Sad Times

I feel like I need to address the fact that my sister-in-law died. She was only 43 and died in her sleep. We still do not know the cause of death. It happened in the early hours of June 8th. It has been a terrible time for My Sweetie and his family. I really do not have more to say on this. I guess I just wanted to record it here. 

I am Back is what I am

  
I thought I was through with blogging. I felt like facebook was fine and I could say all I wanted to say in two or three sentences, but over the past year I sometimes felt I wanted to tell a longer story. And I would think: This would make a great blog post, and I could use italics! And bold!

  Another part of me felt guilty about all my DIY posts - my DIY posts got a lot of hits. I had an idea to create a new blog about do-it-yourself stuff and copy and paste all of those posts over so people could see them again, but I was ultimately too lazy to ever do that. It was a good idea though.

  I'm sure enough time has passed that I have been forgotten by the blogging community, but if people want to make a footstool, or re-wire a lamp or whatever else stuff I've posted about, it is now back online. And if I want to tell a longer story, I have the proper place.

Slog Blogging and Time Travel

I have been remiss about posting about my trip, but I'll get there. In the meantime,
I saw this in a bathroom in Manitou Springs, Colorado and felt like I had time traveled 
to about 30 years ago.

Rocky Mountain Hi!

I'm posting this from the hotel "Business Library." It's just a little room with two computers and one of them is out of order. I shouldn't complain though. Anything is better than My Sweetie's laptop. Everyone knows I hate laptops or notebooks or whatever people call them. Or are those different things? Who cares? Not me.
~
Anyway it's not so bad. Fleetwood Mac is playing behind me in the lobby. No, the band is not in there. I mean on the hotel's "Muzak." But about the trip....
~
First I have to say how very very different it is taking a road trip east and taking a road trip west. Going west, there are no trees, few bathrooms, and very little else. There is lots of nothing for long stretches of times. At least going east, there are trees. There are also many, many more towns. Going east I mean. West? Not so much.
~
We got lucky at our first stop in Amarillo. Our hotel room actually had an outdoor space. And lots of restaurants to choose from to walk to. This one here in Colorado, nope. But, the room is much cooler (temperature wise, most certainly not the other) and it is so close to my daughter's house, it's crazy. I can't believe I hadn't seen her in almost 3 months. We had a great dinner together but we (My Sweetie mostly) were really tired and kept it short.
~
Sunday should be great: Rested up, and also I told everyone I was having some mother/daughter time. I didn't come all this way for group activities. We are going to hang together for a few hours. I'm really looking forward to that. After being in such proximity with me for 48 hours, I bet My Sweetie is looking forward to the break also. It's late, but the adventure continues.....

So after a week of making lists and trying to get organized, we are about to head out on our road trip to Monument, Colorado. I can't believe I haven't seen my daughter since May. I'm really looking forward to the road trip with My Sweetie and celebrating my daughter's 28th birthday (a little early). I haven't been to Colorado since 1988. And the icing on the cake is going to be the 25° temperature drop.
I don't think I've ever been chilly in August in my entire life. I can't wait to see what that will feel like. I'll probably annoy everyone within hearing distance by strutting around and waving my arms while loudly proclaiming, "WOW! It's August and It's chilly!"
I'll take lots of pics and hopefully have lots of stories to tell. But be warned: I may just do a whole post about how I was chilly in August.

Salt? Is It Just Me?

It grosses me out to see people salt their food before they eat it. I may have posted about this before, but it still boggles my mind. I do not salt anything after it has been cooked except baked potatoes and boiled eggs. Why are people adding all that salt? I don't even own a salt shaker. My brother brought a salt shaker to our beach cottage this past May because he knew I wouldn't have one, and almost everyone, except us, used it. When I told my neighbor that I add fresh ground pepper to the mayo when I make a sandwich, she said she also adds salt. I don't get it. I have kosher salt that I use for cooking and that's it. I feel insulted when people salt the food I have prepared. It was salted already!  Is it just me? Does everyone salt everything?

