This September is my one year anniversary of when I got my beloved iTouch. I won it in a contest last year and since the day I got in the mail it hasn’t left my side. I take it everywhere. It is my watch and  my calendar.  I read books on it and play games. Oh and it plays music too.

There are tonnes of iphone accessories for the iTouch. (There is very little difference, just the phone and camera parts, between and iPhone and an iTouch) Most, if not all iPhone accessories will fit the Touch.

In the past year I have bought quite a few accessories for my Touch, a few protective skins, special ear buds that don;t hurt my ears and one very naughty accessory that vibrates in time to the music playing!

I love my iTouch.

<3

This morning I woke up to “MOM! He puked on the couch” , which is a guaranteed way to get  me out of bed FAST. The couch was cleaned up and the sickly child was tossed into the tub to get cleaned, and we settled in for a lazy Sunday spent at home*.

I was on Facebook, and the TV was on Judge Judy reruns, for background noise. I thought the boys were playing their gameboys until a commercial for the treatments for Mesothelioma came on. All of a sudden my seven year old got excited!

“Hey look! That’s a real number we can call!!” he told us.

We asked him how he knew it was a real number and he said “All of the fake TV numbers start with 555!” he was so exicted, he wanted to call the number. We convinced him he was not allowed too, but he was pretty bummed out.

It’s cute though. You don;t think kids are paying that close attention to things, but the fact he was able to differentiate between the fake 555 and a real number brings it all home again.

*I am making a crock pot thingy today. I think its called pot roast? I dunno. I will update later with how it goes!

for a lot of people, winning the lottery is a cherished dream. My husband and I buy three tickets to three different lotteries every week. So far we haven’t won, but as they say, you can never win if you don’t have a ticket!

However, there are a few downsides to being the winner of millions.

** eight lottery winners who lost it all (opens in a new window)**

In Canada, winnings are not taxed, so if you win a million, you get a million, In the states you lose a very very large portion of your win to taxes. Other than the tax thing, I don’t know much about the rules governing lottery sales and winnings int eh states. However, I do know a bit about the ones in Canada.

When you win the lott0, say the Super Seven, or the 6/49, you have one year to claim your prize. In that time, you should have already made financial plans for your windfall, but far too many people do not do this. The lottery corporation gives you one week to set things in order – they recommend you get an unlisted phone number, and if possible, move.After that week, the lotto company has the right to publish the winners names and photographs, and that is where a lot of problems start.

Some winners lose their entire fortune in a year. they buy a house, pay off friends homes, and loans, buy many cars, and what happens? the forget that homes are taxed and don;t have the money for the annual property tax that comes due. cars sit and waste because they have run out of money and cannot afford to plate them or put gas in them.

Some winners wills tart up business ventures knowing absolutely NOTHING about the business! Now, it is a good idea to invest your money into a  business if you know what you are doing or if you hire business plan consultants, but if you choose to, say, open a coffee shop, and don;t understand over head costs, how to ensure a proper inventory or how to work with customers, your venture is going to tank, and take with it, a lot of your winnings.

So many people say “If I won the lottery I would ________” and often that blank is filled with

• Quit my job
• travel the world
• give to charity
• buy a house

And in theory, all of those things a great, BUT. Say you won 2 million dollars at the age of 25 and you decide to quit your job. In forty years, when you would normally retire, you won’t receive canada pension, because you haven’t paid into it. And how much will 2 million BE in 40 years/ not much at all. The sad fact is, a person cannot expect to be able to live a full life, a full retired life, on two million dollars.

The very first thing a person needs to do when winning the lottery is look at their debts. If a person has won 2 million dollars and has 200,000 owing on their home, and 50,000  in student loans, a 10,000 line of credit and  various other debts totaling 5,000, they haven;t won two million at all, have they? Now they have 1.7 million after paying off their debs. Say they decide to buy a house with that, and there goes an additional 200- 750k. And what about friends and family? Going to give them some too?

Two million sounds like a large amount of money, but in reality, it goes very quickly.

And what would I do if I won the lottery? If it was under five million, I would pay off all debts and put my current home on the market.  I would buy a new home, paid off in full, and then put the rest, at the very least, a FULL HALF of my lottery winnings, into a high interest savings account. From that account, we would set it up to only pay us the interest for 20-25 years, keeping the principal of the winnings to be used upon retirement. Both my husband and I would continue to work.

If I won between 5 and sky’s the limit? I would pay off my debts, sell my current home, buy a new home, and set aside at least a full half to three quarters of the winnings in a high interest account where we can only withdraw the interest until the age of retirement. And we would probably travel a bit.

Hi, my name is Mommy, I’m thirty years old and I still get zits.

This morning as usual, my nine year old son woke me up so that I could get his brothers up and supervise  the eating of Breakfast and the making of Lunches. (I don’t wake up to an alarm, and he does, so STFU.)

AHNYway. This morning my brat woke me up and then started laughing at me cus I had grown a zit roughly the size od a Volkswagen Beetle on the bridge of my nose. (Wait. Where is the bridge of my nose? it was right snack between my eyebrows a the top of my nose. Is that the bridge?)

AHNYways, (Again) Parker thought my zit was hilarious and he spent all morning, during breakfast, while they got dressed for school, while the lunches were being made, making fun of my zit. He and the boys decided my zit was soooooo huge that it was a city all to itself, like on Horton hears a Who, and it was called Zitopia.

