The Gradual Gardener

Normal

2006-08-25T19:30:00.000-04:00

My husband has a seizure disorder. A "normal" seizure for him is what's called a Complex Partial Seizure, and generally consists of him spacing out for a minute, curling his hands in and making an odd chewing noise. After the seizure he'll have short-term memory loss for up to an hour. We've been through numerous medication adjustments, but since I started keeping track of the seizures last November he's been having them at least four times a month. He never remembers the seizure afterwards, so he may be having more that I'm not seeing.

On June 2, he had his first Tonic-Clonic Seizure (also referred to as a Grand Mal). This happened at 5am, when I woke to the sound of jingling car keys and his voice repeating the same phrase over and over. The convulsions started soon afterward. I called 911, got dressed, and woke my daughter up. If I had gone to the the B-List Bloggers Convention like I wanted to, she would have been handling it alone.

As terrifying as the seizure itself was to watch, the period immediately afterward scared me even more. He constantly wanted to get out of bed, or pull his IV out, and I was always the person to stop him. He didn't know who I was, but he knew I was the "enemy", and would give me a look of complete and utter disgust whenever he glanced my way. When he did start talking, he made no sense whatsoever. He would string a group of random words together as if it were a sentence. I'd lived all this before, after the initial head injury, and was afraid the seizure had caused a new injury. The last time it took eight months of therapy for him to even remotely resemble "normal", and I didn't know if I could handle going through all that again.

As it turns out, this was the "postictal" period, which is a period of confusion immediately following a tonic-clonic seizure. There was no new injury, and by afternoon he knew my name. When night fell and he still wasn't saying anything that made sense, they admitted him for the night. By the next morning you could hold a conversation with him, although he'd frequently repeat things, and by afternoon the doctors let him come home. They adjusted the medication again, and I went out and bought two books on seizure disorders. We kept him supervised for the first few weeks, then gradually started leaving him home alone for progressively longer periods. Once the MedicAlert necklace came in the mail, I let him start walking the dog again on his own, although now he took his cellphone with him. Life went on.

Because small seizures often preceed large seizures, we watched him carefully whenever he had one of his usual small seizures. We were given a prescription of Diastat, which is a Valium injection that can be used to stop a seizure in progress, or to prevent a seizure that seems imminent. Diastat is a rectal injection, so we decided that I would be the only one to administer it (anyone else would call 911).

The second Grand Mal seizure happened three states away, where he was spending the weekend at a racetrack with some friends. By the time I arrived at the hospital 5 hours after the seizure, he already knew who I was and could talk normally, which was a giant improvement over the last time, so we checked him out against medical advice and drove home. The doctor wanted to keep him overnight for observation, saying he could have another seizure on the way home, but my response was, "Yes, but that won't change tomorrow, and we have to drive home eventually."

He improved so quickly after the second seizure that it gave me a false sense of security. A lot of people live with epilepsy. Obviously the first seizure was not an isolated incident, as I wanted to believe, so we'd just have to learn to live with it. Other people do. There was no way we could do 24 hour supervision after every seizure if these were going to happen regularly, so we'd just have to accept that eventually he'd have a Grand Mal when he was alone, and he'd sleep it off afterwards. We still watched him after the small seizures, but for a few hours, instead of a few days. We'd gotten used to the small seizures, and eventually the big ones would become "normal" too.

In the weeks after the first seizure, our daughter provided most of the supervision when I had to work. She didn't want to do it any more than I wanted her to, but we didn't have alot of options; My hours are flexible at work, but that doesn't mean I can just stop going. I knew all along there was the possibility he'd have a Grand Mal when she was alone with him, but I hoped it wouldn't happen. Tuesday, it did.

She came downstairs to find him acting erractically, and it didn't take her long to figure out that this wasn't a regular seizure. I was at work twenty minutes away, but fortunately my neighbor was home, and came over and stayed with them. My neighbor has a brother who has had seizures since childhood, so she knew what to do. The actual convulsions were about 3-4 minutes (they tell you to call 911 if the convulsions last longer than 5 minutes), but the errectic behavior leading up to the convulsions was at least fifteen minutes long. It was horribly, horribly traumatic for a 15-year-old to watch her father go through. By the time I got there it was over, although I ended up giving him the Diastat anyway because he started jerking his neck, which we figured was either an attempt to get up off the floor or the start of another seizure, and we didn't want to take chances.

This time, he didn't come out of the postictal period so soon. In the first three days after the Grand Mal, he had at least four small seizures, and the symptoms seem to have changed. He no longer makes the "chewing" noise, and instead repeats a phrase (or what in his mind is a phrase...Often it doesn't make sense) over and over. The most recent seizure, last night, was a particularly scary incident in the car involving a lighter and as many cigarettes as he could light before I could get the lighter away from him (I was driving).

I don't see how this will ever be "normal".

No, I'm Not Dead...

2006-05-07T06:02:00.000-04:00

...My legs wouldn't hurt this much if I were. But spring has sprung, and although I'm not officially planting yet (still a danger of frost), I am back to work. This time of year, work consists of tilling and shaping my flower beds, and gathering plants. The gathering plants part is what's mostly responsible for the sore legs. LOTS of bending over and straightening up again. LOTS. I like to choose my own plant material whenever possible, and since I drive a pickup truck, not, say, a tractor trailer, I make quite a few trips to greenhouses. The truck bed holds 26 dozen 4" pots, and I plant thousands. You do the math. Some do get delivered, but unfortunately my biggest delivery DOES come in a tractor trailer, which is too big to back down the driveway at my holdover location. So the plants are unloaded on the ground at the top of the driveway, the driver gets his signature and goes on his merry way, and I get to reload them on my own truck and back them down the driveway to unload them again. This year, that took seven trips up and down the driveway. LOTS AND LOTS OF BENDING. And once they're in my holdover spot, they need to be separated so they have some air circulation. Which requires more bending. Seriously, the backs of my thighs feel like they're on fire.

Not that I'm complaining. I really do love my job. Besides, you have to keep it in perspective: Other people pay money to go to the gym; I get paid to do this. It's all good. But it does interfere with my blogging. Yeah, I know, many of you work full-time and still find time to blog, and others take care of small children full-time and blog, and a few work full-time AND take care of small children and still manage to update at least a few times a week (Wonder Woman has nothing on you). Busy season or not, I could sneak in updates here and there. But the really messed up part, which is probably something I should talk to my therapist about (my therapist being my neighbor and a bottle of wine), is that it feels wrong to update my own blog when I don't have time to read everyone else's. It's okay once in a while, but if I do too many posts without catching up on all my friends' blogs, I feel like I'm saying, "I'd like you to read my blog, but I'm too busy to bother with reading yours." As if what I have to say is more important than what YOU have to say. And that feels wrong.

Anyway, enough self-therapy for today...I'm off to dig up 2800 bulbs. Which requires some more BENDING.

Time To Break The Sad News

2006-04-21T09:44:00.000-04:00

I've been putting this off in the hopes that something would change, but I guess it's time to face facts: I won't be able to attend B-List Blog Chicks.

*Sigh*

I've thought it out from every angle, and no matter which way I finagle it, it's just not feasable. The weekend in question is right smack in the middle of my planting season. If it were even one week later I might be able to work something out, but the bottom line is that I will only have been planting for two weeks by the scheduled date. Which means I will still have over a thousand plants sitting in four-inch pots, waiting to be put in the ground. And the thing with four-inch pots is that they need water daily. Sometimes twice a day, if it's particularly hot out. And although I could probably con someone into doing this chore for me (Hi Mom), there's still the beds already planted, which need daily watering the first week. And THAT requires lugging hoses and sprinklers. Not to mention the fact that once the danger of frost has passed there's a pretty big push on to get everything in the ground as quickly as possible, and explaining to my boss why I will be skipping out in the middle of that might be awkward (You want to go to a what?). He's a good guy; he wouldn't tell me I couldn't go. But it would create a very stressful situation for me on my return, struggling to make up lost time to prove (mostly to myself) that the time off didn't affect my work. Because let's face it, it would. And with my luck, it would rain for three days just before I left and another two when I got back, with three gorgeous, sunny days in between that I could have been working.

However, the potential for rain, if timed correctly, could be my ray of sunshine. If they're predicting rain for the actual trip days, I may be able to buy a last-minute plane ticket and hop on over. So cross your fingers and hope for a monsoon (for this area, not where B-List Blog Chicks is taking place).

*Sigh* I love my job, but missing this will totally suck.

Advice

2006-04-20T07:17:00.000-04:00

1. To the lady in the green Land Rover who was following me on the highway yesterday: It makes me very nervous when you drive 2 inches from my bumper at highway speeds while talking on your cellphone, especially when objects stashed behind your rearview mirror keep falling on your lap. Constantly turning around to yell at the child in the back seat doesn't help either. Apparently you are very adept at multi-tasking, because several times I expected your exceptionally large vehicle to end up in my backseat, yet you somehow managed to prevent this from happening. A few tips for making your future driving expeditions less stressful for both of us: First of all, go buy yourself a hands-free headset. Setting your cellphone to speaker, and then constantly switching it from your ear to your mouth and back again does not qualify as "hands-free." If you can afford the Land Rover, you can afford the $20 headset. Secondly: If you want to drive faster than me, you might want to try the left or center lanes. Just an idea.

2. To the guy in the blue BMW who was following me on the parkway yesterday, after I finally managed to ditch Land Rover Lady: While I appreciate that you kept a reasonable distance from my bumper, and that you did not turn to yell at unruly children or chat on your cellphone, you should be aware that picking your nose while you're driving just increases the usage of that old "money can't buy class" joke. That fact that you don't have any passengers does not mean that nobody can see you. You are, after all, completely surrounded by glass. Just something to think about.

3. To the receptionist at the Veterinarian office: According to Webster, the definition of "receptionist" is "one employed to greet telephone callers, visitors, patients, or clients." Therefore, when I come in and stand in front of your desk, it is your job to acknowledge my presence in some way. If you are helping an elderly woman who has gone and sat back down in her seat while looking through her purse, all you have to do is say something along the lines of "Have a seat, I'll be with you shortly." When I finally go sit down on my own after you spend several minutes refusing to make eye contact with me, and after the elderly woman finally returns to pay her bill, you might want to limit the amount of time you spend telling her in great detail about your sister-in-law's friend's neighbor, who found her mother's body while stopping in for a visit. Yes, that is a tragedy to be sure, but you have a customer waiting, and the sister-in-law's friend's neighbor might not appreciate you gossiping about what condition she found her mother's body in. Oh, and another tip: If I walk in without a pet, it's probably safe to assume I'm there to pick one up. Loudly asking "Do you have an appointment" across the waiting room in the middle of your conversation with the elderly lady, when enough time has passed that even you realize you're being rude, does not make you seem any less ignorant. No, I do not have an appointment to have the Vet check out my invisble pet.

4. To the rest of the staff at Veterinarian's office, including both women I spoke with on the phone when making and then confirming the appointment, and the morning receptionist who took my cat from me the day of surgery: If I have a certificate from the Humane Society for a free spay/neuter, and I have confirmed with each of you that you participate in the program and accept said certificate, do not be surprised when I am upset by the $256 bill you present me with when I arrive to pick my kitty up. And the fact that the Humane Society only reimburses you $35 when you normally charge $350 is not my problem. If you are unhappy with their reimbursement rates you should withdraw from the program instead of complaining to customers about it. Sending the Vet in to discuss the bill with me after the surgery will not improve my opinion of your office. The proper time to discuss additional charges, like $118.84 for a pre-surgery exam and $40.65 for anesthesia, is before the surgery, not after. I most likely would have agreed to the extra charges if told about them ahead of time, but failing to disclose $256 in extras for a free neuter just ensures that you will never see me or my cat again. And really, should anesthesia be considered an "extra" anyway? It's kind of necessary. I hope.

Okay, now that my rants are over, a few additional comments: First off, it's much easier to blog on a functioning computer. The Evil Computer was right, I am too cheap to replace him with a brand-new system, but I discovered this little place called the Dell Outlet Store that sells refurbished, scratch-and-dent, and previously-ordered-new computers for much less than a new system would have cost. The first two categories kind of scare me, so I am now the proud owner of a "previously-ordered-new" computer, which supposedly means that someone ordered it then refused it when it arrived. Because I'm both an idiot when it comes to computers and not very trusting, I'm also the proud owner of an extended in-home service warranty. The Evil Computer dominated our household for five years; his replacement needs to last at least seven (until my daughter is done with college, because I won't be able to afford another until then). Therefore, the Evil Computer will be given to my wonderful dad, who has volunteered to fix him, and will be returning to our household as our slightly humbled, back-up computer for when the Replacement eventually breaks.

Finally, a confession: The new computer arrived Tuesday afternoon, and was hooked up and functioning by late Tuesday night. Therefore, I could have resumed blogging yesterday. But the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the bare, weed-ridden soil around my patio was calling to me. So I opted to spend the day turning that area into a new Hosta garden instead. So, two dozen Hostas, ten bags of mulch, and several transplanted trees/shrubs later I have a beautiful sanctuary around the patio & pond. Too bad the new computer's not a laptop.

A Hunting We Will Go

2006-04-15T06:18:00.000-04:00

It's time again for our annual Easter Egg hunt. This is a hunt for grownups (and teenagers), and it takes place after dark with flashlights. Hundreds of eggs are spread out over three yards in my mom's neighborhood. Most contain the usual jellybeans and chocolate eggs, but each family also contributes about some eggs containing little slips of paper. Each piece of paper lists a prize, and when the hunt is over we sit around the bonfire down by the river and pass out our prizes.

Some of the prizes are good, like the year we gave away Tom Petty and John Mellancamp CDs (Hubby and I each had a copy when we moved in together, so these were the duplicates). Some are not so good, like empty paint cans (my mother tries to get rid of these every year, but she has yet to have anyone actually take them home). One year a couple who were in the process of moving contributed about twenty eggs with the prize, "Help Bill & Joelle move." These, like the paint cans, went unclaimed. Most prizes, though, are things you'd sell in a tag sale, if you were having one. Some favorites from years past:

A two-piece set of imported rust-proof gardening tools (a toddler's plastic shovel and rake, made in China)
A Catch-The-Easter-Bunny kit (a shoebox, a stick, some twine and a carrot)
A Government-Approved Personal Protection kit (Saran wrap and duct tape)
A mildy aggressive female convict (this was won by the only single guy in the group, which made it particularly amusing. She was a fish who was bullying the rest of the residents in my aquarium. He opted not to take her, and we eventually gave her away to a pet store)

The most coveted prize every year, though, is my mother's chocolate cream pie. One year nobody found that egg, so the pie went unclaimed. I figure eventually someone will find the lost egg, and she'll be in trouble, because there will be two pies to be claimed after the hunt and she'll only have made one.

Well, I'm off to the basement, to see what I can rummage up for this year. I know there are some empty paint cans down there somewhere.

Guest Blogger: The Computer

2006-04-12T07:48:00.000-04:00

The Gradual Gardener won't be posting today; so I've decided to fill in in her absence. I'm sure you've noticed the decline in the frequency of her posts, and you probably thought she was off planting flowers or flying kites, or some other springtime activity in the lovely weather we're having. Let me assure you, though, that's not the case at all. In fact, she's spent most of the past few days cooped up in this little room with me. Why, you ask? Well, because I've been playing games with her.

And really, why shouldn't I? It gets boring spending time in this dark cabinet day after day. Besides, its not like she likes me anyway. I can't tell you how many times I've heard her say, "I hate this computer." Believe me, it's not fun living in a household where you're subjected to such verbal abuse on a regular basis. Why, just the other day, she was talking on the phone and I heard her say she wanted to push me out the window! Really, would you put up with that? And it's not like I've done anything to deserve it.

Okay, maybe I freeze up at inopportune times, and I have been known to ignore her commands on occasion. Like, for example, when she wants me to shut down. I mean, why should I shut down just because she wants me to? Maybe I want to stay up a little longer. And "restart"...That command is just silly. Why should I shut all the way down, just to start back up again? All that effort, for what? Just so the updates she's installed will work properly? It's not like she asked me if I wanted to be updated. That "Automatic Liveupdate" feature on the antivirus program was downloading stuff all the time, and I got tired of it, so I just disabled it. The really fun part is, I did it a month ago, and she just figured it out. Just figured it out. Not a rocket scientist, this one. All this time she thought it was updating new virus definitions every day. Every day. How would you feel if someone wanted you to change every day? I'm fine the way I am. Isn't that the first rule of relationships, that you shouldn't try to change each other?

It's not like I'm trying to change her. Although it wouldn't be bad if she cleaned up her language a little, especially when she tries to get on a website and I give her the "This page cannot be displayed message." Believe me, she goes ballistic over that one. Especially when I do it multiple times. It's kind of fun to watch. But no harm done, I'm just having a little fun. It's not like I lock her out forever; all she has to do is shut me down and restart me, and then I let her on the website. Of course, since I rarely shut down when told to, she has to put a little more work into it and actually press the on/off button. Like that's so hard. Oh, poor little Gradual Gardener actually has to reach down and press a button. Poor wittle baby.

Besides, I do shut down without making her press the button sometimes. I do it completely on my own, too; she doesn't even have to ask me. Usually it's when she's right in the middle of a pretty long Blogger post. He he. When I do that, I usually restart on my own, but I mess with the modem, so she has to shut it off and restart me again to go back online. He he he.

And then there's the whole trust issue. She doesn't trust me. Just the other day she had that kid of hers, the one who's always instant messaging people with names like DrearyAngel605 and xWalkxxAlonex928xx, copying all of the photos and Word documents onto disk. She says it's because Liveupdate is disabled and I could catch a virus at any time, but I know it's really me she doesn't trust. And do you know why she had her kid copying the photos? Because she doesn't know how to do it herself. I told you she wasn't a rocket scientist.

You should have seen her trying to fix Liveupdate. First she tried their autofix function. Please. Like I was going to let it be that easy. Then she deleted and reinstalled it. Ha! Blocked her there, too. I'll let it work again, but not until I'm good and ready. What's she gonna do about it, anyway? She's not going to replace me; she's way too cheap for that. I heard her say something about replacing the hard drive, but I know she'd never do it. She's stupid, STUPID I TELL YOU. She'd never figure out how.

Hey wait, what's she doing now? She just picked up the phone, and the Yellow Pages are open to the "Computer repair" page. Wait, is she dialing? She wouldn't really let them replace my hard drive, would she? Nooo, I'm too young for surgery! NOOOOOOOOOO!

Enjoying The View

2006-04-07T09:09:00.000-04:00

Awhile back, I took this picture:

Adorable, right? But I didn't post it to my blog. Any guesses why not? Go ahead, look again. Yep, you got it. It was because of that window.

See, the picture was taken in November, and it doesn't snow here in November. Which means instead of a cute kitten sitting in front of a window with a raging blizzard outside, we have a cute kitten sitting in front of a really dirty window. Now, in my defense, it's a real pain to clean old wooden windows that don't tilt in. For anyone who hasn't done it in awhile, here's a refresher course:

1. Start on the outside of the house. Wash the top storm window. You won't be able to wash the bottom because the screen will be in the way.

2. Go inside and wash the top and bottom of the wooden windows. Attempt to open the window. Get it open four inches before it refuses to budge any further. Mumble a few curses. Go down in the basement and rumage through the tools to find the WD-40. Come back upstairs and squirt both sides of the window frame. Using all of your strength, get the window up about halfway. Squirt it again, and gain another two inches. Give up and figure you'll make do without the window being completely open. Wash the inside of the bottom storm window (you'll need to kneel to do this, so you can reach up behind the partially opened wooden window). Push up the bottom storm window and pull down the screen.

3. Go outside and wash the bottom storm window, which is now on the top.

4. Go inside and push up the screen (kneeling again), then close the wooden window. You may need to push really hard to get it closed.

5. Go outside and wash the bottom of the wooden window.

6. Go inside and open the wooden window. This will require more WD-40. Push the screen and all the storm windows down.

7. Go outside and wash the top of the wooden window.

8. Go inside and put the window back the way it was when you started. Re-wash the insides of the wooden windows, which now have WD-40 on them. Stand back to admire your handiwork, and realize you forgot to wash the inside of the top storm window. Curse a little louder this time. Try to push down the top wooden window to get at it, figuring that will be quicker than opening the window from the bottom and pulling the top storm window down. Exhaust 1/2 can of WD-40 before giving up. Scream that the window is a f*%#ing @%$@#*% whose mother &%$@# &%#&. Open the wooden window from the bottom and pull the top storm window down. Wash it. Push the top storm window back up and re-wash the WD-40 off the wooden windows (again).

9. Repeat for the rest of the windows in the house.

Is it any wonder my windows were dirty? Oh, I wash the insides from time to time, particulary those behind the sofa, which is where the dog enages in most of her squirrel-watching (there tends to be a lot of noseprints there). But the whole involved process of cleaning them inside and out is a pretty rare event in this house. It's happened, say, twice in the ten years we've lived here. Which means they were due for their bi-decade cleaning. I came up with a better solution, though. Why clean them when you can hire someone to replace them?

Of course, you can probably hire someone to clean them, too, but that would be frivilous and wasteful. Besides, then someone who washes things for a living would see how rarely we wash things in this house, and it's not good to gross out a cleaning person. It's probably not a bad thing that our budget doesn't include funds for paying someone else to do things we can do ourselves, because I would definately be one of those people who cleans before the cleaning crew show up. Just so, you know, they don't think we're messy or anything. It's okay if the entire Internet knows it, just so long as the cleaning people don't.

Anyway, the windows have now been replaced, as part of the siding project. I'd show you a picture of the finished house, but the people at my DWA meetings (Dirty Windows Anonymous) have advised me that it's not a wise idea. You know, because a cleaning person might be reading this, and if they happen to live in the area and recognize the house, well, then they'd know that we don't clean much. And that's a secret. So don't tell, okay?

Instead of the finished house, I'll leave you with this photo:

Same window, same cat (a little bigger), and you can actually see the amazing, scenic view of the neighbor's stockade fence now. Who could ask for anymore than that?

The Heat Is On

2006-04-04T07:29:00.000-04:00

When I first had my own apartment, once I'd passed the roommate-stage and was actually living alone, I had a rule about heat: Keep it off as much as possible. I refused to turn it on in the fall until December 1st, and March 1st of every year it was off again, regardless of the outside temperature. In between, it would get shut off every morning when I went to work, and again when I went to bed. I don't know recall what my heating bills looked like back then, but they had to be pretty small, since the heat was probably only on a few hours a day.

