When in doubt, pray it out.

First I was all like this, wondering what it would take to make me feel happy or what the meaning of life was

And then while I was getting a mani pedi, the lady was all "Want some wine" and I was all like



Prayer works.

I Won the Oscars of Parenting

It's like 730 AM or something like that. I haven't had coffee yet. I already drove two kids to school. Congratulations are freaking in order.

Getting a small child out the door without me feeling like a disaster survivor afterwards is tantamount to winning the lottery by finding the ticket on the ground in the rain after someone dropped it and then told you it was a winning one so you should probably pick that up.

This is how these types of mornings generally play out.

6:25 my alarm is all like WAKE UP and I'm all like NO.
6:30 SNOOZE goes off. I'm not down with morning yet, but I have two more permitted snoozes. This is where I go wake up my son and make sure he's awake. Except he is awake, and feeling super chatty. Score, he's awake!! NO. Not score. He's more interested in wanting to know what our house would be like if it was our ship and howcome the sky isn't purple with comets and do smurfs like chocolate? How sweet, right? Whatever, this kind of back and forth interaction is not my forte. I'll just say, ok dude, get ready. And he'll say ok!
6:32, looks like I have three more minutes to snooze. Sold. Don't judge me, mornings are a process and I must wake up in stages.
6:35 Dammit. Let's see what he's doing now. Oh, cool. Still not dressed, but he's started on breakfast, which is apparently the fun dip from the valentine's candy he hoarded and the dog hasn't found and barfed up at my feet. Awesome. I point out the clothes he's going to be wearing because I'm all responsible and picked them out the night before, based on weather. Because I'm so prepared.
He's excited to wear his Michigan tracksuit. He likes it when we go shopping or out and people go M GO BLUE at him. He has no idea what they are talking about but likes it. He will also say M GO BLUE at anyone wearing blue or a tracksuit, and if they are confused, which is usually, he gets really offended. Hey, by the way, he wants to know what I would do if a ferrarri was in our living room and One Direction wrote a song about Kito (our dog) and his smelly farts.
6:40 I'm explaining to him that we can talk about dog farts and ferraris and other lovely things AND get dressed at the same time. I hear my final snooze alarm going off in my room. I leave him mumbling to himself about whatever and go to get the coffee I put in the machine the night before to auto make. The house smells like coffee. Yum.

The other child that has to get ready is instagram addicted and has a bad habit of deciding there's nothing to take for lunch like two seconds before time to leave. She's also 14 so she'll decide she doesn't want to wear what she picked out the night before at the last minute. I have to watch her so she doesn't go into the 16 year old's room and steal something because that will end up in a death match later and my ears can't take shrill noises. She's fine with being late if it's her fault but god forbid anyone else make her late because it's on like donkey kong then. I do not understand this logic, nor will I try to. I just want to make sure she's up, has clothes, and is moving along as is my son.

I passed down the ADD gene to my son, so I have to go downstairs and get his medication and something to eat it with. Except he tells me he isn't hungry because he got up in the middle of the night and ate an entire box of girl scout cookies. How the hell does this happen? I'm a light sleeper and his door is like 8 inches from mine.

He has decided not to wear the M Go Blue tracksuit. He has opted to wear pants that are 3 inches too short. I thought I donated all those clothes that didnt fit PRECISELY because of his insistence to wear them. He's already downstairs now, so I must focus on the pill issue.

"I dont like blue pills" he says "They taste better if they are yellow."

I ...what? No they don't. You have always had blue. I can't even...UGH... "TAKE IT"

"I need a drink"

I pour him water

"I want diet coke"

NO.

"Can I have milk?"

We are out of milk. He drank all of it with the cookies. But he's asking me why I didnt go to the store.

I can still smell the coffee.

Somehow I manage to threaten something that I'll forget to take away later to get the pill swallowed. Next we are on to the task of finding shoes that fit the following qualifiers

1) Fit 2) seasonal appropriateness 3) matching EACH OTHER

I also have to make sure the teenager is making progress.

It's like 7:07 now, we have 5 minutes before I have to load them into the car and drive.

I convince him out of his stupid pants that dont fit because I dont want his teacher to call child services on me. He has plenty of clothes that fit. I'd write a letter to her explaining how hard my mornings are and try to level with her , but since my mom was a teacher I'm fully aware that the teacher will go home and mock me to her teacher friends and her family. More than Im sure she already does. And honestly, to me, at this point, if he's clothed and safe and clean and fed, f*** it. Go to school in highwaters for all I care. I really don't. But no. Whatever.

I promise him something that I will definitely forget later to get his proper clothes on and we are just about ready but he cant get his shoes on. He wants to take them to the car. It's time to go. NOW. If I dont get my 14 year old to the bus stop to her private school I will have to be in the car for an hour driving her round trip.

