Catching up AGAIN

A cool thing happened today. I had sent a photo entry in to tvgasm.com. The contest was for numbers for them to use for their countdown to "Big Brother 7". I sent the picture I had used from this_post . Well they used it for the 11 days. It's here: http://www.tvgasm.com/archives/big_brother/002341.php
And I won a prize. Announcer voice: "It's a brand new car!!" No. I won a T-shirt. But I think that is so cool. I've always been lucky at winning things like T-shirts. Actually, I think I was more thrilled about getting an e-mail from one of the TVgasm writers (madeyoulaugh).

I finally decided to tackle the monstrosity that is the wallpaper in my master bath. Since I don't have a deadline this time (I wanted to have the other bathroom done for a visit from My Sweetie's Grandmother) and it is the MASTER bath, which means no one ever has to see/use it besides us, I believe this project will be relatively stress-free. I've already had a glass guy take the giant mirrors down, so now it's just down to the actual wallpaper stripping. I do not enjoy this task, but I'm getting it done. Also we took the horrible shower door out and I'm just going to use a rod and clear shower curtain until I can find the perfect shower door. It's fun to be able to see out of the windows while I'm in the shower.

Tuesday I'm getting a biopsy from my uterus. Or is it "of?" I haven't given it much thought because that's how my mind works. I don't like to think about stuff I don't want to think about. I don't even know why I'm mentioning it here. From what I could find on the internet, it doesn't sound like I have any problems. It's just that they told me the procedure would HURT. They said to take ibuprophen before I go. Yeah, I'm going to take ibuprophen and drink about 12 beers. And if it does hurt after that, I'll drink 12 MORE beers. I thought it was funny that the doctor said it would feel "like bad period cramps." That's how I described being in labor.

I finally got my pictures developed of my new kitty Rufus, so I'm going to post those next time. I'm too lazy to do that tonight.

Mini Movie Review: We saw Diamond_Men last week and I really liked it. It's mostly a character study. If you are a fan of either Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) or Donnie Wahlberg ("Band of Brothers") you will like this movie.

For My Dad

I've been thinking about my Dad a lot lately and I guess it was because Father's Day was approaching, although I didn't really put it together. I've lightly mentioned the fact that he died at his retirement party in October 1998, but I haven't really gone into it. I'm still not really ready to go into that. Suffice it to say it was a horrible experience and it took me quite some time to realize I was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome from the experience. Basically I sat on the couch and drank beer for a long time afterwards and gained a lot of weight. I already had my anxiety/panic disorder before that and I think some more mental problems were added at that point.

My Dad was a VERY interesting person. He was a GREAT storyteller. I loved his stories from being in the National Guard. I think it's called Army Reserves now, but I'm not sure. He also had great stories from his teenage years. He told heartbreaking stories of his childhood. He had a "distant" dad (My Papa, who died when I was 3 or 4). As Dad told it (and I must have heard this expression a million times) his dad was "a man of few words." To hear it from my Dad, his dad pretty much just didn't speak to him at all. Dad didn't have many stories about his dad - and my Dad was a storyteller, so this told me a lot. The only two stories I can remember are the jail story and the car wreck story. My Dad was thrown in jail for something as a youth and when Dad's friend reported the news to Papa, he said, "I didn't get him in, I won't get him out." The car wreck story was Dad walking into Papa's bedroom, terrified and totally freaking out, and telling him he had just wrecked his brand new car and Papa said, "Well, I'll get another one." Dad said he never even looked up from his newspaper.

Dad was pretty insecure about his looks. He was small and wore thick glasses, but it was the 50's and he was tough and cool. He was friends with a group of guys and they called themselves "The Deadly Six." Dad used to say he met many people years later that said they were one of the Deadly Six. Kinda how EVERYONE says they were at Woodstock. Anyway my Dad somehow managed to woo a beautiful girl, new to their high school - my Mom. This was after all, the birthing ground of Ava Gardner (and my grandmother attended HER birth).

Mom and Dad got married when they were 19 and 17. That was 1955. My brother was born in July of '57 and I came along exactly 3 years and 9 months later, which alway made me think I was conceived on my brother's third birthday. I always imagine my Dad thinking, "Damn, he's THREE already? I'm ready for my next one." Although my brother is the first person I remember from my childhood, my Dad was next. My Mom worked nights and slept during the day so I didn't quite get to know her until later. She hates when I talk about this, but I have no hard feelings and she is my best friend now.

