Best friend from high school is an aerobics instructor. She weighs about 95 lbs dripping wet, even with her implants. Yeah, I know….barf. She recently asked me to come to one of her classes near my house. She said it would be like a “party”. Would there be cupcakes and ice cream at the end? No. Now I know how she stays so skinny, she obviously smokes crack.

I decided that it would be good for me to try something different since this whole running in 100 degree heat thing hasn’t really been working out for me. TURBO KICKBOXING. What. The. Hell. Was. I. Thinking?

I arrive at the gym, confident and apparently delusional. The stench of sweat steam hits me like a wall when I open the door. I fight the gag reflex I am getting from inhaling other people’s vaporized body fluids and proceed to the torture chamber, the aerobics room.

At the front of the chamber is my itty bitty crack head friend with her microphone and big cheery smile. Immediately, I look for a place to hide. DAMN MIRRORS, there’s no safe place in this hell. The back of the room is a glass wall, which to me looks like a big fish bowl for the row of MILFS on treadmills on the other side to watch the little goldfish get eaten alive by a shark to the tunes of Lady Gaga. So I nestle into the middle, picking the strongest looking girl to be beside in the event that I pass out and need someone to catch me before hitting my head on the hardwood floor.

The music starts thumping and crack head starts bouncing around. Everyone follows along except for me. I have no clue what I am doing. Crack head cheerily pipes up and points directly at me, drawing way too much attention to me, and cheers “yay Roxy! So glad you made it! You’ll do great!” Then she gives me a big thumbs up and a wink. I’m convinced this is a long-time coming payback for kissing her cousin my Senior year.

Have I mentioned that I was the only person in my graduating class that couldn’t do the Electric Slide?

The music keeps pumping and my undiagnosed ADD is kicking in because I can’t focus on the music and the instructions at the same time. Arms are punching, legs are kicking, feet are jumping and Roxy is rapidly getting a headache. I’m flopping around like a fish on a hook. Each sequence is done four times. I manage to finally nail each move on the fifth sequence, you know, the one that doesn’t exist.  I blame it on the mirrors. Everything is backwards and I am doing EVERYTHING opposite of the whole class. Strongest-girl-in-the-class-who-is-supposed-to-save-me almost stomps on my foot because I have managed to take over her spot. I pray that she stomps hard enough that I can be injured and get the fuck out of here.  Instead she half smiles and moves a few arm lengths away from me. I put my hands on my knees and gasp for sweat vapor.

Then crack head squeals “Great warm-up everyone! Now, let’s get to work!” What. Gasp. The. Gasp. Fuck. Gasp.

They say time flies when you are having fun. The stupid clock on the wall was broken, because time sure as hell wasn’t flying. It was stopped on the runway due to engine failure.

I managed to make it through to the end of the class without killing anyone with my flailing arms, so that was a bonus. I thanked crack head for nearly killing me. Gave her sweatless waif body a hug and crawled to the locker room, leaving a trail of coffee concentrated sweat behind me.

On the way home, I rolled with windows down and pulled over to buys a Snickers, the BIG kind.

XOXO

Roxy

I am on vacation this week, basking in sunshine and tarballs. So in my absence I leave you three of my favorite videos. Have a great week everyone!

Pinkey the Cat

Growing up, he was the older brother that I never had. My best friend and I would sneak in his room and giggle at his White Snake posters when he wasn’t around. Lord help us if he ever caught us. He could pop a bike wheelie like nobody’s business and when he and his buddies drove up in his classic red Mustang, I thought he was the coolest person on earth, even though I would never admit it.

He joined the Army as a boy, lost and seeking something bigger, and returned from Germany a few years later as a fine representative of the United States of America, and as a man. In 1997 he was killed in an accident at Fort Hood, leaving behind his wife, three children…and my best friend.

I think about him often.
_______________

Many of you are off today for Memorial Day. I hope that your family and friends are going to get together for some mean BBQ-eating-beer-drinking-poolside-boating-poker-playing-fun. I can’t wait to hear about the grub Dub is going to toss on his grill.

