April 16?! Holy shit.

We have been remiss in posting NOTHING the past six weeks. I finished all the work I needed to complete to graduate on May 15th, so that shit is behind me and I have a Masters! Landen graduated from kindergarten and Jake won awards for being an exemplary student. On Monday, they start camp at the YMCA, and I gotta say, I think Corey and I are more excited than they are.

The big news is that we got a puppy. He is a parti-colored American cocker spaniel, born on April 7. His name is Audie Murphy Allbritton, but he’s really just Murphy. Why in the hell did we get a dog? Because I’m nesting and I can’t have a baby right now, and Corey is a dog person. Well, an animal person in general.

I admit that I am going to make all of us neurotic as shit over housetraining, but I am nothing if not routine. We’re crate training, so at night he’s in his crate and we’re taking him out every three hours. He has a habitat he’s baby-gated into during the day and someone comes at lunch to feed him and take him out—and clean up the pee and poop he’s laid on the kitchen floor, sometimes on the pee pad, sometimes not.

When we’re home, we take him out and let him play on the blanket-protected couch, or on the floor, which he “marks” I guess, and we continue taking him out. I’m a little frustrated because he shows no signs of understanding what we’re trying to accomplish here.

See, so obsessed with elimination by this dog am I that I have devoted an entire blog post to it. So blah, blah, if you read this and have suggestions, which I readily solicit, I’m taking all of them. Here are some pics of our little dude.

And how is Lily handling this mess? She just watches him, I"m sure wondering what the fuck he's doing. She will tell him to shut the hell up when we put him in the kitchen and he cries about it. Last night while we were at dinner, he got out of the kitchen gate that I apparently failed to secure, and he was hanging out in the living room, not bleeding, and she was in her chair when we got home.

Things I Learned at the Beach 2009

Fifty-year old women are having LOTS of boob jobs and putting on the bikinis to show them off, certainly not for the hairy, beer-bellied, bald 60-year old men who presumably are buying them.

The hotel-imposed rules of the beach do not matter at all. All hotels guests will swim despite the red flag, bring bottles on the beach, play their music too loud, wear thongs and leave their trash by their beach chairs.

If they are still making overweight teenage girls, they aren’t at the beach. The only teenage girls at the beach are tall, tan and lithe in string bikinis.

Snaps to all the beached whales who get out there in their swimsuits, sans cover-ups, despite the Tiny Teenagers parading in front of them.

Tim Gunn needs to do a swimsuit book, and he needs to advise the planet that those bathing suits with the tropical flowers on the black backgrounds are not okay at any age or any size.

Watch the weather very closely. If, for instance, the prediction is rain on the day you are supposed to pack up and leave the beach, and your mama tells you that one hellacious rainstorm came through last night moving your way, pack your shit up in your car the night before so that you and your family aren’t complete soaking messes for the ride home.

Sunblock, no matter the spf, should be applied every hour. Otherwise your children will burn on their backs right above the waistband of their swim trunks and they will tell you about it all the time.

Know the location of every Wal-Mart between the beach and home. This will come in handy if you decide, on a whim, that you must stop and purchase a portable DVD player on the way out so your children do not ask you if you’re in Louisiana yet every ten minutes. If, in the execution of the backseat theatre, you execute your just-out-of-the-box DVD player when you plug it into the car and it makes a shocking POP sound and begins to smoke, you will need to know the location of the next Wal-Mart so that portable device can be returned as inoperable and another one can be acquired.

Though they sound yuppie and frou-frou, white wine spritzers are delightful balcony beverages.

However much money you spend, however annoyed you get with your family during extended times in close proximity, however much sand you bring home in your bag, however many seashells you are forced to buy....every single pain in the ass is totally and completely worth it to give the beach to a child.

Beach Photos, Days Two and Three

On Day Two they got a little sunburned, so we bought them some of those surfing shirts, and they were STUPID cute in them.

Beach Photos, Day One

I forgot what?

In January, I looked at our collective schedules and decided that Easter weekend would be a great time to take the boys to the beach. Bookit.com gave me a GREAT rate on a resort hotel room with a balcony and beach view. Boss Emily gave me the time off.

When I say that Corey and I have been having quite the times at work the past two weeks, I’m understating it. Corey had inspection (he was commended) and I had four meetings in four cities in five days and my boss is getting reading to have a son. We’ve both been working very late, eating very poorly and sleeping very little. Two people in need of a little beach vacation is all I’m saying.

