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Earn free gift cards from Amazon and other stores by searching, playing games and clipping coupons here!

Grand Old Partisan explains why the Dem’s win in NY-26 is actually a good thing for Republicans.

Wizbang points out how the enviro-weenies demand higher fuel efficiency through more hybrid vehicles, then balk at mining the copper needed in their manufacture!

Oh, and I shared five tips about (not extreme) couponing.

UPDATE: Nearly forgot… looks like Obama ought to get his picture on currency after all!

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Basically, he’d hide behind the sofa, the kitchen island, wherever, then jump out and yell while swinging his arm in the general vicinity of my ass. Although his aim isn’t that good, my ass is nevertheless large enough to ensure he never once missed. And at the end of the day he added a few extra in — not for good measure, or ones to grow on, mind you, but because he figured out I’d lied to him about spankings hurting the spanker more than the spankee.

Incidentally, this may have been the longest birthday on record. Oh, sure, when I was going on Day Two of labor with my first kid I’d have sworn that was the longest birthday ever (and I’d have ripped your head off for arguing with me at that point). But this last one of mine? Well, let’s just say it lasted a week, and I don’t remember much of it.

Except, I do remember that I no longer drink rum. Demon rum. Kill-devil. Nelson’s blood. Whatever you want to call it — and this is coming from a martini-swiller with what we’ll call an “experienced liver” — that shit is evil. No wonder Captain Jack Sparrow can’t walk a straight line, much less tidy up his eyeliner. It’s a delicious drink, though.

Speaking of delicious… I picked up two gorgeous pineapples at the grocery store the other day. I haven’t had fresh pineapple since we moved back from Hawaii and, like many of the foods there (but not the people), I miss it dearly. When I brought the pair home the other day, VH looked at me like I’d lost my mind. No doubt he thought I was going to hollow them out and sit on the deck sipping rum out of them through a straw like some kitschy 1960s babe. But, no, I’d picked them up with the idea of canning some pineapple salsa. Until I remembered I don’t have the slightest idea how to make that stuff. Turns out, they really DO make pretty little rum cocktail glasses.

While I was at the store, I couldn’t help noticing how damned expensive groceries have become. Yes, I know you’re probably sitting there saying “Well, duh, VK. Everything is damned expensive these days.” But, see, as a retired military family we’re fortunate enough to shop in the Commissary where we’re largely insulated from rising prices. Oh, sure, I’ve noticed milk and bread slowly creeping up but only by a few cents here and there. So when I shopped at our local grocery store the other day, the prices just stunned me. WTF is up with the cost of food?

Crazy thought (which I’ll first preface by saying that I’ve been reading quite a bit of British WWII memoirs and diaries of late, so food rationing has been on my mind). Okay, where was I? That’s right: crazy. Also, this: with Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is in a war on two fronts and Libya looks like it’s about to become a third (though, according to Obama, any military action in Libya isn’t really a war much the way that my ass isn’t really fat, it just LOOKS and FEELS that way). And it’s no big secret that our economy sucks wind right now. So, what if the rising grocery prices were really the result of covert rationing by the government in order to funnel beans and bullets toward the war effort?

I know, I know, it sounds insane. Blame it on the rum.

Still, even with the commissary’s lower prices, we’re finding our budget stretched to the limit, too. Hence why I — along with two million or so other stressed-out women, and a handful of men — have become addicted to TLC’s “Extreme Couponing” show. No, that doesn’t mean I’m dumpster diving (like I could get my ass that high off the ground?), nor does it mean I’ve figured out how to buy $3,000 worth of groceries for 61 cents.

Hell, the very thought of building a stockpile of non-perishables in a corner of my basement makes me cringe. Who wants to dust that shit every week? But I definitely do like the thought of spending a less on groceries so I can spend more on other stuff. (Not on rum. Promise.) So I, too, have been picking up multiple copies of the Sunday paper and spending my evenings printing and clipping coupons, then filing them away in my coupon binder.

What’s that? Oh, yeah. The binder. Well, yes, I did in fact get that into couponing. So now I’ve got this cool binder-on-a-strap that zips open to reveal plastic page upon page of neatly organized coupons tucked into their little slots, nine slots to a page, all obsessively organized into categories which I diligently marked with my label maker. Granted, I still feel like a geek actually carrying that binder with me in the store, but when my receipt shows that I trimmed our grocery bill by an average of 46% each trip, I suddenly don’t give a damn how stupid I look hauling that binder around.

Come to think of it, I hope I have that heavy bastard with me for self defense if I ever run into one of these women who, I suspect, should spend some time watching TLC, too. As in “What Not to Wear”, where Stacy and Clinton can explain to them that no matter how svelte they think they are, if they’re over 30 and wearing leggings like jeans, they just look like skanks. The dumb bitches probably paid retail, too.

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Why, it seems like it was just the other day when I sat down and wrote my first blog entry, worrying the entire time that I’d somehow break the internet. But here we are, 6,166 posts and 31,838 comments later. I haven’t broken the internet. I have gone through 3 laptops, five wireless mice, and countless bottles of vodka.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

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Just sayin'

If you’re reading this it means you haven’t yet installed the Charlie Sheen Browser Blocker for Firefox or Chrome. Yeah, I can’t bring myself to use it, either. I do so love me some Schadenfreude.

