The corpsmen and I were having a lengthy discussion of good vs. great movies, and of course this came up: (Sorry I can't embed; just clicky-click)

http://www.familyguyfiles.com/peter-hates-the-godfather-video/

"Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, I mean you never see.... ROBERT DUVAL!"

My new(ish) job has me back to 12 hour shifts with a rare, blessed 8 thrown in once in awhile.  Being a poor widow woman, I rely heavily on my mother and the graces of the local Boys and Girls Club for the kiddos.  This enables me to work long hours, knowing that my children are cared for and, more importantly, not performing unsupervised experiments on each other or burning each other in effigy.  The way this works is, my mother comes over in time for me to actually arrive to work on time, gets the kids off to school, and then they take a bus from their respective schools to the Boys and Girls Club for a few hours until my mom fetches them home again, jiggity-jig.  FB, despite being far too cool for this, can be relied to arrive at the Club albeit with much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.  SoS, on the other hand, looooooooves the Boys and Girls Club, and will often end up thereon my days off instead of taking the bus home.  Mind you, he is reminded which bus he is to take on a daily basis, which, in good nursing school fashion, he can repeat back verbatim.  Now, this child has a memory to rival Rain Man's.  He has, without consulting a map or signposts, gotten my mother un-lost from the woods.  It is a rare day he doesn't actually know what he's doing; I think we can agree on that.  Apparently, today he "forgot" and came home instead of going to the Club, where all activities are SUPERVISED.  An hour and a half later, my mother went to pick the boys up and found out, after FB searched all over the place, that SoS had never checked in.  She races to my house and the boy is outside, garage door up, bike and scooter out, Knucklehead McSpazatron staked out in the front yard, and my poor retired, neighbors out in their front yard, probably praying for someone to come home, for the love of SHIVA!  The neighbor had fixed SoS's scooter, more than likely got his ear talked off, SoS had staked the dog out because, "we hadn't done it in awhile, and (he) wanted to do it one more time."  I'm just glad he didn't let Crackhead out and ended up chasing him through the county.  Long, fervent conversations on safety followed.

In all the hubbub, my mom meant to make some dinner for the kids before SoS went to Scouts, but SoS's adventure threw off her schedule and they didn't have time to wait for the meatloaf to finish.  So, she left instructions with FB on when to take dinner out of the oven and got SoS McD's to go.  When she got home she discovered that FB had eaten 7/8 of the meatloaf and 6 of the 8 biscuits were gone.  He swears he only ate 2 biscuits and the other 4 must have been devoured by the dogs.  These are some talented dogs, peeps!  They were able to lift those four biscuits individually completely without disturbing the pan.  I'm going to have to hire these guys out for delicate micro-processor building. What is it about tweeners and teenagers that lead them to believe the adults in their lives have the IQ of your basic cabbage? 

There are a few things I should never do.  Let us first propose that most nurses are under medicated, OCD germaphobes.  As such, cleaning carpets is best left to the professionals, or at least, some method that does not allow one to view the product of the cleaning.  Because, right now, I'm debating whether I should demolish the house and just start over.  Frankly, if what I've seen the last few days is any indication. we are living in a disease ridden hovel, furnished in smut and dog hair. 

I actually started to write this several days ago and fell asleep in the middle of it.  I took it as a sign.  Of what, I have no idea.  


Just a small comment on the government shutdown that didn't happen on Saturday.  Being a federal employee in a health care setting, makes me an essential employee, and thus there was no hope of a furlough and I better show my face at work.  As I have noted to my father (who worries incessantly about me being a single working mother) I don't make a shit ton of money, but I make a LOT of money, and if I'm hurting it's because, basically, I'm an idiot.  Even with my predilection for all things Target, I have enough to meet my needs and most of my wants.  So, I'd have to use my tax return to pay for necessities instead of buying a Tempurpedic for my birthday.  Oh, gasp!  I'd have to wait to buy my luxury bed item.  My outraged stemmed from thinking about the troops in forward areas who wouldn't get paid, or even my poor little E1s to E3s, some of which have little mouths to feed, trying to live on half pay.  And good for Navy Federal who said they would cover the other half the paychecks for their members.  Awesome!  Until you realize, these people will get the retro pay, all in one lump sum I'm sure, get absolutely raped on the taxes and then Navy Fed will, rightly so, want their money back.  And so these poor kids will be back in the same boat.  Meanwhile Congress and the CIC, bitching and moaning about we're so sorry, we have no money to pay our service members.  Hey!  Here's an idea:  take a leaf out of Lee Iacocca's book (literally!) and pay yourself $1 a year salary until we're out of this hole.
/rant off

Okay, I just smashed my soapbox into kindling; so here's my theme song:

Talk about mudflaps, my girl's got 'em!