The Story of the Dogs

Last Wednesday was a nice day. I was in a good mood because everything was going so well and I didn't have any major errands to run after Meals on Wheels. More specifically, I didn't have to go to the grocery store. I really, really miss grocery delivery service. (Dear Grocery Peoples: Please start up a delivery service in my area again. Thank you.) So anyway, I was in such a good mood, I had forgotten all about Sir Bites-a-lot. As I was getting out of my truck at the house just before that one I noticed the new board in the fence across the street and was glad it was there. There used to be dog that barked his head off with his crazy face sticking out where the one fence board was missing. And when I thought of that, I remembered.
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When I got back in my truck, I packed up all their stuff and had it ready. And the house was right around the corner so I didn't have much time to get all fired up. I wanted to just pull up and honk my horn but that would have been goofy, so I called them. A lady answered and I said (quite tersely), "Hi this is 'Geewits' with Meals on Wheels and I'm out here in my truck with your food. I'm not going to come to the door because your dog bit me last week." She said, "Oh, I'm holding him and someone else is coming to the door." I asked, "Can you guarantee that dog will not come out that door?" She barked, "I'm holding him!" So now I was "fired up" (I wanted to use the P word here, but it's not very Southern Belle, so I'll go with "fired up"). I marched up to the door and as I was walking up, Mr. Cigar (he always has a cigar in his hand) says, "He'll either be closed off in a room or someone will be holding him." I thrust his food at him and said, "Yeah, that was NOT pleasant." I turned sharply and marched back to my truck and never looked back. And Wednesday? I will call them again from my truck. And every Wednesday after that. So there!
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I felt slightly redeemed after that and continued to have a pleasant afternoon. When I got home, the yappy-ass dog that belongs to my uphill neighbors was outside and ran right up to me barking his idjit head off. Ran right up to me in MY YARD. Barking. AT me. IN MY YARD. I was furious. So what did I do? I reached in my purse, whipped out my camera and took a picture. That freaked the dog out and he ran back home. (And yes we need to mow. I have told the mower, and yet...) It's hard to complain about anything with those neighbors though because the man is a WWII vet and I have a very soft spot in my heart for WWII vets. But that dog better stay away from me.

So just in case you are starting to think I am a dog hater, I will finish this post by telling you about Lonesome George. We went to my In-Laws for Easter dinner on Sunday and were in the backyard looking at the extensive tree work my FIL had had done. They have a smallish regular backyard, but behind their little brick wall their yard is one steep hill. You can look down into the yards from the next street. Well, directly behind them is an empty house, but someone keeps a dog in the yard and just shows up to feed it. It's a Bassett Hound looking dog. Or maybe it's an actual Bassett Hound.He looked so sad and lonely. We picked our way down the very steep incline on rough-hewn stone steps, which I wish I had taken a picture of, and went to the fence where we petted the friendly lonely dog and talked to him. He was so sweet. Poor Lonesome George. My FIL named him that and it seemed like a good name for him. I wanted to steal him and take him to a loving home. Who would leave a dog at an empty house? Poor little guy!
So now you know the truth. I do not hate dogs. I just hate dogs that live next door and yap incessantly and dogs that run out and bite me all over my foot.

Mr. Watson, Something is Afoul!

Thursday night My Sweetie was very, very embarassed to ask me if I had gas. This may not seem like anything to some of you, but in our house, unless we need medical attention, we do not discuss bodily functions. Of any kind. So I looked at him like he was crazy and asked him why he would ask me that. He said he smelled something bad in the entryway by the coat closet. I went over there and couldn't smell anything. I've been getting over a slight cold so my sniffer wasn't up to snuff, but I said, "Maybe it's the trash." He took the trash out and that was the end of the whole thing. Well, the end of the whole thing for Thursday night. Friday after I got up and walked through the entryway, I almost gagged. My first thought was "Oh NO! Our sewer pies are leaking under the house!!" I bent down and sniffed near the floor and the smell was not as strong. I stood back up, lifted my head and sniffed and realized the smell was coming from above. Then I knew we had a dead animal in the attic. I called "my guy." My guy is the man that replaced my shower last year that I call for everything. I called him to get a referral for someone to put my mural behind my toilet and to get a plumber when I was replacing my faucets and the shut off valves started leaking. I can do faucets, but I'm not going to mess with a shut off valve. Anyway the poor guy was almost at a loss (and most likely wishing he had never given me his card) and mentioned several pest control companies. We have a contract with one because of our past termite problem. (And yes I could have linked to all of these stories but it would have been link city in here.) So I thanked him profusely like I always do and called my termite company. The girl that answered the phone referred me to a company that takes care of this type of thing. I called them. About three hours later, the guy showed up.


I was very lucky that it was a gorgeous day and I could open all the windows - otherwise I would not have been able to eat my lunch. Dead animals have a dead animal smell. The guy was very interesting. I told him, "You should be on that TV show." It's a show about nasty jobs and he told me they were in talks with the guy. They do all sorts of animals and as a matter of fact he had just come from a bee job and had been stung several times and his right eye was almost swollen shut. I should have done a close up of the truck so you could read the stuff on it. Well he went up in my attic and sure enough, there was dead Mrs. Brisby. She was about 8 inches (not counting the tail) long. Isn't she lovely?

