Jessie has built what he calls the Ultimate Somer Fan Page.  Ok, so it’s not a REAL fan page.  If it were a real fan page, it would be full of pictures, trivia, life accomplishments, and desktop wallpapers….all of me.  This page is well….different.  It’s the ultimate stalker page.  If I update a tweet, or a chatter on BlogHer, or a status update on Facebook, you will hear a ping and you will be immediately able to see those updates on this site.  It’s real-time Somer updates!

Are you tired of checking MWC and SMP to see if I’ve updated?  Just go to this site and it will show my latest blog posts on those sites. 

It’s not completely finished yet, but will be soon enough. 

We were sitting at dinner last night eating tacos made from one of those taco kits you get from the grocery store.  I asked Jessie what motivated him to build this site.  I didn’t ask him to build it, had never even considered such a thing.  He just surprised me with it one day.  He replied, “Oh, let’s just say it’s the ultimate fan page and I’m knocking Aschlie and Helen out of the water.” 

Yeah, he totally went there.

I laughed so hard that the contents of my taco ended up on my lap.

In truth, the real reason why he built this site was because he was wanting to learn a new coding language and he was simply doing this as an excuse to get accustomed to it.  If he’d just said that in the first place instead of trying to look all noble and giving, he WOULD have been my ultimate fan.  Now, I don’t know.  I’m feeling a little let down.

I tell you, it’s hell being small peanuts and can’t even trust your own husband to be an ultimate fan.  I must really suck! 

Ah, what the hell.  Let the suckage continue!

When I put his bare tushy on that potty, I still wasn’t 100% sure that he was ready.  I didn’t expect anything to happen.  I sat  him down, sat across from him and just calmly began chit chatting with him about pee pee and poo poo.  He enthusiastically chatted back and wanted to focus mainly on pee pee and his winky. 

Suddenly, he got quiet.  He looked down at his winky and, to my surprise, started going pee pee!  I squealed and clapped and exclaimed over and over again what a good boy he was.  He continued to go pee pee  until his bladder was empty.  You could have knocked me over with  feather. 

I called Jessie and my mother and excitedly informed them of this new development.  Everybody was excited and stunned at how he seemed to “get it.”  An hour later, I cautiously took him back down to sit again.  I’m prepared for setbacks and accidents.  I’m prepared for flukes.  But he went pee pee again!!!  Again!!  He’s sitting next to me right now enjoying some ice cold apple juice and his next appointment with the potty is in a half hour.  If he goes pee pee again, I will take that as a sign that he is definitely ready to start potty training seriously. 

5 years ago, I never would have thought that a few ounces of urine would make me so excited that I would blog about it.  But I just did.  I just shared with the world that my son squirting a little pee has made my week.  Oh, parenthood!

I’m one of those people who is a huge pain in the ass when it comes to buying gifts for me.  When people ask me around Christmas and my birthday what I want, my reply is always “I dunno,” or “You don’t need to get me anything.”  I get yelled at all the time about it.  When it comes to Jessie buying me gifts, he usually just takes me to a store and says “Spend X amount of money.  Merry Christmas.”  I’m usually ok with that since I don’t feel that I need wrapped gifts under the tree.  That morning is for Lukas and for Jessie to get his one surprise present.  That’s where my fun happens.

Last week I was on Amazon looking at books that I wanted to get.  Since I am terrible at remembering things like that, I started adding these books into an Amazon Wish List.  As the night wore on, I started searching for other things on Amazon and adding them to my wish list.  Things like imported salted and canned fish that I’ve always wanted to try.  Weird things.

I mentioned through Twitter that I was making a wishlist on Amazon when a friend told me to try Kaboodle instead.  I took a peek that night before going to bed, and wasn’t super impressed.  Then the next day I took a longer look and was like “Holy shit, I should have been alerted to this a LONG time ago!”

The great thing about Kaboodle is that you aren’t restricted to only what’s on the site.  You can go to other sites that offer online shopping and add those items to your Kaboodle wish list.  But that’s only half of why it’s so awesome.  This site has a huge community of list-makers of every category.  I can spend hours and hours looking through these lists and adding items to my own lists.  Seriously.  HOURS.

I was just doing this for fun and as a reminder to come back and buy these things later when I realized, “HEY!  Those people who are always bugging me around Christmas and birthday times would really benefit from this list!”  Yes.  I had a revelation.  Instead of sulking in front of a computer two weeks before Christmas, angrily trying to find some stupid little gift someone can get me, I can just tell them to go look at my list!  There’s a wish list and a list for stuff to get Lukas.  Oh this will simplify my life greatly!  And it’s fun to sit on there and daydream.  And look at kitchen gadget lists.

