Crazy Maragarita

I ordered the Dos Equis Margarita because a bartender years ago told me the secret to a smooth margarita was to add beer. I had no idea they put the whole bottle in there. Literally. But man, is it delicious.

Work, Work, Work It Out Baby

I'm not a huge fan of having workmen in my house, but I have a lot of stuff on the burner for this week. See this bizarro lightbulb?:
Well that's the lightbulb in our laundry room. And the brownish parts? Those are the holders of the glass part that I have removed and they look to me like they are burning up or something. Anyway, I decided that A) this weird lightbulb sucks and B) That's all I need to know. So I bought a simple basic light fixture that uses a normal lightbulb like you can find on Earth and won't break in your hand and make you bleed when you are trying to replace it. I mean seriously, what the hell? That's the most idiotic thing ever. For a laundry room, anyway.
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Also we are getting a new air conditioning unit in about 7 or 8 hours and a roofing guy is coming this week to replace a skylight and shore up a section of gutter. All of this is exhausting my brain. I'm going to go to sleep now and deal with all of this la........

Bobkitties!!

How freaking cute are these bobcat kitties? My friend and neighbor Carole went down to the other neighbor's house and captured these little darlings enjoying some fresh rain water. They think they are at least 10 weeks old, so when I saw Timber the bobcat, she must have been out foraging for food for nursing her tiny kits.

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For those who asked, our local animal control does not interfere with these animals. They are considered just part of the local fauna. They really are cute!

It's A Girl!

Timber the bobcat is a female. She had kittens. She had kittens in the backyard, four houses down on my street. That neighbor believes they were born under her deck. We're guessing Timber went off to forage and the babies decided to come out and play. That lady was a little freaked out. I don't know that neighbor, but she called Carole. I am hoping some pictures will get passed my way. I've never seen baby bobkittens. If they are still there tomorrow, I may try to go down and see them. If not, hopefully I will get pictures to share.

Now It All Makes Sense

After being diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my right thumb a while back, I would sometimes look it up and think about it, but maybe I wasn't really paying attention until recently. The other day it was like a lightbulb bloomed over my head like in a cartoon.
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The real reason I didn't see it at first is because I guess it's a normal function to not see one's self as defective. I kept seeing phrases like: Some people are born with abnormally formed joints... and of course, I thought: Well, that doesn't apply to me. I mean, really, who goes around thinking they were born with abnormal parts? And besides, the primary cause of osteoarthritis is aging. And I was aging. So obviously, I wasn't defective or abnormal, right?
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You know how in thriller movies, when the protagonist stumbles upon something and then you get a flashback of a bunch of scenes and you can see that they are putting all the pieces of the puzzle together? It was just like that for me. I remembered that I had my friend Cathy write my daily paragraphs in first grade because it hurt my hand. I remembered all the times I asked teachers if I could type my paper instead of writing it. I remembered how I hated having to do scissor work and how bad scissors hurt my hand. I remembered showing off my "funny double-jointed thumb." It was pretty much just like in the movies as this wave of memories of my whole life and how I avoided things like that washed through my head.
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So I have accepted that I was born defective. My thumbs were not properly aligned. I was a cute baby girl with defective thumbs. Doing normal things like writing, using scissors and using a screwdriver are painful but the good news is, it has nothing to do with getting old. I'm okay with that.

I Still Miss Him

Happy Father's Day

Subliminal Advertising

When I was 19 or so I dated a guy for a short while that was a very good artist. He was also a marketing major working on his thesis about subliminal advertising and tricks of the trade. Although his paper was all about Playboy Magazine, he also had lots of other stuff to show me. The Playboy stuff was fascinating - there was a lot involved and it would take me showing you old Playboys to explain it all. This was probably 1980 or so, and I haven't seen a Playboy in years, so I don't know if they still use those old tricks.
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I still look at ads with a keen eye. The picture above is the new Louis Vuitton ad. The artists have totally reproduced the female anatomy in the crotch of her pants. I was amazed when I saw it and am surprised no one online has mentioned it. Maybe because it's supposed to be subliminal. Maybe everyone else is looking at her eyes. But if you look there, it's pretty obvious.

Much Better!

