Harmonica, Friends, & the answer

I've mentioned before that My Sweetie gets weird random stuff as "perks" through his job. Well, the other day he came home with a harmonica. He's really into playing with it, and it's okay, because unlike a guitar or a piano, you can't really hit an off note with a harmonica. Well it made me want to find my harmonica. I've been looking for it for several years. When I was about 19, my Bestest Buddy Bill gave me his old harmonica. My Dad had married a piano player and she had all sorts of songbooks and I found a little book that had the theme from "Mash." I spent weeks working on it and finally learned how to play it. One weekend, my Step-mom's youngest daughters spent the night with us and I showed R my harmonica. R has Down's Syndrome and I thought she would like it and I was right. She fell in love with that harmonica. I was happy that I had made her happy and time passed and one day I was looking for my harmonica and couldn't find it. Then I remembered that the last time I had seen it was that night I had let R play with it. I remember asking my step-mom about it and asked her if she could call R (my step-mom's kids lived with their dad) and ask her where it was. Well, that was awfully silly of me, but I was only 19 or so and didn't really have a grasp of what Down's Syndrome was all about. Besides, R was only about 5 and kinda seemed like a 5-year-old to me.
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My bedroom had a whole wall of sliding door closets. Two sets of two doors. And I was 19, so my closets were a mess. One day, about 4 months later, in the back of the right closet I found a large lady's purse and figured it was my step-mom's. I was wondering how it got in there and picked it up, looked inside and there was my harmonica! I was pretty good about keeping up with it after that and I've moved a million times. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I've move A LOT and if I haven't posted about that, I should. But anyway, tonight I was looking for my harmonica again and I was looking in this one place where I keep old stuff and I found this maybe 5" x 8" zippered wallety organizery thing that had all sorts of weird random stuff in it and I found this old picture of me and Lo and I think it's probably the best picture of the both of us that I've ever seen.

Once I saw the word "Ra" in the background, I knew we were sitting at the Nile Bar at the Luxor in Las Vegas. Judging by my thinness and haircut, I believe this was taken in 1999. That was our first trip. That's one of the good things about always changing my hairstyles - it makes it easier to guess dates in old pictures. In case anyone doesn't know the history of Lo and Me, we had met once for about 20 minutes at my Dad's house while he was napping in his recliner and then we smoked together by the bar at my Dad's retirement party (and she also drove us there). She was very helpful that next week, because my Dad died at his retirement party and I was staying at his house working on funeral arrangements and stuff with my brother. This was October 1998. In May or June of 1999, I was still suffering from post-traumatic stress from Dad's death and DREADING the anniversary of his death, so I called Lo and told her how I felt and asked if she'd like a trip to Vegas for that week. We didn't really know each other, but she had known Dad for years - she was a neighbor, and had been so helpful after his death, it just seemed like a good idea to me. We have a 14 year age difference, but I didn't even think about that. She flew into DFW and we flew together to Vegas and made a memory to last forever. It was just the beginning of many trips and a very long friendship. We e-mail every Monday thru Friday (she only has e-mail at work like Jazz) and talk on the phone a lot. I will get to see her in June at the N.C. beach cottage, and it's sort of our 10th anniversary.
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I guess my trip to Vancouver in just 3 weeks has made me think about this a lot, because Josie and I will be meeting up and vacationing together as sort of unknowns like Lo and me were almost ten years ago. I feel like Josie and I will also have that great fun connection and I will have another lifelong friend. Many people have been rather skeptic about my Vancouver trip and say things like, "You're going to CANADA to stay with this blogger person that you've never met?!?" And all I can think about when they say this is "10 years ago I went to Vegas with an almost stranger and I have made a friend for life." I expect to have a GRAND time in Vancouver and I also expect to find my harmonica in the next few days. I think I know where it might be.

