Last week was Dr. Seuss’ birthday and it was celebrated at The Diva’s school. Ever since then, she has been obsessed with him. And Green Eggs and Ham. Yesterday was The Diva’s 5th birthday and when asked what she would like for her special meal, she said, you guessed it, Green Eggs And Ham.

Being the good Mama that I am, I set out to give my baby girl what she wanted on her birthday. I had no idea what I was doing. My own Mother never did anything like this for me. So I winged it.

What follows is an experiment.

With food.

And food coloring.

And eggs.

And Sam~I~Am.

Don’t mind my kitchen, it was a mess. Hubby is on vacation this week and has been “tinkering around” in there. And I refuse to clean up all the crap he’s messed up. Although I will likely have to do it anyway.

Yeah, I got nothing interesting today, so I am posting a video Trisha showed us. Because I think it’s funny. But if you don’t blog or do any kind of social media, you may not get it.

Viva le Dorks!!

THE NEW DORK – Entrepreneur State of Mind (Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys Spoof)

1. Susan@What Happened To My House

2. Upstatemomof3

3. You're next!

Oh Miss Ro, today is your 5th birthday. I cannot believe that my baby is so big now! You have almost finished your first year of school and you are doing so well. You can write your whole name, read books, draw beautiful pictures and are so creative. You are so intelligent that I had to request a K1 class for you when you start kindergarten in the Fall.

I am so proud to be your Mommy. We had a rough start when you were born and you just gave me and Daddy the second scare of our lives when you ended up in the hospital 3 weeks ago with pneumonia and RSV. But you kicked that bad boy’s butt!

I am in awe of you, my amazing girl. I still cannot believe that you are 5 years old today! It only seems like yesterday that I held you in my arms for the first time and now you are getting ready to start kindergarten. I love you so much. Please don’t ever forget that. I never want you to stop being who you are, but do you think you could maybe start listening to me and Daddy a bit more? Thanks.

It’s time, once again, for Small talk Six! On Saturdays presented by MomDot.com. Today’s topic is “6 items that are on your grocery/shopping list every single week”. You can answer this with a list of 6 words, 6 phrases, 6 sentences. 6 paragraphs, 6 photos, 6 videos, etc…

Hmmm, things I buy every week? Well I am not sure I have six. Let me try.

1) Simply Lemonade. I stopped drinking soda last Summer and I am now addicted to this lemonade. I do not drink caffeine of any kind now. Shocking, I know.

2) 2 Gallons of 2% milk. We actually go through at least 4 per week, but we only buy two at a time because we don’t have the refrigerator space.

3) Bananas for my Husband and The Diva.

4) Yogurt. We all love yogurt in this house. I specifically only like Yoplait strawberry yogurt. I just wish they would leave the pieces of slimy strawberries out. Just sayin…

5) Rosarita Refried beans. What can I say? My Husband is kind of Mexican. And I like to feed his horrendous farts.

6) Apple/Berry 100% juice. I’ve tried to tell you we eat relatively healthy in this house. No one believes me.

OK, boring list. Sorry. But what else am I supposed to do, lie?

Tracy and Loma Linda, California are now going to charge residents $300 for every call to 911 with an option to pay $48 for unlimited calls for one year. If you are not a resident of Tracy or Loma Linda,  it will cost you $400 per call. Is this a creative way to make up for a budget shortfall or a recipe for disaster?

From KTLA:

LOMA LINDA — Residents making 911 calls requiring emergency medical services now have a choice — pay $300 per call, or sign up for an annual fee. The Loma Linda Fire Department plans to charge residents $300 for each 911 call, beginning Monday [March 1, 2010], under its new “Fire Medical” program. Residents can also choose to pay a $48 dollar annual membership fee and not be charged for each call. The fee covers each household.

Non-residents will be charged $400 per call or an annual fee of about $60.

No fee will be charged for police or fire emergencies. The cost does not cover any charge from a private ambulance company. The money will go to the fire department, which hopes to offset the costs of providing specialized services to the community. Officials say the fire department responds to more than 3,000 calls each year, about three-fourths of which are for emergency medical services.