I had seriously been hoping it was a dead squirrel up there because rats are just gross. Animal guy was trying to tell me that rats and squirrels are the same except "squirrels get better press" which is a very old joke. I've also heard that rats and squirrels only differ because squirrels have pretty bushy tails. I told animal guy: No. The difference is squirrels go around in the daytime doing their thing in public whereas rats sneak around and hide in the dark like they are up to something. Speaking of up to something, it cost $300. Rats! That price included some chemicals where Mrs. Brisby died and he did an inspection to see where she got in. He found a huge hole under the eaves by our front door. He told me to just put cardboard over it to see if it was still being used, so we did that this morning:

The good news is the smell is gone and we found the hole. But $300? I'll go up there myself if I ever smell a dead animal in the attic again. Oh, and that it wasn't sewage pipes. That would have cost a LOT more than $300. See? I always see the good side of things.

My Favorite Photo

I was going to do a post tonight about my return visit on Wednesday to the house of the stupid dog that bit my foot last Wednesday, but I was talking to my neighbor today and I mentioned this Hubble Ultra Deep Field photo so I decided to post about that instead.

I think this is by far my favorite photo that I've ever seen. I like it better than any famous photo and better even than any of my own personal photos. I believe it is the only picture that I have spent so long looking at. I usually look at it for about 20 or 30 minutes each time I look at it. To get a better understanding of what you are looking at go here. To think that I am able to see a tiny pinpoint in space that existed 13 billion years ago thrills me to no end. It makes me feel alive and happy and wondrous and oh, so many other good ways. I hope you get the same thrill that I do and I'll talk about the stupid dog some other time.

No Weather For Travel

It has rained ALL DAY here. And not in a good way. The news stories have been terrible. The airport was shut down most of the day and they said it was affecting airports all over the country. I always feel so bad for all those people stuck at the airport, especially the ones that were just meant to change planes. In all my years of air travel, I've never been in a situation like that. I think I'd handle it okay, though. It's not like I'd be traveling with a baby. Now that would suck! I'd probably just drink until I passed out somewhere. That would be the easiest way to sleep in an airport anyway. You'd just have to have enough wits about you to sleep on top of your stuff so no one could steal anything. Well as usual, I'm thinking about this too much because it will probably never happen to me. Catastrophic weather always happens just before my trips. Katrina happened before my New Orleans trip with my daughter and we already had plane tickets and room reservations. And some forgotten hurricane happened in Mexico about two or three weeks before a trip my husband and I had planned. I think it was Cozumel, but I don't remember now.

It's one in the morning here and I've been hearing planes pretty steadily for the past hour or so, so I guess they are working to finally get some of those people out of there. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice and even eventually sunny: A good day for my Meals on Wheels route, a bad day to work at the airport.

My Unforgettable Dad

I guess since the year turned, I've been thinking a lot about my Dad. This October will be the 10th anniversay of his death. In some ways that seems crazy. How can TEN years have gone by? I'm sure I'll be writing about him a lot this year, but for now I'll just leave you with our song:

Irish Basketball

I love St. Patrick's Day. Well, it's all about being rowdy and drinking beer, right? I'm not going to put green food coloring in my beer, but I'll probably pin one of my little leprechaun troll pins on my t-shirt today. My first two married names were very Irish and I really loved the second one. The first one is my daughter's last name and she even has red hair, so she's very Irish. Her Irish is straight from her father mostly, but I have some too. I believe it's from my Dad's mother's side of the family. And even my Dad's Dad's sisters were redheads, so there may be some over there, too.

Saturday night we had dinner out with our neighbors. I told you guys a while back about the neighbor that helped me out when my washing machine died. Well since then we've talked on the phone, e-mailed and spent a little more time together. I decided it was time for the husbands to meet. We went to Texas Roadhouse which I've probably mentioned before. I love their green beans and will be having leftover ribs and green beans for lunch today. Green beans seem right for St. Patrick's Day.

Anyway, I was a little nervous, because, well, because I'm always nervous. I got that from my Granny. We're just a bunch of nervous people in the geewits family. But as usual, everything went well and we had a GREAT time. It's so fun to meet people that you have so much in common with. I'm hoping we will spend more time with the Fun Neighbors. (Scrabble?)

Saturday wasn't all good, though. Duke lost the semi-final round of the ACC tournament, but I didn't cry. We've had such a good season, I knew we were guaranteed a spot in the NCAA tournament. I know most of you don't follow college basketball or March Madness, but I'll be living it and breathing it for the next couple of weeks. Duke got a number 2 seed in the west. I also play in a brackets game for money. I'll be studying the newspaper and the internet today to make my picks. It's always tough because I want to win the money, but I'm a loyal fan. And it's tough to pick the game Duke might lose, but I really can't see them winning the whole thing this year. Or can they? I have a few days to make my picks. I would love for Duke to win it again, but.....

Anyway, have a great St. Patrick's day and have a beer and make a toast to me, your favorite beer drinker! (Not you, Ian.)