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Here's the answer to the picture puzzle. I think Naomi is better suited at this than I am, so I don't think I'll do this again and I'll just enjoy trying my luck with her:

Picture Puzzle

I am way too tired to post about Unusual Thursday, but I'll get to it later. Thanks to Naomi for the Bill Moyers link! Speaking of Naomi, she did a fun picture puzzle like Games Magazine has sometimes where the photo is a close-up of a common object and you have to guess what it is. She did a seashell and a cactus flower. I thought it was a lot of fun. Here's one if you feel like guessing:

Bill Moyers

I Woke Up Crabby

I woke up crabby today and that's pretty rare for me. First of all, I get to sleep until I wake up about 82% of my days, so of course, I generally wake up all happy and refreshed. And because I so rarely wake up crabby, I spent most of my day trying to figure out why I was so crabby. It began normally. My Sweetie always kisses me goodbye and I wake up and say something weird and random and we both laugh. Today when he kissed me, I think I said, "Yay!" Imagine someone kissing you in the middle of the night, because when he leaves I have usually only been asleep 4 or 5 hours. This morning it was 4. I curled back up in my cozy covers with a smile thinking, "Yay? That's a new one." Then I heard thunder. And then there was lightning, the kind you can see through your eyelids, and more thunder and it got brighter and louder and one was so close I think I kinda popped up off the bed about an inch. I finally dozed back off and then the phone rang. I hate when the phone rings when I'm asleep. When you go to bed at 4:00 a.m. and the phone rings at 9:15, that's like if you went to bed at 11:00 p.m. and the phone rings at 4:15 in the morning. It's not pleasant. I always roll over and look at the caller ID and if it's not one of about 5 people, I don't answer it. So I went back to sleep. Then the phone rang again at 12:15 and that was sort of okay, because that's about when I get up, but I didn't want to be awakened by a phone ringing. Again. I got up and turned on the news to see the weather and they were predicting dire weather for tomorrow at noon, which is right in the middle of my delivery time. I don't mind driving around in the rain, because after all, I got my license in North Carolina where it pretty much rains 3 or 4 days a week, but I DO NOT like to drive around in the lightning and thunder. So maybe I was crabby thinking about that. I dont know what it was, exactly, but I feel I should apologize to a friend that I felt I was crabby with.
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When My Sweetie got home from work, I told him I had been crabby all day and couldn't figure out why. He asked, "Menopause?" I responded, "Mental Paws?" and made funny paws and then I laughed and I felt fine after that. Mental Paws. That's probably it.

The Picture Post

Well I had a really great time today and was going to talk about it and then I found out my horse Eight Belles was euthanized after the race at Churchill Downs and decided out of respect to this sweet little filly not to talk about my horse racing fun today. Also I had three different fun picture posts built up, so I thought I would put them together. That first one is the Andy Warhol thing that Josie had. I used an old cheesecake picture of myself that was taken in New Orleans in the very early 90's. It was my first trip to New Orleans and pre-internet, so I did it the old-fashioned way: I called the Chamber of Commerce and asked them to send me information. I was with my second husband at the time and he was a real penny pincher, so we stayed at The Old World Inn. And it really was almost like a European hostel. No phone or TV and there was only a locked door between our bathroom and the bathroom of the two gassy Dutch guys. Ick. But that's where I met my buddy Billy (at the Inn not in the bathroom) from Essex and we exchanged Christmas cards for several years.

This is one that Ticknart had in January called "First Album" and I did it that day but I have no idea where I saved the picture, so I redid it tonight. The rules of making your first album cover are on this post.

Lastly, Happy Downtowner tagged me a month ago for this Make a Wish thing that you can find here. So "I Wish I Knew Everything" is MY wish and I guess I should explain it: If I knew EVERYTHING, I could cure all diseases, solve all the world's problems and make millions of dollars telling people how Marilyn Monroe died, who killed JFK, who really wrote To Kill a Mockingbird and what happened to Amelia Earhart.

Just Doing My Part

I've decided to be patriotic and go out and blow some of my big government bribe economic incentive money by going to the horse races at Lone Star Park on Saturday. Saturday is also the day of the Kentucky Derby, or as all writers and various and sundry other sportsy people like to call it: the greatest 2 minutes in sports! We watch it on TV every year and my pick came in second last year and my pick won the two years before that and I always say, "Damn! I wish I had bet money on that!" (In case you are unfamiliar with horse racing, the Derby will be simulcast at Lone Star Park and you can bet on it there.) So this year I will put my money where my mouth is, and I mean that literally because I think the beer there is about $5. (The good thing about that is there is never a long line.) Also they are predicting Saturday to be sunny and about 72 degrees. But this is Texas, and it may be 90. I hope they got this one right though, because I want to do the outdoor seating. We haven't been in a few years, but when we used to go more often, we always splurged and got counter or box seats upstairs. And if the weather was great, I'd be a bit jealous of all the people milling around outside down there on the ground, not to mention the sound of the pounding hooves and getting to see the horses up close.