Apparently a little daylight seeping in helped tremendously with getting the color to photograph correctly. Carole came over and we tested the surge strip. She was very brave and plugged in the fan. The whole surge strip is dead. It was a poor design and the plug slots are all spaced so that I may have plugged into two different sockets. I'll have to get a nice new modern one for over there.

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The paint color is named "Sahara Sands." It has a slight peach tinge to it. Now I can't wait to get a new countertop and sinks. We are going to go to a granite place a week from this Saturday. I wanted to go this weekend but it's Father's Day weekend and I don't want to go out three days in a row. I've lived with that horrible countertop for 10 years so I think I can wait one more week to go looking. And now I think I shall go to sleep.

Holy Cow, What the Frik?

It's always something and if it isn't something, it's something else. My after pictures came out a horrible mustardy color and not even close to the real paint color, so I was going to color correct them in Photoshop. The other computer, the one with Photoshop, overheats and I use an external fan. I had used that fan in the bathroom to help the texture dry and when I just a few minutes ago went to plug it into the surge strip by that computer, crazy sparks flew out! I'm afraid of a bunch of things, but electrical sparks is certainly in my top ten. Why would it do that? I can't begin to explain how irritated I am about that. Anyway I'll just show the mustardy colored pictures, because that's all I have right now and will figure out later what the hell is with that fan.
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So this was the before from the door:

After from the door:

This was the before from the window on the other end:

After from the window:

Here are some close-ups of the texture:

The paint is a different color in every picture which is really weird because this is not Oz and the walls are not walls of a different color. I will try to get better pictures. Maybe daylight will help and I want to figure out what made those crazy electrical sparks from the surge strip. It's a surge strip. Aren't they supposed to, you know, not have surges? I don't get that at all.

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I really dislike being irritated. Being irritated makes me irritated, which is not good. I think I need to go to youtube and find soothing music to get myself back to my happy place. I'll be better next time.

No Pics Yet

I can't begin to explain how tough this last week was. I worked myself to the bone. The BONE. I was sore everywhere. And I was so dead set on having everything finished when My Sweetie got home, I ended up with less than four hours of sleep Thursday night. Or I guess I should say Friday morning. The plumber was supposed to be here at 8:00 am Friday morning to seat the new toilet and I was so tired and dead when I went to bed I didn't even set a clock. I decided I would just wake up when he called to say he was coming or rang the doorbell. I think I went to bed around 4:30.
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I somehow randomly woke up naturally at 8:15 Friday morning and jumped up and ran around doing last minute stuff and finally at 8:45 I called the plumber. I had told them specifically that I needed to be in the shower at 9:30. Well he ended up getting here at 9:00 and left at 10:00 and I was all Mission: Impossible getting ready after that for Meals on Wheels. But I made it there and actually I wasn't the last person to get there for the food pick up.
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I had an easy route and a nice lunch, ran to the grocery store and got home with two hours left before I had to pick up My Sweetie at the airport. I still had to do a lot of post work clean up as well as carefully removing all the tape. I also had to re-hang the window shade and shower curtain. It was 95° outside and felt like that inside as I was rushing around trying to finish. I did a sort of rush job decor wise, but had something nice to show My Sweetie when we got home. I have been making little changes since then. I am almost there and will take picures when I feel like I have finally finished. And I finally got some sleep. That was great.

Slow and Steady

Yesterday went pretty well. I had finished what I wanted to do by 3:00 am. Then I had to shower and ended up staying up until 6:00 am. I woke up at 12:30 ready to go. Today did not go perfectly. The texturing is very labor intensive. After I did that first tiny patch, pictured above, I had a cramp in my left arm and my left thumb was numb. I had some sort of death grip on my mud box.
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Once I figured that out, it went better. I am slightly over halfway done with the texture and have pretty much run out, so when I go tomorrow to buy the toilet, I will get another bucket of texture. It doesn't put me behind schedule because I planned to paint on Wednesday.
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My son-in-law came over and we took out the old toilet. He'll be back this evening to help me bring the new toilet in. My daughter just changed her work schedule to fit with her schooling, so I will be having dinner tonight with my son-in-law. That should be interesting.
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So it's almost 6:00 am again and every single part of me is sore except for my eyeballs and earlobes. I bet I will sleep like a rock. I should go check that out.

