Today’s question is: what’s up with parking in front of my walkway?

Background: What’s up with this? Why do people think it’s ok to park in front a shoveled walkway when there is frozen solid snow piled on either side? Don’t they know that very walkway is intended as a means to get from the street to the house? Or is it that they just care more about getting their precious passenger out of the car than allowing anyone access to the walkway? The very walkway that I painstakingly shoveled a thousand times this winter (with my broken hand, no less).

The other day I arrived home and found my neighbors car parked dab smack in the middle of the walkway I use to get in to my house. This particular neighbor doesn’t even live on my street, but on the corner adjacent to my street. Because the car was parked the way it was I had to literally climb around it to get up to my house. I was totally freaking kinda pissed. Who does that?

Here’s the walkway, imagine a car parked in front of it:

See how high those snow banks are? Imagine me climbing around the imaginary car and over those snow banks to rest on my walkway. Now picture me doing it with high heals. Just joking, I managed to have them move it before I exited the house with the heals, thank goodness. Of course I stressed never to park there again.

Dumb asses.

The car parked there in the picture is parked the way you are supposed to park when there is this much frozen snow and you want to get up to the house. Smart parker that lady is, my laundry helper.

Today’s question is: Why do people decide to end it all?

Background: Yesterday I received a call from a friend telling me that one of the dad’s in our school jumped from a building Friday night ending his life. I know this man’s wife and children. I am deeply saddened by this news.

I did some research on the dad online, because while I know his wife and his girls, I did not know him at all. I found some blogs that have opened their comments to the news of his death, (he was in advertising). Some of the comments are despicable. I simply can not even link to them. It makes me wonder why after hearing of such a tragic death people feel the need to do anything other than send condolences.

Quite honestly I just don’t care what people thought of him, what I care about is his wife and his girls. The road ahead is going to be a tough one, one that none of us can imagine. I worry about the girls and what this means for/to them. I’m sad for all of them. I feel like I just want to give her/them a big old hug, but I know even if I did, it can’t make it go away or make it better.

Life sure does suck sometimes. My hope for everyone is that if you think your friend or loved one needs help, try to help them. I know some people are beyond help but it’s always worth trying.

Today’s question is: What’s up with skipping an etched in stone job?

Background: We’ve got a little set up here. It goes like this: last one out of the bed makes it. Almost every day of the week PW is the first one out of the bed and I make it. There is the rare occasion where I get up first during the week and even though we have rules, I still make the bed because he goes to work.

It’s a different story on the weekends. If I get even the slightest notion that he might be thinking of getting out of bed I jump out lickety split, just so I don’t have to make it. I’m sick of doing it by Saturday. I figure I get two days a week I must take full advantage!

A couple of Saturday’s ago, I got out of bed early because I couldn’t lay there any longer (this seems to be the case more and more now that I’m getting old). PW was last and as I was typing away at my computer I reveled in the fact that I didn’t have to make the bed. It went something like this:

I don’t have to make the bed, ha.
Yahoo, I don’t have to make the bed, hee, yipee.
picture me doing a little dance.

Later I stepped into the bedroom and found this:

Crap. It was my day off for goodness sakes. I don’t think PW knows how much I dislike making the bed. It’s right up there with emptying the dishwasher. It’s even worse with a hand splint (remember I fractured my hand?).

So I made the bed:

and went on with my day. I even resisted saying “I made the bed for you.”

Jobs, they are important, no?

Today’s question is: Why do people tell you things they shouldn’t??

Background: I’m pretty sure I could ask this question monthly and always come up with a new and interesting story. People can be so crazy. Of course this isn’t a crazy question.

Let’s see, about a month ago I was talking to a friend on the phone. This is a woman that I don’t speak to all the time, but our kids are friends, they’ve been to our house for dinner, their kids have slept over and they’ve been to our parties. Friends.

Anyway, they had gone away for Christmas and came home a couple of days early and I spoke with her just before the new year. I asked how her weekend went, if she had fun.

this is where she told me something I think she shouldn’t have……

She said she had a great weekend, her husband had thrown her this great surprise party at a restaurant in the city and all her friends were there, it was a blast.

Now, aside from being majorly ever so slightly upset, I said how awesome that must have been and how nice her dh was for throwing her the party. And in all honesty I’m not really majorly upset. I get that parties are parties and not everyone can be invited and how the ‘if we invite this friend then we’ll have to invite that friend’ thing goes. What I don’t get is why on earth you tell someone that clearly wasn’t invited about the party? What is the motivation behind that one?