I can see it now:

Operator: 911, how would you like to pay for this call? We accept debit, Visa, Mastercard and American Express. I can also give you instructions on how to make a payment through Western Union.

Caller: Help me my baby is turning blue!! He’s not breathing! Help me!!!

Operator: Ma’am, calm down. I will be happy to help you as soon as you make your payment. You are a resident, correct? Non-residents pay a higher fee.

Caller: What??!!! MY BABY IS NOT BREATHING. I NEED AN AMBULANCE NOW. HELP MY BABY!!!

Yeah, that will be wonderful, won’t it? So let me get this straight, Tracy and Loma Linda City Councils, you are going to charge your residents to use emergency services that are supposed to PUBLIC safety, paid for by tax dollars and therefore ALREADY subsidized by your residents?  And this is legal? Uh, huh. So in my state, California, which is already one of the most expensive states to live in and completely broke, two cities want to charge it’s residents for PUBLIC services that have already been bought and paid for by the taxpayers of those cities and the state. Oh and don’t we all pay a 911 surcharge on each and every phone bill???

Tracy City Council member, Michael Maciel, was quoted as saying “How much is your life worth to you?”

Apparently, my life is worth $300, to you, Michael.

Does anyone see a problem with this picture?

Anyone?

Another California city, Ventura, is also adopting a fee for 911 calls. However, their charge is much more reasonable than Tracy or Loma Linda at $1.49 per month, if you sign up for the plan, or $50 per call if you opt out. The city will also waive any fees for Good Samaritans who make emergency calls.

From The L.A. Times:

Strapped for money to hire additional police officers and firefighters, Ventura will soon charge a monthly fee for emergency calls to help pay for services.

Residents in the seaside community will pay $1.49 a month for emergency service access beginning May 1. If they choose to opt out of the plan, they will be charged $50 for each 911 call.

City officials stressed that the action is vital to improving public safety services.

The fee will be levied on about 158,000 residential and business land lines and cellphones in the city.With exemptions for certain low-income residents and pay phones, Ventura hopes to raise at least $2.2 million annually to cover much of the cost of operating its 911 dispatch center. The money will also be used to hire six additional police officers and three firefighters.

Councilman Neal Andrews, who cast the lone vote against the fee this week, said the panel should not have authorized it without a public vote.

“The 911 service is a core part of our public safety program; it’s not something people should have to pay for extra. It’s not optional,” Andrew said.

“The public has a right to expect access to emergency services on demand — when they need it, without encumbrances of any kind.”

Don Facciano, president of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., agreed

“Our main point is that it’s a tax,” he said. “So just call it a tax and put it before voters and let it be judged on its own merits.”

Ventura is believed to be the only Southern California city to adopt such a charge. But similar 911 fees are in place in several Northern California communities, including Santa Cruz, San Jose and San Francisco.

Ventura City Atty. Ariel Pierre Calonne said that allowing residents to opt out of paying the monthly fee should protect the new ordinance from lawsuits.

“I think we’ll be successful if challenged,” Calonne said.

A “good Samaritan” exemption in the ordinance will waive the $50 per call charge if someone who opted out contacts 911 to assist someone else. Businesses with multiple phone lines will be charged for three phones per trunk line.

The city of Ventura has this whole 911 fee thing in a much better perspective than either Tracy or Loma Linda. But I have to stress that I do not believe that any “fees” should be charged to anyone needing emergency or public safety assistance. An increase in taxes, maybe, but how much is too much? Don’t our tax dollars, property taxes, sales tax and city taxes pay the salaries and budgets of these publicly funded. public safety agencies? Isn’t it their job “to serve and protect”? Or is the creed only “to serve and protect” those that ante up? Is this a trend that will soon be sweeping the entire country or is it exclusive to cash strapped California?

I did not find any information about “Good Samaritans” being excluded from the per call fee for either Tracy or Loma Linda, CA, so I can only deduce that they are also liable for said fees if they call to report anything. No one will be calling 911 when their elderly neighbor slips on the ice and breaks her hip if they are going to be charged $300. If you go on vacation and your house catches fire, expect to come home to a pile of ashes. I expect the crime rates in both cities to rise as well as apathy towards people in jeopardy. Witnessing a crime in progress will likely not elicit the observer to call 911, but rather to keep moving on. Bank robbers will be having a field day, and a profitable one at that.

