MFA Mama

today BROUGHT IT!

*   I may have a freelance gig doing something I am only marginally qualified to do for someone terrifyingly rich and important at PseudoCorp. When they asked me to meet with them I thought it was regarding PseudoCorp business, but instead they want my help with a personal project that is kind of neat but OH MY GOD DID I MENTION HOW BIG AND IMPORTANT AND RICH AND TERRIFYING THEY ARE? YES? WELL THIS IS ME DOING IT AGAIN BECAUSE GAHHHHH!

*   Okay. Deep breaths. I'm actually more qualified than I thought to do this, in fact it may be something I could start doing as a consultant on the regular if I can get over the overwhelming urge to puke on The Client's shoes and run screaming and waving my hands in the air, heedless to the enormity of my pit-stains (what, you don't sweat profusely when you're nervous? LUCKY YOU). I just...well. I have kind of a complex when it comes to rich people stemming back to my childhood when the only rich people I knew were banging The Narcissist and lavishing her with gifts, which I think my dad kind of accepted as his penance for transgressions of his own in prior marriages, but the whole thing kind of cheesed me off because it tended to throw fuel on the fires of her "I was meant for better than this" complex, with "this" meaning "me." WHOA. AWKWARD. I don't talk about The Narcissist on here (or anywhere else) much for a reason. ANYWAY. Rich people. TERRIFYING. Shit.

*   I have a strict "no turning down work" policy, however. I will put on my big girl panties and Do Lunch with the rich people next week and see where it leads. If I do a good job this might be a foot in the doorway to Better Things. So: YAY!

*   Then I came home and TORE UP the garden, and didn't even find and have to kill any venomous snakes in the process, so, you know, that was good.

*   And then...well. The boys had dinner visitation with their father tonight and I won't stoop ALL the way to juvenile lockerroom bragging, but...a bar has been raised in this house, and that's all I will say.

*   Hotter is feeling much better, obviously. 

*   I am starting to feel less panicky about Big Child's pending birthday. I Have A Plan. He has an Innernet Fairy Godmother who stepped in and is helping me out with the whole Red Robin thing (which is fabulous, because he will be thrilled but also because with his Asperger's if you do something ONCE you have set a PRECEDENT and if you don't do it again the next time the world will fly off its axis and crash into the sun and we will all DIIIIIIIIE...okay, not really. It's not QUITE that bad. But no matter how carefully I tried to explain it he would most likely internalize it as "Red Robin is where one goes for birthdays and we are not going this year because I HAVE DONE SOMETHING TERRIBLY WRONG" and start washing his hands raw again and making us repeat everything we say until we hit the magic number of repetitions, so: yeah), and the only thing Big Child has mentioned really wanting lately (my kids don't ask for much...they know we're poor and don't ask unless they're really, REALLY jonesing for something special) is a Hunger Games t-shirt that one of his friends has that he is convinced is ONLY sold at the very mall where the local Red Robin is located. So if I tell Big Child we have to wait until a non-schoolnight then I will have gotten paid and will be able to get him the t-shirt while we're there for dinner next Friday night. It'll kill me a little bit to buy it in person without a coupon or any cash back from eBates, but it'll make him happy so I will deal :)

*   And now I am off to bed...how are all of YOU?

poverty shaming, the 261-calorie lunch, and Hotter has oral surgery

I.   So I think maybe I'm still a little raw from the incident with the Old Biddy Neighbor. Today I am off work, because I had to go to traffic court over one of the expired registration tickets I got when I couldn't afford to update the MFA Minivan's registration and got ticketed (the case was dismissed when I showed the judge my registration and I was out the door in ten minutes), and also Hotter had oral surgery (which I scheduled for a day I knew I'd have to miss work anyway, because I am efficient like that) and I had to drive him to and from that and take care of him afterward. I was also thinking that maybe if Hotter was feeling up to it, we could use a movie ticket voucher I've had kicking around for a while and go to see The Hunger Games. Here is an update I wrote on the Facespace earlier today:

Figure One: Yeah, I didn't match the shade on the name-text very well, but use your imaginations.

   Here is the comment addendum I added to the first status (I had already covered this on the Twitter, then forgot I hadn't told the facespace about the ticket voucher and panicked a little), and what a couple of friends had to say about it:

Figure Two: This time I didn't even try. Y'all can tell which one I am, right?