BUT THE JOKES ON HIM!

Even though he diligently uses an acne treatment every night after he washes his face, he came home from school with a nice sized, gooey, ewwey, white zit on his cheek!

Thank You Karma!

September 21st is the “first day of fall” on the calendar even though twitter told me this morning it isn’t until the 22nd this year.

I hate fall, whether it (heh) falls on the 21st OR the 22nd! I fight all fall and winter with dry dry itchy dry and itchy dry skin. And it’s itchy. And of course, like clock work, I woke up this morning itching like mad. My arms, legs back and chest are driving me CRAZY.

I sent the boys off to school and drew myself a bath. I added two capfulls of baby oil to the water. I thought I had read somewhere that adding oils to your bath would help with dry skin. I’m not sure if that is true, but what I did find out was that adding Baby Oil to MY bath helps by giving me HIVES. Something in the baby oil is an allergen to me.

YAY.

I know that bathing too often can cause dry skin, and I know that in the fall and winter, when it is cold and freezing I am more likely to hop into the tub or have a hot shower to warm up than I am to go and find a sweater. I wonder if there is any type of water filter out there that deals with dry skin? I know that most water filters deal with the purification of water, but maybe it is something in the water, some kind of mineral that drys out skin?

As much as the itch after a bath or shower kills me, I am not willing to give them up. If you have any ideas on what I can add to my bath, soaps, oils (Not baby oil though! *scratch*) lotions, that kind of thing, or even a good lotion that I can apply after my bath, please feel free to comment!

It’s raining, It’s pouring

The Old Man is Snoring.

He bumped his head at the foot of the bed,

And he couldn’t get up in the morning!

We woke up this morning before the alarm had a chance to ring because it was raining on our heads. Unfortunately, sometime in the night it cooled off and clouded over and the rain started! Because we had plans for the day (hence the alarm being activated) I checked the weather network to see how long and how much it was going to rain.

Good news! It was only scheduled to rain until noon, and then a 30% chance of showers in the evening, all total, we should expect less than 1mm of rain to fall.

Bad news! The weather people SUCK! It has been POURING (not just raining, but POURING) all freaking day! It’s 9pm now and the rain is still coming down just as hard as it was at 9am. Micah was joking that the steel buildings by work (new construction, just the frame is up) will be just a pile of rust by tomorrow morning when he drives to work.

This got all the guys onto the topic of salt water and how quickly it will rust cars and especially anything made out of aluminum.

My Brother in Law lives in Mexico and after they take the boat out onto the ocean, every single time, they have to hoist up the engine, and hose out all the parts, getting rid of all the salt water. They have to spray down the wet suits and the fishing rods, anything that got wet by the sea has to be cleaned off or the next time they got o use it, it will be rotten!

Imagine the amount of work that takes, every time you head out you know that you are going to spend an hour after bgetting back to the dock cleaning things out! Kind of takes the relaxation out of the ride, eh?

Please take a minute to read this post where I bitch about being sick. Or even this post where I also bitch about being sick.

The point I am trying to make is : I AM SICK.

So. We got new to us couches two weeks ago and since the old couch was disgusting and old and gross and yucky and green and flowery and worn out gross-disgusting-GARBAGE, we tossed it over the fence into the back alley so it would be picked up and trashed during the towns bi-annual back alley clean up. (back alley clean up is exactly what it sounds like. twice a year you can toss whatever you were unable to fit into your regular garbage can into the alley and the town hauls it – free of charge – to the dump)

Last night, at about seven, my mother in law calls to tell us that they got a flyer in their mail that said if there are items in the back alley sooner than a week before the back alley clean up date, the homeowner will be fined. This of course, sent my in laws into a tizzy and they called to tell hubs that he JUST HAD TO move the couch into the dumpster by their complex or OMG! A Fine!

So fine whatever, it ends an argument and hubs agrees to carry the couch down the back alley to the dumpster. BUT THEN IT STARTS TO RAIN. And, if you recall, I’M SICK. The last thing I want to do is go outside, it the pouring rain to help hubs take the old disgusting couch to the dumpster!

I’m glad that it was pitch dark last night because of the RAIN CLOUDS, because I bet I looked like a total dunce holding the couch cushions over my head like some kind of floppy floral green rain guards!

Cushions actually make good umbrellas right up to the part where you have to toss them into the dumpster. Funnily enough, once they were no longer over my head, I got SOAKED running home. Just awesome for my cold.

Who wants to take bets on me developing pneumonia before this is done.

Friday night my throat was a wee bit scratchy but I ignored it. Saturday afternoon my nose was stuffed and my throat was worse, but still, I soldiered on.

Today, Sunday, I am hot and then cold, plugged and then runny, dizzy and then starving.

It’s horrible.

Because it is payday weekend, my inlaws took the boys overnight so Hubs and I can have a date night. Normally that means heading to the city for dinner and a movie, but instead, Hubs is rocking on his PS3, (RockBand) and I am about to pop a bluray disc into my laptop, and curl up with my tea and blankie.

This sucks.

Not just because I am ill, which is horrid, but because this is a long weekend and also the last weekend before Logan starts Kindergarten. It’s horrible that the last weekend before he becomes a full time student I am spending it too ill to play with him.

Send soup, ASAP!