When TV was Great

We've been working our way through the old "Mary Tyler Moore" shows since Christmas. When I was making my Christmas wish list I suddenly realized with a bit of shock that I didn't own any Mary. I got Season 1 for Christmas and we loved it so much, my husband kept ordering them. I actually felt sort of sorry for him because he was only 5 when the first one aired. I was 11 and remember how much my parents were looking forward to this new show.
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It was a Saturday night show and was part of the then "Must see TV" line-up on Saturdays that included "All in the Family" and "The Carol Burnett Show"and two years later, "The Bob Newhart Show." I loved Saturday nights. We lived across a dirt road from Leroy's which was a little country store and many Saturday nights Dad would send my brother over there for candy bars or my Mom would make popcorn. And we always had Pepsi.
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I didn't really realize how much Mary's wardrobe on the show influenced my Mom. They were close to the same age and looked a lot alike. We were not wealthy so my Mom made a lot of our clothes. She was pretty good at it too. She was always in there sewing away and make some really good outfits. It's crazy and well kinda touching watching the show now and recognizing so many outfits. When we watch the show I find myself saying stuff like: "My Mom made herself a suit just like that!" or "Mom had a dress just like that!" One of my favorite memories is when Mom went into my brother's room one Saturday and took a blue vinyl bedspread off of one of his bunkbeds and made herself a skirt and vest. People went crazy over it. It WAS the seventies, okay?
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But back to the show. It really amazes me how fresh and funny this show is. There is not a lot of topical humor, or maybe I should say there isn't TOO MUCH topical humor. It's really just great universal situational humor. We are currently on the 3rd disk of season three and it's gotten so funny, I don't even want to watch it while I eat. I don't want to choke or spew food all over the floor from laughing. My Sweetie says the third season is when a really great show hits its stride - and this show is really great now. We also have season 4 and I'm looking forward to more Mary & the Gang. If you're in the mood for something different, rent the first season and watch this either for the first time or all over again. It's really fun stuff and will put you in a good mood. You just might love it after all.

My Turn to Rant

Two weeks ago, a little dog, like the one in the picture, ran out of a house I've been to many times and went berserk and sort of nipped at me. I was pretty upset because it's taken me many years to be relaxed around dogs because I was always afraid of them because of childhood traumas and a lot of Meals on Wheels clients have dogs. I told My Sweetie and maybe Lo about it and I meant to call the MOW office but I forgot. And then last week nothing happened.

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The day started out bad enough. A woman in Dallas tossed her two sons off of an overpass onto a highway and then jumped. That's not the first news you want to hear in the morning. Your brain starts swirling with all the: Why would anyone do that? How could you do that to your children? What was she thinking? How can a mother ever cause harm to her kids? They all survived as of the last news I heard, but they are all in the hospital. And what about those poor people driving on the highway and see a kid come tumbling down? Sheeeesh. People are so freaking weird.

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After the news I was watching "The View" and getting a kick out of the womens' take on Governor Whorehound and then I was all excited because they were introducing my idol: Carol Burnett. Just as they introduced her, the network cut away to a special report and it was Governor Whorehound announcing his resignation. If I lived in New York, that would be important, but for crying out loud it was Carol Burnett!

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This house with the bad dog has a sign on the door: Do not ring bell. Baby sleeping. Well last week I was distracted because my daughter was with me and I rang the bell and as soon as I did I felt horrible and I apologized like crazy and the woman said, "Oh she's not even here." That made me feel better, but as I was driving over there today I kept repeating in my head, "Don't ring the doorbell, don't ring the doorbell." So I walk up to the door and before I can even knock, the door opens. I said, "I wasn't going to ring the bell." She responds, "I need to take that down, she's in daycare now." and then grabs the sign from the door. I start handing her all the stuff (there are two clients there) and then that same freaking dog runs out and goes berserk and attacks my right foot. I mean he is BITING me. I just sort of froze because it happened so fast. She finally reached down and smacked him and he ran back in the house and she's all "I'm so sorry, he's never done that. We'll lock him up next time." And me, because I'm so moronic when under pressure said, "That's not cool." That's not cool? Hey! 1974 called and they want their hippie back! WTF? That's not cool? Why would I say that? What am I, 14? Johnny Fever?

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It was 78 today and I knew it was going to be 78 and thought about wearing sandals, but I got lazy and didn't want to clip my toenails so I wore tennis shoes. I kept thinking, "What if I had worn sandals?" When I got to my bar I called MOW to report the incident and the nice lady said, "We haven't gotten complaints from anyone else." I wish I had said, "Well good for them." but what I said was, "Next Wednesday I will call them from my truck in their driveway and they can come out and get the food or tell me the dog is locked up." Urg.

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There was a TV show in the 80's where a guy found a watch that froze time. He would fix situations. I wish I had that watch. I would go to that bridge in Dallas this morning, grab those children from that deranged mom and hand her that dog. Now THAT is cool.

Random Stuff

I was so sad when little David Archuleta bombed tonight on "American Idol." (He's the one on the left for those of you who are too cool to watch this show.) I actually started to tear up, but I was also chewing a bite of quesadilla and I found out a long time ago that crying and eating do not mix well.


Friday, I got the pots and pans I had ordered from Macy's. I had always wanted stainless steel cookware but never quite got around to it. Then I get this e-mail from Macy's that's all "KITCHENWARE CLEARANCE WITH FREE SHIPPING TODAY ONLY." So, you know, I had to go at least look. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. The brand is Cuisinart and I am IN LOVE. I've used 4 of them so far. That one right behind the tomatoes up there? I've never had anything like that, but I've always wanted something like that so that one is my very favorite. I stored the dutch oven away because I'm not a big dutch oven user, but I will be using the other ones all the time. Every time I look at them or touch them, in my head I sing a rousing chorus of "How [did] I live without you?" Yeah, I'm weird.

Speaking of new, I mentioned I finally got a new phone. That's the old one on the left and the new one on the right. I haven't really used it yet. I usually only use my phone on Wednesdays when I do Meals on Wheels, so maybe I will get to use it tomorrow. And speaking of tomorrow, tomorrow is Catfish Wednesday! Yay! I love Catfish Wednesday. I really am very easily amused.

Popular by default

How I felt at the party.

