Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Wordless Wednesday 11.6



Were our neighbors trying to tell us something when they 
pointed a giant cat's ass towards our house on Halloween?

Friday, November 1, 2013

It Was An Alarming Week

When I am Sovereign Ruler of the Universe, I am going to declare the day after Halloween to be a holiday from school. Get ready for it. In the meantime, I must plod along life with the rest of the masses, biding my time, and occupy myself by finding the thankful in the past week. Here goes.

1. You know how you get a song stuck in your head for days and days and can't get rid of it? I had Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" on interminable repeat in my head (and I like the song, actually, if I hear it every once in awhile, but not over and over and over...) and FINALLY was able to dislodge it. 

2. We all know the only way to dislodge a song that's stuck in your head is to replace it with another one, right?  Goodbye, "Wrecking Ball." Hello, "The Cup Song (When I'm Gone)."

3. Got rid of "The Cup Song" by, yes, replacing it with ANOTHER song. This time up, "Royals" by Lorde. I do love her voice! Which is a good thing, because I keep hearing it over and over and over and....




4. I make a pretty darn fine sugar cookie. This week, I made a double batch and cut them out into pumpkins and fall leaves, then frosted them and sprinkled them with colored sugar. I would show you a picture, but I ate them all. 

5. Always good to have a reason that I can't possibly finish the laundry.




6. Had a follow up visit with my general surgeon, Dr. Dorian Grey. He did a VERY THOROUGH breast exam, made all the more weird by the fact that I can feel the pressure of the exam but not actually feel anything on my skin. Ever fall asleep funny on your arm and your hand goes to sleep and is so far beyond the prickly stage that it seems completely dead? Like that. He didn't find anything of concern, and I don't get to gaze at his unlined face and auburn hair don't have to go see him again for another six months.

7. Our security alarm went off the other night at 1:30 a.m. Before going to bed that night, I had taken an ibuprofen p.m. in an attempt (failed) to thwart the insomnia I have been having for the past few weeks, and had finally dropped off into that deep, dark sleep that sometimes happens right after you drift off. At the blaring of the alarm, my husband leaped out of bed and headed for the upstairs alarm control panel, catching his foot in the handle of a duffle bag that was sitting outside the hall closet door on his way.  I was aware of the alarm going off and of my husband thundering out of the room, and was trying to drag myself out of my ibuprofen p.m.-induced sleep when I heard the crash caused by him falling over the bag, followed by a stream of curse words. He got the alarm off, then headed downstairs to investigate when the alarm went off a second time. I had gotten up by this time and pushed my way past him, going down the stairs to the alarm control panel in only my pajama top, having shed the bottoms during an earlier hot flash, and hoping I didn't meet a burglar. When I checked the downstairs panel (which is the only one with a digital read-out of the alarm status), I saw that the cause of the alarm going off was a problem with the phone line. I walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Problem, all right: no dial tone. (Cell) phone calls to the alarm company and the telephone company and two hours of flopping around, hearing "Wrecking Ball" or "The Cup Song" or "Royals" on an endless loop, and I finally dropped off to sleep. Aaaand the alarm went off again. AND IT WASN'T EVEN SET. So what did I bring away from this for which to be thankful? No burglar, silly!

8. I had a dream this week that I was pregnant, and in spite of my basket being rendered relatively useless from two uterine ablations, and my egg production halted both by the monthly Zoladex injections and the daily Arimidex tablets, I woke up just short of hyperventilating. Once my heart stopped racing, though, all I could think was, "Whew!"

9. Halloween is over! Yahoo! (I really don't like Halloween that much.) It rained buckets all that morning and into the afternoon, but by 4:00, the sun was shining and in another hour, the kids started ringing the doorbell. We ended the night with over 900 trick or treaters, and now it's over for another year.


About 6:30 p.m.



Really starting to get busy. Around 7:30 it was crazy,
with kids lined up all the way from our front porch to the street.


10. Best for last! We have a new baby at our house. As of this writing, she remains nameless (and we are open to suggestions). The other two cats hate her. HATE her. HAAAAATE HER. She is currently kept segregated from them until everyone can play nice. And I love her.





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Saturday, October 26, 2013

Finding Thankfulness In An Otherwise Bland But Busy Week

Hello, weekend! How'd you get half way over so quickly? 

Ten Things of Thankful time. Even with a relatively dull, but busy, week, there is always so much for which to be thankful. Little things, folks, remember the little things.

1. My friend Melinda and I drove the 180 miles (each way) to see our daughters play volleyball in West Plains, Missouri. We debated whether we were completely insane to drive so far to watch them play for 30 minutes, but I pointed out that we only have four more years of them at home, doing things like playing volleyball, and off we went. Not. Sorry. I also discovered McDonald's pralines and cream McFlurry and strongly encourage you to try one, too.

2. The trip back afforded us a view of a spectacular sunset. I took pictures with my iphone through a bug-splatted windshield (and no, I wasn't the one driving, just for the record). I already posted one of them for Wordless Wednesday, but here's another shot:




3. I got to do a little horse-sitting this week when the twins in my primary class at preschool wore horse necklaces to school and needed to take them off for movement class, so they didn't get bopped in the nose with a horse. I love my job!




4. I think,THINK, there is some kind of baseball game (or two or seven) going on this week, and I really could not care less about it. 

5. My daughter played her very last game of the volleyball season. It's been a great year for those freshman girls! They ended the year 15-1 in regular play, 22-3 including tournaments. Look how excited one of the coaches was:





(Coach CLAIMS she was re-enacting the story of one of the pitchers in the World Series game the night before calling a ball then standing there as it dropped in front of him, but we all know she was REALLY unable to contain herself that the freshman team was so awesome....)

6. My parents and my husband's parents were all able to come to the last volleyball game. Not that many kids are lucky enough to have two complete sets of grandparents, let alone have them come to their school activities. And guess who didn't think to take a picture of this event?

7. The choral music department held their fall concert the same night as the last volleyball game, so my daughter and one other volleyball player, also a freshman, had to hustle to change into their show choir costumes and do their hair and makeup. We got the grandparents from the gym to the auditorium (all, fortunately, in the same building) without mishap. My daughter's show choir group, New Expressions, is made up of freshmen and sophomores, and they blew away the other three show choir groups that performed. No lie.



8. After the tornado in 2011, the school kids in our district have had to put up with less than ideal conditions in order to go to school. One of our three middle schools was completely destroyed, as were two elementary schools and the high school. The high school students have been divided into two groups, with the 11th and 12th graders attending school in a converted large box store at the mall and the 9th and 10th graders attending at an old school building that was built in 1917 as a high school, and since then, it has been home to a junior high, a middle school, and an alternative school for kids with special needs. The auditorium, where the choir concert was held, is very cramped. The seats are probably from the 1940s. They are wooden and narrow. The sound and light systems pretty much amount to either "on" or "off". The stage is very small. But those kids got up there and acted as though they were at Carnegie Hall. They are resilient, those kids. 

9. The college boy is home for the weekend. And yes, he brought home a mountain of laundry. But guess what? HE WASHED THEM ALL HIMSELF! There is hope for him yet.

10. With the college boy home, we had a family dinner tonight, sitting at the dining room table and everything. My kids are so quick-witted, and we spent much of the time laughing and telling stories. Many subjects were discussed, including some that should NEVER be covered, let alone at a dinner table. But that's just the way we roll.

Now, see all the thumbnails of the other terrific bloggers who have linked up to our TToT? Do yourself a big ol' favor and click on one or all of them. Read their lists. Read the comments that follow, because we do play loose and fast with our comments. And link YOUR TToT entry as well. Ready, set, GO.



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Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Wordless Wednesday 10.23


Sunset on I-44, somewhere west of Cabool, Missouri, as taken by my iphone through the windshield (no, I wasn't the one driving, silly).

Monday, October 21, 2013

Let's All Go To The Movies. On Second Thought, Let's Not.

We don't go to the movie theater very often. My family would rather watch movies at home, but Saturday night, my husband and I dropped our daughter off at a birthday party and went to see Gravity 3D. And were we sorry. Want to feel my pain? Here are 12 reasons why I'm never going back to the local movie theater (Hollywood Theaters Northstar 14, if you're ever in the area and are tempted to see a movie. Oh, and did I mention it's the ONLY movie theater in town and the next nearest one is thirty miles away?).

1. My husband complained the whole time about the price ($13.25 per ticket for Gravity 3D), the sticky floors, the broken seats, and that the place smells like feet.

2. The popcorn was not the fluffy pieces of salty goodness you would expect, but instead, were hard little kernels that had barely exploded, and I could practically hear my teeth cracking with each bite.

Itsy, bitsy, teeny, tiny,
 tooth-breaking popcorn.

3. They no longer have Coke products. Did you get that? THEY DO NOT HAVE DIET COKE. 

4. The kid working behind the concession stand had no sense of humor when he asked me what I wanted, and I told him what I WANTED was a Diet Coke.

