I just blew a small fortune while sitting around in my underwear. The internet is kind of awesome.

Christmas is fast upon us, so Jason and I took a date night to Walmart last week in search of More Useless Crap for the kiddies. It was surprisingly disappointing. I’ve been looking online, trying to come up with the right list for each kid, but couldn’t find anything we wanted.

See, we like to be organized at Christmas. We handle Christmas the way my folks did. On Christmas morning, each kid gets three main gifts from Mom and Dad. Hey, if it was good enough for the baby Jesus, it’s good enough for us. Besides, it makes sense. In addition to their three main presents, they each get a Santa gift Christmas Eve (and sometimes new jammies), and stockings filled with disposable junk that won’t make it through the morning. Awesome.

My kids have all been very specific about what things they want this year, so shopping should have been a snap. But frankly, we can’t afford the babysitting it would take to hunt all over town for stuffed tigers. And so, with a big jug of ice water and no lipstick on, I sat down this morning and made my way into the world of virtual shopping. Would you believe, I managed to get every single thing I needed, and stayed in the budget.

(Of course, this doesn’t include all the Forgotten Gifts I still have to buy with the $76 I have left in my Christmas envelope. That’s two sets of parents, stocking stuffers, white elephant gifts, and oh look, I haven’t got a single thing for Jason. Nice.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to run to the bank to deposit cash into the now depleted checking account before Amazon freaks out at me.

Here’s this week’s published confession. Enjoy.

“Sometimes I’m a really crappy laundress.

So Saturday I played Awesome Wife and gave my sweet husband the green light to spend the day at sporting events. He left at eight am and didn’t get home until eleven. I? I stayed home with the kids.

With the usual laundry piles on my list of Things I Really Don’t Want to Do on a Saturday, I put in a load of whites early in the morning.

Then I promptly forgot about them.

On Saturdays, I kind of feel like I shouldn’t have to do all the monotonous weekday stuff. And with the Saturday task master out of the picture, I ended up spending a large amount of the day dosing the kids with Red Box movies and surfing the internet to check out Christmas prices on toys. I also might have bought myself a pair of boots, but it’s all so foggy I can’t be sure.

(Okay, we did take a field trip to Walmart for tulip bulbs, then I let June, Rex, and Rex’s animal friends help me plant them.This took a small eternity. Animals don’t have thumbs–it makes for a very lengthy planting process.)

That night, after putting the kids to bed, I realized that in order to look like the day hadn’t been a complete waste, and to make sure my sweetheart knew just how much I had “sacrificed” on his behalf, I would probably be smart to spend an hour cleaning up the debris. You would not believe how trashed a house can get when Mother just doesn’t care.

As I was turning out the lights for bed, I realized that the whites from 14 hours ago were still in the washer. Lifting the lid, I was more than a little suspicious that they needed to be run through again.

But I was tired, and that would mean I had to stay up even later, and that would mean I’d get less sleep before the baby woke me up, and…you know where this is going. I poked around a little, sniffed here and there, and finally just plopped them in the dryer. I added a huge wad of dryer sheets, to mask the must, and went to bed, feeling just a little bit guilty.

This morning, Mr. Clean was getting ready for work. He pulled on his undershirt, and immediately frowned.

“What the…?? Has this even been washed? This thing reeks!” he looked in his drawer and finally deduced that every shirt he picked up had the same not-so-fresh scent.

I gulped, grabbed a nearby shirt, gave it a good sniff (yikes!) and blatantly lied. “Really? I think it smells fine. Must be those dryer sheets, I’ll pick up some new ones. Whoops! Looks like the baby’s crying, gotta go!” I said, evacuating the scene of the crime faster than you can say Oxyclean.

And that is just another installment in How to Be a Really Crappy Laundress, 101.”

As of now, I officially have a New Hair Girl.

Is there anything worse than trying to find the right pair of scissors? I haven’t had the best luck this year in Utah, either the hair people don’t want to do what I ask, or I walk away feeling bored. I like to end up with who’s-that-girl-in-the-mirror—-oh-wait-it’s-me hair when I walk out of a salon.

You see, I’m blond. Not dirty, not sandy, not brown. I do not care about depth (obviously). I like to be so blond that in a blackout, I’d be banned from parking lots because the enemy could use my head as a target. Over the years, this is the color that has made me happiest.

So why in the name of bleach do people insist on trying to talk me out of it? My mother loves me blond, Jason loves me blond, I love me blond–the end.

I finally realized that the only way to combat the dark side is to choose a hair dresser who’s equally inclined. That’s why my new girl, Sierra Hess (at the Aveda salon in Ogden) rocks. She’s the blondest girl I’ve ever met in my life, that pale as death blond. Love. It.