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As most gamblers are, I'm very superstitious and my lucky number is 8. This year the first filly in a decade to make it to the Kentucky Derby is named Eight Belles. I see this as a sign and she is currently at 15:1 so the payoff would be great! I will also bet on horse #8: Visonaire to Win, Place or Show (and the jockey for this horse is wearing green which is my lucky color), so if you happen to watch the Derby on Saturday and have no personal vested interest, pull for horse #5. If I have already won money on the live races by then, I think I'll also bet on #9 Pyro or maybe do a trifecta with those three horses. Anyway, I hope the weather is great. I know we'll have lots of fun and I will take a bunch of pictures. And I will feel so good about stimulating the economy.

I Bought Man Shoes

I needed some comfy summer walking around shoes, which sounds kinda stupid now that I think about it. Walking around shoes? What else are you going to do with shoes? Anyway, I have these really dorky looking Fred Flintstone feet and after trying on lots of cute girly sandals, I was getting kinda depressed. As I was standing there getting kinda depressed, I glanced to my left and saw some black slip on shoes that looked really cozy and then realized I was looking at the men's shoes. I thought, "Why do the men get such comfy shoes and we don't?" Then I decided to try a small men's size on. They felt so nice, I also tried on some brown leather sandals. I loved them both. I bought Man Shoes! Both are Dr. Scholls brand. They are the most comfortable shoes ever! I guess if I never told anyone, they would never know, so don't tell anyone.

I had a great drink today. It's called a "Tropical Paradise" and it was. Isn't it pretty? I left the guy in the picture because I didn't notice him when I was taking it and it's obvious he's thinking, "Why is that strange lady taking a picture of her drink?"

How cool is this thing? It's 21" tall and is supposed to be a planter, but the actual plant hole is not really large, so I'm not going to use it for that. I just had to have it even though I have no idea where I'm going to put it. If I had crazy money to burn, I would have bought every one in the store and lined them up in my front yard. Just to be weird. I wonder if I could have it epoxied to the roof of my truck facing backwards? That would be cool. Or just freaky.

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I have a Meals on Wheels volunteer magnet on my driver's side door and today when I was walking back to my truck from my last stop, a man in the next yard said, "Well good for you!" At first, I was all, "Huh?" Because I'm dim like that sometimes, then I realized he had read the thing and said, "Oh, Thanks, I'm coming up on 8 years." Then he said "Well, you must really like it." Which I thought was a little odd, but then I thought for a minute and said, "Yes, I really do." I don't know how he read the thing because it's pretty small. Here's a picture of my little red trucky:

Hmmm. I drive a truck and I bought man shoes. Now I think I should polish my nails or something. Well, I AM wearing mascara!

My Dentist Buddy

That little lamb is my dentist buddy. Not the beer, that was placed in the picture for size scale purposes, although I suppose beer is also my dentist buddy in some respects. Whenever I have anything done besides a cleaning, I take my dentist buddy to hold, because I was gripping the chair arms so intensely, I would have sore hands and arms. That little lamb is special to me anyway because I bought it just after Easter in 1999 on one of my trips to North Carolina to take care of stuff after my Dad's death (October 1998).
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I was supposed to go today to have a filling replaced and unsurprisingly, I forgot. I remembered as I was stripping the bed. I always wash my bedsheets on Monday and as I was taking them off the bed, I thought, "So is it this Sunday I am supposed to wash the sheets because I have a dentist appointment on Monday?" And then ZING! I was all "Oh Frick!" It was 3:15 and my appointment was for 4:00 and there was NO WAY I could take a shower and make it over there. I called and said, "What's the charge for a late cancellation?" She said, "Is this geewits?" Because, yeah, it was not my first time. My bad. Anyway for $30 I got a 24 hour reprieve from horror.
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I made this appointment when I was in the office a couple of weeks ago and I got all whiny about the shots, so they said I could have nitrous oxide for the shots. Then they told me, "But you can't have any beer." I said, "But I've had nitrous here many times and I always had beer before I came!" So they said, "Oh, okay." Yes, beer is my other dentist buddy.

