Hot Enuff Fer Ya?

Do you get jumpy legs? When you're trying to sit and read or watch tv or work on the computer and your legs feel like they need to MOVE? Sometimes when I get this, I get it in my arms, too, and can even feel it in the pit of my stomach. It's a weird feeling.

I've got the jumpy legs right now. I'm trying to sit with my feet on an ottoman, legs crossed at the ankles, and I can't hold my feet still. I have arranged and rearranged them from left foot on top to right foot on top, back and forth, and my toes are wiggling. My arms are jumpy from the elbows down, mostly, and I have to take a break from typing every few minutes and throw them over my head and flex my hands and wiggle, wiggle, WIGGLE. GAHHHHHHHH!!!

I'm going to put together my Ten Things of Thankful list between wiggles and jumpies. My guess is the list will be jumpy and wiggly as well. Let's see:

1. Temperatures in the upper 90s with heat index up to 107 degrees (heat index, for those of you living in dry climates, is what happens when you add high humidity to high temperatures, so the physical temperature is one number, but humidity levels make it feel much hotter and like you've stuck your head inside a hot oven that has a roasting pan of water boiling inside it). But the pipes aren't freezing like they were almost 6 months ago!

2. Central air conditioning.

3. One of few times I'm thankful I'm not a spoiled house cat, because even with air conditioning, a fur coat in this kind of weather would not be welcomed.

4. The flashlight feature on my iPhone. I use it daily.

5. Ditto the notes section. I currently have 188 notes saved. 

6. It's been on my list before, but Milo's iced tea is getting me through this heat wave.

7. I love to bake, but I haven't even had the urge to do so in this weather, which is good because then I'm not eating what I baked. Bad news is I'm pretty sure I feel some homemade ice cream may be in my future....

8. My husband and I went to Sam's Club this afternoon and picked up a few things we didn't need, but when we were putting the items in the car, I realized I bought a giant bottle of cumin instead of cinnamon. Talk about something I don't need! I HAAAATE cumin; it smells like feet. I went right back inside and was able to make the switch relatively easily. Really thankful for that, because, well, cumin.

9. Cooler weather is on its way! One more day of blistering temperatures, then it will *only* be in the mid-80s for the next week. Ahhh!

10. I am thankful for Simone Biles, who showed remarkable strength and character by putting her own mental and emotional health before all else and calling attention to the world that nothing is more important than doing just that. 

Made it! My jumpies have settled down somewhat, which is a relief, and I'm going to remove the furry blanket, a/k/a Nora Pearl, from my lap and get some sleep. What are you thankful for this weekend? Link up with us! It's easy!

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Distraction: A Six Sentence Story

The teacher's voice droned on and on, echoing off the walls, the chalkboard, the wooden desks, even the students themselves, all of whom sat at attention, backs straight, eyes forward, save for Laurel, who sat slumped in her seat, blazer sleeves pushed up, tie askew, as she twirled the end of the single braid that she had pulled over her shoulder. Was it Latin or geometry, world literature or health, and did it even matter when you were bored to distraction and only wanted to escape the confines of this hell on Earth called school?

When Laurel let an audible sigh escape her lips, the teacher stopped speaking and turned, eyes narrowing, towards Laurel, and said, "Is there something I can do for you, Miss Halloran, to improve your experience here?"

From the back of the room, Laurel softly said, "You could jump out the window and die a painful death."

A gasp was heard from somewhere in the room, and the teacher leaned forward, ear cupped, saying, "Excuse me, Miss Halloran, but when addressing me, you need to rise and speak up."

Laurel slowly rose to her feet, straightened her shoulders, and with a glance at her classmates, replied, "I said, You could bump out the window so I can get a breath; it's terribly warm in here and I'm afraid I'm feeling a little light headed," and she slipped back into her chair, a faint smile on her face as the plan began to formulate in her head.

 

Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge's Blog for Six Sentence Stories with the prompt "distraction"

Ev'rythin's Up To Date!

 Ev'rythin's up to date in Kansas City

They've gone about as fur as they c'n go!