   And now it is kind of bothering me because I wonder if I'm not being a jerk here. My friends are easier on me than I am about pretty much everything, I think out of affection, but...am I being a jerk? Goodness knows I am against poverty-shaming. Poor folks have enough to worry about without judgment from others, and I hate to read about this kind of thing, because I've been judged in the grocery line before and it doesn't feel good (like okay, with Food Stamps? They give you WAY MORE to spend on food each month than I do when I am buying our groceries out of pocket, and when my family received Food Stamps I often used to buy fresh organic berries with them because fresh berries used to be one of the only things Little Child would eat by mouth and with the way he used to be allergic to so many things I wanted to make sure he didn't react to some pesticide or herbicide on the berries and cause us to think he couldn't have the berries themSELVES...more than once I had a cashier look at me like "SERIOUSLY?" and it's not like the g-tube showed when Little Child had clothes on)...but then I see some folks talking about how poor they are but going out to eat frequently, going on vacations where they spend a lot on travel costs and hotel rooms, seeing movies several times per month, and it irks me. Because while I don't doubt that those people FEEL like they're poor, in my reality if I did those things we'd have to go without something really important, like my health insurance coverage (the MFA Children are on the XY's policy), or car insurance (which we did go without for a while, and which I got roasted for openly in the comments one time and remedied as soon as I was able to), or, you know, FOOD or MEDICINE or something. It's been over a year since I saw a movie in the theater. The last time I went on vacation was BlogHer '10 and we've NEVER been on a family vacation. We don't eat out, PERIOD (I think the last time we ate out as a family was Big Child's birthday last year, and when we did that it was because a generous friend had given us a gift card to Red Robin...and Big Child's birthday is coming up AGAIN in a week and a half,* so...yeah. It's been a while. The last time before THAT was over a year previous, too.). Maybe our definition of "poor" and other people's definition of "poor" differ? Or maybe I should feel badly for the folks who are crying poor and still doing all of those things, because maybe it indicates an inability to be realistic about their situation and make smart choices? I don't know. I might be wired a little different in that I've NEVER really had the money to do those kinds of things, and therefore don't miss them--maybe some folks really DO feel like life isn't worth living without seeing movies, eating out, and going on trips (although personally I think if I was feeling that way I'd be more tempted to break the bank on a co-payment to talk to my psychiatrist about it, if anything)? Something about this whole thing isn't sitting right with me, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Ideas?

II. I mentioned on the Twitter that I'd made myself a 261-calorie lunch and it was delicious and filled my belly, and someone asked me to blog about it, so here goes. You will need:

a pat of butter
a splash of milk
five eggs
1 ounce Trader Joe's light feta cheese (most "light" cheese isn't worth eating, but this stuff is a delightful exception--I actually prefer it to the regular variety taste-wise!) 
2 cups baby spinach
a slice of onion
Texas Pete
salt and pepper to taste 

   Dice the onion up and saute it in the butter. Break the eggs into a bowl, separating out all but one of the yolks (discard the four other yolks, or feed them to your pets, or whatever), then add the splash of milk, a few sprinkles of Texas Pete (which adds an excellent flavor and also colors the egg so that it doesn't have that unappetizing white-y look you get when using just or mostly eggwhites), and your spices. Whisk it together. When the onions have clarified, add the spinach, and when the spinach has wilted, add the egg mixture to the pan. Cook until the eggs are the way you like them (I like mine hard-cooked, because runny eggs squick me out). Dish that up, crumble the feta on top, and enjoy. According to Myfitnesspal this has 261 calories.

III. Hotter had oral surgery today. Our dentist did it in his office, but it was kind of gory (Hotter had a tooth that was broken off below the gumline except for one lone splinter that stuck up a little...I couldn't even look at it without gagging and don't know how he stood it, although he said it didn't really bother him). While we were there I went ahead and scheduled the next round of work for the end of May (when my NEXT traffic court date for the expired registration is) (that's the last one though!)...it will be $360. I don't know how I am going to pay for that, but I said that about this month's work and last month's, and I guess I'll think of something. I will be SO GLAD when every month doesn't include a bunch of dental work for Hotter, y'all, you don't even KNOW. In the post-op instructions they said Hotter wasn't allowed to suck on anything because it could cause dry sockets. I turned to him and said "WELL THAT IS JUST GREAT, HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RAISE THE MONEY TO PAY ME BACK NOW?" because I am awesome like that. Also, here are some things I tweeted while I was waiting that people seemed to find amusing:

Figure Three: He doesn't actually have a third nipple. But then I DO NOT ACTUALLY FART IN MY SLEEP, so we're even!

*   And I don't EVEN want to think about it, because a) I haven't gotten him anything and b) he has mentioned several times that he wants to go to Red Robin again this year because he enjoyed it so much last year, but um, NOT GONNA HAPPEN. Crap. 

some happy things

*   Thanks to a generous friend, last night I was able to go out and get bread, milk, and butter (and also? APPLE JUICE! And there was great rejoicing amongst the MFA Children).