The Party in Pics

This is my niece as we were working on the the greeting board for the party Friday night. She's pretty easy going and pleasant. Unfortunately we didn't start the movie until about 11:30 and she fell asleep about 15 minutes in. I guess next time....

This is my heart and flowers centerpiece for the guests of honor table. The other tables just had bunched up Hawaiian cloth under them.

This is the table of pictures.

This is the cool cake my SIL brought. I wonder how they make those icing pictures? Maybe I should google it.

Those are just random shots to give you an idea of the room. We used five large round tables. Notice how everyone is wearing their leis. I was wondering if some of those "good ole boys" were going to feel okay about wearing a garland of pink silk flowers, but everyone wore them. And of course there were a lot of the usual jokes, like, "You haven't been leied! You need to get leied." There was a glass door leading out to a patio with two benches for all the smokers, but a lot of non-smokers hung around out there for the first half-hour because the view of the golf course was nice and it was a gorgeous day: sunny and not hot or cold. It was just right.

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I was sort of a nervous wreck, but everything went very smoothly and everyone said they really enjoyed it. The food was good and the service was excellent. I thought it was funny that they always served me first. We sat at a table with the aunt and uncle that flew in and and a really old couple. Fortunately our aunt is very talkative so I let her run most of the conversation. It was funny to me to think I did all that. When I woke up Sunday morning I had the oddest pain in my extensor carpi ulnaris muscle. I couldn't figure out why it hurt, and I thought, "Did I do anything odd yesterday?" Then I laughed out loud as I was thinking, "Yeah, you did. You threw a big party at a country club!" I was telling my Mom about my arm pain and I said, "The only thing I did was hold a beer all day, but I always have a beer." She said, "Yeah, but I bet you were really gripping that thing." She's probably right.

It's Almost Party Time

I invited my 14-year-old niece to spend the night with us Friday night (or tonight if you are reading this on Friday). It's about time I got to know her better. I generally only see her at family events and she is not always at those because sometimes she is with her dad. I had also thought of doing some sort of "Happy Anniversary" thing in Hawaiian and then thought, "Hey! That's something cool we can do together!" I went to Michael's and thanks to a VERY helpful boy (Yo, Chris W., You Rock!) found these:
I also bought a dark green foam poster board for to put these on. (hee hee) Anyway I separated the letters from the flowers so I could spell this out:

I had to play with the contrast so you could read that, because they are just sitting on a clear plastic tray right now on top of the "party cloth." The weird thing was, when I dumped out the stuff to separate the flowers from the letters, I experienced the Clown Car Phenomenon. I ended up with enough flowers to half fill this very large shoebox:

I put the letters back in the orignal container and they took up almost a third of the space. I can't figure out how it all fit in there to begin with.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having some quality time with my niece and getting to know her on a more personal level. Her mother and grandmother have both told me how excited she is about it. She has only one other aunt that lives in Colorado and I don't think they know each other very well. She's also going to help us with other party related matters and help me decorate. What I didn't tell my niece is that she has to watch my favorite movie with me. I know her mother doesn't like old movies, so I'm pretty sure she hasn't seen it, but I'd like to think that next week sometime, she will be humming "The Boy Next Door" or singing "Clang, clang clang goes the trolley!"

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And now for a totally unrelated subject complete with no segue whatsoever: Lily, the cat that can disappear, disappeared tonight and I always enjoy trying to find her. Sometimes I can't and give up and sometimes I get frustrated and shake a bag of treats to make her reappear. But that's cheating. Tonight after going over the house three times I found her here:

And Yet, Again

Yes, we are having weather. AGAIN. But this time it is not about our branches breaking off or our skylights being busted by hail. This one is an airport wait. My Sweetie's aunt and uncle are attempting to get here by plane for the wedding anniversary party and it is not going well. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining on my end. You all know I stay up 'til all hours, I just feel really bad for them. The plane was supposed to land at 9:14, then 9:24, then 10:21, then 11:47 and now the latest update says 1:15. They were diverted to Austin, TX and I guess they are just now reboarding or sleeping in their seats or something. It's 11:42 here (I know, my little clock there is on Pacific time, not Texas time) and their plane is currently scheduled to leave Austin at midnight to come back here. It will be only 4 hours late. That's Texas weather for you. That little line in the picture is the diversion route. I really feel bad for them and wish we could pick them up in an RV with two masseuses in it. But since we don't have any of that, I'm taking beer and lemonade.
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~~~~~Addendum~~We just got home at 3:45. I think that's the longest I've ever worn a bra when I wasn't in Vegas (19 hours!!!).

