Once upon a time, there was a little boy. The little boy could speak by age 1, and shortly thereafter was dubbed the Funniest Human Alive by all those lucky enough to cross his path.

He had other talents as well. He was the first boy in his class to blow bubble gum bubbles, he can burp a burp that will make you stop, look, and feel general concern for his physical well-being. He is an amazing artist, loves the guitar, and is a fabulous wing man. In fact, in a laundry room in the basement of an old apartment building, he once totally picked up some guy. That guy is now his godfather.

Boy’s got mad skilz, yo.

He has one other god given talent; the Great American Pastime, Baseball. To see that boy throw or hit a ball is like watching poetry get smacked with metal and flung through the air at 60 miles and hour. He’s good.

His momma signed him up for Little League, and due to the world’s most incompetent group of Bud drinkin’ idiots a scheduling error or two, the boys team had no coach. The boys momma volunteered. The boys momma has never played a day of baseball in her life, and was given a group of children to coach who were shipped in from Hades 2 days a week to get some fresh air and exercise. When the season was over, the boy had learned only one thing; he was better than every kid on that team. Not just talent-wise, but, like, character-wise.

The boys momma got down on her knees and cried in front of a candle lit alter to the mother of sweet baby Jesus in all her glory when the season ended.

And then that moron had the boy try out for the select team.  He got on the team.

This weekend, you will not be hearing much from the boys momma, since she’s got to be up well before dawn cracks its ass to get three kids out the door for 2 solid, action packed days of 8 year old Little League Championship games. Which the boys team is not nearly good enough to win, thank god, because if this crap goes on much longer, the boys momma may start hittin’ the drink.

Cross your fingers for the boy, okay? He looks mighty cute in his little uniform.

These are all of the shoes I own:I know, you’re waiting for the other pictures. There are no other pictures. That’s it; just those. That would be totally fine if I were a beach-bum in college, but I am a mother of three in Vancouver, British Columbia where it rains like crazy. Britney Spears crazy. I need shoes.

Today, Josh took me out to fix this little issue, and bought me these:I paid more for those than I did for all over my other shoes. Combined. I’m dead serious; I did the math.

It’s not that I couldn’t have more shoes, it’s just that I am a penny pinching cheap bastard and every time I think I could squeeze in a pair of shoes I then think about next stupid school fundraiser or the impending diaper purchase or replacing the area rug that I have had since I was single.

Anyway, now I have a decent pair of shoes and my husband totally has a crush on them. He’s got a shoe thing. Someday I’ll show you how many pairs of shoes he has.

So, yes; we had a bad go at the store last week. That little incident, however, seems like a nap in a field of lilies compared to the very next day at Ikea. See, I eventually figured it wasn’t so dreadfully important to get baskets right then, in the middle of a temper tantrum, and I did take her home and list her on eBay give her a bottle and put her to bed. I thought that we could try again, the next day, after a good nights’ sleep and a yummanummy breakfast.

Wanna guess how well that went?

We tried Ikea. What kid doesn’t like Ikea? My kid, that’s who. If you haven’t been to an Ikea, how is works is that you find the thing you want and then you go pick it up at the stock area right by the checkout. 3of3 found this: It’s cute and she really could use something like that to lug around her permanent markers and dead insects. And she had a blast pushing it around while I looked for something to get the boys to put their bags and mittens and hats in, because I LIKE the floor in my front entry way and I would like to see it again sometime this century. I was totally going to buy it for her.

Have you ever tried explaining to a toddler that they have put a toy away and go get another one, in a box, somewhere else?

Um, that doesn’t work. She screamed for 30 minutes straight.

