Lots to blog about. I’ve come to the realization that the blogging gets away from me. It just does. Between work, and work, and the column and my family and needing a few glasses of wine from dealing with the abovementioned, the blog falls by the wayside.

However, I’ve been coerced to keep a more regular schedule because it helps me. Blogging helps me vent, sharpen my ranting claws and communicate. I so love to communicate. Really, I do.

So, here are a few things that I’ve been dying to blog about over the last few weeks:

Halloween – fortunately my house wasn’t egged or vandalized. At least not that I’ve yet realized.

Drex in the Morning on KISS-FM – I love listening to 103.5 in the morning. Granted, I don’t always drive in, but whenever I do, I make sure to tune in. They have the best topics. For example, this morning the topic was “My significant other’s kids love me, but I hate them.” I had to weigh in on this one. I called in, and Mel T. started in on me immediately to tell me that I don’t return e-mails. WHAT? I have no idea what address they’re using, but I would have written them back immediately had I received a message.

The story I shared was about a guy I dated MANY moons ago, who had the most unruly kids ever. I would find anything to do rather than hang out with them. And the interesting thing is that they really liked me, despite the urge I controlled to take them across my knee and give them the non-politically-correct spankings that they needed.

And, as an aside, what is it about the fear of spanking these days? Let me be clear – I was spanked as a child. But . . . was I abused? Absolutely not. Before you call DCFS for retroactive parental arrest, relax! I don’t have any permanent scarring, and I’m not in therapy trying to deal with my parents’ disciplinary tactics, or feeling guilt, or shame, or whatever it is that people like to say is the root cause of their fucked up adult behavior and inability to deal with life. (If you’re one of those people, don’t e-mail me or leave foul comments. My opinions will remain the same.)

The truth is, I was a bad-assed little kid. Plain and simple. I know exactly why I got each spanking, and I can say with surety that I deserved every one, and never repeated the act that got me spanked in the first place. I will even go so far as to say that the mere threat of my mother’s wrath kept me from doing a lot of things that I shouldn’t have. Before doing something questionable, I imagined the spanking, and thought better of it. Because, really? After you administer a few good spankings, you can stop, because the memory lives on. My mother only had to look at me, and I would stop dead in my tracks.

I have friends who refuse to spank their kids. Some are lucky enough to have mild-mannered kids who are really good kids and fine without the occasional swat. Others . . . well, let’s just say that some of them are raising little criminals in the making who run the household, and could stand an afternoon with my parents to straighten out some of that behavior.

And what’s the rebuttal? “I don’t want to stunt his creativity!” or “Spanking is abusive. I just think it’s wrong!” You know what’s really wrong? Wrong is kids who bring guns to school, or have no fear of authority or don’t respect adults and think that they can say and do whatever they want. See if time out cures that problem.

The real problem is that there are people that go too far. Our country is full to bursting with citizens who don’t know when to stop and then laws have to be set by what the most extreme, out-of-control person is prone to do. It’s not enough to have anything in moderation — it has to be done to death.

Doctors can’t tell pregnant women that it’s okay to have an occasional glass of wine because there’s someone out there who thinks that ‘occasional’ means once every two hours. And those are the very women who will sue their doctors when their children, carried to term, weigh in at .86 pounds. Some of anything probably won’t kill you. The occasional spanking will not hurt a kid. Every day bludgeonings with an extension cord is a bit much.

Really digressed on that one. Let’s see . . . what’s next?

My new appliances, that’s what!! I used to have white, generic appliances. They were Kenmore, which is a good brand, but really not the sexy stainless steel that I had in the old place. I missed my sexy stainless.

So . . . I finally broke down and took the plunge. I’m SO glad I did. I mismatched the brands because I wanted the big Maytag, French door fridge with the ice and water in the door, but I also wanted the GE range with the griddle in the middle. The good news is that the handles match so that my kitchen doesn’t look like a hodgepodge of random appliances.

My cleaning crew was at my house today, and I hope to God they knew what to clean them with. Somehow those people manage to screw something up EACH time they clean my house. One day they cracked a mirror. Another day, they put the electric AirWick air freshener back into the outlet upside down, which spilled lavender oil all over my floor. I love lavender, but seriously? WTF??? Most recently, I suspect they somehow broke the dimmer switch in the living room. This was also coupled with a few scuff marks that remained on the floor. This is their last shot. If something else is ruined after today, they are never darkening my door again (or brightening my floor).

More later (post inspection).