Burner Dyslexia and stuff

Does anyone else here ever do this? I do this ALL THE TIME. If you think a watched pot never boils, I can tell you it will boil a lot faster than an unwatched pot with the wrong burner on. All the knobs run in a line on the right of the stove. Why can't they design a stove with each knob next to the burner it controls? Why do I have so much trouble with this? Sheeesh! (And please don't mention the horrible pink tiles. They came with the house.)

Some projects I finished this past weekend:
These are my new house numbers I painted. I still haven't checked them at night. I should do that.

These little white (non-reflective) numbers on the mailbox were pretty much the only marker we had. We live at the top of a little hill right where the cul-de-sac starts, so everyone arrives from the bush side of the mailbox and the bush sticks out a good foot or more past the mailbox. I imagine those numbers are only useful for the postman. And last but not least:

I finally finished the photo board for the anniversary dinner this Saturday and those are all the loose pictures she gave me. I will take lots of pictures this Saturday after I decorate the tables and all that jazz. It's nice to finish projects.

My Birthday Weekend

I had a long and fun birthday weekend! Friday night we went to Mac's for dinner. I had been to my hairdresser and my hair smelled strongly of coconut so I made up a drink (I do that sometimes). I ordered a White Russian, but instead of Vodka, I had him use Creme de Cacao. It was good but I could hardly taste the coconut liqueur, because my hair smelled so strongly. I wanted to run into the grocery store on the way home for liquid soap, because like paper towels, I can not tolerate being out of liquid soap, and there was a table with gorgeous flower arrangements for only $9.99, so I bought those flowers for myself for my birthday. We were going to watch a movie when we got home, but My Sweetie fell asleep on the couch, so I finished the picture board project. I never did find more of the original ribbon, so I had to pull all of that out. I redid it with a matching pink rickrack. It was actually pretty funny - every time I used the staple gun, My Sweetie would pop awake for about 3 seconds, then go right back to sleep.
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On Saturday, My Sweetie went for a haircut and stopped at the sporting goods store and got us a fun yard game. I love fun yard games! You throw bean bags into the holes for points. It was fun! I did pretty good for playing left-handed. Once when I was retrieving the bean bags, I thought it would be fun to drop kick a bean bags back to My Sweetie but it went up into the tree. Also on Saturday, I painted my house numbers. Every year for my birthday I give myself a present and I have really wanted house numbers for a long time. I sprayed a few layers of primer on these wooden numbers and then the green. This was the first layer of green and it freaked me out because it looked nothing like the color on the cap. Fortunately after about 3 coats the color was darker, more of a Forest Green. Lastly I painted glass beads on top for reflection. We just put them up today and I forgot to take a picture and I haven't even checked them out in the dark to see if they actually reflect, but I'm glad to finally have some numbers up there. I don't know how delivery people found our house all these years. In the picture, it's the back of the numbers.

Saturday night, we went to the APV tournament at the ballpark in Arlington. It felt so cool to be sharing the same airspace as Olympic Gold medalists. The two ladies facing us are Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. There were also guys playing and all sorts of entertainment between matches including the drunk lady that slipped and fell on the bleachers about 3 feet from us. Of course, that made My Sweetie paranoid and he watched me like a hawk every time I got up to get a beer. It was a fun and different thing to do and was marred only by the bad bathrooms there.
Today, my actual birthday, we went to Main Street Arts Festival. Man was it crowded. My daughter met us there because she had to be somewhere at 6:00 and we were going out to eat from there. I thought this (below) was a really cool (and weird) thing so I took a picture and the artist came out of his booth and said, "Please don't take photographs." and I said, "But I'm a blogger!" Oh, and on the way in three different people were leaving and gave us coupons and I told them all, "Wow thanks! And it's my birthday!!" Two ladies at the Main Street store sang "Happy Birthday" to me. That was fun.

Since that one artist didn't want photos taken, I stood way back to take this picture, because I fell in love with the blue cat. How cool is that?

