More about The Trip

Apparently my step-dad has decided that three generations of us is one or two too many and will be vacating the premises, so instead of the little $25 dollar a night guest cabin, we will stay with Mom in her Fancy Beach House.

Fancy Beach House, front view.

Fancy Beach House, rear view.

Mom has the world's largest green thumb and is an incessant gardener so I imagine everything will look a lot different this year. These pictures were taken last July. It's very nice inside and I love the screened porch. I practically lived on that thing last year. It's nice to sit at the little table out there drinking a beer, listening to the radio and browsing the internet. And the beach is just down the road.

Lo and Me: sunning at Surf City, July 2006

I Love The Beer

Now That I Have The Map Thing Down...

Josie asked about my next trip. My daughter will be 23 on the 23rd and wanted to see Mom's (Grammy's) place near the North Carolina coast, so that's where we are going. We're going on Tuesday the 21st and returning on the 26th. Mom and my step-dad have a 5th wheel that they were using to travel around the U.S. and then decided to park it semi-permanently near Wilmington. The initial motivation was that my grandmother was in a nursing home there and Mom was helping her sister with her care. Grandma died last August, but they decided they loved the area and there they are.
It may look like a long distance from Mom's place to the beach but it is about 6 or 7 miles and takes about 10 minutes. It is also pretty close to Wilmington which has lots of cool stuff.

If you are unfamiliar with North Carolina here is the big picture:

Their camper is bigger than you might think. It has pull-outs, which is hard to explain, but two sections pull out and make whole rooms. We are actually going to stay in the "guest cabin" that the park offers to residents' visitors. I don't know much about it, but I imagine it will almost feel like camping to me because I usually stay in 4- or 5-star hotels. I think it will be fun, though, because:

1. I get to see the ocean
2. I get to spend time with my Mom and my daughter (we have a funky dynamic)
3. Lolo is coming down for the weekend
4. Kim may come to see me
5. I get to have she-crab soup at The George on the Cape Fear river
6. I LOVE THE OCEAN (especially the Atlantic Ocean)

I'm going to look for another swimsuit this weekend but I'm pretty much set. I also have some acquaintances from my childhood that have a summer place just north of Surf City so I hope I get to see them too. I wrote about my trip last year here. I never did do the second part. I guess that was a luxury of having hardly any readers at the time. So Josie, that's my next trip. I guess you're sorry you asked!

Crazy New Route

I had only 6 Meals on Wheels people today, but they are REALLY spread out. The "start" on the map above is the church where I pick up the food and the "finish" is the last house on the route. I actually live about 12 miles east of the church. It was strange today knowing that I would never be stopping at Bertha's house again. I was all "Oh, I can go right here now instead of left." I wasn't even sure that I was picking the best course today, but after looking at it drawn out like this, I guess that's the best way to go.

Now that my trip is less than two weeks away, I finally started doing some preparations. I bought some cute tops today and took some white jeans that I bought a year or two (or three) ago to a tailor to get hemmed. I also made an appointment to get my hair newly furbished. I can't wait to hear the roar of the ocean and the squeaks of the seagulls. Yay!

Congratulations, Lo!

Lolo with her nephew in April

I just wanted to say congratulations to my best friend Lolo! She signed the papers today to buy her first house and will be closing on the 30th. Lo, I'm so proud of you buying a house by yourself at 31. You really deserve this and I know you will turn it into a masterpiece. Please be sure and take lots of before and after pictures. I wish I could be there to help with everything. I'll get back there eventually! You GO girl!

No Anxiety Today

I was so glad I got up and went to Bertha's funeral today. I've mentioned several times that I suffer from severe anxiety/panic disorder and have come very close in the last 8 years to not leaving my house at all. The medicine that I've been taking for 3 or 4 years works well but anxiety attacks are similar to a man's impotence: the fear of it happening again can MAKE it happen again.

A few minutes ago I was thinking about how easy today was and I was wondering why I never felt panicky or nervous and then I remembered something: My daughter was with me. I don't know how brain chemicals work but I have always been fine - even at the worst times, when my daughter is with me. She was resentful when she was 14 and 15 and I insisted she come to the grocery store with me, but she grew to understand that if she did not go with me, there would be no groceries. Now that she's an adult she has told me that she resented my "weakness" and then developed sympathy over time. I can't explain why her presence dispels my public anxiety. It's not like we are the best friends in the world. We've definitely had our ups and downs and have learned to avoid certain topics of discussion. The only thing I can figure is that I produce some sort of "Mom chemical" when we are together that neutralizes my "panic chemical." I wish I could bottle it and spray it on myself when I have to go out.

My Sweetie and I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum at The Movie Tavern tonight and that also went very well. I used to make a secret wish that the chemical changes that come with menopause would effect my "crazy chemicals." Maybe it is happening. And on that weird note, I'll leave you with an awfully cute picture of Barney:

Things I don't get #236

I watch a lot of HGTV , which is the Home and Garden Television channel in case you live in a cave. If my TV is on during the day, that's what is on it. My husband? He's not a big fan. However, he will watch "House Hunters" and "House Hunters International" with me, because he has an interest in the housing market. No, not a financial interest, more like a strange hobby type interest. Well here's the thing I don't get: People complain when the master bathroom does not have double sinks! What the hell is that all about? Do couples actually share the bathroom? AT the same time!?! I haven't shared a bathroom with a husband since 1988 and that's the year we split up. Besides we had only the one bathroom. I've noticed that it's the people with the $400,000 to $1 million budgets that complain about this the most. And the houses they are viewing have 3 - 4 bathrooms. Do people actually have to brush their teeth at the same time in the same bathroom? If bathrooms were meant to be shared, I would think they would have two toilets in them. Is it just me? Do people really do their bathroom stuff together? After ranting about this A LOT, tonight when we were watching "House Hunters International," and the wife said, "There's only one sink." I turned to my husband and he was giving me a funny side-eye look, so I didn't say a word. I guess at this point, I don't need to.