Friday Odd

Wednesday night I discovered that Freddy likes fresh-cut pineapple and Thursday night I found that he also likes pesto-tossed three cheese tortellini. I'm thinking if he gets eaten by a bobcat, it will be the oddest tasting possum that bobcat ever ate.

An Olympics Wonderment

It seems weird to me that India, a country with maybe 52 trillion people, has only 4 Olympic medals so far. I guess they are really not into sports.

Again With The Stupid Wave Cycle

And this is why I have a blog: To keep up with stuff. I'm glad I posted about my bad hair wave cycle because it is back. I looked it up and I posted about it on March 27th. So now I know it takes 4 months for my hair to grow in a full circle. Ha! So that means those circles on the floor when I got my hair cut that time was four months of growth. Now I'm just thinking out loud. Thinking out loud? More like thinking with my two index fingers, which is how I type. So really all this means is that my hair is stupid again and now that I've kept up with it, I realize that I will have stupid hair 3 times a year. I think it usually is really bad for about two weeks each time. So that means I have stupid hair about six weeks a year. That kinda bites. I'm not great at math but I think it works out that when I die, I will have spent one ninth of my life with idiot hair. Oh well...I guess there are worse things.

Answering VioletSky

In the comment section a few posts back, VioletSky posted the above. First of all I didn't understand the question and second of all, there are three question marks. All I had said was that I was looking forward to planning the snacks for my road trip.
~
Doesn't everyone do that? We will be in the car all day. You have to have snacks. Plus that will be our lunch as we will be leaving late morning. Road snacks require thought. You have to have food that does not have particles that adhere to the fingers and then transfer to the steering wheel. For example: Ruffles (greasy), Rice Krispie treats (sticky), Cheetos (orange powdery mess).
~
I plan to make finger sandwiches of roast beef and horseradish cheddar. I will have grapes and strawberries and pretzels. All of these foods are relatively residue-free. Carrot sticks are also good. So yes, VioletSky, I do plan my road trip snacks. At least for the first day.

Deep Thoughts (geewits style)

~~I imagine that politicians running on the platform of "I will go to Washington and fight the president" would have been considered treasonous in many eras.
~~I wish Walter Cronkite was still around to set everyone straight.
~~I think the reason religious people (any religion) get so riled up if you are not with them is because your non-belief makes them doubt.
~~I think it is really weird to mix meats from different animals unless it is on a sandwich.
~~But not seafood.
~~What if all of our climate troubles have been caused by all the stuff we sent to space? Maybe when each rocket poked a hole through our layers of atmospheres, all the good stuff got sucked out into the vacuum of space.
~~That would suck.
~~The word "treasonous" up there doesn't look like it was spelled right.
~~I think the real hardest part of getting old is realizing how stupid most young people are.
~~I think it's sad that some old people have lived a very long time and are still stupid.
~~I think I just realized that people are stupid at every age.
~~I wish people would stop being stupid.
~~Some songs are better than others and people who prefer the other songs just have bad taste.
~~I think people who are "followers" don't realize that they are.
~~I think the greatest invention of all time was air conditioning, followed closely by youtube.
~~I wish Snoopy were real and would come over and have a beer with me.
~~I wish teletransportation were a possibility although I would always have a fear of getting a giant fly head.
~~I think I should wrap this up. 

I Have Name Dementia

I've gotten really really bad with names. I just finished watching "Design Star" on HGTV. I watched every show. The lady I wanted to win won. I was so happy, I shed a few happy tears with her. I know her show will start on August 4th and the name of the show will be "Shop This House," but I can't for the life of me think of her name. I can remember only one name of all the other contestants, and it is only because it was a weird name: Bex. I find it seriously disconcerting that I can't remember the winner's name. But I'm really glad she won. And I will watch her show. Maybe after a few episodes, her name will enter my brain. And stay there.

On Possums and My Latest "Hapnins"

Jeff Musial was on Jimmy Fallon tonight. He's the animal guy. The first animal he brought out was a possum. He was all "Most people only see these on the side of the road. People rarely see possums just going about their business." I was all, Really? I must live in Possum Kingdom! (ha ha! That's a funny local joke because we have a lake in the area called Possum Kingdom.) I am still feeding our possums every night as well as putting out fresh water. It's like a sideshow on our front porch that we watch while we are watching TV.

~

My Sweetie finally picked some days he could take off so we can go see my daughter in August. Although he could not take off for her actual birthday, we will be there just a few days before. I'm looking forward to seeing her. I haven't been to Colorado since maybe 1989 or maybe 1990. I am also looking forward to roadtripping with My Sweetie and enjoying cooler temps. I 've already made all the hotel reservations and am looking forward to planning the road snacks.

~

My brother's daughter, the "found " daughter that we all discovered in 1999 when she was almost 18, recently posted some pictures of her son. He's almost 11. Mom pointed out that he reminded her of me. I think she was talking about this picture.:

That was my fourth grade picture, so I was 9. I never noticed, until I had the picture on my computer tonight, that I have that whole Mona Lisa/ I have a secret thing going on. The reality was, my top second right incisor was coming in oddly and there was no way in hell I was going to show that. The photographer was doing everything he could to get me to grin. Well that's all he got and I like it. The picture was taken in 1970. Doesn't that sound like a million years ago?

True Confessions

When I was about 7, I found some pulp magazines in my parents' room. One of them was True Confessions. (I found out years later, the reason my parents had them was because one of their friends had had several stories published in them so, they were not true, nor were they actual confessions.)  Two things stand out to me about those magazines: One, I thought the word "body" meant torso. So when these bodies were dumped in a ditch or found in the woods, I thought the head, legs and arms had been chopped off. I wondered why murderers always took the time to do all that horrid work.
~
Two, I learned the word "lesbian." The first line of one story was, "There is a sign above my jail cell with the word Lesbian spelled out in large letters." Then the woman making this "confession" went on to say that her only crime was that she loved women. So I read that and I'm thinking, Well I love my mother and my granny. Am I a lesbian? Will I go to jail? As I read on, I realized it was not that simple. She explained that she loved women in the place of men, and it was probably a little bit graphic.
~
I remember thinking that was the craziest thing I had ever heard, so of course the next time I played with my barbies, I had two of the girl barbies be lesbians. Maybe I was quietly observed by Mom, because I finally got that Ken doll I had been asking for.

The Summer of Mice

I will always think of the summer of 2012 as "The Summer of Mice." Barney just brought in his third mouse so far. The first one was paralyzed from the waist down. (I guess mice have waists.) The second mouse was dead. This third mouse, the one he brought in about 45 minutes ago, was just playing possum. I was freaked out, but thought it was dead.  I yelled at Barney and he ran back outside. I went to get the mouse and it moved. I woke up my husband and when he tried to get the mouse, it darted away. So now we have an angry traumatized mouse loose somewhere in our house. Yuck. The good news is Barney has come back inside. I hope he finds it.

In Absentia de Posti

I don't know why I haven't been posting, but I have some ideas: 1) Blogger has been really wanky and it was taking me like five steps to get to "new post." 2) Summer here is so hot you kind of have to be really still for long amounts of time or you will die. 3) Going back to Wanky Blogger, it has changed the way it does your pictures and I haven't bothered to figure it out. You know, because it's so hot. But I have been actually doing stuff.
~
We went to another Texas Rangers baseball game and the beer man set down his beer tray right next to me and walked off:

Apparently this guy was not born with good instincts, because I was so excited by the ice and the beer. I said "ice" first because it was about 1000 degrees hot. I accidentally captured my foot in the photograph and you can see my latest summer cute toesies. I have white asian flowers on my big toes.

~

I was really proud of myself for not grabbing that stuff. I was also pretty proud of myself for my planning. I took a cute misting bottle. I bought a water, and filled my mister and used the rest to wet a small Texas Rangers towel. It really helped to keep us cool. A fellow fan saw me and said, "Wow! That was smart!"  Besides the tray of beer, I didn't take another pic until we were leaving and looking back:

I've developed a very good habit of going out to water my flowers FIRST THING AFTER WAKING.  In past summers, I always had good intentions with my flowers but.... well I was not very consistent. In my older age wiseage, I realized that the coolest I will be all day is when I first wake up. Yeah, you're thinking after dark but that's when the mosquitoes from hell come out and when you are just one big walking nerve-ending and mosquitoes love you, after dark is not such a good idea.

And my plan has worked for both myself and my flowers. Plus I imagine I am producing much more vitamin D for myself than in summers past. My last pic is a sidewalk shadow picture:

I have randomly taken ground shadow pictures over the years and I really love them, but I've never particularly sought them out. I really should pay more attention.

~

We have a road trip planned for August. I'm looking forward to visiting my daughter in Colorado. Other than that I will be trying to stay cool and hopefully I will have something to say here. I do like to chabble (chat and babble). Oh and excuse my blatant abuse of pretend foreign languages in my title. Sí?

Typicality of Men

(Before I start my post, the fires are being contained near my daughter's house in Colorado. Although she was packed and prepared, she did not have to evacuate. I'm very proud of how well she held up.)
~
As to the title of this post, I think it's funny that most Americans think they are unique. You know, it's the whole, Oh, I am not a stereotypical anything! But people generally are.
~
I am friends with a bunch of guys my age on facebook and I have noticed a trend. And of course I should mention that these particular guys are all around the age of 51. Well, guess what pictures they are all posting? Yep, you guessed it: sports cars. Sports cars they are rebuilding, sports cars they just bought, sports cars they admire, sports cars they are thinking of buying.
~
I bet money every single one of them, as youths, laughed at middle-aged men and their sports cars. And yet...and yet, here they are doing the same exact thing. I am so glad my husband is not like that. Of course he's got a few years to go to even reach 50. And come to think of it, I'd rather he trade in his car for a flashier model than trade in his wife. But I bet he'll do neither. Fortunately, he really isn't typical.

The Colorado Fires

My daughter was evacuated from work today. The fires have already consumed housing near the Air Force Academy. I'm worried sick about what is happening up there. I hope something can be done to control these fires.

Some Random Pictures

I made this for my new facebook profile. My stupid short hair is finally growing out just in time for 100° weather . Yay me. They say timing is everything.

I made this artsy picture of my brother, nephews and myself from the beach trip in May. I really like it, but I sort of wish I had put the horizon straight. It looks like the ocean is all pouring towards the equator.

Freddy the possum brings his sister around every once in a while. My Sweetie named her "Ginger." It's funny but when I named Freddy I wasn't thinking about Fred Astaire.

Basic Math

Sentimentality + Memory Like An Elephant = Bad Combination For Clearing Out Closet.
~
I decided to really go for it in my closet and took out the entire row of shirts hanging on the short sleeve rack. I did a good job. I didn't put too many back. As I folded each shirt to place in the giveaway box, I visualized events of when I wore each one. I had many thoughts like this:
~
Oh, I remember this from the beach.
I loved wearing this in Vegas.
Eww, I wore that on that horrible trip.
I can't believe I ever wore this.
I wish this still fit.
What was I thinking?
I wish this one wasn't so short.
I remember wearing this in New Orleans.
Oh, I loved this shirt!
~
It seemed like every shirt had a story. I think the charity that I am giving them to should make a pretty penny. And I hope the new owners make some good memories in them.
~
Fighting Sentimentality + Determination = Cleaner Closet