I'm Back

I'm back from the beach but moving slowly and lazily. I haven't downloaded or even looked at my pictures yet. (I stole this one from my friend's facebook page.) That was Saturday night (the 22nd) walking on the beach at low tide. My friend, Lo, surprised me with a giant sparkler. After my brain acclimates to the Texas heat and I remember how to move around, I'll get some picture organization going on and tell some stories. I had a great time.

good times

I am having such a nice time. I don't want it to end. I really love me some ocean.

Almost Gone

I'm not physically at the beach yet, but I may as well be because my brain has been there for months and now that the trip is just days away, I've become pretty useless. I know I need to get a bunch of stuff done before I go: vacuuming, cleaning the bathrooms and probably other things but all I can think about is the beach. Beach beach beach beach beach. That's my brain. The tiny me-child that lives in my brain keeps asking "Are we there yet?"
Almost.

What Is This Plant?

I have a UFO on my deck (an unidentified flowering object). It's the purple thing at the bottom of the picture:
I bought it last year and it had one of those little plastic things in it - you know the thing that usually tells you what the plant is. But that card just said something like "Full Sun, Water Often." I hate when I get a plant home and the card doesn't tell the name of the plant. (I was very careful this year.) Anyway that plant was pretty like that when I first bought it last year and then bugs ate at the leaves and I was always spraying it with some "Hey! Bug! Get off this plant!" type of spray and then it got really ugly and cabbagey looking and then of course winter came and I forgot all about it. And we had a Hella Crazy Winter and it even killed one of our purple sage bushes but that UFO up there somehow hid its ugly self out all winter and popped right out this spring, all, "Hey remember me? Remember why you bought me in the first place?" And I can't tell you how surprised I was to see it. Whatever it is.

Friday Funny

I saw this hanging in the grocery store on Saturday:
Placed next to the "Sensations" dinner napkins. The brand name is "Brawny" and they are also next to the "Wet Ones."

I said, "This just all speaks for itself."

Like Drinking Money

You know how I mix my metaphors and expressions? Today when I stepped off the scale, I said to myself, "Man! I weigh a fortune!" I somehow confused "weighs a ton" with "costs a fortune" and then I laughed about it and thought, "I bet it would be interesting to see how much that actually cost." Since I eat two normal healthy meals a day, and don't snack, it's pretty obvious that all of my fat is beer fat, so I estimated the cost of the beer that I drink. And I came up with a price per year: $6,067. And it took ten years to get to this weight so my beer fat cost me around $60,000 (adjusting for price differences in the last ten years). So I do weigh a fortune! But I sure love my beer.

The Seizure

I'm really only posting about this in case my Future Self wants to find out when this happened:
On Monday my nephew (the kid on the right in the above pic and on the left in my header bar) had a full on Grand Mal seizure at school and was rushed to Duke Hospital by EMTs. They did a CAT scan, blood tests and tox screens and found nothing. The doctor said that seizures in growing kids are more common than most people know and that 50% of the time no cause is ever found. Chances are he'll never have another one, but if he does, it will probably be in the next two weeks. My brother thinks it has something to do with his crazy growth spurt. Apparently my nephew has grown 4 or 5 inches in about that many months and doesn't sleep alot. Whatever it was, I hope it never happens again. And I hope it did not cause any damage.

A Belated "Thank You!"

I found an old boss on Facebook. He's the guy that hired me at the company where I met My Sweetie. We exchanged a few catch up messages and then I thanked him for hiring me that day and I told him I really meant it. It almost gives me chills to think how easily he might have decided on someone else and I would not be sitting here right now in my house being one happy puppy. One simple decision on his part and "poof" just like that My Sweetie and I would never have met. Maybe this year on our 10th anniversary, I should send my old boss flowers.

Friday Funny

A man in North Carolina had a flat tire, pulled off on the side of the road, and proceeded to put a bouquet of flowers in front of the car and one behind it. Then he got back in the car to wait. A passerby studied the scene as he drove by and was so curious he turned around and went back. He asked the fellow, "What's going on here?"
The man replied, "I have a flat tire."
The passerby asked, "But what's with the flowers?"
The man responded, "They say when you break down, you're supposed to put flares in the front and flares in the back. Hey, it don't make no sense to me either."

Eye Spy

99% of the time that I go out, my camera is in my purse because I never know when I might see something I want to take a picture of - like that 1966 Mustang convertible. I saw that on Thursday in the grocery store parking lot.
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Of the 1% of the time that I forget my camera I rarely see something that I really want to "shoot." But it has happened once or twice. What's worse is actually having my camera with me and not being able to take a picture.
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A couple of weeks ago I was walking out to my truck from the pick up site with my MOW food and there was a lady that I really, really wanted to take a picture of, but there was no way to do it covertly. This lady was about 6 feet tall and probably weighed about 280 pounds. She had one of those apple body shapes where all her weight was gathered between the top of her legs and her shoulders. Her long legs got smaller and smaller and seemed to end in little points. And right there by her little feet, at the end of a leash, was a teeny tiny chihuahua. It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. Hopefully she will be out walking her dog again on another Friday and I can get a picture.