He can't take his shoes to the car, it's raining and even though I've made it his problem before and thought it would teach him a lesson, he just took his soggy socks off and went to school looking ghetto anyway and i didnt notice it til he jumped out at the carpool. Then on the way to doggie daycare my dog would eat his salty soggy socks and need surgery later. Not even kidding.

Now the ADD medicine is working and he's focused, but he's focused on if we can go snowboarding again before summer.

OMG JUST GET IN THE CAR. YES WHATEVER YOU WANT.

We get in the car, I barely get the teenager to her bus. My son is still in the back seat talking about what color snowboard he wants, shoes in hand. He's taken them off after we wasted all that time putting them on, he said his foot itched. Great. Put them on.

We get to the school and he has one shoe on. One. And we are next in the carpool lane . Not only am I not EVER prepared in the carpool lane because he's always pulling some shit like this, but I also devote all my energies in the morning to getting him to school on time. I am likely wearing pajama pants with sock monkeys, uggs, a sweatshirt inside out, and hair completely uncombed, which probably looks like a lion because it's super wavy. I havent even brushed my teeth yet. DONT JUDGE. ME time never comes until I get these kids to school. Getting up earlier not an option. If you suggest this, i will damage you. I will damage you with the same commitment I will reach into my backseat blindly hoping to connect with a kid. HAHA JK. I dont do that. Or do I? GOD i hate mornings.

So this morning, I'mn at carpool and theres all these moms dressed up with their coffee mugs telling the kids to have a good day. My car ends up in the third position and holds up the rest of the cars because I'be discovered my son has swapped pants, is missing one sock and telling the perfectly cheerfully dressed and perfect hair and perfect coffee mom volunteer that I will never measure up to that "Mommy says I cant have my socks because I didnt get ready fast enough so it's my problem now." Not only that but there are like 40 cars behind me waiting to drop their kids off and three positions ahead of me open because they can't get around me.

EVERY morning. By the time the ordeal is over with I feel like a crash survivor.

And you all wonder why I hate mornings.

Oh, I Feel You, Panda Bear..WOW

I'm not a really big REPOSTer because I like my material to be original, pure, crazy 100% Shannonified, but sometimes I really relate to the poor panda bear on the bottom here. I promise you will laugh...



Cant talk long fishies, I'm packing packing packing getting ready for the next chapter!! LOVE YOU!!

Hey now, HEY NOW! Don't Dream It's Over

OH MY!! It has been a hot minute hasn't it?

I dont even know what that means...but I felt like writing that. I also have always wanted to yell "F YOUR COUCH!" -- it was a line in some movie I probably never saw - - but for some reason that stuck.

Welcome back to my blog!

I have been super super busy, and also , when I'm not busy, I go through periods of just lazy, so it's not really conducive to blog writing. However, now that the democratic convention is over, and I'm not traveling as much for my rock stars, I kind of have time to sit here with my coffee and reflect over all the ridiculous things that happen and tell you all about them.

It's not like I have forgotten you though. Sometimes I'm like DAMN that's a good blog, but then I'm like, whatever, I can't post this, this is the kind of crap that goes in my book. Can't give away everything for free you know. And then I don't ever do anything about it and I forget. I tell my agent on deck that I am still pregnant with my story and I am not ready to give birth to it yet. But I'm pretty sure I'm just sitting on GO, having a cocktail and calling it "waiting for opportunity" instead of the "failure to launch" that it really is.

I get a lot of questions about the mutt.

Kito has not kicked the bucket yet but he has had another surgery since the last time. Because, as I said before, he is a repeat offender. But we'll never get rid of him. I lovehatelove him. And he's awesome at cleaning crumbs off the floor and scaring the crap out of door to door salesmen and possible robbers.


I also have a really big meeting coming up that will probably bring me lots of clients in the twitter managing world so I need to whore out my blog more often and get that Klout score back up. Yep, you just helped with that by reading this. You're the bestest. Cant do it without your rubbernecking.

Am I still an incorrigible dork? Absolutely!

So, I will be accountable to you, my fishies. I promise to blog at least once a week. And it will be immature. And it will be inappropriate and it will be caffiene fueled and awesome. Or it might suck. Could really go either way.

I know there are some people chuckling and counting the f*cks they do not give about what my deluded mind has to offer here on these crazy pages...and I will politely remind these people that while they are reading my blog and being all haterish, that I am counting the f you just gave in my pageviews. I appreciate this F you are giving, but I'm wondering if you have it in pink? Great, we should totes do this tomorrow.