Go.  Look.  Make a list.  Friend me.  Maybe I’ll buy you stuff.

Me:  “Ok…..”

Jessie:  “Now get a condom out, put it on me, and rub some of that excitement gel on yourself.”

Me:  “What the hell, Jessie?  Are you really that lazy that I have to put gel on myself to get myself excited?  That kind of defeats the purpose!”

Jessie:  “Listen woman, it takes a lot of energy to get a boner.  This is the best you could hope for!”

Sound reasoning for reading the fine print on that whole “marriage” thing, huh?

I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas.  I know we did.  We laid around all day in our pj’s and watched Lukas play with all of his new toys.  This year was definitely better than last year.  Jessie’s parents came up and visited us for a long weekend and spent some time with Lukas, and we went to my mom’s place for Christmas Eve for dinner and presents.  It was a lot more like the Christmases that I remember as a child.  Lots of family, lots of presents, and lots of laughter.  So much better than the last 3 Christmases.  So much better.

I don’t really have any over the top hilarious stories, though (besides Jessie being a wanker).  Jessie got a Wii, I got kitchen stuff and clothes, Lukas got enough toys to fill the house up, and we adopted a kitty from the Human Society as a family present.  I’ll talk about the kitty later.

I have a bunch of pictures that I need to upload from this holiday season…it’s just been kind of hard to get away from Jessie.  He gets a little grumpy with me if I get on the internet while he’s home, and since it’s an easy conflict to avoid, I stay disconnected.

I’m enjoying myself in my new home, my new city, and my new outlook.  I’ve got things to look forward to.  I’ve got projects that will keep me busy for at least 5 years.  Ahh, it’s lovely.  I’m so glad that we made that move.  I’m so glad that we were able to finally realize our dream and buy a house of our own.  And I’m glad that my internet family has been patting me on the back on my bad days and laughing with me on my good days.  Thank you all so much for sticking with me.  Have a Happy New Year, everybody.  2010 is looking up already.

Ok, so what have you missed?

The plane ride from Seattle to Philadelphia was the longest plane ride of my life.  I will never ride in a plane with a toddler again.  Ever.  Then getting Lukas adjusted to life in a huge house full of breakable things was equally awful.  Jessie’s drive from Seattle to the boonies of Pennsylvania was awful and I’m sure he’ll never want to do that again.  Ever.  Then Jessie had a 3 hour commute EACH WAY to his job.  That means he was spending 6 hours a day in commute.  THAT SUCKS.

Lukas turned two while we were in internet limbo.  Jessie’s parents and brother and sister-in-law and their daughter came and we had a nice little party.  The kids had fun playing and the grown ups had fun catching up and eating ungodly amounts of food.  I made Lukas a dinosaur cake.  It was cute.  He got a million presents as always.

We went into Clarksburg to see friends and family we hadn’t seen in three years.  We brunched with the Canon’s and had a nice visit.  We visited my father and his parents and had a nice and slightly uncomfortable visit.  And then we met up with Aschlie and the rest of a visit was an absolute hoot.  Aschlie and I went to my grandmother’s grave and instead of crying, we told morbid stories and laughed.  My grandma liked to laugh and I think she would have appreciated laughter over tears.  Then we went to the Hussmann’s where I got to hold itty bitty beautiful babies and get slobbered on by Riley.  We had good food, had great company, and felt completely at ease with super nice people.  I was happy for Helen and Mary that their husbands are just super nice guys, to the point of being disarming.

We visited with Aschlie and had great talks and B.S.ing.  It was so nice to talk face to face.  We had breakfast the next morning all together and then said goodbye.  We headed to Morgantown to see Jessie’s brother’s new house.  It is ENORMOUS.  Then the long-assed drive back to the boonies of Pennsylvania.