*   I am the queen of frugality, but I did not know about this. Of course I'd just BOUGHT milk when I saw it this morning, but we will absolutely try it next time and report back on our results! Thanks, Anissa!

*   I have been sick since yesterday with GI symptoms, which sucks, but Isis gives the best snuggles when I'm not feeling well. It's like she knows:

Figure One: Behold, the vishiss killr pitbull!

*   Hotter told me a funny that I'd never heard before, and it had me howling. It's a new-to-me term: "rodeo fuck." 

Rodeo fuck (n.) - When you're doing your girl, and call her by your ex's name then try to hold on for seven seconds.

social media-y goodness, and some stuff you should do/join/try [ETA]

Figure One: It has no soul.

 

   If you like garden porn and don't already follow me on the Instagram, you are missing out.

   If you like free stuff and have yet to join Swagbucks and started searching with it, you're REALLY missing out (and so am I, because I'd get a referral credit, but mostly you--I just cashed in some Swagbucks for an Amazon.com gift card YESTERDAY).

   If you aren't a member of eBates yet, you should totally join AND USE IT, because look:

Figure Two: This is why you want to join eBates! Also because you love me and want me to get credit for referring you.

   And if you join BOTH then sometimes you will search for eBates' site with Swagbucks, win eleven SBs for the search, and then find out that your favorite store is today's daily double and you will be motherfucking THRILLED.

   Now if you'll excuse me, I am way behind on my sleep, and work is nuts, and WHY WAS TODAY NOT FRIDAY? I CALL SHENANIGANS.

   How are all of YOU?

 

ETA: See comments section for an answer to WTF IS THAT THING UP TOP???

by popular demand...

...the story of how I gave up shampoo, probably forever!

   Going no-shampoo is apparently quite A Thing lately. Like as in all the cool kids are trying it! When I decided to give it a whirl I wasn't thinking "trendy" though so much as "green" and more importantly "cheap." We already make our own laundry detergent, and have even started making our own automatic dishwasher detergent (I'm still tweaking the recipe on that), but in my quest to shrink our household's carbon footprint (and hopefully grow our bank account), one of the very LAST things I considered going dirty-hippie with was hair product. Because, see, here is the thing: I am super-vain about my hair. It's stupid-long, and I love it, and my husband loves it, and I am guilty of spending upward of twenty bucks per bottle on things to wash, condition, and gloss it with, but clearly that had to stop with our finances being what they are.

   So I Googled around, and landed on A Sonoma Garden, and pretty much did exactly what she said. A tablespoon of baking soda to a cup of water, and let it age a bit before using (two weeks seems to be the magic number--I put a batch of baking soda and water in a Mason jar to sit while I finished the shampoo I was using, then rinsed the bottle out and poured my baking soda-water into that) (and once I saw the kind of results I get from this stuff I refilled the Mason jar so I'd have more when I finished what was in the bottle). After I've wet my hair through I shake the bottle vigorously and squeeze a generous amount onto the top of my head, then massage it in really well, using my fingertips to scrub my scalp. Then I rinse, use a TINY bit of conditioner (seriously, the baking soda mixture doesn't strip your hair the way shampoo does so you don't need as much), rinse again, and dry (by which I mean towel-turban that shit up, then use a little glossing cream and a wide-toothed comb and let it air-dry the rest of the way, although if you want to fry your hair with a blowdryer then by all means). That's it, y'all. 

   As to the results...well. Hotter read on here that I was going to give the shampoo-free thing a whirl and tried to dissuade me. "I don't like the smell of dirty hairrrr..." he whined. Hotter is very sensitive to smells. He's like a hormonal pregnant woman, except his belly is from peritoneal dialysis instead of a baby and he has boy-junk. But other than that EXACTLY THE SAME. "Okay honey," I said, "I don't have to give up shampoo."

   And then I did it anyway and just didn't tell him. I think it helped that I kept my mixture in a shampoo bottle (Hotter uses manly shampoo from a different bottle). In any case, I never had a "greasy phase" or anything; the mixture worked like a charm and my hair actually looks BETTER than it did when I was paying through the nose to strip it with toxic chemicals. I finally fessed up a couple of weeks into the experiment after Hotter complimented me on my hair looking especially nice (which? It really really does--it's soft and shiny and has more body than it did before!), and he laughed and said he hadn't noticed anything amiss. WIN!

