I've been backing off the dairy a little.  Lately I've been eating stuff from the So Delicious brand.  It is made with coconut milk instead of cows milk.  The yogurt is great.  Tonight I tried the ice cream and I'm conflicted. It has a coconut aftertaste which…is fine…I think.  I like coconut.  Specifically I like coconut candy (Almond Joy, Sees Candy), and I like coconut macaroons that is about it.  You see, my problem with coconut stems from a night where I decided to play waterfall with a bottle of Malibu Rum.  That led to large quantities of vommiting.  To this day I can't be in the same room as Malibu Rum without wanting to empty the contents of my stomach on someones living room floor.  So tonight while eating my ice cream, and last week while eating my yogurt I found myself thinking, "mmmm this taste pretty good and healthy." Followed by, "Oh shit this taste like Malibu Rum and I'ma vomit on my chair."  I have no idea what to do in this situation.  I know the coconut milk yogurt is better for me, but the mind fuck it's doing is not better for me.

Also I have a weird allergy.  Or food intolerance.  I can't eat anything with a pit.  Peaches, plums, avocados, they all make my stomach hurt BAD.  Imagine filling your stomach with rocks, then letting someone put it in a vice and try and squeeze it. Repeat for four hours or more.  Avocados are hard.  I love them and at least five times during the summer I say, "fuck it, they taste so good the pain is worth it."  For the most part I try and be good.  It bothers me though, why do I have to be allergic to healthy stuff?  I can't be allergic to gluten, or dairy or laundry or something?  How great would that be, "sorry dear can't do the laundry my allergies are acting up." 

Anywho these last two weeks my stomach has been hurting like a mother fucker.  I couldn't pin point it.  I blamed it on running.  I blamed it on meds.  I blamed it on global warming.  Then it occurred to me.  If you read my Facebook you would know I recently developed a love affair with Nutella.  A big one.  I'm talking Nutella on my fruit and then just fuck it, give me a spoon and a jar and call it good.  Well.  Nutella is hazlenut.  Hazlenut is a pit type fruit.  Hazlenut rips my stomach in half.  Add that to the hazlenut coffee creamer I've been drinking every day and I've been in a pretty bad way.  I'm kind of depressed about it.  I love Nutella.  I have visions of marrying Nutella and having little Nutella covered strawberry babies.  So I gave it up.  Yet this morning and all day my stomach has been killing me.  Killing me bad.  Killing me so bad I had to leave work and go take a nap.  Then it hit me.  Those bloody marys I drank WERE FULL OF OLIVES.  Olives that grow on a tree that have a pit.

I give up.

The world has taken away my last favorite food.  I would have rather given up cheese then peaches and olives and Nutella and NUTELLA.

Have any of you experienced this problem?  I'm still learning what classifies as a pit fruit.  Mostly stuff that grows on trees.  I don't eat walnuts but I have a feeling they would be on the no no list. 

I am just at such a loss here.  What would even cause an allergy like this?  I don't get hives.  I don't itch it just hurts like a mother fucker.  Please tell me I'm not alone in this allergy.

And yes, I fully plan to just say fuck it every now and then and go spoon first into a jar of Nutella.

How am I celebrating spring? That was the question. When I first read about this I was thrilled. I had big plans (that may or may not have centered around me, a bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs and a glass of wine while staring at my tulips). I couldn’t wait to talk about it. Then I walked outside and got snowed on. I closed my computer, stomped around a bit and then came to my senses.

I love spring. I have loved spring since I was little. Easter is my favorite holiday. Not because of the candy (but I will never turn down some free candy), instead it is because I swear that Easter smells different then any other day. No matter what it smells like fresh grass. It smells like egg salad sandwiches for a week. It smells like happy little girls in Easter dresses (what I wouldn’t give to get all decked out in ruffles and bows just one more time). It smells like happy.

I suffer from bi-polar disorder, (and a host of other disorders but lets not go there) and it never fails that spring is the one time of year I can be sure I will come out of the fog. My tulips will bloom, my roses will bud, my lawn will turn green, my fruit trees will sprout flowers. Spring to me is a celebration of the renewal of my life. It is a few months I can be sure that I will be genuinely happy. Nothing can bring me down.

Spring means farmers markets. It means fresh tomatoes and beets bigger then my head and giant salads on the porch. Chalking outside with the kids. Learning how out of shape I am on the trampoline. Going for long runs without wearing 15 shirts and ear muffs.