It’s easy to forget that this day isn’t just a holiday that companies give you because you need a break or a chance to do some wicked sale shopping. Remember what today is about…and be thankful. Be thankful for Those who have died for our Country. Be thankful for their families. Be thankful that we wake up each day in the greatest nation in the world because of them.

For those who would like to remember someone here today, please do. I would be honored to have their memory shared.

God Bless America, God Bless the Men and Women who protect it and God Bless Those who died for it.

XOXO
Roxy

Dear Department Store COO,

I thought that you should be made aware of a problem present in your stores. The blue death lighting, you know, in the dressing rooms, where I stare at myself NAKED has got to go. I mean, really? Who told you THAT lighting was complimentary to anyone with a pulse? I realize that you want ambiance that is going to make the clothes that you are peddling look attractive but let me tell you that I don’t care how sparkly or shiny or colorful your stupid shorts are on a hanger, if I spot cellulite anywhere on MY legs in THOSE shorts in YOUR mirror, they’re going right back on that little return rack you have waiting for me outside the dressing room.

Please make note that those lights that you have decided to install make me look like a corpse frozen in Antarctica. Do you think your pretty little sundress is going to look appealing on someone with a blue epidermis? NO, no it’s not. My reflection in the security camera ball makes me look like a supermodel compared to that shit you have in the dressing rooms.

Do you save on your energy bills? Well congratulations on being environmentally friendly, Mother Nature thanks you. But, please remember that Mother Nature isn’t the one almost having a breakdown in your dressing room because nothing looks good on, it’s me, the one armed with Husband’s credit card.

While I am at it, I would encourage you to be sure that your clothes don’t run small. If I have to go up a dress size because your dumb asses can’t seem to get your sizes right then I ain’t buying it. What’s that? NO, I did not eat one too many Auntie Anne Pretzels on my way to your store.

Excuse me while I secretly wipe the cheese sauce off my upper lip.

And please, PLEASE don’t put threatening signs up that say that someone might be watching me while I strip down to nothing. Do you KNOW how frightening that is to someone trying to grow out their bikini area for a summer vacation wax?

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Should you wish to contact me I will be huddled in a fetal position in a corner…it’s swimsuit season.

Regards,
Roxy McHapski

Husband put me on a budget when I decided to stay home with the rascals. This whole budget thing is all very new to me and I don’t like it. I’ve been forced to clip coupons and shit.

Since I have been put on this restrictive budget a fancy schmancy grocery store opened up a few miles from our house. I have avoided it like the plague since it opened. All I could imagine was a gaping hole in my pocket gushing money as I ventured through the organic produce section. BUT, a glossy colorful coupon offering free juice and cheese landed in my mailbox teasing me to step foot into the glory that is Market Street.

I wasn’t sure what to expect really, maybe a scene out of the Jetsons but where George is sporting some Birkenstocks. Oddly, it looked like a normal grocery store on the inside but more um… earthy. I had a phenomenal coupon so I was going in soldier style and wasn’t leaving until I got my free Tillamook cheese.

I had to spend an additional $20 to get my free goods. So, I pulled out the grocery list and figured I could pick up a FEW of my items here and maybe find them in the organic, cage-free versions of their evil twins waiting for me at (gasp) Wal-Mart. (In addition to being more frugal, I am also trying to be healthier. It’s a bitch to balance). Suddenly, I felt like Alice in Wonderland in pink Converse, careening down that damn rabbit hole. The old, working with a salary and commission me clicked back on and I got really excited about being in this store. My coupon organizer started to disintegrate in my purse.

Thankfully, I had two screaming kids with me so that bubble got popped REAL fast.

The produce section was as colorful as a Lucky Charms rainbow, seriously. Rapidly, my cart started filling up with Pixar Animated looking vegetables. I kept filling it until youngest started spitting on oldest from her elevated position in the cart. I had to dig through my purse to find an old Starbucks receipt wrinkled just enough to pass as tissue to wipe up the spit splatters on the ground. And don’t worry, I got the evil stares from some of the snotty shoppers. Bitch, stop glaring at me unless you want me to sic one of my kids on you.

