driving psychology and true confessions

Hello all!  I don't think I'm the only one that's noticed this trend...the trend of normally rational, sane people's personality completely changing when they get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.  I've dubbed this phenomenon "driving psychology", though I doubt anyone with an actual medical degree in the field of psychology would back me up on this.  Not that there isn't plenty of evidence (admittedly anecdotal) to back this up, I just doubt they'd be willing to spend hard begged for earned research dollars doing an actual study on the matter.  Now I'm willing to give these people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're good, hardworking, productive citizens on foot...however, behind the wheel of a car, a lot of them are a**holes and some seem just plain dumb. Not all of them, but a LOT.  I personally ran across several today, and I was only driving for about 15 minutes.  Please allow me to give a few examples...

Things I'd like to say to other drivers today:
1: Hey dude, it's been like 5 blocks, when are you actually turning?  Do you NOT hear the dinging noise letting you know your turn signal is on?
2: What's the big idea with waiting till I'm less than 5 feet away from you to pull out of that driveway? And why did you slow down as I almost had to swerve to miss your bumper?
3: Way to stop for that light at the last-possible-second! Good thing I wasn't tailgating you!
And while we're on the subject of tailgaiting...
4: DUDE, where's the fire?! There is a little thing called a speed limit on this road, how bout going it when you're behind me?  If you're gonna ride my a**, at least pull my hair!
To the guy in front of me at the light...
5: There's no one coming from the other way, you can make a right on red...in fact, please do!
To random guy on highway...
6: Did you really just get up on the highway only to take the next exit? Are you too good for the access road? And did you have to slow down so I'd miss my exit because I couldn't get over?
To another guy in front of me at another light...
7: Seriously, the light is green.  Feel free to turn right any time now!
8: You know that thing on the side of your steering wheel that you currently use as a hat rack?  It's called a turn signal dumbass...people use it to let other drivers know when they want to turn or switch lanes. We're not mindreaders you know!
And finally, to the person in front of me at the stop sign...
9: Wake UP stoner!  Hate to break your heart, but that stop sign is never going to turn green...it's been well over a minute, make a move!

And that concludes that little soapbox for today.  I'll let you average out how many idiots-per-minute that was later. Well, I guess that's about all for now...until next time!

the twitter addiction

Hello all!  Long time no see!  I've been trying to log on to blogger for over a month now and until today, couldn't get it to work for some reason.  Anyways, I'm finally back, and we've got some catching up to do!  I finally broke down and got a twitter account...mostly because I was having trouble getting ahold of a friend of mine and I know she has one, but I found a nice bonus to being on twitter...tons of celebs are on it too!  And they verify accounts, so you know if it's really the person you think it is, not just some fan posing as the celebrity.  I'm "followong" almost 50 peeps now...sadly, I only actually know one of them...hubby says I'm weird for following so many celebs, but I don't really care. In other news, baby girl started crawling!  And now she's into EVERYTHING!  I think we're gonna have to dust off the play yard...what's lovingly been dubbed "babytraz" at our house...we haven't used it since my mom and I had our shop in downtown(ish), for my son before I was pregnant with my daughter.  We don't have any baby gates in our house, so if she's not in a play pen of some sort she's pretty much just free-ranging around the house.  Once she's walking, that won't be too much of a problem, but with her just crawling she's a little harder to see when she's under your feet.  At least that way, she still has space to crawl around and play and I wont have to worry about people tripping over her cause they aren't watching where they're walking or little man jumping around and accidentally falling on her (it hasn't happened yet, but he's had a couple close calls).  Speaking of little man, his vocabulary has shot through the roof!  He can tell you all the names of the characters on Blue's Clues, including Perrywinkle and Paprika, which are hard words for some adults to say, let alone a two and a half year old.  Also, he said "Lawyered" the other day, which if you watch the show How I Met Your Mother, you know why that's funny (and he even used it in the right context!).  Hubby and I use the phrase quite a bit, so it's no big surprise that he picked that one up. 

On a similar (sorta) note, while we had the house to ourselves, I finally got the kid's room (mostly) cleaned out!  There was a big hope chest in there (my grandma's) that got moved to another room and a small bookshelf was put in its place.  This will eventually hold some books (of course) and a few baskets of toys so the kids can play in their room if they want to instead of the living room.  There's just one more small stack of boxes in there that needs to get taken care of, but there's finally room for both their beds in there!  Now if only I could get my son to stop climbing in his sister's bed when he wakes up super-early.  My mom and I have been painting pictures for their room as well...she's done several with geometric shapes and I painted one of the ASL alphabet.  I also made a crochet garland for baby girl's side of the room (it's like those paper chains you used to make in school, only the links are crocheted instead of paper), and I plan on making a penant garland for little man's side.  The crochet chain was super easy to work up with yarn I (mostly) already had on hand and a cute pattern I found on the Prudent Baby website (http://www.prudentbaby.com/2011/04/crochet-party-chain.html#more).  If you're in to crafting and haven't checked out this site, you really should!  They also post details on how they planned their kid's themed birthday parties, which are always nothing short of spectacular!  Honestly, most of their parties  kinda make me feel like a slacker in that department, but they give me something to strive for.  This year, I'm starting the planning months in advance for both the kids (they're birthdays are only 2 weeks apart) so that I don't have a repeat of the thrown-together-at-the-last-possible-minute party we had for my son last year (to be fair, I was about to pop with his sister last year and had a TON of stuff on my mind with the new baby...I'll put this in perspective for you: my own birthday is five days before my son's and I didn't realize it was coming up till 2 days before.  Wow, after reading that, it kinda makes me feel worse about it.).  But this year, I'm planning a big blow-out for both kiddos, complete with some activities!  And cute cakes I'll make myself!  (Kinda have to with the wheat allergy and no specialized bakeries around here)  I'm definately stepping it up this year, no doubt about it!

While I didn't get as much cleaning done around here as I wanted to while everyone was gone, I did get quite a bit done.  I got several rooms cleaned out and organized, and while I didn't get the entire house organized, I got all the really important ones done.  And I have to say, I'm loving the Dr. Bronner's magic soap even more!  It's cleaned everything I've used it on beautifully!  I use it to clean my kitchen countertops daily, and it's just magnificent...no more harsh chemical cleansers in my kitchen!  Actually, they haven't been there for quite some time, but this ensures there won't be ever again.  Well, I guess that's about all for now...Until next time!