I was all set to get up and leave early Friday morning, so we could have a little beach time on Friday, and drive home Monday afternoon, maybe after visiting the Gulfarium. Thursday morning I wake up at the ass crack to take the boys to school and I look at my calendar and wonder why it says “NELL ALLBRITTON OUT” on it. So weird, why would I not be at work today?

A feel of doom leads me to my computer where I pull up my Bookit.com reservation, which tells me that I am supposed to be checking into the Ramada Plaza Beach Resort at 3 PM TODAY.

Wait for it………

I FORGOT TO GO ON VACATION!!!

I’m recalling that when I planned this trip, I was aware of the fact that the boys had early dismissal from school on Thursday, and I clearly made that reservation planning to leave after their Easter parties. Designing it that way was as far as I got. Implementation failed.

The lass I share an office with and I often refer to ourselves as complete disasters, and we joke about our office being the Danger Zone and needing caution tape. Her family is constantly facing some drama of the health variety and she forgets something every morning on her way to work. I am a personal disaster and sometimes this trickles down to my husband and children. I pride myself on getting all my business handled despite this.

Clearly my shit is not as together as I thought it was, and there’s nothing like forgetting your vacation to prove how desperately you need one.

You know all the planning and listing and freaking packing you have to do to leave the state, and 30% of that was done as of 6:10 AM on Thursday. Once my shock wore off and Corey stopped laughing, we decided we’d just let the boys play in their baseball game (which they ended up not doing) that afternoon and leave around 6. The boys would sleep in the car and we’d wake up for a full beach day on Friday. This is what we did, and today was a beautiful day.

For your enjoyment, a burial video:

Celebrate the day of our birth

My parents do a joint birthday with us now that we live in the same city. It's usually the weekend that falls between our March birthdays (Cydney's is the 4th, mine is the 11th), take us to dinner and bring us some presents. This year, Corey and Justin got to come, and Dad invited his friend Fred to join us for dinner at Juban's.

Birthday girls!

With Fred, who was so happy to be with us for our birthday. We haven't seen him in years and years.

Eternal youth

Newlyweds!!

That cutie boyfriend of that purdy girl

Many candles on our red velvet cake

Do we all have the same smile?

The party of seven, wait, SIX because Fred took off for the bathroom and never came back!

Have you ever been shot out of a cannon?

I know we owe two weeks of posts on this blog, but I just have to quit doing anything in order to share the tale of the Half Week of Calamity Jane.

Monday and Tuesday of this week I have been preparing for a major event we had with the Department of the Interior today. Both days I was ONLY doing preparations for the event, and a haze had settled over my ability to think about personal hygiene, email or phone calls. I usually kick my shoes off under my desk when I'm seated there for long periods of time, which I had done on this particular day.

So there I am, at my desk, working on spreadsheets and invitations with my shoes kicked off and I am given immediate instructions to deliver other instructions to a girl who worked on the other side of our office. Up I get and off I go to deliver the assignment, so important was it that my supervisor was waiting on the other end of the phone for me to come back and say it was done.

It was not until I had crossed out of the lobby, through the elevator bay, into cubicle city and out again that I realized I had NO. F***KING. SHOES. ON. Not a sock, not a stocking, not a sole. And who should be standing in the elevator bay as I am running through it, looking at me like one of my feet was falling apart before her eyes, while I'm running, waving my arms and saying "I know, I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry"--my Chief of Staff.

Today was the Main Event, in New Orleans. Now, the last time I had worn my black pencil skirt, some of the hem came undone at work, so I stapled the hem and colored the staples with a Sharpie as a quick fix. And then, as I am wont to do, I forgot all about that shit, and put that pencil skirt on this morning. When I got to New Orleans, not only did I remember that the bitch was stapled on, but realized that the REST of the hem had been liberated also. So a coworker came from the New Orleans office, armed with a stapler and a Sharpie, and hemmed the rest of my skirt. The sad part is that the hem STILL won't be fixed the next time I put it on and leave the house in it.

Finally, you may recall that I made some serious fun of Corey's ass stepping on his own toe and breaking it. I myself have personally broken my own two baby toes so many times they don't face forward--it's cuter than it sounds. It wasn't until I got home after 10 hours in pointed-toe shoes that the pinky toe I had slammed on the closet door at 6 AM started throbbing. Why? Because it's all swollen and purple and BROKEN.

I need a mental health day.