Friday night was certainly weird. It was a work party/(very long) happy hour event celebrating 3 different things for two different people. And yeah, I don't work, so it was my husband's company. I wasn't really looking forward to it for all the reasons you can imagine and also because I feel like I have to keep a sense of decorum at these things and I'm not all that decorous when I'm at a big loud party. Is decorous a word? But it ended up being a fun and very interesting night. The wackiest part was how people that had initially generally ignored me, upon finding out I was Mrs. My Sweetie, were fawning all over me. Like they had a sudden personality transplant. Those people really really love my husband. Or something. I started to feel like a celebrity. Or a celebrity's wife. I did take my cue from the behavior of others and cut loose a bit. I sang "Happy Birthday" to the birthday guy and "Happy Trails" to the going away guy after inhaling helium. It seemed to go over well. I have a really funny helium voice. There were also vendors there including an old vendor from my working days that I knew from 1995. I told him he looked exactly the same to me but he took it as an insult. I didn't mean it as one. I'm probably 40 pounds heavier, not to mention 13 years older, so I know I didn't look the same. If he had told me I looked the same, I would have taken it as a compliment. I even met a guy that's married to a woman that used to work there. Small world, I guess. The best one was I met a blogger that reads 3 different things I read. He asked me for my blog and I told him I couldn't tell him because of my husband's request for anonymity and he works with my husband. He said he would try to figure it out from the blogs we both read. I never comment on one of them (dooce) very rarely comment on another (Wil Wheaton) and I don't think he could guess me from TVGasm. I felt bad that I couldn't tell him, but I have to respect my husband's wishes. It ended up being quite a long night but we made it home in one piece. We were very close to the house, thank goodness.

We finally updated our phones today. And because I am quite a cheapo about some things, we opted for the free upgrade phones. They are very tiny. I sure won't miss having to remember the keypad lock thing. And the phone takes pictures in case I forget my camera. My husband's phone was even older than mine and he didn't even have text messaging so he went crazy. We went to the grocery store after we got the phones and he texted me from like 30 feet away. What a goof! I can supposedly check my e-mail on this phone but I'll probably never figure that out.

I'd love to close by saying it was a great weekend but my team lost the big game against their arch rivals on Saturday and came in second for their conference. I cried. It sucked. But they can still win the conference tournament. But not if they play like they did on Saturday. There's still March Madness after that and of course:

There's always next year!

My Blogging Mentor

Jazz awarded me the Blogging Mentor award. I have to say I was shocked and extremely honored (honoured, as she would say). When I first saw this award going around I started thinking about what it meant. Then, of course, because I have a spritely (spastic?) brain, I began thinking about my whole blogging experience. It 's a goofy story which is entirely appropriate as it is my story.

What happened was, years ago, maybe 2003 or 2004, I was reading my People Magazine and there was a little blurb about an anonymous Hollywood blog that had everyone guessing. I didn't know what a blog was, but I punched in the stuff and found a very funky website by a guy who claimed to be a Hollwood Player and had all sorts of interesting and sordid stories. He interspersed all these colorful showbiz anecdotes with little short stories. Because it was a big mystery about who this guy was, I became intrigued and did lots of research. I read the whole thing and checked dates and whatnot and decided it had to be Steve Martin. After the People article, I wasn't the only curious person checking out his site, and he got tired of people just commenting guesses, like "Are you Ben Affleck?"( Which was stupid of course, because he was obviously much older.) He started turning over his blog to guest writers and "friends" and eventually stopped blogging. I did once leave this comment: "You were born in Waco, Texas in 1945." He stopped posting close enough after that time to make me think I was right.

I also did a search on an expression once and found Plurp, a website that ended in 2004. I still didn't know the word "blog" in 2003, so I'd say, "I have to read the Plurp." Please don't look it up, because my comments there are very dorky.

I don't remember what the blog server was for "Steve Martin" but at the top of the page was a link that said something like "read other blogs" or something to that effect. I was bored one night and clicked on it and there was a page of recent posts. I would randomly click on them and most were boring or creepy, but one night I hit on one that was interesting to me. I have no idea why. If I remember correctly, she was a wife and mom of two kids in Kentucky and was in the healthcare business. I guess I just liked the way she said stuff. Well one night she said, "You HAVE to check out this blog!" That was Jay's Party, which is still there but ended in June 2005. (And if you want to check it out, you should start at the beginning.) I found it absolutely riveting! Remember the TV viewers on The Truman Show? It was like that.

Well, I found Jeanette (the cutie in the picture with me up there) in Jay's comments. The name "Jeanette" is special to me, so I contacted her to join her private blog. I loved her blog. We had that wonderful thing where we were very similar and very different (My favorite combination!) so I was always leaving all sorts of long comments and she always said, "You need to make a blog." Many times. Finally one day I did. So, I guess Jeanette is my blogging mentor. Thanks Jeanette! I'm really enjoying it!

Wecome to Texas!

I think it was 70 degrees yesterday (Sunday). I can't help but wonder if that's the day all the national new reporters flocked (like BIRDS!, heh heh) to Texas to cover Tuesday's primary. They were probably quite warm depending on their home bases. They probably spent Sunday getting settled in and playing golf. And then tonight it snowed. I think the temperature dropped 36 degrees in less than 24 hours. I wonder how many of the reporters did not bring a coat?

Speaking of the national news, ABC's "World News Tonight" did a story on the grackle problem here and of course mentioned Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, so I was thinking, Do they read my blog? It was quite a coincidence that they reported on it today. After years of dealing with these annoying birds, they have finally found a solution: Hawks. Apparently hawks can take down and kill 6 or more grackles in a day and the grackles do not like the hawks and may go away on their own. And these are pet hawks and the hawk owners are getting paid for this. Only in Texas.