So yesterday she did it. She took me back to that fantastic level of nothingness color that makes me oh so happy. And we went ahead and left my length, but put tons and tons of layers in it. In fact, once it was dried I had her go through and take all the bulk out of my ends again. Like I said earlier, I really really want short hair, and this will be the perfect transition for the man.

So here you go, the finished result. Next time we’re going short…and it’s way cuter in person.

So last Wednesday we loaded up the kiddies, a year’s supply of diapers in varying sizes, 44 oz of diet coke with a little shot of Dr. Pepper thrown in (my new skinny serum), and took off for St. George. We only had to stop five times in the first seventeen minutes.

The whole point in going was to give Mama a chance to attend Bloggy Bootcamp, a one day, crash course in blogging for the blogger who cares (or, if you’re me, a not too expensive excuse to escape the children for a day). Three of my cronies were speaking–Hoff-loving Kristina, Blargy Stephanie, and Backordered Denae, all funnier than snot–how could it go wrong?

You want to know where it went wrong? I had to take la enfant.

She’s cute. She’s chubby. She smells like unicorn gas. Who wouldn’t want to hold her all day long?

Me. That’s who.

Five minutes into the program, during what should have been her very long morning nap, she awoke. I spent the first half of the day disrupting everyone with my ups and downs and please-excuse-me-while-I-flash-you-my-tata’s, and frantic looks of, “It was the baby! I don’t pass gas in public like that, I swear!” Exhausting.

By lunch, I was completely deflated. (No really, she had nursed so much, there was nothing left.) I did the only plausible thing: I handed her to a stranger and ran away to Mexico.

Kidding.

Jason came and got us, and I had to leave the conference. I was too uncomfortable, felt like we were too disruptive, and what should have been a fantastic get-away turned into a babysitting nightmare.

(And yes, she fell asleep in the car in the first four minutes and slept for three hours.)

The worst part about days like this is the guilt mixed in with the frustration. I would like to say that young mother frustration was my only emotion, but it was tainted with the knowledge that someday, I’ll miss having my own baby to hold. I couldn’t even properly hate her because I know that she’s going to graduate and move away, and then what am I going to do?

When five o’clock hit, I left the baby with Jason (and Harry, and Rexy, and June Bug) and met my dear friends for dinner. It was wonderful, it was invigorating, and by the time Jason texted me to get my boobies home, I felt completely recharged (and re-inflated).

Hey, if nothing else, at least I got to break bread with my favorite girlies.

My new column came out last Thursday. Since I was in St. George on vacay, far removed from anything high-speed, you missed it. But here’s the link, in case anyone wants to see it online.

I’ll update you on the rest of my life and all the fun and slightly disappointing things that happened over the weekend tomorrow. If I can still remember to type. Feels like so long since I logged on to anything, I almost forgot my password.

Let’s give a holler for good husbands.

Not only has my husband been especially good about giving me hugs and kisses after work (Hi, my name is Annie, and I’m an affectionaholic), but last night he kicked me out of the house after dinner so I could have some Alone Time.

I don’t know what tipped him off. Maybe it was the high wattage of my voice when I told June to put down the steak knife, or the way I drop kicked Rex’s T-Rex across the living room. Whatever it was, thank you for a good husband who pays attention to the little things. (When I got home the kids were all in bed, the kitchen was clean, and he was still smiling. Awesome.)

In other less inspiring news, the scale was up three pounds this morning for no reason, I forgot to put the whites in the dryer so Jason had no clean underwear (yikes), the kids pulled open an entire box of new  nursing pads and tossed them all over the house, the baby spit up on my sheets, and I forgot to wash  my leggings so I have nothing to wear.

But I get to see an old friend today, and that always makes everything okay. Hooray for girlfriends. If you’re having a bad day, go find one. Virtual or otherwise, things are always better when you can laugh with someone about them.

We’re back on the budget.

Just over a year and a half ago, the husband and I swapped out date night for Dave Ramsey’s 13 week course on financial smarts. Since we spent the first ten years of our marriage making enough stupid financial decisions to warrant a new method, this came at just the right time.

But with my pregnancy this past year and the man being gone so much, our monthly reckonings dwindled, and my debit card found it’s way down more and more store payment strips. It wasn’t that we were overspending, just blind spending. That is a very dangerous place to be. I started to get so anxious about it that I went on a spending spree. I kept hoping some store clerk would tell me, “Stop! There is no more money! Give me that card and go back to your car!”

I realized the only solution was to head back to my envelope system–cash only. This week we sat down and reworked our antiquated budget. It was shocking. How do so many parents do it? How is there money for piano, and preschool, and basketball, and baseball and karate–three kids in one or two things a piece, each year, is absolutely killing us.

I would be happy to keep them all home with the pumpkins (except for piano lessons, that’s a must), but two of the three oldest are so darn social. Harrison couldn’t care less about what sport he plays, just that there’s a team to socialize with.

I know the rules, I know the answers, I know we shouldn’t overbook our kids. And I don’t feel like we’re overbooked, but even on a moderate level everything is so blasted expensive. Preschool this winter is going to kill me. June is almost three and there’s nothing she wants in the whole world more than a ticket to preschool. (Okay, she still wants to poop her pants more than she wants preschool, but just slightly. I’m crossing my fingers for that to change.)

Oh, how I wish I could send my kids out to the field with a stick and a rock so they could learn some good old fashioned hand-eye coordination free of charge. Unfortunately, juveniles who carry sticks and rocks around are kind of frowned upon in today’s world.

On the plus side, our five-year-old would be happy to live in his bedroom and study butterflies and Africa for the rest of his life. Thankfully, the study of Africa is free. He’s so happy to not participate, we feel obligated to make him participate. It’s a horrible place to be, trying to decide whether we throw him to the coaching wolves or just let him stay home forever and mold. We’ve decided to gently shove him into one activity a year. Hey, the kid needs to get some sunshine somehow.

America is awesome for opportunities. Unfortunately, we’ve also mastered overkill.

Here’s this week’s column. It came in the mail, and next week I’m posting my miraculous before and after photos.

“There is a reason cable television sells things in the middle of the night.

I’m a nursing mother. Last week, 3:00 am came and my usual Law and Order rerun was not to be found, so I did the one thing you should never do in the middle of the night: I decided to check out the infomercials. And what do you think I found? An industrial strength, life-changing, figure-modifying girdle.

This baby was nothing short of miraculous. It was taking women from a size sixteen to what appeared to be a four faster than you can say Jenny Craig. And to top it off, the first 50,000 callers would receive the bottom half of the girdle (two pieces!) for FREE. But wait, if I called within the first minute, I’d receive an entire additional set in black for FREE. Three free girdles for the price of one? It was too good to be true!

(No really, it was too good to be true.)

“Thank you for calling this morning, can I get your name?” said the cheery midnight operator.

“Hi, I’m calling to buy a girdle.”

“Congratulations on being one of our first callers, this qualifies you to receive the original garment at the reduced price of $29.99, plus a ten dollar processing fee–” wait, what? “with three more additional pieces, including the set in black, all FREE, plus an additional ten dollar processing fee per garment.”

With my sleep deprived math skills working against me, I realized that I had better do some fast editing or I was going to be spending a small fortune on underwear.

“Would you like to receive the three additional pieces for FREE, plus the ten dollar processing fee per garment?” the operator asked.

“You know, I think I’ll be good with the first two.” Free my soon-to-be-much-smaller rear end.

“No problem, ma’am. And congratulations, it looks like you qualify for a FREE 30-day trial from Coupon Plus, including a $50 gift card to Wal Mart. All I need is a credit card number.”

“For a free trial?” I asked.

“Yes ma’am. If you keep your membership, a small fortune of $24.99 will be withdrawn from your account each month. Should you cancel in the first 30 days, you will still receive the FREE gift card.”

I’ve got four kids and Christmas right around the corner. This wasn’t a hard decision. “Fine, sign me up.”

“Wow,” she said, “this is certainly your lucky day, it looks like you’ve been randomly selected to receive another FREE 30-day trial to Value Plus’ competitor, Free Coupon Plus, with another FREE $50 gift card to Wal Mart. If you cancel within the first 30 days, you will still receive your gift card. All I need is your credit card number. Again.”

Wanna guess what I did? Come on, we’re talking about free money just for being awake at 3:00 am, people.  No one else wants to pay me to  nurse.

“Can I be done now?” I asked.

“You should buy a lottery ticket,” she said, “because you’ve just been randomly selected to receive a FREE trip for two to Bermuda. All I need is your–”

“Credit card number,” I said. “Do I have to go to Bermuda?” At this point we were rounding on 4 am, the baby was fast asleep, and I was throwing money at the telephone like some kind of talking zombie.

“Well, no, I suppose you don’t have to go to Bermuda,” she said.

“Great. Can I go to bed now?”

Right before hanging up, the operator told me that at least one out of every four callers is a nursing mother. Those girdle people, they know their clientelle.”

Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes yes.

I know I’ve been painfully quiet this week, and there’s a reason. I’ve been suffering under a collasal case of writer’s block. It has been excruciatingly painful.

I think the reason behind my silence is tomorrow’s rapidly approaching deadline. It’s my first week writing for my new column (front page of the Plus’s section for the Standard Examiner) and I’ve been panicked that I couldn’t come up with anything appropriately entertaining. What if I’ve used all my good nonsense words up? What if nothing interesting ever happens to me again? What if I break all my fingers???

Thank goodness this morning provided enough material to produce 700 publishable words. Hallelujah.

Okay, just had to get it off my chest. The ice is broken, I’m alive again.