Heather Barton

Not much to do with Primetime except I think it needs more nudity!

I’m a Prime Time junkie.  I freely admit it!  Every fall season I make sure I watch EVERY new show on the few channels I get, ABC, CBS, NBC & Fox.  I’ll even check out a show on the CW…  sometimes…. rarely tho!

Anyway, so I watched a preseason preview of ABC’s new shows Go On with Matthew Perry and Animal Practice with no one I gave a shit about.

Does that tell you what I thought of those two shows!  Haha.  I DID enjoy Go On.  But Chandler was always my favorite on Friends so  maybe I’m biased.  I hope this series works better for Perry than the last series, which I tried VERY hard to like but just couldn’t do it.   The supporting  cast is genuine in a way that brings out a humanity in Perry that he needs… to be able to bounce his acerbic wit off.  I genuinely liked it while I was watching and it left me wanting more.  A lot more.  Happily the next two episodes were just as enjoyable

Not so Animal Practice!  The monkey gimmick was cute but not enough to carry the show.  It’s like House meets M*A*S*H with a cast of the uninteresting after all the humor had been sucked out of it and replaced with a huge dose of  “Awwww….. cute animals!”   Gack!   I can’t get that off my DVR fast enough!

I watched Men with Kids….  it has potential but its going to have to pick up the situational humor to captivate me.   I actually deleted an episode of The Mindy Project 5 minutes into it.  I realized I didn’t like her enough to watch her publicly embarrass herself in order the “grow” thru the episode.  I’ve watched shows like that before and marvel how the lesson learned in the previous episodes never seems to “take”.

Of course I adored Revolution and have 4 episodes on my DVR as I await a time when Sex God is over and we’re NOT watching The Voice because he wants to see it.  Last Resort is a little of the same “type” of show, but I’m not sure its got the “fun” impact that Revolution does.  If I had to choose.. well, Revolution hands down.  Despite the fact its soooooo much a rip-off of S.M. Stirling’s series Sunrise Lands.  Thank God I’ve got a DVR.

You should have seen Sex God’s eyes when I told him the CW had a new series called Arrow which I assumed was based off the Green Arrow series since the guy’s all in green.  He whispers, “That’s my favorite comic!”  Since he doesn’t have cable & only watches movies & old series off Netflix I think he’ll be coming over to my house more! lmao  Of course all I really have to do is tell him what I’m cooking for dinner and he’s all, “I’m coming over!!!”

I liked Vegas.  Not sure how long it will last.  LOOOVED Made in Jersey!  Hated Mod Doctor, that’s a casting/plot flop if I’ve ever watched one.  The PBS series Call the Midwife is very, very good and the first show that I watch that seems to connect with me thru my work.  We sell to many doulas and having birthed 3 children I’m vastly familiar with all this! lol

And now that the new season has begun  my DVR is full of my favorites and the new shows.  And since I talked the cable people into letting me upgrade for a cheap price for the next 6 months… I’ve got a lot of my OLD favorites rapidly recording to try and fill it in for when I have to pop it down to cheap basic.

Makes working at home muuuuuuch more enjoyable!

There are a lot of people who complain about social services and welfare.  Ironically the people who complain the loudest seem to also have problems with people using or knowing about birth control and having the option of abortion.  These people seem to miss the point that these two often need each other.  I mean, if you are going to force people to carry to term every pregnancy there will be more need for social services and welfare.  Because shit happens and seems to  happen the most to the young, ignorant & unprepared.

Choices aside… the subject of THIS post is the fact that SOME people put their actions where their values are.  My mother was such a person.   Perhaps it was her Christian beliefs or her church support or her years as a La Leche League Leader (a non-profit support group for breastfeeding mothers) but we had several years of having Foster Kids live with us when I was a teen.

I remember the first one was a 16 year old pregnant Latina.  She was a very unhappy girl and I shudder thinking of her raising that first baby.  She was frankly kinda cruel and mean to my little sister.  She didn’t last very long at all.  I have no idea what her name was.