The kids became smitten with the live lobster tank. Seriously girls, it’s not the zoo. People are going to throw them into a vat of boiling hot water where they will die a fiery death, don’t get attached.

I found the free orange juice with ease. The cheese, on the other hand, was a bitch to locate. Thankfully, this store has name-tagged people crawling all over as personal concierges so I found one in the dairy section. Surrounded by women clothed in brands that I will likely never own, I pulled name-tag aside. I made him bend down to my level and whispered in his ear. “Hi, can you please tell me where I can find the um….free….cheese? You know the one on the …fancy coupon? mmmm you smell really nice.” He politely pointed out the OBVIOUS location of the cheese and I went on about my way.

I started to peruse the other aisles. The suits in marketing started rubbing their hands together and snickering “snagged another one boys, high-five!”

The check-out went well, aside from the name-tag that sniffed my cilantro and made an almost orgasmic sound. That was kind of weird, but I get it, fresh cilantro is glorious. I did, however, realize that I forgot my stupid eco-friendly re-usable bags. I felt like a villain walking out of this store while everyone else was carrying their birthed-from-mother-nature-herself-hemp bags and was wearing recycled tires on their feet. I wanted to wear a poster board that read “I FORGOT THE DAMN BAGS AT HOME”.

I have to snap back to reality next week….unless another one of those glossy four-color-press coupons ends up in my mailbox again…..

XOXO
Roxy

How many remotes does it take for a blonde to turn a TV on? Um, apparently a lot. The Husband has this “thing” for electronics. The wiring behind our TV looks like a messy plate of spaghetti. There has to be some kind of fire code violation or a small zoo animal living back there somewhere.

He gets frustrated when I call him at work and say “I (er ) the KIDS must have hit a button on the remote and now I can’t turn the TV on.” On the other side of the line (rolling his eyes I am sure) he proceeds to walk me through the countless buttons that I ALREADY pushed but apparently didn’t push in the correct fucking sequence. I can usually manage a bitter “thank you” after I get it to work with his instruction instead of bitching that the “sequence” is stupid and that his BFF TV hates me.

This is all after I spent ten aggravated minutes tearing up the house searching for the blasted remote in the first place. Oh, it’s an ugly scene. Couch cushions get overturned, mail gets scattered, drawers stand open, and I am sweating and cursing like a madwoman in need of meds. It’s always lodged under a couch cushion, always. I don’t know why I haven’t just accepted this. And no, just pushing the button on the actual TV doesn’t work either. Trust me.

When my parents came to watch our kids for a few days while we were out of town my mom almost had a panic attack when I handed her the two page hand written instructions with visual aids on how to get the channel to CNN. We even practiced turning on the TV together…seriously. They only called us when the kids had a meltdown from Dora withdrawals. I made my husband talk to them since it was his fault the damn system was so FREAKING complicated in the first place.

There are remotes for everything. TVs, DVDs, ceiling fans, lights, garage doors, stereos, computer monitors. I’m sort of surprised there isn’t a remote for the stupid remotes. See exhibit A…

Readers, meet my nemesisessses. (How do you say that plural anyways? ) All 25 of them. Oh, and I should have labeled which rooms I got these from because it took me an hour to figure out where they were all supposed to go back after I took this blasted picture.

Is it just a guy thing? Is this normal? Am I the only person on the face of the earth that wishes there was just a 1970’s version TV with a DIAL I could buy? God forbid I should have to stand up and WALK over to the TV to turn the volume up. Thank goodness I don’t watch that much TV, I might seriously need meds.

There is ONE remote that my husband just can’t seem to figure out how to use. Probably because it only has an ON/OFF switch.

That’s right…THAT, my friends, is the remote to my zipper.

XOXO
Roxy

Do you have cracked heels? You know the kind, biscuit heels. Looks like you could dip your feet in gravy and serve ‘em up with some bacon. When you walk through the house and you can hear the clack clack of your BARE feet on the ceramic tile, you know have a problem.

