Story Time Sunday- The F*cker who Tried to Steal Inklings from Me

Today, dear Inklingers, I tell you the full story about the douche who tried to steal a mom blog... more specifically, my mom blog.

This story took place last Sunday, which is why there was no Story Time Sunday last week. I was too busy dealing with google to try and gain entry to my account once again. It was a hell of a day.

It all started bright and early, before the kids even got up, while I was enjoying my first cup of coffee in a quiet house, with an automated email telling me that my domain, www.theinklingsoflife.com would auto-renew in something like 2 weeks. The email said I didn't need to do anything, just sit back and continue to own The Inklings of Life with a smile on my face and not a care in my world (well, not in those exact words, but you get me).

I never trust auto-renew stuff, so, like I do every single year, I went to log into my account to manually renew my domain so that I could rest assured that Inklings would remain mine.

Only... Wait. Why is it saying that my email address isn't registered to admin my domain? That's funny. Maybe I typed it in wrong. Maybe my caps lock was on when I entered my password.

Nope. Still saying that my email address isn't set up as the admin to my account. Okay, breathe. Let me find the email associated with my domain registration and double check... yep. My email address is the email address for the admin of my website. Hmmm. Let me check the forum and see what's up.

Sweet. I can sneak in the backdoor of my account with this generic admin email address, reset the password and get this said and done, just like the help forum said.

WHAT? GENERIC ADMIN EMAIL HAS BEEN DELETED FROM MY ACCOUNT?? What the... I didn't even know about the generic admin email until I read the help forum, so how in the hell could I have deleted it?

Panic seriously set in at this point. My brain raced with possible next steps.

The section of the website that handled the money associated with my domain renewal last year. That's it!! I

Story Time Sunday- My Roller Coaster Baby

Hubby and I decided after being married for about a year that we wanted to start having kids. My body wasn't so receptive to the idea. We tried, and tried, and tried, and nothing, thanks to a very long history of female problems that I had had from the age of 13.

Off to the fertility specialist we went, as we approached the year mark of trying to have kids.

Hormone tests revealed that I didn't produce enough of the hormones needed to ovulate. So, all the sex Hubby and I were having should pretty much have been viewed as recreational instead of procreational, as we thought, as I didn't even produce anything that could be turned into a baby by his man-stuff.

Fertility drugs it was.

First dose didn't take. They upped my dosage and sent me home for round #2.

After almost a year of trying to have a baby with no results at all, you get burned out. So, Hubby and I talked about it, and if this set of fertility treatments hadn't produced a baby, we were taking a break from the stress of trying to get pregnant.

Test results came back, and according to the fertility clinic, I hadn't ovulated yet again. They asked me to come in for round #3, which is when we told them that we were heading back home on vacation and would resume treatment the following month.

That was a miracle in disguise.

We headed home a few weeks later, and Hubby's brother and wife wanted to take us swimming one day. I put on my 2 piece bathing suit (ah, the joys of being 20 years old and a size 6), and, well...

My boobs fell out of the top. Literally. My sister-in-law even tried helping me stuff them back in. Didn't

Story Time Sunday- The Poop Scream

I took a few weeks off from my Story Time Sunday posts, but I'm bringing them back strong for 2014. Thanks for the feedback that y'all actually liked them. ;)

For today's post, we head back almost 12 years to The Girl's first days at home, for a story I like to call

The Poop Scream.

The Girl was born in March of 2002. Everything went fine, and we were released from the hospital a few days later. Hubby was a great hands-on dad. The Girl was a little on the dehydrated side, because my milk still hadn't fully come in, so we supplemented with some formula the hospital gave us, and Hubby was more than happy to feed his beautiful baby girl a bottle. He got up with her in the middle of the night to bring her to me for feedings, he gave her baths, he changed her clothes when she spit up, and he sat with her for what seemed like forever, smiling and making faces at her.

Then came his first solo diaper change.

He didn't argue when his time came. He had done diaper changes before, with me beside him, helping him learn shortcuts and tricks of the trade. But this would be his first solo one, with me all the way down the hall,

Story Time Sunday- Kool-Aid Shenanigans

Yes, Inklingers, it's time for another installment of Story Time Sunday. This week, we are venturing back to the days of Hubby and I, before kids, for what I like to call the

Kool-Aid Shenanigans.

I came home from my job at the mall one weekend to find Hubby and a new friend playing video games. (Keep in mind that I was 18, Hubby 20 at the time, and we had no kids.) I plopped my stuff down in the living room and gave him a hello kiss. He introduced me to his new friend, and I headed to the kitchen to find something to eat and drink.