In our current economic crisis, where people are still losing their jobs at an alarming rate, no matter what Bohemian fantasies Obama is trying to feed us, how can any city council think that charging its residents for public safety/emergency assistance is a good idea? I don’t have an extra $48 laying around, much less $300. I also expect any tourism these cities have now to dwindle to zero. How is the loss of tourism dollars going to help these cities? I sure as hell am not going to visit any city that will charge me $400 for calling 911, should the need arise. No, I suspect anyone hearing of this new “fee” to avoid these particular locales like they were infested with Ebola, Bubonic Plague and Leprosy.

I thought this picture looked like an angel flying. It was taken after a rain storm we had a couple of weeks ago. And I have a thing for clouds. I have no idea why. I just love them.

Except when they’re brown.

1. AutismLearningFelt- Snowplowed In 2. Run DMT 3. Flat Stanley

4. Jacqueline @Blessings Abound Mommy 5. Southern Bella's Ways To Save 6. Upstatemomof3

7. abby @ both sides now 8. You're next!

Today is my 39th birthday. Which means next week The Diva will turn 5!! Oh my God, when did my baby get so big?? Anyway, I refuse to turn 40, ever, so I will be 39 and holding in perpetuity.

I also have to attend the funeral for my Husband’s Grandmother today. And before y’all start giving out condolences, you need to know that she was a mean, bitter woman who put my Husband and his siblings in the dog house over 20 years ago for no apparent reason. In my Husband’s words, we are going to “watch the sisters fight over the properties and money”. He has an aunt that would not hesitate to punch someone out in front of a priest. No kidding.

Hubby says that wearing a Birthday Tiara to the funeral is classless. I say fighting with your sisters at the graveside is a much, much worse offense.   Ahh well, I may take my video camera just so I can capture all the action and post it here.

Yeah, I’m wicked. So? These people are way worse than my Mom’s redneck side of the family {Not all of my Mom’s side of the family is redneck, just a select few}. And I truly didn’t think that was possible!

Anyway, another year older today…I better get chocolate for this. And some good sex.

Damn it.

It’s time, once again, for Small talk Six! On Saturdays presented by MomDot.com. Today’s topic is “ 6 famous people you would love to have dinner with“. You can answer this with a list of 6 words, 6 phrases, 6 sentences. 6 paragraphs, 6 photos, 6 videos, etc…

Well now isn’t this going to be a fun one?

1) Rick Springfield. I care not that this man is 60 years old. He is still mighty damn fine. And quite funny.

2) John Cusack. I just think he’s brilliant.

3) John Lennon. Uh, isn’t it obvious why?

4) Nostradamus so that I can find out once and for all what the hell all those quattrains truly meant and what  is really going to happen on December 21, 2012.

5) Steven Hawking, just so I can pick his scientific brain and hear some brilliant theories.

6) Anne Rice, my favorite author, so I can ask her why she had a thing for writing about S & M.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we had absolutely no leaves on our tree. Now the first baby leaves of Spring have begun to bloom.

*sigh*

I prefer Winter. These pretty leaves simply mean three things: I am about to be 39, The Diva is about to be 5 and Summer is coming. And I must endure 100*+ days in a house with no central air. ;(

1. Sharon @ My Musings and Stuff! 2. Moms Blog @ Mommy Enterprises

3. Not So Average Mama 4. Healthy Moms

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I recently asked the highly talented blog designer {She did the graphics for my blog}, Susan, from What Happened To My House? if I could interview her about how she came to live in an RV with her whole family and their pets and she said yes! I find her story fascinating. I know that I could never do it. We have a less than 800 sq. ft. house and the not having much personal space gets to me sometimes. Plus everything always looks cluttered because there really isn’t adequate storage/closet space. {This house was built in the late ’40’s early ’50’s} So if I have clutter and claustrophobia in 800 square feet with one husband, one daughter and a slightly demon possessed cat, I can only imagine how Susan feels in an RV with a husband, three kids, two dogs and a cat!

