Happy Grouchies

Today I had one of those dreaded trips to the grocery where there is ONE checker & a gazillion people in line.  It makes me so pissy when I see tons of employees walking around straitening cans & only one lone checker to take care of a ton of customers trying to BUY shit.

As usual, I am the 6^th  person back in line with my cart over flowing to the point of embarrassment and an old lady (maybe 70) gets behind me with ONLY her ½ gallon of skim milk and greeting card to her great grand daughter for making honor roll or some shit in her cart.  I  immediately look over to see what’s up with the Express Lane, it was closed. Otherwise I would’ve slapped some sense into her mentioned it.  So I told her to go before me.   

Since I live in southern AZ, I let old people cut in front of me EVERY time I go to the store.  Sometimes, I can even get myself into an endless loop & end up in line forever by letting all the old people with 3 things in their cart cut.   Eventually I have to put my foot down & give them the go straight to hell & take your bananas & cat litter with you LOOK.

My old lady today told me straight up “Nope, I’m not going to be in a hurry any more, you go right ahead.”

Me:  Oh my gosh! I couldn’t sleep tonight if you didn’t go before me, truly, you go right ahead.

Old Lady:  Ok, thank you.  But I am I am done worrying about all these Snow Birds (those are seasonal Arizona people who only live here during the winter) rushing around and getting angry.  In fact, they don’t know how to drive, especially when it rains, But I’m SURE they can drive in the SNOW, but give them a drop of rain, they completely lose their minds. So I’m in NO hurry, wow those pork chops look good, are you going to grill those?

Me:  Yeah.  Mental Me:  NO SHIT!  I’m a total Snow Bird racist or what ever you call it. In fact, I’m a Rain Driving Racist too.  I’m from Kansas, you DRIVE in the rain, have picnics, play a round of golf & get married in the fucking rain, tornado sirens are just background music. A couple of rain drops here in Tucson make people have eyeball bleeds.

Old Lady: Well thanks again, now GIVE ME YOUR CART!

Me: Huh?

Baddass old lady starts taking ALL my groceries out at lightening speed & putting them on the conveyor belt behind her stuff.  I am busting my butt to keep up while being shocked.

Checker to Grumpy Old Lady:  How are YOU doing today?

Old Crunchy Lady:  Mean As EVER! Can I have $5 bills with my cash back, I have Bunko tonight.

Mental Me:  Can I have your phone number crusty old lady?  I’m pretty sure If I looked on Ancestry.com, you & I are related some how.  Maybe I was adopted & you are actually my biological mom.

Checker:  Sure, what’s Bunko?

Cranky Old Lady:  Just call it BINGO!

Mental Me:  Shut up Checker lady, EVERYONE knows what Bunko is, give her the $5 bills! She just unloaded my groceries like a tri athlete.

On my way home while reflecting on the grouchy old NICE lady that I might want to start stalking, I saw a little chubby (borderline obese) dude of about 4 years old at the end of his driveway while his mom was unloading groceries (probably not cat litter or bananas, but more like twinkies and Haugen D).  I SWEAR he was totally cool dancing right near the street. Like busting Chris Brown or Usher dancing! ♫  I almost stopped to ask his mom if I could take a little phone video for youtube or at least give him a snuggy hug, but I decided that would be creepy, so I will just post a picture or our neighborhood turtle instead. 

Below is a neighbor's pet tortoise that she takes for walks.  He eats prickly pears from kitchen tongs.

Southern Arizona is just FULL of interesting & cool people. I am SO going to work on my project "skin cancer" today & just take it ALL in.

Negative People Suck!

Having 4 kids, conversations with just one at time are rare & often very frenetic.  Below is how my rare, but cherished one on ones went today:

In car on the way back from dentist:

Me:  Hey Blake, who would you say was your least favorite teacher EVER?

Blake (my almost 17 y.o.):  Hmmm, probably Mrs. McGrath (3^rd gr).  One day after school she told me that she was going to follow me to the car to talk to you about me not doing my Accelerated Reading crap. She was such a hard ass about that! I was SO freaked out.

Me:  Yeah I KNOW right?  That AR shit was ridiculous. (I can say that now because he’s bounced between 3.8 & 4.0 GPA for the last 3 years)

Blake:  Luckily that day as we were walking out of the school, a little 1^st grader ate it HARD on the sidewalk & skinned the shit out of her knee.  I saw an opportunity & bolted to the car.