Today was the first time my Mom and I have had a political argument. We have always been on the same page in the past, but now we are in different books. She is in her retirement place in North Carolina but still registered to vote here. She even tried to get her husband to drive her here to vote, but he's not only in a different book, he's in a different bookstore. She tried so hard to persuade me to vote her way and I tried so hard to explain why I was voting my way. Now I'm glad she's out of town so that her vote does not cancel out my vote. I've put a lot of thought into this vote, almost too much, but I have made my decision and that is that.

I've mentioned before how Texans love being the center of attention and now this primary has become important and the hype is incredible. Phrases like "Texas is the Belle of the Ball," are all over the news. And then it snowed tonight and Texas goes crazy for Weather. I actually felt sorry for the news directors. The night before the primary AND snow. They must have been going crazy.

But You Have To Know How

Happy Downtowner tagged me with that page 123 meme. The thing is, Ticknart had this a while back and unfortunately I have the same book near my computer. The book is Hey! It's That Guy which is a book about character actors and unfortunately page 123 is the page for Brian Thompson and there is nothing really interesting about him (I hope he doesn't read this). I couldn't help but wonder if this meme started out to build a funny story with all these random 5 lines from books.

When I was in 7th grade we did a fun creative writing exercise. We started writing a story and then a timer dinged (DING!) and we passed our paper to the person behind us. This went on until our original story had worked its way down the row and back to us and we then had to wrap up the story. I thought it was fascinating how my original concept changed. I actually kept that piece of paper and it is probably in one of those boxes that I keep.

A lady named Rhea challenged Josie to write a six word memoir based on Hemmingway's six word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." I noticed nearly all of the responses to Rhea's challenge were very, uhm, adjectivey or haikuish. (I don't think those are real words, but what the hey?) People seemed kinda freaked out by the concept. I thought it was too easy. I recently commented on Happy Downtowner's blog that this line from The Cat in the Hat is practically my mantra: Look at me, look at me, look at me now. It is fun to have fun, but you have to know how.

My 6 word memoir is this: I know how to have fun.

How Wednesday Went

I don't go to Red Lobster enough to remember why I don't go there. I hope the next time I think about going to lunch there someone will run up and kick me in the shin. Their tartar sauce tastes like bad coleslaw with too much onion. Their shrimp is tiny and dry and the service was awful and I was at the bar. I walked in and said, "I'm going to sit at the bar." The dudes (there were TWO of them) said, "Okay, we'll bring a menu right over." About 7 minutes passed with no menu and no bartender. She finally came out and took the order of the guy on my left who had sat down 4 minutes after I did. I hope I remember not to go there again.

The morning started out bad enough. I already had the shower running when the doorbell rang. AT 9:30 A.M.!!!! My first thought was "Why is my doorbell ringing at 9:30?" My next thought was "Who would ring my doorbell at 9:30?" I opened the door and it was the lawn service guy. We just started this lawn service and I told the guy, "Make a note to NEVER come here on Wednesdays." I was very irritated because I had to close the blinds in my bedroom and bathroom. I like my blinds open. But because I am generally a positive thinker, I realized in the shower that if the guy had arrived 10 minutes later, I would have been in the shower and seen a guy walking around in my backyard. That would not have been good.

My MOW route seemed to take forever. My first stop was a no response and I had to got through all the protocol that I've talked about before. At my third stop, my buddy lady wanted me to do a few things and my fifth stop guy wanted to talk and he talks veeeerrrrrrrryyyy ssssslllllooooowwwlllllllyyyy. I finally finished my route and made my stupid lunch decision.

After my bad lunch I went to the country club to meet with James Bond and he was still in his 2:00 meeting. My waiting narcolepsy kicked in and I was just about to doze off in the lobby when I was saved by some other guy walking up and offering to show me around. The room (the Winchester Room - how Texasy is that?!?) was nice and has a great view over the golf course and a little pond. When we were finished there and went back upstairs, James Bond was ready for me. I had fun picking out the menu and discussing various things. I'm almost 47 and have never planned anything like this so it was a great learning experience.

Now all I can think about is this event and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about centerpieces and whatnot. I need to stop that. It's just that I keep getting ideas all the time. They were married in Hawaii, so I want to have leis for everyone. But I did choose to have an open bar. And that was for me.

I'm So Jealous!

I just got off the phone with my husband. He's on a business trip and told me the speaker this morning was Lewis Black. Lewis Black is my FAVORITE comedian (and I do a funny impersonation of him). He also said there are bunnies all over the resort and that one nearly ran across his foot. Bunnies and Lewis Black. Wow.

I've been busy trying to plan a wedding anniversary dinner for my husband's parents. I am meeting James Bond tomorrow at a country club to go over the menu. Yes, James Bond is the catering director at a country club. Who knew? Maybe he's working undercover.

The Birds

I didn't realize when we went shopping for a vacuum cleaner that we were being cast as unwitting extras in an old Alfred Hitchcock movie:

Another Reason to Hate It

I don't like Dallas. The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex is one giant metro area with a lot of competition between the two major cities and Arlington (there are also a kajillion suburbs). Arlington has the Texas Rangers baseball team and is now building a giant football stadium for the Dallas Cowboys, which will probably be the Arlington Cowboys someday, although they (the team) were in Irving the whole time and were never known as the Irving Cowboys.
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I lived in Dallas from 1984 until 1988. I hated it. I always had a hard time explaining why, but I just found this line from Yahoo Travel: Contrary to popular belief, there's no oil in glitzy, status-conscious DALLAS. If you need a hint about which words are true and also disturbing to me: It's the same reason I don't like L.A. And on top of the, I don't know, attitude, there's the traffic. The traffic is always horrible and there are several major car accidents every single day. I have honestly asked myself many times when in an introspective mood, "Did I leave my first husband just to GET OUT OF DALLAS?"
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Although I left in 1988, I couldn't just wave goodbye through my rearview mirror. My daughter was only 4 and her dad lived there, so every other weekend was the horrible drive to Dallas (or its burbs). When she turned 16 I was SO happy! I also had to work there quite often when I was freelancing (1996-1998). I can't begin to guess how many hours I spent on 635 going 45 IPH (inches per hour). I probably lost 6 months of my life sitting on 635. The best place I ever worked was in a town north of Dallas (The Barney the Dinosaur corporate offices) and they started talking to me about a permanent position and all I could see was me spending hours and hours on 635. And 75? It's as bad. And you had to take that to get to the Barney place. Aaaargh!
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Once after I left the Barney place, and I was in a rush to get to one of my daughter's volleyball games, I came upon a fresh wreck on 75. It looked like Hollywood was filming one of those post-apocalypse movies. There were about 5 or 6 cars and glass scattered all across 4 lanes. I just drove all crazy and slow swerving between all the stopped crashed cars, because I had to get to the volleyball game. I did look at everybody to make sure no one had blood spurting out of their heads, but I just wanted to get AWAY. And one time on 635 after creeping and crawling for FOREVER, I passed the wreck that had held us up. A truck was sitting on top of a car as if it had been lowered by a crane. I never saw anything about it in the news and to this day wonder how that happened.
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The only time I go to Dallas now is for the State Fair. The State Fair is worth it and is on my side of Dallas. I can only think of a few other times I've been in recent years: A Red Wings game and to meet a childhood friend at his downtown hotel. So today on the news they announced that after his term is over, Mr. & Mrs. Current President will be residing in Dallas. That seems appropriate and I think it will suit them just fine.

Whuuuut?

I didn't know Dear Abby was Italian. I always thought she was Jewish:





Okay, it's been a week and a half since my bad haircut. I think it's starting to look normal again. Maybe I just hate the fact that my face keeps getting inexplicably wider. I really need to get on the treadmill. This is a totally undoctored photo that was taken today. And by saying that, I will admit that I am a Photoshop expert (those are Art Squad's words, not mine), and I have touched up some of my pictures. But this is me today (Wednesday) and boy I wish I had done some stuff to that picture.

It Doesn't Suck

Is that not the ugliest vacuum cleaner you've ever seen? I used to hide it when it was out and someone came to the door. But I loved it. It was a hand-me-down from my Mom and I gave away my shiny new pretty vacuum after she gave me this one. Why? Why would I do such a thing? First of all, I have very sensitive ears and the old one that was the new one (I think for clarity I'll call it "the green one" was very very loud and as Randy Jackson would say, "pitchy." The green one was also very heavy. And with all its weight, newness and noise, it really didn't have the suction of the grey one there. So out it went. This one has been My Dawg, Ya'll (okay no more Randy Jackson references!!) for many years, but alas, the end has come. When I was attempting to vacuum the bedroom yesterday all I was doing was making tire tracks, although I think it did pick up a few feathers (from the pillows. There are no birds in the bedroom). But the lint? It was having none of it. So now we have to go buy a new vacuum on Saturday. I hate buying things like furniture and appliances, because you have to plan on being happy with the purchase for 15 to 25 years. Unless you're rich and wasteful, of which I am neither. Okay, I did replace a couch and chair after only five years but they were droopy. And it wasn't wasteful because I gave them to my daughter. So wish me luck on buying a light, low-noise vacuum that uses bags and has a retractable cord. I should be able to find that, right?

I pulled out the sewing machine to do some sewing projects and got another one done today. I have this little pine bench that used to be at the foot of our bed, but when we rearranged our room last year it didn't fit in there anymore. I had made this little green cushion for it that matches our bedroom, but we moved it into the guest room which is black and grey.

So I made this black toile cover for the old cushion:

I don't know why all my sewing projects seem to involve long straight seams. I HATE them. But after some trouble with my bobbin (The sewing machine is 24 years old!), I finally got it done. Now I can move on to my Jake Pillow Project which I hope to have done by Friday and will do a little show and tell here. Tomorrow of course is Meals on Wheels Wednesday as well as Catfish Wednesday, so I get to take a sewing break. Enjoy your Wednesday! And Thursday! Well heck, have a whole great rest of the week!

Pictures of Me and Other Things

When I had to move stuff around last week in flickr to post my Japanese Gardens photos I deleted the picture that was on my profile but oddly it stayed on here for over a week. Then today, "POOF!" it was gone. I wasn't crazy about it because I felt like it looked like I was copying other pictures I had seen on other blogs. I like to use the most recent photos for my picture and I was looking for a newish pic to use and I noticed I had on the same T-shirt in several pictures. I thought to myself, "Why is this shirt in every picture? I don't wear it that often." and then laughed out loud when I realized that I had it on! I'm wearing it right now!

This is the T-shirt. And we actually have two of them and it has long sleeves, so it is very cozy when it's chilly, like now. I even have a short sleeve version and a white short-sleeved one. I don't even know what the "IV" stands for but they were free. We get lots of free T's from My Sweetie's job.

Anyway I picked out the picture over there (up there?) because it's from the bar in San Diego when we watched the Duke game on January 6th. I didn't realize until recently that January 6th was the 13th anniversary of the day I met My Sweetie, so it seemed like an appropriate picture. Speaking of pictures of me, I thought I'd show my Driver's License picture because it always makes me laugh. It looks like I was on my way to a costume party when I stopped to get my license renewed. Cleopatra, yes?