This is the post she wrote for me explaining how she came to ask the question “What happened to my house?“:

My name is Susan, I am a SAHM, married to my husband for over 5 years and have 3 boys (4, 6 and 15).   I am a blog designer and I live in an RV with my hubby, kids, 2 dogs and a cat.  If you asked me 10 years ago I never would’ve imagined I would be doing what I do or living how I live.

I became a blog designer purely by accident really.  I started a blog when a bunch of us from a message board got into blogging in 2008.  I became obsessed with trying to find the perfect theme (don’t we all?).  In my quest there was really only one thing to do and that was to design my own blog how I wanted.  I didn’t have a clue about graphics, or programs to make them, let along anything inside the template of a blog.  After lots of reading, experimenting, trial and error and hours and hours on the computer I came up with a design that fit the theme of my blog perfectly. However, I am a restless soul and I’m always looking to freshen things up, so since then I have had multiple designs and templates on my blog.   Three months after starting my blog I was designing for others for next to nothing to get practice and experience.  In the process I found that I loved to design and have been doing it ever since.

My blog is titled “What Happened To My House” because really, what did happen to it, I live in an RV.  The whole RV “thing” was a couple years in the making and I like to blame my dh for it lol.  My dh is a union electrician working in industrial construction.  Since 9/11 it became harder to find work since a lot of industrial work was put on hold across the united states.  The only way to get work was to go find it, no matter where it was.  We lived in Michigan then and winter time pretty much meant no work, so I usually spent weeks and sometimes months at home with the kids while dh was working in other states.   I convinced dh to move to Arizona (I had lived there before I met dh, and had always wanted to go back etc..).  Dh never actually lived in AZ with the kids and I.  He was always some where else working, be it Vegas, Washington or Texas.  He decided we couldn’t live like this and that the kids needed their dad.  So he decided we would get an RV and all move in there, that way where he was, we could be also.  It took over a year to make it all happen.  In May of 2009 we finally got our big toy hauler RV and we all moved in.  We have been at it about nine months now.  However even with us in the RV I have spent time alone with the kids cause again he needed to work elsewhere and with the kids in school moving around from town to town just isn’t practical.  You might actually be surprised how prevalent this type of lifestyle is.  Most of the moms in those families usually home school so moving isn’t so much an issue for them.  I just don’t believe I have the patience to home school.  Living in an RV (regardless the size) with 3 boys in my personal space 24 hours a day can be stressful.  For my sanity and the sake of their well-being it is best if they are gone to school all day.  Some days are exciting and some days are down right boring, but it’s rarely dull.

We move around.  Where the work is, is where we are.  Although our goal is to stay in one place during the school year.  We live in an RV park.  We find a nice park with a pool, nice big lots and pretty scenery (well those are my goals anyway).  My dh could park it on a piece of land in the woods and be happy.

Well, I’ll tell ya an RV life surely isn’t cheaper then having a house.  We bought a new RV, so that pymt, with the truck to pull it and lot rent for the park is equivalent to a house payment.   An RV is smaller then a house so it messes up very fast, but in the same respect since it is smaller it cleans up faster.  We have to do our laundry at the laundry mat (that sucks).  The smaller space means someone is usually in your face at any given time.  Oh, our RV only has one bathroom and a house usually has two (some RVs have 2, just not ours).  It is kinda cool though that if you want to go on vacation you just take your house (meaning RV) with you.  Nothing like having everything you own with you ALL the time.  Unlike a house we don’t have to mow the grass  Tired of the weather?, just move….    The one thing I didn’t like about moving into an RV was having to get rid of almost everything I owned (big things like furniture etc…).  So if we ever do move into a house or apartment someday again we will have no furnishings what-so-ever.  You spend your entire life accumulating things and it is hard to part with stuff like that (I am a pack rat anyway).  With a house everyone has their own space.  In a house you have your own yard where you dogs can run and not be on a leash.  A community where you kids can go to school with the same kids from K-12.  A community you picked.  With an RV since you are where the work is, it may not be the place, state or community you want to live in.

You can read more from Susan at her blog, What Happened to my house? If you need any blog designing done, she is fabulous. She does both Blogger and Word Press designs at Blog Designs by Susan.