Anyway, Dad was such a fun parent. He taught us all the yard games like kickball, kick-the-can, and "ain't no bears out tonight." He was always the fun neighborhood Dad. Sometimes he would set off a colored smoke bomb on the street (did I say "street?" it was a dirt road) and we would all run through it. He was also the Little League coach and nothing was more fun than riding to an away game stuffed into our '64 Ford convertible with the entire team. Yeah, none of that would be legal now but it was fun at the time.

When my parents' marriage went sour when I was 15, it seemed an obvious choice to live with my Dad. Actually the main reason was I knew it was the only way my Mom could get a clean break. Otherwise Dad would be coming around to visit me all the time. At this time, my big brother was in the Air Force, so it was just me and Dad. It was a big adjustment, but we figured it out. Our favorite thing was Duke basketball and we liked a lot of the same music. At 16 I got a job at Sears, in the record department. My Dad was just downstairs in the Allstate Insurance office. I could just walk over to the escalator well and talk to him. The Allstate booth was between the escalators.

He came home one day and said, "Do you want to go to New York?" I already posted about that here: http://geewits.blogspot.com/2005/09/big-apple.html

Although Dad lived in N.C. and I live in Texas, we saw each other as often as possible. Dad and I would take trips when we could. Our first was to Vegas in 1987. It was a while until our next trip (which was always my fault, he was always offering). But over time we went to the Bahamas (where that picture was taken), Puerta Vallarta, New Orleans, and Lake Tahoe. We also visited back and forth quite often between N.C. and TX, and took a few N.C. beach trips.

I miss my Dad. Happy Father's Day Dad! SQUARE!!!!

The Five Year Itch and Stinky Dirty Rice

We've been in our house for five years now and I am going crazy. There are so many things I want to change and I KNOW it doesn't help that I watch HGTV every day. I did finally get a new light fixture for our "dining" area. We have what is officially called a breakfast nook, but I call it the dinning room, because we don't have a formal dining room. What the realtors call the formal dining room in our house, is our library. Yes, it's just that. Walls of books with two comfy wing chairs. The two big things I really want to change are 1) the floor in the guest bathroom and 2) the walls in the master bath. I am a do-it-yourselfer, but I do not want to deal with unseating and re-seating a toilet (from #1). And as for the walls in the master bath, I have two minor problems. The first is that there are two HUGE mirrors in there so I want to hire people from a glass place to take them down and then to come back later to re-hang them. The second thing is I HATE removing wallpaper, but my friend Kim told me her tried-and-true method, so I hope it works. I still can't believe I have lived with that wallpaper for 5 years! It is some sort of horrible plum color and the print, as far as I can guess is supposed to look like leather(?). How have I let this go for 5 years? The guest bathroom had a giant pastel floral print and I took care of that 3 or 4 years ago. I did a sponge technique (in a robin's egg type blue) and my favorite compliment was that someone thought it was wallpaper. I'm going to do the same thing in my master bath, but a different color. I'm thinking something in a seafoam green.

Meals on Wheels: I did my new route on Wednesday and the oddest part was that I had been to every place before. I had thought there would be a new place or two, but it was all places I had been before. My two original ladies were very glad to see me and that was nice.

So after my cooking slump, I was back on track again and have made some great meals. Well tonight I tried to make dirty rice and it was horrible. When I opened the lid, it didn't smell good, so I tasted it. I asked My Sweetie to taste it and I was watching him and said, "So are we going to order pizza?" And we did. So now I can add dirty rice to the list of things I can not make. And it seemed to stink up the house. We were watching Hitchcock's Saboteur and I asked, "Do you suppose if we ever see this movie again, we will remember this terrible smell?"

A funny Spam title: Never seen working people need this

Hasn't everyone felt at some point like one of the "never seen working people?" I never open spam but it would have been funny if you opened it and in great big letters it said, "TO BE NOTICED!"

I saw Denis Leary, who I adore, on The Late Show with Craig Ferguson (yeah I don't think that's the actual title of the show) and he was showing his DVD's that were out and showed the movie The Pledge and said it was a favorite movie, so we Netflixed it. So now I'm just thinking he is really good friends with Sean Penn who was a producer and the director. Oddly the movie was full of Oscar nominated people and some Oscar winners (from other movies) but it was just odd and the ending was horrible. Not as horrible as my dirty rice, but unpleasant. Maybe just odd. If you want to see a movie that you can't possibly guess the ending, this is the one to see.

According to my calendar, today was the "Queen's birthday (AUS, except W AUS)" That's just funny. Can't everyone just get along?

I've Fallen and I Can't Catch Up

What a looong day. I had a roofer here doing two repairs and an electrician working on our spa pump. And it was 96 or 98 degrees outside. It was HOT. The electrician was in the shade, but I really felt bad for the roofer guy. It seems like he would have just died from heatstroke. I almost passed out working in the yard on Sunday. It's just really freaking hot.

