More March, Less Crime

You'll be happy to hear that I have had nothing stolen in the past two weeks.

Unless, you consider my sanity.

Which seems to be stolen just a tiny bit at a time.

Mostly because of stuff like this..... 

And stuff like this......

We got some fish the day before St. Paddy's Day.  Two fish.

I couldn't say no to the power of two kids saying, "PUHHHH-LEEEEEZZZZZ?"

The last fish we had only lasted two weeks.

I'm doing my best for these guys.

They are still alive as I post this.  So, I think things are going good.

Our tank is about 2.5 gallons, and because of this I have to do water changes every two days or so.

Sigh.

Katie named her fish:  Swimmy (CutiePie is his nickname)

Mikey named his fish:  Flipper, formerly known as Fluttery

Not to be outdone by some fish, a leprechaun snuck some

chocolate coins into our house on St. Paddy's Day.

Katie thoroughly enjoyed hers.

Mikey liked his so much, he tried to eat the wrappers.

We also had time to bake up a nice loaf of Irish Soda Bread.

Yum.

We also happen to live with a future graffiti artist.

It was finally time for the Science Fair!!

We were actually able to create four rock candy sticks (out of about 10 tries)

Success! 

She learned, "Crystals have to be solid.  They have to be a shape like a diamond or cube."

Here she is showing her project to her pal, Alan.

They're best buddies. 

And here is Katie showing off her project to her teacher.

She was very proud and did a great job explaining the experiment and sharing some of her rock candy with her close friends.

Spring officially began last week and in honor of the day,

it hailed.

Here's Mikey braving the weather for a ride to the bus stop.

Overnight, it snowed.

We got about an inch or so.

And, not to be outdone by Mikey, Huzbend rode his ice bike to work.

Poor daffodils.

: (

My Wallet

My wallet got stolen yesterday.

Right out of my purse.  At Panera.

What totally and absolute suckage.

And now it's 5am and I've been laying and playing it over and over in my brain for an hour now.  I'm sitting here, in front of the computer, in the hopes that "doing" something will help make the angry and "if I'd only....." feeling go away.  But, that probably won't happen until the kids are up and I have something else to focus on.

Let's lay it out, shall we?

I decided to go with some friends to the Panera at the local mall.  I picked a table with a bench seat against a wall so that the kids could sit on it and be, well, kids.  This way they wouldn't annoy the other patrons.  Us Moms would sit on the outside in individual seats.  I put Mikey's jacket on the back of my chair and then my purse over top of that.

A person (I think it was a man) sat directly behind me at a large table.  He was the only one at the table.  I paid no attention, as the restaurant was super busy due to the lunch rush.

So, at some point that man stuck his hand in my purse and took out my wallet and ran for it.

During lunch, Mikey asked me about his coat.  I said, "Yep.  I got your coat.  It's right here."  My friend sitting next me to heard Mikey also say something about "that guy".  We thought nothing of it.

Well, turns out Mikey saw that guy take my wallet and book it out the store, slipping on the floor as he made his way quickly out the Panera.  Maybe Mikey asked me about his jacket because he thought the guy was gonna take it too?  I don't know.

It was only when I was getting ready to leave that I realized that my hastily-shoved-into-my-purse-wallet was missing.

My friends were awesome.  They went into action as I sat there in a kind of "what do I do NOW?" stupor.  One went to get the manager of the store.  I called Huzbend to get him to start canceling cards right away.  My other friend called 911 for me.

Then the texts from my credit cards started coming...."Did you recently make a charge for $1200 for electronics.  If yes, text 1.  If no, text 2."  The credit card companies were right on it.  Charges at Macy's - right there at the mall.  Charges at Target and Best Buy across the road from the mall.

In the middle of this, I get a call from Katie's school nurse, she's in the office with an upset tummy.  I explained what was going on.  She's the best school nurse, EVER.  She promised to take care of Katie until I could get there.  No worries.

All in all, we spent an extra hour in that Panera.  Taking phone calls from the credit card companies and detailing the incident to the police.  Then we rushed to pick up Katie and came home, where for the rest of the day I dealt with the fall out of having to inform people my wallet was stolen, request new cards, put fraud alerts on my credit reports........

I spent the rest of yesterday in a state of either anger at this unknown fucker or myself for being such an easy target.

Then comes the, "if I'd only...."
.....put my purse under Mikey's jacket
.....actually turned around when Mikey asked about his jacket
.....shoved my wallet down into the bottom of my small purse next to Mikey's epi-pen where it wouldn't have been so easy to pull out
.....actually looked at the person that sat within two feet of my back
.....picked the table that I was originally going to pick (which is the table the perp sat at)
.....stuck with my original plan of going home to do laundry and NOT going to Panera
.....not carried a purse at all!