 Sorry, I'm a sucker for gratuitous gore

Me:  My GOD son!  That must have really fucked messed with your head all these years! Having a teacher follow a little shy boy to his car is just creepy. Sorry Son.

Enter Myles (my 15 y.o) after school:

Me: Hey guy! How was your day, what’s your homework? I mean HI Sweetie! What was the BEST part of your day?

Myles: Algebra as usual and we have an essay due on Monday for Lang Arts.  This quarter is our Shakespeare shit so we have to write a tragedy based on a true incident in our family.

Me:  CUH OOOOL!  I bet you are going to write about when you got hit by a car while riding your bike on Thanksgiving when you were 9 huh?

 True story, only cartoon pic for that fun day.

Myles: Nope, I’m writing about our great great grandpa who shot himself while cleaning his gun in front of his 11 year old son back in KS. The teacher told us that if our essay makes her cry, we will get extra credit. She also told us since her wedding is next month, she is really emotional these days double cool I smell an opportunity!

Me: WOW! AWESOME!  I LOVE how you think son, but don’t forget that he had 2 children that died before the age of 2 prior to that tragedy.

Myles:  Yeah, I know RIGHT?

Me:  Hell YES RIGHT! If you can some how work in a dead puppy to this story, you will kill it, I mean totally get the extra credit. Maybe there was some sort of bullet ricochet shit in that story we don’t know about.  I can sort of see that can’t you?

 I could so post some gore here, but won't.  

Enter Addie (my 12 y.o. & only girl) after her field trip to The Renaissance Faire in PHX today-

Addie:  MOM!  Look at this WAX hand I made.  It was supposed to look like Lady Gaga’s Little Monster's hand, but it got messed up.  Guess how much it cost!

Me:  Umm 5 bux? 

Addie: NO! 15.00!

 Seriously?

Me: Cool, I am so impressed that you were able to tie in Lady Gaga to your medieval social studies field trip.  What’s up with the fake nose ring?  Did that cost $15.00 bux too?  Oh BTW a friend of your brother’s had his nostril turn black and fall off from a fake nose ring infection.  You might give that some thought. 

Addie: Really Who? Man I’m SO tired.

Me:  Me too! Getting up early for the field trip killed me.  Go grab a corn dog, light your wax Gaga hand and relax.  Then go check your nose, I think I see a little goopey black spot.  

Enter Alex- my college boy (through tm):

Me: How are you doing today?

Al: Fine, you?

Me: Good, just noticing how our kitchen floor is cleaner than it has EVER been since getting the new puppy.  I’m pretty sure she even eats rocks & trash in addition to the food chunks & crumbs.

Al:  Cool! Our new pup (sister of ours) shredded an entire roll of toilet paper today, but DIDN’T eat it. 

 Real pic taken 3 weeks ago.  Yellow ours, Chocolate my son & girlfriend's.

Me:  Hmmm, give her your junk mail & receipts to shred.   Good alternative energy.

SO IN SUMMARY:

A bloody classmate saved the day for Blake.  A shot dead great great grandpa saved the day for Myles.  A gangrenous nose will save a future day for Addie and a destructive new puppy will save Alex from having his identity stolen.  BAM!  Just TRY to call me a negative person!  

Confessions of a Thief

Normally I am that girl who gets home from the grocery store & finds a can of tuna & carton of strawberries in my stuff, realize that I didn’t pay for them, and rush back to the store because the sacker accidentally bagged them with MY groceries.  I panic and guilt sets in because I have a mental picture of a poor old lady wanting to prepare a kick ass strawberry tuna jell-o salad or some shit for her bridge pot luck or something.

 

One time during the holidays I found a really elegant pink & purple $5.00 birthday card with ribbon & glitter along with two $20.00 phone minutes gift cards in my grocery bags when I got home.   That time (because I was a little busy with the holidays), I didn’t return them to the store until the NEXT day.  Upon returning them and standing in line for 5 minutes in ORDER to return them, I took an ass ripping.  The clerk told me (in a shitty tone) that the lady who DIDN’T get her phone minute gift cards & birthday card had ALREADY been there & thrown a fit & they had corrected it & then promptly dismissed me. She basically made me feel like I had missed a deadline or something…mmmmkay.