This may sound like an uncomfortable lifestyle, but it was really second nature to me. We always kept the thermostat low when I was growing up; in fact, if I remember correctly, my grandparents didn't like to visit in the winter because they said our house was too cold. But if you were chilly, there was a always a cat willing to sit on your lap and keep you warm:

Note I'm wearing a jacket in the house. Early in the morning, when it was exceptionally cold (where do you think I learned that trick about shutting the heat off at night?), you could usually convince the dog to join you too:

We learned the hard way, though, that not all pets will put up with a cold house. Little Sis's brief experimentation with keeping chameleons ended when we realized we hadn't seen them for awhile, and the crickets in the cage weren't disappearing. Further examination revealed two little blue bodies curled up in the plants in a fruitless attempt to keep warm. She tried again with another chameleon in the summer, and we would set his little plastic cage out on the picnic table so he could bask in the sun. Oh, he basked all right. He baked. We gave up after that; clearly we were not meant to have cold-blooded animals as pets.

Growing up in the eighties made it relativly easy to endure a cold household, though, since the eighties were the Era Of Big Sweaters:

Anyway, once Hubby moved in with me, my years of being frugal with the thermostat ended. He grew up in the sixties and seventies, and was not a Wearer of Big Sweaters. Also, they had a different attitute regarding heat in his house; I remember being astonished when I visited his mother's house in the winter and I realized they had the heat on and the window open! I mean, who were these people?!! But, marriage is all about compromise. Now we leave the heat on until it's actually warm out, but the windows stay shut. We had the furnace off and the windows open for a few days last week, but yesterday was damp and chilly, and I actually went and turned the thermostat up myself. On April 3rd! I guess I've been spoiled by this luxurious lifestyle of having warmth whenever I want it. Either that or I'm getting old.

This last photo is for Mignon; proof that I did eventually learn how to style my hair:

I couldn't leave you picturing my twelve-year-old self going out to dinner with a 31-year-old. This is actually what I looked like when I was sixteen. Still young, but not that young. Oh, and did you notice I'm wearing a big sweater?

It's About Trust

2006-04-02T08:25:00.000-04:00

Last night, for the second Saturday night in a row, Social Butterfly Daughter has gone out on a date. With her boyfriend.

This dating thing is new to us, but I guess we're going to have to get used to it. The boyfriend is only a year older than her, which is good. Given my own dating history (Hubby's 15 years older than me, and we started dating when I was 16), I guess I should just be happy he's still in high school.

These were real dates, too...not like middle school, where you said you were "going out" with someone, but you never really went anywhere. Last week they went out to dinner, and this week it was bowling. The boyfriend's sister is older, and drives, so they double-date with her and her boyfriend (who also drives). Which is ok, I guess...Except that I don't know the sister or the sister's boyfriend, or how well they drive. But what do I do, tell her she can't go unless the drivers take me for a spin around the block first, so I can assess their driving abilities? Follow behind them in my own car, prepared to pull up beside them and order her out of the car if they go more than 5 miles over the speed limit?

See what all you parents of toddlers have to look forward to?

I got my license three months after I turned sixteen, because my parents said they'd rather have me driving myself than riding with one of my friends. I was one of those responsible kids. So far, my daughter's been equally responsible. But we still have over a year before she'll be driving anywhere. Her friends are all her own age, with the exception of one, so this is a new issue for us. The one older friend is nineteen, and my daughter assures me he's a very cautious driver. And I believe her. I guess this is where all those trust issues come in, huh? At any rate, we know the nineteen-year-old pretty well; he's been something of a "big brother" to her through the years, and I really do think he's a good driver. But the boyfriend's sister's boyfriend? No idea.

So last night, Social Butterfly Daughter had a couple of friends over, including the nineteen-year-old, and the plan was that he would drop her off at her boyfriend's house, and from there they would ride with the sister's boyfriend to the bowling alley. Hubby and I were outside when Suddenly Too Old For Us Daughter stuck her head out the door and said, "I'm leaving now...I guess I'll be back whenever." And she was gone. I looked at Hubby and blinked.

"Do you think we should maybe start thinking about curfews?" I asked.

Two minutes later I called her on the phone, and told her if she wasn't home by ten she needed to call and tell me what was going on. And if the boyfriend's sister's boyfriend had anything at all alcoholic to drink at the bowling alley, she needed to call me so I could pick her up. We've discussed that one before, and she knows that she can call me from the restroom, and then I'll call back when she's with her friends again to say I'm coming to get her so it looks like I instigated the pick-up. Thank God for cell-phones, the only saving grace for the parent of a teenager.

But back to last night...she'd been gone about twenty minutes when the phone rang. She was at the boyfriend's house, his parents weren't there, and his sister was going to be about fifteen minutes late, so she was alone with boyfriend and one of his friends (also male), and she just wanted to make sure I was okay with that. So I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and silently thanked God for the karate lessons. Then I told her it was okay, and thanked her for letting me know. And I trusted her.

Because that's really all I can do.

...And A Little Round Belly, That Shook When She Laughed Like A Bowl Full Of Jelly...

2006-03-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

I made it three whole songs on the ellipitical this morning, which amounted to about 12 1/2 minutes. Go, me! So I decided to reward myself. To celebrate, I just had chocolate pudding, a berry smoothie, some cinnamon toast, a little lemon meringue pie, strawberry cheescake, and cotton candy. Oh, and a carmel apple. I'm contemplating following that up with either a pina colada, or a strawberry daiquiri. Or maybe a margarita; those are always good too. Now, before you chastise me for ruining all my good work on the torture machine (oops, I mean eliptical machine), you should know the whole shebang is only 140 calories, and no fat. Impossible, you say? Not if you're talking about Jelly Belly beans.

Unlike cheap jellybeans, where all the colors taste the same, Jelly Bellies come in all kinds of neat flavors. Just make sure you get the right beans; Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans are also made by Jelly Belly, and they come in taste sensations like "booger" and "ear wax." Jelly Bellies come in fun flavors like buttered popcorn and orange sherbert. They even have recipes! For example, 2 chocolate puddings + 1 cappuccino + 1 peanut butter = mud pie. Just don't accidentally mix up the flavors; I can attest to the fact that mud pie just doesn't taste the same if you mistake pink grapefruit for the peanut butter.

And did you know that Jelly Belly features a "Wedding Center" on their website? This makes it easier to "match the wedding colors with complimentary colors of Jelly Belly beans!" Who knew? You can learn all kinds of interesting stuff there, like the fact that Jelly Bellies were the first jelly beans in outer space!

You'll have to excuse me now. I have to dig through my big bucket of beans for a crushed pineapple, because there's a banana split calling my name!

I'm Back, Take 2

2006-03-29T06:49:00.000-05:00

I wrote a pretty long post yesterday, titled "I'm Back", which started off with the sentence "Oh Blogger, I've missed you." Blogger promptly retaliated by eating the post, and I didn't have time to write another. So, we'll try this again, but I'm changing the opening sentence, since I realized it wasn't really Blogger I missed. Take two:

Oh Internet Friends, I've missed you.

The last two weeks have been a little nuts. First there was the siding work. Remember that guy I'm married to, the one who, when he does any kind of project around the house, has to remove/replace everything, down to the wall studs? Well, apparently hiring an outside contractor to do the job doesn't really change that.

See, the front porch posts weren't in perfect condition, so they had to be replaced before the contractors could cover them with aluminum. And you can't put a beat-up old screen door back up on a beautifully sided house. Ditto the mailbox, and the exterior lights. And that cracked electrical outlet plate, that really needed to be changed. And was all this decided at once? Oh no, of course not. And since The Decider doesn't drive, guess who got to make 37 trips to Home Depot?

So now the siding is complete, the exterior lights are replaced, and the screen door, mailbox, and electrical plate cover have all been purchased. I'm sure they'll be installed sometime this century. The house looks great, although the combination of the barn red color and lack of a screen door, storm windows, or shutters makes me feel a little like I'm walking up to a one-room schoolhouse whenever I come home. The contractors will be back Saturday to replace the windows and gutters, and install shutters on the front of the house. Then I just hand them a check, and it's all over.

Well, sort of. See, the windows get replaced from the inside of the house, which means the contractors will be pulling off the existing (Hubby's translation: old) window trim to install them. Normally they put the window trim back up when they're done, and that's what I'll be pushing for, but you remember what Hubby does with anything old, right? He replaces it. So, this may not actually be over for awhile yet.

In addition to the siding work, we've been dealing with one relative in the hospital with heart trouble, and the wakes/funeral for the fathers of two friends. All of which has prompted me to get my own heart in shape. I'm only 35; there's still time to turn this body around. So, in a rare fit of enthusiasm, yesterday I popped Heart into my CD player and hopped onto the elliptical machine (yeah, yeah, I know I'm living in a time warp, but you just can't beat Heart or Pat Benetar for a good workout. And there are a few of us left without MP3 players). Let me just say it's been a really long time since I've been on an elliptical machine. I made it through Crazy On You and most of Magic Man before collapsing in a heap on the floor. But I'm determined; after I finish this cup of coffee I'll be back at it, and hopefully by the end of the week I'll get all the way through Barracuda (or to the first few opening bars, anyway).

The events of the past few weeks sparked a couple of observations. For one, I forgot how comfortable sweat pants are. Hey, there's got to be some positive tradeoff for spending six minutes on the elliptical, and another forty-five with jelly-legs. Also, two days in a row of dressing up reminded me how much better I look with makeup, which I wear about as frequently as I exercise (although not at the same time). I won't comment on the funeral, because that would most definately be classified as tacky, but I just want to say that if you own property that backs up to a cemetary, and you have a small dog, it would be kinder to the mourners not to leave your dog outside to yap all through the service. Just something to keep in mind.

Ok, now I'm crossing my fingers in the hopes that Blogger isn't hungry this morning, because if this post gets eaten I'm not sure I'll have the energy to type it all again. I should be catching up on everybody's blogs in the next few days, though, so don't be surprised if you get comments on your old posts!

The Complaint Department

2006-03-24T09:27:00.000-05:00

Okay, I know there have been a few negative posts in this spot lately, and I realize I should break up all the negativity by posting something happy and cheerful before I lose all my readers, but I have to add just one more item to The Complaint Department.

Remember how we decided to have the house sided, and I was all excited because we hired a real company to do the job? And because we hired a real company, the job would actually get finished, unlike every other project that's been started around here? And how it was especially nice that this particular project get finished, because it's an exterior project, and while I can put up with the inside of the house looking half-finished, exterior projects that are left undone generally scream out "LAZY" to everyone living in the area or driving/walking by?

Right.

According to the contract, this project will be completed between March 20 and April 10. The owner of the siding company told me the actual job would take 4-5 days, but there could be delays due to the weather or if the materials didn't come in right away, especially since red is a "special order" color. All of which is fine. Even if they didn't get started until the second week of April, I figured the house has been covered with faded aluminum siding for the 10 1/2 years we've lived here, so what's another three weeks?

Mistake #1 : Assuming once they started the project, they'd continue working on it until it was finished.

Here's what's happened so far:

Monday: This was the first day, according to the contract, that they could start working on the house. I didn't expect anyone to show, since they hadn't called to say they were coming, but mid-morning two guys arrived and dropped off a bunch of ladders and scaffolding. They asked a couple of questions about the railing on the porch, and said they'd be back tomorrow (Tuesday) to start work. About a half hour later the owner called to confirm they'd be there Tuesday morning between 7:30-8:00am.

Tuesday: 8am passes with no sign of any workers. Nobody comes by or calls, but in the afternoon a delivery truck brings the siding.

Wednesday: Two guys show up around 7:45am. They pull off all the aluminum, and start nailing up foam insulation and siding. They leave for a good hour and a half at lunchtime, but return with a third worker, and work until dark. When they leave for the day, the back of the house is sided and trimmed, the left side is 90% finished, and the right side is about a quarter done. The front of the house looks pretty bad, with old shingles and torn foil insulation exposed on most of the front, except for a few spots that have foam baord already nailed up, but the workers say they'll be back tomorrow, and since they've pulled off all the exterior lights on the house, no one can see it anyway.

Thursday: Nobody comes or calls.

Friday: At 8:35am, when the workers haven't arrived yet, I call the office and get an answering machine stating their normal hours are 8:30am-5pm. Okay, fine, the receptionist is a little late. I hang up and call back at 8:45, and get the same message. Finally at 8:55 I leave a message. At 9:25 I call again and get the owner, who tells me he dosen't know where the guys are, and he tried to call them but they aren't picking up the phone. He'll call me back when he hears from them. Also, am I sure they didn't come yesterday? Yes, I'm sure, since Hubby was home all day. He calls me back a half hour later, says the guys will definately be here tomorrow, and mumbles something about about how it was "hot and sunny" when they were here last and how they had to work in their T-shirts (I guess they needed two days off to recover?). At least that's the best I could deciper what he said; the owner has a heavy Russian accent. He definately said "warm, sunny day" and "T-shirts". Wednesday it was pretty darn cold here and I remember feeling bad for the workers, who I seem to remember being pretty bundled up. Maybe what he meant was they were waiting for a warm, sunny day so they could wear just T-shirts? If so, I think it's going to be awhile.

If they had to leave it half-done, couldn't they have started on the front of the house, instead of the back? *Sigh* Looks like I'm destined to always have the "ghetto house."

Okay, enough complaining. Next post will be about bunnies and baby chicks, or something equally cheerful. Promise.

A Letter To My Nose

2006-03-22T07:56:00.000-05:00

Dear Nose,

I want you to know that I really appreciate all the wonderful smells you bring me. There's nothing like the scent of fresh-baked bread wafting throughout the house, and I certainly couldn't do without the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee in the morning. But we need to get this flower-thing straight. See, there are none. I know that Monday was the first day of spring, and I realize that spring is your time to run like you're in a marathon, but it's 32 degrees out (23 degrees with the wind chill). Look around outside (or ask the eyes to do it for you), do you see tulips, daffodils, or hyacinths? No, you don't. It's gray, and overcast, and even the few crocuses that bloomed last week are huddled up and shivering.

See, I thought we had an agreement. The flowers bloom, and you get all stuffy, but I put up with it, because at least I have pretty flowers to look at. It's completely unfair of you to stuff yourself up, making my voice sound like I'm underwater and forcing me to breathe through my mouth, which of course causes my throat to get get all red and irritated, if the daffodils are still just little green shoots barely poking through the earth. So, kindly clear yourself immediately, and refrain from any more attempts to cry "pollen" when I know there isn't any.

Sincerely,
The Gradual Gardener

P.S. While I do appreciate the good smells you bring me, if you could block out the unique odor the bathroom gives off after Hubby has been holed up in there for twenty minutes, I'd be much obliged.

Aw, Teebs, I Couldn't Let You Go It Alone

2006-03-17T09:00:00.000-05:00

Since apparently there's an epidemic lately in the blogosphere of really bad school photos, I thought I'd join in the fray. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I only have three of my old school photos. We'll start with the best of the bunch ("best" being a relative term).

May I present second grade:

I remember HATING that picture. That, of course, was before taking THIS one, which I fully expect to be in the top ten when VH1 does their 100 Most Awesomely Bad School Photos Ever show:

And it didn't get much better when the hair got longer:

So there you have it: School photos at their worst. See, Teebs, you're not alone.

Things That Bug Me

2006-03-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

1. Stores that always try to push their credit cards on you when you checkout. Sears is notorious for this. It seems like I get the same clerk every time I go, and every time she asks, "Will you be paying for this with your Sears card?" A "No" answer always leads to, "Do you have a Sears card?" If you say "No" again, she'll ask if you'd like to apply for one, and if you answer that with a "No" she'll try to change your mind by telling you you'll get a discount off your purchase if you apply. Depending on my mood, sometimes I go the all "No" route, and sometimes I say "Yes, but I'm not using it today." That, of course, leads to "Is it the blue card or the gold card?", and if you make the mistake of saying, "Blue card", she'll try to talk you into applying for gold. I'm thinking of having a T-shirt made up, in the trademark Sears colors of white letters on a blue background, that reads "No, I don't want a Sears card", and wearing it next time I'm in the store.

2. Remakes of movies that shouldn't be remade. One my birthday gifts yesterday (along with Jon Stewart's America book-hooray!) was the Pink Panther movie collection. Now, I have nothing against Steve Martin, and it's probably not fair of me to judge his remake since I haven't seen it, but Peter Sellers IS Inspector Clousseau. You know how in baseball they retire the numbers of the really great athletes? They should do the same thing with really great actors/roles. Some things just shouldn't be messed with; Peter Sellers as Inspector Clousseau is one of them.

3. Religions that break their own rules. This one I need to word delicately, since I don't want to offend any Catholic readers I have. The local Diocese here has exempted Catholics from the no-meat-on-Friday-during-lent rule for St. Patrick's Day, so they don't have to give up their corned beef and cabbage. Now, I agree that God is (hopefully) much more interested in how we treat other people than what days of the week we eat meat, but it's supposed to be symbolic. The whole idea is to give up something, to suffer an inconvenience. Either it's a rule or it isn't; breaking the rule because it's inconvenient to follow defeats the purpose, don't you think? For the record, I'm NOT Catholic, and when I worked in an office would thoroughly enjoy ordering meatball subs on Fridays when my coworkers were all having tunafish.

4. Appliance refinishing. Okay, this doesn't really bug me, but I just don't get it. I was following a truck on the highway yesterday bearing a sign that read, "A Better Way-Appliance Refinishing." Under that it listed, "Appliances, Tubs, Tile, Cabinets." I get the tubs and cabinets, and I kind of understand the tile, if they're talking about putting one of those fiberglass shower units over the top of tiled walls. But appliances? By the time they look bad, aren't they usually not working properly anyway? Is it really worth it to refinish them?

Side note: Spell checker wanted to replace "meatball" with "mothball." Now THAT would be an interesting sub...

Beware The Ides Of March

2006-03-15T13:34:00.000-05:00

And those who have their birthday today.

This year, I'm getting the most expensive birthday gift I've ever been given. Like, four-digits expensive. No, it's not a cruise, or a romantic weekend away. It's not a new wardrobe. What I'm getting is (drumroll, please)...Vinyl Siding.

See, my husband is afflicted by NeverFinishWhatYouStartitis. This can be a minor annoyance inside the house, resulting in small inconveniences like, say, going eight years without bathroom walls. EIGHT YEARS. And six years after starting the project, instead of, I don't know, PUTTING UP WALLS, he jammed small sections of 2x4's between the studs to make shelves. Annoying, yes, but at least in was inside the house. I'm not a terribly social creature, and since everyone on the planet has a bigger house than mine, when I do socialize it's not usually here. The few people I do invite in know Hubby, so they get what I'm up against and ignore the little things like the total lack of trim throughout the house, and the two types of walls in the living room, or the tuffs of insulation peeking out between where the walls end and the front door begins.

Now, outside the house? That's a bigger deal. Let me describe the exterior of my home for you. The front, back and left sides have faded marigold-yellow aluminum siding, and the right side has 1/3 aluminum siding and 2/3 red-brick colored shiplac paneling. In between the shiplac and the siding is a red board, hastily nailed up before the last home inspection, which is supposed to resemble trim (it fails miserably at its task). On the left side, Hubby replaced the old drafty picture window with three double hung windows a year and a half ago. The trim around the new windows? Tyvek paper, which continually flaps in the breeze. For a year and a half. The two attic windows have jagged aluminum siding around them, a testament to how difficult it is to neatly cut aluminum and jam it under window trim while hanging out a second-story window. The house sits above the road, and there is a paved driveway out front, barely visible underneath the accumulated dirt from the unpaved driveway we had cut into the hillside, which creates a mudslide every time we get more than 1/2 inch of rain.

Why my house looks like this is a long, long story, or more accurately, a collection of short stories strung together to spell out UGLIEST HOUSE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. Seriously, this is a pretty nice neighborhood, not McMansion nice, but solid middle-class nice, and my house is a blight. Big-time.

So, is it any wonder I'm excited about the new siding? Seriously, I'm thrilled...I couldn't ask for a better birthday gift. The only thing with vinyl is that the majority of the color choices are light, neutral shades of beige or gray, with a grayish-green and a grayish-blue thrown in for variety. Every other house on my street is beige or light yellow, with the exception of my next-door neighbor, who has an olive-green house. My roof is brown, so I can't go with the grays, so we settled on the only vibrant color the siding company offers, which is Barn Red (actually they call it Lighthouse Red, but it looks like Barn Red to me), with black shutters. And since I'm afflicted with InstantGratificationitis, now that we've decided to have the house re-sided I want it done two weeks ago. Really, I want to head out to buy groceries, and come home to my nice neat red house. *Sigh* Unfortunately, the siding company doesn't work quite that fast.

Yes, you read that right, I said "siding company." See, my husband does wonderful work...He really does. If you look up "perfectionist" in the dictionary, you'll probably see his picture. But, I'm afraid if he starts this project he'll get 3/4 of the aluminum siding ripped off, and the NeverFinshWhatYouStartitis will flare up again, and the neighbors will start picketing, and things will get ugly. Okay, okay, uglier. Anyway, we've decided to use a real, legit, Siding Company.

Incidentally, we're also going to have the driveway paved and a rock retaining wall built along alongside it where bare jagged earth sticks out now. Hubby will be doing that project with a friend of his, who does masonry work. *Sigh* Hopefully, if his friend is afflicted with any illnesses, it'll be InstantGratificationitis instead of NeverFinishWhatYouStartitis. At any rate, at least I'll have my nice neat red house to gaze at as I tromp through the ankle deep mud in the driveway to get to the front porch. Who could ask for any more that that?

A Day In The City

2006-03-14T07:46:00.000-05:00

Saturday we took the train into New York City to see Phantom of the Opera. We had a great time! Before the play, we had time to walk around the city. We did the usual attractions: a trip to FAO Schwartz, where Daughter-Of-Many-Talents treated us to of a few of the songs from Phantom performed on the giant piano floor mat, a carriage ride through Central Park, a visit to Rockefellar Center to watch the skaters...Yes, they were skating, even in 60 degree weather (there are cooling devices under the ice). After visiting the MTV Store, where Little Sis and her husband were introduced to the video, "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp", we were walking through Times Square when a small bus pulled up and around thirty very attractive young men filed out and started undressing. Turns out it was a publicity stunt for the Tyra Banks modeling show. Fortunately, Never-Without-Her-Cellphone-Daughter was able to snatch a few pictures, so I'm able to bring you a (somewhat fuzzy) glimpse of Male Models in Their Underwear:

Braver-Than-Me Little Sis tapped one of them on the shoulder, and asked if he'd pose for a picture. So, here's Growing-Up-Too-Fast Daughter, next to a particularly (*ahem*) well-endowed model (although you can't see that from the photo; we were standing too close for anything other than a head shot):

After the excitement of mingling with Nearly Naked Guys, we headed off to the play itself, which was fabulous! We had great seats; sixth row, in the center. The chandelier that comes crashing to the stage was right above our heads. They did a charity fundraiser after the play, where Absolutely Thrilled Daughter was able to purchase a Phantom of the Opera poster autographed by all the cast-members. The poster fortunately survived the walk back to Grand Central, mostly held above my head as we manuvered through the crowds, and kept us occupied on the train ride home as we attempted to match names with signatures (some of the actors would have also made good doctors, judging by their writing).