It's all fun and games until.....

I wanted to tell you about my Meals on Wheels/eye "surgery" day yesterday but after Benny called I wanted to do a little tribute to Mrs. T. Thanks for your nice comments. It was truly her time to go and I like the way they did it at home with hospice. I will miss her, though. The last thing I said to her was. "Have fun wherever you go."

The Wednesday stuff actually began Tuesday night. We were watching Letterman and at 11:00, I said, "Oh, pause, I need to get my cell phone. Kate's going to call in the next 20 minutes with some excuse about why she is not coming over." Kate is my daughter who promised to go with me to the doctor to get that skin tag removed. Since she started working 2-11 p.m., she keeps crazy hours. At 11:10, the phone rang and she said, "I WAS going to come right over but Justin is moving tonight so I'm going to help for a while." So now on top of worrying about the needle in my eye I was wondering if she would be able to wake up on Wednesday. Somehow I slept just fine.

I called Kate's cell at 10:10 Wednesday morning and she didn't answer. I hung the phone up and thought, well I guess... and then the phone rang. A very sleepy Kate said she'd be over on time. We got a good start, but when we got to the church to pick up the food I had two new people. And we were short two meals, but we had three extra cold breakfasts. I figured I would give two people two cold breakfasts instead of their lunch and a breakfast. Our very first stop was a no response. This means I then have to call them and if they don't answer I have to call MOW to report it. This takes a little time. But it gave me an extra meal. Next was a new guy and I fell madly in love with his dog. It was a black and white border collie named Jack. He was SO sweet and while I was petting his head, he put his little paw up for a shake. This may not sound like a big deal to you guys but I've always been afraid of dogs. Not this guy. Anyway after that everything was going fine and I told Kate, "Since we will be going west instead of east, let's change this up so we can go to Mrs. T.'s house last." I was happy that she was still on the list. Her son told me he would not call MOW to cancel until she died so I knew she was still alive. The last stop before Mrs. T. was a new person and she was a no response also. It's pretty rare to get two in one day. So I went through the protocol and we headed down to Mrs. T.'s house. By now I had a crazy amount of food. I think I had four or five cold breakfasts, a bag of rolls, about 7 bananas and one cold salad lunch. I asked Benny if he would like all the food and he said yes. There were four ladies sitting at the kitchen table as I was unpacking the food. I said, "I had already planned to bring any extras over here, but I've never had this much extra stuff in almost 7 years." One of the ladies (I think it was Mrs. T.'s daughter) said, "The Lord works in mysterious ways." I visited with Mrs. T. for a few minutes and we had to book. We still had to eat lunch and the appointment was at 2:10. I think it was now 12:30.

We hit highway 35 south to go downtown and it was crawling. I'm sitting there looking at the downton buildings trying to do the math and said, "I think as long as we're there (8.0, our lunch destination) between 12:45 and 1:00, we'll be fine. I'm glad this appointment is for 2:10 instead of 1:50 like two weeks ago." Kate was all, "What? Why didn't you tell me!? I thought it was for 1:50 all this time.THAT'S TWENTY EXTRA MINUTES." I just laughed and said, "Yeah, I guess I should have mentioned that." So we finally get to the downtown exit and are starting to relax and then when we turn to go to the parking lot there is a big ole ugly "LOT IS FULL" sign. Then we miss a turn to go to the next closest lot and have to go down and make turns to get back that way. We finally got parked and got to 8.0 just affter 1:00. We were all relaxed now and then I said, "Do you remember how to get there?" She looked at me like I was insane (which I may well be). I said, "Yeah, I didn't think about that but I bet when we get back to the truck and look at the mapsco I'll remember everything." After lunch we headed west and spent the time saying stupid stuff like, "Yeah, I remember we turned left here." Then (DUH!) I remembered his card was in my purse. That helped. I think we walked in at exactly 2:10.

I took a tiny nap in the waiting room because I have "waiting narcolepsy." If I am sitting and waiting I will fall asleep. Sometimes it's embarassing like that time in Discount Tire Warehouse. That's also why I can not sit in the waiting area at the airport when I travel alone. I have missed one plane and came very close to missing another one. Oh, okay, back to the doctor's office. They finally called me. We were only in there about a minute when he came in to shoot me. It happened really fast, but I was very concerned because he did not clean or swab my eyelid before giving me the shot. I tensed up so much that I got cramps in both shoulder blades and my right bicep. He said he'd be back in 5 minutes. I asked Kate,"Isn't that weird that they didn't clean my eyelid first?" She said, "Maybe they don't expect people to come in here for eyelid surgery wearing eyeshadow." I said, "Maybe it's because I so artfully apply make-up, he didn't think I was wearing any." Oh, I forgot to say that this whole time Kate was randomly reading out odd stuff from a magazine. When a nurse had come in earlier Kate said something (from the magazine) about buttermilk. The nurse said, "That's got the most calories of all." I sat up thinking, "This is a NURSE?" and told her what buttermilk was. jeeeez!

