Kranky Kricket: Poop

I posted a little thing on Facebook about this yesterday, but I thought I'd expound upon it here, because this is my blog and I can do that. ;P

So I have some neighbors that I, believe, have two cats. A gray tabby and a black one. I know the tabby is their's for sure, and the black one is always around so I just figure it's my neighbor's as well.

Anyway, I live in a little town home complex that has a rule about keeping your animals on a leash when outside, INCLUDING cats. And along with that rule is one to pick up after your animals.

Well, these cats have decided that my garden is their litter box. I used to have flowers there, but they died, so now it's just an empty patch of dirt by my front door. And for weeks now I've been finding cat poop in there and there has been dirt spread all over my front walk. It's annoying and it's messy, not to mention gross and dangerous. Poop of any kind is full of nastiness.

I'm getting fed up with this. I've even moved some of my potted plants so that the cats can't get to the area, but that hasn't stopped them. There was dirt everywhere just yesterday. I shouldn't have to put up with this or clean up the cats' mess. They're not my cats.

And what really gets under my skin is that I have a 10 lb Chihuahua who is the same size, if not smaller, than these cats. I pick up his poop when we go out. You'd think these cat owners could do the same thing.

So, now I'm waiting to catch these cats in the act. And when I do, I'm going to talk to their owner. I'm sure the owner isn't aware that their cats do this and hopefully by making them aware, they'll stop letting their cats out. They're not supposed to be out by them selves anyway.

And for the record, I like cats, never owned one, but I do like them.

I mean, come on, who couldn't love a face like that? :)

Well, thanks for reading and I hope you have a less cranky Friday and a fun filled weekend!

Kranky Kricket: Smart Phones Don't Like Toilets

So, I didn't update this last week because I had family in town and I went an entire week without getting on my computer. Minor miracle for me. But I'm back now and we shall move forward into the Krankiness. :)

Let's talk about smartphones and the people that provide them to us. About three weeks ago I upgraded to a smart phone and I was very excited. It can do everything my Kindle does, plus make phone calls. Only thing that kept me from putting my Kindle aside for good was the tiny phone screen. I don't like squinting at screens.

Anyway, when I bought the phone, the nice guy at the store talked me into getting insurance on the phone. At first I almost didn't do it. I've never once broken any of my previous dumb phones. I always managed to keep them safe in my pocket and away from sticky/slippery children hands. But as the salesman was describing the insurance, I got this image of Will or Jacob dropping my phone into the toilet so I went ahead and signed up for the insurance.

And lo and behold, I dropped the phone into the toilet. Serves me right trying to multitask at 5 a.m. I tried to save it as fast as possible but it was a goner.

So then I went to my local cell phone store to get a new phone and that's when stuff started to get annoying. Apparently, not all Verizon stores are the same. See I got the phone at the Flatiron Mall in Bloomfield with my sister. And the stores that are in the mall operate differently than a stand alone stores, at least with the insurance and stuff. So after driving all the way to one store and waiting around a bit with Will and Jacob in tow, I'm told I have to go all the way back to the original store.

I got sick later that day so I had to wait until the next day to drive over half an hour just so the salesman could call the insurance place for me and then I talk to the insurance lady and get it all settled. $100 later and now I'm just waiting for my new phone to arrive in the mail sometime tomorrow.

Of course, with all of this, I've lost my contacts and all the pictures that were on the now dead smart phone. I didn't have a ton of stuff on there yet, but it's enough to be annoying.

But I've learned my lesson. Never take a smart phone into the bathroom with you and make sure you're paying attention to all the fine print.

And that's my crankiness for the week. I hope your's has been less irritating. :) Thanks as always for reading and have a good weekend!

Kranky Kricket: Not So Kranky

Yeah, I have stuff I could whine about today (I always do) but I don't want to do that because yesterday was Daniel and mine's 5 year wedding anniversary. :)

Back on June 27, 2008 Daniel and I got married at the Salt Lake City Temple.