In other news, we had terrible weather over the weekend. We had hail 3 times: once on Friday and twice on Saturday. It was probably what they call "pea-sized" but one of the times we had the "marble-sized." This is my patio on Saturday:

Here's recent photo of Barney. He weighs 14 lbs. now and he's about 9 months old. He's a sweet loving kitty and sports a cute cummerbund:

And these are my Valentine's Day flowers. I really love the vase. It makes me want to get a goldfish or learn how to do sandscapes.

Oscar* Fun

I just watched a cute show on VH1 called "VH1's 20 Greatest Oscar Moments." I'll admit it: I'm an awards show junkie. I spent two days curled up in a fetal position when I realized there would be no "Golden Globes." Fortunately I had the "Screen Actors Guild Awards" and the "Grammys" to pull me out of my funk. And now the word on the street (and by street, I mean the internet) says The Oscars* are a go now that the writers' strike is over. The show must will go on, thank goodness. (And that horrid writers strike being over means I can also get my "Saturday Night Live" fix -YAY.) I can't wait to watch the Oscars* and I hope we have some new great moments this year. And although I'm not gay, I would have loved to be Adrian Brody that night.

*Dear Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Scientists people, please accept my apology for not being computer savvy enough to know how to do the little circled "c" copyright thingy. And welcome back.

My Bloggy Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day to my favorite blogger buddies. Here's to:

Josie - for being a great new friend and an inspiration.

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Jazz - for being one of the coolest ladies I've ever met.

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Jeanette - for being one of my original blogger peoples (from the Jay days) and sharing so much with me.

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Tai - for making me feel like it's okay to party and have fun all the time.

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Naomi - for sharing her wonderful life in the Hills (and Broadway!)

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Ian - for being all worldly, curmudgeonly (yeah right!) and a little naughty.

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Leslie - for weathering the storms in such an upbeat manner.

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Scarlet - for her fun crazy take on family life in Miami.

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Dave - for his very sweet and real way of looking at life.

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Ticknart - for being a fun young sci-fi guy.

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Happy Downtowner - for her slightly different Canadian perspective and good stories.

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Big Brother - for making me want to be a bit smarter.

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Michael - for making me feel almost like an L.A. insider.

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Lone Grey Squirrel - for his great travel and touching human stories.

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Jocelyn - for her crazy fun (and orange shaggy) take on things.

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And the bloggers that I read and don't really know:

The Daily Randi - because she makes Everything sound Fun!

Rayna - I love her pictures and stories about life in New Orleans with her new baby.

Hilary - I love the smart Jewish L.A. thing she has going on.

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To all of you and future blogger buddies: Happy Valentine's Day!

Things I Made Recently

Here are some things that I made recently:

I made a pizza Saturday night. I don't think I've made a pizza in 10 years. I bought the crust pre-made, but the rest was all me. Well, sort of - I made a killer easy pizza sauce by draining a can of diced Italian style tomatoes and running them through the blender. It was great! The toppings were red and green pepper strips and thin pepperoni (and mozzarella, of course).

I made the mistake of telling my hairdresser that he could cut my hair as short as he wanted to because it would grow back.

I made a call to my estranged brother in North Carolina. You could ask me why until you're blue in the face and I don't think I could come up with a good answer, but I'm glad I called.

I made myself laugh today. I was thinking about future lighting work in the house. I want two potlights for the kitchen and was thinking how nice sconces would look in a particular place in the living room. Except, in my head, I was using the word "scones." That would not be a good idea and would most likely attract ants.

I made these goofy little things with my new modeling clay. I've loved playing with modeling clay since I was 3 or 4. I wanted to make Snoopy but I did not have enough white clay.

And best of all......

I made my airline reservations for my June Vancouver trip!!!!

The Lost Realm

My sincerest condolences go out to anyone and everyone who has experienced a friend or loved one in any state of dementia or Alzheimer's Disease. I've seen all sorts of stuff on TV, but I had never experienced it firsthand. Until today. I was on the phone for about 10 or 15 minutes with the Mom of a high school friend and she was in another realm of existence. I don't want to go into the details of the conversation, but there was a lot of repetition and other odd moments. I felt exhausted after the short phone call and can not even imagine the daily hardships that her son must go through. My heart goes out to all caregivers in this situation. I wish you strength and patience. And love.

Lovely Wednesday

I need to start this post by saying that when it comes to Flickr, I'm really dense. I already had three folders although one of them was junk, so they insisted that to create a new folder (they call them "sets"), I needed to give them money. It took me quite a while to figure out how to delete 4 pictures and rename the set "Japanese Gardens," but by golly, I did it! I may also have deleted my blog picture because that seems like something that would happen.
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Wednesday started out well, and we got an early start for Meals on Wheels. It was the easiest packing and sorting I've had in months. All the regular meal people chose menu A and the two diet people chose B. That may not sound like much, but if you're not a morning person and you're trying to sort your diet and regular A's and B's, it can tangle your brain. When I got to Myriam's house, a lady from her church was there helping her with general cleaning, and she heaped effusive praise on me for her new faucet. That was sweet. When we left her neighborhood we saw this lawn chair in a tree and I had to take a picture:

I think it went up there in the "Crazy Winds" we had, but My Sweetie thinks it was a prank. It's possible that an irate neighbor was protesting because that house still has the Christmas lights up. After MOW, we went to my dumpy little catfish place - My Sweetie's choice. Yummy. Then we went to the Japanese Gardens:

I didn't know what to expect because I had only been once in late April so I wasn't expecting much for the middle of winter, but everything was gorgeous! My Sweetie had never been at all so he was pleasantly surprised that there was fauna as well as flora. There are lots of koi and they have little machines, like gumball machines, to buy fish food. The machines say, "fish food," but apparently ducks and squirrels can not read, because they were big fans of the fish food. The ducks were very aggressive and were practically taking the pellets right out of the fishies' mouths. And the squirrel? He came right up and begged like a puppy! He was so cute. There were also turtles sunning on a log. if you want to see all these creatures and the Japanese Gardens photos I took click HERE. Now My Sweetie can't wait to go back when everything is in bloom. After the Japanese Gardens we went to Hobby Lobby where I bought some modeling clay, other random fun things and this cute thing that I hung on my fence:

And of course, as I mentioned in the last post, my team won THE Big Game. I wish every day could be like Wednesday. It was a perfect day. I hope you all have a perfect day.