The clock kept ticking and I said, "Well he missed the 5 minutes, I hope this shot doesn't wear off." (Because I love ending sentences with prepositions, sort of.) I noticed there was a little portable stereo in the corner with a rack of CD's on the wall. I asked Kate to check to see if there was anything besides Jimmy Buffet over there, not that I hate Jimmy Buffet, it's just that was the only name I could make out from where I was. She picked out Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Broadway Collection." The doctor finally came back in and it felt like he put tape over my eyebrow. He said, "I saw this show in New York and here in Fort Worth, 'The Phantom of the Opera' " I said, "That's not from Phantom. That's a song from "Evita." He said, "Really?" Kate and I both (and maybe the milk-stupid nurse) said "Yes!" Then he asked, "Do you know who played Evita in the movie?" I said, "Madonna." Then Kate said something about Madonna and then the doctor said, "Okay, that's it." Kate and I had been holding hands but she wasn't looking because she watched the shot part and that was all she could take so then we were both, "What? That's it?"

We ran two quick errands and stopped in at Italianni's for a beer and then the Xylocaine started to wear off. Ouch! It felt like someone had touched a lit cigarette to my eye. So then I tried to remain expressionless. I took some Advil when I got home and it hasn't bothered me since except when I accidentally touch it. But it looks like I got in a fight. I should have had My Sweetie take a picture. Maybe I can take one.

More Tomorrow

I lost one of my original Meals on Wheels ladies tonight. She was 97 and had been dying for some time. She had her last "surge" on Thursday, the 26th and went to bed and never woke up again. Her son had called me on Monday night so I didn't know if I would ever see her again. My daughter and I stopped by today. There was a vigil going on, and she was still breathing. I stroked her hair and spoke to her as did my daughter. She was such a sweetie. Every Wednesday for nearly 7 years she told me I was beautiful and often asked to touch my hair. She really loved my hair. Her English waned over the seven years and I would use what little Spanish I knew if her son was not there to translate. She was a lovely lady with a great sense of humor and I will miss her. A lot.

A fun thing to do

Ticknart showed me a cool drawing site, so I thought I'd try to do a funky version of this picture:

This was taken on Lolo's and my first New Orleans trip. Lo liked it so much she had it blown up and framed. I have a copy framed at my house too. I thought the drawing came out kinda cute.

Learn how to draw cartoons, comics, and anime at Sketchfu!

An Open Apology for My Lie

This is an open apology for the inadvertent lie I have been telling for years. For as long as I can remember, when asked, "What's your least favorite household chore?" I always said, "Mopping." I was wrong. I now know that mopping is a snap. It was the "mop-prepping" that I hated: moving things, sweeping, gathering dust bunnies. On Saturday, My Sweetie did the prep work and I mopped all four tiled rooms and it was nothing. I guess my new answer to the household chore question will be dusting. Rather than send you to the link from October about why I hate dusting, I will paste the pertinent part here:

I also realized today that I have probably never gone one full day without sneezing ("I could not snop steezing!"). Maybe when I was in Hawaii, but I'm not sure. I'm terribly allergic to house dust which is a Catch-22. If I don't dust, dust will accumulate. If I dust, even with a dust mask, I will feel sick and miserable for two days and go through a whole box of kleenex. One of the main components of house dust is human skin cell flakes. I KNOW I'm allergic to THAT because I have sneezing fits when I file my nails. I vacuum/dust a lot and that is better than cloth dusting, but it still makes my nose and eyes run. I also use Nasonex but am too goofy to remember to use it every day. Plus I think it costs about $500 an ounce. Well maybe not that much, but close. I guess I should just buy stock in Kleenex.

There are no good household chores, but each person seems to have a rating system. In an ideal world we could all go to each others' homes and do the chores we do not hate and if there were enough people, everything would get done. For example, I would do all of your laundry if you would do all of my dusting (although someone else would have to do any necessary ironing). I rarely iron anything, but if I had a lot of ironing, I would trade that out for cleaning bathtubs. Or I could clean the kitchen for your dusting. Hmmmm. That really would be nice. Maybe I should offer this barter on Craigslist.

Under the Computer Desk

A Good Place to Sit

• Having a mural made from a photo you took in the most serene spot you've ever visited: $91.46
• Having a professional wallpaper installer hang your mural behind your toilet: $80.00
• Having a project you imagined become a reality: priceless

A list of nothing really

1. My daughter and I decided to go visit Mom at the beach in N.C. for her birthday (my daughter's birthday, August 23). I found a good flight and told two of my N.C. friends. Now I need to tell my Mom.



2. The other Meals on Wheels people hate me. I've had only five people for about 4 weeks now. The other people have 10 to 15 people. Last Wednesday a woman there said, "Oh, YOU'RE route 4."



3. I parted my hair on the right today. I've always parted it on the left. I like it much better. What was I thinking?



4. Did I mention I got my hair cut short not too long ago?


5. Why did it take me so long to try Jarlsberg cheese? I feel like I wasted the first 46 years of my life on the wrong cheeses.



6. The cats are all friends now.



7. We have too many cats.



8. My brother who used to be in the Jaycees, a cub scout leader and a little league coach, then became a homeless crackhead and then became a religious fanatic turned 50 on Monday. And I have nothing to say about it.



9. Barney gets cuter and sweeter every day.



10. Can I lose 20 pounds in 25 days?

Slow and Steady Just Makes Stuff Take a Long Time

In my usual tortoise-like pace, I have taken another step toward the completion of the bathroom that I began updating in June of 2006. I had a message from the mural guy the other day and he said, "The job is complete and you should be receiving your mural on Tuesday." I assume he meant the Tuesday next which is tomorrow. The mural will look like this:

And will fill this space:

The guy who did my shower gave me a recommendation for someone to hang the mural. I called her this afternoon and explained everything and she said she would do it on Thursday. I could tell she thought I was missing a few tools from my shed, and that's okay because I can be rather goofy at times. Okay, most times. But I was smart enough to say this: "I know you'll do a great job, because I call Andy for referrals for any job I need done and everyone he has sent has done an excellent job!"