It means baseball, which means a happy husband (as long as the Giants win). There is nothing bad about this season.

But my favorite thing of all is getting to pull out my dusty Canon Rebel and take photos. Pictures of my roses that I can frame. Pictures of my kids covered head to toe in dirt and grass. PICTURES. I can take pictures again. I have an entire wall that is empty and just waiting for photos of my boys. Family photos. But the best part of photos is when I get to take photos of someone else. I just took pictures for my best friends new baby. Who just happens to be sending out birth announcements. All I can think is, “what better way to kick off spring then with a new addition.” Doesn’t this Easter Flower Blooms Baby Announcements 5×7 photo card scream out SPRING TIME????????

I have been given the pleasure of giving away either two photo books or two sets of 50 Shutterfly announcment cards.  At first I was going to hold a contest.  But then I realized that I don't want to do that.  I know who I want to give one photo book to, and I want to pick one more blogger to choose to receive either photo cards, or a book.  I will announce the winners next week.  No contest.  No silly entries or anything, just two deserving bloggers getting rewards.  The catch is, you will have to come back to see if you are the winner and I won't say what day next week i will announce it.  The cards I would most like to see would be something from this section:

Birth Announcments

I supposed other announcemnts would be fine, but I wuv wittle babies and I wanna see pictures.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some tulips to water and a shiny purple bag of candy coated eggs calling my name!!

Are you a blogger, too? Click here to register for a chance at 50 free announcements! This post is part of a series sponsored by Shutterfly. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

Every morning I wake up with about 26-30 emails.  Every morning without fail I get really excited thinking this is the day you are all going to see how witty and funny I am and leave a bunch of comments, but alas, every morning it's spam mail.  I've gotten tired of it and decided it's time to UNSUBSCRIBE from all this shit.

Babies R Us???  I don't have babies anymore, get out of my email.

Smith Micro??? I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE WHY ARE YOU EMAILING ME TO BEGIN WITH?

Apple??? Of course you can stay my sweet precious little baby I heart you, never stop sending me tempting emails ever.

Toys R Us???  WTF I have to unsubscribe from both you and Babies R Us NOT NICE.

Vista Print??? Dude I'm not going to buy business cards from you please stop sending me an email telling me this is the LAST TIME YOU WILL EVER OFFER FREE BUSINESS CARDS EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD only to send me the same email 4 days later.

The businesses who really piss me off are the ones who hide the unsubscribe link in the text.  They make it the same color as the background so I have to mouse around the page to find it.  Or the use fishy text & wording to trick me into subscribing for even more stuff.  Or the ones who word the fine print so poorly I can't even tell where to unsubsribe or if I'm even allowed to.  It's like they want to trap me in their email list for life. 

Unsubscribing from some of this shit is about as hard as Chandler quitting the gym.

Wake up.  Get carried outside and go poop and pee like a good dog.

Walk inside and pee on floor.

Fart until mom throws up (or posts on Facebook that she will die from toxic dog fart poisoning).

Go someone no one will see me and pee on floor…they can find that one later.

Go outside for a quick pee.  Turn that into super play time while mom worries she will be late for work.

Discover are where cats poop and set out to dig up every piece and eat it.

Laugh at the look on moms face when she sees me chewing a nugget of cat poop….she kind of looks mad and her face looks sort of queesy.

Mom tries to get me to go inside but I'm going to run next door to her work instead because I don't know where I live.

Finally follow mom home, get just about to the door and turn around and bolt back to the shop.

Get carried home…damn she wins.

Pee on door step.

Pee inside the door.

Chew on a shoe.

Get shoe taken away and a dog toy handed to me.

Hate dog toy, go in search of another shoe.

Leave another secret pee in protest of having shoe taken away.

Spill my food.

Fart again.

Wait just long enough for mom to drop the blanket from her mouth and fart again…worse.

Go outside to poop. 

Take 20 minutes to poop.

Pee on door step because I know I'm not allowed to come inside unless I pee.

I think that she looks mad.

OOO LOOK ANOTHER SHOE.

Lay down and rest.  Mom looks like she might eat, I better get up and ask to go out.

Stay outside and play just long enough for moms food to get cold. 

Jump in bushes.

Roll in dirt.

Roll in spot where my brother Brandon just peed outside.

There is that barfy look on moms face again.

Run like the wind towards the cat poop.

