go there and buy it for $3 instead of wasting your time talking to us.
Luckily, these crazies are in the minority. Most of our customers realize the value of the stuff we are selling and pretty much give what we are asking.
I told my mom that sometime I want to go to a yard sale and haggle up rather than down.
Me: How much is this?
Them: $3.
Me: I'll give you $5. I think its worth more than $3.
Give the sellers a little something extra for their time and effort.
I've decided I want personalized stationary. I've been perusing Fine Stationary to try and find the one design that screams my name. Here are some of the possibilities:
I think I'm leaning more towards something like this from Simply Silhouettes:
(I love silhouettes! Stonewall and I used our silhouettes as a general theme throughout our wedding. They were on our invitations, postage stamps, the programs, several other stationary things we had, on cookies, and (my favorite part) rather than use a wedding cake topper, we had a sugar sheet made with our silhouettes and put it on the side of the cake. (Before it looks like I jumped on a bandwagon since silhouettes are so popular right now, I would like say that I used them before they become super popular. I started the bandwagon.))
This is a hard decision. Granted, stationary is kind of frivolous, but choosing which one you want is hard. Every time I send out a Thank-You, or some other type of correspondence, what is on the stationary is the first impression the receiver will have of me. For my sister-in-law's birthday, I got her this stationary:
This is just so her! She loves pineapples and she's fun and good-natured. I know me better than her, but I don't know which stationary has me written all over it.
I did, however, find the cards I'm going to order as thank-you cards for my baby shower:
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