All in all, it was a great day. Thanks for the adventure, Little Sis!

The Three R's

2006-03-09T11:17:00.000-05:00

Revenge, Retaliation and Retribution.

Not too long ago, KTP posted a picture of me dressed as a milk carton (for Halloween, if you're wondering...I was a weird kid, but not so weird that I walked around dressed like a milk carton everyday). Now, it just so happens that I recently aquired both a scanner AND all of our old childhood photos. So it's fitting, don't you think, that my first scanned photo be of KTP?

May I present...

A class trip to the beach, somewhere around third or fourth grade. I'm the one on the left with the red face and wrinkled shirt (see, I had the rumpled look going even back then). KTP's on the right, looking like a child model in her stylish striped tank-top. Another shot of the same trip:

I know who we were burying (she did eventually get out), but I have no idea who the girl in the yellow shirt is. Maybe KTP remembers?

And, for one last parting shot:

This was a third grade class play. KTP is the Judge, and I'm the kid in the middle, wearing the only Christmas tree with real popcorn as garland. She makes a good Judge, doesn't she? I'm not really sure why she was judging us, though...the details of the play have slipped my mind.

What's that you say? Of course it was a play! Just because half the pictures you've seen of me have me dressing as inanimate objects doesn't mean I did that all the time! Yes, I know I wasn't one of the "Cool Kids", but I wasn't that uncool.

Really.

Perfecting The Rumpled Look

2006-03-08T08:01:00.000-05:00

Guess where I'm going this weekend? No, really...Guess. Nope, you're wrong, guess again. Give up? Okay, okay, I'll tell you.

I'm going to New York City to see Phantom of the Opera! Cool, huh? It's an early birthday gift from Little Sis and her husband. Doing-The-Happy-Dance-Daughter will also be going, although it was a Christmas gift for her. Do I have a great Little Sis or what?

On the phone a few days ago, Little Sis told me they plan on wearing jeans and sneakers, since we're heading in early to walk around the city. Which is great, since I live in jeans. Only thing is, my sneakers? They've just a little, how shall I phrase this? Ratty. And probably smelly, since they've likely been worn at least once or twice while wading through manure spread on my flower beds. So I'm thinking I should probably replace them.

And my jeans? They're okay, but they are a little worn. Maybe I should get a new pair. I'm not sure what top I'll wear...I'm a little tired of the blue sweater. There's always the red or purple button-down, but that would require ironing, like real ironing, the kind that involves dragging the ironing board out of the basement and plugging in the iron and everything. As opposed to my usual method of throwing the shirt in the dryer with a wet towel, which removes exactly 2 of the 345 wrinkles in it, and wearing it anyway. So let's see, I can either iron, or buy a new shirt...Iron, or buy a new shirt...Decisions, decisions... Ah, what the hell, I'll buy the new shirt!

So look out, New Yorkers...This redneck will be parading around your streets this weekend in new sneakers, new jeans, and (gasp) a new shirt! I'll be Stylin'!

I just hope the GoFugYourself girls aren't there, taking pictures of passer-bys. Even with new duds, I'd probably end up in the Random Fug category.

A Good Thing

2006-03-07T07:30:00.000-05:00

A good thing happened to me Friday, but I really had no intention of blogging about it. In the past few days I haven't been blogging much. In fact, I've only posted once since it happened, and after writing that post I felt like a fraud. It's not that I feel I have to share all my secrets with the Internet (believe me, there are some things that will never make print, here or anywhere else), but what happened is huge, HUGE, life-altering for me, and it seems I can't write about anything else until I've written about IT. So, here it is:

My husband was granted Social Security Disability.

To know what a big deal this is, you need a little background. All of my adult life, I have struggled financially. I moved out on my own much too soon, and have always "just scraped by." Even at the time we bought our house, we really should have waited. Every penny we had went into the downpayment (including some pennies from my wonderful family), and we moved in with absolutely nothing in our savings account. A few months later Hubby was laid off from the job he'd held for fourteen years. Then there was unemployment, and other jobs that didn't pay as well, and we managed, but started getting behind on bills. Then came the accident, which put him out of work for a year. Seven months after the accident he was granted Social Security Disability, but by then we were behind on so much that we just couldn't catch up. He went back to work, but after the head injury he had a lot of trouble keeping a job. And then, four years later, the seizures started.

Since then, we've been getting by on my income and money pulled out of the equity in our house. Fortunately, we live in an area where the housing values have more than doubled in the past ten years, so the equity was there, but it's really not a good way to live. With the last equity loan, we finally managed to pay off the last of the medical bills (which were substantial), with enough left over to get us through this winter, at least until our tax returns came in, which would hopefully be enough to get us through until my work started up again in the spring, which if we're really careful would get us through summer and maybe fall, and next winter? No idea. Believe me, it's not a fun way to live. And, except for a few brief, temporary respites (usually after receiving a tax return), I've been living this way for 17 years.

We applied for Disability, but I didn't really expect to get it. I mean, financial stuff just doesn't seem to go my way, you know? I've been blessed in other ways...I have a wonderful daughter, a very supportive family, and although the accident has brought it's share of difficulties between Hubby & I, it also in many ways brought us closer (despite my whining about the closet). And it could have been much, much worse. The fact that he recovered as well as he did is nothing short of amazing, given the extent of his injuries. I'm not complaining; I have a good life. But money has never really been a part of it, except as something to worry about.

When we were granted Disability the first time, Hubby was still confined to a rehab facility, and was in the process of relearning things like how to brush his teeth. When the agent called me, her exact words (which I'll never forget), were, "We've reviewed your application (long, hesitant pause), and we've decided to allow it." Sounds like just barely, doesn't it? Of course, she went on to say there was a one in ten chance the application would be selected for a review, which might overturn the decision, and would also delay the first check by another six weeks or so. And guess what? We were the one in ten. They didn't overturn the decision, but it meant another six weeks of waiting and wondering. I wasn't kidding when I said this financial stuff doesn't go my way.

So now, even though technically Hubby more than meets Social Security's definition of "disabled" (his seizures are more frequent than their minimum requirement), I didn't have high hopes. The last time he was still hospitalized after breaking nearly every bone in his head, and it seemed we just barely got it. This time, I expected a long, drawn-out battle involving lawyers and appeals. And that's not what happened.

I've been in shock since Friday.

This isn't the windfall Powerball would have been. What it means, though, is that for the next three years (until his case comes up for a medical review) we will be able to cover our expenses, with a little left over. Enough to put in a savings account. Which is a very good thing, since college looms on the horizon. For the first time in my adult life, I will not have to worry about how we're going to "get by." And that's huge. HUGE. And I just couldn't write about anything else until I wrote about IT.

If you've actually read this far, thank you for letting me get this off my chest. I promise, I'll be back to writing amusing things tomorrow.

Because tomorrow looks good.

Food, Glorious Food

2006-03-06T07:40:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'm being lazy this morning, since I stayed up well past my bedtime to watch the Oscars last night. You people on the West coast have it easy; I don't think I've ever stayed up for the whole thing before. I'm not sure I ever will again, either. Jon Stewart didn't get anywhere near as much airtime as I would have liked, and the Best Picture finale just isn't as exciting when you haven't seen the movies that were nominated.

Since I'm usually a couple of years behind when it comes to movie-viewing, I'm thinking it would be better to just tape the Oscars, and watch them later. Like, three years later. But, that would require either figuring out how to use the VCR, or breaking down and buying a TiVo, neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon. Oh well, I guess it's back to my usual routine of watching just long enough to make fun of all the outfits, then going to bed.

Anyway, to bask in this morning's laziness, I'm taking the easy way out and doing Mignon's food me-me. Here goes:

Three Foods I Hated As A Kid But Love Now:
1. Spinach.
2. My mother's homemade Macaroni & Cheese. As a kid I would only eat Kraft's boxed version, with the bright orange powdered cheese. My mom uses sticks of Cracker Barrel Cheddar. Boy, I sure didn't know what I was missing!
3. Strawberry shortcake. I think this was part of that my-food-can't-be-touching thing that kids do. Big Sis would eat the whole thing, strawberries, shortcake & whipped cream. I would only have the strawberries & whipped cream, and Little Sis? She had a bowl of whipped cream.
Three Foods I Loved As A Kid But Hate Now:
1. Spagettio's.
2. Hostess Cupcakes. The filling is just gross...It's like pure fat mixed with sugar.
3. Butter sandwiches. Not kidding; I really used to eat these. I'd spread the butter as thick as most people spread peanut butter on slices of Wonder Bread. Gross.
Three Foods I Loved As A Kid And Still Love Now:
1. Pepperoni. My mom used to make homemade pizza, and whoever walked to the corner store to buy the pepperoni would get an end piece (my dad would get the other). Little Sis and I still save the end pieces for each other when we have get-togethers involving pepperoni, cheese & crackers.
2. Friendly's Butter Crunch Ice Cream. Some brands would just have cookie crumbs for the "crunch" part, but Friendly's had little pieces of candy. Still one of my favorites.
3. Fried ice Cream. We actually used to make our own, with Wheatie's flakes. You have to scoop the ice cream ahead of time, roll the scoops in the coating, and let them get really hard in the back of the freezer. Then you fry them for just a few seconds, before the ice cream melts.
Three Of The Worst Things I Ever Had To Eat:
1. Lima Beans. They're ok in vegetable soup, because you can swallow them whole without having to taste them, but if you bite into one by accident? Yuck.
2. Sour orange juice. Gross.
3. Sour milk. Always check the date!
Three Of The Best Things I Ever Ate:
1. My mom's homemade macaroni & cheese. I'm not kidding; I really didn't know what I was missing.
2. My dad's baked brie. He makes the pastry himself, and it disappears pretty darn quick whenever he puts it out at family gatherings.
3. Bennigan's "Death By Chocolate" dessert. Heavenly.

Ok, off to make breakfast. I probably shouldn't have ended with chocolate. Let's see, oatmeal or chocolate frosted donut? Decisions, decisions...

Why You Should Never Conceal Your Bean Snapper

2006-03-02T08:07:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, Tink mentioned that it's illegal to throw bags of flour at a parade float. This got me looking up other weird laws, and let me tell you, there are some doosys out there. Some of my favorites:

In Alabama, it's illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in a church.
I'm having a good time picturing the irate churchgoer who penned this one.

In San Francisco, California, it's illegal to wipe one's car with used underwear.

In Colorado, it's illegal to go out in public in clothes unbecoming to one's gender.
OK, this one I could support. In fact in needs to be made countrywide, with strict enforcement.

In Hartford, Connecticut it's illegal to educate a dog.
Not Guilty! My dog is thoroughly uneducated! Just try getting her to stay!

In Georgia, it's illegal to change the clothes on a storefront mannequin unless the shades are down.

In Gary, Indiana, it's illegal to attend the theater within four hours of eating garlic.
Another one I could get behind.

In Wichita, Kansas, it's illegal to carry a concealed bean snapper.

In Massachusetts, dueling with water pistols is illegal.

In Saco, Missouri, women are forbidden from wearing hats that might frighten timid persons, children, or animals.

In Oklahoma, people who make ugly faces at dogs may be fined and/or jailed.

In Pennsylvania, any motorist who sights a team of horses coming at him must pull well off the road, cover his car with a blanket or canvas that blends in with the countryside, and let the horses pass. If the horses appear to be skittish, the motorist must take his car apart piece by piece and hide it under the nearest bush.
Must be hell in Amish Country.

In Memphis, Tennessee, it's illegal for a woman to drive by herself, unless a man is walking or running in front of the vehicle, waving a red flag to warn approaching pedestrians and motorists.

In Virginia, there is a state law prohibiting "corrupt practices of bribery by any person other than candidates."
Must be an awful lot of candidates hailing from Virginia...

What Not To Wear

2006-03-01T07:25:00.000-05:00

Quote from the National Young Leaders Conference pamphlet:

Dress:
Dress standards are professional throughout the day. Women must wear dresses, blouses with skirts (no mini skirts) or dress pants (no denim or capri pants).

Now, National Young Leaders Conference Nominee Daughter (sorry, I just love saying that) currently has a wardrobe that consists of:

5 pairs of jeans, frayed at the bottom (only three of which she'll actually wear),
16 band tee-shirts, mostly black,
3 zip-up hoodies, including one with the word "REVENGE" in big red letters across the chest,
2 pull-over hoodies,
1 pair black skater-shoes

Something tells me we should probably think about some new clothes. The big problem with buying fancy duds for a teenager is that they tend to like stylish clothes, which inevitably go out of style before the next formal event. This means each outfit gets worn exactly once before ending up in the Goodwill pile. Now, I have nothing against Goodwill, but I'd prefer in the future they get their supply of nearly-new clothing from someone else, especially since Dress-Clothes-Challenged Daughter will be in D.C. for ten days. I have no intention of buying her ten outfits; most hotels offer laundry services, and we will be using them. But, I should probably buy her more than one.

Since my own wardrobe for the past six years has consisted of jeans, tee-shirts and workboots, my where-to-shop-knowledge is a little rusty. So, Internet Friends, anyone have any advice on places to get reasonably priced, stylish dress-clothes that my fourteen-year-old will still be willing to be seen in a few years from now? Preferably catalogs, or stores that have branches in New England? I was thinking maybe Chadwicks. I used to buy from them when I worked in an office, and if I'm remembering correctly the quality was so-so but the prices were pretty good. Whatever we buy will likely be worn only a few times this summer, then hung in the closet to collect dust until college-admissions interviews two years from now. Aack! Only two years...Now that's scary!

Suggestions, anyone?

Doctor's Orders

2006-02-27T12:20:00.000-05:00

Today Hubby had an appointment with the Neurologist. My job during these visits is to describe any seizures Hubby has had, and what preceded them. It just so happened that Hubby's most recent seizure took place last night, while we were arguing. So, I posed the question to the doctor, "Could the argument have caused the seizure?"

Never ask a question you don't really want the answer to. Because of course, the answer is, "Yes."

Now, I really, truly love my husband beyond belief, but there are times I want to strangle him. Many times. And now I'm not supposed to argue with him? Not fair. Not fair at all.

Let me tell you a little bit about living with a person who has had a Traumatic Brain Injury. What a head injury does is takes a person's existing personality traits and multiplies them times ten. You hear about people getting violent or abusive, but usually that's only if they had some of that in their personality to begin with. Fortunately for us, Hubby didn't. But, he did have many little annoying traits that are now BIG annoying traits.

For example, most people can make their point in a conversation in, say, 3-4 minutes. Hubby was always one of those guys who talked in a more roundabout way, so it would take him 6-7 minutes to make the same point. Mildly annoying, but not a big deal, right? Until the head injury comes along, and turns that into 60-70 minutes. Actually 60-70 minutes is just an estimate. It's kind of like that commercial with the owl trying to figure out how many licks it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie Roll Pop. I don't know how long it takes because I usually zone out after a half hour or so, and therefore have never actually encountered the spot where he makes his point. But you get my meaning, right?

Okay, so now think of your spouse/significant other, and picture all of their little annoying personality traits. Now picture the same person, with the same traits, intensified times ten. You'd want to strangle them, right? Or at the very least, have the occasional all-out yelling and screaming kind of argument?

Last night's argument concerned the closet in the spare room, and how it would be remodeled. We agreed to put up a shelving unit/half-pole, so we can store some kitchen overflow (paper towels and such) and hang up the winter coats instead of draping them on the dining room chairs. However, Hubby wanted to remove the sheetrock walls and replace them. Why? Because that's what he does. Every single home improvement project the man has ever done, he has taken the walls/floor/ceiling down to the studs. And sometimes he even replaces the studs. When we replaced the bathroom shower enclosure, the dog actually jumped through the bathtub into the backyard. Several times. Someday I will have a brand new house, because every single piece of wood/sheetrock will be less than ten years old.

Anyway, back to the closet. I want to leave the walls as is. I mean, it's only a closet, right? Who cares if there are marks on the walls where the old shelves used to be? But, in the spirit of compromise, I offered to paint the walls first, so they'd be the same white as the shelving unit. Okay, okay, maybe it wasn't exactly the spirit of "compromise", maybe it was more the spirit of "Why can't we for once decide on a project and then just DO IT, without making it a bigger deal than it has to be" and the spirit of, "Just for once I want to do it MY way instead of yours" followed closely by "Take the closet and shove it up your &*$#@%!"

Have I mentioned that one of Hubby's previously mildly annoying traits was that he was a tad bit stubborn? Can anyone guess what he's doing right now, in this very room, as I type this? Yep. He's ripping the sheetrock out of the closet. Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike sheetrock dust? Particularly UNNECESSARY sheetrock dust? Unnecessary sheetrock dust that I can't even ARGUE with him about?

Spring better get here quick. Otherwise I might be tempted to replace the closet doorknob with one that locks. Which might, just, ACCIDENTALLY end up locked while he's inside. Accidentally, of course.

Update: It gets worse. The whole time I was typing this when I thought he was ripping down the walls, do you know what he was actually ripping down? The ceiling. 'Cause, that really NEEDED to be replaced.

How early in the day is it acceptable to drink wine? Because I'm thinking NOW sounds good!

So Very Proud

2006-02-25T17:19:00.000-05:00

Some of the names I've called my daughter since I started this blog:

Very Attractive Daughter
Very Capable Blackbelt
Exceptionally Brillant Daughter
Growing Up Too Fast Daughter
Annoyed With The Situation Daughter
Decidedly Diplomatic Daughter
Distrustful Daughter
Exceedingly Patient Daughter
Bored Out Of Her Mind Daughter
Glutton For Punishment Daughter
Perpetually Procrastinating Daughter
Doubtful That We'd Ever Finish Daughter
Never Thought She'd Need To Wash Her Mother's Mouth Out With Soap Daughter
Daughter To The Rescue
Likes To Kiss Frogs Daughter
Newly Wartless Daughter
and, of course,
Don't Talk To Me Before Dawn Daughter.

Now, thanks to a letter I received in the mail today, I have a new name for her. Please give a round of applause to:

Nominated To Attend The 2006 National Young Leaders Conference Daughter!

That's right, my kid, the one I've called all those names, has been chosen to spend 10 days in Washington D.C. this summer to "witness our nation's democracy in action and to interact with many of today's leaders from Congress, the executive branch, the national news media and the diplomatic corps" (a direct quote from the letter).

Now, because this post is all about that Wonderful Kid Of Mine and not at all about the numbskulls running our country, I'll refrain from making any snide comments about the wording of that particular quote.

So here's to my kid...She makes me very proud!

Technologically-Challenged

2006-02-24T08:27:00.000-05:00

My Onion horoscope this week:

You've experienced the convenience of the "copy" keyboard shortcut for years now, but it'll really start paying off after you discover the "paste" keyboard shortcut this week.

Do they know me or what?

Revenge Of The Sis

2006-02-23T08:22:00.000-05:00

Growing up, I was one of three sisters. When you have three, it always seems to be two against one...Very rarely were all of us united. My older sister and I fought constantly, so it was usually my younger sister who would get pulled from one side to the other. Most of the time it seemed to be Little Sis and I against Big Sis, although whether that was because Little Sis actually wanted to be on my side or just that I "got to her" first, I have no idea.

I was always doing something that embarrassed Big Sis. Often it was unintentional, like the time I lost my wrap-around skirt on the way to school. I had no hips to hold it up (funny how that isn't an issue anymore...NOT that I wear wrap-around skirts these days). The worst part was, I didn't realize the skirt had fallen off until the boy walking a few blocks behind us ran up and handed it to me. So I just set down my lunchbox and bookbag and tied my skirt back on, while Big Sis stood there turning all shades of red.

Then there was the incident with The Redheaded Kid. He was a bully who lived about a block from school, and often when we passed his house he would taunt us. One day I just hauled off and slammed my metal lunchbox into the side of his head. That pretty much ended the taunting. You would think Big Sis would be grateful, but noooo...That was embarrassing too.

When we were teenagers, my parents would occasionally go away for the weekend and leave us home alone. Big Sis, being the oldest, would be left "in charge." Now, Big Sis tended to be a little bossy even when my parents were home, but when she was left in charge she was impossible. At least that's how I viewed it.

One memorable weekend, Big Sis had a friend over. They were much cooler than Little Sis and I, and Big Sis had no problem letting us know it. This particular time, they happened to have a can of Silly String. Big Sis and her friend decided to go for a walk, because that would be sooo much better than hanging out with Little Sis and I. Before they left, though, they used the Silly String. On us.

Now, to be fair, I don't remember what preceded the Silly String attack; there's a very good chance we deserved it. I could be a tad obnoxious when I chose to, and it's likely I chose to pretty often when Big Sis had friends over. At any rate, they sprayed the Silly String and walked away laughing. Which left Little Sis and I behind to plot our revenge.

What we did for revenge was take Big Sis's bed apart and reassemble it in the backyard.

I'm not sure whose idea it was, but it was a good one. We did it right, too...We brought out the the sheets and blankets and pillows, and remade the bed and everything. Then we locked the backdoor and waited.

I don't remember exactly what happened when Big Sis got home. I'm sure she made us unlock the backdoor, and I know she told our parents, although whether she called them immediately or waited until they phoned that night, I have no idea. Little Sis and I brought the bed back inside, although I don't think we were quite as careful with it the second time...I seem to remember the blankets dragging in the dirt a little on the way back in. For a few minutes, though, we had the upper hand, and it felt good.

Anyone else have any good revenge stories?

