Funny Things

It seems like lately, a lot of funny things have happened. I need to write them down somewhere and hopefully, somebody will laugh with me.

A couple of weeks ago, we had our carpets cleaned. The technician (I use that term very loosely) explained to me why it was so important that we have our carpets deep-cleaned. He mentioned the dead skin that gets in our carpet, the dust mites that feed on our dead skin and then relieve themselves in our carpet. So, I have been reminding our children about the dust mite poop in our carpet and the necessity of wearing socks in the house. I know, disgusting. Anyway, the other day, Kate was laying on her back on her blanket and rolled over onto her stomach off of her blanket and was licking the carpet. Yum. So, I was standing there watching this all unfold with Justin. I said to Justin: "Oh, no! Dust mite poop!!" Justin heard: "Oh, no! Dat's my poop!!" His response: "Daddy, gross! We don't poop on the floor!! We poop in the potty!" I had to laugh.


I occasionally have very weird dreams. My favorite all-time weird dream was when Michelle was laying on the ground and I was popping her back by sitting on her back. In my dream, she grew feathers on her back, turned into an owl and turned her head completely around and had creepy owl eyes. I hate owls - they are creepy. This has been my all-time weirdest dream for several years - until now. There is a baby picture of me when I was about 1 year old that is pretty cute. I am enormously fat, but quite cute. Anyway, I had a dream the other night that Michelle got a face transplant (apparently her face wasn't attractive to her in my dream). Instead of getting a normal woman face, the doctors were able to transplant the baby face from my baby picture onto my wife. When I awoke, I didn't know whether to die laughing or die crying. I will never look at that picture the same way.


My final funny item is more ridiculous than funny. I watched yesterday as President Obama signed Obamascare into law. What an absolute freakshow. My first ridiculous moment was when Joe Biden, who I could write an entire blog of funny things about, gave his stupid speech about how historic this moment was and then whispered (sort of) to the President: "This is a big f-ing deal, Mr. President". Really? The Vice President of the United States before the signing of the biggest bill in decades uses an f-bomb to describe the moment??? Unbelievable.

The 2nd most ridiculous moment was the signing itself. President Obama, as is tradition, used 22 pens to sign his name. 22!!! 22 Cross commemorative pens to sign his name that at most, has only 18 letters. BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA - count em, 18 letters. 22 pens. Am I missing something? I know this is a tradition so that the commemorative pens can be given to congressional leaders who helped get the bill passed, but even so, what a stupid tradition. Cross Presidential pens (per my crack research) cost $271 per pen. That's almost $6000 on pens. Even Marcelas Owens, the young African American boy whose mother died because her insurance company dropped her and was standing next to President Obama while he signed, looked puzzled as to what the President was doing. He must have been asking himself, "Does President Obama really think that all these pens might run out of ink?" I mean, with $6000, they could have paid for Marcelas's health insurance for several months, but I guess it made more sense to have really nice pens to hand out to members of Congress. Unbelievable.

I wonder how much it cost to make Nancy Pelosi's giant gavel.

Coupon$ense and Cinnamon Toast Crunch

If you haven't heard about CouponSense, you need to. I love it. It is this company that charges a monthly fee to match up all the store ads with current coupons that you accumulate by way of an online database. Michelle and I have been CouponSense customers for about 3 years now. We save a lot of money (usually about 70 to 80% when we are really working it). In fact, I am to the point now that if we actually are not being compensated in some way for going grocery shopping, it just wasn't a good enough trip for me. But it is a lot of work - for both of us. Mostly Michelle, but sometimes me. I hate the fact that there are free deals out there that I might be missing out on. So, grocery shopping has become like work.

Basically, the idea is that when something is on sale at a particular store, you match it up with a coupon and the item becomes very inexpensive. For example, this week, there is a great deal on cereal at Safeway. I don't know all the particulars, however, I do know that Michelle came home with about 60 boxes of cereal and didn't pay more than about $15 TOTAL.