Is it to brag?
Is it to make the other person feel like shit?
Is it to put the person in their place (where ever that is)?

What is the point?

Now those of you who are thinking, ‘why’d you ask if you didn’t want to know?’

I do have an answer for that.

I did want to know, I wanted to know if she did anything fun. If the tables had been reversed and she was not invited to a party my dh threw me, I’d have said “oh yeah, I went to this great restaurant with a bunch of friends and had a simply awesome time, I’m still drunk a little hungover. End of story.

So as usual, people tend to really make me wonder.

Today’s question is: Why does PW always have to tell me when he empties the dishwasher?

Background: I’m sure this is one of those universal things. Kinda like the lingerie. I was reading a friend’s site the other day and she made mention of her husband emptying the dishwasher and not telling her about it. I laughed out loud because I never realized that PW wasn’t the only man on the planet that says: “I emptied the dishwasher for you today”, like I own the freaking dishes or something. Like they are mine.

How annoying do you think it would be if I informed him of every single thing I did for him?

“I took the garbage out to the garage for you today”
“I washed all your dirty undies today”
“I replaced 5 light bulbs for you today”
“I filled the coffee maker, that makes the perfect cup of coffee every time, for you today”

Hmmmm, come to think of it, he thinks many of these things are my job, so it doesn’t sound the same coming from me as it does from him.

Sometimes I just wish he could empty the dishwasher and not tell me about it. Like for once if he could just do it because he just might think it’s part of the job, not part of my job.

I’m at a water park with the kids. PW had to leave on a business trip to Florida today so he didn’t come with us. I spoke to him before the limo picked him up to bring him to the airport and his last words were: (no joke)

“I emptied the dishwasher for you today”

I don’t even think the kids and I had much to do with those dishes, yet he emptied that baby for me. (sigh)

Am I alone? Do my male readers tell this to their significant others? Do my female readers get the same thing? I’m really curious.

Today’s question is: Why would anyone take their obviously sick children out to a crowded restaurant?

Background: This question was raised by Julie the other day in my comments.
She said:

If I had your blog, my question would have been– Why would any sane mother bring her four OBVIOUSLY ILL children out to dinner? I swear I could not even count the number of times those four pajama-clad, sleepy-eyed, runny-nosed kids sneezed and coughed up their lungs. I will be shocked if my family doesn’t develop pneumonia in the next couple of days.

On Valentines day, she took her family to the local Walker Bros. Original Pancake House for dinner (unlike me who left my poor kids with a babysitter so I could go to the Bulls game for a business rendezvous with pw). She was lucky enough to be seated next to the family above. At first, Julie thought that family would be out of there shortly, but because of the excessive coughing, it seems it took them longer to eat than most people. So Julie and her family ended up finishing at the same time as the sick family. Thereby taking in the full effect of each hack and slobber.

My other question is, why would anyone bring their kids to a restaurant in their jammies? I mean maybe they were all sick, but jeez, at least make it look like they should be out. Make them wear some clothes for goodness sakes.

So, the main question remains, why would someone do this? Is it because it was valentines day and this woman (she was with her nanny, not the dad) wanted those kids to feel really loved? Is it because she 1. didn’t care about the other people in the restaurant? 2. didn’t consider the other people in the restaurant? or 3. thinks she’s most important in the world and therefore didn’t care or consider anyone but herself and her most important children?

What do you think?

2j3k&p at $825! I’m more than a little shocked that the estimate came in at $715.89. I was expecting higher and have to admit I am pleasantly suprised. I think pw is pretty happy about that price too. The car only needs to spend one night in the shop as well. Yipeee.

2j3k&p email me at cecedon@covad.net and I’ll get you your fabulous amazon winnings. Have fun with it!

Today’s question is: Why do cars have bumpers?

Background: A bumper is designed to cushion your car from damage in the event that you bump into something right?? I mean that’s what I thought it was for.

Apparently, something has changed, verified by the picture above here. This is my bumper, the part of my car that is supposed to be designed for bumping into things, like a snow bank for instance. Picture the scene for a moment, my car backing out of a driveway onto a street. The street is lined with snow banks because we have received the mother load of snow this year. Perhaps the street is slightly less narrow than it usually is because of the snow. The car backs up and briefly taps the snow bank, at roughly 4 miles an hour. The car wheel is turned and off we go, no biggie, we’ve tapped hundreds of snow banks in our time. 20 minutes later I walk behind my vehicle and see this dent. Now, not only is the bumper dented it’s cracked too. That’s like freaking icing on the cake. A dented and cracked bumper from a freaking snow bank? A snow bank. Sure the snow bank was most likely kind of hard frozen solid, we’ve had a deep freeze here as well. But I thought bumpers were made for bumping?

