NOTE: I know this category is normally called Music Monday and there is lots of Dave Matthews Band posts that could be written…BUT…I saw Toy Story 3 over the weekend and I just had to write about it. So, here it goes:

The first Toy Story movie came out for Thanksgiving weekend, 1995.  I remember feeling a little silly wanting to see it, being a senior in high school and all, but I saw it anyway and watched it many times after that.   Toy Story 2 came out only 4 years and later and Pixar, once again, outdid themselves.  There aren’t many movies whose sequel was just as good, if not better than the original.  When I heard that they were making a 3rd movie in 3D, I took Emily to see the Toy Story double feature last year in preparation for the big event, and when I was at Disneyland in January, I went on the Toy Story ride (and beat my Mom’s score!).

So, you could say I had some pretty high expectations of Pixar when I walked into that movie theater yesterday.  To say they delivered would be an understatement.  I laughed. And I cried.  I got emotional at the end, as most of the audience did. I heard the guy in front of me crying.  And the woman to the left of me. At least I wasn’t alone.

Some of my favorite highlights of Toy Story 3:

Spanish Buzz Lightyear – Buzz is set to Spanish Mode and becomes a smooth Latin ladies man.  Hysterical.

Ken and Barbie -  When Barbie first met Ken and told him, “I like your ascot,” I laughed out loud and Emily nudged me because she didn’t get it.  Michael Keaton, who voiced Ken, was hysterical.  Loved the closet scene.

Mr. Potato Tortilla Cucumber Head - I never really thought about it, but there are so many other options besides potatoes!

Although I suppose they left it open for a 4th movie (Toy Story 4: Bonnie?), I would be perfectly fine with the way they ended the trilogy.  Props to Disney and Pixar.  Well done.

Although I am in the wake of the worst year of my life this Thanksgiving, I still have a lot of things to be thankful for:

1. My family. My parents are on the other side of the country but I talk to my Mom more now then I did when she lived a few miles away.
2. Gracie. The little kitty is my best buddy and has turned me into a morning person.  Well, almost.
3. Emily. She is the spitting image of her father, down to his mannerisms and I still get to see her every week.
4. Social Media. I found a new calling this year and it was in the form of tweets.
5. My friends. You stuck by me through everything. Thank you.
6. My Twitter followers. That’s right, all 16,000+ of you rock. Each and every one of you.
7. The Internet. Seriously.  It has changed my life.  I actually met Harry on MySpace 4 years ago today.
8. Food in my cabinets.  Even though I’m broke and I eat a lot of mac and cheese, it’s still food.
9. Clothes in my closet. Yes, they are all 2 sizes too tight.  But that’s not the clothes’ fault.  It’s mine for eating so many Oreos.
10. My memories of Harry. I got to spend the last 3 years & 2 months of his life with him and I will never forget the good times we spent together.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! What are you thankful for?

Sorry I haven’t been posting any blogs lately. I’ve had a lot going on the past couple weeks: a new client, some freelance design work, doctors appointments, Yankees in the playoffs, etc.  Just wanted to check in and let you know that all is well and I haven’t forgotten about my blog. I haven’t been tweeting either and I intend to return to my normally scheduled blogging and tweeting very soon.

On a side note, I thought I would share this picture with you.  Emily and I attended the Halloween Parade today.  A lot of people asked if I was Octomom.  I kind of thought the hair would give it away…I was Kate plus 8. Although I didn’t win a prize, my costume was a big hit with everyone. Special thanks to my landlord Jenn for lending me her baby carrier.  There were 8 babies in there, a little squished, but in there nonetheless. I can’t wait to wear the whole thing again next weekend for the costume party I am going to! Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend and wishing you a wonderful start to a brand new week.