A Perfect Day!

(Photo from the Durham Herald-Sun)

Wednesday was a great day. My Sweetie took the day off to do Meals on Wheels with me, then we went to the Japanese Gardens, ran some fun errands and capped off the day with a 89-78 Duke victory over UNC - our #1 lifelong rival. I will work on the Japanese Gardens photos today and try to get that post up later tonight. I took about 850,000 pictures!

It's All About Texas!

Although my Mom and I love Texas, neither of us were born here, and we laugh at a lot of Texas ways and things. The thing that's always cracked us up the most is how no matter what is going on in the world, the Texas news folks try to make it about Texas. If they do a story about hurricane Katrina, they slant it to talk about how many Katrina victims relocated to Texas. If they do a Super Bowl story they will manage a Texas connection. It's always about Texas. The primaries today? Texas. Now all the news reports are about how for the first time in a generation, Texas will make the big difference and break the (almost) tie between Obama and Clinton. Yay! It's all about Texas now!

Fat Tuesday!

TWO HOURS?!!?

These are the deluxe chicken nachos I made for our Super Bowl dinner. Because I had to keep stopping to watch the commercials, it took TWO HOURS to makes these. I think next year I will make a frozen pizza.

I operate on 1/2 B.P.

I was looking at my garage door opener motor thing the other day and I noticed it said "1/2 H.P." And I thought, 1/2 horse power? What is that? Is that the power of half a horse? So I started thinking about half of a horse. And I thought, well there's the front half and the back half:

So I figured half horse power, no matter how you sliced the horse, pretty much meant a two-legged horse. I even pictured it being sliced in half sidewise. You'd still have a two-legged horse. So I thought instead of 1/2 H.P, it should be 2-L.H.P. (for two-legged horse power). Then I thought of this:

The MOW Mix-Up (and sore thumbs)

the old faucet

Wednesday morning I head over to the church to pick up my food for Meals on Wheels and there is no route sheet. One man is still there and I say out loud, "I have no route sheet." He says, "I was wondering why you were here, because there's no food left." So I called MOW and she had no idea what was going on. She said, "I guess the subs I called for Thursday came on the wrong day." I think of another option: That my route was somehow lost at the MOW office. I decided since I was all the way over there, I would check on Myriam to see if she needed anything and wait with her to see if any food showed up..
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She did need some help. Her fence latch was not catching and it had been banging in the crazy winds and she had set a chair against it and was terrified someone would steal her chair. She gave me a key to the padlock and man was that thing hard to open. Then I had to use the lock as a hammer to get the latch to close and was finally able to put the lock back on. I feel sorry for whoever has to open that thing. I hope it won't be me. Then she wanted me to look at one of her upstairs faucets. It was the one I had not been able to fix the hot water leak on last year and had just turned off the hot water valve since she has two bathrooms up there. Well, now the cold water was leaking, so I told her I would come back on Thursday with my tools and replace the whole faucet.
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Finally a car pulled up and an old couple got out and walked to their trunk. I walked out and said, "Are you with MOW?" She said, "Yes.?" I said, "I was just wondering how you guys happened to get this route today. This is my route." She said "Dee called us." Hmmm. I asker her if maybe she was supposed to come on Thursday and she told me they ONLY do Wednesdays. Hmmm. Dee was on the phone with Myriam, I got on and told her and she would NOT admit that it was her mistake. Now she claims the Thursday guy said "Wednesday." Anyhoo, I said, "Well I guess that means you need someone for Thursday?" Since I had to go back anyway to do the faucet, I may as well pick up the route. Oh and the substitute lady? She was all whiny and said, right in front of Myriam, "I could have gone to a retirement party instead of this." How freaking rude was that? THEN as we walked out, she turned to me and in an incredulous voice, asked, "Are you going to all of their houses?" Like she thought I was crazy. But now I'm thinking she meant to have me take the rest of the stuff so she could try to make her party.
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When I got up Thursday morning, I called in just to be sure and Dee said everything was right now. I did the route and I'm sure some of the people went around all day thinking it was Wednesday. Then I wasted 25 minutes trying to find a place to eat lunch in the area. Yes, that defeats the whole purpose! I finally found a very mediocre Mexican restaurant. At least they had beer! I always want a Dos Equiis with Mexican food. I made it back to Myriam's just after two and had very little trouble getting the old faucet out - I knew from last year what to expect and had all the correct tools this time. Then I ran to the local hardware store and got a faucet and connectors. The plumbing guy they sent to help was about 12 and I was sure he had no idea what he was talking about, because those old houses over there need a special connector end, but he gave me the right stuff. I finished everything just after 4:00, but my thumbs were KILLING me. Here is some plumbing advice: If you have tendonitis in both thumbs, do not replace a faucet in a tiny bathroom cabinet. Your thumbs will hurt like hell and you will have a hard time holding your beer that night.