Now, I hate to potentially spoil your image of me as a sexy vixen with perfect features but let me tell ya, my poor feet were TORE UP. They were so bad that I could have carried spare change in the cracks of my heels…seriously. “You want some gum, sweetie? Here, let me slip my shoe off and fetch you a quarter.”

It wasn’t that I was unaware of it, or didn’t care because I did. Hell, it pissed me off every time my sock got stuck on a heel claw. Everything I tried to fix the problem ended up with a big ‘ole FAIL stamp.

I have a drawer full of failures….the Ped Egg, pumice stones, Neosporin, Dr. Scholl’s callous removers, SOS pads (yes, I saw that in a magazine once), Arbonne foot scrubs, Sally Hansen overnight foot creams, night socks with aloe. Even the expensive spa pedicures I used to get from the little Asian women during my lunch breaks didn’t seal ‘em up.

I was starting to eye the cheese grater in the kitchen out of sheer desperation when I stumbled upon a most unlikely solution for my rock dogs. I found it while perusing through my local Home Depot in the paint aisle. It was cheap and it was a last resort so I took it home, un-wrapped it and went to it.

Oh, YEAH baby! Gator SANDPAPER…$6.99! And let me tell you, it freaking worked! I scrubbed those biscuits so hard that I had to bust out the Dirt Devil to suck up the mountain of dead skin before the kids skipped off to get their sandbox toys to build a castle out of it. After whittling off half an inch from the bottom of my foot, I took my first steps and I could actually FEEL the coolness of the floor on my heels. I don’t think I even knew that there were nerve endings on my feet….seriously.

My husband loves that I don’t scar his calves in the middle of the night anymore and I love that I can wear my flip flops in public again…without socks. Screw the Ped Egg and their stupid commercials! Gator Sandpaper rocks!

So what about you readers? Got any secret home beauty remedies you would like to share?

XOXO
Roxy

Shoot, the gloves have BEEN off for two freaking years trying to make baby #3. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard, you know, to make a baby.

Now, I can get pregnant, or at least I COULD get pregnant. I’ve actually had four pregnancies. Three of the first four were woopsie daisies. My first pregnancy, an old wadded up receipt with a tampon purchase from Kroger confirmed what my young and recently married self was afraid of… I was two weeks late. A long list of WTFs spewed out of my mouth. WTF, no, no, no, no…we’ve only been married for a year! WTF, how the hell can I do my job with a freaking baby, I work 70 hours a week!! WTF, I JUST learned how to wakeboard! WTF I don’t even LIKE babies!!! Waaaaaaaaaa!

Yep, I was pretty much a basket case but did come to accept the pregnancy and to eventually embrace it just in time for my OBGYN to tell me that the little lima bean resting in my belly had no heartbeat. Miscarriage. Ugh, still gets to me to this day.

Pregnancies two and three, were also “accidents”, well we weren’t preventing them anyways. Having dealt with the emotions from my previous miscarriage and getting a few extra years under my belt I was much more prepared and immediately excited when the two little lines showed up on that little piss covered stick. We were blessed with two healthy beautiful little girls.

So, two years ago, when we decided to try for number three (damnit, I want a boy!) we thought, hey, this will be FUN! We get to TRY to have a baby (snicker, snicker). Two months later, we got our wish, two blue lines. Psh, seeeeee….easy breezy, bitches!…I was MADE to have babies. We so freaking ROCK!….
God, I was such an asshole and so unappreciative of the gift that had been given to me.

When I started spotting shortly after, I wasn’t shocked. Sad, but not shocked. I’d been through this before and knew what to expect both emotionally and physically. What I didn’t expect was the following two miserable years of trying and failing. Nothing makes sex less fun than scheduled gotta-do-it-today-or-else-we-miss-our-chance-and-have-to-wait-until-next-month-to-try-again sex.