Fun With Medical Professionals

Dateline: Monday May 03
Situation: Phone call to make doctor appointment
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(ring ring)
Medical Appointment Lady: Hello, "Healthcare Office"
Me: I need to make an appointment with Dr. O.
(information is exchanged)
MAL: What's the purpose for the appointment?
Me: I'm going to the beach at the end of the month and want the doctor to look at my back because last year he saw something he didn't like and froze it.
MAL: Is there something on your back?
Me: I don't know. It's my back. I can't see my back.
MAL: So there's not a particular thing on your back you need the doctor to see?
Me: I don't know. I can't see my back. It's my back.
MAL: Well there's a 9:00 a.m...
Me: Oh! I don't do mornings. Besides, last time you guys said he only does skin things at the end of the day.
MAL: That's if he has to remove something. Is there something he has to remove?
Me: I have no idea. Because it's my back and I can't see my back. That's why I want the doctor to look at it. But he froze something last time.
MAL: Well, if he has to remove something I can't make that appointment. I can connect you to his nurse. She makes those appointments. But she will ask you if you have something that needs to be removed.
Me: How do I know? It's my back. I can't see my back. That's why I want the doctor to look at it. Can you just make an afternoon regular appointment for him to look at my back?
MAL: Okay.
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Dateline: Tuesday May 04
Situation: Dental Cleaning
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(About 15 minutes into the cleaning the Dental Hygienist switches to some high pitched drill-sounding contraption. After about 5 minutes she pauses.)
Dental Hygienist: How are you? Are you okay?
Me: No. I hate that thing.
DH: Oh. Well I can go back to the scraper but this is faster.
(she starts doing something over there)
Me: I hate that thing too. Just do this then if it's faster.
DH: Oh.
Me: I'm at the dentist's office. You asked how I was. I'm not going to lie and say "Fine." I hate all of it. Just do the one that's fastest.
DH: Oh. Okay.
(She finishes with that and then says she will be right back to do one more thing because I have some stains on the back of my teeth from smoking. She then proceeds to to sand the gums at the inside top of my two front teeth to mush.)
Me: Ow! That was horrible. My gums hurt. I feel like I ate three bowls of Captain Crunch.
DH: Oh! I have something for that.
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So then I had to swish some foul tasting poison in my mouth for a whole minute. It did take the pain away. But it's the first time I ever left the dentist with worse breath than when I arrived. Poison and latex glove breath. I went straight to a bar and drank four beers. All better.
I bet those people hate me.

Frick! And Frack!

I was so excited when my package arrived this afternoon, even though the delivery man woke me up from a cozy little couch nap when he rang the doorbell. And my set of bamboo fiber mixing bowls were even in their own little box:
And they were wrapped tightly in plastic. But the biggest one was broken:

And the box of neatly wrapped bowls in their own little box had been in a larger box with towels, of all things. Nice soft fluffy towels. But this is what that box looked like on two different corners:

I am not a happy camper and now I will have to fill out all that crappy return paperwork and I absolutely HATE paperwork. But I want my bamboo fiber mixing bowls, dammit.

Something Else They Should Invent

Back in the olden days (the 1980's) we used to go to a Mexican restaurant that served these excellent nachos they called "Nachos Grandes." What made them special was that they were individually stacked. No one else does that. If you get nachos at any other Mexican restaurant or even anywhere, really, they just throw all the stuff on there all willy-nilly and you have to use a knife or something to separate everything. That's an annoying mess. Plus the toppings are never evenly distributed that way. Half the chips only have half the stuff on them. I hate that. So I like to make deluxe individually stacked nachos at home sometimes for a fun dinner.
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I start out with a nice good-sized round chip on which I spread refried beans. Then I add either some good beef taco meat or some Mexy chicken. Then I put a good thick square of cheddar and top with jalapenos. That part is baked in the oven until the cheese melts. That's the hot part.
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For the cold part I put a layer of guacamole, then some diced tomatoes and top with shredded lettuce. If you wanted to go one more round you could then add sour cream.
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When I was making these Saturday night, I was thinking how convenient it would be if I could buy refried beans in a tube:
That doesn't exist though. I made that picture for illustration purposes. The guacamole I bought is very good and much easier than making it from scratch and I had cut a hole in the corner of the vacuum sealed bag and was squeezing it out and thought, "I wish I could have done this with the beans." Just squeeze and then smooth with a spatula. I like when things are easy. But not too easy or I would have just tossed it all in a pile like everyone else does.
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So if a producer, manufacturer or distributor of refried beans ever finds this: Please consider refried beans in a squeeze tube. I will certainly buy that.