In front of the Temple doors

It was a pretty amazing and stressful day (as wedding days always are).

In the 5 years since, I have moved a total of 4 times between 3 different states (GA->UT->CO), worked for 2 years, had 2 kids, been too poor to buy milk and then had enough money to buy a car, wrote one book that sucked and am working on another one that hopefully doesn't suck as much. Daniel has gotten his Associates degree in Accounting and had a few different jobs, and all the while we have weathered the ups and downs of life together. I couldn't have asked for a better man to have by my side through all of it.

And the best part is, I get to keep him forever and ever! You know, whether I like it or not. ;)

So looking forward, what will the next five years bring?

• Daniel will get his Bachelors in Accounting
• We'll get out of debt
• We'll buy a house
• We'll have at least one more kid
• I'll finish a book that is good enough to be published
• And the rest of life will just be smooth sailing....

I mean, that's how it works, right? Once you make it through the first five years everything gets easier? No? *looks disappointed* Oh well, I guess we'll just keep doing what we do, BEING AWESOME! :D

Wow, we looked so young!

Thank you for reading while I gushed and have a happy weekend!

Kranky Kricket: Mommy Guilt

Oh my, I just realized, here at 7:30 PM on a Saturday, that I forgot to post a blog yesterday. I had it all planned out in my head too. But have no fear, brave reader, I am here now. Following is a slightly pessimistic, and rambling, view of motherhood.

So let's talk about Mommy Guilt. It's a thing, I'm sure of it. And it's brought on by some crazy idea of what the "perfect" mother should be. In my mind, the "perfect" Mom is one who keeps her house clean, kids properly fed and appropriately clothed, is loving but firm in her disciple, keeps her kids busy doing healthy or educational things, sticks to a good schedule/routine, and is always productive. Any thing else, like hobbies or spending time with people who are not your kids, is just gravy.

I am none of those things. Well, I might be a couple of them on any given day and I've only manged to do all of them at once, maybe twice a month, but that's it.

I'm always behind on the house work, and my house isn't even all that big. There are some days where the majority of Will's diet is Goldfish and we're all in our PJ's all day. My disciple ranges from spoiling the boys, to completely over reacting to minor things. The boys spend way too much time watching TV and not enough time being outside or doing something constructive. My routine, even when written down, is all over the place most days. And I spend way to much time being online doing next to nothing.

I am so far from perfect it's scary and depressing. And there are many days that I go to bed kind of hating my self for it. And rationally, I KNOW I shouldn't feel this way, I KNOW that no one is perfect, not even those people I look up too. I KNOW that there really isn't such a thing as "perfect". And yet, I always find my self lacking.

All of this, is Mommy Guilt. We Moms want the best for our families and we want to give them our all and make life easy and beautiful for them. I mean, that's our job right? It's not enough that we're pregnant for 9 long awful months and then push a baby out of our abused bodies. We're expected to care for and nurture every aspect of this tiny creature's entire life.

And this Guilt doesn't even cover our other roles as Wives, or Employees, or Friends, or Family. This just has to do with children.

It's a lot of responsibility and a lot of pressure. Lives are in our hands. If we mess it up, there's a whole life damaged and scarred, that might not be able to recover. Lot of freaking pressure, I tell you. Thus, the Guilt.

And Mommy Guilt can be debilitating, trust me, I know. I fight it every day. I open my eyes every morning and have to decide how I'm going to approach this day and by the time I close my eyes at night, nothing has gone as I planned. Sometimes it's totally out of my control, but many times, I know it's my fault and what I did wrong. I promise to do better the next day, but it never really gets better. The Guilt makes it hard to get up the next day. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and sleep, hoping that when I wake up, all the problems will just go away.

To be really blunt, it fucking sucks. ((or no, she said the F word, run for your lives, cover your bleeding ears!))

