Gratefully Grateful 2013 Edition

Ta da!
This is kinda like re-heating leftovers, but I have a new batch of materialistic random crap that I am extremely thankful for. If not for anyone else, this will at least be refreshing for me after the 96 posts I had to weed through in the last few glances at my Facebook newsfeed.You will notice that this is becoming a tradition, me posting what I am grateful for (see last year's edition here).
*Luckily this was saved as a draft, and finished at a later date. It will make sense soon. I am grateful that -saved draft- is an option.

1) I am grateful for prescription glasses. Well, contacts too. I haven't quite been able to bring myself to letting a doctor shoot my eyes with laser beams. I rather like being able to see, so I am thankful for glasses. I am also thankful for the old man who works at my eye doc who successfully fulfilled my request for frames that would look like "Roy Orbison and Lisa Loeb's glasses had a baby." Sidenote- I hope they fired the 18 yr old who didn't know who Roy Orbison or Lisa Loeb were.

                                                   He totally nailed it right?


2) I am grateful for Woodchuck Hard Cider. I drank a healthy amount prior to typing this. That stuff is delicioso. I can recall trying to find booze while vacationing in the Poconos (jk nobody vacations there) and it took dad and I several hours half a day to figure out how you are supposed to successfully buy alcohol there. I wound up with two 40s of Cider. Someone was winning at life that weekend, and I think it was me.

3) I am grateful for Antiques. They are the basis of my life now. If you told the history nerd 10 year old me that this is what I would be doing when I was older I would have never believed it. Or, I would have gotten one hell of a head start, and be retired by now. That realization just blew my mind.

4) I am grateful for Mylar balloons. I never really payed attention to different species of balloons until I had a child. I don't even know how latex balloons still exist, they deflate when you look at them the wrong way. Mylar balloons? Those bitches stay floating for 3+ weeks. I am looking at one in my living room right now that is going strong at 4 weeks. I usually have to have this whole "I am tired of looking at you so I am cutting you down man" scenario play out.

** At this point I have realized I am just drinking and looking around my living room and picking random things. I am surprised an "I love lamp" hasn't made its way into the list. I think for the sake of good writing I will take a little siesta and hit this up at a later juncture.

Switched rooms to blog in, regrouped, and continue:

5)  I am grateful for my family. Not in the "the sun rises and sets in their asses" kind of way. Some days it does. I am grateful for the fact that individually, everyone in my family is fairly dysfunctional, and when we all get together it is a bit of a circus. A harmonious circus. We are all guaranteed to laugh at some point too, I am severely entertained by my family and our inner workings. From the outside we might appear to some to be rather Brady Bunch, but peel that back and we are a big fat can of crazy. I seem to have married into a similar situation, however it is apparently less acceptable to divulge in the craziness of people not of your own blood.

6) I am grateful for confidence. I have never felt more confident in myself, and the direction my life is going in as I do now.

7) I am grateful for liquid eyeliner. Really makes my dirt brown eyes pop.

8) I am grateful for the library. Ever heard of one? Oh it is really neat, has books and such. You take the books home for a while, hope your toddler doesn't eat them or hide them in a toilet, and then you give them back. Last month I managed to lose my library card, but was too lazy to pay the $1 to replace it because I just knew it was "around here somewhere". Forced my husband to get a library card to make up for my  incompetence - but not before my family heard my plight and my dad pleaded with me to take a $1 to replace the card and quit being an idiot. In other related news, my child looks so forward to Storytime Saturdays. She is a regular at our library with the staff, and I couldn't be more proud.

So, I am gratefully grateful. I hope you all have a joyous Thanksgiving holiday.

Half a Decade. America.

This celebratory post is in honor of two things.

1- TODAY IS OUR ANNIVERSARY. I married that big ol lug 5 years ago. That is 1,826 days, half a decade, or more awkwardly, that would be 33 years in dog years.
I wouldn't trade a single one of those 1,826 days/33 dog years.

2- MY HUSBAND BECAME AN AMERICAN TODAY. Kind of ironic that his day of oath was scheduled to the date, 5 years from our wedding day.

American, or Canadian, I have had a limited amount of complaints with the guy. He puts up with a whole lot (whole lot) of shenanigans. I am constantly scheming things, typically insane business ventures. Steadily dragging random old stuff into our house and claiming it as decor. I buy too many shoes and I gradually takeover our entire closet (and bathroom sink respectively). I am constantly whipping up something new and delicious highly experimental in our kitchen.

But? I can count the amount of knock down drag out fights petty squabbles we have had on one hand. That is a pretty sweet track record. There is no such thing as fighting a Brett Jones. He is double my size, and has accidentally hugged me into throwing up. It helps tremendously that we have the cutest freakin' kid to direct a hefty portion of our attention. Our little trio is fairly unstoppable.

Icing on our happy little cake is that he got to ditch his green card today and be an official American citizen. We have both worked very hard over the last 5 years to get to this day, and I am very proud of him!

Here's to 5 years, looking forward to 100 more! Yes, I totally plan on the two of us being 127 and 130 years old. We will blend in perfectly with all of the antiques I am filling our house with.

Monday Wins.

My household decided to start this Monday off at 4am. FOUR O'CLOCK ANTE MERIDIEM (I know, it is too early for latin).
So, unless you are bringing me gifts at any point today, I don't want to see your face. Acceptable gift items may include but are not limited to: money, baked goods, pumpkin flavored items, or alcohol.

I am sure we can all guess who kicked off at 4am first. The kid. We took her to the fair for the first time last night. Apparently hanging out with carnies for hours and hours throws her beauty rest schedule off.
She opted for a two hour play date from 4-6am.

I have some sage parenting advice for anyone with a restless toddler in the house. This will apply for parents taking their 100th trip into their child's room to coax them back to slumber land.
You ready?
Play possum. 
There aren't any requests from your little dear for that extra story/glass of water/pillow fluff that can get through mommy acting as if she is dead to the world. Throw in some snores for good measure. Eventually the child will give up and follow suit.
60% of the time it works every time...

This parenting tip might just be as effective as my How to Potty Train Your Toddler in 3 Hours post. God bless anyone who ever takes anything I write seriously. 

Don't forget: I am still upset that it is Monday all day long, and I am still accepting gifts. 

Let's wrap up this post with some fair photos (sans the carnies):

Riding "Butterscotch" who she was convinced, was a donkey. 

Holy fun clown fish batman! That kid is having the time of her life! 

She was definitely the whitest kid in the bass boat. But not a care in the world! 

Pretty good lookin' crew eh? Those two probably shouldn't team up like that, it makes me look even shorter. 

Why Ya Wanna

Brett: "Brantley Gilbert and Jana Kramer broke up!"
Me: "I bet he finally heard one of her songs."
Brett: "Cold! Or maybe, and most likely, she finally told him about her feelings for me."
Me: "She must've heard about your extensive comic book collection... Irresistible."
Brett: "That was uncalled for."

I should have prefaced that a bit. When "Why Ya Wanna" came out Brett sang it- all the time. Horribly off key might I add. However, he also wouldn't skip a beat each time in telling me that she was going to run away with him one day. That song was almost as annoying as "Call Me Maybe". I see from a general search on the interwebs that Jana has a newer song out now called "I Hope it Rains". I would have to agree, I too, hope it rains, just loud enough to drown any chance of me hearing her (or Brett) sing.

I Miss You

...Hi, it's uh, it's me. Just dusting off the blog here, a little surprised no one has called DFCS and had her taken away from me due to neglect.

I know, I can hear you now:
"Where have you been? Who have you been seeing? Come home, the kids and I miss you!"

Shortest version possible is that I have been over here, doing work stuff. Big girl stuff, worky work, responsibilities. I could say keeping the house clean, but that is a total sham of a lie. I would lose my kid in this mess if she weren't freakishly huge for a two year old.

Another time suck lately? I have been working on legalizing my man friend. Resulting in hours of helping him study for the naturalization test. Apparently he and I learned that the President's cabinet does a lot more than "hold shit". May I point out that most citizens would not be able to answer half of these questions correctly without studying (wanna test yourself? click here). They could, however, tell you about 3 recipes they found on pinterest. Or what Miley Cyrus was wearing when she twerked herself into a media frenzy.

With the amount of ridiculously dumb people that can be found here in 'murica I was bewildered to see the crowd of folks at USCIS still trying to get in to join us. No wonder we get our feathers ruffled and cry "they take our jobs!". Well duh. Determined, bilingual individuals tend to make regular joes look like chumps. Especially if regular joes spend 99.9% of their time on facebook making typographical errors and posting pictures of themselves while drunk/something bacon related or both.
Read a book America, a book with words! 
Back to our process- Brett passed all of his tests, and is currently waiting on the final approval along with a notice to go in to take his oath. 