I didn't get a TToT post written last weekend, but I had a good reason! It was an extremely busy weekend, and when I finally had a little down time on Sunday evening, I realized I had no internet. Ready to rock the list now:

After weeks of apartment hunting and finding out that our list of must-haves had to be whittled down to four walls, a roof, and an indoor bathroom, my daughter found an apartment that she really loves and can almost afford! Last weekend was move-in weekend, and guess who her moving crew was...?

I am eternally grateful to my brother and his wife for opening their guest room to us while we searched and again as a home base while we moved Emma into the apartment. During this time, my SIL had knee replacement surgery and my brother had a kidney stone, and they still let us impose on them.

It took us less than three hours to unload an SUV, a minivan, and a small car, all three stuffed to the gills, and that included playing parking space musical chairs with the only space available in front of the building.

Did I mention there is no elevator in the building? And that she lives on the second floor? And that there is a flight of stairs from the sidewalk to the front entrance? And that the stairs from the sidewalk to the entrance are irregularly spaced and inconsistent heights? And that the inside stairway, while a straight shot that didn't allow me a reason to yell, "Pivot! Pivot!" was quite narrow? Those aren't thankfuls, but they did lead to a thankful, and that is we are thankful that that was the last time we physically help anyone move again. My husband and I have officially retired from the moving crew!

We decided it would be easier and cheaper to buy Emma a new bed than to move a queen sized mattress and box spring from the lake house to the new apartment, and I still stand by that, but the purchasing of the bed was no easy task. We got a mattress at IKEA (it was 56 pounds, and I know that because it was on the label) and rolled up like a burrito, but when we loaded a VERY HEAVY (more than 56 pounds) bed frame onto a cart with the mattress, then went to find the needed slats, we found they were out of them. Out. Of. Them. And didn't know when they would get them in. We put the bed frame back, bought the mattress, and went to Nebraska Furniture Mart, where a very nice salesman found us an affordable platform bed that was EXTRAORDINARILY HEAVY but had all its parts, and we are grateful for that.

We didn't get a divorce over putting the bed frame together, although it was touch and go for awhile there....

My husband and daughter did assemble the bed frame (without me after I quit the team over differences of opinion with the one who isn't my daughter), and I can somewhat gleefully report that he did, indeed, put the headboard together wrong, but it doesn't compromise the integrity of the bed; only the aesthetic of it. 

My husband left on Saturday morning (there's a thankful of its own, since I was still harboring leftover pissed-offyness from the day before), and Emma and I spent the next two days cleaning and arranging and buying until we turned the empty apartment into a home. Nothing hung on the walls yet, because she wants to take a little time to think about it all first.

We may or may not have scraped some paint off 
the banister whilst lugging this futon up the stairs....

Cute little kitchen. She now owns her first
set of dishes. Alas, no eating utensils,
but that's what fingers are for.

Headboard attached too high but
I didn't say it....

Teeny, tiny bathroom, but hey,
it's indoors!

Emma and I rewarded ourselves for all of our hard work with walking to have dinner on the Country Club Plaza*. It took us three minutes to get to the restaurant, and all we had to do was cross the street, walk through a (narrow) park, and cross another street, and BOOM! we were there!

In front of the JC Nichols fountain, the buildings
of the Plaza behind us, her apartment a block away.

I remembered to get renter's insurance for her this week!

That's a pretty fine list of thankfuls, which I believe number ten. And for the first time in AGES, my post is not only done before Monday evening, it's done BEFORE THE HOP GOES LIVE ON FRIDAY MORNING! Perhaps I've turned over a new leaf... PAHAHAHAHAAA! We know that isn't true.

Now it's YOUR turn! Write down ten things of thankful and link up with us! We would love to have you!

*for those not familiar with Kansas City, the Country Club Plaza, usually known as just "The Plaza", was built in 1923 as the first planned shopping district in the country that was separate from downtown and was built to accommodate shoppers arriving by automobile. The area is known for the Spanish architecture and contains high-end retail establishments and restaurants, and is surrounded by upscale apartments and mansions. It's a destination for both tourists and locals and is a prestigious place to live.