Love, love, love, LOVE you!
SNN

This Is Why I'm Hot

This was a blog I wrote a few years ago, on my old blog and I was reminded of it today, so I thought I'd share it with my new friends-- YES, I have always been this weird. It's part of my charm.

____

2009

So, recently I was driving down Fairview , overcaffienated as usual, and I keep hitting red lights. There's all these people in their fancy schmancy cars. Is schmancy even a word? Anyways, I am driving the Excursion, AKA the Airbus 380, and the windows are tinted. They're illegally tinted. I am just waiting to get pulled over one day. In which case I will be interested to see if pulling out cleavage actually works. Because I haven't had cleavage in two years. And now I do. Because I eat now. See how that works? Food is medicine. That's what they tell you in therapy. Food is hot. Food is sexy. Food gets me out of a speeding ticket?

Oh, sorry, ADD overload. BOOBS!! ;)

Okay, so here we are driving down Fairview and all these snotbags in their Porsche Cayennes and Lexus Landrovers are surrounding me at lights that are taking way too long. I've had toooo much coffeee and somehow I decide to test the theory that people can feel you staring at them. Hell my windows are SO tinted, it'll be fun.

I start staring this guy down who is on his cell phone in a really nice Lexus. Three seconds into my laser gaze, he looks over. Then looks away. Then looks again, kind of offended. I feel my blood get hot. I feel stupid. Wait he can't see me!! This is fun!! So I stare harder. Evil eyes boring into his soul. He glares at me.

The light changes. He drives off quickly.

Fun!!!

Next light. Lady in an Audi convertible. Whatever. I dont miss my convertible anyway. I'm not jealous. At all. I decide to focus all my not-jealous at her.

I stare at her. She looks over in two seconds. I stick my tongue out. I screw my face up and make monster noises. She can't see me anyway.

She stares straight forward and drives forward immediately when the light changes.

That's what you get for having a convertible when I don't. RUDE!!

Anyway I do this for the 20 minutes it takes to get through the Fairview/Tyvola clogup, and I go to pick up my son at the babysitter. I'm still laughing at myself because I have found a fun way to not hate traffic. Fkk with people in their cars!! YAY!!

I tell her all about it. She says , Shannon I can see through those windows in the daylight.

What?

No you can't. They're tinted look.

Yes I can....look...

I look....

Yeah...you can actually see through enough to see my monster faces, my pig noses, fish faces, etc....

I bet my mom is proud.

A Bum Deal...

***apparently blogspot still REALLY wants me to move to wordpress because for some reason I can't put spaces in to seperate paragraphs. I am not as run on and inept as I appear. Usually***** oh wait I figured it out. Nevermind.







*****

I am going to preface this blog by telling you that it's pretty TMI. And by YOU I mean my mom, my grandma, anyone in my extended family that rolls their eyes (but still reads this) and the friends of my kids on facebook who friended me and I didn't remember to block yet.

If this kind of thing bothers you, then you need to be my guest and click the X because I'm not tolerating any complaints. YOU HEAR ME, SON??

So, day before yesterday, I'd had a long day and I decided to unwind with some new bath salts I got. Because I love bubble baths and bath salts and calgon take me away and all of that crap that probably doesn't even really do anything except get me all slippery. But whatever, that's not the point.

I love Burt's Bee's everything, so when they had that theraputic bath salt that promised to relieve stressful joints and relieve stress with that menthol-y smell I was sold. I have never had a problem and I am not hating on Burt's Bees.

So I pour a capful just like it says into the tub (because too many salt rocks aren't comfy in a bath, especialy since there's oil and you kind of slide around on the tub floor, it's really a good idea to stick to the right "dosage" if you will)

I sit in the bath and I'm like, ooh how relaxing it's kind of tingly all over.

Oh wait.

It's kind of hot now.

Wait, that doesn't feel good.

Panic.

All my sensitive areas below the waist are on fire, RED ALERT GET OUT OF THE BATH TUB NOW! Especially my, um, butt. Like my actual. Anyway whatever, you're the one who kept reading. This isn't really my problem anymore.

So I come blasting out of the bathtub like the kool-aid man and my husband is thinking I probably got the bath water too hot again and was making a run for the fan. Where I will desperately cool off and sometimes fall asleep while waiting for my heart rate to return to normal. No sympathy because I never learn.

NO NO NO HOT!!

"When are you going to stop doing that?"

"MY BUTT!!!"

"What?"

"Bath salt! Burn!"

"What? (laughs)" That doesn't make sense"

"It's BURNING MY BUTT- - - -" I am not saying the word or typing it because that is just too gross for me to utter on my blog. I am classier than that, you guys. Well today...

My husband looks at me, I can tell he's amused but he's also confused and is not sure how to handle my frantic hopping. It's not really helping anything.

I'm not going into any more detail but I may or may not have whined enough to warrant a cell phone picture to make sure I didn't have a tumor, but push that thought out of your mind because I'm not confirming or denying it. This is where all my shame comes in.

I'm so uncomfortable, so I hop up and nearly break my neck on the wood floor because my feet still have the bath oil and I almost fell. I get the hemorroid lotion. I get some valium. And I go back to bed.

APPARENTLY not before taking to twitter and talking about the condition of my butt and then comparing it to a dog dragging its bum across the carpet. Nice. I really should have my phone taken away at a certain time..But whatever..

The next day I have a message from Burt's Bees on my twitter asking me to contact them about the bath salts and my butt problem so they can resolve it. I never even tagged them! Now I feel really bad and because my ASSanine tweets were amusing to my 16K followers, they got retweeted which means they are there forever. GREAT.

So, I have a laugh with my "big sis" stand up comedian friend Julie cuz she doesn't judge and she will find the humor in the whole thing and I get on with my day.

Photo shoot later in a sunflower field. FUN!! I have a really floaty flowy dress on.

One of the photographers wants to shoot near a tree. It's so magical looking with all the vine crawling up it and the sunflowers in the background and the vine on the ground. It's not poison ivy cuz I googled a picture of it twenty minutes ago near a similar tree with similar vine that I knew was going to be in one of the 9 or 10 photographer's "vision". I'm not making fun, the field is really magical. And I'm not complaining, the shoot was fun. But damn if I didn't go right on ahead and sit in that pile of vine and start feeling little tingles. Then I saw tiny red ants.

OH MY GOD FIRE ANTS!! I jumped up really fast. They were all over my legs. I had seated myself rignt ontop of a pile of fire ants. Fire ants are like the gift that keeps on giving , long after those little shits have stung you, the sting hurts worse and worse and worse. And today they are welty and itchy.

So now, my ass has been totally chewed up and like, violated by bath salts and HA HA HA isn't this so funny, and when I was talking to Julie again about my latest butt disaster, she pointed out that Burt's Bee's actually makes a really good salve for insect bites.

Hmm................

THIS is why I don't do mornings.

So, my dog is really not having a good day. I know you all get a kick out of these dog crap blogs so here is another one for you. Sometime, in the wee hours of the morning, I noticed a drawer was ajar in the kitchen. I shut it, thinking not much of it, but when I opened it, I noticed puncture marks in a coffee bag and coffe grounds all over. Not only that but the trash can was ajar and there was a half chewed coffee filter with no grounds to be found. My super spidey senses tell me that this dog has eaten about a cup of coffee grinds. I looked around the house wondering where the inevitable trail of poop was, but he hadn't done it yet. While I was doing THAT, I also noticed that the crushed red papper I used to make beef jerky with was out and spilled. And mostly empty. That damn dog must have gotten that too. Which would explain why all the water is gone. So, I go about cleaning the spillage and the dog is outside looking at me pitifully. I decide he's probably pooped and all is well, and let him in. I put my headsets on to do my cardio . WHAT??? I know right. It' s fricken 7:30. I am awake. AND EXCERCISING. How CRRAAAZY is that? But, whatever, so I'm jamming out on my elliptical to "sexy and I know it" . I love to excercise to that. Because I jump off the elliptical and shake my shoulders forward during the WIGGLEWIGGLEWIGGLE part. It makes my laugh. At myself. As I was doing the WIGGLEWIGGLEWIGGLE shoulder thrust, I realized I heard howling. The dog wants out. Except he is looking at me, and his butt is pointed at the door and he has sprayed diarreah all over the door and I can actually make out the red pepper flakes stuck to the door. Poop is a good glue apparently. And it's still dripping. And I have to let him outside. Then, he fell in the fish pond. I called the vet and they said that if he continued crying to bring him in, but that his anus was probably just on fire. Make sure he is hydrated. Dont even start judging me because the dog is taller than me when he stands up and knows how to unlock things and knock stuff off cabinets. Ive tried to give him away, but David goes all soft. And it was me who begged to pay 8k for surgery in December. So dont get all hater on me because I'm not that sympathetic to his plight. This dog is going to die because he eats like a trash compactor and until we give him to a new owner that lives in a field that is free of rocks, trash and small animals, I doubt there is a way to avoid it. So, as I'm wiping off the squirts all over the door, in my headphones, I am hearing "sex is on fire" except now the words will forever be "your anus is on fire" THANK YOU KITO and if it gets stuck in your head that way too, you may also thank my dog. I hope your day is better than mine. Im sure the mental image bothers you and so I'll leave you be to go stab your mind's eye out. I'm also adding a picture of a cute kitten to try and make up for it , even though I think cats are evil. That's another blog.