Kitty Weekend

Friday afternoon I went to the Animal Services place to get the cat trap. I was a little overeager and had the trap set up way too early. As you can see the sun is still out and the kitty never came before sundown. I put that little sheet of cardboard in there so it would feel more natural to walk across. The gist of the thing is, when the animal puts its weight down on the part under the food, the door slams shut. Mr. Frowny, I mean the man at the Animal Services place told me to set it very "hair trigger" if the cat was too small. And I thought I did, but I did not, as you can see in my little video clip. (Which is my very first video on my new digital camera.)

So he sat there and ate and ate and nothing happened. I was kinda freaking out. I didn't want to scare him away to reset the trap and I didn't know how long until he'd be hungry again. He stopped eating and began licking his paws, so I stepped up to the door and he ran away. I went back out to reset the trap at a lighter setting. I set it so close to the edge I was afraid it would trigger if it thundered. We went into the smoking room for a cigarette and I was lamenting that I hadn't set the trap right the first time and My Sweetie said, "I bet he's out there right now." Well, HE WAS! So I missed the whole thing.

Anyway, now he was going crazy berserk in there (and at this point I became a little afraid that maybe he WAS feral), so we picked up the trap and took it to the bathroom. The kitty finally settled down in the cage, so I went out to the garage for supplies: a little litter pan, and a little box with a towel for a comfy cubby hole. When I got back, the cage was empty and My Sweetie was just sitting there. I said, "What the hell?" He said, "He's back behind the toilet." So I got the food and water out of the cage, took the cage out, and set up the litter pan and cubby box. Then I just reached back behind the toilet and picked him up by the scruff. He was very docile then so I knew he wasn't feral. I took this picture so you could see how small he is:

The kitty spent most of its time in the box but would come to me sometimes and eventually became very friendly and loving. All this time I was still calling him a her and calling "her" Elaine. Then I took a look and realized My Sweetie was right - it was a boy. I started calling him partner for a while but somehow started calling him Barney, although his Native American name would be "Walks With One Grey Toe." He has four white mittens like my cat Lilly, but has one grey toe on his back right paw. Anyway, what his name was didn't really matter Friday night because we were going to take him to the Humane Society on Saturday. I stayed with him until 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning and finally went to bed. When I got up around noon, My Sweetie had spent a lot of time with him and saw how sweet he was and was being awful quiet when I mentioned things like "what time the Humane Society closed" and "which exit we should take off of 30."

He didn't come right out and say anything, but I began to suspect his heart wasn't into throwing him out into the world to take his chances on a possible adoption. We were both saying things like, "If we didn't already have three cats..." and I even made the joke, "Why don't we just take Rufus to the Humane Society?" (Rufus can really be an asshat sometimes.) Usually when we have plans to go somewhere on a Saturday My Sweetie has to keep on me to get ready because my social phobia has turned me into the master dawdler, but he was saying nothing at all. That's when I knew. Finally I came in here (he was on the computer) and said, "Well, instead of going to the Humane Society, we can just got to Petco and buy an extra litter box and some kitten food." And that was that. Barney became our cat. We let him out of the bathroom to roam around after we put the other cats in their room and he really liked the library:

After we went to Petco Saturday, I made him a nice little section in here. It's a very large room with a french door and two french windows looking into the living room. It's a great set up because the cats can study each other through the glass. We have let them meet, but just for short periods. Today Barney hung out in the living room all afternoon with us while we watched Little Miss Sunshine. He jumped into this plant and I couldn't believe I got this picture in time. I need to start wearing the camera around my neck!

So now I'm that much closer to being "Crazy Cat Lady." I told My Sweetie, "We are cat collectors!" But this is the last one.

No, really.

IT'S A BOY!!!!

Elaine is not a girl. Now I call him "Partner." "Hubert" wasn't working for me. I have a lot to tell, but I will save it until later. I even made my first "movie." The trapping part was funny. Partner is in my bathroom, lying in his box. He is very placid and has even purred a lot. Now I want to go see him again. He is SO cute!

The Weekly Daily Stuff

I spent the weekend cleaning and rearranging the guest room. Although I made a lot of changes after my daughter "moved out" in 2003, I had never moved the GIANT black dresser. This dresser is about 8 feet high and 25 feet wide. (That's 1/2 mile by 4 miles, metric.)

We took out all of the drawers before we attempted to move it and the bottom four drawers are so wide, we had to crab-walk sideways style down the hall with them. It was a lot of work, but the room seems twice as large now. Which is odd because with the exception of some wall shelves, which are now holding junk in the closet, we didn't remove anything. ANYTHING. So all of the same stuff is in there, but it seems like there is twice as much floor space. That makes no sense to me at all. I am baffled every time I go in there. I guess it's like one of those optical illusion things. Like this image where the center dot on the left seems larger because it is surrounded by smaller things: But the floor in there is not surrounded by smaller things. It is surrounded by the same things, just in different places. I don't get it. I need to stop thinking about it.

