Secular Confessions

[Suja]

It was #16 that really got to me. "He acts like a shy debutante. “What are you doing? I do declare… Lawks-a-mercy!” AMAZING. Oh, Pregnesia, where have you been all my life?"

Oh, and I'm planning to get that book. Especially after reading the author's response.

[3andMe]

Oh, and yeah, I have been questioning DD as to where on earth she got the idea that you get mean when you get older. "Am I mean?" "No." My mom was worried (because she had been watching them that day) that they thought she had done something mean to them, but they denied that she was mean, too. I finally gave up and asked DD if she knew ANY mean grown-ups. She told me truck drivers were mean. I asked her where she got that idea. She told me Daddy told her that.

I asked DH where that came from, and it was from a big truck that cut him off in a merge. He apparently told them that people with big trucks sometimes feel like they can push into the road and not be as polite because they are bigger.

So I think she was just talking nonsense and trying to justify being mean.

[Cosmosmom]

Ok, the kids conversations are kind of funny.

Hi Lisa and Liz!!!

I like the looks of Ikea stuff for others homes but for us it's just too modern for the most part. though I do really like the whole billy bookcase system. Good when you have a lot of books like we do and works since the office is a bit more modern. Rest of the time we tend to really like arts and crafts or mission style.
it's fun to visit once a year or every two years though and just walk around. Those store designers did a great job at getting you in and making it hard to leave....kind of like a casino!

[Ky'sMom]

Hi Lisa and Liz! Welcome to the thread!!

Myles, you described IKEA to a T!!! LOL! I actually enjoy Ikea though. It is like a tourist attraction here in Atlanta and is less than a mile from my house so anytime someone comes to visit me, I MUST take them to Ikea because they have heard all about them. I only go on weekdays and never in the evenings, so it is usually quiet and just a wonderful place to look at things. I also know all the secret passage ways that you spoke of so I can get through the store itself in under 10 minutes. I usually only get what I come for and I will look up exactly where the item is in the big warehouse section online and head straight there, get my stuff and leave. I rarely even look at the displays unless I am just wasting time or I have a visitor who needs and Ikea tour.

This makes me wonder if I could get tips by standing in certain sections and saying "psst....you wanna know the quick way to check out?" and look all around to make sure an Ikea guard doesn't come and arrest me or something for selling secrets LOL!

Erin

[Suja]

It's official! I have NO impulse control. I actually bought a book titled 'Pregnesia'. Who would've thunk it?

[raspberry]

Welcome Lisa and Liz!!

I've never been to IKEA, the closest one to me is 2 hours away. I get their catalogs and I do like some of their items. L, I love your new shelves. I need those in every room. Especially for my dh the pack rat, he thinks he must keep everything, just in case he might need it one day. oy.

[Inca]

The only Ikea I've ever been to was in Belgium. So not only was it an experience of it's own, it was kinda weird because of the language differences. Everything was written in French, Dutch, and English.

[AbbeysMom]

If she told me that she hated me she would probably burst out in tears, like she does when she says I'm not nice.

Erin

I think Abbey and Elle have similar personalities.

Your new mummy friends sound a lot like the mom's group I mingled with in the last town I lived in, which was extremely tony and all the moms were blond, aerobicized, were all trying to get their kids into a pricey preschool called "Seedlings" and drove huge honkin' SUVs. DH used to call them "The Interchangeables". Mean, we know.

I had to take this quote to say that I'm like a 8 year old [American] boy and picture Ash with a bunch of Egyptian mummies drinking tea whenever I see the word "mummy".

So did you all see that another at Komen resigned?

And this:

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the U.S. Constitution when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.
"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," said Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the majority opinion. "The Constitution simply does not allow for 'laws of this sort'."

I'm thinking maybe I'll start posting in here more often. That is, if you all don't mind.

I was thinking the same thing..............

Hi Lisa and Liz! Jump in whenever and however you want.

[AbbeysMom]

Oh, and IKEA alwasy sounds good in theory but never works out for me. I start to feel frustrated and panicked after walking through two miles of "Scandinavian Designed" (but made in China) goods without finding the one thing I wanted from the catalog.

[AmeriBrit]

LOL, Molly.....makes the phrase 'yummy mummy' even funnier than what it is. I'm so anglicized these days that crazy English words don't phase me anymore!

[demigraf]

LOL, Suja. OK, not only did APA censor the URL, but my company censored the site content, so I'll have to wait until my going there on a non-work machine doesn't represent an act of flagrant procrastination. But judging from the quotes you & L pulled from the site, the content sort of reminds me of the recaps you'd find on http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/ --- for schlubbs like me who spend more time in front of screens than pages.

Erin, that's hilarious about dealing in "classified" IKEA information in the store. Maybe I should approach a lost soul in the store and say in my best Terminator voice: "Come with me if you want to live." I've felt like a complete hero in the past for helping shoppers find their way to the bathroom. I once helped Dharma from Dharma & Greg find her way around at the Burbank IKEA too.