Here is my dilemma: when is enough enough? My boys both love Cinnamon Toast Crunch. They would eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner if we let them. And sometimes we do. Well, I came home from work tonight and went to our pantry (actually it's an entryway closet that doubles as a place to put all of our CouponSense spoils) and it was entirely stocked with Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I saw a few shelves of noodles, some cake mix and fruit snacks (which are free this week as well). But for the most part, it was all Cinnamon Toast Crunch all the time. Of the boxes that I could see, I counted 17 boxes. My guess is there are many more.

Will my children ever be able to finish that many boxes of CTC? And do I want them to? Intuitively, I know the answer to both questions should be a resounding NO! However, my fear is that not only will they finish all 17 or more boxes, but I will be the one behind them as they stuff their faces cheering them on.

Because the truth is I love free stuff. And as long as there is still free Cinnamon Toast Crunch out there, I want it. I need it. I must get it. So, my children will continue to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch three times a day until there is room again in my pantry - you never know what will be free next week.

ObamaScare

This morning, I read an email that shocked me and made me smile all at the same time. It was written by Mortimer Zuckerman, editor in chief of US News and World Report. He was an avid Obama-supporter during the election in 2008. He has done a complete 180 on Mr. Obama. My favorite lines of the article: "A man can fail in the eyes of his countrymen and still be dearly loved by those closest to him. But in Obama's case, his wife and his two daughters will be there to suffer every agonizing step of his fall along with him. And for the rest of his life, each time he looks into their eyes, and into the eyes of black people everywhere, he will see the crushing disappointment that his ill-fated attempt at national transformation has caused them. He will be the country's unhappiest man, living the rest of his life knowing that his daughters know that whole world sees him as a failure. He is simply the wrong man, in the wrong job, in the wrong country, at the wrong time in history."

I went back in my blog and in my family's blog to see what I have said about Mr. Obama in the past. I hate to say it, but my predictions about the man couldn't have been more accurate. I predicted that one year into his presidency, the economy would be no better than it was when he took office (which it really isn't) and that he would be losing the confidence of the American people (which he clearly has already lost).

For the first time in my life, I am actually very afraid for the future of the United States of America. The wildly reckless spending with no thought of the future of our country is taking us on the road to bankruptcy. Bankruptcy? Yes, bankruptcy. It's appalling.

I believe that the 2010 elections later this year are the most important elections EVER in the history of our country. Prediction: the Republicans will win back both the House and the Senate and Mr. Obama, thankfully, will be a lame duck President for his final two years in office. Another prediction: Mr. Obama will be a one-term President and most likely, will not win his party's nomination in 2012. Call me crazy, but I truly believe that he will not even be on the ballot in 2012.

I have tried to give the man a chance, I have prayed for him everyday for almost 18 months now. I have now decided that I must change my prayers - from now on, instead of praying for him to be inspired and led by God, I pray that God will protect him long enough for him to lose the House and the Senate, realize he is a lame duck President and resign in shame.

I also wrote a little over a year ago that I felt badly for Mr. Obama because "nobody could possibly live up to the Savior-like expectations that were placed on his shoulders - he is absolutely destined to fail" - those were my exact words. Mr. Zuckerman wrote almost the same thing this week when he said, "His policies have been so extreme and so far outside the mainstream that he was destined to achieve the most spectacular fall from grace of any American President in history."

I hate to say I told you so, but, well, I told you so.

Genetics is a Funny Thing

I don't understand genetics. I have very dark hair and grey/green eyes. Michelle has dark hair as well with green eyes. So, when we found out we were pregnant with a daughter over 7 years ago, we were sure we would have a dark haired, dark eyed baby girl. We couldn't be more wrong. Blonde hair, blue eyes. And we are not sure where they came from - most likely from Michelle's mom. Below is a picture of Julia at 4 months. We couldn't have been more grateful.Then, we learned that we were having a second daughter. We were positive that we would have a Cherrington baby - long, thick dark hair with dark brown or green eyes. Once again, we were wrong. I am fairly sure we got another Candace. Below is Kate from the other day - almost 5 months old. She still has slightly dark hair on top, but all the new hair growing in on the sides is completely blonde with some reddish highlights. And her eyes are bluer than blue. Does she look familiar?

They don't look anything like Michelle or me (in my personal opinion), but I couldn't be more proud. If you can't tell, Julia is absolutely in love with her little sister.

Genetics is a very funny thing.