dark chocolate

well i've survived my first toddler preschool valentine's day. it took me no time to see that valentines are not for the kids - they are for moms to out-pinterest each other and those bitches were out for blood. when i was a kid you bought cheesy punch-out paper valentines. today's kids are making it rain with confetti and passing out conversation hearts that say "tweet me." not to be outdone, i joined the good fight and withdrew my mortgage to spend on craft crap at hobby lobby. what little money i had left was put into the "divorce attorney" fund i have set aside for times like these when tj goes raging around the house spewing obscenities like "WHEN DID VALENTINE'S DAY BECOME F&*#ING CHRISTMAS?!" and, my favorite, "WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO EAT DINNER AFTER CUPID SHIT ALL OVER THE TABLE?!"

the idea behind my roz's valentines was simple: put teddy grahams in a cellophane bag with cute personalized idioms playing on the word "bear." trying to think of 12 different ways to use the word "bear" was downright... well... ahem... unbearable. after assembling all the bags and writing my beary cute valentines messages on them i had to fill them with the treats. well, i had just completed 10 of the twelve when i realized i was out of teddy grahams. i had to load up the girls and go to walgreens in the freezing cold just to get another stupid box of teddy grahams. (if i hadn't ate half of the first damn box, we probably wouldn't have had to do this...) anyways... i get back home to find that i accidentally purchased chocolate teddy grahams and what i should've got was the honey kind. "oh well" i thought to myself, "these two kids will feel special." i had just convinced myself that i was about to make 2 precious children happy when all of a sudden... "shit!" it dawned on me that one of the kids with the chocolate treats was black. not wanting the teacher to think that the KKK had infiltrated the 2 year old preschool class, i re-loaded the girls into the car and off we went back to walgreens.

here you see an example of valentines for white kids

i know that, most likely, the whole ordeal would have gone unnoticed. however, even the smallest chance that my innocent mistake could've been misconstrued as something bigger was just too much for me to bear.

sometime TODAY please

so i have been very excited about taking the girls downtown chicago friday morning for the live broadcast of the today show. i would like to get my face on national television before i die and i figure these two cute babies of mine are just what i need to catapult me into the spotlight. earlier this year, tj and i built a shitshack igloo with our friends and got it featured on the 11:00 news. (we know someone who knows someone that is banging the weather chick.) that 15 second clip was all i needed to catch the bug - now i'm dreaming big... like, today show big.

other than the igloo debacle, i've only been questioned by a news reporter one other time. nathan howard from wdtn came up to me outside of krogers to ask me what i thought about "this crazy warm weather." by "crazy warm weather" he was referring to the 60 degree march day that we randomly get in ohio every single year, and every single year people talk about it like jesus himself has blown hot air onto the chosen people of the miami valley. then they all update their facebook statusus about it... but i digress. anyways - the reason my answer never appeared on the noon report was because either: a) i asked him if i needed to have a bra on to be on tv or, b) my nipples were poking out of my shirt. (60 degrees is warm, but it's not that warm.)

i have been on the radio a few times when i worked at the car dealerships in high school and college. Those places are swarming with radio dj's on the weekends who give away concert tickets and other freebies to lure the public to the salesmen. i never could understand how people could show up for an umbrella and leave with a damn F1-50. every once in a while they would ask me to make the on-air plea with the public and i obliged every single time. nothing warmed my heart like begging the good folks of our community to come get a free nickleback cd and then watch them walk away with a 72 month lease on an '02 mercury sable. "oh that doesn't happen!" you might say. yes it does. ask my husband.

but, back to the today show: we have all of our supplies ready to go to make the oh-so-necessary sign. everyone who gets good air time in the crowd always has a good sign and i've come up with a great one. between that and that cute babies, i'm for sure going to get my 15 seconds of national fame. what does my sign say? well, you'll have to wait and see. for those of you that actually have a life, i will be sure to update with pictures and a crappy quality video of me taping my dvr playback.



**spoiler alert** just look for the crazy screaming lady and her two children with the sign offering al roker a diaper.