The next one was a young teen who’d already given birth.  Leslie and her son Jason.  She was a happy woman and Jason was a flat out adorable baby.  I think they lived with us just a short while.  Probably until she became a legal age to live on her own.   Funniest thing I remember of them was the lesson Leslie learned about NOT lifting a baby in an overhead game JUUUUST after you’ve fed him.  I think we ALL gagged when he spit up just as he was above her and it landed smack into her mouth!  Lucky for her he was breastfed. lol

Next teen mom was Chloe & her baby Esther.  Esther was the fattest little thing cuz Chloe was a serious over-producer of breast milk and the skinniest woman!  I think she pumped tons of extra to donate to premie babies.

Fidel in our backyard with the chicken coop

So when my brother’s friend, Fidel (who we all called Fido, cuz he imitated a dog bark very well!), when Fidel’s father had an argument with a guy trying to repossess his van & decided to settle it with a shotgun and the repossess agent died of the gun wounds….  (still following the logic?)  …. so when the only parent Fidel had was carted off to jail, my brother convinced my parents, who were registered Foster Parents, to take Fidel in.

And I must tell you about the time the police were looking for Fidel’s father.  See… after his father shot the agent, he drove his Van to our neighborhood knowing his son would be hanging with my brother.  So the police found the van & knocked on our door looking for their suspect.  And my brother let them in.  Lord only know what he did with his stash! lmao!!!  Our parents were both working at the time and I was napping… which meant I was home from school, rubbed a good orgasm out and was indeed napping! lol  So there is a brief knock on my bedroom door, a burly cop comes in, sees me, says “Don’t get up” and proceeds to look under my bed.  I’m thinking, “Crap!  Whatever/whoever he’s looking for is going to see him, roll onto its/his back and shoot me through the bed!”  But he just got up, checked the closet & left.  Once in the hall he met another guy who questioned if he’d checked my room.  He was asked if he checked the bed, yes, the closet, yes, the drawers…. crap!  So he comes back in & checks the dresser drawers & I’m all…. “what are they planning to find a hand?!”

Anyway… I was finally able to get outa bed at which point the cops had finished their search having found nothing.  I later found out Fidel’s dad was hanging out at the local Baskin Robbins where I worked waiting until his son got to our house to try and flee justice.  Didn’t happen, he was obviously convicted.  And Fidel spent about a year at our house, until his older brother got it together enough to have him live with  him.

Fidel was a pot-headed, laid back reggae Dude with a happy attitude towards life.  I hear he ended up a full time stay at home Dad to 6 kids, scraping by but happy.  Whether we impacted that or not it doesn’t really matter.  We provided a safe place for needy kids to be while they transitioned into adulthood.

There isn’t a joke for this post.  Its just another story in my crazy childhood.  But I always felt any bible thumper demanding no sex education in schools and no choice when it comes to a woman’s decision to have kids had better be taking in foster kids or shutting the fuck up.  Money where your mouth is, is all I’m saying…

Today Karma has decided I’m going to spend any bad luck I’ve got coming to me, cuz it has been ONE… of… THOSE… days!

I will admit it must have started yesterday as I squeaked in a Costco shopping trip in between work Thursday since the usual day to do it (Wed) I was at a conference selling all day.  Prior to that we had run out of ink and with the boss heading for Kentucky and me at the local conference we didn’t have the time to buy more.  So I pick it up at Costco yesterday and rush back to work to try and get shipped the many, many orders that had piled up while I was gone.  And the ones that were trickling in every hour because of the conference!

I get all 4 cartridges of black and those primary color ink installed and as I’m installing the black one the printer says this cartridge ISN’T an HP cartridge and do you want to continue?   Um…. it’s an HP cartridge according to the BOX, dumbass!  And I click continue while its prompting me with all these “are you sure???” questions.  And then I start printing and its half ass.  I’m assuming maybe its been so depleted it takes a bit to get to where its going.  But it gets worse!  Throwing my hands in the air I give up and haul half my work home to try and print orders from MY printer at home.

Which I do early this morning cuz Sex God came over last night and well….  I didn’t do as much work as I’d hoped.  Or at least not as much “office” work!  Getting to work today I figure I’ll do accounting until 9:30 cuz Costco opens at 9:45.  Oh, but the computer was left on last night and that froze it at 12:20pm.  I know this cuz that’s what the clock said the time was at 8am!  So I force a shut down and boot up and its running thru all these automated programs to try and fix the problem and I’m checking Facebook on my laptop waiting for it to run its paces.