Let me pause here for a moment. Hubby's friendships have always spawned between him and guys he works with. He always manages to find guys in his squadron with his same weird-ass sense of humor to hang out with- this one was no different. Apparently, it's also a Man Thing to have to impress your friends when you are around your friends and your old lady... which is what Hubby attempted to do this particular day.

As I flung open the refridgerator door, I heard from the living room, "Hey, woman, make me some Kool-Aid!"

Thinking there was a pitcher of Kool-Aid in the fridge (and yes, we were broke when we first got married, so we drank a LOT of Kool-Aid), I reached in to grab it, and to pour Hubby a glass. The fridge had no pitcher of Kool-Aid.

"We don't have any Kool-Aid made," I shouted back.
"I know we don't. Make some," Hubby replied.

Oh hell no. He didn't ask nicely. I popped my head out of the kitchen door.

"Ummm... no. Make your own damn Kool-Aid. I just worked. And, you didn't ask nicely," I stated.

Hubby started smiling- this was his tell. I knew, at this point, his goal was to impress his friend.

"But, you're the woman, and you need to make the man and his friend some Kool-Aid," he stated,

Story Time Sunday- The Hoodoo Chick

Today I have another installment of Story Time Sunday for y'all. We're venturing back to my days as a new age store owner for this week's craziness.

If this is your first Sunday here at Inklings, make sure to catch up on my stories from past weeks. I couldn't make these stories up if I tried...

The Hoodoo Chick

I met a lot of eclectic people when I owned Static Moon down in South Carolina. One day, I had this older woman come into my shop, very quiet, very reserved. I asked her if she needed any help, to which she quietly replied, "No, ma'am, I was just lookin'." I told her if she needed anything, to let me know.

She browsed for a while, stopping in the candles section, where she picked up a few small candles, and moved on to the oils I had. She picked up a bottle of oil, then made her way to the counter, where I kept jars of herbs on the wall. She asked for a few ounces of various herbs, and as she went to pay, I could tell she wanted to ask me something.

"Is there anything in particular you were looking for?" I asked her.

She hesitated, then said, "Well, yes, but I'm not sure if you carry stuff like what I'm looking for." 

I told her that I could order anything she wanted, and have it in within a few days.

"In that case, I need an effigy candle," she stated.

A what? I was clueless. No idea what she was talking about. She saw the confused look on my face.

"I need one of those candles that is shaped like a man, and one shaped like a woman. If you can get one of the couples ones, that would be even better," she clarified for me.

I had seen these candles in my catalogs, but had no idea what they were used for. So, I pulled the catalog out, showed her the picture, and she confirmed that's what she wanted.

"Yeah, no problem. I'll put the order in today for you," I told her.

"Can you get me some 'Go Away' oil, too?" she asked. "And maybe some black salt and sulfur?"

My eyes widened. She laughed.

"Sweetheart, you don't know nothin' about Hoodoo, do you?" she asked.

My naive ass said, "You mean Voodoo?"

She laughed. "No, honey, I mean Hoodoo. You mean to tell me you own a shop like this in South Carolina, and you ain't never heard of Hoodoo? You know, rootworkin'?"

I shook my head.

"Girl, you need to read up on it. You'd make a lot of money around here if you started carrying

Story Time Sunday- The Apology Pizza

I worked at a tattoo shop in South Carolina for 3 years. To this day, I'm always asked about the most difficult customer I ever had. That, dear readers, would be the story of the Apology Pizza.

This kid (and when I say "kid," he was like 21 or 22- that was young to me) worked with Hubby. He was that kid that, when he walked into a room, just joined into a conversation like he'd been there the whole time, making things extremely awkward. So, people in Hubby's shop generally steered clear of him. When he (over)heard that I was a tattoo artist, he immediately came in to see me, to have his tattoo cherry popped.

He had this idea for this huge back piece. It was to be a fight between good and evil on the two sides of his back, and straight down his spine would be 9 kanji symbols (the Asian characters) that represented the 9 levels of hell from Dante's Inferno.

Great idea. Amazing concept. I was excited.

Until the day came for his first session. Because he'd never had a tattoo done before, and was a little short on money, he wanted to just start with the first symbol and last symbol- that was it. The first symbol was placed right below his neck and the last symbol in the "tramp stamp" position of the lower back. I put him in the standard "tramp stamp" tattooing position, straddling a seat backwards, and started the tattoo.

He literally jumped out of the chair when the needle touched his skin. Not just moved a little- he lept up and over the back of the seat he was straddling. Up. And. Over.

I told him he couldn't be doing that shit. I explained to him how he needed to sit really still, and I was good at

Story Time Sunday #3: That Time Our Daughter Was Possessed (Like, Really Possessed)

Caution now: This story is super-weird, and if you scare easily, is going to give you goosebumps. This stuff really happened... I couldn't make it up if I tried.