This last picture is of Bass Performance Hall taken from the parking garage we were in. If you look at the end of the street there, where it gets dark, that's the crowd on Main Street.




I think next year I will not have a birthday weekend. It really wore me out. I think next year I will just celebrate my birthday, like normal people.

Stupid Wednesday

I had to go to J.C. Penney yesterday to return My Sweetie' s birthday present (a lovely watch that loses time, is not a good watch), so I decided to do some bra shopping. I've said many times that I hate shopping in general, but I really hate bra shopping, which is why I really needed some new bras. However, I do love a bargain. I discovered these Ambrielle bras which are only $28, which is pretty inexpensive as far as bras go, but get this: They were "buy one get a second one for 88 cents!" 88 cents! I know! I was pretty happy to find such a great deal since I woke up stupid.
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Man did I wake up stupid Wednesday morning. I have my alarm set for the radio to come on and it usually scares the bejeebus out of me, but not yesterday. I woke up groggily thinking, "What is all this noise?" Well this noise was the radio and it had been blaring for 1 hour and 1 minute before I even noticed it. I should know better than to stay up too late on Tuesday nights, but I am stupid like that sometimes. Fortunately, I got ready in plenty of time and left at the usual time. I did feel a little cranky and didn't call the biting dog people, because I was sort of hoping he would run out. It was a little chilly so I was wearing jeans and my suede Rocket Dog shoes which seemed aptly named for sending a little dog into orbit, but he was smart and did not run out.
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After my route I stopped at the grungy bar that I always stop at for two beers and I usually give her $5 in adavance ($4 for the two beers and $1 tip) and when I reached in my pocket, there was no money. I had left my money at home! Because I woke up stupid. Fortunately I sort of know the bartender. I had to mail my parents' mail to them and didn't want to charge $2.59 at the post office so she let me tip her $5 on my card and she gave me $3 back. I thought that was a good deal for her, but a lot of people won't do that. It was also Catfish Wednesday and that little place didn't seem like they would even accept credit cards, so I called them and they did and I was glad because Catfish Wednesday was actually last Wednesday, but I couldn't eat there last week because of the hand doctor appointment and I wanted my catfish!
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Then I got lucky with the bras, so that was also good. After that I went by On the Border to ask what happened to the guy that had helped me with my basketball brackets and he had been let go and no one knew how to contact him. I was going to give him $20 for his help, but I don't know how to find him. Besides, I didn't have $20 with me anyway, which I had forgotten, because I woke up stupid.
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I feel a lot smarter today.

My Brain is Konfoozled

I remember talking to my Dad back in 1991 after Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and all that grossness came out. Dad said, "I thought I had seen everything, but this, this is beyond my comprehension." He was 55 at the time. I was only 30, but I said, "Really??!!? There is nothing a human being can do that will surprise me." I don't know if it was because I had read so much about Hitler's holocaust or because I was born with a certain cynicism, but Dahmer's crimes didn't really seem that surprising to me. I had already read and heard so many horrible things, which in literature is elegantly called "Man's inhumanity to man" that I was already jaded at the tender young age of 30. But I guess I was only inured to horrible physical and political acts, because now, now, I have discovered something that is really freaking me out.

I imagine everyone has seen some form of these cat pictures with odd misspellings and made up "wurdz" on them. But did you know they are translating the Bible into what they call "lolcatspeak?" As my Dad would have said, "I thought I had seen everything." Here is some of the first book of Genesis:

At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1
6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

And here is some of John 3:

An Jebus sed, "Ceiling Cat has invisible haus, u gots 2 borned agen 2 see it."
4 Nicoteneus sez, "wtf d00d? How doez dat werk?"
5 Jebus sez, "is da truth, u hafta be born agen wif waterz an spiritz an stuffs.6 Flesh givez birf 2 flesh, but teh spirit gives birf to spirit, k?7 Y r u so konfoozled?8 Is lyke wind, it doz its own stufs an u dunno how it werks, but is all ok, amirite? Is like that!"
9 Nicoteneus sez, "I doez not get it." :(
10 "Den ur not gud teecher," sed Jebus. "Lez flame tnak his b4se!"11 "Ok, iz da twoof. We says sum stuff dat we sawed, and teh peeplez is still konfoozled.12 I ben talkin bout teh stuffs on urf and ur still lyke, 'whut?' so whut bout Ceiling an stuffs?13 I iz da only wan whos gone to Ceiling so u haves 2 trusts me, mkay?14 I gots 2 b lifteded up lyke Moses an his snakedy thingy,15 coz if u beleeves ur not gon be ded! Eternal lifes, u can has it!