Now to my THIEF part----So I ordered some new school shirts from Aeropostale for my daughter (because she will ONLY wear Aero polos for school dress code.)  I also ordered some super cute slippers for my son’s girlfriend & a bottle of cologne for myself.  Oh & I ordered some cute plaid sneakers for my daughter. 

WELL- when the shipment came-it had all of my items, PLUS 2 extra bottles of cologne, a pair of size 5 skinnies (perfect fit for me except a bit long), a kick ass ladies T-shirt (again perfect fit) & a nice men’s T-shirt.  2 boxes, same receipt in both boxes.  

I’m pretty sure I was sent someone else’s order.  I had the whole angel & devil on my shoulder thing.  “Keep it.” “No, send it back, yes it will cost you $15.00 to do so, but send it back.. “Oh keep it, maybe it was actually a free gift since you order from them all the time.”  “Yeah right, a free gift, you never order men’s stuff, call them right now and send it back” (shut up angel).   

 (Yes the above picture is of me, minus the head and body)

Well I followed my husband’s advice.  (If you know my husband at all, that was an hour long conversation and assessment). But he finally said “Fuck it Tam, just keep it, if they send you a bill, just pay it.” Thank YOU devil hubbs, you are such a bad ass!

I waited about 3 weeks to wear the new free super cool T-shirt delivered from the devil.  BUT all 4 of my children said variations of -“Wow Mom! That is a COOL shirt! Is it new?”  Shhhhh children, we do not speak of it because there is a size 5 woman out there somewhere without anything to wear or any cologne right now. “Yeah kinda’ new, you really like it?” 

Do you have any thieving stories?  

 

What's yo name?

My daughter scored her first little boy friend this year.  His name is Alex.  Of course his name is Alex. What the hell else would it be?  After all, her oldest brother’s name is Alex and two of his best friends are named Alex.  In addition her youngest brother’s best friend’s name is Alex and she has a 2^nd cousin named Alex. 

My Alex has gone ONLY by his last name since 7^th grade (no one could keep track even with the initial attached thingie).  It would be alright if our last name was something semi-cool like “Worthington, Windsor, Kennedy, Onasis, Rockefeller, Sloan” etc. But our last name is “Hamby”.  That is pronounced: HAM –as in the kind you eat on Easter, and BEE – like the kind that sting you. So my oldest son has been known only as Hamby since he was 13 years old.  I have had friends and even teachers call me & ask for “HAM BEE” on the phone. Nothing wrong with the name, but for a FIRST name….I dunno, not feeling it.

Thankfully, I think he is a beautiful kid, so he can pull it off.  Below is a picture (yes I'm biased, bite me if you disagree. I am totally sure that whole statute of limitation thing for stealing a pretty kid in the baby ward has run out).

My very favorite thing is when a friend of my son says “Hi Mrs. Hamby, is Hamby here? That’s so COOL that you would name your kid the same name as your LAST name.”  Please call the fucking dumb police. Below is another picture of my Alex & his beautiful girl.   Her name is Andrea (pronounced ON Dray UH), but I'm sure you can imagine the ridicule she faces if/when they get married-Andi Hamby....good Gawd help her.

 

Now what I think makes our unusual last name EXTRA fucking special, is that my name is Tammie (which I have always felt was a fat girl name), but next to Hamby is just SO awesome!  I’m sure you can imagine the ridicule on that. Full on Dr. Seuss material at best.  Tam Ham, Tambo Hambo, Tammie Hammie, Tamby Hamby-----ALL FAT GIRL GRAIN FED NAMES! 

SO-Shortly after marrying, I went back to my given name of Tamara in an attempt to avoid the ridicule. I was so tired of seeing people hide their laughter upon saying Tammie Hamby out loud or worse-saying “WOW is that really your name?”.  Of course that has brought on 19 years of people mis pronouncing my given name-GAWD!  It’s such a fucking chore. I’ve been called Tuh MARE uh (like a horse), Tuh MAR uh (not today, but tomorrow). It's just TAMRA (Like that super hot Real House Wife of Orange County) with a little extra short vowel in the middle (Tam ah ruh) is that so hard?

Do you have any weird name stories?  I kinda want to start a club.  Hit me up if so! 