~
Tuesday night my daughter came by "after work," meaning she got here about 1:00 a.m. Wednesday. In all fairness she does work until 11:00 p.m., but she works about 15 minutes from here. I pretty much told her she needed to come Tuesday night to spend the night because she had planned to do Meals on Wheels with me for the past two weeks, but never made it over. But this particular Wednesday I wanted her to drive me because I had a doctor appointment downtown. For this:

That is a skin tag on my left eyelid and I'm tired of it. My regular doctor referred me to an "eyelid specialist." What's that? An eyelid specialist? Eyelids are what? two square inches of the whole human body? That didn't make any sense to me. Until I saw his "before and after" book. DO NOT EVER look at an eyelid specialist's before and after book after you've just had lunch. And I'm not even as squeamish as some people. He was an odd little man. He reminded me of a gnome. I had hoped he would just snip it off and put some human band-aid superglue stuff on it, but no, I have to go back. He held my hand and explained the procedure to me: He will INJECT my eyelid WITH A NEEDLE to numb it, then snip it off, and then CAUTERIZE it. I said, "Mmmm, that will smell good." My daughter, who was in the room with me, said, "Well that's going to be horrible." Then I said, "So have you ever, you know, slipped, and the needle went through the eyelid and into the eyeball?" He seemed offended and taken aback, but he calmly replied, "No. Not in my 30 years of practice." I said, "Can you just do it without the needle part?" He told me no and that's when he told me the cauterizing part involved a tool that would be 2000 degrees. I can see how he wouldn't want to be touching someone with a 2000 degree thing ON THEIR EYE and having them jump. I'm going to do that August 1st. Oh boy!

~

Tuesday night, Elaine, the stray kitty seemed a little more bold than usual so I went out there to try to make friends with her. The only things I made friends with were about 19 mosquitos. I have been getting an average of five bites a day for over a week now. I should be dead from West Nile Virus by now. Tonight I tried to sneak up on her from behind but she is faster than lightning. I called the animal control people today about a trap and he said I needed to leave a $50 deposit check. I told him I had cash, but he would have none of that. I do not have a checking account so My Sweetie wrote a check tonight and I am going tomorrow (Friday). I'm hoping he will find someone at work tomorrow to take her. My second option is the neighbor lady who was Reebus's mom although she lets her cats out. The main option is to take her to the Humane Society. I wish we could keep her, but four cats seems like too many (sorry, Jeanette). I will try to get pictures of the trapping experience. Wish me (and Elaine) luck with all of that!

Denser Than Osmium

I am denser than osmium. Before I existed, osmium was the densest substance known to man. The reason I know this is because I looked it up. The reason I know I am even DENSER than osmium is just this: Several weeks ago Josie actually stated what her favorite painting is. I kept thinking, "Wow! Josie knows what her favorite painting is!" And the logical thought after that should have been, "What is my favorite painting?" But it was usually something stupid like, "What did I come in here for?" or "Where did I set my beer down THIS time?" Sometimes I wondered about the favorite painting thing.

I guess for about 20 years or so, my favorite painting has been "The Cardsharps" by Caravaggio (pictured above). I don't know about Josie, but I based this on an actual painting I had actually seen, unlike "The Mona Lisa" which is a made-up painting for a Tom Hanks movie. (Ha Ha, just kidding! I'm sure it is a real painting or Ray Evans wouldn't have written that song for Nat King Cole to sing.) The reason I think "The Cardsharps" was my favorite painting was twofold: It's right here at the Kimbell and 2) (oops, I forgot the 1!) Whenever I go to the Kimbell, I stand there and look at it for a VERY LONG TIME. Plus one time it played a crazy trick on me. (okay that's three things). In April 2002, we went to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. AND IT WAS THERE! If they didn't have those little plaques that say things like "On loan from the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas," I would have really thought I was crazy. As in "Hey I love this painting and it's in EVERY museum! How awesome is that!?"

I pondered on the whole favorite painting thing some more and came to realize that "The Young Sheperdhess" by William Bouguereau (I wish I knew how to program that to F7) is my current favorite painting. I discovered this painting at the San Diego Museum of Art in January 2006. It's there on my right side bar thing. After I decided that, I realized I knew nothing at all about Bouguereau (which is probably French for "bugger of a name to spell") so I googled him. His Wikipedia page had a picture called "Interrupted Work" that looked A LOT like a painting postcard that I had on my corkboard.

"Interrupted Work"

This is a little corkboard in my guest room with a painting postcard from all of the art museums I have visited (except the Met). The picture in the bottom right is called "Whisperings of Love." This was a painting I really liked at the New Orleans Museum of Art. I saw the painting and bought the postcard in May 2003.


I ran into the guest room, grabbed the postcard, flipped it over and the very first line printed on the back was: William Adolphe Bouguereau. So I had bought these two postcards three years apart, from museums 1,840 miles apart, and they were pinned up on my board just 9 inches apart and I DIDN'T REALIZE IT WAS THE SAME ARTIST.


Hey scientists!! There IS a substance denser than osmium, and I am it.

My Good Vibrations

Jazz tagged me with the "5 things that raise your vibrations" meme so I thought it would be fun to do and here it is:

1. Coming up with a fun creative solution to something. I recently posted about my old black wicker shelf that I wanted to re-use in my new foresty green bathroom and how I thought I was going to have a big to-do about figuring out what color to paint it. I had picked bronze as the frames for my mirrors and pictures in there and happened to have some bronze acrylic paint and dry-brushed right over the black paint. It looks great. One of my favorites was this frame below:

This picture has a great story behind it. I posted about it before, but it's such a minor part of the other post, instead of linking I'll just paste the pertinent part here:

That painting is a painting of my Dad that his friend Henrik Ravn (a Dane) painted when they were working in the Dominican Republic together back in '72. Dad said they would hang out every night and drink and talk. Dad imagined that canvas must be about 1/4 inch thick because Henrik just kept painting over and over it.

