Home improvement stores bore me to tears. But in all fairness, I’m sure Fashion Bug, Lane Bryant and Target all bore Dan to tears, too. So once in a great while I subject him to FB or LB, and he retaliates by dragging me into Lowes or Home Depot. I have no interest in looking for grow lights or picking out the right nuts, bolts or filter for our furnace, so I usually go traipsing off to check out the gizmos and neat little gadgets along the front of the store.

We haven’t been to a home improvement store lately. In fact, the last time I was at one I’m pretty sure it was just ME there. Shocking, I know. But I had stuff to buy: light filtering mini-blinds, a new lock for the door, and some other odds and ends that I can’t find at Target or Wal-mart.

All right, a new TV show is on and I want to watch (Baby Borrowers!), so talk to you later.

Right now I’m watching Most Wanted on Court TV Tru TV. I like the show. It’s like COPs, only with more narrative, more still video rather than the sporadic video shot by a huffing camera man that can’t keep up, and more brutal crap. They just showed a mens jewelry store that got robbed by a guy who couldn’t just take the money and leave. Oh no, he had to hit the female clerk and shoot at her. So riddle me this. While I don’t understand people who rob other people and stores, I really don’t understand people who rob them, but insist on hurting, trying to kill or killing the innocent clerks and sales people. Can’t you just take the money and go? Isn’t that enough of a crime?

I ordered a t-shirt from ThinkGeek, and another from KlearGear. One is for Dan, and says “meh”, and the other is for me — it says “I’m blogging this”. I love geeky t-shirts. I can’t wait until they arrive!

Many advertising companies are taking advantages of the service someone like a Mom consultant can offer. A Mom consultant is a professional that can assist companies with reaching out to their favorite targets: moms. Mom consultants know how to approach us mothers, and they know what we do and don’t like, what we’ll make time for and what we just can’t be bothered with.

I have been approached by a few Mom consultants in the past. Some asked me to participate in product reviews, others were looking to sponsor my blog by placing sponsored content on it. Then some others just wanted me to answer a few surveys.

I like Mom consultants, because they really know how to approach us moms!

Have you been approached by a Mom consultant? How did it work out for you?

Oy, I am really tired… going on 4am. I swear, I’m going to bed in just a few minutes! I can’t wait to get my contacts out, because my eyes are very dry.

When it came to choosing names for my daughter, Alyssa, and my son, Ryan, I consulted a lot of baby name books and baby name websites. Once I knew Alyssa was going to be a girl, I set out to picking names. I’m pretty sure we had settled on a name before I reached the ninth month of my pregnancy. Her name would be Alyssa Marie [last name]. Marie was my grandmother’s middle name.

Now my son’s name took a lot longer to figure out. In fact, it wasn’t until a few days before I had him that we finally settled on a name for him: Ryan Edgar [last name]. Edgar is my grandfather’s first name.

I remembered consulting a few celebrity baby names list, but just out of genuine curiosity, and no real desire to follow the trends.

How did you name your kids?

I had the unfortunate luck of finding the direct result of not spaying and neutering cats: sick, abandoned kittens. There were five in all, being eaten from the inside out by maggots. All had maggots in their eye sockets, maggots coated on their hind legs and tails, and maggots wriggling in and out of their protruding, bleeding rectums. All five cats were dying a slow, painful death in which they could do nothing but cry and wiggle about on the ground.

Even if your cat or dog is an inside pet, you should still have them altered, just in case they do ever get out. There are several other reasons to have them altered, including decreased risk of certain types of cancers and cysts, and better disposition. For dogs, male aggression is significantly reduced. For cats, the scent of the urine is also greatly reduced.

Just as importantly, do NOT feed strays. As tempting as it is to feed a stray, do not. Instead, take it in and care for it as a pet, if you’re able and the stray is friendly. If not, trap it, or call your local shelter/animal welfare agency, and report the stray.
As cruel as it sounds to not feed a stray cat, remember this: if that stray cat sticks around because it’s given food and possibly shelter, it’s going to mate, it’s going to reproduce. One female cat can produce 22 kittens in a three year lifespan. That’s a lot of kittens that are risking injury, torture, and slow deaths like the ones I found faced.