Besides, as a formerly avid fan of Two And A Half Men , I’ve been waiting for Sheen to see what’s been obvious to everyone but Sheen for quite some time now: regardless of whether he shows up on time, regardless of whether he knows his lines (though I can’t imagine Sheen ever passing up an opportunity to do a line of any kind), regardless of the size of his bank account and the number of grams in the rocks he’s banging, regardless of the number of cars he owns and women he’s simultaneously sleeping with, regardless of how attractive his kids are or how many rooms there are in his mansion, the only difference between him and some Ozark mountain meth-head is that Sheen puts his fake teeth in before going to work.

So today’s news that Rob Lowe is in talks to replace Sheen on the show makes me very, very happy. Sure, John Stamos’ name has been floated, too, but Stamos lacks the true bad boy tint needed to balance Jon Cryer as uber-anal rententive Alan Harper. Yes, I know Stamos played airquote-rocker/bad boy-end airquote Uncle Jessie on Full House, but where’s his sex tape, hmm??? (No, seriously. I’d love to watch it.)

But how should Chuck Lorre write it?

If it was me (and, sadly, it’s not), I’d enjoy having the last laugh by inflicting an (unseen) Charlie Harper with repeated impotence after which he downs so much booze that he topples off of his deck and dies on the beach, where he remains undiscovered for days as Alan, Jake and Bertha enjoy his absence. Follow with a funeral scene similar to the episode in which Sheen’s real-life brother, Emilio Estevez, appeared. Queue the women spitting in Charlie’s casket. (James Earl Jones performing the eulogy in this one, too, would be icing on the cake.) Then, as Alan prematurely celebrates inheriting Charlie’s house, car and money… enter Rob Lowe as an old drinking buddy of Harper’s to whom Charlie left everything… including the responsibility of housing Alan and keeping Bertha employed.

BOOM. You’ve got a (much better looking) new bad boy (who may or may not catch Evelyn’s eye), a reason for Alan and Jake to remain in the beach house, Alan’s continued money envy and the ongoing jokes about his freeloader ways, and a reason to keep Bertha around.

But that’s just what I would do and, folks, if I could write a sitcom I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here wearing my pajamas and bunny slippers at 11 o’clock in the morning pounding the keyboard on an outdated computer while wondering just how hard-and-fast that 24-hour time limit on my 24-hour deodorant really is.

Or maybe I would.

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As a mother of an almost 11-year-old, I want to tell Mark, et al: it’s time you learned how to do your own laundry, operate a microwave, tiptoe on weekends until 9 am, and stop trying to force farts because, well, you won’t like doing your own laundry once you’re the one sniffing the chlorine fumes.

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Earlier today I’d tried changing the setup options for a plug-in that sends emails when people leave first-time comments. That made my blog freeze up, which I now realize probably occurred because my server was sending out thousands of emails. YIKES!

I’ve already uninstalled the darn thing so it won’t happen again, but please accept my apologies.

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Anyway.

The ‘Meet the Teacher’ day is always a turning point for the Big-Eyed Boy. That’s when he makes up his mind whether the end of summer is a total drag worthy of a major meltdown, or whether he’s actually looking forward to going back to school. The answer always depends on his first impression of his teacher.

If she seems nice and friendly he assumes that means she’ll be an easy teacher and he looks forward to class starting. If she seems aloof and reserved, well, that’s enough to convince him she’s going to make his life a living hell for the next nine months and, naturally, he’ll claims he’s getting “strapped throat” or “typhoonoid” — ailments which, he assures me, will lead to his untimely demise if I actually force him to go back to school this year. Oddly enough, he hasn’t figured out that each and every year his impression of how easy his teacher would be have been 100% wrong.

His no-nonsense 3rd grade teacher? She made the kids popcorn every day in class, turned my book-hating kid into someone who’d at least put up with reading a book once a week, and inspired my kid to increase his math skills by THREE grade levels. By the end of the year, he adored her.

His hip-hugger wearing 4th grade teacher with the multiple earrings and spiky blond highlights? When we visited her class on “Meet the Teacher Day” he didn’t speak a word but blushed furiously the entire time. Afterward, he’d sigh whenever he spoke her name, and it sure seemed like he came up with a lot of reasons to be speaking her name. Then school started and he discovered her fondness for piling on the homework on TOP of a half-hour of assigned reading nightly, even over Christmas and Easter vacations. By the end of the year he’d taken to grumbling whenever her name was spoken.

Today it was a real treat watching him meet his new teacher. See, she’s about my height and about my build. Her hair’s about the same length and color as mine, and we’re maybe 3 years apart in age. So in this year when my son’s hormones are most likely to kick in I can rest easy knowing he’s probably not going to get a distracting crush on his teacher (and if he does I’m afraid I’ll never be able to look him in the eye again). Now, before you go thinking his teacher’s a carbon-copy of me, let me assure you: she seems VERY nice and VERY easy-going. I’m not like that at all.

Halfway to the car my son announced that someone as nice as her couldn’t possibly be a mean teacher, so he’s now looking forward to school. Me? I just chuckled, considering his track-record. Either way that now makes two of us looking forward to the alarm clock going off at 6:30 Wednesday morning.

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Earn free gift cards from Amazon and other stores by searching, playing games and clipping coupons here!