What I didn't mention in that other post was that after my Dad died, this picture was one of the things I shipped to Texas. When I pulled it out of the box (its original box - Dad had never taken it out of the box except to show someone every once in a blue moon) the upper left corner of the frame was missing. There was just a bright white square there. I just assumed something had happened during shipping and shook the box but nothing came out. If you look at the picture again you will see that the corner is different. At least it's not a bright white square. I used my exacto knife on some packing peanuts like this one:

I then glued them on and painted them with some gold acrylic paint. I was quite proud of myself and no one has ever noticed until I pointed it out. I really get a kick out of stuff like that.

2. When the music is perfect. I really, really love when the music is just right for the situation. I wish I could program all the background music for my life, but I can't. That's why it's SO GREAT when it just happens. I can be playing pool and the perfect song comes on and it just gives me a boost. It improves my mood and my game. I love it when I'm in a posh hotel bar and someone unexpectedly starts playing great standards on a grand piano. It's hard to explain, but if I'm doing something and the just right song comes on, it's as though a sense of euphoria washes over me. Yeah, it IS hard to explain. I give up.

3. The ocean. I love the sight, sound and smell of the ocean. My absolute favorite way to enjoy the ocean is to sit on a nice hotel balcony with a cooler full of beer on ice and my binoculars. I can spend hours and hours sitting there and looking. And I have - in Hawaii, Virginia, North Carolina and Mexico. And I loved it. Those Corona commercials? I totally get them. And I don't even like Corona.

4. Vacationing with my bestest buddy Lolo. When Lo and I vacation together everything is SO relaxing and fun. We have some sort of perfect vacation rapport. We do stuff together and do stuff apart. After we do stuff apart, we meet back up and regale each other with crazy stories. We laugh about everything and never get on each other's nerves. If one of us starts to tire, the other will infuse them with energy. We look so odd together people always ask, "How do you two know each other?" Then we always look at each other and burst out laughing. It's a goofy story. We have such a good time together. We e-mail all the time and talk on the phone a lot, but our visits are the best. We only saw each other twice last year and I won't see her until October this year (unless...). But I sure love our visits.

5. My Sweetie. After many tries, I finally found the perfect person to spend my life with. We have so much fun together. We turn the mundanity of day-to-day life into a goofy fun adventure. We love to make each other laugh and are both pretty good at it. We have been together for 12 years and married for 6 1/2. Every day seems to be better than the day before. We are alike in the ways that matter and very un-alike in the ways that matter too. In most ways one of us will have a strength to counterbalance the weakness in the other. When we do find something that we BOTH suck at, it's just funny.

So those are the 5 things that top my list for raising my vibrations. I also love a good cream sauce. If a menu says something like "...in a sherry garlic cream sauce," I will order it. And bisques. Mmmmmm, bisques. Especially Lobster bisque. Speaking of food, today I had a fancy version of "the perfect lunch." I had a leftover KFC chicken leg, some havarti with dill and two black plums. Yummy!

Reebus

I can't believe I still have these two disposable camers floating around. I had forgotten all about them until the other day. About three weeks ago the lady at the top of the hill called me. Everyone on our street has a sheet of paper with the names and numbers of everyone on the street and of the two houses at the bottom of our street who are actually on another street, but face up our street. (They are honorary members of our street.) It's part of our neighborhood watch thing. She asked me if the white cat was mine. I got kinda defensive because I knew she was talking about Reebus. I said, "No he's not mine, but he's sort of the official neighborhood cat and everyone knows him and loves him." The lady who called me is "new" to the street and I thought she was going to complain about Reebus. I guess my tone was a little rude because then her tone got sort of rude and she said, "I just wanted to know who the owner was because he has been here a few days, not really moving and does not look well." Then I felt like an ASS and told her who the owners were.

Reebus had been a fixture in our backyard and front yard since the day we moved here. I've had countless "conversations" with him because he was very talkative. If you asked him a question, he would answer. Every winter, I put a box on the front porch with some sort of cozy cloth inside. I think he slept there almost every night. It drove our cats crazy. He spent a lot of time during this crazy rainy spring we had sleeping on the hood of my truck between storms. He was most often found sleeping on our deck. On winter days, he slept in the corner of the bench, on summer days, he slept in the shade beneath. He really liked the corner of our deck. He also liked to come to the front door and tease our indoor cats. I've already posted a picture of him that was taken a few years ago:


Reebus was the name that we gave him. If a cat's going to hang out in our yard, we figure we have the right to call it whatever we please. His official name was "Spirit," which My Sweetie and I could never say without doing an airy lisp, if you know what I mean. He belonged to my next door neighbors, "The Mullets." I call them that because the man has a seriously bad 80's mullet. They have another cat that I call "Toby," that is really named "Max." Anyway, I guess I was pretty much in denial about the whole thing, but I had seen neither Reebus nor Toby since that lady called my house. I don't think I'd ever gone two days without seeing Reebus in 6 years. My Sweetie wanted to know what happened, so the first time he saw Mr. Mullet, which was Monday, he asked what happened. Well, Reebus died. The second part of the story is weird. Apparently Reebus was the alpha cat of the outdoor cats and when he died, Toby had no one to protect him and was severely beaten by another cat. As of Monday Toby was still alive, but not flourishing.

I had just taken a picture of Reebus in May because he was sleeping on our lounge chair on the deck and he was lying in such a stupid position, I just had to take a picture. That picture is in one of those disposable cameras. Also in one of those cameras are photos taken from the Skybar at the Met. You'd think I would have remembered THAT, but what made me remember the cameras was Reebus.

I'll miss Reebus. I'm glad I took pictures of him over the years. Now I need to get those last ones developed.

New Words

I read in the USA Today today (that's always funny when you say it out loud) that Merriam-Webster had announced its list of new words to be added to their dictionary. In honor of that I would like to add a new word to the English language.

grimme

Grimme is a combination of "grim" and "me," and is also pronounced that way (grim* me). A grimme is a person that sucks the joy right out of a room. They have no inner light and thusly see everything in the negative. If there is an opposite to "rose-colored glasses," a grimme is wearing them. They are the "glass half empty" people. They are all "woe is me" and expect the worst of themselves and others. Because of their negative nature, they distrust all occurrences and motivations. When bad things actually happen they are momentarily happy and filled with smug self-satisfaction.

I think we have all known a grimme or two. If you are lucky enough to have never met a grimme, you are lucky indeed.

A Squirrelly Meme

Lone Grey Squirrel had a neat little meme on his blog, so I thought I would do it.

5 Things I wish to do before I die.

1. See an Aurora Borealis

2. Visit Ireland

3. Visit Italy

4. Spend a week on a Really Large yacht

5. Visit with my childhood pal Jeanette

5 Things I Can Do.

1. Cook

2. Cheer people up

3. Find simple solutions to seemingly complicated problems

4. Keep people calm during a crisis

5. Find the funny side to almost anything

5 Things I Can't Do.

1. Sing (even though I know all of the words)

2. Complicated math in my head

3. Tolerate boorish behavior

4. Mornings

5. Remember names easily

5 Things that Attract me to the Opposite Sex.

1. A quick wit

2. A good voice

3. A sense of ease in their own skin

4. Elegant gentlemanliness (I may have made that word up)

5. A true ability to listen

5 Celebrity Crushes.

1. Matt Damon

2. Dermot Mulroney

3. Ron Livingston

4. Mark Wahlberg

5. Orlando Bloom

And The Cat Came Back

Elaine came back tonight. Rufus was at the door again and she didn't care but she will run away if she sees a person. I was able to take this picture by extending my hand out and because it's a digital camera I had the big LED (or LCD?) screen so I could see what I was doing without the kitten seeing me. She didn't react to the flashes either. It's hard to tell how really tiny she is in this picture, but that bowl is a small bowl, and those are regular sized bricks.

I guess I jinxed myself last week when I kept saying how happy I was that whatever animal took the tomato didn't damage the plant, because less than 12 hours after that post, a whole branch had been pulled down and broken. For some crazy reason I decided to put it in water. That was 5 days ago and my "hydroponic tomatoes" are doing okay so far. I did put a tiny pinch of Miracle Gro in the water.

I'm not a typical female when it comes to shoes, but I bought these yesterday and I really like them. The reason I am not really a shoe person is because I have Fred Flintstone feet. And yes, it is the same shoe in two different colors. I've been buying shoes that way since I was 9. I actually bought a shoe a couple of years ago in THREE different colors. That's just how I roll. Yabba dabba do!

Weekend Stuff

I'm going to do the weekend days in reverse order because Saturday's is a lot longer.
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Sunday: We had originally planned to visit my BIL on Saturday but we changed it to Sunday. He looked good. His scar is healing, but he's not really happy about the way it is affecting his hairline. I pulled up my blog on Lisa's laptop and showed him a lot of the nice comments from you guys. He was very touched. He tired out after about two hours and went back to bed. He seemed in good spirits and was very talkative before he got tired. I guess it will be a while before he is totally back to normal. I can't imagine the frustration he must feel after being a big tough firefighter/paramedic and now being a "patient." I think he will be fine though.

Saturday was "Suburban Wild Kingdom Day." Because I am the consummate health nut, the first thing I do when I wake up is put on the t-shirt and shorts I took off before I went to bed, cross the hall from my bedroom to the garage, open the garage fridge, pop open a diet decaf Pepsi, and smoke a cigarette. After a few puffs, I usually amble over to the garage door windows to survey the neighborhood. I was not expecting to see that lizard doing the same exact thing.

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Friday night we had seen a tiny kitten walk across our front "porch." I put that in quotation marks because basically our walkway goes up to our door. There is no real porch. Apparently it is actually some sort of crosswalk for nocturnal animals. Before we went to bed Friday night, I put some cat food out there. On Saturday, the food was still there. Saturday night as we were watching The French Connection (The first time for both of us, how crazy is that!?!) I saw the kitten come up to the plate of cat food. We paused the movie to try to get a better look at the kitten. Rufus was parked with his face practically against the glass door, but the kitten didn't seem fazed by him at all. We very slowly snuck up and were peaking around corners. That kitten seemed too little to even be eating dry cat food, but he/she was really going at it. Finally, My Sweetie was able to sneak right up to the door and sit. After about 4 minutes he/she noticed My Sweetie and took off across the front of the house heading east. (My Sweetie named him Hubert but I think it is a girl and secretly named her Elaine.) I went into the garage and opened the side door which faces east and sat down to smoke and tried to be as quiet as possible hoping she would go by. After a few minutes I heard the small sounds of an animal approaching and was practically holding my breath. Well instead of a cute kitten approaching from the south, a big ugly possum popped into the light from the garage from the north. I was NOT expecting that. And neither was the possum. We met eyes and both freaked out. He turned around and went back north (into our backyard) and I jumped up and closed the door. I went into the house and My Sweetie said, "Did you see it?" I said, "The possum? Did you?" I thought he had been smoking in the backyard. My Sweetie, I mean, not the possum. I ran to the back door and we both watched the possum hightail it across the back edge of the yard.