For those of you that have followed my blog for a while might remember in March when I went to get a tattoo on my wrist as a tribute to Harry.  I had “designed” it myself, although it was quite simple:  a big bold “lmL” with the words “Forever in my heart 8.11.76-1.22.09″ underneath it.  lmL was something special between Harry, Emily and myself, kind of an “inside family joke” that turned into something so much more.  I get questioned about it ALL the time (understandably so), so here is the story behind it:

Every morning, Harry and I would together walk Emily to the bus stop to send her off to school.  One of our neighbor’s kids used to wave to her Mom from the bus, but not a normal wave, she would use the hand symbol for I love you and wave it until her Mom did it back.  The first few times, I didn’t say anything and it was a few days later that Harry brought it up to me.  He said “do you see that girl waving her hand like that all the time?”  “Yes, I do, it’s funny but very cute.” So we started to do it with Emily on the bus and she loved it.  It went from a goodbye on the bus to our goodbye all the time, no matter where we were.  Anytime we were leaving each other, we would use that hand symbol instead of waving.  Harry and Emily came up with these extensive handshakes that always included the hand symbol.  We even laughed about how our neighbors were probably making fun of us now as we had of them, but we didn’t care.  After a month or two, I realized that when you typed lmL it kind of looked like the hand symbol (the l was the pinky, the m was the middle fingers and the L was your pointy finger and thumb).  So from then on, any text message, e-mail or Facebook comment ended with lmL, in addition to our daily hand gestures.  Since Harry and I kept in contact via text messages all day, lmL was used quite often.  After I spoke at Harry’s funeral, I gave his urn the lmL hand symbol for one last time.  Emily and I still do it to this day.

So, now, that you know the meaning, let’s get back to the tattoo.  You can read the original post about the tattoo here, but I will give you the synopsis: I had attended a funeral that night for a co-worker’s Mom.  I had already drawn out the tattoo and had it in my bag and on my way home, thinking about how precious life really is, decided that I should get it done.  I said out loud: “Harry, if I should get this tattoo tonight, show me a sign!”.  No more than 3 minutes later, I came up on a tattoo shop, Lucky Cat Tattoos, in Miller Place, NY.  I said to myself, “if that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”  When I walked in, there was one artist who was free at the time, Rob. While he was doing the tattoo, I noticed that he spelled Forever wrong.  He had made it Forover.  At first, he said I was wrong but then realized his mistake and made the o into an e.  At the time, it was not noticeable to anyone who didn’t know about it, but it was something that bothered me since I got it.

After a few months, the o/e started to look obvious and the For in Forever and the 09 had faded out, almost to the point that it looked like they weren’t there.  I had shown this to MANY tattoo enthusiasts who balked and asked where I had gotten it done. They had never seen anything like it, especially in a tattoo that was only a few months old.  I waited another month to make sure it was completely healed before I complained.  I happened to be in the area of Lucky Cat Tattoos one day and thought I would stop in and see what they said.  I saw the store manager.  He said that the fading was “normal” on my wrist. Normal? I had never seen anything like this before. The tattoo artist that had done my tattoo was off that day.  I told the manager, “to be honest, I don’t want that artist touching my wrist again. He spelled Forever wrong!”. His response:  “That is the only way we will fix it for free,” he said.  “If you want a new artist, you will have to pay for another tattoo”.  Considering the guy had spelled something as simple as FOREVER wrong permanently on my body, I was really taken back by this.  However, I’m broke.  I could barely afford to get it done in the first place and couldn’t afford to get it re-done.  I was told when the artist was there and to come back.  Fast forward two months.  I had gotten really busy and I don’t live near the shop anymore.  I called ahead of time and got the artist on the phone.  He couldn’t remember me or the tattoo and denied the spelling mistake. He told me to come in and he would take a look.  As soon as I stopped in, he remembered me, the tattoo and the spelling mistake.  He (and the manager) told me they didn’t want to do it that night, he wanted a picture of it so that they could draw it out and figure out what letters needed to be retraced.  He said he would call me to come in at some point that week.  A week goes by, no call.  I call them and he says, “Oh, yeah, um, just come in whenever you want”.  So, back I go.  He tells me that they decided to just go over the entire tattoo again.  So basically, I could have had it done the week earlier, but had to wait a week for no reason.