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Shift: A Six Sentence Story

At the time I learned to drive, my parents owned a 1972 Chevy Impala in avocado green and a 1971 Chevy Nova in harvest gold, and while neither of them were exactly hot cars, the Nova was at least slightly cooler, being a 2-door and with a three-on-a-tree transmission (3 speed, gear shift on the steering wheel column). I drove the 4-door Impala for about a year, but yearning to drive something closer to a sports car (and by closer, I mean like a bottle of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's is closer to a fine French wine than Boone's Farm is), and I begged my dad to teach me how to drive the Nova. 

One Saturday afternoon, my dad took me to the junior high school (it had a huge, flat, empty parking lot and everyone went there to learn to drive) and taught me the ins and out of driving a car with a manual transmission. After about an hour, my dad determined that I had caught on well enough to drive us the two miles home, but as we neared our neighborhood, my dad had me stop the car halfway up a steep hill, then turned to me and said, "Now go on up the hill."

I slowly let out the clutch, the car rolled backwards, I panicked and hit the brake, and the car died; this sequence was repeated over and over and over, me sobbing and crying while my dad calmly sat in the passenger seat and said, "You can't drive this car until you can start and stop it on a hill, so keep trying."

I rolled all the way to the bottom of the hill, crying the entire time, when I finally, FINALLY was able to let the clutch out and press on the gas pedal without rolling backwards; I then drove the rest of the way home, and from that day through the rest of high school and college, I drove that little hotrod (not) Nova every chance I could, and with that, I'd like to add that I'm sure glad cars can't talk, because boy, oh, boy, that car knew A LOT....

Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge's Blog for Six Sentence Stories with the prompt "shift"

Center: A Six Sentence Story

He attended the party begrudgingly, worn down by his work mates who were tireless in their efforts to get him back into circulation. It had been 27 weeks since she vanished, 27 weeks since he came home from work to find her morning cup of coffee still sitting on the kitchen table, cold as death, the newspaper neatly folded to the crossword puzzle, every square as blank as his stare, the very center of his being now as hollow and as empty as their bed.

The party was uptown and promised to be one of THE events of the season, if his office mates were to be believed, and as the door opened to the opulent space and the music and laughter swelled out into the hallway, enveloping him, he began to relax for the first time in 27 weeks as he felt himself drawn to the gaiety inside.

One of the men from accounting clapped him on the back and handed him a drink, the alcohol quickly spreading its warmth throughout his body and soul, and before he knew it, he was enjoying himself, laughing along with the others, savoring the smooth bourbon that never seemed to empty from his glass, even going as far as to dance with a few of the charming young women who graced the party.

The hour grew late, the crowd began to lessen, and he bid adieu to the host and hostess, thanking them for the lovely evening, content that he had finally taken the step needed to free himself from the past. He walked home with a lightness in his step and a fullness in his chest and was so caught up in the thrill of the evening that he didn't see the car careening down the street until he had already stepped off the crosswalk, catching only the gleam of familiar blue eyes before the impact.

Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge's Blog for Six Sentence Stories with the prompt "center"

Ding Dong, The Mouse Is Dead

I mentioned last week that there was a mouse in my car. Here's how it went down: I got in the car at 6:30 in the morning two weeks ago today to go to work. It was pouring down rain, I had the wipers on and was about to back out of the driveway when I saw something zip towards the front of the car on the passenger side floorboard. Just a shadow from the wipers, I thought, but then - zip - it ran back the other direction. Shadow? In the dark and the rain? Zip -it ran back to the front, and ZIP! I was outta there.

I ran in the house and up the stairs and woke up my husband by shouting, "THERE'S A MOUSE IN THE CAR!" He rolled over, pulled his CPAP mask off (sexy, I know), and said, "What?" "THERE'S A FUCKING MOUSE IN MY CARRRRRRR!!!" I replied, and he said, "What do you want me to do about it right now?" "TRADE CARS WITH ME" I responded. He tried to say something along the lines of it will be fine, just drive it to work, and I was getting VERY PISSY as I was now going to be late to work, oh, and THERE WAS A MOUSE IN THE CAR when my daughter, who happened to be home for a couple of days, came in the room and said she would move my car out of the driveway so I could take the other one (right after she got in my car to move it, she realized SHE was now driving a car with a live mouse running around, and had it run past, which it fortunately didn't, she surely would have driven right into the side of the house).