I seriously don't know what to make of this. Is it good? Is it bad? To me it's just really freaking weird. Here's the site if you want to check it out. I just really don't know what to think. And I thought I had seen everything.

Perspective

Last weekend when my husband turned 41 he said, "I'm old." Well, of course, that irritated me a a little because if he's old, then I'm old plus 6. Age really is a matter of perspective. I remember thinking 19-year-olds were old when I was 6. And when I was 19, I thought 30 was old. And when I was .... okay, I think you get the gist. The thing is, I've decided to never say I am old because I know it will just irritate someone who is older than me. There will always be people who are older than me just like there will always be people who are younger than me. That's always true except the day you are born (no one younger) and until the day you die if you are one of those record-holding oldest people that live to 116 or whatever they are living to these days.

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I will always seem young to my mother and I will always seem old to my daughter, that's just perspective. And that's okay because that makes sense. But if my husband thinks he is old, then he must think I am old (plus 6).

This Is Getting Old

Wednesday night after I posted about my thumb, I was reading blogs and listening to the radio and after the second big weather alert came on I started watching the radar screen on the TV in here. It did not look good. About 3:00 I went to the big TV in the living room because it has full cable and I could watch the special local network weather channels. They were LIVE, which meant they felt a need to inform at 3:00 a.m. That's not good. About 3:15 I woke up My Sweetie and we watched for about 15 minutes as the rain started to pound and the wind whipped up and then POOF! The power went out and about 2 minutes later the alert sirens went off, so I jumped in the closet. It was all very loud and there was some small hail, but no big pounding hail like last year. All the whooshing and pounding rain lasted about 20 minutes or so. We went out to the car in the garage to check the radio and the giant vertical line of storms had moved on so we went to bed. The power popped back on just before 5:00. I was smart and had unplugged the TV so it wouldn't come on and wake us up, but just all the regular house sounds like the ceiling fan, fridge and whatnot coming on woke me up.
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When My Sweetie got up he checked our yard and roof and said we only lost one large branch from our big tree in the backyard. He went on to work and later when I got up and opened the front door, I saw all this in my neighbor's yard:

So I grabbed my camera and snapped a picture and decided to check out our backyard. This was the big branch he saw:

But what he didn't see was the REALLY BIG branch that was still hanging in the tree:

This is the spot, high up in the tree, it snapped from, but it is still hanging on by a few strands of wood:

Around 5:00, I drove to the drugstore and there were branches all over the place and some trees just snapped right off about halfway up. I wish I had taken my camera, but as I was at a light, I remembered my phone and snapped the picture at the top of a mangled carwash. (It's my first phone pic on my blog.) There was a really mangled used car dealership, but the picture did not come out well. My friend Carole had a lot of damage to a Maple in her front yard. All we lost in the front was a lot of mistletoe from our trees, but that is a good thing.

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I really feel bad for the one house I passed. There was the tree in the yard with a little circle of flowers around it, but about 5 1/2 feet up it was just a fresh wood point, like a manic giant had whittled a crude spear tip. And there were no branches in their yard. I wonder where their treetop went?

Good News? Bad News? You Decide.

Those are the actual hypodermic needles at the hand doctor's office today. One was novocaine aand the other was cortisone. The good news was that he did it somehow with only one needle. I didn't watch so I don't know how that works. But it hurt like fu[g?]! And it hurts right now. There was a groovy space where I was sitting in a bar drinking beer afterwards and the novocaine was all going on, but that passes as everyone knows that has slobbered and bitten their tongue after going to the dentist. On the bad news side, it is not fixable really. He diagnosed me with osteoarthritis. My Granny had that and her hands got really bad, but she lived to the age of 82 and I don't plan to get near that.