Figure One: Do not adjust your monitors; I actually *am* that pale. But look how shiny my hair is! Incidentally if you ever want to a) look absolutely douche-tastic and b) reduce yourself to tears over the wrinkled state of your forehead, try taking a picture of your hair without any of the rest of your face in it sometime and have a gander at the outtakes. You see what I put myself through for you people?!?

in which Isis and I receive excellent veterinary care & hobos save the day

   First of all, Isis is going to be okay. That said, the surgery ended up being a bigger deal than planned; the vet said that the surface lumps were the tops of two "tracks" where it appears that something (she thinks smart money would be on barbed thorns of some kind, although she didn't cut the hunk she removed apart because apparently Pathology likes to do that themselves) burrowed down into Isis's belly and kept on going, nearly piercing her abdominal wall (which would have been VERY BAD NEWS). So Isis has a two-inch incision with a LOT of stitches, and apparently it goes waaaay down internally as well (they sent her home with a second course of antibiotics and some heavy-duty narcotic pain pills--she is also sporting a Cone of Shame) The good news is that the vet said she is 99% certain that this had nothing whatsoever to do with anything malignant (although Pathology will still have a go at the cutlet she excised to be sure). The terrifying news is that apparently waiting even a few days could have had an awful result--THANK YOU, INNERNET!

   That out of the way, when I picked Isis up and lifted her carefully into the MFA Minivan, I placed my keys and phone in the cup-tray and shut the passenger door. While I was going around, Isis jumped up and stepped on the lock button, and...yeah. Fuuuuuudge. Here is where it gets ridiculous! There was a drycleaner RIGHT THERE and I easily obtained a coathanger, but was then accosted by a group of chivalrous hobos who were all "ma'am can we help you? You're bleedin' pretty bad." One of them took a knee and covered his eyes, another one took the coathanger, and a third ran for the vet (who apparently is a friend of theirs). Son of a gun if I hadn't nicked my knuckle somehow, except I couldn't tell WHAT the hell I'd done because I honestly felt nothing but there was blood POURING out of it. I must say, our new favorite veterinary practice went WAY above and beyond; the vet frog-marched me into her clinic, leaving her techs to ride herd on the hobos, and scrubbed my hand with surgical soap, then applied a neat pressure dressing, grabbed a "spay hook" to arm the hobos with, and came back outside with me, and within a few moments they were able to jimmy the lock on the MFA Minivan and Isis and I were on our way.

   When I got home, Hotter wanted to have a look at my hand. "This will go one of two ways," I told him. "Either I will need to go and get some stitches, or else it will be something the size of a paper cut and this is just that thing where Levaquin effs up my platelets and there is a bloodbath." We unbandaged it and...there was no visible mark. I bent my finger slightly and there it was, the size of an effing papercut, and there came the bloodbath. Yay? I mean, I'm super-glad I didn't have to shell out for stitches, but I'm guessing I shouldn't have bled enough to make a hobo woozy from something so utterly insignificant. 

   Oh well. I am calling today a wash, honestly, because while there was suckage a-plenty, everything bad pretty much ended up turning out to have been the best-case scenario in the end. And you?

an update on the state of things

   WELL! The sun is shining, I FINALLY (after ten days of antibiotics, two trips to Urgent Care, two days of steroids, antibiotic eardrops, numbing eardrops, enough Vicodin to block up a pony, and a day and a half of missed wages at the worst possible time) feel human again,* Isis's surgery tomorrow morning is a go (YES! YESSSS!!!) and now naturally Hotter is as sick as the proverbial dog. 

   WHOSE PEOPLE DO WE NEED TO LET GO AROUND HERE, ANYWAY?

   Still, things look considerably better than they did a few days ago when I was neverendingly sick and the dog needed surgery we couldn't pay for, and for that I have only you lovely people to thank. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'm still hoping to sell maybe one more ad to cover a Cone Of Shame and any after-surgery medications Isis may need, but if I don't I should be able to carve that out of the budget without anyone missing any meals or vital medications. So the phone bill might be late. NOBODY WILL DIE OF THAT!

   I am giving myself the remainder of the weekend off from thinking about Hotter's teeth, because yeah, I dunno. 

   Now I am off to DO ALL THE THINGS, because with me having been sick for so long and Hotter now down, there are a LOT of things to do. I will leave you with this ridiculously adorable video of Pitbull vs. Kitten that slayed us all dead over here and made Isis cock her head all the way to one side, then all the way to the other, and then back again.

 

 

 

*   We will not, for the time being, put much thought into how quickly I turned around once the steroids came into play after fainting at Urgent Care on the second visit with a blood pressure of shit over are-you-sure-you're-not-dead? because my adrenal glands are Known Problems...everyone just cross your fingers that I do okay coming off of those and this doesn't become a Regular Occurrence, please.

if you want to help but can't afford to donate or buy an ad, grab a button!