I can fit through the fence you can't catch me woman I'm going to go in the back yard.

Take a shit right where the kids swing is.

Pee on back door matt.

Oh look a shoe outside weeeeeeeeee.

There is the cat, must chase it. 

Holy shit cat is bigger then me RUNNNNNNNNNN.

Speaking of cat where is that cat poop?

Bark at dad because he went down the stairs in the laundry room and I'm afraid to go down those stairs.

Bark at mom because she went up stairs and I'm afraid of those stairs too.

Knock over my water.

Oh look another shoe.

Dammit, she got the shoe.

But I can still pee on the rug, take that lady.

One more fart for good measure.

Bark at the door because I want to go out and jump in her bushes and flowers again.

Attack bush.

OUCH THAT BUSH HAS THORNS ON IT. (Don't attack rose bushes any more, that hurts).

Pee

Attack bush again

OUCH STILL HURTS.

Run in circles for no reason. 

Find cat toy and carry in my mouth while I run in circles.

RUN FOR CAT POOP.

Get caught.

Pee on door step.

Come inside.

Pee inside door.

Get in bed and look innocent.

Oh look she found the hidden pee from this morning, bet she never takes my shoe away again muahahahahahah.

Go outside to pee and poop once more before bed time.

Fart one more time.

Snooooze.

I clearly have a Jane Austin obsession lately huh?  And Katie has me on a mission to read the top ten book that Time Magazine says you have to read.  I think I will Start with Lolita just because it freaked her out so much.  Here is the list:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot

Future girls of the world…lookout.

Husband just texted me to inform me that his work password expired and rather then updating it to be about me like it always has he has replaced me with a password referring to our dog.
I have officially been replaced.

Last week a friend came by the house with her puppy.  It was a Chihuahua.  The boys just loved the puppy.  They wanted a puppy.  They needed a puppy.  They forgot about the puppy. Some of my long time reader’s may remember I kind of have a fear of animals lately. It started when I had Brandon and I became incredibly grossed out with dogs. Then Codi came along and before I knew it cats were the yuckiest thing on the planet with litter and poop and VOMIT. Since then I have not had animals. I wouldn’t even touch dogs and sitting on someone’s couch with a dog nearly killed me. What I can figure is that maybe my current medication is a winner because somehow this weekend this happened.

It's really all my fault.  You see this new restaurant opened in Reno that makes a great salad.  We went there on Friday and I fell in love.  So Saturday after T-ball I wanted to go get another salad.  We could have went anywhere but I JUST HAD TO GO BACK TO THAT PLACE. We pulled in and saw a crowd and thought it must be full.  But instead we found a puppy adoption place there.  This was a problem. The boys were all over me after seeing the Taco Bell dog and now here was a whole cage full of dogs and suddenly they remembered the puppy and they wanted a puppy again and PUPPY PUPPY PUPPY PUPPY.  I laid down a firm NO DOGS rule and went home with two crying kids. 

Here's where it gets confusing.  Somewhere between that place and my driveway the kids convinced my dad to take them to the pound.  To just "look."  Somehow during this time my husband also mentioned that he "liked" dogs and somehow that all translated to LETS GET A DOG. 

I said NO NO NO NO!

My dad swore they were just going to look, so the boys would calm down and stop crying but I knew better.  So they went off to "look."  The next thing I knew it was Sunday and this was happening:

I was holding a cocker spaniel that my boys had already named Sparky behind my back.  My parents told me I was just going to look and see if I liked him but when I got there it seems all of the paper work had already been filled out.  I was about to become a sucker.  The next thing I knew I had visions of going on runs with (my) dog and him laying around the house with us (after a bath) and I don't even know what happened but on Monday I found this in my car:

This is Sparky.  He is supposed to be a family dog but I'm pretty sure he is my dog.  He has spent the last five days locked in a cage with no bed, no comfort and no love.  He came home with me and spent the rest of his day running in the grass, chasing a cat, chasing a kid, eating bones and taking a very very long nap.

I IZ GOING TO EAT THE KITTY

I CAN RUN LIKE THE WIND MY EARS GO FLIP FLOP

We took him to the pet store and tried out every single bed:

He came home and chased the kids forever on their bikes.  He ran and ran and ran and then he was pooped.  So we took a bath and got all wrapped up. 

And passed out.

Everyone made fun of me because I took him out of his towel and wrapped him all up in a blankie and apparently it was obvious or something that I was in love with the dog.  But I wasn't the only one:

My husband spent the rest of the night doing this.  And saying, "I just love him so much."

He got all tucked in for his first night and went to sleep.

He actually ended up sleeping in a kennel by our bed.  I guess crate trainging is supposed to be best.  But talking to two parents who never used a crib and let their kids sleep with them for over a year you have no idea how hard it was to put him in his crate.  He cried for a couple of minutes.  Rob and I might have cried too, and then he just went to sleep.  He woke up this morning, ate, went outside to potty, and followed Rob all over the house.

Then Brandon came downstairs and touched his bone and Sparky was like, "WHOAH KID I IZ GET YOU IF YOU TOUCHES MY BONEZ."

He can't go up stairs very well.  Or down stairs for that matter.  So he barks when you go upstairs and hops around and it is just oh so cute.  He tried to eat a teddy bear, a computer cord, a phone cord and I just looked down and he was chewing my favorite flip flop.  He wants to play with the cat but the cat isn't sure about him yet.  His ears get wet when he drinks his water because they flop right down into his dish.  He is just the cutest thing ever.

And now he is laying by my feet as I type.  On the carpet and I'm not even having a panic attack.  I hold him and everything. 

Me.

Holding a dog.

In my house.

All because I wanted a salad.

I walked into Brandons room last night to find him biting his toenails.  I was appalled.  Who bites their toenails?  I nearly barfed on the spot but instead I walked downstairs and all in a kerfluffle I loudly said, "BRANDON WAS JUST BITING HIS TOENAILS."  I expected my husband to be just as grossed out as me but instead he said, "so, you never bit your toenails?"

WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE?

His next reply was to, "go to Facebook and ask how many people bit their toenails."  But my blog is bigger then Facebook so I'm asking you….Is it really common for people to bite their toenails???? 

In other news I'm on a mission to find a new razor.  I see my podiatrist today.  I made extra sure to shower last night and shave and I woke up this morning with cheese grater legs.  I need a better razor.  I currently use a Venus one and I'm over it.  I'm so tired of going to doctors or pedicures and having spikey sharp legs.  What do you guys recommend?  If I wasn't such a pussy I would probably try waxing but honostly I don't want to pay for that.

It's getting warm here in Reno.  I went running yesterday and I was thrilled that I ended up with boob sweat.  I don't know why but to me that is always a sign of a good work out.  So running in all this cold weather was totally eliminating my PROOF of the workout.  I also ran up a big hill.  Guess what?  i don't like hills.  Hate hills.  I'm going to run up another hill tomorrow.  But oww.

There is a kid at Brandon's school who is being a total dickhead every morning.  The mornings his mom has been there she has let him get away with it.  But yesterday was the last straw.  While they were playing with their Beyblades the kid got upset and began spitting on the other kids toys.  He spit on Brandon and two other kids toys.  His mom wasn't there so he got away with it for a minute before another mom stepped in that knew his family and stopped him.  This kid has been a menace and I just don't know what to do.  First of all, I don't want Brandon thinking that is okay.  Since it is before school there are no teachers out there, so I'm not sure what good it would do to tell the teacher.  His mom hasn't been there the last three days so I can't even talk to her.  All I know is IT IS NOT OKAY AT ALL TO SPIT ON TOYS.  It's not okay to do the other things he does either.  What do I do?  Talk to the teacher?  Hunt down the mom?  I swear my instinct is to spit on this little asshole kid, but I WON'T…I promise. 

I get to see my foot doctor today.  I hope he can get some orthodics covered by insurance because running hurts like a mother fucker.  I pronate, and I have shin splints and a fractured ankle and….on and on and on.  I need something to help with this shit.  Yesterdays run up that hill was hard.  I forgot to take Excedrin before and I felt every single step.  I ran slow because of the pain and at the end of the run I was pissed off with my time.  I need to get my legs all fixed up so I can run faster.  I ran with Rob on Sunday and Y'all he made me feel slow.  I could hear him behind me and it sort of sounded like he was just skipping along.  Later I asked about his time.  He can run an 8 minute mile.  That day I was running a 12 minute mile.  Yesterday I ran a 14 minute mile because of the pain.  EIGHT MINUTE MILE.  He might as well have just been walking next to my slow ass 12 minutes huh?

Okay.  Thats all now.  Enough randomness for one day!