Needless to say I had to use C-Cleaner and boot up about 4 times before it seemed to take.  And by then it was 9:37!!  So I’m skating out the door to rush to Costco and back for replacement ink and run straight into heavy traffic!  Lucky for me I spotted the “not moving line of cars” on the freeway BEFORE I got on it, but the surface streets to the next entrance was almost as bad! As I entered the freeway they were clearing away something huge enough to close 2 lanes on either side of the 8 lane highway!  I got to Costco and got my ink and took a chance they’d have it all cleared by the time I hit it on the way back.

No such luck so I’m off onto the surface streets again.  Of course those took me past the library so I dropped off those 2 books & then “Hey, Taco Bell!”  and got some lunch.  By the time I got back, taking twice as long as I’d hoped the computer was back up and running.  And the ink took!  Yay!

I spend the next 2 hours trying to catch up on printing everything while MORE orders come in and I add them to my work load.  Bad, compulsive completer that I am this only delays getting OTHER work done.  Then I go to pack up the orders and cannot find my shipping tape ANYWHERE!  I scrounge around and find the old one and grab a roll of tape to get these orders packed.  Takes an hour and I still have to take them to the post office.

I’m left with 30 minutes to try and wrap up what I can before I have to rush home to pick up the 11 year old for Social Skills class cuz he’s being dumped on me this weekend as the Ex takes the other two on a Boy Scout camping trip.  Can’t wait until next year when he goes WITH them!!  The Ex should just break the rules and take Conor with them and give me the occasional break!  But… well, he’s not ballsy enough.

I did manage to get some of the accounting done, but not the deposit.  And I’ll have to rush back to the post office to ship the packages after dropping Conor off at his class.  And as I’m about to do my final piece of work for the day… the stapler is out of staples.

I keep my sanity by mumbling the mantra… “Using up the bad Karma will help me win the lottery.”   Oh, I soooo hope its true! lmao

French Toast Breakfast

So Day Two of Coachella starts well with lovely sex and a shower and then I head into the kitchen to cook some breakfast.  Cuz I be HUNGRY!  I enlist Jocelyn to help me and we make french toast for all 6 of us.   And coffee, lots of coffee!  Then we all just get wrapped up in a lazy morning.  We talk, I do designs on my fingernails using my MagiNails, then Yessi does designs on her nails and then we FINALLY realize the time decide to head back to the Festival.   Again, after parking & getting through security we arrive on the grounds around 3pm!  I can’t tell if we are losers or just GOOD at enjoying the evenings!

Mike & Jocelyn

By now we’ve got the bottle collecting down.  See there is this recycling program where if you collect 10 empty water bottles they’ll give you an ice cold one for free.  This helps keep the grounds cleaner as everyone is pounding down water cuz its 100 degrees, yes its April but its also the desert!  And when buying one bottle water is $2 it can get pricey!  But the beauty of the system is if you wait just a little bit when a performance is over you’ll have a HUGE selection of water bottles to scoop up & take to the recycling center.  When the crowd clears out (cuz there is about 20 minutes between artists at any stage) the ground is littered with empties!  And they expanded the recycling center so there was barely a line at any given moment.  BETTER… I read the sign (on the last day so I wasn’t able to participate) if you collected 1,000 bottles you would get upgraded to VIP status.  AND they let you create an account so you didn’t have to bring in it all in at once, you could dribble it in.  If we don’t buy VIP for 2013 we might try this!  Its probably pretty achievable by the end of the first day if you work it well enough.

Anyway.. so Day Two we just made it to see Awolnation.  Who were, of course, absolutely fabulous.  I knew every song cuz I’d been listening to their album on my iPhone at the gym since I saw them at the 98.7 Penthouse concert months prior.   And we got there early enough to be close to the stage.  Plus front man Bruno did what I’d seen him do in videos.  He brought out a surf board and surfed the crowd… so much fun!  I was happy we were to the left as I’m too short to help and didn’t want to mess with my manicure!

After that we wandered between venue checking out Tune Yards, Kasabian, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Feist & a few others.