When you encourage a stray cat by feeding it, rather than trapping it or having an animal welfare agency trapping it, you are:
1) encouraging reproduction, which results in more unwanted cats
2) drawing other strays to your home and neighborhood
3) risking the spread of disease, as stray cats may often be carriers of rabies, FIV or other diseases that can be spread to humans and even other animals

When you don’t neuter your own pets, you are running the risk of it reproducing if it ever got out.

This post has been brought to you by the awful night I had last night, in which I found five maggot filled two week old kittens in a nine hour period, and made two late night trips to a 24/7 emergency vet clinic to have them euthanized. Oh, and a $188 vet bill. And a lot of tears and grief.

The tannish spots/gritty areas are maggots. They were also in their eye sockets.

Full story on jenn.nu: This is how a heart breaks

Since titanium-jewelry.com has a coupon good for $25 worth of savings floating around (use coupon code CS25 to get yours!), I’m checking out some tungsten rings for my husband. He has expressed some interest in black titanium and tungsten. I think I like the tungsten personally.

In addition to black titanium and tungsten rings, titanium-jewelry.com also has a huge amount of jewelry available in regular titanium. They carry rings for men and women, necklaces, bracelets and other accessories.

I want to do something special for my husband. While we both work and probably log equal amount of hours most weeks (yes, I am that busy working from home!), his job is much more physically demanding than mine, and definitely more stressful. Plus there’s the driving time to and from work, and I know how much he hates to drive.

I have one idea in mind, but it would take a lot of planning, and a significant amount of money. It’s something I hope to pull off by the end of the summer. I’m so tempted to just jump and do it this weekend, but unfortunately those pesky little things known as “bills” always want to be paid first.

Today has been a really quiet day. I did some blogging, started a new book (check out my Good Reads to see what’s on my reading list!), read some of the confessions at True Mom Confessions, and did a bit of research on titanium rings for a writing project I wrapped up just a little bit ago.

I need to get geared up for July and then August! Ack! Summer is just whizzing by. My son’s second birthday is in two weeks, and then we have a swim party to plan for on August 5th. Whew!

If you have a child, then you’ll definitely want child insurance! We have our kidlets covered under everything — health and life. I think that’s about it, right? What other kinds of insurances are there?

I’m bored today. I’m trying to get a few small writing projects out of the way, because then I have a bunch of big ones to tackle. Oy. Tonight is going to be a busy night!

How is your Thursday? Do you have any exciting plans for the weekend?

Alyssa is really starting to get her own sense of style. While we were shopping a few weeks ago, she came running over with a Littlest Petshop themed cap. She likes wearing tank tops, flowing, ruffled skirts and stockings — she’s wearing all three together today, as a matter of fact. She likes pink sunglasses and purple headbands and blue hair clips, and lots of glitter. She dresses herself, routinely coming out wearing blue and orange, or stripes and polka-dots.

But you know what? I definitely embrace her uniqueness! ♥

Straight or curly. Blonde or brunette. Tight curls or loose waves. Yadda yadda yadda. We women are never satisfied with our hair. Take me. I was born with thick, slightly coarse, straight dark brown hair. Perfect for big, upswept styles (so long as you have clips, bands and bobby pins strong enough to support them!). But am I happy with it? Noooooooo. I spent almost ten years coloring, bleaching and streaking my hair continuously. I experimented with curlers and special sprays and shampoos in the hopes of turning my very thick, very straight hair into a luxurious main of soft waves and loose curls. Obviously, it never happened, because my hair is straight, and it’s too thick and heavy to defy gravity.

Then you have the women who are blessed (or cursed, to hear them tell it) with hair that is naturally wavy, or even curly. They loathe it, and use various tools and chemicals to get it straight. One popular item to use for hair straightening is a ceramic flat iron. I have never used one myself, obviously, but I know what they are and what they look like, from various friends, and from summer camp and spending four summers living at a college campus.

Hana Salon offers elite and professional ceramic flat irons that are perfect for straightening hair. For more information, pricing and photos, check out hanasalon.com.