I sit down in the chair and he begins.  All went well the the majority of the tattoo, until he gets to the lettering.  He tells me he is going to redraw the F with pen since you can’t really see it.  This makes me feel better but then he changes his mind. “I can see the F fine, I will just go over it again.” WELL…I guess he couldn’t see it that well because he COMPLETELY SCREWED IT UP!!!!  See the pic below of the tattoo as soon as it was finished:

The F is crooked, smaller and not lined up with the rest of the letters.  You can still see where the top of the F used to be.  I was sooooooo mad as soon as I saw it.  After I pointed it out, he realized his mistake… but it was too late.  The manager came over and suggested making all the letters bolder to fix the F.  I said, “you are not touching my skin again”.  He told me to come back in a few weeks and they would try to figure out how to fix it AGAIN.  Basically, he screwed up the ONE THING that I went to get fixed.  I also noticed later that the 1.22 looks like 7.22 now and there is no dot over the i in the word “in” as there was before.I have never, in my life, met a group of more incompetent people.  People have said in the past few days, “it’s not THAT bad”. It’s tattooed on my body, for life.  When you get tattoos, you don’t want them to be BAD at all, only perfect will do, and this is far from it.  If this was just a tattoo that had no meaning, it would be one thing, but this is a tribute to the love of my life and it has turned into a disaster. I’m hoping that the F fades AGAIN and I will go to a tattoo artist that has actual talent to get it fixed, not some 21 year old moron who doesn’t know what he is doing.  (BTW, he has an apprentice. I don’t think he should be one to teach anyone anything).

So, a word of advice: Check out your tattoo parlor before you go.  Don’t just take the artist that is available at the time.  There is probably a reason why every other artist was busy and he wasn’t.

I haven’t been able to blog or tweet too much the past 2 days.  Yesterday afternoon, I got a horrible phone call.  It was a paramedic but he was on a cell phone and the phone was breaking up. All I could hear was “This is Bob from the *static* Fire Department.  We have *static* and *static*. They were involved in a motor vehicle accident.”  Now, this phone call is horrible as it is, but to not know who was in the accident was even worse.  I asked him to repeat the names 3 times and still could not hear him.  He said he would call me back on a landline.  I immediately called my parents to make sure they were OK.  They were home and accounted for.  The phone rang again and I could actually hear him now.  “We have Emily and Hallie at the hospital.  They were involved in an MVA.  The babysitter was driving.” Hallie is Emily’s half-sister who is 5.  He had called me because Emily knew my phone number by heart (she had made a song to remember it).  He asked for their Mom’s phone numbers and told me what hospital they were at.  I grabbed my keys and got there as fast as I could. Emily’s Mom had beat me there (she works close) and they were stitching Emily’s leg.

Emily had gotten the brunt of the injuries.  The babysitter’s Mercury Mountaineer had been T-boned at a light when she was making a left hand turn. Emily was on the passenger side in the back where the impact was.  The guy had been going so fast that he spun the babysitter’s truck three times and Emily’s door ripped off the truck.  She said the only thing she remembered was closing her eyes and when she opened them, the door was gone.  I thank God that she had been wearing her seatbelt or she would have been thrown out of the truck.  The guy who hit them actually got out of his car unharmed and started yelling at the babysitter, when there were kids bleeding in the backseat.  Apparently, he was upset that he had wrecked his brand new 2009 Jeep Cherokee.  The babysitter’s car was totalled.   She had ended up with a bruised thumb, Hallie had bitten her tongue and her mouth was bleeding and a piece of metal from the door tore Emily’s calf open.  She ended up with 6 stitches.  They are also concerned that it was so deep that it cut the tendon, so she has to go for more tests.

