The Sunshine Trip: Day 1

I forgot to mention that on the way up to Sandland we discovered that the Explorer was infested with grey wolf spiders... and we had no turn signals on the trailer... but that's another story that involves the Department of Motor Vehicles, my Brother-in-Law Sir Will, and three of the nine rings of hell.

Any-descent-into-the-unknown, Jex got back from his mission the night before we are to take off toward Sunshine. In the morning it's a mad dash for things forgotten, baby stuff, and keeping Kitten and Gwendol from exploding while the grown-ups (ha!) get everything packed up. Construction Duck decided to continue in his usual conflustering of everything going on and turned on his 360 and play games while the rest of us worked. I'm not mad... I'm disappointed. Another dude would've come in handy when we realized that Cait and I had completely misspacked the trailer.
Yeah.
T-minus 5 minutes to take off and we discover that we didn't distribute the weight properly while we were playing tetris with all of Cait's worldly possessions. Luckily we're all badasses and had the trailer unloaded, reloaded, and secure in a little over one hour. That's 2,000 pounds of crap my friends.

At long last we backed up to the trailer, hooked the badboy on, and were off.

I don't know if you've ever embarked on such an adventure. If you have you'll understand what I'm about to say. Nothing, absolutely nothing, feels quite like pulling out of the driveway at the start of a journey you've never made before. Jex and I had been to the Sunshine State once before for my best buddy Kai's 21st birthday. But that time we left from Texas not the east coast, and we didn't have a 2 year old, a teething 1 year old, a dog, and their mommy with us.

We drove far enough for the world to start losing its color, but not its heat. It was december and I was pumping gas in a tank top. Then again I also lived in places that got, on average, 2-5 feet of snow in the winter.
Not but a few hours into the trip we saw the first of what would be many events. We saw our first wreck. These weren't little fender bender wrecks, no, these were people parts and cars turned into confetti wrecks.
The wreck we saw at this time was a delivery van, crunched like a coke can, the wind shield beside it and crumpled like a shiny sheet of paper. On the road in front of it was a MedEvac Helicopter. Beside it was a Semi with a dented fender. They were carrying a man that had been in the crushed van to the helicopter as we drove by. He was in one piece at least. Other wrecks would leave us wondering later on down the road. (haha! Down the road, hehe, oh shut up I know it was a bad pun)

Even with Kitten's teething screams, and Gwendol's cries of rage that she'd been in her car seat for entirely too long we made it into the night. We contemplated driving through the night. Not only were we nearly 4 hours behind schedule, but we hadn't counted on driving under 70, the trailer was at its weight limit and we were pushing it by going 60.

Then Gwendol woke up... as a Pterodactyl. I'm not kidding. The kid was done, absolutely and 100% finished with her car seat, the car, and everyone in the car.

So we decided that for the sake of life, limb, and sanity to pull into the Motel 6 that wasn't too far down the road. And that was an adventure in of it'self.

~*~     ~*~     ~*~     ~*~      ~*~

Happy Feast of the Birthday my lovely readers!
Tis the Season for all kinds of joy and shinies and all things not on the 'healthy diet' list.
The end of one year and the beginning of the next.

I'd like to know how you all are planning on spending this time.

Jex and I are running the Christmas Gauntlet with his family this year. Why is it a Gauntlet? 6 houses in 9 hours. That's why it's a Gauntlet. Jex's parents are divorced, his grandparents are divorced, and we have some of his step-dad's family to visit too. It's crazy.

Till next time.
~The light heart lives long

fitting room blues

Today I went Christmas shopping for some stocking stuffers. I'm going to print out some pages of cool stuff and have my family pick what they'd like for Present Day. I bring the stuffers because most people don't understand Present Day and get sad that I didn't give them anything on Christmas Day.

What is Present Day you ask? Present Day is the day after Christmas. Jex and I go shopping for/with one another while all the After Christmas shenannagans are going on and pick up stuff for half of what we would have got it for earlier in the year. What can I say; we're frugal.

Anyway, so the point. I like button up shirts. They're flattering on most every body type if they actually fit right. Which they NEVER do and like an idiot I still try them on every year come the holidays when they're out on all the racks look deceptively beautiful.
So here's my question: Who are they making mass produced clothes to fit?
Really, what body type/ BMI formula/ measurment combo are they going off of? Why is it that a size 5 juniors is too small for my big ass dainty butt but I can go and buy a girls 16 regular and it fits like a glove. WTF?!
I think that some one needs to tell me how to get a hold of big clothing companies so I can send them a mass printed letter.

The letter would go something like this:

Honorable CEO of [enter company name here],
I don't know if you've noticed but you're losing a lot of sales because many people can't fit into the clothes your robots sew together. If you have time I have a suggestion for button up shirts in particular. Perhaps this idea can be edited and used with a variety of your other products at a later time.
Make button up shirts that take into consideration cup size. Have S, M, and L shirts as normal but adjust for the varying chests that are trying to fit into them. Sm A would denote some one who's small and has a small chest where as Sm C would be one of those girls that despairs ever finding a shirt that will fit her figure.
I happen to own a sewing machine and know a few tricks to get stuff to fit me better, the majority of America does not follow this life style. Convienience makes money and it'd be really really convinient if I didn't have to edit everything I bought to fit my boobs.
Sincerely, Mrs. Ashes

Of course I'd look up more intellegent sounding vernacular. Probably bother Rachel over at her Chronicles to help me or something.

I was going to write about something else but now I can't remember. Probably something to do with the book store never having enough cashiers, ever. Oh wells.
Happy Christmas shopping to all and to all good deals.

Dear Corporate America

Dear Corporate America,
My throat would love it if you would stop forcibly shoving Christmas down it. Quite honestly pine trees don't go down very smoothly and the blood trail, though matching with the holiday color scheme, is really bad for my carpet.
Couldn't you wait until the day after Thanks Giving, or for heaven's sake November first? It's really disconcerting to see a Christmas tree in the middle of bat and witch shaped cookies.
I mean you're confusing the little kids. They're going to think that Santa is some demon who comes down the chimney to suck their blood.
It would be really nice if you could try not to look so eager to take every penny of our hard earned cash. We might forget how greedy and overpriced you are if you respect the Holidays and stop putting Santa hats on Turkeys and Christmas lights over the fake blood and gore.
Sincerely a very annoyed ex-customer.