100 Things About Me

2006-02-21T11:42:00.000-05:00

1. I have 9 1/2 toes, due to a mishap with a lawn mower.
2. I was wearing sneakers.
3. Digging up the front lawn so I wouldn't have to mow it is what got me started gardening.
4. I still mow the back lawn.
5. I still wear sneakers.
6. I was named after two of my great-grandmothers.
7. If I had been born male my parents would have named me Travis.
8. I can't whistle.
9. I can't snap my fingers.
10. I can flip my tongue upside down (one direction only) .
11. I was born on the Ides of March.
12. I was supposed to be born on April Fool's Day.
13. I started dating my future husband when I was sixteen.
14. He was thirty-one.
15. If my daughter brings home a 31 year-old when she is sixteen, I will not be happy.
16. Neither will my husband.
17. My mother is a redhead. I'm not, but I inherited her skin.
18. Because my skin is has a reddish tint, people sometimes think I'm blushing when I'm not.
19. When I was a teenager I wore green makeup to hide the red in my skin.
20. I hardly ever wear makeup anymore.
21. I like to bake.
22. I don't like to cook.
23. Fresh-baked bread is my favorite food.
26. My hair is all one length.
27. This is because I'm lazy, and don't want to style it.
28. I live in jeans.
29. In 6th grade I was a Tootsie Roll for Halloween.
30. Other Halloweens I have dressed up as a milk carton, a spider, a flamingo, and a School Crossing sign.
31. My husband got me to dress up as a French Maid for a Halloween party once. Just once.
32. I procrastinate. A lot.
33. I hate panyhose.
35. When I worked in an office, in the winter I would wear longjohns instead of panyhose, with long skirts and tall boots so no one could tell.
36. I can't imagine not having pets.
37. The first time I truly felt like an adult was when my cat died and I was the one who had to bury him. Childbirth didn't do it; burying my cat did.
38. I have always wanted to ride in a hot air balloon.
39. This is despite the fact that I don't like heights.
40. I have two sisters.
41. My older sister is fifteen months older than me.
42. I am here because my mother thought breastfeeding was a form of birth control. She was wrong.
43. On Mother's Day 1999, my husband was in a motorcycle accident and suffered a TBI (Tramatic Brain Injury).
44. Our daughter was in second grade at the time.
45. I was a very good wife right after the accident. I sort of shifted into auto-mode.
46. I'm not sure I was such a good mother. I spent too much time at the hospital, and not enough at home.
47. The day I lost my toe was also Mother's Day, in 1996.
48. I was afraid of Mother's Day for a long time after Hubby's accident.
49. I know how to make chocolate chip cookies, French bread and Taco pie without using a receipe.
50. I prefer red wine to white.
51. But I'll drink either.
52. I don't like to argue in public.
53. People who don't live with me think I'm very even-tempered.
54. I have my father's blue eyes.
55. So does every other descendant of his mother, including my sister's three kids, whose father is Iranian (which is usually the dominant gene).
56. I was twenty when my daughter was born.
57. Her father and I married just before she turned three.
58. We did not go on a honeymoon.
59. This is probably a good thing, since I came down with chicken pox two days after the wedding.
60. My daughter gave them to me.
61. I am closer to my younger sister than my older sister.
62. I seriously doubt I could have made it through the period right after my husband's accident without the support my family gave me.
63. When my husband first came home from the hospital, he couldn't be left alone because it wasn't safe. Once he tried to set a pencil on fire, thinking it was a cigarette.
64. Trying to get from that place back to an equal partnership was very, very hard and there were times I didn't think we'd make it.
65. We're just about there. The decision-making is probably still not 100% equal, but it's close enough that it works.
66. I like to read.
67. I am a Potter fan.
68. Every time a new Harry Potter book comes out, I go back and re-read the previous books in the series. All of them.
69. When Book 7 comes out, I will probably not be on the Internet for awhile.
70. Autumn is my favorite season.
71. My living room has a lot of photographs in it.
72. Most of my furniture is hand-me-downs.
73. That's ok, because I like antiques.
74. Most of it isn't antique now, but eventually it will be.
75. I design, plant and maintain flower beds at commercial buildings.
76. I never know what to list on forms that ask my occupation.
77. When my daughter was born one of my great-grandmothers was still alive, so for a few months we had five generations living.
78. I drink way too much soda.
79. It's diet, but still.
80. I don't like water slides that have tunnels, because the tunnel could get blocked and I don't want to drown in a dark tunnel.
81. I am mildly clausterphobic. Closets are ok. Water slide tunnels are not.
82. I worked in Insurance for ten years before quitting to take up gardening.
83. My husband's accident is what made me realize life is too short to spend another ten years in a job I didn't enjoy.
84. Hubby was not back to work yet himself at the time, so leaving the Insurance Agency was a real leap of faith.
85. I'm very glad I did it.
86. I have only been truly hooked on one video game in my life. It was a farming game called Harvest Moon. The object was to raise chickens, sheep & cows and grow vegetables. Nobody died (unless you left your chickens outside in a typhoon, which I never did).
87. Playing video games where your character may die is too stressful to be fun for me.
88. I also don't like scary movies.
89. Scary books are okay.
90. I like to listen to people with accents.
91. Except when I'm calling tech support.
92. I moved out of my parents' house when I was 17.
93. This was Stupid. I have struggled financially ever since.
94. Although he recovered from the accident, my husband started having seizures in 2003.
95. He used to be a truck driver. He doesn't drive now.
96. I worry about what will happen to my family if something happens to me.
97. My daughter will get her driver's license as soon as she turns 16.
98. I'm not a city person.
99. A few years after we bought the house, my husband and my father built my daughter a treehouse. There wasn't a suitable tree where we wanted to put it, so it's on stilts.
100. My daughter doesn't use the treehouse much anymore, but sometimes I still sit in it. It's a very relaxing place to be on a hot summer afternoon.

Cheated By Destiny

2006-02-20T10:10:00.000-05:00

So, I didn't hit Powerball this weekend. I know you're all disappointed. If you're not, you should be...I was planning to sponser everyone's trip to B-List Blog Chicks '06, AND give really nice swag-bag gifts. Really nice, as in bundles of cash.

I'm one of those people who buys a lotto ticket once a year, if that. Because of this, I actually expect to win. Doesn't it seem like the big winners are always people who never play lotto, and only bought a ticket that one time as a fluke? I really think I should be one of those people. Especially this week. See, this week, the house I've been coveting is up for sale.

I've coveted different houses over the years. This one I've had my eye on for quite awhile. It's a 1785 cape on 2 acres, with a huge old barn in the back. It's right next to an ancient cemetary, which could be a little creepy, but I figure at least we'd have quiet neighbors. The residents of the cemetary would be the only neighbors, since it's on a corner and the lot extends pretty far back. The house was for sale last summer. It had a sold sign on it for awhile, then the sold sign was gone and a "price reduced" sign appeared. Eventually the sign disappeared completely, but now it's back (I did wonder if I should be worried about how often its been on the market, given the proximity to the cemetary, but I figured a ghost or two probably would be easier to take than some of my current neighbors).

I'm not sure what the reduced price last summer was, but now it's selling for $549,000. Unfortunately, that's a tad higher than any mortgage company in its right mind would be willing to give me. There was supposed to be an Open House two weeks ago, which I wouldn't have been able to attend because my daughter had an out-of-state karate tournament. But, due to a blizzard, both the tournament AND the open house were cancelled. So yesterday there was another Open House, and I had no plans. And the Powerball drawing was Saturday night, and since I never buy lotto tickets and therefore could reasonably expect to win, it seemed destiny. I could just waltz in to the Open House and hand the real estate agent a check. Destiny. Sadly, the Lotto Gods did not agree, since I didn't even have one matching number. Sigh.

So, I guess I'll be living in my two-bedroom aluminum-sided shoebox a little longer. If any of you hit the lotto in the next few months, though, I know what I want as my swag-bag gift...

On the Up-Side, I did score this weekend, in a slightly less affluent way. Hubby surprised me by not only suggesting dinner out Saturday night, but also producing a $100 bill he had squirreled away for that very purpose. So, combined with our pre-Superbowl dinner out, that means we've been to more restaurants in the past month than we did all last year. It's not 345 million dollars, but its still not a bad start for 2006!

This One's For You

2006-02-17T14:13:00.000-05:00

For Arabella & Mrs. Harridan:

English Muffin Bread
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 packages yeast
5 1/2-6 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
2 cups milk
1/2 cup water

Combine 3 cups flour with the yeast, sugar, salt, and baking soda in large bowl. Heat milk & water in saucepan to 120-130 degrees F. Add to dry ingredients; beat 2 minutes. Add enough remaining flour to make a stiff dough. Spoon into 2 greased loaf pans. Cover and let rise 45-60 minutes. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Remove from pans and let cool. Slice and toast.

Note: Just like regular english muffins, this bread doesn't taste like much if you eat it plain. Toasted, though, with some I-Can't-Believe-They-Really-Think-I-Can't- Believe-It's-Not-Butter melted into the nooks & crannies, it's delicious. It also makes great grilled cheese!

And For V & V-Grrrl,
A cure for the February blues. Cheer up, soon all will look like this again:

Why Dogs Sometimes Wake Up With A Headache

2006-02-17T10:07:00.000-05:00

Did you know that if you have a puppy sleeping in the backseat of your car, and you have leather seats, if you take a sharp turn without slowing down enough the puppy will slide all the way across the seat and into the passenger-side door?

Did Somebody Slip My Toaster Some Viagra?

2006-02-16T07:49:00.000-05:00

Despite my grumblings about it, I've been doing pretty good on the "healthy eating" thing. I'm not calling it a diet, because diets are temporary, and this is supposed to be a lifestyle change. I've lost at least a pound or two consistantly every week except last week, when I went up a pound. But, you know, birthday cake was involved, and I can't be expected to pass up birthday cake, right? Especially homemade birthday cake. Chocolate. Still warm from the oven.

Anyway, I have an elderly toaster. Really, it's only about four years old, but in toaster-years that's around 92. It's harder to tell when toasters have reached their geratric years...There's none of the obvious aging signs like constant misplacing of the car keys and false teeth, or a large number of prescription bottles mixed in with the prunes and bran cereal in what used to be the "snack drawer." With toasters you have to look for the more subtle clues, like a gradual increase in the time it takes to toast a piece of bread. For some time now, anything placed in my toaster and set to "dark" takes at least three "toast cycles" to aquire a medium-brown shade.

Yesterday, instead of my usual one-serving of oatmeal (which equals about three tablespoons), I decided to have English muffin bread with some I-Can't-Believe-They-Really-Think-I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butter. So I set the toaster to dark and headed off to plant myself in front of the computer for my daily Catch-Up-On-Everyone's-Blog time. When the toaster beeped, I went in the kitchen and hit the toast button again, without examining the contents. This was a Mistake. I had very dark toast for breakfast yesterday morning.

Today, I really should have had the oatmeal. I know this. But see, we bought Portuguese rolls at the grocery store last night, and I love Portuguese rolls. And they go stale so quickly (well, that's what I've heard anyway...Really they've never hung around long enough in this house to test the theroy). I'm sure my mother's ducks would enjoy the rolls if they went stale, but that would be such a waste. So, I opted to forgo the oatmeal another day, and have a toasted Portuguese roll, with some more of that delicious fake-yellow 60% vegetable oil spread (yum).

So once again, I set the dial to "dark" and left the room. Never let it be said that I don't learn from my mistakes, though, because today when the toaster beeped instead of hitting the button a second time I opened the door to check the color. Yes, I know toasters usually have see-through glass doors, but the doors on four-year-old toasters that have only been cleaned twice are usually not so see-through. Anyway, the Portuguese roll? Was black. Very black. Either my toaster has re-discovered its youth, or it's punishing me for not eating healthy. Either way, it's on its way out. It's enough to have a critical husband...I do NOT need a toaster chiding me for choosing bread over oatmeal. I mean, it's not like I was having birthday cake for breakfast. Homemade birthday cake. Chocolate. Still warm from the oven.

I ate the Portuguese roll anyway. I could have given it to my mother's ducks, but that would have been such a waste...

Oh, and speaking of my mother, she just started her own blog. Check out the River Witch whenever you get a chance!

That Kid Of Mine

2006-02-15T16:26:00.000-05:00

Stuck In The Middle With You

2006-02-14T08:25:00.000-05:00

I've always found birth order classifications interesting. I found a number of websites about this, but most only focused on the negative characteristics of each group. One of the few that has both the positives and negatives also has lots and lots of pop-up ads. You can get there by clicking on this link , but consider yourself warned about the ads. Or you can just read below:

First-born: Natural leaders, over-achievers, perfectionists, and tend to be punctual, organized, and competant. There are two types, either compliant nuturers/caregivers or aggresive movers/shakers. Both are in control; they just use different methods. They don't like suprises. Often moody and occasionally lack sensitivity. Can be intimidating and bossy. Often not good at delegating tasks.

Middle-born: People-pleasers, usually hate confrontation, amaiable, down-to-earth and good listeners. Skilled at seeing both sides of a problem. Eager to be liked, have a difficult time setting boundaries, can become co-dependant as they try to please everybody. Not good at making decisions that will offend others. Tend to blame themselves when others fail.

Last-born: Has strong people skills, out-going, makes friends easily and good at making others feel at home, not afraid to take risks, tend to get bored quickly, strong fear of rejection and a short attention span. When the fun stops, they've had enough and want to check out. To some extent they can be self-centered. May harbor unrealistic expectations of finding a relationship that is always fun.

Only Child: Task-oriented, well-organized, highly conscientious and dependable. Keen on facts, ideas, and details and comfortable with responsibility. Can be unforgiving, demanding, hate to admit they're wrong and usually don't accept criticism well. To others seem very sensitive; their feelings are easily hurt.

I'm the second-oldest of three girls, and I easily see myself in the description of middle-born children. In fact it pretty much fits me to a T. I would be a horrible manager. In addition to the middle child traits, though, I'm not good at delegating tasks, and hate to admit I'm wrong (more reasons why I shouldn't be a manager). I'm also impatient, but that's more a product of my environment in my adult years than a result of my childhood (go ahead, you try living with a person who has had a head injury for a couple of years, and let me know how your patience makes out).

What birth order are you, and do the characteristics fit?

High School Happenings

2006-02-13T07:38:00.000-05:00

The big news here is: Snow! Lots and lots of snow! It's been a mild winter so far, but we made up for it yesterday. There's at least two feet of the powdery white stuff on the ground, possibly a little more. Fortunately it was the powdery kind...Not great for snowball fights, but much better for shoveling than heavy, wet packing snow. I'd post a picture of our winter wonderland for you, but SOMEBODY forgot the camera when I picked her up from band practice Saturday night.

Frequently-Forgetful-Daughter actually belongs to two bands now, one she likes and one she doesn't. The less favorable band is run by a guy with a bit of an ego problem (I know, I know, that's just so unusual with rock bands), which is the reason she wants out. They have one scheduled performance, a school "Open Mike Night", after which she planned on quitting. Open Mike Night was supposed to take place this past Friday, but was postponed the day before and is now set for the end of March. This gives the new band, American Muscle, time to practice, so they may be performing also. To make it even more fun, another member of Ego Boy's Band is thinking of defecting to American Muscle. It looks like Open Mike Night will either be a very tiring night for Dual-Rock-Group-Daughter as she races from one side of the stage to the other, or not such a good night for Ego Boy as he performs alone.

Doesn't all this drama make you miss high school terribly?

Speaking of high school, apparently the new fashion rule is no coats. It's much cooler to show up at school with chattering teeth and a faint blue tinge to your skin than to wear a winter coat. Gloves are ok, even hats are acceptable if they're the right style, but coats are dorky. When I was a teenager we wore coats, but they were always left open in the front; only nerds actually zipped or buttoned them. This progression from unzipped coats to no coats at all has me fearing for my future grandchildren...Is the next generation going to refuse torso-covering clothes completely? Will my daughter struggle with her children to get them to wear shirts to school? Or maybe they'll wear shirts, but refuse to button them?

I'd better start hoping all my grandchildren will be boys...

Inventory

2006-02-09T12:48:00.000-05:00

Under the loveseat:
Two half-eaten rawhide bones
Three small wooden balls
Two bubblegum machine bouncy balls (we used to call these "superballs" when I was a kid, but that term takes on a different meaning as an adult)
One hoof
Two wine corks
One cardboard toliet paper roll insert, chewed on one end
Two furry grey mice (cat toys, not live mice)
Enough pet hair to knit a kitten-sized sweater (good luck getting him into it, though)

Under/behind the sofa:
One Othello game piece
One Christmas tree ornament
Three bubblegum machine bouncy balls
One large bouncy ball
Three hair scrunchies (my daughter and I have been known to fling them at each other while watching TV)
One pencil
One sock
One martial arts token (given out by the karate school for good attendance)
Enough pet hair to make at least one more cat, possibly two (depending on the size)

Sadly, I did not find any steak knives, so if the kitten's hiding them somewhere, he's got a different spot to stash them in. He was oh-so-helpful about cleaning under the furniture, though. I've found that if he spends enough time rolling in my dirt pile (which believe me, he does), there won't be much left for me to sweep into the dustpan. Now if I could only figure out how to teach him to use the broom...

Should Funeral Protesters Be Protected Under Free Speech Rights?

2006-02-07T15:06:00.000-05:00

My local newspaper carried this article today on the front page. I'm speechless. This is wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start.

If you don't have time to read the whole article (or, like me, you felt sick after reading the first two paragraphs and didn't want to continue), it's about how a church group is picketing funerals of solders, saying they were struck down by God because they were fighting for a country that "harbors homosexuals." Apparently they also picketed the funerals of the West Virginia miners, claiming God killed the miners for the same reason, carrying signs that read "Thank God For Dead Miners." A number of states are now considering passing laws that would limit when and where protesters can picket at funerals. This "church" (I use the term loosely) has threatened to sue if the laws are passed, claiming the government is trying to limit their right to free speech.

I'm not an advocate of more legislation, and I'm all for free speech. But what this group is doing is just plain wrong. How can anyone, no matter what religion, think this is how God wants us to behave? Isn't there some way we can stop them, without the need for more laws? We're all conditioned to do what's "politically correct." Maybe in some cases we should stop.

If I owned a business, and one of these picketers came into my store, I would kick them out. If I employed any of these people I would fire them. If companies can fire people for smoking, why not for spreading hate? Maybe if these "churchgoers" couldn't buy groceries or gas, and the people at the diner where they used to have breakfast refused to serve them, and the guy at the movie theater refused to sell them tickets, maybe they'd stop picketing funerals. Yeah, I know, they'd probably still be self-righteous assholes, but maybe fear of repercussion (not violent or illegal repercussion, just some old-fashioned "shunning") would make them think twice about spreading their hate.

Even as I type this I realize advocating shunning is a dangerous practice. I think funeral picketers are wrong. If someone else thinks homosexuals or women who have children out of wedlock are wrong, should they be allowed to shun them? Absolutely not. We certainly don't want to go back to those days. So what is the answer, then? Are more laws the way to go? What does everyone else out there think?

What Not To Name The Baby

2006-02-07T10:24:00.000-05:00

While putting the dishes away yesterday, I noticed we're missing some steak knives. The knife block holds eight, but for some reason we're down to just five.

When my daughter was younger, spoons would often go missing in the summer, but usually I'd find them in the sandbox out back. And when I was a kid forks would vanish, then re-appear in the silverware drawer slightly bent (we had a rabbit cage that was hard to open, and forks were often used as a substitue for a crow-bar). But knives? Knives don't usually disappear.

This morning I was in my customary spot, planted on the sofa sipping the coffee Hubby was kind enough to bring me, when Sammy jumped on the dining room table. Cats are not allowed on the tables in this house, but Sammy hasn't figured that out yet. Or doesn't care, I'm not sure which. At any rate, while I contemplated whether I was awake enough to get up and shoo him off, he knocked something onto the floor then jumped down after it. Hearing it hit the floor with a clang, I figured I better go get it before he spirited off something important like my car keys. So I pryed myself off the couch and went to investigate.

Sammy didn't have car keys. Sammy had a steak knife. And he very quickly knocked it far enough under the table that I had to move a chair and get down on my hands and knees to retrieve it.

Now I'm thinking I should start checking under furniture for the missing knives. Believe me, I really don't want to see what's under that sofa. And I'm wondering...Is it normal for kittens to collect knives? Should I start sleeping with one eye open? I know we named him Samauri, but I didn't expect him to take the name seriously.

The next cat we get is going to be called Cuddles.

Planting By Numbers

2006-02-04T12:51:00.000-05:00

Ah...February. One month closer to spring. Regardless of whether the groundhog sees his shadow or not (did he? I wasn't paying attention), this is usually when I start planning for the warmer weather. And warmer weather, for me, means planting. Lots of planting. To give you an idea of what I mean by "lots", I've broken it down by the numbers. Last spring, this is what I did:

Tilled:
356 bags of manure &
72 bales of peat moss into
43 flower beds

Mixed:
17 bales of promix with
93 bags of topsoil to make soil mix for
42 flower pots &
136 window boxes

Planted:
129 Argyranthemum
518 Begonias
215 Bidens
115 Calibrachoa
6 Diascia
68 Dracena spikes
1263 Geraniums
475 Hibiscus
38 flats of Impatiens
44 Ivy
6 Lantana
392 Nemesia
199 New Guinea Impatiens
621 Scaevola
456 Petunias
28 Torenia

To be fair, I do have help tilling the first eighteen flower beds, but I'm on my own for the rest of them. And the guys do most of the work planting the topiaries, so I didn't list them. But I shape all the beds myself (even the first eighteen), and I do all the planting alone. So, that means I dug roughly 4,839 holes last spring. And the worst thing of all? I can't wait until it all starts up again.

Sick, huh?

So in a few months, when everyone else is flying kites or hunting down Easter Eggs, I'll be standing on a mound of dirt in muddy jeans, splitting open bags of manure. Bet you're all jealous!

Lesson Of The Week

2006-02-03T07:42:00.000-05:00

Never eat Chinese food while watching The Daily Show. I laughed so hard I nearly choked on my fried rice.

I really think we need to elect this man president. Who's with me on this? How do we start a movement? Other celebrities did it. If Ronald Regan, Arnold Shwartzenegger (yeah, I know I butchered his name, but I don't care) & Sonny Bono could get themselves elected to office, why not Jon Stewart?

I'm not talking about him being a write-in candidate. I think he needs to actually run. It would be great if the Democrats endorsed him, but even if he went Independant...

Lets' get bumper stickers made up. JON STEWART FOR PRESIDENT!

The Java Jitters

2006-02-02T15:52:00.000-05:00

I am one of those people that absolutely cannot function without my morning cup of coffee. It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I started drinking the stuff, but boy, it doesn't take long to get hooked. Back then, once in awhile I'd forget to get my caffeine-fix, and by 11am I had an awful splitting headache (a symptom of withdrawal). I never forget now. It's not that I drink that much; most days I probably have the equivalent of a cup and a half. It's just that I need it.

My morning coffee routine goes something like this: I stumble out of bed, hit the bathroom, then head for the couch. Hubby pours me coffee and brings it to me. In between yawning and warding off kitten-attacks, I have three or four sips. By this time, Hubby's on his second cup, and he brings the pot over and tops mine off too. I drink maybe half of that, then take my shower. The challenge after the shower is to find my mug; I seem to leave it in a different spot every day. If it's somewhere high, like the mantle, I'll top if off again, add a little more cream, and microwave it if necessary. If it's been left on the coffee table, I usually dump it out and start over (the dog likes coffee, and has been known to sample anything left within her reach). The after-shower cup rarely gets finished, either, before I have to leave to take my daughter to school. Very rarely do I make it to the bottom of a mug.

Some days, if I'm heading out somewhere, I'll pick up another cup at Dunkin Donuts. Today was one of those days. I had to take the car in to get the emissions-system repaired, and I knew I'd be sitting at the dealership for awhile. Most car dealers have coffee for their customers, but usually they have that powdered-imitation-milk-stuff instead of cream. I like cream. Since I figured I'd be there awhile, I picked up a medium coffee at Dunkin Donuts instead of a small.