Sigh.  Yep.  Well, it's hard to let that shit go.

And so, now, here I am obsessing and hand-wringing about another thing I have no control over.  I was actually laying on the couch about a half hour ago trying to think of ways that I could contact someone (the stores, the credit card companies) so that I could know exactly the items that were bought with my cards and at what time.  Then maybe they could pinpoint with a camera the dude (or dudes, I suspect it was two) that did it.  And maybe, JUST MAYBE, they could catch them.

But, no, isn't that the cops job?  I mean, I guess I could call the credit card companies and request this information to pass to the officer that is working the case.....

Like, now I think I'm a crime fighter.

Maybe I should contact our local news channels and ask them to investigate the amount of times this stuff happens at the mall I was at.  Maybe it would give other moms with kids a chance.  The manager at Panera told me that it happens "frequently" to moms with kids.  If the only knew.....

I just feel the need to DO something.  But, there's nothing to do.  Helpless and pissed.  Not a good combination for me.

No.  Today I gotta focus on getting gas in my truck (which is extra complicated because I have no cash or access to cash.....), getting a bank card and getting a new license.

It's sad that we've experienced more crime here than at any other time in our lives.  Our car window being smashed, someone entering our garage and stealing out of our car, and now this.  It kinda puts a little dent in your happy, shiny life for a while.  You begin looking over your shoulder, not trusting in your fellow man, not wanting to go running in the morning, wanting to get a really scary guard dog, wanting to own a gun......

I'm a changed person....again.  I'll forever be extra cautious with my purse in public places.  Never putting it out of my sight.  I'll also be suspicious of every person that's a little too near me - catching their eyes and looking at their faces.  I'm bound to get really weird looks.  But, oh well.

You could say that I should've been that way already.  It reminds me of my Mom making us safety pin money into our bras when we went into New York City......Mom is good at that stuff.

I guess the thing that REALLY REALLY gets me, is that Mikey saw the guy take it and that I was so clueless.  He, and the kids that were with us, now know that there ARE bad guys in the world.  There are robbers that really steal things from people and make them sad.  What a sucky lesson for them to learn at a lunch at Panera.

As we were leaving the Panera yesterday, I was just about on the verge of tears; holding them back valiantly as I carried Mikey back to the truck.  He didn't want to leave his friends, he wanted to play more.  I had to explain to him that I had to go pick up Katie at school and then go home to stop the bad guy from taking any more of our money.  I told him that I was sad that he took my wallet.  That it was not nice.

He said, "If Batman was here.  Batman would catch him and punch him to the ceiling."

That made me smile.

I wish.

The Second Coming?

Okay.  So this has nothing whatsoever to do with the kids, but does anyone else notice the resemblance?

One picture came from the internets, the other was handed to me at my front door.

You guess which is which.

I can't take all the credit for this.  It was actually Huzbend that mentioned the similarities.

I just couldn't help myself.

"Jeeeeesus!  He turns water into wine in about 20 seconds! Jeeesussss!  He heals lepers and blindness with common household materials!  Jeeeeeesuuusss!"

Moving on.....

Another subject that has just a smidgeon to do with the kids - only 'cause they play with Legos.
 

Sometimes LEGO sucks.

Is it SO hard, frickin' LEGO, to make a series that actually has a strong female character!?!?!?

Okay.  Yeah.  You all (or you Ninjago freaks) are yelling out "Nya!!"  Yeah.  Okay.  I'll give you that.  She was kinda cool.  BUT, the series started off with her being kidnapped and having to be saved by her cool ninja trained brother.  Looking past that, later they showed she could kick some butt with her awesome samurai mech.

If you ask me, SHE shoulda been the Green Ninja.  Sigh.

Anyways, my main complaint is with the new CHIMA series - specifically the TV shows that Mikey has watched about a million times.

They've got this female eagle-like character.  Just seeing her makes me want to punch LEGO in the face.

In the first few minutes of the first episode, she's pulled down out of the sky ('cause she can fly) in a net by the bad guy and whines, "Whhhhhyyy are yooooouuuu doing thiiiisss?"  Ugh.  So, it's gonna be like that, is it?

Later on, these anthropomorphic animal characters are having a battle on their jazzed out motorcycles.  They duel, one on one, to win a competition.  One of the bad guy characters wants to get the main good guy to fight.  The main good guy doesn't want to fight.  So, you know what the bad guy does?  He, of course, decides to attack the helpless eagle lady.  Wouldn't you do that same thing?

So, he begins to drive right at her.  She, of course, can't get her motorcycle started.  She's fumbling with the controls and is screaming for help until the main good guy rescues her by bashing into the bad guy with his motorcycle.