5. Most of the seats look (and feel) as though a bunch of 10 year olds have been jumping up and down on them. 

6. We were the very first ones in the theater, chose our seats, and began breaking our teeth munching on the popcorn when about ten college-aged kids came in and sat in the row behind us. IN THE ROW BEHIND US. WHEN THE ENTIRE THEATER WAS EMPTY OTHER THAN OUR TWO SEATS.

7. About a dozen other people also chose seats frighteningly near us, making my husband ask if we had become part of a Saturday Night Live skit without knowing it.

8. The girl sitting behind me and immediately to my right put her feet up on the back of the seat next to me, situating them RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD. 


9. The girl directly behind me laughed loudly throughout the entire movie. You realize we saw Gravity? And that it is not a comedy?

10. The two men who sat directly in front of us kept a running dialogue of commentary throughout the entire movie.

You must have really good eyes or a magnifying glass to see my little captions on here,
but it took me nearly an hour to do this (and that doesn't include the twenty minutes
it took me to find it on the computer after I saved it) so would you humor me
and take a closer look? Thank you.

11. This has nothing to do with the deplorable state of the theater, but I did find it entirely implausible that Sandra Bullock's character could pull out a manual and press a few random buttons and ignite the engine of a space capsule and launch it into space. But when I mentioned this, my husband said I needed to suspend reality and JUST ENJOY THE MOVIE AND THIS IS ANOTHER REASON WHY I DON'T TAKE YOU TO THE MOVIE THEATER.

12. The bathrooms are nasty, and only one hand dryer works. And there are several bathrooms in the building. And only one hand dryer EVER works in every. single. bathroom. What's more, it's usually the wheelchair-accessible one, so you have to bend over to dry your hands.

After prying our sticky feet off the floor and leaving the theater, we vowed that THAT WAS IT. 

But guess who got the last laugh?



That's right. I kept my 3D glasses. So there. Hah!


Friday, October 18, 2013

It's Better To Carry A Tune Than A Grudge*

It's a chilly, rainy night in the Ozarks. Unseasonably chilly. So unseasonably chilly that I broke down and put the electric mattress pad on the bed this evening, because I like to froze last night. That will lead me to my Ten Things of Thankful rather nicely, won't it? 

1. Electric mattress pads. I turn it on before I brush my teeth and wash my face and see to the rest of my evening toilette, and then I have a toasty warm place to put my tootsies when I climb into bed.

2. Electric mattress pads with dual controls, because my husband HATES having the mattress pad turned on on his side, although when he has cold feet, he sticks them on my side of the bed (and I kick them right back to his side).

3. Ever heard of a three dog night? Thursday night was a two cat night, thanks to the inviting fuzzy blanket I added on top of the covers. It worked; I was warm, but I also couldn't move all night.


The sliver that remains of what was once
 my side of the bed. 

4. I had help making the bed today when I put on the electric mattress pad. How do people who don't own cats put sheets on their beds? Who helps them?






5. This week was "F" week in pre-k. We talked about words that started with "F" during circle time. You know, fossils. Feet. Finger. Firetruck. We were walking down the hall to music class when one of the boys said, "Miss Dyanne, 'fart' starts with 'F'!" It proves he's listening and learning, but I must say, I am a little worried about "P" week....

6. It was also Fire Safety week at preschool. We had a visit from the fire department, which was really cool. The crew who came on the day I teach the primary class was the same crew that came last year and dressed me up in their firefighting gear. Wouldn't you know that they remembered me and asked if I would do it again this year? I was much more prepared for it this year and didn't think I was going to die while trying to breathe with the face mask on, although I might have did drool a little bit, maybe.


If Firefighter Justice weren't so cute,
I don't think I could be talked into this....


7. We had planned to attend the last home football game tonight, so with the rain pounding down outside tonight, I am reminded that I am so thankful my daughter plays an indoor sport, because those football player families are huddled under umbrellas and rain ponchos and are, I'm sure, quite miserable right about now.

8. I decorated the house for fall, and it makes me happy. 







9. Thursday night was Pink Out night at the home volleyball game. The freshman team surprised me by each presenting me with a pink carnation with a note attached telling how I had been an inspiration. It was very touching.






10. And sweet Lizzi made good on her word that she was going to run a 5k and raise money for cancer research! She reached her fundraising goal (and then some) and ran the race in a respectable 32 minutes and 15 seconds.

*The title has nothing to do with the post, as you have probably noticed by now. It was just a line from an episode of Modern Family that was airing while I was writing this, and I thought it was worth noting. And yes, Cam is the one who said it. Who else?

 This is a link up. Write your ten things and link them up. Hear me?




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