Jen Mann's Blog, page 8

You might remember that last year I had a partnership with Responsibility.org as one of their #TalkEarly bloggers. It was an awesome fit for me and you. The topics I covered got a lot of conversations started and I was so pleased to hear from so many of you. I was very excited and pleased to be asked back again this year! Yay!


In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, Responsiblity.org is the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility. Don't worry, they're not the Booze Police....

I don't know about you, but my mornings are a bit hectic. There are two kids who need my constant supervision (ie, yelling) to:

Get dressed - "Didn't you wear that shirt yesterday, Gomer?"
Brush hair - "Adolpha, shaking your head upside down doesn't count as brushing your hair."
Brush teeth - "Adolpha, you have more than enough strength to squeeze the toothpaste tube."
Eat breakfast - "Gomer, goldfish don't count as breakfast."
Pack lunch - "Shoot, we're out of bread again! Everyone's buying...

I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't been hanging around the blog much these last several months. It's not that I don't want to, it's because I have to. I've been super duper busy working on a new book. Only this one is taking me a little longer, because it's not a PIWTPITT book, it's my first fiction book. EEEEEK!!! I've been working on it for a long ass time, but it always got shoved to the bottom of my to-do list. I finally decided that this year was the year I'd move it to the top...

I'm grumpy tonight.  It's been a very long week. I think all that fun made me anti-social tonight. Tonight everything the Hubs says pisses me off.  I'm irritable and I'm definitely letting him know. Here's the latest conversation/squabble we just had:

Me:  Be quiet.  You're really getting on my nerves.
Hubs:  Well you're getting on my nerves.
Me:  Shut up.  You're annoying me.
Hubs:  You're annoying me.
Me:  Shut it!  You annoyed me first....

The Overachiever—The holidays are a stressful time of year and the rest of us are doing the best we can. Why must she set the bar so high for the rest of us? Who really wants to wear matching Christmas sweaters for the entire family (including the dog) while caroling through the neighborhood and distributing homemade cookies and fudge to all your neighbors? Does is really make her life easier to have a unique wrapping paper for each member of her family's gifts? It's one thing to put lights in...

I am a Holiday Pantser, meaning I don't plan for a darn thing during the holidays. So, come December 1, I start trolling the internet looking for lists of gift ideas for my family. Sure, my kids are at an age when they'd prefer cash or their weight in bubble gum, but I won't do that. I might not make the holidays that magical and special, but I do want them to have some gifts (that I've wrapped horribly) for them under the tree.

Last year I made a pretty good list and I decided to do it again...

I have a few bins of crap - I mean precious treasures - that my mom has saved since I was born. A few years ago, my mom gave me the bins. She said that she thought that maybe I'd enjoy going through them with my kids and seeing the "time capsule" of my life. I was like, "Yeah, maybe" and then I shoved them in the back room of my basement and piled a ton of crap in front of them.

This weekend Adolpha and I were cleaning out the back room when she spotted the bins. "Are you ever going to open...

“What does it taste like?” Gomer, my ten-year-old, asked me.
“What does what taste like?” I asked.
“Your beer.”
We were having dinner and though I don't normally have a beer with my dinner, that night it just sounded like a refreshing beverage. I looked at the bottle in my hand and shrugged my shoulders. “I don't know,” I said. Because I really didn't. How do you describe the taste of alcohol to your child? They only flavors he knows and understand are water, milk, juice, and soda. Beer doesn't...

If you follow my personal page on Facebook, then you know that, apparently, I am "The Genitals Whisperer." I'm not sure how it started. Probably because I wrote about vaginas and then again about vaginas and then once more about vaginas. Just because I have a slight fascination with unusual undercarriage undertakings, suddenly I'm the go-to lady whenever you see something bizarre or disgusting about privates. Like this week, SEVERAL PEOPLE (not just one person who saw this and thought, "You...

I've told you before that the Hubs is a cheap-o, right? I think I've mentioned it once or twice or eighty times. Anyway, he's cheap. In so many ways. For instance, I work mainly by sunlight (light bulbs are expensive!), I only eat out when he has a buy one-get-one coupon, and we wear layers all winter long, because we're not billionaires, so the thermostat has no business going higher than 67 degrees. Rarely do the Hubs and I buy one another gifts. At Christmas time we usually buy something...