 

   Since I've conquered HTML via TKO, with the help of smarter friends, here's a way that you can help raise money for Isis's surgery without having it come out of your pocket! Grab the code below (highlight and copy the blue text including the hyperlinks, which might show as purple or grey) and add it to your sidebar to display the ad above (I am hosting the image on my bandwidth over here, so don't worry about that). If you have Typepad, you can do that by signing into your account and going to Dashboard>Design>Content>Embed Your Own HTML (in the center column--scroll down!)>Add This Module and pasting the blue text (plus the hyperlinks, whatever color those are) below into the box (name it whatever you like--that won't show on your blog) and then dragging it to where you want it on your blog and clicking "Save Changes." Easy-peasy!

 

   Here are instructions for adding HTML to the sidebar of a Blogger blog.

   Here are instructions for adding HTML to the sidebar of a Wordpress blog.

   Here are instructions for adding HTML to the sidebar of a Squarespace blog.

<a href=" http://mfamama.typepad.com/my-blog/2012/03/the-first-annual-oh-my-god-life-sucks-ad-sale-extravaganza.html "

target="_blank" title="BOGO Ad Sale">

<img src="http://mfamama.typepad.com/IsisAd.jpg"

alt="BOGO Ad Sale" /></a>

   Because I'm getting desperate, I will even kick back 10% of ad revenues from your readers to the PayPal address of your choice (I'll grill any new ad buyers as to where they learned of the BOGO ad opportunity). This is win/win/win--your readers can get ads on TWO blogs for the (reduced) price of one, you can earn a few bucks, and my dog can have the surgery she needs. If you decide to run the ad code, please drop me an e-mail (my e-mail address is on the About Page) and let me know, so I can in turn e-mail YOU when I've raised the necessary funds, at which point everybody can take the buttons down. I'm not trying to get rich or anything, I just want to do right by Isis without breaking my family to do it. GO!

 

introducing...[UPDATED!]

...the newest MFA Sponsors!

   The first one you already (kind of) know. Say hello to Fairy Sweatshop Boss! I can personally attest to the fabulousness of her wares, and if you order a custom badge-holder from her, you might just get one I helped make with my very own hands!

   The second advertiser is another friend of the MFAmily and frequent commenter. Jessica is my go-to gal for All Things Geek, and it turns out she and her husband are the dynamic duo behind a blog that uses all kinds of scary mathematical calculations to try and predict the next American Idol with SCIENCE! It's pretty cool if I kind of squint my eyes and blur out the math bit...

   The third new advertiser actually has a blog, but I don't know if it's cool to link to it so I'll just say that the worthy cause she chose to advertise for is one that is near and dear to her heart, and that I've seen pictures of the inspiration behind the ad and she's ADORABLE. has a blog, and gave me the go-ahead to share it! This is her blog, and this is the ad she chose to run here:

   Finally, last but CERTAINLY not least, MomTeachingTwo is the best BlogHer roommate I never had (looong story!) and a truly fabulous mom and friend. She has the same funky autoimmune condition I have been diagnosed with and still kicks ass and takes names, and because she's super-extra-awesome, she's running a deal on her blog that...well, I think if you're considering buying an ad here you should check it out.* This lady rocks:

 

   There is still room to grab YOUR ad; the rates are right here and you'd really be helping my family out of a tight spot (go here to read all about it). xox

UPDATED TO ADD: We are getting there! Three more one-month runs of large ads would let us get her the surgery AND the pathology. I'm sorry to keep heckling y'all, and I'll stop as soon as we have the operation and the pathology covered. Think of it as being like a PBS pledge drive, WITH CAPSLOCK! ALSO I AM ON STEROIDS AND OH MY GOD. THAT IS ALL.

 

*   If you already bought an ad and want to take advantage of MomTeachingTwo's special promotion, a little bird told me that you can extend your ad's run and she'll include you, too ;)

birdie school

   Everyone please give a warm MFA welcome to the first advertiser to take advantage of the first annual OH MY GOD LIFE SUCKS ad sale extravaganza, BIRDIE SCHOOL! If you have a parrot and are interested in training them to be a better citizen of your household through positive reinforcement, this is the website for you. We here at Casa MFA have a middle-aged cockatiel who probably isn't bright enough to benefit from the technique, but who knows, maybe I'll get inspired...in the meantime, I'm waiting to receive HTML from one other advertiser and will probably cap sales of the larger ads when I've filled the immediately-visible portion of the left sidebar, so get yours while the getting is good!