But the highlight of the day was Radiohead.   Oh.  MY.    It was … wonderful.  By far the highlight of the entire festival actually, but at the moment of them playing it was incredible.  Now Sex God is a HUGE Radiohead fan, but I wasn’t.   Not that I didn’t enjoy their music, I just didn’t know much of it.  So about 3 months before Coachella I downloaded their newest and their “best of” albums and began to listen to them.   And I LIKED them!  But hearing them live in the warm desert night with my flying Sex God dancing to the music and belting out the lyrics in a really loud voice it was just trans-formative.

Now I might blame that  on the level of alcohol in my blood or the fact that we’d drunk so much water our electrolytes were shot, or maybe it was just an “experimental day” but even today, almost 2 months later, whenever my iPhone plays a Radiohead song I’m thrilling to it.  It is NOW my music of choice, right up there with Incubus.

So Radiohead ends and we scampering off to meet with Will & Ellen & Cesar in the camping area.  But they are gone or asleep so after we buy something from the ALWAYS open food area in camping we head to the car.  The nice thing about getting to the car late is its pretty easy to find!  But the bad thing is its difficult to remember how to get home!  And on THIS for some reason our phones did NOT help.  We ended up driving for almost an hour in a very large square until we realized we needed to make a left instead of a right.  By that point I had pulled over to find a small secluded bush to pee in!  Desperation!   Brant had already had his moment of OMG!  It’s pee or die but being a guy he was able to use a handy empty cup we had in the car!  So WHILE I’m driving he’s letting loose into the cup but then he says, “Oh God… it never ends!”  And he’s panicking cuz he’s filling the cup.  So he has to clench/squeeze the flow to stop, rolls down the window & dumps the cup, only to “release” more into it!

I’m laughing so hard, but he’s all… “Keep driving!”  while he ends up filling & dumping 4 cupfulls of pee!  When we finally make it back to the Condo…. again… everyone is there and awake and telling the stories of what they saw.  We join in and I make the mistake of drinking a Pepsi.  Now THAT … on top of the Red Bull I’d had just before Radiohead and NOW I cannot sleep!  I literally lie awake for 2 hours before giving up and get on my phone.  I updated all the apps….  answered emails….  check out the free books….  and the game apps…. until about 8 am.  Then I just jump in the shower wide awake and dead tired at the same time!  Very strange experience!

They aren't as Hot as Thor, but about as Hot as Hawk. Heeheehee

My fall annual conference is going to be held in Chicago this year.  Last year it was held in Miami, Florida and I spent months hoping that Hottie would clear his schedule and come with me for 3 days of playing.  But alas, he just couldn’t afford the ticket nor the time off work.

This year I asked Sex God and while he WAS able to afford the ticket to the conference at the END of October to San Francisco (Yay!) he couldn’t do SF AND Chicago also.   So I got it into  my head to try my dating profile to see if I could line up any company.   And you know you’re dying to hear about how THAT went!  You naughty readers!

See I never really end my membership off the site.  I only close my profile to viewing so it SEEMs as if I left.  And when I’m feeling bored with my current lovers, or of the amount of “want you” adoration THIS Aries needs… well, then I open my profile and see who emails me.

I HAVE used the site to try and find some company when I’ve been on a work trip but it was extremely short notice and there were no answers to my emails.  Which is why I decided to do this now in August.  Giving me plenty of time to see what members in Chicago might enjoy a night out.  And in.   So I updated the profile with a few new pix of me and a detailed opening paragraph clearly stating that I’m NOT interested in local guys only looking for “Chicago Cougar Connection for mid-October”.   Literally, that was the tag line on my profile! lol

And boy was that fun!   I can never tell which I love the most.  The ego boost of their email when they see my profile or the ego boost of how pleased they are at the REAL me when they meet me or how I rock them in the bedroom if they get that far!

But within 6 days I realized I needed to close this lovely profile as I was having a lot of fun but had more prospects than the 3 nights in Chicago would allow!   The numbers are:  Total views of my profile in 6 days time = 1627.   Total flirts (non-email inquiries) 62… 33 of them were men “hotlisting” me.   I sent out 93 emails, but only 5 of them were me contacting men I was interested in.  The rest were me answering emails sent to me.  Because I STILL believe if you have the balls to send me an email I have the class to reply, even with a nice, “No, thank you”.

Which is the reason I keep my profile closed.  As I tend to compulsively want to answer emails and then someone might interest me and suddenly all my free time is sucked into this whirlwind void of dating NEW men and I don’t get to play with the other men!

Anyway, I’m sure you are all wondering if I was successful   Oh, don’t be silly, of course I was!  I clicked with several men in the first few days but when I realized I was favoring two and already HAD two additional I felt were in the running, I knew it was time to stop!  Ironically the numbers are exactly even between Cubs and Men-My Age.   Even between the two local men who snuck past my defenses and clicked with my libido! lol

And of those two, the man my age turns out to be a very good kisser, we shall see how he does on a Date.  And the local Cub is both delicious, smart, interesting and has his own apartment!  I cannot tell you how much of a plus that is!

Oh but I’m now very, very excited about going to Chicago, too.   With almost a month of email, texting, phone foreplay, this will be very fun!  Very fun, indeed!

There is so much new music that I am just loving on the radio these days.

Mumford & Sons, new song is wow   I will Wait

No Doubt, with my new theme song!  Settle Down

Killers back together with   Runaways

Of course you all heard the new Muse song, Survival at the Olympics opening ceremony.

Heard some lovely new songs from Young the Giant at their concert

Of the new bands I’m enjoying, The Walk the Moon with their single  Anna Sun  is by far my favorite.  I’m even loving the new Green Day song.

I would be thrilled to see Mumford & Sons again at Coachella and next time they are touring in Los Angeles, I’ll be buying tickets!

But I’m betting No Doubt will be headlining one of the days of Coachella, and I’m rather thrilled with that also.  So happy Sex God & I have our Condo & Tix already!!

Now… if I was a GOOD blogger I’d know how to embed this videos in a way that they look more like ready to play stuff instead of links to YouTube… but, well, I suck.  Of course, I’m very good at too 😉

Did I mention its also an ART Festival. This was a moving crane flower

Well it took a bit of time but I finally caught up with my life to have a moment to write the Coachella blog.  AND that is WITH a part time employee to help out and children and interns!  For a bit there I was wondering how do I make this blog more than just a reporting of “we saw this…then we saw this, etc”  Then I realized this is ME we’re talking about.  Of COURSE way more than that happened!!

But let’s start at the beginning, which would be after Sex God & I dropped the kiddos off at school at 8 am.  I had to pop into work to try and get ONE thing done.  Sadly, that took way longer than it was supposed to and suddenly I find us more than an hour behind schedule!  Yikes.  This tends to kick in my rush mode cuz I’m a bit compulsive about being on time for things.  So I was maintaining my favorite speed and I’m NOT posting that online.  But lets just say Sex God’s comment by the time we arrived was, “Whew!  Its like riding with a professional race car driver!”  He hummed “Go Speed Racer” half the drive!

We got completely lucky at the hotel cuz our type of suite juuuuuust opened up when we got there so we got keys and were able to unload our stuff.  Other people had to wait for hours.  Mike and his troop were leaving much later than us so we left a key under the mat of the condo and headed out to the festival.  And this is where having experience and a smart phone really helped.  I KNEW we needed to hit the back entrance not the main entrance.  The difficulty was just finding that working off memory which is a year old!  But we got lucky and found it!  I can’t tell you how nice it is to park on grass not dirt and be closer to the venue entrance!

Checking in on Facebook

We spent the first day seeing what was the same and what was different.  It took me a while but I found my favorite item, root beer floats, for sale at a booth in the expanded food area.  Which I must say was amazing.   The food was expensive, as expected, but the diversity of choices were exceptional.  Indian food, Chinese, cold sandwiches, pizza, ribs, roasted corn, veggie & regular burgers, Mexican… something for everyone.

Sadly we didn’t get thru security before 3pm so missed 3 hours of bands but had plenty of time to saunter over and see Group Love.  They completely lived up to our expectations… as in Wonderfully Fun!  It was packed and hot and amusingly every so often the oxygen level would drop or raise!  But we loved every minute of it.

