Tuesday Tirade, and randomness for your reading pleasure. Oh and a giveaway!

First off, let me just say this. I got a message to call my sister in law this morning, and when I called her, she told me that our step-mother had died through the night. Turns out my niece read about it this morning on the Book of Face. What a lovely way to find out that the woman who had been married to your Dad for over 30 years had died. :insert dripping sarcasm here:

I was not ever very close with her, but she was with my Dad for longer than he was with my Mom. 5 times longer, in fact, so she must've made him happy. When my Dad passed away in 2010, she was in a rehabilitation center for her hip, and she was not at the funeral. I did find this odd, but I was grieving the loss of my Dad and no one gave me any instruction to go to the rehab center and pick her up. Neither of her own children went to pick her up, and thus, she was not at his funeral. I lost touch with her after my Dad died, and yes, I'm fully to blame for not picking up the phone and trying to reach out to her. I DID, however, write her a letter after Dad's funeral. I told her that I was sorry we had our issues when I was younger and that I'm so glad Dad had her there to care for him and to spend his last days. She never responded.

I'm just really kinda pissed off that no one bothered to contact anyone on my Dad's side. I've got 3 brothers and a sister who live in the same city that the rest live in, yet we found out about her passing on Facebook. Remind me to send Zuckerberg a thank you for giving us an avenue to learn about the passing of a loved one.

Okay, now that I've got that off my chest, I'm going to move on to the next subject. Ebates. Ebates is this cool site that I was turned onto by another blogger before last Christmas. The way it works is this: You do a lot of online shopping, right? Me too. Just ask Discover, Chase and Citibank. Now you just go directly to the Ebates website, sign up for the FREE service, find your favorite store on their vast list of stores and then you shop as you normally would! Each store lists how much cash back they're offering for purchases. For example, let's say you like Sephora. Well in today's Ebates email that I received, Sephora is offering 8% cash back for shopping their website by first going through Ebates. Easy peasy. So you go to Ebates website, sign up, click on Sephora and shop. When you make your purchase, that 8% goes into your Ebates account. They send out checks every month or two. At Christmas, I did almost all of my shopping online through Ebates and received a check in February for over $100. My friend and sister in snark, Teresa, is up to some ridiculous amount of cash back (she apparently is a hard core Ebates shopper). I'mma ask her for a loan soon.

 

So they are running a special offer right now where if I get people to sign up to use Ebates, I don't even have to BUY anything, they're giving me $10 for each person who signs up and make a minimum purchase of $25 from any of the stores listed on their site. Trust me, you'd have an easier time naming a store that's NOT on their site than you would trying to name all the stores that ARE there. So what do you say? Can you help a sister out? Go sign up on the Ebates site, it's free and if you make that $25 purchase, it'll get me $10. And it's all about making me money, right? Everybody's happy that way.

On another note, I put my blog on Bloglovin' which is cool because if you subscribe to a billion other blogs like I do, you can get all your newest favorite blog posts on this one site. If you're not subscribed already to Snarkfest, you can either subscribe to have my delivered hot and fresh (okay, the blog, not actually ME) to your email OR you can sign up for Bloglovin' and you can also subscribe to all your favorite bloggers there, and we'll ALL show up in your inbox daily if we've posted new stuff. There's a little button thingy on the right side that you can use for this.

Now, enough begging. Want to win some really cool stuff?? My friend Robyn from Hollow Tree Ventures, along with more than 20 other bloggers are hosting a Rafflecopter Giveaway involving some kick ass prizes!

Some of the prizes include our book, "I Just Want to Pee Alone", as well as the new books by Paige Kellerman, "At Least My Belly Hides My Cankles", and Abby Heugel', "Abby Still Has Issues", a $125 Amazon.com gift certificate and some cool Vera Bradley stuff as well! Go check it out and enter! I did. And if I win, I'll be giving away my copy of "I Just Want to Pee Alone". If I DON'T win, I'm STILL going to give it away. Stay tuned, a new giveaway from Snarkfest is coming up soon!

Want a good laugh? Got some free time? Read on...

In today's blog post, I'm going to share with you some of the funniest and most awesome people I don't know in person. How about that? I wish I knew them, and I do hope, one day, to meet a great many of them. But for now, I'll just have to admire them from afar. In no particular order:

Kim from The Fordeville Diaries. Kim's letter from her dog, Senor, threatening legal action cracked me up. Today, Kim shares with us how she shoves her 20 weeks-pregnant body into maternity spanks. Enjoy My Cirque du Soleil Audition

Tina from There Must Be A Third Option. My first look at Tina's blog got me hooked when I saw her tagline that says: ...because I can't find any gypsies to buy my kids, and I'm too tired to run away from home. I used to say ALL THE TIME that I was going to sell my kids to the gypsies. Tina's son Red has a penchant for not wearing pants. And fire trucks. And giraffes. He's quite the little charmer. Please read Nonsensical Sense and Illogical Logic: Why it is Tough Raising Redheads

Tracy from Momaical. Tracy cracks me up. A lot. She started our newest venture, The Epistolarians and is just a full of awesome ideas and is simply hilarious. One of my favorite posts of Tracy's is Shut the Fucupcakes. And her post about her trip to the gyno with her darling children in tow is just too funny not to share. So funny, in fact, that it's featured in No Laughing Allowed, the new blog collection put out by A Life Well Blogged.

Joy from Evil Joy Speaks. Joy and I have become fast friends. She's got 4 kids, a husband, and 2 pups. She lives in the Arctic Circle known as Wisconsin and has really taken to snowboarding. She posts about her life and her kids and her hubby and she never disappoints.

Michelle from You're My Favorite Today. Michelle has an obsession fascination really likes Scott Baio and was so excited when he favorited one of her tweets she nearly peed exploded lost her mind. She and I have similar tastes in men (I loved Chachi more than Joanie did, just sayin') as you can see from her post on George Clooney. She never fails to make me laugh.

Nicole at Ninja Mom Blog. Nicole opens her blog every month for the Character Assassination Carousel, and if you remember my blog post We're Going On A Bear Hunt, you'll remember that it was featured on Nicole's blog. She's generous, warm and freaking hysterical. Nicole was recently featured in the In-faux-mercial, Wine-Not? One of my faves, for sure.

Paige at Paige Kellerman. Paige recently had a baby, Doc Holiday to add to her posse, Butch and Sundance. She is pee-myself funny and I love seeing a new post from her in my inbox. Her breakup letter to Oreos is heart-wrenchingly hysterical.

Jen at People I Want To Punch In The Throat. Jen is sarcastic, snarky and funny as shit. Her Valentine to Tina Fey is side-splittingly funny. Her review of Magic Mike was spot on. And her post on ultrasound parties just cracked me up.

There are a megafuck ton of great bloggers out there. These are just a handful. To see more (Jesus how much time to you HAVE anyway??) go check out My Favorite Blogs page.

Stay snarky, my friends.