Granny Perturbed

All right, Children. It's time to talk about the Express Lane.

Here's what "20 items or less, speedy checkout" does NOT mean:

1.) Waiting in line, picking your nose, while holding your checkbook, only to start filling the damn thing out AFTER you get your total, digging in your purse for a pen, then writing so-o-o slowly, and finally balancing your account with the $3.67 you just spent on a pack of Camel no filters.

2.) Aw hell. Using your checkbook PERIOD in the express lane.

3.) Getting into line with your chica and having five separate orders each so you can pay with food stamps for each order ... Welfare, WiC, food stamps are all ok - abusing them is NOT ok.

4.) Putting 40 items on the belt and thinking that I don't notice.

5.) Sending your kid back for the gallon of milk that you forgot, making the rest of us wait. Get your lazy ass out of line, go get it, re-queue, and suck it up.

6.) Counting out exact change - if you want to give the gal eighty-six cents, in the REGULAR lane, go for it.

7.) Returning something, exchanging something, buying a money order, or anything that you KNOW will require a manager. Get thee to Customer Service.

8.) Moving slowly. Seriously, ma'am, I know you're so old you owe Christ a quarter, and technically you do have fewer than twenty items, but PLEASE go to the regular lane. Don't make the rest of us wait behind you while you excruciatingly slowly lay your cans of cat food and boxes of Depends on the belt, then dig out your little change purse, count out eighty-six cents, write a check for the rest, buy a money order, ask for a price check on the Fancy Feast, and then shuffle your way out the door.

Here's what "20 items or less, speedy checkout" DOES mean:

We've got shit to do. Get the hell out of the way.

Conversations with a Toddler

Mommy: What would you like for supper, Ian?
Ian: spaghetti!
Mommy: You want spaghetti?
Ian: Yeah! I want spag- phas- I want some!

~~~~~

Mommy: Looks like we beat Daddy home again!
Ian: Yeah, I beat on Daddy!
Mommy: That's Mommy's job.

~~~~~

Ian: I see a bus!
Mommy: You do? Where?
Ian: On the road.
Mommy: (singing) on the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again...
Ian: Stop singing, Mommy! I want to talk!

~~~~~

Ian: I wanna put my hood up!
Mommy: Ok, go ahead and put your hood up.
Ian: I'm a-gonna leave my hood down!
Mommy: Okie dokie, leave it down.
(pause)
Ian: (hopeful) I a-gonna eat a cookie!

Ameda's Milk Storage Bags Are Terrible (With A Side of Suck!)

Every day this pisses me off, so I decided to come here and rant about it.

With Ian, I used Lansinoh milk storage bags for all the milk that I pumped, and I never had a problem. I heard other moms say that they leaked, but they never did for me.

A couple of months ago, I was running low on the Lansinoh bags, and I was at the Ameda website anyway, buying a new power cord for my pump. So I threw a couple of boxes of these Failbags into my shopping cart. At $13.99 a box, they ain't cheap, kids. But I thought, hey, my pump is Ameda, and this bitch has fought the good fight for three years, so they probably make good bags too.

Fail.

First of all, the opening of the bags are narrow. They "say" that it's so you can screw the bag onto the neck of the pump and pump directly into the bag; I've never in my life been able to do that. Are they smoking crack?

Secondly, they don't have a nice little neat and tidy zip closure like Lansinoh's bags (which, by the way, are CHEAPER). They make you use some stupid ass clip and then a twist tie - like we need to pollute the earth some more, now, sure, let's throw some more plastic crap in the landfills. I've already got a coworker who's squicked out by me pumping - the LAST thing that I want to do is stand there in the kitchenette with my milk apparatus on display as I fight with the damn bag. I gave up on the clip after the first time using it. I just try my best with the twist tie, and pray. Sadly, the milk gods don't listen, because frequently I get leaks. The best thing I can do is to freeze it, because then it won't leak. If I put it in the fridge, I'd best be putting it in a cup if I don't want milk all over my edibles.

Thirdly, the box contains 20 bags. They divvy out the bags into separate sealed plastic bags of 5 each. Because, again, with the landfill. And that's exactly how I want to spend my afternoons - ripping into a little baggie with my teeth as I stand there holding pump flanges and bottles and whatnot, trying to hustle so my coworker doesn't freak out. I'm pretty sure it's a sterilization issue - they figure that having 20 bags parceled out into 4 bags of 5 means that if one bag gets contaminated, the others will be ok. But dammit, they need to test this shit with new moms in the real world before they sell their failbags on the open market.

Just don't ask me to do it because I've just about had it.

Child Photo Contest

I entered a photo of Ian to Parents Magazine's cover photo contest. Winners get their picture on the front of the magazine.

Please go here to vote. All you have to do is click "I like this!" - you don't have to sign up for the website or anything.

There are three pictures in the "My boys" album. Please vote for all three?

Thanks! :)

Echo In The Bone (spoilers!)

Ok y'all ... wtf?!?!?

Did Diana Gabaldon go on a walkabout for the last 10 chapters of EitB and someone else wrote it?!?

The below mini-rant contains spoilers. If you haven't read/finished the book, DON'T LOOK!

Claire and Jamie Fraser have a massive all-encompassing love, right? Their love transcends time, right? It's the whole basis for these friggin' books, that they're "blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh." So someone PLEASE explain to me why Claire sleeps with John Grey?!?

I think Diana's in love with John Grey, seriously. I personally don't care for the character - I read the books in part for the sex and, to be completely 100% honest, I don't really want to read about homosexual sex. Sorry. Nothing against the character really, he just doesn't appeal to me for that, and because he's so damn prim and proper.

I'm just so disappointed that she has Claire have sex with John. I mean, I can understand having them marry to save her from being arrested by the English, but then they have a drunken night of hot monkey sex? Not. He's gay. She's made quite the point of that. Why on earth would he want to sleep with the widow of the man he's been in love with for thirty odd years? I don't buy the reasoning of he just wanted to be closer to Jamie. It's still the wrong hole, sorry, no.

Does anyone else think that the end of the book felt extremely rushed in some plot lines and not rushed enough in others? I wanted to hear what was going on with Roger - what happened when he went through? Did he make it through? I assumed he did because he didn't come home, but - what's going on! Aaagh! Obviously he's going to try to make his way to the Ridge, because that's where he thinks Rob Cameron is taking Jemmy, but would he first go to Lallybroch to try to find Jamie, since he knew they went to Scotland?

And she has Claire find out that Jamie's dead, then marry John, have sex with John, think about killing herself, and find Jamie again, all in a whirlwind of like 2 chapters. Granted, they're long chapters, but... I could have done without that plot line at all. Just avoid that crap and have Claire and Jamie wait in Philadelphia and Roger shows up there and they all look for Jemmy, etc. The sex with John is unnecessary and, obviously, upset me and many other readers. (Not to mention that Claire is a physician and she knows that in that time period STD's would be rampant, especially among homosexual men, and yet she sleeps with one unprotected anyway. Right.)

The final scene with Jamie is John telling him that he had "carnal knowledge" of his wife and Jamie's noncommittal response. And that's it. Whuh? Talk about a crappy ending. Would Jamie not care? Hardly. He's taken bullets and bayonets for this woman, he's killed men who raped her - he's not going to just shrug off a man admitting to having sex with her.

Has the Outlander series jumped the shark? I pray not. It's my favorite series of all time and I'm so disappointed right now in the turn it's taken. Unfortunately I'll have to wait a couple of years to find out what happens next.