Emily wanted to come home with me, so I took her back to my house and tried my best to be a nurse.  Thank goodness Harry’s Mom is a nurse and came by this morning to help me change the bandage.  I’m horrible with blood.  Emily left this afternoon, sore and bruised from the seatbelt, but I told her that saved her life.  I also told her that Harry must have been watching over her, that accident could have been so much worse.   Hopefully I don’t have to get another call like that anytime soon.  I’ve had too many of them lately.

What began as a wonderful day turned into a major disaster.  On Saturday, I made plans with Emily to go to the BEACH!  We haven’t had a day of sun in weeks and the weather was looking GREAT! She had slept at her cousin’s house the night before so I told her to be ready and I would be over to get her.  I got all the beach essentials together for our trip and packed the car with sunscreen, magazines, bottled water, soda, snacks and chairs.  I picked out my best beach outfit and called Emily to tell her I’d be there in a few minutes.  I pulled into the driveway and heard the kids in the backyard.

Obviously I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking and paying attention to what they were doing, and BAM! Next thing I knew, I was on my knees in the gravel which was their driveway.  Apparently, there is a part of the driveway that was never paved, which is now a big ditch next to the fence.  I was wearing capris and flip flops and the result wasn’t pretty.  From what I could see, I scraped up my palms and my ankle and calf.  I brushed myself off and started to hobble into the backyard.  Her cousin yelled, “Watch your step!” warning me a little too late.  I told her I had already fallen and she ran inside to get a first aid kit. Emily felt horrible.  She helped me to wash my legs off and apply bandages.  Then, I rolled up my pants and there it was, a scrape FAR WORSE then the others.  I hadn’t even felt it at first.  I looked closer and there was a piece of gravel lodged under the skin of my knee.   We bandaged the rest of my leg up and I thought of what I should do next.

My first thought was, go home and show Jenn, my landlord, who is a nurse.  She would know what to do. That was the plan!  Emily said she would stay at her cousin’s house while I went to get it looked at.  Well, it turns out that Jenn was an hour away and not returning home until that night.  When I called her, she told me to go to a walk-in medical facility that was close to the house.  I laid down on the couch and took a picture of my bandaged leg:

Then, after a few minutes of rest, I hobbled back to the car and drove to the walk-in.  CLOSED.  At this point, the pain in my knee was becoming unbearable and I decided that as much as I HATE hospitals, I needed to get to one ASAP.

I got to St. Catherine’s Hospital in Smithtown and the ER parking lot was full.  That is never a good sign. I parked 2 lots away and made my way, slowly, to the entrance.  I saw the triage nurse and told her I fell.  They brought me right back and registered me.  I informed them I was taking Coumadin and I think it was for this reason that I was treated fairly quickly.  Within 15 minutes I was brought in and met with a physician’s assistant.  I told her what happened and she sent me for X-Rays.  She didn’t want to dig around for a rock if there wasn’t one there.  While I was waiting to be brought for the X-Rays, I took another pic of my leg, this time without the bandages:

That hole in my knee, that’s where I thought the rock was. Twenty minutes later, she came back and said “Yup, there’s a rock.” I heard her say something to the nurse about a “knife” and I nearly passed out.  She said the part that would hurt the most was the shot of numbing agent they needed to inject my knee with.  She wasn’t kidding.  After the initial pinch and burn of the shot, all I felt was pressure.  I tried not to look, but I did.  She was cutting the hole open bigger to get the rock out.  I’m glad I was on a stretcher, because I nearly passed out again.  After about 5 minutes, the rock was found.  She told me she needed to stitch it up, but she didn’t want it to get infected, so she was just going to put one stitch in.  This was my first “stitch” ever and I was so proud of myself that I handled it so well.  They even gave me the rock to keep in a little urine cup (LOL) and told me to stay off my feet for a few days:

By the time I was released and went to fill my antibiotic prescription, it was past 6pm and our perfect beach day was officially ruined.  Even though my trip to the emergency room made for a good story (complete with rock souvenir), I would have much rather been laying on the beach with Emily.  There’s always next weekend…

Emily enjoys the photobooth feature on my mac and uses it often.  Here is an oldie, but goodie.

Dented and Demented