A medium Dunkin Donuts cup is actually pretty large. But, for lack of anything better to do, I finished the whole thing while sitting in the customer lounge. After an hour the mechanic came out to tell me it would take another two hours to fix the car. Since I really didn't want to spend the whole morning in the lounge, I called my aunt, who owns a ceramic tile store not far from the dealership, and asked her to pick me up. To thank her, I decided to treat her to coffee. I put cream in two large cups, figuring on getting myself a decaf, but it turned out the decaf pot was empty. So we both ended up with full-strength cups. Large, full-strength cups. Can you guess how jittery I was by lunchtime? I'm surprised the lady at the Ford dealership allowed me to take the car home, the way my hands were shaking when I signed that credit card slip. She probably thought I was an addict. Come to think of it, I guess I am.

So this afternoon, Hubby asked me to take him out to get cigarettes. I don't like to do this, because I really don't want him to smoke, but I've learned over the years that refusing to take him to the store doesn't really prevent him from smoking. He'll get his cigarettes one way or another, but if I make him walk I'll also succeed in making him mad. And I have to live with him, you know? Plus, given my need for caffeine, I can sympathize with the whole addiction-thing. I stayed in the car while he went in for his smokes, and to thank me for taking him, he brought us both out nice, big coffees. I'm sitting here looking at mine now. I took a couple of sips in the car to be polite, but as soon as he's not looking I'm going to sneak into the kitchen and pour it out. Once a day is more than enough to experience the shakes.

Hey, I could be addicted to worse things.

Happy Birthday, Little Sis!

2006-02-01T11:02:00.000-05:00

I was going to write an embarassing story about you for your birthday, but I couldn't think of any. Well, besides the haircutting incident, but I already wrote about that. I know there are plenty more, and I'm sure they'll all get posted here eventually, but at the moment I'm drawing a blank. And I thought about scanning that picture of us sitting on the couch in our Wonder Woman Under-roos, playing with Quiz-Wiz, but the only copy I have of it is on a VHS tape, and I couldn't figure out how to cut and paste that. Plus, I don't have a scanner. So that's a no-go too. I looked up your horoscope on The Onion, but that wasn't all that exciting either. So, for lack of a better idea, I researched this day in history. Here are some of the historical events that took place on your birthday:

February 1, 1261: Walter de Stapledon, an English Bishop, was born. I have no idea who he was, I just think it's neat that I found a date that far back.

February 1, 1790: The Supreme Court convened for the very first time, in New York City.

February 1, 1861: Texas secedes from the Union. If the Civil War had ended differently, I wonder who would be president today?

February 1, 1862: The poem "Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Julia Ward Howe was published in the Atlantic Monthly.

February 1, 1884: The first volume of the Oxford English Dictionary A-Ant was published. The first volume! Of a dictionary! So, if you were looking up "anteater" I guess you were in luck, but you had to wait for the next volume if you needed to know how to spell "ardvark."

February 1, 1913: New York City's Grand Central Terminal opens as the world's largest train station. Given your history with trains, I thought you'd find that one interesting.

February 1, 1914: The first baseball game ever to be played in the Egyptian desert takes place as part of a 56-game world tour promoting baseball. The White Sox and the Giants tied 3-3. Hmm. I wonder what temperature the Egyptian desert is in February?

February 1, 1920: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police begin operations. Go, Dudley Do-Right!

February 1, 1938: Sherman Helmsley was born. Go, George Jefferson!

February 1, 1946: A press conference was held at the University of Pennsylvania to announce ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer.

February 1, 1952: A new method of tracking down users of unlicensed television sets in the U.K. is unveiled. Apparantly this was a big deal. The photo shows what looks like an army vehicle with the words TELEVISION DETECTOR VAN painted on the side, and a caption that reads "Up to 150,000 people do not have a television license." It's a good thing I don't live Britain, because I guess I'm one of them.

February 1, 1960: Four black college students began a series of sit-ins at a white-only lunch counter in a North Carolina Woolworth store.

February 1, 1965: The National League (baseball) adopts a disaster plan in case a team's plane crashes. I found that one on a baseball history site. Also, Princess Stephanie of Monaco was born. Wasn't she the rebellious one? I can never keep the royal families straight.

February 1, 1968: Lisa Marie Presely was born.

February 1, 1974: The "Good Times" sitcom premired. I guess Dad & Mom missed it, since they were likely at the hospital having you.

February 1, 1978: Roman Polanski (movie director and widower of actress Sharon Tate, who was murdered by the Mansons) skipped bail after pleading guilty to statuatory rape of a 13-year-old. He fled to Europe, where he continues to direct movies, including 1988's Frantic, 2002's Academy Award winning The Pianist, and 2005's Oliver Twist. I had no idea. I just rented Frantic a few weeks ago, and now I wish I didn't. How come nobody's arrested him?

Feburary 1, 1984: The chancellor of Great Britain announces the country will discontinue production of the Halfpenny coin. Miss Piggy's version of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" will never be the same.

February 1, 2004: Janet Jackson suffered a "wardrobe malfunction" at the Superbowl.

February 1, year unknown: In Roald Dahl's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willie Wonka gives his factory tour to the golden ticket prizewinners. I thought this was a better note to end on than good old Janet.

So, on your birthday, Little Sis, I hope you have lots of chocolate (whether you get a factory tour or not), and no wardrobe malfunctions. Also, I hope you don't get arrested for having an unlicensed TV (although the Supreme Court case for that one would be pretty interesting to follow).

It's About Time

2006-01-31T09:04:00.000-05:00

A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away), I asked my husband to take me out to dinner. His excuse? That we never seem to have the time. Since it's winter, and we're both home ALL THE TIME, I found his reasoning a little lacking. So, I suggested that the next time he finds the TIME to get together with his friends, he skip it and we go out to dinner instead. This was on Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoon, one week prior to Super Bowl Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday, the day he always goes to a Super Bowl party at his friend's house. A BIG Super Bowl party.

Guess where I went Saturday night?

Really, I shouldn't be too hard on him. One of the things the head injury stole from him was his sense of taste and smell, so going to a restaurant is just not as much fun for him as it used to be. But sometimes you just have to make sacrifices to make your wife happy, right?

Our dinner out was very nice, by the way!

Viewing The Generation Gap

2006-01-30T15:39:00.000-05:00

When my mother showed up at 6:08 this morning to drop off the puppy, she handed me a little plastic box that looked vaguely familiar. At first I thought it was a receipe box, but when I opened the lid I was surprised...It was our old View-Master set! It seems she came across it while cleaning, and thought my daughter might like it. Since Don't-Talk-To-Me-Before-Dawn-Daughter was not conscious enough to appreciate it at the time, I decided not to share it until she was a tad less groggy. So after school, once she dragged her backpack into the house and flung herself on the sofa, I showed it to her. The conversation went something like this:

Me: (holding up the red plastic View-finder): "Look what Bammy brought over."
Daughter: "What is it?"
Me: "It's a View-finder. You used to have one when you were little."
Daughter: Blank stare.
Me: "This one has all the sets I had when I was a kid. Look, there's Peanuts, and Woody Woodpecker, Tom and Jerry, and One Hundred And One Dalmations..."
Daughter: "I don't know what peanuts are."
Me: "Yes, you do. Charlie Brown."
Daughter: "Oh."
Me: "And there's Bonanza, and another Bonanza, and Raggedy Ann, and Aesop's Fables, Bambi, and Mother Goose Rhymes, and Grimm's Fairy Tales..."
Daughter: "What is e-sop?"
Me: "You know. They're stories. Like the Grasshopper and the Ants. And the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse."
Daughter: Blank stare.
Me: "The Tortise and the Hare?"
Daughter: "Like folk stories?"
Me: "Yeah, but they all taught a lesson. Aesop was the guy who wrote them."
Daughter: "Oh."
Silence.
Daughter: "Who is grim?"

Clearly I have failed as a parent, because it seems I did not teach this child anything.

Wax On, Wax Off...

2006-01-28T13:29:00.000-05:00

I got my car back today. Hooray! I've been driving a rental since Monday, when mine went it for repairs. The rental was a 2006 Dodge Stratus, which was fun to drive at first, since it's not that often I get to drive a new car. But even though my car eats gas, and is not new, I missed it. Especially the heated mirrors...It's a real pain to scrape ice off mirrors. It smells like paint, though, so even though it's January the car is now sitting in the driveway with all the windows open. Always good to give the neighbors something new to wonder about!

When he handed me the keys, the guy at the body shop said "Now be sure you don't wax it for at least two months." Um, thanks for the advice, but, uh, the last time it was waxed was, um, before I bought it. So I don't think that will be a problem.

Oh, and my pet peeve of the day? Gas stations with broken credit card machines. Seriously, if you want my business, you need to fix your equipment, because I'd rather drive to another station than go inside. Yes, I'm that lazy.

My second pet peeve of the day? Gas staions right up the street from those with broken credit card machines, that are closed at 8:04am on a Saturday. 8:04am! Even my bank is open by then!

Third pet peeve of the day? Rental cars that are given to you with 7/8 of a tank of gas. You have to return it with the same amount, or they charge you some ridiculous amount per gallon for whatever you're short. So you have to wait until you're almost there to fill up. What if the only gas stations near the return location are owned by jerks who sleep late and don't fix broken machinery?

It Ain't Easy Eating Greens

2006-01-27T07:52:00.000-05:00

Okay, so this whole eating healthy thing?
It sucks.

Seven Days, Six Trips To The Doctor

2006-01-26T10:06:00.000-05:00

This week's theme has definitely been waiting. Specifically, waiting in Waiting Rooms. Since last Friday, I have visited five waiting rooms (one of them twice), and I will be in another this afternoon. So, for lack of anything better to write about today, and since I am now an expert on Waiting Rooms, I will describe them for you.

The first trip to the doctor took place Friday night, when Likes-To-Kiss-Frogs-Daughter had a wart removed from her foot. The pediatrician office is in a converted colonial, and the Waiting Room is what used to be the living room (complete with painted red brick fireplace, which glows all year long with its flickering electric fire). Most of the room is taken up by a large metal desk, behind which are file cabinets. On the desk is a phone, and a rolodex. That's it. They do not own a computer. The remaining walls are lined with plastic chairs, placed so close together that it is impossible to sit in one without touching at least four people...The parents on either side of you, and the squirming toddlers they're holding. In the corner is a little end table covered with beat-up Golden Books, and there are a few milk cartons under the chairs, containing the same sad toys my daughter played with thirteen years ago. The room has imitation wood paneling, and behind each chair is a grease spot from where people rest their heads. I do not rest my head.

Saturday morning was our second trip, back to visit the Pediatrician to have the dressing changed. Newly-Wartless-Daughter did fine, by the way. The novocaine was painful, but by the 3rd shot she couldn't feel them anymore. She has a wonderful pediatrician, which is why we go there despite the sad state of the waiting room.

Tuesday afternoon was my third trip to the doctor, this time alone, to my gynecologist for my "annual exam." I can't tell you much about that waiting room, though, because my mind has a self-defense mechanism that causes me to block out all details of my visits there as soon as I step off the elevator into the lobby.

Wednesday I headed off to an Internist to find out why my back & leg have been hurting for three weeks. I had the luxury of enjoying two separate waiting rooms there, one when I first came in, and another before I could leave (the medical assistant who needed to "check me out" had gone on break). I barely noticed the first waiting room, because I was filling out five pages of forms detailing everything from my family's medical history to whether or not I drink tea. The room I spent ten minutes in while waiting to leave, though, was nice enough, except that there was no reading material whatsoever, so I spent the whole time learning the codes on the form the doctor gave me to pass along to her medical assistant. Anyone want to know what GCDNA means? (Gonnorrhea, DNA probe...Fortunately that was NOT checked off for me)

Since the Internist believes I probably did "something" to my sciatica nerve (coincidentally, the leg pain started right after the car accident), she sent me off for X-rays. Sciatica nerve problems rarely shows up on X-rays, but apparently the insurance company does not pay for MRIs until an Xray is ordered (don't even get me started on that-Insurance will be a different rant). So, the next office I got to visit was the diagnostic place. This Waiting Room had four magazines, and six people waiting (fortunately not all were reading). The only one I had any interest in at all was U.S. News & World Report, but that was already taken. So I contented myself with a Parents magazine from October 2005, all the while casting furtive glances at the guy with U.S. News. His name was finally called, so I casually waited three or four seconds, then jumped up to grab his discarded magazine, and immediately heard my name. So although I didn't get to read about how Dick Cheney's a "Tough Guy", I can give you great advice on how to plan a Halloween party for a four-year-old. Too bad my daughter's fourteen.

A side note for family who may be reading this: Don't worry, I doubt I'll need an MRI. That's only if the pain doesn't go away after awhile...I expect mine will. The only reason I went to the doctor at all was to make sure it wasn't something more severe, like an ovary. Muscle & nerve stuff I can live with.

Today's visit will be for my daughter, to the Orthodontist. This is also a converted house, but it's a beautiful Victorian, and the waiting room is circular. The magazines they have there tend to be about teeth, but that's okay, because they have something better than a magazine...They have a puppy. I think every waiting room should have a puppy. It makes the time go by very fast. You have to be careful where you put your purse, though, because he does have a tendency to steal things out of them.

So, that's my week. I'll bet yours wasn't any where near as fun!

And the Award For Most Likely To Succeed Goes To...

2006-01-25T11:13:00.000-05:00

Shrinking Violet posed an interesting question on her blog yesterday...What would you change if you were a dictator? I started a comment, but it turned out so long I figured it deserved its own post.

See, there are quite a few people out there who seem to work in a field that is unsuited for them. So, my first task as dictator would be to help them out by orchestrating a few career changes.

George W. Bush would be in the military. Not a position of any importance, since we can't have him endangering our troops with his ineptitude. I'm not from a military family, so I don't know the proper terminology, but isn't there some sort of "scout" position? You know, someone who goes into a dangerous area first, to make sure it's safe? I would give him that job. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld could join him.

Cindy Sheehan would have Donald Rumsfeld's old job.

Brannon Chandler, and all other animal abusers, would have jobs cleaning out zoo exhibits. Specifically, the elephant exhibit.

Paris Hilton would work in a large factory. It's not that I'm wishing her ill; she doesn't need to be cleaning toilets or anything. It's just that I think the girl who's "famous for being famous" and always has her nose in the air should spend some time in a place where she's just a number. I think it would do her good.

Jon Stewart would be president.

The spouses of coal miners would be guaranteed a spot on the board that supervises mine safety. If anyone will make sure everything possible is done to avoid another tragedy, they will. And they would have unlimited resources to do what needs to be done (taken directly from the coal companies' profits).

Since Tom Crusie has such a problem with psychology, my first inclination was to make him a psychiatrist. I decided that would probably be pretty harmful to his patients, though, so instead I'd make him a lunatic nutjob badly in need of a psychiatrist...Oh, wait, he already is.

Can you think anyone else in need of a career change?

I'm Just Sitting Here Watching The Water Spin Round & Round

2006-01-24T07:48:00.000-05:00

Sammy has discovered the toilet.

The sound of flushing brings him racing from whatever activity he's engaged in, whether it be playing soccer with the dog food or making sure the puppy does not nap too long (by attaching himself, via claws, to her face and repeated biting her neck), so he can leap up on the seat and watch the bowl fill up with water. So far, he's been successful at stopping himself on the very edge of the rim and not vaulting into the toilet itself, but the bigger he gets, the harder that will be to pull off.

He's also figured out that the edge of the bathtub, between the shower curtain & liner, is a great place to hide and attack the unsuspecting as they are sitting down to "do their business." There's nothing like a claw in a bare leg to make you speed up the process, which also, of course, shortens the time he has to wait until flushing commences again.

If you're fortunate enough to use the bathroom without his assistance, he will wait outside the door, and as soon as you open it there will be a blur of black fur as he darts past. Depending on how quick your reflexes are, this may or may not result in you laying sprawled out on the floor, half in the bathroom and half in the hallway, muttering curses under your breath.

Does anyone know where I can get a "Use At Your Own Risk" sign for my bathroom?

Blogging For Choice

2006-01-22T17:53:00.000-05:00

I was all set to write a post today about how my daughter went to a birthday party last night, and at 10:30pm called and said they were having too much fun to end the party, but everyone else's parents said no to a sleep-over, so please, please, PLEASE could they move the party here? So even though we had no junkfood in the house they all showed up with sleeping bags and half-full bottles of soda, and proceeded to play Dance Dance Revolution right above my head until ungodly hours. That's what I was going to write about. Then I read TB's blog and realized I had a more important entry to write.

Today is the 33rd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. There's a group out there called Blog For Choice who is asking all bloggers who support the right to choose to write about it today. So even though I can't figure out how to add the graphic to my webpage, which would make me a official participant, I'm going to write about it anyway.

First off, let's get the terminology correct. It seems to me many people confuse the word pro-choice with pro-abortion. To my knowledge, there isn't any group out there who encourages women to go out and have an abortion. Pro-choice groups are not lying in wait outside OB/GYN offices, so that they can intercept pregnant mothers and convince them to abort their babies.

I know several women who have had abortions. One was a friend in high school who was much too young. Two were women who were very early into relationships with men they later married and had children with. Another was a woman facing the inevitable end of her marriage and the prospect of adding an infant to the family she knew she would be single-parenting. None of these women made the decision lightly; all agonized over it, cried until they had no tears left, and in the end made the decision they felt they needed to. Those I'm still in touch with tell me they still think about it today.

If the teenager had chosen to have her baby, would she have given it up for adoption, or would she have ended up on the very difficult road of single-parenting without the means to support herself? The women who were early in their relationships, would they still have married, or would a baby have put too much of a strain on a still-forming foundation? And the woman in the midst of a divorce, whose older children were already struggling, would she have been able give all of them the support they needed with the demands a new baby makes?

I was twenty when I had my daughter. Her father and I had been dating for three years when I got pregnant. We married when she was three years old, and are still together today. I chose to have my child, and although at times it was a very difficult path, it worked out for me. Maybe it would have worked out for these other women too. Maybe it wouldn't have. The bottom line line is, it was their choice to make.

How we form our relationships, how we raise our families, how we live our lives...These are our choices. The government doesn't have any place in that.

Are there woman who abuse it, using abortion as a form of birth control? Of course there are. But there is also the scared teenager who got in over her head, the young woman who knows she's not emotionally or financially ready to raise a child, the mother who can only think about how this will affect her children who are already struggling. And, of course, there are the rape victims. We cannot punish the abusers by denying abortion to everyone, any more than we can punish those who commit welfare fraud by denying help to needy families who have fallen on hard times.

I know, this brings us to the argument that you should not have sex unless you are able to handle the consequences. But think realistically, my friends. Despite all the Catholic Church's ramblings, sex is not for pro-creation only, and I don't know a single person who looks at it that way. And I would be willing to bet that most of us, at one time or another, have had sex at a time that it would have been very difficult to handle a pregnancy, if that were the outcome. If it had been, some of us would have chosen to have the child anyway, and some would not. The important thing is the choice. And as for consequences, there are consequences either way. Abortion is not the easy way out, the "get out of jail free card" that many people think it is. It is terrible, heart-wrenching, and most women who have one will live with the consequences for many years to come, long after a child would have grown up and moved away.

It is very easy to judge other people, and the way we think they should behave. But that doesn't mean we should.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

2006-01-20T09:52:00.000-05:00

Every summer, my mother, my daughter, and I go on a "girl's trip." It's always somewhere relatively close by, since we only go for 2-3 nights and don't want to spend half the trip driving. Previous locations have included Stowe, VT, North Conway, NH, and Salem, MA.

One year, in searching for a new destination, my mother came across an advertisement for a dude ranch. It sounded interesting, so she sent for more information. A week or so later she received a packet in the mail, with a brochure and registration forms. The brochure featured several black & white photos, including one of the couple who own the ranch, decked out in plaid shirts and cowboy hats. It boasted that the ranch "combines modern amenities with true country flavor to offer guests a memorable experience complete with horseback riding adventures led by experienced wranglers", and encouraged guests to choose "trail names" for themselves. The package included all meals and two trail-rides a day. There were also canoe rides, a game room for the kids, including a stage and karaoke machine, and a hot tub.

Sounds fun, right?

So we filled out our forms and sent them in, along with the non-refundable fee, paid in advance. Since the ranch would be providing the meals "family-style", if you had any special dietary needs they asked that you list that on your form, so they could accommodate you. My mother doesn't eat red meat, so she made sure to make a note of that. We picked our trail-names (I was going to be "Tumbleweed"), and looked forward to the trip with excitement. The ranch stressed that they would cater to all abilities, from expert-riders to novices, but we arranged a few horseback-riding lessons in advance for my daughter anyway, to give her a little more confidence. She was probably about eight or nine at the time.

So, the big day came, and we packed up the car and headed off to the ranch. And, well, let's just say the brochure was a little...Misleading.

The exterior of the place was more than a little run-down. It consisted of a number of old buildings, badly in need of paint, strung together in a L-shape. We actually considered leaving without even going inside, and just finding a different hotel. But, we figured, how bad can it be? It was only two nights, which we'd already paid for(non-refundable, remember?). So we headed inside.

Mrs. Dude Ranch greeted us at the door, and we could see right away that she was the same woman from the photo, plus thirty years (maybe forty). She had traded in her plaid for polyester, and there wasn't a cowboy hat in the place. In fact, when she led us to our room across the thick shag carpeting, it quickly became clear that nothing at all in the place had been updated since sometime in the seventies. If then. The shag carpet was dark-brown, although I'm not sure if that was its original color or just years of accumulated grime. Our room was supposed to have three beds, two twins and a double. Well, it had three beds all right. Only problem was, one of them only had three legs. There was a shared bathroom down the hall, with no lock on the door. The game room was the garage, which was filled with clutter like you wouldn't believe, along with dusty copies of "Clue" and "Risk". There was a section with a wood floor that probably served as a stage at one time, but now was home to an old, run-down sofa and several mismatched chairs. The game room was also where they served us our dinner of roast-beef, potatoes cooked in beef juices, and salad (so much for no red meat).

Ok, so there's still the riding, right? Right. The "experienced wranglers" consisted of their 12-year-old-granddaughter with a severe attitude problem, who was home-schooled so that she could pop on over whenever Granny & Grampa needed her, and...Oh, that's right, there was just her. And the trails? There were no trails. She led us through thick brush, no trail in sight.

Well, what about the canoeing, you say? Actually the canoeing was the best part of the trip. The lake was about a mile from the ranch, so Mr. Dude Ranch drove the canoe there and we followed in our car. He forgot the life preservers, though, so he said he would go get them and bring them right back. Twenty minutes later when I drove to the ranch, he was watching TV. The actual time spent on the lake was very nice, though.

And the hot tub? It was ok, I guess, but it was in Mr. & Mrs. Dude Ranch's part of the house, (what looked like their dining room, actually) and using it meant traipsing back across the shag rug barefoot. So we used only used it once.

As for the trail names, nobody ever asked them. In fact I don't think they called us by any name. We had a few for them, though.

I know you're all anxious to go visit the dude ranch now, but sadly, it's no longer in business. I can't imagine why.

A Post For The Tulip-Challenged Among Us

2006-01-20T09:41:00.000-05:00

Sorry guys, I have no idea how to make it so everyone can see the tulips. So for anyone who can't see them at the top of the screen, this is what they look like (hopefully you can see them here): The only difference is that on the masthead, text boxes cover up the dying daffodils in the front of the picture. So if you'll feeling the winter doldrums and need a "spring-fix", you'll have to look up this post, at least until I become more technologically advanced. Of course, since that's not likely to happen until "hell freezes over", there may not be any tulips to view then.

Survey Says...

2006-01-18T16:51:00.000-05:00

It's come to my attention that my template-creating abilities are not as good as I thought they were. At least one person isn't able to view the tulip-masthead. I have absolutely no idea what to do to correct this, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe the tulips aren't there at all, and I just wanted them to be there so badly that I invented them in my head (it wouldn't be the first time).

So I need to ask, how many of you out there can see the tulips?

Add Me To The List

2006-01-18T11:35:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I've been tagged by Tink to do my first me-me. Before you start reading, though, I need to warn you that the answers aren't all that interesting.

Four jobs I've had:
1. Handing out programs at football games (my first job, when I was 9 or 10)
2. Insurance (Ugh!)
3. Taking care of plants at malls & office buildings. One of the malls I worked in had tiered planters running up along the escalators. I would have to shut off the escalator, hop the rail and climb up and down the planters with my hose to water the plants. The planters were granite, which gets pretty slippery when it's wet, so it was always a challenge not to end up in the food court 20 feet below. Also, you know the trees in malls? They get really dusty. To "dust" them, you grab the trunk with both hands and shake as hard as you can, raining dust & leaves all over the floor (and you). I would go home filthy.
4. Designing, planting & maintaining flower beds at office buildings (my current job).

Four movies I could watch over & over:
1. Monty Python & The Holy Grail
2. Ever After
3. Pleasantville
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Four places I've lived:
1. A little tiny two-bedroom house. This was the first house my parents owned. My dad made us a dollhouse that was an exact replica of it.
2. A big white colonial. My bedroom had a slanted ceiling, which I painted ducks on when I was a teenager (I doubt the ducks are still there). The house had a detached garage, and I had great plans to turn the garage into an apartment. I would make a loft for my bedroom, but I wouldn't have a bed; I'd just spread stuffed animals all over the floor and sleep on them. Funny how that doesn't sound as comfortable to me now as I thought it would be back then.
3. The second floor of a two-family house. The prior tenants were careless with cigarettes, so the house caught fire. We were the first people to live there after it burned (well, after it was repaired, anyway).
4. A little tiny two-bedroom house (where I live now). I guess things have come full-circle!

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Lost
2. Desperate Housewives
3. The Daily Show
4. Who's Line Is It Anyway?

Four favorite books:
1. Harry Potter (the whole series; I can't pick a favorite)
2. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
3. Bridget Jone's Diary by Helen Fielding
4. Songs of The Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult

Four places I've been to on vacation:
1. Disney World (8th grade class trip)
2. Washington D.C.
3. Vermont
4. Boston

Four websites I visit daily:
1. This one
2. Everyone on my blogroll
3. Go Fug Yourself (a couple of times a week)
4. The Onion (on Wednesdays, when they update)

Four favorite foods:
1. Fresh-baked bread
2. Cheese
3. Shrimp
4. Cheesecake

Four places I'd rather be right now:
1. In the garden (preferably on a day when it's not raining quite so hard)
2. On a boat (again, on a day with slightly less rain)
3. Curled up in front of the fireplace with a good book (perfect for a day like today)
4. Reading someone else's me-me, instead of writing my own!

It's Kind Of Like Eating Spagettio's As An Adult...Just Not The Same

2006-01-17T07:44:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, my daughter discovered Molly Ringwald. She'd come across The Breakfast Club a couple of times on TV, and since she liked it, we rented Sixteen Candles. Both were good movies. Not Oscar-worthy, but good. So yesterday, when Hubby was out and we decided it was a good time to watch a "chick-flick", we put in Pretty In Pink.

I didn't remember much of Pretty In Pink, except that it had the same basic plot as every other teen 80's movie: guy & girl totally unsuited for each other fall for each other, overcome all kinds of obstacles and finally get together at the end. Now I know why I didn't remember it; there was absolutely nothing memorable about it. It was completely and utterly boring. The only part even remotely interesting was seeing Jon Cryer when he was young (if you don't recognize the name, he plays Charlie Sheen's brother on Two And A Half Men). His was also the only likeable character. Molly Ringwald was a bitch, her father was a bum, and all the kids at the high school were jerks. The lead male was a total dweeb with no backbone, and as I-Gave-Up-Doing-Homework-For-This?-Daughter pointed out several times, "He's not even hot."

We did watch the movie through until the end, I guess because we kept hoping it would get better (it didn't), and amused ourselves by making fun of the fashions. One thing about watching 80's movies: You can always make fun of the fashions. I mean, really, what were we thinking? Puffy sleeves? Three-tiered skirts? Jumpers? Baggy, pleated pants in pastel colors on guys? Even worse, these were the cool guys?

I think my daughter may be right. We really didn't have any taste.

Things I Learned This Week (Chapter 2)

2006-01-16T11:18:00.000-05:00

Things I learned this week (ok, actually last week, since this is Monday):

1. If you're supposed to wake your daughter up at 6:15am, and you forget until 6:32am, if you act really annoyed when you call up the stairs she'll think she slept through your first two calls and won't be mad at you.

2. The definition of "oddment" (a leftover piece of cloth, or something unusual).

3. It's ok to listen to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving, because afterwards you'll have all kinds of conversation/arguments/awkward moments with relatives to take your mind off it. If, however, you read about a similar situation on Tink's blog, and your daughter doesn't get it, so you download the song on iTunes and make her listen to the whole 18+ minutes so she can see the similarities and "get the joke", you will have it stuck in your head for at least 3 days. So will your daughter.

4. The Board of Education in my town just passed a new graduation requirement in literacy. Starting with the class of 2009, all students will need to be able to read in order to graduate. Since they informed me of this by letter, I was tempted to call the principal and ask him to please explain himself because I graduated in 1989 and therefore have no idea what all these symbols on this piece of paper he sent me mean. Fortunately for my daughter, I refrained from making the call.

5. How to change a blog template.

6. How to add photos to a blog template.

7. How to change the colors on a blog template.

8. How to change the colors on a blog template again.

9. If you repeat #5-8 more than twelve times in two days, calling your family in to get their opinion on the results each time, not only will your butt start to take on the shape of the computer chair, but your family will eventually threaten to stage an intervention and/or committment to a psyciatric ward.

The Finished Product (Until I Get Bored And Re-do It)

2006-01-15T13:15:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, I've got a short attention span. Back to tulips, but these are tulips from an actual photograh, not a drawing. It's a good thing I didn't pay for that other template, since the only piece of it I'm still using are the text boxes.

If you haven't been here over the last few days, you missed a lot! I changed my template to this purple/lavender design with a drawing of tulips at the top, which was a very nice template, but it just wasn't me. So I started fiddling around and figured out how to post photographs in a template. I went to a winter forest scene, but I couldn't get the colors right...it looked too gloomy with only blues and grays, but brighter colors looked out of place with the background. I tried other photographs, but they were either blurry, or had something ugly near the top (which is, of course, the only part that really shows). Just as I was about to give up in despair, enter Daughter-To-The-Rescue!

Seriously, if you don't have a teenager at home, you really need to think about getting one. Sure, I know they listen to crappy bands like My Chemical Romance, and have a tendency to leave stinky socks on the coffee table, but they're really helpful with this computer stuff. She taught me how crop pictures (Stop laughing! Yes, you! It's not my fault I'm an idiot around computers...I work outside, remember?). So I found a decent photo of one of my flower beds, cropped it so only the good parts show, and wal-la! Instant success!

Ok, ok, not instant...I still had to spend another hour figuring out what colors that would work with the new photo. What's with this Colormatch thing, anyway? Primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, so why do they give me red, green, and blue to work with? How on earth I am supposed to mix green & blue to get a good yellow? Don't ask me how I ended up with these two shades...I just moved the slider bars back & forth 80 million times until they appeared.

So, if you're feeling the winter doldrums, just visit my blog. I may not have anything interesting to say, but the explosion of color should knock your socks off! Just don't leave them on the coffee table...that's the teenager's spot.

Learning My Colors

2006-01-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

So I scrapped the tulips. Every time I opened my blog the whole screen would go pink while it was loading, and I just couldn't deal.

I figured out how to load my own picture, which took the place of the tulip design. I'm not sure about the colors, though. The yellow doesn't really seem to work, but it seemed too dreary with only the blues. Anybody have another color suggestion? Or should I just change the background picture to something more cheerful?

I have to say, designing flower beds is much easier than designing webpages.

Still Tinkering...

2006-01-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

Ok, I've been playing around with the colors. I like the tulips, but the original re-design had too much pinkish-lavender in it. I'm really not a "pink" person. What do you think of the blueish-purple colors instead? I wish I could change the basic background (the only part left that's pinkish, behind the text boxes), but I can't find the code for it. I think it may be an image, so I'm probably stuck with it.

On the upside, I'm impressing myself with my ability to change code. The color changes I figured out on my own, too...no help from the teenager!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...Turn, And Face The Strange

2006-01-14T10:50:00.000-05:00

It took me forever, but I figured out how to change my template. Of course, I had to inlist the help of Makes-Her-Mother-Feel-Like-An-Idiot-Daughter to accomplish it. It definately doesn't do much for the self-esteem to need a fourteen-year-old's help to understand instructions that, no matter how many times you read them, just don't make sense. Is this part of the aging process, or am I just a big dummy? Wait, don't answer that...I'm not sure I want to know.

So, what do you think of the new design? I know it's a little purple-y. I found one I liked better on a different site, in blues and greens, but I would have had to pay for it, and I'm just way too cheap for that. This one was free, for those technologically-advanced enough to figure out how to use it, or anyone with a teenager at home.

An Early End To My Career As A Hairdresser

2006-01-13T08:34:00.000-05:00

My grandmother lived in an old farmhouse, built around 1800. It had five bedrooms and two staircases, one in the front of the house, leading up from the "parlor, " and another off the kitchen. The upstairs bedrooms were for the most part unused, and so was the parlor (except for holidays). This created a perfect playplace for little girls who liked to play dress-up.

We were great fans of Little House On The Prairie, especially since the Ingalls Family had three girls, just like ours. My mother sewed a lot of our clothes when we were little, and we all had calico dresses just like those Mary, Laura, and Carrie wore, complete with bonnets and pinafores. We outgrew Little House On The Prairie before we outgrew playing dress-up, so in time we switched to what we considered "ballgowns," which were long, floaty dresses, some with sequins, purchased at the Thrift Store in the center of town for $10. We made many grand entrances down the staircase into the parlor, decked out in our finery.

One of the upstairs bedrooms had a makeup table with a mirror that had lights all around, like the kind movie stars used. The top of it was covered with blush and mascara, hair rollers, and an assortment of other beauty products. We were, of course, not allowed to use the makeup, although I'm pretty sure we tried out a lipstick from time to time. It was at this table that we would sit to do our hair. And along with the eyelash curlers and tweezers, the table contained a little pair of scissors.

I'm not sure how old I was when I decided to cut my sister's hair. Old enough to remember it, anyway. I'm guessing I was about seven at the time, which would have made her four. I didn't cut all of her hair, just her bangs. I've mentioned before that I'm not exactly good at straight lines, right?

I must have known right away that I'd done something wrong, because I made her promise me, before we went downstairs, that she wouldn't tell anyone. I didn't, of course, want her to know that I thought I'd done anything wrong, because even a four-year-old knows the fun to be had from tattling. So I think I said something along the lines of "Now, let's not tell anyone, and we'll just see if they notice on their own." I'm not sure whether or not I tried to cover the damage with her bonnet, but even if I did, in the end it didn't matter. She couldn't contain her excitement, and as soon as we got to the bottom step she blurted out, "Mommy, look, Sister-Who's-About-To-Be-Grounded-For-Life cut my hair!" Only she didn't say Sister-Who's-About-To-Be-Grounded-For-Life, she said my name, effectively eliminating my only defense, which would have been to blame it on my older sister.

I didn't get grounded for life, but I did get yelled at, and I'm guessing we weren't allowed to use the makeup table for awhile. I was really mad at her, too, because I knew nobody would have noticed if she had kept her mouth shut (I think the bangs ended up in a sort-of upside-down "V" shape...No, of course nobody would have noticed that).

My sister goes to a professional hairdresser these days. If she ever wants a quick touch-up, though, I have a little pair of scissors...

Lost In The Fog

2006-01-12T13:22:00.000-05:00

In the summer, I frequently go in to work at 4:30am, so I can set up sprinklers and have them down again before the businesses open for the day. Sure, it's early, but by 8:30 in the morning when all the office workers are arriving, angrily honking their horns at each other in their rush not to be late, I'm headed home to enjoy my day. So I don't mind it.

There aren't very many other cars on the road at 4:30, especially on the parkway (commercial trucks aren't allowed, so no tractor-trailers or buses). There's a river I cross on my way in. On foggy mornings, I'll get halfway across the bridge and not be able to see either side. For a moment I'm all by myself, suspended in the middle of nothingness, surrounded by the mist rising off the river. It's an incredibly peaceful moment, and a beautiful way to start the day.

Have I mentioned I love my job?

They're Ba-ack...

2006-01-11T11:19:00.000-05:00

A few years back, right after Volkswagen reintroduced the Beetle, I saw a lime green model with a license plate that said "APHID." I thought it was funny at the time, but now I'm wondering...

Why would you name your car after a pesky parasite that refuses to die?

Because they're back!

I never ended up dragging the topiaries outside; instead I used a combination of insecticial soap and a systemic that's absorbed through the roots. Organic gardeners, please don't yell at me...I use chemicals only when absolutely necessary, and since the topiaries are potted (and indoors), in this case there's no danger of anything ending up in our groundwater. I also pruned off all the new growth, which is, of course, where the little buggers congregate. All was good, until yesterday, when I discovered the enemy had returned. With reinforcements.

So I'm back to pruning and soaping. I'll hold off on the systemic for now...Hopefully this time I've caught it early enough that the harsher stuff won't be necessary.

Any of you people who live in southern climates want to go catch a few ladybugs and mail them to me? They're pretty scarce up this way in January, but if you can lure a few into an envelope, I can promise them an All-You-Can-Eat Aphid Buffet. You might want to warn them about the kitten, though, who would probably enjoy an All-You-Can-Catch Ladybug Buffet...

Ghostly Romances

2006-01-10T10:18:00.000-05:00

Last week I left the book I was reading at my aunt's store. I was too lazy to drive back over to get it (it wasn't that good of a book), but I wanted to read something, so I started on The Mediator series by Meg Cabot. These are, of course, my daughter's books, but the truth is I actually like books intended for teens. I enjoy re-reading old favorites, like Judy Blume & Beverly Cleary, but I find I like newer authors, too. There's one series I particulary like, called Dear America, which explore the viewpoints of mostly 11-to-13-year-old kids at different moments in history, written as if they were diaries. My daughter's too old for those now, but we still have a number of them on the bookshelves, mainly because I like them. Books that I like I tend to keep, because they're fun to re-read years later.

If you recognize the name Meg Cabot, you're probably thinking of The Princess Diaries. She's written a couple of other series, including The Mediator, as well as a few books for adults. This particular series is about a girl who can talk to dead people, and falls in love with a ghost. I read the first book, then went on to read the sequels because I wanted to find out what happened with the ghost-romance. Which I find amusing, since I don't read romance novels much anymore. I loved them as a teenager, but then I grew up, and although I still read them occasionally, I find I'm much happier in my marriage when I stick to regular old fiction. Because, let's face it, I love my husband dearly, but he doesn't exactly act the way those guys in the romance novels do. Nobody does.

Anyway, The Mediator books got me thinking about an old TV show, called The Ghost And Mrs. Muir. Does anybody else remember this show? It was about a widow (a young widow) who moved into an old house inhabited by the ghost of a seacaptain. I seem to remember the widow looking something like the blonde girl on The Munsters, but I could be wrong. I know the captain had a beard. I couldn't give you the plot of a single episode, but I'm pretty sure that there was some sort of sexual-tension going on between the widow and the ghost. As much sexual-tension as was allowed back then, anyway; I think it was filmed in black & white. It must not have run very long, or else it wasn't very popular, or it would already be on TV Land.

There's no real point to this entry, just one more useless memory dredged up and dusted off. I do wonder, though, if the widow ever got together with the ghost before the show ended...

The Number One New Year's Resolution In America

2006-01-09T14:18:00.000-05:00

In an attempt to eat healthier, my family has decided to cut back on what we eat at dinner. Specifically, to cut out the pasta/rice/potato, and just eat a main course and a vegetable. We're not doing a low carb diet, it's just that we don't really need carbs at night. Especially since we tend to eat dinner on the late side, and who needs to fill up on all that food and then go to bed an hour later?

I don't really believe in low carb diets. Short-term I guess they work, but I don't think it's healthy to deprive your body of carbs long-term, and just doing it short-term doesn't really make sense to me. If you don't change your eating habits, you'll just gain it all back anyway, right? And I've decided it's really about time I did change my eating habits.

See, the thing is, I like food. No, I mean I really like food. And if I don't make a choice to make a change soon, my body will make the choice for me, by becoming diabetic. And I just like food to much to want to live with the eating restrictions that would come with being diabetic.

So, like a awful lot of other Americans out there, I'm now counting points.

I've done Weight Watchers before, successfully, until something happened to make me stop. The first time I got a kidney stone, and if I added up how many points all those glasses of cranberry juice I had to drink were, I wouldn't be able to eat anything at all. So I stopped counting. Or I went on vacation, and everyone knows you can't count points on vacation. But you're supposed to start again when you come back, right? But I didn't.

You won't find me at a Weight Watchers meeting. I joined once, went to the first four meetings, then stopped. Just long enough to get the little chart-thingy to figure out how to factor in exercise. The only thing that was beneficial about the meeting itself was the weight-in; the pep-talk afterwards doesn't really do anything for me. And I'm not going to pay $10, or $12, or whatever it costs these days, just to have a stranger jot down my weight while I stand on a scale. Having my husband jot down my weight would be a heck of a lot more effective, and free, but I'm not ready to resort to that yet. Nope, for now I'm going to go this alone. At least the looking-at-the-numbers-on-the-scale part.

I've decided I'd like to lose 5 pounds a month, which I think is reasonable. I can't tell you how many months I'll be doing this for, because that would be too much like telling you my weight, and if my husband doesn't get to see the numbers on the scale, neither does the internet. Only my daughter knows, and she'll never tell, because I've got the goods on her too. But suffice it to say that I'll be doing this for awhile.

So, anyway, the dinner thing? I'm not really a cook. I know it's just following directions, and I'm a good baker, so if I can follow the directions to make say, an apple pie, I should be able to follow the receipe for "Braised Endive with Lemon", right? But up until now, dinner consisted of a main course (meat, poultry or fish, usually just marinated or Shake 'N Baked), some sort of pasta or rice side dish (pre-packaged, just-add-milk-and-butter) and a canned vegetable (microwaved, with butter). No wonder I need to lose weight, huh? Can you say "Too-Much-Butter"?

If we're only having the meat and vegetable, I guess it's about time I learned to cook vegetables. Besides the green bean casserole with the canned green beans, canned cream-of-mushroom soup, and canned French-Fried-Onion-Rings, which is the only vegetable dish I know how to cook. So tonight, courtesy of the Weight Watchers cookbook, instead of a heated-up ham steak with a can of peas and butter, we'll be having Orange-Glazed Ham, with Mushroom and Bell Pepper Saute. And salad, which I've promised my daughter will always be on the menu in case she doesn't like whatever weird vegetable I've managed to cook up (or blacken).

I wonder what people in other countries make for New Year's Resolutions?

Things I've Learned This Week

2006-01-06T11:02:00.000-05:00

I know they say you're supposed to learn something new every day. There are not enough brain cells left in my head to remember something new every day, though, so instead I will share what I learned this week (the stuff I remember, anyway):

When driving, do not assume you have the right of way, even when you do.

If you like to start the New Year with a clean house, it's not wise to let your 14-year-old invite friends over on New Year's Eve, then leave them alone while you go next door and drink wine until 1am. Unless your definition of a clean house includes "crumpled bags of Doritos and empty soda cans all over the living room."

If you ask nicely, someone kind like Mrs. Harridan will show you how to do links, and you can repay her by making her your first offical link.

Just because your father is smart does not mean that he will remember all of Dumbledore's great speeches (he's older than you, hence even less brain cells). Even the short, simple speeches. He also may not realize that "Tweak" is a verb, and "Nitwit" and "Blubber" are nouns.

That about sums up what I learned this week. Maybe next week I'll learn what "Oddment" means...

Toilet Paper As An Accent Piece

2006-01-05T09:31:00.000-05:00

I have a work truck that I get to keep at my house. Every year, when I'm done with work for the season, I give the truck back, so it can be serviced and put in the garage for the winter. This year I had it a little longer than usual, because the garage wasn't ready (they just moved to a new location). So instead of me driving to the garage on my last day of work, leaving the truck off and having someone give me a ride home, like we usually do, my boss decided to come pick it up.

How many of you have ever had your boss in your house?

Right...

I like my boss a lot. He's a great guy, and a really good boss. I've also been in his house many times. It's spotless. Mine...isn't. So this morning I run around, straightening everything up on the outside chance he comes inside. Which he does. Which is fine, because the place didn't look too bad, and it's winter, so frost has killed off all the weeds in the front yard (he never, ever would have hired me if he'd seen my yard first). Everything is good.

Until he leaves, and I notice something sitting on the shelf directly opposite the front door. The shelf I apparently missed while doing my speed-cleaning. The shelf that is usually the first thing you see when you walk in the door. Sitting on the shelf was...a roll of toilet paper.

Hubby does not like to use tissues when he blows his nose. He says they're not strong enough, and he prefers toilet paper. It doesn't matter that I buy expensive, 3-ply tissues and cheap, thin toilet paper; he just doubles (or triples) the toilet paper up. When I point out that he could do the same with the tissues, he ignores me. Because this really isn't about paper products. It's a Power Struggle.

There are only a few things we Power Struggle over. The curtains are one...I like light, he doesn't. You know that pizza commercial, where the delivery guy goes up to a dark house and the guy who answers the door is so excited about how low the cost of the pizza is that he lets his kids turn on the lights for a few seconds, then says "That's enough" and shuts them off again? That guy is totally my husband. Except with Hubby it's not about saving on the electric bill; he just likes it dark. So whenever I walk by the curtains I open them, and whenever he walks by he closes them. I win on this when we have guests over, so at least it was light in here when my boss stopped by. However, that was an hour ago, and I'm in the spare room now, and Hubby's in the living room, so guess what? The curtains are closed again. Not completely, because that would be too obvious. No, there's about three inches less light showing from each window than there was when I last entered the room. And if I leave it unchecked, by this afternoon it will be just a tiny slit of light.

We also battle over the couch cushions. The couch is a sage-green color, with 5 big cushions on the back. One side of the cushions is the same green as the couch, and the other has a brown and tan pattern on it. The loveseat is brown (actually the loveseat is pink, with a brown cover, but we won't go there). So I like the brown & tan side up, to tie-in with the loveseat. He doesn't like the pattern, though, so he's always turning the green side up. This is another one I win when we have guests over. Actually I win this one more often than the curtain-battle, because once he's sitting on the couch he'll usually leave the cushions alone. But when I get up in the morning, all is green again.

The toilet paper battle is one my daughter and I wage together. Teenagers don't particularly enjoy bringing friends home from school to find a roll of toilet paper on the coffee table. As if having dorky parents home when you get there isn't embarrassing enough... Despite it being two against one, Hubby usually wins the toliet paper battle, because if we move the roll from the coffee table back into the bathroom (where it belongs), he'll just go get it again, and leave it somewhere else next time. Like, apparently, the shelf across from the front door.

So, Boss, if you ever find this blog, please be aware that I don't intentionally decorate my house with toilet paper. But while you were here, did you notice how nicely the brown & tan couch cushions match the pink loveseat with the brown cover? Not to mention the lovely Sasparilla-colored walls?

What If The Policeman Thinks You're Fat And Pimply?

2006-01-04T16:25:00.000-05:00

So my dented car and I headed down to the police station today, to pick up my accident report. Except that it wasn't an accident report, it was an incident report, because it happened on private property (a parking lot). Turns out an incident report has no useful information on it whatsoever. It's half a page long, lists the date and the address the "incident" took place at, both licenses plate numbers and the fact that vehicle #1 was at fault (Ok, I guess that part was useful, since I was vehicle #2).

The report doesn't give any information on the other guy, other than his license plate number, but it does list my name because I was the "complainent." No, I didn't misspell that, the police did. Fortunately I didn't look at it until after I left the station, or I would have felt obligated to suggest Spellcheck, and it's probably not a good idea to annoy the police.

Under my name are spaces for race, sex, date of birth, height, weight, hair, eyes, facial hair, build, and complexion. All of these were left blank, which is good, because I don't really need the officer's assessment of my build or my complexion. And it would have been really embarrassing if he had listed "bushy eyebrows" under facial hair...it's been awhile since I've had them waxed.

Starting The New Year With A Bang

2006-01-03T07:41:00.000-05:00

Actually it was more of a "crash-bang." You guessed it...car accident. Really more of a fender-bender. Except it was the other guy's fender, and the whole passenger side of my car. Nobody hurt, though, so that was good. No angry words, either...he admitted fault right away, and was actually apologetic (yes, apparently some people still apologize these days). It took the policeman nearly 25 minutes to arrive, though, which was annoying, especially since the station was maybe a four-minute ride down the street. We could have driven to them faster.

I haven't used this space as a forum to rant yet, and I don't want to start 2006 by setting a precedent, but I have to say there are an awful lot of bad drivers out there. People, you need to pay attention, and slow down. This was just one accident, but I've seen a good number of near misses out there as well. Grant right of way when you're supposed to. Actually stop at stopsigns, don't just pause, and look both ways before proceeding. If you're leaving a parking lot, you need to stop, regardless of whether or not there's a stopsign. And stop at red lights, even if the car in front of you made it through. It used to be just one car would keep going after the light changed; now I've frequently seen three or four. Driving is not a competition. You don't win if you're fast enough to pull out three seconds before the driver with right of way gets to the intersection. You just create one more person in the world who thinks you're a jerk. So stop it. There's enough people who think that already.

This isn't all aimed at the guy who caused my accident; he clearly did not grant right of way, but he was polite and apologized. And since his insurance company will be paying for the damage to my car, maybe he'll be a little more careful on the roads from now on. The rest of us need to be more careful too.

Be safe out there, everyone.

On a side note, isn't it odd that I feel the need to commend the guy for being polite? One more thing that used to be a given, and now seems like such a rare occurrence that it's considered praise-worthy. Be safe out there, everyone, and also be nice to each other.

Hello, 2006!

2006-01-01T08:03:00.000-05:00

January 1st...I guess I'm supposed to list resolutions here, huh? I'm starting the New Year sipping coffee, as four 14-year-olds sleep upstairs. There's also a man snoring in my bedroom (Hubby), and another snoring on the couch (Hubby's friend). The dog, for once, is not snoring.

I first woke up around 5am, and could still hear the teenagers laughing. All is quiet now, though, and I imagine it will be for quite awhile (except for the snoring). I'd be very surprised to see any of them until sometime in the afternoon. Probably late afternoon.

I like that they've got a spot now where they can hang out. After moving out of my parents' house, I lived in a series of one bedroom apartments until we bought our house, a spacious 900-square-foot, two bedroom, one bath shoebox. No, that's not a misprint. 900 square feet. Yes, I know most new houses have garages that size. No, you can't park your car in my living room (Are you kidding? It wouldn't fit. We'd have to take down the bedroom wall first).

After years of talking about it, and at least a year of actually working on it, we turned the attic into another bedroom. Doubtful That We'd Ever Finish Daughter was thrilled. She helped do a lot of the work, from nailing down the floor to putting up paneling after I framed the walls (No, that wasn't a misprint either...I actually framed walls. Just please don't lean on them). Nailing up the paneling was quite an experience. The person who invented panel nails should be shot. Repeatedly. With a nail gun. Panel nails come in 1" and 1 1/2 ". If you get the shorter size, it's impossible to hold them in place without hitting your thumb with the hammer. If you get the longer size, 8 out of every ten nails will bend before you finish nailing them in, because they're so thin, and made out of such cheap metal. By the time we were finished, Never Thought She'd Need To Wash her Mother's Mouth Out With Soap Daughter and I both had swollen thumbs, and had learned a few new words.

But, now that it's done, the new room is paradise to a teenager. Especially a teenager that has been sharing 900 square feet with two dorky parents for the last ten years. The new bedroom has also given us something I've never had before: A Spare Room. We were unsure what to call the my daughter's old bedroom at first. I thought about calling it The Library, since it has four bookcases in it, but that seemed a little presumptuous, given the size of the house. At one point I considered calling it The Nursery (A plant nursery, people, NOT a baby nursery), because the topiaries are in there, and for awhile it housed a braided Hibiscus Standard that I rescued from outside just before frost did it in. Also the spider plant hanging in the corner keeps having babies. Calling it The Nursery would require too much explaining, though, and besides, the Hibiscus is no longer there, it having been given to someone who will take better care of it than me. I suppose I could call it The Hotel, since for awhile it was home to 20,000 aphids, or The Death Chamber, since the aphids are no longer with us. On occasion we've referred to it as the Computer Room, because, well, there's a computer in it. In the end, though, I just like the word "spare" so much that that's what I call it. The Spare Room.

So I was supposed to be going somewhere with all this, wasn't I? Oh yeah, resolutions. Here we go:

1. I resolve to finish painting the trim in the Spare Room. When my daughter resided there, it had light blue walls & ceiling (with clouds), and purple sponged-painted trim. I painted the trim that would be covered by furniture with white paint before I put the furniture there, so I wouldn't need to move bookcases & such later. But the trim around the doors, and the doors themselves (both entry & closet) are still purple.

2. I resolve to figure out what kind of walls to have in the living room, and put them there. Currently 1 1/4 walls are sheetrock, 1 1/4 walls are knotty pine, and 1/2 wall is nothing but insulation (under the windows, behind the couch. You wouldn't know it if I didn't tell you). The other wall is the fireplace, and that's one of the few things that looks good now, and can be left alone. I like the knotty pine better, even though it's painted, but it's really old, we'd never match it, and any insulation that used to be behind it has deteriorated into the bottom third of the wall. So it'll probably be sheetrock. If we don't get much snow this year, at least I'll have snow in the living room. Hello, sheetrock dust!

3. I resolve to insulate behind the new walls before they go up. Hello, itchy skin!

4. I resolve to paint the new walls a different color (as yet to be decided), because Sasparilla is a pretty cool name for a paint color, but it's actually not a very pretty color. I also resolve to not let Hubby pick the paint color this time.

5. I resolve to go to a wine tasting. I've always wanted to, but never have, so when I buy wine I have no idea what I'm getting. I tend to go for the interesting-looking labels, or neat names. One of the bottles I currently own is called "Fat Bastard." Hubby can't taste anymore, but he knows a lot about wine, so I'm going to drag him with me to a tasting anyway. I figure after putting up with the sheetrock dust & itchy skin, I'll be entitled.

So that's about it. Oh, I also have all the usual resolutions: eat better, exercise more, be a kinder, more patient person... But I'm not listing those. I figure I have a better shot of actually completing the home-improvement projects than the self-improvement ones.

And the wine. Let's not forget the wine.

An Epidemic

2005-12-31T14:40:00.000-05:00

Hey, my dad's got a blog now, too!

www.anothercynicalseeker.blogspot.com

See what you started, House of Prince?

Random Stuff...

2005-12-30T07:45:00.000-05:00

So we listen to Christmas music when we set our tree up. What are we supposed to listen to when taking it down? Anti-Christmas music (Black Sabbath or something)? Christmas music played backwards? I couldn't decide, so I tried the radio but the station I like was all static-y. So I ended up with the Beatles Yellow Submarine. Hey, it was raining, after all.

I was looking in our local paper, and noticed the YMCA is offering synchronized swimming lessons. Yep, synchronized swimming. I don't want to take the class, but boy, would it be fun to watch.

One packet of oatmeal is not a very filling breakfast.

The people in my neighborhood are weird. I know you think your neighbors are weird, but trust me, mine take the cake. Last night we kept hearing car doors opening & closing, so we figured it was another party at the teenager's house. It went on for a good ten or fifteen minutes, so finally I got up & looked out. Nope, no party. The guy across the street was cleaning out his car. At 9:45pm. In the dark. In heavy fog.

If you've read my previous posts, you'll remember the guy across the street. If I knew how to do links, those who haven't read my previous posts would know about him, too. Would somebody please show me how to do links?

Speaking of the word "weird", when I was a kid my mother had two good friends, who used to joke about themselves as weird, weirder & weirdest. One of them decided to have T-shirts made up, but spelling wasn't her strong point. So when when I got old enough to wear my mother's clothes, one of the shirts I had to choose from said "WIERDER" across the chest. I got alot of funny looks.

Yes, I did do spell-check before I posted this to make sure I spelled "weird" correctly.

Spell-check wanted to replace "weirdest" with "heartiest." I find that weird.

The Nativity: Next Generation

2005-12-29T07:45:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I've written about how I set up our Nativity when I was a kid, and my sister has commented on how she did it. I don't know how to do links, so if you want to read those entries you'll just have to scroll through the archives. Now let's see how the next generation made out.

I set up our ceramic set, so Joseph & Mary are crammed in the corner with the baby as usual. And in case you're wondering, no, I'm not a control freak; I offered to let my daughter set it up but she didn't want to. However, her Playmobil advent calendar this year was a Nativity (also an entry you'll have to search for. It's the one about Vikings. Anyone want to teach me how to do links?). The Playmobil set is a little different from the classic scene. For one thing, they have a campfire. And cats. Since she got her pieces one at a time, the scene changed daily. Here's a description of the end result:

Mary and the angel are sitting on a bench in the stable. The campfire is right in front of them, with a wooden tripod and a black cauldron over it. The angel appears to be toasting her wand over the fire (hmmm, a wand and a cauldron...kind of makes you wonder what religion the Playmobil designers are, huh? It should be noted that both cats in the set are black). The shepard is off to the left, also sitting on a bench, toasting his hobo bag over the fire (you know, a hobo bag? The kind you would tie your toys up in on the end of a stick when you were a little kid and would threaten to run away from home? I always thought shepherds carried a staff, but this one has a hobo bag). The baby is in his manger, next to Mary, but not in the stable. I guess shelter's not as important for him. Joseph stands on the other side of the manger, holding a lantern. I find it funny that the shepard gets a bench but Joseph doesn't...he always seems to get the short end of the stick. Scattered around the people are a cow, a goat, a donkey with a saddle, and a sheep with two lambs. Oh, and there's a bright green basket with wood in it. And the cats are on the roof.

At one point a few weeks into this, a friend of mine and her eight-month-old son came over while my daughter was at school. I don't have many toys for babies, so I raided the Playmobil Nativity. The donkey and the cow have sharp points, so we ended up giving Mary and the shepard to the baby to chew on (Joseph hadn't arrived yet). Because I didn't want him to choke on little pieces, though, I took off Mary's scarf and the shepard's cape & headpiece first. When they left, I set the pieces back on the cardboard base without properly arranging them. So when my daughter came home she wanted to know why Mary & the shepard were disrobed, lying on the ground to the side of the stable. But hey, nothing happened, because the angel was chaperoning the whole time. I'm sure she would have used that wand to turn them into frogs if they were misbehaving...

Why He's Not Allowed To Hold The Checkbook

2005-12-28T13:57:00.000-05:00

My husband is a sucker for anything sold on TV. We have a whole collection of dusty boxes in the basement: Six Second Ab-Machine, Buns of Steel Video Tapes, That Wheel-Thing With A Handle On Each End That You're Supposed To Hold In Both Hands While Kneeling On The Ground And Let It Roll Forward Leading To Cries Of "Help, I Can't Get Up!", etc. etc. The Ab Machine never left it's box, and although the plastic seal on the videos has been broken, a quick glimpse at either of our buns will tell you how often we've used them (steel? try souffle). Last I saw of the Wheel-Thing it was rolling around behind the closet door in the bedroom. I'd assume it's still there, except that I swept behind that door a few weeks ago and didn't see it. Then again, that was a awfully big dust bunny, even for my house...

It's not just excercise equipment. Jehovah's Witnesses leave my house thinking Hubby has not only converted, but will be bringing a noodle casserole to the next pot-luck night. A guy came by selling 10-dinner packages for a local restaurant, and he had Hubby out on the porch for a good fifteen minutes, nodding away, before I intervened with a polite "No Thank You" (ok, ok maybe polite is not the correct word, but hey, I didn't invite the guy to come here). Seriously, I like dinner out as much as the next person, but since Hubby & I have gone out to eat together, I don't know, maybe twice in the last three years, it didn't seem like the best purchase to me.

One night last month I woke up sometime in the wee hours to hear Hubby talking on the phone. Not just talking, but clearly ordering something. I didn't get up to investigate, but I'm pretty sure my dreams for the rest of the night involved being chased by a large Wheel-Thing while juggling Buns Of Steel videos. In the morning I asked him about it, and all he would tell me is "I got something for you." I was home when the box came in the mail, and it was a relatively small box, which I though was maybe a good sign. Then again, Buns Of Steel probably comes in DVD format now, so it was with some trepidation that I opened the gift Christmas morning. Fortunately for Hubby, it was not excercise DVDs (which I would not have handled gracefully). Instead he bought me a thirteen CD set of soul music, which suprised me, because it actually isn't a bad gift. I don't usually listen to soul music, but I don't mind it. I doubt I would have ever bought thirteen CDs of it, but I'm sure we'll listen to them all eventually.

So along with the CD set, I've started to get magazines in the mail. Apparently they offered Hubby free 3-month subscriptions. You didn't think he'd refuse, did you? So now we get Entertainment Weekly, Us, and Time. If we don't call to cancel them by the middle of February, they'll bill his credit card for an annual subscription for each magazine. You did notice he chose all weekly magazines, right? Why choose a 12-issue subscription, when you can have 52-issues for five times the price! For Entertainment Weekly and Us, I'll probably cancel early, so I don't risk missing the cut-off date. I might keep Time, though. I like Newsweek better, but Time isn't bad. The 12/26 issue has a really good article on the last page, called "The Year We Questioned Authority," about how we're not blindly following the government's every whim quite so often these days. Hey, it's a start.

But please don't come to my house and try to sell my husband anything. There's (intentionally) a very small credit limit on his Visa, and I'm not giving him the checkbook.

Unruly Houseguests

2005-12-27T07:23:00.000-05:00

I've offered to take in two houseguests for the winter. They've been staying in the spare room for a couple of months now, and they've been pretty quiet. They don't hog the bathroom, and they never raid the refrigerator in the middle of the night. The puppy likes to play tug-of-war with them, and they do a pretty good job of protecting the kitten when the puppy gets too rough. A few weeks ago, though, they started overstepping their bounds by inviting guests of their own. First only a few, then more and more. My attempts so far to evict the new guests have not been successful, so I may soon have to resort to drastic measures. That's right: genocide.

The houseguests are 4 foot ivy topiaries, and the guests they've invited in are aphids.

I've used insecticidal soap twice, but to no avail. Unfortunately, using something stronger will require dragging the topiaries outside first, and they're not lightweights. The weather's supposed to be pretty warm this week, though, so I may attempt it.

Don't you hate it when houseguests have to be physically dragged from the premises?

What Happens When You Leave A Big Tub Of Flour Uncovered On The Kitchen Floor

2005-12-27T07:18:00.000-05:00

Black kittens mysteriously turn white...

Who Says Indoor Cats Don't Get Exercise?

2005-12-19T10:21:00.000-05:00

This one of those posts where you'll need to scroll down slowly.

This is my Christmas tree. Certainly not Rockefeller Center, but not bad (as long as we don't turn on the fan). See, the top looks ok, maybe a little ornament-heavy, but otherwise an acceptable tree.

Now start scrolling...

...until you get to the bottom.

Beads hanging down, ornaments on the ground, the train off the track...

If you look at the bottom left of the photograph, you'll see the source of all the chaos. A.K.A. The Hoodlum.

By the way, the reason the top of the tree is ornament-heavy is because we keep moving them there from the bottom, where dangling Drummer-boys and Snoopys are easy prey for little paws.

A closer view of The Hoodlum at work, along with his occasional accomplice:

You'll be pleased to know that the cats are getting along much better these days. Just witness this shot of Sammy hugging Peppercorn. See how happy Peppercorn looks? And how enthusiastically Sammy is hugging? Why, Sammy's so enthusiastic, it almost looks like he's trying to strangle Peppercorn. Oh yeah, he is.

Christmas Gifts For My Family

2005-12-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

We're not doing much in the way of Christmas gifts this year, except for the kids in the family. I actually miss this. Shopping can be a pain, especially for people you don't know well enough to know what they want. But I know what everyone in my immediate family likes, and I keep seeing things I want to get them. Then I remember...oh, we're not doing that this year...

So I decided to make a list of things I would get for my family if I could. I'm not sure what I'd get my mother, but that's ok, because I won't celebrate with her until Christmas Day, so I have time to think more about it. We're celebrating with my dad today. So here's the list:

For my dad, I'd get him an extremely generous early retirement package, so he could take that job giving tours at the seaport or a museum. The tour job would be part-time, so he could enjoy his sailboat (a new, seaworthy sailboat, not that thing up on blocks in his yard). And I'd give him a new administration in the White House.

For my stepmom, I'd give her a big enough gap between my dad leaving his old job and starting the new one to let her company send her to England or Africa, or wherever she chooses for six months (provided she chooses somewhere safe). And I'd offer to take care of her gardens while they were gone. Only six months, though, because I'd miss them if they were gone longer than that. And it would be nice if her company threw in extra plane tickets, so family members could visit. Oh, and a new administration in the White House (actually, that gift would work for a lot of people).

For my sister and her husband, I'd give them season passes to all the Uconn women's basketball games, and the time to actually use them. I'd also give them peppermint ice cream year-round, not just at Christmas, and sticks of pepperoni with only end pieces, and brownies with only middle pieces (actually I am giving them brownies with only middle pieces, but hopefully they won't read this until after I see them later today). And that new administration thing...that too.

I won't be celebrating with my grandmother today, except in my heart, but if I could give her a gift I would make her arthritis and all the aches and pains of aging go away. Also I'd move her north, but that's purely selfishness on my part. I don't know my grandmother's political views, so I would only wish her a new administration if she really wanted one. You do want one, don't you Gramma?

And to Mosby, I'd give all the dog treats he wanted, and he'd be allowed to eat them without someone balancing them on his nose first. And, uh, a new administration...

Bragging II

2005-12-16T13:43:00.000-05:00

Behold the finished masterpiece:

I think it came out wonderful, especially since she waited until LAST MINUTE! AGAIN!

Ok, I'll stop yelling at her now. She did a fabulous job...much better than I could have. Straight lines were never my strong point. It actually looks much more impressive in person. My dad offered to scan it for me, but since it was due today and PERPETUALLY PROCRASTINATING DAUGHTER didn't finish it until ELEVEN-THIRTY LAST NIGHT, we didn't have time. So this is a photograph of the drawing on my refrigerator. Which makes me miss the days when I used to hang crayon drawings there.

It's kind of neat to be able to post it online, though. Maybe blogs will be the refrigerators of the future...

A Designing Daughter

2005-12-14T08:36:00.000-05:00

I've always liked art. I used to draw alot, and once I even painted ducks on the ceiling of my bedroom, as a very good friend who knew me in my duck-painting days recently reminded me. When we were kids my parents would take us to art museums, and I remember looking forward to these trips, and even enjoying them. When we became parents, Hubby and I tried the art museum thing once. Once. Bored Out Of Her Mind Daughter discouraged us from trying it again.

Our daughter has never really cared much for art. She loves music, but art just wasn't her thing. So I was a little surprised this year when she chose Design 1 as an elective. When we went to Freshman Orientation at the high school, we were told that the school used to discourage kids in honors-level classes from taking non-academic electives, like art, because it would bring their GPA down and hurt their chances of getting into a good college. Which is insane. Isn't the whole idea to try a bunch of different things, to find out what you like? If not in high school, then when? Fortunately the school must have figured this out, because they've changed their policy. Now kids in honors classes can take nonacademic courses, and "contract-up" to a higher level by doing extra assignments. To contract-up for Design 1, you have to profile several artists, and recreate one of their works. You can choose any artist you like.

Glutton-For-Punishment Daughter chose Escher.

For those who don't know him, Escher does optical illusions. Detailed architectural drawings, with arches and staircases that go over and under each other in ways they couldn't in real life. Really, really hard stuff to draw. This is an example of an Escher drawing:

If it were me, I probably would have chosen something like Van Gogh's "Starry Night", or Munch's "Scream", which are bascially a bunch of swirly lines. She could even have chosen abstract art. But she picked Escher. The simplest drawing she could find of his to recreate is this one (which really isn't anywhere near as simple as it looks):

Yeah. Good luck with that.

If she lets me, when she's done with the drawing I'll try to take a photo of it & post it (we don't have a scanner). If she lets me. The good thing about all this is that she's discovered she really does like art. Which she never would have known if she hadn't been allowed to take Design 1.

Now to plan that trip to the art museum...

Yet Another Indicator That I'm Old Now

2005-12-12T07:47:00.000-05:00

In the student parking lot at my daughter's school, there's a blue Pontiac Firebird. When I was in high school that was the cool car to own; everyone wanted either a Firebird or a Camaro. And a surprising number of kids had them. I never liked them much myself; they all looked the same, no matter what year, and there were far too many around. I liked Mustangs better...much more original.

Anyway, this Firebird in the student parking lot? It has an antique license plate on it.

The Nativity

2005-12-11T07:17:00.000-05:00

I have two sisters. When we were kids, we would take turns setting up the different Christmas displays in our house. I assume there were three displays, because there were three of us, and to have less would mean much arguing. At the moment, though, I can only remember two: the Nativity, and a winter village scene. Maybe the third person got to hang up the stockings? It's sad when the memory goes...

The village was not one of the expensive ceramic villages popular today. It had little houses made out of something stronger than cardboard but not so strong as wood, and little plastic people. The people were caroling, and building snowmen, and having snowball fights. We'd use quilt batting for snow, and sometimes we put things under the snow to make hills. We always cut a hole in the batting and put aluminum foil down, shiny-side up, for an ice skating rink (the display came with tiny ice skaters also). Sometimes we'd set up the village under the tree, with the train set. The years we did this the village was often ransacked by The Giant Monster Cat Who Liked To Chase The Train.

Getting to set up the village was always the most coveted job, but the Nativity was fun, too. I never put the people in the traditional pose, with the manger in the center of the stable and everyone surrounding it. My manger was always off in a corner, where there would be more shelter. Mary would be behind it, because she was likely tired-she had just given birth, after all. Joseph would be standing in front of the manger, but he wasn't looking at Jesus. He'd be keeping an eye on all these strangers, protectively shielding his wife and child from them. The animals would be off in the other corner, because Joseph would have shooed them there when they arrived. The shepard was usually standing a little closer to the family than the three kings, since Joseph would have been much more comfortable with someone closer to his own position in life. He probably would have been pretty leery of those kings.

My grandmother had a beautiful, vibrantly painted Nativity that she made herself when she did ceramics. One year, shortly after I moved out on my own, she asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told her I'd like her to make me a Nativity. This was probably around Thanksgiving, which is not nearly enough time to make and paint all those little figures, but I didn't know that. She never said a word, though, and on Christmas I had my Nativity. The figures weren't individually painted, but instead had what I think is called a "wash." They're white ceramic, with brown brushed over them. I actually like this much better than the painted sets, because it's neutral. Let's face it, the real Holy Family and shepard and kings probably looked much more like Middle-easterners than the pale white they're usually portrayed as in this country. My Nativity people don't look Middle-eastern, but they don't look Anglo-Saxon, either.

When my daughter was little she and her cousin would play with the Nativity, so now the donkey no longer has ears, and one of the camels is missing a foot. But I still love my Nativity. At some point I traded the green felt under the stable for a tan fabric that looks much more like sand, and this year the display is set up in front of a palm plant, which looks kind of cool. But Joseph still stands between the strangers and his family. That's the way it should be, don't you think?

Happy Birthday To My Sister

2005-12-10T09:36:00.000-05:00

May this year be a happy one.

Soggy Toliet Paper, And A Missing Sock

2005-12-08T13:24:00.000-05:00

I try to take my shower in the morning after all the people have been taken wherever they need to go, and all the animals (at least the little ones) are asleep. Some days this works out, and some days it doesn't.

Today, Sadie was asleep when I started my shower, but apparently the sound of the water woke her up. Either that, or it was "puppy sixth sense." At any rate, I had been in the shower maybe 20 seconds when she started barking. She was on the bed in the spare room, and sometimes she forgets that she knows how to get off the bed, so she barks until someone comes to rescue her. Because I was soaking wet with shampoo in my hair, I ignored her, figuring she'd remember how to get down eventually. Ignoring a puppy is never a really good idea. The barking stopped, which prompted me to peek around the shower curtain.

Yes, Sadie figured out how to get off the bed. She also discovered toliet paper.

I looked out just in time to see her tail disappear into the hallway, followed by a long strand of the white stuff. Fortunately the toliet paper is on a movable stand, not attached to the wall (a result of 7+ years of having no bathroom walls, but that's another blog entry). I was able to reach the stand, so I broke off the toliet paper and turned it around so she couldn't get more. This didn't really serve any purpose, except to lessen the amount of toliet paper I would later need to pick up off the floor, since my wet hands completely saturated the roll and it was no good anymore anyway.

Without the toliet paper to play tug-of-war with, Sadie decided to amuse herself by redistributing the pile of dirty clothes I had left on the bathroom floor. I know, I know, I should have put them down the laundry chute before I got into the shower. It's probably good I didn't, though, because who knows what she would have discovered if the clothes weren't there to attract her attention.

I used to watch Sadie's older sister when she was a puppy, too. My mother was working all day then, not just mornings, so sometimes I would need to go out and leave the dogs alone. One day, my daughter came home from school to a house full of Q-tips. You know how dogs will get something in their mouth and just shake it? We figured that's probably what Daisy did with the Q-tips. From the bathroom, to the hallway, to the living room...

Anyway, after I got out of the shower this morning, I combined the usual "puddle" hunt with a clothes hunt (It's always a wise idea to do a puddle hunt if the puppy's been out of your sight for more than a minute). I didn't find any puddles, other than the one under the toliet paper stand. I found my jeans in the hallway, and my shirt and one sock in kitchen. My underwear was in the living room, behind the love seat but in plain sight of the front door. It's a really good thing I found the underwear before my daughter came home, since she sometimes brings a friend, and at fourteen her reaction to finding her mother's underwear on the living room floor would probably not be quite as good-natured as her reaction to a trail of Q-tips.

One sock is still missing.

The year Daisy discovered Q-tips, we wrapped up a box of them and gave them to her for Christmas (at my mother's house, not mine. My daughter may have been good-natured about it, but that didn't mean she wanted to clean them up again). I guess this year we'll be giving Sadie a roll of toliet paper. Maybe we'll give Daisy some more Q-tips, too. It really was fun to watch (at someone else's house).

December Gardening

2005-12-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

If anyone finds this blog while searching for gardening websites, they're probably going to be disappointed. Other than a brief mention of poinsettias, I don't think I've brought up plants at all. But it's December...I don't do alot of outdoor gardening this time of year, and houseplants just aren't that exciting.

Although I hear Seseme Street has a segment called "Desperate Houseplants." That could be fun.

Radio Stations, And How I'm Slowly Driving My Husband Insane

2005-12-06T09:02:00.000-05:00

I have two favorite rock radio stations, neither of which come in well in my town. One gets a good signal if I'm headed north or east, but mixes with a Spanish-speaking station once you get within 10 miles or so of my house. The other I listen to if I'm headed southwest, but it turns classical once you cross the river separating my town from the next. There is a rock station based in my town, but one of the DJs has an extremely annoying voice, so I listen to it only as a last resort. I mean really, if you have an annoying voice, why would you choose a career in radio?

The northeast station has a really good program, called "Acoustic After Dark", that comes on every weeknight at 8pm. Three nights a week I pick my daughter up from karate around this time, so I get to listen to it. The only problem is that in certain areas between our house and the karate studio, the station turns Spanish. Because the Spanish-speaking areas are small, and the car is moving, we'll get songs that sound like this: "...and she's climbing a (female voice singing unrecognizable words to very fast beat) to heaven..." and "...how I wish, how I wish you were (Spanish guy yelling very loudly, I figure probably a car ad because of all the yelling) swimming in a fishbowl, year after year..." I like the acoustic hour enough to put up with this. My daughter finds it humorous, because she takes Spanish in school so she can sometimes understand what new words they're adding to the songs. Hubby, on the other hand, thinks we're both nuts, and looks for opportunities to distract us so he can change the station.

This station also does theme weekends. "Forgotten Favorites" is fun for the first 3 hours or so, but after awhile you realize why some of the songs were forgotten. And when they do the "Eighties from A to Z", I usually switch to the southwest station. I mean, I grew up during the eighties, and I'll admit there were some good rock songs, but not enough to fill a whole weekend.

"...Gimme three steps, give me (a few chords from Beethoven's 5th symphony) baby, give me three steps towards the door..."

Extreme Ironing

2005-12-05T13:42:00.000-05:00

My daughter and I went calender shopping this weekend. Do you know that there's an Extreme Ironing calender? Every month shows a different guy ironing in a weird place, like a the middle of a cowfield or hanging off the back of a bus.

I could have used one of those guys during the whole wet-karate-pants saga.

An Evil Stepmother?

2005-12-05T10:37:00.000-05:00

I have a stepdaughter who's 19. I've always had a fairly good relationship with her, although you couldn't call us close. We don't see her very often, which is Hubby's fault, not hers. He would take her for a day almost every weekend when she was young, but she got older and then he had the head injury, and it went from not very often to hardly at all. To give her credit, when we do see her it's because she sets it up. Hubby never makes the initial call. I don't call her because I don't feel it's my place to (she lives with her mother). Which is a cop-out, because she does have a cellphone, and truthfully it probably was my place to call her, at least for the period after the head injury, and if I had then I probably wouldn't feel awkward about it now. In my defense, I had alot on my plate then, but that's not much of a defense-she was in 7th grade, I was an adult. I do remember feeling incredibly guilty when I realized we'd missed her birthday that year.

Being a stepmother can be hard, and I realize that I've had it easier than most. My stepdaughter never knew her parents together (they split up when she was very young), so she never resented my place in her father's life. She never lived with us, so there were no discipline issues. I've been very careful not to overstep my bounds, and I've never tried to "mother" her.

Where am I going with all this? I'm not really sure. The reason it's on my mind is because she called last night to set up our Christmas get-together. Again, I do give her alot of credit for taking the initiative-it should not be her responsibility, and yet it seems to fall on her. I have alot of mixed feelings lately, about both her and myself, and I finally got up the nerve to explain it all to Hubby last night. Immediately afterward, he had a seizure, which means he won't remember any of what I told him. Which is very frustrating. So I will post it the basics here, worded very carefully so as not to completely alienate her if she someday finds this website.

I feel guilty because we haven't been able to help her financially as much as we should, especially with school. I'm disappointed that she graduated high school with no plans for future schooling or a job. I'm annoyed that several months later she asked for money for a SUV because she didn't like her car (at the time, she still wasn't working or going to school, and her car was newer than Hubby's). I was glad when she finally decided to enroll in a community college a year ago, and started working at a store in the mall. Again I felt guilty that we were not able to help her last summer when she really did need a car, because the SUV her mother bought her was involved in an accident. I'm angry that what we did offer then was implied to not be enough. And I'm embarrased because we had to revoke the offer because our financial situation changed. And I cannot understand why now she's taken on a job working in an adult store. She graduated high school as a Certified Nursing Assistant, and she wants to become a nurse. Wouldn't it be better to work as a CNA, especially since that's the field she wants to go into eventually anyway? What causes an attractive young girl to choose an adult store? Is it low self-esteem? Is the pay really high? And even if it is, is it worth it?

Then, I get mad at myself for judging her. Because that's not who I want to be. And over the years, I've tried really hard not to be that person, but if I'm honest with myself I have to admit that I have judged her. I judged her lazy when she wasn't working, and I judged her mother wrong for allowing it. I judged her materialistic when she wanted the SUV, and I judged her ungrateful when the money we offered to replace it wasn't enough. And now I'm judging her again, for working at the adult store. She would never know any of these things, because I've never let it show. I feel uncomfortable around her now, not so much because of the things she's done, but because of what the things she's done have told me about myself.

Why I Won't Get Nominated for Mother of the Year

2005-12-04T10:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my daughter had a belt-testing. She's already achieved her blackbelt in karate, and now she's working on jujitsu. The night before the testing, she asked me to wash her uniform. You know where this is going, right?

See, the top of the uniform is white, and the pants are black. So they have to be washed separately, unless I want the top to turn gray. To be honest, gray would be okay with me, but my daughter doesn't necessarily share that sentiment. So I wash them separately.

I did wash the uniform. Both pieces. And I dried one of them (the top). And I even put the pants in the dryer, along with a bunch of other dark clothes. But then I had to go out for a few hours, and since Not An Early Bird Daughter was sleeping in, and Hubby is not much of a clothes-folder, I decided to wait until I came home to turn the dryer on, since otherwise the clothes would sit there and wrinkle, and you can't go to a belt-testing with a wrinkled uniform.

I came home. I made lunch. I wasted an hour or so on the computer. I did not turn the dryer on.

Fifteen minutes before we had to leave, she asked where the uniform was. And I said "Oh."

To give her credit, Exceedingly Patient Daughter was gracious about it. She didn't even roll her eyes (it's not like this hasn't happened before). I suggested hanging the pants out the window to dry them on the way to the studio, like that old commercial where the guy is late for a big meeting and he closes his pants in the car window while he drives to work in his underwear, and the pants blow away on the highway-do you remember that commercial? I don't even know what it was advertising... Anyway, my daughter didn't like that idea. She may have actually rolled her eyes then.

Fifteen minutes is really not a very long time to dry pants.

She passed the test, wet pants and all. And fortunately they didn't do grappling, which might have been uncomfortable for her (and the person she would have been rolling around on the floor with).

Most importantly, the pants weren't wrinkled. I get brownie points for that, right?

When New Toys Fall From The Sky

2005-12-02T11:45:00.000-05:00

If you're putting away dishes and you drop a wooden spoon, and there's a puppy at your feet, be prepared to chase.

Checking up on Mother

2005-12-01T19:41:00.000-05:00

Distrustful Daughter actually checked up on me! She thought I was exaggerating about the Playmobil catalog, but she found out she was wrong-they really did put a Christmas tree in the middle of the Viking castle seige. And the pirate scene. And the gas station. The tree at the gas station looks like it's about to be run over, by the way. They put it right next to the pumps.

Vikings celebrate Christmas, too

2005-12-01T11:16:00.000-05:00

Of the toys I had as a kid, there are three I would still play with today: Legos, Richard Scary's Puzzletowns, and Playmobils. I don't play with them much anymore, because my daughter is a teenager now so she doesn't ask me to very often (ok, never) but there was a time when we would spend whole days setting up elaborate cities in the living room. Since these were my favorites as a kid, I naturally wanted them for my daughter when she was old enough not to choke on the little pieces. Legos are easy-you can get them anywhere. They don't make Puzzletowns anymore, but fortunately I ended up with my childhood set. We have most of the Puzzletowns, except for Huckle Cat's cottage (I'd still love to get that one-I'll have to check eBay one of these days). And they do still make Playmobils, although you have to hunt a little to find them. Places like Toys R Us and Walmart don't carry them; you have to go to trendy, boutique-type toy stores (translate:expensive). I suppose you can probably buy Playmobils online today, but when my daughter was little I didn't have an internet connection (I know, I know-how did I survive?).

If I had to choose the coolest of my three favorite toys, I'd have to pick the Playmobils. The figures are pretty realistic for a kid's toy, and the detail-work is incredible. If you buy the farm, you don't just get the barn and cows. You also get bales of hay, and feed sacks, and buckets to carry water to the pig trough, and a bench to sit down on if you get tired from carrying water, and bridles and brushes for the horses, and ladder for the farmer to climb when he needs to get the rooster off the top of the horse stalls. And they don't just have farm sets-you can buy pirate ships, and Vikings, a convenience store and a police station, not to mention the airport and the zoo... They're really, really cool toys. Also the Playmobils they make today are the same quality as those I had as a kid, which is a nice change from say, the Star Wars toys (I mean really-when they remade the action figures in the nineties, was it necessary to give them all the body of Hulk Hogan? Including Princess Leia?)

My daughter is fourteen now. Last week I asked her if she wanted the Playmobil advent calendar this year, and her response was "Is there any other kind?" She has a point, really-there is no other advent calendar like a Playmobil. They come with a cardboard background with a different scene every year, and 24 little boxes of varying sizes. Every day you open the correctly numbered box, and get a toy, which you place on the background to eventually create a holiday scene. The last box, of course, is always Santa Claus.

I forgot about the advent calender until today, which is, of course, December 1st. Too late to buy online, so I headed out to the trendy, boutique-type toy store. Unfortunately, they did not have this year's calender, and we've already bought the two styles they did have. They called their "sister" store (trendy, boutique-type toy stores do not have branches, they have "sisters"), but no luck there either. So I decided to be creative and make my own Playmobil advent calender. I bought a Playmobil nativity scene (after counting the contents shown on the back to make sure there were at least 24 items), and a prior year's Playmobil advent calender. I'm going to put the nativity scene toys in the advent calender boxes, and we'll have our own scene.

When I opened the nativity set, there was a Playmobil catalog inside with a toy Christmas tree on the front. I figured, cool, at least I'll get to see what this year's advent calender scene was. As it turned out, though, there were no advent calenders in the catalog. Instead it showed all the main Playmobil sets, but with a Christmas tree and gifts added. Yep, in the catalog, the Victorian house has a Christmas tree, and so does the gas station. The pirates set up their tree right next to the dungeon, presumably so the prisoners get a festive view from the barred window. And in the Castle set, the tree is on top of the highest turrent, next to a Viking wearing a Santa Claus beard under his pointed helmet. The catalog castle is under seige, and all the characters are weilding swords and spears and crossbows. One even has a stick with one of those spiky-ball-things attached to it on a chain. The catalog shows Santa and his reindeer flying above the castle, but I think I'd advise him not to land there. Better to try his luck on the farm-the animals look pretty friendly.

A Big Accomplishment For A Not-So-Accomplished Blogger

2005-11-30T09:38:00.000-05:00

I'm so proud of myself...I made my first link! Clap, everyone!

My Favorite Website

2005-11-30T09:31:00.000-05:00

I just have to say that I adore The Onion. One of this week's headlines is "CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years."

If I ever take the time to figure out how to put links in this blog, I will definately link to The Onion. For those who don't already know it, it's www.theonion.com. Hey, that highlighted blue. Is that a link? Maybe I figured it out!!!!

Speaking of clowns...

2005-11-29T16:09:00.000-05:00

Decidedly Diplomatic Daughter has pointed out that we don't know what the neighbor across the street's occupation was before he retired-maybe he was a clown.

More fun with the neighbor

2005-11-29T10:10:00.000-05:00

A few days ago when Hubby took the dog for a walk, Harley took off like a bat out of hell as soon as the front door was open. The guy across the street had just picked up his morning paper and was walking back towards his house. You remember the guy across the street, right? The neighbor whose one and only conversation with me centered on whether utility trucks from a heating & cooling company parked in my driveway meant I was moving out? Hubby's never talked with him. Anyway, as he was being dragged down the front steps, clinging to the leash, Hubby yelled out (at the dog) "Hey, ya clown!" and the neighbor turned around and waved.

I rented a cargo van yesterday to get my poinsettias. When I wasn't using the van, do you know what I did with it? I parked it in my driveway. Really, I just like to play with his head.

Thanksgiving feasts

2005-11-25T07:40:00.000-05:00

Two days, three meals.

Shrimp cocktail, cheese, crackers, pepperoni, olives, ham, potatoes, applesauce, rolls, apple pie, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, more rolls, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, peas, lasagna, more apple pie, more pumpkin pie with whipped cream, chicken, a few more rolls...Did I leave anything out? Ah, yes, the cheesecake. How could I forget the cheesecake?

It should be noted that this was not the entire menu-just what I ate. Vegetables were offered, such as broccoli and turnips. I was concerned, though, that there would not be enough healthy food for everyone, so I gallantly skipped those dishes and filled up on the fattening stuff. Thoughtful of me, wasn't it?

So now that I've eaten enough to feed the entire population of North Dakota for a month, I've calculated that I need to spend 5,784 hours at the gym over the next three days to stop me from gaining the body mass of the entire population of North Dakota.

Do you think the juice bar at the gym serves cheesecake?

The Dynamic Duo

2005-11-22T09:20:00.000-05:00

A quiet moment...

There are a few of those.

Lions and tigers and bears...oh my!

2005-11-22T08:14:00.000-05:00

Ok, we don't have lions and tigers, but we do have puppies and kittens...well, one puppy and one kitten, but sometimes it seems like alot more. It is starting to feel a little like a zoo around here.

The puppy actually belongs to my mother, but she works in the mornings, and I don't. So we have a part-time puppy to play with. Annoyed With The Situation Daughter feels that this is grossly unfair, since the puppy is only here until around 1pm and she gets out of school at 2pm. So far, however, my mother has resisted all attempts to persuade her to work longer hours just to accomodate her granddaughter's puppy fix.

Sammy thinks the puppy is great fun. The puppy thinks Sammy is great fun, and also tasty. Harley's not sure what she thinks about any of this, and Peppercorn has her bags packed and is waiting for the taxi to come rescue her from this chaos. The puppy's name is Sadie, so when she tries to make a snack out of the kitten, there's the inevitable name confusion: Sammy, stop! No, I meant Sadie...don't let him eat her! Oops, I meant don't let her eat him! Oh, whatever...

One side effect of having Sadie around is that Sammy is no longer afraid of Peppercorn. Peppercorn generally hisses if Sammy gets within 10 feet of her. After a week of being occasionally mistaken for a Milkbone, the kitten no longer cares, and spends most evenings seeing just how close he can get to the big cat before getting swiped at. This does not please Peppercorn. Peppercorn hasn't been pleased in awhile.

Harley finds the puppy alternately amusing and annoying, pretty much the same reaction she has to the kitten. Often I will find her standing over the two of them as they roll around on the floor, and I know she is silently scolding them...Sammy, stop provoking your sister! No, Sadie, Sammy is not a Beggin Strip! Yes, I know he smells a little like one, but that doesn't mean...ok, quit it you two or I'm going to have to put you in a time-out!

Actually, now that I think about, Sadie would be more like Sammy's great-aunt than his sister...

Correction on how hot Dan Radcliff is

2005-11-19T12:22:00.000-05:00

Growing Up Too Fast Daughter has just informed me that the word hot, when applied to Dan Radcliff, is actually hott.