L, all of those conversations are precious, although I'd like to be in line for some of your blouses. Honestly, the pluckier C sounds, the more I like her. I think I've gotten a little meaner as I've gotten older. A little. ;)

Liz & Lisa, welcome! Feel free to SCUBJIA anytime.

Mandy, I'm thinking of you and hoping you're feeling better today. I hope your "day off to mope" did you some good.

Chrissy, where are ya? How are ya? I can't remember if you've started your new job or if that is next week. Anyway, I hope all is going well for you, mama!

[3andMe]

Claire has been on a tear this past week. She has been pretty rotten. DS was in the right to accuse her of being mean, actually.

So DH at dinner the other night asked her, "Hey Claire, what starts with a 'B' and rhymes with 'itch'?"

Claire looked at him and said the word that APA would just filter out.

I was utterly appalled.

DH was also appalled. He stared at me accusingly and asked me who taught her that word. I said, "You did. Just now. As far as I know, she's never heard it before. But she does know how to rhyme." I was pretty incensed.

DH recovered quickly. He said, "What starts with a 'D' and rhymes with 'itch'?" and got her going on other rhymes so she quickly forgot about it. Still. Ugh.

On the weird side, DS, who is the one who doesn't listen, has all of a sudden started doing everything he's told and saying, "Yes, Mommy, right away Mommy, and is there anything else I can help you with?" and he volunteers to go in and read bedtime stories to Baby S (it is SOOOO adorable!) and it's like there must be some universal balance of child behavior where if one is good, the other must be bad and vice versa.

[daylilies]

I hope you all don't think I'm a terrible mom for doing this but I was curious if Josh would figure it out (of course I would not even make a big deal out of it if he got it right and then he'd promptly forget about it)
So I asked him what starts with B and rhymes with itch and he thought for a while and said "Back itch?"

I couldn't make this stuff up.

[AbbeysMom]

Where is Chrissy?

[3andMe]

Maybe Chrissy started her new job already and can't hang out on APA all day because she has to work or something?

Oh Chrissy???????

Back itch!!!! I love it! I will have to tell my dh that one. I was so mad at him for that.

[Cosmosmom]

Kate that is funny. I could see doing something like that too.

I think that this is Chrissy's last week on the job so she's probably closing up things there and not playing online with us.

[daylilies]

IDK, she hasn't been on facebook all day either.

[Suja]

The B-word IS a legitimate non-cuss word. Just explain that it is a term for a female dog.

[Bridget]

Oh, this thread is cracking me up today.

Welcome Lisa and Liz!

[daylilies]

The B-word IS a legitimate non-cuss word. Just explain that it is a term for a female dog.

Yeah, I was thinking that too.

[3andMe]

Oh, for those of you who are angling for a career helping shoppers navigate through IKEA quickly, I wanted to let you know that I have always found actual employees at IKEA who can direct me to secret shortcuts. I can get in and out in a heartbeat.

[demigraf]

Really?!? I've always felt that finding an actual employee to answer a question at IKEA was up there with trying to find someone to cut 3 ft of lamp wire for me at Home Depot. You can't have any other plans for the rest of the day. At least from my experience.

I've decided my official job title should be changed to "No one tells me anything and yet everyone expects me to know everything."

Unrelated to that, but speaking of work... this company we partner with (we're their customer but are so dependent on their product that they pretty much have us by the ho-hos) had promised us they'd support us in what they'd originally assured was a simple data mapping exercise. Like we thought they could give us one spreadsheet and if we wanted to look up what "a" mapped to, all we had to do was find "a" on the list and read across to find its related "b" in the same row. Not so simple. They handed us one of those spreadsheets and we quickly found that "a" couldn't get us to "b", but it could get us to "xyz". And if we used this other list and looked up "xyz", it would find at least 40 different "xyz" rows that might contain "b". After that didn't work, they pointed me to their repository of code. Just read the code, they said, and it'll get me to what we need. I then realized their code consisted of 846 separate files - 846 separate places I'd need to look to potentially find "b". Then I found out of those 846 files, some were variants of the same thing, so I asked how to know which variant to look in. You know what they recommended? That my company pay for us to attend a two-day webinar taught by them just to understand their versioning system (to make rhyme or reason out of their variants).

So a simple request for customer support turned into them upselling us on a whole big, pricey course to give us the information we'd originally requested that they'd assured us they could provide. I should add that their assurance was what led to the allocation of funds to this project. We have built out a whole team & hired new people (I think I'm actually one of them) just because they said this mapping exercise was going to be straightforward. I wonder if my higher-ups will complain. Anyway, I'm off to they gym to chill out. Bleh.

[missychrissy]

new people!

I'm here...it is my final week at my old job. I spent a lot of time with the boss man today and saying goodbye to some people. I was ok, until I went to therapy. My therapist says, "So Friday is going to be hard?" and I burst into tears. Gulp. Yeah. Hard isn't the word.