Lit balloons on wire held by people floated the night sky

After that we kind of wandered about, saw a bit of Arctic Monkeys, some Madness before parking at the Main Stage.  Brant left me there to pop over to see M83 but said they weren’t that good after the one hit they played.   Having seen Black Keys last Coachella we didn’t feel the need to “see” them.  So I kinda hunkered down within sound range but back enough to lie down and well, I’ll confessed, I napped!  Cuz I was stupid enough to go to the gym at 5 am that morning!  Sex God came back from M83 & joined my nap, lol, cuz he’d been drinking all day.

But at 11 pm the wonderful beat of Swedish House Mafia woke us up.  And wow… that experience suddenly brought home to me the appeal of house music.  There were few lyrics, just music.  But it was PERFECTLY executed.  It would change and build up and then crescendo and change and build up and crescendo… all in a way that did NOT seem repetitive or boring and made you want to dance and dance.  Which we did!

They were the last band of Friday and we left with the crowd and went to the camping site to look for Will and his group who were camping but couldn’t find him.  Actually we DID find them but weren’t sure in the dark if it was them and the guys next to their site were all suspicious of us wandering around so we left and headed back to our condo.   Turns out Will was there but asleep.. ASLEEP at Coachella!!  Dude, get wasted at HOME… tix were too expensive to waste sleeping!

Freddie

Once at the condo Mike and Freddie and entourage had just arriving also.  (Again.. yay smart phones!)  So we all stayed up and chit chatted and drank and crashed probably around 2 in the morning.   Reluctantly!   But by 6 or 7 am my mind is up.  Languid and easily dozing in and out, but once my mind is up its only a matter of time before my stomach wakes also.  Of course, not before I “awaken” the libido of Sex God… although not too much!  I send him off to pee first!!  I’m THAT kind of a considerate girlfriend!

Drama of that First Day…. getting texts from Luke that he’d forgotten his key & I was on the phone & texting trying to solve his problem.    After 30 minutes we settled on Grandma leaving work early & getting the spare key at her house.  She was going to pick him up anyway for the weekend so it worked out.

Crazy busy barely describes my life these days. haha  So I’m going to try to do a quick recap while I finish up the OTHER blogs I can’t seem to get to, like the Coachella 2012 blog which is turning into 3 separate blogs!

The Geek side of Sex God. (Note to self.. THAT is your BAD side! )

Brant won a contest but the email had the wrong date so we got substituted from Breakfast with Dave Grohl (which would have been awesome) to the Penthouse performance of Dead Sarah which was AWESOME!

Oh and I was caller number 9 so I won tickets to see Morrisey and Iggy Pop in November… again.. AWESOME!

Young the Giant at the OC Fair was wonderful.  We took Sex God’s daughter and her friend and tried to say Hello to Hottie who was also there, but between the girls & his friends we just never managed to “meet at [blank]”  The concert was lovely and I learned the spotlight on my cell phone makes a perfect substitute for the old concert habit of holding up lighters!  Everyone was doing it and it was hilarious!

Next month we are seeing Linkin Park and Incubus at the Home Depot Center.  Never been to that venue so it will be interesting.  We are more interested in Incubus but going with friends so it will be a great time no matter what.

Patio of the Orlando rental house, eating ice cream & watching the lightning flash.

The Orlando trip was fun and boring and interesting and not relaxing. Ha!  I’ll do a blog on it later.

Evan and Luke passed their summer school classes.  Yay!  And got used to riding their bikes to and from school… double yay!   No more driving them in the morning or afternoon.  And Evan needs the exercise!  Even Conor is into the act, scootering to and from school.   Since they start school in 10 days I’m actually looking forward to this school year.  Evan’s IEP will kick in and he’ll get the help he needs to hopefully stop flunking his classes.

Luke seems to be moving out of the Angry 14’s since he’s a month away from turning 15.  I think he’s almost ready to start “hearing” my suggestions on how to deal with his peers.  Some of my Facebook friends have been very helpful in suggesting books to help my little geek understand the hypocrisies of our society.  Haha.

On a last note… I’m trying to get back into my writing.  And also contemplating trying the dating website CougarLife.com.   Although those two things tend to be time sinkholes so I’m not sure I can even contemplate it until after October and I’m done with work travel for the year.

But it should be quite fun if I do  😉