The difference between Walmart* and Ikea is that no matter where you are in Walmart, you can find a straight line out in 5 seconds or less. Ikea, however, is a labyrinth. You cannot take a straight line anywhere in Ikea. A full grown adult comes out of Ikea looking like this: Try getting out of Ikea with a demon-possessed kid flung over your shoulder (because that’s the only way to protect your face from punches and kicking and stuff). It’s not the funnest fun ever. It took me 30 minutes to get out, but at least this time I started for the door immediately. At one point, we passed a mom with a small baby and, I’d guess, a 4 year old. The 4 year old pointed at my ape of a child and said, “Mommy, look at that baby!” The mom did the embarrassed-shush-her-kid thing and I looked at the little girl, smiled, and said, “See, honey, this is how not to act at the store.” She nodded a very serious nod to me and that was that.

We made it out basket-less, toy-less, and almost in tears.

I tell you that all to tell you this; you won’t be seeing me in public for a while. This kid is officially grounded until college.

*Shut up; I know. But I’m in Canada. We don’t have Target.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Josh and I lived in a really awful little duplex in Denver. We lived there until just after 2of3 was born. We had these really cool neighbors in the house next door to the awful duplex, and when they sold it, we were sad. They moved away and the new owners moved in. They were a young couple and after a little bit we realized that they rocked, too. And then we moved away. Bygones.

Fast forward 7 years.

So, let’s all pretend for a minute that my laundry is all folded and the dishes are stacked neatly in the cupboards and that my bedroom floor does not have a large sticky spot on it caused from what I can only pray was a popsicle and therefore I totally have my shit together and am left with tons of spare time.

In my excessive amounts of leisure time, I have signed up to do a few things. One is NaNoWriMo. I tried last year with Andy, but damn that sweet sweet wine. If you could write a novel full of giggle-giggle-giggle, Andy and I would have Pulitzers. But this year, I’m doing it. I am going to write a very stupid book in 30 days. And no one will read it. But I’m writing it anyway. You can mock my failure here.

I am also doing NaBloPoMo. That’s a really hard way of saying National Blog Posting Month. I will bore you to tears for 31 straight days in November. I apologize, whole-heartedly, in advance. The NaBloPoMo site is here. Today, I got a friend request on that site (it’s like MySpace for real people) from someone. That someone didn’t know me, I didn’t know her. She just wandered past me online and asked to be my friend *Gush*.

This is where it gets good.

I clicked on her link, and I’ll be a greased Jesus…I totally know her. She is the very same someone who bought the house next to us 7 years ago. She is the same someone who I ran into on my kids’ school playground last year because she and her husband, well, they went and had a kid, too. And very unknowingly, just this very day, she stumbled across yours truly.

Does it get more random than that? I think it doesn’t.

Anyway, here is her blog. It’s seriously good. Like, it’s way better than mine.

I’ve done the breakdown of you, my dear readers, based on the comments left last week. It’s pretty interesting, those results:

• One guy is trying to make atonement (it’s made, by the way)
• One guy was surfing for blue-collar porn
• One dad has a Tron fetish (we’ll lump that in with the porn)
• One guy apparently likes prolonging torture
• One guy tripped and fell on me (like I’ve never heard that before)
• Two dads who are contractually obligated to read this mess
• One mom is plotting to steal my kid
• Three moms think I’m funny
• One chick just loves me
• Two single, hot, kidless chicks fueled by jealousy

That totals 14 readers. There’s no way that’s right, but heck, lurkers lurk. Lurk on, lurkers.

50% of my readers are men, 28.57% of whom are perverts. 35.71% of my readers have no children. 22.22% of you have no children and no uterus. 14.2% of girls have no kids, and 100% of those girls have dogs the same way I have kids. Not that they got them the same way, because that’s just gross, but that they adore their dogs and they walk them more th….oh, you get it. I should also mention that my cousin Kathy reads it, and she is A) related to me, B) a mom and C) and this is the whammy….CANADIAN! That means that she is the one person reading that really, truly fits what should be my target demographic. Hi, Kathy!

That’s right; I showed my work. That gets me a 1 grade letter higher test score, thank you very much. Thanks for playing, those who did. Those who didn’t, and you know who you are, go play now!