When The Girl was 4 years old, we bought our first house. It was a 1960s one story, with the kitchen, master bedroom and dining room on one side of the house, the kids' bedrooms and main bathroom on the other side of the house, and the living room in the middle. In the 9 months or so prior to moving into this house, we had just moved back to the states from England, were living in base housing, and decided to move once again into our very own home.

Strange things happened in this house.

It started shortly after we moved in. The Girl started having night terrors, screaming so loud that it would wake us up on the other side of the house. We figured it was just all the moving and upheaval we had done in the last year- that she wasn't adapting so well to it.

The Girl looked just
like this scene from
the movie, "The Ring"

Sure... We'll stick with that theory.

One night, I woke up in the middle of the night because I felt something weird. When I turned over to look at Hubby, there was The Girl, standing perfectly still, on Hubby's side of the bed, hair in her face, just staring at us. I shook Hubby awake, who looked right at The Girl, yelled out some obscenity, and sat straight up in bed. I was frozen. I couldn't move, it was so creepy. He flipped on the light, and she just continued to stand perfectly still, and stare at us. Hubby got out of bed and walked The Girl back to her room, where she climbed back into bed like nothing had happened. To this day, we have no idea how long she was standing at the side of our bed, just staring at us.

The bedside staring incident happened several times over the course of about 2-3 weeks, and each time, The Girl had absolutely no recollection of it the next day. We weren't even sure if she

Story Time Sunday #2: "Be Very Quiet or We'll Wake My Wife Up"

Over a decade ago, before The Girl and The Ginger were even a twinkling in Hubby's eyes, we spent our weekends like many early 20-somethings did- drinking and having fun with friends. When Hubby turned 21, we were living in base housing, so our house immediately became the party house, as all of his friends were still single and lived in the dorms. I honestly wasn't a huge drinker back then, and I was working 10 hour shifts at the mall, so I would come home, maybe have a wine cooler, and sit on the couch and watch TV.

One particular evening I was super exhausted, so I plopped on the couch, which we had situated in front of the dining room (open floor plan), so behind the couch was our dining room table. Hubby and his friends were sitting at the dining room table, playing some drinking game, so I flipped on the TV and ended up falling asleep.

I was awakened a little while later by some loud sound. I opened my eyes, but didn't move my body on the couch. As my senses started to focus, I realized that the house was dead quiet- not normal for an evening of drinking games. I laid there for a second, looking around the living room, trying to figure out what the sound was that woke me up. That's when I heard whispering coming from behind me, from the dining room table.

"Shhhhhh. Everyone be very quiet or we'll wake her up. Don't make a sound." 

Oh hell's bells, what in the hell did my husband just do that

1. He didn't want me to know about
2. Quieted the entire house
3. Warranted him warning everyone to be quiet until whatever it was, was cleaned up and/or disposed of.

I heard the sliding of a dining room chair across the floor, so I popped up, over the couch, and stared directly at Hubby, who froze in a mid creep from the table.

"Hi, honey, love of my life. How did you sleep?" Hubby said to me, as I watched him try and block the

Story Time Sunday #1: The Portal Girl

Somewhere along the line, I've been told I have great stories to tell. Between having been a tattoo artist, new age store owner, having lived in 2 countries and being a mom who doesn't think like most moms, I guess I can see that.

So, I decided to start Story Time Sunday. Each Sunday, I'll share with you all a random story from my life. Yes, they are all true... I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

Grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and gather around for my first Story Time Sunday! This week, I'll start out with a bang!

The Portal Girl

I owned a new age store for several years, and would get asked the craziest things. I had a completely open mind (why I opened the store), so while I never talked down to anyone or argued with what they believed, there were a few times I raised an eyebrow when a person asked me a question.

I will never forget The Portal Girl. She came rushing into Static Moon (the name of my store) one day, all in a frenzy.

Portal Girl: OH, thank goodness you are here today. I came yesterday, but you weren't open.
Me: Oh. Sorry. I close on Sundays. Are you okay?
PG: No. I have a question that I hope you can help me with. I don't know who else to turn to.
Me: Okay, shoot.
PG: How do you close a portal?

At this point, I didn't say a word. I started looking around, wondering if I was on Candid Camera. The look on her face told me I was not.

Me: I'm sorry, what? A portal?
PG: Yes. How do you close a portal? 
Me: Well, to be completely honest, I'm not sure. How did you open the portal?
PG: With this spell I created.

I started looking around the room again. No hidden camera men were popping out at me.

Me: Okay. Well, can't you just reverse the spell, which would close the portal?