Somewhere in there we decided that we needed to at least look at a few properties in the area and get an idea of what our budget could afford us.  We found a WONDERFUL realtor and set up a viewing day with three houses.  The first house was dirty and scary.  The second house was on a gorgeous tree-lined street and was fantastic.  The third house needed to be condemned.  We went back to the boonies and talked about looking at other houses.  Then we decided that we actually really liked the second house so we asked our realtor to talk to the listing agent to inquire about it further.  The listing agent said that the price had been reduced recently and they were getting a lot of foot trafic through the house.  We talked about it some more and decided it couldn’t hurt much to put in an offer (after Jessie had about 20 panic attacks).  We put in an offer, got a counter, countered back, and were under contract in one weekend.  It happened really fast.  Then Jessie had another 20 or so freak outs.  We got the place inspected, was told everything is in great shape and after the mortgage company dragged their feet until the last effing minute, we closed.  So yeah, we now own a house.  We looked at three houses before buying one.  The whole process was not as stressful as some people make it out to be.  You sign a zillion papers, you fax a zillion papers, and then you sign a zillion more and then they give you a set of keys.  I’ll be posting pictures later, right now I’m just catching up.  Trust me, I’ll be talking about this place a LOT on the future….and you’re going to read it and like it or else!

On a little side note here, I feel that I should post something funny.  Two nights ago, we went to Home Depot to get a big garbage can for recycling.  It was too big for our car, so we had to readjust everything and ended up having to recline the front passenger seat and setting it in there.  Well with Lukas in the back, there was no place for me to sit besides curling up into a ball and smooshing myself into the space behind the reclined seat.  Our car is tiny and sucks sometimes.  Anyhow, Jessie was talking to me and turned his head to say something and I heard a loud *THUMP* and then him yell, “OUCH!  I just punched myself (I’ll tell you the rest in a second).  Believe it or not, I hear Jessie yell “I just punched myself….” about 3 times a week.  Sometimes he punches himself in various regions of the crotch, and sometimes he punches his chin.  He does this a lot, so it wasn’t a surprise to hear him yell the first part.  It was the second part of this yelp that put me into hysterical laughter only because it was so unexpected.

“I just punched myself in the face with the trash can!”

You tell me where else you would hear that exclamation.  Where?  Who else would say that besides Jessie?

Oddly enough, it hasn’t been a bad day.  These stupid things just keep happening to me.  But some good things happen to me too!

A few months ago, an “ad agency” started hounding me to use one of Lukas’ pictures for a poster at an awards show that they were hosting.  As a paranoid parent, I naturally assumed they were scary pedophiles and tried to ignore them.  But.  They.  Kept.  Bothering.  Me.  Finally I wrote them back and told them that I was NOT comfortable with them using my son’s image so PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!  At first, I got an email back thanking me for my response and one of those “I have kids too and understand your hesitance” statements.  The next morning I saw that they had emailed me AGAIN.  This time, the “ad agency” said that actually, Lukas’ picture was an office favorite and they REALLY wanted it.  They offered me money and I freaked out.  I looked up the name of the agency online and the looked legitimate.  I called Jessie and had him ask his boss if this place is real and it turns out that this “ad agency” actually is one of the world’s most prolific ad agencies.  They were real.

Holy shit.  A real ad agency wants a picture of my baby?  What the fuck am I supposed to do?!?  Do I accept the money?  Will I be a horrible person for selling my baby’s picture?  It’s not like it’s for an ad or anything.  It’s for a poster for an awards show.  But STILL!  I’m being a baby peddler!  I’m an awful parent for even considering this!

I gave them permission.  And I accepted the money (bracing for criticism).  What’s funny about all of this is WHAT picture they wanted and for what client the picture would represent.  I acquired a copy of their poster in .jpg form and have it here in my posession.  Would you like to see it?  Sure you would.

And yes, he still makes that very same face.

I was also approached by a man who wanted to use one of my pregnant belly pictures in a novelty book that he was compiling.  The caption of the picture is “I feel like a balloon” and the book is full of pictures of  feelings and thoughts beginning with the phrase “I feel….”  I won’t get any money, but I get a free copy of the book and I’ve been invited to the launch party in New York city, which I am thinking about attending.  I’ve been sent a copy of the page on which my picture appears, but I’ll post the page on here once I actually get my own copy of the book.

Also, some wheels are turning on getting a children’s book that I have written published.  I know, me, Miss Potty Mouth a children’s book author.  But hey, someone wants to publish it and I’d love to see it on shelves.  Hopefully we can work out the kink that has been plaguing the project for almost 2 years.

Christ, when it rains it pours, huh?  This is all exciting stuff though and I am very pleased with myself right now.  I’m feeling downright puffed up and big headed actually.  But you know what’s keeping me grounded?  MY FUCKING HAND HURTS AND I CAN’T TYPE ANYMORE!