Stuff That is Happening and Another Redo

I've been very very very good about keeping my reading glasses in my purse. I bought some specifically for that. They are in a little blue plastic hard case that almost looks like a toothbrush holder. Unfortunately, when I travel things get disorganized, and I never took them out of my backpack and put them back in my purse after the beach trip. So on Friday when I got to my lunch restaurant after Meals on Wheels, I pulled out my USA Today and discovered I had no reading glasses.
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I was able to read the articles okay, but when it came time to do the crossword puzzle, I was having a hard time. I tried looking through the bottom of my beer glass but that didn't work. Then I got the great idea to use my camera, set it on macro and zoom in. Fortunately, as soon as I pulled out my camera, the battery died. Otherwise, the bartender probably would have cut me off.
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I charged my camera battery when I got home and took my BEFORE pictures of the blue bathroom. This afternoon I will start on my redo. Here's a picture from the door:

And here's a picture from the other end:

This is a closer image of the sponge technique I did about 8 years ago:

When I first did it, I really thought it was the cat's meow. And maybe that's because the old wallpaper was seriously heinous, but now it seems really tired and dated. I'm actually going to do a texture before I paint and I hope to do something really cool, but I don't want to say what, in case it doesn't work out exactly. So this afternoon I will sand and prep. Monday I will apply the texture. After midnight that night (they work until then), my daughter and son-in-law will come by and we will remove the toilet. On Tuesday I will buy new mirrors and a new toilet and start painting. On Wednesday I will finish up painting and clean up and on Thursday, the plumber will install the new toilet. At least those are my plans.
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I have all my materials and My Sweetie will be at E3 all week so I can work any hours that I want and play loud music and hopefully everything will go smoothly. I'm looking forward to a busy week of making new stuff. I will chart my progress each day. And I will have fun.

The Beach Trip of 2011 (May 20-27)

I took this picture of my daughter and her husband at the rental car place after we landed in Raleigh/Durham on Friday afternoon:

My daughter made me some French braids that Saturday:

On Sunday we went into Wilmington to go to The Riverwalk and had lunch at The George:

I love how the guys look so cool on The Riverwalk:

My son-in-law and I played a game of foosball at a very hot bar:

And no it wasn't "hot" as in "happening," it was freaking hot as hell in there.

This next picture shows some of our fancy chalkwork:

On Monday, we all went down to volley a ball around and I sucked so bad at it, I designated myself "photographer":

This is Loretta and me on Tuesday just before she left:

A ball and a beer. That's all you really need at the beach:

My daughter, brother and I had a little afternoon excursion on Wednesday and I got this great picture of my big brother:

On Thursday, my daughter interrupted my beer pong game so I could take this picture:

My brother and I were playing beer pong against his sons:

My nephew (the one above in the grey shirt) took this rather artsy shadowplay picture of me making one of my many futile attempts:

It was a great week. We had great food. We played team Trivial Pursuit (I won one game with my youngest nephew as partner). We frolicked, we sang, we picked up beach rocks, we looked at the stars, we looked at the moon. The moon rose deep red two nights just over the pier and it was awesome (in the true sense of the word). We saw sunrises and sunsets. We watched silly videos on youtube and laughed about them all day. And we all made plans to do it all over again next year. I can't wait!

End of the Trip

We are at my friend's house for the weekend. It's always sad to say goodbye to Topsail Island, but I'm looking forward to giving my husband a tour of Duke University. I hope this rain goes away.

Smart and Stupid

I feel really smart just being in this wonderful beach cottage, but I feel pretty stupid trying to use my daughter's laptop. Laptops? Not really my thing. The sound of the waves crashing on the shore outside? Yeah. That's my thing.

I AM READY

This will be the view from our deck and living room for the next week. I can't wait. The cab picks us up in 9 hours. Let the adventures begin!

Low Tide

I just went back and read my posts from the last two years that I had written just before my May beach trip. I did this because I have been a slug this week. Where is that normal excitement energy? The 2009 post said I was so excited I felt like my skull was going to crack open. Right now I feel like such a dullard, my skull would more likely implode into the vacuum of what should be my brain. Mom would say it was my biorhythms. My best guess is that the four flights in one week that I did for my 50th birthday gave me some sort of travel brain damage.
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There is no place I would rather be than the beach cottage, so what's going on here? Is it the dread of hauling luggage through the airport, going through security, slow walking down the gangplank of stand and wait while people try to stuff their crap in the overhead bins, then wait 20 minutes for a beer while sitting in something less comfortable than a dentist's chair? I feel like Charlie Brown complaining about Christmas, which I never quite understood.
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I hope the old adage Mother knows best is true here and it's just my biorhythms. Maybe they are just at low tide or something. And maybe just like at the beach, the tide will change.