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I went back into the garage to get a beer and when I came out My Sweetie said, "NOW there's another cat out there that looks just like Rufus!" Sure enough, and it was weird, another strange cat was out there eating the cat food. The cat looked just like Rufus did about a year ago, which just means it was smaller. So there's "Faux Rufus" eating the cat food and two feet away on the inside of the door is "Real Rufus" watching all of this and about to go crazy. It was a weird visual. When we tried to get closer, Faux Rufus ran away. I put a bowl of water out after that and a little later F.R. came back for water. The runtime for The French Connection is 104 minutes but I think it took us almost 3 hours to watch it.

Updates

This is the latest update on my BIL. My SIL sent this out Wednesday. We are going to visit him tomorrow.

***
Happy 4th of July to you all!

Fortunately, there's not a whole lot to tell you about our boy. He is slowly, but surely, getting a little bit better every day. As some of you know, he's been up to Station 3 to eat or just visit a couple of times. Even that tires him out, and he has to come home and lie down. Today we drove to Granbury, and he got to see some of his family. That also wore him out. But at least he's trying! He has graduated to sitting up in bed for long periods of time playing his XBOX. It seems to keep his mind occupied for a while. However, I think he's also getting a case of cabin fever, and as wonderful as I may be :), he probably likes to see a few other faces than mine. So, if any of you fellas are out and about and have a few minutes, I'm sure he'd love the chance to visit with you!

Medically speaking, he got his staples out last week and the incision seems to be healing nicely. He is still receiving antibiotics through the PICC line at 9:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. I think he only has two weeks left of this! He has another Dr. appt. in about 3 weeks after he has a CAT scan, and I guess we'll know more about when he can come back to work then.

Thanks for your love, support and especially your prayers!! It has made all the difference in the world to us!

Love,
Lisa
*****

On the weather: Last night on the news they said that the airport (and we live next to the airport) had had rain 19 days in the last 20. All I could think was, "There was a day without rain?" It rained early this morning so now it's officially 20 of 21. There WAS sun today and I sat in it for a while. It was unusual, to say the least.

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Some stupid stuff I have said recently: I was talking to someone in a bar and I was trying to tell them about that great cooking store and I said, "Have you been to Smith and Wesson?" Yeah, I meant Williams-Sonoma. Tonight I had Double Jeopardy on the tube. My husband came into the room to ask what I was watching. I said, "Double Jeopardy, the movie with Ashley Judd. You know, the one where you can't be twied trice for the same crime?" I felt like Elmer Fudd.

The Perfect Lunch

Today I had what I think of as "The Perfect Lunch." Not only is it tasty, but I think it appeals to me on an ancient, basic level. The meal is simply a leftover "oven-fried" chicken drumstick, cheddar cheese cut into small sticks, and an apple cut into slim wedges. Today I had a green apple, but any apple will do.

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I think part of the appeal is knowing that if I could slice through time, stopping at any random place, I would find someone, somewhere, eating a chicken leg, an apple and some cheese. If I close my eyes, I can see myself as an ancient shepherd on top of a bright green hill eating this very same meal while keeping a careful eye on my sheep. I can be a ten-year-old kitchen worker, slipping away from the manor house with my carefully pilfered items to enjoy a lovely picnic by a babbling brook. I might be a big sweaty, blacksmith taking a break from the fires to enjoy this lovely lunch someone had packed for me that morning.

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Remains of apples have been found in ancient Stone Age villages, cheese is guessed to be around 4,000 years old, and people have been cooking and eating birds for almost ever. The three make a great combination. So try this for lunch one day and let your imagination go wild.

The Animal Mystery

In the 15 or 20 minute "rain break" between the normal daily drizzle and the deluge that caused more flooding today, I decided to check my tomato plants to see if some were ripe. As I was walking across the deck I noticed what looked like an unripe cherry tomato in the corner of the bench.



Upon closer inspection, I saw this:

So apparently SOMETHING picked a tomato, carried it to the corner of the bench, took a bite and left it. I walked back over to check the plant for any damage and there was none. So whatever it was carefully plucked the one little tomato. What could it have been? Do squirrels eat tomatoes? Can a possum pluck a tomato without damaging the plant? Wouldn't a racoon have had a bigger bite and have just eaten the whole thing? Why would a squirrel pluck a tomato?

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At least I had something to think about besides the weather.

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Oh and for 4TH OF JULY CLICK HERE. This is one of the coolest things ever. I found it many years ago. The more you click, the more fireworks. And they explode wherever you click. Happy 4th!

Wet and Tired Of It

I think this unrelenting wet weather is starting to affect me. I'm just really really tired of it. On top of the wet soggy mess that is the world around me, I am now getting mosquito bites on a regular basis. I thought when May ended, the weather would return to normal, but the rain continued through June and now it is supposed to rain every single day through Sunday. And probably after that. Our street is on the side of a hill with the yards cut out like stair steps and now My Sweetie is having nightmares that everything will collapse and all the houses will slide down to the bottom of the hill.

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On top of the daily routine news about floods, lake levels, water rescues and weather forecasts, the latest thing is whether or not there will be any fireworks on Wednesday. Even if they can shoot off the fireworks, will anyone go? I imagine the best choice would be Lone Star Park (a horse racing park) because there is a lot of indoor seating, but the fireworks display is "weather permitting." Sigh.

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Maybe I should rent one of those old movies about hot thirsty people trudging through the Sahara desert being hammered by the giant bright sun. Oh giant bright sun, how I long for thee.