BUT, I offer hope, more for my self than you, but you can have it too, I'll share. Now, repeat after me: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PERFECT. SCREW WHAT OTHER PEOPLE DO OR THINK. YOU ARE THE MOTHER TO YOUR CHILDREN, YOU KNOW WHAT'S BEST FOR THEM AND YOUR SELF. THE REST OF THE WORLD CAN EAT YOUR HOME MADE CHOCOLATE POOP PIE! (bonus cookies for the person who gets that reference)

Now, go forth, dear reader, and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Comments welcome!

Kranky Kricket: Disappointments

Hello Good Reader. Take a deep breath in... now let's get it all out.

Don't you just hate it when you discover something new and you're really excited about it but after a while it's just hugely disappointing? I've had this happen to me three times this week.

I'd like to start with the game I discovered a few weeks ago called Dragon Story. I praised it in my first Happy Korner, but just this morning I found out some things that kind of tick me off. So over the last few days the game would crash on me whenever I tried to visit other people's dragon islands. I couldn't figure out why this was happening so I did some digging online. Come to find out, the version I have on my Kindle is not the actual latest version of the game. If I want that, I'd have to have an iOS device. Apparently people with iProducts have all sorts of features and dragons that I, as a Kindle user, will never have. And it doesn't look like the developers of the game are going to fix this anytime soon.

It's just annoying. Why offer a game if you're not going to offer the full version? I'd even be willing to pay real money to get a fuller version of the game, but that isn't even an option.

Nonetheless, I'll continue to play the game, just minus the social aspect of it, since the reason the game would crash was because I was trying to visit iOS supported islands.

The other thing that was disappointing was an anime I found earlier this week called Trinity Blood. I got so into this show. I normally avoid most things with vampires because I feel the trope is way over used, but this put a different spin on it that I like. Plus, the biggest draw for me was the main character, Able Nightroad. He's pretty much the most kick ass anime character ever. Goofy+Hot+Killer Powerful=Totally Awesome in the Kricket Book of Awesomeness (it's a thing, I'm working on it ;) ).

But the last episode of this show was just awful. It's going good and it's gearing up for, what should be, an epic battle. It even gets this battle started, but then it's like the writers realized they only had ten minutes left of the show and rushed the hell out of it. There is just soooo much more they could have done with this, it makes me sad. But, it also makes me want to read the manga and/or novel as well, so you have that.

And finally, there was a book I was looking forward to reading but 10% of the way through and I just couldn't get into it.

I tried, I really did. But it gets to these parts with these aliens and the author just took too damn long to actually describe what these aliens look like. At first I thought he was talking about a creature with multiple heads and arms and things and I could not for the life of me figure it out. Finally it comes together that a single alien entity it actually a pack of wolves, and as cool as that is, the whole book was just done for me by then. So I moved on.

And that's my gripes this week. Now that I've let them out I feel a little better.

So tell me, what things have you gotten really excited for and then walked away from wondering why you even bothered? Tell me in the comments!

Thanks for reading and have a Happy Weekend!

Kranky Kricket: Love/Hate Government

Unlike last week, I don't really have a laundry list of things that bothered me this week. I mean, yeah, there are some government things I could talk about, but my opinions aren't that much different from everyone else.

A lot of what's going on in Washington is interesting and everyone is all shocked or surprised by things, whereas I don't think they should be. What is going on now, this is not the first time our government has covered up an international incident. This isn't the first time different groups have been targeted and harassed by the government. And this is not the first time that the government has spent a lot of time and resources monitoring their own people for various reasons.

What makes things different now is that we live in an era of information. It's easier to find information and it's easier to spread it. Thanks Internet. Sometimes all we find and spread are lies, but in there is a nugget of truth. And thankfully, we the people, no longer have to simply take what we are spoon fed by the major media.

But even through all of this, I still love this country and I'm still grateful for this government. It's not perfect by any means, because it is run by people. And humans are possibly the most flawed creatures on this planet. But I'd rather live here than any where else.

Now remember friends, take deep breathes and let go of all that negativity and have a great weekend!