Above is a close-up of the 1 1/2 inch needle from Hell. I guess some good news is I won't need surgery until way down the road when my thumb becomes gnarly and deformed, if I live that long. It's a pity, all this, because I use my thumb quite often and I rather liked it fine until the last 4 or 5 months. Now, not so much. The good news is I now have a somewhat logical excuse to drink beer all the time (since a lot of people don't understand anxiety). I can say, "Hey! My thumb! It is not good! I'll have another beer! Please place it near my left hand in case I forget." I liked Dr. Hand Doctor even though I didn't know who he was until he left. The business card my regular doctor had given me had 4 names on it. Before I left I asked the nurse to circle his name on the card for me. He was the third one down. During the shot process which seemed to take 18 hours, I was "counting" and alphabeting" out loud to distract myself and it went something like this: 6, 12, 14, 7, 127, 91, d,e,b,z,y,x,52,71. Dr. Hand Doctor said, "127? Do you know any good jokes?" I said, "I know a million good jokes, but I just can't tell one right now, 37, 14, 8, 2, 17." If he thought I was weird he can just take a number and join everybody else.

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When I was in the waiting room my phone rang, but it is a new phone and my brain still has not filed the ring, so I looked at that lady sitting closest to me like, "Why aren't you answering your phone?" Then I realized SHE was looking at ME like "Why aren't you answering your phone?" Sure enough, I glanced in my purse and it was my phone ringing. I think I should call myself from the home phone tomorrow a few times and try to memorize the ring. I tried to download a BEP song a few weeks ago, but it went to my husband's phone because that's how I roll.

I wish they had let me pick a color for my new hand thing. I would not have picked "Sallow Yellow." That little band-aid strip part? That's where the metal strip is. I'm looking forward to wearing it through airport security.

The Icky and the Good

Warning: Do not read this while eating or if you are easily grossed out:
I was having a good ole time out in the yard prepping all my pots for flowers. I have a system that involves pulling out all the old roots, pulling out all the spring weed growth, and putting most of the old soil into a big tub that I have already filled with peat moss. I recycle the old soil with peat moss to use as a base and then I use new potting soil on top. I am also excessively pigeon-toed. I always say I have Fred Flintstone feet. What happened was, I got my Mom's toes and she wears a size 10 and my Dad's feet and he wore a men's 7. And my feet are flat and duck shaped. Seriously, I could win an ugly foot contest. Or all them if there were such contests. I always had problems with my pigeon-toedness. When I was little, I'd run excitedly and trip over my own feet. As an adult I have stabbed myself in the heel many times with the other foot, but heels are rather tough. Today, I was sitting on the edge of the deck, turned to stand up and walk across the deck and my left big toe nail slashed into my right foot. At first I just thought "Ouch!" and kept walking but thought, "Man, that really hurt!" and then I looked down and there was a giant open crater on my foot. My first impulse was to throw up and my second impulse was to faint (because I am the queasy type) and my brain got confused so I did neither. But I felt all gibbly goobly and went into thought mode. My first thought was, "I need to get a beer and a towel and a Band-Aid and the Neosporin and some paper towels and take a picture for my blog and go to the tub and rinse this thing out." In the picture, the part on the left is just blood. The crater is on the right. I couldn't bear to actually touch anything to the giant open crater, so after I rinsed it really well, I put the Neosporin on the Band-Aid and put that on. Man that was gross. But what was even grosser, was after I rinsed it, and had the Band-Aid on, I thought, "I wonder if that giant layer of skin that is missing from my foot is still stuck under my toenail?" Eeeeeeew. IT WAS! Ick ick ick. Then I felt all flooby again so I decided not to think about it. I continued planting flowers and occasionally glanced at the Band-Aid which was slowly being soaked with blood. So I decided not to think about that anymore, either. My Sweetie got home while I was still planting flowers and I told him about my horrific ordeal. He and I are opposite on our queasiness factor: insects make him queasy and blood and gore make me queasy so when I held up my left toe (the evil one) and showed him the giant piece of skin stuck there, he snatched it out and tossed it in the yard. I hope none of you were eating while you were reading this.

Here's the good part: Kansas won! I won $420!!!! I think the last thing I won was a pink plastic flute when I was in third or fourth grade at a Girl Scout Bingo game. Well, if you don't count casino wins (but hey, the losses at casinos SO outweigh the wins!). I thought it was cool that the top prize was $420 because my birthday is 4/20. I'm going to send $100 to St.Jude's Childrens Hospital because that was my deal with The Universe. So I have a hole in my Fred Flintstone foot, but I have some money coming and St. Jude's will get $100. It's not all bad.