We’ve been through all the normal infertility testing, sperm checks, blockage x-rays, ovulation blood tests, etc. et-fucking cetra. All the tests say that we are “normal” which I guess should come as a relief, but it doesn’t. I want to know WHY it’s not happening. Just tell me that my body’s baby factory has gone bankrupt and let me move on instead of spending every month wishing away the symptoms of a period that I can feel coming on.

We decided a while ago, that this April was the last month we would screw for the sake of our parts to make a kid. If it doesn’t happen then well, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. I am extremely thankful for the two beautiful children that we do have. In fact, this whole “trying and failing” experience has made me much more appreciative of the fruition of their little breathing lives.

This week is baby-making week. Got any ideas? Foods I should eat? Special positions? I’m going out with a bang, so bring it!

We’re starting a Business Directory for all the businesses that have advertised with us, are advertising with us, or want to advertise with us.  If you own a business that you’d like listed in the Directory, please let us know about it!

We hope this will be a good “go to” place for your needs.  Or, for whatever.  If we reviewed the product there will be a link to our review.

Hopefully everyone is settling in to our new digs!

Love,
The Housewives

I grew up watching scary movies at my best friend’s house. My mom would never let me watch them so we would always sneak off with her older brother’s VHS rentals. We loved warping our young minds with the likes of The Silver Bullet, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Lost Boys, Friday the 13th the Series…you get the picture. It sort of traumatized me but I loved it…back then.

It’s not really the slashers that get me now it’s the damn ghost/demon movies. The Irish in me sort of believes in that shit I suppose. Shortly after the 5 year old was born I got the brilliant idea to watch ‘The Grudge’. Every time the baby monitor would start buzzing in the middle of the night I would have to work up enough nerve to jump 5 ft from the bed and sprint across the dark room repeatedly muttering “butterflies and cherry trees” like a madwoman to keep myself from visualizing that creepy dead Asian kid staring at me from the corner. It pretty much sucked for two solid months.

So recently, The Husband joined Netflix. First movie to pop in our mailbox was ‘Paranormal Activity’. Shiiiiiit. Ok, Roxy, you are an ADULT, get some damn BALLS. It’s just a stupid budget movie! But, I kept finding excuses not to watch it. The Olympics, The Bachelor Finale, early mornings, “wouldn’t you rather have sex instead?” to name a few. That little red envelope sat on the bar top collecting dust for FIVE weeks.

Before the Netflix police starting pounding down our door I decided that I was mature enough to watch this movie. I methodically prepared for after-the-movie. You know, made sure all the bedtime routine shit was taken care of so that all I had to do was jump off the couch, run downstairs and pull the covers over my head soon as the credits started to roll. I also had to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable prank by The Husband to hide behind a doorway during a mid-movie potty break to scare the shit out of me. Asshole.

The movie was fine and predictable, but still spooked me enough to not even empty my bladder before going to bed. At 3 a.m. I felt a presence beside me. I jerked my eyes open to see the 3 year old standing at the side of my bed blankly staring at me. Sweet Jesus! Say something!

“I have to go potty” she said.
“No you don’t, you just THINK you do. Get in bed with us.”

Of course the thought of having to clean up a puddle of piss in the morning trumped my fear of the ghouls waiting to grab my ankles under the bed so I took her to the bathroom. I avoided any eye contact with mirrors along the way. To my dismay she refused to just crawl back in bed with us and wanted to go all the way back to her room upstairs. I almost blew a fuse flipping on every light switch in the house and got near whiplash when the cat made movement across the room. I told the kiddo to hurry up and stay close. If she didn’t keep up I was going to leave her ass to fend for herself.

Last night, the 5 year old does the same thing. Only this time she says she is scared. Scared of what? Demons? The boogie man? Was there a creepy Asian kid staring at her from the corner? Nope, just the damn cats trying to kill eachother. I insisted that she get in bed with us and she obliged. I swear at some point in the middle of the night she started growling in her sleep. I stuck a pillow in between us and kept one eye open the rest of the night to make sure I didn’t miss her levitating above the bed or something.

Yeah, that’s not normal. I am SO DOOOONE.