Kranky Kricket: The First Scream

Welcome to the first edition of Kranky Kricket, where I whine a little and y'all get to be my sounding board. :)

Okay then, everyone ready? Deep breath in, and SCREAM!

Being sick really sucks. So does figuring out that your old favorite way to sleep is bad for your neck and is why you wake up stiff every morning. Of course this is a new development. I strained my neck somehow a week or two ago and now I wake up hardly being able to move it. It gets better after being awake for a while and moving it around, but it's back the next day.

I know I should go to the chiropractor but as it is with insurance right now, it'd cost $40 a visit. And if you've ever been to a chiropractor you know it's nearly impossible to go just once a month. They always start with at least weekly visits, if not more. I really like my chiropractor, I'm just poor at the moment since we just had to pay for new glasses for William out of pocket.

And that's a whole other issue. I was taking him to one eye doctor that prescribed bi-focals for Will. I was skeptical at first but we still tried them for a month. Will spent the whole time wearing them on the tip of his nose so he could look over them. After determining that the eye doctor was on crack I found a new one. New eye doctor is much more competent.

Alas, we have already bought one pair of glasses this year, so insurance is not going to cover a second pair for him. $387 for a pair of kids glasses. I can't even imagine how much money my parents spent on glasses for me.

In other things that made me frustrated, not having internet. I'll admit it, I'm a slave to my computer and all my devices that connect me to the internet, so when that goes away, I feel a little lost. And I don't consider my self that addicted, honest.

But then the other thing is when you call the internet provider company about it, all you get is robot answering machines and then it has the audacity to tell you what websites you can go to to find out about local outages. Well now, if I could get ON THE INTERNET I wouldn't be calling you now would I?

So there's my gripes for the week. Tell me what's been bugging you this week in the comments! It's good to get these things out so we can all enjoy the weekend a little more.

Thanks for reading and have a Happy Friday!

The New Plan

Hello Wonderful Readers! Thanks for being patient while I tinkered with my blogs, I hope you find it worth your time. :)

So, along with a slightly new look, notice the background change and a few new things on the side, there is also going to be a new line up of content that I will stick to like it's a new religion. If you really love me, and I know you do, you should be excited for a chance to hear from me 3 TIMES A WEEK! Crazy, right? Yeah, I'm crazy.

Here is the New Schedule:

MONDAY: "Kricket's Happy Korner" I'm a real believer in the power of positive thinking (think happy thoughts and you can fly Peter Pan!). Also, I'm a fan of reminding my self of all the things I have to be thankful for. Sometimes the world is full of so much crazy and negative things and you just need a pick me up. And what day do we need that most? Monday. So I'll be writing about things that make me happy and what I'm thankful for in the past week.

WEDNESDAY: "What's Up Wednesday" This will continue over on Kricket Writes. I've been doing it for about two months now and I like it. In WUW I give word count updates on my current projects and other general writing observations. I'll also be sharing an excerpt of something I wrote that week and sometimes sharing interesting/insightful writing news/advice.

FRIDAY: "Kranky Kricket" Because we can't be happy all the time and sometimes you just need to let some things go. So here I'll be purging all the things that annoyed me over the week so I can be unburdened for the weekend. You're welcome to come join me as I scream into the void just for the pleasure of hearing it echo back to us.

I'll still be doing book reviews, if I liked the book, it'll pop up on Monday, if I didn't like it, you'll see it on Friday.

And there you have it. I am very serious about sticking to this new schedule and if I slip up, you're allowed to be angry with me. So please, come along with me and leave comments, I LOVE comments! Let's remind ourselves that we're not alone in the great big thing that we call The Internet/The World.

Happy Monday!

P.S. I wrote this a few days ago and now remember that today is Memorial Day here in the USA. So thank you to all the wonderful and brave men and women who serve to protect this country and have helped to provide the freedoms that I take for granted everyday.

Special shout out to my brother who served in the Navy! :)