Timber!

With blogger down those few days, I was not able to post and it was annoying, so I have some catching up to do. 'Tis a rare beast that I have any computer time on a Sunday, but My Sweetie has gone to a Rangers baseball game with his sister. Speaking of rare beasts, (ha ha! No! I don't mean his sister!) take a look at this:
That is our neighborhood bobcat, who I have named "Timber." I figure Timber is a good name for either a boy or a girl and it also references the name of our neighborhood. Our neighbor two houses up the hill snapped this the other day.
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I think I was the first one to spot Timber. I caught a glimpse of Timber at dusk two weeks ago. I had just gone into the kitchen and saw movement outside and glanced out the window to see it trotting across our deck. I yelled, "What the f### is that?!!" and ran to the back door and then through the house, and through the garage to the side door, opened it and then asked myself, Hey! What the heck are you doing? And then I stepped back inside and quickly closed the door. All this time My Sweetie is chasing me around going, "What? What?!!" So then I described what I had seen and we went online and found several bobcat pictures that looked like what I saw.
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A day or so later I told Carole about it. A week later when we returned from San Antonio, Carole asked if I had told any other neighbors and I had not. While we were gone, the neighbor that lives between Carole and me told Carole that a bobcat had been spotted in the neighborhood. She didn't hear it from me!
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This past Thursday,Carole and her husband stepped out in the early evening and startled Timber just emerging from their downhill neighbor's bushes and it ran across their front yard and up the street toward the top of the hill and disappeared. I ran into them when I came back from the store. They were across the street telling another neighbor. He knew all about Timber and told them that the neighbor two houses up from me had gotten a quick blurry picture. I called him yesterday and got a copy. So now every night at dusk, we look for Timber, but I haven't seen him since two weeks ago. Apparently Timber and Barney have not bothered each other although there was a wild scream in our backyard one night about a week ago. Carole and her husband also heard it as they were returning from a walk. Hopefully Barney and Timber will keep any confrontations to just screaming matches. You know, I was wondering why I haven't seen any possums yet this year.

Really?

I see blogger is finally working again.

San Antonio Was Fun!

After I finished my Meals on Wheels deliveries on Friday, I came back home and finished packing and My Sweetie and I hit the road. We stopped right away for lunch and I had lobster bisque and a salad, which is a great way to start anything. The actual road trip part was pretty easy except for traffic jams in both Austin and San Antonio. It was fun playing with his satellite radio. The names of the stations are funny. One station is called "The Joint" and it plays reggae party music. And no, saying "reggae party" is not redundant because some reggae music is actually serious. Anyway, we had a pleasant surprise upon arrival to our hotel. I had booked a city view balcony room because that was the only option for a balcony room when I booked online, but we were offered a river view. That's my balcony there on the third floor:
We wandered around the Riverwalk Friday night and both totally lost our bearings. We never did know where we were. We finally found a place to eat dinner that wasn't a tourist chain and when we looked up from our table we realized our hotel was right across the river. That was funny, because we had no idea where we were.
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I was surprised at all the changes to the Riverwalk since 1988. It was pretty much all tourist chain restaurants, but worse than that was across from the Alamo, where scores of men died fighting for Texas, was a wax museum and a world record or believe it or not museum of hokey stuff. I thought that was disgraceful. It was at least very tacky.
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Anyway, we had fun on the Riverwalk. It was pretty crowded but not horribly so, although May is apparently The Time of Big Events. We saw idiotic bachelorette party girl groups at night wearing stupid hats and such and during the afternoon on Saturday, we saw several prom groups. There's a picture of one of those in the slideshow below. They were all very sweet and cute The picture of the five bells represents the original five Spanish missions of San Antonio, one of which was the Alamo.
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We had great food, enjoyed a great jazz band and had nice weather. I even got to hear street musicians sing Malagueña. The pretty girl on the left in the picture is singing it. I had never heard a woman sing it. She did a great job. It was a fun little vacation. Here are some pics: