Rock On

You know what's awesome when you feel like something the cat threw up? Being told that you rock. And that is exactly what has happened to me.

It turns out that I am a Rockin' Girl Blogger! I never would have thought! My buddy Meghan, who is quite rockin' in her own right, has tagged me. I'd like to thank all the little people, particularly the three who provide me with so much blog fodder. As stated in the rules, I must now tag 5 others. Of course, I can't narrow it down to just 5 so I'm throwing in a bonus at no extra charge:

1. Of course, my curly little Tannazie of All Kinds of Yum. Even if you don't appreciate her meandering posts about the most arcane food news and information, you'll love her photos, including the occasional very cute child model or two, and her blog is sure to leave you hungry and itching to visit her cute neighborhood in L.A. Stay tuned for her big blog remodel. It is gonna look great. Now we just have to bring her over to the dark side and get her scrapping.
   
2. The lovely Rambling Tara herself of Tara's Ramblings. This girl is a military wife, has 5 adorable kids whom she homeschools!, and still manages to crank out gorgeous detailed scrapbook pages. Amazing!
   
3. Tara Whitney, who I'm sure doesn't read my piddly blog but is still rockin' nevertheless. She is a mom of 4, a photographer whose family pictures have been made to make even bitchy me teary, and a really awesome scrapbooker whose emotions for her kids come through in all of her pages and photography.
   
4. My darling Just Nicole of Nik's Notations. Truth be told, Just Nicole hasn't posted in a while but she just turned 30, started a new job and is traveling this weekend so we'll cut her some slack. Her blog treats us to a slice of her life in Australia and when we're lucky we get pictures of beautiful scenery, her lovely lovely scrapbooking and awesome Indi, her precocious and foul-mouthed daughter. Hmm...wonder where she gets that from.
   
5. Speaking of daughters, mine is certainly rockin' at All About Me. Certainly, she would post more often if she wasn't so busy feeding her Webkinz or devoid of computer privileges for the infraction of the day.
   
6. Finally, sweet Lissa of Life's Reflections. She has such a lovely way with words that even when her posts don't include cute pictures of Dalton or her gorgeous scrapbook pages, her blog is a treat to read.
   

There are several other blogs I read daily who are definitely written by rockin' girls (Kim, Jax, Beth, Teri-Lynn, and others). However, I believe those have already been granted official rockin' status. Hope you enjoy the ones I mentioned here. Tell them I sent you and thanks again Meghan!

Odds & Ends, Mostly Odds

So the summer is half over (sniff, sniff, sob, sob) and it's been a good one so far. The days have been sufficiently busy, with a little bit (not enough) down time here and there. Here are a few things that are going on:

• We finally got a desk ordered for Julia's room. I don't know which 6 year old begs and begs for a desk but mine did. We promised her she'd get one before second grade and it looks like the promise will not be broken. She'll need a chair, but that can be procured easily I'm hoping. The arrival of the desk will necessitate some rearranging in her room but more importantly, once it's here, I can start the project I've been dying to do for her room. I want to make a homemade version of a combination of Pottery Barn Kids' and Pottery Barn Teen's bulletin board systems. I recently found out that you can buy Dry Erase paint to make any surface a dry-erase board. How cool is that?! This was the last bit I couldn't figure out for this project and now I have. I can NOT wait to get started. It will be a big project (by my scale anyway) and I'll be amazed if I can pull it off and manage not to get divorced in the process. I can't wait to start shopping for fabric!

• If you like baking or baked goods or ice cream or eating or supporting a good cause, read this post from my sister's blog. She and her friends are organizing a local bake sale and could use contributions of either baked goods to sell or other items for a raffle. Feel free to spread the word to all your L.A. area friends. Or better yet, organize a bake sale in your own neighborhood.
  

• On Friday Ray took my big kids to the office with him. One of the people who work there is a nice lady by the name of Erica. Well, never having heard that name before, Ethan assumed it was America. And walked around all day calling her....."Miss America!"

• A while back I mentioned Julia's birthday cake and how I might post a picture if it turned out OK. Well it turned out OK, but not much better than OK. I was in the grocery store and found a packet of edible flowers in with the fresh herbs. I picked them up hoping to spruce up her birthday cake and here is the result. The assortment of flowers wasn't the greatest and by the time I got around to using them, they weren't so fresh. They would've probably looked much better on white frosting, but we're a chocolate family. I think next year I will strive to do better than a cake mix cake and store-bought frosting. I can do better than this, much better. However, the novelty of the flowers on the cake went a long way. No one was brave enough to actually eat one, however.

The Police at Dodger Stadium: The Bad

A word of advice: if you find yourself injured in some way and happen to be going to Dodger Stadium, do not expect one iota of help from the unhelpful, untrained, uninformed and unsympathetic staff.

After having paid over $100 each for tickets to see The Police Saturday night, we decided to spend the extra $15 (over and above the exorbitant $20 charge for regular parking) for preferred parking, hoping to reduce the amount of walking my poor hobbling husband had to do on his dislocated and contused knee. We asked
the parking attendant which lot would be closest to our seats and were directed to the appropriate place. When we got to the entrance, we were directed to one entrance (more walking) only to be told when we got there that we needed to be elsewhere (walk right on back to where you came from). And then, when we finally got in, we realized (you know what's coming, right?) that our seats were exactly on the opposite side of the entrance we'd been directed to. Seriously, when you work at Dodger Stadium, do you never have to look at a map of the place as part of your training?

At this point, I was sure on of the seemingly millions of ushers and various staff hanging around talking to their buddies would be happy to help my obviously injured husband, in his big, black knee brace, and I reach our seats as quickly as possible. Luckily, there seemed to be this giant FIELD right in front of us that we could simply cross to get right to where we needed to be. But no, apparently you need to be personal friends with God himself (herself?) to be granted access to the field. Never mind that our seats were less than 10 rows up from the precious field. No amount of begging, pleading, or explaining would get us past the gate to the field. We were offered a wheel chair, which Ray wasn't interested in, and that was it. And forget trying to talk to a supervisor. It was like trying to find the Customer Service phone number on Amazon.com. It just wasn't happening. So, around the stadium we limped.

Fast forward to the end of the show (more to come on that in the next post). At this point, I figured that it would be OK for us to walk back across the field, seeing as the SHOW WAS OVER and EVERYONE WAS LEAVING. Ha! At this point the ushers were tired, cranky or just pissed off and once again the answer was "No." Not "Sorry, no." Not, "I wish I could." None of that. Forget courtesy. Forget that our ticket sales pay their salaries. Forget that we were just trying to get the hell out of the stadium. The rudeness was disgusting.

Apparently, having the preferred parking did get us out of the park faster, but that was the only benefit. I hate being one of those customers who is constantly complaining about things, but in this case, I don't think it's too much to ask for parking attendants to know which side of the stadium is odd or even, for entry attendants to know which entrance they happen to be manning, or for ushers to be polite and courteous even if they can't be helpful. While Dodger Stadium is a phenomenal place to watch a baseball game or concert, and Dodger Dogs are the best in the world, that doesn't eliminate the need for customer service. Los Angeles residents have a lot of entertainment options, including another baseball team down the freeway and a dozen or more other concert venues. Why go somewhere where you'll get ripped off and be disrespected?

Big thanks to malingering for this great shot of Dodger Stadium.

Free Fashion Tip of the Day

Gentlemen:

If you must insist on wearing these godawful plastic shoes for some reason, there is no reason to make them uglier than they inherently are by adding socks, particularly when you are wearing them with shorts. Granted, the socks probably make your feet less stinky, but trust me, it's not worth it.

Of course, the same advice goes for the ladies but I can't imagine any ladies making this fatal footwear faux pas.

A Request. No, A Desperate Plea.

IF you have as much black hair covering your body as an average gorilla and,
IF that hair extends down your lower back and covers your butt and even extends into your nasty fluffy butt crack and,
IF you insist on wearing low rise jeans with no visible undergarment and sit outside, leaning way forward in your chair talking to your friends while innocent people, even children, are walking by, or God forbid, trying to enjoy a cold Starbucks beverage on a freakishly hot southern California day,
THEN for God's sake put on an overcoat or jacket or at least a long shirt to cover that thing up. Better yet, just wear a jumpsuit.