       

Important Questions

Along time ago my boss, who was also a good friend and an extremely successful business woman asked me “Tammie, would you rather be extremely beautiful and really stupid, or extremely ugly and really smart?” 

I’ve always loved questions like that.  I’m the one at the party that asks people if they would cut their pinky toe off with a butter knife for a million bucks.

I thought her question was so ironic because she was both beautiful (men fighting over her beautiful) and the girl who handed everyone their asses in Trivial Pursuit. She was fluent in French, owned her own business, and went to some foreign boarding school (ok it’s cuz she got kicked out of Catholic HS, but it was somewhere awesome like Hogwarts I think.)

My answer off the cuff was “ugly & smart”.  She said she would choose beauty over intelligence EVERY time.  

Now that I’m old and wrinkly, I kinda’ wanna to change my answer.  

But hit me up with YOUR choice. Beautiful and stupid? Or ugly and super intelligent? Oh & go ahead and answer the pinky toe question while your at it.

Good Decisions

The other night my 15 year old boy came down stairs in a seriously foul mood.  A Damnit MOM! Why the hell do you ALWAYS think something’s WRONG? Mood.

After some prodding, it turned out that he was on Formspring and the entire universe hated him because they believed he broke the bro code or man code or some sort of important code shit.

Having no idea what he was talking about, I demanded that he show me this destroyer of children.  WOW!  It is a question-and-answer-based social website, launched in November 2009. The site allows its users to set up a profile page, (got that from Wiki).  But it also allows people to post comments anonymously!  How awesome is THAT? Oh, I’ll tell ya- It’s like seeing your name on a fucking (had to get that word in) bathroom wall every 60 seconds WITH responses!  Basically kids ripping each other apart online.

After about an hour of reading this shit, I did the whole good mom thing & told my son that he HAD to get rid of this evil Formspring black tar demon because it was totally consuming and ruining his life.  I explained to him that if I had one of these accounts, I would spend my entire life on it just to see the shit people were saying about me. Now go grab me a Corona sweetie while I read some more posts from these DOUCHENOZZLES (that’s my new word, do you love it or what?).

Things have worked out just fine.  Myles has given up Formspring.  He is also officially dating the girl that caused the universe to hate him. She is a straight A student, very polite, well mannered, super cute & she told me I was pretty the other day- that's what I call good catch! (Smart girls know how to suck up). Unfortunately, she is ANOTHER cougar Damnit Myles, but only by one school year. Also only one kid hates him now and that is the cougar’s ex boyfriend. 

AND as an added bonus-Myles has given up super skinny jeans this week! He told me “you just can’t pull that shit off unless you have a small package.” I’m SO proud of him for making good decisions these days!  AND there is just something so rewarding when your high school son no longer shares jeans with his 12 year old sister.     

The Things Dogs Say

So we got a new puppy last weekend.  Her name is Christy. My 15 year old son Myles named her shortly after we got home. Myles saw her and said “She looks like a Christy”.  This was after my 12 year old daughter and I spent 6 hours in the car to go get her and being unable to agree on a name, getting lost on the way back, ending up in Nogales and having Border Patrol stop to ask us what we were doing on the side of the road.  We’re just mapping on the tablet & taking a puppy pee break. Oh, we’re in Nogales? We were shooting for Sahuarita.  Why are you laughing?  So we just went with Myles’ opinion.

Christy is a 7 week old yellow Labrador retriever.  We are crazy about her and below are some of the conversations I have had with her, well, how I imagined them anyway.

Christy:  Sweet Mother of God! Is that a BONE in your big toe?

Me:  Why yes it is.  In fact, you can even SEE it now huh?

Christy:  Why is this shrimpy black wiener dog humping my head?  He doesn’t even have a freaking sack.

Me:  I Think he’s just a perv Chris.  Get used to it, it runs in your new family.

Christy:  Holy SHIT! Is that a Pepperidge Farm Pizza Flavored Goldfish in the track of this sliding glass door?

Me:  I KNOW RIGHT??  I’ve been keeping it there for 2 years JUST for YOU!  Am I the COOLEST or WHAT?

Christy:  What kind of sick monster puts a 7 week old puppy in a cage? And to wear fuzzy blue slippers while you do is just messed up.

Me:  COME ON?  REALLY?  Here, just take my big toe bone you sweet thing.

Love our little Christy!  She’s pretty great!