My husband took the mouse mobile to Walmart later in the morning and bought mouse traps and glue boards, then liberally, and I mean LIBERALLY spread peanut butter on all of them, including putting a dollop in the middle of the glue board. I saw this when I came home that afternoon, looked in the car, and saw that he had put five traps, a glue board, and the what must have been half of a jar of peanut butter in there. There was so much peanut butter, in fact, that my little mouse friend was able to eat for several days off it and only set off one trap, and no, he did not meet his end doing so. I could envision the mouse lying on his back next to a trap, reaching a little mousy arm out and taking swipes from the peanut butter, then lazily licking his gooey mouse fingers IN MY CAR.

By Thursday, all the peanut butter was gone.

That afternoon, before leaving town for 4th of July weekend, my husband reloaded the traps and we left town (in the other car, of course). There were two problems with that: one, I REPEATEDLY asked him to put the traps inside empty cracker or cereal boxes with a hole cut in the corner, so when the inevitable (hopefully)  happened, there would be no, um, mousy bodily fluids on the interior of the car, and two: we were going to be gone for FIVE DAYS in July in the midwest with temperatures in the 90s. He did neither.

I tried not to dwell on it over the long holiday weekend. When we got home Tuesday evening, the first thing my husband did when we got out of the car was to check the mouse mobile, and immediately crowed, "I got him!"

And yes, yes, he DID get him, but not before the little fucker drug the glue board onto two umbrellas and a tarp and then perished rather untidily in a trap. My husband did the removal, I continued to refuse to drive the car until the traps, peanut butter, and mouse turds were cleaned up. 

On Saturday, my husband took the car out to run errands, and apparently, the first errand he felt was a priority was to buy a giant bottle of Febreze and spray the entire contents all over the inside of the car. Hmmmm. I then spent half an hour with a shop vac removing every last trace of poo while my husband tried to get sticky glue board residue off of two umbrellas and a tarp. Hmmmm. On the advice of my dad, I also stuffed dryer sheets under all the seats (it's supposed to deter future mice from moving in with a bonus of giving off a fresh scent).

The car still smells like peanut butter and not very fresh mouse and clean laundry, but it's MOUSE FREE.

And that's my Ten Things of Thankful post, because not only is the mouse dead, but he (or she) didn't bring nine other members of its family to take up residence in my car (and yes, I checked EVERYWHERE).

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4th of July Thankful Math

Thankful math is getting me again this week, and I have 4th of July holiday to blame. The child development center was closed Friday and Monday for the holiday, Monday because the 4th was on Sunday and therefore is considered "observed" the next day, and Friday because someone higher up was being really nice to us. We work a 4-day week during the summer, half of us taking Mondays off and half of us taking Fridays off. I'm a Monday person, and since everyone got Monday off, then Monday people got Tuesday off as well, and I thought today was Sunday but actually it's Monday and my Ten Things of Thankful is going to come in under the wire and THIS IS WHY I BARELY PASSED ALGEBRA IN HIGH SCHOOL.

Carrying on. Here are my thankfuls:

There is a mouse in my car. I am thankful that we have two cars, because I'm not setting foot in the other one until the little fucker is caught.

My daughter was approved for an apartment we found in Kansas City. This is a HUGE relief for all of us. Move in should be easy, since she only has a small arm chair, a desk chair, three cups, a couple of bowls, a sauce pan, and way too many clothes.

I had a dream I peed myself, and I woke up pretty relieved to find out that it was just a dream.

Made brownies in a bowl that was entirely too small and didn't slop it all over the counter.

Poshmark, which makes my addiction to Allbirds shoes affordable.

POV on PBS.

We can sit on the dock at the lake house and watch the fireworks display at Branson Landing without the crowds. 

Milo's zero calorie sweet tea.

Pleasant weather for the 4th of July weekend: warm during the day, cool in the evening, and low humidity.

Good tweezers.

I'd invite you to join us this week at the Ten Things of Thankful, but you're going to have to be quick, because the link closes soon!

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