Meals on Wheels update: About 3 posts ago I mentioned I didn't have my two ladies that I've had since the first day. This past Wednesday, again, they were not on my list. I called MOW to see what was going on. Apparently they've changed the routes again and these two ladies are now on route 4. So I called the volunteer coordinator and said, "These two ladies are the main reason I've been driving all the way over here since I moved 5 years ago, so if I'm not going to have them, I'd rather do something closer to my house." She called me back later and told me the route 4 guy would trade routes with me. This is good for at least two reasons: 1) I get my ladies back and 2) I won't have the apartments anymore. The reason I don't like apartments is I have to turn my truck off and lock it, and I think I mentioned how hot it is. When I deliver to a house, I leave my truck (meaning A/C) running. Also I think this will save me a couple of miles. I'm guessing I'll be back with the doorbell-dont-work-please-knock. lady with the cute little dogs as well as the trailer park people. That one trailer lady that always says "God Bless You" can't hurt. I'll take all the blessings I can get. Also, this morning, the son of one of the aforementioned original ladies called me to see what happened to me. I told him the whole story and he seemed to be glad that I will be back tomorrow. On another note, I'm afraid that if anyone from my old route asks where I am, the man might tell them "She asked to trade routes with me." I hope he doesn't say that.

It's funny how you're supposed to be able to find anything on the internet, but on Memorial day I heard the first Cicada and really couldn't find out much about them. I waded through pages and pages of stuff, but there wasn't a lot of information. I like to stick their discarded body shells on my nose. My Mom once said, "To some people these might be like potato chips." That still makes me laugh.

We saw The Da Vinci Code at The Movie Tavern last night. It was pretty good. I'm still mad about the casting though. The whole time I was reading the book, I was picturing Ian Holm as Teabing. He would have been perfect. It's ironic (or maybe just odd) that they cast his castmate from The Lord of the Rings movies. Jean Reno, however, was a great choice as Captain Fache. And although I adore Tom Hanks, he didn't quite seem as manly as I imagined Robert Langdon would be. Yeah, yeah, you're saying the book was better. Well duh! All books are better than the movie version. If you know of an exception please let me know. One thing I can tell you, and actually I may have mentioned this before, is DO NOT read a book right before you watch the movie. I did that with Jurassic Park and spent the entire 127 minutes thinking things like "Well where's this character?" and "He didn't do that!" At Least with The Da Vinci Code, I think a good year or more had passed so I wasn't so nit picky.

My cooking has been a little off. I haven't been very fond of my last couple of meals. I don't know what that's all about. Hopefully Thursday I'll be back as the great home chef (I don't cook on Wednesdays). I guess to get my groove back on I should cook something simple that never misses like my angle hair pasta with Italian sausage. My husband is so sweet, he always claims to love everything I make. Either he's "just being nice" or I'm just being too critical.

I've been really enjoying following this guy's journey across the U.S. on a souped up Tricycle. It's a great site and if you have time, you should read through the archives.

I feel caught up now. Fwooooo!

Celebrity Fidelity

I never really followed much of the Heather Mills/Paul McCartney gossip. It was pretty obvious to me that McCartney was one of those guys that HAS to have a mate. Everybody knows a guy like that. My brother is a guy like that. When the gossip rags ran stories about Heather and McCartney's kids feuding, I didn't think anything of it. That's been the history of step-moms forever (and for the record, I am not one and I loved my step-mom dearly). But what I did NOT know was that when Paul met her (Heather, not my step-mom) on a TV show or at a charity event or whatever, she was engaged to be married. So he got her number and called her and she called off her wedding. I think that speaks for itself. I'm sure a lot of women would have done the same thing. I'm not sure about now, but he used to be the richest guy in the whole U.K. Kinda the Bill Gates, buckwise, over there, but much better looking and with a sexier job. I've got to wonder why he didn't question that she just up and dumped her fiance. And everyone knows they had no pre-nup because he said it "wasn't romantic." What a sick love puppy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Speaking of Jerry Seinfeld, he met his wife about 2 weeks after she returned from her European honeymoon. At a health club. I've always wondered how that conversation went.

Jerry: Hi! I'm Jerry Seinfeld

Jesica: Yeah, I know.

Jerry: So are you married or what?

Jessica: Uhm, it's nothing really, what's up?

They've lasted 7 years and have 3 kids. I bet money Jerry has a pre-nup. I just wonder about these women, though. There is not one single celebrity in the world, including the guys on my list that would entice me away from my husband. What was Paul McCartney thinking?