About Mama

shan 400 copy My name is Shan, and I own this Asylum. I’m a little nutty, a lot sarcastic, extremely opinionated, and pretty damn smart. I have a nine-year-old daughter who is quite intelligent, even going so far as to cause her preschool teachers to come up with new ways to challenge her that year because she “already knew everything.” Every teacher since then has remarked about how smart she is, but that she’s also a pistol. I’m not kidding. She’s a handful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And she inherited my sarcasm gene.

Oh Lord.

I am married to a very intelligent, fairly sarcastic man with a twisted sense of humor. We both share that last bit. We recently discovered that he is a Crypto-Sephardic Jew on his father’s side. He now refers to himself as JewBat. I cannot make this up, folks. We also love our child “to the moon and back.” She is the light of our lives.

And sometimes the person leaching the last shreds of sanity we have left. <~~~~ See what I did there?

It depends on the day.

We now, as of July 2014, live in South Eastern Arizona, but used to live in SoCal — in the ghetto of the Inland Empire, not in Los Angeles. We grew up in Orange County, but it got too expensive and too overrun with The Free Range Stupid, so we moved to Riverside County. I usually refer to my location as Half Way To The Nut Hut because, well, most days I am. You can often find me staring off into space, perpetually pondering the question “How much therapy is my daughter going to need if I don’t get this Mommyhood thing down soon??”

I am a cervical cancer survivor, but that does not define me.

I am many things…wife, mother, Christian, sister, daughter, auntie, friend, graphic designer, writer, entrepreneur, blogger, wanna-be photographer {Hello, Nikon?}, former psych nurse…but no one thing defines me. No one thing has ever defined me.

So why do I blog? Because I have always wanted to be a writer. And people tell me I’m good at it. My second grade teacher told my Mom that she expected me to write The Great American Novel one day. I’m still working on that. I also have opinions that My Husband is sick of hearing about. We have been together for 22 years. He’s heard it all already. It was time for me to branch out and spread my brand of twisted far and wide…and find like-minded others.

Oh and make money from advertising because companies would think I was so extraordinary that they would be falling over themselves to pay me to give them space on my blog.

Still working on that one, too.

Here comes the obligatory “what I do in my spare time” blurb…

I’m kind of a tech geek..well I’m just a geek but that’s another story. I like cool things that make my life easier as long as they are not ridiculously expensive and/or superfluous. I mean an electric diaper wipes warmer? An electric bottle warmer? WHY? You can do both with a pot of warm water. Sometimes low-tech is the way to go.

Of course if the wipes warmer also changed the baby’s diaper, we’d have to talk…

I am all about the pixels, CSS, HTML and php code and anything that makes manipulating it all easier. Did you read that Adobe Photoshop CS6.5?

Like I said, I’m a nerd. It happens.

I am a foodie. Food Network is like nirvana for me. OK actually all the cool gadgets and pots and pans they use are my nirvana. I can be found drooling uncontrollably each time I watch one of the chefs use a Kitchen Aide stand mixer. But man do I love me some Alton Brown, Rachael Ray, Jaimie Oliver & Paula Dean. I was kind of wishing Paula would adopt me and make me biscuits & gravy for breakfast every day, but oh well.

I am also addicted to The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, Bravo, A&E, DIY and HGTV. My Husband used to roll his eyes every time I watched HGTV. Then he got addicted to House Hunters, Real Estate Confidential, Designed To Sell and other similar shows. And Holmes on Homes. He really likes him.

Now he only does it when I watch The Women In Jeopardy Channel {That’s Lifetime, for the uninformed}.

I also like “intelligent” reality TV. Shows like The Real Housewives {NYC & NJ only}. Those other ones are just ghetto. Besides, I love seeing the dichotomy between the classless who suddenly got money and the high society old money. They all cat fight the same. Flipped {The OCD Control Freak cracks me up}, Top Chef and a couple others I can’t think of at the moment.

We also love twisted, dark comedies. Priscilla, Queen Of The Dessert, Muriel’s Wedding…why do my examples seem to be only Australian movies? There must be an American made one somewhere…

I also love a good chick flick. Love Actually and Serendipity come to mind immediately.

I am fascinated with Impressionists paintings, Monét, Degas and Van Gogh being my favorites.

So that’s me, in a twisted nutshell.