UGH.  UGH.  UGH.

LEGO, do you realize how much YOU ARE PISSING ME OFF?!?!?!?!

Just reminds me of the time I walked into the Lego store and a gentleman greeted us with this gem, "Hi!  Welcome to the LEGO store!  The Girl Legos are back there (referring to Katie and her obvious like of the Friends collection based solely on his observation of her gender), and the Boy Legos......well, they're, uh, everywhere."

Argh.

Confound you, LEGO!!!!!

Getting off soapbox in 3.....2.....1......now.

February Stuff

February 2nd was our 17 year wedding anniversary.

How 'bout that?  17 years.

We celebrated with a date.  Movie and dinner.

Katie decided to get me all dolled up for our date.

The best part is the heart on my neck.

Katie's science fair is coming up.  I suggested a variety of topics for this year.

Cataloging the birds that visit her bird feeder......

.....a study on pandas......

.......making candy crystals.....

SOLD!

Candy won out.

Hmmmm.  I wonder why?

We got to work.

Boil some water and add some sugar.....

....pour it in a jar......

....and then wait.  Like, a couple of weeks.

Next up, Valentine's Day.

Valentine's always means yummy treats

This year was no exception.

Here are the kids cookie creations from Katie's class

party.....

Later on that evening, they were able to sort through all of their Valentines.

There was lots of candy, of course.

Katie ate her first nut-safe truffles.  She LOVED them.

She is a true dessert connoisseur.

Mikey had a field trip to a local pizza place.

They let the kids play around with some pizza dough and flour.

Then they showed them how they spin out the dough.

Whoa.

Then, it was the kids turn.

HIIIII-YAAAAA!!

Mikey couldn't quite get the hang of the flying pizza dough.

So, he decided to make a "light saber" pizza instead.

You can always tell how great a field trip is by looking at the state of your child's clothing.

Messy = AWESOME!!!

Then, the best part of the field trip came.

IT WAS TIME TO EAT PIZZA.

FOR BREAKFAST.

Right on.

Time to check back in on our candy crystals (aka rock candy) experiment.

This is it at one weeks time.

So far, this is the only jar that has worked.  

Four other jars have been tried and failed.

Hmmmph.

Crystals are hard to grow.

After all that Valentine's and pizza excitement, the kids had school vacation.

At the end of the week we traveled to The Great Wolf Lodge.

I'm gonna start off by saying that the kids ADORED this place.

Absolutely LOVED it.

The parents.....um.....not so much.

It was really expensive.

There's an indoor water park that's kept at 84 degrees.

That was pretty neat AND it's included in the price of your stay.

What was the problem, you ask?

Nothing else was.

Included, I mean.

The food was atrocious and expensive.

The resort entertainment was boring, dated and totally lame.

The games and attractions were okay, but also expensive.

We guesstimated that it cost us upwards of $600 for a one night stay.

Gulp.  That's Disney prices for a not-so-Disney experience.

ANNNNNYWHOOOOOOOO...

I did mention the kids had fun, right?  They did.

Here we are chilling at the water park.

Here is Katie enjoying her $400 chocolate milk.

The rooms were nifty.  They had a separate little room within a room for the kids.

They were excited about the bunk bed.

Here we are killing some time in the lobby hula hooping.

One of the game options was called MagiQuest.

It was a really cool interactive magic wand game.

Of course, you had to buy the wands (and our kids chose the most expensive ones) AND then pay to play the game.

Sigh.

But it WAS super fun.

I didn't manage to take a pic of Katie with her wand (it was pink with a dragon on it - you can see it in the video).

But here is Mikey's.

We tried to find some dessert for the kids after dinner with not much success.

We're leery of getting ice cream from scoopable buckets (kinda like a Baskin Robbins type place) because of cross-contamination with nut filled ice creams.

So, we ended up getting Swedish Fish and jellybeans from the merchandise store.

The kids sat and enjoyed the audioanimatronic/musical  "Clock Tower Show".

If you clicked on that link, I apologize.  Wasn't that the most painful minute of your life?

There's a Native American princess that lives in a big tree.

Her name is "YellowFeather".  Mikey said that her name should be "Scary".

The kids thought the show was okay.

I, as you can see from this picture, was about to throw myself off the damn clock tower.

GOD.  It was horrid.

Almost as horrid as this picture, courtesy of Huzbend. 

After the show, they had "story time" and then a meet-and-greet with a Lodge character.

Katie was all over that!  Mikey decided to pass.

I guess anyone who's friends with "Scary, The Native American Princess" should not be trusted.

So, we won't be going back to the Great Wolf Lodge anytime soon, although the kids ask just about every day when we'll be returning.

Here's a little video of our escapades.....