That short version of where I have been as of late got really out of hand didn't it?

I want to promise that I will write more often. However, I don't want to be like the husband who works "out of town" all the time, so I will cut it to you straight. If you don't see me here, take a look over at the business page. I am halfway appropriate over there. I tend to keep the sailor talk to a minimum, but some Mrs. Jones blogging is better than none right? So chin up! My sincerest gratitude to all of you who actually read the things that fall out of my mind.

Mexican Adventure Log Day 4 Part 2 of 2

      Alright ladies and gents, I left off at the cenote - travelling to the ruins. We spent an ungodly amount of time in the van driving across the country that day (seriously it took up about 4.5 hours of the schedule). The road trip for the day looked like: Dirt road - dirt road - two lane road that everyone knows is just a one lane road - side of the road trash - wild dog - repeat. I have never seen so much litter in all my life. Back home I feel bad just throwing a banana peel out the window (that usually goes well for me, remember this post?). Back to the two lane one lane roads...We hit a traffic jam on the way to the ruins caused by road construction (which really just looked like a bunch of random dudes playing with heavy equipment) in which we watched a large commercial coca cola truck smash, and scrape, the side of the cement roller. Just scooted right a long too. One interesting factoid I want to point out: we were shown a small concrete building (let's guess, maybe 300 s.f.) with a 100s.f. satellite parked right on top of the building. The guide told us that it was the satellite school for the local mayan children. The mexican government felt that it would be cheaper to provide a teacher via satellite and on a screen for these kiddos vs. a real teacher in the classroom. That seemed very strange to me. I wonder how well these little guys can learn via screen and not hands on?

       Litter and odd schools aside, that is neither here nor there. We arrived at Ek Balam, mid afternoon. Just the perfect time to feel like your face is melting off. Our tour guide gave us all a hefty bottle of water for the trek. We regrouped with a new tour guide provided and listened to the history of the ruins, and what some of the magnificent structures were used for. We were embraced by the shade of a few outlining trees during our history lesson, and we all dispersed accordingly to get a good shady listening spot. However, during the tour guides schpeel I kept hearing a spitting noise. I disregarded it at first because, people spit right? Sometimes. I guess.  But wait, I heard it again, and again. Much to my surprise, the Russian duo (a mother and daughter) were standing right behind us. What do you think they might have been doing? Think for a sec. This might throw you for a loop. You think you got it?

The mother, was taking her water bottle, taking a big sip of water...AND THEN SPITTING IT ONTO HER DAUGHTER. Swig, spit, swig, spit. All over this ladies shirt, shoulder area, back, the whole deal.    ..... I KNOW RIGHT?!      $%&*#@!
        She couldn't have come up with a better method of cooling her off? I can think of like, at least 5 ways to incorporate cold water FROM THE BOTTLE to cooling someone off that don't require sloshing it around your gross (and considerably warm) mouth first. For starters, just drink your own cold water, jesus. Brett and I were fairly terrified of them from that point on. And if it weren't for the small shady parameter we had secured we would have gotten the hell away from the spitty Russians. I can't be thankful enough that they were socially awkward and far from cordial or they may have offered to spit on us too. I would have died. If I had known that this was going to go down I would have attempted to see if during our lunch she actually chewed her own food, or had her mom do that for her too. Hello Alicia Silverstone.

We proceed, and wander through the amazingness of the ruins. Once I could regain my focus it was really an awesome experience. These structures are said to have been inhabited 600 BC-1600AD, and it was once a very powerful city. It had several large structures on its grounds. We were able to climb the main temple. At first I laughed at the idea of actually making it to the top, being perfectly content just touching the structure and photographing it. But our entire goofy gaggle slowly crept and crawled to the tippy top. That's almost 100 feet high, narrow stairs with no railing, no rope, no nothing! Going up wasn't the issue, climbing down sorta sideways sorta backwards was the hard part! At least I have little feet to fit nicely on the narrow stairs - Brett's monster feet in his ski sized flip flops had a hell of a time scaling the stairway down. I am pretty sure I just freaked myself out into closing my eyes most of the climb down. Intuitive feet, ftw.

Brett really liked seeing all of the lizards roaming the grounds too:

All in all, it was everything I had hoped to see, and more! One more thing to cross off the bucket list. Maybe when Adeline grows up we can take her and she can experience the greatness too. I will be sure to bring a cool rag for her, and make her drink her own damn water so I don't have to resort to spitting on her to keep her cool! Oy. 

Mexican Adventure Log Day 4- Part 1 of 2.

When I started thinking about the "things to do" in Mexico, the only thing I really wanted to experience was a trip to some Mayan ruins. The rest of the trip? Relax! I won't lie, I much preferred the relaxed environment of Ireland where we were free to roam the countryside in our ridiculously small (and pink, damn thing was pink) rental car. There weren't people every ten feet trying to sell you a tour, and I really liked that. Not that I thought Mexico would be anything like Ireland, I am just stating aloud my travel preferences.

I digress. We actually had an appointment the first morning of the Mexico trip to discuss the thousands of tourist traps stops that were at our disposal. They bring out the big guns first. The stops that require you riding on a huge tour bus packed to the brim with 40+ hungover idiots such as ourselves (to the tune of $150-300 per person). No thanks. Then time to discuss the "booze cruise" tours. Same concept, but on a tiny catamaran with no escape from the freakishly hot Mexican sun (yes, I realize we all share the same sun, but it seriously feels hotter there). No thanks. Then the Mayan ruin tours. She busted out several lovely laminated sheets of combo tours with glamorous photos of Chichen Itza (Chicken Pizza), Coba, Tulum. Then she hesitated to pull something else out of the bag. I asked what else she had rattling around in there that was a little less, crowded? A little less, commercialized? She then pulls out this poor little flier for Ek Balam. I am not going to say it isn't commercialized, hell, the fact that the Mexican government is practically forcing the Mayan people to open up shop at any of these stops to us stupid tourists is bad enough. I would like to note I also requested somewhere we could actually climb some of the temples. Many now have restricted access.
Slowly yet surely they are shutting down climbing opportunities to a lot of these ruin sites. Apparently when big fat Americans drink Tequila all week and then attempt to climb the intricately narrow stairs of these Mayan temples...they fall. Thus, ruining any possible awesome experiences for the rest of the world.

Long story long, we signed up to go to Ek Balam which also included a pit stop to a cenote (underground cave/water system). When Wednesday rolled around we went to the lobby of the resort to join our fellow vacationers on this nice little tour. To our surprise, we were the only folks on that entire resort going to Ek Balam, so we hopped onto our small, empty bus van and geared up for an eventful day. We had a great tour guide for the day, named Danique. She is from the Netherlands, so I thought it odd she happened upon being a tour guide at an obscure spot but hey whatever! Went to another resort where we picked up: a slew of  crunchy canadian kids, some french people, and 2 bat shit crazy Russian ladies (I will explore further soon enough). I was the only American on board, I am glad they didn't feed me to wild dogs that roam countryside.
*Insert long bus ride here*
Factoid, factoid, factoid.

Stop #1 - The cenote. We were told ahead of time that this would be occurring, but it was neat to be a part of a Mayan blessing. In a nut shell, when the Mexican government politely asked practically forced the Mayan people to get on board the tourism money train they said that they would be comfortable allowing strangers into their sacred water systems aka, these cenotes, IF they went through a blessing performed by a shaman beforehand. Followed by a thorough shower before touching these special waters.

We went through the blessing, and the painfully cold shower - saw that there were two methods of entry for the cenote. 1- Rappel  or 2- Take handy dandy stairs. I decided against being hooked up to the intriguing system of levers and pulleys and took the stairs. As most tourist spots do, they had entertaining stations inside the cave. Zip lines, rope walks, floaties for relaxing, and so on. My idea of adventure did not involve any of those things, I got in about knee deep and my mind started to shut down it was so cold. While Brett prepped for a refreshing zip line dip I scoured for a floatie. I knew he wouldn't let me leave without at least getting in the water. Whilst finding a floatie to suit my size to my dismay I also found 3 spiders and abandoned project. Stuck my feet back in the freezing waters and grinned at Brett as he proceeded to do ALL THE THINGS. You go hunny.
Other buses started showing up, gaggles of really awkward tourists started to fill up the poor little cave and it's frigid waters, and we headed out and had a yummy lunch.

This post seems to really have gotten lengthy, my apologies. I will break it into a two parter and wrap up with the good stuff: THE MAYAN RUINS.

Wandering the grounds at the cenote.

some photos of the cenote provided by the photographer there. 

The group with the shaman.