Now I have to figure out how much it’s going to cost me. Anyone care to take a guess?

I think I’ll turn this into a contest. I’ll send the first person who guesses closest to my estimate (that I have yet to get, but I’m thinking PW would be thrilled with that as his valentines day present) a $25 gift card to Amazon. Now tell all your friends. Contest will end Friday(February 15th) at 6pm Central time.

Have fun. And don’t go backing into any snow banks. (bumpers just aren’t what they used to be.)

edited to add: SC called to tell me that I had to post what type of car it is because he would have an unfair advantage, as would some others. So the car is a 2003 Lexus LX470.

Today’s question is: Why is it easy to forget to do some regular maintenance on your house?

Background: It’s cold here. It’s very, very cold. My Weatherbug reads -4 degrees currently. It is essential in weather like this to have heat.

Last night it was even slightly colder, it was -5 degrees (this does not include the wind chill factor which is what it feels like out there when the wind blows). Because it was so cold yesterday I had both fire places on and I was wearing a scarf in the house. The older I get the colder I get, apparently. We had been out during the day and once we got back at 3:30pm I had never left the warmth and comfort of the first floor. I had been shivering hanging out by the fires all afternoon.

During dinner, that was enjoyed in the dining room with the fire blaring, my oldest daughter ran upstairs to get something for my sister. When she came back down, into the warm and toasty dining room, she declared, “it’s really cold up there”. I raised an eyebrow, looked over at PW (who incidentally had been hanging out in his man room on the third floor all afternoon, and didn’t notice it being cold, go figure) and said, “oh honey I bet it just felt cold because this room is so warm and toasty.” Boy was I wrong.

A short while later the kids were upstairs getting ready to take showers. I followed them up and when I got to the top of the stairs I declared “OMG, shit it is cold up here.” And cold it was, 56 degrees. I started doing an immediate mental check of all the things that could go drastically wrong if we didn’t get the heat working before we went to bed. Frozen pipes are not my friend. Cracked drywall, no thanks.

Once we determined that the furnace fan worked and that the pilot seemed to be out (you know you can’t just light a pilot now like you could in the old days, technology, sigh), I called two local heating companies and left messages for the emergency service. The first one to call back got my business, even though he seemed to try to sway me away from wanting him with his price. I practically laughed at him when he started on how much it was going to cost me. Without him, I’m fairly sure it would have cost me much, much more. He arrived an hour later (I think that’s why he didn’t want to come so much, he lived an hour away). He replaced the broken igniter and we had heat. I could have hugged him, but I think that may have been inappropriate. Although I did tell him I loved him, several times.

Concequently, had I had the routine service conducted on the furnace, the igniter probably would have been replaced and this would never have happened. The furnace is 9 years old. Of course, this also means I have to get service out here pronto as the other furnace (the one that kept me warm on the first floor with my fireplaces) hasn’t been checked either and is using a 9 year old igniter, that apparently could go and any moment, yikes.

I am happy to have heat. Were looking at another day where the temps aren’t expected to rise over 10 degrees so heat is essential. Thank goodness for 24 hour repairmen.

Today’s question is: Why do people love to criticize others?

Background: I’m sure every blogger out there knows what it’s like to be criticized by someone, whether it be a complete stranger or someone you know. It’s like we’ve put ourselves out here and we are free game. Maybe that is true, I’m unsure.

I remember last year sometime I read some pretty unkind comments on Confessions of a Pioneer Woman because she was talking about her retarded brother. I found it kind of mean for people to be so critical of her, especially since she explained why she referred to him as retarded.

Same thing happens on dooce, she often talks about the hate mail she receives. Actually a couple of years ago she cracked me up with this post about hate mail.

Just yesterday I read this blog called So Very Alone and I stumbled on this post where he called out the jack ass commenter, hilarious.

Anyway, I realize it’s the way of the world. My own mother finds it necessary to criticize half of everything I do. Maybe it makes all the writers of the world a little wittier? Maybe it makes some of them quit? Maybe it just makes those people that criticize feel really good about themselves? Or maybe they just think they are funny? I don’t know. What do you think?