I don't know if all my older kids said something cruel about wishing I was dead or that they hated me, but I can assure you that it is nothing compared to hearing your teen say they don't want to live. I don't think the little kids really grasp what they're saying and they're just testing the boundaries and trying to get a reaction.

As far as Ikea, I've been to one once. I wasn't impressed with their stuff at all. I like the pics some of you have posted of stuff on here, but what I saw in person looked cheap to me. But I'm not good at shopping and can't really see individual pieces when they're in the midst of a lot of 'junk' There's something about Ikea's setup that made it harder for me than normal to spot anything I liked.

It's the same with me at Target. I cannot see past all the red and the store drives me bonkers. I've never once gone in a Target and found a 'good deal' I know it's me because everyone else seems to get 100 dollar items for 50 cents all the time!

[Gwenn]

This thread is too much fun today. I'm cracking up at all the comments. Particularly back itch.

Welcome to the new heathens! Jump in, or SCUBJIA, any time.

I like Ikea, but my DH hates it. Combined with the fact that the closest one is in Phoenix, which is 100 miles of barren desert away, and I hate Phoenix almost as much as I hate crossing 100 miles of barren desert to get there, I've only been to Ikea like twice in my life. But I do wish we had one here. I don't see why we don't - we have a ton of big chain stores like it and not only does the local population shop here, but tons of people come up here from Mexico to shop, so I'm sure we could keep them in business.

Jennifer, your comment about your grandmother and the orphanage made me My MIL did the EXACT same thing to DH. Not only that, but she made him pack his own suitcase (which he filled exclusively with teddy bears, being 6) and then made him sit in the car, clutching a teddy bear, waiting to be driven to the orphanage. What life lesson that taught him, other than not to trust people in general and his mother in particular, I can't imagine. He does not think it is funny, he thinks it's horrible. She also told him once, "If you weren't my little boy, I wouldn't let my little boy play with you." That and, when spanking him for doing nothing wrong, "If you haven't done anything to be spanked for yet, you will." All true stories. This is why my MIL will never watch my children unsupervised. And if I hear anything approaching that, she won't even see them. And I kid you not, this woman worked as a nanny for years. Can you imagine?

DH still has trouble accepting that I love him unconditionally. No one else ever has, I'm quite sure. It's taken a lot of work.

So, question for all of you. Testing a little girl today, and I heard a lot of that baby-babbling nonsense words and very rote phrases such as "What's that?" and "Here you go." Other than that, just single words, "food" "cookie" "ball", etc. So I asked her mother, "I hear some routine phrases, but does she put two words together in her own way?" The mother looked blank and asked me for an example, so I said, "Does she say something like 'Mommy eat?' " She said no, she will say "I'm hungry." Then I asked, "What if she isn't hungry, but you are eating - would she say mommy eat or mommy eating, or something similar?" The woman looked totally confused and didn't seem to understand what I was asking.

If your kid does that, or did do it at some point, you would know what I was talking about, right? Because the woman seemed to look at me like I was speaking some foreign language or something.

[Suja]

Mandy, I would think so, but maybe different examples might have helped? I think she might have been confused about the difference between 'I'm hungry' and 'Mommy eating', given that they are both 2 words strung together.

[Cosmosmom]

The B-word IS a legitimate non-cuss word. Just explain that it is a term for a female dog.

Dude I should have thought of that one considering I have two of them. LOL

[Gwenn]

Oh, how DH and I love to read dog food labels and point out any mention of "lactating *****es." Juvenile, but good clean fun.

[Cosmosmom]

Mandy I get what you are saying.

Maybe it was something about a different generation. Well wasn't my grandma but DH's. Though his mom (my MIL) and grandma were very close. wasn't my favorite person but oh well. If anything, I worry my MIL will be too easy going on our kid and she will be around and watching the baby for us or probably by toddler years. I mean even with the puppy she's too easy....like Molly found a ribbon on her robe and started chewing on it. MIL was like oh look what she found, how cute. DH and I were like OMG that is NOT cute, don't let her do that. That was a couple of weeks ago. I mean here we are trying to teach her to chew on her toys only and no biting.... Generally she to go with our wishes and rules but she's a pushover.

Chrissy, hang in there. It will be ok.

[Cosmosmom]

Here's my b*tches. Well are they still called that if fixed? Cosmo is and Molly will be soon. Taken last night. 003.jpg

Cosmo is nicknamed The Princess and Molly is The Poogle. So I feel like I have a fairy tale on my hands, The Princess and The Poogle.

[demigraf]

TBH, I'm still a little confused at the distinction between "Mommy eat" and what could be considered a routine phrase. By routine, did you perhaps mean something like two words repeated versus two words assembled from single words she'd never heard said together before?

I'm afraid I'm one of those people who gets easily confused because I need specificity. I guess that's why I write a lot of specifications for a living. I'm fairly quick to notice where more detail could be filled in, but annoyingly bad at making correct inferences.

Jennifer, speaking of the mean things grownups say, my crazy aunt once threatened to throw my beloved great-aunt into the river when I was 5, just because I was crying for her not to leave for the afternoon.

Man, people.